I attended several of the panel discussions about the twenty-five year anniversary of the raid of Rocky Flats, and commend the organizers. The event was well attended. It was obvious that there are still high emotions about the Rocky Flats mission and its legacy.

Len Ackland, one of the organizers, gave a good sketch of Rocky Flats history. He did say something I thought was surprising, if my notes are correct. He said there is a fundamental controversy about secrecy of weapons production. I would expect that critics of Rocky Flats would believe that protecting that kind of information would be crucial to at least slowing nuclear proliferation.  He mentioned the number of nuclear weapons remaining in the world, and I doubt anyone wishes for more countries to begin building them.

I have some specific comments about the event, and one I do not want to forget is how much I admired Jack Weaver for his participation in the opening event. I also greatly appreciated that Phil Saba stood up after one of the panel discussions to say he came from a job that was dangerous to Rocky Flats where safety came first. I also appreciated Ken Frieberg’s wonderful discussions of how production information was guarded as secret and environmental information was open to everyone. Of course Jon Lipsky, the FBI agent in charge of the Rocky Flats raid, attempted to discredit that statement by saying the waste characterization reports filed by the plant as required by law were marked as “Unclassified Nuclear Information (UCNI)” I expect he knew that the reports contained information about piping diagrams and waste volumes that could be used by interested agents to perform “reverse engineering” to identify processes used at Rocky Flats. Those reports contained “waste processing” information, and not “environmental” information. What Ken said was true.  

One of my favorite moments was when Ken Frieberg  commented that he has plutonium in his body and Judy Danielson, who was seated beside him, pushed herself backwards a couple of feet. Apparently she doesn’t know that she, everyone else who was in the hall and in the world, also has plutonium in their bodies. It really is too late for all of us if plutonium really is “the most toxic element on earth” as stated by Mr. Lipsky.

Mr. Lipsky is obviously a very intelligent person who is passionate about his views, and made a statement about the lack of moral justification for Rocky Flats. That would put him on the opposite side of all of those in the military, Congress, and several Presidents who decided Rocky Flats was necessary to perform an important function for the defense of the nation. All of those officials undoubtedly considered the moral as well as the national defense justification.

Mr. Lipsky and other speakers received loud applause for comments that said anything to the effect that “Rocky Flats was bad.”  Ken Frieberg did receive a few scattered polite claps when he said the people of Rocky Flats were proud of what they had done for the nation.

I intend to post another somewhat longer commentary about the Arvada Center event titled “Lessons Learned” soon. I have at least two other commentaries in draft form for posting sometime next week.  I intend to suspend the weekly book reviews and explanation of origins of expressions until I complete commentary about the event.

Check out my free book on this site (the PDF is at the bottom of the Rocky Flats Book page) if you want to read the truth about how the raid and how it failed to confirm the sensational allegations in the search warrant.