ML20128F335
| ML20128F335 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 06/07/1983 |
| From: | Miller R Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel |
| To: | Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20127A137 | List:
|
| References | |
| FOIA-84-415 NUDOCS 8505290620 | |
| Download: ML20128F335 (1) | |
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/ % UNITED STATES E S NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 5 ! Arouac SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD PANEL
% wasmmorow.o.c.zosss
...../ .
June 7, 1983 MEMORANDUM FOR: The File FROM: Ruthanne G. Miller
SUBJECT:
INTERVIEW WITH APPLEGATE'S LANDLADY On June 1, 1983, Judge Helen F. Hoyt conducted an interview by 6 telephone with Mrs. Larry V. Means r Mrs. Maanc lives in Covington, g4A 9
Kentucky. Her telephone number is l Judge Hoyt placed the call at 5:15 in the afternoon. 'Sebastian Alcot and myself listened on the line.
Judge Hoyt called Mrs. Means to check out Applegate's allegation that approximately in April 1981 the NRC diverted resources to investigate Applegate. At page 5 of the attachment to the Malsch Memo, Applegate is represented as stating "that his former employer, his landlady and members of his family told him that they had been interviewed about Applegate."
Judge Hoyt identified herself and asked Mrs. Means if she knew Thomas Applegate. She said that she did.
Judge Hoyt then asked her whether he was living there in April <
1981. Mrs. Means stated that he was and that he left in August 1981; that it's been 2 years since he had been away from there.
i Judge Hoyt asked whether anyone had ever interviewed her about Thomas Applegate. She said no, except that Tom Devine had asked her
- some questions. Nobody else questioned her.
l l Judge Hoyt then tenninated the interview.
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- In the matter of:
INITRVIDf T JNES B. E.AR1Hi Docket No.
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Location: Great Iakas, IL Pages: 1 - 163 i Date: 'niesday, June 7,1983 0
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i UNITED STATES OF AMERICA s.
2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMM+SSION 3
4 INTERVIEW 5 OF 6 .
JAMES 8. McCARTEN
, Special Agent
.7 Naval Investigative Service U. S. Naval Intelligence 8
9 Great Lakes Naval Station IB Building 3 Room 202 Great Lakes. Illinois 60088 11 Tuesday, June 7, 1983 12 33 The interview commenced at 10:10 a.m.
BEFORE:
15 THE HONORABLE HELEN F. HOYT 16 Administrative Law Judge Atomic Safety and License Board Panel 17 Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D. C.
18 -
g9 C. SEBASTIAN ALOOT, ESQ.
Office of the General Counsel 20 Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D. C.
. 21 22 23
. 24 25 4 . .
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TAYLQE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
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2 1 PROCEEDINGS 2 JUDGE HOYT: We have met here at the Great 3 Lakes Training Center Station in Chicago, Illinois with 4 Mr. McCarten.
5 I would like to on the record introduce myself 6 as Helen F. Hoyt, an Administrative Judge with the 7 Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and 8 Licensing Board Panel, and introduce my colleaguei 9 Sebastian Alcot from the General Counsel's Office of the le Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
gg Mr. Alcot and I were assigned by the Chairman 32 on May 6th, 1983, to undertake an investigation into the 13 al. legations that are detailed in the November 16, 1982, c .
i 'g memorandum to Chairman Palladino from Martin G. Malsch, 15 Deputy General Counsel. This memorandum is entitled 16 " Interview-With Thomas Applegate."
37 In accordance with our assignment, the focus 18 of our investigation will be whether or not the Director 19 of OIA and that Office made a good faith effort to carry 2g out their responsibilities in an OIL investigation of 21 Applegate's allegations investigated by Region III in the 22 early months of 1980.
23 If you wish, Mr. McCarten, you of course may i
24 have an attorney here. You have not expressed any desire
~
i 25 to have one. So therefore none is present here in the o
q TAYLOE ASSOCIATES
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g interview room, and the interview room should be
.2 designated as your office, I believe. -
, 3 MR. McCARTEN: Okay.
4 JUDGE HOYT: We ask that you not discuss this -
5 interview with anyone in this Commission's office or in 6 ,any other office, and the request is made of you to 7 ensure that what we discuss today will not, if it could, 8 influence any other persons we talk with about this OIA
- 9 investigation.
4 gg Do you have any questions of us, Mr. McCarten?
1 .
! 11 MR. McCARTEN: Noi I have no questions.
12 JUDGE HOYT: All right. When we have completed g3 the investigation, we will report our findings and
', g4 recommendations to the Chairman of the Commission and to 15 the Commission. .
16 MR. McCARTEN: Okay.
17 JUDGE HOYT: Mr. McCarten, would you please 18 identify yourself.
g9 MR. McCARTEN: I am Special Agent James 2g McCarten. I am with the Naval Investigative Service, 23 Resident Agency, Great Lakes, Illinois.
22 I was employed by the Nuclear Regulatory 23 Commission from September 1979 to March of 1982.
24 JUDGE HOYT: Your employment was terminated in 25 1982. Can you explain to me what the circumstances were?
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 m n .s se, ., nan
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MR..McCARTEN: At that time I resigned from my 2 position as an investigator with Region III, Office of 3 Inspection and-Enforcement in order to accept a position f 4 with Naval Intelligence, Naval Investigative Service at 5 Great Lakes.
6 JUDGE HOYT: Were you employed during the 7 early months of 1980 with the Nuclear Regulatory 8
Commission in Region III?
9 MR. McCARTEN: Yesi I was.
gg JUDGE HOYT: What was your position at that time?
1,1 22 MR. McCARTEN: At that time I was an 13 investigator assigned to the Region III st$f1.
g 3UDGE HOYT: Mr. McCarten, did you have an 15- opportunity to become acquainted with the allegations 16 made by Thomas Applegate?
17 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, I did. In January of 1981 I
, 18_
was assigned by Mr. Jerry Phillip to investigate four 39 allegations that were made by a former quality _ control
, 2g inspector at the Zimmer project.
gg 'After the Christmas holidays in January myself 22 and NRC Inspector Jerome Shapkar went to the Zimmer site 23 to investigate four allegations.
24 One of them dealt with the unjustified firing 2 of a QC inspector.
I' g TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1804
- - Washington, D.C. 20006
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5 Another allegation was that noncomformance 3
reports were being improperly voided.-
2 Another allegation was that bolt holes on 3
4 some structural steel were not being properly reamed. -
5 They were being welde,d rather than drilled, which was Mr.
6 .Shapkar 's - concern generally. It was an engineering 7 Problem.
8 There was also an allegation that design 9
drawings and d ocume n t s of the plant were not accurate.
gg Those were the four allegations that I
. initially started investigating.
43 These were made by an individual who requested 12 confidentiality. Can I disclose him for the purpose of
. 13 g4 this hearing?
15 JUDGE HOYT: Yes.
MR. McCARTEN: These allegations were made by, 9
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3 I was sent out to Zimmer to investigate these 21 22 allegations'.
l Prior to my beginning my investigation, Mr.
23
! 24 Jerry Phillip and Mr. James Foster informed me that they 25 had conducted numerous. previous investigations at Zimmer l
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l TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 1: Washington, D.C. 20006
6 1
and that this site, to use their expression, was a "real 3
2 turkey." ,They made statements to me like you will have a
, 3 lot of fun there and I am glad it is you and not me, 4 statements to this effect which led me to believe that 5
Zimmer was going to be a problem site.
f They had recently gone through a SALP process, 7 systematic appraisal of licensee performance, and in 8 December Mr. Keppler, the Regional Director, had 9 characterized Zimmer for a site under construction to gg have the most construction noncompliances of any other gg site in the region.
g2 So I thought this investigation at this point g3 was extremely important and I began pursuing the
( g4 allegations with Mr. Shapker.
15 Do you have any questions so far?
l 16 JUDGE HOYT: Did these in any-way relate to 17 allegations made by Thomas Applegate?
t 18 MR. McCARTEN: These allegations did not relate
! g9 to Mr. Applegate at all.
20 JUDGE HOYT: When did you first become 2g acquainted with Mr. Applegate?
l 22 MR. McCARTEN: Could I speak for ten minutes 23 and lead up to where Applegate tuned in?
24 JUDGE HOYT: Whatever way you want to answer 25 the-question, Mr. McCarten.
l TAYLOE ASSOCIATES l 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
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. 7 1 MR. McCARTEN: Myself and Inspector Jerry
,2 Shapker went to the site and Jerry Shapkar had spent 3 anywhere from two to four years as a welding inspector 4 for the Navy on nuclear reactors being built for thu .
3 NIMITZ. class aircraft carriers. He was an extremely 6 , knowledgeable welding inspector and an extremely 7 competent inspector.
8 He and I went to the site and we'took neutral 9 position on what the site was. We had heard so much good
. 1g and so much bad. We began pursuing these allegations, I gg think ht was the week -- could we stop and I can get a 12 calendar to give you the exact dates?
13 JUDGE HOYT: If it will help you, sure.
[f 34 NR. McCARTEN: It will be helpful to me to show 15 you the scenario.
16 JUDGE HOYT: We will go off the record a 17 moment.
18 (Short Pause.)
19 JUDGE HOYT: Back on the record now.
20 Go ahead, Mr. McCarten.
21 MR. McCARTEN: To the best of my recollection, 22 I visited the Zimmer site for the first time from the 23 week of January 12th to the 16th with Mr. Shapker.
24 JUDGE HOYT: And that is 19817 25 MR. McCARTEN: 1981. He and I investigated ik TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 23006
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n 3-g those four allegations and a number of significant things a
- , happened that week.
We found that the inspector who was threatened 3
4 with firing by a construction manager, that that was in fact probably true. Je.rry Shapker found that he was 5
properly inspecting a weld according to code and a gW,u.c, y g. l 6
g to have him fired. In fact, the employee was told he was 9
going to be fired and later that firing was rescinded.
10 gg But still the statements were made, and then after the utility realized, or Kaiser realized that they 32 did not have the grounds to fire him, that he was 13 Performing his duties according to code and he was in 14 fact right, they did not fire him. But still the threat 15 was made that he would be fired and people intervened and 16 17 he wasn't.
l gg MR. ALOOT: Were those threats documented?
39 MR. McCARTEN: These were all documented in the 2g investisative report, 81-13. It was ;
o JUDGE HOYT: Is that spelled d*N '
'g Lx. 7 lb)
MR. McCARTEN: The allegation that 22 nonconformance reports were being voided was found to be 23 substantiated and it was also found that during a 24 25 pravious routine inspection, Inspector Isa Yin had 1ound l
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 2004 Washington, D.C. 20006
l 9
that they were improperly voiding nonconformance reports.
3 JUDGE HOYT: Would you give us the spelling of 2
that, please.
i 3
4 MR. McCARTEN: Isa Yin.
MR. ALOOT: Now these inspectors are licensee 5 ,
MR. McCARTEN: No. Isa Yin is an NRC inspector.
7 He cited them for improperly voiding nonconformance 8
reports. At that time as corrective action they were 9
gg directed to stop voiding the nonconformance reports and gg they were directed to audit the nonconformance reporting 33 A Mr. E c) for the utility was interviewed about the nonconformance 14 reports.
15 ,
The bolt holes problem that Jerry Shapker 16 17 looked at was substantiated.
The design drawing problem, we didn't 18 _
substantiate it, but we received more allegations of more 39 20 instances of problems in the documentation.
21 JUDGE HOYT: What was the nature of those 22 allegations?
MR. McCARTEN: The nature of-those allegations 23 24 were that records were not being properly filed, that 25 records were being falsified, that Kaiser welding records s
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington,_D.C. 20006
a 10 g were being falsified.
2- JUDGE HOYT: By falsification, Mr. McCarten, do 3 you mean that the records had been changed to reflect 4 something that was different than the actual facts?
5_ MR. McCARTEN: Specifically allegations were 6 made that heat numbers showing the quality of the steel 7 - being used in the construction was being changed.
8 JUDGE HOYT: And the change resulted in what?
9 MR. McCARTEN: The change resulted in a lack of gg traceability for the steel because you would have two gg- heat numbers for the same piece of steel and you wouldn't
, g2 know if it was nuclear-or non-nuclear steel.
-13 (Brief pause while Mr. McCarten receives phone
, g4 call.)
15 MR. McCARTEN: What we found essentially was 16 that almost all the allegations were true. During the 37 course of our inquiry the inspectors we were interviewing
^
gg made more. allegations and gave us names of other 39 . inspectors who had left the site because-of harassment, 20 because of records being falsified, because of 2g construction problems, because of poor management of the 22 site. Just a myriad of alles;,icis were made, and I think l _23 we walked away with 9 0 m;. r e 3, !ations after a two-week 24 period.
'25 The first week was spent at the site. What was 4
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also interesting at this time was that the Resident 2
Inspector, Thomas Daniels, was at thessite and he was an 3 ex-Navy Nuc, but he was an operations inspector.
4 About Wednesday we went to lunch with him and 5
we talked about the case and we said, hey, we feel we 6
have got some real problems here. Tom Daniels' reaction 7
to that was that well, it is about time that somebody 8
from the investigation side realized that and had enough 9 guts to say so.
gg He felt that Phillip and Foster had come out 11 there and whitewashed the allegations and he had no 12 confidence in the investigations staff at Region III.
13 JUDGE HOYT: Now that is the investigation that 9 Phillip and'and Foster put together in the earlier part 15 of 19801 is that correct?
16 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
17 MR. ALOOT: Did Mr. Daniels convey his opinion 18 about the.Phillip and Foster investigation to anyone in 29 Regional Headquarters?
gg MR. McCARTEN: He never expressed that to 21 Regional Management. It was like field personnel to field
.22 personnel, that type of a conv'ersation.
23 MR. ALOOT: I sea._._. _.
24 MR. McCARTEN: And he didn't say it in the 25 context of Applegate being right or in the context of k
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
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12 Applegate. He -talked about all the previous 3 '
investigations.
2 JUDGE HOYT: Now this is.Mr. Daniels you are 3
4 speaking about?
MR. McCARTEN: Yes. He felt Region III's 5
handling of the construction problems at Zimmer were very 6
poor. He said that Gaston Fion.relli's group and 7
g construction inspectors in Region III had not done a good 9
job inspecting the plant.
He said he was the first operations inspector gg gg ever to cite a plant for a construction violation, and he sent it forward to the region to cite them for a 22 e nstruction violation where here he is an operations 13 y.-
inspector. He said he found weld rod all over the place.
( g4 His opinion of the utility that he 15 communicated to me was that on the operations side they 16 were not capable of getting the plant ready, they were 17 way behind and did not have the expertise to get the 18 Plant operating. He also told me that he had no 19 2g confidence in the construction side of the house either.
JUDGE HOYT: Vell, what did you do with the 21 9
allegations that you received at that time?
22 MR. McCARTEN: The next week I went out.and_
23 visited the Midland site and the Perry site and talked to .
24 some of these and one of them was E -7 25 I.
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 - . .
13 I tilked to him . o get clarification of his 3
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.other names that I talked to during that time.
1 (Brief pause while Mr. McCarten gets notes 7
g from file.)
1 9 MR. McCARTEN: During that January time peried (
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r I 18 allegations.
JUDGE HOYT: May we have the spelling of that
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I 21 MR. McCARTEN: I talked to , ftu,\1 don't think he made any allegations.
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'3 MR. ALOOT: Were all these interviews reduced l
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.,5 MR. McCARTEN: The substance of these f
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TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 2004 Washington, D.C. 22236 i
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interviews were summarized and presented to Mr. Charles Norelius when I returned. After this two-week sojourn !
2 returned to the region.
3 JUDGE HOYT: Is that Glen Ellyn?
4 5
MR. McCARTEN: Glen Ellyn.
, JUDGE HOYT: Who did you give them to?
7 MR. McCARTEN: I verbally related the 8 inforriation to Mr. Norelius. I said these are the allegations. There were so many I started document.ing 9
gg them on noto paper in going to the field interviews. Some gg of them I took statements from, and those are in the 32 81-13 or in the Region. gI took statements 13 ** ~
. I, The substance of what these people said was 34 15 phenomenal. Here is ,saying the vendors, all the people that supplied material to the L 16 17 plant were not approved, a lot of them were not approved
. 18 vendors.
g9 So what he is saying is you are getting I
non-nuclear material in there from unapproved vendords.
gg He says I k'new this and and Kaiser did 3) 21 ,
, , , not support us. Kaiser would not give us adequate 23 staffing. Not Kaiser, but CG&E would not give us adequate staffing.
24 r Kaiser officials made allegations that CG&E
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l TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 n _ _ _ _ _ _
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g management was not properly running the plant, and all 2
this was communicated to the region. The statements were 3 given to regional officials, Mr. Norelius, Mr. Streeter, 4 Mr. Keppler, Mr. Warnick, Mr. Heismann, Mr. Ficaralli.
5 I came back from this two-week trip with all l
6 .this information and we spent a week in planning and I
i 7 discussing it because while I was visiting those other i
8 peripheral sites Paul Barret's team was out investigating 9 the 19 Applegate allegations which came in on January gg 11the the week that I started going to Zimmer.
1,1 GAP came in with the allegations, the 18 32 Applegate allegations, and they created a big political 23 troblem for the region. You know, they were under fire 14 for doing a poor job in a previous investigation at 15 Ii""*f*
16 Keppler is faced with a dilemma. He has got 17 Applegate walking in and saying you blew the previous 18 investigation, which may or may not be true. I didn't 9 participate in the investigation. I didn't participate in 2g the investigation of Phillip's inquiry into Applegate's 23 allegations. I stayed,away from that. I was too busy with 22 what I had.
23 Then I came in the door and I says, hey, I 24 have got Ltelling me the plant is ( ,, ( )
25 screwed up. So it put the regional officials in a real 4
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 2004 Washington, D.C. 20006
16 g
problem. Keppler characterized it in meetings. He said 2
Zimmer was always a "D" student and now it has gone to an 3 "F".
4 At that point we spent a week planning how~we would Pursue the investigation.
5 6 MR. ALOOT: By "we" you mean ---
7 MR. McCARTEN: Myself and Mr. Barret. At that 8
time Mr. Norelius left' investigations and Mr. Streeter 9 came in. Mr. Norelius wanted to do a team investigation, gg a big investigation. In fact, he had told me that early gg in January. I called him on the'. phone and I said, hay, I g2 have got.all these allegations. He says, well, we are .
13 going to get a team together and look at it. We are going to pursue it, 14 g5' The investigation planning group, I disagreed with their strategy and I told them that. I vehemently 16 i: told Mr. Streeter that. The investigations planning group 17 18 was cha'ir.ed by Mr. Meismann, Mr. Ficarelli, it included g9 Mr. Shapker, Mr. Barret, Mr. Kavin Ward, Mr. Streeter, gg myself. It was asout ten people who met one morning 23 during the week of --
it would have been the 26th to the 22 30th of January I think we met.
23 I proposed and I told them that I felt there 4
24 were criminal violations at the plant. I felt that we 25 should get OIA involved i. sne investigation. I told them TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
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that we should do a team effort of inspectors looking at 2
t'he hardware and investigators looking at the paper to 3 prove falsificaation because it is very difficult to 4 prove it. You first have to prove the hardware is wrong, -
$ then you have got to, prove the paper is wrong, then you 6..have to prove that they violated an NRC requirement and 7 then you have to prove the false statement, and it is B- very difficult to make a false statement case in the NRC.
9 You have got to prove all four elements. -
gg. I felt this would need a lot of control and gg> attention. I didn't expect to lead it. I knew I couldn't 12 be expected to lead it. I didn't have the seniority with 13 the NRC to lead it, but my approach was good and sound g4 and I discussed it with Bill Ward, the head of 15 investigations on the phone. ,
16 MR. ALOOT: This is Bill Ward at Headquarters?
17 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. I said this is the way I 18 feel we should approach this thing. Mr. Heismann and Mr.
19 Ficarelli, I remember during a meeting I said I can see 2g this thing all going to a gradual thing where we prove 2g the hardware is wrong, we prove the paper is wrong, we 22 prove falsification and we so to a grand jury. You would 23 think I had just said I was Satan or something. These 24 people looked at me like I was nuts.
25 MR. ALOOT: In teaming this investigation, did 4
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TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1804 Washington, D.C. 20006
18 y they fold the Applegate/ GAP allegations in with'yours?
2 MR. McCARTEN: This is what I disagreed with.
3 First of all, I said that the real meat was the 4 inspectors and everybody agreed to that. The field people agreed to i t '. I said we ought to go for a criminal case, 5
6 and they have no interest in working an investigation 7 which would lead to a possible Justice Department 8
prosecution. The operations people and the construction
, 9 people, that was totally alien to them obviously, and it 10 was totally distainful to them. They had no desire at gg all, the management officials that were present during g2 those planning meetings, to pursue a criminal case.
13 JUDGE HOYT: And these are the officials in g4 Region III of NRC that you are talking about?
15 MR. McCARTEN: Right.
16 JUDGE HOYT: Let's go back to Mr. Aloot's 37 question. How did this interface with Applegate?
gg , MR. McCARTEN: This is what happened. We got 29 our marching orders. You will investigate Applegate. I l
L. - 2g briefed them. I says, you know, I have read Applegate's i
23 allegationii, and I said these are allegations of 22 misdemeanor criminal offences which are not under the 23 jurisdiction of the NRC. I said we do have criminal 24 violations here. They are 1001 violations, falsification l
25 of records, harassment of inspectors. I said but the type
(
L TAYLOE ASSOCIATES l 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 l Washington, D.C. 20006
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IS of criminality that Applegate is alleging is not
-f- g 2 something within our jurisdiction. -
3 In fact, if you read his s'ffidavits, and I 4 read all of.the backup, it wouldn't eve'n be something
.5 that would even warrant an investigation by the local 6 .P0liC8' 7 JUDGE HOYT: Are-you talking about-the belt 8- buckle and prostitution---
9 . MR. McCARTEN: All that kind of garbage, the gg prostitution, the belt buckles ---
1 gg JUDGE HOYT: --- and the gambling.
g2 MR. McCARTEN: --- and the gambling. The local 13 Police wouldn't even do that, and that is'what I told the
'/
l(, g4 region. But I said we do have these other problems and 15 these are significant and these are criminal and they 16 didn't buy that. They didn't agree with my concept of 17 working for a criminal case.
l L.
[~ 18 JUDGE HOYT: Mr. McCarten, let me ask you. In
(- g9 your opinion, did they disagree with you out of a sense 2g of ignoranc'e or did they disagree with you because you 2g didn't have the documentary proof to present to them that 22 would persuade them that they 'should go that route, and l'
~
23 that route meaning the criminal investigative route?
24 MR. McCARTEN: I don't want to say ignorance 25 because that gets them off the hook. I think they knew I
- (. .
l TAYLOE ASSOCIATES
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. l 20 g what I had. Later on in the investigation'when the 2 criminal stuff came out more clear, Mr. Daniels made 3 comments to me on the way to lunch saying, yes, Bob 4 Warnick says McCarten wants to throw these people in 5 jails you know, like he is nuts for wanting to do that.
6 They did not want to have anything to do with 7
a criminal investigation. They didn't. That was their 8 thinking, their philosophy and their policy. As you see, 9 as we get on with this, CIA did get involved in trying to gg set them more atuned to the criminality.
gg We will continue with the chronological series g2 of events.
33 MR. ALOOT: Let me see if I und'erstand this.
I g4 You believed a criminal focused investigation was proper.
15 Now did you distinguish between record falsification and 16 items of that nature, did you distinguish that from other 17 health and safety types of violatians?
18 MR. McCARTEN: No. I said the health and safety
, 39 equalled criminality. The words I used was it forms like
, gg a pyramid. We proved :he health and safety, but we want
+
2g investigato'rs there to prove the falsification and let's 22 work together.
