ML20129G810
| ML20129G810 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 05/04/1995 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS (OI) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20129E434 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-96-359 NUDOCS 9610030151 | |
| Download: ML20129G810 (144) | |
Text
1 I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA .
NUCLEAR REGUIATORY COMMISSION 2
3
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4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS 5 INTERVIEW 6 ----------------------x 7 IN THE MATTER OF: :
8 INTERVIEW OF : Docket No.
9 ULRICH'V. WITTE : (not assigned)
x ,i 10 .
Thursday, May 4, 1995 11 12 Conference Room 1031 13 123 Main Street 14 White Plains, New York 10601 l
15 )
l 16 The above-entitled interview was conducted at
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17 9:46 a.m. 44 acc.:rdance ;;,i , it g,g,.y g ,
C 18 ' BEFORE: Ar.t.
EDIA-cseniptjons 76-3 _ ylp' ~~ ~'--
Investigator 19 JEFFREY TEATER Investigator 20 JERRY KENNA 21 PRESENT:
22 On Behalf of the Witness:
23 zACHARY MARANTIS of Quinn, Marantis & Rosenberg 170 Hamilton Aven6e, White Plains, 24 10601 (914) 949-0800 25 New York
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g 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 9:46 a.m.
2 3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. Today's date is 4 May 4, 1995. My name is Jeffrey Teater. I am an . >
5 investigator with the NRC's Office of Investigations. >
6 Today I an interviewing Mr. Ulrich Witte, the l
1 i
7 New York Power Authority. The interview is taking place in I
l 8 Conference Room 1031 at 123 Main Street, White Plains, New 9 York, which is the New York Power Authority building.
^
10 Also sitting in on this interview are Mr. Jerry 11 Kenna, an investigator with the Office of Investigations in 12 Region.I, and Mr. Zachary Marantis.
13 Mr. Marantis, can you explain your l
14 representation? '
MR. MARANTIS: I'm an attorney with the law 15 16 firm of Quinn, Marantis and Rosenberg, at 170 Hamilton 17 Avenue, White Plains, New York, 19601. I am representing 18 Hr. Ulrich Witte.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Mr. Witte, let the record 19 20 indicate that myself and Mr. Kenna did show you our 21 credentials prior to going on the record. Is that~ correct?
22 THE WITNESS: Yes.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
You did read and sign the 23 24 aC advisement on identify protection before going on the l
25 record?
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THE WITNESS: Yes.
2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Prior to meeting you, I J
3 mailed to you a U.S. Department of Labor regulation -
4 concerning discrimination complaints.
5 THE WITNESS: Yes. I. received that.
l 6 Whereupon, ,.
7 ULRICH K. WITTE 8 was called as 8 witness and, having first been duly sworn, j 1
9 was examined and testified as follows:
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: State and spell your full j 11 name for the record, please.
12 THE WITNESS: Okay'. My name is Ulrich Konrad
. 13 Witte. It's spelled U-L-R-I-C-H, Konrad with a K, K-0-N-R-14 A-D. Last name is W-I-T-T-E.
15 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And your date and place 16 of birth?
17 THE WITNESS: Date of birth is l My 18 place of birth was 19 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Your Social Security i
20 Rumber?
21 THE WITNESS: It's 22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What is "your home 23 address?
24 THE WITNESS: My home address is in 25 It's a ,
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2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:- You maintain a residence
! 3 in the White Plains area also?
4 THE WITNESS: No.
- I stay with my cousin during 5 the week down in Manhattan. I commute on weekends.
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6 ' INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Can I get the phone 7 number where you are staying at in Manhattan?
8 1' LIE WITNESS: . Yes .- Unfortunately, I don't have 9 it memorized though, but I can give that to you later 10 today. I have got it in my office.
I1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And your office phone i
12 number, please?
13 THE WITNESS: It's (914) 287-3269.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Do you have a r 14 15 Driver's License?
16 THE WITNESS: Yes.
17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: May I look at it, please?
THE WITNESS: Yes. I'll have to get it.
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Let's go off the record.
19 20 (Whereupon, from 9:49 a.m. until 9:50 a.m. the 21 proceedings went off the record.)
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. We're back on the 23 record. Go ahead, Mr. Witte.
24 THE WITNESS: M phone number is 25 j '
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5 1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:. Okay. ,Want's that 2 address? Do you have that there?
.. 9 hqj r
I 3 THE WITNESS: Yes. It's' .
4 That' I I don't know the' zip. Probably a zero, 5 right? .
6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I'm not sure either.
7 There's probably a number of them in 8 THE WITNESS: There's my driver's license.
./
()/f 9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: All right. M2 . Witte has 10 presented to me his driver's license. It's' license 11 number
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i 12 Thank you, Mr. Witte. Okay, Mr. Witte, were 13 you ever in the U.S. military?
14 THE WITNESS: No.
15 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did you serve any time?
16 THE WITNESS: No.
17 , INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What is your post high
. 18 school education?
THE WITNESS: I went to the University of 19 20 california, Berkeley. I graduated in Physics. Some post 21 graduate work in Mechanical Engineering.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Was it a Bachelors of I 23 science degree in Physics?
24 THE WITNESS: Actually, a Bachelor of Arts.
25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Bachelor of Arts in NEAL R. GROSS count nenmns AND rnANstascas 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE. N.W.
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l What year was that? s 1 Physics. ,
or 2 THE WITNESS: I believe it was 3 somewhere in there. l Okay. And you have some 4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
-5 post graduate work?
\
THE WITNESS: Yes.
6 l INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Where?
7 THE WITNESS: 'That was also at Berkeley.
8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
Are you currently 9
10 a ttending any further studies?
THE WITNESS: No. I 11 i INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
When you graduated from 12 13 Liniversity of california, Berkeley, did you go out into the l 14 job market?
THE WITNESS:
Actually, I started working while 15 16 I was still a student. I had to finish part-time, because 17 of my family responsibilities.
18 The first place that I went to work, that was 19 in 1978, was at the time it was called, what was it called, 20 it's the predecessor of Impell. EDS Nuclear was the name 21 of the company, which became Impell corporation, which then Decame Vectra.
But that was my first -job and theit was in 22 23 1978.
24 I started working as a technician, and was 25 promoted to a'n engineer within about four months that I was NEAL R. GROSS court REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 HHODE ISUWO AVENUE. N W.
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2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. How long did you 3 work for that group?
THE WITNESS: I worked for them right up to --
4- ;
5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Do you have a resume? l 6 THE WITNESS: Yes.
7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. I can just attach 8 that to the transcript.
9 THE WITNESS: Okay.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I can go right to the 10 11 Power Authority. ,
j 12 THE WITNESS: Okay.
13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: When were you hired by 14 the Power Authority?
15 THE WITNESS: November of 1991.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who hired you?
16 .
17 THE WITNESS: The manager that brought me in was Alan Ettlinger. He was my director at the time. The 18 19 decision was Alan's as well as his manager, which was the ;
)
20 vice president of engineering, Sal Zula. l 21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Mr. Zula is still with l
'22 the company. Is that correct?
23 THE WITNESS: Yes.
l 24 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So you were hired by the 25 Power Authority in 19917 NEAL R. GROSS count nEpomas ANoinescaeEas 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N.W. ~
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i l THE WITNESS: Right. '
I INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What was your job title?
2 Manager of Configuration
' t 3 THE WITNESS:
4 Management Programs, which.is on the card. i INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. Are you currently 5
l 6 in that position?
THE WITNESS: No. I am not. Effective 7 !
8 December 14, I was removed from that position.
l 9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: 12-14-947 THE WITNESS: Yes. My new title was never l 10 11 explained to me. But I assume that it's some kind of a i 12 senior engineer or something. I INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What group are you l 13 l 14 working with now?
- THE WITNESS: I am now up here in the same 15 16 group that I started up. I am in the configuration 17 Management Group as an engineer, working with the people 18 that I had brought in and started up in this company.
Okay. When you were 19 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
20 bired in 1991 as Manager of Configuration Management 21 Programs, what were you responsible for, actually?
THE WITNESS: I was recruited by the Power 22 i
23 Authority to establish a configuration management program.
24 rhe Power Authority had some very deep-seeded problems in Those 25 ::onfiguration management, as maybe you are aware of.
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l i p roblems data b2ck to tha cid-1980s.
- 2. They made a variety of commitments to the NRC One,of 3 to do certain changes to the way they do business.
4 w hich was to start up a configuration management formal ,
b program.
4 5 ,
t What is configuration
! 6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
! 7 m anagement?
f 8 THE WITNESS: That's a good qu,estion. I like r
It's essentially looking at 9 to use Webster's definition.
i 10 the hardware of the plant, the functions that are required
- 11 to physically control that plant, to modify it, to maintain 12 it, to repair it and to keep it running safely, along with 13 the interfaces between those functions, and make sure that 14 those things aire working correctly.
15 There are typically 10, eight to 10 objectives The first one, which 16 to configuration management program.
17 I'll cite you one here, is that the design basis of the
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18 plant is established, documented, maintained and 19 retrievable.
20 so the Power Authority had a problem with that 21 in the mid-1980s. One of the components of the ;
22 configuration management program was to achieve that 23 objective.
l l
INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
Fire protection fell l i 24 l 25 anderneath that?
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Absolut31y. Fire protection.
1 THE WITNESSt 2 One of the things that I had under my responsibilities was 3
to reconstruct the fire protection design basis for both 4 plants.
5 In that particular example, the approach that I 6 took, which' differs a little bit from some of the other ,
7 design basis work, is that I brought in resources from 8 outside the company and'essent'ially staffed the group with 9 a series of contractors and did the job as "in-house" 10 effort, versus letting the whole job out to let, or letting 11 the job out and bidding it and' letting an architect 12 engineer just simply bid the work and supply a product.
13 So what I did was I brought in three fire 14 protection engineers.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Can you name them?
15 THE WITNESS: Yes. Tom Baileys, Jim Strausser, 16 17 and John Tarpinian.
Are they all three 18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
19 contractors? ,
THE WITNESS: Yes. The reason that we went to 20 -
21 a contractor staff on that is that we felt that once the 22 DBDs were written, that the need for a full-time permanent so we were going to keep 23 position was no longer required.
24 these guys here for a number of years to finish the design 25 basis work, and then turn it over to someone to simply NEAL R. GROSS COURT. REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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i I saintain.
! 2 One of the things that we used as a somewhat n ovel approach was that we felt that fire protection was l 3 4 g eneral enough and not plant specif'ic enough that we could i
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' 5 use the same team.to do both plants, and essentially do -
j' 6 pieces of that work for both plants simultaneously.
I 7 so for example, if the design basis work looked
- 8 at say a sprinkler system at one plant, and the team would 9 then immediately jump to the other plant and deal with the l 5
10 sprinkler system there.
i 11 The thought there is th'ta we would get that expertise to then come back across to the other plant, and
! 12 We thought maybe it will save money by 4
13 then come back.
1 I 14 having two plants done at the same time.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Now did your, this is a 15 16 real general question, but did your problems with the Power 17 Authority begin when you started working on this fire 18 protection design basis document work?
19 THE WITNESS: Actually, as I mentioned before, I am a contractor, I was through most of my career. My 20 I have helped a 21 expertise is in configuration management.
22 number of other plants out in solving configuration 23 management problems.
24 I have to say, in is years, or 17 years, whatever it's been, I have never seen anything like this.
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t 12 1 I htva halped Rancho S:co, Sacr:2:nto Municipal Utilities ,
2 District, I have helped them through their problems before r they were voted to shut themselves down. I helped the 3
4 Southern Company out with Plant Hatch through a number of 5 problems in the mid-1980s, late 1980s, to get them through l
l 6 configuration management problems. l 7 You know, these things are not short little 8 small projects. They are large projects that expend a 9 great deal of resources. Usually cause cultural changes in he facility or the people that work at the facility. The 10 t 11 c ultural problems that I have found at the Power Authority 12 is very deep seeded.
13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: When you worked at those, 14 you worked as a contractor at Rancho Seco and the Hatch .
15 Plant. Did you get performance appraisals from the company 16 or would your contracting company do yearly performance 17 appraisals?
18 THE WITNESS: That's a good question. The way 19 that worked is that I would get a performance appraisal 20 from my contracting company. However, whoever was my 21 supervisor at the time would usually give that performance 22 review to my direct manager at say, SMUD, and then they 23 would provide input to that performance review and then the 24 socument would be consolidated.
25 But it wouldn't have, for example, a SMUD i
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I 22ntgar's n::dts en it. It would hava en Impell nanagsr's 2 name on it.
3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What is SMUD? l 4 THE WITNESS: I'm sorry. Sacramento Municipal ;
5 Utilities District. <
6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. That was the owner i
7 of Rancho Seco?
8 THE WITNESS: Right.
9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Were those performance 10 appraisals during those years positive?
11 THE WITNESS: Yes. Good. Yes.
12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Were there ever negative 13 performance appraisals during any of those?
14 THE WITNESS: Actually there was one or two.
15 But for the most part, one of the things that happens with 16 the nature of this business, configuration management, is 17 that you tend to inflict a lot of pain to the organization, 18 or its perceived pain.. So you have your " camp" that would 19 love it if you would disappear. So occasionally, I got 20 damaged in a performance review. I didn't really concern 21 myself with it.
22 It really depended on the expertise of the 23 manager at the time. If he really, understood my business, then the performance review was very, very positive. If he 24 25 didn't understand my business very well, then sometimes NEAL R. GROSS COURT PEPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ELAND AVENUE, N.W.
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I there would be a ntgativa cesponsnt to the performancs '
s 4 2 review or whatever.
) 3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Were you ever removed l 1
- 4 from any of those jobs based on a performance review? l e
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5 THE WITNESS: No.
i i i Why don't'you go ahead 6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
I 7 and tell me when your troubles with the Power Authority '
I
. 8 first began. .
1 9 THE WITNESS: Mall, this again I think is way, j 1
way aside, but I'll throw it on the table anyway. I found
. 10 4
my relocation process here very difficult.
11 l !
12 For example, Sal Zula, the Vice President of l l
i 13 Engineering, had provided relocation benefits verbally to 4
me that I thought I had. But as it turned out, because of 14 A
the bureaucracy in the Power Authority, I didn't have. He i 15 16 did not have the authority to provide those benefits to me.
17 One of which was that I had a house in Atlanta, 18 which I still have right now, which I was unable to sell.
19 The Power Authority was going to assist in potentially 20 purchasing the house or extending th'e temporary living j 21 expenses to cover the mortgage long-term until it sold.
22 None of those things ever actually happened.
23 As a result, I had a lot of difficulty in a 24 nortgage down there of at the time, it was over 2,000 25 dollars a month, and a rental up here, a substantial 5
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1 amount. S'o I fcund cyself in a finnncial bind early in my 2 c areer here at the Power Authority.
3 INVMSTIGATOR TEATER: Did that cause friction I 4 4 between you and Sal Zula? 1
)
THE WITNESS: Not so much Sal Zula and myself, 5
6 b ut it caused a lot of friction, I think, between Sal Zula .
7 and the Executive Vice President.
8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who then was?
I THE WITNESS: Ralph Beedle. It caused a lot of 9 :
10 friction between myself and our Human Resources Department.
I 11 They basically said, hey, the only people that can make You didn't get it from us. ;
12 commitments like that are us.
13 Therefore, it wasn't of any merit or whatever. l 14 That person's name, by the way, is Bill 15 Berliner.
Is he still in Human
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16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
17 Resources?
18 THE WITNESS: 'He's still here.
19 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What's his title?
20 THE WITNESS: I think he's the Director of 21 Administrator, something like that.
/
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So you had your problems 22 23 in your move up here and things like that.
Yes. It I think, well, this is 24 THE WITNESS:
25 teally just an opinion, but it really tainted my opinion of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RH00E ISLAND AVENUE. N W.
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how ths Powar Authtrity warkcd. Fcr a vica prasidznt to b3 I ..
2 a ble to make certain commitments and then have those 3 r escinded later by a director in a human resources 4 department was very troublesome.
5 As a result, you know, I was staying in the 6 White Plains Hotel at the time. As a result, I had to pay 7 a 9,000 dollar bill on an American Express card that I was I
8 expecting reimbursement for, and did not receive.
9 received a part reimbursement, but not the total 10 reimbursement.
11 To this day, it's a substantial amount of money I never really felt 12 that I have had to pay out of pocket.
13 good about that.
There are other examples. I mean, where there 14 15 were other managers brought in where that transition was So I 16 real smooth and there wasn't any problems like th'at.
17 guess from three yeOrs e.go, I had sort of a raised eyebrow I have tried to put 18 about how people do business here.
19 that behind me, but as you'll see in this interview, the 20 performance review even in 1994, talks about financial I
21 responsibility in 1992. I find that somewhat outrageous.
INVESTIGATok TEATER:
While you mention 22 23 performance reviews, if I wanted to go look at your 24 performance file here at the Power Authority, do you have 25 any problem with me doing that?
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t 1 THE WITNESS: No.
2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. I'll probably and ;
3 up doing that. !
4 I had a case up here at one point where I 5 wanted to look at an employee's performance file, and was ;
l l
6 told that it's some New York State law where you needed the ;
l I 7 person's permission to do that. That's why I am asking you !
8 now.
9 THE WITNESS: I might be able to get you a copy 10 of it. But if you want to see the real thing.
I 11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes. I wanted to look at 12 the couplete file.
13 So you had those kind of problems with your 14 move up here and mon,ies that were promised to you.
15 THE WITNESS: Right.
16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: When did you start 17 experiencing problems, I'm using that'as a general term, 18 but when you were working on nuclear safety issues, doing 19 your job here at the Power Authority?
20 THE WITNESS: I didn't really concern myself 21 with the lack of progress in solving technical problems 22 until about June of last year. But I saw a slow, slow 23 response in solving technical problems from the get go.
24 For example, the thing that I was involved with 25 first has in parallel to writing this strategic plan that NEAL R; GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N.W.
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. 18 1 azttblichrd ccnfiguratien managssent, tha progrea, I was 2 a sked to take a look at the design control and modification 3 procedures. Those are coined around here, the McMs and
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4' DCMs.
5 Well, those procedures were absolutely
- 6 terrible. I can go into the details of that later, but
- 7 they were a very, very poor set of procedures. They were 8 relatively new. Interestingly enough, they were mostly 9 championed by Sal Zula, the Vice President of Engineering.
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So he had a part in 11 writing the procedures?
1 12 THE WITNESS: Yes. In fact, as I got into the 13 details of how those things evolved into-the state that i 14 they were in, as it turned out, Sal Zula had a major, major ,
T factor in the content of those procedures. He is very 15 i
16 details-oriented.
17 When someone else or a group would write a 18 procedure, he would turn around and take it and rewrite it 9
19 and then give it back to that group, and then they would 20, iterate on it for months and months and sometimes years before they agreed on that procedure. He would wear 4;te 21 22 group down.
23 His own approach would get into that procedure, I mean, 24 and that approach was typically very, very weird.
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INVESTIGATOR TEATER: When you began reviewing 2
3 those procedures and you found numerous problems with them, 4 w ho did you raise those problems with or those concerns 5 with?
THE WITNESS: I raised them directly to my 6
7 director, who was Alan Ettingler. What they did, which I 8 think was proactive in its own way, was they put me the 9 head of a task force to repair these procedures.
10 Now I' started that even prior,to a formal, 11 proper, change control evaluation of those procedures.
That evaluation was done, produ,ced June of 1993. But even 12 13 prior to that, I was staffing at the time, bringing in I got 14 supervisors and lead engineers and project staff. i
)
15 them started on starting to repair these procedures. l 16 Now it sounds as if I was given free latitude, 17 but I was not. I had the same constraints that the 18 previous group had from Sal Zula on how to fix them.
19 What I found was that I had an enormous problem 20 with lack of ownership of those procedures by the two 21 plants. They hated them. They didn't want to work to 22 them. They didn't like that Sal Zula had such a large role 23 in them. His personal influences made it much more 24 difficult to fix those procedures.
25 What I suggested to Sal and to Alan, was that l
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. r wa simply wait until tha changa centrol cval. is c plata, I
a nd then basically re-baseline it. Let them be done by the !
2 9
3 groups at the sites within engineering. Let them have a 4 m ajor role in their content, so that there be some ownership. This would be the beginnings of a cultural l
5 6 improvement.
I 7 At that time, and there was an NRC diagnostic 8 evaluation being done right at the time I was brought in, 9 1991, that also identified the same problems with these l
\
10 procedures.
11 The NRC found them, and the NRC got into them 12 to the point where they said, hey, the controls on these 13 procedures, the management on these procedures is lacking.
That report is available. I'll give you a list of 14 15 references.
16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. So you identified 17 these problems. What happened as a result of that, in the 18 end?
19 THE WITNESS: What happened as a result is that We were simply 20 our group could not properly fix them. 1 putting band-aids on them. We were wasting time doing 21 22 that, when what we should have been doing was're-baselining 23 them 100 percent.
24 The results of that are, you can see those 25 results in several documents. One, the change control self ;
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21 1 valuations th2t wa'va r 211y got to rs-b:calina th:m. .
2 This band-aiding business is not working. That is one 3 document that I'll give you today.
4 The second one is the quality assurance 5 process. Here at the Power Authority, has some' thing called 6 a DER. The number of DERs over design control and .
7 modifications continue to be very high. That's the second 8 data point.
9 The third data point is that the NRC was not 10 satisfied. They put out a report in April of 1994 that 11 said, you've got significant design control modification 12 weaknesses still.
13 To tell you the truth, I am somewhat surprised 14 that they didn't look a little harder in their visit here 15 recently.
16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Which visit are you 17 talking about?
18 THE WITNESS: .They came liack and did, it's 19 called a RATI, re-start and assessment team inspection.
There was a public meeting on that just last week. They ;
20 )
21 apparently have given the Power Authority a green light to 22- re-start.
23 They identified some concerns, but nothing 24 significant. That really bothers me.
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22 1 to intorfcca with cny of tha RATI in pection tcam a:mbers?
2 THE WITNESS: Ever since December 14, I have 3 been totally isolated. I mean, I have got to hear this 4 stuff. I have got to read about it in.the newspaper. Zach 5 brings me, I mean, I really feel like I am mushroomed here.
6 These guys do not want me involved. That is the impression 7 that I'm getting. I think that that's the facts as you 8 look at them. They will be bo'rn out.
9 INVESTIGETOR TEATER: So you didn't bring any 10 of your concerns to the inspection team members?
11 THE WITNESS: Absolutely not.
12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. All right. Now 13 you find all these troubles with these procedures. Did 14 anything discriminatory happen to you as a result of you 15 trying to do that at work? Any actions taken against you?
16 THE WITNESS: Amongst these issues and others, 17 I found, okay let's give you some more background.
18 My director, whose name is Alan Ettlinger, I 19 found a lack of credibility of the troops for him. I 20 wasn't surprised when he was removed from his position last 21 actober.
22 Also, Sal zula was removed from his position 23 about a year and a half ago.. Sal was replaced by an acting 24 vice president from Impell, Paul Borer. Through this 25 process, I found that I beginning to be the sole person NEAL R. GROSS COURT MPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W.
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23 I that was pushing cn fixing th300-prcblsm3.
2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So Ettlinger was pushing 3 them first of all. Then he got moved out. I don't want to 4 put words in your mouth. Is Zula trying to make these 5 procedures be done the right way? .
6 THE WITNESS: No.
1 7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: No? i I
8 THE WITNESS: The role that he's in now, he's 9 got nothing to do with them.
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: No, at the time though, 11 in his old' job?
12 THE WITNESS: No. He was not pursuing re- l
\
baselining them properly. l 13 14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: All right.
15 THE WITNESS: Amongst other reasons, he was ,
16 removed. I can't say whether he was removed for that 17 specific reason.
. 18 INVESTIGATOR THATER: So you were still working 19 on this stuff, and what happens to'you?
THE WITNESS: Okay. December 14. Okay. The 20 21 new manager that picked up from where Alan was removed, his name is Hugh Gilmartin. Paul Borer was replaced by Tom 22 23 Dougherty. Tom Dougherty was acting for about two months,
~
24 and named permanent Vice President.
Their approach to doing business is also 25 NEAL R.' GROSS COURT REPORRRS AND TRANS6 RISERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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24 i i
difforent frca whnt I hava cocn in tha pact. Tom Dough 3rty ,
1 2 has been here a long time. Hugh Gilmartin has been here 19 i 3 years. The Power Authority was looking on the outside for 4 a vice president of engineering and apparently never found 5 one, and gave up and placed an in-house director in that i
l 6 role. !
7 But what I saw was no change in culture.
No ;
I 8 change in philosophy to doing business. I saw the same j 9 exact style of management, with attention to detail but 10 dealing with perception all the time, not the facts.
11 So what I found was that the change control l
l 12 self-evaluation that we produced in June of 1993 was still ,
13 not acted upon. i i
14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who had the J 15 responsibility to act on that?
16 THE WITNESS: The Vice President of l
\
17 Engineering.
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Tom Dougherty?
19 THE WITNESS: Yes.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: All right.
20 21 THE WITNESS: I wrote him a memo in June of 22 1993, that said we've got to get started. I didn't even 23 know he was permanent at the. time. All I knew at the time l
l 24 was that he was acting. A week later he became permanent.
L 1
25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Is this June of 1993 or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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25 l
1 Juna, 1994 wa cro t21 king Cbout? ,
2 THE WITNESS: I'm sorry. June of 1994.
3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay.
4 THE WITNESS: I have got a copy of that memo 5 here.
6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. So you wrote the l l
i 7 memo.
8 THE WITNESS: Right. Now, I need to give you, j 9 I am going to mix you up on h'istory here again. But once 10 we produced this change control evaluation, we were then 11 asked to make a presentation to the Safety Review Committee 12 on it. We made that presentation in September, 1993. It 13 took a while for them to get us on the calendar.
I 14 The Safety Review Committee consists of the 15 Resident Managers, the Vice President of Engineering, the 16 Executive Vice President. It's a s'enior group of executive 17 people in the company. They are supposed to render
. j 18 decisions on safety issues. ),
19 People come in, bring the facts, present them.
20 Then they say yes, fix it, or no. They listen to someone 21 else's argument that everything is okay and they concur .
22- that it's okay.
23 Well, they dete'rmined that this was a j 24 "significant area of risk" in September of 1993, based on 25 the presentation that was.nade by myself and the lead NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRWERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W.
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26 e
- 1. s nginaar that did tha cvalusticn. ,
2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who was that?
3 THE WITNESS: Floyd Edler.
4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Is he still here at the !
5 Power Authority?
6 THE WITNESS: Yes. Ile is now the Tech.
7 Services Manager at JO (phonetic).
8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: He's a NYPA employee?
I 9 THE WITNESS: Yes.
l 10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: All right. Go ahead.
I 11 THE WITNESS: So they had serious concerns at i 1 12 that meeting. One of the things that was done in that 13 meeting was Paul Borer made a presentation about a " action ,
i 14 plan" on how to fix the process, how to re-baseline the l l '
l 15 procedures.
! 16 He told the SRC at that meeting that we were 17 overhauling these procedures and fix them properly.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: That wasn't being done?
18 1 19 Right? At that point.
l It was not being done. It 20 THE WITNESS: No.
l f
21 was being contemplated. He was clear on that. He was l
saying that we are going to fix the process. 'Okay? He 22 23 didn't say it was in progress.
24 What he said in that meeting, and what was very 1
25 much implied, and I think was very important to this j i
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27' I discussion, is that that ro-bacGlining would bo dans prior ..
f j
t o the plant re-starting. That we would not bring the i 2 i t
3 p lant out of cold shutdown until we had a solid design ,
c ontrol and modification program in place. j 4 i i
Here we are getting l 5 That has not occurred.
t 6 ready to head-up, in fact, we are heating up, and we have t
I l
7 not done anything.
i 8- INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Was that commitment-made . 1 1
9 to the NRC though?
l THE WITNESS: No.
- 10 I
11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: This is just an internal I
12 thing where you're saying this is something we're going to 13 do before we let the plant get hot?
~
14 THE WITNESS: That's right. It was done to the 15 Safety Review Committee.
16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes.
17 TtHE WITNESS: The safety Review Cosmittee 18 accepted that. On that basis, on the arguments that the 19 plant was in a relatively safe condition at cold shutdown, 20 they said okay. You guys are going to do that. The issue '
21 is close. I accepted that at the time. -
i 22 But here we are now,-not having done anything. l l
23 In spite of the fact that in June of 1994, I sent the memo l
! 24 to Tom Dougherty, because Paul Borer made a presentation.
W 25 He left. Tom Dougherty came in. I wasn't sure Tom was 1
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28 1 fully awara. I belisvcd ha was, but I wantad him on tha j I 2 r ecord to be' fully aware that we had to do this. l l
3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Why wasn't it done? I l
sean, vould it cost a lot'of money to make these changes or 4 _
'5 would it have negatively affected re-start?
l 6 THE WITNF.3S: Yes. It would have'somewhat, not 7 a whole lot. Back then, it could have been done in a year.
8 It could have been done in a year. And it could'have been 9 done in six months with the right resources on it.
10 INVESTIGATCR TEATER: Are you talking a lot of 11 hardware fixes or is it just rewriting procedures?
12 THE WITNESS: It is rewriting procedures, going 13 back and scrubbing the modifications that have been done in 14 the past that were done to the faulted procedures to make 15 sure that you don't, you know, and identifying any concerns 16 through that review, and then dealing with them.
17 Here we are now, 1995, and we've got DERs 18 related to design, still out there. Some of them are Some of them are significant. But there's enough 19 minor. i 20 out there that I know that the report plus the band-aids 21 that I've done do not justify allowing the plant to re- ,
l I
22 start at this point.
23 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. Since you were 1
l 24 talking about this, I was going to wait u'ntil the end. But 25 what is the safety significance of what you are telling me?
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29 1 THE WITNESS: Thsra cro piscas of hardwara in 2 the plant that if you make them inoperable, you jeopardize 3 one of three barriers, either the pin cladding, the j 4 containment of the reactor coolant ^ system or the l
~
5 containment of the building itself.
6 If you break all three barriers there and you ,
7 have an uncontrolled release of radioactive material, then !
8 you are jeopardizing the health and safety to the public.
9 This is particularly important with IP3, because we'are 40 10 miles from New York City.
l In fact, I'd say that of any plant in the l 11 1
12 country, this ought to be the model of design control and 13 modification. This particular plant needs to be a model, ]
14 not oh let's just get by. Let's do it absolutely pristine.
15 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Are they working? Is the 16 Power Authority working on that particular issue, the one i
17 you just-told me about now? I mean, are they going to have 18 it done before re-start?
19 THE WITNESS: Re-baselining the procedures?
20 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes. ,
i THE WITNESS: No. Nor is there any intent to 21 The NRC has, in 22 do so. Nor did the NRC ask them to do so.
23 their own documentation, and I'll reference it here, has 4 24 reported these design control weaknesses and yet they did 25 not fo'1ow 1 through to see whether or not the program was NEAL R: GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N.W.
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1 fixed. ,
2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So this would be one of ,
l ,
3 the issues that I may give to the staff. They would have 4 to talk to you directly on that.
5 Would you like to talk to them directly on this 6 issue?
7 THE WITNESS: If that makes sense for them to 8 do so, I wouldn't be opposed to it.
9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. Well let's go on i 10 to something else. I can let them, you and the staff l
11 interface on that. l 12 THE WITNESS: Yes. I'll give you a summary of 13 those issues. You might want to give,them.
14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes. I'll give it to the 15 staff so they can look at it.
16 THE WITNESS: Let me just list the four, okay?
17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You can just give me the 18 document.
19 THE WITNESS: All right. Okay. That's the 20 document.
21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. Mr. Witte has 22 presented me with a memorandum dated April 19, 1995. It is 23 from himself to Mr. Hugh Gilmartin. The subject is summary 24 of open technical issues.
25 I.will give this to the staff. They may call NEAL R. GROSS .
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1 you ebout this. .
l 2 THE WITNESS: 'In all fairness, I brought these 3 issues to the Speak out program, because'of lack of l 4 progress in Engineering. ,
i 5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: When did you bring it to i
4 6 Speak out?
- ,7 THE WITNESS: I've got the memo on that too,
- i
. 8 the actual date. April 25th.
j 9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: This year?
l 10 THE WITNESS: Yes. Just recently I escalated i
11 this to Speak out.
! 12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER,: What are they going to do i
13 with it? Did they say?
l' 14 THE WITNESS: They have informed me that they i
i 15 are investigating right now. 'So there may be a very good i 16 response still coming from the Power Authority on this.
> 17 But you know, for example, in the area of fire j 1
18 protection, interestingly enough I was never interviewed by i
! 19 speak out.
20 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: By John Hahn?
21 THE WITNESS: Never interviewed.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I was wondering if I was 23 missing something. I got a copy of;the complete report in 24 the file. I didn't see any interview notes.
25 THE WITNESS: I am probably going to ask John .
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1 H2hn for a copy of it, bacturs I undsretand ny n202 is in ,
- 2. it.
3 But I found that very odd, because with being l t
4 so close to the DBD projech and then these guys doing this 5 work under my management. Why was I not interviewed? I r
6 found that very strange.. !
l 7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Can I ask *fou why you
! 8 waited this long to write up this thing and go to Speak 9 out?
f 10 THE WITNESS: Well, I had reservations about i
11 Speak out, partly because of that reason that I just I i
l 12 mentioned. I didn't resort to speak out until I started 13 really looking at whether or not this program would be 14 resiiponsive. I am hoping that they are responsive. I l 15 didn't think that they would.
16 Speak out is relatively new. It has a mixed 17 review at the Power Authority. Some people think it's 18 great. Some people think that it washes'out an issue.
19 I wanted to give every opportunity to allow 20 engineering management, i.e. the director and vice 21 president of engineering, to take action. I occasionally
-22 saw motions of action, but no substance.
23 For example, the Vice President of Engineering s
24 said, well, we're going to set up this engineering steering 25 committee.
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33 !
I >
1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Ton Dougharty? , ,
2 THE WITNESS: Yes. And he did that. He set up 3 a steering committee. But did they produce any new . .,
4 processes? No. ,
5 I found myself being told, trust me, trust me.
6 So I held off on escalating until, really until the.. f 7 December 14th event, when I was just pushed aside and l l 8 demoted. l
{ .
l 9 At that point, I really ptarted taking this a l 10 whole lot more seriously. I started putting two and two 11 together. I just couldn't believe that anyone would be l
12 attacking me for pursuing technical issues.
, 13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I think Mr. Kenna wanted 14 to ask you a couple things. Then I want to go into what I
15 happened in December.
16 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Okay. During our 17 interview this morning, you brought up a couple of problems 18 about moving. .
19 THE WITNESS: Yes.
20 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: About the culture of the 21 moving. You said that others didn't have problems in their
~
22 transition.
! 23 THE WITNESS: Right.
24 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Did others have houses 25 purchased?
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_ . - , . . - . . ~ . . . . - - - . _ . - . - . - . . - - . - . - . . - - - . . - - . . . . .
34
- 1 THE WITNESS: Yoc. I can giva you a nans of ,
2 s omeone who is no longer with the ciompany.
3 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Okay. So what you are ,
4 telling us is that things were done to other people, that 5 were given to those people but not given to you? ;
6 THE WITNESS: That is correct.
l INVESTIGATOR KENNA: I also noticed by your 7
l 8 resume that you were living in. Tennessee at the time?
I '
THE WITNESS: Yes. I wasn't actually living.
9 10 I was living in Atlanta, but I did support TVA. I had some j f
i 11 work out there.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Is there a reason why they 12 13 wouldn't purchase your house, other than the problems you I
l
! 14 had that you mentioned?
l l 15 THE WITNESS: Well, see this is where this 16 place, they are very odd in the way thati they implement 17 procedure here. The procedures are very clear on new 18 employees. They don't purchase your house, they don't pay i i
19 points. They have a three month temporary living expense
. 20 period. But that is the narrow benefit. !
21 Most of the employees or the managers that come 22 in here, that is part of their process of coming into the i
l l 23 company. For example, the person I am thinking of right l 24 now, whose name is John Garrity, hic house was bought lock i 25 stock and barrel. They did that for him.
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35 1 Yst for 3, I had trouble sysn axtsnding temporary living. I got it extended. I got it extended, I 2
3 think 11 months. But during that particular' time, they .
w ould not touch buying my house or assisting me in selling
~
4 5 it. At that particular time in Atlanta, it was just a glut .
6 of houses on the market. It was not going to sell.
7 I don't know whether that answers your question 8 or not.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: This is back when you 9
10 first were hired. I think it was in like November of 19917 11 THE WITNESS: Yes.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Is this when you first 12 13 noticed that you were being discriminated against, shortly 14 after your hire?
I didn't think I was. I thought 15 THE WITNESS:
16 it was odd the way that they'd give one thing to John, they 17 would give another one to Betty Sue and they'd give something else to Ulrich Witte. I thought that the process
. 18 19 that was used there was not proper.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: We don't have any 20 authority over that kind of stuff. That's personnel 21 22 issues.
Right. I'm not asking.
23 THE WITNESS:
I know. I know. But I 24 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
25 just w' anted --
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36-1 MR. MARANTIDs 3 g3 cff ths rcc2rd h2ro? -
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes.
We'll go off' the l 2 l
3 record.
4 (Whereupon, from 10:29 a.m. until 10:30 a.m.
5 the proceedings went off the record.)' .
l INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. We're*back on the I 6 7 record.
8 Mr. Witte, you wanted to clarify something.
9 THE WITNESS: Okay. Through this process that 1
10 I came into the Power Authority, I probably could have had
'll these things cleared up'before I walked in the door under a
~
12 letter of understanding or something, as other employees 13 apparently had. ,
14 However, and I'm not claiming any .
discrimination ex post facto. But it just made my 15 16 transition here very difficult. I had some financial 17 burdens that I am still bearing today as a result of this.
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What is your salary here 19 now?
20 THE WITNESS: It's 21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Do you get bonuses or 22 overtime or anything like that?
23 THE WITNESS: No.
24 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: No performance bonuses 25 based on plants operating?
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37 .
No. Not in thin comp 2ny. Just 1
THE WITNESS: -
another footnote there. The salary has remained flat this 2
i 3 year. There was obviously no raise.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: For anybody?
4 5 THE WITNESS: No. For me.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Based on you being 6
r emoved from your position and the performance review?
1 7
THE WITNESS: Yes and this very negative 8
9 performance review that I'm sure we'll get to talk about. )
10 can we.take a break?
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Sure.- !
11 12 (Whereupon, from 10:31 a.m. until 10:40 a.m.
13 the proceedings went off the record.)
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. We're back on the j 14 l 15 record. You wanted to take a little break, Mr. Wi-te. I l 16 forget where we left off.
MR. MARANTIS: You wanted to qualify something.
17 18 THE WITNESS: Well, the only' thing I wanted to 19 mention regarding the relocation is that this is not a big 20 deal, but in retrospect and looking back now at the way 21 that the relocation and expense hassle was brought into my 22 1994 PPR, I feel like that it's another weapon that is 23 being used against me.
24 Just for the record, because the policy is 25 written the way it is, I don't have a problem with the way NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCR$ERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N.W.
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r i 1 ths whole thing wao hnndicd. Eut'I do havs.a probica with !
, 2 a favor given someone else and not being fairly distributed 3 across the organization and then I'd actually be damaged in 4 the 1994 PPR as a result of,that whole process.
5 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Was that mentioned in your 6 evaluation?
7 THE WITNESS: Yes. It was. The financial 8 issues in 1992 were mentioned. You'll see that'when I give 9 you a copy of that. t q
10 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Basically, that's all the 11 questions I have right now. I think we ended prior to that j 12 on the design control problem. You gave us the memo.
13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes. I wanted to go into 14 what led up to you being removed from your position in 15 December of 19947 What was happening right before then?
16 THE WITNESS: The management change. The 17 director was changed in October.
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: To Mr. Gilmartin? l i
19 THE WITNESS: Yes.
20 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. ,
i 21 THE WITNESS: In addition, there was a study in 22 the summer of 1994. It's called the "Ninety D:sy Study" 23 that talked about decentralizing engineering as a whole'.
24 It used words about configuration management, about I
25 revisiting whether or not we needed configuration NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1823 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W.
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39 1 man 2g:asnt in Whito P1cin3, what wac tha rasl nec2ccity of l i 2 it. Thing's like that, 3 Because of lack of progress in this program, t
4 there was a lot of questions about well, maybe we ought to l
l 5 just kill it.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did that study act.u ally 6
7 recommend getting rid of the configuration management i
i 8 group?
THE WITNESS: No. It didn't do that. It just 9
10 said change it.
11 I need'to go back and read that now and said 12 what it said exactly, but it talked about decentralization.
13 The management in engineering looked at consolidating it 14 slightly, but not decentralizing it. So we shrunk. )
15 At one point, I was going to have 21 people.
16 On December the 14th, I had about six permanent employees 17 and I don't know, six or eight contractors. I had a 18 smaller group than was originally an't'icipated.
19 I was told by Gilmartin that I was probably 20 going to have to shrink to four people, four permanent 21 people.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Isn't the company as a i
23 whole downsizing though?
24 THE WITNESS: That's right. I didn't have a 25 problem with that. I expected something like that. That NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W.
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1 w 2c ny Gxpect2tien, thnt ny grcup wsuld chrink clightly and .
2 that some of my responsibilities th'at my group had owned l
3 w ould transition to other organizations.
1 4 Here's the part about this that gets kind of l J
5 messy. When you say get rid of configuration management, 6 you can not g'et rid of the components of configuration i i
7 management unless you want to shut both plants down and i 8 fill them with concrete.. You still have the responsibility l l
9 of for example, maintaining the design basis for amongst l .
l 10 other things, fire protection.
1 So when you see senior management saying change 11 )
12 configuration management, that does not mean that much.
13 The responsibilities themselves don't go away.
f 14 The way we agreed or the way that we got to a 1 l 15 resolution on this was that the group would shrink slightly l
l 16 and that both sites would absorb a little more l
l 17 responsibility for configuration management, and White 1
)
18 Plains would have a little less. We would still continue 19 in the oversight role.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You didn't really see 20 21 that as a problem though?
22 THE WITNESS: No. I saw that as fine. Not a i 23 problem.
24 What was absolutely a shock was that I did not 25 expect to be just cast aside in December. That was a NEAL R. GROSS court REPORTERS AND TRANSCREERS l
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INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You mentioned a study.
2 3 Who commissioned the study and actually who did it, the ,
4 "Ninety Day Study."
5 THE WITNESS:
The "Ninety Day Study" was -
6 commissioned by Freeman, the President. It was done under a contractor's guidance with mostly in-house resources. So 7
3 he went about a process of sel' acting employees from a 9 variety of places and put them all on the 14th floor of 10 this building. They produced that study in August of last 11 year.
1 12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: August of 19947 13 THE WITNESS: Yes.
I 14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Let's go to what happened
~
15 to you in December. Do you have a copy of that performance 16 appraisal here?
17 THE WITNESS: Yes.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: For the record, I'm 18 19 looking at Mr. Witte's performance. appraisal. The review 20 period is 1/94 to 12/94.
21 Your appraisal before this one, where did you 1
22 rank in departmental ranking?
l 23 THE WITNESS: I don't know the answer to that.
24 But I was given an Average rating, which is typical around 25 bere. 'But I was marked in Exceeds in a number of NEAL R GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W.
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42 1 1 catcgorios. .
'2 In fact, this meno that I'll give you, it 3 compares the two. There you go.
Okay.
4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Mr. Witte is l
5 showing us a document dated April 7',*1995. 1 6 .THE WITNESS: If'you flip to page six of that 7 thing, you can see a comparison between 1993 and 1994. 1 8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. The meno I am 9 looking at is from Mr. Witte to Hugh Gilmartin, subject,-
10 1994 performance review.
11 I would like to get copies of both of these.
I' 12 THE WITNESS: Yes.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: All right. I am looking 13 ,
14 at page six. It's a comparison of 1993 and 1994 reviews.
15 What does DNME mean? Does not meet 16 expectations?
17 THE WITNESS: That is correct.
l f
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So on communication you l
19 went from exceeds to a does not meet expectations.
20 THE WITNESS: Right.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Excellence criteria you 21 22 went from exceeds to does not meet expectations.
23 You went down two steps in a number of areas, l
I
! 24 one, two, three, four, five. Five areas.
25 THE WITNESS: Right.
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- i 1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did you go up in cny !
2 areas? . ,
3 THE WITNESS: No. ,
4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You went down -- l THE WITNESS: Across the board, virtually.
5 I
6 INVESTIdATOR TEATER: One, two, three, four, 7 five, six areas you went down one step.
8 THE WITNESS: Actually 10. ,
9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Are there more on the i
10 next page? .
11 THE WITNESS: No.
12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Oh, a total of 10 13 counting the tuo step changes. .
THE WITNESS: Right. This was really not 14 15 expected. A couple things here.
16 First'of all, the meeting December 14th when 17 they talked about taking me out of the role of manager of 18 this group, they said it was not performance based.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who told you that?
19 20 THE WITNESS: Gilmartin.
21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Was it a one on one 22 conversation, you and him?
23 -
THE WITNESS: No, actually the new manager was 24 at that meeting.
25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who would'that be?
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1 THE WITNESS: ThEt'a Dick Becht.
- 2. INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So it was the three of 3 you there.
4 THE WITNESS: Yes.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And when did that meeting 5
6 take place? Was it before you got the performance review?
7 THE WITNESS: Yes. That was on December 14th 8 of last year, of 1994.
9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And this is --
10 THE WITNESS:' This is March ninth, was when 11 that was given to me.
12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: March 9, 1995.
13 THE WITNESS: Right.
14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: But actually it's for the 15 reporting period just through December, 1994.
16 THE WITNESS: That is correct.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Mr. Gilmartin tells you 17 18 your removal is not performance based?
19 THE WITNESS: That is exactly what he said.
20 Becht will or should be able to back that.
21 Around here, I never know any more. So I'm 22 learning. I don't know what to expect.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. Prior to getting 23 24 this performance review given to you in March of 1995, were 25 you told by Mr. Gilmartin you weren't performing, you were !
)
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f 2 THE WITNESS: No.
INVESTIGATDR TEATER: Never had any counseling 3
4 sessions with you at all?
i No.
l l 5 THE WITNESS: Not a one. ,
6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So when you got this, did 7 you have any indication before receiving this that you were t 8 going to get such a negative performance review?
9 THE WITNESS: The only thing, I had heard 10 through Becht that he was giving me hints that a real bad i 11 one was coming.
a INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. What was he saying 12 13 to you?
14 THE WITNESS: He was saying things like, "Well, 15 I've seen it. It's a very harsh review. Brace yourself."
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did he tell you that he 16 17 agreed with the review?
18 THE WITNESS: .No. No. .
i INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did he tell you he did 19 20 not agree with the review?
THE WITNESS: No. What he did say was that he i 21 22 was asked to write it and he refused.,
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who asked him? Who did ,
23 24 de say asked him to write it?
4 25 THE WITNESS: Gilmartin asked him to write it.
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1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And ha rafucid? -
l 2 THE WITNESS:- And he refused. j 3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: How long has he been a 4 NYPA employee, Becht?
i 5 THE WITNESS: Maybe a year longer than I have. (
6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: How do you spell his l 1
7 name?
8- THE WITNESS:, It's.B-E-C-H-T.
9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What is his title? ;
1 10- . THE WITNESS: Document Coritrol Manager. l l
11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Why would he be asked to 12 write this? Was.he in your chain of command? l l
13 THE WITNESS: Well, my understanding is that, 1
14 and he told me this, that out of that meeting from December ,
i 2
15 14th,'where Gilmartin said this is not performance related, l 16 within a day or two after that meeting,'Becht was~ asked by 17 Gilmartin to do a "out of cycle" performance review.
18 So I found that rather strange. That is when 19 secht refused.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. Let's go back to 20 21 the meeting. Who called for this December 14 meeting to 22 take place?
23 THE WITNESS: That was Hugh Gilmartin.
Where did it take place?
24 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
THE WITNESS: It took place in his office.
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1 INVESTIGNTOR TEATER Do you h:tvo any nctso of 2 the meeting? Did you take any notes or after the meeting, 3 did-you -- -
THE WITNESS: Yes. .I have a few notes. I 4
i 5 don't have them here, but' I've got some things that I wrote -
6 down from that. i l
7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: 'I'd like to get a copy of I 8 thos'e notes.
4 9 All right. so tell me what happened during the 10 meeting.
11 THE WITNESS: He called'me and said, okay, I'd 12 like you'to con >e up to my office. He pulled out an 13 organization chart and said, "This is the new organization 14 for engineering. You are no longer manager of the
~
configuration management programs. Dick Becht is taking 15 16 that over and that's why he's at this meeting." Those were 17 the words that he used.
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Was it a Becht just took 19 your job and title. Right? .
20 THE WITNESS: He didn't take my title, but he 21 took the job.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. Was the title just l 22 }
23 abolished theni ;
24 THE WITNESS: I don't know. He is still ]
25' signincj things " Document Control Manager."
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- 48 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Do ycu know if tho ,
1 , ,
2 position just disappeared?
3 THE WITNESS: Eliminated?
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes, eliminated.
4 5 THE WITNESS: No. I don't think so. There was 6 s till a manager that had those responsibilities with those ,
7 four people reporting to him, which should have been me.
8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Do you know if NYPA has 9 plans to name a new manager of configuration management?
10 THE WITNESS: That's Dick. That is Dick.
11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: That's his title?
12 THE WITNESS: I can't give you an answer on 13 that, because titles here are changed. willy-nilly. !
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You're telling me he has 14 I
15 responsibility for, he has your former responsibilities.
THE WITNESS: That is absolutely true, 16 1
I 17 absolutely true.
18 I saw one letter from Dick that said, " Document i
configuration Nanager," which doesn't make any sense. Then 19 20 I saw another one that said, " Document Control Manager."
21 So I can't give you a correct answer on what's his title.
22 I don't know.
Could this change though, 23 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
24 where you are taken out of your job, could that have been 25 part of the corporate restructuring or downsizing? ,
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d 1 THE WITNESS: I don't think Co. I d n't think 2 ,
so. ,
3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Why don't you think that?
4 THE WITNESS: B,ecause my role or a role as 5 oversight in configuration management is continuing. There 6 are four people that are still in that group. A lot of 7 those responsibilities have remained. It does not make l
(
8 sense to have a grcup of technical people without a i 9 technical lead, which is exactly where we're at'this point.
10 We have a document control manager, who is 11 administrative, leading a technical group.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. What else happened 12 13 during the meeting? He folds out the organizational chart.
14 THE WITNESS: I queried him over and over again, "Why are you doing this? Tell me exactly why you l 15 16 are doing this?" He said, "For the good of the Power i 17 Authority." That was the only thing that he could say. He l
- l 18 must have said that five times.
19 I said, "Well, that doesn't tell me anything.
20 rell me exactly why are you doing this. Is this 21 performance based?" "No." I mean, we went around and 22 around.' He would not give me any information.
23 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What else was discussed 24 at the meeting?
25 THE WITNESS: He said we're going to inform NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS ANO TRANSCR48ERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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30 y ur grcup thic cftcrnoon. W3 cro Enn:uncing it to tho 1
2 entire Engineering Department in an engineering meeting 3 today, which was done.
4 Tom Dougherty held a meeting for the entire 5 group down in the Jaguar Room downstairs and announced it, 6 or stated in that meeting that there are lots of chapges or 7 there would be changes and that those would be discussed on. l 8 an individual by individual basis. l 9
Then that same day, my whole group was brought ,
i 10 into this room, whoever happened to be around that day, and l 11 was told.
Were other people, you i 12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
13 know, Dougherty is saying there are going to be other 14 changes. Did other people lose their job titles on that 15 day, do you know?
16 THE WITNESS: Not that I am aware of. I don't 17 think so.
l 18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: HoV long did this. meeting 19 last with Gilmartin?
20 THE WITNESS: Fifteen minutes. It was very 21 short. He wouldn't give me any substance. I ended the meeting with, well, this doesn't make any* sense. I said 22.
I'm offended that you guys.are doing this. You know, you 23 24 baven't given ne a reason.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What did you think the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W.
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1 rcccon was?
2 THE WITNESS: Oh I think it was because I was ;
3 so out-spoken with fixing these technical problems that I
4 they wanted to shut me up, push me out of the way.
These design control j 5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
6 documents?
f THE WITNESS: Right. The design control ;
7 8 program, the software quality. assurance program, these j 9 issues that I had brought up over and over again. 1 i 10 ,
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Firia protection?
11 THE WITNESS: Fire-protection was being 12 resolved by last December.
13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: They had a task force j
,' 14 that came in.
THE WITNESS: Right. So fire protection was no 15 16 longer an issue, but let me tell you, between John 17 Tarpinian and myself and Andy Bartlett, and it's mostly 18 those two guys, but I was the out-spoken manager on fire 19 protection. I went to meetings where Les Hill was present, 20 the Resident Manager of IP3. Basically, the one I happen 21 to be thinking of right now was last September, when this i
22 flip-flopping between redoing analysis and not redoing 1
analysis prior to re-start was still happening. I went on 23 24 record at that meeting with a lot of people present, saying It's not a grey area.
25 you've got to do this by re-start.
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A l' It's bicck and whito.' <
l INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Based on a commitment 2
made to the NRC7 3 1 THE WITNESS: Based on complying with the law 4
5 r egarding Appendix R. You can't operate that plant without .
~
6 an Appendix R analysis in place. That is correct.w 7
I'm sure these guys have told you per hundreds 8 of h'ours of interview, but the' things that have changed have been substantial. For example, the safe shut-down 9
10 list has doubled on Appendix R in the last three months.
11 It's very very significant, as far as good design control' 12 or an indicator of bad design control.
13 Second item is, it flew out of my head, I'm 14 sorry. There were about 600 plant modifications that were never incorporated into the original Appendix R analysis in 15
'16 1984. You can't take a document that's complex like that 17 and upgrade it with that many modifications without 18 requiring a new document or a full revision with 1994 19 thought processes on how to go about doing it correctly.
20 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I want to come back to 21 fire protection.
THE WITNESS: Okay.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So you left this meeting, 23 24 where you are told you were no longer going to be the What did they tell 25 Hanager of Configuration Management.
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1 y u ycur n:w jcb was going to be? Did ha ts11 you? ,
2 THE WITNESS: Support Dick Becht. I was l 3 basically a peer amongst the group of people that I had 4 brought in and hired. .
l 5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did you suffer a loss of 6 pay in the loss of your title?
7 THE WITNESS: No. ;
8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You did not?
l THE WITNESS: No.- Not yet. I'm known right )
9 1
10 now, still.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. What happened next I1 12 in December? ,
i 13 THE WITNESS: I was then asked to -- I tried to ,
14 follow through on commitments that I had made to people at IP3 on projects. I didn't just drop the ball., I tried,to 15 16 close out procedure changes. I was blocked. I was told' i 17 not to go to IP3.
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: By whom?
19 THE WITNESS: By Dick Becht.
20 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Why?
21 THE WITNESS: He said that he didn't think it l
l 22 was appropriate'that I go to IP3 and present these 23 technical positions given that Hugh Gilmartin and others 24 were-rethinking them. Those are more or less the words he 25 ased. I am paraphrasing.
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s, I H3 cOid that it wacn't right for to to go cut 2 and sit down with, for example, the Tech Services 3 Department people and try to close down these issues when 4 others were r'ethinking how to go about solving them. That 5- is cited as one example in that list of technical issues ,
6 that I am giving you.
7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: The summary of open -
8 technical issues?
9 THE WITNESS: Right. Right. There are some 10 procedures that have gotten -- it's not just, number one, l 11 we didn't fix the process properly, but number two, the l 12 process"is getting worse. It is declining. l 13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Today?
THE WITNESS: Today. Today. It will. See, 14 15
~
we've been through this before. The plants that I have 16 seen do this sort of thing and come up out of a poorly 17 changed organization tend to break again like Rancho Seco 18 did.
19 They had a transient, after they came out of a 20 long outage that shut them down for two years. IP3 will' 21 certainly see that.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You think IP3 is going to 22 23 have some kind of problem?
l 24 THE WITNESS: Yes.
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I will --
2 THE WITNESS: I can't tell you the specific 3 components that are in. question, but I can tell you that 1
)
4 because of the condition of the design control prc.7 ram, l 5 because of the condition of the plant-equipment data base, 6 and the lack of compliance to s3-28, and the potentially l l
l 7 improperly classified components, that it is going to 8 happen. It is going to happen.
9 Because of the history of DERs in the last
.. 10 year, and the trend not. improving regarding the design 11 control of DERs that are out there.
12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Those are issues the 13 staff may need to get back with you on.
14 THE WITNESS: Yes.
15 INVESTIGATOR TENTER: Okay. So you are removed 16 from your job title. You a peer in the group. Then .
17 between then and the day you got your performance review, 18 what's going on there?
THE WITNESS: I was cut off from doing any 19 20 procedure work.
21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: By Gilmartin?
22
~
THE WITNESS: By Gilmartin, but via Becht.
23 Becht was the one that instructed me to concentrate on' these other things or look elsewhere. I was cut off from, 24 25 I mean, I have not been to JAF once. Not once in the last i l
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1- four senthp. I niocet w:nt lect wook, but I didn't go. t 2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: It's not only work at IP3 c
3 that you were cut off from, it's work up at Fitz too?. l THE WITNESS: That's right. That's right. I 4
$ have been to IP3 one time. That was to apply for another f
6 position, to interview for another position out there, ,
l 7 which was the site Configuration Manager.
8 Amongst the I4 :andidates, I was easily the :
l l
9 most qualified, easily. I mean my resume says j l
10 configuration management all over it. I am positive that I 11 was just black-balled.- I didn't get that job because of 12 the history with Gilmartin.
13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. When you are not 14 allowed to work on these issues after the first of the 15- year, you view that as a form of harassment?
16 THE WITNESS: Yes.
. INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
So I'm clear, who are the 17 18 bad guys here, in your opi,nion? -
19 THE WITNESS: I think that it's the vice 20 President of Engineering --
21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Tom Dougherty?
I 22 THE WITNESS: Yes. The Director of Engineering 23 Support, which is Gilmartin. I think those two ar's the 24 ones that are controlling what I work and what I don't work 25 on.
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1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER5 Why, in your cpinien, why .
2 w ouldn't they want yo'u working on those issues? l 3 THE WITNESS: They want to make them go away.
4 They don't want to fix them right. They want to make them 5 go away. The best way to do that is to isolate me from the 6 problem and.let someone else put their own band-aid on it.
7 It's like I said before, I've never seen anything like 8 this. I've never seen anything like this.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. Then in March'you 9
10 get your 1994 performance review.
11 THE WITNESS: Right.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: How did that take place?
12 13 It was done by Gilmartin, I guess?
14 THE WITNESS: Yes. The way that that was done 15 was that he came by my office on March 9, and dropped that 16 on my desk, which by the way, was the first time I had 17 talked to him since December 14th.
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: It was the first time 19 you've talked to him?
THE WITNESS: That's right. He said you are 20 21 noted as a does not meet expectations. After you've had 22 time to read it, we'll sit down and go through it, and 23 walked out.
24 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: The copy that I'm looking 25 at, it's not signed by anybody. But this is the official NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W.
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I 1 varcien? :
l THE WITNESS: Yes. I need to get you the 2
3 signed.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes. I'll get that when 4
- . I 5 I go into personnel files. .
6 Did you meet with him at some point to discuss l 7 the performance review?
THE WITNESS: I think it was March 15th, he 8
9 wanted to meet on it. I had gone to Human Resources 10 already and said, "What is this? Look at this."- I talked 11 to Lori Steinmetz and Ann Tivenan, are the two people in 12 the Human Resources Department about that this whole thing 13 was happening.
14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What did you tell them?
I 15 THE WITNESS: I asked them what I should do. ]
asked them what was policy.on something like this. What is l
. 16 l I
17 the appeal process.
18 INVESTIGATO'A TEATER: Did you tell them that i
l 19 you believe you being retaliated against by management? )
THE WITNESS: Yes. I have a memo that says 20 21 that. I followed up with a meno to Ann Tivenan that said I 22 really feel like this PPR is going to be negative because !
23 of my outspokenness, because of the technical issues that I i
24 have raised.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
What did they commit to 25
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1 you? Did thGy c::mait anything to you or d.d thsy offsr you 2 advice?
3 THE WITNESS: They suggested that I start i 4 w orking on the rebuttal to this and that then in turn, 5 after I've sat down with Gilmartin and gone through my 6 positipn on this, that they would also investigate this ,
7 perforance review.
8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Have they done that?
9 THE WITNESS: It is in progress. I don't have )
i l
10 a whole lot of faith in that. ,
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who is doing that {
11 I
12 investigation from Human Resources? J 13 THE WITNESS: That is Lori Steinmetz. It is a j 14 difficult job for her, because she has to represent both 1 15 sides of the fence and try to render a decision about i
16 whether it was fair or not.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Has she reached any 17 18 conclusions.at all or anything?
19 THE WITNESS: Not to my knowledge. I have had 20 two meetings with her. I have given a lengthy rebuttal, 21 which I've given you a copy of.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I need to copy'that.
22 23 THE WITNESS: No. That's not it.
Is this the rebuttal, the 24 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
f 25 April 7, 19957 I .
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1 THE WITNESS:. Yec. Thst 10 the rebuttal.
2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Performance Review. ;
! 3 THE WITNESS: Right.
4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Now have you filed a 5 g rievance with the Power Authority regarding your 6 performance review. ,
THE WITNESS: No. I haven't done anything more 7
8 than given these two menos, I've gone to Speak out and .
9 asked to deal with the technical issues, and I coincidently 10 supplied them with the performance review and hinted that I 11 thought that there might be a relationship there.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. What did Speak out 12
- 13 say they were going to do regarding your performance 14 appraisal? Did they commit to anything? ,
\
I 15 THE WITNESS: They said they were going to look 16 into the harassment, but that the performance review itself 17 would be handled by Human Resources, and they were looking 18 into the technical issues, obviously.
19 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who did you go to at 20 speak Out?
21 THE WITNESS: George Wilverding. l 22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did you talk to Mr.
j 23 Pfluger?
24 THE WITNESS: Not yet.
s., 25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: About this?
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1 THE WITNESS: No.
l
, 2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Are you scheduled to talk 3 to him?
THE WITNESS: No. I'm not. Although George 4
5 did mention that Bob Pfluger is the person that is assigned 6 to this.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: It's your position that 7
8 t his performance review is retaliation because you pursued 9 and raised these safety issues?
THE WITNESS: Absolutely. That's right.
10 11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What proof can you offer 12 me to support your position, other than things we have 13 already talked about? Do you have any --
14 THE WITNESS: In the back of the technical 15 issues list, there are a list of documents that I provided.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: The summary of open 16 I i
17 technical issues memo?
18 THE WITNESS: Yes. Those documents should 19 support, or I think support the history, my position 20 regarding these technical issues, and the fact that they 21 are not solved today.
22 I have also, for example, supplied the meeting 23 notes of the SRC meetings, where the Vice President of 24 Engineering went on record with his so-called planned re-
- t. 25 baselining the procedures.
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1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Mr. Borar? ,
2 THE' WITNESS: Mr. Borer, yes. He was acting on 3 good faith at the time, but it nevertheless, didn't get ,
4 done. It's not done today.
5 So I'm not trying to condemn or criticize him.
6 I'm just saying that that's the history. That is exactly 7 what happened. ;
8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So your position could be 9 reviewed and looked at as a result of the documentation 10 numbers attached to this?
11 THE WITNESS: That's right. For example, the 12 memo tha't I mentioned previously that's addressed to Tom i 13 Dougherty from June of 1994, that says, we really have got 14 to get started'on rebaselining these procedures, is listed 15 in that list. I can tell you specifically which one.
16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes. What number would 17 that be? Do you know?
18 THE WITNESS: I think itis 30.
19 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Memo to Tom Dougherty, 20 rebaseline of the McMs and DCMs?
21 THE WITNESS: Yes. That's it.
22' INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I would"like to get a 23 copy of that. We already talked about that though.
24 THE WITNESS: Some of the other documents that 25 I think provide the evidence, the information that you are
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. 1 I looking for -- ,
2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: There are 117 listed 3 here. If you could point out.
4 THE WITNESS: For example, when we bring these 5 things to the attention of Quality Assurance Department, l "
l 6 which is another avenue that we use to try to fix these l 7 problems --
8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Is that on the DERs?
l 9 THE WITNESS: Yes. The DERs that they wrote 10 and then.the closure of those DERs, tlie way that the Power 11 Authority went about closing out these DERs, I think you'll I
12 find the' lack of. follow through on fixing the problems 13 properly. ,
14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What document number is 15 that?
16 THE WITNESS: It's Document No. 31, Document 17 No. 58. I don't need to talk about the fire protection 18 DERs. I'm sure you are aware of those. Document No. 96.
19 I'll tell you what. I'll just get these DERs 20 and give them to you.
21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay.
22 THE WITNESS: Is that all right?
l 23 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes. But these are 24 issues that are being raised, and you are trying to resolve 25 them the way they should be resolved. As a result of that, l NEAL R. GROSS count neponrEns ANoinANsensens l
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t I tho company w:nt aftar ycu thrcugh ycur performanca ,
2 appraisal.
THE WITNES':
S That's right. .
3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: That is your position?
4 5 THE WITNESS:
That is my pasition.
6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Off the record.
7 (whereupon, from 11:1'2 a.m. until 11:26 a.m.
8 the proceedings went off the record.)
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. We are back on the 9
Mr. Marantis has left the meeting. Is he coming 10 record.
11 back, do you know?
12 THE WITNESS: No. Unless there's a need for 13 him to come back.
Okay. We're going to 14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
15 proceed without him.
16 When you got this performance review from Mr.
Gilmartin, he dropped it off on your desk, said you don't 17 18 meet expectations. I think you told me he said he would 19 get with you and you guys would discuss this.
20 THE WITNESS: Yes.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
Did that meeting happen?
21 THE WITNESS: Yes. But in between that meeting 22 23 which occurred'on March 15th, I had already sat down with 24 the Human Resources Department and asked to work through i 25 them in my rebuttal, because I had no confidence in my NEAL R.-GROSS (X)URT REPORTERS AND TRANSGR$ERS -
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I director at that point. .
2 So the meeting with Gilmartin was very brief.
3 I stated in tha't meeting that I was working with Human 4 R esources on the performance review appeal and that unless 5 he had a need for that meeting, I was not going to be 6 d iscussing the issues in that PPR at that point, unless he 7 w anted to discuss some specifics.
What did he say when you 8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
9 told him that you were going to appeal this through Human 10 Resources?
' THE WITNESS: He seemed like he already knew 11 12 it. That they had told him that when they had gotten that ,
13 request from me. So he didn't seem to be particularly 14 surprised. .
15 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. I haven't read the 16 whole performance evaluation, but do they state in here 17 that if you don't perform better in their eyes that you could be subject to termination? Yes. I do it now.
18 l Yes. It is the very last 19 THE WITNESS:
20 sentence.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: If performance is not 21 22 improved to a meets expectations level, disciplinary action 23 up to and include termination will be taken. 1
! 24 As it is now April, May of 1995, have you been li .
25 given any mid-cycle performance reviews?
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_ . _ _ .. __. _ .. _ __ - _ _._ _ _ ... . . _. 7 66 l 1 THE WITNESS: Nothing. ~
.i l
.2- INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Have you been given any l 3 input from your management as to how your performance is.
I l i 4- improving or not improving? I f J 5 THE WITNESS: I have sat down, I cornered my ]
l 6 new manager, Dick Becht in a meeting.
7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: When was that?
THE WITNESS: I have meeting notes for that. I
! 8 9 didn't bring them in here. It was maybe three weeks ago. j 10 I just asked him during that meeting, where he was talking 11 about something else. I said, "Well, do you have any performarkce issues at this point,7" He said, "No " . That 12 13 was the only thing that transpired. I documented that in 14 some meeting notes.
15 What he was talking about was that when my 16 responsibilities were significantly reduced, totally 17 reduced in December, I used to work a lot of hours for this 18 company. I took some vacation. I took some time off.
19 They brought up an attendance issue, which is in the back. I I
20 It's listed here. This is outside of the performance 21 review period.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I see absentee record as B
23 of 3/1/95. .
l 24 THE WITNESS: So he sat down and discussed all l
l 25 that.
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1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who did? ;
2- THE WITNESS: Dick Becht in the same meeting, I said, 3 a nd he documented that with his meeting notes.
w ell, you know, this was time off. I didn't need to be, 4
5 here. If this is important to you, then I won't take any 6 more time off, which I haven't.
7 I am going to take a day off this Monday, but 8 it's the first day off.since March 1.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Well, how much leave are 9
10 you given a year?
11 THE WITNESS: Twenty days of vacation.
12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Do you know what the 13 requirements are as far as getting that leave approved in 14 advance? ,
15 THE WITNESS: You just need to clear it with 16 your supervisor. That's all.
17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did you have this leave 18 that's on this absentee record approved by your supervisor?
19 THE WITNESS: I always talked to him ahead of So maybe 20 time, but some of it was done like the day of.
21 the answer to that is no.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: January 9, 10, 11, 12, 22 13, you took vacation unscheduled. What does that mean?
23 24 THE WITNESS: I talked to Dick Becht Monday and 4
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I family was cick.
l
! 2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You talked to him on the 3 ninth then?
l I 4 THE WITNESS: Yes. ,
5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Then January 23, 24, 6 there's eight hours both days unscheduled.- Had you. spoken 7 to --
8 THE WITNESS: I called'him on Monday and said I 9 was planning on taking the day off. .So mayhc ichat's not ,
10 within company policy. I don't k:mw.
11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And February 27th and 12 28th, eight hours vacation each day unscheduled.
13 THE WITNESS: Same thing.
14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You just called and said 15 I'm taking today and tomorrow off?
THE WITNESS: Yes. I'd call my secretary. I'd 16 17 call him, and say I'd like to take the day off. I'd call him,the next day and take the next d'ay off.
18 19 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Are you in arrears for 20 vacation time?
21 THE WITNESS: I still have almost four weeks 22- right now, even after taking all that time off, so 23 somewhat.
24 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did they give you a lump j l
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1 period, a c:rtain number of hcurs losvo in your bank. .
THE WITNESS: No. You get 20 days per year.
2 3 It is given to you on January 1. I think I still have 20 4 days right now. I have to check.
That last paragraph of 5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: .
6- the performance evaluation, it says your performance will l 7 be reviewed again in three months.
8 Has that been done?
9 THE WITNESS': No.
10 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: But thlat is due about now?
THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes, that should happen any 11 12 time.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Have you gotten any hints 13 14 about what it's --
15 THE WITNESS: No. I expect, given the history 16 here, I am looking, I expect the worst, that it will be 17 negative again. Why should it change? This one was 18 negative and the next one will be negative too. I INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Have you been told by 19 20 anybody of the date that this review is going to take 21 place?
-22 THE WITNESS: No. There has been no discussion i 23- on those lines at all.
24 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I guess would Mr.
25 :;ilmartin be doing that review?
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4-1 THE WITNESS: I ackOd. Dick Becht that, who was l
2 doing the next one. He thought it was a combination of him 3 and Gilmartin, would do the next one.
4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You have already asked
\
5 him recently if he had any performance issues with you, and 6 he said none. ,
7 THE WITNESS: That's right.
8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And if I ask Mr. Becht 9 that, he is going to tell me the same thing?
10 THE WITNESS: Yes. I mean, I guess.
11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Do you believe he would 12 tell me t' hat? ,
13 THE WITNESS: I don't know any more. I don't 14 know, I mean this is a personality thing here. But I don't 15 know what to expect from people in this company at this 16 point.
17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Is iti a personality
. 18 conflict between you and Mr. Gilmartin that caused all this 19 stuff to happen?
20 THE WITNESS: I don't know. I think it's the 21 fact that I am out-spoken on fixing things right, and that 22 he wants to get me out of the way. l 23 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Gilmartin?
24 THE WITNESS: Yes.
25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who is Gilmartin's boss?
(-
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71 :
- 1 Is that Dougherty? ,!
l l 2 THE WITNESS: Yes. Gilmartin has personality j l
3 conflicts wit;.h everyone. I mean his reputation is far and j 4 wide, but that's neither here nor there, I guess. l 5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who are some of the other l l
l 6 people that he's had conflicts with?
l 7 THE WITNESS: Well, let's see. Jerry Caccavale' 8 is a person that used to Work for him 1
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Is he still with the 11 Power Authority?
l 12 THE WITNESS: Yes.
13 14 l 15
! 16 17 l
18 D
20 21 .
, 22 j 23 i
j 24
{ 25.
4 '
~
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4 2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. ~So sometime in the 3 near term, it looks like you are going to get a performance 4 review.
i 5 THE WITNESS: Right. -
6 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: If I could jump in here.
7 You wrote this response to the 1994. Did you ever write a 8- response for a prior one, like in 1993?
9 THE WITNESS: No. 1993 I didn't have a problem 10 with. The 1992 was negative, and I felt that that was 11 because of the relocation fiasco. I was willing to let 12 th at go 't a that point, because of all the confusion, 13 misunderstandings there. So I didn't write anything like 14 that in response to the 1992 one.
15 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: I noticed on your 1993, 16 your comparison chart, that there are some that do not meet 17 expectations in your 1993 and 1994.
18 THE WITNESS: Yes.
19 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Could you explain that a 20 little bit?
21 If you look at, I think it's page six.of your 22 April 7 memo to Gilmartin from you, in 1993, it's meets 23 schedules. On the chart there it says do not meet 24 expectations. That's for both 1993 and 1994.
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73
?
1 in hera. .
, 2 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Did Mr. Gilmartin write 3 your 1993 evaluation?
4 THE WITNESS: No.
5 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Who wrote that?
6 THE WITNESS: Ettlinger.
7 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Who wrote your 1992 8 evaluation? .
9 THE WITNESS: Ettlinger.
10 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Did Ettlinger participate 11 in the 1994 review at all?
12 THE WITNESS: Yes. Very much so. As I found 13 out from Human Resources, that he had a great deal of input 14 in this 1994. ,
15 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Do you know what his input 16 was?
17 THE WITNESS: According to Lori Steinmetz, it 18 was very critical, very, very, critical.
19 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: He was your boss up to, I 20 think October of that year you said?'
21 THE WITNESS: Right.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So for 10 months there, 23 he was your supervisor.
24 THE WITNESS: Right.
25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I just wanted to make NEAL R. GROSS count nEcomas AND inaNseneEns 1323 nHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W.
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74 1 curo cvsrybody 10 closr en that.
2 THE WITNESS: That's right. These three DMNEs, 3 I didn't really have problem with these things being ,
4 negative, because if you look at schedules at the Power ,
5 Authority, everybody across the board misses schedules by a 6 mile. Resource planning at the Power Authority is very 7 poor. Schedales in particular are diffi' cult to meet here !
8 because our work is not, we are not self contained. We 9 rely on others to do their part.
10 So when someone else doesn't meet a schedule 11 that we are trying to meet, then if they don't meet it, you ,
12 didn't ineet it, then you didn't meet it.
13 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: These evaluations, a lot i 14 of them you got do not meet expectations. Did you write 15 evaluations for your people?
16 THE WITNESS: Yes.
17 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Did they have do not meet 18 expectations?
19 THE WITNESS: No. I wrote all the evaluations 20 for my group, with the exception of some that I had my lead 21 write for their people. I can get you copies of those.
22~ INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Was Mr. Gilmartin aware of 23 those evaluations that you' wrote?
24 THE WITNESS: Yes.
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, 75 1 them?
)
1 2 THE WITNESS: No. He can override them if he 3 so chooses. .
4 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Did he override them?
5 THE WITNESS: He did do that in one' specific 6 example, where I had given someone an Exceeds, and he in l
7 turn rejected that and knocked it down to a Meets, with 8 many do not meet expecta'tions for that person.
9 That was another surprise. I mean, that 10 individual had no contact with Gilmartin at all.
11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who is that person?
12 THE WITNESS: That happened to be my secretary, 13 shich i In her situation, well, it's LndaKiamo>
14 another strange way of management here.
15 At the end of the year, I had already been 16 displaced by Dick Becht. Then in 1995, Dick Becht said,
, 17 sell, "can you still do these evaluations on these people.
18 It makes sense that you do them. You were their manager 19 last year." I said, "Sure."
i 20 So I did them. I turned them in. Then what 21 aappened was.that those things were adjusted and changed by 22 311 martin to do what he had wanted.to do to these other 23 people.
24 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: So your secretary also got 7h N L R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCFUBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N.W.
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1 76 THE WITNESS: That 10 right. Th t 10 right. -
1 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: That was issued by you?
2 THE WITNESS: No. I never sgw that. Once Dick 3
4 Becht told me that he had knocked it down.
5 I'm sorry. She did not get a % ) she got a She was knocked down fro t )B 6
- ) )
7 she had numerous instances where they had checked'off 8 for her. That is just one example. ;
9 once they changed it, when they knocked it down 10 like that, I said, " Wait a minute. I'm not going to give 11 her that. What is the reason for knocking it down?"
"Well, Gilmartin wants to." Dick Becht gave her that 12 13 performance review, and I didn't have anything to do with 14 it. . , ,
I did bring it up to Human Resources. That it 15 I 16 was not a fair review, and as a result of that, I h' ave 17 asked them to investigate the fairness of that review as I
18 well.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: I noticed, and I have not 19
, 20 studied your evaluation. Most of the evaluation does not 21 talk about technical issues, but talks about other issues.
22 fhrepersonnelissues.
23 THE WITNESS: Right.
24 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: There are some instances 25 of travel problems.
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- 77 Right.,
I 1 THE WITNESS:
I INVESTIGATOR KENNA: You mentioned, and I just 2
3 read portions of your comments, but you deny that there 4 were travel problems? i 5 THE WITNESS: No. There were expense reports 6 that were turned in late by myself.
7 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Were they accurate though?
8 THE WITNESS: 'Yes. They were accurate.
9 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: There was some discussion 10 in the evaluations about potential, I mean, when I read it, 11 the word fraud wasn't used, but it was hinted at.
THE WITNESS: I think that that is part of this 12 13 harassment. I really do.
14 What happened there, I'll be very spec!ific. ,
l 15 one of the things that I did as part of my start-up of this I
16 group, was I tended to put off my personal administrative 17 responsibilities and expense reports. I did them as I had ,
18 time.
19 When Gilmartin took over, he said, "Well, I 20 want you to turn in any back expense reports that you might That is a perfectly reasonable request. He said, 21 bave."
22 "I want them in a week."
23 on the outside, that sounds reasonable, but we 24 were right in the middle of a relatively serious crisis at 25 IP3. What I'did was, I gave them to a clerk and had her NEAL R. GROSS ,
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2 I met his needs. But there were, I think, I mean they were 3 just real poor quality.
4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who was the clerk?
5 THE WITNESS: She's a temporary and she's no 6 longer here, but I can get you her name. I don't remember 7 her name. She was just somebody that we had in as temp.
8 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Do you have to show a 9 receipt for all of your expenses?
10 THE WITNESS: No. You just have to show 11 reasonable costs. The policy is very clear on what 12 receipts you need and what receipts you can just state on 13 the expense report.
14 For example, a meal of under 10 dollars, I 15 don't believe you need a receipt for that.
16 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: So they made an issue.
They seem to have made an issue out of that. A 900 dollar 17 18 airline ticket.
THE WITNESS: Yes. That's another really 19 20 ridiculous point. They brought up a ticket and they said 21 that it was mismanagement on my part. This ticket was a 22 900 dollar ticket to fly from here to Syracuse.
23 Now I don't know how Delta managed to get the 24 fare so high on that, but when I saw that I said, "I'm
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I be rOfund:d cr properly creditcd cgain:t cnsthcr futura 2 trip. That's the way that the Power Authority works. .
3 The employee can hold the ticket or the Travel l 4 Department can hold the ticket. It doesn't make any I happened to have buen holding that ticket P
5 difference.
6 for another trip. I never got around to using it. l 7 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Well, what did you show in 8 your travel expense?
9 THE WITNESS: If you don't use the ticket, you 10 don't need to show it. 'That was brought up in the --
i 11 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Well, did you show the 12 mileage for the car?
THE WITNESS: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.
13 I
14 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: So you had a 900 dollar l 15 ticket, but you showed traveling by car?
THE WITNESS: That is right. That's right.
16 17 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Could you keep the ticket?
18 THE WITNESS: Yes. You just' hold the ticket 19 and then the next time you go out on Power Authority 20 business, you give that ticket back to the Travel 21 Department and say, " Exchange this ticket and use this )
22 against the next trip." So that's what I wn.s planning on 23 doing.
24 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: It's sort of like hinted 25 nere that you held the ticket.
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THE WITNESS:
Th y $cply thora that I was 1
2 stealing that ticket. That is was really, really 3 infuriated me.
Okay. But is there 4 INVESTIGATOR KENNA:
5 a nywhere on the expense that you showed?
THE WITNESS: Yes. What I did was there's two 6
7 w ays to do it. One, just hold the ticket, Travel knows that you have it. You know that you have it, and use it on 8
9 a future trip, and don't show it at all. ,
The second way, which is also perfectly 10 ,
11 acceptable, is to show the ticket as an expense advance. I 12 Show it'not being used, and then credit it back out to 1 13 zero, so that the dollar refund doesn't change to you as an 14 employee.
Well, would it have shown, 15 INVESTIGATOR KENNA:
16 I mean when they look at your trip and they see you also 17 have mileage, charged them for mileage.
THE WITNESS:. Right.
18 And you had an outstanding 19 INVESTIGATOR KENNA:
20 ticket.
Right.
21 THE WITNESS:
So I mean, would it have 22 INVESTIGATOR KENNA:
shown up? Would it have.been caught?
23 THE WITNESS: I don't know whether Travel 24 altimately would have caught. I've talked to them at 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND' AVENUE N.W. (202) N WASHINGTON D.C. 20005 (202) 2344 433
I length cbrut thic cinca thic wzo brcught up. Whsta )
2 responsibility is this? Would you guys have spottec t.his?
i 3 They said that their system is not very good, 4 a nd that they probably would not have noticed it for a long 5 time.
6 . INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who did you talk to in i 7 Travel?
8 THE WITNESS: Linda Vigors. She's the Travel 1
9 Supervisor.
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Were you investigated by 11 the Power Authority regarding some of your travel expenses?
12 THE WITNESS: Yes. Absolutely.
I 13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who conducted that 14 investigation? l 15 THE WITNESS: When I turned in that stack of 16 stale expense reports, Gilmartin turned-around and gave 17 them to the Corporate Auditor, who is Joe Brennan.
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. What did Mr.
19 Brennan find?
THE WITNESS: He found trivial, minor errors, 20 21 because of the sloppiness that I just mentioned. But 22 overall, the refunds that came back to me were larger, not 23 smaller.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did he conclude that you 24 25 were trying to defraud the company?
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1 THE WITNESS: No. I h0v3 n0 var DGOn that -
2 report, by.the way. ~But that is my understanding. l INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who told you? How did 3
4 you get that understanding? .
1 L 5 THE WITNESS:. Dougherty told me that. I asked ;
i 6 Dougherty about it. That's what he said.
7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: . So at this point, it's l f
8 not a problem? -
- i 9 THE' WITNESS: No.
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Except that it's in your 11 performance appraisal. .
Except that it's in that. Yes. [
12 THE WITNESS:
l 13 I guess on the one hand, zach is saying don't go into all l this excessive detail. But let me just give you some 14 background surrounding this.
15 16 When I turned these reports in, and I turned 17 them in November 8, it took a month for, and normally we 18 process a report and get a check back to an employee within It took a month for us to figure out that 4
19 three weeks.
20 they weren't even in the system.
21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who is us?
22 THE WITNESS: My secretary. I asked her to 23 chase them down when they didn't come back.
24 When Gilmartin mentioned to me, he looked at
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I como prebicm3 with them.a I caid, "Oh rOnlly? Givo thna ,
That was like November 9 or so. They didn't come
\
l 2 back."
l 3 back. He just kept saying, "Well, I've just turned them l 4 in."
5 So I thought, well, that's very odd. If he had !
6 a problem with them he should have kicked them back'to me. l l
7 I wanted them back at that point. I wanted to go back r 8 through them. ,
9 on December 1 or so, December 8, somewhere in 10 there, Gilmartin called me into his office. Joe Brennan i
11 showed up. They spent two hours grilling me over those l 12 reports. I was really just completely cold caught in that. 1 i
13 I had no idea what was the concern. I had no idea. I was 1
14 asked questions about, where did you go on this trip? Who l 15 did you visit? What was the purpose of the trip? Why 16 isn't there a meal receipt here? And all this stuff.
17 We just went through it from one end to the 18 other. I answered their questions to the best that I 19 could.
20 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And Brennan concluded 21 that you weren't trying to defraud the company?
22 THE WITNESS: That's correct. If I was, if he 23 bad concluded otherwise, I would have been fired.
24 But what happened next was that at the end of that meeting Brennan said, "Well, here's your reports. Why 25
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.. . . .. -- - - - . _ . - . . _ - ~ _ - -
1 dcn't you clazn th03 up cnd turn thru in.a 2 So I went through them with a fine tooth comb I I found 3 at that point. I found lots of little mistakes, 4 others that he didn't find. I was very concerned about it, 5 but I turned them back in.
6 I turned them back in I believe December 8.
7 Well, for two more months nothing happened. I was real 8 curious. You know, these guys made an issue out of it.
9 They did a corporate internal audit over it. What's going 10 on? Am I being audited again? Is there some other 11 problem?
12 so I kept asking my new manager, which is Dick 13 Becht, what's the deal here? It's almost 2,000 dollars in 14 refunds. Once I knew that it was thIat much, I had no idea 15 it was so much at the time. I was really looking for that 16 check, because it was christmas time and what not.
17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You pay out of your own 18 pocket and then you are reimbursed by th'e Power Authority?
19 THE WITNESS: That's right. So to cut to the 20 chase here, I ended up having to write a memo to Tom 21 Dougherty saying, you know, this is ridiculous. It's 22 February 1, we're still goofing around with these old 23 reports. I'm being harassed by Gilmartin because of this l
24 stuff.
l t
25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You put that in the memo?
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1 THE WITNESS: I Put thzt ,in tha asso. I"hsard ;
w ords through Dick Becht like, "Well, I'll get to them when ,
2 i l
i 3 I get to them. Tough luck." It was like he didn't care. r l
i !
l 4 They were on'his desk and he wasn't. signing them, even '
5 after they had been scrutinized by our auditors.
i 6 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Have you gotten paid 7 since?
8 THE WITNESS: Yes. Once I sent that memo to ;
9 Tom Dougherty, three days later, the check was in my lap.
10 Three days.
11 We had a meeting on it. We agreed that it was a non-issue at that point. That was February 1. Then'the 12 13 next thing I know, it shows up in like three or four different places in that performance review. It's just 14 15 ridiculous.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: You mentioned this, and 16 let me ask you. They have had a downsizing here. The 17 Why don't they 18 performance review is lower, below average. .
19 just get rid of you? Why don't they just fire you?
THE WITNESS: I think that's going to happen.
20 21 I expect to be fired.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: When you get your next l
23 three month review?
THE WITNESS: Yes. That's why I brought a 24 25 legal counsel.
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1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Whtn did ysu rhtain Mr. ,
2 Marantis?
3 THE WITNESS: About two weeks afte.r that March l l
4 9. After I got that PPR.
5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Se sometime in March of ,
{
6 this year? ..
7 THE WITNESS: Yes. I was very upset.with it.
I didn't know what to do. I didn't'know what my options 8
9 were. I called in these guys and went through.
I 10 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Do they fire people only 11 for cause? I'm sure they lay people off.
s 12 THE WITNESS: Yes. They lay people off here.
13 Yes.
14 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Why not just lay you off?
15 THE WITNESS: They don't do it individually.
16 If they do a lay off, it's department-wide or section-wide.
17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: That has happened too, 18 hasn't it? .
THE WITNESS: Yes. It has. They really, if 19 20 they lay off their own expertise in this subject area, they l 21 are nuts. I can't see anyone coming to the conclusion that, we've got problems in configuration management, let's 22 23 lay off our resident expert.in configuration management.
24 We can fix this ourselves.
' INVESTIGATOR KENNA: But there's other people 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS l
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os i i
1 in ycur group that cro in c:nfiguratien cans.g:::nt? '
2 THE WITNESS: That's right.
3 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: I mean, they could come in 4 and just say, cut one out of configuration sanagement. It 5 just happened to be you. f 6 'THE WITNESS: I don't think that would happen.
7 It could happen.
8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: They have already done j I
9 it. They eliminated the position. They have given your 1 10 former responsibilities to someone elise.
11 THE WITNESS: Yes.- I'm not sure about that, to 12 tell you the truth. Since the position is still there, 13 people are still reporting to that individual, the fact 14 that he has an unknown title at this point --
15 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: He's wearing two hats 16 then, right? He's a document control manager, it's his 17 title, but he's also doing your old job.
18 THE WITNESS: Right.
19 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: What are you listed as?
20 THE WITNESS: Now?
21 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Yes.
22 THE WITNESS: The only thing I can tell, is a 23 Senior Configuration Engineer. That happens to be at the 24 top of that PPR. That is the only way that I know.
25 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Was it different in 19937 NEAL R. GROSS court REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N.W.
- WASHINGTON. D.C. 20005 (202) 234 4433 (202) 2m
88 1 THE WITNESS: YCo. It woo M:nIgsr ,
t 2 Configuration Management Programs.
3 INVESTIGA'50R KENNA: Okay. I'm look ng at your .
4 April 7 memo regarding your 1994 performance review on page 5 six, where you do the comparison.
6 In 1993, you had a meets schedules, do not meet 7 expectations. You already discussed that. Most people 8 here at the Power Authority don't meet their schedules, is 9 what you said.
10 THE WITNESS: Right.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: You didn't have a problem 11 12 with that. But the reviewer, did he tell you, "Mr. Witte, 13 you've got to try and improve your schedule performance."
14 Were you told that? I am going to look at what the 1993 15 review says, but were you told that by the writer of your 16 performance appraisal?
17 THE WITNESS:
In 1993 or 1994? 4 18 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Yes. 1993.
19 THE WITNESS: I do remember discussions on 20 schedules.
21 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: That would be with 22 Ettlinger, right?
23 THE WITNESS: Right. That's why I guess I didri't have a problem with this One staying a DNME. Yes, I 24 i 25 couldn't fix it. I tried.
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59 INVESTIGATOR KENNAs And tha cama'with plcnning ,
1 2 resource management. You are telling us that configuration 3 management isn't self sufficient. It needs other groups to 4 do its work. If the other groups aren't meeting schedules 5 and planning the resource management' correctly --
6 THE WITNESS: Then it breaks down in my group.
INVESTIGl\ TOR KENNA: It impacted your group.
7 8 THE WITNESS: 'that's correct.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: And you didn't have a 9
10 p roblem with the 1993 review, the DNME on planning and 1
11 resource management.
THE WITNESS: No. In all fairness, sir, I 12 would expect that there are areas to improve upon. Those 13 14 might be two. Those would happen in concert with other I
15 people getting their act together. But that's fine.
16 accepted that.
17 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: And the last one is issue 18 status reports.
19 THE WITNESS: That one I have a problem with. 1 20 That one is wrong.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: How is it wrong?
21 22 THE' WITNESS: They basically say, Gilmartin and 23 Ettlinger said that I didn't issue status reports.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: I'm talking about the 1993 24 25 review now, where you get DNME on issues status reports.
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YU ,
THE WITNE3St Let's coa. I'D not cura I 1
2 remember the specifics on the 1993. I have to look.
INVESTIGATOR XENNA: It looks like it's on page 3
4 12 of your --
5 THE WITNESS: I may have actually brought the
' 93 review, in here somewhere. I'll give you a copy of 6
7 this too, or a clean copy of this.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Your 1993 performance ,
8 9 review?
10 THE WITNESS: Yes. He brought it up in 1993.
11 He wanted improvement.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Ettlinger?
12 THE WITNESS: This was Ettlinger. There were 13 14 many, many things that I had done to try to get l l
15 improvements in this area, but I honestly don't think that 16 it did improve an'd that therefore, with the exception of 17 status reports,-the schedules and planning of resources, I 18 mean our group was responding to emergent work versus 19 really fixing configuration management. That was at 20 management's direction. i 21 so you know, planning and resources management 22 I think we.were wasting our talent. These two DNMEs are 23 fine. This last one, is not fine in 1994 and it.may have l
l 24 been fine in 1993. But 1994, I provided them 15 different 25 references on status reports. They are in the back of that NEAL R. GROSS COURT BEPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W.
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91 docu=nt that ysu h Vo gat. I can givo you coma cxampics I
2; of that, if you want to follow.
INVESTIGATOR EENNA:
I see them on page 12 3
It lists examples of schedul'es provided. Okay.
4 here.
5 What was your overall rating in 19937 6 THE WITNESS: It was Meets.
7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Mr. Witte has shown us a 8 c opy of his 1993 performance review. There's three "Does
.u.. a .~
9 not meet expectations." There's four " Meets"'and there is 10 one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, " Exceeds 11 expectations." I The evaluation, this is for 1993. Where is the 12 13 1994 one?
I've got it. I'm sorry.
14 THE WITNESS:
Departmental rating. They 15 INVESTIGATOR KENNA:
don't do that, I guess. Right?
16 THE WITNESS: That is something that they 17 18 started doing in 1994. I only talked about this mark here 19 versus that mark there.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
Your summary rating in 20 1993 is Meets Expectations. Your summary rating in 1994 is 21 22 Does Not Meet Expectations.
THE WITNESS: Right. Then they took that one 23 I
24 level further and stuck me down on the very lowest 25 quartile, I guess.
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92 i .;
- INVESTIGATOR KENNA Iow3t of tho low. I cocn j 1
2 an evaluation like you just got, is that sufficient to start the procedure to -- j 3
4 THE WITNESS: Sure.
i 5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: To get you terminated.
6 THE WITNESS: Definitely. If that evalua. tion l r
7 was accurate.
8 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: How about the 1993? Is l 9 that sufficient to get you terminated.?
10 THE WITNESS: No. Absolutely not.
11 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Even though you got three? !
THE WITNESS: Yes. That is not unacceptable, 12 13 the fact that you have several areas that you need to make ;
14 improvements on. I mean those are areas that an employee l
15 should work on for growth, or whatever. It's not a matter 16 of you got three or you got one.
17 If the majority are DNMEs and your overall
't 18 rating is DNME, then you are probablf' going to be looked at i.
! 19 very closely, as far as whether you should stay an i
20 employee, which is exactly what they did in 1994.
l 21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:. What do you mean?
22 THE WITNESS: Look at the 1994' eval. Ninety I
i 23 percent of that is DNME, with an overall rating of DNME.
~
24 mean, if they wanted to get rid of me, this is the way to 25 do it.
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. i l
l 1 INVESTICATOR TEATER Ycu b311Gvo that that's 2 what they are going to do.
THE WITNESS: Absolutely, absolutely. I expect 3
4 to be terminated. -
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: If they do that, what 5
6 action do you plan or what action do you contemplate?
THE WITNESS: I hope they don't. Right now I 7
am fighting to keep my job. That's what I am pursuing.
8 9 That's what I had legal r7unsel here doing, is to try and 10 help me preserve my job.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Is Counsel interfacing 11 i
12 with the company, discussing your --
13 THE WITNESS: No.
14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: No?
l 15 THE WITNESS: Not yet. They are just offering l 16 me advice on how to proceed.
17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And you are pursuing 18 saving your job by going to Speak Out and to Human i
19 Resources?
I 20 THE WITNESS: Right.
21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Do they have an official 22 grievance procedure or grievance policy here, where you can l
23 formally grieve a performance review? Most companies do. .
1 l
{ 24 THE WITNESS: I know.
l 25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: They don't have it here?
I
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I look0d, Gnd I couldn't find it. [
1 THE WITNESS:
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did you ask Human 2- P 3 R esources if they had that type of grievance?. -
4 THE WITNESS: Yes. I a.sked. specifically, what
'5. is my appeal process. I.was given an answer that was vague :
l 6 that said that I could go to my manager or I could go to !
But it's nothing i 7 them and they'll try to look into it.
8 formal. Nothing documented.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You didn't go to your 9
10 manager because you didn't see any reason to go there.
He's the guy that wrote this. So you went to Human 11 12 Resources?
THE WITNESS: Right. Right.
13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
You have also gone to 14 15 Speak out on technical issues.
THE WITNESS: That is right.
16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Speak out is not going 17 18 to, if I understand you correctly, they are not going to 4
19 investigate harassment, or are they? ,
THE WITNESS: Yes. They are investigating 20 I 21 harassment.
~
INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
But not your performance 22 1 23 appraisal? -
THE WITNESS: But not the performance review, 24 i 25 which is closely tied to the harassment.
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1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER CkOy. But Cpeak Out 10 ,
looking at safety and technical issues that you have?
2 THE WITNESS: That is right. That's right. I 3
4 read the Speak out procedu.res in the last month or so.
5 That is the Speak out process. They turn around and will 6 take a personnel issue and immediately pass it.back'to the 7 Human Resources Department. That is what their procedures 8 say. They don't like to overlap with Human Resources doing 9 the same thing, i
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And as far as technical l l
11 issues you brought to speak Out, those are the issues 12 listed in your April 19, 1995 memo?
13 THE WITNESS: Correct.
14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I want to take a break 15 for lunch at this point.
16 THE WITNESS: Okay.
l 17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Is there anything else l
18 regarding your performance appraisal, what's going on now, 19 that you want to discuss though, because if not, this 20 afternoon I want to talk about John Tarpinian and some fire 21 protection stuff, and whatever other safety issues you 22 bave.
23 THE WITNESS: Yes. There are three or four 24 more harassment issues that I was hoping that we could talk 25 about. ,
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96 s
INVESTICATOR TEATER: Ok2y. Wall, ws'll do 1 .
l s
2 that after lunch then.
3 THE WITNESS: They are in the back of this.
They are lis.ed in the back. There's a summary.
4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: The back of your April 5
6 19th memo?
THE WITNESS: Yes. They are on page 18. There 7
8 are six total that I in retrospect now, really feel that I 9 am being harassed on in this part of the process to push me 10 out of the company.
11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What are you referring 12 to? .
13 THE WITNESS: Page 18 of the performance review 14 memo.
15 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: I don't have all those 16 extra pages on mine.
17 THE WITNESS: Oh. You got the technical issues 18 one. All right.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Here we go. I got it 19 20 now. Page 18 you said?
21 THE WITNESS: Yes.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Summary of harassment 23 issues. We have discussed expense reports.
1 24 Harassment related to property passes for i t .. 25 computer equipment. We haven't talked about that.
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1 THE WITNESS: That'd right.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I'll look at that though.
,. 2 3 Travel airline' tickets, you have talked about.that.
4 'THE WITNESS: Right.
5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Being asked to use the 6 Director's receipts in completion of expense report.
l THE WITNESS: He asked that I falsify the 7
8 report with his receipts, which I won't do.
9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: We haven't talked about 1 1
10 that.
11 THE WITNESS: No. ,
12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Being called into the 13 Director's office and harassed over commercial issues 14 regarding contractors.
15 THE WITNESS: Right.
16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: We haven't talked about 17 that.
18 THE WITNESS: That is correct.
19 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Number six.
20 THE WITNESS: We briefly talked about that.
l l 21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: We talked about that.
22 Right?'
23 THE WITNESS: Yes. That treatment in that
{
l 24 meeting.
I i\ 25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: But the actual action is i
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+ -
y cu cra anying io o ferm of rctclistien cgninct you? ,
1 . !
Absolutely. l 2 THE WITNESS:
\
I 3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You were taken out of 4 your position.
THE WITNESS: Absolutely.
5 All right. Well, we'll 6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: ,
come back and we'll talk about a couple. I'm going to try 7 l 8 and read these six things over lunch. We'll address them 9 when we get back. I want to get into, John Tarpinian and 10 Andy Bartlik.
THE WITNESS: All right.
11 12 (Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m. until 1:04 p.m. the 13 interview was recessed for lunch.)
I j
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. ~
1 AFTERNOON SESSION .
1:04 p.m.
2 3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: We're back on the record.
4 Mr. Witte, before we left, you' talked about page 18 of your April 7 meno, on your 1994 performance review. Page 18 is 5
6 a sub-section, summary of harassment issues.
7 We've talked about half of these, it looks 8 like. I wanted to talk to.you'about this number two here.
9 Harassment related to property passes for computer 10 equipment.
11 It says you were investigated for allegedly 12 taking a' computer printer home. Who investigated you?
13 THE WITNESS: The Security Department.
'14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: John Hahn's department'r 15 THE WITNESS: Yes.
16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What was the result of 17 that investigation?
18 THE WITNESS: They asked me about, first they 19 asked me about a computer that they thought I had taken 20 home within a few of days of when this had started. This 21 was in the November time frame.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: November 19947 23 THE WITNESS: Yes. I couldn't figure out what 24 they were talking about, unless they were talking about a 25 notebook computer that I have. My group has three of them.
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1 W3 cil teko th=1 homo'rcutinoly. W3 d::n't rcquire ths t
2 e mployees to have property passes for them..
3 But the day in question, I didn't eyed have ,
4 that. So I said, "Well, what's going on here?"
INVESTIGATOR'TEATER: John Hahn is talking to .
5 6 you about it? \
1 7 THE WITNESS: No. It was Roger Busha, which is 8 one'of the security people tha't takes care of this sort of :
9 thing. '
I j
10 Roger said, "Well, someone saw you taking a \
i 11 computer home last night. We're trying to figure out what l 12 is going on?" I said, "Well, is one missing?" "No. Not i
13 yet. We haven't found a missing one." I said, "Well 14 whatever. It wasn't me." :
i 15 Then the next thing that happens is th'at I get i
l
! 16 called into Gilmartin's office and'he's asking me questions l
j 17 about printers that I took home in August, and did I-or did I not have property passes for them. I went back, dug up l 18 f ,
l 19 the property passes and gave them to him. There were two l 20 occasions when I took a printer home in August because we 21 were so busy that _I worked over the weekend up in vermont.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So you are telling me 23 it's not unusual for your people to take home the notebooks, the lap top computers or printers. Not unusual j 24 I
- 25 at all?
i 1
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LUL 1
THE WITNESS:' Wall, o printor 10 o littlo nora -
2 unusual. If you do take it out, you should have a property 3 pass for it.
4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: But you had those
~
5 property passes.
THE WITNESS: I had the property passes.
6 7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You presented them to --
i Gilmarten. l 8 THE WITNESS:
9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Gilmartin. Did that and .
i 10 that issue? '
THE WITNESS: No. It wasn't over yet.
11 12 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Were they missing a 13 printer? ,
14 THE WITNESS: No. They were not missing a 15 printer. Nor were they missing a computer. I was still 16 lectured on whether or not, or to always have property 17 passes whenever I take something from the building.
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: But you had them.
THE WITNESS: Yes. That's why I was harassed.
19 Gilmartin was lecturing 20 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
21 you?
22 THE WITNESS: Yes. It wasn't called for. I 23 don't understand what his concern is.
Is that security person 24 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
25 still with the Power Authority?
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1 THE WITNES3: YG3. '
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did he tell you a 2
3 c omplaint was made to their office?
4 h'HE WITNESS: Yes. Yes.
5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Have you found out who 6 made that complaint?
THE WITNESS: No. In fact, I didn't really 7
8 pursue it that much, and I don't they would have given me 9 that information if I would have asked for it.
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Can you spell his name, 11 the security person?
12 THE WITNESS: Yes. It's B-U-S-H-A.
13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Busha?
THE WITNESS: Busha. His first 'ame is Roger.
14 15 He's a good guy. He's just doing his job.
~
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: All right. Let's go on 16 to the other thing here. Number four, being asked to use 17 Director's receipts in. completion of an expense report. Is 18 19 that the one we already talked about?
THE WITNESS: Yes. These stale expense 20 21 reports, he felt that in one instance or a couple i
I said, 22 instances,.I still didn't have proper receipts.
"Well, it's too long ago. What I have is what you've got.
23 24 What I don't have, I'll never be able to produce, since 25 I've found everything I can find."
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H3 00id, eWall, hOro. Una th 03.# B3 pullcd ,
2 them out of the top of his desk drawer. I just looked at him for a second and said, "What? No. I can't do that."
3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What was --
4 5 THE WITNESS: I don't know what his motivation 6 was.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA:
What was he handing you?
7 8 THE WITNESS: He was handing me a restaurant 9 receipt, one of those little tags that you get for a cash 10 receipt.
11 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Blank ones? !
He said, " Fill it I 12 THE WITNESS: A blank one.
l 13 in for that missing receipt and you've solved the problem." ;
14 I refused, and I wrote a note on the expense report saying i l
15 that the receipt was not available. That's it.
How much was it? A lot of 16 INVESTIGATOR KENNA:
17 money?
THE WITNESS: No. It was maybe 20 dollars.
18 I 19 Something like that. It was a dinner.
20 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: It we.s for a dinner?
21 THE WITNESS: Right. The process that I am 22 used to, that I think is inbred in this company, is that if If the 23 you don't have a receipt, you write an explanation.
24 Accounting Department doesn't accept the explanation, then 25 they can bounce the expense.
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104 :
1 INVESTIGATOR KENNAs Io thic befera er oftar ,
i 2 the travel question?. '
i 3 THE WITNESS: Before.
9 4 INVESTIGATOR EENNA: Before the travel t
$ question. ,
6 THE WITNESS: Before. !
7 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Before you even handed him 8 the travel 900 dollar travel voucher. .
i THE WITNESS: Yes. That did not occur until, 9
10 oh excuse me. That occurred after the meeting with Joe ;
11 Brennan, and I had cleared up this travel business. !
12 As soon as I had to worry, or looked for that ;
13 thing, I found it and gave it directly to Travel ar.d said, 14 "Here. Take th'is." l 15 After that, we had this meeting on December 8. l l
16 That is when he gave me that receipt.
' INVESTIGATOR KENNA:
So this is'in the period 17 18 of time when he was auditing your travel vouchers?
THE WITNESS: Yes. Right.
19 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: You missed a receipt.
20 21 THE WITNESS: Right. There were several I
22- instances where the receipts were not there any more.
~
23 sean, I never had them.
24 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Approximately how many 25 travel vouchers did you turn in?
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. 1
{
THE WITNESS I think absut ccv0n or cight from 1
2 this stale travel. About eight.
,J 3 INVESTIGAMR KENNA: So you are required to, "f 4 attach receipts?
5 THE WITNESS: Oh yes.
6 ' INVESTIGATOR KENNA: For meals?
Sure. Yes. If you stay in a l 7 THE WITNESS:
hotel, you attach your hotel rinceipt. Whatever expenses 8
You are 9 you have, where possible, you supply the receipt.
not required to supply meal re'ceipts when tiay are below I l 10 11 think it's 25 dollars or 10 dollars, I can't remember.
l 12 But if they go above 25, then you should have a J l
T 13 receipt.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: So were you required to 14 15 have this 20 dollar receipt?
I don't know at this point. I 16 THE WITNESS:
don't remember at this point. I think yes. I think it 17 18 should have been there and it wasn't.
Let me talk to you about 19 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
20 this number five here. Being called into the Director's 21 office. What date are you talking about here?
22 THE WITNESS: I should have put a date on here.
Is this before you get 23 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: ;
24 ren.oved from your job or after, removed from your position,
( 25 I should say.
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, . . -~ . . . --- , - - - . - - -
l 100 THE WITNESS I think thic was aftar. This w.c 1
l 2 s omewhere between December 15th and December 24th.
3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: How do you know that?
i THE WITNESS: I have a profile, a contractor 4
5 p rofile with a memo that I have dated the date that I went 6 and followed up with after this meeting. Documents 7 produced, yes. I have some documents that I can pick off 8 the date.
9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What are the commercial 10 issues that you are talking about here?
THE WITNESS: It's interesting. He seemed to 11 12 be focused in on financial stuff.
13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Gilmartin?
THE WITNESS: Yes. Gilmartin. We have 14 l 15 contractors working here. We're responsible.for their 16 budgets and the approval mechanism to get them in place.
17 In this particular instance, one of the things that I 18 expressed when I came to this company is that I wanted to 19 stay focused on technical, and did6't want to get burdened 20 down with administrative details.
21 My director typically took care of this But in this instance, these 22 contractor administration.
- 23
- ontractors, their budgets were expiring about two weeks !
i 24 early or so. Their budgets had run out before the end of 25 the year.
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y 1
If ycu dsn't know that that's going to happan l
l 2 a nd you don't do something about it, like either release j f
3 the contractor or get additional budget, then basically the l person is working here unauthorized. You can't de that in 4 '
5 this company. You can not do that.
6 In this particular instance, some budget was ,
l 7 established with what I thought would cover them until the In-fact, it was short. This individual, 8 and of the year. ,
9 Sid Mehl, together with Alan Ettlinger, had worked out that 1
budget. I never.even saw it. I didn't concern myself with l i
10
- 11. that detail. i i
12 When we produced the contractor authorization 13 that showed who had put this particular one tihrough, I !
I This 14 looked at it and went, "My name's not even on this. .
15 is Alan and Sid." So at that point, it became very clear j
16 to Gilmarten, that he was pointing the figure at the wrong 17- guy. His follow-up out of that was to blame me anyway, which I don't think was appropriate. It was harassing or 18 19 whatever.
20 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. You told me 21 marlier on, back when we first started, when you came on 22 here, it sounded like you were the person that found Mr.
strausser, Mr. Tarpinian and another individual. Was his 23 i 24 name --
THE WITNESS: Yes. Tom Baileys.
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= !
1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: T3 Bailcya. Okay. Why ,
2 were these people needed?
3 THE WITNESS: We brought them in to develop the l i
4 fire protection design basis documents for both Fitzpatrick 5 and IP3.
l 6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: How did you come to 7 select these three guys to do that? Did you know them 1
8 previously?
9 THE WITNESS: No. I didn't know a single one 10 of them. I asked'several companies who they could supply.
11 They supplied me with a bunch of potential candidates.
12 Then I went through a process of selecting those. ,
13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So you were the selecting 14 official?
15 THE WITNESS: Yes. I'd basically make a 16 recommendation on who I want. Then the contracts 17 Department negotiates a contract, negotiates contract 18 price, and decides whether or not it has to go out through ;
i 19 the normal business processes.
1 20 There's a normal business process of bidding !
21 work here.
f 22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes. ;
23 THE WITNESS: And in this case, apparently we l
24 :lidn't need to do that. But I was the one that made the 25 pick on the three people.
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INVESTIGATOR TEATER Whsn ycu wars cup rvising 1
2 Mr. Tarpinian, were you happy with his job performance?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
3 1
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Good worker?
4 I
l THE WITNESS: All three. Yes.
5
)
6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: All three.of them?
, l 7 THE WITNESS: All three. All of them are blue l 8 chip.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
When did Mr. Tarpinian, 9
10 in your view, when did he start experiencing trouble in 11 getting his job done, where actions may have been taken 12 against him, discriminatory actions?
13 THE WITNESS: Well, things were going fine while we did the Fitzpatrick DBD. When that DBD was 14 15 complete, then I moved him on to revising the fire No 16 protection program reference manual for Fitzpatrick.
17 problems there.
18 During the course or in the beginning of the 19 DBD project for Fitzpatrick, we were doing a simultaneous 20 thought of proceeding on both plants at the same time.
There were no problems then. But when he came back, and by 21 22 the way, Baileys now had left the project. He had been 23 there a year and he was burning out on being away from'his 24 family.
25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Is he still with the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RH00E IkAND AVENUE. N.W.
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l l i I cerpsny? ,
i 2 THE WITNESS: No.
3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: . Do you know where he's 4 at? !
THE WITNESS: Yes. I can get ycu a phone ,
5 ,
?
I can reach him.
6 number. !
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: All right.
7 8' THE WITNESS: Anyway, when John and Jim i
9 Strausser started on the fire protection DBD for'IP3, ,
things didn't go as smoothly. What they found, they 10 i 11 started identifying problems in the 1992 time frame, back i 12 when they were working on both projects simultaneously, i
13 they started writing the DDOIs.
14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: In 19927 15 THE WITNESS: In 1992. There were four written on fire protection at IP3.
That is how things got started.
16 17 I have got'some notes here on that.
18 This is what I thought you all were going to 19 concentrate on here today. I brought them in in May of 20 1992. In July of 1993, we issued the DBD. We issued about 21 60 DDOIs. 1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Design deficiency open 22 l
23 item?
THE WITNESS: Right. We revised the FPRM.
! 24 september of 1993 we started the IP3 DBD. We had four I 25 i l NEAL R. GROSS COURT PEPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHOOE 18 LAND AVENUE. N.W.
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1 DDOIs written in 1992 cn c2argsncy lighting. .
2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: All four were on i
e mergency lighting? .
3 ,
4 THE WITNESS: Right.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did John Tarpinian write 5
r 6 all four of those?
7 THE WITNESS: Yes. It was a combination of him l 8 and Jim Strausser and Tom Baileys. Okay? If you need to 9 see those, I can get you copies of them.
~
! 10 Things,-I thought were okay to the end of 1993.
11 In January of 1994, we started finding more deficiencies 12 with respect to'the 1984 Safe Shutdown Analysis.
l-INVESTIGATOR TEATER: John is bringing these, l 13 l
14 these concerns. John is a fire protection guy?
15 THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes.
l l
16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Expert.
17 THE WITNESS: Yes. !
I INVESTIGATOR TEATER: He's bringing these to 18 19 you?
Yes. And I'm not, by the way. I 20 THE WITNESS:
J l
21 am configuration management.
22 But he is bringing these to my attention. Two 23 of them at that point, which one had to do with the PAB 24 ventilation, and the other one had to do with the operator
! 25 actions regarding communications and so forth, were NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N.W.
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, . i 1 cignificant cnsugh to be priority-ensa. , j l
J 2 INVESTIGAPOR TEATER: Priority one requires a design deficiency evaluation report?
j 3 4 THE WITNESS: Actually, priority ones, the 5 break out of the process is that priority ones are 6 significant to safety. Okay? They are not just a design 7 discrepancy, design output or something to that effect, but '
1 4 8 they are significant to plant safety.
i 9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Does it require
- - 10 reportability evaluation?
! 11 THE WITNESS: Absolutely. Okay? Now, we got 12 nowhere with that. We started running into problems with i l ,
i 1 i
13 the plant people that owned that old 1984 analysis. l i
14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who are you referring to? j 1
15 THE WITNESS: The names in question are Ken l 16 Vehstedt and Roger Lauricella, and Bob Shinff. They all 17 seemed to be.very, very defensive about that 1984 analysis.
i
~ 18 We didn't understand.
19 As we looked into it further, we thought it was 20 appropriate that a meeting be held amongst all the players 21 and get this stuff out on the table.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: When was the meeting ,
23 held?
24 THE WITNESS: That was March second.
25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: 19947 NEAL R. GROSS, COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCPUSERS 1323 RHODE MAND AVENUE. N.W.
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I 1 THE WITNESS: 1994. I h2d a let of fcith in .
2 John. At the time, and I regret doing this, I didn't j attend that meeting. I let him do it. I was very busy on 3
4 design control issues and .cydaer stuff. But on this 5 particular issue,~ John attended and Alan attended. l l
l 6 At that meeting, there was a lot of discussion l
7 about duplicate work, which I know that's not accurate, 8 1.e. the site was saying that there was duplicate work 9 between what we were doing on the design basis 10 reconstitution and what they were doing under a PIP l 11 project. That is not accurate.
12 That bothered me when I heard about it. I I
l 13 decided to write a memo. I asked John to write a memo that 14 put us on record on what we felt were issues. That memo 15 came out March 11, about a week afterwards. Do you guys, l 16 have a copy of that?
l 17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I have got a number of l
18 documents.
l l
l 19 THE WITNESS: Okay. If any of these come up l
I 20 that you don't have, I'll be happy to give them to you.
l 21 We identified a number of issues in that March 22 11 memo. We then turned around and wrote additional DDOIs.
l 23 de had another meeting. I remember I was in Paul Borer's 1
24 at the office at the time so I couldn't attend. This was 25 April 1. .
a
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~= _ ._ _- . . . - - . _ - _ . - . _ - . _ . - - _ _ _ - - . . . _ . . _. _- . . - .
1 Thora vac a najor dcbsto thero cbout wh ther or I
l 2 not there was a requirement to do a DBD, which I thought 3 was rather superfluous at.that point. We had a plan to do 4 a DBD. We had a licensing commitment to the NRC on the 5 Fitzpatrick DBD. Whether or not we had a license 6 commitment to the NRC to do a fire protection DBD for IP3 7 was not important. The fact was that we were going to do 8 it, and it was certainly warranted.
i 9 We had a project plan in place that had been 10 approved by management. To revisit that issue really 11 didn't sit with me at all. It didn't sit correctly. l 12 During that time frame and at that meeting 13 there was apparently a lot of hostility between some of the I 14 people in that meeting.
I 15 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Between who?
16 THE WITNESS: I hear this and I wasn't there.
17 That Vehstedt was telling people that there was no 18 requi Sent to do a DBD and that the site wanted the budget 19 that we had assigned to use it on other things.
20 Without Alan Ettlinger or myself present, it 21 was totally inappropriate to get into that kind of 22 discussion.with a contractor.
23 There were some words tliat Vehstedt apparently 24 had said to John.
25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: See you later, pal?
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I >
1 THE WITNESS 530 ycu intOr, pal. I don't know i
i ~
2, whether that's true or not. I wasn't there.
3 INVESTIGA'13R TEATER: Up until this point, you 4 know, Tarpinian is doing his job ori the first protection i
'5 issues?
- e 6 THE WITNESS
- Yes. -
? l 7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Are you yourself getting l'
j 8 direct complaints from anybody up at IP37 9 THE WITNESS: Yes.
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: About John's work?
11 THE WITNESS: I got it about the whole team.
12 About Strausser and John, about being too detail-oriented, 13 getting into nit-picky stuff, that sort of thing.
14 . INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who was complaining to 15 you about that?
16 THE WITNESS: Joe Dube, which was a project 17 manager at the time, that was calling me. I 18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Was ha' calling you on'the 19 phone and complaining to you about this? .
20 THE WITNESS: Sure. Yes.
21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Does he put anything in
, 22 writing?
23 THE WITNESS: No.
24 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: No?
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, I didn't bsth r ca that nuch that h3 was corpleining absut j 4 1 l 2 these guys' work. You know, as I mentioned earlier, when j j 3 you are in the business of reconstituting or fixing i 4 configuration management, you are going to get people that 5 complain. That is just part of the job. No big deal.
- 6 So when he complained, you know, he said, "We 1
4 j 7 could them here. We could use them there, but we can't use 8 them over there." I said, " Wait a minute. Where he is, is i
i 9 where he is. That's what he is going to stay doing." That i 10 was the end of it.
l 11 But directly after that, Gilmartin, who was not 12 my boss at the time, but was basically Tom Dougherty's
- l. 13 righthand man, came to Alan with a request that we prociace 4
l 14 the resumes of'Strausser and Tarpinian. I found that very 5
15 peculiar. The guys had been here for a couple years at ,
l i
. 16 that point. Who the heck wants to see their resumes and 17 why. What is the problem?
i- .
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did you ask that l
i 19 question? -
t 20 THE WITNESS: Yes.
i 21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Who wanted to see it?
.22* THE WITNESS: Yes. Gilmartin asked to see I 23 them. He was told, I can't' remember who, but he was told i 24 to conduct an investigation into the backgrounds and i
25 credibilities of Tarpinian and Strausser.
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1 So I Percenally tock ths rocum2s to Gilmsrtin 2 and said, "Here they are. What do you want these for?" He I said, ",He's 3 s aid, "Well who is this John Tarpinian guy?"
4 a fire protection engineer. He's the lead on the DBD 5 effort. He works for me. What's the problem?" "Oh, oh, ;
I 6 nothing." That was the response. t 7 That has, to this day, never sat with me i '
8 comfortably. -
9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You indicated that i
i 10 someone was conducting some sort of an investigation 11 regarding their qualifications. A THE WITNESS: That's right.
12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Do you know who?
! 13 i
THE WITNESS: Gilmartin is the point of contact i
14 '
I 15 that I had. So you'd have to follow up with him.
f !
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Do you know wha't other l 16 17 actions that were taken to pursue that investigation? Did 18 anybody else contact you? ,
! 19 THE WITNESS: No.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: About Tarpinian or 20 f
i 21 Strauuser?
22 THE WITNESS: No. I think since I made it 23 known that I was a big defender and that they weren't going 24 to get me to move on it, they left me alone.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: All right. Now when Dube i 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT, REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE. N.W.
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1 io calling ycu en tho phens cnd complaining ab:ut tho 1cval 2 of detail these guys are going in, did he make any 3 s tatements to you that he was going to take actiont to .
4 e ither have them fired or have their work curtailed or 5 anything like that?
6 THE WITNESS: No. He understood protocol, 7 which was that if he wanted to pursue that, he was going to 8 pursue that with me. He wanted me to stop the work on the 9 DBD, to curtail the work. I refused.
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Why did he want you to 11 curtail the work on the DBD? Did he --
THE WITNESS: Yes. He felt that the things 12 13 that they were identifying were stopping the process from 14 the plant fire protection people pursuing other "more 15 important" fire protection activities. Those were his 16 words.
17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did you believe him?
I 18 THE WITNESS: No.
19 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Why not?
l 20 THE WITNESS: For one thing, Joe Dube is not a fire protection guy. He doesn't know Appendix R. His 21 22 background is not in fire protection. I questioned what he
'He said, 23 was' talking abo'ut, and he couldn't answer me.
you'll have to talk to Ken Vehstedt. I said, well, here we 24 25 go. -
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7 _ _ . _ _.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER Did Vehetcdti hava any -
1 l 2 c onversations directly with you complaining about Tarpinian 3 or Strausser?-
4 THE WITNESS: No. Not that I can remember. ,
i INVESTIGATOR KENNA:
Was'this after the meeting 5
6 where he asked for the resumes?
THE WITNESS: Yes. Within a few days.
7 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: You mentioned he said, ,
8 9 "See you later, pal." That was to Tarpinian?
10 TEE WITNESS: Yes. That was Vehstedt to This is what 11 Tarpinian at that meeting. I was not there.
12 I heard.
13 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: At that time.
14 THE WITNESS: Right.
15 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: That was before he asked 16 for the resumes, you heard this?
THE WITNESS: Right. Afterwards, we get this 17 .
18 little inquest through Gilmartin about who are these guys, 19 what are their backgrounds, let me see their resumes, what l
20 are they actually doing.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Do you have any notes on 21 22 that Gilmartin meeting? Do you have the date?
I have to look. I'm not as good 23 THE WITNESS:
- 24 with notes as I'd like to be.
s Gilmartin asked you for i 25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
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l ~_ _ e-ew -
( -
120 1- theco rocusso'aftor ycu h ar s.bcut ths *Sas you later, . i f 2 pal."
THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes. Yes.
3 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: What does, "See you later, 4
5 pal" mean?
6 THE WITNESS: Well, I think it's pretty
.7 ambiguous. The first time I heard it, I wasn't all that ,
8 concerned about it.
9 coming from Ken Vehstedt, I'll tell you how I 10 read it. As I an' going to do everything in my power to 11 move you off the project, but not necessarily out of the 12 company.- That is the way I read it.
13 I was expecting to hear from him. I never did.
I I 14 I was surprised that I didn't get a call from Ken Vehstedt 15 on that subject.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Then something else 16 17 happens where an Ebasco employee --
18 THE WITNESS: Yes.
19 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Can you tell me what you 20 know about that, the Mr. Wittig incident?
\
I 21 THE WITNESS: Well, I know that that surfaced j l
relatively.quickly after it apparently had happened. A i
,22 couple guys came into my office and.said, John being one of l 23 them, that apparently Ebasco had been called. I guess I 24 s
I i 25 didn't understand the seriousness of it at the time.
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I thrught, wall, thst's ridiculcus.
, 2, Number one, why should he have done that, and 3 number two, why did he-call sbasco. Why didn't he call me i
i 4 if he had this concern. Number three, John Tarpinian is 5 not poing anywhere. That he is doing a good job. so is :
6 Jim strausser. They are going to finish this job.
7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Now when that information 8 is brought to you, about someone complaining about 9 Tarpinian, did you alevate that up to anybody in your chain
. 10 of command?
11 THE WITNESS: No. I did not think it was 12 serious enough to do that. The only thing, once Gilmartin 13 asked for resumes, that's serious. That to me was as 14 serious as someone monkeying with Ebasco.
15 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Now did Gilmartin ask for j 16 those resumes after the Wittig incident or was it before?
THE WITNESS: I think it was after, but I can't 17 18 remember.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Is there any way you can 19 20 pinpoint when Gilmartin asked for those resumes?
21 THE WITNESS: Iamprettysureitwasafterg 22 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: What is your understanding 23 of the Wittig incident?
24 THE WITNESS: My understanding is that there 4
! 25 was a phone call made to someone at Ebasco that requested NEAL R. GROSS l COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W.
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1 thnt Jchn Tarpinian be reovsd fron tha projGct, and that ,
. 2 Ebasco responded with, "He's not our employee."
3 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Do you know who made the 4 call?
THE WITNESS: That is absolutely, I'know who ,
5 6 m ade it or I heard who made it, but only through other 7 people.
8 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: And who was that?
9 THE WITNESS: Vehstadt. ,
10 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Vehstedt made the call to 11 Ebasco?
12 THE WITNESS: Right.
13 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: But John doesn't work for 14 Ebasco, does he?
l 15 THE WITNESS: Absolutely not.
16 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: How did the information 17 come back from Ebasco? Who in Ebasco knew it?
18 THE WITNESS: There is a close enough community l
I 19 here amongst the fire protection people and Ebasco people 20 and the NYPA people that my understanding is that made its 21 way through I believe Joe Adamson and Dave Lochbaum.
l Who are they? Are they
,22 INVESTIGATOR KENNA:
23 Ebasco employees?
i 24 THE WITNESS: No. They are also contractors or l'. 25 were at the time. Also working on DBD work here in White i
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1 Plains. 4 2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: But not on fire .i 3 protection DBD?
THE WITNESS: Not on fire protaction. ,
4 i All right. So that 5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
6 incident happened. The incident where you are asked for <
7 the resumes of Strausser and Tarpinian.
8 THE WITNESS:. Right.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Now, at some point early ,
9
! 10 this year, Steve Wilke had a conversation with John 11 Tarpinian about a Robert Pollard letter.
~
THE WITNESS: Right.
12 Okay. Tell me what you 13 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
l 14 know about that, and how do you know it?
15 THE WITNESS: I don't know a whole lot about 16 that, except that John Tarpinian was asked whether he was 17 the one that leaked the information to what's his~name, l
Pollard. He was very upset.
He felt very threatened by 18 19 that. Even though he was no longer working for me, that I I 20 was already removed as manager, I mean, I've spent a lot of 21 time with John with him in my office, there's been a lot of 22 problems with the way people have harassed John in this 23 company.
! 24 At one point, for example, he asked to be moved i
25 back to the Fitzpatrick DBD and just work on DDOIs, because NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRf8ERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. NfW.
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l 1 ho was really tired of --
-2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Tarpinian asked you that?
i 3 THE WITNESS: Yes.
4 INVESTIGATOR,TEATER: D'o you remember when he .
}
l 5 asked you that?
6 THE WITNESS: I got it from him, and then I got t
7 it from his manager through cataract.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Rocco Campanella?
! 8 THE WITNESS: Yes. I'll have to check my l 9 10 notes, but I can give you a pretty approximate date.
,i i
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Why do you believe these
- 11 i )
12 things happened to Tarpinian? In your opinion, why do you ,
l 4
13 think they were happening?
I' 14 THE WITNESS: I didn't really accept that they l
15 were really being harassed for technical concerns until --
l h
You didn't think they
- 16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
i
- 17 were being harassed there were technical concerns until i
18 when?
THE WITNESS: Not until November, December of 19 i 20 this year was when I really started believing it.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
And what made you change, 21 or what made you come to that belief? Was there an 22 23 incident?
THE WITNESS: Yes. See, I didn't even believe 24
' 25 that I was being harassed until I put all this stuff NEAL Rc GROSS OXlRT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N.W.
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i 1 togsthsr and I ctarted losking at, w311 1st's cos, you got
'.,. 2 r emoved December 14th, you got this PPR March 9, went on
' record with that u no last June. These things happened.
3 Maybe that's why they screwed you. That was my thought 4
I 5 process.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What made you turn around l 6
- 7 on Tarpinian though? What made you come to that belief?
THE WITNESS: I started, for one thing, I sat
- 8 down with Joe Dube and spent some time with him. One of 9
i 10 the things, I hadn't spent much time with him in the past.
11 I spent time with him. In September, I had lengthy 12 meetings with him and tried to get to know him a little bit 13 better and figure out how we could really help him.
14 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: The customer. .
