Crony Capitalism at our Nuclear Facilities
What could be worse than our nation's hurricaine response being left in the hands of incompetent Bush cronies?
How about the safety of our nuclear plants handed over to an incompetent GOP corporate crony, a company which has repeatedly botched security drills and lied about it to cover up its incompetence.
This is Wackenhut, the foreign-owned security firm that guards many army bases and US nuclear facilities, a company that has:
- botched security drills at the Nevada nuclear test site
- cheated on security drills at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee
- illegally violated whistleblower laws by punishing employees who revealed safety problems at South Texas nuclear facilities
- and generally has been found to violate safety standards or failed tests repeatedly.
So why does Wackenhut keep getting these security contracts?
Because of the usual government revolving door, where ex-government officials leverage their connections to get contracts for substandard privatization. Just look at this list of ex-GOPers on Wackenhut's board:
Admiral David E. Jeremiah - Board Chair. Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Gulf War, president of one defense contractor and director of several others; paid consultant for Boeing regarding the Air Force's tanker acquisition.
John S. Foster - Director. After career in the Defense and Energy world, member of a range of advisory bodies, defense company boards, and neocon causes.
Troy Wade - Director. Assistant Secretary for defense programs at DOE during the Reagan Administration, former Deputy Manager of DOE's Nevada Operations Office, and a member of President Bush's Transition Advisory Team on Energy, where Ken Lay -former CEO of Enron - served as a co-member.
As Public Citizen has written, the Bush administration has resisted improving security at our nuclear facilities because it "has a fierce ideological aversion to regulation, and two, the administration is heavily indebted to the nuclear industry and electric utilities for generous campaign contributions."
In fact, as a National Academy of Sciences report detailed, the administration has been systematically withholding information on potential security lapses by companies like Wackenhut.
SEIU International union has been birddogging these problems at their Eye on Wackenhut site, revealing how corporate cronyism is undermining our nuclear safety programs.
September 30, 2005 8:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Part of the complaint-- highlighted by the National Academy of Sciences study -- is that the government is increasingly withholding information on problems at the facilities specifically to keep the watchdogs from evaluating these problems.
Typical Bush solution-- don't solve the problems, just cripple the accountability.
September 30, 2005 9:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Who can tell the difference between government and corporations anymore?
This piece is from 2002 -- does Wackenhut still works at Indian Point? The link above does not list Indian Point...
RFK Jr., in his Crimes Against Nature talks about simulated attacks on Indian Point, and they were able to easily breach security by simply riding up in a boat.
If it's not same geniuses, does that mean there more incompetent companies like that our there?
September 30, 2005 9:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
In the case of Indian Point, the federal government did nothing in particular, but the company that owned it, Entergy, actually did conduct an internal investigation (no doubt under pressure due to bad publicity) and fired Wackenhut.
September 30, 2005 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
nnewman - if the study comes from the genuine NAS (vs. modified by some White House non-science operative) it is very credible to me. The nuclear experts I dealth with are people I would really trust. Especially those w/ some gray hairs, they were amongst the brightest to get in when they did. They have endured through many years when nuclear was at best uncool and at worst an anathema. Again my knowledge is in the government nuclear world not the private nuclear facilities.
September 30, 2005 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why go nuclear? There are thousands of places owned by the chemical , oil & gas and other companies that could do significant (some places, in the millions) human damage. Once upon a time, the Senate Republicans in a committee were entertaining a bill that would require security standards for these facilities. Bush nipped it in the bud.
September 30, 2005 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your post reads a lot like an SEIU press release -- and bears about as much resemblance to the truth.
Wackenhut is controlled by a domestic board of directors and owned by Group 4 Falck, a widely known progressive company in Europe. SEIU itself has embraced internationalization of its unionizing efforts, so "foreign-owned" smacks of pot-and-kettle.
Wackenhut and its customers are required by law to report all incidents potentially affecting nuclear safety. Thus the SEIU is simply quoting NRC public documents in its many attacks.
SEIU's child organization "US Protects" has trespassed at Wackenhut client sites and even stockholder meetings. At Qwest their efforts were successful -- Qwest changed to a non-union discount security provider who immediately cut wages and benefits, causing many incumbent officers to lose their jobs. Way to go, SEIU! Great job protecting the worker!
YYY So why does Wackenhut keep getting these security contracts?
Because Wackenhut gets the job done. The US DoE and NRC are both satisified with Wackenhut's performance. The best the SEIU can suggest for improvements is to bring in the military instead -- great way to protect worker jobs, by making them low-paid civil service positions, right?
YYY As Public Citizen has written, the Bush administration has resisted improving security at our nuclear facilities because it "has a fierce ideological aversion to regulation, and two, the administration is heavily indebted to the nuclear industry and electric utilities for generous campaign contributions."
