REPORTER: Amos Cohen
A television news crew is on a stakeout in the Hamptons, an exclusive beach resort not far from New York. They're looking for Warren Anderson, the 81-year-old former chairman of Union Carbide.
REPORTER: So there's not really much sign of life.
This is all they will see of their quarry. Anderson, who once controlled America's third-largest chemicals corporation, now keeps an extremely low profile.
REPORTER: Mrs Anderson, hello. Is it Mrs Anderson? Why are you and your husband in hiding? Why won't you talk to the press?
LILLIAN ANDERSON: We're not in hiding. We don't know anything more than the stories that you people publish. We object to your bothering our neighbours at 8:30 in the morning. That's a private road. Stay off it.
REPORTER: But he is facing charges of corporate manslaughter. If he believes he's innocent, why doesn't he come out and proclaim his innocence? We are talking about the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
LILLIAN ANDERSON: That's true.
REPORTER: Does he not feel responsible at all? He was chairman of the company. It's not as if he had nothing to do with this.
LILLIAN ANDERSON: It was an Indian-managed company. I have nothing to say.
REPORTER: But if he's innocent, why doesn't he come out and talk to us? Please, Mrs Anderson, just a few moments of your time.
Warren Anderson is a wanted man. For more than 10 years, there's been an outstanding warrant for his arrest issued by an Indian court.
Anderson was charged with culpable homicide after toxic gas escaped from Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal in 1984, killing thousands of people. Until recently, it was thought he'd gone into hiding to avoid receiving a court summons.
GREENPEACE ACTIVIST: Excuse me, sir, we're looking for a Mr Anderson.
But late last year, a Greenpeace activist surprised Anderson in his driveway as he washed his car. After chasing the retired executive across the lawn, he slipped a copy of the arrest warrant through his door. There's now mounting pressure for Anderson's extradition to India.
ROBERT KENNEDY, FORMER CEO, UNION CARBIDE: Warren Anderson is sort of being pursued as an icon, as the personification of a tragic thing. It could just as well have been myself, if I had been in the CEO job, or Warren's predecessor, if he had been in the CEO job. So Warren is being pursued, not because of what he did, but because of who he was, the chair he occupied at the time.
It's been almost 20 years since Warren Anderson last visited the Indian city of Bhopal, but he has not been forgotten. Every year, as the anniversary of the gas explosion approaches, effigies of the former executive are fashioned out of straw and clay.
For many Indians, Anderson has become the embodiment of the corporate criminal, retiring comfortably while they're left to fend for themselves. Apart from causing thousands of deaths, some 150,000 people are still chronically affected by their exposure to the gas, and they blame Anderson for their suffering.
The night of December 2, 1984, was auspicious in the Hindu calendar, a traditional time for wedding celebrations. Gita Pandey was part way through her reception when the gas struck.
GITA PANDEY (Translation): It was then that we felt a burning sensation in our eyes. It was very strong. Slowly, some of us began to lose consciousness. Some fainted, some vomited, and some tried to run outside. It was chaos. No one knew what was happening. Then I passed out. I lost consciousness.
CARBIDE VIDEO: The events, as first described by the workers at the plant began shortly after 11:00pm that Sunday evening. A number of these men reported smelling MIC gas.
This video produced by Union Carbide reconstructs some of what happened at the plant that night. Unbeknownst to the workers, a runaway reaction had been triggered as water poured into a tank storing methyl isocyanate, or MIC, a highly volatile and toxic chemical.
CARBIDE VIDEO: Then at 12:15am the control room operator said they checked the tank pressure and saw it rising. Within 15 minutes, rumbling sounds were heard coming from tanks. Heat began radiating from the ground. The concrete platform began cracking and, at approximately 12:45am, the screeching through the safety valve signalled the terrifying release.
For the next two hours, 50,000 pounds of a poisonous methal isocyanate gas enveloped most of the older sections of Bhopal.
The 10m high curtain of gas struck without warning. It ate away at its victims' lungs and throats, causing haemorrhaging, muscular convulsions and blindness.
Rashida Bi remembers the terrified stampede to escape the gas.
RASHIDA BI (Translation): After running for a while my father vomited blood and fell unconscious. We left him there and kept running. People were shitting and peeing in their clothes. They were begging to die. They didn't want to live.
It's impossible to say for sure how many died that night and during the days that followed. Whole families were wiped out, leaving no one to report their passing. The official death toll is 3,800, but evidence suggests the real figure is more like 8,000 to 10,000.
In the midst of this nightmare, Gita and her family completed the wedding rituals.
GITA PANDEY (Translation): Everybody was traumatised. Everybody reacted differently. My in-laws were worried about where they'd ended up!
When doctors called Union Carbide's medical officer in Bophal, they were told the leaked gases were similar to tear gas - essentially harmless - and those who were suffering simply needed to rinse their eyes with water.
