Public Affairs Program; Return to the Nuclear Crossroads - Part 4

At about 9 a.m. today marks near 75 agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Criminal Investigation was assisted by representatives of the Department of Energy's inspector general. I began the execution of a federal criminal search warrant at the United States Department of Energy's Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver Colorado. Welcome to return to the nuclear crossroads a history of protest at our local nuclear weapons plant. Rocky Flats in part for today we listened to the 90s during the final push to close Rocky Flats. Activist then faced the radioactive legacy created during 40 years of plutonium trigger production. I'm your host David Wilson. In June 1989 the FBI raided Rocky Flats in search of environmental crimes. Anti-nuclear activists were stunned that one branch of the federal government would finally investigate another branch of itself following the raid longtime

peace activist likely Roy Moore one of the founders of the Rocky Mountain Peace Center saw an opening to end nuclear weapons production at Rocky Flats. Well it was outrageous. Right after that happened about half a dozen I threw myself among them went to see the governor Roy Romer. And we ask him to take steps both with who to love. We move that he did not have the legal authority to anything before that but we reminded him that he had incredible moral authority and we called on him to use his moral authority to coal for the whole to production at Rocky Flats until the facility could be shown to be safe at the same time. Greenpeace USA hired Jason Salzman to work full time on shutting down Rocky Flats when the FBI raided it. That just opened the doors to all kinds of scrutiny and the buildings were all we have that on our side. It

was just a matter of time. We kept digging and eventually the truth came out of those killings were not adequate and wasn't worth it. But it would take a while for the problems at Rocky Flats to be fully revealed. Colorado Governor Roy Romer remained equivocal about closing the plant. He did however set a limit on how much plutonium waste Rocky Flats could store on site. More than I decided at that point to engage in a in a public sign of subtle and subtle dirty water only so I focused on the tombs of Rocky Flats. And I was thinking of workers I was thinking of people that might be the victims of the explosion of one of these bombs somewhere or somebody knew the people that were exposed to radio active materials and other collections around the plant. Leroy Moore continued to fast until July twenty ninth. Many people joined him during the Fast for short periods. Now the Japanese Buddhist monk

saw what took Lee Wright Morris a place in the past up until August night. The forty fifth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki three days earlier on August 6 the Colorado freeze border had organized another attempt to encircle the planet with over 5000 people showing up. Things are changing on a daily basis with the Rocky Flats anti-nuclear activists scramble to keep up. And while Colorado's governor wouldn't take a stand to close Rocky Flats Idaho's governor did indirectly in September. Cecil Andrus closed Idaho's borders to Rocky Flats plutonium waste ending 35 years of shipments to the Idaho National Engineering Lab. Rocky Flats would face a crisis building bombs created radioactive waste with no place to go. Right around Thanksgiving November of that year I did they did none of my work comes who is them secretary of energy you hold to production and Rocky floods temporarily. You said the facility was so and

such but say but they contaminated buildings were very dangerous to operate. As soon as rocky flight suspended operations the Department of Energy began talking about when they would restart the plant in the process they proposed the plutonium recovery modification project. Jason Salzman Dawn was this effort to basically rebuild the plant in Denver and that's what they would have loved to have done. You know just start from scratch build a new sugar manufacturing facility and not have to hassle with with moving in or deciding what else to do. And that was very unpopular because and I think this this indicates out you know how important the early activism was and how it dovetail with what we did. You know Skaggs and

