‘Texaco Man’ Ambivalent to Company

The laid-off “Texaco man” who triggered a national black boycott by releasing his secret tapes of company meetings--and in the process got himself indicted--can’t bring himself to sever his last ties to the oil giant.

“I’ve kept some Texaco stock,” Richard Lundwall said in his first interview since his acquittal on charges of obstruction of justice 18 months ago. “I suppose I should trade it in for Exxon, just to make the separation, but I don’t want to pay the fees.”

Lundwall is doing what he calls general office work, writing a book about the experience and earning “a lot less” than the $100,000 he would be making at Texaco.

Ambivalence toward the giant oil company was a recurring theme in Lundwall’s interview with Associated Press. The company “worked hand-in-glove with the prosecution” in the federal case against him, he says. But he adds, “I was a staunch defender of Texaco and its policies. . . . I’m a Texaco man.”

In 31 years, he worked his way up from gas jockey to personnel executive. In that job, he sat in on meetings about what evidence should be handed over in a racial discrimination suit filed in 1994 by Texaco’s black employees. And he taped those meetings, with a recorder in his shirt pocket.

Texaco was downsizing at the time, and he wanted to protect himself from any unjust accusations that might cost his job, says Lundwall, now 58.

When he was let go anyway, he told the racism suit plaintiffs about his recordings--even though the tapes put him among executives who seemed to be scheming to destroy evidence and belittling black employees. Lundwall could be heard saying about one document: “Let me shred this thing.”

He went to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, he says, because “I was thinking about an age discrimination suit against Texaco and I thought they would represent me.”

Bari-Ellen Roberts, the lead plaintiff in the civil suit, says she thinks Lundwall offered the tapes “not to help us, but to hurt the company.”

The black employees’ lawyers put the tapes in evidence and the case exploded onto the front pages, partly because an early transcript erroneously put a racial slur in the mouth of one executive. Black leaders called for boycotts and demonstrations and Texaco settled, for a record $176 million.

Lundwall was indicted, accused of destroying evidence in the racial suit--with his own tapes the key evidence against him.

Attorney Ethan Levin-Epstein, who won Lundwall’s acquittal, said: “The whole experience was terribly frightening to him and his wife. . . . He was facing virtually certain jail time were he convicted.”