ANDERSON PRESSER: I think it's important, really, that we do everything we can to make sure that whatever can be worked out in terms of help, assistance, can be done as expeditiously as possible.
Warren Anderson's first response to the disaster was to fly immediately to Bhopal. Union Carbide's lawyers and his wife advised him not to go.
ROBERT KENNEDY: Warren was a kind of father figure of the organisation, and
Robert Kennedy replaced Warren Anderson as company chairman and CEO in 1986.
ROBERT KENNEDY: He had two choices really. He could go to India or he could not go to India, and I don't think the not go to India was ever really a serious consideration.
In hindsight, Anderson must wish he'd stayed at home. Arriving at the airport, he was met by the police chief who escorted him to the company's guesthouse. There, to his horror, he was charged with culpable homicide and placed under arrest.
The Indian, and American, governments were as shocked as the company chairman, and within 24 hours, Anderson was freed on bail.
NEWS REPORTER: Tonight Warren Anderson is out on $2,000 bail. He does not know whether he will have to face trial but he's glad to be free now.
WARREN ANDERSON, CHAIRMAN UNION CARBIDE: What I'd like to do, and I hope you can help me, is tell my wife I'm alive and well and "Hi, Mom," like they do in the ball game.
NEWS REPORTER: Anderson was freed tonight only after American embassy officials protested to the Indian Government. American diplomats believe today's charges were a political move aimed at winning votes in India's national elections later this month.
WARREN ANDERSON: Bail, no bail, I'm free to go home.
Anderson was whisked out of the country after signing an undertaking to return to face any court summons.
ROBERT KENNEDY: As he was about to get on the aircraft leaving Delhi, he was asked to sign some papers, in Hindi. He was told that these were release papers and so forth. I think he'd sign whatever was presented to get on the plane. If it turns out later that this was some kind of a bail bond or a legal instrument that requires you to come back to India and appear in court, that's a surprise to everybody.
As Union Carbide's chairman was leaving, America's top personal injury lawyers were arriving in droves. For them, Carbide's guilt was obvious, and they dreamt of damages that would run into the billions of dollars.
Soon celebrity lawyers like Melvin Belli - he had his own television show - were signing up thousands of victims for the anticipated class action.
MELVIN BELL, LAWYER: Did you hear any sirens before the gas came? I hope that you get well soon.
Mr Anderson said he doesn't want to be tried by the Indian court, he wants to be tried in the United States. My client wants to be tried in the United States too and they want United States damages.
Back at Union Carbide's headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut, Warren Anderson went to work on a strategy to save his company. Staff morale was at an all-time low.
ROBERT KENNEDY: Well there was a great concern about what this would do to the corporation. This is obviously not something that just goes by and the next week it's out of the headlines. This was something that had to be lived with for a long time.
WARREN ANDERSON: The tragedy of Bhopal is overwhelming to all of us at Union Carbide, and it goes without saying we have tremendous grief for those of the people involved in Bhopal. The one thing I wish I could tell you today is what happened over there. And at this point, we simply don't know.
From the start, Anderson and other senior executives had defended the Bhopal plant, maintaining it was identical to its sister plant in the United States.
MR.BROWNING: They are the same. The plant was designed and built by the engineers - were designed by engineers from this country. The safety standards, the safety facilities were in keeping with anything that we would use or have in this country.
But as the scale of the disaster became apparent, Union Carbide started to backtrack. The need to protect the company's interests soon led to an astonishing turnaround and Carbide began to distance itself from its Bhopal plant.
MR.BROWNING: If you mean by identical, the same kind of valve, the same size of valve, same kind of pipe, same size of pipe, that sort of thing, the answer is that there are differences.
Soon, the official line was that the plant in Bhopal was run by a subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited, so whatever had gone so badly wrong there, the parent company couldn't be expected to take any responsibility.
WARREN ANDERSON: We run safety not with some small group in Danbury running out to locations to make sure everything is safe, but safety is the responsibility of people who operate in our plants, and you can't, in a system of this nature, take that responsibility off their shoulders and delegate it to somebody else.
PROFESSOR UPENDRA BAXI, LEGAL ADVISER TO BHOPAL SURVIVORS: Carbide knew what it was doing. Carbide knew that it has to avoid every semblance of harm, of liability, of guilt. They knew from the 3rd and 4th of December what to do.
Professor Upendra Baxi is the former vice-chancellor of Delhi University. He travelled to Bhopal a few days after the disaster and has assisted the survivors with their legal strategy ever since.
PROFESSOR UPENDRA BAXI: There was anger at Warren Anderson who came just around that time, in that period I was in and out of Bhopal, who personified the evil that happened to them and you'd find from about the first 10, 11 days, this notion that we should hang Union Carbide. Carbide - that was the slogan, that was the groundswell, that this corporation deserved to be awarded a capital punishment.
