JACQUELINE (JACQUE) BREVER. Born 1957.

TRANSCRIPT of OH 1498 A-F.

This interview was recorded on June 4, 1999. It was later donated to the Maria Rogers Oral History Program and the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum. The interviewer is LeRoy Moore. The interview transcript was prepared by Cyns Nelson.

NOTE: The interviewer’s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets. The archiving of this interview was made possible by a grant from Colorado Humanities.

ABSTRACT: Jacque Brever was hired at Rocky Flats in 1982, when she was 25 years old. She started in the cafeteria, worked her way into a position as chemical operator, and became a whistleblower after the 1989 FBI raid. In this interview, Jacque talks at length about her personal experiences on the job: training for her position, the work she did, what she struggled against, description of plant processes, safety breaches, years of harassment, and personal attacks after she agreed to testify before the grand jury. Jacque also filed a separate law suit, which was dismissed. She describes her move to Grand Junction and rebuilding her life while getting bachelors and masters degrees in the field of environmental science.

[A].

00:00 (It is the 4th of June, 1999. I am sitting outside, behind the Mennonite Church—where the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center is located—talking with Jacque Brever, a former employee of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.)

(Welcome, Jacque, glad to see you. Welcome to Colorado. I know you came here to graduate from the University of Denver, and that gets to happen to tomorrow. It was 10 years ago that you became quite well known for blowing the whistle at Rocky Flats, and that's one thing I definitely want to talk about. But why don't we—if it's okay—why don't we back way up, and you tell me a little bit about where you came from: that is, where you were born and a little bit about your background, and how in the world you happened to end up working at Rocky Flats.)

And making plutonium triggers! [laughs]. Well, let's see. I was born in Sparta, Wisconsin, on June 19th, 1957. My mother spent her 20th birthday, on June 18th, in the hospital, in labor [laughs]. I was born just a little after midnight, after her birthday.

(Is that a rural area, Sparta? Or is —)

Sparta, Wisconsin, yes. I was born in a Catholic hospital, and the nuns delivered me. I was so tall, so long, that they asked my mother if I walked out! [Laugh from LeRoy.]

(Uh-huh.)

I have two brothers and two sisters. I'm the oldest; we're all about a year apart. In fact, my brother and I—his birthday is June 10th, so we stay the same age every year for nine days. So we were pretty close, there. My dad was in the Army, and we traveled all over, everywhere. I think the longest—

(So was he stationed at a military base there, at Sparta, when you were born?)

Yes.

(And then you moved a lot.)

Oh, yes. We moved a lot. I think the longest we stayed anywhere was three-and-half years in Germany. I think that was it.

(During your growing-up period.)

Yeah. And then we moved to—my mother’s from Colorado, and he went off to wars all the time: Vietnam, two or three times, and so forth; Korea. So, she had enough. When I was about 12, I think—it was '69—we moved to Aurora, Colorado, and they bought a house.

(Aurora. Okay. Outside Denver, a suburb of Denver.)

That's where I stayed, for many years. And then I grew up, left home—

(You graduated from high school, there?)

No, actually I didn't. I got a GED. My parents ended up getting divorced. My mom was working two jobs—and she was going to the Women's College—so I had to work. I helped, since I was the oldest. So I got a GED.

(What does that stand for?)

General Education—

[Female voice says: “General Equivalency Diploma.”]

There you go!

(Okay.)

Yeah, yeah.

[Female voice comments that it was a long time ago.]

[Laughter.]

I went to work. I worked odd jobs; I was unskilled, and I just worked physical labor jobs that—

(Around the Denver area?)

Yeah, around Denver and Aurora.

And then I went to—oh! I met my daughter's father. We lived together for many years, and then we decided that we would split up, AFTER he got his job at Rocky Flats, and after I was pregnant.

(Uh-huh.)

He got his job there, as an electronic technician. Up until then, I had never even heard of Rocky Flats.

(I see.)

Never even heard of it.

(You learned about it because he got a job there.)

Uh-huh.

(How old were you when that happened?)

Let's see, 23, or something like that.

(And your daughter was born soon after that.)

She was born in '81, so that would be four—I was 24. He got his job there. I was pregnant; we split up, and then I found out I was pregnant. [Laughs.] He said, “Well, what are you gonna do?”

I said, “Well, I don't know what you're gonna do, but I'm gonna HAVE this.” No abortion. No, no, no, no.

(Uh huh.)

05:01 So, he worked there, and then I got a job there. I thought: It's good money, and I'm unskilled! I went to—

(So, you just went out there and applied for a job.)

Yeah.

(And you learned about it because he went to work there. Did you have any idea what you were getting into, there?)

I had no idea.

(Did you know what they did?)

No! I was so unskilled that I didn't even read newspapers. I didn't watch TV, I didn't read newspapers. I knew NOTHING. All I knew is that he went to this Rocky Flats place and he made a LOT of money.

(Uh-huh. Follow the money!)

[Narrator laughs.] Yes. When we’re young—

(Considerably more than you can make, applying for a job somewhere else.)

Considerably more. So I went to work there, and they said, “Well, we have no jobs right now.”

I said, “Well, I'll do anything. I'll work in your cafeteria.”

They said, “Well, we do happen to have some chemical operator positions open, but you need to get a Q clearance.”

(They said that to you, before you even got hired?)

Uh-huh.

(Really! You've got to get a Q clearance.)

Got to get a Q clearance.

(Did you know what that was?)

No. I had no idea.

(What is a Q clearance?)

“Q clearance” is a top-secret government clearance that you—

(“Top secret.”)

Top-secret government clearance that gives you—

(Not everybody can get them.)

They're very difficult to get. In fact, they fast-tracked us back then, because they were in a hiring frenzy. Mine still took almost two years.

(You didn't know at the time—or DID you know at the time—what “chemical operator” meant?)

THEN I found out what a chemical operator—

(When you were talking about the job, you mean?)

Yeah. After—

(They told you?)

In the meantime, they hired me to work in the cafeteria—and they gave me stacks and stacks of papers to fill out for this Q clearance—so in the meantime, I was asking around, what chemical operators did—

(From other workers?)

Uh-huh. It was so dramatic back then that nobody REALLY wanted to tell me, because I wasn't Q-cleared. But I sort of got a feel for what they did.

(So, if you're not a Q-cleared, you can't know what Q clearance means.)

THAT’S right. [Laughs.]

(What year did you start there?)

[Refers to year.] ’82. My daughter was, like, 6 months old.

(1982.)

Thank goodness I had her before I worked there.

(’82. So you were 25, or something like that.)

Something like that, yeah. I think I started in June—it was right around my 25th birthday.

(I gather that it was fairly common for them to hire people to do custodial work or to do, maybe—you worked in a cafeteria. They hire people to do these jobs, and they must, kind of, havetheir eye on you. They are thinking: Is this going to be an appropriate person for us to push in the direction of doing the Q-cleared work of a chemical operator—and in a minute you can tell me what that means. Do you think that was, sort of, a pattern that they had, to hire people that way?)

I believe so. I believe it's sort of to keep their eye on you. The Q clearance—I mean, they investigate your entire life. They go and they—

(That took a while.)

—interview people. Oh, yeah. They investigate everything. So, I agree. It might be, sort of, a way they can watch and see what kind of a person you might be.

Also, back then, they were JUST barely starting to hire women chem ops.

(Oh.)

Actually, they were pushed into it. Because, the equal rights—those things—they were sort of pushed into it. So, they took black women from the janitorial, and they took women from the cafeteria—to fill their quotas—and hired them in; put them to work in the hot side.

(You were one of those? The hot side.)

Actually, I had to FIGHT to get in there. All this time my Q clearance is going, I decided to take some classes at Front Range Community College—

09:43 (Especially for Rocky Flats workers, or just general classes?)

I'm a painter. I love art. So, I just wanted to go for just an Associates of Art degree, Associates of Fine Art. And then, in the meantime, you have to take cores, also, general education. So I had the beginning –well, the algebra, I zipped through it. That was part of it I already—out the door, I was done. Then my Q clearance came through, and I said, “Okay, I'm ready to be hired on now as a chemical operator.”

And they said, “Oh, no, no, no. You have to have a semester of physics—basic physics—and a semester of chemistry”—[LeRoy laughs.]—“along with your algebra. But your GED is okay.”

(Could you—)

I said, “What is going on here? This is not fair!” I go through this whole investigation; all my friends and family are calling me, because there's OPM guys—Office of Personnel Management guys—interviewing them about me and being all secret and everything. I said, “This is not fair. But, okay, I'll go take your two semesters.”

So I took physics: no problem. I took chemistry: no problem. Finished up my—

(Did you do that at the same school, or—)

At Front Range Community College. I went back, and I said, “Okay, I finished my physics, my chemistry, and my algebra. In fact, I'm almost done with my whole Fine Arts degree, so give me my job.”

They said, “No, no, no, we can't do that. We can't do that.” All of us in there—

(What were you doing at work, all that time? You're still working in the cafeteria?)

I'm still working in the cafeteria! [Laughing.] With a Q clearance!

(In what building?)

[building number] 750.

(Okay.)

750. And every once in a while they’d send us around—

(That's not on the hot side then, right?)

Yes it is. It is on the hot side. And they would—every once in a while—send us out to other buildings that had cafeterias, on the cold side. So, every now and then I’d go to another building and flip hamburgers.

(So what happened this time? You said—)

I'm done—and, as it turned out, all of us were union—all the cafeteria workers, all the chem ops—everybody was union.

(Were you Steelworkers, or were you—)

Steelworker. Same union. I worked—and became good friends with—our union president's son, Jim Kelly.

(Jim Kelly's son?)

Uh-huh. Jim Kelly, Jr. We got to be good friends. He worked in the cafeteria with me, and—

(I know Jim, pretty well.)

Jim Kelly. Which one?

(The older one.)

Senior. The union president?

(Right.)

I have a story about him, too.

(All right.) [Both laugh.]

I said, “Hey Jim,” because Jim was going through the same process—

(Jim, Junior.)

Yeah, Jim, Junior. So I knew it wasn't just because of being a woman, or anything. They were doing it to all the cafeteria people. And Jim, Junior, went to his dad and said, “What's happening?”

Somehow, he found out that the union made a deal with ARA services—the cafeteria company—not to take any more of its people. Because, ARA would get them in—they’d get Q- cleared, and everything else, and then—

(What does that mean?)

Q clearance?

(They made a deal?)

They made a deal that—because ARA would hire us and train us, and everything, and then as soon as we got our clearances, we’d move over to Rockwell. So they were losing their employees as fast—and they needed Q-cleared people to work in the hot cafeteria.

(Oh, of course. That's where you serve hot food, I guess.)

Yeah! [Both laugh.] You don't need a grill. [More laughing.]

(All right.)

So, Jim and I went and fought his own father.

(Oh!) [LeRoy laughs.]

To shut us up—when I think something is not right, I will say so. [LeRoy laughs.] And, I DID. He, offhandedly, said something like, “I know you're going to be trouble. I just know it.” [Laughs.]

(Jim Kelly, Sr.? Jim Kelly, Senior’s, just like you! I mean, he's that same way. But, go ahead. [Laughs.] If anything's wrong, and he knows it, he'll speak up.)

Well, I filed a grievance, with the union, to fight that. The guy they sent to handle it—the union representative they sent to handle it—his name was Barney. I don't know his last name, but I can see his face, as clear as day. He pretty much told me, “You know, why don't you just back off and stay where you are. You don't want to go work there.”

And I said, “No! They said I needed these requirements and, by gosh, I did everything they said. Now it's time for them to cough up their part of the deal.” So, they did it. They hired me AND Jim, Junior. [Laughs.]

15:02 (What year was that, then, when you started actually—)

It was January, '84. It was supposed to be December of '83. But, my boss at ARA got SO mad that I was going to go to work for Rockwell, that he told me that if I did not complete my time to December 31, I wouldn't get paid for the Christmas shutdown. [Chuckles.] We're off for, like, two weeks, paid, at Christmas time back then.

(So, he put the pressure on you.)

They cancelled my number—gave it to someone else—and then I started right after the holidays, like January 4th, or something, ’84.

We had chem-op training. And, when I got in there—in this chem-op training—I found out: Those people didn't have a semester of physics, chemistry, and algebra. Half of them barely— IF— they even graduated high school. They were just making it difficult, because of that agreement.

(Because of the agreement?)

I’m sure.

(They hadn't changed their standards for what was required to do that work, you don't think?)

Right.

(They were just making it hard for you.)

I worked with some people that would make “X”s, that couldn't even sign their names. So, being educated was not an issue.

(Well, what is a chem operator?)

Chemical operator?

(Chemical operator, yeah.)

Actually, what my job was—in the beginning—was recovering plutonium.

(“Recovering.”)

Recovering plutonium from impure product. It has to be a certain purity, to go into making a trigger. Impure products—powders, residues—

(So these are leftover materials, or by-products, of the trigger manufacture?)

Right.

(And you received that material, probably in a glovebox?)

Uh-huh.

(And what does it mean to “recover” it?)

When you RECOVER it. [Laughs.] That was recycling! [Long laughter.]

(Recycling?)

[Narrator is laughing.] Sorry! [controlling her laughter] I just thought of that. [Laughs again.]

(Does that mean you were using chemicals to extract separate plutonium from other material?)

Uh-huh. What we did was: We’d take it, and it goes through all these various—depending on what form you got it in. If it was like metal shavings, it went through a different stream; and if it was powder, it went through a different stream. It depends on what form you get it in. And it was constant, I mean, constant. You always had operations running.

(You had to know how to deal with all of those different types? You didn't just concentrate on one kind, but you dealt with all of them?)

Right. I moved around, from line to line. Well, like I said, back in those days, very few women did that job. And the men did not like it AT ALL; they had a little club going on in there for, what, 30 years? [Laughs.] So, here come all these women, and a lot of them did not like it.

Since I went through their little training, and everything—learned how to wear my respirator—I mean, that was my BUDDY during all my whole time there, was my full-face respirator.

(You had to wear that to do the job you were doing?)

No. You wanted to always carry it with you. They gave you a half-mask respirator to carry in your pocket. But, not only is it really uncomfortable—because it slides down on your nose—but you just can't stay in there a long period of time with that thing, because it's uncomfortable. So you're not comfortable with the seal or anything else, because you're always fiddling with it, trying to make sure it's sealed properly. So I PREFERRED to wear my full-face; most of us did.

(That covered your eyes—)

Covers your eyes, everything. And that way, you can just continue doing what you need to do without having to keep fidgeting with your half mask.

