Beverly Gattis Interview, Part 2 of 2

  • TextoTRANSCRIPT INTERVIEWEE: Beverly Gattis (BG) INTERVIEWERS: David Todd (DT) and David Weisman (DW) DATE: October 4, 2002 LOCATION: Amarillo, Texas TRANSCRIBERS: Chris Flores and Robin Johnson REELS: 2216
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  • DT and BV: Chatter
  • DT: Beverly, we were talking earlier on the previous tape about this struggle to dissuade DOE from siting the high-level nuclear waste disposal site here in the panhandle, and I was wondering if you could explain what they meant by high-level and how that's different from low-level and how much confidence you have in those kinds of terms?
  • BG: Im happy to try, but I can tell you I've forgotten a lot and so I cant do it as technically as Id like to. But the definitions they use to distinguish one type of nuclear waste from another are really arbitrary in terms of they, I think, are established by how the waste was generated. So it isn't an accurate reflection of how radioactive it is, how dangerous it is in terms of you can't get within certain number of feet of this or you will have received too much exposure, or it has a certain half-life, so you have to sequester it for longer versus things that have quite a short half-life.
  • That isn't how it was done, it's how you'd think it was done, but it isnt. It has more to do with how it was generated. And high level nuclear waste is generally the fuel rods, of course, and then, I think, some of the containment building portions of that will also be.
  • But, I'm sorry, I don't remember as clearly as I should. For us, it was really, we just thought of it in terms as the fuel rods from a reactor that had been irradiated and so they were they were both physically hot, hot temperature wise, and hot with radioactivity, radiation emissions. When you talk about low-level nuclear waste, it is they like to describe it as gloves and booties and health waste and things like that.
  • And it can be a wide array of things. It can be some of it that should be categorized, in terms of radioactivity, it should be in the high-level category. It is extremely broad and so those definitions lend themselves to making really bad mistakes, and it would be a fine thing if this country would go back and define these things according to their hazard, not by how they were generated.
  • And that we separate them out and you would find that you have a body of waste that might, indeed, be safe for land disposal, say, in a decade or so, as opposed to it being blended in with this volume of other things that you have to sequester forever, if you can. And you would find your problems, I think, more manageable. But the industry isntisn't done that way and so we are struggling with that.
  • And it makes it hard for citizens to understand, also, and they are lulled by the term, it's only low level waste so its no worse than, you know, gloves and booties, and so they won't feel as at risk if they come knocking at the door of your county and say they'd like to have a low-level waste dump in your county. Not they would ever call it a dump either. I'm sure it would be a repository because this was certainly going to be a high-level nuclear waste repository.
  • But STAND is quite intentionally named Serious Texans Against Nuclear Dumping and they always hated that name, but thatsthe people who named STAND intentionally called it dumping. Trying not to fall into using their lingo, their sort of PR version of terminology or their confusing version of terminology. And there were different times when that has different ramifications, but for instance in thewhen you get into defense stuff, what used to be called tube alloy during the old Manhattan Project is highly enriched uranium.
  • But a worker who was harmed at Pantex, for instance, was told he was exposed to tube alloy, and he didn't know what that was and he couldn't find out what that was for a while. And it was quite intentional, so language gets used very carefully by these people. They measure every word and they tell you nothing they don't have to tell you, so.
  • I was going to...I've lost the train of thought, but I was going to tell you one anecdote that I just have to tell you, my first outing as an activist. Oh, no, go ahead if you have something else you'd rather...
  • DT: No, go.
  • BG: There was a kind of a Chamber of Commerce business fair and so I decided, well, STAND will have a booth at this business fair and we'll see what kind of response we get. I was very ill at ease with it, but one of the things they kept telling us was you have to sequester it for 10,000 years. That is, by the way, an arbitrary figure of how long you have to keep high-level nuclear waste sequestered.
  • It doesn't mean it's not dangerous after 10,000 years, I think it was the National Academy of Sciences said, realistically, 10,000 years is the most you can even pretend you could predict being able to sequester this material. And after that, it's just absurd to even pretend you could try. So the 10,000 year figure for sequestering high-level nuclear waste from the public being exposed to it in some way, is completely arbitrary because some of the wastes that are being buried have half-lives of far more than that.
  • DT: So it has to do with the limits of our ability to foresee, or the limits of our technology, not the limits of the hazard.
  • BG: Yeah, yeah. So once again, people get confused with that. But they always used to toss out this 10,000-year figure. So I thought, you know, weve lost our sense ofof time so I decided a time line would be helpful. So II concocted this timeline that was six feet of poster board behind the table, the banquet table.
  • Showed things like when man invented the wheel and that sort of thing, that was kind of what we were at at 10,000 years and the half life of nuclearsome of these nuclear mamaterials were like 100,000 years, so I used adding machine paper and you started at 10,000 years ago today, sort of did it as it if it was a refrigerator ad or something, and showed different things that happened, which was fascinating in its own right.
  • Then you're at the present. And then you run out 100,000 years of adding machine tape and it just went off the table and on the floor in a big wad and all that kind of thing. And its justi an absurd amount of time to even try to think about. But 10,000 years ago today, we were still in caves, and its not easy to predict where youll be and how to handle things.