Warren Anderson retired from Union Carbide in 1986. Since then, he's never spoken publicly about the Bhopal disaster.
ROBERT KENNEDY: In the two years after Bhopal, I never saw Warren lose his temper, curse out anybody, the gods or the events. His composure was incredibly good. I'd say it remains that way, but how deep the pain is inside, I can only imagine. If it were me, I would be hurting terribly.
The Union Carbide plant was dismantled after the explosion, but some of it still remains, rusted and overgrown.
KAMAL PAREEK: This has basically become a graveyard and it's not a good feeling, it's not a good feeling at all to be walking through this plant. You can't describe the emotions. You can only look back in horror. At least I look back in horror. I helped to create this plant.
Kamal Pareek started working here as an engineer in the 1970s while the plant was still being designed.
KAMAL PAREEK: For me it was like a dream come true because I was one of the very few Indian-educated engineers who had been selected to work for a multinational. It was a point of honour and prestige in my community at that point of time to be selected to work for Union Carbide.
Carbide prided itself on its culture of safety. Warren Anderson himself is credited with improving the company's safety record. He first came to Bhopal in 1980 for the inauguration of Carbide's new pesticide plant.
But a few years later, when the plant had failed to make a profit, Kamal Pareek says cost cutting began to take priority over safety.
KAMAL PAREEK: It was obvious to even an idiot that, you know, the minute you take away one safety feature from the plant, you are left without just about another couple of safety features which may or may not be adequate. There's just no way you can guarantee safety. If you start taking decisions based on a few, maybe a few thousand rupees a day.
None of the plant's safety systems were functioning on the night of the disaster. Some were being repaired, others had been shut down to save money.
Over the years, numerous warnings had pointed to the possibility of a disaster. A safety audit of the plant, carried out by American inspectors back in 1982, had noted a total of 61 hazards.
By the following year, none of the audit's recommendations had been implemented, and Pareek decided to leave.
KAMAL PAREEK: Since I decided to quit, I put my fears on record at that point of time. I told them, and I told them that the way things are going it wouldn't really surprise me if we have a huge tragedy on our hands. I did not use the word 'tragedy' - I said 'disaster', at that point of time.
And how did they react, how did they respond?
KAMAL PAREEK: Nothing, they wished me good luck and threw me out.
With hindsight, do you wish that the head office had been more proactive in ensuring those safety standards were maintained?
ROBERT KENNEDY: In hindsight, the head office, as you referred to it, is not current on the operating process momentarily at every plant around the world. It cannot possibly do that. That's the responsibility of the local company.
After the disaster, Union Carbide worked hard to find something to blame other than its own negligence. First it tried to pin the blame on Sikh terrorists, but then it chose a target closer to home - one of its own workers.
Although it was generally accepted that water entered the tank of methyl isocyanate during a routine cleaning operation, in this corporate video, Carbide suggests it was added in an act of industrial sabotage.
CARBIDE VIDEO, MAN: We also know that this particular candidate had a motive, in the sense that he had recently been transferred out of the MIC unit into a less prestigious unit in the plant.
WOMAN: He, in fact, still bore a lot of resentment at the time we interviewed him, which was over a year later at that point.
According to the company's version of events, Mohan Lal Varma was the disgruntled worker who sabotaged the plant.
MOHAN LAL VARMA (Translation): I discovered I was implicated through the newspaper. But my name was not specifically mentioned. Varma was not mentioned. They said a disgruntled employee. An employee who was dissatisfied with management, and who'd had an argument with them.
REPORTER (Translation):Were you trying to take revenge?
MOHAN LAL VARMA: Definitely not. It is not possible.
Varma has never been charged for the crime he's supposed to have committed. None of his neighbours or co-workers ever took the accusation seriously.
MOHAN LAL VARMA: In a way, they made up a story to try and implicate and blame an employee and to hide their mistake. If the safeguards were working, we could have controlled it. The gas wouldn't have spread to such a large area.
You must admit it's a very convenient explanation though. In one stroke it appears to absolve Union Carbide of direct responsibility and shifts the blame for the tragedy onto a single Indian worker.
ROBERT KENNEDY: It is what it is, namely the truth of what happened.
Today, the people of Bhopal are still suffering as a result of Union Carbide's toxic legacy. Rates of cancer and tuberculosis have risen dramatically and, each month, 10 to 15 people still die as a result of their exposure to the gas.
Despite a long legal struggle, victims of the disaster have received almost no compensation for their suffering. Yet 18 years ago, Warren Anderson promised a just settlement.
WARREN ANDERSON: I am confident that the victims can be fairly and equitably compensated without a material adverse effect on the financial position of the Union Carbide Corporation.