(You only put that on sometimes, not always.)

Yeah, sometimes: when the alarms went off, or if they posted a room, and we had to go in there.

(What does it mean to “post a room?”)

It means there’s airborne contamination.

(In the room, so you don't want to inhale it.)

Right. Huh. Yeah, and—

(I know you're gonna tell me more.)

Yeah, I'm gonna tell you about that.

19:56 (So, you started doing this. And by this time you knew you were working on nuclear weapons, probably.)

Well, no—yeah, I did. I knew I was recovering plutonium for triggers. Rocky Flats made triggers. What we did was: We recovered the plutonium, to make it into the buttons that get sent to the foundry, that get molded into the triggers.

(So you recovered material. And, what do you do? Heat it up to produce that button?)

Yeah. You have to fire it, in a containment—

(You're doing this inside—)

—crucible.

(—inside a glovebox, so it gets quite hot.)

Ooooh, yeah. Yeah.

(How are you handling the material when that's happening?)

Well, you don't. You stay out of the gloves, and you fire. And then—

(It becomes molten and runs together?)

Right. And when it cools is when you break it out. It’s called button breaking.

(And then the button goes—)

Out of the glovebox and up to the foundry. Well, in a container, and then up to the foundry. And then they shave—

(And what do they do in the foundry?)

They mold it into the trigger shape.

(Into the shape itself. They shave it, and—?)

Melt it, or whatever they do. I've never been IN the foundry. What they do is: They take the button—or, however many buttons they need to use—and then they MOLD it; probably make it molten again or something, and pour it in molds. I'm not sure—

(To fit a particular warhead requirement.)

Probably.

(Yeah.)

I went in there, and they put me—my first assignment was 771. I stayed in that building for years. That was the heart and soul of that place.

(That was the first building you worked in when you started doing this.)

Yeah. Years. I knew that place like the back of my hand. When I went in there, the guys were really mean. [Laughs.] They were really mean to me.

(Were you the only woman? Or were there—)

No, there were a few of us. They just did not want us there. They had their little club, and women were invading it. I was asking them, “How do you do the”—because it's trial by fire in there, back then. They said, “Here you are, you're trained, you know how to wear your respirator. Go!”

(They didn't give you somebody that stood by you and told you—)

Well, they TELL the guys to do that, but they wouldn't.

(I see.)

The particular area they assigned me to, first: That man was truly mean to me. Truly mean.

There were procedures on the gloveboxes, and nuclear criticality limits—for spacing, and stuff— so I was reading all this. And he's working frantically, being all dramatic; flipping this and turning that, and showing off. I said, “Well, look. It says here, in the procedure, you're supposed to do such and so.”

And he said, “Well, that might be what it says in there, but that's not how it is in the real world.” He told me to go away and leave him alone. And I was assigned there! [Laughs.] So, of course my feelings were a little dampened.

I said, “All right, screw it!” I bought a little black notebook [chuckles], and I started taking notes. Everywhere I went, I took notes: This valve goes this way, and these things do that—

(Is that the beginning of your Rocky Flats diary?)

My journal [laughs].

(Your journal?)

That was the beginning of my journal.

(You were actually doing it on the job.)

Uh-huh. Yeah, everybody knew I carried it. They used to make jokes about the absent-minded professor, and stuff like that, because I wrote notes. I wrote notes about everything. I figured: If the procedure wasn't how it was in the real world, then I was going to have to hurry and figure out how the real world was.

(Right.)

So, I just started writing in my journal. I eventually ended up knowing that place—front to back, top to bottom, upside down—every square inch of building 771, and I ended up being a crew leader. I could run any operation in there, just b paying attention, from taking my notes.

I suppose that's probably not something to be proud about today. But I WAS proud, because I was a woman, and very few women held that position. Of course, I got all the jokes about what I had to do to get that job; but I KNEW, I didn't do anything. I KNEW it. That's how I got my job: I KNEW it.

25:03 Then, there was safety. Two things that really, really bug me: One is when people lie to me; that just gets under my skin, so bad.

(Are you suggesting that happened on the job?)

Oh, yes. [Laughs.]

(They lied to you?)

Oh, yeah. Safety and fibbing to me, those two—

(And?)

Fibbing—not telling the truth—those two things just got my goat. Because by then, I had a really good idea of what we were doing in there, and that it was really dangerous. Their mission back then was—

(Had they emphasized that to you, as part of your indoctrination?)

Safety?

(Had they emphasized safety, and how dangerous the situation was, and that you could hurt your health, and—)

No.

(They had not?)

No, they did not do that. No. They showed us how to do the steps: how to do the basic things you need to know to survive in that process area.

(They didn't explain why you had to work with gloves, and why you had to wear a face mask?)

It's part of your protective equipment. They pretty much told you WHEN you needed to know how to use these things.

(Yeah. Without explaining what it meant?)

In chemical-operator basic training, I had no idea—until I was actually in the process area—that it was BAD. In fact, my whole training I thought that it was like a little lab. I did! I thought it was just—not a little lab, a big lab—that's what I thought. I thought we made nicey-nicey, little bottles of glass [or flasks?]. That's what I really thought, until I actually—my first day in that building—walked in the door, in that room, in 771. I looked all around and there was BRUTALISM architecture. [Laughs.] Piping everywhere; tanks, and gloveboxes. I looked in there: It took my breath away. I thought, “Oh my gosh, what have I gotten myself into? This is a FACTORY. What did I do here?”

We weren't even in there five minutes and an air monitor sounded. It was my first real-life thing. The guy who was showing—touring us the building, he said, “Well, you know, that's the SAAM. You learned about in training, get your respirator on.” We all leave.

(SAAM. That's an acronym for the—)

Selective Alpha Air Monitor.

(Okay.)

When that—

(That sounded an alarm.)

It has an alarm. When the airborne contamination hits it, in a certain concentration, the SAAM will “click,” and then an alarm will sound. After you've been there for a while, you learn to recognize the “click” before the alarm. Because, as it is, the airborne has to make it to the SAAM for it to even click. So you've already breathed it before it gets to the SAAM. So you just automatically start listening for stuff like that.

I was panicked. We put our respirators on, and we left the—the procedure is, when a SAAM alarms—I keep saying “is,” like it's still happening!—the procedure is: You don your respirator, monitor yourself out, and leave the area. We carried our respirators with us, so that's no problem. We go to what's called a “combo”—it looks sort of like an ATM machine [laughs]—and you put your feet in there. It's a “go,” “no go.” It's red or green. If it’s—

(This is the monitoring machine?)

Yeah, that you monitor before you leave the room. You put your feet in there, and turn the little button down to foot, and if it goes into the red, your booties are contaminated—we wore booties on top of our boots—your feet are hot. If it's in the green, you're fine. You can leave. But then the next thing is, you switch it back up to hand. It has a Ludlum—those long, thin, that they waved [narrator makes swishing noise] over you—then they had the Ludlum attached to it. You click it to hand, and you checked your hands.

(“Ludlum.” Is that the—)

Ludlum. L-U-D-L-U-M.

(L-U-D-L-U-M. Okay. That's that wand—)

Yeah, the wand. And then you can leave the area, but you go out in the hallway and you just sit until they clear the room. If there's a problem, you can plan on de-conning [decontaminating] it before you can go back to work.

30:10 Also, too, I should have mentioned that: When you have to leave the room, if it's something that you must absolutely leave operational—that you can't just turn off before you leave the room—then you put your full-face on and you stay there, and run it, until they clear the room. You can't leave. You have to keep running it.

(So sometimes the work has priority over everything else.)

Oh, back in those days it was production, production, production. Work was THE priority! And they got sick of hearing about me—or hearing from me—because I'd tell them: This is not safe; this is not safe. At first, they’d just pat me on the head, and send me back to work, and say they'll look into it. And then they didn't. As I worked there for more years, my frustration level grew. And, my confidence grew.

Is it gonna run out? [Referring to tape recorder.]

(In a minute. But I'll turn it over, and the other one's going.)

Okay.

(Tell me about this: You said there were two things that really bothered you; one was fibbing and the other one was safety. Maybe you want to say more about the safety thing, and—)

[Audio cuts off as tape runs out.]

31:27 [End of tape A.]

[B].

[Audio begins in mid sentence.]

00:00 —contract negotiations so they could get us more pay. That's just about the only times, in all my years there, I really heard about safety, from anybody other than the workers—the ones who cared, even, or the ones who even started reading on their own, or cared to know.

(You mean, the company paid a lot more attention to safety issues at those—)

The union.

(—crucial times. Oh, the union did.)

The union did, to get us more money.

(I see. They weren't paying attention—the union wasn't paying attention—all the time?)

They don't care. They didn’t care. They just didn't want people making waves.

(I see.)

I would tell people—

(So the union was not much help—more help—than the company was.)

That's right.

(That's fascinating.)

Oh, it gets better—let me tell you—with the union.

(Some of the union employees had the job of being—I forget the title, but they have a title—they monitor the health of the workers and the safety of the different facilities. What is that title? Jim Kelly, in fact, had that job, I think for quite a long time.)

I can't remember.

(Anyway, go ahead.)

Maybe “coordinator,” or some such thing. I don't know. But, I didn't see any of them at all.

We worked in there: production, production, production. By the end, by then, we had gotten several raises. We were making really decent money; REALLY big money. By this time, I had a BIG inkling of what the heck was going on in there and how dangerous it was. But a lot of people didn't even think—

(How did you learn that? Did you—)

I READ. I read every single thing I can get my hands on.

(About radiation?)

Uh-huh. They’d do stupid things in the name of production. Like, a room would go airborne—a SAAM would alarm on, say, PM shift, and they'd have the room posted; and then by midnight shift they’d take the signs down, so we could all go in there and work. Production, production, production.

(Were you working on a midnight shift?)

Yeah. I worked midnight shift for five years. It was—oooh, I don't remember my hours—I think I got off at seven in the morning, so it must have been 11:00, maybe? 10:30 or 11:00.

They’d post areas, too, so they wouldn't have to post the whole room. They put up a couple of signs that had a yellow rope that said “Full-face respirator required.” Well, we all know that it stops at the rope, right?

(Right.)

[Laughing.] That's just the way it was. They did that. They would post only certain areas. And people would come in and remove the signs, just so that we could keep the lines running; especially ones that took a couple days to get them up and running good. It's old equipment. It was MEANT to be started up and run, the hell out of it, until it broke. And then you fix it and started again. It wasn't ever meant to start up, shut down, start up, shut down. You just couldn't do that. The ones that were really complicated—

(This is the assembly line, within one glovebox to another.)

Within 771. Right. The lines that were really complicated TOOK several shifts, or several days, to get them up good. Every effort was made to not shut those lines down, unless you have to.

(Is that because of the complicated chemicals, and so on, you're using? What made it—)

No. It was not complicated, at all. In fact, it was basically bucket chemistry in a box.

(Why did it take so long to get it—)

After you worked there for a while, you can recognize when your line is running good. You KNOW when you're getting good product off. In fact, I used to be able to get really close to guessing the gram-per-liter concentrate of plutonium just by looking at the color of the solution in the sight glass. So, you know.

04:43 And then, other lines were more complicated, to where you had to get them a certain WAY—it's really hard to describe—but you had to get it a certain way, of running, to know you were making good stuff. The last thing you wanted to do, at the end, was—after it's all ready to be fired into a button—is have impure stuff and have to recycle it all over again. Those lines, they kept running no matter what. If a SAAM alarmed and you were on that line, you stayed in there. You did not leave. When I was a crew leader, I'd send my crew out, and I would stay in— unless I NEEDED another person.

They’d do stupid stuff like that, like take signs down to keep lines running. Just, really dumb things. Like, people sleeping on the job, and their lines are spilling over—running all over the place—so I became [a] more vocal advocate for safety, especially after I found out my crew and I had been working a line for TEN DAYS that they’d had the sign up before our shift came in, and took it down when our shift came in. TEN days we worked in that, without knowing anything. The SAAM was on by-pass.

I was so mad, I went out there and—by this time, I was dating a manager there; Jessica's father worked in another building. He had a different job. We hardly even spoke.

(Jessica is your daughter?)

Jessica is my daughter. He was not—in MY opinion, he was not a good—he used drugs and alcohol; abusive; so I DIDN’T want anything to do with him. I didn't want her raised in that environment. So, we never even talked; we never even, hardly, saw each other.

At this time I was dating a manager down there, and we ended up living together for three years. I found out that HE was trying to get that job for all these years. But they wouldn't give him that job, because he was even more unsafe than the ones they already had. They finally—since he was there so long, and applied so long—they finally gave him the job.

He would come home and tell me some scary stuff about what he did. “Those union people wouldn't do this and that!” And if a manager touched anything, you could file a grievance on it. It was a game. So he didn't care; he would just go turn stuff on, do stuff. He did stupid stuff. Like, he’d send acid into caustic lines—I mean, that's explosion waiting to happen. He did all kinds of bad stuff, in the name of production.

So I filed grievances! I started filing grievances right and left, right and left. The people who were workers—there were two kinds of people there, workers and deadweights. That’s it. There was no in-between. And I was a worker. So that's why they didn't make life too miserable for me; because I was a worker, and they got work out of me. So they'd listen to me, patronize me—

(Did they have quotas? And they wanted you to meet quotas, and you’d get rewarded if you meet quotas?)

Oh, yeah. Well, mostly, we didn't get rewarded so much as the management got rewarded. Bonuses from DOE, the Department of Energy.

(Rockwell got the bonuses.)

Oh, yeah. Many, many years down there, I probably saw one DOE person—maybe a couple— tour that place maybe, MAYBE, a couple times a year. DOE NEVER came in that building, DOE NEVER wanted to know what we did; DOE NEVER had a presence in 771. And 771 was the heart and soul of that place. In fact, one time—

(So they were letting Rockwell run it like they wanted to.)

Right. They kept breaking in their bonuses; DOE would red-stamp everything.

(Did you know that that was the building where the fire happened?)

Yes.

( Do you know that story?)

Oh, yeah. In fact, I worked—[shifts her thought]—okay, in 771 there are the two main rooms that you recover plutonium: fast side, slow side. Upstairs is where you prepare the chemicals to send them down to the area to use them. And then storage. And there was one room, in the hallway, that was sealed; sealed, welded shut, and the glass was blackened. There was one of our warning signs on the door, not to linger in that area [Jacque and LeRoy both laugh] because of the radiation that was still coming out of that room. Well, I never—

10:12 (Was that one of the rooms they called an infinity room?)

