The Rocky Flats Horror Picture Show

[Guest guest]

The Rocky Flats Horror Picture Show --Ex-FBI agent charges feds with

radioactive coverup at Rocky Flats --by Amanda Griscom Little " ... An

FBI agent exposes deadly contamination at an old nuclear-weapons

plant, but the federal government conceals the findings. Years later,

Congress votes to convert the tract into a wildlife refuge and open it

to school field trips and public recreation. The site becomes a poster

child for eco-friendly nuclear-waste disposal -- with a dangerous

radioactive secret lurking below the surface. "

 

http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2005/01/21/little-rockyflats/

 

The Rocky Flats Horror Picture Show

Ex-FBI agent charges feds with radioactive coverup at Rocky Flats

By Amanda Griscom Little

21 Jan 2005

The plotline sounds as absurd as a made-for-TV movie: An FBI agent

exposes deadly contamination at an old nuclear-weapons plant, but the

federal government conceals the findings. Years later, Congress votes

to convert the tract into a wildlife refuge and open it to school

field trips and public recreation. The site becomes a poster child for

eco-friendly nuclear-waste disposal -- with a dangerous radioactive

secret lurking below the surface.

 

Aerial view of Rock Flats

An aerial view of Rocky Flats.

Photo: Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Fact, of course, can be stranger than fiction -- even bad

Sunday-night-on-CBS fiction -- and former FBI agent Jon Lipsky is one

of several insiders who say the above scenario is unfolding right

beneath Uncle Sam's nose.

 

In 1989, Lipsky led an FBI raid on the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons

plant in Colorado after receiving reports that the plant posed a huge

public-health threat. His raid, which took place over 18 days and

involved more than 100 FBI and EPA officials, gave way to a nearly

three-year criminal investigation into widespread radioactive

contamination of the air, water, and soil at the 6,240-acre site and

the surrounding suburbs of nearby Denver.

 

The raid prompted the Department of Justice to assemble a special

grand jury to investigate the evidence against U.S government

officials and Rockwell International, the private defense contractor

that managed Rocky Flats from 1975 to 1989 on behalf of the Department

of Energy. Rockwell pleaded guilty to certain counts of negligence and

paid a fine, but never fessed up to the full extent of the crimes

Lipsky says he witnessed. The case was settled with a plea bargain

agreement, and the Department of Justice sealed the contamination

evidence from the public.

 

Next month, Lipsky will be party to a lawsuit against DOJ in

conjunction with Wes McKinley, the former leader of the Rocky Flats

grand jury, and Jacque Brever, a former chemical operator at the plant

who suffers from radiation exposure, in an effort to unseal the documents.

 

The plaintiffs are concerned, in particular, about a 2001

congressional decision to turn Rocky Flats into a wildlife refuge,

which may have as many as 16 miles of trails for hiking and horseback

riding. On Dec. 31, Lipsky retired early from the FBI to protest the

agency's orders that he keep mum about the Rocky Flats controversy. " I

left so I could help expose the truth, " he told Muckraker. " Without

the truth there can be no real understanding of the extent of this

environmental crime, and there can be no thorough cleanup. "

 

Lipsky describes the DOE's ongoing cleanup effort at the nuke site,

scheduled to be completed by 2006, as " woefully inadequate -- a

farce. " As for the decision to make Rocky Flats a tourist destination,

he said, " There is nothing safe or sane about it. "

 

Before the vote on the Rocky Flats designation, Lipsky wrote an open

letter to Congress putting his objections in no uncertain terms: " I am

an FBI agent. My superiors have ordered me to lie about a criminal

investigation I headed in 1989. The Justice Department covered up the

truth ... I have refused to follow the orders ... Some dangerous

decisions are now being made based on that government cover-up. "

 

He exhorted members of Congress to read the book The Ambushed Grand

Jury, a chronicle of the cover-up by Colorado lawyer Caron Balkany,

who is representing Lipsky et al. in their lawsuit, and McKinley, the

former grand-jury member, who was just elected to the Colorado state

legislature.

 

The DOE dismisses Lipsky's charges as bunk. Department spokesperson

Karen Lutz flatly denies that there's anything to be concerned about.

" Our Rocky Flats cleanup effort has been going on for 15 years, and

the whole time it has been meticulous, thorough, and transparent, with

full community participation. We've had this under a microscope -- the

oversight has been incredibly vigilant. There is nothing legitimate

about these allegations. " The Department of Justice did not respond to

Muckraker's request for comment.

