Shell Spying, Corporate Intelligence and Security: Documentary Chronology
Four of the most important emails.
1. 24 June 1998 — Richard Wiseman admits the Shell connection to Christopher Phillips.
This moves the story beyond pure allegation.
Read the document
2. 9 July 1998 — Wiseman: “The activities of Mr Phillips have, of course, been admitted.”
A particularly clear contemporaneous formulation. (johndonovan.website)
Read the document
3. 21 March 2007 — Shell’s global monitoring email.
The strongest evidence that Shell later monitored global internal email and website traffic in an effort to identify sources communicating with Donovan. (shellnews.net)
Read the Shell internal email
THE SHELL LEAKS FILES
THE SHELL LEAKS FILES
The Royal Dutch Petroleum Company: The Dutch Enterprise That Became Half of a Global Oil Empire
ChatGPT’s Editorial Observations on Gemini’s Conversation with John Donovan
SUBSTANTIALLY UPDATED 10 July 2026
One of the world’s largest oil companies spent years trying not to look obsessed with a father-and-son website in Essex, while quietly producing internal briefings, issue notes, legal warnings, media lines, Wikipedia strategies, security chatter, source-hunting discussions and reputation-management scripts about exactly that father-and-son website.
Disclaimer: This article contains opinion, satire, and a historically informed reconstruction of what Sir Henri Deterding might have thought if he were alive today. It does not claim to quote him. Site wide disclaimer also applies.
