You would have Congressman Sweeney believe that the DOE, Naval Reactors, and you are the good guys and that I am the bad guy. Contrary to what you want others to believe, Mr. Beckett, this rogue behavior practiced by the DOE and Naval Reactors has not gone unnoticed. It has produced a legion of vocal critics, of which I am only one small voice. A few of these are quoted here:
Rep. Al Swift (D, Wash) "There isn't any basis to trust them (the DOE) at all."
Sen. John Glenn (D, Ohio) "We (the DOE) are poisoning our people in the name of national security."
Rep. Thomas Luken (D, Ohio) "We've had 30 years of conspiracy, condoning of criminality and cover-up. The same thing going on at Rocky Flats is common elsewhere. You've had the government (the DOE) brazenly and crassly (saying), "Go ahead and commit the crimes; forget about the local residents."
Rep. John D. Dingell (D, Mich.) "The DOE and DOD are among the most notorious offenders of our hazardous waste laws."
Richard Celeste (Governor, Ohio) "They (the DOE) have lied to us. Without a mechanism to oversee what they're doing, we can't trust them. The cost of cleaning up Fernald is not a discretionary budget item. After 37 years of service, the citizens of Ohio ... and of our nation ... deserve better than this."
Anthony Celebrezze (Att. Gen. Ohio) "During the Reagan Administration, the Justice Department kept throwing up road blocks. It slowed the process of getting Federal facilities cleaned up."
Rep. David Skaggs (D, Colo.) "It is unprecedented to have a battalion of FBI agents to descend on a Federal (DOE) facility to conduct an investigation of alleged violations of important environmental laws. The only implication that comes out of an action of this scale is that Federal authorities were concerned about the destruction of evidence."
Dan Reicher (NRDC) "This (FBI action) will send a shock wave through the nuclear weapons complex. It will cut to the heart of the problem, which has always been accountability."
Rep. Mike Synar (D, Okla.) "Currently, the department is not in control of its own defense complex. DOE is, in effect, a captive of its own contractors."
Dennis Eckart (D, Ohio) "The size of the vote indicates clearly that those who want to adopt a let's wait and see attitude about cleaning up the Federal (DOE) facilities have little standing in Congress."
Roy Romer (Gov. Colo.) "I will insist on much stricter state controls at the plant ... and if the Federal government balks, I may shut the plant as a health hazard. All of us cannot become the dump of last resort for the Department of Energy."
Hazel O'Leary (former Secretary of Energy) "Workers who expose flaws at nuclear weapons plants and labs regularly are harassed and undermined by their bosses. There has been a practice of repeated and long-term reprisal that visits (a whistle-blower) in the place he or she is most vulnerable ... by questioning the employee's competence."
Judge Loren N. Brown "Kakretz's present absolute denial of having called Bordell an evil man is not persuasive Uncertainty under oath at the deposition has become more certain under oath in the affidavit supporting a motion to dismiss. Under the circumstances, what he says in support of this motion lacks credibility." (A. Kakretz, a General Electric Employee, was the KAPL General Manager for 14 years.)
Tom Carpenter ( Attorney Government Accountability Project): "It emerges quite clearly that SNR's priorities lie in protecting GE's economic considerations at the expense of the health and safety of KAPL workers."
Tom Carpenter (Attorney Government Accountability Project): "responses to virtually all complaints are usually in the form of non-responses, e.g. "there is no evidence...", "...there is no unsafe condition...", "...management will investigate further...". Responses such as these are clearly inappropriate particularly when related to asbestos concerns."
Tom Carpenter (Attorney Government Accountability Project ): "The Saratogian newspaper quoted Mr. Sabian as saying that no problems had been found related to that complaint. You state that an investigation of the incident has yet to be completed. This lack of candor further reduces worker confidence."
Tom Carpenter (Attorney Government Accountability Project): "It took two years from the time of his complaint to obtain an asbestos abatement plan. I would furthermore not consider a conclusory three-sentence statement which lacks appropriate details, to be an abatement plan in any meaningful sense."
Tom Carpenter (Attorney Government Accountability Project): "Attachments indicate a tangled asbestos mess for which, until the GAO investigation was announced, neither GE nor DOE management has given much more than lip service."
Tom Carpenter (Attorney Government Accountability Project): " a request for approval of a course of action to alleviate the asbestos problems then plaguing KAPL, clearly acknowledges that 4,000 feet of pipeline covering needs repair since weather conditions had severely reduced its effectiveness. Furthermore, G. Terranova {KAPL Employee Relations] states that "[t]hese areas must be repaired to prevent a release of asbestos fibers."
Tom Carpenter (Attorney Government Accountability Project): "These largely baseless responses routinely deny any violation of Occupational Safety & Health Standards or health and safety provisions found in their respective Articles of the IUE/GE National Contract. The documentation belies the KAPL myth, perpetuated by your letter, that management acts responsibly to correct egregious and potentially life-threatening concerns brought to light through union grievances."
