Major Security Breach at Palisades Nuclear Plant

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/0515-03.htm

Major Security Breach at Palisades Nuclear Plant


TAKOMA PARK, MD - May 15 - A story appearing in the June edition of Esquire magazine that reveals a major security breach at the Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert, Michigan, confirms that reactor security around the country is grossly inadequate according to specialists in the field.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and its allies today called on the U.S. Congress to investigate the security breach at Palisades. The Esquire story, entitled “Mercenary,” details how the head of Palisades security – William E. Clark – had largely fabricated his background, experience and security credentials presenting himself as an expert on armed deterrence. Clark has since resigned his position.

“Mercenary” reveals that officials at the Palisades nuclear power plant failed to detect false assertions in Clark’s resume that claimed he had high level security clearance from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). Clark also passed a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)-regulated background check. He was hired by the plant’s previous owner, Consumers Energy Company, and operator, Nuclear Management Company, a year and a half ago, but was kept on by the new owner and operator, Entergy, since it acquired Palisades one month ago. The article can be found at http://www.esquire.com/features/mercenary0607.

“What’s disturbing is not only that Palisades hired an individual who claimed to be an experienced assassin but that apparently no one verified his false claim to have DOD clearance,” said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist at NIRS. “This has serious implications for security at all 103 reactors across the country. It begs the question as to what would have happened if Mohamed Atta had decided to fake a resume rather than fly a plane, and earned a top-level security job at a nuclear power plant.”

The article describes how Clark convinced NRC officials, as well as Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents, to support and even join his “Viper team,” a supposedly “elite strike force” he set up at Palisades. According to Esquire, FBI agents and NRC officials attended a “Viper team” presentation by Clark hosted at DHS headquarters in Washington, D.C. The federal officials reportedly considered establishing Clark’s “Viper teams” at nuclear power plants across the U.S., the article said.

“If what Esquire says about Clark is true, I surely hope Entergy and Consumers have formally notified the NRC, FBI, and DHS of the revelations by now,” said Terry Lodge, an attorney based in Toledo, OH who represents citizens in interventions against Palisades. “Apparently a journalist can do a much better background check than Entergy and Consumers security officials. Entergy has also had security problems at the Indian Point reactors near New York City. The NRC must reconsider whether Entergy can guarantee the safe operation of Palisades, and one hundred per cent protection of the high-level radioactive waste still stored at Big Rock Point in northern Michigan,” Lodge said.

“Despite the NRC claim that the 9/11 attacks prompted a “top to bottom” security review, it did not detect Clark’s deceptions or act upon his apparent erratic behavior as described in the article,” Kamps added.

“Palisades’ reactor and waste storage facilities hold potentially catastrophic amounts of radioactivity, at continual risk of release into the environment due to accident or attack,” said Kamps. “This incident clearly shows that private companies and government agencies who are supposed to protect public health, safety, security, and the environment are incompetent at doing so.”

NIRS has called on Congress to investigate the failures at NRC, FBI, DHS and the nuclear utilities involved at Palisades and to explore whether similar problems exist with security at other nuclear power plants across the country. It will also re-apply to NRC for hearings on its security-related contentions at Palisades and Big Rock, which had previously been rejected, based on the new information revealed by Esquire.

Who has the key to the storeroom that has the back bones. How long does the list have to get before we do something?

Asshattish drive-by comment with no follow-up.

Just another boring episode of "RL3AO at DU".

what a piece of work this guy is. A typical repuke appointee?....

<snip>

Which is why it’s a good thing that the security manager at Palisades Nuclear for the last year and a half is real, too, with real qualifications for the job. His name is William E. Clark, and he has been in the Army, he’s been a cop, he’s done some contracting work for the Department of Energy, he’s gone to Kosovo on a diplomatic mission, and after Katrina, he worked for Blackwater, the security company, outside New Orleans. He started at Palisades in early 2006. He has a new house and a new wife and has told people, “I would shed blood to keep this job.” As a statement of determination, this is reassuring...but what if he means it as a statement of fact? What if William E. Clark has told people -- told me -- that he has in fact shed blood many times, in many places, over the course of many years? What if William E. Clark says that he worked for Blackwater in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as in New Orleans and killed so many people that he considers himself a cold-blooded murderer? What if he says that his job as the security manager of a nuclear plant on Lake Michigan is both a reward for all the killing he’s done and a means for keeping him quiet about it?

The guilt is real. The shame is real. He is not proud of the things he’s done, although that doesn’t stop him from talking about them. He’s not proud of what he had to do in Vietnam, his son says. He’s not proud of having to kill someone in New Orleans, his ex-wife says. He wakes up with nightmares, his new wife says, because he’s starting to see the faces of the human beings he once saw through the rifle scope. And so this story represents his attempt to come clean. He is a bad person, he says, but he wants to be a good person -- he wants to be thought of as a good person. He wants to be purified, shriven. He is telling his story because he knows it will destroy him. He is telling his story because he knows it will set him free.

He has kept stuff, over the years, because he knows that nobody will believe him. He has kept the stubs from all the boarding passes, the keys from all the hotel rooms. There are hundreds of them, and he keeps them in thick wads and piles. He has kept a business card for one of his aliases, Zeke Senega, a reporter for The Irish Times in Dublin. He has kept his passports, including the diplomatic one that was required for the work he did for the State Department. And he has photographs. He has a folder full of photographs from what he calls an “operation” in Iraq -- an operation that ended with two jihadists slumped dead in the front seat of an Opel, their car windows spiderwebbed with the ghosts of two precision gunshots. He also has a photo album, which he calls the Book. The Book is not very different from a lot of photo albums -- it is a record, in snapshots, of the places he’s been and the people he’s met -- except that the mostly unsmiling men staring at the camera are usually wearing camouflage and armed to the teeth. And in the middle of the Book, there is one photo, black-and-white and larger than the rest, of William E. Clark cradling a rifle to his chest in what appears to be a jungle. He does not seem to be posing, and indeed he looks a little sick -- his mouth slightly slack and his long face droopy with exhaustion. And yet when he remembers the circumstances of the photo, he relishes them: “That picture was taken in El Salvador in 1996. I wasn’t supposed to be there. Nobody was. Suddenly this UPI photographer shows up, taking pictures. I said, ‘If you don’t put that camera down and give me the film, I’ll shoot you. I’ll kill you and get away with it. Because I don’t exist.’ ”

I just read the entire story at Esquire. Wow.

of security in and around any of our nuclear installations would turn up comparable weaknesses. This administration isn't really interested in security (except for foreign installations of oil multinationals)

What total fucktards!

this isn't that far from me.