23 MR. ALCOT: I see.
24 MR. McCARTEN: Their concern and what was set 25 up was they said the first priority will be given to TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1804 Washington, D.C. 22006 h_ _ . __ . _ . _ . _ _ _ _
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investigating-Applegate, and you will investigate
, 2 Applegate's allegations to no end. He stone will be left unturned. You will do every investigative lead possible 3
4 to prove or disprove Applegate. .
5 MR. ALOOT: ,
By Applegate you mean the 19 ---
6 MR. McCARTEN: The 19. They said just the 19, 7
and I says, wait a minute, if you read all the affidavits B
from GAP and they make another hundred allegations. I 9
said limiting yourselves to the 19 -is ridiculous because gg there are a hundred other allegations backing up the 19 zg and plus the ones I had. I said what are you trying-to do 12 here? They wanted to contain it to just the 19 13 allegations.
i .
g4 MR. ALOOT: Who made the decision to focus only 15 on APPlegate's 19 health and safety allegations? ,
MR. McCARTEN: This is what was set up.
16 Applegat e 's 19 allegations got first priority. Some of 17 the more.significant QC allegations got priority. Then 18 _
19 priority two and three was given to the QC inspector 20 allegations. I did not assign the priorities.
MR. ALOOT: Who assigned the priorities?
21 MR. McCARTEN: Pau1'Barret assigned the 22 23 priorities. ..-- - .- .
24 MR. ALOOT: On his own?
25 MR. McCARTEN: Vith Mr. Heisman and Mr.
e TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20006
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22 l Fiore111. The construction branch assigned'the priorities t
2 and Mr. Keppler knew it. He was briefed on it and he knew 3
that I disagreed because I had told Mr. Streeter I 4
disagreed with the overall approach of the investigation.
MR. ALOOT: Did you tell Mr. Keppler?
5 MR. McCARTEN: I didn't tell him directly.
6 7
MR. ALOOT: Did you send him a memo or did you ask Mr. Streeter-to convey your views?
8 MR. McCARTEN: I asked Mr. Streeter to convey 9 ,
gg it. But I think their position and their feeling at the gg time was that we have got egg all over our face, we are in a bad situation, we have got a real mess here, and I 12 g3 think the management wanted to contain thal mess.
Dne of the comments made throughout the 34 investigation by Mr. Kappler himself, the'words he used, 15 and I wil.1 never forget them, he says how can you guys 16 tell me that a plant is a hundred percent inspected, 17 18 every construction module was bought off on, completed g9 for that planti and yet you are telling me it is not gg built right. How did that happen? He says, how can I go 2g to the public and say we have completed inspected the plant, it is 93 percent complete, but it is a mess? And 22 23 here he is the Regional Director supervising this work.
24 For the Past five years he was responsible fo'r monitoring 25 Zimmer's construction progress.
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23 MR. ALOOT: Did Mr. Keppler ever set a response 1
to his statement or his question?
2 MR. McCARTEN: Mr. Barret told him, he said our 3
construction program is flawed. He said the problem with 4
4 the construction program, and I don't know if it has been 5
6 remedied, was let's say you look at a concrete pour and 7
how were they pouring concrete in 1977? You then check off that module. The concrete construction is okay. If 8
9 you find something wrong, you write them an item of gg noncompliance, they follow it up and you check their
- response. That is the way the system works.
gg There is nobody going in there in 1981 and 12 rechecking the module on construction. In the meantime 13
=
O the utility, GAP gives the utility the opportunity to s 14 weaken and water down the procedures which is what Zimmer 15 ,
16 did, an f In a statement he says I wanted to build the 17 18 Plant to nuclear codes and standards and CG&E wouldn't 39 let me do it and I left.
JUDGE HOYT: Do you have that statement here?
20 MR. McCARTEN: Let me check my notes.
! 21 (Brief pause.)
l 22 MR. McCARTEN: Looking down my list,
- 3 u d e..r. .i was his name. But he mentioned that ;who C.x '7 4 24 25 was a , would corroborate what he said.
i i
t i
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'i 3 JUDGE HOYT: Do you have the spe'lling on that
- 2 name? -
.i j 3 MR. McCARTEN:
4 v.%eU 5
6-7 (D)
! 6 I am pretty sure. If I had my book of 7 statements that I took, that the FBI has. It is a whole S back of statements that I compiled on Zimmer and the 9 Region III files have them, too. He identifies himself as gg What he said was that CG&E 33 management did not support the QA program.
32 MR. ALOOT: Let me interjact a point here. Any 13 document you g r. v e the FBI, would they also be in the i g4 NRC's files?
l 15 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. when I left the NRC I was '
! 16 given a memo saying you will turn everything you have
( 17 over. I discussed with Mr. Warnick this memo, and I says, 18 you are right, I have all these -- I decided to leave in
~
39 late November, and I had all my field interviews right 2g here. There were allegations in those interviews which ;
23 might not have been documented. So I spent like three 22 weeks in December going through every single interview I 23 did, which is over a hundred interviews, and entering 24 those allegations on a computer printout, and all of them 25 are computerized in the Region III files and they have i
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v- b r 25 g the backup because I was concerned that they wouldn't be 2 able to read my handwriting. . l 3 So when I left the NRC I wrote them a memo 4 back saying I have complied with your memo. I am not 5 leaving here with anything that you don't have. At that
- 6 Point notes were the personal property of the 7 investigator. That was the policy. I think that has g changed.
, 9 I told Bob Warnick, I said I am going to keep gg all this stuff. In fact, in the memo I say.any notes on gg this case should be kept for the lifetime of the plant's 12 licensing. Those were the words I used to emphasize that 13 I felt everything should be retained.
14 $ hen the FBI subpoenaed me they asked for 15 these records under a grant jury subpoena. We went 16 through every record I had and they took what they felt 17 they wanted. One of them was a master copy of every 18 statement,taken during the Zimmer investigationi indexed, g9 who was interviewed, date interviewed and the statement.
20 It was about that thick.
21 MR. ALOOT: By that you indicate four inches.
22 MR. McCARTEN: Four or five inches thick. The 23 regional officials had access to that thing. I passed out 24 Copies of these statements to everybody.
- $ MR. ALOOT
- Did they have access to the master 1 .
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 Washingtoni D.C. 20006
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26 g copy?
MR. McCARTEN: Yes, consisbently. In fact, at 2
the and of the investigation when they were compiling 3
their report, they had lost some stuff and they would 4
come to my files to get it right, because I said I am 5
, keeping everything. I logged it and everything. I didn't 6
have the originalso but I had everything.
. 7 8
When I left I took whole folders down to the reproduction room and I said Xerox the whole folder and 9
left them with Mr. Foster. I took every stuff like phone gg gg notes and planning notes that I Xeroxed and gave them to g2 him.
g3 To get back to the point. At th'is point in the Y investigation I disagreed with their approach to the
$ g4 investigation. Mr. Streater knew 1t and the planning 15 ,
16 group knew it to each individual inspector, especially
- Mr. Barret. I told him, I said this is not the way to go.
37 i gg
'They said Mr. Keppler is getting heat on the Applegate thing. So this is the way we have got to go.
19 gg They responded more to the public pressure by GAP than
. 2g they did for the real' safety allegations and they all 22 admitted it. Streeter admitted'it and Barret admitted it.
JUDGE HOYT: Vere these admissions made to you 23 _ _
24 in conversations?
MR. McCARTEN: Yes, in conversations in their 25
> r k
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1 office and out in the field. We then went to,the Zimmer 2 site I think the first week in Februa'ry and we conducted 3 our investigation of the Applegate allegations.
4 Of the original 19 allegations, the ones that 5 alleged criminality were basically unfounded. They were 6 state misdemeanor offenses, et cetera. We continued to 7 work on some of the more hot quality control allegations.
8 MR. ALOOT: Was records falsification one of 9 the elements of this investigation?
10 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. I particularly focused on 11 that, and I did get a mandate. I said to Mr. Streeter, 12 can I interview every QC inspector,on the site, and he 13 did let me do that. So my time was spent, and I want
- 14 through every QC inspec. tor on the list and interviewed 15 every one of them and we got a lot more allegations from 16 them.
17 MR. ALOOT: Did any of these QC inspectors tell
. 18 you why they didn't in furtherance of their.own personal 19 job responsibility identify these problems earlier?
20 MR. McCARTEN: What they said is that they 21 had identified the problems, written them up on 22 nonconformance reports, written them up on inspection 23 reports and that t he -u t ili t y -hrd- dest r o y eo t he i r ' r epor t s .
24 MR. ALOOT: They knew that for a fact?
25 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, and we proved it.
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 ! Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
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I 28 1 JUDGE HOYT: How?
2 MR. McCARTEN: They gave ne nonconformance 4
3 reports which we found were later never entered into the 4 nonconformance reporting system. We went to the log which 5 loss those reports and I found that the entire los had 6 ,'b e e n rewritten and that the last two pages which had not 7 been rewritten. I-found evidence of white-out for two
].
8 NRs. I seized the original pages of los and sent them to 9 OIA and told OIA about them later on in the thing.
10 ,
MR. ALOOT: When did you send these papers to
. (1 OIA?
12 MR. McCARTEN: I verbal,1y told CIA about them 13 in Feburary.
14 MR. ALOOT: ,
Who in OIA did you send them?
15 MR. McCARTEN: Art Schneblin. Then when I left 16 the NRC I'sent the originals to them because I didn't 17 feel that the people in Region III had the ability to 18 retain that type of evidence. They would 1qok at it as' 19 junk and throw it away. So I sent it to OIA directly.
20 My point is during the February time frame we 21 found proof of falsification of records, falsification of
, 22 the NR log, we found NRs not entered into the system, we 23 found heat numbers. Fred Maura found that drawings had 24 heat numbers on them which were false for the diesel 25 generator room.
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES
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29 1 He went in there and he walked it.down and 2 took the drawing that the utility hads especially on 3 small bore pipings and compared it with what was in the 4 plant and proved that the record didn't match what was in i
5 the plant and that they had falsified the record. That is 6* what he said.
7 That was one of the allegations we kept 8 pursuing because it was one of those original four that 9 was made.
le Another allegation was the NRs. We found 11 falsification there. We found NRs that had been thrown 12 away. Inspectors told use they sa,id I have identified 13 p'oblems, r but it is put on a punch list or it is put on a
- 14 lesser significant document that does not get any 15 engineering or NRC review. -
16 Tom Daniels, the resident inspector told me 17 about these documents and about the fact that inspectors' 18 concerns were not being properly documented.and that t h e' 19 QA program had broken down.
20 MR. ALOOT: Did Mr. Daniels notify Regional 21 Headquarters of these problems?
22 MR. McCARTEN: Yesi he did. Mr. Daniels' 23 communications to the region prior to my getting there I 24 think are for him to t,alk abouti but he told me that he 25 had made the operations side aware of the construction TAYL0E ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washingtone D.C. 20006
f '
30 1 problems, and Mr. Daniels.is a very outspoken person and
-2 he did.
~3 JUDGE HOYT: Did you check Region III 4 Headquarters' records to see if any of those reports of x -
5 Mr. Daniels were in the files?
6 MR. McCARTEN: No, because my job was not to 7 conduct an internal inquiry of Region III management, but 8 I had allegations that I entered into the computer system 9 which indicated that CG&E was directly involved in the 19 falsifjcation of records, the allegations that I 1,1 collected, and I showed people's statements made by 12 people that said these records hav,e been falsified.
, 13 MR. ALOOT: The first hard evidence of record
" ~
- . 14 flasification came to your attention around February of 15 19817 -
16 MR. McCARTEN: We spent three weeks at the site 17 in February. Yes. At that time Mr. Ar,t Schneblin and I 18 think it was John Sinclair came to Region III and were 19 conducting the OIA investigation. At that ' time I was 20 pretty friendly with them because we were of like 21 backgrounds. We were both from another organization which 22 was considered one of the best organizations.
23 . Art Schneblin I think is former Air Force OSI.
24 So we hit it off. I told him, I said hey, let me show you 25 all this. I said we have got falsification of records
- i. .
TAYLDE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
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l 31 1 here. This is'in February that OIA was aware that we had 2 allegations and had some proof of fal'sification of 3 records at Zimmer. They talked to me, they talked to Fred 4 Maura, they talked to Paul Barret and they talked to 5 Kavin Ward. They also were doing the OIA investigation of 6* Phillip's investigation.
~
7 So it was a difficult time in the region. It
- 8 was a high pressure thing and I elected to stay totally 9 away from the OIL Applegate thing as f ar as looking at my
. 18 own shop. But I did communicate to them that there were 2 11 criminal allegations and that they were in line with the 12 1001 type violationsi falsificatio,n of records.-
. 13 Mr. Lieberman attended a briefing on Zimmer in s
-( 14 February. .
15 MR. ALOOT: Mr. Lieberman ---
16 MR. McCARTEN: From ELO.
17 MR. ALOOT: That is Jim Lieberman?
! Yes, Jim Liebermaq. He attende'd 18 MR. McCARTEN:
19 this briefing, and at the end of the briefing he turned 20 to me in the hallway and he said there are a lot of 1001 21 violations here. Is OIA aware? I said yes, they were here 22 last week. I told'them about it, and I said I know there 23 are 1001 violations. - - - - - - . _ _ . ._
24 His concern was are you pursuing these, and my i
25 only comment to him was CIA knows about it and we are
- c l \
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4 32 1 working on it. We are trying to get the falsification.
. 2 My problems with the region' at that time was I 3 felt they did not properly prioritize the task. I also 4 felt that their approach to the investigation was do 5 anything you could on Applegate. Go to the umteenth 6 degree on Applegate. The other stuff we will do in our 7- regular way, but we will do a better job than we.did 8 before. But they were very concerned, overly concerned 9 about Applegate, and I told them that.
10 MR. ALOOT: Did you work on any other 11 investigations other than Zimmer at this time?
12 MR. McCARTEN: Not duri,ng this year. I spent 13 the whole year exclusively on Zimmer. I never did another
.y.
A. 14 invest.igation for the NRC until I left once I had gotten 15 into Zimmer. I did a little bit on NPI, Nuclear Pharmacy, 16 Incorporated.
17 My dealing with OIA was I told them about the 18 criminal falsification. .
19 MR. ALOOT: Did you provide them documentation?
20 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, I did. I showed them the 21 documentation. I didn't give them copies of it. They 22 expressed no interest in the copies.
23 Va then continued our investigation in Zimmer 24 throughout the month of March. I think we went there two 25 or three more weeks on and off, and we began to e
TAYLCE ASSOCIATES 1625 ! Street, N.'W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20006
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4 33 1 investigate the'QC inspector allegations. ,
2 At this time Mr. Bob Warnick was. named site
-3 coordinator. They wanted a GS-14 or 15 to be on-the site.
4 There were so many people there and he could solve 5 problems on the site, plus there was a conflict between 6- I think myself and Mr. Barret. He was lead investigator 7 and I was lead inspector.
8 He was going back to the region I think and 9 saying McCarten wants to do things this way. I never 10 complained about him, but he apparently complained about
(! me. So Mr. Warnick came out as kind of an intermediary to 12 keep things going smoothly. Mr. Barret did not agree with 13 pursuing any type of a criminal case against CG&E. It was
. 14 against his philosophy.,
15- MR. ALOOT: Let me ask here, in deciding not to 16 pursue a criminal case, do you mean that you were 17 investigating the same health and safety allegations and 18 the differnce was in the way you acquired and maintained 19 evidence?
28 MR. McCARTEN: It was to the depth of the 21 coverage, it was the way you acquired evidence and 22 generally what you pursued and why.
23 MR. ALOOT: But whatever health and safety 24 allegations were on the table starting in January, 25 everybody was still investigating those?
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20006
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34 1 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. He felt that you could go 2 in there and find poor welding, prove'that they hadn't 3 found it and that was it.
4 MR. ALOOT: And put it into the system. -
5 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, and I would say, hey, wait 6 a minute. Why don't we so back to the inspection record 7 and look at the inspector who approved that welding. That 8 is a false document. He didn't understand that. He says 9 if we did that, every time we found a noncompliance we i
18 would find a false record and we can't charge every 11 ' single inspector with criminality. That was his attitude.
12 My. attitude was, hey, when you have the same 13 inspector and it shows a pattern of falsification, then y .
I 14 you have got somebody falsifying records and not just 15 making a technical mistake. -
l 16 Later the issue came up that the welders were 17 not qualified and some of the inspectors were not 18 qualified which maybe negates your criminal. case, but i t' 19 certainly makes a pretty strong regulatory 'violation.
28 I disagreed with the depth. To go into a 21 record and to pursue it for falsification takes a lot 22 more than to prove noncompliance.
23 Bob Warnick when he was out at this. site, it 24 was a compromising situation. If I felt we should dig a i
25 little more because there might be a false record, he TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
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1 1 would say let's dig into the false record. l l
l 2 We had one case I remember in February. While 3 the investigation was in progress there was construction 1
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't 1,1 They didn't use the walkway. They redesigned 12 the plant. Design control was p o o,r , which 81-13 later l
13 shows, and the situation was that they had attached 14 safety related equipment to a non-safety support 15 structure. The welding was poor and i t wasn't even 16 inspected.
17 18 l
l 19 20 21 g, ,
E r9 r-22 these NRs, 90 out there and take a look at the beams and 23 see what you find.
24 Well, out, and he said hey,
.a
-- boss, five of them aren't bad, 50 of them are bad and you TAYLOE ASSOCIATES jl 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 i Washinoton. D. C. 20006
36
-1 have got a rea'1 big problam here. I wanted to j ump right 2 on that and.go out and look at those b'eams right now.
3 Barret disagreed and. Warnick disagreed. We have got to A pursue Applegate.
5 When May r.olled around I finally got to pursue ,
6 *the allegation again. By that time Kaiser had cut out 7 avery-beam. They had done their own thing and had removed 8 all the beams and fixed it. So therefore you have no item 9 of noncompliance.
. 18 ,
MR. ALOOh: But you also have no ---
11 MR. McCARTEN: The NR was destroyed. The los 12 entry showing that NR was whited o,u t . So you have a false 13 record and you have a hardware problem associated with
(- 14 it. .
15 MR. ALOOT: But you don't have poor beams left.
16 MR. McCARTEN: You don't have poor beams left 17 in a safety sense, but you do have a pretty good false 18 record case. If we would have gone out that_next day, We
~
19 would have said there are the beams.
'20 MR. ALOOT: What would have been the proper 21 procedure then, for them to bring the NRs into the 22 system, note that they were defective and then note that 23 the corrective action was to cut them all out?.
24 MR. McCARTEN: Right. The significant thing is 4
25 NRs are subject to engineering review. You review those
'e'
\
TAYLdE ASSOCIATES
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37 I 1 things and you get a feel for what is going on in the 2 plant, where are you finding things w'rong in a general 3 sense and where are mistakes being made? That would have 4~ showed' poor design control and it would have showed hey, 5 maybe there are other' areas of the plant that were 6* tacking stuff that was essential to nonessential 7 equipment. ,
8 The utilit'y could have instituted procedural
'9 changes maybe and inspection programs to remedy this.
10 This utility didn't do that, and that is why Zimmer is 1.1 such a mess today.
12 The strongest tool, the field representative's 13 tool to tell the utility something is wrong, the NR, was
,- 14 thrown away because when these guys wrote stuff it 15 identified big generic problems and the utility didn't 16 want t o d d'a l w i t h them because it meant' big money and it 17 meant not setting licensed.
18
- We were doing our investigation in February.
. 19 They were telling the licensee we are going to fuel load
- 20 in August of '81. Tom Daniels told me privately no way, 21 but this was the util'ity's mindset. The utility didn't 22 have a handle on this plant. They didn't want to hear 23 about any construction problems. They rode these ;
t; 24 inspectors, destroyed their reports and drove them off 25 the site by giving them poor positions, cuts in pay and I
k .
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20006
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38 1 changed their' shifts, threw away their reportsi
. 2 harassment.
3 I reported all this to the region in our 4 investigation ---
5 MR. ALOOT:' Who did you report this to again?
6 -
MR. McCARTEN: Mr. Streeter.
7 MR. ALOOT: All this information went to Mr.
8 Streeter?
9 MR. McCARTEN: It went to Mr. Streeter' and in 18 briefings with Mr. KePPler.
11 JUDGE HOYT: What kind of documentation did you s s 12 have on that, Mr. McCarten?
13 MR. McCARTEN: I had signed sworn statements L 14 from the inspectors. I had the voided NRs. I had the NR 15 los sheets which I showed to people and the whited out 16 loss. I showed it all.
- 17 MR. ALOOT: Those are the los sheets that you 18 subsequently transferred to OIA7 .
l- 19 MR. McCARTEN: To OIA. I wasn't the only person
[
l 28 saying this. Fred Maura came in and said the same thing.
21 Kavin Ward found a big problem with their radiography.
22 Jerry Shapker came in and he says hey, I looked at l 23 structural welding and its terrible. He said they didn't i
24 even inspect it. They handed them an eight by ten sheet 25 saying this thing is' inspected.
r E
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 i- Washington, D. C. 20006 <
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1 We found that we received allegations that the 2 material was supplied by non-approved vendors. Here 3
Yr En-h 4 them not doing adequate vendor audits, and Paul Barret 1
5 found while pursuing another allegation that they had not l 6 done adequate vendor audits, that they had no vendor QC 7 program and that a lot of the allegations that Region III 8 had previously investigated were now substantiated. It 9 was a real mess.
10 MR. ALOOT: How is it safe to say then that in 11 the course of conducting what has been titled Phase I of 12 the Zimmer investigation, that is,the Applegate 13 allegations,plus some others, is it safe to say that at s 14 the end of your investi.gation of those allegations you 15 had more allegations than when you started?
16 MR. McCARTEN: Oh, yes, and not only that, but 17 we had covered so few of them that I was pretty 18 disappointed. In fact, in June I was told write the 19 report and you will be sent back out there'to do Phase 20 II. Then as that dragged on and on and on and the region 21 didn't even think about Phase II, I got more 22 disappointed. Sc I didn't see a real effort to go after 23 the additional allegations. - -
24 This is what happens in the region that I have 25 problems with. In February we met with Applegate and we TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 2004 Washington, D.C. 20006
40 1 were still pur' suing the Applegate allegations. Applegate
- 2 talks about that meeting where he says' we promised him 3 four things.
4 MR. ALOOT: Were commitments made at that 5 February 26th meetine?
6
- MR. McCARTEN: Yes. Mr. Keppler made 7 commitments to Applegate pertaining to the 19 Applegate 8 allegations, not to the whole case.
9 JUDGE MOYT: But did Applega'te understand?
1B MR. McCARTEN: I don't think so.
1.1 JUDGE MOYT: Okay.
12 MR. McCARTEN: He doesn,'t understand. I think 13 anything that is found at Zimmer he attributes to him
.o - .
, 14 personally uncovering 1t.
15 MR. ALOOT: And you have stated previously that 16 the week the Applegate allegations came in you had 17 already ---
l L 18 MR. McCARTEN: --- gotten wind of.the problems'.
l 19 They discussed that. They said your findings are going to 20 make Applegate look like a hero. After hearing that for 21 about two weeks I just said so what, and Keppler adopted j 22 that position, so what, you know, who cares. It comes out
! 23 in the end where he looks good. So what. But a lot of --- -
l f
L 24 people had some heart burn with that. A lot of people in 25 the region had heart burn with that. I didn't.have any l TAYLOE ASSOCIATES l 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 y; Washington, D.C. 20006
41 1 heart burn.
2 JUDGE HOYT: Who had heart burn with that?
3 MR. McCARTEN: I think Mr. Phillip had some 4 heart burn with it. I think Mr. Davis, Mr. Heisman, Mr.
5 Ficarelli and Mr. Streeter had some heart burn with it, 6 and understandably so. That didn't bother me. Warnick had 7 a problem with that, Barret had a proble'm with it, 8 Daniels, he had my attitude. He didn't care.
9 MR. ALOOT: Let me ask another question here.
~
10 Was there an understanding that you had that OIA was '
- 11 going to monitor this second Region III. investigation?