Yeah. I never, in my time there—and my main operation was on the other side of the wall from that room—I never, in all my time, knew what happened in that room. Never. And Ron, the manager that I was living with, he wouldn't tell me. But he was there when whatever it was happened. So it was always my little mystery, detective thing. But I never did find out what happened in THAT room.

But, on the other side of the building is where they had that fire. That was still sealed off; it was a bad place. There was one part of it that had been made into a separate room that you COULD work in. You just couldn't linger in that room, working, for a long period of time. That area of the building always gave me the cooties, really bad. REALLY bad. There were warning signs on everything, “Don't linger.” We're in the middle 80s. That fire was, what—?

[Referring to year.] (’57.)

‘57?

(Yeah.)

Oh, a good year!

(November of ’57.)

Okay.

(September of ‘57, rather.)

Yeah. So it was STILL that hot. Feedback, then, they didn't have the protection we had. So they just swept it up, into barrels, and closed up the barrels. They didn't have the protection.

Let's see: ‘57, ‘65, and ’69. Is that right?

(Well, ‘69 fire, you're talking about?)

Yeah. That was up in a different building.

(That was in 776, 77.)

[Building] 776. That's where Jess’ dad worked.

(That's what?)

[Buildings] 76 and 77.

(That’s where he was?)

That’s where Jess’ dad worked. They had their shop up there. And then the ’65—wasn't that in 771 also?

(I don't know about that one.)

I'm pretty sure that one was in 71, 771.

One night, I came—I was filing these grievances; I just wasn't getting anywhere with them. And Ron was coming home and telling me to knock it off, because they were giving him flack. I told him, “No! Look what they're doing! This is wrong. This is really wrong.” And he was telling me: Don’t make waves.

So finally, in 1987, I came in one night, and there was a really, really, really high neutron line. It was a fluoride line. And fluorine, it puts off some radiation. You do not want to be stuck on that glovebox for a long period of time. I mean, it’s bad.

(What line? What kind of line?)

It's a fluoride line, and it gives off some BAD neutrons. Bad neutrons. And they—

(Because of the chemical mix—)

Chemical reaction.

(—between the fluoride and the plutonium?)

Right. Up until then they were LYING to us. We had badges: we had wrist badges, TLDs— thermoluminescent detectors. We had wrist badges for working in the gloves, so they can measure our exposure, and then we had TLD [emphasis] BADGE badges that would be clipped on our coveralls. They’d go and count those, and they would stick me on these hot lines, because I was a worker—not only me, but other workers, too. I'm speaking for myself. They would put us on these hot lines until we got what’scalled “red lined.” We sent these badges in every two weeks, to get counted, and put fresh ones on.

Well, the counting place, that did that, was always two months behind. So, by the time we got red-lined—their procedure for when you get red-lined: that means you're OVER exposed, you're over the limit. Our limits were high, anyway, because they figured that we would take the risk of more exposure than the average person, to make more money than the average person. That's why the limits for workers are higher than the average public. That is exactly their philosophy.

So, they would come back—and you think, take all these into account—and you're red-lined. So that means you're WAY overexposed, AND it's two months late. And you've still been working on the same operation.

15:17 We’d go in there and work, and we’d get red-lined. And then the management would call us in their office, and they would accuse us of badge tampering. [Pauses, and then laughs.]

(If you got a high reading?)

If we got a high reading—

(It’s your fault?)

It’s your fault.

(Oh! Well.)

Badge tampering. And if they REALLY wanted to punish you, they’d pull you out of the area altogether, and you'd sit in the cafeteria all night. [Chuckle from LeRoy.] And then you’d take it from your peers, for not working.

They would say stuff like, “You did that on purpose; you put your badge in a glove,” and stuff like that. So even if you did get red-lined, it didn't mean a thing. I was a crew leader, they put me on another—I’d get red-lined—they put me on ANOTHER hot line, and then they’d say, “Don't get in the gloves.” And all my crew would go to break. [Laughs.] So, no matter what, it didn't mean a thing to get red-lined! Their safety controls—it didn't mean a thing. Nothing.

(Did you get cumulative records, from time to time, about your exposure and—)

They had a book out front, and when you changed your badge—you couldn't get your paycheck without changing your badge. You had to look at your account, find your number in the book— they kept a book out front, in the manager's office—you look at your number, you look at your name, you look at your account, and you initial it. They hand you your paycheck. What you really signed was—

(What you're doing is saying, “I'm okay. I'm approving of what has happened to me.”)

I'm approving of these numbers.

(Oh.)

But you have to initial it to get your paycheck.

(Yeah.)

So, you couldn’t win.

(They're protecting themselves, it sounds like, more than they're protecting you.)

Right. Exactly, exactly.

(Did you have that thought at the time, or?)

No, I didn't. I didn't! At that time I was totally naïve; I was just really ticked about safety. I didn't think about that, it never connected. It never connected until later.

Two things happened—back to back—that just set me off. One was: I got sucked, up to my waist, inside of a glovebox, because some bozo did something really stupid. I got sucked into a glovebox, up to my waist. We were breaking up filters [backs up her line of thought]—okay, the glovebox has vacuum, has negative pressure. And they have filters on the boxes. The idea is to keep the particulates inside the box and then suck the air out upstairs to the plenums—filter plenum.

(That keeps plutonium from getting into the pipes, right?) [Laughs.]

It keeps it from getting out into the atmosphere, and everybody in town breathing it.

(Yeah.)

Anyway, those filters had to be changed—I mean, every now and then—so they’d take them, and they put them into a glovebox—

(And you have to get inside the glovebox to change them?)

No. You can work in the gloves and break them up, with a hammer and screwdriver. It's really high tech [light laugh]. You break them up. And then you separate the wood from the nails from the aluminum foil-type, filter-paper stuff. The paper—you separate it all, and then you bag it out of the glovebox and put it in separate drums.

This glovebox had a giant, huge bag out on the end of it, so you could remove large objects from the glovebox. How you did a bag-out—or bag-in; if you want to put stuff in, you could do it backwards—how you did a bag-out is: This bag—very long, long, long cylindrical bag; it’s attached with elastic—goes over the port. It's a lip sticking out. And you put the elastic up to the, flush with the box, and then you put a metal band with a clamp, and you bolt it—tighten it down with a—

(So it's well sealed.)

Yeah. And then you push the cylinder inside the box, down to the end of the bag, and the vacuum inside the box will open it, okay? So you reach inside the bag, you take what you're going to bag out, and you put it to the end of the bag. You pulllll it back out of the hole, and then you take yellow-plastic tape and you tight, tight, tight as you can tightly wrap it, about that long.

20:10 And then there's a device called a downdraft. It's a vacuum; it looks like a shop vac. It has a funnel on the top of it, and that's taped up underneath the bag port. So if anything gets out when you cut, then it goes into the downdraft. You make this tail—this long tail—tight as you can wrap it. After you're there for a long time, you LEARN how to make that sucker REALLY tight. [Sounds like narrator is demonstrating what she’s describing.] Two people, each holding one end; the other person takes a knife and cuts. And then you take a tab of plastic tape, and you tab the end. More tape, and then you're done with—

(The end of the bag.)

Uh-huh. The other person, tab on the other end, and then tape. You count it, and then you put it into a drum and document on the drum. And that's a bag-out.

(You count it. What do you mean?)

They have a portable instrument—

(Measure the radiation?)

—that estimates the gram count.

(I see.)

It was an estimator, a gram-count estimator. It looked like a little R2-D2 thing [reference to robot from movie Star Wars]. You just push it wherever you need to go and count your packages. And then you put them in the drum and document, on the top of the drum—on the paperwork—what you put in there, what code it was, and what the gram-estimator said it was. Then you put your drum back wherever it goes, wherever it needs to go.

But THIS particular time: I came in, and my crew and I had to bag-out the stuff that the previous shift had taped up and gotten ready for us.

(When you say “my crew,” were you in charge of the crew?)

Yes.

(How many people were in the crew?)

On this day, there were [thinking] a few of us. So, maybe five, on that day. But you could have up to—you could have 30 or 60 people. You could run a whole room. I've had a crew of a whole room of people before—or BOTH rooms [light laugh], if they’re short ofcrew leaders. And then you have to run back and forth between all the rooms.

(So, what happened this time?)

This time: We got all ready to do our bag cuts. My crew was off to the side, and myself and one other person were getting ready to do the bag cut. The radiation monitor is standing by, to make sure we're okay.

(Radiation monitor; that's the people that I thought were—)

Radiation monitor. We're all standing there in our full-faces [full-face respirators] getting ready to do the bag cuts, and the bands FLEW off the port! [Laughs.] FLEW. It flew through the air! It popped off the bag port and flew through the air. The vacuum—since I was in front of the bag, holding what we were getting ready to bag-out, getting ready to pull it out—the bag popped off, sucked into the box, and I went with it, because of the weight and the vacuum. I was INSIDE the glovebox.

(You went right into the port.)

Up to my waist, inside that glovebox.

(Wow.)

I was in there, and I was thinking, “Whoa. Everything looks bigger in here.” [Chuckles.] That was my thought. It's too late, I'm sucked in a glovebox, what else am I gonna do? I was thinking, “Whoa. Here’s my first time seeing the INSIDE of a glovebox from the IN-side.” [Laughing.]

(So, what happened?)

Oh, boy. Myself, the person who was with me, and the radiation monitor: CON-TA-MI-NATED. Wow.

(Everybody?)

Us three that were in front of the bag port. The crew—the rest of the crew—was fine. All they had to do was leave the room. The airflow was coming this way [gesturing]. It was going pffff, getting sucked right past us, going to the air monitor. He said, “Just hang on. The SAAM will be going off any minute.” We struggled, and put another bag on, and got a new clamp, and a new ring, and—

(You got out of there, I guess, you got out of that glovebox.)

Yeah, I got out. We were messed up; messed up so bad. My filters were PLUGGED. My particulate filters were TOTALLY plugged. That's how much—I got everything. And so did she, and so did he, and we had to go—they had to figure out a way to get us out of the room so we could go to the de-con showers and start scrubbing. It's not all dramatic like Silkwood. They don't, like, wire-brush you down [laughing] or anything like that. It's just a little dramatic. They had to figure out a way to get—we were all in—

25:18 (What about internal exposure? Did you have internal exposure on that occasion? Or do you even—)

Well, I think so. I'm going to get to that in just a moment.

(Okay.)

All three of us: infinity. That means, their instruments cannot read it. You are so contaminated, it bombs everything out. And that's alpha—alpha radiation. Alpha, you can stop with a sheet of paper. You can wash it off, but if you get it internal, it's eventually fatal. Dr. Ed Martell did some studies. He _____ [cough obscures audio; might have said, “He showed me his studies too.”]. He also showed that it keeps fissioning [?] in your heart. I love Dr. Martell. Anyway—

(You knew him?)

Uh-huh. In fact, he called me; he said he admired ME! Dr. Martell did that! My, gosh. He's like, THE man. He said that to me. It choked me up. He sent me his studies, and I read them.

Anyway, what happens, in a case like that, is: you strip. You take your clothes off, and you don't care—you do not care—about modesty. You don't care. Trust me. When you have it on you, all you want is to get it off. So we stripped—all three of—we just stripped. All their little faces in the window at the door. But, they were throwing us stuff in, so we could put paper coveralls on and get ourselves covered up, so we wouldn't track it all the way to the de-con room.

Of course, the room got closed off, and we managed to get the bag up. What the next people had to do was come in and de-con, which: They get really mad. They don't CARE if you get contaminated; they CARE if they have to come into work and de-con, the room.

(Clean the room, you mean?)

Uh-huh. Try to get up the contamination. You do it with a soap stuff and chem-wipes, napkin wipe things.

We went in the de-con room and showered, and showered, and showered, and showered. And you had to keep your respirator on, ‘cause you're hot! Your filters are plugged and you are hot!

(You still had that on, while you're showering?)

Yeah! What can you do? I mean, you can't take it off [laughs] ‘cause YOU’RE contaminated. So you have to wash your full-face, and you're naked, taking a shower. Now that's not pleasant. [Light laugh.] Over, and over, and over again—five or six showers. Shower, shower-shower, hard as you can, and then a monitor—a radiation monitor—checks you: “No, no. You're still hot.” Back in; back in the shower; scrub and scrub and scrub again. “No, no. You're still hot.”

(This is just the stuff that's on your skin, that they're talking about?)

Right. We did that. Finally, finally, got our bodies cold enough to where we could go—the procedure is: You go to medical, and you get body counted. That's when they count your internal, your lungs. It's a lung counter. “Body counter” is a misnomer. It doesn't count [radiation in] your body; it counts [radiation in] your lungs—only. It took more than three tries to get cold, so then, for sure, they want you to go.

You can expect body count, peeing in jars—and bringing them in for them to count—and fecal samples, bringing them in for them to count. They lie anyway, so I don't know—

29:03 (For how long a time were you having to give them samples?)

They tell YOU. You start off with one four-pack of urine jars. They're mason jars! You start off with one of those; if it comes back hot, they give you more. They keep making you do it until it doesn't come back hot anymore.

We went to body counter. The body counter came up for—the woman who was with me came up positive for uranium. And, they said it was a “statistic of the body counter,” so they were going to write it off. I went RIGHT AFTER HER; I came up positive in americium, which, in that line, yeah, there was a lot of americium. And she said it was a “statistic of the body counter,” too.

(They told you that?)

Uh-huh.

(Wow.)

29:59 They said, “Statistically, it just screws up every now and then.” They wrote her off. Then I went right after, and I came up positive in americium. They said that was a statistic, too. It screws up every now and then. They wrote me off.

30:16 [This comment is directed to someone present during the interview.] (For Amanda, if she doesn't know—maybe she does know—this would be a by-product of the decay of plutonium. It turns into americium. So, it indicates that you were in an area where there was enough plutonium that had already produced americium. So, both is present; one is a sign of the other. I don't know about the uranium. That person was encountering uranium [said with surprise].)

Somewhere. Probably over on another—there was a line right next to us, and she had been working that line for a long period of time. So I'm thinking she may have gotten uranium from that line, not that day.

(I see.)

Amercium—in that place, if you have your choice between americium or plutonium, stay away from the americium.

[Female voice says, “Really?”]

Yeah. Americium is WAY more deadly. The reason that I know why, now—

31:24 [End of tape B.]

[C].

[Audio begins in mid-conversation.]

