Illustration: Damon Dahlen/HuffPost; Photos: Getty

It was early March when other reporters first noticed Sylvie Barak. About a half a dozen journalists were in a northern California courtroom to cover a third lawsuit alleging that Monsanto’s pesticide glyphosate causes cancer. Barak told others that she was a freelancer for the BBC. She was friendly and helpful, listened earnestly as reporters discussed their private lives; she offered parenting tips and shared her thoughts on the trial. Barak also mentioned that she supplemented her income with PR consulting to pay the bills. One night, she invited several of the female reporters to a meet-and-greet for one of her clients, the European Institute of Innovation & Technology. Barak promised in her email that the event would deliver “warm fuzzies after these 4 weeks of craziness we’ve just been through!” “It was a girls’ night out with free drinks,” recalled Kelly Ryerson, a blogger covering the trial for the site Glyphosate Girl, who spoke to HuffPost. “She was very interested in having the reporters meet her client.” A photo from that night shows Barak smiling next to Ryerson and two other reporters. HuffPost interviewed one of the reporters, who asked not to be named to avoid association with the incident, which could jeopardize her future employment. SUBSCRIBE AND FOLLOW Get the top stories emailed every day. Newsletters may offer personalized content or advertisements. Privacy Policy Newsletter Please enter a valid email address Thank you for signing up! You should receive an email to confirm your subscription shortly. There was a problem processing your signup; please try again later Twitter

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Flipboard “[Barak] would make suggestions about interesting parts of the testimony,” the reporter told HuffPost. “And then go on and on about certain points of testimony to try and get it into stories, and it was always bad for the plaintiffs.” The reporter said that Barak seemed to be fishing for reporters’ views on Monsanto and the trial.

She was very interested in having the reporters meet her client.

Something else about Barak seemed off. A BBC staff journalist was also covering the trial, which raised the question: Why would the BBC send a freelancer and a staff reporter? When journalists searched the internet for Barak, they noticed that her LinkedIn account said she worked for FTI Consulting, a global business advisory firm that Monsanto and Bayer, Monsanto’s parent company, had engaged for consulting. After the reporter sent inquiries about Barak to Bayer, Barak’s LinkedIn account changed to describe her as a freelancer. And when an Agence France-Presse reporter inquired, the BBC said Barak wasn’t working for them. AFP published a piece in May that revealed parts of the intrigue, but did not name Barak. Much of Barak’s social media has since been deleted or locked to outside viewers, including her Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts. Her deleted Twitter page made no mention of her work for FTI, describing her rather as a “recovering/relapsing journalist.” Barak did not respond to multiple requests for comment. FTI staff have previously attempted to obtain information under the guise of journalism. In January, two FTI consultants working for Western Wire — a “news and analysis” website backed by the oil and gas trade group Western Energy Alliance — attempted to question an attorney who represents communities suing Exxon over climate change. Monsanto has also previously employed shadowy networks of consultants, PR firms, and front groups to spy on and influence reporters. And all of it appears to be part of a pattern at the company of using a variety of tactics to intimidate, mislead and discredit journalists and critics. When HuffPost asked about Barak, FTI responded by reissuing a statement from earlier this year, noting that she attended the trial to take notes and that the firm has “initiated an internal review and has since taken necessary and appropriate actions.” FTI did not respond to questions about its work for Bayer or Monsanto. Bayer has denied employing FTI for the trial, saying in a statement: “FTI is not part of the Roundup litigation multi-function team and is not involved in any work related to the Roundup litigation. Bayer did not authorize FTI to work at the Hardeman trial, and did not know anyone from the firm was in attendance until it was brought to our attention after the trial was completed. We want to be clear that the behavior this FTI employee engaged in is not in line with our principles.” The company did not respond to more detailed questions about the consulting firm for this article. After the reporter who spoke to HuffPost contacted Bayer, Barak disappeared. Monsanto went on to lose the trial. But Barak’s presence was felt in court long after; several people covering or involved in the trial told HuffPost they were left feeling slightly paranoid about who they could trust and who else might be watching them. Hiring A Firm With A History Of Spying In early May, an 18-page document made public in the California trial revealed that Monsanto had also hired Hakluyt, a British private investigative firm formed by two veteran MI6 spies in the mid-1990s. Hakluyt keeps a low profile, but it is considered one of the world’s elite spy firms. News accounts and court documents have shed some light on its past clients, including Enron and BP; in 2001, the latter deployed a spy posing as a documentary filmmaker to track Greenpeace as it planned a climate change campaign. The Monsanto document offers a rare insight into Hakluyt’s work, its tactics and political reach. In a sworn deposition for the trial, formerMonsanto attorney Todd Rands testified that Hakluyt agents deliberately hid their links to Monsanto as they gathered information from high-ranking government officials in 2018, including a Trump White House policy adviser and senior officials at the Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency. “We wanted to make sure that we could hear things about ourselves that people might not say directly to us,” said Rands, who also notes in the deposition that he left Monsanto in January 2019 and was then consulting for FTI. The document quotes a staffer at the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, who does not appear to have known they were speaking to a Hakluyt representative, stating that their litigation team “has been working overtime and is likely to continue doing so, going after both the EPA and companies.” Rebecca Riley, legal director for NRDC’s nature program, was appalled to learn that Monsanto had hired private investigators. “We do not know where quotes attributed to NRDC came from,” said Riley, “but it is no secret we hold polluters accountable to the law—and we are proud of it.” A spokesperson for Hakluyt said the company had no comment on how it gathers information nor about its clients. When Traditional PR And Less Traditional Methods Collide While traditional PR companies befriend reporters and crank out press releases to spur news articles, they sometimes deploy more aggressive tactics. Ketchum PR, which has helped Monsanto in its efforts to combat labeling products containing genetically modified organisms and sway public opinion on the safety of its products, has its own record when it comes to hiring people to spy on journalists. Working on behalf of Dow Chemical at the time, Ketchum hired private security firm Beckett Brown International, Inc. to produce dossiers on scientists, journalists and nonprofits working to expose GMO safety concerns, as Mother Jones reported in 2010. The strategy included casing their offices, dumpster diving to collect phone records and confidential meeting notes, and planting operatives within the organizations.

We wanted to make sure that we could hear things about ourselves that people might not say directly to us.

The techniques we most often see in corporate espionage ― dumpster diving, physical surveillance, and false identities ― can supplement more staid documentary and informational research on a target.