12
- MR. McCARTEN: No. You ,mean like audit our 13 case? ,
14 MR. ALOOT: Yes, as it was ongoing.
[s .
15 MR. McCARTEN: CIA was in the region on 16 Phillip's case. They had a lot of. confidence in my work 17 and told me that.
1 18 MR. ALOOT: Who is they? .
19 MR. McCARTEN: John Sinclair, Da've Gamble, Art 20 Schneblin. They expressed to me over lunch and over 21 dinner that they were happy with our current work on the 22 case, my current work, investigations current work. Ted 23 Gilbert from headquarters was involved in this phase of 24 it and his work was unquestioned.
25 They were concerned that the field inspectors, l
I
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42 8
1 the I&E. inspectors on the job would not pursue the 2 criminal 1alsification when they came across it, like an 3 inspection report. Their position was mine. You find a 4 defective weld. If an inspector inspected that and said
-5 it wasn't, then he has falsified his work either through 6 ' negligence or through intent, and that should be looked 7 at and is this a patterni and OIA agreed with that. l 8 They told Keppler this and he wrote a memo to 9 the staff saying OIA has said they don't feel you are le signifjcantly sensitive to criminal allegations. The 1,1 Commissioners said it to them.
12 MR. ALOOT: Wait. Mr. Keppler said OIA feels 13 that you are not sensitive to criminal allegations.
v 1, 14 Wasn't there something, else after that, or was it just 15 --- .
16 MR. McCARTEN: And he said, yes, you will
[ 17 pursue criminal, you know, but that is the way he worded 1
i le it. *
~
19 OIA came in in February and they met with us f
r, 20 on Applegate. They came in in late March after were were l
21 done with the Applegate allegations and some of the QC 22 allegations. They came in I think on the Monday following
- 23 Easter and I b r-i e d -t h e m . I to-1d them again, the second -
24 time, and I think it was John Sinclair and Dave Gamble 25 -this time, and I briefed them on everything I had, and I
- (
- TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 Washington, D.C. 20006
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43 t
I had more specific examples.
- 2 At that time is when they ' talked to not only 3 me, but they talked to Fred Maurai Paul Barrets Bob 4 Warnick. They talked to a number of people involved in 5 the investigation, Kavin Wards and they came away with an 6 impression that Barret was not that sensitive to criminal 7 matters and that generated that letter, and neither was 9 Warnick, and that generated their concern. They told me 9 that*that was their concern.
10 We then met with the U. S. Attorney. Now in 1 -
)
13 hey, we feel that, you known based on my experience as a 14 criminal investigator with the Navy for five years, that i 15 Applegate's 19 allegations, the criminality aspects are 16 basically state misdemeanor offenses and that there isn't l
l 17 even enough to prosecute on a state violation or even to 18 warrant an investigation by a state agency..
2 L - (&
L 21 said but we have got some false records here and that is
(
, 23 was and I went into detail as to what some of those l l
24 violaticns were and that we were actively pursuing those i 25 violations and that we hoped to make a criminal case. !
k_f l
1, TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 k.-._._ . - . _ , , . , _
l-. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
- 44 i
l( 1 This is in February.
1 2 MR. ALOOT: You told the tidWr. 6 3
E3 *l DC) that tne NRC was actively pursuing the false records 4 allegation.
5 MR. McCARTEN: Because I was, and I was the NRC 6 ' person doing it. We also had phone conversations with Mr.
7 Bernard G11 day, Mr. Keppler did and Mr. Davis did and I i
8 was in on it and Streeter was in on it. We told them in 9 these phone conversations in February that we had some 10 ---
1,1 MR. ALOOT: Gilday.is the ---
h l 12 MR. McCARTEN: G11 day is the U. S. Attorney in 16 but we are in a bind because he has made these i 17 allegations and we are not a criminal investigative 18 agency per se of that type of criminality. .A t that poin't 19 I interjected into the conversation, I said wait a minute -
20 here, we do have some 1001 vio'iations and he wanted to be i 21 briefed on those. ,
l 22 MR. ALOOT: The U. S. Attorney.
l 23 MR. McCARTEN: The U. S. Attorney did. We then
- r
'l 24 met with the U. S. Attorney in Cincinnati in April, 25 myself and John Sinclair met with the U. S. Attorney in N.
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904
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45 a
1 Cincinnati. David Everett was there and Bernard Gilday 2 was there. We again discussed the Applegate allegations i
! 3 and the perspective on those.
I 4 We told them, we said we' felt the Applegate
'/ . ('
7 hey, there is somebody somewhere saying that the U. S.
l 8 Attorney is not interested in Zimmer, and he says that is 9 not true, I am interested in Zimmer.
10 JUDGE HOYT: Did he indicate to you who that j 11 someone was?
12 MR. McCARTEN: No. It might have been the 13 press. It might have been he heard it somewhere.
14 JUDGE HOYT: It wasn't necessarily someone s
15 within NRC that he was referring to?
16 MR. McCARTEN: No.
17 JUDGE HOYT: All right.
18 MR. McCARTEN: Although at the time NRC 19 inspectors and myself were saying to the FBI and to the 20 people we were working with, and it was con. mon knowledge .
21 that we all felt after the month of looking at 22 Applegate's stuff that it was unfounded. Even the safety I
23 stuff was primarily unfounded.
l 1
24 MR. ALOOT: Unfounded or nonsignificant?
}
f 25 MR. McCARTEN: Non-safety significant and/or
-3 el r
i TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 Washington, D.C. 20226
. _ . _ _ _ _ . . . _ _ ._ ._. . . , om9 t.793_3ng _
46 I unfounded. Wh'en we met with Gilday, he expr.essed that 2 concern that he was interested in any ' type of a criminal 3 case coming out of Zimmer and he strongly emphasized 4 that. You know, voices were raised saying hey, I am 5 interested in the case.
6 David Everett, the Assistant U. S. Attorney 7 day hey, I want to get in on this case right now. He says 8 I want to be guiding this case from a justice viewpoint.
9 He said we set involved in these things, the U. S.
la A Worne,y, similar to our big cases here. We are on the 1,1 phone t h'e next day to the U. S. Attorney and they are 12 fe'11_ing us what they feel they w11,1 need to prosecute.
13 He said, I know we have never worked with the
\, 14 NRC before like this, but I want to work with you guys 15 like this and I want to be briefed on the case and I
.16 want to be out there with your agents working.
~
17 JUDGE HOYT: Vere there any concerns expressed 19 that the NRC was anxious to pursue this thias from a 19 civil point of view?
20 MR. McCARTEN: During that meeting I told Mr.
21 Everett that we would welcome him into the investigation.
22 Mr. Sinclair c o:nme n t e d to him that his headquarters would
~
23
~~
have to review'it a n'd m a'k'e' 'a~~dec'1sion. Following the 24 meeting he told me privately without Mr. Gilday or Mr.
25 Everett present, he says I&E Headquarters is never going TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
47 1 to buy that and he mentioned Vic Stallo in particular.
2 MR. ALOOT: Mr. Sinclair m'entioned this?
3 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. He said Vic Ste11o and
. 4 'Cummings will never buy that.
5 MR. ALOOT: Getting the V. S. Attorney involved 6 in the field investigation.
7 MR. McCARTEN: Getting a U. S. Attorney 8 involving in guiding one of our investigations.
9 JUDGE MOYT: Did he tell you why they would not it b's interested in pursuing it?
11 -MR. McCARTEN: That is what I said. I said why?
12 This is a good criminal case. He said these People aren't 13 interest in pursuing criminal cases and he referenced
'N 14 NPI, Nuclear Pharmacy, , Incorporated, and Mr. Ste11o's 15 apparent mitigation of some civil penalties that were 16 directly contradictory to DOJ's guidance on the case.
17 They compromised the DOJ' case during a civil 18 penalty hearing with Nuclear Phar nacy, I n c o r.p o r a t e d , M r .'
19 Ste11o had, and Main Justice wrote a scathing letter to 20 Cummings saying his meeting with the company without 21 Justice's approval or knowledge and his acquiescing on 22 some of the civil items of noncompliance negated criminal 23 prosecution in this. case. T h a t.. i.s . w h a t they.said..
24 Sinclair told me flatly I&E is not interested 25 in pursuing criminal things.
s TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 2004 Washington, D.C. 20006
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48 i
- 1 MR. ALOOT: Did he indicate whether OIA was 2 interested 7 i
3 MR. McCARTEN: He said he wasn't sure. His 4 general tone was he says I don't think they will buy it.
5 Everett getting involved in the case. We briefed Everett 6 'in detail on the falsified NRs and the falsified records 7 that Fred Maura had found.
i 8 MR. ALOOT: This is in the same April meeting?
9 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. I said hey these are 12 direct,1y. falsified, and Sinclair took a more cautious
'~
1,1 approach and said welle they may bei and I think mainly 12 because OI hadn't looked at it yet,and he didn't want to f ,, 13 speak for another you know, like he was saying it. But k 14' he said we are looking at inspection records being 15 falsified. He said Jim has found these NRs which are not 16 per se inspection records, but he was saying we are 17 looking at these other things.
18 I told them flat out that we hadq't getten the 19 opportunity to look at inspection records b'ecause of the 28 Applegate allegations.
21 That meeting ended and there were a series of g-22 discussions which I was not privy to between Bert Davis 23 and Cummings and Miin'Jdit' ice. Whatever it wanted didn't 24 come to pass.
25 MR. ALOOT: It being?
f '
(
TAYLGE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20006
49 1 MR. McCARTEN: It being him being involved in 2 the NRC case.
3 JUDGE HOYT: The U. S. Attorney being involved
- 4 in the ---
. 5 MR. McCARTEN: And he said, he says I don't 6 want to run it. I just want to give you guidance and I 7 just want to be kept apprised. I saw it as not an unusual 8 request.
9 MR. ALOOT: In this April meeting did the OIA 10 representative commit to keep the U. S. Attorney 11 apprised?
12 MR. McCARTEN: No. .
13 MR. ALOOT: Was there a contrary commitment?
'. 14 MR. McCARTEN: There was a comment that we will 15 set back with you.
16 MR. ALOOT: I see.
17 MR. McCARTEN: There was a commitment to 18 continuing keeping him briefed on the casa..
19 JUDGE HOYT: On the progress of the i 20 inves'tigation that.you were performing.
- 21 'MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
22 MR. ALOOT: But not necessarily the findings of 23 the investigation. . _ . - -
-24 MR. McCARTEN: Oh, yes, the findings, but the 25 issue of them getting involved directly in the case and TAYLOE ASSOCIATES-1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20006
_ . . _ . . _ _ _ . _ . . (202) 293--3950 .__ .._____ _.
50
~ !, 1 guiding the case was given a noncommital answer. The 2 issue to brief was kept solid. We will keep you briefed.
3 MR. ALOOT: To your knowledge, was that ,
4 complied with?
5 MR. McCARTEN: We will get into that. l 6
The next phase of the case -- do you want to 7 set off on the side issue.of the Easter meetings in which
^
B the staff recommended closing the plant and Mr. Keppler 9 not closing it and coming up with the QCP7 That is an 10 issue I think I raised during the phone call. Do you want 11 to cover that now?
I think we,better let you make 12 JUDGE HOYT:
13 that decision on the way you want to proceed so that you 14 will get everything in,that you have.
15 MR. McCARTEN: Okay. I think chronologically is 16 the best way to proceed.
17 JUDGE HOYT: I think we had agreed upon that.
19 Why don't*you go ahead that way. .
19 MR. McCARTEN: Okay. At this poi'nt in the L
20 investigation ---
l l 21 JUDGE HOYT: Don't forget that other thing 22 though.
23 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. I think chronologically is 24 the best way to do it.
25 JUDGE HOYT: All right.
I.
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
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51 1 MR. McCARTEN: The month of April was 2 characterized by the OIA meetings, by' starting to 3 reorganize and discussing the report and beginning to 4- starting to write it.
5 MR. ALOOT: Were there any on-site 6 investigations going on at the same time?
7 MR. McCARTEN: The most we dug into the 8 allegations, Burt Davis or Warnick or Streeter.would 9 review and say hey, we need a little more here or hey, 10 can you look into this deeper. We would go back out to 11 the site with a laundry list and we would look into it.
. 12 MR. ~ ALOOT: Was there any point -- well, we 13 will get to it chronologically.
'. 14 MR. McCARTEN; Yes. What happened was was the 15 -last week in March the Applegate allegations were just 16 about finished, and at this point there~was a strong 17 feeling on the team that we had pursued Applegate enough 18 and that the QC inspectors were the significant thing.
19 The utility was saying hey, you have been on 20 our site for seven weeks with ten people on and off and
. 21 you haven't briefed us yet on what you found. What is 22 going on? They had somewhat of a right to know on some d
23 things.
24 So Warnick on Monday finally said okay, now we 25 will start pursuing the QC inspectors' allegations.
j TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
_ .. . . . _ _ _ . _ . _ . . . . _ _ _.,~.e...~,,_-ussa. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . .__ _ . . _ _
52 1 MR. ALOOT: Do you have a date for Monday?
2 MR. McCARTEN: 1981. It wou1d have been the 3 week ~before Easter which I think was the 28th. It would 4 '
have been the week of the 23rd to the 27th that we were 5 at the site. -
6 MR. ALOOT: Okay.
7 MR. McCARTEN: What happened was we went out to B the site. The started pursuing the QC allegations and hit 9 pay dirt. Every single inspector that was given a QC 10 allegat, ion found it to-be substantiated and there was a 11 lot of real strong feelings. Everybody just came back to 12 the trailer every night saying hey, the one you gave mei 13 they are all screwed up in structural welding, in 14 radiographs, in design drawings, in the electrical area.
15 Everything we looked at and everything we had an 16 allegation of was proven, and this was after weeks of
^
17 working on Applegate and just spinning our wheels for a 18 lot of them, for a lot of the inspectors. .
19 By Wednesday Warnick sa id he y , we have been ,
20 out here seven weeks and people are getting tired.
21 Everybody in the trailer said we ought to shut the plant 22 down. There was a meeting of the Re2 ion 3 office on I 23 think Good Friday in which the staff said they felt the -~
24 plant should be shut down. The people at ';e site felt it 25 should be shut down, the field inspectors.
TAYLCE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 Washington, D.C. 20006 -
- a. _
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53 1 Kappler left that meeting. I think that was 2 the meeting where he turned to Davis and he says we have 3 to discuss strategy and they left it at that.
4 The result of that strategy discussion was
- 4. 5 that the QCP was initiated and the plant was not shut 6 down. I questioned this and I asked Barret and I asked 7 Warnick. I said hey, why don't we shut the plant down, 8 and the response to me was we can't shut down.a plant 9 that is 90 p'ercent inspected and 93 percent complete. It 10 would make us look bad. The boss can't shut it down.
1,1 The second comment was they would never get 12 back up again because at that time, Marble Hill was having
'13 trouble getting recertified to get back up. They said
. . , 14 this place is so much worse than Marble Hill that they 15 will never get back up.
16 MR. ALOOT: When they made these statements, 17 was it their own personal opinions or did they indicate 18 in any way that it was part of the strategy.that Mr.
19 Keppier and Mr. Davis had talked about?
20 MR. McCARTEN: I think Mr. Earret and Mr.
21 Warnick felt it was their personal opinion, but Mr.
22 Keppler made the statement a number of times during these 23
~
~
meetings when we briefed him on the case, he says how'did 24 this happen, how do we go and explain the fact that a 90 25 percent complete plant is bad and how do I personally TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
_ _ _ ,_ ._ < omoi..ms roarn___ ..
I
- '54 1 . explain that?
. 2 When you heard that six or'seven times, the ,
3 tone became clear. He.didn't want to shut that plant 4 _down. He knew the region had a big problem. During these 5 meetings there were discussions with the construction 6
- inspectors. He would say how did this happen and what is 7 wrong with our inspection program?
8 The conclusion was after three or four 9 meetings, everybody concluded the inspection program was
. 10 inadequate and they all agreed to that. So by the time it
' 1,1 came around-to closure, he came out with the strategy of 12 we will give them a stop work orde,r and we will initiate 13 this quality confirmation program.
y, -
1 14 That was a program designed by Bert Davis. /
l 15 The idea was Bert Davis' idea, and.the construction 16 people liked that because it got them off the hook, 17 because if they closed the plant down, there would be a
^
18 lot of adverse publicity, Applegate would ett credit, an'd 19 that was a factor in' closing the plant d o w n", and they j
i 20 didn't want to give APPlegate that credit.
!' 21 MR. ALOOT: What is the difference between 22 closing the plant down and issuing a work stoppage order?
23 MR. McCARTEN: Valle_. work. stoppage _ stops work 24 in certain areas, and only in the areas where we had 25' found problems.
i-TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
_ _. i_wm.Se7-7ou __ _ _ _ _ _ . . - _ . _.
55 t 1 MR.'ALOOT: So the difference is one is general i 2 and one is specific. l 3 MR. McCARTEN: One is specific. You no longer 4 have a construction license or to show cause to revoke 5 -your license.
6 MR. ALOOT: I see.
7 MR. McCARTEN: What happened then was the 8 construction people in April and May got actively 9 involved with the CG&E people in trying to set up this 10 QCP, the QCP program, which I had nothing t'o do with.
41 That was strictly the construction side of the house, 12 working with.CG&E to come up with,a plan t_o fix all this 13 stuff, and it was a nice, convenient way for them to g- .
- \ 14 dodge the issue of an internal inquiry into why Region 15 III failed to inspect it, a stop work order which would 16 make Applegate look like a hero, and one of the reasons 17 given was they said they would never get back up again 18 they were so scrowed up. .
19 Those three reasons were given at various 2C times during the discussion.
21 MR. ALOOT: At the present time work at Zimmer 2$ - is suspended?
23 MRT McCARTEN: Right now"it is af ter- the second 24 phase investigation which took a year and a half to get 25 off the ground.
c TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 Washington, D.C. 20006 4 - -- n y y -
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56 1 That was my concerni that appropriate 2 enforcement action was not taken. The inspectors all the 3 sudden into a mode where they were working hand in hand 4 with'the CG&E people and the criminal issues are dropped.
5 There is no hard inv'estigating going on any more. We are 6 all of the sudden helping the utility with this QCP.
7 MR. ALCOT: Now you just mentioned that you 8 were not involved in this QCP.
4 9 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
10 ,
MR. ALOOT: The inspectors were involved. What 11 did you do with your time?
12 MR. McCARTEN: That is t,he point. You lose your
- - 13 inspection support and you can't do much more 4- .
I l. 14 investigating. What I did was I did a lot of follow up on 15 some of the Applegate allegations. - I spent a lot of time 16 keeping track of things and categorizing information and 17 setting it down and disseminating allegations. I spent a 18 lot of time with OIA being interviewed by them. ,
19 MR. ALOOT: Ycu are saying that, let's say, May 20 1981 there was no active on-site investigation?
- 21 MR. McCARTEN: In April we startec getting in 22 to the QCP and in May they started getting into the QCP,
~ ~ ~
23 which drained our inspection ~ elfort.'~~ Investigations kind
- 24 of went and followed collateral issues, you know, 25 interviewed more allegers and things like that. We began f
I' t *
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57 1 writing our report.
2 .Then at the end of May you'see a flurry of 3 activity. OIA went out I think on May 18th and 4 interviewed some witnesses in California, and at that 5 point OIA was going to get involved in the case. They had 6 planned to come out to the site in the last week of May 7 and they did.
8 I met Al Pulgia and Dave Gamble and.we started 9 working in the falsification issues on site. After one 10 week Pulgia and Gamble after reviewing my work and 11 interviewing people on their own and looking at records, 12 they said we ought to go to the U., S. Attorney right now.
13 That is what they told Cummings in a phone call that I E..
- e
, 14 listened to.
15 MR. ALOOT: When was this phone call?
16 MR. McCARTEN: This was from^the Region III 17 trailer and it would have been one of the last weeks in
, 18 May of '81 when OIA was on the site. It was probably, and
' ' 19 I am not sure, the week of the 18th to the.22nd.
20 MR. ALOOT: Could you to the best of your 21 recollection recreate what you heard them tell Mr.
22 Cummings?
23 MR. McCARTEN: What I heard wasi.and I think it 24 was on a Thursday or a Friday afternoon, they were 25 briefing Mr. Cummings on what they had found. They said i
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58 1 they had pursued my allegations and Maura's a.11egations 2 of falsified records and they had interviewed some 3 employees about falsified records and inspector 4 harassment.
5 Pulgia and Gamble told Cummings that we ought 6 to go to a grant jury right nown meaning go to the U. S.
. 7 Attorney and get a grant jury convened and start 8 subpoenains records and calling witnesses and we should 9 set the FBI involved in this right now. That was their 10 feeling. I think they left on a Thursday.
1.1 MR. ALOOT: You didn't get any impression of 12 Mr. Cummings' response? ,
_. 13 MR. McCARTEN: No.
- i. 14 JUDGE HOYT: ,You were not using a speaker phone J
15 then?
16 MR. McCARTEN: Ve were using a speaker phone, 17 but I was not a participant in the investigation. I think 18 the overall tone was we will get back to th( office and l
19 we will discuss it.
I I
! 20 JUDGE HOYT: Sut you heard Mr. Cummings' 21 replies to the Gamble /Pulgia remarks?
22 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, and I think the reply was 23 we will get baci to OIA and we will discuss it.
24 JUDGE HOYT: Vas that the only thing that you
. 25 recall him saying?
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59
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1 MR. McCARTEN: Yes,-because it has been so 2 long. What sticks out in my mind was them saying let's go
!^ 3 to the U. S. Attorney right now and that there is 4 falsification there.
[ 5 The next week, or maybe a week intervened, I 6 think it was June, Cummings, Sinclair, Gamble and Pulgia 7' came out to the site. I was actively involved in writing 8 the Zimmer report and John Streeter said hey, you can go 9 there to meet with OIA, but spend a minimum amount of 10 . time because I need you to write the report. I had no
' 11 qualms with that. We had to get the paper out, and this 12 conflicted with his getting the paper out.
13 I met with Mr. Cummings and Mr. Gamble, Mr.
is 14 Sinclair and Mr. Pulgia. We spent a whole day in our 15 hotel room and I briefed them, I think like a 10 or 16 11-hour brief where I gave them everything I had and they 17 grilled me over what I had. Cummings was asking ne 1B questions and Sinclair was asking me questiqns on 19 specific items of falsification and why I felt it was 20 false and where are we at right now.
21 Comments were made by Dave Gamble to me and by 22 Al Pulgia, and the one that sticks in my head was 23 Cummings is out here t o qua s h--the--inve s t i ga t i on . - That ts-24 a direct quote.
25 MR. ALOOT: Vere these made in the presence of i.
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60 1 each other-or separately? ,
2 MR. McCARTEN: In the presence of ---
3 MR. ALOOT: I guess it is Pulgia and Sinclair?
4 MR. McCARTEN: The pecple that said it most of 5 the time were Pulgia and Gamble.
6 JUDGE HOYT: And they were all in the same 7 vicinity?
8 MR. McCARTEN:-Yes. Of course, Cummings was not 9 present. John Sfpclair may have been present.
12 JUDGE HOYT: That would be Pulgia, Sinclair and 1,1 you were together?
12 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, and, comments were made that o
13 h's is out h,e r e to quash the investigation.
~\ 14 JUDGE HOYT:.Did they tell you why he want&d to 15 quash the investigation?
16 MR. McCARTEN:. The general feeling of their 17 staff was that he did not want to find anything wrong, 18 that he did not want to-pursue any criminal., cases. That r
19 was the tone of 'their stand, 20 JUDGE HOYT: Did not want to pursue any 21 criminal cases or did not want to pursue this criminal :
4 22 case?
23 MR. McCARTEN: Any criminal cases, and I think 24 their reasoning for it was he either didn't want to make 25 waves and he was happy where he was at and let's not make i
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61 1 waves or he was pro-nuclear to a point where he didn't 2' want to embarrass the industry. I don't know what the 3 motivation was, but when they said to me he is out here 4 to quash the investi5ation as the Chief Investigator, you 4 5 know, for-five months or six months, that kind of hit you 6
- ha r d.