The class action mounted by American lawyers failed, thrown out by a Federal Court judge who said the case had to be heard in India. On behalf of the victims, the Indian Government sued Union Carbide for US$3.3 billion, but in 1989, it settled for just a fraction of that - US$470 million.
ROBERT KENNEDY: I think it goes without saying, it's a very difficult thing to put a price on, on the value of human life, but that's the way in which the process was arrived at and, to this day, it is far in excess of any kind of civil settlement in India.
PROFESSOR UPENDRA BAXI: We live on different planets, actually. So, life and injury and suffering of the people in the South is one planet, and the life of people in the rich, industrialised north is another kind of life on another planet. Therefore, there is no comparison. So $470 million is an awful lot, apparently, for 200,000-plus people, whereas for one individual in the north, it might not even be substantial.
The people of Bhopal are now taking the law into their own hands. Along with international activists, they're breaking into the old plant in order to start cleaning up toxic waste left here by Union Carbide.
Three years ago Carbide was swallowed by Dow Chemicals in a merger, and the protesters are hoping to shame what is now America's second-biggest chemicals company.
POLICE CHIEF (Translation): No, you can't climb up. Remove this ladder. No one is allowed to go up.
RASHIDA BI (Translation): You can stop us if we do anything wrong. We're trying to save lives, which the law ought to do.
Rashida Bi has become one of Bhopal's leading activists in the struggle against the American multinational.
RASHIDA BI (Translation): What has happened in Bhopal has happened. Some died and some were injured. Those with tumours can't be cured. But it musnt happen again. If nothing is done, companies will do what they want. If this company is not tried in India, others will feel free to do whatever they like.
Local police quickly step in. Drawing the world's attention to the pollution here embarrasses the authorities.
POLICE (Translation): What do you want? Go away.
Every year, the anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster becomes the focus for the survivors' anger.
CROWD (Translation): Bring Anderson back to India. Bring him back. Bring Anderson to India. Bring him back.
RASHIDA BI (Translation): Anderson killed many people, yet India can't bring him back. Our law gives 20 years in jail for killing one person. He's killed thousands and we can't punish him. I'm ashamed to talk about this. Why is our country so weak?
The giant effigy of Anderson is followed by effigies of the Indian Prime Minister and the Chief Minister of the State Government. People in Bhopal feel betrayed, not only by Union Carbide, but also by their own politicians.
Only a tiny fraction of the settlement paid by the multinational has ever found its way to the survivors. What's more, last year the Indian Government tried reducing the charge against Anderson from culpable homicide, an extraditable offence that carries a 20-year jail sentence, to criminal negligence, for which he cannot be extradited.
The chief judicial magistrate in Bhopal refused, saying: There is no sense reducing the charge, since Warren Anderson, who has been declared an absconder and against whom a permanent arrest warrant has been issued, has not appeared in any court.
ROBERT KENNEDY: The extradition of Warren Anderson, an 81-year-old retired executive who's been retired since 1986, is inconceivable. There is no connection between what happened in India and Warren Anderson.
RASHIDA BI (Translation): He grew old thanks to Union Carbide and the irresponsibility of the Indian Government. Whether he is old, or dead, or breathing his last breath, we want him here.
CROWD (Translation): Down with Warren Anderson. Death to him. Down with Warren Anderson, death to him.
RASHIDA BI (translation): It's not revenge. It's to show the world that someone like him cannot get off scot-free. Even if he is on his deathbed he should be brought here and sentenced.
It would be extraordinary if Warren Anderson did ever have to stand trial here. The Indian Government would need to lodge a formal request for his extradition with the American Government. This would set an awkward precedent for both countries.
REPORTER: Realistically, what hope is there of Warren Anderson ever being extradited?
PROFESSOR UPENDRA BAXI: Given the current attitude of our Attorney-General, none whatsoever.
But Warren Anderson shouldn't relax yet. After he was outed by Greenpeace last year, his home was picketed by activists, and he's had a stream of journalists knocking at his door.
LILLIAN ANDERSON: Are you still here? Will you please turn that thing off?
REPORTER: Is there really no way Mr Anderson can talk to us
LILLIAN ANDERSON: He is over 80 years old. It's a long time ago and he may get a story all garbled and we have a family party tonight, uncatered.
REPORTER: But we are talking about thousands of people that died. Does he not feel responsible at all?
LILLIAN ANDERSON: The facts are on the record. If you did your homework you would know. You would know the other side of the story. This is very upsetting. It's very unfair. He's been harassed for 20 years. Get off his back.
REPORTER: We're just trying to find out the truth.
LILLIAN ANDERSON: He's retired. He's not on a retainer.
