Corporate Espionage Detailed in Documents

Former BBI investigator Timothy S. Ward, a retired Maryland State Police officer, said BBI did nothing illegal. He declined to comment on methods or specific investigations, citing what he said were confidentiality requirements under Maryland law.

The legality and ethics of such methods as dumpster diving and infiltration are widely debated and vary from state to state. Many private investigators and corporations have abandoned the practices since 2006, when it became known that Hewlett-Packard's chairwoman used investigators to spy on board members and reporters.

Experts said corporations are typically insulated from such investigations by confidentiality agreements and multiple layers of subcontractors, making the BBI documents rare for more than the methods they reveal.

"I don't know of many cases where you get to see the whole chain of people involved," said Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology, which researches privacy issues.

That chain included Jim Daron, a D.C. police officer who helped seize trash from outside activists' offices. "If he can't get it with the shield, it will be difficult," Ward wrote in an e-mail about dumpsters in a gated alley.

In an interview, Daron said he was present during trash pulls but served only as a driver. He said he stopped even that after BBI asked him to use his badge to gain access to restricted areas. "I said, 'No, it's over,' " he said.

D.C. police officers must obtain permission to have outside jobs; Daron, who still works for the department, said he did not do so.

The chain often included public relations consultants who hired BBI or urged clients to do so. The documents show that many of BBI's clients were referred by Nichols-Dezenhall Communications Management Group, a D.C. crisis management firm.

Before Nichols-Dezenhall disbanded in 2003, founding partner Eric Dezenhall promoted his firm's willingness to aggressively respond to what he called "the culture of the attack."

"We are the last resort, the Navy SEALs of the communications business," he told The Post in 1999. "Our only objective is to make the problem go away."

In a statement, Dezenhall said neither he nor anyone else at his former firm authorized or condoned unethical activity. "Although at times we have recommended that our clients protect themselves by retaining security and investigative experts, we have not supervised or directed those activities because that has never been our area of expertise," he wrote.

Dezenhall said his current firm, Dezenhall Resources, does not share Nichols-Dezenhall's "strategic focus." Managers, employees, clients and vendors "have turned over almost entirely since that time," he wrote.