00:00 What you really want to stay away from, is alpha—inhaling it—penetrating gamma neutron. So you learn to stay away from high americium lines, because you know your badge is going to bomb out faster. Because, americium has so much MORE gamma-neutron radiation; so much more penetrating.

Also, plutonium is soluble AND insoluble. So when they're measuring your urine, and your fecal samples, and your nasal swipes—they're measuring the soluble portion that's passing out of your body, okay? The IN-soluble, which is old—and insoluble—stays. It deposits in your lymphs, your liver, and your bones. I didn't even know THAT until a long time after I worked there. They were misleading us, because they're only counting what you're eliminating—the soluble—which is coming out anyway!

But you learn, you quickly learn: Stay away from those americium lines; stay away from drums that have high americium; stay away from old gloveboxes. They used to make smoke detectors out there: americium. So we had an americium line that we had to discontinue using and use it for another thing. We could only work in those gloves 15 minutes, and then you had to be out for 30 minutes; and then in 15, out 30. If they lie, I'm thinking we probably should have only been in, maybe, a minute [laughs] and out an hour!

The next thing that happened was—

(When was that whole event? Do you remember the date?)

Oooooh. Let me think. They were back-to-back, so it was, I think, '87. I'm sure it was '87.

The next thing that happened, RIGHT after that, was: I came into a line on midnight shift, and it was a high neutron—the plutonium fluoride line I was telling you about—and it was liquid. So it had acids and all kinds of corrosive stuff in it. The people who I was supposed to relieve on that line had left, early. They left their shift. They showered out; they left early. It was a Friday night; they left. And they left that line running. Not only did it have nitric acid—it had acids in it, it had caustics in it. It had heat—you know—heat, steam in it. They left that line running. The stuff was dripping onto the floor of the glovebox, which, if you have a configuration of plutonium in too concentrated of a form—in too big of a pile, if you will—it could cause a criticality.

(And what is a criticality?)

A criticality is a chain reaction. It's when your—whatever it is that's radioactive—reaches a critical mass. And it just starts—

(Fissioning.)

Fissioning in itself. Every time a neutron hits, it splits, and keeps doing that, uncontrollably. Everybody in that place would DIE if that happened. That's what happened at Chernobyl. That's what happened at Three Mile Island, is a criticality. So you want to make sure you pay attention to your criticality limits and never get stuff any closer than what it says. You have spacing limits; you want to keep the stuff away from each other so it doesn't react with each other and cause a criticality. We would all DIE. And Denver—who KNOWS what would happen to Denver, or Boulder, or anywhere else. You never, never, never want that to happen. And this is one waiting to happen! The stuff is dripping on the floor, the steam is just going everywhere— you can't even see in the windows— there's acid and caustic. It was TRASHED.

So the first thing I did was go through and shut that entire line down. And these guys are GONE. They left the building; there's no overlap; they left no notes in the log book. They left nothing. So I shut everything down, and I put my full-face on, and I went out there [coughing], and I told a radiation monitor—excuse methat we needed someone to do bag cuts, right now. There's too much material in that glovebox.

05:12 They were getting ready to do that, and my manager—that I was living with—he came in there, and we got into a BIG screaming match, screaming. Because he: “No matter what, YOU KEEP THAT LINE RUNNING! You can do the bag-outs and everything; you turn that box back on!”

And I said, “No! I'm not doing it, it's dangerous! I'm shutting this line down, I'm filing a 628 Concern”—that's a major, major, major safety concern. It's supposed to bypass the union, bypass the company, and go straight to DOE. And then, I backed up when we were—

[Background noise, like door slamming.]

(Is that the most serious form of grievance, then, that you can file?)

It’s the most serious, most serious. It's VERY serious. All their bull crap, telling us, [affected voice] “Well, if you think a line is unsafe, you can shut it down.” That was BULL. There's the lying thing! I just got so mad. I backed up, when we were yelling at each other, and a big, 10- foot-tall iron rod FALLS DOWN—they left an iron rod! propped up!—falls, barely misses me.

That was it. I said, “You call nuclear safety; you call whoever you need to call. I'm shutting this down, I'm filing a 628. Right now. I want a union—and this is, like, midnight [laughs]. So they have to call these guys at home, and make them come out. “I want them HERE RIGHT NOW!”

(Yeah?)

That was such a terrible night. WE broke up.

(Over that?)

I threw him out, yeah. It was such a terrible night. I finished my shift, I filed that thing. And then I went home, and I typed up—

(Is this the nuclear family?)

Huh?

[Both LeRoy and Jacque break into laughter.]

Yeah! The nuclear family! That was good! [Laughs.]

I went home, and I typed up part of my journal. Because, by then I knew what the difference between right and wrong was, so I was documenting “right” and “wrong.” I typed up some of the safety concerns stuff—a few pages—and I put a cover letter on it, to Jim Kelly, Sr., I said, “Maybe this will help my union brothers and sisters.” That was what the note said. I was gonna take that with my 628 and file it.

Jim Kelly [pause] took that typed-up thing—copied out of my journal—put it in his safe, and SHELVED my 628 Safety Concern.

(Shelved it?)

Shelved it. Wouldn't even—

(So, it had to go through him?)

Yeah. Wouldn't even turn it over to them.

(I see. When you file a grievance like this, even though you’re the [searching for the right word] chair of that team of workers—you're in charge of that team of workers—when you file a grievance, it has to go through the union? Even though you're sending this most-serious type to DOE?)

Exactly. You had no way around that.

(That's amazing. That's amazing.)

Jim Kelly shelved my 628, and put my copy of my journal in his safe, and told me what I was doing was very dangerous—and stop making waves. Jim Kelly, Senior.

(Yeah. Now, when did that happen?)

'87.

('87. The same year as the other stuff.)

It was right after it. It was, like, within a month.

(That was not an easy year for you, then.)

They ALL were not. These are just the BIGGEST ones. So I DEMANDED that they have an investigation. I was very angry with Jim Kelly, Sr., and I DEMANDED—

(You went over his head, some way?)

I demanded an investigation. The company and the union—

(To whom did you address that demand?)

I demanded it to Jim Kelly, and I demanded it to Rockwell management.

(I see.)

The union, in cooperation with Rockwell, had this phony-baloney investigation, where they brought in all my witnesses, intimidated them, and sent them back to work. They finally called me in, about a month later—Rockwell and the union—and they said that they were closing the case, because they were writing it off as sexual harassment. But not that I [emphasis on “I”] was sexually harassed, mind you; that I [emphasized] sexually harassed that manager because he spurned my advances.

That's how they closed it. They wrote that in the file and closed it. And then they told me, “We'll be watching you.” And then they moved me out of 771, and they moved me to 371.

10:28 (Okay. That's when you went to 371. That was some time in '87.)

Yeah, that was in '87.

Two months later, Rockwell received an 8.7 million-dollar bonus from DOE for “safety and management excellence.” Two months later.

(The manager that you had harassed got his share—)

[Jacque starts laughing]

(—his share of that bonus?)

I’m sure he did. I’m sure he did. By this time there was no hope for that relationship.

(This actually raises an issue—and I know that the sexual harassment thing shows up later on— and we really have got to get on to that other story.)

Okay.

(But I'm curious whether—are you, as one of the few women, and the new women—whether there was, in fact, a fair amount of sexual harassment, or whether that was—

Oh, yeah.

(There was?)

Oh yeah. There was a ton of it. Oh yeah. Everything from vocal—saying things—doing things, being rude. And horseplay. Oh, my gosh. You had to be so tough. I came in there, like, totally sweet, innocent, naïve. Peaceful and happy. Man! When I got in there, after a while, I was a MEAN—excuse me—I was a mean bitch. If you would have known me back then, you would not like me. Because, you HAD to be, to survive. I was MEAN. I’m ashamed of how I was, but that's how you had to do it. It was a factory; they had factory-worker mentalities; and that's how you survived, because you had a big bark. BIG bark.

I think I ended up getting physical, a couple times. I don't like people touching me, unless I choose to hug them, or something. But when you're in the gloves, and you’re trapped, sometimes bad stuff happens. So, yes. There was a lot of sexual harassment. And, a lot of other bad stuff.

(Was there any attempt—on the part of the union or the company—to pay attention to that and— )

Not that I know of.

(—protect the women workers, or—I don't know that that's the right word, even, to use.)

No, no. Their attitude was: You're getting paid the same money, so take it. You wanted to be in the Boys’ Club, you're in the Boys’ Club. So, buck up! And you did, too, quickly.

(So they were giving you permission to sexually harass others.)

[Both LeRoy and Jacque burst into laughter.]

I don't know where they got that from! [Searching for what to say] I do NOT know where that came from!

(That one's pretty original, I think. That's pretty good.)

Are you being facetious or are you serious?

(No! Somebody is using their imagination, it sounds like.)

[Jacque laughs.] So I was defeated, by then. I was disgusted; I was just disgusted. I even stopped writing in my journal.

(Oh, you did.)

I thought, what good—all it does is make me trouble, so what good does it do?

I went up to 371, and—

(What were you doing in 371? That was a—)

White elephant.

(So, you moved in there in 1987. That was the building that was built at a very, very great sum of money. Opened in, what, ’82, or something like that, and never did work.)

Yeah, it didn’t.

(Didn't work like it was supposed to, so it was a complete failure. As I understand it—maybe you can correct me about this—but that building, one of the things that happened was that the whole building went hot. Right after they started it up, there was a release of material, and they contaminated the whole building; so they were never able to use it, for what it was designed for.)

Right. The whole purpose—

(I gather it was designed to do the recovery—plutonium recovery—work, which you were doing earlier in 771. It was going to be the new building to replace the old one.)

Right.

14:58 (So what were you doing there?)

Well, 371 was designed to replace chemical operators with robotics. They had a great idea; I worked some of those robots in there, and stuff, and they do what they're supposed to do. The thing is: It went way over budget, way over schedule, and they just had to push and push and push to get that building opened to justify all the money. They never “leak-checked” the building with water. They never leak-checked it. So they started it up, with plutonium nitrate solution: which ate through the welds, which ate through the piping, which ate through the tanks, dripped to the floors. The building was designed—it's something like five stories, and I think only two of them are above ground—and it was designed that if you had a leak, or a spill, it would all run down, down, down, into the sub-basement, into the canyons. THOSE were infinity rooms. [Makes a croaking noise.]

When they started it up, they were in such a hurry, they didn't water check it first. So they started it up with plutonium nitrate [laughs]. It went EVERYWHERE. Down into the canyons, we had stalactites and stalagmites in there, of crystallized plutonium! And salts. Those were scary, scary rooms. THOSE were infinity rooms; those were scary. It was weird-looking. It's hard to describe.

(When you say “the canyons,” are those the rooms where they stored the plutonium? Several layers high?)

No, that's a separate part of that floor. But the canyons were designed only to contain spills from the upper levels—

(I see.)

—so you wouldn't have a criticality. It was huge. This building was giant.

(Very big, yeah.)

Then you wouldn't have a criticality—that was the idea—it would spread out in the canyons and it would dissipate itself. It would still be radioactive, but you wouldn't have a criticality—so much—in one place. That's how building 371 went hot.

There were very few chem-ops working in there, because there was no work. It wasn't running. So they had what you’d call “chemical control operators.” Their job was to run the control panels in the computer rooms, to run the robotics. Well, those weren't working either!

(Is that what you were doing?)

Well, no. They weren't working. So what we had to do was, go up there and do crummy, miscellaneous work: walk around the building, pick up trash, go and bag stuff out of—they had decided they were going to decommission it, and so we’d get it ready. And then we had to go and look at blueprints, and trace out the lines through all those floors, to see what was in the lines. They didn't know, and the blueprints didn't say. So we what we did was: We dressed up in our little outfits, and we went in there—it was very high tech—we took dynamite caps, and a hammer, and a funnel—with a tube going to a tank somewhere, with vacuum on it—and we’d [makes a noise like “tchit”] put the dynamite caps through the pipe, and then collected whatever came out of the hole, in the funnel. [Light laugh.] That was so very high tech! And that's what I did, for a long time.

(That sounds pretty dangerous, too.)

It was really dangerous. To find out what was in those lines, and empty them out.

I did that for a while. And then they put me in a room; my reputation preceded me, so they just didn't want me to make waves. They just gave me BS jobs, you know. I couldn't POSSIBLY get anybody in trouble. They put me in a room, all by myself, and they said, “We have this product, and it was the result of an experiment that had been shelved 20 years previous.” So, what was that, '67? By this time it was '88, so ‘68 was when it got shelved. It was a way to make impure— really impure—plutonium powder into pure stuff. You can only have it above a certain purity to make a button. Otherwise, you have to send it ALL the way back through ALL the processes. But this way was a short-cut, to make it really good stuff.

20:04 It was also very dangerous, high-gamma neutron stuff; deadly, deadly, deadly. There was so much gamma neutron coming out of that room that my support people would NOT come in there and work with me. I was in there hours and hours and hours every day. They said, “Make it work!” And I did. But, I didn't tell them how to do it.

There’s two things they left out, 20 years previously, and I figured them both out. And I wouldn't tell them how to do it. [Laughs.] I said, “We don't need this stuff.” And I had giant radiation sickness—that's what it gave me. I had giant bruises all over me; you could touch them, and they didn't hurt, and they popped out of nowhere. All my hair on my arms fell out. In fact, it's still peach-fuzzy. My hair on my head fell out. My SKIN was burnt. Burnt! The worst sunburn you've ever had in your life. I could not stand to have clothes on it. Oh, it was bad. I had nausea and vomiting for three weeks solid. I lost 30 pounds.

I went to file another safety concern! [Laughs.] And Rockwell said, “We don't recognize the skin as an organ. Your complaint is not valid.” Skin is the largest organ on the body! So, they shelved that one, too. And then they ordered me new coveralls; they said that it was just the lye— that they were washing our coveralls in—so they ordered me new ones. I got brand-new ones, all my own.

(How’d they spell lie?)

[Laughter from Jacque and another female.]

Yeah, exactly! How did they spell lye?

I told them; I went in there, I said, “I'm not making that stuff anymore.”

And they said, “We don't care! We'll give you a crew, and we want you to make not only that stuff, you make five more products THIS WEEK. You will do that!”

I said, “Nope. I'm not gonna do it. [Laughing] That's it!”

They sent me a crew of spies and kiss-asses that were trying to figure out how I was doing this. They could not figure out how I made it work! But, I have an affinity for chemistry; that's like my love! [Laugh from LeRoy.] And it was so easy to figure it out! I wouldn't tell them, and I wouldn't write it down; and nobody could get it out me! I would send all of them to break, if I had to—get them out of the room—to make that stuff.

