ML20136D966
| ML20136D966 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 05/12/1983 |
| From: | Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20136D878 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-84-415 NUDOCS 8511210399 | |
| Download: ML20136D966 (100) | |
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SIDE ONE TAPE ONE SINCLAIR INTERVIEW May 12, 1983 Judge Hoyt Let me introduce myself, I am Helen F. Hoyt, I am an Administrative Judge here with the Atomic Licensing Safety Board Panel and my colleague is Mr. Sabastian Alcot who is with the General Counsels Office. And the third person thats here in the room with us is Ruth Ann Miller,.who.is my
-law clerk. Mr. Alcot and I were assigned by the Chairman of this Commission, Chairman Palladino, on May 6 to undertake an investigation into the allegations that are detailed.in the November 16, 1982 memorandum to Chairman Palladino from Martin G. Malsch, Deputy General Counsel of this Commission. !
And that memorandum was entittled (Interview with Thomas Appelgate). In accordance with our assignment the focus'of our investigation would be whether or not the Director of CIA and that office made a good faith effort to carry out their responsibilities in an OIA investigation of
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Appelgate's allegations investigated by Region III in the
.early months of 1980. To anticipate any questions you may 8511210399 851106
BAUSER 84-415 PDR
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have concerning an attorney, we would like to assure you that you may have one if you choose. We have elected to use this small dictaphone cassette in leu of making copious notes here in the interview with you this morning. And it is intended only for our use and will remain in our files and will be used to transcribe the events of the interview and that is its sole purpose. And concluding these introductory remarks,.I would like for you to know that we.
would prefer that you not discuss this interview with anyone in this Commissions office or any other office. This request is made of you to ensure what we discuss today will not, if it could, influence any other persons we talk with about the OIA investigation. And I am sure you are familiar with that customer type of request, you have probably made in your interviews with witnesses as well. When we have completed the investigations we will report our findings and the recommendations to the commission. I believe I have here the warrant you received from the Chairman so that you will no that this is an official document. This also, I would like to give you is a copy of the November 16, 1982 memorandum to Chairman Palladino from Deputy Counsel, J l
General Counsel Malsch. Do you have any question with us?
Mr. Sinclair No, I don't.
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- Judge Hoyt Thank you very much Sir. If you do any were along the line please stop either one of us and feel free to make any ,
request that you feel would be appropriate that would help you. Mr. Alcot, I think is going to ask most of the questions this morning and he will lead off with these and we will carry on from there. Sir.
Mr. Alcot
- Would you want to take the time to read the Malsch memo? -
Mr. Sinclair L
l Yes, I would. I don't think I have seen this, if I could have a minute?
l Judge Hoyt Oh, yes, I'm sorry, I should have asked you that. Yea go l right ahead and sir and read once.
Mr. Aloot Let me identify the tape though. This is Tape one side one of the interview with Mr. Sinclair.
Judge Hoyt Yes, thank you.
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, You also need a minute and then you will respond? '
Thank you.
2 Mr. Aloot could you for the record state your full name and your present position with the Commission?
Mr. Sinclair Yes. My Name is John R. Sinclair, I am currently inv'estigator with the Office of Investigations.
Mr. Aloot During your tenure with the NRC were you ever assigned to the Office of Inspection and Audit?
Mr. Sinclair -
Yes. I was with the Inspector and Auditors office from i
approximately July 1978 to June or July 1982.
Mr. Alcot What was your responsibilities while you were at that office?
Mr. Sinclair 4
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5 During my time with OIA I was also functioning as an investigator.
Mr. Aloot The first set of questions that I am going to ask you deal with general background matters. Policies, procedures, issus Office of Inspector and Audit as you understood them at the time you were with that office. Did OIA have any written policies on initiation of conduct or disposition of investigations?
Mr. Sinclair I guess I'm going to have to generalize a little bit till I become more familiar with the questions, but in terms of a standardized or structured criteria for investigations-conduct of how to interview specifics of investigation matters, no.
M'r. Alcot .
Okay. Did, where their any written policies, procedures, for example, that were handad you was when you first came on as new inspector and said learn these.
Mr. Sinclair -
Yes. Well that was my point, I don't think there was any -
criteria that established in the office that you would
6 consider investigators manual or procedure manual for conducting investigations and office policy'related to investi,gations. I think, if I remember correctly, there were some memorandum that were in existence that fairly general sentences addressed policies of investigations and in a since said there would be some type of investigative format, by that I mean that they were looking for having details of reports and that there was background areas and things like that but there was not many detailed policies.
Mr. Aloot Sir, would you happen to recall were these memos would be located?
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Mr. Sinclair There should be some in the office files. They go back to era that even preceded my appointment. I think they were initiated by the previous Director, Mr. Batarian, he wasn't i even with the Agency were talking about retired.
Mr. Aloot l
l Were they, let me ask, would they be in individual files, or l
i would they be in just files as memos?
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! Mr. Sinclair I
7 They have to be in the Administrative office files, and I can't get you any narrow than that, because I'm not, you know, I'm not sure that we didn't have a specific filing system, when I attended there was directly related to investigation. And then one for audit. Thats the way I recall it. Theres an Administrative file set up through the office which I didn't have much reason to get into unless we were looking for correspondence or something like that between offices but somewhere there should be a record of some, these documents that are in memorandum were introduced, I do remember seeing them. Somebody says here is some of the background of the office in some of the things we have written regarding investigations with l responding to these specifically. Was there a manual, was l '
l there some way to conduct investigations anything written on l that. The answer is no.
! Mr. Aloot where there any unwritten policies regarding initiation of conduct disposition of investigations? ,
{ Mr. Sinclair i Yes. I think that was a, I don't know how I'm going to say this, the investigators who are in the office brought l
j different backgrounds into the office but there was a i certain common denominator that we all came from more
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traditional law enforcement backgrounds. Different agencies, but generally investigations were conducted the 4
same. And some in more detail, some more complex, but the
! investigation activity, the training investigators got from other agencies and whether or not they were written manuals that they used, everybody had had some familiarity before they came and we had some kind of common approach. We i
didn't have much trouble with the investigators trying figure out how to conducted investigations. That was kind ,
of what was given.
Mr. Alcot i
, could you describe some of those given policies?
Mr. Sinclair Well, as a projectual matter we all in an investigative function realized that when we had to interview individuals that we wanted some documented evidence of it. That was ,
either going to be in the form of a sworn statement, if we ,
wanted to get the authority to take statement under oath and i
also, if witnesses refused or we consider it wasn't really a matter that had to be sworn to. We would write up what we characterized as reports of interview. But there had to be some comprehensive documentation of what was discussed U during interviews with both witnesses, and principals of i whatever you want to call the people we were interviewing, l
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9 okay. In addition to that, we by background, I think there was a common agreement that if there were documents to be review that were relevant to investigative matters and testimony we would review these files or what have you, we would take copies of the documents we consider them evidentially type matters. And then there would also be in any report that we put together investigative report we would have a writeup reflecting investigative activity that was undertaken, review of files or wnat have you. So, what ever investigative effort that was conducted we were in an agreement that was all to be documented in the file report.
Mr. Alcot Let me ask, based on this, I guess its standard investigative policy, would there, would generally require a written record of all interviews or just the principal interviews, or I should say all persons contacted in the course of the interview?
Mr. Sinclair Okay I think if the investigation is, has some fairly well conceived or perceived guidelines at the initiation that most of the interviews or the people who to be interviewed that you consider, maybe thats improperly said, pertinent or within the framework or should have knowledge, I would say l that you would writeup the results level of detail that
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whatever these people had told you. If for some reason you got side track or_for one reason or another the population expanded a little bit and you were really off the target, I would think you got a go with the investigators perception of whats happening and if these people are not really relevant it may be no more than documenting the notes that you talked to them and that what they would really supplying had no relevancy or they just didn't have any details regarding the matter. So you can only go through the writeups if you consider the people that your talking to to be' supplying information relevant to the issue or issues.
Mr..Aloot Do you think it would be proper for in preparing or conducting investigations to contact somebody who provide, lets say, specific factual information or correct specific, I won't pressure you into another interview and not document that topic?
Mr. Sinclair I interpret the question correctly...
Mr. Aloot Assume the person provides an item of relevant information?
Mr. Sinclair
11 And that would not be documented?
Mr. Aloot Not necessarily interviewed just contact and said look, its either X or its Y, you tell me which one based on that persons statement the report reflects X or Y?
Mr. Sinclair Okay, I'm still not understanding the question, if I can try to rephrase see, should someone be contacted, may be not necessarily interviewed in any detail but via the telephone or something, and the individual does supply something that you consider a fact, or perfect fact to investigative matter that you would for one reason or another not write it up or not document it?
I Mr. Alcot Right. .
Mr. Sinclair 1
And then the bottom lino question is sonething like is that appropriate or is that procedure for my background would tell me no. That I would be uncomfortable with that.
I would think that it would not be appropriate thing to do.
Mr. Alcot
12 Where there r.ny other policies that you have that were followed in OIA under written policies that'you have mentioned so far on investigations or writeups of reports?
Mr. Sinclair I guess I',m not sure how to respond to that either. In a specific since I, the policies we developed a method of doing things, I guess, because of the investigative staff.
working together and talking to management. But, you know, in terms of specific policies I am having a hard time relating to the question. I think...
Mr. Aloot Let me see if I can rephrase so that actually no answer is necessary. Was it basically the policy of OIA to in conducting a particular investigation to follow " Generally Excepted Investigator Procedures"?
i Mr. Sinclair Yes. I think thats accurate and thats what I was trying to say.
l Mr. Alcot Is it also correct then that when an investigation started it wasn't a matter of going to written or unwritten policies instruction investigation but using investigative judgement
13 the investigators determined how that particular !
investigation was going to be conducted? :
.mr. Sinclair Yes. Thats...
Mr. Alcot Based on these policies.
l Mr. Sinclair Based on practice...
Mr. Aloot General determined acceptable.
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Mr. Sinclair Practice and knowledge and yea. Thats correct. And just so I, you know, I probably appear to be a little confused here.
By practice we understood what was suppose to be done and i
one investigation, maybe this doesn't come across right.
One investigation is not going to handle any different then any other. l Mr. Aloot I see.
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14 Mr. Sinclair .
Okay. The process is standard. If we didn't have any written guidelines here it may not have been standard by the way this office would of done it. But its standard by empirical knowledge that that we bring in to it. And we wouldn't change the way we did one investigation from the way we did another. There all the same. It would just be trying to continue to identify the document the appropriate information to resolve issue or issues, but the process is the same.
