-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: March 11, 2007 10:19:55 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Labor Dept Conspired to Cut Aid to Federal Employees
Exposed to Radioactivity
Feds tried to cut aid
Limits sought on help for ill workers
Department Of Energy ©
An aerial view of Rocky Flats after cleanup was complete in 2005.
By Ann Imse And Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News
March 10, 2007
Federal officials secretly schemed to limit payouts for sick and
dying nuclear weapons workers, including thousands from the Rocky
Flats plant outside Denver, newly released documents show.
The officials responsible for helping those workers went behind
their boss's back, called on White House officials for help and
tried to hide their efforts, according to internal e-mails and
memos obtained by a congressional committee and posted on its Web
site.
They also wanted to get the White House to override scientific
decisions granting compensation and pack the program's advisory
board with members less sympathetic to workers.
Labor officials say the plans were never carried out, and they deny
trying to hide them.
The U.S. Department of Labor oversees the program to compensate
workers whose illnesses can be tied to working with radioactive and
other toxic materials at nuclear weapons plants, such as the now-
defunct Rocky Flats.
More than 60,000 ill atomic bomb makers, including thousands from
Rocky Flats, have sought help. About 16,000 workers nationwide have
received a total of $2.6 billion. Far more have been denied or
still are waiting for help.
Throughout the documents, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Labor
Shelby Hallmark and other officials express grave concern that the
bill for providing $150,000 per ill worker could reach $7 billion
over 10 years.
Coincidentally, $7 billion is what the U.S. Department of Energy
spent over 10 years cleaning up just one of its sites -- Rocky
Flats. The department has spent $65 billion so far cleaning up 84
of its weapons sites, which were left contaminated by the drive to
win the Cold War.
In the memos, Hallmark worries about compensation costs soaring in
"an arms race among members (of Congress) jockeying to demonstrate
their ability to bring home 'special' benefits to their
constituents." His boss, Assistant Secretary of Labor Victoria
Lipnic, bemoaned, "There is not a fiscal conservative left anywhere."
Now, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of
Congress, is looking into whether the Labor Department overstepped
its bounds and meddled in the payments illegally.
Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said, "Clearly, the [Bush] Administration
put money above honoring the nation's promise to the Cold War
veterans."
He added this is "almost worse" than the bad conditions at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center. That was negligence, Udall said, where
"this seems to be a pretty callous plan that the administration
knew could harm sick veterans."
Some lawmakers see the documents as evidence of continued
stonewalling in the program, as workers died before they could
collect benefits.
"Those involved in this back-room manipulation of the program have
destroyed the government credibility again," U.S. Rep. John
Hostettler said in December. The Indiana Republican held hearings
last year to investigate the program, which has been plagued by
delays since 2000.
"This program was supposed to ensure workers that the deceit was
over and the government was finally going to do right by them.
Those tasked with implementing the program have failed that purpose
miserably and they need to be exposed for what they have done."
Instead of helping workers, the program has spawned a "culture of
disdain" toward them, Hostettler said.
Rising costs
In memos and e-mails in October 2005, Labor Department officials
expressed concern about approving compensation for whole groups of
workers, called "special exposure cohorts."
Congress ordered these special cohorts if records on workers'
radiation exposure were so incomplete, missing or destroyed that
scientists could not reconstruct the radiation doses to link them
to workers' illness.
Workers at many sites, including Rocky Flats, have requested SEC
status. Rocky Flats workers are expecting a decision in May.
Each special cohort approved makes more workers eligible for
compensation and would add to costs.
In a Jan. 31, 2005, memo, Hallmark wrote about Iowa and Missouri
sites that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and
Health was about to approve for special cohort status. He worried
this would make it easier for other sites, such as Rocky Flats, to
get the same status.
NIOSH had written a notice for the Federal Register granting the
status. Hallmark wrote: "We have revised the attached version of
the notice . . . to require that NIOSH DENY (the petition)."
Labor officials suggested in memos to the White House's Office of
Management and Budget that OMB should have final say on future
requests for special cohorts. That would mean budget officials
would overrule scientific conclusions about exposures.
Giving special cohort status to the Iowa and Missouri sites had
"the potential to vastly increase the cost of the program and
decrease its scientific validity," Labor Department attorney
Jeffrey Nesvet said in a memo on Oct. 6, 2005.
Costs could approach $7 billion, Nesvet said. "At this point, it is
clear that only intervention by the OMB is likely to stem this
trend," his memo said.
Hallmark, in other memos, notes that it would be unfair to pay
claims to "undeserving" workers whose illnesses might not be
related to their work.
In a late 2005 memo, OMB agreed and said the White House would
convene a work group to recommend ways to "contain growth in the
costs" of the compensation program.
In February 2006, Hallmark told OMB in an e-mail that he was "still
smarting" over its memo a few months earlier citing his office as
the source of the cost-containment suggestions.