7 MR. ALOOT: .Did Mr. Cummings tell you what the 8 purpose of this long-term interview was?
9 MR. McCARTEN: He interviewed me for three 10 days. ,Then we went to the site and he interviewed some 11 people.
12 MR. ALOOT: But he never told you what the 13 purpose of your grilling was?
14 MR. McCARTEN: Well, the purpose of the 15 grilling, it was a " briefing" on the case.
16 MR. ALOOT: A three-days' briefing?
17 MR. McCARTEN: A three-day briefing.
18 MR. ALOOT: In a motel room? _
19 MR. McCARTEN: One in a motel ro'em and one at 22 the site. That is how long we discussed Zimmer.
I 21 MR. ALOOT: And this entire discussion.was 22 focused on criminal allegations and not health and 23 safety?
24 MR. McCARTEN: Criminal allegations. At that l
l 25 point we were not very knowledgeable about what the 7
i.
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. 62 1 implication of'this is, but it was spent on that, and' 2 that is a.long time.
. 3 JUDGE HOYT: In that entire period of time you 4 were.not able to discern the purpose that Cummings.had?
5 MR..McCARTEN: The purpose was to open an CIA 6 investigation of Zimmer. That was the obvious purpose 7 that OIA was actively investigating the criminal case at G Zimmer. That is the obvious reason. They had.three or 9 four people out there. My impr.ession was they were scing 10 to be out there with us for the rest of the time.
1,1 MR. .ALOOT: Doesn't that seem somewhat inconsistent to have OIA initiate,a formal and somewhat 12 13 . involved criminal investigation and yet attempt to quash 14 the investigation at the same time?
15 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. Well, the say he acted was 16 he did not want to pursue it. He did n'ot want to go to 17- the U. S. Attorney and that made the investigators feel 18 he was going to quash it. .
19 JUDGE HOYT: What manifestations did you see j_
I 20 him exhibit?
l j 21 MR. McCARTEN: He was extremely skeptical of 22 what we said. He was noncommital about approaches to it.
23 He wasn't aggressive. It wasn't like saying we will need 24 more people out here. When you talk about doing a 25 criminal case you say let's focus in on this guy er let's Is.
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63 1 1 focus in on this issue regarding CG&E management. No talk 2 like that. There was no talk of what'we are going to do
- 3 in.the future. It was what have you got and no response 4 from him.
5 In fact, he had a conversation with me by the 6 ' pool.that night alone which I thought was funny. He 7 turned to me and he said you know your boss Jim Cummings B here'has a real problem with Zimmer and that is all he 9 said.
18 JUDGE HOYT: Now who is it that'said that?
1,1 MR. McCARTEN: Cummings to me directly.
12 JUDGE HOYT: Speaking of himself in the third 13 person, is that you are saying?
- 14 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. He turned to me and said a
15 .you know Jim Kappler has a big prob.lem with t .)i s 16 investigation.
17 JUDGE HOYT: Oh, Jim Keppler had a problem.
18 MR. McCARTEN: Jim Keppler has a , big problem 19 with this i t.v e s t i g a t i o n .
i
! 20 In other words, here he is, and you have got 21 to look at my perspective. I am a new agent. I have been 22 told by his staff he is here to quash the investigation.
23 After grilling me for a whole day and knowing that 24 Keppler in fact has a big internal problem that Cummings 25 should be investigating. He is the internal investigator T .
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- 64 1 for the whole agency. He turns to me and says you know 2 your boss has a real problem with this case.
~
3 You know, how do you take it? I took it as he l '4 has no interest in seeing why the NRC got this way when
'5 :an internal inquiry I felt was warranted and memos had i
6 already been written by Fred Maura saying an internal 7 inquiry in warranted of Region III to see why this 8 happened. And the head of the Office of Inspector and 9 Auditor. turns to me and says you know'your boss has a
~
le real problem with this case, with Zimmer.
' 1,1 MR. ALOOT: That was all he said?
12 MR. McCARTEN: That is,all he said, but how do 13 you take tha,t?
.s 14 MR. ALOOT: How did you take it?
15 MR. McCARTEN: I didn't say nothing. I just 16 went well, you know. And here his staff has told me 17 privately 20 minutes.before that he is out here to quash 18 the case. .' .
I 19 JUDGE HOYT: Did you confront him with that 20 statement, or did you indicate it to him why are you 21- here? You made no response to him at all?
22 MR. McCARTEN: No. He did say that I&E's 23 in s pec t ion p r og r am-was "scr ewed up . " During the day long 24 thing he says well, I&E is all screwed up. And I am 25 looking at him, well, you are the Internal Investigator.
I'
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65 i 1 If it is screwed up, why dont you look into it. You have
~ 2 got the auditors and you have got the staffing to audit 3 the Program to find what is wrong, and you are telling me 4 you don't like I&E and it is screwed up and you are not 5 doing anything about it.
6** MR. ALOOT: Now this is in June?
7 MR. McCARTEN: June.
8 MR. ALOOT: Was there a meeting at the U. S.
9 Attorney's Office in June? -
18 , MR. McCARTEN: No.
11 MR. ALOOT: Other than CIA's on-site visit, 12 were there any Region III on-site, inspections at Zimmer?
13 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. There were people there for i.
' s. 14 the QCP all the time. There were investigators there 15 coming and going. I know I spent two weeks out there. ~ Bob 16 Burton and other investigators came out for a week or two 17 at a crack on and off.
18 MR. ALOOT: What about in July? .
19 MR. McCARTEN: July, this is wha't happens.
20 June, I went out there with OIA. The OIA people told me 21 he is going to quash the casa. The week before that we 22 had interviewed Floyd Oltz, to go back a little bit to 23 give you the significance o f-i t-. - -
24 Dave Gamble and Al Puglia interviewed Floyd
) 25 Oltz who was the Chief Document Controller at the plant.
(. .
'l .
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1, 'l 'We interviewed him for four. hours and we taped it. At the 2 end of the - interview Al Puglia turned to Oltz and said is
~
3 what out there at that plant match what is in that v a u'I t ? \ j 4 'He said you are the custodian of all these records and
'5 you know more about the designs and the drawings and l 6 everything than'anybody else. What do you think?
. ? ,
He says this plant has got a lot of problems.
8 He said what is in that vault don't match what is out 9 there. In other words, the certification of inspections, 18 the physical location of the components on the drawings
, 1,1 don't match what is really out in the plant.
'12 MR. ALOOT: Is that on the tape?
t.
13 MR. McCARTEN: It is on the tape. The way y .
- l. 14 -Puglia phrased it was we have talked here for four hours. 7 15- We have got a long, sad story here, Floyd,'and what is 16 the bottom line?
17 The bottom line is Floyd said the drawings p 18 don't match the as-built condition of the plant, the 19 inspection records aren't accurate and he said there is 28' going to be a lot of rework needed to fix it. His tone
' 21 was I have been trying to hold down the fort myself and I 22 have had inadequate staffing and inadequate help.
23 Cummings was privy'to ~that information because
~
24 that was before he came to the site.
- 25 MR. ALOOT
- Did he have a copy of this?,
i f.
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67
.[ 1 MR. McCARTEN: Yesi he had the tape, and i t was o
2 supposed to be transcribed.
. 3 MR.'ALOOT: Was it transcribed to your 4 knowledge?
5 MR. McCARTEN: It wa.s transcribed and we 6 listened to the tape and added comments because the 7 transcription wasn't that good. I submitted my
! B ' transcribed copy to Dave Gamble from OIA and I never got 9 anything back. Let's put it that way.
10 . MR. ALOOT: When did-you submit your corrected 11 version of the transcript to OIA?
12 MR. McCARTEN: That would have been in August.
13 Of '81.
- y. M. R . ALOOT:
'\ 14 MR. McCARTEN: '81..
15 JUDGE HOYT: Is that the early part of August?
16 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
17 MR. ALOOT: Before the OIA report came out?-
18
- MR. McCARTEN: The OIA critical qf Phillip?
- . 19 MR. ALOOT
- Yes.
20 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. He was aware of that 21 statement I am sure. That was a key statement.
22 JUDGE HOYT: By he you mean Cummings?
-~~
23 MR. McCARTEN: -Cummings, and I made Keppler 24 aware of it, too, and I made Streeter aware of it.
25 MR. ALOOT: That takes us into the beginning of
!.\
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a 68 i
,e 1 July. '
I i 2 MR. McCARTEN: Okay. When you get into the l
- 3 beginning of July, I conducted an interview of Phil
! 4 Gettings with OIA, Sinclair and Gamble present. They then 5 went on to interview 7[
6 MR. ALOOT: Who is T[C) 7 MR. McCARTEN: 7y 8 nd they described that interview to.me as very l
9 nonproductive. I didn't want to interview 7(t) 10 because I was not prepared to interview y 11 was such a major actor that I felt it was a i 12 premature interview because all along I had felt we 13 should build this pyramid type case proving the 14 falsifications and then working our way up. I didn't feel 15 you should talk to the major subject of the case until 16 you get to a point where you should.
17 I didn't participate in the interview. I 18 didn't think it was an appropriate intervieg to make at 19 the time.
20 MR. ALOOT: Vell, you nonparticipation, was it 21 choice or their choice?
22 MR. McCARTEN: My choice. Gettings, I asked 23 specific quest' ions of Gettings that I needed to prove-our-24 regulatory case and to prove points that I had made so 25 far. We interviewed him and CIA then continued to
(\
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i 69 1 interview him. To be honest with you, the OIA 2 investigators did not know as much ab'out this case as I 3 did.
4 MR. ALOOT: Well, you had lived with this case 5 for six months.
6 MR. McCARTEN: I had lived it for six months, 7 yes. They were getting into it.
8 MR. ALOOT: You participated at Gettings 9 interview.
10 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
11 MR. ALOOT: Did you reduce that interview to 12 writing? ,
13 M.R.
McCARTEN: Yes, I did. In 81-13. that is in 14 L.k~ there.
I 15 MR. ALOOT: Was OIA's interview summary 16 subsequently sent to Region III?
17 MR. McCARTEN: It was, but it wasn't until 18 late. The interviews of a nd Ge t t i rig s d i dn ' t get 7[h 19 to Region III I think until September or Oct'ober.
20 MR. ALOOT: Would it be necessary since you had 21 already done Gettings?
22 MR. McCARTEN: That is why. The issue that 2
25 i nterview and Gamble and Puglia told me, they said you I
l l
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70 1 wouldn't belie've it. This guy is ,a and II #" 3 2 he is sitting in an office with no furniture waiting to 3 retire in a little four by ten office. He is like an l 4 exile because of Zimmer and the problems, and the company 5 had more or less labeled him as a screw-up and he didn't 6 say anything.
7 The interview they talk about says ,
8 admitted to nothing.
7 (C' -
nothing, 9 MR. ALOOT: You were verbally apprised of the 10 contents of the interview at the time it 11 occurred?
12 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, and that is why I felt the 13 interview was premature. The'y didn't have a line of s 14 questioning to deliver.to him. They had not prepared the 15 interview, you know, what issues were they going to 16 address.
17 MR. ALOOT: Did they tell you the interview of 19 was under strained circumstances? . 7[t 19 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
20 MR. ALOOT: Why?
1
! 21 MR. McCARTEN: Because of the situation he was 22 in. He had obviously been left with nothing to do as a 23 result of Zimmer. His career was obviously at an end. I
]
24 think he made a comment to them at the end of the 25 interview like the next time you want to talk to me you TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 Washington, D.C. 20006
71
!f I will need a subpoena or something to that effect. That is 2 a sign of a strained interview.
3 They were looking more at the mangement of the 4 utility conspiring to falsify records.
, I felt we weren't 5 there yet and we hadn't proved enough individual 6 instances of falsification.
7 MR. ALOOT: You thought ultimately you might.do 8 that?
9 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, or not even me, but maybe 10 the grand jury.
(1 MR. ALOOT: But you feel that OIA's people were 12 focusing in albeit prematurely, but still focusing in on 13 the ultimate issue?
14 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
15 MR. ALOOT: Management,.high-level CG&E 16 knowledge involved in all this.
17 MR. McCARTEN: Management knowledge and 18 involvement in these problems. The kicker it is in August 19 I called back and I said hey, when are you' guys going 20 back out? Ve are. going back out sometime during October.
21 Well, we don't know yet. Well, I am not sure. Throughout 22 September and October there is no more investigation of 23 Iimmer?
24 JUDGE HOYT: Who was this you were talking 25 with?
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72 l
1 MR. McCARTEN:
Gamble and Sinclai{?
2 JUDGE HOYT: At different times or together?
3 MR. McCARTEN: At different times almost 4 weekly.
5 MR. ALOOT: So after this last round of the 6 Gettingsand]llllllll1nterviews, was there any active 7[()
7 investigation by OIA, to your knowledge?
8 MR. McCARTEN: No.
9 MR. ALOOT: Vas there a meeting at the U. S.
- 10 Attorney's Office in August?
1,1 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, there was. There was a I
2 12 meeting with the U. S. Attorney's 0ffice.in late August.
13 I was at the training center in Chattanooga. It might k 14 have been late August or early September. The sist of 15 the meeting was to discuss the findings of 81-13.
16 MR. ALOOT: That were yet to be issued.
17 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. I learned about the meeting i
18 through Ted Gilbert who was in attendance a( this
<
- 19 training meeting with me. I called up John Streeter. I 20 said, John, I hear there is a meeting with the U. S. .
21 Attorney, and I said I would like to go. I said I am the 22 most knowledgeable person on the criminal issues in the 23 case. I said I want to attend the meeting. They say well, 24 it is going to be with Ann Tracey and not the same 25 people. I said well, I want to be there.
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73 0
1 Streeter says you are right, Jim, you should 2 be there. You know more about the cr$minal case than 3 a re y b o d y else. We will arrange a flight for you.
4 I called back at one o' clock. Jim, you can't 5 come to the meeting. I said why? He gave me no reason 6why. He says you just can't come. I said, John, not to 7 insult you or anything, but you don't know anything about 8
the criminal issues in this case and neither does Paul
- 9 Barret who was also going to the meeting.
1B , I said you don't know enough about the 11 specifics of the issues to brief the U. S. Attorney. He 12 says you are right, Jim, I don't ,but I will Just do the 13 briefing anyway. But you cannot come to the briefing. I
( 14 felt that I was intentionally excluded from the briefing 15 for some reason. -
16 MR. ALOOT: You do not know why.
17 MR. McCARTEN: No.
18
- MR. ALOOT: Do you know who participated in the 19 decision not to want you to go?
20 MR. McCARTEN: No.
21 MR. ALOOT: Could budget have been one-reason?
22 MR. McCARTEN: No. They had money coming out 23 the ears for Zimmer. There was no logical reason for me 24 not to attend the meeting. My overall impression was I 25 had voiced my opposition and I was not happy with the way TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006
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,' 1 Zimmer was going.
- 2. , In June a decision was made that Jim Foster 3 would be the editor of the report. I strongly disagreed 4- 'with this position. I said, wait a minute. I said Foster
~
5 .did all the previous investigations at Zimmer. He has got
- 6 a vested interest in rewriting this thing. I said I don't
- 7 like the idea of anybody rewriting our reports and 8 " editing"'it. What for? What we say is what we say and, 9 that is it.
18 My philosophy and their philosophy were 11 totally different and they knew it, investigative 12 philosophy, enforcement philosophy and how to report, 13 things. My idea were the same as Bill Ward's, and Bill Y
, '\ 14 Ward had taken taken Ted Gilbert's work at Zimmer and his 15 other investigators' work at North. Anna and made it into 16 a report which was similar to an NIS report which follows 17 the guidelines that if you are an individual and you 18 state to me something, it goes in the repor( exactly how 19 you stated it.
20 The agent says he interviewed somebody and the 21 person said this. It is all there, good or bad, true or 22 untrue. It is a regular standard investigative report 23 that every other agency uses.
24 He wrote that report and the Region III people 25 got it and they went "Yoosch", you know, here are these t
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75 1 guys saying in a public document this plant is all 2 " screwed up." They didn't like those kind of words and 3 words were used like we have to use word engineering. We 4 have got to massage your report. These were words used to, 5 se about my reports.-
6 I wrote them the'way it was said.
7 Consistently in my two years at the NRC, your reports B need a lot of rework.and a lot of rewriting. You reports 9 have to be massaged'a lot.
10 . JUDGE HOYT: Now let me understand, Mr.
Il McCarten. You were the lead investigator now at Zimmer.
- 12 MR. McCARTEN
- Yes. ,
j, ,. 13 JUDGE HOYT: And the focus of everything that
- 14 you were doing there at Zimmer was towards the criminal
~
15 aspects of the case. - -
16 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
j 17 JUDGE HOYT: But you were not going to the e.
18 meeting with Ann Tracey in the U. S. Attorney's Office in 19 Cincinnati in August.
20 MR. McCARTEN: And my entire report, which was 21 written by me, was edited by John Streeter and Jim Foster 22 and it took them June, July, August, September, October 23 and until November 24th to rewrite it.
24 MR. ALOOT: Do you think that the rewriting and 25 editing process misrepresented your ---
I' 4 -
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76 1 MR. McCARTEN: I found instances where the 2 report that was presented to the Commissioners was false 3 and contradicted sworn depositions that were attachments i <
4 to the same report.
5 JUDGE HOYT: Could you take that report as 6 issued today, Mr. McCarten, and point out to us those, 7 areas where you found those inconsistencies? If we give l 8 you a copy of that report, could you do that for us?
9 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. What they did was they did 10 the tone.
I
! 1,1 JUDGE HOYT: Let me see 11 we can get an answer l 12 to that first. Could you do that?,
L 13 M,R. McCARTEN: Yes.
'J 14 JUDGE HOYT: .Would you do it?
15 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. I will walk you through one 16 section of that report and I will tell you what really 17 happened and what really was told to me and then what was 18 in that report, and it is so watered down and it is so
~
, 19 toned down that you can't discern. It is there, but the 20 impact is gone.
21 One thing they did was they took my entire 22 section of the report detailing all the falsifications in 23 the nonconformance reporting system and made it an 24 appendix.
25 JUDGE HOYT: Which you think detracted or TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1804 Washington, D.C. 22006 j . . ..
- 77 J
g watered it down.
2 MR. McCARTEN: Sure it does when it is not part 3 of the body of the report. What Stree r did was he wrote 4 and I concurred in a summary of the nonconformance report
~
5 allegations.
6 All my fac'ts'were made an attachment to the 7 report. All the exhibits that backed up those facts that g excluded. So the statements with all the meat in them, 9 with the real testimony and the person was gone.
, gg MR. ALOOT: You did sign that final report?
gg . MR. McCARTEN: I did sign the final report.
12 MR. ALOOT: Was it under. protest?
g3 MR. McCARTEN: I verbal,1y protested to Foster
. 14 and Streeter,, and I also at one point wrote a memo saying 15 hey, Parts of the report are false, and Streeter did not 16 tell Mr. Kappler about this memo. -
, g7 MR. ALOOT: You sent a memo to Mr. Streeter?
18 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, and I verbally discussed it 39 with him. This was in November when the final draf t was 22 going. Mr. Foster in his real to water down this report 21 had actually made misstatements in the report.
, 22 MR. ALOOT: Do you have a copy of that memo?
23 MR. McCARTEN: I will dig it out of here and b
y, give it to you. I think I have got that or the Bureau has
- $ got i t, but I will check it. If you i nterview Streeter,
~
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3958 J ._ __ .-. - - . _ . -
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73 1
he will tell that happened, and there'are memos in the 2 files about it because he wanted me to sign a memo saying 3 everything I found wrong was substantially not 4 significant, and I wouldn't sign it.
5 He did not tell Mr. Keppler about this. We 6
went to a meeting in November with OIA to discuss the
~
7 case and Foster out of the clear blue stands up in the 8
meeting and says is everything in the report accurate?
, Everybody agrees to that, don't they? I said no, I don't.
le I found misstatements in the* report, and Keppler and gg Davis hit the ceiling because they had already given the report to the Commissioners.
37 13 MR. ALOOT: You say OIA,was also,present there?
14 MR. McCARTEN: OIA was present there.
of
\ JUDGE HOYT:., Who was representing OIA7 15 16 MR. McCARTEN: Cummings; 17 MR. ALOOT: What was the purpose of OIA in the -
18 Region III meeting on this report?
! g9 MR. McCARTEN: It was a problem t. hey had. The gg problem they had was in the summer Keppler briefed the f 21 Commissioners and they called me at home in the morning 22 and said isn't it true that DIA told you not to get a 23 statement from Gettings? And I says well, they told me 24 not to take the interview and that they weren't taking a 25 statement.
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 29006 (292) 293-3950
- -. yem-------g r-,_, % -+eim----q +
t 75 g MR. ALOOT: Why did CIA tell you not to take 2
the interview of Gettings?
3 MR. McCARTEN: I don't know. I wanted to take 4 it. I felt it was that significant, they said no, because 5 I like to get transcripts of the tapes. They vetoed it.
6 So when I responded thinking they refused to let me tape, 7 and that is equivalent to a statement, I says I did that 8 at the direction of OIA.
9 Vell, OIA denied ever telling me that I gg couldn't take a statement. Well, to me not taping it was 11 telling me not to take a statement. So Keppler went and 12 testified before the Chairman that OIA directed us not to 13 take statements from people and that hit the ceiling.
14 Cummings denied it and his staff denied it and we had y
15 this big meeting with about 15 people present and 16 everybody agreed it was a misunderstanding and I had
. g7 taken the tape incident out of context.
J. 18 Well, that was the purpose of the meeting and I
g9 here in the meeting I says hey, that report ain't right, t=
- g and Streeter and Kepple 51t the overhead when Streeter
- g says yes, McCarter told me about this three dayr ago and 22 I ain't told you yet. My comments were not welcomed, to 23 say the least, you know, that the report was false in 24 certain areas.
25 MR. ALOOT: False or misleading or ---
e TAYLCE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20006 (222) 293-3950
00 g, MR. McCARTEN: Outright fal'se.
2 MR. ALOOT: Did Mr. Keppler everi,.to your knowledge, convey your feelings about the report to the 3
4 Commission to correct the record?
5 MR. McCARTEN: Not that I am aware of.
6 MR. ALOOT: This briefing, did this occur ---
7 MR. McCARTEN: You have got to look at this l
time, the time frame you are talking about. OIA people 6
know that Foster and Streeter are rewriting the whole 9
reports and the people who participated in the reporti 10 gg what a slap in the face, g.2 You have got to remember that I left. Jerry I Shapker left. Paul Barret said I, don't want to have 13 ll anything more to do with Zimmer. Tom Daniels left the NRC 3- 14
\ at.that time because o.1 things like this. They took our 15 whole report and edited it. People who hadn't even 16 par'ticipated in the investigation edited it.
17 People had a vested interested interest in 16
- making sure that the report didn't highlight things that 39
- g the NRC had previously approvedi like Foster and the i vendor audits. Barret found problems with the vendor 23 audits and that was very weakly put in the report. Yet, b 22 23 that is a major problem area because it proved that .
24 Foster's previous investigation of L (
25 testimony before the ALS8 was wrong.
1 J,
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES
! 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
1 81 g
So the editing process, I strongly objected to the editing process. I fought with them. I at times 2
3 ignored them. A whole month went by where I just didn't 4 talk to them.
5 MR. ALOOT: Let me get this straight though.
6 From basically May to' November you had no involvement in 7
'the editing of your report $
B MR. McCARTEN: Ycu have got to look at July. I 9 was in the Reserves for two weeks. So that cuts out about gg a half a month there.
11
. MR. ALOOT: I see.
g7 MR. McCARTEN: In August I was actively 13 involved in the Applegate part, and I didn't have a big
,- . g4 problem with the Applegate editing. I didn't have a big 15 problem with what they were saying. I thought they were 16 going overboard in the way they war's editing.