Mr. Alcot And that process would be identified scope of the investigation identifying witness potential or interviewees and then interviewing interviewees to exhaust the scope of their knowledge about the relevant subject?
Mr. Sinclair Thats correct. And anything else we had to do to try verify ,
or collaborate that information file, checks, inspection, taking pictures, I mean theres a lot of investigative techniques that are used to buffer or develop that thats the purpose.
Mr. Alcot As a general matter, how were investigations scope...
15 Mr. Sinclair The, I think, the initial, hold on a second, generally !
l speaking it would be investigations that were did not have maine complex issues or did not have some other impact i political considerations or things like that. That more ,
routine, if you will, were just scope basically by an investigator. The issue looked at was the type of things that had to be resolved, what the potential violations may have been and was probably discussed with management, probably on an average did not go higher then the Assistant
- Director of Investigations who either concurred or maybe veto or modified it. But the investigator maid the first cut and as a normal operation we knew what the violation may have been the issue was scope MD...
Judge Hoyt Did you use dedo, what does dedo mean?
Mr. Sinclair No. ,
Judge Hoyt i I heard something?
Mr. Sinclair I didn't say that, lets trying think...
s 16 Judge Hoyt I believe thats what I heard and thats what I was trying to clarify? ,
Mr. Sinclair The Assistant Director of MD, thats the Assistant Director for Medications in the office.
Judge Hoyt .
Yes, thank you.
Mr. Alcot what about for a non-team investigation some other higher visibility, broader scope normal time and attendance?
Mr. Sinclair okay. I, on this I have to candidly say theres no generalization. okay. This is kind of handled on a case by case basis. And if there were complex issu,es or there was some other factors that had to be taken into consideration that before the investigation really got underway after that l
investigator or maybe investigators reviewed material that we had and tasked assigned, we had meetings with the Assistant Director of Investigations and Director to make some determinations in get out the common approach or to find out what management was thinking as well as the e
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l 17 investigators perception of what had to be done. 'That it l
was case by case there was allways discussion and meeting or 1
meetings to get an idea that everybody understood all of the l
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Mr. Alcot so determining the scope of the focus of the particular ,
non-routine investigation...
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Right.
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Mg. Aloot we, was my understanding is the investigators, the Assistant Director for Investigation and the Director commonly met to thrash out the issue?
Mr. Sinclair Yea. Commonly usually, I mean, you couldn',t say every time ,
but I think, this would that would be the type of approach...
Mr. Aloot You would not be surprised if the Director called your office his office and said how we going to handle this?
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18 Mr. Sinclair Yes, oh, exactly, okay.
Mr. Aloot Did you ever know, let me see, how many investigations were assigned any particular investigator at one time or flip side how were investigators assigned to matters?
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Mr. Sinclair There was no set procedure for that.
Mr. Alcot Per quota?
Mr. Sinclair -
Yea, we did not carry any specific number of investigations there was no quote of assignment. We think and this, you know, thats the way the office operated and this is to the benefit of the way management approached it. .
We had varied ,
! backgrounds of investigators in terms of length of experience and others with various experience and some of ,
i the investigators with less experience were handling things that were not quite as complex. So they may have been doing more of personnel type cases or something but the issue was very clear and it was only a matter of trying to do the investigations and make sure the writeups were complete and
l l 19 the reports were complete. If it got in to more difficult l areas of understanding or expertise we had more of a journeyman investigators that handled those. When I first was hired in the office we had two investigators who were G8-14 level who had a great deal of investigator experience and handled the very complex cases. I came with considerable amount of law enforcement investigative
, experience and I picked up basically right in behind them or ,
with the same level. Then we had the investigators who did not have very much experience or maybe none or very limited and they handled issues that were not quite as difficult to determine. So it was kind of a growing pattern when we assigned things that they look like they, you know, how much can you handle this. It was more to the ability of the individual and thats how it worked. We did suffer back logs and there were times when were relatively pretty current.
But there strict case load it was basically what is the work and how tough does it look and do we have to more than one investigator on it, sometimes we would put one,or two or even three.
Mr. Aloot Getting to that point. Was it common for Mr. Cummings or Mr. Schnebelen to participate in a field investigation !
conducting interviews in the? ,
20 Mr. Sinclair Well, thats a difficult question for me to answer and I don't want to split hairs on this but I think common is I guess,what you just said was it, there were occasions when either the Director or even the Assistant Director who for the majority of my tenure was Roger Fortuna to at periodic times,actually participate in the investigative field work, I would say that I don't think it was common but it wasn't...
Mr. Alcot Unknown.
Mr. Sinclair Yes, it wasn't so unique that it was usual to have it but it was not, it didn't happen in the majority of the time, it happened less frequent and as far as'Mr. Schnebelen was concerned he was the Assistant Director for well in an Acting capacity, and I think, in a full fledged capacity for some period of time appears to escape me but its all less than a year, I think. His involvement in the day to day investigations was not common although he had participated in one investigation.
Mr. Alcot Generally...
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- 21 t Judge Hoyt j Excuse me, when you say Mr. Schnebelen participated in an l
investigation with you, do you mean with you corsonally or?
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Mr. Sinclair Yes.
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Was this investigation of Appelgate or was it another?
Mr. Sinclair i !
! The investigation that was assigned to the office to i
! investigate the earlier Appelgate allegations that the l
l Region did not conduct an adequate investigation at Zimmer.
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! Mr. Aloot Is it your opinion that Mr. schnebelen had the background and training to supervise an investigation of this typei ;
Mr. Sinclair i
! Two questions in one, I think, right? supervise ;
l l investigative background? l l
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l Yes. !
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22 Mr. Sinclair i
Its my opinion and I will be quire honest with you that Mr.
l l- Schnebelen didn't have the background for understanding investigations. And I don't think I'm being over definitive but I'm not going to challenge Mr. Schnabelen's ability to supervise. I mean I maybe... ,
Mr. Alcot Good distinction to make, I think.
Mr. Sinclair Okay, I mean if I were to carry that further, okay, it may be difficult to supervise something your not familiar with.
Mr. Aloot would it be difficult to review investigative reports?
Mr. Sinclair I think thats a valid assumption.
Mr. Aloot We may get to that a little latter. Generally who was responsible for writing the first draft of the report?
Mr. Sinclair
e 23 First drafts or any other initial compilation information putting into the report was always the responsibility of the investigators or investigator on the report.
Mr. Aloot Who is the lead or principal investigator in the Appelgate matter?
Mr. Sinclair I think I was.
Mr. Aloot As a general matter for most reports, what was the chain of review?
Mr. Sinclair It varied a little bit, but the investigator initially wrote the report for a period of time we had a position that was a Branch Chief position, and the Branch Chief reviewed, m,ade comments, it might have come back at the point or gone forward, it went to the Assistant Director, same process review, might of sent it back for some comments or changes and sent it forward and alternately went to the Directors office, again, same process, review, might have discussions sent back, modification and so on, but that was the routine.
e 24 Mr. Alcot Generally, how long did this review process take? We'll exclude for the answer this questions as routine not tend to voucher stuff. ,
Mr. Sinclair Well, we can't really exclude that, but I mean it did vary and its difficult to put an exact timeframe on it, but...
Mr. Aloot one month, two weeks, four months?
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Mr. Sinclair It took, I want to use an adjective but I don't, I want to say vary, it could take any were from a month, okay, up to l several months to get a report finally finished and issued by the office.
Mr. Aloot Did that varying lengths of review time, did that generally turned on the scope of the investigation or the affects of l
the issues or the political consequences of the report?
Mr. Sinclair I guess several of those factors, it didn't appear to be as
. much as an administrative review in terms of report l I
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structure sentence "/pe administrative typos and things of that nature as it did to a, I'm lost for .s moment, it had to do as you say factors, I think that discussing the report as to whether the contents of the final product really responded directly to the task of the issues asked the investigator so that is a generic but it was a perception problem I guess, or thats were all the discussion and the review seemed to be taking place as to... :
Mr. Aloot Let me change the tape before going on to the next question.
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e TAPE ONE SIDE TWO INTERVIEW OF JONW SINCIAIR Mr. Alcot s May 12, 1983. Do you have any additional comments to add to our last question I asked you? ,
Mr. Sinclair Well, Yes, in thinking about it for a second I, we were talking about the review process and discussions that occurred after the investigation had taken place and after the report had been written, and I just, I have a little comment that I want to add to that, there was a problem and-I can't think of a better way to say, with the way the final reports were to be written and the way the information was to be presented and it had to do with the investigators perception and it came from background that the investigator reports were to contain facts and they were to be presented j as objective a manner as possible and to avoid any opinions or conclusions within the report proper. It varied but managements perception was not always, you know, in a i
agreement with that and there was in the review process there was always a way of getting more opinions or conclusions and
{ the language pertaining to that into the svamaries of the i
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reports and the investigators and myself included were having a lot of difficulty with that and were, you know, continually trying to say that, we can't do that, thats like trying the, or making the presentation, trying the information right within the report of the investigative stage. We were trying to avoid that so that we could get the reports out and what the adjudicatory body or anybody had to review it, make the decisions on the facts without l the given a one sided view, it was. And that caused '
continued dilemma. We didn't get it resolved and... -
Mr. Alcot This problem was in the office of CIA 7 l
Mr. Sinclair Right.
t Mr. Aloot Did you ever know during your entire tenure,there or any particular subcommittee?
Mr. Sinclair Well, in fairness, at one time it seemed to be not, it wasn't a problem, some other reports went out. And that may ,
have been due strictly to the matters that were being ,
1 investigated. But it continued, you know, for most of the
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time I worked in the office. We had we were agonizing over this and it just didn't get resolved.
. Mr. Aloot Let me ask, is credibility in your mind a matter of fact or a matter of opinion, credibility of the person your interviewing.
Mr. Sinclair I can't make, I have no distinction on that. Can you give me more I don't understand that question?
Mr. Alcot For example, you go out and interview alleger or some other person you've identified and they give you their story and in your mind you think this person cannot be believed, would you reflect that in your summary of the interview?
Mr. Sinclair . .
I guess if I can try and follow that, you don't take information, I mean you take it in a since at face value, but you do make a lot of observation, and if your saying because of the, oh I don't know the, either the amount of information that the individual has peu just know that couldn't know that much or theres a lot of evaluations that the investigator makes and there are some options to doing i
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4 that you can make notes in the report stating that the individual doesn't, couldn't know that and thats your opinion, okay thats a note for the investigator, but as a general rule you try to stay away from the kind of thing because thats exactly what you are overall trying to avoid.