Wirth and others have really always been there always taken the position that it's OK for now or earlier you know it's it was it's OK here but no no. Once these buildings are old you know we can't rebuild we can't continue this in a metropolitan area. And so. Skaggs and worth every you know every credible politician anywhere in this region stood up and said no way we can't rebuild. Why yes and that's a week we pitch it that way. Of course they didn't like that Kadek characterization of it they preferred it as we knew this was still a good eat up Rocky Flats itself to chew up the buildings and stuff as they dismantled it moved it but that was total you know bunk because it was obvious too because they were investing at you know a half million dollars or more a brand new facility that all the weapons in the weapons production budget that all of the bells and whistles of a new trigger manufacturing facility was obvious so they were in a real disadvantage arguing that even while some of the other restart issue was on the other issues had some support from our own delegation and politicians. More and more information came out during one thousand ninety and ninety one revealing the reasons for

the original shutdown. The aging buildings were falling apart in the Rocky Flats of ventilation systems. Turned out to be full of plutonium activists likely want more worry displayed Tony and could reach a critical mass and explode into the environment. They didn't want to have I think a major disaster of some sort. They halted production then proceed to spend a billion dollars a year for the next two years trying to get back into production. And you will remember that every few weeks they would like the floods is going to resume production. Carolyn Binion Skee other Rocky Mountain Peace Center. Jason Salzman of Greenpeace

is wonderful but is fortunate because over the Rocky Horror we want to stand up at the back of the plane. One point we thought the governor was was supporting the restart too closely. So we took a bed to the state capitol actual band we dressed up a Greenpeace activist as a governor and a Greenpeace activist as Rocky Flats and we put the governor in Rocky Flats in bed together on the Capitol steps. And so I was a I was a strong message to the governor in late 1990 if you drive down Highway 93 past Rocky Flats it was impossible not to notice the nuclear weapons plant due to the efforts of local artist Greg Freeman and Greenpeace is Jason Salzman. We had 12 billboards in front of the plant. What happened was Craig and

Greenpeace were both eyeing these empty billboards right in front of the Rocky Flats plant right there at the gate and they were they were empty because citizen Issa demanded that they do so and they were it was a campaign against those billboards Matz why they were that way. We contacted the owner and he said that he would donate them to our entire Rocky Flats cause I think his hope down the line was that he would profit from that somehow. So we Greg put anti-nuclear messages on these 12 billboards and. In neon a lot neon colors and it was it was a great attractant. There on Highway 93 the interesting part of it and what what generally the national press coverage was when the group that originally opposed those billboards got very pissed off with Greenpeace and crags for using them and they staged a protest at our press conference unveiling them in which Tom lost a great activist in the border area stood up and disrupted my speech as we are unveiling those

billboards. He called him litter on a stick and he had you know they had approached us and asked us not to do it and we thought that given their proximity to Rocky Flats and given the issues it raised you know the invisible plutonium versus the visible blight of a billboard in the scenic environmental issues involved. We thought it was worth it to go ahead with it. But they had they had legitimate concerns and we felt bad as it turned out everybody won because those billboards were actually removed from that area lit up there and in 1991 the war in the Gulf broke out of the whole book. LOL LOL LOL I love it. Dr. Song and I was simply amazed everybody I knew is focused on stopping the war. Tom Marshall and yet at the same time the machine kept grinding on they wanted to keep on producing nuclear weapons it was still happening as though

this war wasn't going on at all and I was rather amazed that there was somebody who was paying attention to all of this and that happened to be some people at the Rocky Mountain Peace Center as it was known at that time and in particular Le Roy Moore and I made a decision then that is soon as I could I wanted to get more involved in the Rocky Flats issue and that's what brought me into the work of coming out. Ellen Claiborne Carmichael credit examiner in order to provide a report coming out recalls even more about that now. Actually. One of the

people. The Soviet Union had collapsed by now in the cold war was over. Yet through 1991 the Department of Energy continued to try to restart Rocky Flats.

Lee why more but never happened. But in the lead in the debacle in Lebanon and it was January 1992 when George Bush who was then president gave the state of the Union address and announced in his State of the Union address that the warhead. Which was the last warhead being made at Rocky Flats it was the only mission they had at that moment. But the BATF warhead production was being halted and cancelled when he announced that people that like ourselves were watching it from the outside and workers that were watching it from the end of it when we heard George Bush and his message was clear immediately from those sort of code words almost that that was the end for Rocky Flats.

