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NEWS RELEASE
November 25, 2003
Contact: Stan Goff or Jim Warren
919-416-5077
Report released: Bush administration degrading national security
to protect financial interest of nuclear energy industry; Calls Bush
administration rhetoric “Orwellian patriotism-for-profit”
DURHAM, NC – In the George Orwell classic 1984, the monolithic
security state called “Big Brother” combined “doublethink” with “newspeak”
to create doublespeak, where “peace” meant “war” and “love” meant
“hate.” A new report from the North Carolina Waste Awareness and
Reduction Network (NC WARN) shows the Bush administration using “homeland
security” to mean “homeland security neglect” when it comes to the giant
energy corporations that run the ill-protected nuclear power industry.
The administration’s “security for sale” mentality could result in an
unprecedented radiological catastrophe.
“Our research shows the Bush administration’s deep antagonism to government
and corporate whistleblowers,” says Stan Goff, NC WARN’s security analyst,
who is a retired military Special Operations expert. “Federal
regulatory agencies – especially the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission –
are now complicit in financially-motivated industry cover-ups of glaring
security weaknesses.”
Deep financial ties are shown in the report between the energy industries –
particularly nuclear utilities – and the executive branch. The
emphasis this administration has put on compromising civil liberties
ostensibly to increase security, says the group, has paradoxically done the
opposite as the Bush-Ashcroft security state has aimed its newfound post
9/11 power at citizen watchdogs and regulatory oversight.
“Secrecy is being systematically invoked by the Bush administration to
conceal security weaknesses on behalf of their corporate patrons’ bottom
line, ” commented Goff. “Meanwhile the so-called security at nuclear
power plants and many other targetable facilities is based more on blind
faith than substance, and if put to the test by any committed group will go
down like a chicken-wire canoe.”
The NC WARN study entitled “Are you more secure today than before
September 11?” prominently cites three recent publications that indicate
an increasing threat to nuclear facilities in the United States and a Bush
administration response that has sacrificed security to protect the
financial interests of energy corporations: A Government Accounting
Office (GAO) report on aviation security showing that 70 light aircraft have
been stolen inside the US in the last five years, a Vanity Fair
article on a nuclear security whistleblower who was ousted from the
Department of Energy for reporting security failures, and a Department of
Homeland Security alert that there are plans afoot to attack US nuclear
power plants with airplanes – a contingency the nuclear power industry
has falsely and knowingly claimed poses no danger to the public.
Gordon Thompson of the Institute for Research and Security Studies points
out that small general aviation aircraft can do exactly what a Cruise
missile can do: fly 600 miles under radar and deliver hundreds of
pounds of high explosive with pinpoint precision.
Rich Levernier, fired from the Department of Energy for reporting security
weaknesses to his superiors, ran mock terrorist teams that breached security
at nuclear weapons facilities in half of their force-on-force exercises. By
extension, Goff points out, “given that nuclear power plants have markedly
weaker security, and themselves fail force-on-force exercises against
untrained three-person teams in half their exercises, it is safe to assume
that a larger, more well-trained team [like Levernier’s] could penetrate a
nuclear power facility close to 100 percent of the time.”
The Homeland Security alert said US intelligence indicated that nuclear
power plants are targeted now. But the Bush government has resisted
upgrading security at every turn, and now classifies as secret even the
criteria upon which their protection is based.
NC WARN’s research showed a series of deceptions by the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) including a report they buried from 1982 that
showed an aircraft hitting a nuclear power plant could melt down the
reactor, ignite the spent fuel pools, and kill thousands before they could
evacuate. The NRC began denying this could happen on September 11 and
had to recant on September 21, saying that while nuclear plants are
vulnerable to destruction, other facilites are more likely to be targeted.
For the latter claim, they provided no evidence.
“Our report weaves together these pieces to show a dangerous pattern,”
explains Jim Warren, executive director of NC WARN, “of invoking ‘national
security’ not to protect the general population, but to protect energy
corporations and industry-obedient regulatory bureaucracies from exercising
their mandate to provide oversight and accountability.”
“While the NRC and other business-friendly regulatory agencies were
busily protecting their corporate clients from the costs of security
upgrades,” says Goff, “George Bush and John Ashcroft were taking
unprecedented measures to scapegoat immigrants and re-legitimize racial
profiling. The administration tried to intimidate the public from
dissent by making the ‘with us or with the terrorists’ statement, they now
want to marginalize and even criminalize people for telling the truth about
weakened security. This is one of the most Orwellian patriotism-for-profit
scams imaginable.”
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