Los Alamos,the whistleblower,THE BEATING ... where is the outrage?

[Monkie]

as some of you may have read, last weekend a whistleblower at Los Alamos was badly beaten and told to "keep quiet".He has a broken jaw, a herniated disc in his back, broken teeth, can barely talk and has shoe prints on his face.



he had filed for whistle-blower protection with the Department of Energy over what he says was retaliation for information he provided on alleged financial irregularities at LANL. He also has a lawsuit alleging retaliation pending against the University of California-run lab and was scheduled to testify at a congressional committee hearing later this month.

the NY times has this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/09/national/09alamos.html
"The F.B.I. says only that the inquiry is continuing. But Peter Stockton, a senior investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group in Washington that is assisting Mr. Hook, has accused the bureau of leaking information to news organizations that paints a different story.

In this version, described in The Sante Fe New Mexican, The Albuquerque Journal and local television stations, Mr. Hook went to the topless bar on Saturday not to meet an informant but because his wife was in Albuquerque that night. He had several drinks. He got a lap dance. When he left the bar, he nearly backed into someone with his car, setting off the fight.

The bouncer got some license plate numbers from cars speeding away"

www.defensetech.org quotes the Albuquerque Journal:
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001595.html
"But according to a Cheeks dancer, Hook did more than just wait by the bar. "He did get a lap-dance from the waitress," Jeanette McCalip, a dancer who was working at Cheeks on Saturday night, said of the whistle-blower."

The Santa Fe New Mexican has a different version as told by Hook's lawyer:
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/14582.html
"Rothstein said a private investigator got an entirely different story when he interviewed several Cheeks employees.
"We've had a private investigator who interviewed the manager, the bartender and two security guards," he said. "All four of them confirmed that Tommy sat at the bar, he was drinking light beer, didn't have any interactions with the girls who were dancing there..."
Montoya, the club owner, said Tuesday that law enforcement officers instructed him to not speak about the incident, but he did say Hook probably wouldn't have lived if it weren't for a Cheeks security guard who helped disrupt the fight.

"My security employee did save the guy's life," he said. "

i'm not just outraged at what happened to him,i am also reminded of a 7 part series of articles in the san fransisco bay view last year written by Leuren Moret titled:
UC Regents lose control of nuclear weapons program
Five admirals, Carlyle Group and Rand take over

which details the fight over who controls the weapons of mass destruction programs in the USA and i feel could be relevant to the beating of this whistleblower


more background at:
http://www.sfbayview.com/091504/ucregents091504.shtml
http://www.sfbayview.com/092204/nuclearweapons092204.shtml
http://lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com/
http://www.defensetech.org/

[LaurenG]

1. Bu** republicans have succeeded in turning

America into the APATHETIC nation. Not enough people care to question or fight back. (ranting today, I don't know why?)

[cthrumatrix]

3. being a Patriot is no longer "admirable" according to FAUX

[complain jane]

2. What's a lap dance got to do with anything?

Like that's supposed to discredit the guy's story?!

[formercia]

4. It's about discreditation

The powers that be want to discredit him as a potential witness. He was lured to the club under false pretenses to assault and discredit him.

This is a standard smear tactic that I have first-hand experience with.

[acmejack]

5. Trying to make him appear as a deviant

Unworthy of attention and probably untrustworthy too. Fooling around while his wife is out of town. I am getting really pissed about these tactics. And the GD Carlyle Group. Any bets as to whether any arrests are ever made in this case? They are engaging in a wholesale campaign of whistleblower intimidation and at a time when it is apparent these brave souls require greater protection, they are stripping them of what little they have.

btw, I still hate these people!

[Monkie]

6. indeed! and a lapdance on the eve of his 30th wedding anniversary

"Susan Hook cried as photographs of her disfigured husband were shown to news reporters. She said today is their 30th wedding anniversary. She said she had to cancel a Hawaiian cruise they had planned to take. When a reporter asked whether her husband could be lying, she said he was not the type to go to bars. "We just aren't dancers or bar people," she said. "And he'd been in bed."

He usually accompanied her to Albuquerque, but he was too tired and overwhelmed with the upcoming hearing, she said. He suffers from a heart condition, and he is recovering from a stroke and shoulder surgery. He had been back to work just three weeks"
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/14538.html

the lapdance is a distraction,which is probably why he was lured to that type of bar in the first place,i can only imagine the way this would have been spun if he hadnt been so lucky to survive and be able to tell his side of things...

[formercia]

7. It's all about BIG money

Most of the projects that DOE has are run by corporations that are paid enormous sums of money. It's a very insular world because of the security requirements in the nuclear weapons field limit the number of qualified 'bidders' for the contracts.

So, the contractors have their army of thugs that keep anyone from becoming a'problem'. Karen Silkwood is an example of what happens to whistleblowers. Her concerns about safety at the Cimmaron plant that was making plutonium/Uranium fuel pellets for an experimental fast breeder type reactor were well founded and eventially the project was cancelled but it didn't keep her from paying the ultimate price.