So then it was like a game! [Laughing]. I was already poisoned. So it was like a game: I’d send them out of the room, and they'd come back, and there would be a giant fluffy batch. [Laughs.] I’d say, “Put it in the oven, I'm going to break!” [Still laughing.] So it was just a game, then.

Then, one day, I came in and there was some BAD stuff hanging around in bottles in there. I think they were going to make me take this mystery liquid, and try to do it with that. I was not touching that stuff; it looked deadly. Look what I’m already working with, and I think this stuff’s deadly. [Laughing] I took a sample of it, and I bagged it out and put it in the lab; and it was so hot, they couldn't even read it in the LAB. Not only that, but it contaminated that entire box in the lab, when she opened the cap. So we never knew what that was. But boy, oh boy, did I get in trouble for that.

Then they started talking about me. And then I just said, “Fine, whatever. I'm not making that stuff again, ever. And I'm not telling you how to do it, either.”

So, I left. And I went to the dentist. And then when I went out, it was June 6th, 1989.

(You left and went, what?)

To the dentist.

(Oh, yeah.)

For a teeth cleaning. I wasn't going to hang around; I didn't even care anymore.

My dentist was in Boulder, so I had to leave out the West Gate. I left—it was in the early afternoon—and there, at the West Gate, were all these vans, and all these dramatic guys. It was the FBI raid!

(Oooooh! This is the day of the FBI raid!)

June 6th, 1989.

(June 6th, 1989. Yeah.)

Oh! I should back-track, just a little bit.

About six weeks before the raid, some of the other managers came in that room—that deadly room, where I was working—some of the other managers came in there, that were friends with Ron, and they said, “Where did Ron go?” He gave away all of his stuff; he gave his ex-wife his truck and left town. And his retirement was in less than a year. After 19 years—six weeks before the FBI raid, he left! Disappeared without a trace. They came and said, “Where's Ron?”

And I said, “How the hell should I know? I haven't talked to him in a LONG time.” They told me: He gave away his stuff and left, suddenly!

25:23 Just before THAT, when I was working in overtime in 771—a couple Sundays before that I was working in overtime in 771—and Ron called—Ron was the manager that day—and he called me in his office, and he was crying. I was just trying to stay out of his way, because I wasn't talking to him. I didn’t want nothing to do with him. He called me in there, and he was crying, and he took out all these old pictures. Oh, it was sad—chokes me up right now thinking about it. All these old badge pictures from when he first started there, of his 19 years there. He said, “Who do you think this is?” and he handed me one of them.

I said, “Oh, I don't know. Looks like some smart-ass to me,” and I threw it back at him.

He was crying, and he said, “I'm soooo sorry for everything.” He was apologizing. It choked me up, bad. He apologized for EVERYTHING. I mean, he was in tears. And then, right after that, he's gone. Disappeared! Less than one year to his retirement.

(You've never heard from him?)

Not ever.

So, then, the FBI was raiding the plant—on June 6th—I was going to the dentist. I thought, well this is cool. I've got to go back to work to see what's going on [laughing]. They locked both sides, going in and out, when the raid happened. So I couldn’t go out. I had to sit there ‘til they opened the gate. So I was listening [laughing]. I rolled my window down. The guard was saying, “I can’t let you in here!”

And they were saying, “You HAVE to let us in here! We’re the FBI!” [Laughing.] I was like: I’ve got to go to the dentist and come back to work.

(Is this quite early in the morning?)

No, I think it was early afternoon. I'm sure it was.

(Okay.)

They were raiding the plant, while I'm at the dentist. So I hurried; I went back to work. And they were all over that place! Crawling, everywhere. They knew what offices to go to, what managers to throw out of their offices, what documents to seize, what buildings. They had their own jumpsuits, their own instruments. The blue jumpsuits said orange FBI on the back; crawling, all over that place, everywhere. Nobody knew what was going on. The management was frantic; they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

So, I went home [laughs]. Watched it on the news, and read about it in the newspapers. Because they wouldn't tell us—for a long time—what was happening. They would NOT tell us. So one of my guys, on my crew, went and stole a copy of the affidavit, out of the manager's office. And we read it in the cafeteria. And then, that same day, in the newspaper, was about the illegal incineration—in the Rocky Mountain News.

(It was mentioned that that was one of the allegations the FBI was making?)

That's right.

(Okay.)

And they said their evidence was fly-bys. They did fly-bys, and they found the stack hot in the middle of winter.

(That's right.)

Rockwell tried to tell them that the stack was hot because of the heat in the building. That's a big lie, because we FROZE in there in the wintertime. We wore coveralls, and labcoats. It was freezing cold in there. AND—

(This is 771.)

Yeah. If the stack was that hot, we would have been FRYING in there. I mean, if it was that hot from the heaters—the stack? [Laughs.]

(Right.)

So, I started thinking, and thinking, and thinking. And Karen, Karen Pitts, was—

(You were friendly with her already, I assume, at that time.)

Uh-huh. We were friends. She was the only woman in that place that would work with me. She was the only one. The rest of them wouldn't come near me, because I was mean. I told them— but they’d go get my guys off of break, to make them do their work for them. I’d yell at my guys, “You don't do that! You take in exposure; they're making the same amount of money as you are. You don't go off your break and help these little women out.”

So no women would work with me, except Karen. We were friends. Karen and I spoke to each other on the phone. And I said, “Yeah, I think we did that.” Because it was in question—

29:59 (You think you did what?)

Ran the incinerator illegally.

See, what happened was: The Sierra Club filed a lawsuit. And the incinerator in 771 was supposed to be shut down, because of that lawsuit, on November 30th—

(Of 1988.)

—of ’88. And it was supposed to be shut down to February 28, 1989. I worked that incinerator on an overtime day; I went down there with my crew, and we worked that incinerator. And it was winter. I knew we did that. We did do that. We ran that incinerator. I remember everything about, not only that, but here I'm taking notes. But, I wasn't writing in my JOURNAL, because of that stuff that happened. It was 88. I wasn't writing in my journal, I was taking notes; just pieces of paper.

We went there for that overtime day—here's the facts of the day in question, of the incinerator; the alleged incinerator day. We went down—Karen, another guy, and I—walked down. Everybody else—we all came from 371 to work in 771 that day, because they couldn’t—

[Audio cuts off as tape runs out.]

31:23 [End of Tape C.]

[D].

[Audio begins in mid sentence.]

00:00 —it was really funny to me, and I was teasing them. I went in there and saw the foreman was Jeff _____. It was supposed to be Ron. And I said, “What are you doing here? Ron’s supposed to be here.”

He said, “Oh, he worked midnight last night. I traded with him, so I'm it today.”

I said, “Oh, that's right, it's his birthday. He's probably on his three-day drunk.” Ron's birthday is December 15th. And then Jeff and I talked about me babysitting his children while he and his wife—he had twins, NEW twins—I told him I would babysit his children while he and his wife went out for New Year's Eve. And then we were sitting there talking about Christmas Presents. I remember all of that, just as plain as day.

(So that dated the—)

For December. Not only that, December 15th, because that's Ron's birthday!

We read that in the paper, and I said, “Yep, I think we did that.” I'm not going to jail for anybody. The manager called us all in, from 371, for a meeting, and pretty much told us—pretty much advised, us in a diplomatic way—not to speak to the FBI if they came and asked us questions. We just said, “I'm not lying for anybody. I'm not going to JAIL for anybody.”

(You said that, then?)

Uh-huh.

(To the manager.)

Oh yeah. And then we went home for the day. By this time I was feeling panic. And, the next day—

(How long after the raid was this? A couple of days?)

It wasn't long at all; a couple of days. Whenever that article first appeared in the Rocky Mountain News—that was the day after that. I thought: Okay, it's time to start the old journal up again. [Laughing.] So I took my notes—that I had taken from that deadly product—and all my little scribble notes, and started a new journal, right then.

The next day, I came to work and one of my guys came up, and he said, “Well, I worked overtime, midnight last night, in 771. What did you do to those guys?”—meaning the managers.

I said, “I didn't do anything, why?”

And he said, “Doug Smith and Steve”—and I don't remember his last name; maybe Miller. The manager from 771 and the manager from 371. No, no. Dee Sherrill.

(Dee Sherrill.)

Dee Sherrill was the manager from 371. They had pow-wowed in Steve's office, in 771, all night. All night! And this is the manager, who doesn't give a crap; he goes home. But they had been there all night. And then the next day—

(Trying to figure out what to do about you.)

Yeah, exactly.

(You might tell the truth.)

The next day, Doug Smith—Doug Smith worked under Dee Sherrill, directly, underneath—so Doug Smith would—I would go through a foreman, and then I would go through him and Dee Sherrill. Dee Sherrill is the head of 371. Doug Smith—

(It fascinates me that people from 371 were dealing with you, rather than the people from 771. But anyway, go ahead.)

Yeah. So, Doug Smith came up, and he said, “Well, what do you know about that day? If you know something, you have to tell us.” Actually, Doug Smith WAS a decent guy. I did kind of like him, and I did kind of trust him. I really liked him. I did trust him. Karen was sitting there— we were in the cafeteria, just sitting; figuring out what we're going to do—and he came and sat with us. Of course, that puts the finger on you, a manager coming to sit with you.

I said, “All right, this is what I want: I want the documentation from that day. I want my time card, I want the MBA”—that's the Material Balance Accountability sheet. We are legally liable for everything we put in or take out of a glovebox; so that's a legal document, that you signed. Also it's used for accountability, to make sure terrorists aren't stealing our plutonium. And then, a couple other documents I said I wanted.

And he said, “Okay, we'll go find them. We'll go locate them.”

And then I said, “Well, I can go look in my journal, but I don't think I was keeping my journal at that time.”

He said, “Wha— Journal?” [Jacque laughs.]

I said, “Excuse me, I'll go in the locker room and check my notes.” And Karen said he was [laughing] panic stricken, at that point. I came back out, and I said, “No. Gee, Doug, I can't find a thing. So let's go look for those documents.”

05:19 We went to payroll; we went and dug through boxes and boxes and BOXES of timecards. My timecard and the rest of those people's timecards were GONE. All the rest of them were there; ours were gone. I went storming out of that building. I turned to Karen, and I said, “See! I TOLD you we shouldn't have trusted him! I TOLD you! No we're going to be in so much trouble; you shouldn't have trusted him!” And he was standing right there. I didn't care.

He says, “No, no. You can trust”—

I said, “No. NO.” I went back and I took a shower, changed my clothes, and went. I left.

Then the next day, I came in, and I was having lunch. My manager came up and he handed each—me and Karen—a note. It said: “Report to Rockwell legal.” My appointment was in 15 minutes from the time he handed me that note. And hers was after that. I said, “No. I'm not reporting to Rockwell legal without union representation.” I’m not going. Uh-uh. Nope.

So we got a union steward; the union steward called a union attorney, who was Wally Brower. And Wally Brower said, “Don't go talk to them without me. But you have to go up there and tell them you're not going to talk to them.”

So we went and changed into our khakis. Karen and I went up there. Administration building— crawling with FBI. Crawling. There we come up: chemical operators in our khaki coveralls. I mean, we're easily identifiable. We work in the hot side; that's the way to tell. Two FBI came over. They took our names and badge numbers, and they said, “What are you doing up here?”

I said, “I don't know!”

They said, “We'll be talking to you later.”

So, we found a hot line number—in the Rocky Mountain News—and called the FBI. They came over to my house; and, I told them the truth. Boy, oh boy, oh boy [laughing]. What came after that!

The FBI came; they called us out of our work area to interviews—in front of everyone. Threw Doug Smith out of his office—I mean, it was so obvious. Then a guy came up from another building. He said that he heard something like I was telling on him, or something. I said, “Oh where did you come up with that?”

He said, “I read it on the bathroom wall.” IN HIS BUILDING, which was far away. It spread like wild fire. I had 95 interviews with those FBI. And they ARE just like in the movies.

(95 interviews.)

Over three years.

(Over three years.)

Over three years. They would NOT let me loose. They interviewed me—oh! And when they found out I had a journal—oh, my gosh. The whole time, I insisted—see, Wally Brower came out there—

(This is the attorney for the—)

For the union. Going to legal day; after that, we went back to the union trailers to wait for him. And we said, “Wally, we want this, this, and this pieces of documentation.” He kept going up to Rockwell legal and coming back with NOT the right things. He did that about three times. Jim Kelly was in there.

And I said, “No, this is not the right stuff. Not right, no.”

Finally, Wally came back—everybody had gone home for the day; the union trailer was shut and locked, and we're sitting out there [laughs], waiting for Wally to come back from legal—he came back and he patted me on the knee. He said, “You don't have anything to worry about, they're going to take care of it. They'll find that.”

I jumped up and I yelled. I was so scared, and so worried. I said, “Wally, they patronized you! Don't you know what they did? They're lying to you. They patronized you. We're in so much trouble! We're in SO much trouble.”

We went home. I was scared, so scared. And that was just the beginning.

10:07 (Well, why were you scared?)

Because I didn't know what I was into. I didn't know what was going on. I knew we had done something wrong, and I knew me bringing it up threw them; it made them react. And I wasn't getting that paperwork. So I was involved in something that was bigger than me, and I didn't know what it was! You only fear what you don't know.

The FBI came—interview, after interview—the harassment at work started. They sabotaged my gloveboxes. The union put out the word that I was going to shut down the plant and make everyone lose their jobs. That was spoken to me by a high-level union official. Management was after me—just management harassment, company harassment—and the FBI wanted more and more information. My union brothers and sisters were saying bad stuff and doing bad stuff to me. I mean, it was coming from ALL directions.

Finally, the show-down with Rockwell Legal. This was bigger than Wally Brower could handle, so Jim Kelly, and some other union official, went and hired a downtown attorney—Brian Holland—to represent the union members if they should have to testify to the grand jury; they were convening a grand jury to investigate all of these environmental crimes. So his name was Brian Holland. And, finally, the showdown with Rockwell legal came. The Rockwell legal private detective—he was an evil man. They took me in this trailer room, and he was trying to intimidate me; yelling at me, leaning across the table. “You're gonna lose your job!” and all this stuff. “You're never gonna work again!” Just on and on and on. “What about your daughter?”

And I said, “I don't care! I WANT THAT DOCUMENTATION. I want those pieces of paper.”

(You wanted your time card, and you wanted the—)

The MBA

(—record of the material you had taken out of the incinerator.)