Several days later Admiral Watkins head of the Department of Energy made it official. Rocky Flats mission would change. It would now become a cleanup site. Jason Salzman we were lucky here in this area. In Denver this diversified economy we could get our politicians to even you know broach the issue of shutting down this plant are questioning the safety and all that. Most nuclear weapons production facilities in this country were built in rural areas where they were the politicians from that area were totally trapped. They had no choice but to support them. The jobs in them and therefore the bomb production Rocky Flats was different to middle the metropolitan area which was growing you know and more yuppies and others were coming that had total distaste for that activity and so the diversified economy really helped us. Shortly after I began in a pay capacity here at the Peace and Justice Center production did stop so I tend to take credit for all of that. Tom Marshall but there was really a debate at that time as to whether or not the peace and justice center should

continue working on the Rocky Flats issue. Production was stopped. We were a peace center that's what we were known as at the time the Rocky Mountain Peace Center. Should we continue working on the Rocky Flats issue and we decided as an organization that yes there were still a number of issues that were very important at Rocky Flats the legacy of nuclear weapons production that we had always said were important as important as the production the health and safety issues the environmental contamination the waste issues. What we do with all of that plutonium that's out there so we made a conscious decision at that time to continue our work on Rocky Flats. A lot of people thought that the job was done. Sam Cole originally a volunteer at the Rocky Mount Peace Center in key JNU now directed the Colorado chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. For instance our membership at Physicians for Social Responsibility really dropped after the end of the Cold War and the shutdown of Rocky Flats and you saw the community kind of losing interest in the nuclear weapons nuclear proliferation issue

because it became a lot more less obvious with the issues that we started to work on namely the cleanup of Rocky Flats and what to do with the plutonium out there was Rocky Flats production going to happen elsewhere. There were some very important issues but they were maybe more difficult to get across. In 1992 a new type of Rocky Flats activist was born. The Grand Tour. Following the FBI raid in 1909 a grand jury was impaneled to review the evidence of environmental crimes at the plant. Wes McKinley a self-proclaimed Talbott from southeast Colorado was there for him and I would like to tell you what I know but it's kind of like to listen to a joke is it funny you never know to laugh you just tell the situation I mean I don't know what I have to say. It was worthwhile for you that your love life itself. And then you have to make it you know. So what did the Russians last grand jury do. After two and a half years hearing testimony and reviewing documents about Rocky Flats activities the grand jury saw indictments of eight former or present Employees for Environmental

Crimes at the weapons plant. However a deal was cut between the Department of Justice and Rockwell International who had operated the plant until they quit following the FBI raid. In the deal an 18 million dollar fine was imposed on Rockwell for violating environmental laws. But no individuals were prosecuted. Sam Cole of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Really amazing about that. The Rocky Flats grand jury was throughout the history of Rocky Flats. There is enormous secrecy and the public wanted to know more and we couldn't get information although we had our suspicions about what was going on out there. Then with the convening of the grand jury you had a group of average people average Colorado citizens having access to all these documents that we always dreamed about having access to and were outraged about what they found out about the dangers around Rocky Flats and what had taken place at Rocky Flats and environmental crimes that are taking place at a Rocky

Flats and they really verified our deepest darkest suspicions about just how bad things really were out there. And they recommended some very very stiff penalties to be taken in swift action to be taken. Yet that was ignored along with being ignored. The grand jury was bound to secrecy. Jury foreman Wes McKinley what if we had to get out and verify what I did or said anything. We're criminal contempt of court. And what would you like when you were on the Grangers you were on the next you were called because this is just the point. We had to have public attention so I said Well I'm glad on the courthouse steps and read a letter to President Clinton. You've been elected in 92 there in the member election President elect William Clinton. Please direct the district attorney to appoint a special federal prosecutor. And Al Gore was quoted in the paper and saying the grand jury report should be