17 But when it got to the meat of the gg nonconformance reports, the poor designsi et cetera, they g9 really started taking it apart, di sa gr ee i ng -wi t h a lot of gg the findings.
21 In fact, at one point Foster and I made a 22 visit out to the site because we disagreed on some points 23 and we wanted it clarified by field interviews, site work. We participated in an interview of a witness and 24 25 Pat Gywnn was the Resident Inspecter that was present l
'- TAYLOE ASSOCIATES -
1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3958
.u _ _ . _ _ . . _ _ - . _ . . _ . _ . _ . _ _ . _ _- ._
82 g
during the interview. The tone of the' interview was so 2 bad that Pat Gywnn and I left the trailer and. Pat Gywnn j
3 turns to me unsolicited and says what is Foster trying to 4
do, put words in that guy's mouth to get out of the item of noncompliance?
5 6
He would interview him about a procedure, a 7
welding procedure, and the guy would say I made a 8 mistake. I didn't review that radiograph. Foster would 9
say ohe come on, you didn't really make a mistake, did gg you, and doesn't the procedure really allow you to give gg it another kind of testing? He says yes, you are right.
r2 The code says we could give it another kind of testing, 13 but our procedure said to test it,this way .and we o- 14 violated our, procedure and we were wrong. No, no, you 15 weren't really wrong b,e c a u s e you weren't against the ,
code. After about 15 minutes of this Gywnn and I walked 16 17 out of t h'a trailer.
Foster was deliberately trying to water down 18 those findings in that report because it would prove that 39 22 the Phillip's investigation was flawed and his previous 21 investigations were flawed and it caused a lot of friction in the region.
22 I was gone for the month of September, too.
23 24 They sent me to two report-writ-ing schools, each a week -
23 long, and I got married and I took about three weeks off.
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Wadington, D.C. 29806
(:22) M3-3958
83 1
So I was gone a lot in September. But in October and 2 November I was invol'ved in the editing process. In 3 November it got very heated over what I felt should be in 4 there and what shouldn't be in there.
5 MR. ALOOT: You signed the report on October 6 16th, 1981, and five weeks later it was issued.
7 MR. McCARTEN: Right.
8 MR. ALOOT: When you signed it, was your 9 section part of the report or was it part of the gg_ appendix?
gg ,
MR. McCARTEN: When I signed it, it was made an gg appendix. They did that in August while I w'as gone.
13 Myself and Tom Daniels signed that report and we both 14 discussed not signing it. We said let's just sign it and
-y'-
\ forget it, you know, and the hell with it. We are both 15 16 l**VI"8' '
17 So we signed the r e p o r t. , and then in November 18 ,
I started comparing things because I said, boy, they g9 really butchered this thing. I started going through it gg word by word. I read it over and I said it looks good. It 21 ain't what I wrote, but it looks good. But then I started 22 going through individual interviews and I took my 23 originals and compared it with the old ones and that is 24 why it took five more weeks to get out because not only 25 did I do that, but about four other inspectors came in
'. TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
34 g
and said what the hell is going on her'e.
MR. ALOOT: Did you write the entire report?
2 MR. McCARTEN: You have got to remember the 3
title page was signed October 16th. Thay were still 4
changing the report after the title page was signed.
5 MR. ALOOT: Certainlyi yes.
6 JUDGE HOYT: Let me pick up on something a 7
moment. I want to be certain I understood you correctly.
8 .
The testimony that Foster from Region III gave to the 9
gg Atomic Safety and Licensing Board in its hearings on the operating license was misleading? Did I understand you gg gg correctly?
MR. McCARTEN: One of Keppler's. concerns was 13 3 g4 _that statements we had made to the Licensing Board about I
- electrical, and I thin.k it was electrical, that the 15 16 inspectors had made based on the investigations conducted by Foster and by the inspectors were false. I think one 17 18 of them was Jack Hughes who appeared before the Board and made statements that the electrical problems were okay 39 gg and that a number of these allegations were unfounced.
~
23 Barret went, in there and found they were violating some
~
22 of those.
MR. ALOOT: But was the concern that the 23 testimony would turn out to be false or that the 24 testimony was knowingly false when given?
25 f
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES l',
162S I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20086 (292) 293-3950
~ ^ '
~ L
- 85 g MR. McCARTEN: It would turn out to be false.
2 MR. ALOOT: So we are not talking about purjery 1 3
so much as stupidity.
4 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, stupidity. But to go before 5 the Board and say hey, our people are stupid or we made a 6 mistake, that is bad for Regional Directors.
7 JUDGE MOYT: Was this an operating license?
8 That must have been an operating license stage, wasn't 9 it?
gg MR. McCARTEN: Operating, and it was about gg construction issues in the electrical area and that was a 4 gg big worry. Previous investigations, inspections and 13 testimony before the Board were proven to be untrue.
- y. 14 MR. ALOOT: We jumped shead to November. When 15 you came back to Glen Ellyn after the August meeting with 16 the U. S. Attorney's Office, did you ask anybody what 17 went on and what was said?
18 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. I asked Paul Barret what 19 went on, and Paul Barret described it as the U. S.
gg Attorney, Ann Tracey, didn't know anything about nuclear 21 power, didn't know anything about the issues in the case I'
22 and the meeting was a joke.
23 MR. ALOOT: Who attended this August meeting?
24 MR. McCARTEN: Paul Barret -John St reeter and - - -
25 John Sinclair from OIA.
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES .'
1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20226 (292) 293-3930
36 g MR. ALOOT: And Ms. Tracey of the U. S.
$ ; Attorney's Office.
3 MR. McCARTEN: And Ms. Tracey.
4 MR. ALOOT: What was the purpose of that 5-meeting again?
6 MR. McCARTEN: The purpose of the meeting was 7
to tell them the findings from 81-13. How they could tell 8
about the criminal findings is beyond me, and they 9
described the meeting as not much of a brief. Just the gg tone of what Barret told me, ,he said she didn't know gg anything about nuclear power, had no expertise in it and gg was not knowledgeable of the case. They could have told 13 her anything. ,
, g4 MR. ALOOT: Was there a memo to the file 15 concerning that August.. meeting prepared by anyone in 16 Region !!!? -
17 MR. McCARTEN: There was a memo to Ann Tracey 18 that I have here.
g9 MR. ALOOT: It is a letter? .
- g MR. McCARTEN
- Yes. Here it is.
2g MR. ALOOT: What was the date of that letter?
22 MR. McCARTEN: August 17, 1981. This is an CIA letter from Schneblin and Cummings to Tracey.
23 24 MR.'ALOOT: Can I have you dompare this 25 document that is numbered 64 to the letter you have and TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 29996
(:22) 293-3959
97 g
are they the same letter?
MR. McCARTEN: Let's see what it says here.
2 3 (Pause while Mr. McCarten examines documents.)
4 (A short recess was taken.)
5 JUDGE HOYT: We have been off the record for a
- 6 moments and have resumed the interview.
7 I think, Mr. McCarten, you were comparing the two letters of Ann Tracey there.
8 9
MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
gg JUDGE HOYT: Let me retrieve that report I 11 handed you earlier, the Marty Malsch interview.
37 MR. McCARTEN: Here you go.
I g3 JUDGE HOYT: Thank you.
34 MR. ALOOT: Is the document identified as No.
I 15 64 identical to the document you were going to be discussing?
16 ,
MR. McCARTEN: Yes, it is.
17 18 Okay, do you have any questions on it?
g9 JUDGE HOYT: May we have that back if the copy gg is the same.
21 MR. ALOOT: The letter indicates it is from O!A 2; signed for Mr. Cummings and Mr. Schneblin to Ann Marie 23 Tracey. This is the only document reflecting the 24 substance of that August meeting?
25 MR. McCARTEN: What is the date on the TAYLOE ASSOCIATES -
1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 ,
Washington, D.C. 29996 (292) 293-3959
98 document against?
1
, MR. ALOOT: August 17th, 1981. .
3 MR. McCARTEN: That doesn't talk about that 4
particular meeting. The meeting with Ann Tracey postdates that document. That is the forwarding of the OIA report 5
6 of Jerry Phillip's investigation.
MR. ALOOT: All right. What I was interested in 7
was is there any ---
8 9
MR. McCARTEN: ---documents to her about the late August meeting?
18 MR. ALOOT: Not only to her, but to the file or 11 T2 to somewhere else.
13 MR. McCARTEN: Not that I am aware of.
MR. ALOOT: The substance of the August meeting S- 14 o'- was never reduced to writing?
15 MR. McCARTEN: Not that I am aware of, and I 16 was never told formally, except by Mr. Barret informally, 17 as to how that meeting went. Mr. Gamble did tell me I 18 g9 think aft'er that meeting that a decision had been reached gg where I&E would continue its health and safety gg investigation and keep Justice apprised periodically and that Everett's proposal to get. actively in the case was 22 out and that OIA's investigation of the criminal matters 23
' ~
was out, was ended, and that I&E would do i t s h e a l't i s~n'd 24 23 safety first and then the criminal would be done. It TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 ! Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (292) 293-3959
e9 1
would not be done together. That is what Sinclair told me 2 circa September or,0ctober, was that OIA was,out. Their 3
investigation was out.
4 MR. ALOOT: They were not continuing with their 5
current investigation.
6 MR. McCARTEN: Right, and that I&E had the 7 ball.
8 JUDGE HOYT: In effect then, Mr. McCarten, you 9 were not replaced in Region III as the lead criminal f gg investigator in Zimmer matters. .
gg MR. McCARTEN: No. Mr. Foster was given the g.2 Zimmer case after I left. I left in March.
13 JUDGE HOYT: I thought,you said you left in 34 November.
g5 MR. McCARTEN: I took the job in November. !
~
, 16 did not leave until March. In December, January and 17 February I assisted in compiling Zimmer data for Foster 18 and I also got involved in the Zion investigation about 39 drug use at Zion. That took about a month's. time on that.
gg MR. ALOOT: Why do you belive that you were 2g excluded from the August 1981 meeting with the U. S.
22 Attorney's Office?
23 MR. McCARTEN: I don't know. It shocked me that 24 I was excluded. I can't specwlste as to why I was 25 excluded. It could be for a very practical reason. My TAYL0E ASSOCIATES 1625 ! Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (282) 293-3958 g -
~ - _ _ - _~ .-.
90 g
feelings were known that I felt we should take an 2 aggressive approach to the criminal case. The end result 3
is that an aggressive approach was not taken.
4 I can speculate that they didn't want my view 5
expounded at the meeting, and I would have expounded it.
6 They knew that. In fact, I was kncwn to attend meetings 7
and just say what I felt and not acquiesce to the group.
8 If I wanted a criminal case I would have told them that 9
we have got a criminal case here.
gg MR. ALOOT: Do you believe any-, relevant gg information was withheld from the U. S. Attorney's g.2 Office regarding criminal vielntions at Zimmer?
13 MR. McCARTEN: I feel that documents were i withhold from the U. S. Attorney's Office.
9 15 MR. ALOOT: ,
Which, documents in particular?
l MR. McCARTEN: When I left the NRC ! provided 16 17 all of my field notes, there was a computerized printout made of all of the allegations and all of the statements.
18 When I me't with the FBI in 1982 I talked to.a special 39 gg agent there.
MR. ALOOT: Do you know the name of the special 21 22 agent?
MR. McCARTEN: Let me check in my file.
23 (Brief.pausee) 24 MR. McCARTEN: ! think I kept his card. Yes.
25
^
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES
- 1625 ! Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20206 (282) M3-3958
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g I had talked to Ted Gilbert once I r e t u r '1 e d ,
u 9
and I said hey, Ted, if you ever want to sit down with 3g me, I hear you are going to be working on Zimmeri 11 you gg ever want to sit down with me, and I think this was in 3,;,
September of '82, I said I hear the Zimmer investigation l 1s kicking off and if you want to interview me on it, I 33 will be glad to spend a day or two helping you out to get
., 14 lk started on it again.
15 His comment to me was well, Foster hasn't cut 16 loose the documents from Region III. He 1s sitting on the 17 d cuments, all of my stuff that I left copies of in 16 39 Region III, was a comment that Ted Gilbert nade to me.
p n. . .., . .
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MR. ALOOT: Who was the Assistant U. S.
73 Attorney assigned to ---
J, MR. McCARTEN: Ann Tracey.
.> 3 TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
93 I g MR. ALOOT:
l 2 W'
- MR. McCARTEN:
3 ' & .-7 ( A' l
l
' 4 l
0 l
6 7
i i 8
\
MR. ALOOT: Do you believe that any' material l 9 I
information or. documents were withhold from the U. S.
gg gg Attorney *s Office in August of 19817 g)
HR. McCARTEN: No, not that I am aware of. I am 13 saying pertinent information may not have been
- ,. g4 effectively. communicated to her.
l MR. ALOOT: 'At that time. ,
15 MR. McCARTEN: At that time.
j 16 17 MR. ALOOT: But of course there was no official i
18 request for documents or information at that time. !
MR. McCARTEN: No. -
39 MR. ALOOT: Vere there any subsequent meetings f i pg t J
[
! 21 with the U. S. Attorney's Office that you knew about or ;
l participated in?
22 MR. McCARTEN: No.
23 1
' MR. ALOOT: Mr. McCarten, I am going to show 24 i
j 25 you a letter from Jim Cummings to Patrick Hanley. It is I.
J TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 1 Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 Washington, D.C. 20006 f (202) 293-3950
94 4
.g identified as document 74 and ask you'to look it over and
, further ask whether you have seen that document before or i ,
3 have heard about its its substance?
4 (Paure while Mr. McCarten examines document.)
5 MR. McCARTEN: I have never seen this document before. To comment on the substance, parallel proceedings 6
was discussed in May of 1981. Dave Everett was the person 7
, g that I talked to in the case.
I am kind of vague as to what Mr. Cummings
.9 gg refers to as "I am aware of Dave Everett's point of view ,
gg on this, matter. However, I do not share that point of g.2 Vi'" " to my knowledge, does the Department of g3 Justice." If he is referring,to Mr. Everett's view that he should be actively involved in the case, he is 9 14
.. obviously disagreeing.with him her. He says they can get 15 16 involved.
- g7 MR. ALOOT: What I am somewhat confused about is obviously parallel proceeding problems are dependent 18 upon having parallel proceedings or parallet 39 l~
j gg investigations. Was there any time in 1981 or in-March'of
'82 where there was not a parallel civil investigation on
[. 2g the Zimmer site that could have been repeated if there 22 l-was a criminal investigation at the same timei or was r
23 24 there always 1,nvestigat, ion _s o n_ t he s e .a_1.l eg a t i o n s ?. . _ . .
I MR. McCARTEN: Throughout '81. In '82, from my 25 I'
(
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TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 1 Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 I' Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
- ' " ' ' ' ' ' ' " " * * * " m ,eam,,,
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93 g understanding, there was no investigation at Zimmer, 2 investigation, now there may have been inspections, from 3
January through most of '82, all the way to September.
4 MR. ALOOT: Did you say there were 5
investigations in December of '81 on site?
6 MR. McCARTEN: There was no investigation at 7 Zimmer from November / December of '81 all the way until 8
1982, late '82.
9 MR. ALOOT: What happened to all those gg allegations that had not been addressed?
gg MR. McCARTEN: They were assigned to Mr. Foster n to investigate and there was no pursuit of them by Region g3 III for months and months and months.
g4 JUDGE HOYT: Now all those months tota 11ying up
,(.
15 to late '82i is that'what you are saying?
16 MR. McCARTEN: That is what I am saying, to my
.17 knowledge. I don't know what Fost.er did. He had the con 18 to do something. Now what he did was another matter, g9 MR. ALOOT: During this time perted was the 20 Office of Inspection at the NRC being involved?
21 MR. McCARTEN: They were involved in monitoring 22 the quality confirmation program, and they may have 23 looked at some of these allegations, but I wasn't there.
24 Mr. Foster could speak as to the progress of the Zimmer 25 case. Mr. Gilbert in September when he took over the case
( TAYLOE ASSOCIATES -
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~
96 had told me that they had done nothing on i t.
1 2
I have a question on this letter., Can we go 3 off the record for a minute?
4 - JUDGE HOYT: I think so.
5 (Discussion off the record.)
6 JUDGE HOYT: Back on the record.
7 MR. McCARTEN: When I look at this letter, 8
Exhibit 74, he is saying now all of the sudden in 9
September he feels that he is doing something that is 10 contrar,y to what he has been doing.
11
. MR. ALOOT: Who is he?
g7 MR. McCARTEN: Cummings i n this letter. He is 13 saying now I believe there is a parallel proceedings
..,- 14 Problem. Well, i n May we discussed parallel proceedings
( -
at length with Main Ju.stice and got memos on this point 15 16 from Main Justice. In fact, I remember reading those 17 memos saying it i s okay to proceeds and OIA's position 18 was proceed, CIA and I&E go with it, 'a joint l' 19 investigation.
l 20 Now in September he writes a letter saying we are not going to proceed and I disagree with your l' 21 l 22 approach to Everett. They got an opinion from Greenspan.
l 23 The letter was signed by Greenspan i n Main Justice saying proceed.
[ 24-
+
25 MR. ALOOT: Vith a joint I&E and CIA ---
(
i - TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 29006 (202) 293-3950
97 1
MR. McCARTEN: Vith a joint I&E and OIA 2 investigation, and then in September he writes a letter 3 to the U. S. Attorney which says I have had further 4 discussions which say don't proceed. I don't understand 5 what was told, you know, what changed. I was not privy to 6 those conversations, but in light of the guidance in May, 7 this is totally contradictory to the guidance that he 8 gave us in May, and the guidance he gave us in May was 9 based on discussions he had with Main Justice.
gg MR. ALOOT: Now would it be consistent with Mr.
gg Everett's contrary views with regard to the U. S.
g.2 Attorney's involvement in monitoring and leading the 13 on-site investigation? ,
6,- 14 MR. McCARTEN: It could either be over parallel i
- l. 15 Proceedings or over Everett's more aggressive approach to 16 the investigation. He says "I do not share this point o f' 17 Vi'W "Of' to my knowledge, does the Department of 18 Justice." I don't know what to say about that. He doesn't g9 agree with Everett obviously, but Everett's. approach is pg one that is commonly used by Justice with every other 2g agency in the government and wh'y not the NRC. That was 22 Everett's position. He says hey, we have worked with 23 everybody else and why not you.
24 I remember at that meeting in April with 25 Sinclair. He says I don't see what the problem is. We TAYLOE ASSOCIATES
, 1625 I Street N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
_ _ _ _ . _.._._._ _ _ _ ._ .- - ~ .
94P, *e *A.4i SS work with everybody like this, and that is true. Why is I
2 there a problem with NRC I think was Everett,'s position.
~
- 3 MR. ALOOT: Mr. McCarten, k am going to show 4 you a document. identified as No. 85 and ask if you have 5 seen that?
6 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, I have.
7 MR. ALOOT: Does that document attach relevant 8
information regarding record falsification to Zimmer?
-9 MR. McCARTEN: These documents were forwarded gg to the region in November and I think this information 11 was included into the report, these interviews were, not
.g.2 all of it in its total.
g3 MR. ALOOT: Do you recall receiving that in p 34 November of,'817
- \
15 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
16 MR. ALOOT: You recall reading it?
17 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
18 MR. ALOOT: The information that was provided 39 in the transmittal memo, did any of that or.does any of 20 that contradict any of the findings of 81-13, or could it 21 have changed any of the findings of 81-137 l
1.
22 MR. McCARTEN: See, I don't agree with the i 23 1indings of 81-13.
I 24 MR. ALOOT: You did state that you received l - 25 that.
l t
I s TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1804 i
Washington, D.C. 20006 I (292) 293-3958
35 3
MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
2 MR. ALOOT: Did you review that prior to the
-3 sending out of the report?
4 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, I did.
5 MR. ALOOT: After reading that and knowing what 6 the report said, would you have pointed out any 7 information that was inconsiste'nt with the report's 8
findings?
9 MR. McCARTEN: I reviewed all these'and some of gg this we included in the report, the interview of 11 Schwiers especially.
gg You are saying did this contradict the report?
13 MR. ALOOT: Obviously one of the. allegations is
., g4 that the relevant information that contradicted the N 15 findings of 81-13 was not provided to Region III until 16 the report was issued.
. 17 MR. McCARTEN: That allegation is kind of moot i 18 because 81-13 knew there was con.tradictory information. I g9 mean there was contradictory information in.our own files gg to the conclusion of 81-13. The conclusion' of 81-13 is 21 Zimmer has.some, or the summary said there were some 22 paper problems. I disagree with that conclusion, that is 23 "only paper" was what was touted in the region, and it 24 was told to the press in November. I was present at that 25 press conference. I didn't believe that.
k I
it p TAYLOE ASSOCIATES
- l. 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 0 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
100 g That report in that area, the region said 2 there were only paper problems when we had allegations of 3
hardware problems. We had substantiation of hardware 4
problems. Mr. Keppler was fully briefed that there were
,5 hardware problems. As inspectors began to look more and 6 more at the plant, they found more and more hardware 7 problems in the October and November time frame.
8 That brings us around to the main meeting with ,
9 Mr. Stallo in Region III in which Mr. Stello was given 10 detailed brief as to what we found at the plant. The 11 conclusion of the brief was Mr.Stello, these are only r2 paper prob' ems and thmt is it.
13 Stello got very upset about that saying you 14 mean you spent three months investigating a plant with 20 15 inspectors and invested a thousand man-hours and you are ,
16 telling me you have only found paper problems? He was 17 kind of upset with that type of thinking, and one of the 18 inspectors, Jerry Shapker, stood up and he says has g9 anybody in this room got any evidence that there are
- g hardware problems? He said I have got inspectors that can gg walk into a plant and tell you if there are hardware -
22 problems. I would like to see the inspector, but the 23 point is Shapker stood up in that meeting and said there l
k 24 are some hardware problems, the structural welding is 25 faulty. -
M Y
i TAYLOE ASSOCIATES }
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[-
101
)
g I stood up and I pays the nonconformance 2
reporting system relates to hardware problems not being 3 identified. Then I said tho.*a are also criminal 4
violations therei and when I said that Stello got very 5
emotionally upseti threw up his hands and said we have 6
got inspectors tied up in grand juries.right now. I don't .
want to hear about any criminal allegations. He says we 7
' are just going do health and safety. That is OIA's job 8 .
and we don't.want to have nothing to do with criminal 9
gg stuff, and this is May. -Then he walked out of the meeting..
11
, g7 MR. ALOOT: You are saying then that the g3 information or the memos or interview summaries that were
,y 14 transmitted ,on November 18th, 1981, while it may be it 15 had given information ,that was contradictory to the 16 findings of 81-13, that that contradictory information 17 was already in your files, or was this new information?
MR. McCARTEN: Yes, because you have got to
~ 18 look at the scope and how they narrowed. At.the beginning -
39 2g. of the investigation they narrowed the scope of what we would look at. We didn't look at CG&E management.
21 MR. ALOOT: But what I want to make clear is, 22 23 to myself anyway, is that this information that OIA 24 allegedly failed to transmit in a timely manner, would it 25 have affected or added new information to the TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
[.
102
. g invest sative report, 81-13, . if it had come over earlier?
MR. McCARTEN: No, because the regional people 2 .
would have excluded it in the editing process, Just like 3
4 they excluded all the other stuff.
To answer y o'u r question, Applegate is right.
5 6
Pertinent information was excluded from 81-13.
MR. ALOOT: But not by OIA.
7 MR. McCARTEN: Not by OIA. By Region III 8
specifically during the five-month long editin.s process.
9 This information shows that the utility and that Kaiser
. 10 management was involved in these problems. I had similar gg statements to these. I had better ones and they are in l'2 13 the files. If you get those and you read them, you will -
see that these guys are saying CG&E management failed to
's Provide us with inspect, ors.