Tom Carpenter (Attorney Government Accountability Project): "This grievance alleged loose surface contamination on top of the cell, unstable duct work, and high radiation levels from some sections of the duct work. A reading of 24,000 picocuries per 100/[square-cm] was well in excess of the allowable limits. KAPL management was aware of the situation. However, three months passed before SNR responded that "[t]here is no evidence that any KAPL employee has been exposed to an unsafe condition...[nor that] KAPL's radiological controls practices are inadequate for radiological work on top of Radioactive Material Laboratory [R. M. L.] cell #10. One could have just as easily said that there is no evidence that employees were not exposed to the high radiation levels on Cell 10 - - assuming it does not make it so. Prudent radiological practice mandates that conditions described in the union's grievance be rectified so as to eliminate the possibility of an exposure."
Tom Carpenter (Attorney Government Accountability Project): "Several complaints concerning improper handling of radioactive materials were highlighted in 1985. Responses from management were typically devoid of both detail and of timeliness which the nature of the allegations demanded."
Tom Carpenter (Attorney Government Accountability Project): "The niggling responses of GE and SNR management to legitimate safety and health concerns demonstrates the elevation of production concerns at the expense of worker and public health and safety."
Doug Allen (IUE-AE Business Agent): "There seems to be no mention in their (GAO) report for procedures for my carpenters, who have cut threw transite walls with skill saws to make door openings or window openings, or to replace broken transite wall panels, or cutting cemesta board for walls; a large amount of this work was done in closed shops or offices, in which it looked like it was snowing while performing this work - with no air sampling being done, no monitoring, no procedures, no protection, whatsoever, no training, no qualifications for this work, and no requirements for respirators until approximately 1989, and no protection for the office workers while this work was being performed."
Doug Allen (IUE Local 301 AE Business Agent): "I find it most interesting that a similar incident occurred in 1990 while your (GAO) investigators were here. In the DIG Plant, they had the Navy remove lagging from some piping in which they were told it was non-asbestos, so they took no precautions other than to wear surgical masks, then proceeded to rip it down, stuff the asbestos in garbage bags, then dragged the garbage bags through the hallways of Building 13, and then threw the garbage bags in the regular garbage dumpster. So, why was this incident not mentioned in their (the GAO) report?"
Doug Allen (IUE Local 301 AE Business Agent): "Mr. Synar, if their controls have been so great and there has been no other incidents, maybe someone can explain how the following people (an attached list of 150 workers) contacted Asbestos related Cancer and have past away or have developed asbestosus [sic] (a lung disease). But I see no mention of any of this in their (the GAO) report and the list will probably continue to grow, but we are safe - no problem - your investigators say so!"
Doug Allen (IUE Local 301 AE Business Agent): "I would like to discuss some of the radiological information we provided to your investigators - such as going into radiation areas and putting film badges in lead boxes so it doesn't show a dose rate. Most of this information was in documents given to the GAO or from interviews they held. Also, they were informed of the KAPL Landfill and the buried drums with radiation symbols. I even offered, Mr. Synar, to volunteer my own time, if the Government would provide the heavy equipment to dig up the Landfill to prove or disprove, if the contaminated drums were buried there but nobody wanted to hear about it. "
Doug Allen (IUE Local 301 AE Business Agent): "Mr. Sinar, [sic] I would like to say on behalf of myself and my members, that the employees who have worked in these facilities in the past and the spouses who have lost loved ones from exposure to hazardous material from these facilities is that - We know better, Sir! we would like to thank your investigative branch the GAO, especially those individuals who did the investigation and all of the experts they brought in for us to talk to, which we never saw much less got to talk to, and who looked into our allegations - it was deeply appreciated and we all feel much safer and healthier since the 52 page report has been released, and we could read for ourselves that Naval Reactors still carries the Seal of Excellence ."
Wenonah Hauter (Director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project) "The NRC has ignored these important safety issues for decades. If these nuclear reactors don't meet safety requirements, they should be shut down until they do."
Washington Monthly magazine "The DOE's nuclear weapons complex had deteriorated for 30 years before the GAO noticed."
Rep Richard Armey (R, TX) "The first recipient of the Mark Twain Statistical Distortion Award is the General Accounting Office, an arm of Congress. It's the Mark Twain award, because there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Harold L. Ryan (Senior United States District Judge ) "DOE (Naval Reactors) simply does not seem to understand that this nation is depending on it to protect the health and safety of all Americans from the danger associated with its activities."
Harold L. Ryan (Senior United States District Judge ) "...the court denied DOE's Motion because DOE had made serious misrepresentations to the court. When the court learned of these developments, it was dismayed by DOE's apparent bad faith in its representations to the court. Consequently, the court was unmoved by DOE's promise of future compliance."