  • But, at this event, a young man came in with a very thick, and this will sound absurd for me to say because I have an accent myself, a very thick Southern accent. And he said, "I thought he said, I would like to do anything that has to do with rioting." And I thought, rioting, well, and being a child of the sixties that I am, I knew, I knew that was an option. But I said, "Well, you know, thank you so much for that offer, thats probably not the first thing were going to try."
  • And, of course, what he was saying was writing, as in writing articles or things like that. And he looked with me, he was just completely puzzled with my response. That's probably not the first thing were going to try. And it wasnt until about five minutes after he'd walked away that I realized what he actually said to me. And I probably lost our first volunteer because I thought hed said rioting.
  • Anyway, maybe you had to be there, I dont know, but I just, theres an innumerable number of foolish things you'll do as you fight this fight, I guess. And itsnone of its fatal and it can be kind of funny to think back about, so anyway.
  • DT: Well, it does bring to mind sort of the options that you had in front of you, the tools that you had to show how much displeasure you had with the high level waste proposal. Did y'all make a conscious decision not do any sort of civil disobedience? It seems like y'all were careful to be very measured in your responses.
  • BG: We were, and it was a reflection of this place. That, this I mentioned before, this is not a liberal area and its not an area that respects that kind of civil disobedience, really. And it wasnt the best tool to use to persuade people to join, it would've made it too alienating and too risky, I think. So that just isnt the path that we chose.
  • And I think, I still think that was the right decision, so. But it's, I have a lot of regard for people who are willing to do civil disobedience, spend the night in jail, or do whatever it takes, or those things have power, sometimes, for the individual. It is not, perhaps, the best tool to move your community, but it has power that maintains and supports the individual doing the work, and so there are different reasons for doing those things.
  • And I don't, I wouldn't tell people not to do them, I would simply say, here it wouldnt be the most effective way to get people to join your cause. But if it helps you keep heart and soul together, then maybe its the right thing for you to do. And, we're not big on telling people what they must or must not do, we are very, we try to be very clear about what STAND is likely to stand for and be willing to do. And that, that wasnt our bailiwick, so.
  • DT: Well, this might be a good time to move to something else that STAND did stand for. It got very involved, as I understand it, in doing some of the oversight of the Pantex complex out near Panhandle, northeast of Amarillo, where, as I understand it, they assembled the nuclear weapons and now are disassembling some as well.
  • BG: Your saying it that way is a perfect example of what they want people to think. That we now have treaties and were doing dismantlement and disarmament. That plant is still the final assembly, disassembly, maintenance, repair point for all U.S. nuclear weapons. And their work is probably 50% assembly, maintenance, all that kind of stuff. They are not, by any stretch, merely a benign dismantlement site. But it is the site that does the dismantlements when they happen, so.
  • Yes, we did, and that was a big step for STAND. Just as an example of how they can get you to sign up for one thing and then the discussion or the project will shift, they always said it was civilian high-level nuclear waste that would go in a waste repository here. Before they shifted it to that political decision and made Nevada the targeted site, it had been redefined that it would also be defense high-level nuclear waste.
  • Not just civilian, which would put you in a different regulatory structure and that kind of thing. And that was one of the things you could almost be guaranteed of. You might say, okay, if this is the deal, I can buy into that. But you always could never take your eye off the ball because it would always be redefined at the convenience or the pragmatism of the needs of the government or whatever the department saw it needed to do.
  • And so, you never could, you can never trust that what you sign up for is what you will finally be saddled with. So that's just a fair warning for everyone. It's the nature of how this was done. But STAND had always been, we were composed, and it was one of our strengths, of both liberal and conservative people because we did not deal with defense nuclear weapons issues. We just didn't touch it.
  • We had enough on our plate trying to deal with this other end to keep all the people in the boat, learning and caring, we simply said, we dont, we're not talking about defense materials. In 1990, when it turned out that the city of Amarillo had joined up and partnered with Pantex to proposed becoming the new plutonium manufacturing site, which means they get plutonium from a Hanford or Savannah River, or whatever, bring it in and shape it and form it and machine it into weapons parts. That's what they mean by manufacturing as opposed to production of a site like Hanford produced plutonium and reactors.
  • A site like Rocky Flats machined that plutonium into parts for a weapon. So you had filings and emissions and potential exposures and waste streams and stuff that wed never had here. Because Pantex was, in terms of manufacturing, it manufactured high explosive components, so it would receive high explosives from the produproducer.
  • DT: They were conventional.
  • BG: Yes, and shape them into thethe lenseslenses and all the sorts of things that were needed for a weapon. So that was the manufacturing that we did, wethat that plant did. And then, assembly, disassembly, all that kind of stuff was the other piece that Pantex did. Therefore, we were lucky, and we had a lot less radioactive waste streams coming out of that plant that the manufacturing or production sites had.
  • And that's why, I think, the communities around the manufacturing or the production sites were more easily galvanized to rise up about the problems that these sites were causing than we were around Pantex, because Pantex has had a subtler impact and didn't have those same kinds of problems. And the DOE, very legitimately, was able to say this is a clean site compared to the others.