Right.

(Okay.)

And this other documentation, which is just drum documentation. It shows that I took it out on the MBA and then it shows it went into this drum, on the drum documentation. I told them, even, exactly what I cut out of the box. I told them, exactly. I remembered it, so well. I HAVE—I have a photographic memory. I can make pictures in my head; in fact I could tell you what I was wearing the day I testified to the grand jury. I could tell you what THEY were wearing, and where they were sitting, and make pictures in my head.

So, I said, “I don’t care. I want this documentation. I WANT THIS DOCUMENTATION.” They just threw up they’re hands.

And then they said, “Alright. You say you cut the stuff out of the glovebox; WE’RE saying we don’t have it.” And they served me with a “Diversion of Material” charge. [Laughs.] That’s a serious, serious, serious thing. I had to get immunity. In the meantime, here’s the FBI breathing down my neck, making me try to testify to the grand jury. I had to get immunity because of that, so I could testify to the grand jury. And I did.

They took me and Karen down there, to the federal court house. The judge gave us immunity; the FBI agents were sitting right there to grab us, as soon as it was over. We went straight from there to the FBI office. And then they had a free reign to ask anything they want; collect anything they want. But I wouldn’t give them my journal! [Laughs.] I would just tell them what was in it. I told them they couldn’t copy it, but they could read it. I mean, he looked like he wanted to dive across the table, to snatch it out of my hand. It was in MY shorthand, so he couldn’t understand it, anyway. It was initials, and acronyms. So he read it; so what.

Then, I was served to testify to the grand jury. I was the FIRST one, the first employee from Rocky Flats to testify—on the first day that they started interviewing employees.

15:04 About a month before that, they put me back in that bad room, working with that bad stuff—which I was not happy about; that was a punishment thing. So the guys would come in there while I was on my break, and stuff. They’d break bottles, throw all my chemicals all over. They’d do bad stuff. They sabotaged my work area, is what they did. Nobody would work with me, except Karen. She was in another room, clear down at the other end of the building. What we did was: When everybody went to break, she’d come help me; and then I’d go help her. That’s how we got our work done, so we didn’t get charges of insubordination and work stoppage on top of it.

They asked me to come in for an overtime day at 3:00 in the morning, which is in-between the shifts, in the middle of a shift. That’s really weird. But, I needed the money. I figured my days there were probably coming to a close. [Light laugh.] So, I accepted it. And so did Karen. We came to work at 3:00 in the morning—Oh! Before that, I said, “Where the heck am I going to get a babysitter at 3:00 in the morning?”

And they said, “We don’t care, but”—they pretty much said: You NEED to work overtime, this overtime. So, fine, I worked it. Came in at 3:00—

(Somebody from management called you and told you to come in.)

Pretty much. Yeah. Just, insisted on it. Overtime is time-and-a-half, which by then was really good money. I hunted down a babysitter and went to work. We got to work at about 3:00 in the morning and checked in with the manager—foreman, at that time—who was Jeff Shaneholt [?]. The incinerator guy from 771was now up in 371, working. And he was the foreman! He said, “Well, both of you guys’ rooms are running”—both of our operations were running—“but, I want you to work in this other room.”

What this room was, it was across the hall from my regular room. It was a room that had—the glovebox had never been used, to my knowledge. Not for ANYTHING. Part of our job, every week, was to go around to all the gloveboxes and do glove inspection. I did the glove inspection in that room, the week before, and signed it off. We went in there, and what the job was, in this box, was FBI-ordered repacks, from the fire! Remember, I told you they scooped it all up in dust pans and brooms and dumped it in the drums? Well, the FBI wanted to know what was in those drums, and they ordered us to repack them. So what we had to do was take everything out of the drum, put it in the glovebox, and sort it. Metals, woods, glass, ash. Then take it back out, put it in separate drums, and count it. Estimate it—gram estimate it. [Narrator begins laughing.]

But, according to the laws of RCRA [Resource Conservation and Recovery Act], that’s illegal. You can’t do that. You can’t take something out of one drum and put it in separate containers; you have to keep it in the same container. I said, “Okay, we’ll separate—”

(They were asking you to do something that you knew was illegal?)

Illegal. Yeah. That’s against the laws of RCRA. But it was FBI-ordered repack, so what do you do? I am NOT going against the laws of RCRA, and I already had immunity anyway. So, I said, “What we’ll do is: We’ll go in and we’ll separate the materials; somebody else can bag them out and take that risk. I’m not bagging them out.”

Karen and I—we were assigned together, with another guy, who QUICKLY left us and wouldn’t work with us; he refused to work with us, because of the FBI and all that. So, we were in the glovebox, and it was TRASHED. It was trashed. It looked like they’d just opened up stuff and flung it everywhere. I told Karen, “We need to clean it up before we can even start working.” They have what’s called bird cages; it’s a criticality safety thing I was telling you about, where they keep the jars of material a certain distance apart, automatically, so you never can accidentally put them together. There were jars in bird cages from this drum, and then there was stuff all over. So we were cleaning it up.

20:00 I reached in the box, to pull down a jar—so we could open it and dump it—you have to do some contortions in some of those gloveboxes. Karen is shorter than I am, and her arms are shorter. I had to reach in and just really do it. Way, backwards, up there in the lead-lined gloves, to get this jar down. I got it down, and then the SAAM clicks, in the room. Karen said, “Okay. We’ve got the airborne.” She was standing behind me. So—like we’re supposed to do—out of the gloves. I just swiped on the Ludlum. My gloves were hot. I always wore two layers: one taped to my coveralls and one on top that I could change. So I peeled the top layers of gloves and threw them on the floor. We put our respirators on and headed for the door.

Walk past another SAAM, and it clicked, and alarmed. I looked at her and I said, “Ew. It’s one of us.” We went to the combo, she checked herself; she was fine. It was me. I mean, EVERYWHERE. And I don’t have a respirator on, when this happened. Me pumping the glove—with the vacuum in the box—it was clearly pulling it right in my face, over the top of the glovebox. That’s how that SAAM went off.

So, it was me. And I had no respirator on when it happened, but I had my respirator on when we left the area. So I’m breathing it, the whole time. Karen—I had to stay in the room, until she could get help—and Karen had to go through 371, five floors, looking for somebody to help me. A radiation monitor is who’s supposed to come help you. He was asleep in the sub-basement. She violently woke him up and brought him up there. And then when he saw that it was me, he didn’t want to come and help me. He just wanted to de-con me enough to get out of the room, which meant he would remove my coveralls and give me papers, and then I could leave the room. And then he left. What he was supposed to do was go with me to the de-con room and make sure I was okay.

So, got into the de-con room. I mean, it was a mess. I had it UNDER my respirator, on top of my respirator. So, I didn’t know what to do: to clean with it on or clean with it off. So I just started scrubbing, and scrubbing and scrubbing. Finally, she found another monitor to come and see if I was cold. What you have to do when something like that happens is: You have to take a nasal smear, and take it up to medical, and get body counted. None of those people—because it was ME—none of those people would do a nasal smear or take me to medical. They all refused. I went out to speak to their manager, and she said, “You’ll just have to wait ‘til day shift.” I had to stay there, and sit there.

Finally a day-shift monitor came in early. He was such a sweetheart; he was always really nice to me. Edie [?] [laughs], I loved him. He was sweet. I said, “Edie, I’ve got a problem.” I told him what happened.

He said, “Sure, I’ll go with you.” We went back down to that room, because what you need to do is take the nasal smear and then send a sample of the person’s clothing that they could check it against. We went down the room, and somebody had SOAKED my coveralls and put them in a bag. So there was nothing to get a sample of.

These two guys that were openly hostile to me, before this—I found out that those two guys and the rest of their crew had come into work in the shift previous to me. They were gone before I got there, so I didn’t know who it was. They came back on day shift, on the regular shift. They were the ones working in there, before me. They had been openly hostile. I was holding the door, waiting for Edie—Edie was inside of the room, looking for something he could send with me—I was holding the door, and they came walking down the hall. They were laughing, and patting each other on the back. One of them—Mike—looked at me and said, “That’s what you get for making waves.”

I was denial about that for a long time. But the evidence—Edie went through, he found the track of it: It came out of the glove, up in my face, up the front of my hair, and over the top of the box. So there was LIMITED contamination on the floor, but the top of the box and the window was infinity. So this is what came at me. And I breathed it. Breathed it for a long time [coughs].

25:25 Then I went to medical, had a body count. They said it was fine and dandy. But it was a little bit toward the baseline, so I would need to come back and do another one, later. And then they gave me my jars. They lost EIGHT bottles of my urine. LOST. Lost them! I filled them, turned them in, they lost them. They lost my fecal sample. They never did give me a count on my nasal sample. And the FBI—four months later—had to order them to give me a count from that nasal smear. And then they sent me a letter, and they said, “Well, it was high. But you’re in no danger.” That’s what I got, four months later. I never got counts off—I had to make them actually SIGN for the fourth package of urine [laughs], to make sure they received it. Nothing. They never gave me anything else. In fact, they never even gave me another body count.

Then, here’s the FBI—and everybody else—just barreling away at me. The Friday before I testified, on Monday, October 23rd—

(What year was that?)

’89.

(Okay.)

The Friday before that—that Monday that I was to testify—Rockwell sent out a letter, to everyone on the plant site, that the grand jury was convening on Monday and some of us on the plant site might have to go. [Laughing] I was the only one, out of 8,000 people, going on that day. So, duh! Guess who it is!

In the meantime, I had been talking to Brian Holland—and the FBI—and Brian was running interference with the company, for me. But it didn’t matter. They were still harassing me, a union member. I went down there and testified. I don’t think they took me seriously. I really don’t. And I was reading right out of my journal.

(You don’t think the grand jury took you seriously?)

Not at first.

I stayed at the grand jury for all day, so I didn’t have to go to the plant, at all. So they turned their attention to Karen. They put her back in 771, and some chem ops attacked her—VERBALLY attacked her—and gave us death threats, verbally. She fled. She actually fled, in fear, and went home, called me. We got together, we talked; she went with me the next day, to the grand jury, and while I went in to testify, she went upstairs to talk to the FBI. We were scared; we were scared. We were really scared. So the grand jury—my testimony started off, telling about the death threats.

While I was in there testifying for THAT day, the FBI called Rockwell and ordered them to move Karen and I out of the hot side, to a trailer on the cold side, and give us cold jobs at the same pay. The trailer they sent us to was right behind the union trailer. So we got the pleasure of all my fellow union members heckling me while I’m working. It just followed me. It just all followed me there—all the harassment. And I got home—I came home, my pictures of my daughter were turned upside down; found a bug in my kitchen, a bug in my bedroom—

(In your house?)

In my house. My house has been broken into several times. Somebody loosened the tie rods from my truck. I have a statement from the mechanic, who says those don’t come loose by themselves; somebody did it intentionally. They did bad stuff. They hired a private investigator; followed and chased me on the highway—tried to run me into a tanker truck. The reason I know who it was is because—on our mad race through the streets of Denver—I got his license plate number and turned it over to the FBI.

30:00 And, I found a memo from a high-level manager—high-level Rockwell manager—with my badge picture, my name, my address, my phone number, and a memo for him to “keep eyes” on me. He wasn’t hiding; he was hiding BEFORE he let me know he was there. Because, the day that he chased me on the highway, he was sitting right across the street, in front of my house; he wanted me to see him. It was a day that I took off from work to go to a doctor’s appointment that Rockwell was making me go to. [Laughing.] Okay! We get to have a mad race on Hwy 36! I was HYSTERICAL; I ran into a Denver police station. I took the officer outside and I said, “There he is!” He was PARKED. I said, “There he is!” He went over to go talk to him, and he took off.

I called the FBI, and I called my attorney. Because, all I could think of was: I was going to get in trouble for not going to this doctor’s appointment. Called the FBI, and they got all dramatic; they said they were going to go get him, and they were going to PARADE him all over the plant site.

[Audio cuts off as tape runs out.]

31:21 [End of Tape D.]

[E].

[Audio begins in mid-conversation.]

00:00 Then Simon came over that night, and he recommended that I NOT go through with the police report. He said it was a private investigator, hired to by Rockwell. They talked to him— the interviewed him—and he promised he would never, ever, ever do that again. And that I should not proceed with my police report. [Laughs.]

Then we started with the “gas lighting”—that’s what I called it—they did, like, concentration camp stuff to me. Psycho stuff. They’d say that I was imagining stuff.

I remember you [narrator is talking to someone she sees]. Hi!

I call it gas lighting. They’d do stuff in the middle of the night, and then before the police come they would take off. In the meantime I’m calling the police, at the same time, and by the time they come they’re gone. They’re throwing rocks, and saying stuff. Jess’s dad was one of them. She got to see her own dad out there doing stuff.

(Really?)

Yeah. And this is in her formative years. She was eight then.. She’s going to be 18 this November. So they got her in her formative years. “Mom, why are you having to pee in jars? Mom, what’s going on? Mom, I’m scared, what’s happening?” Her dad was one of them. He thought it was really, really cool that he got so much attention because he knew me. And then they started harassing him. And he made his choice; he made his choice, his paycheck.

Then they decided to take him under their wing, and he started taking me to court, over Jessica. Time, after time, after time. Every time he lost; every single time he lost, AND they raised his child support. But his attorney was from them. So, it was part of the game. He would come over and sit in my driveway and rev his engine, and honk his horn, and throw stuff at the house, and say mean things. This is her FATHER. I didn’t ever have to say a word about him.

(I thought you said he had left the place. Was that later?)

Oh, no. He stayed. Jess’s dad and I never were together; he worked in a different building. They came to that building—all these other union members—because they thought it was cool that he knew me. He thought that was cool. He lived in another part of Broomfield. Broomfield was ALL Rocky—almost all—Rocky Flats employees back then. I was surprised when I saw it today; man!

Little Jess had gone to daycare with all these kids. They grew up together, since they were babies, in the daycare. All of a sudden they’re saying mean stuff to her, because their parents are coming home and talking about it. One of her teachers—she was getting a drink of water, one day—and one of her teachers came up and said, “Don’t do that! If that water’s poisoned, then your mom did it.” She fled, out of the school, and fled home. She wouldn’t play outside; she wouldn’t GO outside. Oh, it was so bad.

Gosh, we almost made it all the way through, without getting emotional. But it’s my kid, so it affects me worse. It’s okay to poison ME, but if they hurt my kid.