Notra Trulock (former Chief of Counterintelligence at the Energy Department) "I was Screwed, blued and tattooed, which I am convinced was the work of political enemies. This is what happens to whistle-blowers who speak truth to power in the Clinton administration. I was hounded out of the department (the DOE) for my efforts to expose Chinese nuclear spying."
Notra Trulock (former Chief of Counterintelligence at the Energy Department) "My judgment on intelligence was questioned by an inspector general' s report that went to great lengths to coverup the entire Chinese espionage debacle."
Notra Trulock (former Chief of Counterintelligence at the Energy Department) "Their responses (DOE superiors) were always "appropriate," but their actions never matched their expressions of concern."
Notra Trulock (former Chief of Counterintelligence at the Energy Department) "To his credit, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson did present me with a $10,000 bonus, but this didn't offset the fact that I had been demoted, relegated to a meaningless job and eventually forced out of the department. Routine stuff for whistle-blowers in this administration."
Notra Trulock (former Chief of Counterintelligence at the Energy Department) "I read that I was a 'dangerous demagogue,' a 'great impostor,' 'obsessed,' that my 'style' was abrasive and a host of other epithets including imputations of racism and xenophobia. This was pretty heavy stuff for someone who has spent most of his career trying to stay out of the public eye."
Notra Trulock (former Chief of Counterintelligence at the Energy Department) "Of course, most of these allegations came from the very officials within DOE and the White House responsible for the cover-ups and stonewalling of the Congress, and who had fought so hard to kill any meaningful security reform at the labs. Many of these were the perpetrators, if not the creators, of the very security lapses that made Chinese espionage possible in the first place."
Congressional Report (Staff members of the House Commerce Committee's Republican majority) "The U.S. Department of Energy has "squandered hundreds of millions of dollars" since the end of the Cold War trying to develop innovative technologies for cleaning up the nation's contaminated nuclear weapons sites."
Harold L. Ryan (Senior United States District Judge ) "Idaho has submitted an internal DOE memorandum which suggests that DOE never intended to reprocess the (naval) fuel, but simply used that as an excuse to send it to INEL for indefinite storage."
Now surely Mr. Beckett you must find this criticism and condemnation of the DOE, the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, and the General Accounting Office appalling, in lieu of your long time effort to sell the myth of "Naval Reactors Excellence." However, you should be able to malign these misguided soles, all respected citizens, into realizing their egregious error. They have quite obviously lost their senses. And when you have completed their enlightenment, please notify me and I will forward another 1000 names of critics for similar conversion.
As to why your disgusting character assassination statement is also patently false, I list five state, federal, and independent findings that clearly and completely validate the merit of allegations I have raised against Naval Reactors. They also show your broad brush smear for what it really is, slander.
1. 1986 Schenectady Naval Reactors Investigation of Asbestos Violations: In 1986 KAPL demoted me from my position as KAPL Manager of Nuclear Safety, Industrial Safety and Industrial Hygiene because an audit team that I headed in 1985 found gross violations in asbestos safety and record keeping at the Laboratory, as well as eighteen pages of other serious safety deficiencies. This report could have cost SNR management their performance bonus for the year. Six months later, after the US Navy threatened to pull its entire force of 1200 sailors out of the Kesselring Site Operation because of the alarming asbestos situation, Schenectady Naval Reactors substantiated the findings of my audit in reporting that KAPL had no asbestos control oversight program ("Management attention to the asbestos control program simply did not exist." --- Barry Ericson, Manager of SNR). Since then, Naval Reactors has spent $30,000,000, out of a budgeted $100,000,000 million on an asbestos cleanup program at KAPL and KSO that is yet to be completed. The KAPL asbestos cleanup has been categorized by one national asbestos expert as the largest such cleanup in the history of the country. Furthermore, KAPL management continues to thwart all efforts by both union and non-union employees to obtain compensation for asbestos exposures to thousands of past and present employees.
2. 1987 New York State/DOE Investigation of The Peek Street Weapons Factory: NY State DEC representatives and the DOE working as an investigation team at the former Peek Street weapons factory verified my allegation that Naval Reactors had abandoned that facility in 1953 without decontaminating it of high levels of radioactivity both inside the building and on the grounds. Prior to the NY State/DOE finding, KAPL repeatedly denied that Peek Street was contaminated. After abandonment, the building was sold to a food wholesaler (Buy-Rite), who distributed food from this radioactive site throughout the Capitol District for 20 years. In 1988 radiation measurements along an adjacent bike path where children played were found to be 700% above normal background radiation. Subsequently, DOE FUSRAP covertly removed this radiation from Peek Street but never supplied the city of Schenectady with a final report as to what the radiation status was. The building was destroyed in a roaring inferno in 1999 but the rubble, almost certainly contaminated with radioactivity, remains. Naval Reactors should still be held accountable for this mess.