  • What people just needed to know was, doesn't mean Pantex is clean, it just means the others were so horrific and that we had different quantities and qualities of waste streams that had been released into the environment and our groundwater was deep enough that it hadn't impacted it in the same way. That was the only real difference. But we just had less volume. We were not a high volume production site and it's what saved us in some ways. So STAND, we went, we gathered up and just said, this is coming.
  • I was able to come back from a meeting that I attended, actually on nuclear waste, again. Oddly enough, Id been asked to go to Washington, D.C. by some groups in New Mexico, and to also keep an ear on things because Don Hancock in New Mexico was saying STAND probably needs to tune into this conversation.
  • There are some things starting to crank up, and it would be good if they saw that someone from your area was there and still tuned in and it wouldnt be just a cakewalk, that if they were to site it there, it would just slide through easily. They are looking for the point of least resistance.
  • So I went, and it was when we were thwhen I was there in Washington, D.C. that they announced this revamping of the nuclear weapons context and that complex, and that Pantex was one of the sites proposed to become the new plutonium manufacturing site when they would close down the Rocky Flats site near Denver.
  • DT: And it closed down because...?
  • BG: Of its tremendous environmental trouble that it had caused. Because the facilities were not sufficient to the winds that they endure there, thethe complex had been allowed to deteriorate. The department and the military wanted new, upgraded facilities. They kind of wanted to remodel and redo.
  • And the people around there had closed down because of citizen pressure, they had found out so much of what had been released, what the emissions were, what the risks were, how decrepit some of the buildings were and the population rose up and started fighting the fight. So there was a lot of political pressure brought to bear to move that site, it was too close to a major metropolitan area. That plant is about sixteen miles from Denver.
  • Pantex is about twelve miles, or fourteen miles, I cant even remember for sure, from Amarillo. But we're a smaller city, and so itwe needed to move it away from so many voters and put it, perhaps, near fewer voters. And fewer voters who tend to be a little bit more my country, right or wrong. An old slogan from the Vietnam days. They question less. So anyway, STAND had to decide how to, or if, even, to tackle this.
  • And my request to the members and the board was that we really need to, we have to decide how. How can we keep all of the both our liberal and conservative members of our group, how can we respond to our commitment to them that we arent going to be a disarmament group?
  • And so STAND simply established itself as we deal with environment, safety, health, and policy issues. But we will not enter into the discussion, we don'twon't have a position on whether or not the country should have nuclear weapons. We dont talk about that. What we do feel free to talk about, and this was wonderful, I thought, the conservative members of STAND who tended to be very fiscally conservative, lower your taxes, all that kind of thing.
  • We talked about whether or not the country needed so many nuclear weapons, and we used it as a chance to help teach people about how usable or unusable nuclear weapons actually are. So it was an education process and we didn't not talk about all those kinds of things and we made proposals that this country has far too big an arsenal and has far too big a nuclear weapons complex also. But we did it for fiscal reasons and for sheer, you dont bankrupt your country doing these things and just, lets look at these things realistically.
  • But we didn't ever say you didn't need any. And this is one of those times that I think anyone who goes into work like this, I was so uninformed about nuclear weapons things and I feel badly about that in some ways, but it has always made me a good barometer. I understand other people who know as little as I used to know because I know how that happens.
  • And I'm not a stupid person; I'm not an uneducated person. But it isI know the sense of it is so huge and so devastating and so intractacleintractable a problem that I simply just didn't ever really want to look at it. So I have watched my evolution of a person who honestly didn't know how devastating the current weapons are to how many we even had.
  • I had no idea that we had 20 or 25,000 at the hheight of the Cold War, that number of warheads. I didnt even know those figures and I didn't even appreciate how overwhelmingly, ridiculously huge that number was and how unnecessary that number was until I learned more.
  • DT: Can you give us an idea of scale? What is enough?
  • BG: I have changed from a person who didn't even know that 25,000 was too many to being willing to say that I really think if the United States had ten, it would be fine. And I honestly believe that is the case, because they are so unusable. And I...so Iyou know, I used to feel even more strongly about how unusable they were before we have the current president we have now, who is much more problematic about these things.
  • But truly, ten would do it. Ten would keep the peace. Ten thatthey're not all in one place and all that kind of stuff, would be plenty. And it'd be a vast improvement for the safety of this planet.
  • DT: If ten is enough, as a deterrent, why do we have a thousand times as many?
  • BG: Oh, I don't know. I think, you should never underestimate the level of paranoia. You should never underestimate thethe level of, when you are in a group of like-minded people, how you lose your sense of proportion. And I think there are a lot of people who operate in, in military or strategic circles or inside the beltway and all that kind of stuff, that all of this begins to seem realistic.
  • It's a little like hearing them talk about we've gone from having the one major Cold War enemy of the U.S.S.R., that we now have to be able to fight a war on five fronts. You know, that kind of military thinking. And people who've preyed on people's fears forever, I think it's a combination of people tootoo insulated and too insular in their own working area that they lose their perspective to otherother people who have such fear of we have to be able to defeat anything.
  • And thathen the general population who has so little knowledge that they don't know how to judge really, but they certainly don't want to put their country at risk, and so they tend to vote for defense spending, you know. Youitsit's so complex and there's so many things that we, as the public, dont know. You all must need to make these decisions and well back you on it and wellwell just have to trust that you know because we cant possibly know, were not sophisticated enough, we dont have the information.
