CONGRESSIONAL and CITIZEN COMMENT
about the
DOE/GE/Justice Dept/KAPL/SNR/GAO/Naval Reactors/and White House
last update Janurary 20, 2001
- Gerry Spence 1989 "With Justice for None"
Gerry Spence said of General Electric: "General Electric is the third
largest American corporation, with a recent market value of $48.9 billion.
How did it get to be so large? From 1911 to 1975, the Antitrust Division
of the Justice Department brought at least sixty-seven suits against the
company. One hundred private antitrust actions were brought in the early
1960's alone, and the company was a major participant in the Philadelphia
Electric price-fixing case of 1961, when several of its executives received
prison sentences. ... But GE did not reform. Two decades later, GE's
misfeasance and fraud was said to be so pervasive that the Department
of Defense debarred the corporation from doing further business with
the department, the first time it had taken such action against a
major supplier. ..."
- 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."
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