released. So we wanted this information out. David Skaggs it said the grand jury should be allowed to carry after doing it. And Panix relatives say you know well there's lots of smoke there should be some foreigners there. So I had lots of support so I wrote President Clinton a letter and then I went out on the courthouse steps and read it out went up the city and Justice Department the FBI it was there in attendance and had the warrants sworn at for my arrest because in the end lead up with Sansa media packets and they thought the grand jury was going to go out and tell all. And of course and I've done that I would have been thrown in jail and it would have been sensational new years. And every reporter has given me their home number please comment when they can sample it. But so far we have survived because we really can't close places that haven't been charged. Tom Marshall of the Rocky Mountain peace and justice center by a deal being cut the effect of that was that the grand jury report was sealed not only was the grand jury report itself

sealed but we did not we were not able to hear the testimony that the grand jury heard. The public of Colorado was denied that. And I think we would have learned quite a deal quite a bit had that process gone forward while the Rocky Flats grand jury gave up on pursuing specific individuals for their crimes at Rocky Flats. They still hope to have their findings fully revealed and are in court today trying to remove their gag order. In the years following the end of Rocky Flats mission as a nuclear weapons producer the nature of protest and anti-nuclear activism has taken on new forms. Tom Marshall as I said I came in at the time that Rocky Flat shut down. So I sort of picked up as I see it where a number of people left off and for me it was quite easy to make the connection between the need for disarmament work and the need for the environmental part of the

solution at Rocky Flats and my feeling is that it's our responsibility here at the Peace and Justice Center to make sure that the problems that still exist are addressed responsibly the way we work on the issue I think has changed quite a bit from the way the issue was worked on in the late 70s and early 80s and even the late. I think that we've been able to institutionalize some of the gains that people working during those earlier periods were able to make. So in other words we have right now a Citizens Advisory Board and the Peace and Justice Center worked hard along with a number of citizens organizations across the country to establish a Citizens Advisory Boards around

these sites and these boards are funded by the Department of Energy. But at least in the case of Rocky Flats it's quite an in-town in this body. It has a budget we're able to hire staff and we're able to get information and give input on the decisions that are happening out there. I think we've made significant gains in being in gaining access to information. We have more information about what happens at the site and what happens in the nuclear weapons complex than we've ever had in the past. We've also gotten the idea across the Department of Energy and the federal government and the regulatory agencies should be listening to the public and finding out what the public wants to have happen at these sites. What we have not been able to achieve is to actually get those agencies to listen to the public at this point. So it's a gross example of democracy. Leroy Moore one of the

things that fascinates me about it is that not only was it probably more difficult than doing civil disobedience of carrying it but it also there are so many hundreds of ways in which the voice of the activist is muted. And. Compromised and deflected. Because suppose you're on the citizen's advisory board as I was for three years. I was one of the people that pressed hard to get those kinds of advisory boards created at facilities like Rocky Flats and then we got the one at Rocky Flats created when I served on it but to deliberate something in that party means that you've got to you've got to deliberate it with government people business interests. Union workers

smoky flow. Maybe the chamber of commerce includes the people that want to develop and own and so on all of those different kinds of interests and I will grant that all of them are legitimate interest. But I will say that they would not have a table to say that if it were not for the Rocky Flats activists they would not be talking about the Rocky Flats issue at all if it were not for the rocket science activists for all of those years. So who created the situation we still in some respects have created a situation in which it still possible to marginalize. Tom Marshall what does not occur is a situation where the citizens advisory board or other entities issue a recommendation and the government says yes you're right. We see the wisdom in that and we're going to implement that.