  • All that kind of thing plays into it and so it just can get bigger and bigger. And the arms race, you know, Russia says it has this number of bombers, that kind of thing and, so it just it happened that way.
  • DT: Well, speaking of scale, can you, you described a little bit about the weapons industry as a whole and the role of Pantex in the industry. Can you say a little bit about the size of Pantex, how many people work there, just give people an idea of the scope of the place?
  • BG: I can, though it has changed and ImI'm afraid I will confuse the figures. Maybe even more to the point would be to say that the plant, when this conversation started was, I hope I've got this right, about between 2000 and 2500 people.
  • All of a sudden, the plant payroll gets a little bit bigger as theyyou talk about jobs and how important it is to the community and thethe boosters for the plant, pulled out the card of if we dont getif we dont become the new Rocky Flats, if we dont accept this dangerous new work, not that they would ever say it was dangerous, but if we dont accept this new work, then they'll close the plant.
  • And Amarillo will lose one of its largest employers and it will be a devastating blow. So that wasthat was the main dynamic here. Youyouyou should support your country patriotically, so we should be doing this because our country needs nuclear weapons. And youif we don't buy into this thing that people in Colorado and around Denver drummed out of its neighborhood, if we don't accept that, they'll close our plant.
  • And so they just were using that fear tactic of having this huge economic hit on our city as one of the ways they drove thatthat discussion and polarized people into saying they used the slogan, "Pantex Yes". Not a lot of detail, just say yes. My country right or wrong, that really is what it was like. They really questioned your patriotism if you questioned. And its an uncomfortable position to be in.
  • But one of the things that we would find, I generally wound up being the person who represented STAND is to remind people, it's an activist is always so at risk of being so cynical and so bitter that it's almost unbearable to stay inside your own skin and you begin not to be able to talk to people because you're too overwhelming to talk to. It seems too hopeless and tootoo black and so you just youyou dont even want to join that group, it justyou don't want your spirit to just go that dark route.
  • And I always tried to take the tack of talking about what our country should be. And we will do for our country what the country truly needs, but our government must ask for what it needs, no more, no less. And it was asking for more than it needed. It must be willing to invest in it and do it in a top-drawer way, a safe way so that were not destroyed doing the work if we take it on.
  • And it's got to tell us, it has got to give us the details, it cannot expect us, should not expect any citizen to sign on to an undefined program, to a blank check and just say, we trust you, go ahead and do it. It's our responsibility to learn and judge and back it if we believe in it and question it if we think it is insufficient. And that's how I would talk to people. It was like playing a role in your country, the very role your country needs you to play.
  • It eventually caused me to redefine my definition ofof patriotism that I've I finally decided that in this area we were a little too inclined to the heroic version of patriotism, the being willing to die for your country, that's patriotism. And I began to tell people that I think the patriotism your country needs the most is to be willing to think for your country and to do the work, day in and day out. And stay the course, and anything elseanything less, you betray your country, so. And people responded to that. They do.
  • Too often, I think, maybe, people hear too little of that kind of more sophisticated patriotism, I guess. And I'm not uncomfortable saying it that way. I'm more fleshed out. How do you maintain this thing you love, this country that is the only country in the world that I think I could truly be comfortable living in, from my limited amount of travel? How do you bring out its best, and not let it succumb to its worst?
  • And how do you play the role youre supposed to play? So, it was interesting, you know, in the early days of the nunuclear waste thing, there's a tri-state fair that happens here, and we would have a booth at the fair where we would offer information and things like that. And it was during those days that I learned howhow powerful fear is. And I know a lot about fear myself. I haveI am not a person who's at ease in public and I'm not a person who ever wanted to be in the public eye or wanted to make a speech.
  • I didn'tI was not even comfortable just trying to talk one on one very well. But you would be at this booth, and I remember so clearly one time one woman coming up to me and just saying, well, it's in God's hands. And I was sothat was such a debilitating thing for her to feel, and it was so dangerous for thefor the world and the country, I felt, that I rarely did this, but I just reached across the table and I took her hands and I lifted them up and I said, these are God's hands.
  • And she wasshe just sort of looked atand she said, you might be right. But she, you know, its just hard for people to believe that they are so important, each individual is so important. And its just so true; its the one thing that makes a difference. But getting them to believe that is a hard thing. So.
  • DT: Tell me something. Did the panhandle, I think Amarillo as well, has a very strong religious component to it, a lot of churches here. I wonder how this love of life and goodness coexist with a munitions factory and an industry that basically trades in...
  • BG: Mass death? DT: ...weapons of mass destruction.
  • BG: I can't answer that for you. I can only tell you that I was divorced enough from it before that I think people just can'tthey just dont look at it because it's so intractintractable moral question. I am harsher about it in my own mind now. I'm more judgemental, I think, of the people who work at the plant, forbecause so manyso often they areit's kind of a fundamentalist religion and it seems to takeitd be a little bit more Old Testament than New Testament, I guess is the only way I can describe it to you.
  • DT: The cruel God.
  • BG: Yeah, it seems to be an option. But I cannot figure out what they do with that pesky little commandment about thou shall not kill. I just cant quite settle that in my own mind. And I can tell you that, from my own church, the assistant pastor's wife works at Pantex and I, I mean, I cannot get this picture to focus.