So, it was pretty bad. I wasn’t sleeping, and I was working—trying to put up with their crap. They deleted all my computer files. It just _____ there. Nobody would help me. The union was CERTAINLY not going to help me. I had no friends, nobody to talk to. And Karen was in it with me. It was a really bad time. I didn’t sleep, I would lay—I didn’t sleep in my bed for FIVE years. I slept on the couch, keeping vigil.

(Five years?)

Five years. Even after we moved OUT of the front range. For two years after that. I mean, they terrorized me and Jessica.

05:00 (Who is “they”?)

Rockwell, the workers, security, the FBI. Everybody who had a hand in that. For three years.

(The FBI, too?)

The FBI, too. I was so scared, I would lay on the couch at night. I couldn’t go to sleep, because every time I’d drop off something would happen. So I’d lay there—I told you I was raised in a Catholic family—and I’d say Hail Mary’s and Our Fathers over and over and over again, for hours. [Narrator’s voice is raspy.] I was scared. And I had to work. And then, in between, I had to go down to the FBI downtown. In between that, I had to go see Brian Holland. It was so bad.

Christmas was the worst, that year, because—

(Christmas of—)

’89. Bill—Jessica’s father—was taking me to court again. It was just bad. People were coming to work, and people were coming to my house. Nobody would help me. We went to EVERY federal—every agency—everything I could THINK of, for help. And nobody would HELP us. I wrote to Tom Carpenter, Government Accountability Project.

(Yes, yes.)

They wrote me back, finally, and said they were too busy with the Hanford workers. He didn’t even sign it; someone else did. They said they were too busy with the Hanford workers, they couldn’t help. And then they put me on their donation list. That was upsetting to me.

(Yeah.)

Then, my phone was tapped. How I found that out was: A couple times my attorney’s secretary called me, and she said, “Do you know your phone is tapped?”

I said, “Yeah, I know. But just tell me what you have to say, anyway,” offhandedly. And then, one day, I was talking to someone on the phone—Karen. I said, “Karen, you know my phone is tapped, right?”

And she said, “Yeah.”

She wasn’t hearing it, but I was hearing it: voices. It was clear as a bell on my end. She said, “You know, Jack,” she used to always call me Jack, “I can tell this is really bothering you, so why don’t I hang up and call again.” I said, fine.

Well, she hung up and she couldn’t get through again. Nothing. I—on my side—I could hear these voices that sounded like people were in the very next room, talking, about taking their wives out to dinner and stuff. And I thought the voice was Simon. Simon Thornton [Bolton?], the FBI guy. Clear as a bell!

She couldn’t get through, and couldn’t get through. She didn’t call me back, so I called her and she said, “Well, I can’t get through to your line.”

I said, “Well, listen. Do you hear that?” And then, this time, it changed. It sounded like it was at Rockwell. There’s these big trucks they used to drive all over, there. I could hear those kind of trucks, driving around. For some reason I had placed it at Rockwell security, because the gate those trucks go through is right next to their window. Those trucks have a specific sound: they’re military; they have a distinct sound from any other truck that you just see on the road. It was in Rockwell security, but Simon was there! And they were talking. I told Karen, “You HEAR that?”

She was: “Barely. I can hear, barely.” It was clear as a bell, so I punched Record on my answering machine. [Laughs.] I recorded it, for a really long time. I told her, “Shhh! Shhh!” and she stopped talking. We both stopped talking and listened. And I recorded a good, long time of it. After I got tired of it, I said, “This is Jacque Brever. This is such-and-such a date, at such-and- such a time.” And then I heard dead silence, total pause, a clicking sound, and it went off; the noise went away. They had left their switch on. And they shut their switch off when they realized I was listening to THEM. I was like, “Whoa! I got proof! Call Simon, call ____.” But, hey, Simon’s voice is on this tape! [Laughing.] Okay, who do we call?

10:28 It didn’t come out really good on the tape, because it was a tape of a third party. So we took it to a guy who does music arrangements—like recording—and he took a lot of that out. So you could hear it better. You could make out sentences and stuff. I didn’t know who to TELL, because Simon was one. And it was Rockwell security!

It just kept going on and on and on, over the years. The FBI just hung me out there; hung me out there to dry. They just wanted to use me for information. I was scared, scared, scared. So, finally, I called John Lipsky and Simon to my house, a meeting with me and Karen. And they were doing stuff to her and her family, too. And Mark—her husband worked there, too.

(John Lipsky was the FBI person who signed the affidavit and—yeah, okay.)

He was in charge. And I LAUGH, to this day. What a joke, what a farce. They even set up a little command center, downtown [laughs]. It was all top-secret. It was under the guise of “Nu-clear Face Products,” get it? Nuclear? “Nu-clear?” [Bursts out laughing.] That was the funniest thing! That was their command center. “Nu-clear Face Products.” [More laughing.] They were just like in the movies. He would sit there, and his coat would hang up so he could show his gun off, in its little holster. I just wanted this nightmare to be over, so I was not impressed.

No agency, nobody would help us. Nobody would take us on. No LAWYER would take Rockwell on; we could NOT find a lawyer who would take Rockwell on. So I went on this massive public media letter-writing campaign. I just made a letter, and I addressed it to every different major media I could think of, and mailed them. I said, maybe this will stop them from harassing us.

In the meantime, I had Simon and John come over to my house. I was in tears, my daughter was in tears, Karen was upset, Mark was upset. And I said, “I’m afraid. I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I want OUT of this. I want OUT.” And he looked at me square—had his briefcase there, so I’m sure he was taping it. Plus I didn’t trust anybody; I forgot to mention that, but I didn’t trust anybody. He looked at me, right in the eyes, and he said, “How much do you want?” And that stopped me cold, cold, cold. Dead in my tracks. I figured he was entrapping me. That’s my assumption. Entrapping me to say I want money, to go away.

(Was this John Lipsky?)

John Lipsky.

(Uh-huh. Fascinating.)

I said, “I don’t want anything. I want OUT of here; that’s what I want.”

And then they picked up the briefcase and they left. So, I was on my own again. I decided I would move. I had to telephone people: the police, there, I don’t know.

(Were you still working at Rocky Flats, or was this—?)

Oh, yeah. Still looking for a lawyer, too. I was going to file a lawsuit: just make them stop harassing me, that’s what I wanted.

I got a roll of dimes and changed all my utilities, by pay phone, and moved, to Westminster. About a block from Karen. And they were back on my phone in three days. Back on. New phone! New city, everything. Within three days, and I could hear them. It was Rockwell security. I even heard him dispatching, on his radio, in that office. It was a guard at Rocky Flats.

14:56 (Well, it sounds like they wanted you to know.)

Uh-huh. They were gas-lighting me. In retrospect. I didn’t know this at the time. They were gas- lighting me. They wanted me to know. And then they would come down my street, in front, and they’d throw light bulbs. You know, when those break it sounds like gunshots. And then they’d turn and squeal their wheels. They WANTED me to notice. Go through my trash; all kinds of stuff. The Westminster police gets me now—the crazy lady, who’s always calling them.

Found an attorney! Found Hartley Alley! He was Jim Stone’s attorney.

(Say his name again?)

Hartley Alley. He was an attorney from California, and he had an office in Wheat Ridge, also. He took Jim Stone’s case. So, he took our case. He was going to file it.

By this time—see, now the media is getting their hands on my letters, at the same time. Gannett Broadcasting was one of them. They’re in New York, and their station is KUSA, here in Denver—we’re in Boulder—in Denver. They called right away, to send a guy out to interview and get a feel, before they film it. They sent John Fosholt, and I told him as much as I could. He left, and he said, “We’ll be back.” The I-team—Ward Lucas and John Fosholt—they came to interview. They were the first ones.

He came and set it up at Karen’s house. I’ll never forget that day! Ward came charging up the stairs in his suit, like “impress me!” All I could think of was, “This guy’s wearing pancake makeup!” [Breaks into laughter.] I had to leave the room [laughing]. I didn’t know they did that! [Laughing] I had to leave the room and laugh! The ironies? I’m involved with my life, and then to see that man.

(Did you put syrup on the pancakes?)

Oh, my gosh! It was so funny. They interviewed—and when I was talking, I was telling him all the stuff going on out there. It scared him so bad, he got back spasms and he had to get up and walk around the room.

(Really.)

He said, “You’re working in this?”

I said, “Yeah. I’ve been seven years, now.”

They definitely put that on. It was July 15, I think, of ’90.

(A little more than a year after the FBI raid.)

And then we went to a congressional committee, to testify. The Ahearne Committee, the Conway Committee. I just went everywhere. I went to public meetings, I came here. Everywhere. I talked, and I talked, and I talked. And I didn’t STOP talking. And then we filed the lawsuit—big media—

(What was the lawsuit? Who was that filed against, and what was that about?)

The lawsuit was filed against Rockwell, EG&G, and miscellaneous named workers out there. I think, 15 John Does; the midnight rider people that we couldn’t prove. It was for harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, my inhalation. It was long. I don’t remember all of it; it’s just been a long time. I’m sorry. But, it was long. The main things were the main harassment things that we could prove. Also, I had a video camera, upstairs in a window. I recorded them; I videotaped them. So, I had that. I had my tapes, I had my journals. I had as much documentation as I could have, to back everything up. Police reports; on and on and on. So we were prepared to give evidence.

It went to court. And the judge dismissed it, for lack of evidence. But MY evidence was never presented. It was written incorrectly; the evidence in the written document, the lawsuit. It was WRITTEN incorrectly, and that’s why it got dismissed.

(Where was this? What court?)

Federal Denver, 10th Circuit.

(Federal Court.)

Tenth circuit.

Rockwell, of course, they got together—they have a lot of money. They went judge shopping, and a whole bunch of stuff happened in between there. I’m trying to shorten it. It was really ugly, the battle. So, it got thrown out.

In the meantime, the harassment still continued, AND the media interviews still continued.

20:26 (You’re still working at Rocky Flats, when this is happening.)

Yep. Still working! [Laughs.] By this time, I had the best attendance record of my entire career. Because I was going to work to SPITE them; I was spiting them. “You are NOT going to scare me anymore.” I went to work to spite them. I never missed a day, I didn’t miss an hour; I worked my lunch breaks. I—bolder than heck—stood right up in their faces and said, “Yeah, I did it. I told the truth, and I’m going to continue to tell the truth, so get out of my face.”

Then the media interviews REALLY started. And HOLLYwood [laughing] came, to make a movie about it. Hartley called Karen and I down to his office and said, “Well, you know, I’ve got these people that want to make a movie about you.”

I said, “Hartley, what is the matter with you? What are you doing—walking around Hollywood, selling my STORY? Beating the streets of Hollywood? Why aren’t you focused on my lawsuit! We’re taking on the government, the U.S. government, and two major corporations. I’m not going to DO a movie! God! What’s the matter with you?!?” [Laughing.]

He said, “Well, it will pay for the lawsuit.”

I said, “I don’t CARE!” [All are laughing, very hard.] “I’m not doing a Hollywood story!”

So, he and Karen—both of them—jump in. I said, “I want you FOCUSED.”

And he said, “You got to do this movie!”

“No, I’m not.”

Karen and him decided about the money part. So, I signed the damn thing—the paper that he was supposed to take back to them. I said, “Focus on this lawsuit. I WANT you focused.” Then, just everybody around us got Hollywood head. It was ugly. They lost their focus.

By 1992, the lawsuit was going through appeals—it had been dismissed. The grand jury had been dismissed. You all know the story about the grand jury. In fact, they did end up believing me, a LOT. I found out that they had been talking settlement—see, it was the first time in history of our government that one federal agency raided another federal agency. It was the first time in history. It was BOTCHED. Whoa, bad. And, the new environmental laws were involved, which are bad enough, to get through. I found out—the topper of it all—I found out they had been talking settlement since December of 1989. The whole rest of it was show. Show!

I said, I can’t do this anymore. And they’re talking to me about making movies. I can’t do this. I did—the WHOLE time, what I thought was right: Setting an example for my kid; no matter what, I’m telling the truth; I’m not losing my focus. And the whole thing was for show. John Lipsky called me, and I hung up on him. He called me back again, and I told him he was a pimple on my American ass. I hung up, and I told him, “Never speak to me again.”

Then they had a sub-committee hearing, in Washington, that was gearing up—that was due to the grand jury’s being rebels and going public with their [laughing] documents. I had it. I took all my stuff—yeah, I admit it. I was materialistic. I had a lot of nice stuff. I piled it in my truck, and I went to three weekends at the Flea Market—where, 88th or something; the big one, Mile High—three weekends, and sold ALL my stuff. Dirt cheap. Mahogany and gold; monopoly game; all, everything. I had antiques, appliances. I sold it all, all of it. Every bit of it, and had very little left.

25:18 I told Jess, “You just keep your personal stuff, you want.” I took my pictures, my art; piled it up in the middle of the living room and loaded a U-haul, and left. Sold everything we owned and left. I didn’t even know where we were going to go. I put the truck east, on I-70—I mean west—on I-70. I had three birds. I had to give away my Amazon. He was old. He wouldn’t have made it. I had three birds, a kid, and a cocker spaniel. We went: I-70 west, and stopped in Grand Junction. I thought, well, we’ll stay here. We’ll call your grandma—my mom lives up in _____ by Gunnison—we’ll call your grandma and have her come down, maybe she’ll show us around.

I walked out that night—of the hotel room—and I saw the most incredible thing. I have never, in my life, seen mesas. In all my traveling, all around the world, I never saw a mesa. The wrapped, red-pink, orange sunset on the monument—the Colorado National—I’d never seen that. And it took my BREATH away. I stayed there until it just wasn’t anything to look at, anymore. And then I hurried the next morning, to go watch it again! Oh, duh! It’s in the west, the east is over there! Then the mesa, Grand Mesa. I was, like, “Whoa, look, I’m surrounded!” My mom showed us all around. We went, and I saw the sign for Mesa State College. I said, “Okay, this is good. We’ll stay here for a while.”

Rented a house. My landlord was a JERK. He didn’t know anything about me, he was just a jerk. [Laugh from LeRoy]. But, my next-door neighbor did, however. He came over [makes rapping noise] on my door. And he said, “I know who you are. I DON’T want you to say anything to make them come to MY neighborhood and do this.” That was my “Welcome to Grand Junction!”

[Female voice says “Whoa!!!”]

That was my neighbor. That was right after we moved in. And we had nothing—we had no furniture, nothing. We had a feather bed that we rolled out every night to sleep, with a blanket. Jess slept with me. We were inseparable by then, we were terrorized!

