One night during the mild autumn of 2010, a German luxury sedan that goes for more than an average miner makes in twelve months, pulled into the parking lot of the down-in-the-heels country club in Bluefield, West Virginia.
Bluefield is a declining coal city in a state stuffed with coal towns. Three-quarters of a century ago, there was hope. Ramping up for the industrial age required tons of coal. There was money in Bluefield. There was promise. Now, the coal is gone. Downtown is vacant and shiny cars are about as rare as a good hair day for Donald Trump.
Until recently, unless someone lived in West Virginia, they probably never heard of Don Blankenship. He grew up in the West Virginia coal fields and took his accounting degree from a local college. Using a recipe of luck, hard work and ruthlessness, Blankenship morphed into everything wrong in business and politics in America. Pursuing blatant self-interest that he called patriotism, Blankenship bought judges like cheap whores, treated his dogs better than his workers and blasted mountains just to get a few centimeters of coal. For all this, Blankenship earned $18 million a year — and attained the position of being the highest paid CEO in the coal industry.
For twenty years, Blankenship was the king of coal in The Mountaineer State. While other coal CEOs who operate in the Appalachians are business school graduates and have offices and other states, Blankenship is a rich hillbilly who is convinced God put the coal in the mountains so that he could mine it. Blankenship is alternately hated, feared and respected. He's a carry-over from the coal barons of the 1800s.
To Blankenship, and the old-time coal barons, being productive in coal mining means getting the coal out of the ground as fast and cheaply as possible. The heck with the cost to workers or the environment.
After years of seeing citations for safety violations ignored, Federal prosecutors indicted Blankenship on one count of conspiracy to violate workplace safety laws and two counts of lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, and investors. On October 1, 2015, jury selection was begun in the case of The United States vs. Don Blankenship.
Over 300 potential jurors were called. It turned out to be a challenge finding twelve who had not already established an opinion about the defendant — for good or bad.
Ken Silverstein, a writer for Forbes, who has been covering Blankenship's trial in Federal Court in Charleston, West Virginia, says, "In the mining communities where Blankenship lived and worked, he is largely loathed. Many in those communities feel that he is getting his just deserts. Others, though, feel as if he is being prosecuted because he was a hard ass who had no feelings for the little guy and that prosecutors are trying to criminalize what is already a dangerous business."
To extract the coal according to his goals, Blankenship popularized mountaintop removal. Mountaintop removal is a form of mining where the mountains are removed from the coal instead of the coal being removed from the mountain. Mountaintop removal has destroyed over 2,000 miles of streams and damaged over a million acres of forest. Fighting labor unions and federal regulators every step, Blankenship exposed miners to deadly conditions and injected toxic slurry near underground aquifers. "All in all, Blankenship has caused more suffering than any other human in Appalachia," says Cecil Roberts, the head of the United Mineworkers of America.
With big money at stake, the emphasis was "running coal" at any price. The safety data was terrible and getting critical. In 2014, MSHA found that the company's culture of favoring production over safety contributed to flagrant safety violations that caused the coal dust explosion. It levied $10.8 million in fines for 369 citations and orders, the largest for any mine explosion in American history. Alpha Natural Resources eventually settled Massey's potential criminal liabilities for $209 million.
The serious violations centered on the air purifying system. At Upper Big Branch, supervisors told miners to take shortcuts and avoid monitors. When an MSHA inspector would visit the section, miners would hang an air-diverting curtain. The moment the inspectors left, the curtains came down.
The explosion at UBB happened during the shift change on April 5, 2010. The power of the explosion shredded mining equipment like paper mache. The fire rolled around corners and killed everybody in its way. The level of devastation was so punishing that searchers walked past the bodies of four lost miners on the first day — and didn't see them.
Following the accident, Blankenship was observed going in and out of the corporate building where relatives had gathered for news. With his eyes focused on the earth and a mixture of anger and guilt on his face, Blankenship's appearance only helped to incense family members.
Never before in his life had Blankenship discovered himself in the middle of a disaster that he was not able to spend his way out of. The news coverage was constant, and business insiders started speculating openly that Blankenship would have to quit as Massey's CEO.
Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia rebuked Blankenship, telling him, "I cannot understand how a company could exercise such shameful health and safety plans while concurrently bragging about its dedication to the protection of its workers." "The Upper Big Branch mine had a distressing record. Shame!"
The story that Blankenship tried to push out through press releases and social media was as twisting as the mountain highway. Initially, he argued that MSHA was liable for the disaster at UBB because its air-exchange plan didn't remove methane fast enough. Days later, Blankenship posited the theory that the blast had been caused by natural gas — not methane — which is rarely a problem in coal mines.
It makes for a nice story. There is little reality in it. Assertions from miners make it clear that a persistent problem at UBB was high levels of methane. Two miners reported to The New York Times that the mine had experienced such high methane levels in the preceding two months that evacuation was required — three different times.
If the mine was as dangerous as the MSHA, and miners, claimed, why didn't the miners themselves blow the whistle? Job security. If the miners spoke out, they would lose their jobs. "No one felt they could go to management," Stanley Stewart, a miner, said. "We knew that we'd be marked and that management would find ways to fire us."
What goes around comes around and instead of miners' jobs being threatened, it was Blankenship's job security that was in doubt. A mere nine days after the disastrous UBB explosion, Massey Energy shareholders started calling on the company to see the immediate resignation of Blankenship. New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, who controlled about $14.2 million of Massey stock as the administrator of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, issued a statement blasting Massey's "callous disregard" for the protection of its employees.
DiNapoli's full statement read, "Massey's indifferent attitude toward risk and stubborn disregard for the safety of its workers has exacted a terrible cost on dozens of hard-working miners and their loved ones. This disaster was a failure both of risk management and effective board oversight. Blankenship must step down and make room for more responsible leadership at Massey."
Following the explosion, the company was hit by civil and criminal investigations and damage suits and regulators stepped up investigations of several more company mines for potential safety infractions.
Blankenship tried to stay the course in the midst of the turmoil. There was no stopping the storm. The writing was on the wall and on December 3, 2010, the embattled CEO gave up the fight and resigned.
Government regulators continued their work. Interviewing mine supervisors, former miners and others familiar with the operation of Massey Energy led to Don Blankenship's indictment and trial which began October 1, 2015.
Very few CEOs, of publicly held corporations, have stood trial and been convicted. Jeff Skilling, Enron and Bernie Ebbers, WorldCom, are two that have walked the path Blankenship is walking. Regardless of the final verdict, Blankenship's trial will still have far-reaching implications. It will cause industries to underscore safety — not to relegate it to a secondary status.
Blankenship's trial will serve as a warning to other CEOs according to Silverstein, who has been covering the trial and is knowledgeable of the accusations, the attorneys, and the issues involved.
Blankenship has been indicted on three counts: first, the conspiracy to violate workplace safety laws and second and third, lying to the SEC and investors.
Silverstein outlines the lessons to be learned. "The lesson about Count One is that federal regulations are to be respected, not violated. Even if you disagree with them, you must still obey the law," said Silverstein. "The lesson about Count Two is more tenuous. As a reporter, I get a ton of press releases, and most of them have some BS in them. The difference here is that the press release was filed with the SEC, which said that Massey gives safety its highest priority."
The government appears to have been strategic in bringing the charges. "Frankly, I think those charges are a stretch and may have been brought to force a plea on the front end," said Silverstein. The conspiracy charge is a potential 5-year term, and the SEC and investor charges are 25 years.
Bruce Stanley, an attorney who grew up in Mingo County with Blankenship, said, "One thing that is hard to take about Don is how he betrayed his own people. He took charge of a coal company and climbed to the top — and it turned him into an asshole."
The failure of Don Blankenship to his fellow residents of Mingo County is he could have been seen by others as the savior he saw himself as.
"I hope he comes back to Matewan," said Wilma Steele, a former high school classmate of Blankenship. "After he goes to prison, he could do some good."
About his downfall, Silverstein says Blankenship is too much "like the Godfather, who just talked too much. He brought attention to himself because he was an ardent opponent of the federal government and especially the Obama administration. For him, many regulations were laborious and costly, taking away from production. "