  • So thatsIyou know, everybody has to walk through those things as individuals andand make up their own mind about what they're going to do. I only know that my own tolerance for that has mitigated. I used to not feel Iyou know, you would hear people say, these are not bad people and I would say, youre absolutely right, theyre not.
  • I still dont think theyre bad people, but I do think that they are wrong in this and not looking at it truly straight on or they couldn't be doing what theyre doing. But some people do believe, I guess, that you would defend this country and that would be the right thing to do, you know, so I, anyway.
  • DT: You say that the folks at Pantex, in some ways, are wrong and you've mentioned this sort of boondoggle aspect of it, this is just a industry that is creating much more product than we really need and the other argument that this is a morally, religiously wrong thing to be catering in death. Can you talk a little bit about sort of the health aspect to having radioactive materials? What are some of the arguments you've made there?
  • BG: Well, I think it will be hard to prove for this plant because they're not manufacturing the radioactive materials yet, if they never do. So the exposures are different, they're getting exposures from working with completed materials and I think the worst health insults happened in the plants where they were producing, machining, sorting, doing that kind of exposure. But I also think that the health records are not kept in a way that will really, honestly, reveal in an statistical way the damage and harm thats been caused to people.
  • Now, I will backtrack some part and say that when, under the Clinton Administration, the Department of Energy sent people here to hear from workers about health impacts. If you could've heard some of those stories, you would've been amazed.
  • And they are not statistatistically significant, it might not be but one or two or whatever additional cancers, and it might've been a child of the person who worked at the plant or something like that. But those people were pretty clearly convinced and compelling that it was a parent's exposure in the plant that caused it, or the exposure of the husband that caused it.
  • But these are going to be so hard to prove in a way that is irrefutable enough, scientifically, that you can make the charge stick. It can be muddied so well thatwell, yes, but he smoked also, and he drank, and this that and the other. And anyone who raises these issues on behalf of a family member will probably see its a little, I think, like being on trial forthe victim of rape. That your own character gets pretty well assassinated also.
  • They'll look at what your other lifestyle is that could've caused these problems you can't pin it just on the plant or just on the work. But are workers exposed out there? Yes, I'm convinced they are. Unnecessarily so. I remember, regarding nuclear waste transportation shipments going to the New Mexico WIPP [Waste Isolation Pilot Project] site, they had a hearing here in Amarillo. I want to say it was in 89 or so; this is before I knew much about Pantex at all.
  • And the Pantex people were there talking about how some oversightthey were testifying before this, it was nicknamed the O'Hearn committee. And they were talking about, we've learned a lot, we don't let our workers in the past, you know, two or three years, we don't ride in ourthe workers dont stand right next to the warheads anymore, any longer than they have to.
  • When their operation is through, we have them stand back now, so they get less exposure cause distance makes such a difference in certain kinds of exposures and things like that. And I remember sitting there thinking, it is 1989 and you guys have been doing this since the 50s, and only in the past few months you have made these changes? And I thought, you are not the plant that people think you are. And so thereI have no doubt workers were harmed, more so in the past than they are now, I hope. And are they still at risk? You bet they are.
  • DT: Do you think that there's an attitude sort of managing the risk rather than trying to eliminate the risk?
  • BG: Oh, absolutely. And for a good enough paycheck, you'll take those risks for your family. Even if you get uneasy, you'll stay there. But my experience has been, limited as it is, that the people who work at the plant really do feel, in general, I think, that it does a pretty good job and people are pretty safe and pretty protected.
  • And it's only when you are exposed in some way, used in a way that was not necessary and you got an exposure you shouldnt've had, somethingor you see safety things not being followed and you go to your supervisors and you can't get them to enforce the safety procedures as they're written and you watch people being cavalier with this stuff or throwing a wrench in a room where you're doing an operation on a weapon or something like that, that you can't get people to stop doing that.
  • It's only when those workers have to try and confront their system or they get abused by their system so that they raise these issues, then all of a sudden they find they have just run into a buzz saw and the plant is absolutely ruthless about undermining them, not giving them information, coming at them with, you know, thirteen lawyers. Itsit's a massive attack against you. So it...
  • DT: This is before they actually become a whistle blower, this is just when they bring their concerns to a superior?
  • BG: I would say, internally, in the plant, even raising issues in there. My understanding from a few folks who have talked to us is that is not a comfortable thing to do. They're trying to change the culture, as they say. But you will never know the truth of the inside of this plant. It is too secret. I really do believe that we...I was alwaysand got to be more and more uncomfortable with people thinking we knew more about this plant than we could possibly know.
  • It is too secret and it must be well managed from the inside and it needs an independent regulator that can go in there and make and have the authority to make changes and demands. And go into these top-secret areas and see things as they are. Citizens' groups can do some good but they cannot know for sure that these plants are run right.
  • And I would never want people to take anything I say as saying that that plant is safe. I can only say, I don't know. I will tell you that that plant is more trouble than I ever dreamed it was before I ever looked at it. There is evidence for that, so. Does that help at all?
  • DT: Well, maybe you can talk a little bit more about the, the people of conscience who also know, the whistle blowers, and what happens to them when they try and speak out? If you have any examples, that would be helpful.
