I don't know if I can adequately explain this story, or its' significance for the people out here, but it's one that needs to be told. And told again.
From 1952 to 1989, Rocky Flats was a nuclear weapons manufacturing facility, located just outside of Denver. They manufactured the trigger mechanisms for nuclear weapons. The facility provided lots of jobs for the area, and lots of secrets.
Long the site of anti-nuclear protests, the site was eventually shut down back in the 80's, but only because the need for more and more nuclear weapons waned. Protesters maintained that the facility was contaminating the area, including groundwater and the water table, with radioactive material. At first, everyone just laughed at the 'kooks', but eventually, with the advent of environmental organizations that had some political clout, people started taking them more seriously. Radiation was indeed leaking from the facility, and contaminating air, earth, and water, not 16 miles from a major metropolitan area, with approximately 3 million people.
Eventually, they were taken seriously enough, and there was enough evidence gathered by the state and city health departments that there was something bad going on, that the FBI raided the facility. This is a highly-classified, government facility, managed by Rockwell International, and it was raided by the FBI.
The investigation progressed, and was presented to a 23 member "special" grand jury in 1989. They spent 2-1/2 years investigating what was going on at Rocky Flats, including allegations that officials conspired to cover up the illegal handling and disposal of dangerous wastes at Rocky Flats.
Grand jury proceedings are secret, and grand juries are not allowed to breach that secrecy. What this grand jury learned, however, led them to taking several unprecendented steps. They became known as the Runaway Jury. They made allegations of organized crime on the part of the government, and Rockwell. When prosecutors balked at acting, the jury wrote their own report. They asked to make their report public, so serious was the contamination and subsequent cover-up, which request was denied by Judge Sherman Finesilver. They tried to return indictments against the Energy Department, and Rockwell International, but federal prosecutors refused to sign the indictments.
The result was an extraordinary behind-the-scenes constitutional confrontation pitting 22 ordinary citizens, determined to do their duty as they saw it, against Colorado's top federal prosecutor and his staff, the U.S. Department of Justice and Colorado's chief federal judge.
In this showdown, the jurors--most of whom had never served on any jury before or taken on any public official over so much as a parking ticket--stood their ground:
-When Norton told them he would not draft an indictment naming Rockwell or energy department employees, they drafted one themselves with the help of a lawyer on the jury and adopted it unanimously.
-When Norton asked them to approve an indictment he supported--which contained the charges Rockwell executives eventually pled guilty to--they refused. His indictment was a whitewash, they said, and they wouldn't be a part of it.
-When Norton discouraged them from drafting a "presentment," a document outlining the charges of criminal conduct that doesn't carry the force of law, they drafted one anyway and adopted it unanimously.
Seven days after the judge refused their request to publish their findings, excerpts from their report and details of their accusations were published in what was then a small local "alternative" paper, Westword. The major papers wouldn't touch the story, but Westword did, and it propelled the small paper into news and investigative legitimacy.
After reports that U.S. Attorney General Mike Norton had referred grand jury leaks to the Justice Department, U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder called for a new grand jury and an independent prosecutor to investigate Rocky Flats. "Frankly, Mr. Attorney General," she wrote in a letter, "it is not the grand jurors but the U.S. attorney who ought to be investigated. From what I gather, the U.S. attorney did everything he could to sweep the entire scandal under a rug. Worse, it was a Department of Justice rug." (1)
Instead of being indicted, Rockwell International was fined 18.5 million dollars, and the grand jury was disbanded. Told to go home, and keep their mouths shut.
Twelve of the original 23 grand jurors wrote to President Clinton, asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the government's actions. In 1993, an edited version of the grand jury report was released. The full version of the grand jury report is available here., including portions the gov't did not approve for release. C'est la vie, you know? Can't keep a good grand jury down...
In 1997, at least six members of the special grand jury hired their own lawyers, and made a secret appeal for a hearing, to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, who ordered Judge Richard Matsch to give them one. They testfied about the 2-1/2 years they spent investigating 'environmental crimes' at Rocky Flats. They claimed that officials at the Justice Department blocked their attempts to indict Energy Department and Rockwell International officials. They asked for permission to make public their findings. That was denied.
Though closed to production for many years, Rocky Flats is still there, still operational (though only in terms of shutting the place down, which has been going on for all these years,) and still cleaning up the site. If I'm not mistaken, RF has gone through three operators since Rockwell was thrown out. "Clean up" is scheduled to be completed next year, some seven or so years ahead of schedule. For every year ahead of schedule they complete the cleanup, the current operators receive tens of millions of dollars in performance bonuses. Once it's done, the site is scheduled to become a "wildlife refuge" and recreation district, in 2007.
Grand jury foreman Wes McKinley, along with three other citizens has continued the fight to get the whole story told for all these years, and has now been elected to the state house. His book, The Ambushed Grand Jury, (How the Justice Department Covered Up Government Nuclear Crimes, and We Caught Them Redhanded) is available on his website. Right now, he's introducing a law that would require that all visitors to the site, including the anticipated school tours, be fully informed about the dangers of the site. "The federal government lied to the citizens of Colorado for years about the dangers of Rocky Flats," said McKinley, speaking at a news conference. "They're still lying, and now they want to take our schoolchildren out there on field trips."
So... what brought this all to mind, and made me spend the last two hours writing this post? News, of course, as usual.
The FBI agent who led the original raid of the Rocky Flats facility back in 1989 has taken early retirement from the FBI, specifically so he can "tell the truth about Rocky Flats"; how the government stymied his investigation, tampered with environmental monitoring, and hid the truth of the true extent of the contamination at Rocky Flats.
And there you have my Saturday morning treatise on my neighborhood. :)
