The Profiteers
Page 40
“The Cold War”: Author interview with Mello.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: PRIVATIZE THE APOCALYPSE
“Privatize the Apocalypse”: Frida Berrigan, “Privatizing the Apocalypse,” TomDispatch.com, March 30, 2006, www.tomdispatch.com/post/72765.
the US Nuclear Security Enterprise: www.bechtel.com.
“sent Los Alamos” . . . “What do we do” . . . “the urge to privatize”: Berrigan, “Privatizing the Apocalypse.”
For more on the Bush agenda for privatization, see also Jon D. Michaels, “Beyond Accountability: The Constitutional, Democratic, and Strategic Problems with Privatizing War,” Washington University Law Quarterly 82 (March 29, 2005): 1001.
“deeply wounded”: Author interview with Mello.
“The need is clear”: DOD Posture Review.
“Washington should oversee”: Stepp et al., 11.
“scientific discovery”: Ibid., 5.
“A recipe for the enrichment”: Author interview with Mello.
“corporatization” . . . “self-serving” . . . “an anachronism”: Memorandum from Robert Civiak to G. Gary Gwilliam in Andrews v. LLNS litigation.
“After initial US and Russian”: Benedict, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex.
“Bechtel leveraged”: Author interview with Todd Jacobson.
“Everybody thought”: Stockton, quoted in Upton, “Employee Lawsuit.”
“Bechtel gets nuclear”: Gary Gwilliam on law firm website, https://giccb.com/privatization-of-lawrence-livermore-lab-bechtel-gets-nuclear-lab-taxpayers-foot-the-bill/.
“There was a social contract”: Jeff Garberson, “National Report: Broken Relationship Quality at LLNL,” Livermore Independent, February 17, 2012.
“are no longer to be”: Berrigan, “Privatizing the Apocalypse.”
“zero tolerance” . . . “these facilities”: O’Leary, quoted in Chris Berdik, “The Department of Energy’s War on Whistleblowers,” Mother Jones, January 17, 2001.
“using taxpayer dollars” . . . “Keep your mouth shut”: Ibid.
“In wars in Iraq”: Benedict, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex.
“powerful as one of its”: Streitfeld, “Quiet Ambition at Work.”
“none of the thirty-one nations”: Hore-Lacy, quoted in “Our Aging Nuclear Arsenal,” Week, January 23, 2015.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: NUKES FOR PROFIT
Details about Bechtel’s federal contracts, by agency and date, as well as company revenues and lobbying power can be found in numerous locations—on oversight organization websites, government agencies, and business and trade journals, as well as on the Bechtel company’s website, including:
https://www.usaspending.gov/Pages/Default.aspx
http://influenceexplorer.com
http://www.beyondnuclear.org
http://nucleardiner.com
http://www.enr.com
http://thebulletin.org
http://www.arabianoilandgas.com
http://www.govconwire.com
http://www.forbes.com/search/?q=bechtel
http://www.contractormisconduct.org
“Private interests”: “Nomination of George P. Shultz,” 104.
“From Los Alamos to Kwajalein”: Western States Legal Foundation.
“the ultimate white-collar”: David Hobson (R-OH), quoted in Berrigan, “Privatizing the Apocalypse.”
“Profits and nuclear weapons”: Tyler Przybylek, quoted in Benedict, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex.
“creeping privatization” . . . “unwise”: Bruce Held, quoted in “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Agency to Delay Work on Interoperable Warhead,” Global Security Newswire, February 18, 2014.
“Bechtel and its partners”: Author interview with Gary Gwilliam.
“In the classic slash-and-burn”: Author interview with fired employee.
“hatchet man”: Author interview with Gary Gwilliam.
“kitchen cabinet”: Liedle video deposition in Elaine Andrews et al. vs. Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, et al., February 17, 2011.
“through their limited liability”: Author interview with Gary Gwilliam.
“intentionally overstated its budget problems” . . . “At OMB”: Robert L. Civiak affidavit, Andrews vs. LLNS, December 15, 2011.
“The sheriff was there”: Author interview with Marian Barraza.
“corporate takeover”: Livermore employee Art Wong, trial testimony, Andrews vs. LLNS, March 21, 2013.
“LLNS put everything into NIF”: Author interview with Gusterson.