But were going to get into an awful lot of detail here. If you do the investigations right and the interviews are conducted as a lot of investigators will, you tend to try to pin down people pretty finite as to why they think they know it, or isn't it an assumption on their part, how can they prove it or how would they, you know, or the investigator himself develops a method by which he thinks he can collaborate it. You can get into issues that they want to avoid during the time they are complaining you can check employment records, you know, you can say, you know, what was your job function, and you know that job does not relate to what he is complaining about, so who told you, you go through a lot of det.il to figure out how this information comes to be. ,
Mr. Alcot And that additional information be reflected in the summary rather then the statement that this person is apparently unbelievable.
Mr. Sinclair i
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- Yea, investigators by background stay away from that kind of opinion making. Now, you know, there may be a problem with-the person providing the information and if thats developed in the course of the investigation, you would I think reflect it, I mean you may have bonified reason, you might have a person that has some type of a mental problem or something and you can find that and it may be relevant. But then on the other side it may not be. The information may be factual and the persons emotional condition is arso factual. Okay, so you can't you, I guess that what were trying to say is you don't prejudge it, but investigators
- spend a lot of time evaluating information and they try, you know, very hard to elisit stuff that is specific and that they think is verifiable and the idea about making it a character assessment of interviewees only in the since of is this information is essential. Okay and you don't want to get into, I don't like the color of ties that they ware, you know, they were the wrong shoes or something.
Mr. Alcot That obviously clarifies my question. Lets turn to the specific Appelgate, when is the first time you learned that allegations relating to Zimmer or Region IIIs investigation of Appelgate's original charges?
1 Mr. Sinclair
6 Okay, I probably can't be, you know, very very specific on dates, you know, I'll be close I think and if there is some discrepancy we can, you know, resolve it latter. But I think I first became aware of the Appelgate allegations and the fact that there may have been an investigation conducted by Region III concerning some allegations brought by Appelgate around the end of December or right after the first of the year 1981. The years I guess will be hard one 80.
i Mr. Alcot Let me direct your attention to a time period approximately nine to ten months earlier around February 1980, did Mr.
Cummings or anyother person in the office of Investigations and Audit ever mention a telephone call from a Mr. Appelgate or allegations regarding Zimmer?
Mr. Sinclair Staying with the time that you just presented to me. .
Mr. Aloot Well, anytime prior to December 1980?
Mr. Sinclair Did I know about Appelgate or communications with Appelgate l l
or... ;
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7 Mr. Aloot In your office?
Mr. Sinclair
- I don't think so.
Mr. Alcot So thats the first time you knew that the of Appelgates allegations was in late December or early January?
Mr. Sinclair Yes, and its supported my response that I. don't think so.
The reason I say that is'because that particular
. - communications became an issue of the subsequent i investigation and thats when I became aware that we had a problem that had to be resolved early on in the new effort, okay and we had a discussion about that.
Mr. Aloot But you had no independent discussion about that?
Mr. Sinclair No, I was surprised.
Y Mr. Aloot Why.were you surprised?
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Thats just something that, I don't understand, you know, how I
! we could of been getting into this effort about some allegations raised by an individual and having had already had received information that was suppose to have been l similar or something at a much earlier date.
Mr. Alcot ,
j Why would you see, did you see a conflict or a problem or l just an administrative failure?
l Mr. Sinclair l It seemed really an, you know, untimely delay. You know, we l
just seemed to be a lot of time in between. I mean, and not l
knowing that, I mean not, I just that causes me personally
! I thought that, you know, the office knew some problems.
about it, how come'why didn't we get started on it earlier?
But we, I mean we got it discussed and I'm somewhat resolved but I, at the time that I knew about it I wasn't as concerned as I am when I got done with the investigation and
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l I found out that a lot of this stuff that this guy had to say as limited as it was that we took an approach on it, okay.
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9 Thats right. Well going back to your experience as an l
investigator, is it consistent with your experience and ;
l generally excepted practices for lets say an investigator to 1 1
learn of allegations and not refer them to another office who may or may not have jurisdiction, someone in your office didn't have jurisdiction?
Mr. Sinclair I don't think theres any circumstances were an investigator who gets some information, its wrong, obviously, has the prerogative to dismiss it, okay, not document it and not transfer it or put in into the somebody t'o review. I guess maybe that answers you. I have never done it, I don't, you know, I don't any investigators that, I mean I can't say I don't know investigators and that but that is not a wise decision, okay. I mean you have to make a lot of assumptions, I think investigators like any other job, okay, you have certain requirements and commitments to make since we seem to be in the business of documenting and recording facts and things like that, you don't generally dismiss stuff unless your awful certain that it really doesn't mean anything. Something like the suns not coming up tomorrow I mean that might be something to throw out but, you know...
Mr. Aloot You can't be to sure now...
10 Do you happen do know why you were assigned to the Appelgate h matter lets say December or January 817 Mr. Sinclair No, I don't know whether it was just, you know, my turn came up or I don't think, I think,it was proably as I explained very early on that it was who had the experience or who was more familiar with that type of problem, I can summarize and thats really all I had, nobody called me in and said hay your the only guy that can do this. But I can surmise that I was fairly familiar with inspection problems and things ;
like that. I probably in hereted more than was picked out of the, you know, the lot or something.
Mr. Alcot-When this, when the Government Accountability Project petition which contained Appelgate's allegations, when that came into the office was this and the Chairman, then Chairman Ahearn requested an OIA investigation with them,-
was this investigation considered to be a routine investigation or non-routine investigation?
6 Mr. Sinclair Well, I guess, if we make by definition routine, routine is to what the office initiates on its own by Charter, personnel, audit functions etc. and we take maybe more i
11 tasking assignments from the Commission or Commissioners and outside requests, it was probably was not the routine. It '
was probably unique in that one of the Commissioners and in this case the Chairman, you know,-asked us to take a look at what happened here and report. .So, I mean it depends on how you characterize that, but by percentage break up if you will, that we didn't have a lot of request from the Commissioners but when we did get one I guess that that took a little more importance, well a lot more.
Mr. Aloot Thats fair.
Judge Hoyt I
Had Commissioner Ahearn ever asked your office to do an
-investigation before?
Mr. Sinclair Yes.
Judge Hoyt Do you recall the character of that type investigation or character of that type of investigation?
Mr. Sinclair
12 Well, I can remember one specifically, we had a request, I can't remember the exact timeframe but six or eight months earlier I think, or it might have been a year even, that Commissioner Ahearn asked us to look at what looked like a potential conflict of interest on the part of some inspectors in Region II and it had to do with Crystal River and I did that. We made a report, did the interviews of those people and whoever wrote this consultant report and so on and we reported back and I'm not sure if there was others but there might of been another request. But periodically we did get requests from different Commissioners, Commissioner Gilinsky requested us to do an investigation or maybe a couple of them.
Judge Hoyt And the character of those investigations was something similar to the one you describe a moment ago conflict of interest in Region II someother Region?
I Mr. Siciair Yea, it through us outside of are normal working environment which put us out into the field working with things that impacted upon licensing activity and our actual NRC personnel and that interaction. Generally you were fairly well focused inside the Commission and not going out. And l
I w-----*-r .e -- - - .wc
13 when those task came in it took us into a little bit, quite of a different environment.
Mr. Alcot Was the South Texas investigation a Commissioned initiated investigation?
Mr. Sinclair !
The OIA?
Mr. Alcot Yes.
Mr. Sinclair No. As I remember that was requested by the Department of l
Justice. And I'm sure the Commission was aware of it, but if I remember there was a lot of correspondence, when that started I was at Three Mile Island working, you know, with the IE people. But when I got back I saw a lot of the correspondence in the file and started to, you know, because of a lot of allegations and Congressional inquiries they said that yes, we got it by deferral almost, Maine Justice had said that OIA would look into and report back and that just put us right in the position of having to do something.
Mr. Aloot
S 14 Another agency can initiate an investigation or do we develop passing through the Commission?
Mr. Sinclair I don't know the mechanics but I, they didn't really, you know, say you have to go and do it, I think there was a lot of discussion as to what we should do and whether OIA should be looking at some of it and it was, I can't say that there was any specific process that we were following and ways we had dealt with other agencies. It was a little bit convoluted but we, the office did accept the responsibility of going down to South Texas and looking at some issues that were considered pretty important at the time getting the report put together.
Mr. Alcot would you describe how the Appelgate inquiry was scoped who participated and what was decided from the time the petition first came in until let say the end of, well please start interviews?
Mr. Sinclair Okay, let me try to crystalize that a little bit. When the petition, and I think thats the first thing that I saw, was
< this petition to the Commission came in from the Merit System Protection Board, I believe, it contained a lot of ,
l
9 15 information that appeared to be significant, it warranted '
some followup and investigation, if in fact was legitament or bonified. But there was a question about the, as I read '
it, and as, I think, when everybody else took a look at it.
It had the character, okay, it mentioned one individual by name, which was the investigator from Region III who handled
.it and that was Gerold Philip. It mentioned him a numerious times, I mean his name was mentioned throughout the petition and not a very highly regarded matter. And'was casting a doubst on whether or not we were talking about this ind'ividuals potential conduct, if you will ok. And right off the bat I think there was some questions and it alerted me because I, the character of the petition appeared to chalenge the Regions handling of the matter which the issue of handling the allegations which was'an investigative issue. But if we were wrong and that was just part of the request and what they were looking at was the conduct of the employee that I wanted to rcake sure in my mind before we ever stepped out the door, that we had either or, that we had are you after employee misconduct thing here or are you after the investigation itself and the issue is not being investigated properly. And maybe they fit together but in my mind and as we talked about it I think we found out that we were initially going at the generic issue. The investigation.
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16 Mr. Aloot Now you mentioned when we talked about it was there a meeting? .
-Mr. Sinclair Yes. There were probably more than one but there were meeting initially at least between myself and Dave Gamble and Roger Fortuna and at some very early stage within the first month I'd say January and I'll use that as a date, Art Schnebele, who was a special assistant to the Director was also involved in these meetings.
Mr. Aloot And then was Mr. Cummings involved in those meetings?
Mr. Sinclair Yes. We carry it further and then find out we had meetings at least a meeting with the Direc' tor in which I think on everybody that I mentioned was present including myself. ,
But we through that around because I...
Mr. Aloot What was decided at this meeting that......
Mr. Sinclair
a 4 17 Where everybody attended?
Mr. Alcot Yes.
Mr. Sinclair That it wasn't that we were to go out and look the investigative effort, what happened to the investigation, and get the answers. Find out the why's of, you know, find out what happened and if it turned out to be somewhat as alleged to pertaining to the petition. You know, why that occurred.