The nuclear industry is not willing to pay for good security. They buy the bare minimum they can get away with under the NRC rules. Then when things go wrong, they blame their contractor -- Wackenhut -- instead of spending the money to put more guards on post. Just like the airlines, who cut security to the bone and then blamed their security contractors for the results -- and look what happened on 9/11 as a result.
YYY SEIU International union has been birddogging these problems at their Eye on Wackenhut site, revealing how corporate cronyism is undermining our nuclear safety programs.
SEIU has decided that their future in unionizing the security industry lies over the dead, bloated body of Wackenhut. 38,000 jobs lie in the balance -- but SEIU is much more interested in union dues than in justice for workers.
If SEIU wants to help with nuclear safety, why not start picking on the nuclear energy companies directly? Call out by name the companies who have poor security -- it's not exactly a secret. Of course, this would require SEIU to actually learn something about the nuclear security business, which would require some SEIU people to actually work for a living.
September 30, 2005 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hmm, looks like a press release for Wackenhut....
Chuck Wynns
September 30, 2005 11:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Drewguy- Don't act like I was being subtle-- I was linking to Eye on Wackenhut and sourced that to SEIU.
Of course SEIU is targetting the nuclear industry as a whole for the problems; they've done a number of campaigns targetting such individual companies. But if Wackenhut is a key player across the industry, why aren't they a legitimate target for complaints of the cost-cutting that you ADMIT is chronic in the industry?
As for Wackenhut's parent company being "progressive", see this article where unions around the world are targetting Group 4 for its anti-union stance.
September 30, 2005 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed. Fortunately, insurance carriers sometimes impose security standards as a condition of insurance. Unfortunately, they really don't like publicity about the details.
September 30, 2005 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't speak for Wackenhut -- but as someone in the security industry myself, it's frustrating to see all of us get smeared as usual in the media.
Twenty-nine security officers died on September 11, 2001. They died saving the lives of others, running the evacuation despite many obstacles. Their sacrifice was taken for granted by everyone.
Security officer Richard Jewell saved a number of lives at the Olympic bombing in Atlanta. His reward was to be arrested by the FBI and accused of being the bomber. It took him months to prove his innocence, in which he lost his job and had to give up his career ambition of becoming a police officer.
SEIU's "attack on Wackenhut" campaign makes all of us look bad. Show me a profession without errors, and I will show you a liar. Doctors make errors that kill people, but no one calls doctors "keystone kops."
Maybe security officers should have their own unions -- but to lump us in with "service workers" leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
September 30, 2005 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now this is just faux populism with a dishonest message. SEIU is not smearing individual security officers-- they are attacking their bosses who cut corners on training and pay, punish whistleblowers -- yes heroic security guards trying to protect the public -- and generally screw both the public and their employees to increase profits.
If you have actual facts to rebut what SEIU documents about Wackenhut, I'd welcome it, but playing the "dead 911 security guard" card is just disingenuous and very Bush-like in changing the subject.
September 30, 2005 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I do not know who owns Wackenhut or what corporate umbrella it falls under. However being from Texas the name is very familiar because they run many of the Federal and State prison facilities in Texas. I'm sure there are many campaign ties to be found. After all Texas has a lot of prisons, federal and state.
September 30, 2005 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nathan,
Thank you for this most important post. It is a bit shocking to see how far Bush is willing to go to implement privatization to the point that it obviously endangers the safety of Americans who have put their trust in the Bush presidency.
I have felt for a long time that Bush has weakened our defenses against terrorist attack for many reasons. I have felt that terrorism is something that is fought via police action rather than military though of course there is a role for the military. Since terrorist attacks affect other nations it seemed logical that our various police forces would work with those of other nations, a coordinated effort where all agencies would work in tandem sharing information. Of course that is now rather difficult considering the war in Iraq and its unpopularity with most of the world. Then we look at the new missile defense system that was recently installed and I am sure you recall that the testing of that system was as rigged as the tests performed by Wackenhut at our nuclear facilities. The big question is why are we building missile defense systems (that do not really work) when the main threat comes from terrorist attack? I have also read articles about security at airports that spoke of malfunctioning detecting devices, operators of these devices who turn down the sensitivity due to numerous false alarms which adds up to ineffective security.
When the Bush administration took over the Whitehouse the exiting Clinton administration advised them that terrorism was going to be a central issue, and as many of us are aware Bush and his people ignored the warning.
Though as many argue one of the reasons Bush was elected was due to his strong stance on defense, if the truth be told, when it comes to defense Bush is just a paper tiger.
September 30, 2005 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink