Date: August 14, 1994 20:57 YST From: PsychoSpy Subj: Second Groom Lawsuit [Supplement to the Groom Lake Desert Rat] According to an article in Saturday's Las Vegas Review-Journal, a second lawsuit will be filed on Monday in the Groom Lake toxic dumping case. The full text of the article is below. We can speculate that the first suit, which was filed against the EPA, was a tactical move by lawyer Turley. Perhaps, by filing against the EPA first, he can prevent it from coming to the AF's rescue. CNN will run a story on this latest suit, probably in its Monday evening newscasts (Aug. 15). -- ed. ----------------- TITLE: SECRET BASE TO BE HIT WITH LAWSUIT SUBTITLE: A Washington lawyer alleges various agencies have violated hazardous waste laws at Groom Lake PUBLICATION: Las Vegas Review-Journal DATE: Aug. 13, 1994 AUTHOR: Keith Rogers [Reproduced without permission.] Defense and intelligence agencies will be sued on Monday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas by a Washington, D.C., law professor who claims they violated hazardous waste laws at the secret Groom Lake air base in Lincoln County. The lawsuit will name Secretary of Defense William Perry, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who is representing employees and former workers at the Groom Lake base, said Friday. The lawsuit is the second that will be filed this month on allegations that hazardous wastes were illegally burned in open trenches at Groom Lake, 35 miles west of Alamo. In an Aug. 2 lawsuit Turley files in U.S. District Court in Washington, he claimed the Environmental Protection Agency failed to inspect the Groom Lake base, where workers said they were denied protective clothing for handling hazardous wastes. That lawsuit named EPA Administrator Carol Browner as defendant and six John Doe plaintiffs. Chief Judge John Garret Penn allowed the plaintiffs to use fictitious names because Turley said they feared reprisal from the government. Concerning the case he will file Monday, Turley said, "We hope to show that military and intelligence agencies cannot unilaterally create a secret enclave through which they can violate environmental and criminal laws with impunity." He said his clients in Monday's filing will include six John Does and one named plaintiff, Helen Frost, a Las Vegas widow, whose husband was a former base worker who died in 1989. Frost claimed in a 1993 lawsuit that her husband's death was linked to inhaling toxic fumes while he worked atop hangars and buildings downwind of trenches where former workers have said hazardous materials, including radar-absorbing stealth coatings, were routinely burned during the 1980s. A federal judge dismissed the wrongful death suit, ruling that Frost did not prove dioxins in the fumes hastened her husband's death from a liver disorder. Turley said Helen Frost is representative of a large number of widows and family members who have asked him for legal assistance. "We have decided to use only one of the widows and only six of the workers because of possible concerns with reprisals. The government has already threatened my clients with severe reprisals if they ever broke their silence about what happened at the Groom Lake base," Turley said. The Groom dry lake bed is the site of an active government installation where high-altitude, high-speed spy planes and other military aircraft have been tested, including the F-117A Stealth fighter, according to aviation industry sources and witnesses who have observed the base. Turley said, "Our Nevada filing will go to the heart of the allegations. We believe the Air Force will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the existence" of the Groom Lake base, also known as Area 51. "It is clear that secrecy at Groom Lake became a magnet for illegal activities that could never have occurred at conventional federal facilities," he said. "The use of secrecy in this case has little to do with the national security purpose of the facility. The military is using secrecy to hide what are environmental and, possibly, criminal violations," Turley said in a telephone interview from his office. He is director of the pro bono Environmental Crime Project at the university's National Law Center. Turley said the Groom Lake base became "something of an irresistible temptation for certain agencies and contractors in the Stealth program." ### ----- GROOM LAKE TOXIC INJURY SUIT ----- Below is a transcript of a report on ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT WITH PETER JENNINGS, August 1, 1994. [Supplement to the Groom Lake Desert Rat. Transcribed without permission. The transcript is followed by a press release from George Washington University concerning the suit.] FORREST SAWYER (fill-in anchor): Some government employees are going to court this week, charging that their work has made them sick. What makes their claim so unusual is what they do and where--at a super secret military base called Groom Lake whose very existence we first reported just a couple of months ago. Here's our legal affairs correspondent Cynthia McFadden. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: These people are not your average commuters. [Workers boarding jets at McCarran Airport.] Among them are engineers and technicians helping develop America's most secret new weapons. Every day they fly a half an hour into the desert from Las Vegas on an airline that doesn't exist. [In desert.] The planes land at an air base just behind these hills. Showing it to you would be a crime. And if you have ever worked at the air base, talking about it is a crime. And yet some of the workers say they now must talk about environmental crimes they say the government committed. VICTIM (in shadow, voice disguised): We all done a lot of coughing while the smoke was blowing in our direction. I developed cancer. I guess I'm not cured of it. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: This man and at least a dozen others say that throughout the 1980s a deadly smoke was produced by weekly burnings in huge pits at the air base. WITNESS (in shadow, voice disguised): There were several trenches about 300 feet long and about 25 to 30 feet across and about 25 feet deep. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (to WITNESS): What was the purpose of the trenches? WITNESS: For the destruction of classified material. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: Materials like those used to make the stealth fighter invisible to radar. Where better to dispose of the secret compounds than the secret air base, as seen in this 1988 Russian satellite photograph. An air base where the environmental laws didn't seem to reach. WITNESS: The running joke was, it was the place that didn't exist, so consequently anything could occur there. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: The Air Force says that while we can't take a picture of the base, they can't object to our showing you this Russian photo. It shows where workers say the trenches were located. VICTIM: It was thick black smoke. Sometimes it was thick gray. The smell was very nauseating. It would burn your eyes. It would burn your throat. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: And the smoke, say some of those who worked in it, made them sick. VICTIM: I developed a rash, skin rash. I used sandpaper to get the scale off, because it's the only way I can remove it. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (to VICTIM): Do other men that you worked with describe a similar rash? VICTIM: One in particular, yes. He had it all over his body. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: What happened to him? VICTIM: He died. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: Robert Frost was a sheet metal worker at the base, until he started developing these rashes. Neither he nor his wife could figure out what had caused them. Just before his death, they sent a tissue sample to Peter Kahn, an expert on hazardous chemicals. His conclusion? Robert Frost had been exposed to types of dioxins and dibenzofurons, which are not normally seen in humans. PROF. PETER KAHN ("Rutgers University"): My only reaction is, what on earth has this man been exposed to? CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: Frost died in 1989 of cirrhosis of the liver, but his widow Helen says that while Frost did drink, he was no alcoholic. She believes the real cause of her husband's death was working at Groom Lake. HELEN FROST: Who does the government think they are that they can go around killing people. That's called murder. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: The Air Force told Mrs. Frost that it had nothing to do with her husband's death, so she and her daughters, along with a dozen others who worked at the air base, have hired themselves a lawyer. PROF. JONATHAN TURLEY (to Frost family): Many of our clients may be developing more extensive injuries similar to your father's. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: They want to lift the secrecy surrounding the burning and find out what the workers were exposed to. The government's position has been that these people have no right to go to court, that national security demands continued secrecy. Air Force and Environmental Protection Agency officials said that they would not comment on the pending legal action. PROF. JONATHAN TURLEY ("George Washington Law Center"): The secrecy oath doesn't mean that my clients have stopped being citizens of the United States. It doesn't mean that they are non- persons and they've got a non-injury. CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: The government says there were no environmental crimes committed there at Groom Lake, the Air Force base that doesn't exist. They say, nobody's sick. Jonathan Turley and his clients say given a chance they can prove otherwise. Cynthia McFadden, ABC News, on the road to Groom Lake. ----- GWU PRESS RELEASE ----- Below is a PRESS RELEASE from George Washington University, Office of University Relations, Washington, D.C.... FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 2, 1994 GW LAW PROFESSOR JONATHAN TURLEY FILES AGAINST THE EPA FOR FAILURE TO INSPECT SECRET AIR FORCE BASE FOR VIOLATION OF FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS. Washington, D.C. -- The George Washington University National Law Center Professor of Environmental Law Jonathan Turley, in an unprecedented move, filed suit today against the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to live up to its duties to inspect violations of federal environmental laws. This will be the first in a series of legal actions planned by Professor Turley. Turley is representing current and former workers at Area 51, a secret Air Force base in Nevada -- also known as Dreamland or Groom Lake. The suit alleges serious injuries, and at least one death, to employees due to the burning of hazardous and toxic wastes at the facility. Turley's suit further alleges that workers were denied requests for protective clothing -- including gloves -- in handling hazardous wastes. Workers, who signed secrecy agreements upon employment at the base, will be represented as "John and Jane Does" to prevent possible retaliation, including physical threats. This case is the first of it's kind. Area 51 is generally