15 Yet the overall report, .the summary of the 16 report reads these are paper problems, not hardware 17 problems and we believe they are not indicative of real 18 quality p'roblems at the plant. The summa r y -of 81-13 is 39 2g false. In a sense Kepper issued a false report.
Vhen he was making that press conference and 21 saying it was only paper, I sat in the back of the room 22 23 and I knew it was false.
MR. ALOOT: Do you b51ieve-Mr. Keppler knew it 24 25 was false?
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
- - - - ~ . - - . - . _ __ _. .. _ _ _ _ __
'P r v w, - - - - , , _,,
103' MR. McCARTEN: Yes, and I think it has been 1
2 proven that i t' is false because the subsequent Phase II 3
investigation has proven those hardwars problems.
MR. ALOOT: Vall,.again, the question is is it 4
false through ignorance or false through a knowing ---
5 MR. McCARTEN: I think it is knowing because 6
7
'there was enough there to say there were hardware 8
problems and he didn't want to say it, and I think Victor Stello had a big, big role in taking it from hardware to 9
. paperi to downplay it. Again, they inspected the plant gg for five years. How can they come out and say it is bad 11 gg now.
MR. ALOOT: The interviews that are attached, 13 g4 and I believe there is a memo, attached to the November
( '
15 18th transmittal memos,would that be information that would be relevant to the U. S. Attorney's inquiry?
16 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
17 gg MR. ALOOT: Vas that ever provided to the U. S.
Attorney?' .
19 2g MR. McCARTEN: Not that I am awa're of.
MR. ALOOT: I am going to show you a document 21 22 identified as 92. It is a December 3rd letter from Mr.
23 Cummings to Ann Maria Tracey.
24 MR. McC ARTEN :. _ D e c emb e r_3 r.d _ o f _ '_8.1.
25 MR. ALOOT: I believe it references the 4
(, TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 i Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
~~'
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4 104 g interviews in document 85.
MR. McCARTEN: It says "Results of,several CIA 2
3 interviews conducted." Okay.
4 MR. ALOOT: What I want to know is that since 5
you did receive this, is it reasonable to read that 6 reference to refer to this November 18th ---
MR. McCARTEN: Yes. These are the interviews 7
8 that OIA did at the site.
MR. ALOOT: Vere there any other interviews 9
gg that you happen to know of that might be re' levant other
. gg than what was transmitted here in this November 18th gg memo?
MR. McCARTEN: What was your question? I was 13 r'eading aloud.
.MR. ALOOT: .Are there any other documents or 15 interviews that may be relevant other than to the U. S.
16 Attorney's investigation other than the ones that were .
17 transmitted to you on November 18th of '817 l 18 l
MR. McCARTEN: Yes, there is. We took over 50 f 19 f- 20 statements.
MR. ALOOT: Obviously the November 18th package
! 21 f
l 22 is not 50 statements.
1 MR. McCARTEN: Right. There are 50 statements 23 taken by I&E fnvestigators at Zimmer that were never 24 given to the U. S. Attorney and were never included. A I 25 I
t .
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 l Washington, D.C. 20006 l-i (202) 293-3950 o - - - - - , . .
~ '
.......-_..~.....a...
, 103 I
g majority of them were never included in 81-13. Some of 1
2 them for reasons of confidentiality of t he a,11ege r and l
3 some of them just for general considerations. 1
~
4 JUDGE HOYT: Can you identify those to us, Mr.
5 McCarten? . 1 6 .MR. McCARTEN: It would be easy to identify 11 7 you ---
8 (Pause while Mr. McCarten receives phone 9 call.)
gg MR. McCARTEN: Can we take a short break?
11 . JUDGE HOYT: Sure.
gg (Brief recess.)
13 JUDGE HOYT: All risht 3 go ahead.
14 MR. McCARTEN: I have turned over all the
- k. Paperwork to the FBI or otherwise it would be a lot 15 16 easier. These statements that we are talking about are 17 located i n the Region III investigative file. They would 18 be the results of all the people I interviewed during the 39 first six' months of 1981, the statements that I took.
2g JUDGE HOYT: Do you recall the number of that 21 file?
22 MR. McCARTEN: It is not. It would be 23 investigative notes, but it was left with Jim Foster when i
24 I left. If you really have a hard time with it, you could 25 go to the Bureau i n Cincinnati and they could give you
' TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1804 Washington, D.C. 20006 t
(292) 293-3950
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106 g .the file.in its totality.
. 2L MR. ALOOT: Unless a grand jury has been 3 impaneled.
4 MR. McCARTEN: Yesi and then they can't. Region 5
III has-sot it. It is just a matter of how they filed it.
6 MR. ALOOT: Do you happen to know whether 7
everything that you give to Mr. Foster when you left g Region III, whether all that information was given to 9 OIA?
gg MR. McCARTEN: No, I have no idea. ,
gg MR. ALOOT: It is quite likely then that OIA's g file on criminal issues at Zimmer are not as complete as g3 what you turned over to Mr. Foster or not the same?
., 34 MR. McCARTEN: It could be, but I think I.gave
' them copies of all the. statements because there were 15 16 books of these statements made. -
17 MR. ALOOT: Judge Hoyt, I believe you had a question that I stepped on just before we went on the 18 g9 recess. You asked him'if he could identify _---
2g JUDGE HOYT: Oh, that was the names of the 2g persons and I think we got that when you came back in.
MR. ALOOT: The names of what people?
22 JUDGE HOYT: These were the names of the people 23 24 that you had interviewed that were not included in the
~~~
25 TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
. = . , - _.
. =-. ._.
107
-g MR. McCARTEN: You could take 81-13 and compara 2
it with the list of people, the statements attached to in t'he file and you
-3 81-13 and the statements that are will see how many were excluded.
4 MR. ALOOT: Were some of the statements you 5
received involving allegations that had yet to be 6
- investigated?
7 MR. McCARTEN: That is correct.
8 MR. ALOOT: So.is it possible that some 9
gg statements were excluded because*81-13 never got around gg to deal,ing with their allegations?
MR. McCARTEN: That is right but it doesn't 12 23 mean that you can't forward that to OIA or Justice, and
. g4 that was my point.
15 MR. ALOOT: ,Okay.
JUDGE HOYT: You never knew what OIA was 16 feeding t'o Justice though, did you?
17 MR. McCARTEN: No, I did not. The 18 communications between Main Justice and OIA> the only one 39 2g 'I got a feel for was results of the parallel proceedings 23 discussions in May which were in memos and I don't know 22 if you have them. I don't have them. They were memos from 23 OIA to the region saying here is guidance on how to 24 pursue this.
MR. ALOOT: Did you have any discussion with 25 TAYLCE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 i
Washington, D.C. 20006
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108
. g U.S. Attorney in Cincinnati regarding the flow of 2 information from OIA to that office?
3 MR. McCARTEN: You mean in December?
4 MR. ALOOT: From the present to '81.
5 MR. McCARTEN: I discussed with the FBI the i 6 lack of. communication, you known obviously they didn't 7 have what they should have. That was the only thing I g discussed with them.
9 MR. ALOOT: And they were going to discuss that gg with the NRC, or they indicated they would more than*
i gg likely through the U. S. Attorney's office.
3; MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
13 MR. ALOOT: You have had no other
- r, 14 communications with the U. S. Attorney's Office of the
^k 15 FBI?
16 MR. McCARTEN: No. -
17 MR. ALOOT: I should get you to identify this.
18 It is document 95. I believe that is your exit memo that g9 you identified and discussed previously.
20 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. I say I turned over all my field notes from the '84 field interviews I did. My 23 22 interview notes and copies of all statements were turned over and it i n c leid e s transcripts and copies of all 23
~
24 documentation relating to the NR system investigation.
25 The original NR los book and NR reports found in the I TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 2004 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
109 g inspection report file had been turned over to OIA for 2 custody. .
~
3 What I do say is that I was able to augment 4 the interviews that were not reduced to statements, just 5 the field interviews where no statement was taken, to the 6 computer list. The statements, which speak for 7 themselves, have to yet be entere'd in the computer.
8 MR. ALOOT: I see.
9 MR. McCARTEN: Then I say in paragraph 5, I say 10 that on three occasions we told OIA and DOJ that we would 11 Pursue.anything that would violate a criminal violation, g.2 I said the people currently assigned to the case are not 13 criminal investigators. I said we are not commiting our y commitment to OIA and DOJ without having experienced
,(
15 trained personnel to c.onduct a criminal case, and I 16 recommend that somebody from I&E haiadquar t e r s with the 17 proper experience be given the authority to independently 18 .look at the criminal allegations. Then I say the records
~
39 should be maintained until the plant is f i n a.11 y licensed 20 or the life of the plant.
l 21 JUDGE HOYT: Did you get any reaction to that 22 memorandum?
23 MR. McCARTEN: I sent a copy to Cummings and
~
24 Fortuna. This reaction was a response from them, from the
! 25 region. I was leaving and Investigator Foster wrote a l'
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110
. g memo. It was almost an insulting memd saying turning 2 everything you have over and it was very detailed. It was 3~
like a warning notice almost. So I submitted this in 4 response.
5 , J.UDGE HOYT: But after you had submitted that 6 and a copy of it was given to Cummings and to the 7 regional people, did you receive any feeback from it?
8 MR. McCARTEN: No comment from them at all. In
, 9 fact, my recommendation was not followed because until 10 September Foster was the lead investigator. Foster had no gg experience.in working a criminal case.- He has never been 1*2 trained.
13 MR. ALOOT: What was his experience?
s .- 14 tiR . McCARTEN: He experience was he was a sky j
S. -
15 marshal for three years and then he went to work for the 16 FAA checking physical security of airports. Then ht went 17 to work for the NRC as an investigator. He has a degree IB in Psychology. I felt he had no background.
39 He was never trained at a f ederally recognized 20 law enforcement investigation school like the NIS 21 Academy, the FBI Academy or the Federal Law Enforcement 22 Training Center down in Georgia which Treasury uses.
MR. ALOOT: NRC doesn't train people as 23 i
24 investigators.
25 MR. McCARTEN: At that point they hired
. TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
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everybody who had that training. He was one of the people 2 hired before Bill Ward came in and instituted those kind 3 of changes. Some individuals like Bob Burton were sent to 4 the schools for eight weeks. He had never been sent to i 1
\
5 the schools, and in fact Bill Ward wanted to send him to <
6 the school and the region protested it. He had no 7 training in eriminal law, criminal evidence or eriminal 8 procedure, no experience, nothing.
9 MR. ALOOT: Did you ever have cause to discuss 10 the problems at Zimmer or the nature of the NRC's 11 investigation with any group or individual other than us, gg the FBI or OIA?
_MR. McCARTEN:
g3 I, talked to representatives from Congress regarding Zimmer.
0 g4 15 MR. ALOOT: , Who was that?
16 MR. McCARTEN: The Uda11 committee.
17 MR. ALOOT: Anyone else?
t .
18 MR. McCARTEN: They contacted me. After I left 39 the NRC somebody gave them my name that I wu leaving and gg they contacted me saying will you talk to us.
23 MR. ALOOT: They got to look at the same 22 records the FBI got to look at.
23 MR. McCARTEN: Not in their totali no.
24 MR. ALOOT: Did you talk to anyone else? Did 25 you ever talk to GAP 7 TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3958
i 112 I
I J
! MR. McCARTEN: Why would you ask that question?
3 ,
(Laughter.)
J l MR. ALOOT: I am just interested.
3 I
! MR. McCARTEN: I get calls from reporters and 4
4 everybody and I freely discuss the activities of the NRC.
5 6 -7 ( )
to a reporter I say hey, I will talk to you in general f 7
'l MR. ALOOT: Have you ever talked to GAP?
gg l MR. McCARTEN: They have called me.
11 MR. ALOOT: And they were treated no different j gg than a reporter?
i 13 ,
I
^
MR. McCARTEN: Yes, than a reporter.
, 34 MR. ALOOT: .Did you ever talk to Applegate?
l- 15 MR. McCARTEN: I have t a-1 k e d to Applegate.
16 MR. ALOOT: You met him personally.
17 MR. McCARTEN: I met him personally. Do you 18 want to go off the record now? _
39 MR. ALOOT: No, no. I just wanted to know how 20 many times you had met him.
23 MR. McCARTEN: On the record, Applegate e
23 contacted me, and how he got my phone number bothered me. ;
MR. ALOOT: He called the NRC operator.
24 MR. McCARTEN: Probably. I was here. He 25 l
l l
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. . - =
173 g - contacted me last summer and wanted me to give him all 2 the documents'that I had-on Zimmer and I of course 3 refused. My meeting with him, the best way to 4- characterize it would be obsessed with Zimmer. It has 5 become his whole life's work.
6 Zimmer to me i s kind of a nuisance because now 7 'I have got all these other cases and it interferes with 8 them. It has become almost an obsession with him. The way 9 he contacted me and the nature of the contact was that he gg is someone who is very upset over Zimmer. ,
11 MR. ALOOT: We should get something else on the g.2 record here that we have already discussed, and that is 13 did you at any time advise Mr. Applegate that the Region
,. 14 III investigation was going to focus on him personally?
15 MR. McCARTEN: No, never. I never said that to 16 him. The periodic briefings of AppJegate were ended when 17 we stopped investigating his allegations and we told him i
18 that. I told him that a number of times. I said we have g9 investigated your stuff and it is unfounded, Some of it 2g is and some of it isn't.
21 MR. ALOOT: When you stopped the investigation 22 of Applegate's allegation ---
23 MR. McCARTEN: We stopped the briefs.
24 MR. ALOOT: That doesn't necessarily mean that 25 you stopped the investigation at Zimmer.
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114 g
MR. McCARTEN: Right, but we weren't going to tell him about'the progress of our investigation of QC s 2 inspec'or t allegations, especially with the 3
4 confidentiality of the inspector involvement.
MR. ALOOT: Some of the names you have given us 5
6 are confidential informants?
7 MR. McCARTEN:
MR. ALOOT: So then they continue to be 8
9 confidential.
gg MR. McCARTEN: I would say the name of anybody gg that I interviewed during the course of my investigation gg that I identified as an alleger I think should be kept i
13 confidential for the record. Give,them an acronym or give them a code letteri A, B, C. I would request that because
,,, g4 ,
I don't know who specif.ically I granted it to it has been 15 so long. So I don't know if that causes you a problem.
16 17 JUOGE HOYT: I don't think so.
MR. ALOOT: It might be best.to do that for 18 almost every name except those of myself and ---
29 MR. McCARTEN: Of NRC employees.-
2g 23 MR. ALOOT: I will be individual "A".
(Laughter.)
22 HR. ALOOT: Have you talked to Mr. Applegate 23 24 since you left the employ of NRC?
25 MR. McCARTEN: Yesi he contacted me and I TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 2004 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 w --
115 g talked to him once and that was enough. ,
2 MR. ALOOT: You changed your phon.e number and 3 put the screens on the doors.
4 MR. McCARTEN: That is why we have all these 5 alarms just to keep him out.
6 (Laughter.)
7 MR. McCARTEN: No, it was a very testy 8
situation, and he is a problem. To me he is a problem.
9 JUDGE HOYT: How long ago was this contact?
10 MR. McCARTEN: Last summer he contacted me..
gg . JUDGE HOYT: He hasn't contacted you since that g.; time then I take it.
13 MR. McCARTEN: No, I haven't talked to him 2
c .,o g4 since theni,and if he calls me again I won't talk to him.
15 This situation was he showed up here at our office.
16 JUDGE HOYT: You mean he got into the station 17 and came 'to your office to see you?
~
18 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, as a guest or something he g9 got in l a's t summer. This station is an open. Post, by the 20 way.
! 21 JUDGE HOYT: Yes, I understand.
f 22 MR. McCARTEN: It is not secure.
23 JUDGE HOYT: I noticed that coming in.
24 Did he say what the purpose of contacting you - -
25 was other than to get your notes?
l
'*f
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- MR. McCARTEN: He wanted to get my notes. He g
-, 2 believed-that t'here was a large conspiracy between the utility'and the NRC to cover up Zimmer. He believes that 3 .
4 it even goes to the White House and involves Weinberger
.or somebody at that level.
5 JUDGE HOYT: You mean the Secretary of Defense?
6 MR. McCARTEN: The Secretary of --
some bis 7
official in the Reagan Administration that used to work 8
for Bechtel, i 9 r- gg MR. ALOOT: Shultz.
MR. McCARTEN: Shultz, yes. He believes it gg g.2 involves the White House and all this.
JUDGE HOYT: That is the Department of State.
g3 MR. McCARTEN: He is all wrong in who has g4
..[, influence and everything. That is why I say he has become 15 obsessed. There may be problems at Zimmer, but his train 16 of thought isn't logical as far as who is responsible.
17 My opinion is, and I will tell you this of the
' 18
! 39 NRC as a whole, the people that I worked with in Region
- III' they were not aggressive inspectors. They were not 20 aggressive managers. They were not aggressive 33 ,
individuals. They were primarily technicians. They were 22 not administrators. They don't think like lawyers or 23 investigators. They are not very critical of what people 24 tell them. They don't question what is said.
25 f .
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. 1 117 1 As a whole the FBI people said are these 2 People taking bribes? I said you don't have,to bribe 3 somebody that you have already bought.' They are so pro 4 nuclear and-they believe that they are trying to save a 5 dying i ndustry. I don't think it is dying, but their
~
6 Philosophy is the industry is under fire and we have
.7
- circled the wagons. Their philosophy is we have to fight g off all these people. You don't have to buy them. They 9 are already bought.
gg They are career nuclear engineers. Their whole gg 1-ife has been in nuclear power. It is in their vested 12 interest to keep i t going and not find anything wrong.
13 So when somebody like me comes in from an
, 14 outside agency, and this is my experience and the
( 15 experience of other in,vestigators in the NRC, we are 16 treated like somebody from outer space because we don't 17 think like they think.
l 18 They are oriented towards the utility and they 39 are pro nuclear, so pro nuclear they don't have to be .
2g bought, some of them. I am saying some of'them are. Most 2g of the upper management is that way. In fact, I have 1
22 nsver met anybody in the GS-15 area or higher who doesn't 23 have that basic philosophy.
24 You will see i n d i v i d u'a l i n's p e c t o r' s , 13's and ~
25 14's, who are true safety inspectors, but the management
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.of the NRC, every single one I met in ny two and a half years there, has that idea. They don't have,to be bought 2
or paid off. Their minds are already there.
3 MR. ALOOT: But Special Agent O'Neil seriously 4
asked you whether you believed any individuals working 5
for the NRC had taken bribes regarding Zimmer?
6 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, and that was my response..
7 You don't have to buy them. They are already bought.
8 .
MR. ALOOT: Before Applegate's second set of 9
health and safe.ty allegations came in, you mentioned that .
10 gg you had developed in January 1981 a set of QC allegations
, g.2 on your own.
13 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. ,
MR. ALOOT: Were those allegations ever g4
' investigated or schedul.ed for investigation?
15 MR. McCARTEN: They were scheduled to be 16 investigated during Phase II.
17 MR. ALOOT: And when was that? What was the
- 18 g9 time schedule for Phase II? .
MR. McCARTEN: Phase II was after I left the 20 gg NRC.
MR. ALOOT: So post March 1982?
, 22
. 23 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
JUDGE HOYT: And you discovered those-24 25 violations in '817 TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 l- ~ - ~ -
_ , . . _ _ _ - _ - . - - - . _ _ _T_.
119 l
1 MR. McCARTEN: In '81, January of '81 and they 2 sat on them for a year and a half.
\
3 JUDGE HOYT: And during that entire time '
4 neither you nor anyone in Region III was assigned to do
$ any investigation. Let me ask you this. Were ary of those 6 allegations that you were able to come up with, were they 7- ' Picked up in the CIA's investigation albei~t 1or that very 8 brief period?
9 MR. McCARTEN: No. There were literally 200 10 allegations that languished for a year and a half in-33 Region ,III.
gg JUDGE:HOYT: Have you got any feel for where 13 they are now?
- g. g4 MR. McCARTEN: They are on a computer printout.
- 'f 15 JUDGE HOYT: I am speaking of in the 16 investigative process. -
, .g7 MR. McCARTEN: No, because I don't have any 18 Privy to what they are finding in Phase II. To me that is g9 inexcusable, a year and a half. I don't car.e how you 20 manage a case, that is just gross mismanagement.
2g MR. ALOOT: On the computer printout, obviously 22 it lists allegation by allegation.
23 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
{ 24 MR. ALOOT: Does it list the time period in 25 which that allegation was developed?
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120 3
MR. McCARTEN: Yes. It lists the name of makes
-2 the allegation. It lists what the allegation is. I am not 3
sure if it lists the date the person 'was interviewed, but 4
then you-can go to the book of statements and pick that s
5 out or the book of field notes.
g MR. ALOOT: Does it list when that. allegation 7 was resolved, or.is the computer listing only of g outstanding ---
9 MR. McCARTEN: It is a list of allegations gg resolved and unresolved.
gg MR. ALOOT: So it does reflect wh' ether they are 32 resolved or unresolved. Does resolved mean i nvestigated 13 or does it mean something different like scheduled for 14 investigation?
y 15 MR. McCARTEN: That is the point. They were going to try to say that if i t wa s -r a i s e d in the past 16 17 during a previous investigation at Zimmer, then they should not reinvestigate it, completely negating OIA's 18 I.
39 findings 'that their previous investigations.were flawed.
p lI 20 When I left I said that shouldn't be done.
23 Now some of the stuff that GAP raised I said 22 we should not investigate on its face.
l 23 MR. ALOOT: Which stuff was that?
- j. 24 MR. McCARTEN: Stuff relating to belt buckles.
K 25 Stuff that clearly nothing to do with safety and was E
I*
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2 MR. ALOOT: What about drinking on site?
3 MR. McCARTEN: That should not be 4 reinvestigated.
l 5 MR. ALOOT: You don't think that drinking on 6 site has a health and safety ---
7 MR. McCAPTEN: I think it does, but you have to 8
prove it.
9 MR. ALOOT: Doesn't common sense say if someone 10 is drunk and doing a welu ---
g3 . MR. McCARTEN: That is my point. The way you gg Prove that is what is the end product, and the end 13 product is sloppy work. If you find sloppy work, there is
, , . 34 a reason somebody didn't weld it right and he may have 15 been drunk, he may hav,e been on drugs, he may have been 16 poorly supervised or his testing may have been falsified.
17 MR. ALOOT: Oh, I see.
18 MR. McCARTEN: So you don't . investigate j 39 drinking.' You investigate the work the guy.did.
~
- g MR. ALOOT
- You investigate-the hardware 2g problems and find the cause of the hardware problems.
22 MR. McCARTEN: That is my point. We a r e 23 investigating it, we are finding hardware problem and we 24 are citing them and saying that is it. -We are almost
~
25 doing what the utility did with the plant. We never look c
e f TAYLOE ASSOCIATES C 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 2004 Washington, D. C. 20006 (292) 293-3958
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122 at why. In my cases I looked at why and I tried to do 3
2 that in my stuff.
3 MR. ALOOT: Did you have cause to review the 4
OIA report'on the Phillip investigation?
5 MR. McCARTEN: I read'it.
6 MR. ALOOT: You weren't asked officially to comment on it like everyone else in Region III was asked?
7 8
MR. McCARTEN: Vell, Iwas.g[was there at that meeting when they briefed everybody on the findings, and 9
gg I agreed with OIA, which did not make me very popular the 33 rest of Region III. f n MR. ALOOT: You agreed with then in the sense 13 'I-" . .
MR. McCARTEN: I a g r eed wit.h them in their y' 14 15 conclusion that Region.III's investigation showed a lack of depth and the conclusion of substantiated or 16 unsubstantiated was a wrong way to say ' things.
17 MR. ALOOT: Did you express that support at the 18 g9 time? -
MR. McCARTEN: Yes, I did. I told them OIA was 20 6
21 right.
I
! JUDGE HOYT: Did you tell them that in the 22 23 meeting?
MR. McCARTEN: After the meeting I told them. I 24 25 said they were right.
I L
l^/ '
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123 g MR. ALOOT: Who is them?
's 2 MR. McCARTEN: Streeter, Fosteri Keppler. I
-3 said they were right. In fact, I was kind of an 4 intermediary. Keppler blew up and everybody was made and 5 I was in the middle caught-between the people I knew in
! 6 OIA and I&E and I said hey, they are right. The bottom 7 line was I said they were right. He did do a sloppy job.
B But my qualification is this. That report was 9 reviewed by Region III management and " edited" in the gg same manner that my report was and they never came down gg on the, regional officials who edited the report.
12 Norelius, Meisrann and Keppler had intimate 13 dealings in rewriting that report,and changing things.
. 14 Yet they dump it on Phillip.
15 MR. ALOOT: They being?
16 MR. McCARTEN: They dumped the blame on him.
^
17 They meaning Kappler, Norelius, and this is Phillip's poor report.
18 39 MR. ALOOT: You don't think OIA's report
- g indicated it?
23 MR. McCARTEN: No. In fact OIA said that. They 22 said that the report was reviewed and the management 23 officials responsible in the region are ultimately 24 responsible for the work. Phillip had just been doing 25 things the way they had always done them, go out there, TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 2004 Washington, D.C. 20006 (292) 293-3950 I
124 g
this is the allegation and you talk to-the utility.
You look at the report. The only people he 2
3 talks to are utility officials. That'is it. He talks to 4 the a11eger and QA managers on up. He never goes down in 5
to'the field and talks to the guys doing the work about 6 what really . happened. He takes a manager's word as to 7
what happened without ever verifying it and that is B
flawed. You look at the index of names,on the report and 9
it shows manager, manager, manager, engineer,. engineer.
10 MR. ALOOT: Do you think that the OIA report gg accurately and completely indicated that Phillip's g investigation was inadequate because he did it by the 13 book and the book was wrong, or do you feel that it never p reached the cause of the inadequacy of the Phillip 14 ,
15 investigation?
16 MR. McCARTEN: I felt it never reached the cause. I read the Harpster interview and I also think 17 that Cummings exclusion of the Harpster interview was an 18 attempt to keep a lid on Zimmer. .
39
22 23 MR. ALOOT: But why do you think Harpster's a
24 interview was relevant?
25 MR. McCARTEN: He was the resident inspector
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125 1
there. He was the most knowledgeable
- person about the !
plant.
2 .
3 MR. ALOOT: At the t iina of the Phillip 4 investigation? l 5 MR. McCARTEN: At the time of the F. ' lip i 6 investigation, yes, and yet he-said all those things 7 about CG&E which are later found to be true. You see a 8 quashing of the Zimmer allegations before you even got 9 into. it.
10 MR. ALOOT: I am a little bit confused as to gg what is. the relevance of Harpster's interview to the '
, gg particular Phillip investigation that OIA was reviawing.
13 Certainly it was relevant to Zimmer, but in what way was
, 14 it relevant ,to ---
35 _ MR. McCARTE,N: CG&E's mismanagement of the plant. One of the things that Phillip found ip his 16 17 investigation was that NRs were written and voided and
- 18 written and voided and written and voided and played
.- g9 with, and'that is the key to a major problem at Zimmer is e-20 that the reports were played with.
21 MR. ALOOT: Are you saying then that the 22 Harpster interview is an example of depth in an 23 inspection?
24 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. If you go in and talk to l 25 somebody you don't say what did you do Monday and just 1
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g -limit it to what happened Monday when the whole place is !
i 2 falling down. That i s my approach to an investigation.
- 3 His exclusion of that, I don't know. k'wasn't involved in 4 tha't at alls but I read the interview and i n light of
, 5 what ---
6 MR. ALOOT:- When did you read the interview?
, 7 MR. McCARTEN: I think it was in August, the g Harpster interview. When I was working with OIA they 9 showed me the Harpster interview.
1 10 MR. ALOOT: Oh, it had already been taken out .
11' of the, report at that time?
g.2 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
13 MR. ALOOT: Who showed,it to you?
34 MR. McCARTEN:
I think it was Gamble.
[{' . 15 MR. ALOOT: What did Gamble say when he showed 16 it to.you? .
37 MR. McCARTEN: he said this is the Harpster 18 interview. Harpster knew about all these problems just
' ~
g9 like Danie1s did. Daniels went there as his replacement 2g and found the same thing wrong. Lee Speserdi I think he 21 was in Ops, and he was in charge of Zimmer preoperational 22 testing. He said to me before he even went to Zimmer in 23 the hallway when he heard I was going theres he said.
24 Zimmer, he says Schwiers and companyi the QA Manager, 25 they are a bunch of turkeys.
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The same guy in a meeting with Keppler four 2 months later stands up and says well, you know, boss, i n 3
all deference to the guys that worked on the team, 4 meaning the people that did the field. work, us managers 5
in'the region feel that, you know, we gave them a mandate 6 to investigate Applegate to no end and they found all 7 this other stuff wrong. Maybe we keyed them up too much 8 and Zimmer really isn'.t that bad, right, boss? I couldn't 7
believe.the guy said that. But in the meeting with 10 Kappler he made it sound like no disrespect to the team.
gg members, but what they are finding is not significant.
gg They are overemphasizing what they are finding wrong and 13 Zimmer is really not that bad.
, g4 MR. ALOOT: Compared to other plants?
15 MR. McCARTE#: No. Zimmer is not that bad 16 because the inspectors overreacted-and you sent too many
- 37 critical 'nspectors i in there and gave them a mandate to 18 act like tigers and you really didn't find a lot wrong
- 19 and it is'really just paper, downplaying.
2g A guy who never went to the site, a guy that 21
.three months previously said that the place was a turkey 22 is now telling Keppler something directly opposite. That 23 is because, like I said, he is one of these GS-15 24 managers who go with the flow. That is my complaint with
, 25 the NRC in a general sense.
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JUDGE HOYT: It is more than a complaint, Mr.
- (
3- 2 McCarten. I seem to feel like it is pretty much of an s
3 indictment, isn't it?
4 MR. McCAR. TEN: Yes.
~
5 ~5R. ALOOT: A true bill.
4 6 JUDGE HOYT: And a true bill.
7 MR. McCARTEN: And it is true. You have got to 8
set an influx of people from outside the NRC and from 9 outside the nuclear industry to manage that agency. You gg cannot. promote engineers and make them enforcers. Their gg mindse.t is not enforcement. It i s to resolve. All their n training, 16 years of college, is towards resolving 13 Problems and not towards enforcement. So how can you run g4 an' enforcement agency with people that have no 4 -
15 enforcement philosphy.
16 JUDGE HOYT: Do you think the role of a 17 regulatory agency is primarily an. enforcement agencyi is 18 that what you are saying?
, 19 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. In this case -enf o r cement .
2g because there is a lack of enforcement thai led to these 21 problems.
22 JUDGE HOYT: I wanted to just pursue one thing 23 that you mentioned earlier about the interview with
, 24 Victor Ste11o and he was very angry that these criminal 25 investigation allegations were being brought up.
]
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 I' Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 w--
129 g Did I understand you correctly to say that he 2 was not i nterested in it? Would you give me,that 3 statement.of what his reply was again?
4 MR. McCARTEN: He said we don't get involved in 5 that. Our job is health and safety and we are not 6 involved in investigating criminal allegations.
7 JUDGE HOYT: Was there anybody in that room 8 that tried to relate to him how criminal could be health 3 9 and safety as well or health and safety could.be gg eriminal?
gg MR. ALOOT: Vell, after saying that and after 32 seeing hi's eyes bulge out, I just sat-down. He then
. 13 turned to Kepper and said I want to talk to you and he
- 14 left the meeting. That was like the high point of the
-Y
-b 15 meeting. ,
16 JUDGE HOYT: And the meeting was at Region III 17 headquarters?
.gg MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
19 JUDGE HOYT: So Stallo and Kepplet go then into 2g Keppler's office?
21 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, because he challenged the 22 audience are there hardware problems and we stood up and 23 said there were. Also, the tone of the meeting, too, was 24 funny. There were like 20 people there and there were the f
25 seven people who were actively involved in the TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (292) 293-3950 a - g y , , -
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, g investigation and every manager in the building was s 2 there. People who had never even been involved in Zimmer 3 were there and giving input on what they . thought about 4 Zimmer. I couldn't believe it. They like to rule by
~
5 committee. I guess that negates any mistakes.
6 MR. ALOOT: It spreads the blame.
7- MR. McCARTEN: Yes, it spreads the blame or 8 something.
9 MR ALOOT: Let me focus your attention back on le the August 1981 meeting when CIA came out to read their gg- draft report or at least their summary. Do you know of r2 .any modifications that Region III personnel requested OIA 13 to make on the summary? .
14 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. There were discussions 1(- 15 between Keppler and Schneblin, Cummings wasn't there for 16 that meeting, about modifying-the summary.
17 MR. ALOOT: Were you privy to those r 18 conversations or did you hear about it secondhand?
[ g9 MR. McCARTEN: Secondhand. .
gg MR. ALOOT: What did you hear secondhand?
~
gg MR. McCARTEN: Secondhand I heard that they 22 wanted to rewrite the summary and that is all.
23 MR. ALOOT: Who did you hear this from?
24 MR. McCARTEN: I heard it from Schneblin and 25 Gamble.
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (292) 293-3958 m- - _ ._ _. _ ..__ __. . . . . . .
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MR. ALOOT: Schneblin and Gamble told you about 2 Keppler's ---- .
3 MR. McCARTEN: You see, at this point I was 4
offered a job in OIA. In January of that year I was 5 offered a job to be the first regional OIA 6
representative. Cummings announced the job, I was given 7 'the job and then they decided not to implement 8
regionalization at that level. But I was their pick for 9
the OIA rep for Region III hands down. No question about gg it. We thought the same way. ,
11 MR. ALOOT: I get the sense you are conveying gg the impression that at least during this time period you 13 were viewed as one of the team, the OIA team, at least y 14 among the OI,A field invest.igators. You were not an 15 adversary. ,
16 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, because I definitely was 17 not a member of the Region III team at this point.
18 MR. ALOOT: So you heard about the request for g9 .
20 MR. McCARTEN: I heard about a request to 23 rewrite the report.
22 MR. ALOOT: Did you hear about any successful 23 rewriting of the report?
24 MR. McCARTEN: No.
I
- 25 MR. ALOOT: You weren't interviewed, right, by TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (292) 293-3950
132 1
OIA with respect to the Phillip investigation?
2 MR. McCARTEN: No, I had no participation in 3 that case.
4 JUDGE MOYT: When did you then have the feeling 5 that Cumm,ings was quashing this, when you were told that 6
by Sinclair and Gambre?
7 MR'. McCARTEN: Yes, in June.
8 MR. ALOOT: This is June 1982?
9 MR. McCARTEN: '81.
gg JUDGE HOYT: '81.
gg . MR. ALOOT: You are telling me they quashed it g.2 in June of 19817 g3 MR. McCARTEN: They commented to me that he was
,p g4 here to quash this case in June of81.
15 MR. ALOOT: Even though they had opened up this 16 criminal investigative file in May of '817 17 MR. McCARTEN: Right. They said to me we will 18 .never be out here again and they weren't.
g9 MR. ALOOT: Did they indicate that they gg wouldn't because they were going to defer to the U. S.
og Attorney's office?
%> +
22 MR. McCARTEN: No. They indicated to me, they 23 said Cummings is going to quash it and we will never be 24 out here again.
25 JUDGE HOYT: 81-39, do you recognize that TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20086 (202) 293-3950 ee em-m -'-~%=e+e. " - ' " - - * ' - * " " -* - ' * "** ' **
3 JUDGE MOYT All right.
4 MR. McCARTEN: 81-13 is the inspection report 5 '" II""*f*
6 MR. ALOOT: 81-39 is the OIA designation for.
7 their criminal investigation. If you don't know it, you 8 don't know it.
9 MR. McCARTEN: 81-397 gg JUDGE HOYT: Yes.
gg MR. ALOOT: They have the same system and it 12 sets kind of confusing with the numbers.
. 13 MR. McCARTEN: My opinion of the NRC at this
- ,_ 34 time was that ---
i' 15 JUDGE MOYT:. Are we speaking of June '817
- . 16 MR. McCARTEN
- June '81.
17 JUDGE MOYT: All right.
18 MR. McCARTEN: Or let's say August of '81.
19 JUDGE MOYT: All right. .
2g MR. McCARTEN: My opinion of the NRC was that 21 regional officials were not adequately doing their job in 22 the construction inspection program and were quashing any
~
23 information which would prove that.
24 The internal affairs division of the NRC was 25 not interested in investigating our auditing. I&E's TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904
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134 g performar.ce, and that they were effectively keeping a lid 2 on a criminal investigation, both of them. So that is why 3
I left the agency.
4 MR. ALOOT: Didn't OIA ultimately assist in the 5 creation of OI?
6 MR. McCARTEN: That is after I left. No, OI did 7
not ultimately assist in that. Morris Udall assisted in 8 the formation of OI.
9 MR. ALOOT: You had talked to the Udall gg committee?
11 . MR. McCARTEN: Yes. After I left and talked to gg Udall OI was set up.
13 MR. ALOOT: And you believe it was Udall's
, 14 Congressional suggestions --- -
15 MR. McCARTEN: --- that they get an independent 16 investigative body in there that could not be influenced 17 by the Regional Directors, and I was not the only one 18 that had a problem. Investigator Dick Herr had a case 19 where the Regional Director made disclosures- to the gg licensee and had the licensee ---
J.
gg MR. ALOOT: Is this Region III or another 22 f*810"7 23 MR. McCARTEN: Region V in Dallas.
24 MR. ALOOT: Four.
25 MR. McCARTEN: Four. He was the Chief TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20096 (292) 293-3958
]
l 130 l;
3 Investigator in Region IV and the Regional Oirector was 2 replace as a result of a Congressional inquiry. From what 3 I heard secondhand was that a report was provided to a 4 utility, a draft report. Dick Herr was told he will only 5 i nvestigate this matter for a very limited amount of 6 time, two or three days. He will not take statements from 7 people, and generally focusing his investigation and then 8 informing the utility of the findings before he ever got 9 out there.
gg MR. ALOOT: You mentioned previcusly that you gg had conducted other investigations for Region III at gg plants there than Zimmer.
13 MR. McCARTEN: Right.
24 MR. ALOOT: Was the handling of the
,f*
' I 15 investigation at these,.other facilities different than ;
- 16. the handling at Zimmer?
- 17. MR. McCARTEN: No. In the case of Systems 18 Control Corporation, which was a vendor investigation, I g9 talked to' Gene Pawlike the new Chief I nv e s t iga t o r at
- g Region III and he told me. I said why Systems Control two 21 years later? He said Cummings said he had lost the report 22 and never referred it to OIA.
23 MR. ALOOT: Do you mean 00J?
24 MR. McCARTEN: DOJ. OIA lost the report and '
25 never referred it to 00J. You have got to remember I read s
i TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1804
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136 g
the GAO report on CIA at this same time.
2 MR. ALOOT: That came out in July of '81 I 3 believe.
4 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
5 MR. ALOOT: What but I am trying to get at is 6 you indicate that the' 81-13 was edited in such a way that 7 the problems were minimized at Zimmer.
8 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
9 MR. ALOOT: Were reports that you wrote gg concerning other facilities like Zion, where they also gg edited.to minimize the problem?
g.2 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. Systems Control they let go g3 through and I was surprised. That,is why it is going to a
, 14 grand jury., I had trouble with American X-Ray and 15 Inspection: getting that through.
16 MR. ALOOT: What do you mean by trouble?
-17 MR. McCARTEN: Meaning that the way I wrote it 18 and the way they wanted to rewrite it significantly toned 39 down the s'ignificance of the incident. What people gg testified to me in person after reading an' interview of
- 23 them in the report was sterilized to a point where a lot 22 of emphasis was gone on what the person really said.
23 MR. ALOOT: You believe then the reports were 24 edited not for style but for substance?
25 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
(
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1894 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) lW3-3958
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157 g JUDGE HOYT: Mr. McCarten,'you mentioned 2 earlier that you had gone to a report writing course a 3 couple of-times I believe you said.
4 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
5 JUDGE HOYT: Vas the agency at Region III 6-telling you that your reports were deficient?
7 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, they were.
8 JUDGE HOYT: And that.you had to go to these 9 schools to improve your writing techniquesi is that
-10 right? -
gg MR. McCARTEN: Yes. They denied me a grade 13 12 in August.
4
-13 JUDGE HOYT: Is that August of '91 now?
m, - 14 hjR . McCARTEN: Yes.
'(. 15 JUDGE HOYT:, All risht.
16 MR. McCARTEN: After doing the Zimmer case they 17 denied me a grade 13 and I told them, I says hey, I don't i 18 think it is how I am writing. I think it is what I am I
g9 wr1. ting. .
gg JUDGE HOYT: And what was the response to that?
23 MR. McCARTEN: No response.
22 JUDGE HOYT: Who were you talking to?
l 23_ MR. McCARTEN: I said that to Mr. Keppler. I i
24 then went to two report writing schools in August and 25 September. They were somewhat beneficial, but the l TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 Washington, D.C. 20006 (292) 293-3950 -
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138 1 overall problem was that they -- we also had a very 2 incompetent. clerical staff in Region III, and it was not 3 a place where you could write. Like I find myself, I came 4 back to NIS, and I can write a lot better because I am in
! 5 a room by myself. It is more quiet and it is more 6 conducive to writing.
7 Where we were in Region III . -we wer e right down
. 8 the hall f' rom Keppler with phones ringing. Our secretary, ,
- 9 she is about 63 years old and she was not that competent.
10 In fact, she was down right i ncomp e t erkt , and there were a 11 lot of* problems administrative 1y in that office and a lot 12 of that impacted on the work of the office.
13 We told John'Streeter that. They knew there was
! y- 14 a problem administrative 1y. Here you have got a key A
15 office and'they have got somebody who can't type in 4
16 there.
17 MR. ALOOT: Do you acknowledge that your writing 18 style could be improved and that these two schools 19 helped? -
20 MR. McCARTEN: The two schools helped, but what 21 I was saying was a problem, too. I put down a narrative 22 report. When somebody said something, that was it, and 23 they didn't like that.
24 MR. ALOOT: Well, how would they like the 25 reports written?
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E 139 1 MR. McCARTEN: They want them written like 2 81-13.
3 'MR . ALOOT: You are telling me that your 4 interview summary style is FBI style. If they caugh it 5 goes on a piece of paper.
6 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, and they didn't like that.
7 MR. ALOOT: What way did they like it? They 8 meaning, I assume, your supervisors.
9 MR. McCARTEN: They would like to summarize the le interview. Well, they summarized the NRs. I interviewed 11 like a hundred people and they wrote one line. NR-3855, 1*2 NR-3840 and NR-3850 were improperly voided.
13 Hell, if I had known that is all they wanted in
- , 14 the final report, I could have done that in a day. I i '
15 wrote a big thick -- this thing, this thick.
16 JUDGE HOYT: Meaning about three inches.
17 MR. McCARTEN: Yet, about the backup to come to 18 that conclusion.
19 MR. ALOOT: Do you believe that your interview 20 sumary style is similar to that used by OIA?
21 MR. McCARTEN: It is used by OIA and it is now 22 used by I&E. The new reporting writing system that I&E is 23 adopting, or CIA, is that system. In fact, the report 24 written by the headquarters people was that style.
25 MR. ALOOT: I see.
TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 29806 (282) 293-3950 l
140 1 MR. McCARTEN: It was a matter of they wanted to 2 write like an engineering technical report and we wanted 3 to write an investigative report.
4 A problem with handwriting and editing and what S they did are two different things. They took out 6 substantive facts re'lating to the case. They called it 7 word engineering. It was Streeter's favorite wordi and ha 8 meant word engineering. You could have a good secretary 9 rewrite your reports to be grammatically and punctually 10 correct. They engineered, they toned down and they played 11 with the reports. It took them three months, four months.
12 JUDGE HOYT: What were they doing in that timei 13 Mr. McCarten, in four months to edit the report?
.f - 14 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, four months.
i
\-
15 JUDGE HOYT: Vell, what were they doing that 16 required that?
17 MR. McCARTEN: You see the size of 81-13. It is 18 this thick, and they were editing every single line of 19 that report and every single interview, e v e ry t h i n g .
20 JUDGE HOYT: And it took them four months to do 21 it.
22 MR. McCARTEN: Four months to do it. That is why 23 so many people left. During that four-month period you 24 saw the key people wanting to leave, me, Daniels decided 25 to leave during that period and later left. Shapker and TAYLOE ASSOCIATES -
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2 MR. ALOOT: You said someone else indicated they 3 didn't want to be associated with Zimmer.
4 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, that was Barret, and Fred 5 Maura said don't you rewrite my part of the report, and 6 they did battle with him for a_ month on his part.
7 MR. ALOOT: Did they rewrite his part of .i t ?
8 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, they did.
9 MR. ALOOT: That brings up a question I want to 10 ask.
11 MR. McCARTEN: It was word engineering in a 10 grammatical sense. It wad doing battle with the inspector
-13 over his finding. ,
o 14 JUDGE HOYT: Over his substantive finding?
(-
- 15 MR. McCARTEN.: Yes.
16 MR. ALOOT: What section of t h'a 81 -13 d i d you 17 write?
18 MR. McCARTEN: Have you got 81-13 there?
19 ' JUDGE HOYT: Yes. -
20 MR. ALOOT: We have got sort of a copy here. It 21 is the one.you signed. It doesn't have everybody's 22 signature on it.
23 (Brief pause while Mr. McCarten reviews 24 document.)
25 MR. McCARTEN: I wrote Employee Dismissals,
( TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D. C. 20006
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142 1 Radiographer Suppression, Industry Blacklisting,
- i. 2 Inspector's Journal, Inspector Harassment, QA 3 Surveillance Reports. I am pretty sure. There is a 4- question of QA Surveillance Reports. I think Shapker 5 might have had it. I wrote Control of Nonconformances, 6 Threatened Firing. Let's get back here to the back. Here 7 you get some ~ of the'back part which I think is called 9 Appendix -- I wrote about the whole back part of the ---
9 MR. ALOOT: Those are i nterview summaries?
10 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, all those interviews and 11 statements. It is a whole thing on nonconformance l'2 reports. It is the whole thing. I think it is Exhibit 1.
13 Yes, I wrote all of Exhibit 1 whigh is about 30 pages
. 14 long. .
'- 15 MR. ALOOT: You say that originally was a 16 section in the main report.
17 MR. McCARTEN: And they.made it an exhibit.
18 MR. ALOOT: When it was a section in the main 19 report, there were exhibits that supported tta t chapter, 20 or whatever it was?
t 21 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
l 22 MR. ALOOT: And they, were replaced with'the 23 section you wrote itself.
i 24 MR. McCARTEN: With no exhibits, yes. Well, 25 maybe there are exhibits to this exhibit. I think I TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20096 (202) 293-3950
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143 1 fought that and I think the exhibits are here because 2 here is Exhibit 1 and I think that is Exhibit 1 to 3 Attachment'A, which is kind of ridiculous.
4 MR. ALOOT: Do you have copies ---
5 MR. McCARTEN: That is 30 pages at the back of 6 the report.
. 7 MR. ALOOT: Do you have copies of the final C draft that you submitted to ---
-9 MR. McCARTEN: No, I think the FBI has that.
- 10. ~ Yes, that is in a special yellow folder and they have got 11 that. Let me check here. Yes, they have that.
I'2 MR. ALOOT: I have no more questions.
13 MR. McCARTEN: They have,that because it has got 14 the --- .
9 15 MR. ALOOT: "
.-- notations of where changes were 16 made?