Mr. Alcot Let me see, does that mean that you were, that it was decided you were going to do an employee misconduct?
Mr. Sinclair No. I think that what I am saying is we we,re going the, other way.
Mr. Aloot The other way or generic kind of? .
Mr. Sinclair
18 It was to, I guess you could almost call this more then just a pure investigation and almost call it inspection and audit activity. We were gonna go out there and take a look at what happened with that, investigation and compare it against the standards by which they' quote "did investigations". And see if they feel within the framework. If they did I guess we would begin to narrow down what the problems were.
Whether you had a people problem or you had an investigative program problem. But initially, fou know, we took that approach that we were gonna go out and see if they did the investigation correctly.
Mr. Aloot -
By the books so to speak.
Mr. Sinclair Thats right. And it wasn't a focus on the conduct of the investigator, or the personnel that participated. I mean that was clear, the was an out front decision.
Mr. Aloot Did you have any subsequent meetings with the Government
~
Accountability Project with their representatives after this meeting with? -
Mr. Sinclair
_.__._.s.___
19 j I'm not, I think it was subsequent, okay, there was a meeting and it occurred maybe January early February, you
. know, and I'm must going rough it, because I'm not sure that ,
! I'm that close but it was before we did any field work a decision was made to go to the Government Accountability l Project with the petition, and sit down with Tom Devine, who i ,
j was their legal Director I guess, or something different at i the time and the Lewis Clark, I think he's the head of the ,
l Government Accountability Project, to make sure that if we
~
did, if we went out, you know, find out what they wanted first, but, you know, were not going to have the Government
- j. Accountability Project dictate to what we were going to do.
l t But we were explain who ever we were going to precede to j based on what we believed they were petitioning. And the i -
line was just as I just stated. Are you looking for us to conduct an employee misconduct case on somebody who is in j the Commission. Or are you looking at a, you know, trying !
- to find out what happened to these allegations that were
2 brought by Thomas Appelgate to the Region approximately a ,
year before. Their response as I recall it and I think its t reflected in some memos or .something to the file or some
! place, and I think its even in the report per dates that . . .
they wanted that investigation reviewed and to, you know, find out what happened.
a i
Mr. Aloot
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20 Who attended this meeting from the NRC7 ,
I
-Mr. Sinclair ,
Myself and Art Schnebelen and at that time I think well I'm ;
not sure, Roger Fortuna was moving out of the agency on a lone agreement with the State of Pennsylvania, so its hard ,
-to remember whether he was, he might of still been there but for one reason or another Schnebelen went but I think he was beginning to almost take over the Acting Assistant Directors job the dates, times escape me a little bit. But I do know '
in the beginning that Art Schnebelen was like one member of the investigative team. And when the assignment finally -
came out as to who was to do it, it was Dave Gamble, myself,
. and Art Schnebelen. And I don't why that came out like that. But I mean, we were the three assigned to it. And I was told by Roger Fortuna that we were still the lead investigators and as far as he was concerned we were conducted and even though Art Schnebelen was much more Senior in GS level and was a Special Assistant to the Director that he would not be in charge of the
- investigation. f
\
Mr. Aloot You mentioned earlier that you were surprised about the r f delay between these allegations orginally being received and coming in the GAP petition form, was that issue discussed
. a l
l 21 in these early January meetings that is apparently one of the allegations in GAP petition was the Director of OIA knew about this stuff?
Mr. Sinclair Yea, it came up in some discucsions in the office. And I think I the Director I think ment'.oned it.
Mr. Aloot How was it resolved?
Mr. Sinclair It had to be resolved, or it had to be discussed before we went to Chicago because it became an issue on our intry into the Region and why we were there. But I think it was
' segmented, that the Director would respond to that. Okay what happened to this previous contact and that would be t
accounted for and documented responded to, so we accepted that.
1 i Mr. Aloot At the, this was discussed at the meeting were Mr. Sinclair, yourself, Mr. Gamble, Mr. Schnebelen and Mr. Cummings had this big scope"
i 22 i
Mr. Sinclair Thats to specific for me. It was discussed. ,
Mr. Aloot I
Your not sure when?
Mr. Sinclair i It had to be discussed from the time of that meeting or '
meetings, there was more than one, but that was probably the largest and the most comprehensive meeting. It had to be l
! discussed between that point and the time that we went to
?
- Chicago, and that was not a long time. And we had, the j decision had already been made. It wasn't my decision to make. That that part of the issue would be addressed.
Because it was in the GAP petition if I remember right now, to jog my memory. And we were saying what happens with
- this, do we not have some probable with maybe refusing the l office or something getting out of this because the ball been dropped it looks like, you know, on the surface but no that can be responded to as a separate matter and if you do !
that then we'll explain our activity to strictly to monitor the investigation and the work done by the Region. And this other issue will be addressed separately.
I Mr. Aloot r
0 4
4 - -, v . _ . - _ . . _ . . . - _ _ . . ---.c...---.,,,. , ,,_ -,_,-y_..e,s.-m_-,_,._,m_..r. .,_.,,.m-....,,,__._-,-...__,-.m, _ - _ _ - - - - . .
. o 23 Well what was your understanding of how we were going to be addressed and where? In the report that was going to be published or written up?
Mr. Sinclair No. I mean separately. I mean separate then our investigation, we were not going to do the work that was up to the Director to account for that, explain the circumstances at best, respond to it.
Mr. Alcot To whom?
Mr. Sinclair To the Commission.
Mr. Aloot Do you happened to know if that explanation was ever done?
Mr. Sinclair Yea, it was.
Mr. Aloot When was that?
Mr. Sinclair
c .
24 I might be guessing a little bit, but I think that the correspondence from the Director of OIA probably went out about the same time the report did or maybe just before.
Mr. Alcot August or there abouts?
Mr. Sinclair Maybe before that. I'm not sure that I saw the document, I think I might have, I just am under the impression that the Director did write to the Chairman of the Commission and say hay, you know, heres what.
Mr. Alcot Your understanding in January 1981 that the Assistant Director separate report was going to be delayed untill your report your allegations were Mr. Sinclair . .
I'm a little confused.
l Judge Hoyt Thank you.
t Mr. Sinclair l You brought the Assistant Director in there and I didn't..
l
25 Mr. Alcot Oh, I'm sorry, I meant the Director Mr. Cummings, was it
- your understanding that h's would respond to that separate
, allegation immediately or would wait?
Mr. Sinclair I don't know. I wasn't even really concerned with it.
Mr. Aloot We maybe running out of tape 'shall we stop.
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SINCLAIR INTERVIEW - MAY 12, 1983 '
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Mr. Aloot: Mr. Sinclair we had just gone through, I believe, how the g }
Applegate investigation in scope of January,1981. Do. !
2 you have anything else to add on that matter before I go on? i l
Mr. Sinclair: No, I don't think so. At this point I don't remember the ;
question that well either. (Laughter) i Mr. Aloot: How are potential interviewees in this investigation identified, and by whom? .
1 i i Mr. Sinclair: The personnel that were interviewed from Region III were l identified basically, I think, by the investigators -
- meaning gself and Dave Gamble, and you know we had !
discussed initially how to start this thing with Roger i Fortuna. The first interview, if I can recall correctly, 4
was done, of course, the investigator, Gerry Phillip, and . i i I don't think that there was anybody else interviewed i during that first trip. Based on Phillip's interview, I '
think the names of the other people that we thought that might be somewhat involved in this were elicited and if 1 they weren't, then there was just an assessment of the t information of what Phillip provided that we determined, a we knew what personnel out there should be talked to i j regarding any involvement or either extent of '
involvement.
! Mr. Alcot: Based on your recollection today, was there any decision made prior to going out to Region III to interview anyone other than Mr. Phillip? For example, Mr. Keppler or Mr.
Davis.
Mr. Sinclair: Yes, let me see if I can put that in perspective. We made an entrance interview where we talked to the '
regional personnel to give them an idea of what DIA was l going to do and we had a meeting with management and.
people involved in investigations and enforcement. Gerry Phillip, in particular, and I think maybe the inspector .
who assisted and participated with him on his investigation at Zinner might have been present, I am not
! absolutely certain at this point. But, we did generally characterize what we were there for and what we wanted to
- try to do. And then we did specificJ1y tell Gerry 2 Phillip that we intended to interview him. I don't think '
j the other names, upfront, I don't think we made any i decision as to the extent of the personnel we were going to intervip. Does that answer the question? ;
. Mr. Aloot: Yes. Was Mr. Applegate given an interview?
! i l Mr. Sinclair: Nn. l,
2-Mr. Alcot: Was there a reason why he was not?
Mr. Sinclair: I am not absolutely certain. I know there was a decision made not to do it. .
Mr. Alcot: Who made that decisioni ,
Mr. Sinclair: I don't know. I thisk--I was involved in it and I was in agreement with it. You know, there is something that I am missing; I guess now and I don't recall why it happened. Normally, I don't think wt would have interviewed Gerry Phillip first.
Mr. Alcot: Normally, you would have interviewed who first?
Mr. Sinclair: I think we would have looked at a lot of the investigative material and things that were going on, would have made some assessments ourselves, tried to maybe even independently determine whether or not some of the allegations about welding and some of this other stuff, in the information, ends up through those people where it might not have double checked at that before we went back to the investigator who did the work and asked him why, if there were any contradictions did it occur.
It's more, I guess, a perception thing, but it's somewhat standard in investigations that you don't initially go to the person who's responsible for the potential problem in violation, you usually try to put the facts back together and take a look at what you got and then you interview once you've developed some information. I don't know why this happened in this manner. I remember being told to go and interview Phillip's. .
Mr. Aloot: By whom?
Mr. Sinclair: By Roger Fortuna. And, I am honestly at a loss as to why we did it that way. I mean there may be a reason for it, but right at the moment, I am thinking as the subject was coming up, that we did this. I remember, it seems kind of funny to me, that we did Phillip's first and that's all we did.
Mr. Alcot: At the January scoping meetings, was there ever discussed on whether to do a document reading first, and interview secord, or...
Mr. Sinclair: No, no I don't think so. I don't think there was a lot
- of detail discussed as to what to do, and I am really not aware. I don't think, I am not sure, I was aware of why we started it in that particular manner. There is a question in my mind right now, as you ask that question,
e i
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and I can't really answer it. I am thinking about why did we go out there and interview him and then come back.