“stadium-sized laboratory” . . . “an era of carbon-free”: John Upton, “Fusion Experiment Faces New Hurdles,” New York Times, June 24, 2011.
“[w]e are assigned missions” . . . “So those four committees”: Videotaped deposition of George Miller in Andrews v. LLNS, January 4, 2011.
“giant array of lasers”: Upton, “Fusion Experiment.”
“People don’t know”: Greg Mello, quoted in Roger Snodgrass, “Activist’s Experience, Passion Culminate in LANL Project Delay,” Santa Fe New Mexican, March 9, 2012.
“far more intelligent”: Author interview with Mello.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: THE BUDDHIST AND THE BOMB
“None of my friends” . . . “Basically, by 1970” . . . “Nixon wanted me”: Author interview with Mello.
“strong sense”: Mello, quoted in Snodgrass, “Activist’s Experience.”
“I was disgusted” . . . “apprentice activists” . . . “He was just a teacher” . . . “I didn’t fit the Harvard mold” . . . “economic hit men”: Author interview with Mello.
“the Cold War permeated” . . . “Essentially a monk”: Ibid.
“I realized that the Cold War”: Mello, quoted in Snodgrass, “Activist’s Experience.”
“Our idea”: Author interview with Mello.
“have made standing up”: Carolyn Carlson, “Greg Mello and Trish Williams-Mello,” Alibi, April 19–25, 2012.
“a gigantic self-licking”: Greg Mello, quoted in Jeri Clausing and Matthew Daly, “LANL, Other Nuke Facilities Under Renewed Scrutiny,” Associated Press, September 12, 2013.
“strange bedfellows”: Snodgrass, “Activist’s Experience.”
“Greg has always been”: Masco, quoted in Snodgrass, “Activist’s Experience.”
“Few realized” . . . “Just as the country”: Author interview with Mello.
“an antinuclear complex”: Snodgrass, “Activist’s Experience.”
“Now we have the threatened extinction”: Author interview with Mello.
“It’s like a Laurel and Hardy”: Jeri Clausing, “Management of LANL Waste Facility Faulted,” Associated Press, September 12, 2013.
“Fort Knox of nuclear facilities”: Peter Stockton, “Security at Y-12 Nun Too Good,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, October 2, 2012.
“could fit into a small gym bag” . . . “would begin the process” . . . “The fact that”: Eric Schlosser, “Break-In at Y-12: How a Handful of Pacifists and Nuns Exposed the Vulnerability of America’s Nuclear-Weapons Sites,” New Yorker, March 9, 2015. At the time of Sister Megan’s break-in at Y-12 during the summer of 2012, Wackenhut Services, Inc. was responsible for security at the site. A onetime American company, Wackenhut had been acquired by a Group 4 Falck, a British company. G4S, as it was called, was the third-largest private employer in the world, operating private prisons, defending American embassies, and providing security at rock concerts. In July 2014 a consortium headed by Bechtel and Lockheed Martin took over as the operator of Y-12.
As of March 2015, Sister Megan was incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where, at eighty-five years old, she was serving out her sentence for her intrusion at Y-12.
“freshen up our bombs”: Author interview with Philip M. Smith.
“back down the limb”: Snodgrass, “Activist’s Experience.”
“What with fallout”: Greg Mello, “Udall Promotes Labs at Expense of New Mexico,” Santa Fe New Mexican, August 17, 2014.<
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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE
“So today, I state clearly” . . . “I’m not naïve” . . . “As a nuclear power” . . . “put an end to Cold War thinking” . . . “all nuclear weapons states”: Remarks by President Obama.
“the peace and security”: Ibid.
“first- versus second-strike” . . . “billion-dollar” . . . “Breaking the War Mentality”: Obama’s March 1983 article that appeared in Sundial. Quoted in William J. Broad and David E. Sanger.
“naïve, anti-American”: Ibid. See also “Obama’s Youth Shaped His Nuclear-Free Vision,” New York Times, July 5, 2009.
“a recent spate”: Zachary Roth, “Global Zero: Obama’s Distant Goal of a Nuclear-Free World,” Atlantic, September 29, 2011.
“insider threat” . . . “launch codes”: Schlosser, “Break-In at Y-12.”
