Below is a transcript of a report on ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT WITH PETER JENNINGS, August 1, 1994.
[Supplement to the Groom Lake Desert Rat. Transcribed without permission. The transcript is followed by a press release from George Washington University concerning the suit.]
FORREST SAWYER (fill-in anchor): Some government employees are going to court this week, charging that their work has made them sick. What makes their claim so unusual is what they do and where--at a super secret military base called Groom Lake whose very existence we first reported just a couple of months ago. Here's our legal affairs correspondent Cynthia McFadden.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: These people are not your average commuters. [Workers boarding jets at McCarran Airport.] Among them are engineers and technicians helping develop America's most secret new weapons. Every day they fly a half an hour into the desert from Las Vegas on an airline that doesn't exist.
[In desert.] The planes land at an air base just behind these hills. Showing it to you would be a crime. And if you have ever worked at the air base, talking about it is a crime. And yet some of the workers say they now must talk about environmental crimes they say the government committed.
VICTIM (in shadow, voice disguised): We all done a lot of coughing while the smoke was blowing in our direction. I developed cancer. I guess I'm not cured of it.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: This man and at least a dozen others say that throughout the 1980s a deadly smoke was produced by weekly burnings in huge pits at the air base.
WITNESS (in shadow, voice disguised): There were several trenches about 300 feet long and about 25 to 30 feet across and about 25 feet deep.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (to WITNESS): What was the purpose of the trenches?
WITNESS: For the destruction of classified material.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: Materials like those used to make the stealth fighter invisible to radar. Where better to dispose of the secret compounds than the secret air base, as seen in this 1988 Russian satellite photograph. An air base where the environmental laws didn't seem to reach.
WITNESS: The running joke was, it was the place that didn't exist, so consequently anything could occur there.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: The Air Force says that while we can't take a picture of the base, they can't object to our showing you this Russian photo. It shows where workers say the trenches were located.
VICTIM: It was thick black smoke. Sometimes it was thick gray. The smell was very nauseating. It would burn your eyes. It would burn your throat.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: And the smoke, say some of those who worked in it, made them sick.
VICTIM: I developed a rash, skin rash. I used sandpaper to get the scale off, because it's the only way I can remove it.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (to VICTIM): Do other men that you worked with describe a similar rash?
VICTIM: One in particular, yes. He had it all over his body.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: What happened to him?
VICTIM: He died.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: Robert Frost was a sheet metal worker at the base, until he started developing these rashes. Neither he nor his wife could figure out what had caused them. Just before his death, they sent a tissue sample to Peter Kahn, an expert on hazardous chemicals. His conclusion? Robert Frost had been exposed to types of dioxins and dibenzofurons, which are not normally seen in humans.
PROF. PETER KAHN ("Rutgers University"): My only reaction is, what on earth has this man been exposed to?
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: Frost died in 1989 of cirrhosis of the liver, but his widow Helen says that while Frost did drink, he was no alcoholic. She believes the real cause of her husband's death was working at Groom Lake.
HELEN FROST: Who does the government think they are that they can go around killing people. That's called murder.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: The Air Force told Mrs. Frost that it had nothing to do with her husband's death, so she and her daughters, along with a dozen others who worked at the air base, have hired themselves a lawyer.
PROF. JONATHAN TURLEY (to Frost family): Many of our clients may be developing more extensive injuries similar to your father's.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: They want to lift the secrecy surrounding the burning and find out what the workers were exposed to. The government's position has been that these people have no right to go to court, that national security demands continued secrecy. Air Force and Environmental Protection Agency officials said that they would not comment on the pending legal action.
PROF. JONATHAN TURLEY ("George Washington Law Center"): The secrecy oath doesn't mean that my clients have stopped being citizens of the United States. It doesn't mean that they are non- persons and they've got a non-injury.
CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: The government says there were no environmental crimes committed there at Groom Lake, the Air Force base that doesn't exist. They say, nobody's sick. Jonathan Turley and his clients say given a chance they can prove otherwise.
Cynthia McFadden, ABC News, on the road to Groom Lake.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 2, 1994
GW LAW PROFESSOR JONATHAN TURLEY FILES AGAINST THE EPA FOR FAILURE TO INSPECT SECRET AIR FORCE BASE FOR VIOLATION OF FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS.
Washington, D.C. -- The George Washington University National Law Center Professor of Environmental Law Jonathan Turley, in an unprecedented move, filed suit today against the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to live up to its duties to inspect violations of federal environmental laws. This will be the first in a series of legal actions planned by Professor Turley.
Turley is representing current and former workers at Area 51, a secret Air Force base in Nevada -- also known as Dreamland or Groom Lake. The suit alleges serious injuries, and at least one death, to employees due to the burning of hazardous and toxic wastes at the facility. Turley's suit further alleges that workers were denied requests for protective clothing -- including gloves -- in handling hazardous wastes. Workers, who signed secrecy agreements upon employment at the base, will be represented as "John and Jane Does" to prevent possible retaliation, including physical threats.
This case is the first of it's kind. Area 51 is generally considered the most secret, classified base in the U.S. military network. "By forcing compliance at Area 51, we hope to establish a precedent whereby the military will be forced to acknowledge its responsibilities in every base and facility," says Turley. "Ultimately, this case is a direct confrontation between national security laws and environmental and criminal laws."
Specifically, Turley will be asking the D.C. court to force the EPA to inspect and monitor the secret base. He will argue that the federal hazardous waste law does not give any exception for secret bases in its provisions and will be asking the court to force the EPA to fulfill a mandatory duty under the law.
"We want to establish that workers at secret bases should not be forced to rely on the arbitrary protections of the military, but should be able to go to court to receive remedies for violations," says Turley. He also intends to establish that secrecy agreements do not preempt environmental protections. Eventually, Turley plans to draft a new law on the judicial review of such cases and on issues ranging from anonymous legal actions to standing questions to citizen suit actions against the EPA.
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