17 MR. McCARTEN: It is more detailed. No, it 18 wasn't the changes. It is just more detailed. It is a 19 better t o'o 1 to work with for an investigator than this 20 thing. I fought them for four months and down to the last 21 day on some of the stuff.
j 22 MR. ALOOT: You didn't attend the Commission i
23 briefing, did you?
24 MR. McCARTEN: No. You might have a copy here 25 where it is safety related.
I f'
>- TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1994 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
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144
. 1 JUDGE HOYT: I am sorry. I didn't understand
. 2 what you said.
3 MR. McCARTEN: There was one on electrical that 4 they said was not safety related and we later found out 5 it was. Yes, like the final report says, this was not 6 safety related.
7* JUDGE HOYT: Vould you mark that for us?
8 MR. McCARTEN: Yes,and I think page 30 of 9 Attachment 1.
10 MR. ALOOT: That is the one where Mr. Keppler 11 flip-flopped.
12 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, was it safety or not. It was 13 the violation of a hold tag where,they whited out one of
,.. 14 the los books. Keppler didn't get involved in the r -
b 15 editing. Streeter did all that.
16 MR. ALOOT: So by the time it hit Mr. Davis, Mr.
17 Keppler ---
18 MR. McCARTEN: Mr. Streeter and Mr. Foster had
~
19 already rewritten a lot of the report, partr of it.
20 MR. ALOOT: So any improper editing would have 21 been done at the Streeter level?
22 MR. McCARTEN: The Streeter/ Foster level.
23 MR. ALOOT: What about Mr. Warnick?
24 MR. McCARTEN: Or Mr. Warnick, yes. No, Mr.
25 Warnick, he took over Streeter's job after Streeter got
, TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (292) 293-3950
145 1 this report out.
2 MR. ALOOT: You were the lead investigator.
3 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. ,
4 MR. ALOOT: And Foster was what, lead inspector.7 5 MR. McCARTEN: Nothing. -
6 MR. ALOOT: How did he set in the role of 7 editing your work product?
8 MR. McCARTEN: Streeter had him edit my work 9 product.
10 MR. ALOOT: So the people that had the problems 11 with your writing style were Streeter ---
1'2 MR. McCARTEN: And Foster.
13 MR. ALOOT: Who was not,your supervisor.
}, 14 MR. McCARTEN: Streeter was my supervisor.
15 Foster was not my supeivisor. He_was a co-worker.
16 MR. ALOOT: What about Warnick?
17 MR. McCARTEN: Warnick, no. It was mainly a 18 conflict between Streeter and I.
19 JUDGE HOYT: Well, Foster was alsa editing the 20 report because he was going.to replace you, or had been 21 tapped to replace you.
22 MR. McCARTEN: That was not at the time he was 23 given the job of editing.
24 JUDGE MOYT: That came later then.
25 MR. McCARTEN: He wasn't tapped until I quit.
/
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146 1- JUDGE HOYT: And at that time you had not made 2 known your intentions to depart?
3 MR. McCARTEN: No. I left because of the 4 editing.
5 MR. ALOOT: Did you ever ask Mr. Streeter why a
. 6 co-worker was now supervising your work product?
7 MR. McCARTEN: Their excuse they gave to me in 8 June when they started this editing process was that ha 9 had experience on the Marble Hill rtport and they wanted a
a le him to get in on it. There was no adequate reason I felt 11 to have him rewrite the report. I said I could have done 12 it.
13 The point is why rewrite an entire report? Why
- ',- 14 does i t take four or five months to get a report out? I 15 think Keppler's intention was to get another opinion on 16 Zimmer maybe in there. That could be his only 17 justification.
18 JUDGE HOYT: Let me suggest to you a reason, Mr.
19 McCarter, that it took so long to rewrite the report. It 20 feel in consistently with the attempt to ignore the i
21 criminal violations and retain the paper chase theory 22 that had sprung up earlier.
23 MR. McCARTEN: I don't understand the paper 24 chase theory.
J t
25 JUDGE HOYT: Well, the paper chase i dea seemed 4
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147 1 to have been that we were going to cail things that 2 happened at Zimmer paper problems. This you-mentioned 3 several times.
4 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. What you are saying is that 5 it was an e f.f o r t to keep'the lid on while the utility got 6 its act together. It could have been that.
7 JUDGE HOYT: Do you think it was?
8 MR. McCARTEN: I don't know.
9 JUDGE HOYT: Have you ever been asked that 10 before?
11 MR. McCARTEN: No. I do know that I have read a l'2 book which i ndicates that Streeter was involved in the 13 Davis-Bessie case. He was Jim Crpswell's . supervisor. Are c, 14 you familiar with Davis-Bessie and Creswell, the
\
15 inspector who said tha.t the Babcock and Wilcox reactors' 16 water level indicators were defective and could lead to a 17 THI accident and this was three weeks before TMI?
18 He went before the Commissioners and flew there 19 at his own expense to express'his concerns because ha 20 felt Keppler was quashing his concerns. He talked to 21 Ahearne or.somebody and he said the only thing I want out 22 of this is another job because I will be persona non 23 grata in Region III.
24 Streeter was Creswell's supervisor during that 25 time, and two weeks after he went to the Commissioners TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (292) 293-3950
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)
. 1 TMI happened, and exactly what he said would happen i
s 2 happened at TMI. They could not read the pressure level I 3 indicator which resulted in an accident. That was a 4 subject in numerous Congressional inquiries following the 5 TMI accident.
6 Streeter'was Creswe11's' supervisor. Streeter 7 was brought into Zimmer by Keppler the minute he knew he B -had a big problem. He had a big problem at Dav.is-Bessie.
9 MR. ALOOT: Wouldn't Streeter normally have been 10 involved in Zimmer since he was your supervisor?
11 -
MR. McCARTEN: Streeter had no ability or 12 experience whatsoever in investigation.
13 MR. ALOOT:._ But wasn't be your supervisor?
.f 14 MR. McCARTEN: He was named Chief of 15 Invastigations when he had'never done an investigation in 16 his life.
17 HR. ALOOT: But when was he named Chief of 18 Investigations?
l 19 MR. McCARTEN: The first week of February when 20 this thing started They wouldn't name Jerry Phillip to 21 Chief of Investigations. -
l 22 MR. ALOOT: But assuming that once he became 23 Chief of Investigations he would automatically have been i
L 24 Involved in Zimmer.
I, 25 MR. McCARTEN: Right, and he was, and that is f
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149 1 the point. He is interjected into Zismer at the point 2 when Keppler knows he has a problem and then.he 3 subsequently e,d i t s the whole report. l
, 4 My theory is, if there is a theory as to why it j 5 took five months, is Kepper wanted to lid kept on and he 6 didn't want the problems pointing to him and his v
7 mismanagement of the construction inspection program, and 8 he Streeter was somebody he could count on to minimize it ,
. 9 and it was minimized and delayed.
10 That is my only theory, and that is because of ,
11 what I have read about the Davis-Bessie incident. That is
-12 just theory. I am not saying that is a fact, I have no 13 evidence of that, but there is why Streeter was brought g .. 14 in there. .
15 MR. ALOOT: .Was the job announced?
16 MR. McCARTEN: No.
17 MR. ALOOT: You never had a supervisor in 38 investigators?
d 19 MR. McCARTEN: There was a reorganization and 23 Chuck Norelius was named a branch head and Streeter took 21 his job.
22 MR. ALOOT: Where was Streeter prior to 23 February 0 24 MR. McCARTEN: He was an operations supervisor.
25 He had never done any . investigations. He knew nothing it, TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 1 Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3952 e -
150 1 and at a crucial time he is brought into the picture. It 2 made no sense.
3 MR. ALOOT: His background was engineering?
4 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, reactor operations. For all S the criticism of Jerry Phillip, Jerry Phillip at least 6 had 20 years experien'ce as an investigator, good or bad 7 experience. He knew. He was a quantum leap over Streeter.
8 MR. ALOOT: 'Did Mr. Schneblin know much about 9 . investigations at OIA?
12 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. He had been in Air Force OSI 11 or Air Force Air Police for years.
12 MR. ALOOT: Did he impress you as having a good 13 grasp of investigative techniques and e managing field
.- 14 investigations?
15 MR. McCARTEN: Yes.
. 16 MR. ALOOT: Did'Mr. Gamble or Mr. Sinclair ever 17 express any opinions regarding Mr. Schneblin's 1B qualifications?
19 MR. McCARTEN: No. -
28 MR. ALOOT: That is pro or con.
21 MR. McCARTEN: Neither pro nor con, never 22 anything critical said about Mr. S c h re e b l i n . He was I 23 think retired. This was not his career. This was for 24 something for him to do, which maybe is a good attitude 25 to have. He as very easy going. Now the other people 6
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i 191 1 involved in the case were highly qualified.
2 MR. ALOOT: Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Gamble.
3 MR. McCARTEN: Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Gamble 4 studied to be an attorney.
5 MR. ALOOT: Mr. Pulgia?
- 6 MR. McCARTEN: Mr. Pulgia had been a DEA agent-7 for like 12 years and had been involved in major drug 8 investigations.
9 The inspectors on the staff were some of the le best. inspectors on the team.
11 MR. ALOOT: What about Mr. Cummings?
r2 MR. McCARTEN: His qualifications?
13 MR. ALOOT: Yes. g
.- 14 MR.. McCARTEN: I have never worked with him on A 15 case. I have never seen him work.
k 16 MR. ALOOT: You had always been the object of 17 the interview.
- . 18 MR. McCARTEN
- Yes.
19 '(Laughter.) -
22 JUDGE HOYT: Tell us more about that job offer 21 you had from OIA.
22 MR. McCARTEN: That was Roger Fortuna who is now 23 in I&E.
24 MR. ALOOT: 01.
4 TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1004 Washington, D.C. 20006 (292) 293-3950 m --
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152 1 (Laughter.)
2 MR. McCARTEN: What happened was Fortant4 got the 3 clearance to announce this job for an OI regional 4 investigator for Chicago and it was going to be i k ilot 5 program to put DIA in the regions.
6 Fortuna ann'ounced the job. I applied for it and 7 nobody wanted to go to Chicago. I heard that the weather 8 is bad here, but that is totally erroneous.
9 (Laughter.)
, is MR. McCARTEN: But nobody wanted to go to 11 Chicago. That was one of the factors, but they also E2 called me and said hey, the announcement is coming out 13 and would you apply, and I said, yes, I would be v- 14 interested.. I applied. I was accepted.
15 Then there was a problem where I wasn't in 16 grade a whole year as a 12. So they cancelled the 17 announcement and they were going to reannounce it as an 18 11 so they could hire me.
19 Then Keppler heard that I was going to be the 20 OIA guy in the region and he called headquarters and said 21 what is going on here? He told me. He says it is nothing 22 against you personally, but they should tell the Regional 23 Director when they are going to put an OIA guy into his 24 region, and I don't like this and neither does 25 headquarters.
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1 MR. ALOOT: OIA doesn't report, however, to 2 headquarters. -
3 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. So the point is that the job 4 was never reannounced. Fortuna then went on like a year's 5 sabatical or.a year exchange program with the State of 6 Pennsylvania to work with them. He was very disappointed 7 in the way the announcement thing was handled. I guess 8 when I heard secondhand that when I&E complained about OI I doing something in their region without telling them, he 9
10 was not backed up by Mr. i!,mmings.
j, 11 JUDGE HOYT: He Fortuna wa2 not backed up?
l 10 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. Cummings said well, Fortuna j 13 did this without my approval and .it is not.my fault.
. 14 MR. ALOOT: Fortuna announced a position?
15 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, without Cummings' approval.
16 MR. ALOOT: So it is your understanding that Mr.
17 Kappler complained to whom, Stallo or Cummings?
1,8 MR. McCARTEN: I think Cummings directly. Not 19 complained, but said hey, what is going on here? That is 20 all.
21 MR. ALOOT: Did you take it personally? I know 22 Mr. Keppler said don't take it personally, but did that 23 upset you?
24 MR. McCARTEN: No. In fact, Keppler thought it 25 was a good idea because I was finding all the criminal TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3958
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154 1 stuff anyway.
2 MR. ALOOT: But the problem is OIA.could start 3 turning its sights internal.
4 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. I don't know. He told me he
. 5 felt it was a good idea because I was developing a number 6 of criminal cases and he felt I had the expertise to do 7 it and it would relieve him of having to worry about 8 criminality. He could just say heyi I have got it right .
9 here.
10 MR. ALOOT: Was Mr. Keppler's objection the fact 11 that they would locate the pilot project in Region III, l'2 or that they had started to do that without informing 13 him? ,
.f- 14 MR. McCARTEN: Starting to do it without 15 informing him. .
16 MR. ALOOT: How does that translate into 17 cancelling the announcement?
18 MR. McCARTEN: The announcement was cancelled 19 because I did not have enough time --- -
20 MR. ALOOT: Vell, ultimately cancelling a 21 position, how does tnat ---
22 MR. McCARTEN: Cummings backed off, and'I later 23 heard months down the road that that was a feeler to I&E 24 to see if they would buy OIA in the regions.
25 MR. ALOOT: A trading chip or something?
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1 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. It was just a. feeler sent 2 out to see how things would go. -
3 HR. ALOOT: Who did you hear this from?
4 HR. McCARTEN: Sinclair and Fortuna, but I don't 5 think it was a feeler. I don't know what happened there.
6 I didn't care at the time. I think it was in '80 when 7 that happened. It didn't ha.ppen when Zimmer was going on.
8 That was in '80.
t 9 JUDGE HOIT: Why, Mr. McCarten, woul'd Keppler le have been pleased that you were developing these criminal 11 violations when the OIA appointment business came up and 12 he would still have you out there after it was cancelled, 13 and his desire to prevent, as I upderstand you to be
- e , 14 sayirs heres or keep the lid on the Zimmer thing?
'.' 15 MR. McCARTEN:. I think Keppler's perspective in 16 keeping the lid on was to keep a lid on an internal '
17 inquiry of Region III's actions. .I think Cummings had a 18 lot to do with keeping the lid on the criminal.
, 19 MR. ALOOT: So when i 'd referred t'o keeping the 20 lid on, it was not to protect the licensees from the 21 public, but it was to protect Region III from the 22 Commission.
23 MR. McCARTEN: And specifically Kappler from the 24 Commission. Nobody has ever looked at how this happened.
25 The Commission never has.
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156 1 JUDGE HOYT: How what happened?
2 MR. ALOOT: How Zimmer happened. That is what I j 3 am saying'. How did a plant get_to this stage and be this 4 bad?
5 JUDGE HOYT: Well, let me see if I understand -
6 you then, Mr. McCarten. You are saying in effect that 7 everything that Region III did was either futile or 8 mismanaged or of such a poor quality that they screwed ,
9 the operation from the very beginning.
10 MR. McCARTEN: Of Zimmer?
11 JUDGE HOYT: Of Zimmer.
I'2 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, and I think that is 13 evidenced by the fact that eventup11y the plant got
,- 14 closed down two years later. I think I am right.
- 15. MR. ALOOT: You think Zimmer was --,
16 MR. McCARTEN: I think Zimmer properly managed 17 at the beginning would have led to a closure in March.
18 JUDGE HOYT: March of '817 19 MR. McCARTEN: '81, and you would -have a year 20 and a half more --- ,
21 MR. ALOOT: Rework time.
22 MR. McCARTEN: Rework time, yes. So in a sense 23 they did an injustice to the utility.
24 MR. ALOOT: Is Zimmer unusual of the plants that 25 you dealt with?
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157 1 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. I have never seen a place 2 like that in my lift. .
3 MR. ALOOT: My problem is you are saying the 4 region mismanaged.
5 MR. McCARTEN: Oh, are they mismanaging things 6 in general? )
7 MR. ALOOT: Yes.
8 MR. McCARTEN: I have had a number of cases that 9 have languished for months. I really can't say. My other le work at the NRC was pretty well managed. They used to 11 send me out on peculiar kind of cases like they had an 12 allegation of sabotage of the reactor, a possible 13 misalignment of valves at Quad Cities here in Ilinois and
,, 14 they sent me,out on that because of my experience in the 15 Navy. We worked a lot of sabotage cases, unfortunately 16 for the Navy's part. We work with a lot of disgruntled 17 people turning knobs and turning valves.
[
18 I could work those kinds of cases, allegations l 19 of drug use and stuff like that. I developtd more l
20 criminal cases than all of Region III had ever developed 21 in the two, years that I was there.
L 22 JUDGE HOYT: Were these brought to successful l
! 23 conclusions?
24 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. A lot of them resulted in a 25 number of civil penalties. One if them is going to a P
l
~
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158 1 grand jury, Systems Control. The one ~ out in Quad Cities, 2 we proved that it could have been an accident and it
'3 could have been a mistake.
4 I successfully resolved all of my cases.
5 , MR. ALOOT: What I think Judge Hoyt was af'er t 6 was were any of your Eriminal investigations, have any of
. 7 them resulted in a criminal conviction?
B MR. McCARTEN: No, because they were all 9 forwarded to OIA. Yes, one did. We found a nurse in 50 Milwaukee who was, and you laugh, but she was taking old 11 people and in order to speed up the ---
12 MR. ALOOT: I can remember this.
13 MR. McCARTEN: You have heard this one where she
, 14 wanted to spged up the nuclear medicine scan on a person 15 because she didn't want to spend that much time uith an 16 elderly person.
17 So instead zapping them with 15 millicuries of 1B radioactive material, she would give them 45, three times
(*
- 19 the dose and then falsify the logs and the Ferson would 20 set a scan in 20 minutes and it should have taken 45. She 21 would do this without the doctor's approval. She I 22 confessed to it. I got her to confess to it, and she gave 23 some horrendous doses of radiation to some elderly i
j 24 people's kidneys and vital organs.
l 25 That one she pleaded guilty before she got into l
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159 1 court and gave up her nursing license and went on 2 probation for like three years.
3 'MR . ALOOT: But how about with respect to any 4 biproduct material licensee or ---
5 MR. McCARTEN: That was one of them. Oh, you 6 mean nailing a licensee, a company?
^
7 MR. ALOOT: Yes.
4 6
8 MR. McCARTEN: No. We have one of the few 4
9 license revocations of a radiographer. It was American i
le X-Ray. I did that. Are you familiar with that one?
11 MR. ALOOT: That never got to OGC's level.
1*2 MR. McCARTEN: Okay. That was in Detroit where 13 the guy was --- ,
. - 14 MR. ALOOT: I mean if they are dead in the water 15 and they don't fight about it, we never hear them.
16 MR. McCARTEN: This guy just bowed under. He 17 said hey, take my license. He was.giving people 60 rem in 18 a nearby garage, shooting pipe welds inside of his 19 garage. I had a number of good cases. I had a good track 20 record there.
21 JUDGE HOYT: A lot of these civil penalies were 22 simply assesaed because they were minor. They were 23 criminal, but of minor quality, a misdemeanor type of 24 things rather than ---
25 MR. McCARTEN: Yes, they weren't the magnitude u .
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- 160 1 of Zimmer.
T 2 JUDGE HOYT: Yes.. .
3 MR. McCARTEN: Although System Control, the one 4 that I said was sat on, is a felony violation.
5 So I think we have covered everything.
6 MR. ALOOT: I have no more questions.
7 JUDGE HOYT: I have no more questions either, 8 Mr. McCarten.
9 I think obviously we will want to simulate what 10 you have told us here and we would like to have the 11 opportunity to speak with you again probably at even l'2 greater depth focusing in on a much more narrow area of 13 interest in the future. ,.
- 4. 14 .We would like though the privilege of having 15 you cooperate with us.again as you have done so today.
4 16 MR. McCARTEN: Does the Chairman of the NRC have 17 any feeling towards looking at why this happened, why i 18 .Zimmer happened?
19 JUDGE HOYT: Well, I think, Mr. McCarten, you 20 -have sean our charter. We will of course write our report t'
21 based upon the information we'have developed in the
. 22 various interviews and examination of the documentation 23 and we will make certain recommendations to the Chairman.
24 That is-as far as I think I can indicate to you anything 25 at this point in time.
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4 1
1 MR. McCARTEN: I would like a transcript of this f a
2 interview when you get it all done, j I
3 JUDGE HOYT: I think that can be arranged l l
1 4 without any Problem. $
5 MR. ALOOT: This one we can guarantee you.
6 JUDGE HOYT: This we can guarantee an accurate
] 7 transcript since we do have a qualified reporter with us.
4 1
8
. will ask for a second copy. I believe the Commission 9 usually buys two copies of these transcripts a'ny ways and le we will have a copy of it sent to you.
11 MR. McCARTEN: At the close I would like to say r2 that I don't see any criminal wrongdoing at this point 13 because I am not privy to all the,information on behalf 14 of NRC employees. I will say that. I never saw a 15 deliberate criminal vi61ation, but I am not privy to 16 what was communicated to Main Justice and by who and in 17 what tone, and I was not privy to the August 27th meeting 18 and why I was excluded and that may change that opinion.
(
22 MR. McCARTEN: Yes. You can't shock an FBI 23 agent.
24 (Laughter.)
25 (Discussion off the record.)
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162 1 JUDGE MOYT: Just one final thing that was 2 generated by your last remark.
3 Mr. McCarten, when we talked to you by phone we 4 reduced to writing the substance of what you had told us.
l 5 You had indicated to us in that telephone conversation we 6 had with you several ' days ago now that Region III and OIA 7 did not pursue the criminal violations and may have 8 obstructed justice.
9 Are you indicating that you are backing off le from the obstruction of justice? ,
11 -
MR. McCARTEN: I would say that they may have 12 constituted obstruction of justice, yes. If they did not 13 effectively communicate to the Department of Justice the
.. 14 allegations.of criminal wrongdoing at Zimmeri that may 15 have consituted -- it depends on what was communicated to 16 them in Cincinnati. Mr. Everetti and what Mr. Cummings 17 communicated to Main Justice. That is why I qualified 18 that. I say did they impede a criminal investigation by 19 failure to adequately disclose all the information that 20 they had, which is the statements of all the people that 21 I took and the results of my interviews with them and the 22 results of other inspectors.
23 MR. ALOOT: In the face of a specific request 24 for those documents or t' tat information.
25 MR. McCARTEN: I don't think they were ever TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
163 1 asked for all the documents. What I am'saying is did they 2 adequately brief them. How can you talk to me for two
~
3 days and then brief the U. S. Attorney on.what I said in 4 a half hour, and what was said on the phone about the 5 investigation? I am not privy to what happened.
6 But the result is did the Justice Department 7 act or not act based on what the NRC told them, officials 8 in the NRC, whoever they may be.
9 That is my concern, my exclusion from the le m.eeting and the resultant stalling of the investigation t
11 may have constitutdd obstruction of justice if what was i
r2 communicated to them constitutes that. That is what I t
13 communicated to the FBI, that I was not there. I don't ,
,. 14 know what wa,s said, but I.can tell you this is what I ,
15 communicated to them and this is what the end result was.
16 Actions were or were not taken and investigations were or 17 were not continued and why, for whatever reason it was 19 communicated to them.
19 App 11 gate of course will say it ir obstruction 20 of justice at the drop of a hat, but I won't.
21 J.UDGE HOYT: Thank you, Mr. McCarten.
22 (Whereupon, at 1:55 p.m., the interview 23 concluded.)
24 - --
25 TAYLOE ASSOCIATES 1625 I Street, N.W. - Suite 1904 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
g CERTIFICATE OF PROCEEDI.:GS 2
3 This is to certify that the attached prpceedings before the 4 NRC COMMISSION .
s In the matter of: Interview of James B. McCart'en
- Date of Proceeding: 7 June 19 83 ,
Place of Proceeding: Great. Lakes, Ill.
7 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original
,- transcript for the file of the Commission.
10 .
Mary C. Simons 11
-Official Reporter - Typed 12 ,
ts .~. , _ .
Of ficia6 Reporter - Signature is
- 16 17 ,
Is
- 19. .
3 20 ,
4 21 22 23 s
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25 TAYLOE ASSOCIATES REGISTERED PROFESSION AL REPOP.7ERS
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