Mr. Aloot: Were the documents reviewed when you went out to the regional office the first time?,
Mr. Sinclair: Well, we requested, in support of that interview we requested to know about I think, there was administrative files. Yes there were and that's the answer. And, investigative files, and did they have any notes available to support that, and we did I think we did do a little bit of investigating to the Appeal Board in that regard. At end there was only one interview conducted.
Mr. Alcot: Did both Mr. Gamble and yourself look at the documents or just one?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, I think we both did, but I think, if I can remember correctly, Dave Gamble had made some contacts with either Chuck Norelius, who was the head of enforcement and really kind of running the investigative group as a manager, as to where these files were and could you get us this stuff that pertained to Zininer. I remember seeing some folders and different information in the folders, and we looked at it and we probably did more of that in the next couple of weeks or'whenever it was that we made the follow-up trips to the region.
Mr. Aloot: Did OIA have a policy of interviewing allegers?
Mr. Sinclair: No, I don't think so. We didn't do much of that, I mean that's practicel interviewing, if any. There was a conscious decision not to interview Applegate at least in the early part, at least in the early stages at the initiation investigation. I am not so sure we weren't going to get to him, maybe if we felt we needed it, and there is no, as I recall, there is no real reason for this, no motivation not to do it, other than I think we '
thought we had enough infonnation from the petition plus in taking to the gap people that we could start and that would be sufficient, unless something else came up that we were unaware of and we already made arrangements with the government accountability project that if they had subsequent infonnation that was pertinent to this as we went along, they would supply it to us.
Mr. Aloot: Let me see if I understand this correctly, you decided...
Mr. Sinclair: Ok, let me follow that, you just jogged my memory, plus I had a little bit of time here.
I
.. l l
Mr. Sinclair: The IE people were also taking off on a concurrent task, and we were certainly two functions. We were doing this review or investigation of the region and I & E was l.
starting out on another safety-related or potential safety-related investigation and we had become the conduit for information from the government accountability project, so we were picking up statements that they took that were not pertinent to our effort, but were pertinent to I & E's effort and we were taking that and passing it through.
Mr. Aloot: Was there any understanding that DIA would monitor how I & E conducted this current health and safety investigation? j Mr. Sinclair: That's a pretty thick question. I don't think so. I am not sure.
Mi.Aloot: As information was received, from whatever sources to relevance this concurrent health and safety t I investigation, did OIA just transfer documents and
- infonnation as it came in or did they hold it for some
- length of time?
! Mr. Sinclair: No, we tried to pass it along as soon as we got it.
I I Mr. Aloot: Now from what I understand then, yourself and Mr. Gamble f announced to the Region III, I guess to interview Mr. <
' Phillip, and have a group meeting with everyone at Region III, and then further interviews were identified based on the Phillip's interview?
Mr. Sinclair: I think so. At the very beginning, we didn't know who the~ people were in the investigative program, and who the managers were or if there was any. We knew there was an inspection investigative effort right, I mean it was a .
two-fold thing, they had an inspector there verifying !
technical issues and an investigator writing up the !
t results, really. So, we had two disciplines. They were married together for this effort; and when we got there, we wanted to see well how much, maybe this thing went !
! array because it went over to the inspection group to be i
done and written and maybe Phillip, even though he signed ,
i off as the investigator on the effort, maybe it was
- really all an inspection work and it went up to the
- inspection people, and you know they didn't know how to ;
document it right. There could have been a lot of ~
l reasons it could have gone array, but so we wanted to know who the people were that were involved and what !
management process they had by reviewing the work and then who looked at the report, and where did it go up and i
l f
', . - _._ ..,_ .-,._.,,-__ _ __ _._ _ _ ~,,_._ _ _-,__.._--.--_,_...m.- ---. -._-- _ ,._.
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~!, how did it, if, in fact, turned out to be inadequate, how did it manage to get out without somebody, you know, challenging the information?
Mr. Alcot: After Mr. Phillip's interview, were other interviewees :
scheduled any particular order? i Mr. Sinclair: Well, they were scheduled in a sequence. I don't know if it's really, it went it seemed in a logical fashion since we started with Phillip, we went to the inspector who
=
helped him, and then after we had analyzed the !
l infomation they provided and they knew they worked for,
- we kind of went up that line in the level of review and ;
- involvement, and as we did that you had the first-line
- managers or people who were supposed to have been actively involved. There was another inspector that took part in the effort that initially we thought that
- happened, but we weren't sure, and we flew to St. Louis to talk to him to see what he remembered about it, then we went up to the next line which was mid-level -
' management and then we ultimately went up to the Director of the Region.
Mr. Aloot: Did you interview any personnel on the site at Zinsner? -
2 i Mr. Sinclair: No, we never went to the site. .;
Mr. Aloot: Was that a conscious decision? l l
Mr. Sinclair: Yes, I think so. !
l Mr. Aloot: Who made that decision? i Mr. Sinclair: Well, it had to be later one. It was probably myself, x and maybe Schnebelen, who I think was the acting director 4
through investigation and Dave Gamble. I think we all ,
- probably discussed it. It didn't take a lot of research or, we were getting documentation from the site that was pertinent and we were contacting the resident there; l
Schnebelen did that, on a couple of occasions, I did it. '
I am not sure if Dave had any specific contacts, but we-
] were getting what we thought was relevant documentation to the effort that we did not have at hand to take a look i and see what they really looked at, what they really -l missed and that kind of stuff. So it was made based on,
- I guess, the evaluation of the documents related to the welding and the history'and the whole thing, and it just t showed up that you didn t even need to go down there to verify that they missed all the. That's a generalization, ;
that they missed specific infor1 nation that would have '
given them other conclusions... ,
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Mr. Alcot: Who wrote the ending sumaries? ,
! Mr. Sinclair: I think they were all written by myself and Dave Gamble, i
Mr. Alcot: Do you recall the summaries you wrote?
Mr. Sinclair: By name?
L Mr. Alcot: Yes.
i
. Mr. Striciair: Yes, I think I do, most of them. I did the majority of the Gerry Phillip's interview, there was a small section of that that I didn't do because I left the interview and Gamble and Schnebelen carried on and he had notes he had
, thrown in for me to get to that near the end. I did, I
- think, a lot of the interview, or most all the interview on Kavin Ward, who was the inspector that was involved.
I wrote the interview on one of the Division Directors or Branch Chief's by the name of Knott. I did the interview on James Keppler, their Director. I did the interview 4
on, it was Wayne, there was another Division Director
. out there, Duane Danielson, and let me think who else was 4
interviewed. Chuck Noralius was interviewed but that was done by Dave Gamble. Those interviews and whether there .
were any follow-ups, and I did the writeup of the interview of Tom Vandel, who was the other inspector that had been working on it, off of the notes that were taken by Gamble. It was a joint interview, but I did most of 3 the talking, questioning and Gamble did the notetaking but I ended up writing the interview and then Gamble reviewed it.
Mr. Aloot: What about Mr. Harpster?
Mr. Sinclair: I forgot about him. (Laughter)Letmesee,therewasan interview done with myself and Gamble and I think the
, majority of that, I recall was done by. Dave Gamble. .
Mr. Aloot: Of interviews that you wrote and did sumaries of, did Mr. Gamble have an opportunity to review them?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, there were only a couple of circumstances where we actually passed the interview over to the other l investigator to look at, review it and check it, and I think that, other than you know with typos, that was the Danielson I had to give back because I hadn't taken the notes and I wanted to be sure it was right, so Dave had the review on that. The Gerry Phillip interview I gave t back to him to finish off and I am sure he reviewed it, and told him as well to finish it off. And, the Harpster
i 1
interview was passed to me to look at. -Those were the three. Now the others were probably looked at by Dave
- or anybody else. Once they were incorporated in the 4 report, everybody got a chance to read them to see if it was factual. It became an issue much later on too as a matter of fact, but in terms of just taking "a" interview -
and someone else take a look at it and see if, you know, it was accurate and that the conditions of what was said, there was only about three. The others were probably seen 4 in the report, but not interviewed specifically.
i Mr. Alcot: So, you didn't have a hard time in formal agreement among each other?
Mr. Sinclair: We weren't chopping on each other's intervie,ws, except for those that I mentioned.
Mr. Alcot: During this interview process, or first let me ask, when were all the interviews completed?
/ Mr. Sinclair: End of March, but no later. I think the actual interview had probably, I don't think anybody was interviewed after March, but the writeups may have been a couple of weeks after, in the April time-frame.
Mr..Aloot: The interviews were actual face to face?
Mr. Sinclair: Yes, I don't think any of.the interviews, even the write-ups went much past the first week of April. Now, I could be wrong on that, but I think most of the documentation was done, I forget the exact date of Harpster interview, which was one of the very last.
Glenn Williamson, another investigator, from the Region was also interviewed, and I am trying to think, I don't remember who wrote that up. I think I might have but maybe Gamble did. Williamson and Harpster were interviewed one day and then the next, and I want to say it was March but I might be off on my dates, or if you can refresh me, I can tell you better, I am not sure.
Mr. Aloot: What was Mr. Schnebelen's role during these interviews?
Mr. Sinclair: He was an interviewer elong with Gamble and myself.
- Mr. Alcot: Did he ask questions? -
Mr. Sinclair: Yes. .,
Mr. Alcot: Was his involvement */ j H
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- Mr. Sinclair: The same level of effort as Gamble and myself?
Mr. Aloot: Yes.
- Mr. Sinclair: Were we all equal interviewers?
Mr. Aloot: Yes.
- Mr. Sinclair: No.
Mr. Aloot: Did he participate as a supervisor, or... <
Mr. Sinclair: Well, that's a good characterization. No, not that he had the lead but if you had a supervisor and had investigators working, his role would be more as a supervisor because he was less involved in doing the 4
interviewing and you would think that maybe a supervisor doesn't have to do the interviewing if he has people doing it for him. (Laughter) That's a good assessment there, you know we went under that assumption.
Mr. Aloot: Let me see, you went under the assumption that he was j
your supervisor?
Mr. Sinclair: Not until a couple of weeks or a month or two later.
During the time-frame that the investigation was being conducted that it ended up to be, in fact, that he was our supervisor.
- Mr. Alcot
- But, at the actual time you were doing the interviews,...
Mr. Sinclair: Well, maybe I better even retract myself to some degree.
The timing is critical, but I can't remember it. Roger Fortuna, who was the assistant director for investigations, went on a loan agreement to Pennsylvania, the exact date of his departure I don't remember. At that point, Art Schnebelen became, I guess, I mean I-don't remember what the paperwork looks like, you know, he became the defacto, assistant director for investigations whether that was on paper or not, and before we finished the interviewing up there, we were, in 4 fact, working for Art Schnebelen, so that there were interviews, although maybe not the first ones, but someplace in there the transition occurred, and Art Schnebelen was not only just working with us on the investigation, but he in turn ended up to be the assistant director of investigations.
_ Mr. Alcot: During your period of interviews, was there communication between your group and Mr. Cummings? Any telephone communication?
L
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-9 i
l sMr. Sinclair: Yes.
Mr. Alcot: Did that' occur on a daily basis?
Mr. Sinclair: It was frequent enough to keep Mr. Cumings briefed. And, I am sure if we were out in the region a week it was 4 several telephone calls during that week, it might have ;
been almost daily.
Mr. Aloot:
Did you participate in all these phone calls?
Mr. Sinclair: No.
Mr. _ Aloot: Were you previewed on these phone calls?
Mr. Sinclair: To some. I mean it wasn't like a conference cal.1, but I was probably in there when Art Schnebelen was calling, or this becomes very very gray, or Mr. Cumings talked to me or, you know, tried to get my impression of what
_ happened, or Dave Gamble or somebody that I. Most of the discussions, if I am accurate, were between Art Schnebelen and Jim Cummings and I might have been present in the room to hear one side of what was going on and then got the recap back from Schnebelen who, at that point, was the new AD or was in charge I guess.
Mr. Alcot: In most field investigations, were telephone contacts such as these common?
Mr. Sinclair: You know it's not always necessary, but yes it's comon.
It's very comon here and if you were in another environment. ,
Mr. Aloot: I mean for an OIA investigation?
Mr. Sinclair: Very, yes, we try to keep management appraised. It's kind of a, I don't know what to say, but you had to keep management appraised, that was just a good idea in case, you know, something came up that you couldn't evaluate or assess and you had it up to management and they could take a look at it, and decide what was happening.
Mr. Aloot: Did these phone calls get direction, ways to go, people to interview, or suggest merely this is what we did today or this is what we heard?
Mr. Sinclair: In tenns of who to interview or, I guess more important, specific information to elicit or something, I don't recall any direction in terms of the mechanics,'we were just moving right along. I don't remember any mm
.. o i
discussions about don't perceive that way, or change course because your offbase or somethin'g like that.
Judge Hoyt: Was there any directions given to you in which direction to pursue to perceive these documents, any affirmative direction?'
Mr. Sinclair: Only from the initial meeting.
Mr. Alcot: Generally, there was some reinterviews or perhaps some additional interviews after the first round. Who determined who to reinterview or what additional people to interview? Let's exclude for the moment the reinterviews of August 3 and 4, 1981.
Mr. Sinclair: Ok, alright something during the actual field work before we iecided it to stop, that we have gone far enough?
Mr. Aloot: Yes.
Mr. Sinclair: You know, I don't know, it's somethinj that just kind of happened.
Mr. Aloot: Do you recall who decided to interview Mr. Harpster?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, that's a . Let me go through the whole Harpster involvement and how we started that because I don't, we can't, there's no clear cut decisions and all of a sudden something happened. It was hard to say why it happened. When we got towards the end of the field work, alright, I didn't know Terry Harpster, and I'am not sure Dave Gamble did either, other than by name. We had heard that Terry Harpster was either, I think he was still on an intern job on the hill, but he was an I & E name employee, and we had heard that Harpster, and this is the way the thing got started, that Harpster had made a conenent to somebody in I & E management that he knew OIA was doing investigation of the Region and was looking into problems which related to Zimmer,-and this is all heresy on my part, Harpster's consnent to somebody was that we, OIA, would never interview him in the course of looking into something like that. And, you know, of course, it sounded like a challenge or something, but you know we said maybe we don't need to interview him. But, then when we found out who he was, and that he had been the principal inspector at Zimmer, for three or four years, and was incharge of problems with preoperational testing, and things like that, I said well maybe it's not wise to leave this undone. And, if it had a relation, it only related because not only did we have a problem in the scope of the investigation that we were doing about
l some safety issues whether there were defective welds, and they were discovered, and whether the allegations were true, and maybe the investigation was not coming up i to par because of the way they perceived it. But if that's true, and then we had a principle inspector who for some reason or another is aware of problems at the site, that seem to somewhat relate. Ok, now we didn't just jump off though and say, hey well let's get Harpster and everybody else in Southern Maryland. (Laughter) So, let's see what he's got, and 'you mentioned very early on about if there's nothing, maybe we just wrote that up and
- just stuck it in the file. It wasn't current, it wasn't
- - relevant, something, but when he came in and we started ;
to talk about it, it had some significance, generic, inspectors interpretation, so we said well ok, there's no
- way we can get out of not documenting the interview, so we'll write the interview up. But if I remember correctly, and I was not involved then, that the decision to interview Harpster and what I have just described to you was passed on to the director. 1 Mr. Alcot
- Frong who?
Mr. Sinclair: From Dave, you know I did not do it personally, about this whole situation, and it was with the sanction that we interview Harpster. So, then we wrote it up and included it in a report. And, as far as we were concerned that was the end of it. I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether or not it was really crucial.
We needed it to make a complete set of facts regarding the region's efforts. But, you know, it was done. Does that make sense? That's the way it happened.
Mr. Aloot: Was Mr. Cunnings involved in any way of the interview stage?
Mr. Sinclair: Yes.'You want an explanation of that? -
Mr. Aloot: Yes. Well, what time, what interview?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, it wasn't in the first one or two interviews, I don't think. If I remember right, it went out the first week. I, myself, Gamble and Schnebelen went and did the one interview. We did a follow-up, it probabl'y was not the next week but maybe two weeks later we went back again. Schnebelen and I did most of the work, Gamble had to leave but we started interviewing a lot of the people that were involved. And, I think it went all the way through Mr. Keppler, ok, then there was probably another week or two delay and we scheduled another trip that we went out and I think, well this time there were four of
us, there was myself, Gamble, Schnebelen, and Mr.
Cumings. And, WarJ was reinterviewed, and Phillip was reinterviewed, I don't know who else. Other people were talked to but I don't know who else was interviewed.
Except that Gamble and I left one day, mid-week and flew from Chicago to St. Louis for an appointment with Tom Vandel and interviewed him down there and flew back
, the same day.
Mr. Alott: What did Mr. Cummings and Mr. Schnebelen do during this time that you were away and interviewing?
Mr. Sinclair: Interviewing, I guess. I think, well, they were interviewing. They told us they had talked to them again and either the following day there was more of this interviewing of Ward and Phillip both together and separately, and I don't know if there was any purpose for it. It was, at one point, that I was in the room and all four of us were there and I was just sitting there pulled up in a corner.
Mr. Aloot: What was the purpose of Mr. Cumings participating in the investigation at this stage?
Mr. Sinclair: I can only speculate, ok, I really don't know, except for the fact that we were covering, maybe I should say Mr. Cumings was covering the same ground that we had already covered, and said what we thought without having the ability to have all of the writeups of the interviews and so on, but we had briefed him on what we found, and what we were looking at and, you know, what else we had to do. There weren't a lot of conclusions, ok, and I mean conclusions in the sense that developing infonnation and being able to give some kind of a statement. But, at some junction, ok, he came back in and he actively participated. We reinterviewed a couple of these -
people and I don't know what else was done.
Judge Hoyt: When you say actively participating, could you give me what that term includes?
Mr. Sinclair: Ok, well, if we were in a situation that we are now, as you are all actively participating and interviewing me and nobody is actually sitting back and not somehow involved. To that date, other than the investigators doing the work and Mr. Schnebelen changing roles from ;
being with us to being with us as a supervisor, or less kind of reporting back to Mr. Cumings. We didn't have any management actually sitting in with the investigators or independently of the investigators reinterviewing the I
personnel that had already been talked to. So, at that juncture, Mr. Cumings also was serving as an investigator and conducting interviews. Reinterviewing was a big word and I mean that's exactly what was occurring.
Judge Hoyt: Do you recall any of the matters that Mr. Cumings may have brought out in his reinterviews that had not been brought out in the original investigations?
Mr. Sinclair: No.
Judge Hoyt: Was this more or less just clarification questions? ,
Mr. Sincl~ air: Well, if I was speculating, you know, and that's all I can do. It was going back over the same ground and I don't know whether he was trying to convince himself of what we were saying was accurate or to show that we couldn't get those interviews done right, or I mean, I don't know, I have absolutely no, it was a reinterview.
I don't care about questioning it, he was there, he was covering the same grouad that we've been over before, and I don't think in any greater detail than what we already looked at in trying to spend initially in interviewing these people. I don't know. Maybe he just wasn't convinced that we were coming up with the right answers, or, I mean, that we were really getting the information that was there.
Mr. Alcot: Did Mr. Cumings participate in any other interviews other than Ward and Phillip reinterviews?
Mr. Sinclair: No, that's the only one that I know that those individuals were sat down and we sat together and then we, you know, the other again was related to me. But I excepted it at face value that in our absence Schnebelen and Cumings interviewed both Kavin Ward and Gerry Phillip.
Mr. Alcot: And you continued to speak to him?
Mr. Sinclair: Yes, I can't remember the date sequence, but it was roughly we got out there on, I think, it was a Monday, and there was some interviews conducted. I don't remember who and when, but see a lot of it had already been covered on a previous trip with Schnebelen and myself. So, the one that really sticks in my mind is the unusual circumstance, and that was for Gamble and myself to get on a plane and go to St. Louis and we interviewed Vandel and we got back, I think it was that night maybe, i
1 I think I sat up a good portion of the evening taking Gamble's notes and writing up the results of Vandel's interview and that got us into Thursday and by then there was more of the Vandel, I mean Ward interview. There was
- a lot of questions about their assessment of why they .'
didn't think that some of the welding activity that was '
going on at Zimmer regarding specific welds that they -
were looking at was not of concern to them, and did they know of certain things. And, it became very clear that they didn't, that they didn't know that certain work was being done down there, and they reported otherwise. By not knowing that, they reported that, for instance, that '
a particular weld was still in place in the plant, when between the two times that they went to the site, the licensing contractor had repaired and removed that weld '
and what they had in the report was not even dated correctly. By the time they put the report out, the weld that they were talking about was not even in existence -
any more. And that was a big surprise to n:e. You could tell that right off the paperwork. So, we asked them if they saw the paperwork and they said no. And we said, well what did you look at? And they looked at radiographs, and they talked to some people, and I said well you guys, you know, you got to go further and the i interviews with Mr. Cununings were the same type of thing l that we went through initially. ;
Mr. Aloot: Did you ask these same questions? .
f Mr. Sinclair: The first interview, what are you going to do, when are you going to challenge him, when are you going to try and find out, is anybody ever going to look at the weld? And the responses were the same, no. And I said, well, you guys are just, we just can't understand what'is going on.
Mr. Aloot: Did you detennine whether this failure to look at the weld itself, did you determine whether that was a result of individual investigator judgment or IE policy?
1 Mr. Sinclair: It was, well, first of all that was not the investigator's responsibility, that was the inspector's responsibility, being a technical man. That was pragmatic, that's the way we did it, and the issue, it was critical here, because here is an investigation that .
they were asked to do, and that they were given three specific welds by number so they knew exactly where they l were. Now, one caused a problem because it was in ten or more feet of concrete, but the other two were somewhere in the plant. And we said, well if you're not going to .
do a visual inspection, what are you going to do. They said we'll check the radiographs, that's a technical
response. We said, well, if you check the radiographs, and what your telling me is based on all the work that you've been doing out here in reviewing radiographs of this facil.ity, that you have unresolved coen issues regarding thousands of radiographs, and maybe this will include,it, which was the case. You can't make a determination about the weld. Yet they said the allegations were not substantiated. And we said it doesn't go, you can't do it. So, what are you going to do next? The answer was nothing. I said well when are you going to inspect the welds and when are you going to reradiograph it or not? That's the licensee's job. And one of the welds in question was about four or five years old. I said, well how long are you going to wait? And they said all the way till the operating license. I said absolutely not.
Mr. Alcot: And you thought that to be consistent with the inspection procedures, the generic inspection procedures, IE or Region III or whatever, rather than individual inspectors just not doing his or her job?
Mr. Sinclair Right, we had been through South Texas.
Judge Hoyt: Let me ask you this, Mr. Sinclair, do you think that the problem or that result may have been caused by Phillips being assigned this investigation that he was sent the wrong man for the job?
Mr. Sinclair: No. The person I am talking to right here isn't even Phillip's. Phillip's was the investigator and as far as we were concerned, any time you put an inspector together. I know I am going into virgin ground, I think for some reason, we don't understand the mechanics of what we are discussing here. Forget about inspection activity and that's exactly what I was just describing, ok. Investigative activity, none of the technical thing I just described with Kavin Ward, who was the welding inspector, the specialist that was his description of what he was going to do and not do to me. The investigators, if they ever go out independently, are supposed to follow investigative criteria. And we have been through an extensive discussion of that. Any time you put the inspection group together with the investigative group, which was a cosunon occurrence, the bulk of the work, if not all of it, except for the fact of maybe documenting interviews, and hopefully in detail, but not always so. The investigator is along as more a scribe, as a person who begins to put down on paper what's actually being done and then the inspector also has the ability to write up the technical detail of 4
what's discovered and incorpor- ated in the report. So, if you will, when the investigation comes out with the investigation title, what you have is an investigator signing he was there, he wrote it, and that the investigators, inspectors stuff is incorporated. But, you end up with an inspection type of document which is only going through a certain point. And, that was what was evident with this report from the beginning. That Phillip, who was one of the authors, if you will, but you couldn't, even from reading the basic report, you couldn't figure out what the investigators were doing.
It didn't look like anything. Well, they did write up i some interviews, but in the interviews they dropped off at a point where it would be significant. As soon as somebody would get ready to say well, did you do this, or-they did ask some significant questions on a couple of occasions, and someone said well I don't remember doing that and they just dropped it, and, therefore, it's not substantiated.
Mr. Aloot: You, as the principal investigator, you saw this as a deficiency, this melding or marriaging of the inspector and investigator, with the investigator...
Mr. Sinclair: No. I saw the report, I saw the end product, e lacking information to answer the question, and we broes n t that up in the interviews with everybody. I said all you have to do is answer the question, you had three issues on welding, you had one on something else and there was only a total of five, all you have to do is do a level work of some sufficiency and answer the questions and if it doesn't turn out to be resolvable, no one is going to challenge it. Just show that you did the work and you couldn't resolve it, or you did resolve it. It wasn't clear that there was any real effort pushed at answering those issues, and we brought it up in the interviews with all the management and I think there's some agreement.
If you read the interviews, and I think you'll see that management concurs, that they weren't looking at it in that light.
l Mr. Aloot: Do you think that the report sunnary, as finally published, and transmittal memo to the Connission adequately states that, say, investigative conclusions?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, when you put it like that and in this sequence, my initial response is to say no.
Mr. Aloot: Why?
Mr. Sinclair: Because, in trying to sumarize what we had documented and what we believed we were looking at, the final sumary states unaquivably that the investigation conducted by Phillip was inadequate. It doesn't answer anything.
Mr. Alcot: Does it say why?
Mr. Sinclair: It's conclusive. And that's the stuff we were trying to avoid. That's not the point. It's inadequate. In -
essence we took what the memo, that was sent from the Chairman said, see if it was an adequate investigation, turned it around and said, no there wasn't an adequate investigation. With putting the material in there, it doesn't say, they didn't follows steps A, B and C, yet they have them, and it doesn't say, as investigations go, they didn't pursue these following steps that were, for lack of a better term, nonnal or " accepted." We didn't
. explain that and that seemed to be something that was supposed to come up.
Mr. Aloot: You say ,vou didn't explain it in the final report or it wasn't explained in the first round?
Mr. Sinclair: Your question was, was it in the final sumary, did we report that to the Consnission?
Mr..Aloct: Right.
Mr. Sinclair: No, we didn't report it to the consnission, and no it wasn't in the sununary, I mean not in the way it was written. It was a much more, I don't like to make
, but it was more limited in the way we wrote the summary. What was in the report was much more comprehensive in terms of interviews and commitment than what the sumary actually requests.
Mr. Aloot: Did you prepare the first draft of the report and sumary?
Mr. Sinclair: Yes, I think I did.
Mr. Aloot: About what time-frame?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, if we were on schedule, and we were trying to get it written, we had deadlines, if I remember right. And we were really trying to make 30 or 60 days or something.
Mr. Aloot: There was a deadline on this report, internally?
Mr. Sinclair: Internally, let's get it done in a month and then let's try to get it out in the next couple of weeks, and we were pushing pretty hard there.
Mr. Alcot: Who made those deter 1ninations?
Mr. Sinclair: I don't know, but I mean....
Mr. Aloot: Management, Mr. Cununings, Mr. Shenebelen, or yourself, Mr. Gamble?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, ok, let me extrapolate. I think there was a 30-day deadline and was done by management whoever, Mr.
Cununings, and maybe Fortuna, Schnebelen, that started, I think, that the first several weeks of the end of the first month, then there wasn't much discussion. It was like let's get it done, but the pressure wasn't there anymore to get the report out.
Mr. Aloot: Why?
Mr. Sinclair: I.have no idea. I don't think that's really unusual, it seems like a lot of things happened.
Mr. Sinclair: Alright, so let's see if you recall a month that you might have put together the first draft.
Mr. Sinclair: Oh,yes. I didn't answer your question. I think the initial report and the initial draft were finished sometime in March. Now that sounds a little contradictory, because we hadn't done the Harpster interview and we hadn't done the Williamson interview until I think it was the end of March. The days escape me. But, just in terms of putting it together, since it's in a chronological sequence anyway, you can start ,
making certain writeups about what you have already found, what documents you have already seen, start -
putting them in the order that you did them, and the fact that we had not interviewed them yet, really didn'.t mean much unless there was something that really came up that l was contradictory. to what we already started to report.
But, then again, I might be wrong, it might have been i April or so after we got those in. But, at one point, everything including Harpster interview, I take that i back, it refreshes my memory. The Harpcter interview was i ended, and the sunenary included everything developed to i date. There was only one section of infor1 nation that I ,
wrote later that I thought we were going to incorporate !
but we didn't.
Mr. Alcot: What inspection was that?
I a .
l
\
Mr. Sinclair: It had to do with the IE manual chapter and a sunnarization and analysis of the applicable investigative criteria and recommendations that they have, for we were conducting the investigations and incorporating that and putting it in a summary saying that what they did didn't seem to match the criteria set forth in the manual chapter.
Mr. Aloot: You wrote that chapter or that draft?
Mr. Sinclair: Yes, that draft or whatever it was.
Mr. Aloot: Was that taken out before or?
Mr. Sinclair: I don't think that ever went in.
Mr. Alcot: Who decided not to put it in? .
Mr. Sinclair: I don't know. I mean, heresy, I could tell you.
Mr. Alcot: I'll take heresy at this point.
Mr. Sinclair: Ok, I was on leave and when I came back I think Gamble told me, I am not sure, but I am pretty sure he did that, that section did get in the report. I forget the real specific, if I am not mistaken Gamble and Schnebelen were in Chicago with a copy of the report, and we were talking about some other matters and things that were going on and we probably didn't get to that, but ...
Mr. Alcot: When were they in Chicago?
Mr. Sinclair: August. First of August.
Mr. Alcot: It was much later.
Mr. Sinclair: It was much later but that hadn't been' written until June or July. I took some leave and I don't know when, but let's get this in before it goes out.
Mr. Alcot: Let me take, let me double further back...
Mr. Sinclair: It just didn't get in.
Mr. Alcot: In the final?
Mr. Sinclair: Right.
Mr. Alcot: Try to focus in now on the state of the report of the first draft that you and Mr. Gamble put together and and I want to find out about what time, f
Mr. Sinclair: That was all being reviewed from some time in April, May, June, July. I was on leave, I think, most of July like a couple of weeks, then back and out a week or something like that. I took at least a couple weeks leave.
Mr. Alcot: What was the chain of review, once you and Mr. Gamble...
Mr. Sinclair: It went to Art Schnebelen first.
Mr. Aloot: Then let's assume that it went to Schnebelen somewhere around the first week or two of April.
Mr. Sinclair: It might not have been hat early, I have a feeling it was, (I am trying to think) it was all typed and we got it back and we put it together and probably gave it to Art Schnebelen and it was moving back and forth but there was maybe a lot of typos, he was probably getting things changed. In terms of a review like asking the investigators if they changed certain languages is it
, still inaccurate, is it still reflective of what was done. Yes or no. I think that was like in a mid-May time-frame, maybe a little bit later.
Mr. Aloot: Those are between yourself and Mr. Gamble.
Mr. Sinclair: Before it went any further than Mr. Schnebelen, he had questions about it.
Mr. Aloot: What were Mr. Schnebelen's questions, do you recall or any suggestions, modifications?
