WIHISTLEBLOWER ON LOS ALAMOS LABS ASSAULTED

There are mushrooming problems at the Los Alamos Nuclear Labs. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) was having a press conference today to denounce the assault this past weekend on Tommy Hook, a whistleblower on financial irregularities in the procurements division of the Labs, which are run by the University of California under a contract it's had with the federal government since 1943; the facility operates under the Department of Energy (DOE). Hook was scheduled to testify to the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the Los Alamos frauds later this month, A team of three staffers from the committee has been sent to Los Alamos, where whistleblower Hook is still in the hospital, and is set to arrive there tomorrow, along with a POGO investigator.

Hook and his fellow whistleblower Chuck Montano have already appeared on CBS Evening News to discuss their revelations (you can see a video of their CBS appearance by clicking here.) Here's POGO's account of the beating of whistleblower Hook:

"Mr. Hook had planned at the end of last week to meet an individual who claimed to have corroborating information about fraud at Los Alamos. That individual never attended the meeting. Late Saturday evening, someone who might have been posing as that individual called Mr. Hook and asked to meet with him at a bar in Santa Fe. He went to the bar and waited but that person never showed up. When Mr. Hook got into his car to leave, attackers pulled him out of the car and brutally assaulted him. The assailants threatened Mr. Hook to keep silent. A bouncer at the bar intervened and broke up the attack. Mr. Hook was hospitalized in an Emergency Room with severe trauma to his face and head, including a fractured jaw, and a herniated disk. He is heavily medicated today and unable to speak to the media."

Audit reports conducted by Hook and Montano in 2002-2004 found a disturbing pattern of financial irregularities in the Los Alamos Lab’s procurement division. In compliance with DOE requirements, Hook and Montano produced a report assessing the Lab’s contracting operations. Lab supervisors refused to allow the report to be submitted to DOE, instead submitting a report that glossed over the problems identified by the whistleblowers The duo filed a whistleblower retaliation suit against the University of California and supervisors at the Lab in March, 2005. (You can read the whistleblower's complaint by clicking here.)

This isn't the first time whistleblowers have revealed serious problems at Los Alamos Labs. As CBS reported two years ago, 18 top officials at Los Alamos were fired, demoted or transferred, including its director and deputy director, after two other whistleblowers revealed security problems at the nation's leading nuclear facility. And S.F. Weekly has a very good piece published June 1 this year, summarizing the latest problems at the nuke labs, in which include: "lab employees have been found guilty of embezzlement; more than 200 computers have been stolen or gone missing, in addition to numerous lost or misplaced disks and drives; the keys to a nuclear research center vanished for 16 hours; and, last summer, as staffers were searching for two more missing Zip disks, they were also investigating the transmission of classified information over unsecured e-mail."

With the Bush administration doing everything it can to make whistleblowing more difficult by failing to enforce protections for whistleblowers, it takes guts for guys like Hook and Monsanto to go public with fraud charges against Los Alamos labs and the University of California -- which now faces stiff competition from another University competing for the contract to run Los Alamos. And which University is that, you may well ask? Why, it's the University of ...Texas! Draw your own conclusions...