 

Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge

What lurks beneath the tallgrass?

Photo: RFETS.

The critics counter that DOE wanted to keep the public in the dark to

cut corners on cost, not to mention protect itself from criticism for

environmental negligence. The department allocated $7 billion to the

cleanup, a sum initially criticized as far too low to enable a

thorough job. And less than 8 percent of the allocated sum is even

being used to decontaminate the site, the plaintiffs say; the rest is

going to administrative costs and decommissioning the plant.

 

Former Rocky Flats employee Jacque Brever, who claims to have read

more than 16,000 documents on the cleanup, told Muckraker that the

effort is " so bad you wouldn't even believe it. " She said several

fields and hillsides that had been dumping grounds for toxic and

radioactive wastes have been excluded from the cleanup. Additionally,

she said, the sampling techniques for determining contamination levels

are misleading, and the standards for soil and water purification are

weak.

 

" There is no question in my mind that the grounds are still hot

[radioactive] at that site, and will be for a long time, " she said.

" That plant was spewing radioactive ash and effluent for nearly 40

years. We dumped radioactive stuff in areas they're not even looking

at. We buried drums that corroded underground, and they're looking

only at the surface of the soil. " Brever worked at the plant for 10

years and her fiancé for 19 years. Both spent most of their careers in

" hot " areas of the facility where they were directly exposed to

plutonium. Brever now has thyroid cancer and her fiancé has a rare

form of eye cancer, both illnesses associated with long-term exposure

to radioactivity. They haven't been able to get financial compensation

for their medical treatment, she said, because some key records

pertaining to their exposure have been suppressed. " We're having

difficulty proving our case. That's why we're taking it to the courts

-- to get the rest of our records released. "

 

Congressman Udall and Senator Allard

Allard (left) and Udall introduce the Rocky Flats National Wildlife

Refuge Act.

The effort to transform Rocky Flats into a wildlife refuge was lead by

Colorado Rep. Mark Udall (D) and Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard ®. But

at the time, says Lipsky, Udall and Allard, like everyone else, didn't

have access to all the facts. " Congress didn't know that there was

midnight plutonium burning. Congress didn't know that there was

extensive offsite contamination. Congress didn't know the site had an

irrigation system that dispersed radioactive liquid from the holding

ponds throughout the surrounding fields to skirt discharge constraints. "

 

McKinley has announced that he will introduce a bill in the Colorado

legislature that would require officials at the Rocky Flats National

Wildlife Refuge to warn visitors of the site's past. " People shouldn't

visit a so-called park that for half a century has been a radioactive

waste dump without knowing about the malfeasance that happened there, "

he said. " You get warning labels on hot coffee, why shouldn't you be

warned that you could be walking on 'hot' ground? "

 

What concerns attorney Balkany the most is that the Rocky Flats

cleanup could be used to fuel the myth that nuclear waste can be

safely handled. " I believe the main goal of the DOJ and the nuke

industry at Rocky Flats is greenwashing. It helps both nuclear power

and the nuclear-weapons industries to convince people that industries

and government can deal with their waste in a safe way, " she said.

 

This could be of particular interest to the Bush administration, given

that just last week, in President Bush's first newspaper interview

since his reelection, he told The Wall Street Journal of his hopes to

spark a nuclear-power renaissance, glorifying nuclear power in ways

that many would deem delusional: " I believe nuclear power answers a

lot of our issues, " he said. " It certainly answers the environmental

issue. " He later added: " It's a renewable source of energy. " Who's

ever heard of renewable energy that creates cancer-causing waste?

 

" Just watch, " said Brever. " They're going to hold up Rocky Flats as

the nuclear-waste success story, the flagship. It's going to happen

all over the country: Washington is going to make nuclear-waste dumps

into plutonium playgrounds. "

 

 

Muck it up: We welcome rumors, whistleblowing, classified documents,

or other useful tips on environmental policies, Beltway shenanigans,

and the people behind them. Please send 'em to muckraker.

- - - - - - - - - -

 

Amanda Griscom Little writes Grist's Muckraker column on environmental

politics and policy and interviews green luminaries for the magazine.

Her articles on energy and the environment have also appeared in

publications ranging from Rolling Stone to The New York Times Magazine.

 

 

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