Full Body Burden (34 page)

Lipsky, Smith, and Fimberg then bring their case before U.S. attorney Mike Norton. They’re not sure how he’ll respond. Norton has run twice as Colorado’s Republican candidate for Congress. Both times were unsuccessful. He’s thinking about running for governor. Despite a lack of criminal experience, Norton’s just been appointed by President George H. W. Bush as U.S. attorney for Colorado, with the Department of Justice. He’s still waiting for his Senate confirmation when the three men visit his office to discuss Rocky Flats.

The meeting seems to go well. If they’re burning plutonium out there, Smith emphasizes, we can catch them.

Somewhat to the men’s surprise, Norton gives them a green light. But he cautions that the investigation must proceed carefully. He has to seek approval from the Justice Department in Washington. The EPA is an independent agency, but the FBI falls under the Department of Justice.

The Justice Department approves.

The first flyover occurs in October when Building 771 is supposed to be closed. Then, on the cold nights of December 9, 10, and 15, 1988, an FBI plane armed with an infrared heat-sensing camera flies directly over the plant. Jon Lipsky, Ken Fimberg, and another EPA agent are on board.
Lipsky hates to fly—especially in puddle-jumpers—as he gets motion sickness. But he’s not thinking about his stomach. They take photos of the Building 771 incinerator—shut down by court order until February 28—and other areas in and around the plant. “Look at that,” the EPA agent says, pointing to the monitor. The men can see white plumes rising from a smokestack and long white ribbons spreading out from the plant in lines, shapes, and swirls, as well as occasional white spots. White indicates thermal activity.

The photos are sent to an EPA laboratory for analysis. The results
are dramatic.
The photographs indicate that, contrary to statements by Rockwell and the DOE, the 771 incinerator is thermally active and likely in operation, burning radioactive waste. Further, the plant appears to be illegally discharging radioactive liquid waste into Woman Creek.
Streaks of light splay out from the “spray fields” where contaminated waste is sprayed. Narrow white rays that stretch across Indiana Street and toward Great Western Reservoir seem to indicate the movement of radioactive material beyond plant boundaries.

Lipsky is shocked by the results. The heat signatures show the runoff fanning out just like a spiderweb. Capillaries spread down to Woman Creek and then to Standley Lake, which provides drinking water for nearby cities. Even on the coldest night of their flights, when it was just 7 degrees Fahrenheit, Rocky Flats was still spray-irrigating with radioactive waste.

Never before have two government agencies—the FBI and the EPA—planned to raid a third government agency, particularly one as powerful as the DOE.

Based on the videotape and other evidence they’ve accumulated, Lipsky and Smith begin to prepare a 116-page affidavit that will lead to a search warrant.
The affidavit states that the DOE and Rockwell tried to prevent the public from learning “just how bad the site really is.… There is probable cause to believe that Rockwell and the Energy Department officials have knowingly and falsely stated Rocky Flats’ compliance with environmental laws and regulations and concealed Rocky Flats’ serious contamination.”

Lipsky and Smith decide to call the raid Operation Desert Glow.

Fimberg flies to Washington to brief supervisors at the Justice Department and gain their approval. On January 10, the head of the Environment and Natural Resources Divisions approves. In March, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh signs off, and in June, James Watkins, the secretary of the DOE, who has brought a new spirit of openness to the agency, signs a memo of understanding about what is to happen.

C
ARL
J
OHNSON
doesn’t live to see the raid on Rocky Flats. In Colorado politics he was a pariah, but beyond state boundaries he became an internationally renowned expert on the effects of radiation.
His work included a significant study of people in Utah, the “downwinders,” who were subject to the fallout from nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s and 1960s.

Five months after he was terminated from his job as Jefferson County Health Director in May 1981, Johnson’s “Rocky Flats Area Cancer Incidence Study” was published in the highly respected journal
Ambio
. In 1983 his case against the county board of health and the county commissioners—who, according to the press, had appointed a new member to the board for the express purpose of firing Johnson—was appealed to the state supreme court. One week after the Church lawsuit—initiated by owners of the land on which Johnson had tried to prevent residential development—was settled for about $9 million, Jefferson County commissioners offered to settle with Johnson for $150,000. He accepted. It was less than ideal—what he really wanted was to have his job back—but at least he felt somewhat vindicated.

On December 18, 1988, less than two weeks before his unexpected death and six months before the still-secret raid, Johnson published an article in the
New York Times
titled “Rocky Flats: Death, Inc.” “The actual number of people who have been injured or died because of the operations of Rocky Flats and other such plants can never be fully known,” he wrote. “Thus, communities near nuclear weapons and nuclear power facilities must insist on detailed investigations of all activities and emissions. I was a whistle-blower.… I was forced out of office. If the nation is to be properly protected, all studies of nuclear contamination and associated health effects should be conducted primarily by independent scientists who are insulated from cynical retaliation from the nuclear establishment as well as advocates of urban development.”

Eleven days later, the man who overcame tuberculosis as a child died of complications from heart surgery at the age of fifty-nine.
He was buried with military honors at Fort Logan National Cemetery. “It was probably the most respect Carl J. Johnson ever got from the government,” wrote a reporter from the
Boston Globe
.