considered the most secret, classified base in the U.S. military network. "By forcing compliance at Area 51, we hope to establish a precedent whereby the military will be forced to acknowledge its responsibilities in every base and facility," says Turley. "Ultimately, this case is a direct confrontation between national security laws and environmental and criminal laws." Specifically, Turley will be asking the D.C. court to force the EPA to inspect and monitor the secret base. He will argue that the federal hazardous waste law does not give any exception for secret bases in its provisions and will be asking the court to force the EPA to fulfill a mandatory duty under the law. "We want to establish that workers at secret bases should not be forced to rely on the arbitrary protections of the military, but should be able to go to court to receive remedies for violations," says Turley. He also intends to establish that secrecy agreements do not preempt environmental protections. Eventually, Turley plans to draft a new law on the judicial review of such cases and on issues ranging from anonymous legal actions to standing questions to citizen suit actions against the EPA. ### [Supplement to the Groom Lake Desert Rat] Title: GROOM LAKE TOXIC BURNING ALLEGED Subtitle: A former worker at the secret Air Force base says poisonous substances were routinely ignited. Las Vegas Review-Journal, Mar. 20, 1994, Page 1B. Illustration: Photo of "The B-2 Stealth bomber, one of the planes tested at the Groom Lake base." Map of buildings at the Groom Lake base, titled "Groomed for secrecy," with the following labeled: "Lockheed hangers," "burn pits," "Scoot-N-Hide shed," "Red Hat hangers," "Satellite dishes" and "Sam's Place bar and recreational complex." By Keith Rogers, Review-Journal Trucks hauling poisonous waste from California routinely arrived at the Air Force's secret Groom Lake base on Mondays and Wednesdays, said a former base worker who was employed there during the 1980s. There were always two Kenworth rigs, he said. They towed trailers with sealed cargo bays sometimes filled with 55-gallon drums of resins, solvents and hardening compounds--stuff he said Lockheed Corp. used to coat its radar-evading Stealth aircraft. At the base, 35 miles west of Alamo in Lincoln County, the trucks would roll past the dormitory complex where as many as 2,000 full- time residents lived, then down a road that parallels a taxiway that leads to Lockheed's hangers at the south end of the base. There, just west of the road and at the foot of Papoose Mountain, the trucks would back up to one of the 300-foot-long trenches. Workers would then roll the barrels into these pits where the drums and their classified contents would be doused with jet fuel and ignited. Like every activity at the base, the Air Force and the phantom trucking company, known only a NDB, operated with great latitude under the veil of secrecy, often in defiance of state and environmental laws at the time. The waste shipments were never accompanied with manifests, which are required by law in Nevada and California. And the trail of paperwork to the base, once known as Area 51, was covered by code words. Any reference to the base during the Stealth project was nonexistent in government correspondences, other than the name "Score Event," said the source who spoke on the condition of anonymity, but who provided a base manual, map and aerial photograph of the base that was taken in the mid-1980s by a government contractor. "They could have hauled in untold amounts of things," he said. "They would bring the stuff up from California at first twice a week, then once a week," he said. His story about waste disposal practices at the Groom Lake base confirms what other workers and former workers have said about the burn pits and the acrid fumes that wafted over the hangers and dormitories where people lived and worked. Nevada environmental officials are probing whether the burning was proper and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley is preparing legal action against the Air Force, accusing it of environmental crimes. Turley has said his growing list of clients includes people who were injured by the Air Force's actions. Nevada's only environmental official with a clearance to enter the base, Air Quality Bureau Chief Thomas Fronapfel, has visited the base twice since allegations about open-pit burning were made last year. He said he has "looked at most of the information" about waste burning practices at the base and has found that classified materials were burned, but they were mostly papers. Fronapfel and his boss, Environmental Protection Division Administrator Lew Dodgion are still trying to determine how they will report their findings and what action, if any, they will take. Dodgion has said, though, that the amount of information that state has compiled about waste disposal practices at the base is small compared to what his staff has not reviewed. Neither the Air Force, Lockheed nor NDB are licensed waste haulers in Nevada, according to the state's Motor Carrier Division in Carson City. NDB is not listed as a trucking firm in Nevada, California or in the National Directory of Addresses and Telephone Numbers. Allen Hirash, a spokesman for the California Department of Toxic Substance Control, said, however, that Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co., in Burbank, Calif., was a registered hazardous waste hauler from 1982 to 1991. Likewise, several Air Force bases in California once were registered to haul hazardous waste but the registrations have expired, the latest being the one for Beale Air Force Base. Its registration