REPORTER: AMOS COHEN
EDITOR: TOUFIC CHARABATI
A television news crew is on a stakeout in the Hamptons, an exclusive beach resort not far from New York. They're looking for Warren Anderson, the 81-year-old former chairman of Union Carbide.
REPORTER: So there's not really much sign of life.
This is all they will see of their quarry. Anderson, who once controlled America's third-largest chemicals corporation, now keeps an extremely low profile.
REPORTER: Mrs Anderson, hello. Is it Mrs Anderson? Why are you and your husband in hiding? Why won't you talk to the press?
LILLIAN ANDERSON: We're not in hiding. We don't know anything more than the stories that you people publish. We object to your bothering our neighbours at 8:30 in the morning. That's a private road. Stay off it.
REPORTER: But he is facing charges of corporate manslaughter. If he believes he's innocent, why doesn't he come out and proclaim his innocence? We are talking about the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
LILLIAN ANDERSON: That's true.
REPORTER: Does he not feel responsible at all? He was chairman of the company. It's not as if he had nothing to do with this.
LILLIAN ANDERSON: It was an Indian-managed company. I have nothing to say.
REPORTER: But if he's innocent, why doesn't he come out and talk to us? Please, Mrs Anderson, just a few moments of your time.
Warren Anderson is a wanted man. For more than 10 years, there's been an outstanding warrant for his arrest issued by an Indian court.
Anderson was charged with culpable homicide after toxic gas escaped from Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal in 1984, killing thousands of people. Until recently, it was thought he'd gone into hiding to avoid receiving a court summons.
GREENPEACE ACTIVIST: Excuse me, sir, we're looking for a Mr Anderson.
But late last year, a Greenpeace activist surprised Anderson in his driveway as he washed his car. After chasing the retired executive across the lawn, he slipped a copy of the arrest warrant through his door. There's now mounting pressure for Anderson's extradition to India.
ROBERT KENNEDY, FORMER CEO, UNION CARBIDE: Warren Anderson is sort of being pursued as an icon, as the personification of a tragic thing. It could just as well have been myself, if I had been in the CEO job, or Warren's predecessor, if he had been in the CEO job. So Warren is being pursued, not because of what he did, but because of who he was, the chair he occupied at the time.
It's been almost 20 years since Warren Anderson last visited the Indian city of Bhopal, but he has not been forgotten. Every year, as the anniversary of the gas explosion approaches, effigies of the former executive are fashioned out of straw and clay.
For many Indians, Anderson has become the embodiment of the corporate criminal, retiring comfortably while they're left to fend for themselves. Apart from causing thousands of deaths, some 150,000 people are still chronically affected by their exposure to the gas, and they blame Anderson for their suffering.
The night of December 2, 1984, was auspicious in the Hindu calendar, a traditional time for wedding celebrations. Gita Pandey was part way through her reception when the gas struck.
GITA PANDEY (Translation): It was then that we felt a burning sensation in our eyes. It was very strong. Slowly, some of us began to lose consciousness. Some fainted, some vomited, and some tried to run outside. It was chaos. No one knew what was happening. Then I passed out. I lost consciousness.
CARBIDE VIDEO: The events, as first described by the workers at the plant began shortly after 11:00pm that Sunday evening. A number of these men reported smelling MIC gas.
This video produced by Union Carbide reconstructs some of what happened at the plant that night. Unbeknownst to the workers, a runaway reaction had been triggered as water poured into a tank storing methyl isocyanate, or MIC, a highly volatile and toxic chemical.
CARBIDE VIDEO: Then at 12:15am the control room operator said they checked the tank pressure and saw it rising. Within 15 minutes, rumbling sounds were heard coming from tanks. Heat began radiating from the ground. The concrete platform began cracking and, at approximately 12:45am, the screeching through the safety valve signalled the terrifying release.
For the next two hours, 50,000 pounds of a poisonous methal isocyanate gas enveloped most of the older sections of Bhopal.
The 10m high curtain of gas struck without warning. It ate away at its victims' lungs and throats, causing haemorrhaging, muscular convulsions and blindness.
Rashida Bi remembers the terrified stampede to escape the gas.
RASHIDA BI (Translation): After running for a while my father vomited blood and fell unconscious. We left him there and kept running. People were shitting and peeing in their clothes. They were begging to die. They didn't want to live.
It's impossible to say for sure how many died that night and during the days that followed. Whole families were wiped out, leaving no one to report their passing. The official death toll is 3,800, but evidence suggests the real figure is more like 8,000 to 10,000.
In the midst of this nightmare, Gita and her family completed the wedding rituals.
GITA PANDEY (Translation): Everybody was traumatised. Everybody reacted differently. My in-laws were worried about where they'd ended up!
When doctors called Union Carbide's medical officer in Bophal, they were told the leaked gases were similar to tear gas - essentially harmless - and those who were suffering simply needed to rinse their eyes with water.