It's a long slow process but we do have an effect in it's more incremental than many of us would like to see happen. One instance has to do with waste disposal at Rocky Flats. The Department of Energy and the regulatory agencies were talking about creating a low level waste dump at Rocky Flats. The Citizens Advisory Board and most organizations and many many individuals in this area said no we don't want you doing that. It took a year's worth of work for them to agree to the fact that no they would not create a low level waste dump. Rocky Flats. Well change is slow at Rocky Flats. One major difference between the 1990s and earlier activism relates to how workers and activists each other again Tom Marshall one of the benefits of the Citizens Advisory Board is there brings together people of different interests including workers and activists and by spending time talking with one another

in that sort of a forum. You are able to form alliances that you never will simply by going to hearings. The same people that I used to be on the opposite side of the room from at large public hearings. I now sit with at a table. And we find that we have an awful lot coming. Another major issue facing anti-nuclear activists in the 90s is Rocky Flats clean up the Department of Energy helps to decontaminate and decommissioned a nuclear weapons plant over the next decade with a price tag of tens of billions of dollars. Sam Koehler Physicians for Social Responsibility How clean is clean at Rocky Flats. Longtime Rocky Flats activist churches Esky returned to Colorado in the 90s after working for several years at Greenpeace USA and San Francisco. He became part of the Rocky Flats future site use group that recommended cleaning up Rocky Flats to a natural state comparable to what it was like before the plant was built marquee plants and I served for almost two years on a deal we funded a committee called the

future site use Working Group which was responsible for building community consensus on what should happen with the Rocky Flats site in the next. Generation of activities there I have to say it was an interesting experience I don't know whether I feel it was worthwhile. I'm afraid that our success in trying to democratize our government is only marginal because it goes through the motions involved involve citizens in participatory ways and then ignores their preferences. Even though this group this future site use Working Group for example managed to agree some 30 people including representatives of chambers of commerce homeowners workers and activists groups managed to get a unanimous consensus anyway on cleaning up that we recommended to the federal government that they clean up the Rocky Flats site to background levels. Well they just ignored that and other

recommendations that were consensus recommendations of a group that they said was to guide them. And so until. The federal government and other government agencies can get clear about what they're empowering their advisory groups to do. I think it's a distraction for activists to get involved that way there are plenty of other people who can do that work and activists should maintain the advocacy role and not get sucked into bureaucratic rules which produce marginal results. The future site use working group that should just ask you worked on also made recommendations about what to do with the Rocky Flats site. Once it is cleaned up the group suggested that the land surrounding Rocky Flats be left as open space. What to do with the land where the buildings reside is more up in the air. Everything from levelling all the buildings and creating more open space to redeveloping the site with other industries were suggested

as cleaner progresses. The future of the Rocky Flats site itself will become more clear. But many other issues still remain at Rocky Flats. The Department of Energy plans on shipping off site all of Rocky Flats plutonium weather is way stories trigger material to other facilities within the nuclear weapons complex. Some activists oppose contaminating and endangering other parts of the country in an effort to get rid of Rocky Flats problems. At the same time the U.S. government continues to develop plans for a 21st century nuclear weapons complex. Los Alamos National Laboratory the birthplace of the atomic bomb now appears it will become Rocky Flats. You've been listening to part four of return to the nuclear crossroads a history of protest at Rocky Flats. This program will continue as part of the

nuclear issues program called going critical airing the first Thursday of July and August at 8:30 5:00 a.m. going critical We'll explore the impact both personally and politically of the Rocky Flats movement. In addition a program will be dedicated to the future of anti-nuclear activism picking up on many of the issues activists have been working on over the past few years. The real work of the Iraqi movement is yet to be done. This program was produced with support from the more I find thanks to Joy Boston and the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center for providing archival recordings. If you have a question or comment about this program in your comment line at 3 0 3 4 4 7 ninety nine. 11 copies of this four part radio documentary are available by contacting you. Our number is 3 0 3 0 4 9 4 8 8 5. Percy it will benefit both Keiji and you and the Rocky

Mountain Peace and Justice Center for return to the nuclear crossroads. I'm David Wilson.