Deadly denial: Government fails to help sick nuclear workers

[DogPoundPup]

The Americans who built the nation's nuclear weapons are still fighting a cold war.

Tens of thousands of sick nuclear arms workers — or their survivors — from every state in the nation have applied for compensation that Congress established for them in 2000. But most have never seen a dime.

Congress promised these Cold War patriots an efficient, compassionate path to atonement. But a Rocky Mountain News investigation found that the government has derailed aid to workers by keeping reports secret from them, constantly changing rules and delaying cases until sick workers died.

Many ill workers have become mired in a process so adversarial that top program officials at one point considered putting some of them under government surveillance — spying on them.

"These are heroes from the Cold War who risked their lives to build nuclear weapons," said Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico who oversaw the nation's weapons complex as U.S. energy secretary and helped create the compensation program. "The bureaucracy has placed so many barriers, it's almost criminal that workers and their families are not being compensated."
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jul/20/deadly-denial/

[gateley]

1. We don't take care of our own - that's become increasingly

and painfully obvious. Ask the veterans.

I recall a story about workers employed at Area 51 becoming ill - cancer. They couldn't even get heard because of the secrecy of what goes on there. National security, and all.

Whoever is treating these people - who have given so much of themselves to our country - as ENEMIES, should be ashamed. A pox on their houses.

[Democrats_win]

2. Money for the victims was used to create hurdles for the workers rather than help.

That was on the front page of the Rocky Mountain News yesterday.