One of the panels that was part of the event at the Arvada Center about the Rocky Flats raid was titled “The Raid in Retrospect.” The panel consisted of moderator Patty Limerick, Jon Lipsky (leader of the FBI Raid team), Roy Romer (Colorado governor in 1989), and David Skaggs (Colorado Congressman in 1989).
Mr. Lipsky said in his remarks that he had asked Mike Norton to delay forming the Special Federal Grand Jury. He added the case got out of hand quickly, and he was ordered to unseal the search warrant. He finished by offering the opinion the reason for the Grand Jury was to keep a seal on the documents. That comment feeds the conspiracy theory that there are 65 boxes of evidence from the raid that would reveal sites of contamination and environmental crimes not pursued by the government.
An audience member asked why the government wouldn’t allow anyone to look at the content of the 65 boxes. The panel members sat looking at each other in silence for a time after the question. Congressman Skaggs earned my respect by stepping up with an answer that I’m certain was not popular with the audience. He said that, as a lawyer, he understood the reason why Grand Jury information needed to be treated as secret. It would be “a slippery slope” to begin releasing such information to meet special needs. He said he was willing to let the courts decide.
I watched Mr. Lipsky closely to see whether he would contribute, but he was silent. Perhaps he did not know the court had ruled that regulators could review the content of the 65 boxes, although that is somewhat difficult to believe considering his in-depth knowledge of the entire case.
The facts are given in a news article titled “Flats papers unsealed” by Ann Imse in the Rocky Mountain news published May 4, 2004. The article led with, “State and federal regulators are being offered the chance to review 65 boxes of long secret Rocky Flats grand jury documents.” The next paragraph says, “The U.S. Attorney’s office, which oversaw the 1989 grand jury, says the papers are unlikely to provide evidence of secret contamination at the nuclear weapons plant. That is followed by, “Still, the Colorado Department of Health and Environment plans to pore over the documents to be sure…” “Many of the documents came from the regulators themselves, so it’s unlikely there will be any surprises.” No one in our office believes that there is evidence of contamination at Rocky Flats contained in the Justice Department files…”
The regulators unfortunately failed to act. A follow-up article reported that, “Three months after the U.S. attorney said he would consider allowing Rocky Flats cleanup officials to see secret grand jury records …no one has asked to review them.” A Justice Department spokesman said “…all such files have been returned to DOE. He said what remains sealed is largely grand jury testimony, which is subject to the secrecy rule.” DOE was said to be “…certain there’s nothing new in the grand jury files.”
It’s too bad the regulators didn’t pursue looking at the records when the court made its offer. That inaction helps keep the conspiracy theories alive. My opinion is that the 65 boxes contain no surprising revelations. I’m convinced the officials in the Justice Department who planned the raid would have had no hesitation at making arrests if there had been damning evidence in those 65 boxes. The search for a reason for the raid lasted over two years, and nothing was found that hadn’t been public knowledge before the raid.
Pursuant to my last comment on this subject, I have to again ask what was the purpose of this event at this time? No new information was presented, and the same old information that should have come to light seems to have again been supressed and/or ignored. If there is a newsworthy story line here, it is that a huge amount of taxpayer money and government manpower was wasted trying to find and prove criminal activity where there was none. If these same resources had been applied to investigation of the practices of Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Wall St. Establishment following the 2008 financial meltdown, we would have had to build a couple of new Federal prisons just to hold all the perps.
The prevailing mindset of the late 80’s, wherein so many people in so many domains both in and outside of government were so eager to believe the worst rumors about what went on at RF, allowed a few disgruntled workers to ignite the torches of the mob. After bursting into the dungeons and finding no one to rescue, the crowd now feels the need to minimize its embarrassment by periodically convening a seminar where the mobsters can reiterate their claim that RF was a bad place that needed to be eliminated at whatever cost, congratulate themselves on their political correctness and go home. If there is another rational explanation for this exercise, I’d like to hear it.
Spoken more harshly than is my custom, but there is much truth in the comment!
During the raid, Rocky Flats provided a lot of labor to the FBI. Papers the FBI seized had to be classified (we took security seriously! No Snowdens at RF!), they needed safety briefings and escorts, and our secretaries copied reams of paper. I understand that, if the FBI wanted to copy a margin note on a single page of a document, they had to take a copy of the entire document. Due to the nature of the allegations, the site’s Health, Safety, & Environment manual was of interest to the agents. Every manager on site had a copy, and many of them inserted their own notes, so the FBI took many, many copies. The manual was 2 inches thick! I bet a noticeable fraction of the “65 boxes” is copy after copy of the HS&E manual with a handful of margin notes that never led the FBI anywhere.