  • BG: Well, there were two in particular, that really did go public with Pantex. One was a man who, both he and his brother had worked there for decades. And in, I think it was, perhaps 89, but I surely could have the year wrong, I'm sorry. In the eighties, though. That he was asked to do a machining operation, that the material kept smoldering and smoking, and he was breathing in this smoke cause he was trying to cut this part away fromfrom this off...I gather it was a warhead sort of situation.
  • And he asked, "Should I be wearing a respirator?" And the folks who'd called him in here to do this operation, who were standing across the room, said, "No, no, its fine. Go ahead, do that." And this is the man who his health, after he did that, within months, his health had just collapsed. And theyhe went to the doctor at the plant whothey were treating him for everything from epilepsy on. And the exposure he got, and they told him he was exposed to tube alloy.
  • He went over to Amarillo College, the junior college here, and went to science department there and talked to the woman who was, I don't know, the head of that and asked her what he had been exposed to, what tube alloy was and she said she couldn't help him. It turned out later that we learned that that woman was the wife of the assistant manager of the Pantex plant. The woman at the college.
  • And I will probably say that, I think she probably could've found out what tube alloy was, and have helped these people try to find out what he was exposed to. What it turned out he was exposed to was uranium smoke, so he inhaled it. And his health has just cratered completely.
  • He's still alive, but much impaired and various things going wrong and tumors showing up and all kinds of things. But he was crucified in his trial. Just absolutelyhisthe defense, his own defense could not refute their experts that came in and justhe gothe was justit was just a mess, just awful. And so...
  • DT: Why was he put on trial?
  • BG: Well, he sought compensation and needed to prove harm and couldn't do it sufficiently and...
  • DT: The burden was on him.
  • BG: Yeah. And they justI mean, they had all the experts you could want lined up. People who go around from plant to plant testifying, sort of the hired guns. Very plausible, all that kind of stuff. And here these people are sick, very few resources, all that kind of stuff. So his is a particularly sad story and, but you justit is ait's a brass knuckles fight, if you go into it. If you don't just sort of take the bullet and be a good soldier and keep quiet.
  • If you try to get compensation or something like that, you're in a brass knuckles fight. And they come at you with, you know, all kinds of lawyers and depositions and it's endless and exhausting then and it'syou can't prove very clearly. It's real hard to prove. So that was one example.
  • Another example is a man who saw safety violations happening in the plant and he was part of a team of people who would work on warheads. Assembly, disassembly, whatever. And he just felt that the supervisors and management were more focused on production or not putting up with all of these irritating safety steps that were so aggravating, all spelled out, all that kind of stuff. And he finally went public.
  • He had the help of the Government Accountability Project to fight his fight, and I think it made a huge difference in terms of those people have the expertise and the knowledge of how tothey canthey sort of have brass knuckles of their own. They help whistle blowers fight these kinds of fights and they know more what theyre getting into. They know how to get the information; they know how to read the information.
  • They don't have so much toof a learning curve, and I'm so sorry to have to say that I cant remember how Mark's case turned out. I mean, he got away from the plant. I believe, IImI shouldI'm not even going to say. I can't even believe I've forgotten the upshot. But he knew when he did that that he probably couldn't continue to work at the plant, even though management says, "Don't take any retribution on these people."
  • Your fellow workers, or people like that. You find, you know, things in your locker. You're harassed if you meet somebody alone in the hall and there's no witness. Just the attitude of people who won't talk to you, sit near you, don't want to work with you, all that kind of stuff. But it was it was so telling. It doesn't prove anything.
  • But there, a part of the materials that were sought by his lawyers in discovery, they weren't able to produce even though Mark knew they existed and he had told them they existed, he'd seen these documents, all that kind of stuff. But, golly, they were stored at Pantex, they were stored next to the incinerator and someone accidentally threw them in. Doesn't prove anything. They say it was an accident, you can't prove it wasn't, but I mean, I'm sorry, but, please. You know. But anyway, so.
  • DT: Tell me something.
  • [Misc.]
  • DT: I was thinking about these whistle blowers, and especially the ones that have health problems. Did they get any help from the local medical community?
  • BG: No. No not really.
  • DT: Why is that?
  • BG: It's hard to prove. There are not good records. It could probably destroy your practice, in some ways. There's a lot of pressure to be brought to bear. One of the things early on inin this debate about whether or not Pantex should take on plutonium work, for instance. Was one of those Pantex, yes, those booster things about support Pantex, went out in the pay envelopes of all the hospitals. One of the booster little support things.
  • You shouldn't underestimate how small the percentage of people who were willing to speak out in opposition to Pantex being expanded because it felt too much like speaking out against Pantex. And physicians justthere's the company doctor that they went to. And, I'm sorry, I reallyI don't even feel like I should answer this, I just think some of the physicians who might've said these things. One came to a meeting one time and talked about, this is a neurosurgeon's dreamland here, there are so many brain tumors in this area.
  • But he left, went somewhere else, so. II can't answer that well. All I can tell you is there was never a medical community that sort of stood up and said, we have seen too much of this. We might have a physician or two talk about it privately, but they didn't ever stand up and really do the work of speaking out and giving some credibility to these people.