THE WITNESS: Yes. l 15 16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did you go up to IP3 for 17 those meetings?
THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes. I had probably four 18 19 in the period of a month, once a week. We'd meet for two 20 to three hours at a pop.
21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Just you and him? i Just me and Joe. We would try to 22 THE WITNESS:
23 figure out, I mean I just couldn't believe that this !
24 ' bullshit.
25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Go ahead.
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1 THE WITNESS; This otuff hEppaning was rac11y 2 serious harassment. I kept looking for Joe to reconcile 3 that, as far as once Joe got to know John Tarpinian a 4 little bit better, his respect for him would start coming ,
5 up. So one of the things I suggested was that John and Jim 6 Strausser work out at IP3 at the fire protection area that 7 Joe Dube had set up. He accepted that. He liked that.
i ;
8 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: That didn't happen 9 though.
10 THE WITNESS: Yes. It did.
11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did they go up there and i
12 actually work?
13 THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes. Yes. It didn't 14 happen as well as it could of, but they were up there for 15 I'd say five or six weeks every day. They didn't like it.
16 They were in a pretty rough environment. I kept trying to 17 solve their problem along those lines. Get people 18 together, get them face to face and the technical issue 19 will come together and they will see our perspective on 20 this.
21 The other part that really bothered me was the 22 on again, off again commitment to revise the Appendix R ]
23 analysis. We'd hear it from someone that they agreed to f;
! 24 revise it and they had agreed to revise it by re-start.
J 25 rhen less than a week later, we would hear from someone NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCW6CRS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE,itW.
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127 1 z gain, or ccccena oleo that mayb3 thst'e'not all that important. Let's do it after re-start. Like a person's 2
3 w ord didn't have a whole lot of value when it came to that 4 subject. .
5 So I was starting to spend a lot more time with 6 it. At that point, I began to think that with the number 7 of errors in the Appendix R analysis, and the fact that 8 Vehstedt had such a big role in its preparation in 1984 and 9* was very defensive about it, that maybe there was a 10 motivation there for him to be pushing people out of the 11 project.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What else can you tell me 12 i 13 about John Tarpinian, discriminatory acts that may have 14 been committed against him, in your view? ,
We talked about 15 the Wilkie thing, we talked about he Wittig incident, we 16 talked about the meeting where Vehstedt patted him on his 17 shoulder and said, "See you later, pal."
18 Any other major things that really come to your 1
19 mind?
20 TRS WITNESS: Yes. He was isolated in the same 21 manner that I had been isolated. For example, let me check 22 my notes here. We have not talked about what' happened with 23 these four DERs. Have you guys talked to other people
! 24 about that?
I have talked te people 25 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
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128 l 1 t bcut DER 5.
i l 2 THE WITNESS: Okay. I believe that -- l I
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Is that 10, 11, 14 and l 3
4 15? Those are the ones?
5 THE WITNESS: Yes. You must have talked about -
6 them. You've got them memorized. It's 10, 14, 15, and 16.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: All right. I have one, I 7
8 was one off.
9 THE WITNESS: Not bad. For one thing, these DDOIs were getting a lot more serious. You know, the 10 11 number 15 and number 16 were challenging the safe shut-down 12 analysis itself. Number 16 looked like an admission of 13 fact on an exemption request. You know, I'm just seeing 14 mo're and more examples of, to be nice, deep cultural 15 problems. To not be nice, material false statements. I 16 began to be very suspicious of some of th'e people in this 17 company.
18 There was a meeting after we wrote four'DERs, 19 to get proper attention to those four DDOIs that was about 20 May 18th.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Was this up at the plant?
21 22' THE WITNESS: Yes.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: In the operations ,
23 !
i 24 trailer?
25 THE WITNESS: That was in the afternoon.
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129 ,
1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Go chand. I'm Sorry.
2 THE WITNESS: There was a meeting at 7:30 in f 3 the morning, which you have probably already heard about.
l 4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Were.at both these 5 meetings?
THE WITNESS: No. I was at the morning 6
7 meeting. When Vehstedt didn't show at the morning meeting, l
8 I left. We stuck it out for about an hour with just Dave l
, 9 O'Brien. Apparently, Vehstedt was asked to come by 10 O'Brien.' O'Brien went to his office, told him we were 11 ready to meet. He just didn't want to do it. He disliked, 12 he just 'had a re'al distaste for dealing with these 13 technical issues. He didn't want to deal with it.
[ 14 The other part of this that I think was 15 harassment was the way that Bartlik and Tarpinian were 16 treated regarding the operability, the reportability l 17 determination on those four DERs.
18 We went through the procedure on determining 19 reportability. We said quite probably yes, they are t
20 reportable. He was told through Vehstedt intervening at 21 the last second, via Don Venkowski, that reportability 22 would be dealt with later.
23 Some of the things that really upset me was 24 what happenee" with the responses to those DERs and the l _
25 intent of plant staff to go out of their way to take the .
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i 1 facto and twict thro orsund and prscent them in a postura 2 that was-absolutely false.
1 .
Are these the DERs that E
- 3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
w ere eventually brought to the QA Dispartment and they -
4 l -
5 rejected them? ,
4 THE WITNESS: Those were the DER responses.
6 l
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Responses. 7
- 7 i,
8 THE WITNESS: Right. '
4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: But that's what you were 9 i r
10 talking about, is the responses from the --
11 THE WITNESS: If you think about it, once 12 again, Tarpinian's credibility was being challenged by the way those were worded. Mine was too. My name was on those ,
13 i 14 four DERs. ,
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Yes. You signed them.
15 THE WITNESS: Right.
16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: He initiated them and you 17
\
. 18 --
THE WITNESS: I was the-NYPA manager, NYPA l 19 20 employee that put my neck out there. When it comes to 21 harassment and treatment of what happened in my performance 22 review, I attribute a bunch of that to being aggressive on 23 fire protection.
24 If I weren't here, those guys would have been
(. 25 gone. 'They wouldn't have been, this thing would have NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTUtS AND TRANSO4SERS 1323 MHODE AK,AND AVENUE, N.W.
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131 I cnded. ,
2 I think I have already mentioned that to double !
I 3 the number of safe shut-down components for fire protection t
4 two months before re-start and 10 years after Appendix R is 5 out on the street tells you something.
- 6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER
- Let's take a' break for 7 five minutes.
8 (Whereupon, from 1:40 p.m. until 1:45 p.m. the 9 proceedings went off the record.)
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. We're back on the
(
11 record. It's 1:45 in the afternoon.
12 Mr. Witte, what can you tell me about firsthand 13 knowledge that you have regarding discriminatory acts i committed against Andy Bartlik. Now I want to talk about, 14 15 he got a mid-cycle performance review.
16 THE WITNESS: Yes.
17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You are aware of that?
18 THE WITNESS: Yes.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Tell me what you know 19 20 firsthand information about that.
21 THE WITNESS: Nothing.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Your information was what 23 ya know from what he told you?
24 THE WITNESS: His supervisor at the time was
. 25 Frank Bloise.- I really can't comment on what happened NEAL R. GROSS .
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1 thora.
2 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did Mr. Bloise tell you, 3 ever confide in you about problems he may be been having 4 with Andy Bartlik or on the other end, did he never 5 complain to you about Mr. Bartlik?
6 THE WITNESS: Frank Bloise's biggest problem 7 was not, I mean, Frank Bloise had a problem with a lot of 8 people.
l 9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did he ever confide in 10 you? ,
11 THE WITNESS: Yes. I guess I was one of the 12 people that he trusted and he would talk to. But he had a 13 problem with his relationship with Joe Dube, which was very 14 deep, a huge rift ir. their relationship. They were !
15 constant *y battling over who was in charge of fire 16 protection.
17 Joe Dube told me that Andy Bartlik was 18 disbarred from coming out to Ip3 during that time frame.
19 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: What time frame?
20 THE WITNESS: That was August and September, 21 October, about three months.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: 19947 23 THE WITNESS: 1994.
24 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And what did Frank Bloise 25 tell you about, did he talk about Andy's job performance?
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133 -
l
. ej
_ ,i 1
THE WITNESS: Yes. ;
l 2
3 {
l 4
5 6
7 8
9 10 i
11 l
l 12 13 i
i 14 I
15 l
16 l
1
, 17 _
18 All things aside, Andy's technical skills are l
etter than Frank's. Frank's supervision skills are better l
19
! 20 han Andy's. I think that there was a little tug of war i'
21 here. Okay?
22 Frank Bloise was worried just like everybody 23 1se in this company about his rear end as far as fire f ,
l
! 24 rotection as well.
f INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
Did he tell you that?
. 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TR/d4 SCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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1 THE WITNESS: Yes.
2 l
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 j 10 I 11 12 13 i
14 15 16 17 _
18 All things aside, Andy's technical skills are 19 etter than Frank's. Frank's supervision skills are better 20 han Andy's. I think that there was a little tug of war 21 here. Okay?
22 Frank Bloise was worried just like everybody f 23 1se in this company about his rear end as far as fire i A
! 24 rotection as well.
i INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
Did he tell you that?
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RH00E ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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/'/
t------ --
134 4
! 1 THE WITNESS: Oh yes. Yes. I told him, you've ,
3 2 got to go on record with your posture. If you don't, then 1
1 3 you are the enemy. Because he kept agreeing with me on 4 these issues. ,
, 5 INVZSTIGATOR TEATER: The DERs, you mean?
1
- 6 THE WITNESS
- Yes. .
7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Things like that?
4 i
j 8 ,
THE WITNESS: Yes. Then he would turn around 1
l 9 in a meeting and he would be on the fence again. I didn't i
j 10 like that. That is not right. It made my job a lot l
l 11 barder.
12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did he, after the meeting l !
! 13 you are saying, I thought you and I agreed on this issue.
l 14 Did you ask his what changed his mind?
1 15 THE WITNESS: I never got a straight answer.
16 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You did'ask him this i
1 17 question though?
1A THE WITNESS: Yes. I did. It really bo'thered j 19 e l 20 h l
- 21 l 1
i i 22
- 23 i
l 24
! ~
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THE WITNESS: Ysc. Yoc. So I don't agres th:t 1
i 2 it should have been done. l 3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did you thi'nk that Andy .
had trouble dealing with people though? I mean, was that 4
5 your opinion too? .
THE WITNESS: Yes. Definitely.
6 )
7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You did?
8 THE WITNESS: Yes. He gets cross-wise all the l 9 time. He's much better now. But a year ago or six months 10 a go, I was afraid to have him in meetings.
Why was that?
11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
12 THE WITNESS: Because the guy would just get on a soep box and not get off. We'd be moving on to other 13 14 material and he'd still be on a soap box on something else. !
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Was he disruptive in 15 I
16 meetings?
THE WITNESS: Not intentionally, but 17 l 18 disruptive. That style of dealing with people is 19 disruptive.
20 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: It's your opinion that he 21 could improve?
22 THE WITNESS: Yes.
23 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: There was room for 24 improvement in that area for Mr. Bartlik?
THE WITNESS: Yes. I thought that he would 25 i NEAL R; GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSOUSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W.
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Ut I heva dena it, h d conteno taken the fivo ninutics to chew .
2 him what to do.
3 INVESTIGATOR TEATER:
5 THE WITNESS:
6 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Mr. Witte, is there 7 anything today that I have not, that you feel is very 8 important regarding discrimination that was committed 9 against you that I haven't asked you about or you.want to 10 tell me?
11 We talked about your performance review, your 12 losing your position, and you b'eing put aside and isolated, 13 things like that. Is there any other. instance or act that 14 <e haven't talked about? .
15 We talked about the things that were in your.
16 3erformance review memorandum. Something very important 17 that we haven't discussed or it's not documented.
18 THE WITNESS: The only thing that I'd like to 19 add is that I'm not real good at this. I think maybe we 20 started at the wrong end of this whol'e thing.
1 21 But I think that there was harassment, I hate 22 :o use that word, but I was discriminated against.'because 23 af my technical posture. We haven't talked about the 24 :echnical issues very much. We are going to give those to 25 (RR or somebody.
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l l 1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: No. Tho Rggien wants to ,
2 look at them. !
THE WITNESS: I think that when you get down 3
l 4 and dirty and look at this, and you look at the technical '
l issues that are still out there now that I brought to l 5 6 management's attention, and what are finally now being 7 dealt with in speak out, and I have no idea whether or not 8 that will be a proper closure of those items.
9 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: They remain to be seen, I ;
I 10 guess. .
THE WITNESS: Right. But I honestly believe 11 12 that between, if you look at treatment that I went through, 13 pushed aside, demoted, given.this very negative PPR with 14 loads of false statements in it, and then being isolated, I 15 really think that that tells you something about the 16 culture here. I'm just really hoping that you guys can 17 help. l 18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Are you afraid to raise j 19 safety issues at this point?
20 THE WITNESS: Yes.
21 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: New safety issues? l l
22 TNE WITNESS: Yes.
23 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Based on what has 24 tsappened to you already?
4 25 THE WITNESS: Yes.
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1 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay. If you find or 2,
found a safety issue, what would you do with'it? Bring it 3 to Speak Out? l 4 THE WITNESS: The first' thing I would do is r
write a DER on it. Then I would watch the closure of that I 5
6 DER, how was it responded to.
i 7 If I believe that it is being white-washed, 8 like I believe that these DERs are being white-washed, then 9 I will at this point, I'll bring it to Speak Out. I won't 10 even bother with Engineering. ;
11 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: So you wouldn't not )
12 report it.
It's just you think you might be retaliated l 1
13 against for doing so?
~
14 THE WITNESS: Yes.
15 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: For bringing these things 16 up or identifying them?
17 THE WITNESS: The damage is already done. I 18 have been demoted. I have been pushed aside. I am 19 probably going to be fired.
20 If I find another issue,. closing my mouth or 21 opening it is not going to make a darn bit of difference, 22 so I'li keep it open.
23 That's where these contractors are so concerned 24 now, they won't open. They are very, very leery about
- 25 identifying issues now.
l 1
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INVESTIGATOR TEATER: New you told no Garlisr 2 on that when you got this bad performance review, it cost 3 you money.
x 4 THE WITNESS: Yes.
5 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Explain that to me.
6 THE WITNESS: This is minuscule, but I've got a 7 memo from Bill Cahill saying that everybody is getting a 8 salary increase in 1995. Presumably, I didn't get it 9 because of that negative PPR. .
10 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: How much was the increase 11 across the board for everybody?
12 THE WITNESS: I think it averaged about four to 13 five percent average, all the way up to nine for some, 14 probably two for others.
15 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: And you got none? ,
16 THE WITNESS: I got none.
17 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Have you been told why 18 you didn't get a raise?
19 THE WITNESS: No.
20 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Did you ask anybody why?
21 THE WITNESS: I have not asked anybody yet.
22 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Are you ioing J to ask 23 Ruman Resources?
24 THE WITNESS: I am going to follow up with her, 25 with Lori steinmetz. We have been meeting on a weekly NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W.
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I bneio. W3 hiv0n't Gvan unds it thrcugh this. Ws'ra cbsut 2 2 0 percent through this rebuttal, which I thia.k I was too -
3 - the next time I write one of those, it's going to be a 4 lot shorter. It scares people off, it's too big.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Rebuttal to your --
5 6 'THE WITNESS: Performance review. Yes.
l 7 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: I have your technical 8 issues, the document you gave'me, summary of open technical 9 issues. I will be giv'ing that to the regional and staff.
I Okay. i 10 THE WITNESS:
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Someone from there may be 11 12 contacting you about these.
l 13 THE WITNESS: Okay.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: If that happens, I will 14 l
15 probably call you just to let you know who it's going to l 16 be, when it will happen, so everybody can be around at the 17 phone.
18 THE WITNESS: Okay.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay? I appreciate you 19 20 spending the time here today with me and Mr. Kenna. I am 21 going to review this transcript. I am probably going to 22 have to get back with you to follow up on a couple things.
23 aan looking at it, I'm sure questions will pop into my 24 mind that I didn't ask that maybe I should have.
INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Is the technical review up 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT, REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W.
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'l to date? I rsaliza it was just written on ths 19th. But f 1
2 is it for the most part up to date? There's no other
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j 3 issues that you can think of, other than the ones that are .
4 in that memo?
5 THE WITNESS: Well, it's interesting how, 6 that's a good point. It's interesting how once I went to
}
j 7 Speak out all of a sudden people said, "Well, you .
i
' 8 identified the problem. You solve it." Same game that was 9 played with Tarpinian with fire protection, which is, l l l 10 you've got these DDOIs, okay, we'll keep you busy by you ;
I 2
-11 working on solving those'DDOIs.
12 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: That was Speak Out?
l
?
speak Out just hit the ball back to you?
1 I 13 Not directly, but indirectly. I
$ 14 THE WITNESS:
i 15 hear that someone wants me to cose up with a list of i ,.
16 problems with the change control self evaluation and 17 present that list by the 19th. ,
e 18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: To Speak Out?
19 THE WITNESS: No. Just back to Engineering.
20 I'm sure that Speak Out will get their hands on it.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You should just give a 21 22 copy directly to Speak Out and give it to Engineering too.
23 THE WITNESS: So that example and the other one 24 with the plant equipment data base example, their answer to 25 this lis, " Gee. He identified the problem, we'll suggest NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1923 RHOOE ISLAND AVENU2, N.W.
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I that ha colva it." -
2 That is the nice easy way out, if you think It's'very crafty on their part to do that. But 3 about it.
4 my feeling is that that's.a nice way to white-wash it, 5 because they can reign me in, not give me the resources. I 6 mean you can't reinvent the design control mod processes by 7 yourself. People can still tell you no in how to fix 8 things. No, we're still not going to do it the right way, 9 or your way or whatever it is.
10 So I think that the harassment and the I 11 intimidation and the strategy to isolate me is going to 12 continue. I do not think it's over by any means.
INVESTIGATOR TEATER: You think it's going to 13 14 result in your termination.
THE WITNESS: Yes. If it doesn't happen, it.
15 16 that doesn't happen, then I will continue to be isolated 17 and be able to do little good for this place.
18 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Are you looking for 19 another job?
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THE WITNESS: Yes. I don't know what to expect 20 21 right now. I didn't want to leave here after three or four 22 years. That's t'oo short.
23 INVESTIGATOR KENNA: Have you ever been fired 24 from another job?
25 THE WITNESS: No.
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'l INVESTIGATOR TEATER: Okay, Mr. Witto. ThEnk 2 you for your time.
3 THE WITNESS: Okay. Thank you.
4 INVESTIGATOR TEATER: This interview is closed.
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5 (Whereupon, at 2:03 p.m., the interview was 6 concluded.)
NEAL R. GROSS
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