ANDERSON PRESSER: I think it's important, really, that we do everything we can to make sure that whatever can be worked out in terms of help, assistance, can be done as expeditiously as possible.
Warren Anderson's first response to the disaster was to fly immediately to Bhopal. Union Carbide's lawyers and his wife advised him not to go.
ROBERT KENNEDY: Warren was a kind of father figure of the organisation, and
Robert Kennedy replaced Warren Anderson as company chairman and CEO in 1986.
ROBERT KENNEDY: He had two choices really. He could go to India or he could not go to India, and I don't think the not go to India was ever really a serious consideration.
In hindsight, Anderson must wish he'd stayed at home. Arriving at the airport, he was met by the police chief who escorted him to the company's guesthouse. There, to his horror, he was charged with culpable homicide and placed under arrest.
The Indian, and American, governments were as shocked as the company chairman, and within 24 hours, Anderson was freed on bail.
NEWS REPORTER: Tonight Warren Anderson is out on $2,000 bail. He does not know whether he will have to face trial but he's glad to be free now.
WARREN ANDERSON, CHAIRMAN UNION CARBIDE: What I'd like to do, and I hope you can help me, is tell my wife I'm alive and well and "Hi, Mom," like they do in the ball game.
NEWS REPORTER: Anderson was freed tonight only after American embassy officials protested to the Indian Government. American diplomats believe today's charges were a political move aimed at winning votes in India's national elections later this month.
WARREN ANDERSON: Bail, no bail, I'm free to go home.
Anderson was whisked out of the country after signing an undertaking to return to face any court summons.
ROBERT KENNEDY: As he was about to get on the aircraft leaving Delhi, he was asked to sign some papers, in Hindi. He was told that these were release papers and so forth. I think he'd sign whatever was presented to get on the plane. If it turns out later that this was some kind of a bail bond or a legal instrument that requires you to come back to India and appear in court, that's a surprise to everybody.
As Union Carbide's chairman was leaving, America's top personal injury lawyers were arriving in droves. For them, Carbide's guilt was obvious, and they dreamt of damages that would run into the billions of dollars.
Soon celebrity lawyers like Melvin Belli - he had his own television show - were signing up thousands of victims for the anticipated class action.
MELVIN BELL, LAWYER: Did you hear any sirens before the gas came? I hope that you get well soon.
Mr Anderson said he doesn't want to be tried by the Indian court, he wants to be tried in the United States. My client wants to be tried in the United States too and they want United States damages.
Back at Union Carbide's headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut, Warren Anderson went to work on a strategy to save his company. Staff morale was at an all-time low.
ROBERT KENNEDY: Well there was a great concern about what this would do to the corporation. This is obviously not something that just goes by and the next week it's out of the headlines. This was something that had to be lived with for a long time.
WARREN ANDERSON: The tragedy of Bhopal is overwhelming to all of us at Union Carbide, and it goes without saying we have tremendous grief for those of the people involved in Bhopal. The one thing I wish I could tell you today is what happened over there. And at this point, we simply don't know.
From the start, Anderson and other senior executives had defended the Bhopal plant, maintaining it was identical to its sister plant in the United States.
MR.BROWNING: They are the same. The plant was designed and built by the engineers - were designed by engineers from this country. The safety standards, the safety facilities were in keeping with anything that we would use or have in this country.
But as the scale of the disaster became apparent, Union Carbide started to backtrack. The need to protect the company's interests soon led to an astonishing turnaround and Carbide began to distance itself from its Bhopal plant.
MR.BROWNING: If you mean by identical, the same kind of valve, the same size of valve, same kind of pipe, same size of pipe, that sort of thing, the answer is that there are differences.
Soon, the official line was that the plant in Bhopal was run by a subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited, so whatever had gone so badly wrong there, the parent company couldn't be expected to take any responsibility.
WARREN ANDERSON: We run safety not with some small group in Danbury running out to locations to make sure everything is safe, but safety is the responsibility of people who operate in our plants, and you can't, in a system of this nature, take that responsibility off their shoulders and delegate it to somebody else.
PROFESSOR UPENDRA BAXI, LEGAL ADVISER TO BHOPAL SURVIVORS: Carbide knew what it was doing. Carbide knew that it has to avoid every semblance of harm, of liability, of guilt. They knew from the 3rd and 4th of December what to do.
Professor Upendra Baxi is the former vice-chancellor of Delhi University. He travelled to Bhopal a few days after the disaster and has assisted the survivors with their legal strategy ever since.
PROFESSOR UPENDRA BAXI: There was anger at Warren Anderson who came just around that time, in that period I was in and out of Bhopal, who personified the evil that happened to them and you'd find from about the first 10, 11 days, this notion that we should hang Union Carbide. Carbide - that was the slogan, that was the groundswell, that this corporation deserved to be awarded a capital punishment.
Warren Anderson retired from Union Carbide in 1986. Since then, he's never spoken publicly about the Bhopal disaster.
ROBERT KENNEDY: In the two years after Bhopal, I never saw Warren lose his temper, curse out anybody, the gods or the events. His composure was incredibly good. I'd say it remains that way, but how deep the pain is inside, I can only imagine. If it were me, I would be hurting terribly.
The Union Carbide plant was dismantled after the explosion, but some of it still remains, rusted and overgrown.
KAMAL PAREEK: This has basically become a graveyard and it's not a good feeling, it's not a good feeling at all to be walking through this plant. You can't describe the emotions. You can only look back in horror. At least I look back in horror. I helped to create this plant.
Kamal Pareek started working here as an engineer in the 1970s while the plant was still being designed.
KAMAL PAREEK: For me it was like a dream come true because I was one of the very few Indian-educated engineers who had been selected to work for a multinational. It was a point of honour and prestige in my community at that point of time to be selected to work for Union Carbide.
Carbide prided itself on its culture of safety. Warren Anderson himself is credited with improving the company's safety record. He first came to Bhopal in 1980 for the inauguration of Carbide's new pesticide plant.
But a few years later, when the plant had failed to make a profit, Kamal Pareek says cost cutting began to take priority over safety.
KAMAL PAREEK: It was obvious to even an idiot that, you know, the minute you take away one safety feature from the plant, you are left without just about another couple of safety features which may or may not be adequate. There's just no way you can guarantee safety. If you start taking decisions based on a few, maybe a few thousand rupees a day.
None of the plant's safety systems were functioning on the night of the disaster. Some were being repaired, others had been shut down to save money.
Over the years, numerous warnings had pointed to the possibility of a disaster. A safety audit of the plant, carried out by American inspectors back in 1982, had noted a total of 61 hazards.
By the following year, none of the audit's recommendations had been implemented, and Pareek decided to leave.
KAMAL PAREEK: Since I decided to quit, I put my fears on record at that point of time. I told them, and I told them that the way things are going it wouldn't really surprise me if we have a huge tragedy on our hands. I did not use the word 'tragedy' - I said 'disaster', at that point of time.
And how did they react, how did they respond?
KAMAL PAREEK: Nothing, they wished me good luck and threw me out.
With hindsight, do you wish that the head office had been more proactive in ensuring those safety standards were maintained?
ROBERT KENNEDY: In hindsight, the head office, as you referred to it, is not current on the operating process momentarily at every plant around the world. It cannot possibly do that. That's the responsibility of the local company.
After the disaster, Union Carbide worked hard to find something to blame other than its own negligence. First it tried to pin the blame on Sikh terrorists, but then it chose a target closer to home - one of its own workers.
Although it was generally accepted that water entered the tank of methyl isocyanate during a routine cleaning operation, in this corporate video, Carbide suggests it was added in an act of industrial sabotage.
CARBIDE VIDEO, MAN: We also know that this particular candidate had a motive, in the sense that he had recently been transferred out of the MIC unit into a less prestigious unit in the plant.
WOMAN: He, in fact, still bore a lot of resentment at the time we interviewed him, which was over a year later at that point.
According to the company's version of events, Mohan Lal Varma was the disgruntled worker who sabotaged the plant.
MOHAN LAL VARMA (Translation): I discovered I was implicated through the newspaper. But my name was not specifically mentioned. Varma was not mentioned. They said a disgruntled employee. An employee who was dissatisfied with management, and who'd had an argument with them.
REPORTER (Translation):Were you trying to take revenge?
MOHAN LAL VARMA: Definitely not. It is not possible.
Varma has never been charged for the crime he's supposed to have committed. None of his neighbours or co-workers ever took the accusation seriously.
MOHAN LAL VARMA: In a way, they made up a story to try and implicate and blame an employee and to hide their mistake. If the safeguards were working, we could have controlled it. The gas wouldn't have spread to such a large area.
You must admit it's a very convenient explanation though. In one stroke it appears to absolve Union Carbide of direct responsibility and shifts the blame for the tragedy onto a single Indian worker.
ROBERT KENNEDY: It is what it is, namely the truth of what happened.
Today, the people of Bhopal are still suffering as a result of Union Carbide's toxic legacy. Rates of cancer and tuberculosis have risen dramatically and, each month, 10 to 15 people still die as a result of their exposure to the gas.
Despite a long legal struggle, victims of the disaster have received almost no compensation for their suffering. Yet 18 years ago, Warren Anderson promised a just settlement.
WARREN ANDERSON: I am confident that the victims can be fairly and equitably compensated without a material adverse effect on the financial position of the Union Carbide Corporation.
