Buried in Practice Reconstructs the Record on West Papua, Human Rights, and a Missing US Investigation

New investigative book from Resource Capital Research examines Freeport-McMoRan, West Papua, Indonesia, a vanished US State Department human rights report, FBI interference, and thirty comparative project case studies involving Indigenous rights, environmental harm, and corporate accountability across five continents.

Key Points

West Papua and the US State Department - Key Findings and Questions Raised:

• Missing US State Department human rights investigation: State Department officials publicly confirmed a human rights investigation in 1995-96.
• Declassified cables reveal widespread US government concern. Thirty years' later the interim and final reports remain unreleased.
• Revolving door between key government officials and corporate advisory roles and positions on Freeport's board – including former ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, and secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
• The unanswered fate of a 1995–96 investigation: Over ten years of FOIA searches and litigation failed to locate key report records, including potential conflict of interest declarations. Human rights concerns persist despite official reassurances.
• Development aggression: Why Indigenous communities bear development's costs. Indigenous Papuan communities bear substantial social and environmental costs.
• Public accountability versus national security secrecy: Domestic US and Australian critics reported surveillance, intimidation, and interference, including a former Wall Street analyst who challenged official narratives.
• Additional Findings - Thirty comparative projects reviewed:
• Accountability can take decades. Comparative cases show that allegations of violence, displacement, and environmental harm can remain legally, politically, and socially significant decades later.
• Thirty projects spanning Latin America, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Pacific, and the Arctic, highlighting similar conflicts across diverse political, legal, and cultural settings.
• Major sovereign wealth funds blacklisted multiple companies examined in the book.

SYDNEY, June 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Buried in Practice: Freeport in West Papua, Indonesia—and the State Department Human Rights Report That Disappeared is a new work of investigative non-fiction examining a publicly acknowledged US State Department human rights investigation conducted in 1995–96 whose interim and final reports remain missing or unreleased thirty years later. Combining investigative narrative with an extensive documentary archive, the book explores the implications of that absence for human rights, government transparency, and public accountability.

John Wilson said, "A publicly acknowledged US State Department human rights investigation was conducted, yet thirty years later the report remains missing despite more than a decade of FOIA searches."

This is the second installment in Archives of a Wall Street Analyst, a series built around official paper trails, first-person testimony, and the handling of human rights allegations tied to extractive-industry power. Drawing on declassified embassy cables, FOIA records, litigation filings, human rights reports, and eyewitness testimony, Wilson reconstructs the public record surrounding reports of killings near Freeport-McMoRan's Grasberg mine in West Papua, and examines what the missing investigation reveals about accountability, secrecy, and the treatment of dissent.

In a 1996 embassy cable, US Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, whose embassy was involved in the State Department's West Papua human rights investigation, described the competing forces surrounding the Grasberg project as "a kaleidoscope of greed, venality, high principle and naivete." Roy subsequently joined Freeport-McMoRan's board of directors.

Part narrative and part documentary archive, Buried in Practice assembles FOIA correspondence, embassy cables, litigation filings, human rights reports, and contemporaneous media coverage, allowing readers to examine the record for themselves.

Wilson broadens the subject beyond the missing report, describing a pattern of development aggression in which weak oversight, high-value resource extraction, and remote locations can combine to produce displacement, environmental harm, and contested Indigenous consent.

FOIA attorney C. Peter Sorenson, writes of the State Department's investigation in the book's foreword, "The frame is there. The picture is missing."

Wilson says, "The question is not whether an investigation occurred. The question is why its findings remain absent from the public record."

Comparative cases reviewed

Companies: Comparative analysis spans thirty projects across Latin America, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Pacific, and the Arctic, including case studies involving Freeport-McMoRan, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Rio Tinto, BHP, Vedanta Resources, Glencore, and others.

Themes: In addition to the Freeport/West Papua material, the comparative cases examine allegations of development aggression involving resource projects and Indigenous communities across multiple jurisdictions. Drawing on controversies associated with projects linked to Shell in Nigeria, Chevron in Ecuador, ExxonMobil in Indonesia's Aceh region, and Rio Tinto and the Panguna mine conflict in Bougainville, among others, the book explores recurring themes of environmental damage, Indigenous displacement, security-force violence, unequal distribution of economic benefits, and the marginalization of local communities in resource-rich regions.

Significance: Several of the comparative cases have seen major settlements, criminal proceedings, civil liability findings, or sovereign-wealth-fund exclusions. These include the 2023 settlement of long-running litigation against ExxonMobil arising from alleged security-force abuses in Aceh, Indonesia, illustrating how unresolved allegations of violence, displacement, and environmental harm can continue to generate legal, political, and public-accountability questions decades later.

Blacklisted by sovereign wealth funds

Major sovereign wealth funds and public pension funds documented in the book, including Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, Sweden's AP Funds, New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and KLP, excluded or divested several companies examined in the book, citing concerns ranging from Indigenous rights and environmental damage to corruption and human rights risk.

Availability

Buried in Practice is available worldwide in paperback, hardcover, and ebook editions through major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Waterstones, and other online booksellers.

About the Author

John Wilson is a former Wall Street mining analyst and Wharton MBA whose investigative and documentary non-fiction explores the intersection of resource development, state secrecy, human rights, and public accountability. As an analyst, he covered major mining companies, including Freeport-McMoRan, for SG Warburg and SBC Warburg in New York. He is the author of The Untold Story of the FBI: Archives of a Wall Street Analyst, DOJ.

Contact
John Wilson
 Sydney, Australia (+61- 2) 9439 1919
[email protected]
www.buriedinpractice.com

Title: Buried in Practice: Freeport in West Papua, Indonesia—and the State Department Human Rights Report That Disappeared
Author: John C. Wilson
Publisher: Resource Capital Research Pty Ltd
Publication Date: April 2026 (print and ebook)

SOURCE Resource Capital Research