"I am uncomfortable with even an unofficial sharing of my briefing
piece for today's meeting with my second-floor people (the U.S.
secretary of labor's office) since I am not at all convinced they
will be willing to argue directly for any or all the actions it
proposes. . . . But if you promise not to spread it, and if you
don't use the language in your documents such that NIOSH will know
where the verbiage came from, I'll share it."
Denials to Congress
In December, Hallmark testified in Hostettler's congressional
hearing that allegations of a covert cost-containment effort "are
simply not true." No such effort ever happened, he said.
"Cost containment is not part of any strategy or involvement that
the Department of Labor has had in this process," testified
Hallmark, who has worked for the Labor Department since 1980.
Hallmark also denied to Congress that the Labor Department was
trying to prevent approvals of special cohorts.
Hallmark declined to be interviewed by the Rocky but responded to
written questions sent to his office.
Hallmark said the OMB proposals "have not been and will not be
pursued."
When asked about Labor Department efforts to limit costs, Hallmark
said he was concerned only with the "overall consistency and
fairness of the program."
He noted that he must be able to defend decisions as reasonable and
objective to the federal courts and to the public.
"Workers at the Rocky Flats facility who suffered some of the
highest exposures of the DOE complex deserve no less," he said.
Change of view
The memos indicate a big shift in Labor Department sympathies since
early 2004.
Hallmark wrote in a February 2004 e-mail that it seemed like
"common sense" to give Rocky Flats special cohort status since it
is "probably one of, if not THE, dirtiest site."
At one point, he wondered in writing if they should just give every
nuclear weapons worker the benefit of the doubt.
Then something changed.
The same month, Labor Department officials began to request
rewrites in NIOSH documents that mentioned problems with radiation
exposure reports.
Acknowledging faults with the records would "undermine confidence"
in how scientists determine workers' radiation doses, the memos say.
In December 2004, Hallmark complained that NIOSH's independent
radiation advisory board was successfully pushing NIOSH to approve
more claims, the memos show. The next month, Hallmark said he was
worried that giving cohort status to the plants in Iowa and
Missouri would set a precedent for approving other sites.
The draft approval for the Mallinckrodt plant in St. Louis cited
missing or corrupted data.
"The same allegation has been made for virtually every DOE site,
and in most cases, acknowledged to one degree or another," Hallmark
wrote Jan. 31, 2005.
Giving this reason for the special cohort status "would essentially
signal acceptance of SECs at all DOE sites," he wrote.
For the Iowa plant, the advisory board recommended approval because
the government couldn't tell workers exactly what they were exposed
to. Doing so would reveal secret information about nuclear weapons
manufacturing.
Hallmark wrote Feb. 10, 2005, that if Iowa was approved for cohort
status, "certainly Pantex (Texas), Y-12 (a big part of Oak Ridge
nuclear facility in Tennessee), Los Alamos (New Mexico), Hanford
(in Washington state), Piniellas (in Florida) and Rocky Flats and
probably several others - can be expected to be filed immediately
on the 'classified data' basis."
At least part of his concern was staved off when Secretary of
Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt, whose department
oversees NIOSH, ratified the cohort status for Iowa without
mentioning classified data. It is not clear whether the Labor
Department influenced that decision.
In addition, NIOSH obtained a ruling from the Department of Justice
saying that classified data are not a valid reason for a cohort
status.
In February 2005, the Steelworkers' union filed its petition for
cohort status for Rocky Flats. It argued that autopsies have shown
more plutonium in Rocky Flats workers' bodies than shown in tests
while they were alive.
That's proof exposure records are unreliable, the union said.
By law, a decision on the petition was supposed to be made within
six months of the filing. The decision expected in May is nearly
two years late.
Troubled program
The recently released internal documents have infuriated lawmakers,
who say Congress intended to give Cold War veterans the benefit of
the doubt and help them as quickly as possible.
More than half a billion dollars has been spent on administrative
costs and trying to reconstruct workers' dosages of radiation. The
compensation program was so problem-plagued that the half run by
the Energy Department was transferred in 2004 to the Labor Department.
Other concerns about the Labor Department's handling of the program
have arisen.
Congressman Hostettler said during his December hearing that the
Labor Department was "selectively culling" worker claims for review.
Hallmark replied that most of the pulled cases had actually been
headed for denial.
"We were nearly always giving the claimant a second chance,"
Hallmark said.
The GAO will be investigating how the Labor Department has handled
the program.
Daniel Bertoni, who heads the GAO's workforce investigations, said,
"The concern is: What had changed? If they weren't reviewing these
cases before, why are they now?"
Udall, of Colorado, said the documents "confirm what many of us
suspected was under way, which was the administration tried to
override science to cut costs at the expense of sick workers. And
it might have succeeded if the plan hadn't been exposed."
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