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- From PsychoSpy@aol.com Thu Aug 4 00:00 EST 1994
- X-Mailer: America Online Mailer
- Subject: ABC News Groom Toxic Suit Transcript
-
- ----- GROOM LAKE TOXIC INJURY SUIT -----
-
- Below is a transcript of a report on ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT WITH
- PETER JENNINGS, August 1, 1994.
-
- [Supplement to the Groom Lake Desert Rat. Transcribed without
- permission. The transcript is followed by a press release from
- George Washington University concerning the suit.]
-
- FORREST SAWYER (fill-in anchor): Some government employees are
- going to court this week, charging that their work has made them
- sick. What makes their claim so unusual is what they do and
- where--at a super secret military base called Groom Lake whose
- very existence we first reported just a couple of months ago.
- Here's our legal affairs correspondent Cynthia McFadden.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: These people are not your average commuters.
- [Workers boarding jets at McCarran Airport.] Among them are
- engineers and technicians helping develop America's most secret
- new weapons. Every day they fly a half an hour into the desert
- from Las Vegas on an airline that doesn't exist.
-
- [In desert.] The planes land at an air base just behind these
- hills. Showing it to you would be a crime. And if you have ever
- worked at the air base, talking about it is a crime. And yet some
- of the workers say they now must talk about environmental crimes
- they say the government committed.
-
- VICTIM (in shadow, voice disguised): We all done a lot of
- coughing while the smoke was blowing in our direction. I
- developed cancer. I guess I'm not cured of it.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: This man and at least a dozen others say that
- throughout the 1980s a deadly smoke was produced by weekly
- burnings in huge pits at the air base.
-
- WITNESS (in shadow, voice disguised): There were several trenches
- about 300 feet long and about 25 to 30 feet across and about 25
- feet deep.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (to WITNESS): What was the purpose of the
- trenches?
-
- WITNESS: For the destruction of classified material.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: Materials like those used to make the stealth
- fighter invisible to radar. Where better to dispose of the secret
- compounds than the secret air base, as seen in this 1988 Russian
- satellite photograph. An air base where the environmental laws
- didn't seem to reach.
-
- WITNESS: The running joke was, it was the place that didn't
- exist, so consequently anything could occur there.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: The Air Force says that while we can't take a
- picture of the base, they can't object to our showing you this
- Russian photo. It shows where workers say the trenches were
- located.
-
- VICTIM: It was thick black smoke. Sometimes it was thick gray.
- The smell was very nauseating. It would burn your eyes. It would
- burn your throat.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: And the smoke, say some of those who worked in
- it, made them sick.
-
- VICTIM: I developed a rash, skin rash. I used sandpaper to get
- the scale off, because it's the only way I can remove it.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (to VICTIM): Do other men that you worked with
- describe a similar rash?
-
- VICTIM: One in particular, yes. He had it all over his body.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: What happened to him?
-
- VICTIM: He died.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: Robert Frost was a sheet metal worker at the
- base, until he started developing these rashes. Neither he nor
- his wife could figure out what had caused them. Just before his
- death, they sent a tissue sample to Peter Kahn, an expert on
- hazardous chemicals. His conclusion? Robert Frost had been
- exposed to types of dioxins and dibenzofurons, which are not
- normally seen in humans.
-
- PROF. PETER KAHN ("Rutgers University"): My only reaction is,
- what on earth has this man been exposed to?
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: Frost died in 1989 of cirrhosis of the liver,
- but his widow Helen says that while Frost did drink, he was no
- alcoholic. She believes the real cause of her husband's death was
- working at Groom Lake.
-
- HELEN FROST: Who does the government think they are that they can
- go around killing people. That's called murder.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: The Air Force told Mrs. Frost that it had
- nothing to do with her husband's death, so she and her daughters,
- along with a dozen others who worked at the air base, have hired
- themselves a lawyer.
-
- PROF. JONATHAN TURLEY (to Frost family): Many of our clients may
- be developing more extensive injuries similar to your father's.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: They want to lift the secrecy surrounding the
- burning and find out what the workers were exposed to. The
- government's position has been that these people have no right to
- go to court, that national security demands continued secrecy.
- Air Force and Environmental Protection Agency officials said that
- they would not comment on the pending legal action.
-
- PROF. JONATHAN TURLEY ("George Washington Law Center"): The
- secrecy oath doesn't mean that my clients have stopped being
- citizens of the United States. It doesn't mean that they are non-
- persons and they've got a non-injury.
-
- CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: The government says there were no environmental
- crimes committed there at Groom Lake, the Air Force base that
- doesn't exist. They say, nobody's sick. Jonathan Turley and his
- clients say given a chance they can prove otherwise.
-
- Cynthia McFadden, ABC News, on the road to Groom Lake.
-
- ----- GWU PRESS RELEASE -----
-
- Below is a PRESS RELEASE from George Washington University, Office
- of University Relations, Washington, D.C....
-
- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
- August 2, 1994
-
- GW LAW PROFESSOR JONATHAN TURLEY FILES AGAINST THE EPA FOR FAILURE
- TO INSPECT SECRET AIR FORCE BASE FOR VIOLATION OF FEDERAL
- ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS.
-
- Washington, D.C. -- The George Washington University National Law
- Center Professor of Environmental Law Jonathan Turley, in an
- unprecedented move, filed suit today against the Environmental
- Protection Agency for failing to live up to its duties to inspect
- violations of federal environmental laws. This will be the first
- in a series of legal actions planned by Professor Turley.
-
- Turley is representing current and former workers at Area 51, a
- secret Air Force base in Nevada -- also known as Dreamland or
- Groom Lake. The suit alleges serious injuries, and at least one
- death, to employees due to the burning of hazardous and toxic
- wastes at the facility. Turley's suit further alleges that
- workers were denied requests for protective clothing -- including
- gloves -- in handling hazardous wastes. Workers, who signed
- secrecy agreements upon employment at the base, will be
- represented as "John and Jane Does" to prevent possible
- retaliation, including physical threats.
-
- This case is the first of it's kind. Area 51 is generally
- considered the most secret, classified base in the U.S. military
- network. "By forcing compliance at Area 51, we hope to establish
- a precedent whereby the military will be forced to acknowledge its
- responsibilities in every base and facility," says Turley.
- "Ultimately, this case is a direct confrontation between national
- security laws and environmental and criminal laws."
-
- Specifically, Turley will be asking the D.C. court to force the
- EPA to inspect and monitor the secret base. He will argue that
- the federal hazardous waste law does not give any exception for
- secret bases in its provisions and will be asking the court to
- force the EPA to fulfill a mandatory duty under the law.
-
- "We want to establish that workers at secret bases should not be
- forced to rely on the arbitrary protections of the military, but
- should be able to go to court to receive remedies for violations,"
- says Turley. He also intends to establish that secrecy agreements
- do not preempt environmental protections. Eventually, Turley
- plans to draft a new law on the judicial review of such cases and
- on issues ranging from anonymous legal actions to standing
- questions to citizen suit actions against the EPA.
-
- ###
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