expired Jan. 31. When asked about its waste hauling practices from Lockheed's Advanced Development Co. in Palmdale, Calif., the so-called Skunk Works division that developed Stealth aircraft, company spokesman Jim Ragsdale issued a statement that he said "is all my management is willing to say on this topic." "Lockheed on occasions in the past has had requirements for removal of materials from our factory that our customer, the US Air Force, deemed to be classified materials. In those instances, Lockheed followed instructions from its customer as to how the materials were to be transported away from the factory location," the statement says. "When the materials were trucked away, the destination of the trucks and the eventual disposition of the classified materials were determined by the Air Force," Ragsdale's statement says. Air Force officials in Las Vegas and at the Pentagon did not respond last week to questions about Lockheed's statement. But in a telephone interview Thursday, Rep. Jim Bilbray, D-Nev., a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, said he has asked the Air Force to give him a "full, detailed briefing on any burning activities in its Nellis Range Complex, which maps show include the Groom Lake base. "They may not be willing to come forward and admit to violations that they don't think took place," Bilbray said, noting that while he can't acknowledge the base's existence he said he has "deep reaching ability to peer in." "What was done out there a few years ago, the institutional memory might not be there. Records might not exist," he said. Regardless of the secret nature of the Groom Lake base, Bilbray said if any environmental crimes took place, the people who suffered from them should be compensated. Bilbray confirmed that he has heard of the words, Score Event, in connection with the Nellis Air Force Range complex, but "I shouldn't get into it," he said. "When you cannot acknowledge that a facility exists, it makes it very difficult to talk about what goes on there," he said. What did go on at the Groom Lake base from 1980 through 1990 didn't come cheap, said the source who worked there during those years. The source said he saw charts that listed the base's budget at between $93 million and $115 million per month. That figure fits with the $1 billion to $1.5 billion annual budget that private military analysts have estimated based on projects at the base and daily flights to shuttle workers there. "I was staggered by the numbers," the source said. High-powered, telemetry satellite dishes at the base's north end serve a dual role for communicating and fogging film of any would- be photographers who were detected on nearby ridges, he said. A Scoot-N-Hide shed on one runway was used to keep secret advanced aircraft out of sight while foreign satellites orbited in view of the base. While the F-117A Stealth fighter jets and a prototype B-2 bomber were housed at one end of the base, the government's Red Hat teams--the foreign Technology Assessment Group from Edwards Air Force Base in California--kept its collection of advances Soviet MiG jets in hangers at the other end, the source said. In the time he worked there, the source said base personnel were involved in seven plane crashes that involved three F-117s, one A- 7 Navy chase plane and three Soviet MiGs, including one that landed in a woman's back yard in Rachel. At least five unmanned F-86s were shot down for any Army battlefield air defense system project. The crashes and missile exercises sometimes caused range fires that could have been avoided, he said. Sidebar: EXTRAVAGANT LIVING ON A SECRET BASE Just because the 2,000 or so civilian and military personnel working at Groom Lake were fighting the Cold War didn't mean they couldn't enjoy a cold one. A favorite watering hole was Building 170, the hanger-size centerpiece of the base's recreational complex. It is listed in one base directory as Sam's Place, a bar named after a Central Intelligence Agency official who once ran the base, said a source involved in base operations during the 1980s. Sam's Place was a dark, fully carpeted nightclub with large padded chairs and a bar ringed with stools that rivaled the largest ones in Las Vegas, the source said. The bar and many of the facilities probably still exist, he said. The club had four pool tables, dart boards and a big screen where pornographic movies were shown "until a few ladies on the base complained," he said. The recreational complex was complete with an eight-lane bowling alley, a heated indoor pool, four racquetball courts, a basketball gymnasium with a wooden floor, tennis courts, saunas and a snack bar. At one time, a golf course and lighted softball field existed. Supplies for the base were flown in from Hill Air Force Base in Utah aboard C-130s. "Sometimes people would chip in and buy big ice boxes of shrimp that were flown in specially to the base from Florida in 20 to 30 big Styrofoam coolers," he said. The planes stopped at the base only long enough to offload the shrimp, he said. Some colonels, he said, "had very extravagant tastes," including one who had grapefruit flown in from Israel at $25 a piece and requested deliveries of canned tuna from South America that he estimates cost the government $26 per can. In the dining hall, prime rib was offered every Wednesday afternoon and New York steaks were often on the lunch menu. "They used to serve frog legs, king crab and filet mignon at no charge," he said. "They drank bottled water to the tune of $50,000 a month," he said, comparing the lifestyles of some base inhabitants to high rollers in Las Vegas at the government's expense." #####