Went to Mesa, put her in school, and we tried to rebuild. I think I did two documentaries since then. I did Frontline—Frontline, documentary. They came to Grand Junction. Then, I did a BBC documentary. Then, I went to Mesa; got my Bachelor of Science degree in environmental restoration and waste management, because I wanted to be part of the solution.

Irony of irony! I won a very prestigious [“prestigious” is emphasized] DOE scholarship that ran for six years, through my bachelors AND my masters. Let’s see. That was by a different DOE! [Laughs.] Only something like 28 people in the whole country got that scholarship. It’s VERY prestigious.

I went through my Bachelor of Science degree. I did some speaking at the college, because when I moved there I was still, pretty, in the media. I thought: Well, they better hear it from me. So I spoke. I did a couple speaking things, to the classes. Had a couple of peers in my classes whose parents worked at Rocky Flats, and sent them to Mesa to go to college; they were pretty vocal. But, what the heck. I didn’t care.

The harassment stopped. All we had to do was start rebuilding. Got my Bachelor of Science; major in environmental restoration and waste management; minor in chemistry—I took a year of organic chemistry, which is hard—emphasis in business management. In 1995 I was a certified master tutor. I tutored calculus, and trig, and chemistry, and all the environmental classes. I helped TEACH the environmental classes. I wrote a paper about soil at the 904 pad; I sent it to Rocky Flats, saying: This is well researched. It was one of my final papers, and the professor thought it was so good that I should send it to them so THEY could use it for information.

[Laughter.]

Sent it to them, and they STOLE part of it! [Laughs.] They sent ME the letter saying that they couldn’t use it; but they did use part of it. I read it.

Then, I just set out to be part of the solution. I worked for DOE at Grand Junction—the uranium mill tailings. They started recruiting me February, before I grad—no, it was January; somewhere in there—before I graduated. I told them no, because I had such a load. I told them no; after I graduate, then call me.

Life was good. It was good. A year after—when we moved into that house, and I had that crummy landlord, I told my daughter, I said, “You mark my words: In one year from now, we will never rent again.” One year, almost to the DAY. I bought my first house. Yeah!

Peaceful is nice; I have my own house, my own yard—

[Audio cuts off as tape runs out.]

31:22 [End of Tape E.]

[F].

[Audio begins in mid sentence.]

00:00 —for a lawsuit.

(When was this?)

January, 1997. Oh! I left out one part. Karen and Hartley had teamed up, or something. I said, “I want NOTHING to do with that, anymore. Forget it. I’m off the lawsuit, off the appeal. Forget it. Your not getting my evidence; you’re not getting nothing. You’ve lost your focus. Forget it.”

I had nothing to do with them, ever again. 1997!

(So that has to do with your—sort of—your breakup with Karen. Karen Pitts.)

In fact, she sent me a letter, accusing me of leaving because I was bought off by Rockwell. She sent me a letter. She said that I was bought off by Rockwell, and that’s why I left. So, we never had any contact after that. Totally lost focus, in my opinion. Breaks my heart.

Anyway, Rockwell and EG&G attorneys had hunted me down. They found me, in Grand Junction.

(They wanted to pay you off, eh?) [both laugh]

No! They said, “We need your deposition,” for a lawsuit. It either meant—Karen, her appeal went through. I don’t know HOW, because a big portion of it was to do with me. But it went through; evidently he wrote it correctly the second time. They said, “We need your deposition.”

And I said, “No. I’m out of it. I’m not talking to you.”

They said, “If you don’t—you know, we have the money; we found you. We have the money to make your life miserable, and you know that. If you don’t”—and they knew I was graduating— “we’ll make your life miserable at school. If you don’t talk to us, we will order you to come to Denver, and we will wreck your life.” They meant it. And they had the money to do it.

I said, “Okay. You can come to Grand Junction, you can interview me in Mesa State College Library. I’ll rent a study room. I’m going to talk to you; you can have an entire day to interview me; and then I never want to see you again.” They did! That interview was TEN HOURS. They were shocked. They didn’t know half of that stuff. I read that appellate—the appeal lawsuit. It was NOT much changed, from when I was on it. They tried to call me since then, and I said, “No. The deal was: You don’t ever talk to me again, and I don’t ever talk to you.” I never did.

And then I graduated, WITH honors, and I went to work for the DOE compound in Grand Junction. I designed and built a wastewater treatment plant, in Monticello, Utah, at a Superfund site. So I DID get to do some good. From a baby in the lab to the big running thing in the field, that’s my baby.

After that, I figured my school was over, at Bachelors. They called, the following August— DOE, the people in charge of my scholarship—and they said, “We have a fellowship available. It’s got to be a Masters in environmental, if you want it.”

I said, “Yeah!” So I called, that day—they said, “You only have a week to do it, though.” That’s DOE! The first place I called was the University of Denver. They gave me an advisor, and he faxed me over a program. I got enrolled that day. The rest is history!

I got my Masters in Environmental Policy and Management, over the Internet. I took every class they offered, and worked, and raised my kid. I did it in a year-and-a-half; and I’m the second person to ever get this degree COMPLETELY over the Internet. I graduate tomorrow morning!

(You’re going to meet your professors for the first time tomorrow, correct?)

Yeah! They’ve never seen me, and I’ve never seen them! [Big laugh from LeRoy.] I’ve got a 4.0 average; I’ve never met anybody!

(That’s wonderful.)

04:40 (I want to go back to one little detail, and then just give you a chance to say other things that you might want to do. The one little detail is that: I don’t think you made reference to your termination at Rocky Flats. When did that happen?)

After that detective chased me on the highway, and followed me? That was in January of [thinking] ’91 or something.

(Detective chased you on the highway—)

The detective they hired to chase me. After that—I’ll back way up.

1988, I was underneath a tank—a big, huge storage tank—doing my funnel thing in 371. See, you can’t use dynamite caps on tanks. So, in order to get the vacuum off of the tank, you have to pop the flange. I was the only one long enough, and thin enough, to fit underneath there, to hold the funnel at the drain. . I got underneath, I was holding—I WAS protected—I was holding my funnel up to the drain, and got it drained, and came out. The flange had slipped off. It was only held on by one bolt. It slipped, hit me square in the back: SMACK, down to the floor. I had to wear an 18-pound body cast—in July and August—because they thought it was completely broken, in my back.

So, on TOP of everything else, I had to fight them—worker’s comp—to pay for physical therapy, back surgery, and everything from that point forward. On TOP of the FBI stuff. The worker’s comp attorney is the one—they did the surgery, and I never went back there again. And they arranged a settlement. That settlement was that I would resign.

(When was that?)

April, 1991.

(’91. So about a year, year-and-three-quarters after the FBI raid. The day that changed your life, as you’ve put it.)

Yeah. Changed my life forever. See, I thought I was going to always work there; I thought I was going to always work there. You could work there until you die. Literally AND figuratively!

(Well, what do you think about the health situation; you’ve referred to so many cases where you were exposed, on the job. Is your health okay? Do you have concerns about it?)

I have Reactive Airway Disease. You know what: I used to think about it every single day, because I KNOW I have alpha in me. I know that for a fact. I used to think about it every single day, but, you know what? You could go and eat organic carrots and just live a healthy, healthy, healthy life, walk out and get run over by a bus. I figure that I have some kind of mission to do. When it’s my time to go, that means my mission is over! [Laughs.] When it’s my time, it’s my time! In the meantime, I’m just going to do everything I think I need to do.

(That reminds me of some communication you sent to me—oh, it must have been three years ago. It was a spiritual message; you were talking about your own sense of a spiritual mission, I guess, really. Well—)

Yeah. I believe that.

(What things have I not asked you about that are important to include here. Is there anything?)

I’m not happy with WIPP [Waste Isolation Pilot Plant]. [Laughs]

(You’re not happy with WIPP. [Someone says, “No, good!”] I’m not happy with WIPP either, I don’t think we’ve got anybody here that’s happy with WIPP.)

Well, you know what I did for my master’s thesis was: I wrote an environmental education course pack for high-school students, about water—I can only do it about one small, tiny area, because I was limited on time—I wrote it about water pollution and water remediation. The reason I did that is because school, in general—education, environmental education—is really good from sixth grade down. And then it DECREASES every year after that. So, by high school, they barely have any environmental education. For a lot of those students—

09:43 (You talking about the state of Colorado, or are you talking about in general?)

Nationwide!

(Really, really.)

I have research; I did research and have FACTS. For most kids, in high school, this is the last exposure they’re going to have to environmental education, unless they major in it in college. Some of them won’t even go to college. High school mostly focuses on working, and getting a career.

Identifying that gap, I wrote a course pack—it ended up being 400-and-some pages. But anyway, I think WIPP is a big mistake. Through my environmental education, the more you know the more you get—and I know a lot, now; from back then, I know a LOT. But I still don’t know everything; every day I learn a million things. But anyway—

PESTS are pests—I get to throw my soapbox down now; sorry LeRoy! Pests are pests because humans have decided they’re pests. Weeds are weeds because HUMANS have decided they are weeds. We spend UNTOLD amounts of money to build many, many, many—tens of thousands, just in this country—nuclear weapons, of which TWO have ever been USED for their intended purpose, in the history of the world. Many, many, more are tested. We didn’t even THINK beyond the shortsighted, instant-gratification mentality that is prevailing in this country.

What are we going to do with our big mess? We’re going to stuff it in the ground and give it to the earth. That just DISGUSTS me. Instead of spending ALL that money that they spent on WIPP—which, by the way, I heard some rumor that they MOVED the center of it, or something. They found that it had a possibility of having water flooding, or something? I heard something about that. Is that true? They moved it over? Did you know that?

(I’m not sure about that. They have had leaks in the facility.)

Something about having a groundwater flood, or something, so they MOVED it—rotated it. They spent ALL that money so we could dig a hole in the earth and put all of our stuff out of sight, out of mind, instead of investing in something to take it apart! It’s MAN MADE. God did not plutonium here. It’s man made—man can take it apart. We need to take some responsibility instead of stuffing it in the ground! It’s going to remain dangerous for 24,000 years!

[Female asks Jacque what she’s doing on June 15th.]

[Big laugh from LeRoy.]

(She’s trying to recruit you, Jacque!)

For?

[Female: “The first truck leaves Rocky Flats at 8:00 PM.”]

Oh! That’s right.

[Female: “On June 15, and we want to do a press conference!”]

They were going to open WIPP last year on my birthday; I was praying: “Please, God, no. Don’t open WIPP on birthday!” Please, no. So, it’s close enough, this year.

They have to justify it now; they’re too deep into it. They have to justify it. So we get to bury it all: out of sight, out of mind.

[Female: “And we have to go and say, ‘No, this is not okay.’”]

That is WRONG! That is SO wrong. Why didn’t they take somebody who knew what the heck they were doing and take it apart, or make it something less, or do something else. All their stupid little things—vitrification didn’t work. Now they have a BIGGER mess in Savannah River. All this stuff didn’t work! It was all for show; it was for money. Money, money, money. Money is a necessary nuisance, that’s all. [Chuckle from LeRoy.] That’s all!

Man, I’m so disgusted with WIPP. I’m so disgusted. I’m disgusted with DOE. They will NEVER change. Look at, China still—

Okay! Here’s an irony! There’s this guy sitting in Los Alamos, right? He’s running this super computer, giving the Chinese all of our nuclear secrets? In the meantime, they’re spending all these millions of dollars to harass me for telling the truth! [Laughs; big laugh from LeRoy] And they can’t even prosecute him!

14:57 So the funniest thing of all? Those people did all this stuff to me because they were afraid I was going to shut down the plant and make them all lose their jobs. The only one who doesn’t work there anymore is ME. [Chuckle from LeRoy.] And, you know what? That is a BLESSING. That is a blessing. Otherwise, I would have worked there; I would have had that mentality; I would have had to justify myself remaining there and justify my paycheck. There’s no telling what kind of lies I could have made up in my brain, to justify going there every day. And then you get trapped and you can’t DO anything else. What are you going to do with plutonium recovery skills, in the real world?

So, I’m going to be part of the solution!

(Your daughter has a much happier story than she would have if you were still there.)

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I thank God every day that I had her before I worked there. I really, really do. Our whole time we lived in Broomfield, she had kidney problems. It was getting REALLY close to her having surgery. She was little; little, little. We moved to Westminster? They went away. [ said with an ironic tone of voice:] Now, let’s see. Let me THINK: What is the drinking water source for Broomfield? Does anybody know? [Laughs.]

(I know what it used to be.)

Back then it was, still. They did it. They eventually pleaded guilty after their big FARCE and their big SHOW, under the Big TOP. Rockwell pleaded guilty to five felonies and five misdemeanors and paid an 18.7 million-dollar fine—18.2 million-dollar fine. Nobody went to jail. The grand jury went rebellious, and they had a subcommittee investigation. One of the people in that came to Grand Junction to interview me. So I gave my testimony to her, rather than having to go to Washington.

And then I saw John Lipsky on TV, sitting in front of that subcommittee, and he said, “You know, when that case got settled I was sick to my stomach.” He said that, to the subcommittee, on TV. “I was sick. I was sick to my stomach.” I just looked at the TV, and I just went: Liar. Just, liar. Liar; all lies, all liars. And then you tell your kid: Tell the truth, do what’s right. La-de- dah, blah-de-dah. And then, look what happens? I had that RESENTMENT—I still probably have a little bit of it—for a long, long time.

(You’ve said a lot of very strong things, and you’ve mentioned some names in this interview. Is it alright with you if I use this information? I’ll give you the text of what you’ve said, when I finally get it typed up.)

John Lipsky’s testimony is in a public document, in the House Subcommittee investigation. The other stuff, that I can’t prove: I really don’t care. I told the truth. What are they going to do, sue me? I have nothing.

(Is there anything else you want to add, here?)

No. I just think it was a big farce; it was just a big mistake. BUT, I wouldn’t trade that for a million dollars, not ever.

(It’s really fascinating to try to understand why the FBI went in there, as they did. You certainly make the case that they were—if they meant well in the first place, they certainly changed their mind after a while. The Department of Energy—I’m sure—outweighed the FBI, many, many times by the time they were lobbying the Department of Justice to get a settlement in the whole thing.)

You know, in spite of it all, I really do think they had good intentions.

(Originally. Yeah.)

I really do. Actually, Simon—I believed—really cared about it. And then, at some point in time, that totally changed.

(I’m going to shut this off.)

Okay.

19:54 [End of Tape F. End of Interview.]