  • And as for their healthcare, the plant sometimes sends them to Albuquerque for this, or to Dallas for that, or other places, also. So, you know, I don't know what I should know about it. It's a there's aI think there's people who know better than I do about these things.
  • DT: You've also talked about how there's this culture of confidentiality and secrecy and security. Can you explain where that comes from? Is it part because its a weapons facility, or is a loyalty to the company, or is it because it's a government project? What is it?
  • BG: Oh, I think it has that but I think the real underpinning is thethat isisthis is one place where all the components of nuclear weapons are in one place and you can know as much as you need to know about a nuclear weapon if you need to, you know, find out about it. So it isit is, truly, one of the most secret of all of the plants.
  • The others have been secret foralso, but this is, I mean and they like toyou know, it is kind of an elite group that get to be in this fraternity of people who are in the know of this powerful secret thing. But it is for theynational security reasons, I think, is really what they pull out as the important card. But they use it far, far beyond what what they should use it for. They won't give you environmental waste stream information sometimes that you ought to have, because it might tell you too much about what a bomb is composed of.
  • And part of that is truly bogus, I did not realize this before I got into this, but it's not really all that secret how to build a nuclear weapon. That kind of information and smart scientists, even smart students, have figured that out. What is being kept secret more has to do with safety mechanisms, how to build a weapon and not blow yourself up doing it, that kind of thing.
  • So people tend to think that we have to keep this quiet, and the citizens tend to buy into the fact that this plant needs to have these levels of secrecy because we wouldn't want people to find out how to make a bomb and what's in a bomb. But I'veI now really firmly believe that information is already, for a good scientist, is already out there so well that thats not the secret you have to maintain and therefore citizens and communities where these plants are should have access to the environmental information they need to understand what's going on and how to straighten things out.
  • But itsit's the national security trump card and it's getting worse, not better, during the times that are in now with President Bush and since September 11th. So. One of the things that STAND did concretely, for instance, I had no ideathegreatwhen you meet some of the landowners that live near the plant, there's aa woman and her husband, Doris and Phillip Smith, who have been so crucial and it is, I think, a perfect snapshot.
  • I'll try and tell you two things. A perfect snapshot of the temper of this community. Even with my business background, I'm not your standard sort of wild-eyed, liberal persona, but the first time I ever met Doris Smith was at an Amarillo city government meeting that I'd gone to sort of say, gentlemen, we really think you are not wise to think about making Pantex the new plutonium manufacturer.
  • And a man named Les Breeding, who helped start the Peace Farm, goes to the same church as Doris and Phillip Smith and he introduced me to Doris. And Doris was soshes a wonderful woman, sophisticated and elegant and all that kind of stuff, and smart as a whip. But she met me and shook my hand in a very cursory sort of way, turned on her heel, and walked up to the city commissioners and said, "I'm not with those people."
  • Because it was the Peace Farm and then STAND, and we were regarded as such a radical group even though we had this broad spectrum of people who were members and stuff like that. Since then, she and I have become excellent friends and good working partners and I have nothing but respect for her, but that is a perfect snapshot of how people feel about the folks who do this kind of activist work. You dontI mean, calling someone an activist is an insult, so.
  • Thatsthat's one piece of the story and I've forgotten the other piece and maybe itll come back to me. But anyway, that's a snapshot of what it's like here so you shouldn't underestimate the pressure that people feel and how easy it is to succumb to their unease or their fear. That there'll be repercussions for their job.
  • There's one woman here who feels that she's an environmental lawyer but herwhen we invited her to be on the board of directors of STAND, when she checked with her law firm, they said, "We'd rather you didn't. You can be a member, but we dont want you to serve on the board." And she didn't, so there's a lot going on that way.
  • DT: Maybe you can help us see the whole picture and especially, how it resolved. Has there been a final decision on how these plutonium processing facilities are going to be sited or are they coming to Pantex or not?
  • BG: Not what they were talking about originally. What actually has happened is that thebecause of treaties, we shouldn't really be needing to manufacture new plutonium pits. That's essentially what Rocky Flats, that's what we were going to receive, it was called pit manufacturing. And I will just say, as much as we can know, a plutonium pit is like a hollow sphere of this heavy metal that is the internal core of a nuclear weapon and thatthat sphere of plutonium is what is compressed by the explosives and then creates the chain reaction and creates the nuclear explosion.
  • But we have so many weapons that we shouldn't need anymore. So they're not actually manufacturing plutonium pits anywhere. They talked about if we start doing that, that it will go to the Savannah River site is really the site that's been targeted for more of the plutonium work. But I would not say any of that is written in concrete and there's a new discussion that's been launched about establishing new pit production facilities somewhere and Pantex is on that new list as is Los Alamos National Labs, that sort of thing.
  • These decisions are kind of rubber. Depends on what sort of need crops up, they'll be revisited. You can never feel like you've won the fight. Not really, you just have to always keep your eye on it, so. And not enough about how to encourage people to be activists.
  • DT: Well, why don't you discuss that a little bit? It's clear that getting involved in these radioactive waste disposal issues or into the plutonium processing issues is just a daunting sort of effort, and I was wondering what sort of impact its had on you and how youve responded personally, and how you might make the case that others should join in or try other kinds of efforts that are more productive.