“had decided”: Broad and Sanger, “Obama’s Youth.”
“the U.S. was losing”: Greider, “Boys from Bechtel.”
“A World Free”: Shultz et al., Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007.
“deeply immersed”: Eben Harrell, “The Four Horsemen of the Nuclear Apocalypse,” Time, March 10, 2011.
“All were veterans”: “The Growing Appeal of Zero: Banning the Bomb Will Be Hard, but Not Impossible,” Economist, June 16, 2011.
“America and the Soviet Union” . . . “the growing number”: Shultz et al., Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2011.
“Detractors regarded” . . . “an unlikely coterie”: Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, “Hawks Against the Bomb,” Sojourners, November 2009.
“Call it penance”: Eben Harrell, “The Four Horsemen of the Nuclear Apocalypse: In Conversation,” Time, May 20, 2011.
“sacrilegious renunciation” . . . “high priests” . . . “former apostles”: James Carroll, “Why President Obama Needs to Revive His Pledge for a Nuclear-Free World,” Nation, December 11, 2014.
“We all knew”: Wigg-Stevenson, “Hawks Against the Bomb.”
“Unfortunately, such figures”: Carroll, “Why President Obama Needs to Revive.”
“never invited them”: Broad and Sanger, “Obama’s Youth.”
“Ridding the world”: “Growing Appeal of Zero.”
“echoing their message”: Broad and Sanger, “Obama’s Youth.”
“President Obama has taken”: Harrell, “Four Horsemen . . . In Conversation.”
“It would all come”: Author interview with antinuclear activist.
“devil’s bargain”: Carroll, “Why President Obama Needs to Revive.” For Obama’s nuclear modernization program, see Mecklin.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: THE CAPTAIN AHAB OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Captain Ahab: Carroll.
“a world without”: Remarks by President Obama.
“no-nukes push” . . . “cover he needed”: Roth, “Global Zero.”
“president moved quickly”: William D. Hartung, “Cut Nukes Now,” Huffington Post, April 15, 2013.
“This is dangerous” . . . “nuclear ambitions”: Broad and Sanger, “Obama’s Youth.”
“between vision”: Roth, “Global Zero.”
“no mean feat”: Hartung, “Cut Nukes Now.”
“Extremist Republicans”: Carroll, “Why President Obama Needs to Revive.”
“the disarmament hook”: Emily B. Landau and Shimon Stein, “From Prague to Berlin: The Decline of the U.S. Nuclear Disarmament Agenda and Its Implications for the Middle East,” James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), August 21, 2013, http://wmdjunction.com/1308021_disarmament_agenda_decline_mideast.htm.
“vision of and work for”: www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html.
“At this point, the pressure”: Dienekes. Remarks published on LASG website.
“Without nuclear weapons”: Author interview with Mello. Details of Bechtel lobbying Kyl were revealed by Mello in author’s interview.
“a full-blown reinvention”: Carroll, “Why President Obama Needs to Revive.”
“year of arms control”: Landau and Stein, “From Prague to Berlin.”
“Obama fell” . . . “Now we have entered”: Author interview with Mello.
“the size of the nation’s” . . . “a new generation”: William J. Broad, “Which President Cut the Most Nukes?” New York Times, November 1, 2014.
“deterrence in the age”: Henry Kissinger et al., “Deterrence in the Age of Nuclear Proliferation,” Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2011.
“quartet barely make mention”: Harrell, “Four Horsemen.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: A TRIAL LAWYER GOES TO BATTLE
“rougher and rougher”: G. Gary Gwilliam, Getting a Winning Verdict: A Trial Lawyer Finds His Soul (Walnut Creek, CA: Pavior, 2007), 46.
“Most of my friends”: Ibid., 57.
“it was still a college degree”: Ibid, 69.
“Have you ever thought” . . . “I had never met” . . . “You could be”: Ibid., 88–89.
“just short” . . . “the most competitive”: Ibid., 95.
“I didn’t know”: Ibid., 113.
“win the big one”: Ibid., 127.
“We don’t cheat” . . . “on behalf of the general”: Ibid., 170–71.
“takes on issues” . . . “help the average”: Ibid., 269.
“I’m the only lawyer” . . . “When this case” . . . “It’s clear” . . . “trying to pass”: Author interview with Gary Gwilliam.
