“War Rooms, Wiretaps & Walnut Paneling”

Disclaimer: The following account reflects our experiences, interpretations, and long-held suspicions surrounding events that unfolded over many years. Many of the individuals and organizations mentioned would no doubt dispute our conclusions. Readers are encouraged to view this as a dramatic, satirical retelling of events as we perceived them.

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I. Before the Gavel Fell: The Prelude to Paranoia

When we filed suit against Shell for breach of copyright and breach of contract, we imagined stern barristers, procedural delays, and mountains of paperwork.

We did not anticipate what felt like an audition reel for a Cold War espionage thriller.

The Threat Barrage

Before the trial even began, the atmosphere shifted. Letters, phone calls, subtle warnings — some vague, some theatrical — began arriving. Whether coincidence or choreography, the timing was exquisite. We were, apparently, inconvenient.

There were interviews conducted by individuals who introduced themselves with confidence and polished credentials. Among them were people presenting as Christopher Phillips and Charles Hoots. They asked questions that felt less like fact-finding and more like reconnaissance. Later, we would come to doubt whether they were who they claimed to be.

Were they journalists? Consultants? Concerned intermediaries?

Or characters auditioning for a role in “Corporate Intelligence: The Musical”?

We still don’t know.

The Burglaries That Weren’t (Or Were)

Then came the break-ins.

No dramatic safe cracking. No theatrical ransacking. Just selective disturbance. Documents shifted. Items examined. Nothing obvious taken.

The sort of burglary that whispers:

“We were here.”

Police reports were filed. Shrugs were offered. Explanations were thin.

We began to feel less like litigants and more like background characters in a John le Carré subplot.

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II. The Trial: Order in the Court, Chaos in the Shadows

The case proceeded. Arguments were heard. The machinery of justice churned forward.

Then something curious happened.

Shell paid all of our legal costs.

And there was a settlement.

A settlement not disclosed to the judge.

At the time, we accepted it as a practical conclusion to litigation. Only later did it begin to feel… strategic.

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III. Enter Hakluyt: The Gentlemen’s Spy Club

It was after the trial that we discovered reporting about Hakluyt, a private intelligence firm founded by former MI6 officers. The firm had reportedly conducted discreet investigations on behalf of corporate clients. Shell has long been publicly described as one of Hakluyt’s clients.

We learned of connections — overlapping directorships, titled individuals, cross-shareholdings — a web of establishment credentials so polished it practically reflected candlelight.

Hakluyt, for the uninitiated, is the sort of organization that sounds fictional until you Google it.

Our subsequent correspondence with Hakluyt became… surreal.

At one point, they reportedly consulted Sir Anthony Hammond regarding how to respond to communications relating to us. The idea that a former senior legal authority might be summoned into the orbit of our dispute made us feel either:

1. Deeply important

2. Deeply delusional

3. Or accidentally standing in the middle of something much larger

Possibly all three.

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IV. The Email That Wasn’t Just an Email

In one particularly curious moment, we contacted the head of Shell’s Corporate Affairs & Security (CAS).

The automated response we received came — astonishingly — from a Hakluyt email domain.

Now, there may be perfectly benign explanations for such overlap. Shared services. Technical quirks. Administrative routing.

But when you already suspect you’re living inside a spy novel, even an autoresponder feels like a wink from behind a velvet curtain.

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V. The SAR Revelations: Welcome to the War Room

Years later, we filed Subject Access Requests.

What emerged from internal communications startled us.

References to a “war room.”

Discussions suggesting coordinated monitoring efforts.

Indications — at least as we interpreted them — that Shell was conducting wide-ranging intelligence activity not only concerning us but also its own employees.

Was this standard corporate risk management language inflated by our imagination?

Or were we genuinely categorized as a hostile threat requiring containment strategy?

We found ourselves reading corporate emails the way Kremlinologists once read Pravda.

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VI. Insider Voices

We became aware of individuals inside Shell who appeared sympathetic to our concerns.

Among the names associated with CAS leadership were:

• Gene Sticco

• Ian Forbes McCredie

Corporate security departments, especially in multinational energy firms, operate on a scale most civilians cannot easily imagine. Global assets. Geopolitical risk. Activist pressure. Litigation exposure.

Were we simply swept into the defensive posture of a giant used to thinking in intelligence frameworks?

Or had we stumbled into a machinery designed for something far larger than handling a copyright dispute?

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VII. The Recording: MI6 and the Boardroom

Perhaps the most dramatic episode involved an audio recording we obtained — allegedly capturing a conversation between former Shell CEO Ben van Beurden and CFO Simon Henry, discussing hires from MI6.

The recording has circulated publicly.

We will not opine on its provenance here.

But when you hear senior executives discussing intelligence backgrounds in recruitment strategy, it adds rocket fuel to suspicions already ablaze.

Names such as:

• Guy Colegate

• John Copleston

surfaced in connection with intelligence or security networks.

Again — multinational corporations frequently hire from intelligence communities. It is not inherently sinister.

But in the context of our experiences?

It felt operatic.

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VIII. The Litigation Echo Chamber

Years later, our orbit expanded into litigation involving other senior figures:

• James W.D. Hall

• Mike Olivieri

• Crockett Oaks

Our website was referenced in U.S. court papers involving Oberti Sullivan LLP.

We had transitioned from plaintiffs in a contract dispute to recurring characters in a sprawling legal-intelligence ecosystem.

Not bad for a family who just wanted their copyright respected.

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IX. The Satirical Conclusion: How to Sue an Oil Major

If you ever decide to sue one of the largest energy corporations on Earth, we offer this lighthearted guide:

1. Expect paperwork.

2. Expect silence.

3. Do not expect what feels like a subplot from Tinker Tailor Soldier Driller.

What we encountered may have been coincidence amplified by stress.

It may have been corporate security functioning at industrial scale.

Or it may have been something more coordinated than we were ever meant to see clearly.

We cannot prove the grand conspiracy our imaginations sometimes assemble.

But we can say this:

When you glimpse war rooms, intelligence alumni, private spy firms, selective burglaries, and overlapping boardrooms — you begin to suspect that suing a supermajor oil company is less like filing paperwork…

…and more like tugging a thread in a tapestry woven in very old rooms with very thick carpets.

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Epilogue: The Shell Spy Bot Smiles

And somewhere, in a mahogany-lined office overlooking the Thames, a discreet corporate spy bot may still be humming softly, processing risk matrices, flagging dissent, and adjusting cufflinks.

Purely metaphorical, of course.

Probably.

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