Encounters: The UFO Phenomenon, Exposed!/Encounters - The UFO Phenomenon, Exposed (1995).iso/misc2/misc019.txt

Text File | 1995-10-20 | 8KB | 182 lines

 ----- GROOM LAKE TOXIC INJURY SUIT -----

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.

 ----- GWU PRESS RELEASE -----

Below is a PRESS RELEASE from George Washington University, Office
of University Relations, Washington, D.C....

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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