“tracking the misuse”: Declaration of Danielle Bryan.
“frequently had”: Author interview with Gary Gwilliam.
In 2013 the author filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration. The request was specific and limited: “1. The adverse impact analysis of the 2008 workforce restructuring at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, submitted by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (LLNS) to the Department of Energy (DOE) and/or its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in or about May 2008. 2. All attorney’s fees and expenses paid by DOE and/or NNSA for the representation of LLNS in Andrews et al. v. Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, et al., Alameda County Superior Court Case No. RG09453596.”
After a two-year wait, on April 9, 2015, the office of the General Counsel of NNSA finally responded by redacting nearly five hundred pages of material in its entirety. The exemptions cited by NNSA included protection of “trade secrets and commercial or financial information” and the attorney-client privilege between the US government, LLNS, and private attorneys retained by LLNS (and paid by the US government).
“As soon as the Lab”: Author interview with Gary Gwilliam.
CHAPTER FORTY: THE EXXON OF SPACE
“Bechtel is one of the great creations”: Starr, quoted in Streitfeld, “Quiet Ambition at Work.”
“Bechtel’s phenomenal” . . . “indistinguishable”: Dowie, “Bechtel File,” 37.
In one of the more recent political cycles Political cycle cited here was 2011–2012.
“I am really concerned”: Feinstein, in US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water, April 24, 2013. For Feinstein’s contributions from Bechtel and the nuclear industry lobby, see Center for Public Integrity, “Are Nuclear Weapons Contractors’ Millions in Campaign Contributions Buying Favors?” June 6, 2012, www.publicintegrity.org.
“dysfunctional management”: Benedict, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex.
“the most costly” . . . “as toxic” . . . “Bechtel rushed”: Joshua Frank, “Hanford’s Nuclear Option: Department of Energy Scientists Allege Catastrophic Mismanagement of the Costliest Environmental Cleanup in World History,” Seattle Weekly, October 18, 2011.
“Hanford is a long-term”: Carpenter, quoted in Alexander Nazaryan, “America’s Fukushima?” Newsweek, November 20, 2013.
a “long overdue justice” . . . “It was absolutely terrifying”: Malone.
“After consultation”: Susan Beard, quoted by
Munger, February 4, 2015, http://knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/2015/02/04/nnsa-defends-klotz-waiver/. Also see Smallberg for Klotz-Bechtel relationship.
“Bechtel has designed”: World Generation Class of 2002.
“multibuilding”: www.yournuclearnews.com/bechtel+praises+completion+of+first+step+toward+building+vital+national+security+facility_113970.html.
“Mining is an industry” . . . “We want to become” . . . “ambitious”: Mark Odell, “Bechtel Adds Grit to Space-Mine Mission,” Financial Times, April 22, 2013.
“If California Energy”: Laughlin, Powering the Future, 98.
“$2.2 billion bird-scorching”: Cassandra Sweet, “The $2.2 Billion Bird-Scorching Solar Project,” Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2014.
“Despite its behemoth” . . . “Away from public” . . . “sparked a wholesale”: Julie Cart, “Sacrificing the Desert to Save the Earth,” Los Angeles Times, February 5, 2012.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: A NASTY PIECE OF WORK
A Nasty Piece of Work: Baltimore Sun, October 2, 1990.
“I made a specific offer” . . . “If I give too many details” . . . “Such commutation” . . .
“excessive, grossly disproportionate”: Gil Ronen, “Jonathan Pollard Turns 60 Behind Bars,” Israel National News, August 7, 2014.
“My wife and I”: Author email exchange with Sheldon Adelson, November 15, 2014.
“Call for Clemency Campaign”: Jewish Link.
“president to president” . . . “to seek Jonathan’s”: Ibid.
“the Israel lobby”: Walter Russell Mead, “The Spy Who Didn’t Walk,” American Interest, April 24, 2012.
“secular Jew” . . . “the result of a miscarriage of justice”: Viorst, “ ‘Catch-22’ Plight.”
“I could tell you for sure”: Author email exchange with Adelson.
“impressed by the force”: New York Times News Service.
“Dear Mr. President”: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-turn/2011/01/exclusive_george_p_shultz_call.html.