The class action mounted by American lawyers failed, thrown out by a Federal Court judge who said the case had to be heard in India. On behalf of the victims, the Indian Government sued Union Carbide for US$3.3 billion, but in 1989, it settled for just a fraction of that - US$470 million.
ROBERT KENNEDY: I think it goes without saying, it's a very difficult thing to put a price on, on the value of human life, but that's the way in which the process was arrived at and, to this day, it is far in excess of any kind of civil settlement in India.
PROFESSOR UPENDRA BAXI: We live on different planets, actually. So, life and injury and suffering of the people in the South is one planet, and the life of people in the rich, industrialised north is another kind of life on another planet. Therefore, there is no comparison. So $470 million is an awful lot, apparently, for 200,000-plus people, whereas for one individual in the north, it might not even be substantial.
The people of Bhopal are now taking the law into their own hands. Along with international activists, they're breaking into the old plant in order to start cleaning up toxic waste left here by Union Carbide.
Three years ago Carbide was swallowed by Dow Chemicals in a merger, and the protesters are hoping to shame what is now America's second-biggest chemicals company.
POLICE CHIEF (Translation): No, you can't climb up. Remove this ladder. No one is allowed to go up.
RASHIDA BI (Translation): You can stop us if we do anything wrong. We're trying to save lives, which the law ought to do.
Rashida Bi has become one of Bhopal's leading activists in the struggle against the American multinational.
RASHIDA BI (Translation): What has happened in Bhopal has happened. Some died and some were injured. Those with tumours can't be cured. But it musnt happen again. If nothing is done, companies will do what they want. If this company is not tried in India, others will feel free to do whatever they like.
Local police quickly step in. Drawing the world's attention to the pollution here embarrasses the authorities.
POLICE (Translation): What do you want? Go away.
Every year, the anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster becomes the focus for the survivors' anger.
CROWD (Translation): Bring Anderson back to India. Bring him back. Bring Anderson to India. Bring him back.
RASHIDA BI (Translation): Anderson killed many people, yet India can't bring him back. Our law gives 20 years in jail for killing one person. He's killed thousands and we can't punish him. I'm ashamed to talk about this. Why is our country so weak?
The giant effigy of Anderson is followed by effigies of the Indian Prime Minister and the Chief Minister of the State Government. People in Bhopal feel betrayed, not only by Union Carbide, but also by their own politicians.
Only a tiny fraction of the settlement paid by the multinational has ever found its way to the survivors. What's more, last year the Indian Government tried reducing the charge against Anderson from culpable homicide, an extraditable offence that carries a 20-year jail sentence, to criminal negligence, for which he cannot be extradited.
The chief judicial magistrate in Bhopal refused, saying: There is no sense reducing the charge, since Warren Anderson, who has been declared an absconder and against whom a permanent arrest warrant has been issued, has not appeared in any court.
ROBERT KENNEDY: The extradition of Warren Anderson, an 81-year-old retired executive who's been retired since 1986, is inconceivable. There is no connection between what happened in India and Warren Anderson.
RASHIDA BI (Translation): He grew old thanks to Union Carbide and the irresponsibility of the Indian Government. Whether he is old, or dead, or breathing his last breath, we want him here.
CROWD (Translation): Down with Warren Anderson. Death to him. Down with Warren Anderson, death to him.
RASHIDA BI (translation): It's not revenge. It's to show the world that someone like him cannot get off scot-free. Even if he is on his deathbed he should be brought here and sentenced.
It would be extraordinary if Warren Anderson did ever have to stand trial here. The Indian Government would need to lodge a formal request for his extradition with the American Government. This would set an awkward precedent for both countries.
REPORTER: Realistically, what hope is there of Warren Anderson ever being extradited?
PROFESSOR UPENDRA BAXI: Given the current attitude of our Attorney-General, none whatsoever.
But Warren Anderson shouldn't relax yet. After he was outed by Greenpeace last year, his home was picketed by activists, and he's had a stream of journalists knocking at his door.
LILLIAN ANDERSON: Are you still here? Will you please turn that thing off?
REPORTER: Is there really no way Mr Anderson can talk to us
LILLIAN ANDERSON: He is over 80 years old. It's a long time ago and he may get a story all garbled and we have a family party tonight, uncatered.
REPORTER: But we are talking about thousands of people that died. Does he not feel responsible at all?
LILLIAN ANDERSON: The facts are on the record. If you did your homework you would know. You would know the other side of the story. This is very upsetting. It's very unfair. He's been harassed for 20 years. Get off his back.
REPORTER: We're just trying to find out the truth.
LILLIAN ANDERSON: He's retired. He's not on a retainer.
REPORTER: AMOS COHEN
EDITOR: TOUFIC CHARABATI