3. 1988 New York State Investigation of The KAPL Radioactive Parking Lot: In response to my allegations of a radioactive parking lot at KAPL, The Schenectady Gazette reported that an unpaved parking lot at the Knolls Site was radioactively contaminated, and had been so for 20 years. Radiation levels were measured as high as 10,000% above normal background. This finding by a local Newspaper contradicts the GAO audit. After initially denying that the parking lost was radioactive, KAPL paved it with asphalt. During this time KAPL spent upwards of $1 million on investigations trying, without success, to discover who had obtained the soil samples from the parking lot.
A NY State Labor Department investigation found that the General Electric Co. violated six sections of state labor law. GE was cited for:
failure to confine possession and use of radioactive materials to controlled areas
possessing soil contaminated in excess of state standards for unrestricted use
failure to record the radioactivity during inventory
failure to record survey checks or tests on the lot
failure to report the radioactivity to the state labor commissioner
failure to conspicuously post a sign warning of radioactive danger at the parking lot
4.1989 DOE Inspector General Investigation of the 1995 Nuclear Criticality Safety Audit: I alleged that the 1985 KAPL Fuel Handling and Storage Safety Counsel [FHSSC] audit was fraudulent because of a number of major irregularities, including appointing an audit leader who had no experience in nuclear criticality safety, changing the scoring system used to quantify the results so as to falsely indicate a precipitous drop in safety, including non-nuclear safety issues in the scoring, writing a cover letter to the report that was not representative of the findings, and issuing the report without sign off (proof of review) by members of the FHSSC committee. The DOE-IG report, following its investigation, found my allegations had merit. Inexplicably, no action was taken to force KAPL into compliance with federal law [DOE Order 5483.1A], and reinstate me as a Manager of Health and Safety.
The DOE-IG findings included the following:
(1) "It would have been appropriate for KAPL management to have more fully addressed the concerns of Shannon regarding the cover letter to the 1985 FHSSC audit. Three of six statements in the Summary of Findings section of the 1985 FHSSC audit cover letter were misleading or erroneous, even though the [erroneous] findings were generally accepted [by KAPL management] as accurate"
(2) "Scoring of Findings were inconsistent. Trend determinations were inconsistent" and "Trend assessments were erroneous"
(3) "Characterization and other aspects of reporting of ... Nuclear Safety audit results was inconsistent and erroneous"
(4) "There were no written procedures that specifically addressed the conduct and reporting of FHSSC Nuclear Safety Audits"
(5) "There was insufficient management oversight of the summarization, categorization and other aspects of reporting of FHSSC Nuclear Safety audits"
The DOE-IG recommend that the Manager, Schenectady Naval Reactors office:
(a) "Ensure that KAPL management improves the conduct and reporting of FHSSC Nuclear Safety audits by developing and publishing additional guidelines and procedures, as appropriate, for the conduct and reporting of FHSSC audits.
(b) Provide for appropriate KAPL management oversight to ensure consistency and accuracy in the reporting of FHSSC Nuclear Safety audit results."
Interestingly, the Manager of the Schenectady Naval Reactors Office (whose educational credentials amounted to a degree in Hotel Management), and the SNR Manager of Safety, suddenly found it expedient to take early retirement before the DOE Inspector General arrived at KAPL for this investigation. In any case, The DOE-IG's recommendations were ignored by SNR/ NR since the purpose of the audit was obviously to provide cause to remove me from my position as Health and Safety Manager for reporting an asbestos disaster in 1985. It was a blatant exercise in retaliation.
5. 1995 National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) - Department of Energy Retaliation Complaint Study: In response to my repeated complaints to the DOE and to Congress that I had been retaliated against for raising safety violations at KAPL, I was considered to be a whistleblower and was one of many interviewed by NAPA. My allegation was, that despite the DOE's policy of "zero tolerance for reprisal" my case had not been resolved, my hard earned reputation for excellent performance had been damaged, and my professional career was in ruins. In addition, I charged that the perpetrators of the retaliation against me had continued their employment unpunished, and even with promotions and bonuses. NAPA found that the DOE contractor employees had no viable procedure for review of such whistleblower allegations and concluded that a special procedure should be developed that would review "old cases", such as mine, expeditiously in a cost-effective manner and provide finality to them. The DOE and Naval Reactors have totally ignored the results of this study because it was not what they wanted to hear.
So much for whether my complaints were found, by legitimate state, federal, and independent investigators, to have merit. They were, and the allegations that Naval Reactors has so far succeeded in stonewalling and continuing to coverup will also eventually be found to have merit. I do not make allegations for which I do not have well-documented proof.