In
An Enemy of the People
, Henrik Ibsen—the Norwegian playwright whom my mother insisted we read when we were young—tells the story of a doctor who discovers that the baths at a popular vacation spot are contaminated by toxins from a local tannery, and citizens are becoming ill. He expects to be commended for saving the townspeople from disease, as well as the many tourists who visit the town. Instead, he is denounced, driven away, and declared an “enemy of the people.”

The strongest man in the world, Ibsen wrote, is the man who stands most alone.

O
N THE
morning of June 6, 1989, at 8:00 a.m. sharp, a U.S. magistrate in Denver issues the search warrant. More than seventy-five FBI and EPA investigators are waiting outside the gates of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant as FBI agent Jon Lipsky, search warrant in hand, drives from the Denver courthouse to the foothills, green with spring, to meet them.

Marriage is like a boat; I hope to find steadiness on a rocky sea. Instead the boat seems less stable than the waters, and I find myself constantly peering over the bow. I try to follow my mother’s advice—you have made your bed, now you must lie in it—although I sometimes worry that my hasty marriage is playing out unhappy patterns from my parents’ situation. I work as a secretary to help my husband, Andrew, through his last year of college, and a year after he graduates we move to Germany for his engineering job. I begin writing again and find work as a freelance journalist. The money is slim, but I relish the chance to travel.

On April 26, 1986, a large radioactive cloud travels across the sky near our home in Germany and continues its rounds across Europe. No one seems to know exactly what happened with Reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but my neighbor is afraid to eat the blueberries in her garden and everyone stays inside for a few days. It probably doesn’t matter, I joke with my friends. Whatever there is to get, I probably already got from Rocky Flats.

Our son Sean is born in June 1989 in a hospital in Frankfurt. The
birth is traumatic but swift; an emergency C-section saves Sean’s life and he greets the world with round pink cheeks and indigo eyes. I lie awake all night and hold him, watching as the full moon travels across the black sky.

As I lie in a hospital bed in Germany with a newborn in my arms, the raid at Rocky Flats unfolds.

J
UST BEFORE
9:00 a.m., on June 6, 1989, FBI agent Jon Lipsky drives through the gate of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant with a search warrant in his pocket, a .357 by his side, and the knowledge that just outside the gate stands a line of vans and vehicles filled with more than seventy FBI and EPA agents waiting for the signal to enter. Rockwell has no advance warning of what’s about to happen, but in a memorandum of understanding between the Department of Justice, the DOE, and the EPA, the DOE has agreed that security guards at Rocky Flats will not prevent the raiding officials from entering the plant. Lipsky pulls into the parking lot, aware that he’s being watched.

The administration is housed in a plain gray two-story building with a no-frills factory feel. Some doors have coded locks, others don’t. Secretaries look up as Lipsky walks past. He raps on the door of the conference room once, then again, and enters.

The conference table is ringed with men: FBI agents in dark suits on one side and Rocky Flats officials on the other. A badge hangs from every neck. Plates of coffee cake and mugs of coffee are half submerged under documents, flow charts, and maps of the facility. The room is calm and cheerful.
The FBI has told Rocky Flats officials that this meeting is to be a briefing on a potential “ecoterrorist” threat from Earth First!, the radical environmental advocacy group.

Lipsky takes a seat at the table. He nods briefly to the special agent in charge, Tom Coyle, to let him know that the search warrant is signed. The men wait, sipping coffee, until the Rockwell manager of Rocky Flats, Dominick Sanchini, arrives. Sanchini seems rushed. He’s eager to get the meeting started.

But the FBI is calling the shots. Suddenly an agent standing near the door nods to Coyle. That’s the sign. All is ready.

Coyle informs the men at the table that ninety FBI and EPA agents are invading the plant to begin an official investigation of Rockwell and the DOE for environmental crimes at Rocky Flats. Everyone is to remain seated. Guards, managers, and workers will be instructed to be cooperative.

“You can’t be serious,” sputters Sanchini.

“We are serious,” says Coyle.

Dominic Sanchini, or “Dom,” has been manager at Rocky Flats for three years. He has an impressive background. He has a degree in mechanical engineering from Lehigh University and a law degree from the University of Southern California. In the past, his work with Rockwell included helping to develop the main engines for the Space Shuttle orbiters. At sixty-two, he’s beginning to think about retirement.

The vehicles pass through the gate. Agents emerge from the vans, some in protective gear and carrying face masks. They enter buildings around the facility, one after another, confiscating documents and examining equipment. They set up a command post inside an administrative building with their own telephones and portable computers. Someone alerts the press, and a TV crew arrives.

Workers are stunned. Many are scared or angry.

Back in the conference room, Lipsky and Coyle are busy playing defense. Rockwell’s first response is to say that the agents don’t have appropriate equipment—masks, respirators, or hazmat suits—to protect them from radioactivity and other dangers in the more hazardous parts of the site. The FBI, Coyle says, has taken that into account. The agents have proper gear.

A Rockwell official protests that the agents can’t go into high-security areas anyway because those operations are classified. He’s informed that the FBI has full permission to access all areas of the plant.

Another Rockwell official points out that all visitors need to go through a security check and obtain a proper security badge from the
DOE before entering Rocky Flats or any other nuclear weapons plants. Security checks could take days or weeks. The FBI and the EPA agents are, Coyle says, perhaps with a touch of irony, definitely not visitors.