  • BG: Well, it is daunting and I, maybe it's a good thing that the previous parts of this tape will sort of paint that picture somewhat. And yet, I'm not sorry that I did it. It took a real heavy toll on me because I don't think I kept my balance well in the middle of so many things that needed to be done, so many issues that needed to be addressed and so much harm that's been caused.
  • And you can tend to get lost in that. But I also know that people tend not to come into this business because it is soso daunting, or citizens dont even want to join the organization because they feel daunted by it or itsit's hopeless. And I amI am sorry for people to feel that way because for all that it has been itit will always be, I think, kind of unresolved, youreyou're never quite sure that youve won because it can change on you.
  • You don't itsit's been interesting to talk to people and remind them, you don't play only the sports that you know you'll always win. You take some risks and you don't have to win the decision that you're going after to have made a difference. Youyou do otheryou've made a difference, in spite of the fact someone could look at it and say, its fruitless, what do you thinkwe heard this so oftenwhat on earth do you think you can do?
  • It's the federal government youre fighting, you can't possibly win. But you don't fight only the fights you can win. You fight sometimes the fights that need fighting. And you make a difference in terms of reminding people that we can do better and that you do make a difference, the decisions will be better, that plant runs better, I have no doubt whatsoever, because we raised issues that we did.
  • For one thing, commercial airlines don't still fly over that facility. And that's one of the things that we tackled. When the city fathers and the powers that be, the boosters, were saying, don't raise that, they'll close our airport. Or they just made it soundI mean, you can't, you should not fly over a nuclear weapons plant, you just shouldn't do it, that's kind of a no-brainer. And we just kept talking about that until we got it changed.
  • DT: This was prior to 9/11?
  • BG: Yes. So, this plant is still, I would argue, an indefensible plant. It should close just because of the very issues that 9/11 raises. I don't know that they'll do that, but it shouldI don't see that you can defend this plant from all kinds of attack. Not just an airliner sort of thing. But anyway, so.
  • I'm trying to think, though, how tohow to convey to people that it is work worth doing and you know that youyou know you're not going to win everything, but at least you did put up a fight. You didn't just lay themlay there and let them roll over you. And itsyou can keep your balance and feel like you've done a good thing and you've helped support people.
  • And it is so supportive to have people spend even an hour a month, to send in their membership check, to learn some, to be at a meeting, to take the risk of feeling foolish and by testifying, even though you feel like you dont know quite what to say, helping get out newsletters. It all makes a difference and it empowers the people that you ask to be out in front for you. But finally, at the end of the day, it is, perhaps, for your own sake that you should do some activist work.
  • TheyI think, my sister was telling me one time that she read a study that they had done, that children whose parents were active in causes felt much less disempowered and much less fearful of the future than children of people who didn't do that kind of work. And I thought that was such an interesting finding. I am, you know, I'm a lot less fearful now, having gone through the ringer, than I was before. And I can't tell you that we won great things, but we did good work.
  • And I can, at least, look at myself in the mirror and know that I did what I could. And that I helped other people do it, too. And I learned enough to be useful in the future, also. Maybe one of the mistakes that we make, STAND purposefully, we have a hard time keeping anan environmental organization running in this area because it's not that popular a thing. So twice the Sierra Club has started a chapter here, some of us start it, and it doesnt keep going.
  • Theand so we have so few of us willing to do environmental work that we really kind of need to husband our resources. But one thing we purposely did with STAND was to try and take the heat off of a group like the Sierra Club group or whatever, so they didn't have to tackle such a controversial topic and put themselves at risk. I don't know if that was the right decision or not, but I do know that one effect it had on us, the subject and the work is so overwhelming just in this one area that it's more than you can possibly do.
  • But I still think we need to find places where we say, you know, we can't do all those things, we're going to have to let some of these things fall off the table, and STAND is also going to do some more, instead of fighting against this bad thing, were going to find some places where we fight for things. A little more clearly, so people see it that way differently. I think we needed to find more positive aspect to our project.
  • DT: Speaking of positive things, we usually close these interviews with some sort of discussion about a place that you find some serenity, peace, restoration; usually in the outdoors. Some place that you might be able to tell us about that you like to visit?
  • BG: Yeah. Well, for my husband and I, we always wanted a piece of land and we've looked for years and taken a lot of nice hikes and that sort of thing. And, I almost feel like it was our reward for doing this work, that about four years ago, we found this piece of land that we know is the place we belong. And it's twelve miles southeast of Claude here, and so we are part-time there and part-time here in town now.
  • And that's where I go, and it is so reviving just toto be there, it just feels like home. The prairie area always felt like home to me. I'm one of those people who left this area to go, as I said, be a marine biologist and I was going someplace where there were trees and hills and I was only coming back to visit. Got down to Austin and I got claustrophobic, I couldn't see.
  • I had to ask them to move me to the twelfth floor of the dormitory so I could see the sunrises and the sunsets. So that you gradually learn if you're a prairie person or not. And I am, and so thisthis land that we have that is both canyon and prairie is where we go to get close to that. Under trees, but also in the grass and walk and be in the thing were trying to save, I guess.
  • DT: Thank you. BG: Youre welcome.
  • [End of Reel 2216] [End of Interview with Beverly Gattis]