The long-muzzled FBI agent who led the 1989 raid on the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant is accusing federal prosecutors of obstructing that investigation and misleading the public on the danger of radioactive dumping there.

Jon Lipsky, who retired from the FBI last Friday, accuses the Justice and Energy departments of "potential criminal acts" in preventing a thorough investigation, which ended in a plea bargain in 1992.

He and others involved in that probe say in a memo posted on the Internet that the deception "should result in extreme skepticism about current government assurances that the cleanup of dangerous contamination at Rocky Flats is protective of the public health."

Lipsky will appear at a news conference today to talk about his allegations.

Energy officials said the $7 billion cleanup is thorough, and a former federal prosecutor defended the handling of the case.

In 1989, the FBI raided the Department of Energy atom bomb plant at Rocky Flats, which had been ignoring pollution laws on the grounds of national security. The raid was the first ever by the FBI on a sister U.S. government agency and led to a three-year grand jury investigation.

But the Justice Department rejected what grand jurors considered to be evidence of serious environmental crimes of dumping and burning radioactive and toxic waste. A plea bargain allowed Rockwell International, which ran the plant for the DOE, to pay $18.5 million in fines. No individual was charged with a crime.

Retired FBI agent Lipsky is joined in his allegations by Rocky Flats grand jury foreman Wes McKinley, a newly elected Colorado state legislator; former Rocky Flats worker Jacque Brever; and their attorney, Caron Balkany. The four posted a memo detailing their allegations on the Web site www.ambushedgrand jury.com, where McKinley and Balkany promote their book on the case. They are calling for a congressional investigation.

The grand jury report with the evidence remains secret. But the group's memo says midnight burning of toxic waste really did occur and that officials did not tell the truth about a plutonium incinerator or dumping of radioactive waste.

The memo claims that deception has interfered with the cleanup and endangers people who will roam the site after it is converted to a wildlife refuge.

Department of Energy spokeswoman Karen Lutz said the site has been thoroughly tested and that all contamination is being cleaned up according to law.

"Every aspect of this cleanup has been under a microscope," she said.

Mike Norton, the former U.S. attorney who handled the plea bargain between the Justice Department and Rockwell, said, "It is beyond imagination that anybody covered anything up" given the hundreds of people involved in the investigation.

Generally, Lipsky and his colleagues contend that Energy officials and their contractors dumped radioactive and toxic waste at the plant for years and lied about it so they could build more atom bombs.

Specifically, the memo says the Building 771 incinerator was used to burn toxic waste when it was supposed to be closed down - even though the plea bargain said no such evidence was found.

The memo says the Justice Department should have filed charges for operating that incinerator without a permit and illegally storing the radioactive ash.

Norton disagreed that there was "proof positive" of that incinerator burning illegally.

The memo also alleged the Justice Department misled the public in stating Rocky Flats contractor Rockwell did not cause substantial physiological harm. It says Rocky Flats sprayed radioactive and toxic waste over a large area called the East Spray Fields, and this seeped into groundwater and drinking water.

However, the DOE's Lutz said the entire area was tested and came back with such extremely low levels of contamination that it did not require cleanup.

Years later, officials found radioactive contamination in Great Western Reservoir and Standley Lake, which contain drinking water. Great Western was closed, and Standley Lake's plutonium is considered safely buried in the sediment.

Lutz said the amount of radioactivity in the reservoirs was found to be well under legal limits.

Norton noted that the decision on charges in the case was made by numerous officials in the Justice Department.

"I don't know of any outstanding issue that wasn't resolved," he added. "What we concluded at the time is what we believed at the time."

Allegations of obstruction

An ex-FBI agent, the head of the Rocky Flats grand jury and others said the Justice Department:

• Restricted the FBI investigation at Rocky Flats and did not file charges for the most serious crimes found.

• Denied the public was harmed, even though radioactive and hazardous waste contaminated ground- and drinking water.

• Ignored evidence and did not file charges that Rocky Flats illegally stored radioactive incinerator ash.

• Obstructed a special grand jury, Congress and an FBI agent, and lied to the court and the public about the extent of the contamination and government crimes at Rocky Flats.

Source: www.ambushedgrandjury.com

3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."