Mr. Sinclair: There was one thing that I can recall, was something that was taken out. It was a letter from. I think it was from Mr. Stello to Mr. Phillip telling him its too bad that investigations of this kind, and I am sure you did a good job and don't worry about it. That was going to be put into the report, and Dave Gamble made that kind of decision to do all. I am trying to think right now why we were going to put it in, but it started to be in the report and I don't know how significant it is, but there -
was a decision to let's put it in and see what happens.
Mr. Schnebelen said no we don't need that.
Mr. Alcot: What was his reasen?
Mr. Sinclair: For lack of a better term, I think it was more visual and
, maybe just, it might be related but it might then again be too much of a judgment thing or something. Don't put that in there if it doesn't really say what investigative procedure they missed just because they were saying that
' OIA will be out there, but don't worry you guys did a
good job, that a boy, you know, so I think that was the basis for us to avoid saying just leave that out.
Mr. Aloot: Where there any other modifications that Mr. Schnebelen requested that you make, or additions, subtractions?
Mr. Sinclair: Other than there were some word changes, there were certain.words that were used and he didn't like them, and he changed them. But he wasn't really affecting the overall thrust of the report. He wanted to say things a certain way, he didn't want us to say them. But it was really, it was word choice.
Mr. Alcot: By word choice, we are not talking about tenses?
Mr. Sinclair: No. ,
Mr. Aloot: What kind of word choice changes are we talking about?
Mr. Sinclair: It's just basically the'sunnary. You have to remember all of the work was done on a sunnary, it was three pages, that was in the initial sunnary, and it went down to about two.
Mr. Alcot: Did Mr. Schnebelen and/or Mr. Cunnings see the interview sunnaries prior to sending them forward, in a bulk report?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, yes from an early stage. I mean if you wanted to sit down and read them, they were written up, they weren't like handed in one at a time.
Mr. Aloot: I see.
Mr. Sinclair: But the early version of the sunnary in the way the report was structured with the detail section and background about the Chairman requesting it and all this put together, so it went forward at a fairly early date, and it was subject to any level of review or scrutiny that you wanted.
Mr. Aloot: bMr.Alootaskssomequestions,butthetapewasnotclear ar4 Mr. Sinclair: If you wanted to read the interviews, it had been as far as Mr. Cunnings, know that you jog my memory. He was asking some questions about the Phillip interview in l
particular and asking me about changing some language, I mean they were words, and we reached a decision on it. l that he wouldn't change it. I said well, I've got the l notes and I am the one that interviewed him and I wrote j i
)
it up and I am saying that's what he sa.id and if we get into a discussion now about you telling me that these words have to be changed, I said there is no logical way you can possibly do that because you weren't there.
Mr. Aloot: When did this occur?
Mr. Sinclair: I hate to put a date on it, but it was May, June, it might have been late June.
Mr. Aloot: It was after the investigation?
Mr. Sinclair: It was after it was over and after we at least got a -
rough cut or draft of this thing going through the front.
Mr. Aloot: Are you saying Mr. Cumings asked you to change some words that...
Mr. Sinclair: In the Phillip interview in particular.
Mr. Alcot: Do you recall what those words were?
Mr. Sinclair: No.
Mr. Aloot: Do you recall what the thrust of the changes were, the '
ultimate outcome?
Mr. Sinclair: It didn't change. I said look, Jim don't do that. I wrote that interview and I'll stand by it, but you can't do it from a management viewpiont even if you don't like what I said or if you don't like my choice of words, but it's an accurate recharacterization of what Phillip told me, and I turned out to be right too, because when they went out there they had 12-13 pages or whatever that thing was, he didn't take exception to anything. Except maybe we missed a date or the fact that they flew to or something.
Mr. Aloot: You say most of the...
Mr. Sinclair: It's all sumary, the whole review process.
Mr. Aloot: First stage is a three page sumary that you sent forward
. At what point did Mr. Cumings get the modified report from Mr. Schnebelen?
Mr. Sinclair: I hope I am not overgeneralizing. Let's not use modified. I am trying to be very specific here and I .
sound like I am digressing, tell me, because I don't want to do that. Mr. Schnebelen's review, consisted of basically of what I said. A memo was taken out, I don't
i have any personal problems with that, or professional j problem with that. Mr. Schnebelen's review, I don't i think it stopped at him. It wasn't like it was, ok, it !
wouldn't go past him through Mr. Cunnings. I think it did go past him to Mr. Cusmings. There was more than one copy.
Mr. Aloot: I see. 1 Mr. Sinclair: There was discussion about certain things. My point is i that it was going two ways. It was going from Mr. ,
Schnebelen back to us for changes and it was going from i Mr. Schnebelen to Mr. Cusmings for changes and back from l Mr. Cummings to Mr. Schnebelen, so it was doing this.
Judge Hoyt: How do you know that, how do you know that Cunnings got it? .
Mr. Sinclair Well, the discussions I am saying. It hadn't really been finished review when I was in having lengthy discussions i with Mr. Cusmings about the report and especially about ;
summary. Now you remember the date on the report was !
August. I was still discussing up into July before I went on leave, with Mr. Schnebelen as to what the report was going to say and we had a discussion and a debate, if you will, all the way to practically till the report was signed out about saying things like, in the sunnary, that ;
this investigation was inadequate. I mean, that's how !
much involvement everybody had. We got to the point that and Mr. Schnebelen at that point was on the investigators ,
taking their position, do not make conclusions in that ;
report. It you want to write a separate memo to the Commission, do it. Say anything you want about what i they did on a separate piece of correspondence and
- reference the report, but don't write it in, don't make a judgment shot at them. And we finally won that, but in ,
the interim back through early July and June, Mr. -
Cummings and I were meeting daily on it. !
Mr. Aloot: Really what you had, you did have a distinct chain of ,
review with just Mr. Schnebelen and Mr. Cunnings were l basically reviewing this at the same time,
- 1. ,
! Mr. Sinclair: I would be in with Mr. Cunnings for a bunch of '
l consecutive days, thinking it was a June time-frame we .
were working on that sunnery and this and that this and
- that, so fine, it's accurate. I just think we're going
! to miss the boat if we take this out or if we take that 1 i
out, so why don't we just report everything, just take l this, just take this, and I said ok. Later one, I'd go
- away and I'd get a copy of the report, after that was l
i
done, I'd get a copy of the report back from Mr.
Schnebelen saying take a look at this and see if this is alright because it's been passed back to Jim. Ok, so now I am back in it again, and Mr. Schnebelen may not even be in, or maybe he was and the next thing, you know, Mr.
Cummings would be coming back to me, saying come on in my office, I want to talk about this, and we would go back up and we would start going over the review of the summary again, so there was no fine distinction here in terms of how the levels of review, it got; it was real open, we just had a lot of flexibility. .
Mr. Aloot: Did he have a large office?
Mr. Sinclair: No, it's very small.
P i
4 e 8
e j Sinclair Interview - May 12. 1983 Mr. Aloot: We were talking about the review process with this report. You were mentioning that it was a sort of a !
joint review with Mr. Cummings and Mr. Schnebelen both reviewed and then got back to you and Mr. Gamble. Could
- you describe all the, in what your mind, were the
- significant modifications to the report from the verison you initially turned to the version that'was actually published?
- Mr. Sinclair
- I don't know if I can do that accurately. The best I can i do is guess at it a little bit. In tems of -
! signif'cance, I don't want to be presur,tuous, ok, and I don't think that any of the times that we did '
investigations at DIA and I have done them any place
, else, as investigators we don't make presumptuous 4
decisions that we call all the shots. But in tems of recording information, investigators are supposed to ;
report the investigative activity conducted, so I won't make a distinction as to significance, I'll make a distinction as to....
Mr. Aloot: Well facts, , typos, and word changes.
- Mr. Sinclair: Oh, ok, yes and I won't be concerned with administrative '
l review. There were some different phases of the I investigation that were done, and they were written up to be incorporated in the report. One area was Applegate
- had mentioned and it was in the petition, I believe, that
!- the FBI had been contacted about som: of these
! allegations, ok, and did not say much. They didn't respond to him with the degree of interest, or real l .
interest, and at one point he admitted, one way or j another he got to Chicago, either through a newspaper ;
i paying his air fare or something and he got to Chicago and was ultimately in a meeting with Gerry Phillip, another safeguards Branch Chief, his name escapes me <
, right now, Donovan I think it is, and two FBI agents down I
- in the Chicago field office at which time he went through his list of concern, a lot of it non-NRC related, potential criminal activity at the site; guns and drugs and Jrostitution, etc., which under certain circumstances if twre is excess the bureau might be j interested, but that meeting did take place and he did mention that the previous radiography fim had tapes that i
he had taken off the telephone of a manager who was, I think, with the fim of Peabody Manuflex, that they were
! run off that site for, strictly my characterization, i . critical radiography or turning down accepatability at l certain welds due to the radiograph process. That they
, were overruled by Kaiser, who was the constructor. And, l I because they would not go along with those
_~ - , _ _ . _ , - , - _ - - _ . , . .
interpretations of the constructor, that they were ultimately the contract was terminated, and that they were removed from the site. The tapes don't really say that, there is some implicit term meanings in the way things were said to Applegate the interview that this individual, and some of the responses'were not his specifically, but were elicited and almost, you know, constructive replies, but his point was they were runned off the site. They may have complained about it that industry wise they'd suffer, and that came out on the tapes. So, we followed that line because that was an additional time that we meet with the region and what did they do about it and how did they address this, and so on. You know, not really concerned with the FBI's involvement, but they wanted to take their piece and say that there is nothing here. Fine, from a safety
. standpoint maybe there is something abcut this radiography problem, you wrote that up and put it in a summary, and took it out. I am not making, and I don't care about it, you know, one way or another, except that it occurred. We followed that particular lead, if you will, that's to be tne majority , and found out what incurred and what we're going to document it , put it into chronology and say here s where this stands, and that was taken out.
Mr. Aloot: Do you happen to know why it was taken out?
Mr. Sinclair: Yes, Mr. Cumnings and I, we discussed it and we ' struck it and we said no we are not going to put this in. And I said, well, it seems to me to be part of what we did
, but...
Mr. Aloot: , Did he respond to that?
Mr. Sinclair: No, I have to make an assumption that the thing is that in Mr. Cummings mind that was not essential to determine I whether or not they get an adequate investigation.
Mr. Aloot: In your mind was it essential but was it relevant i to you in any way to whether to assist in making your l determination?
Mr. Sinclair: It was part of the infonnation that we had reported, and you brought back earlier would I ever take a pice of information that I consider that had to be brought to somebody's attention, and make a conscious decision on his work. No, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do it in this case either.
Mr. Alcot: Were there any other changes?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, in terms of changes the analysis of the IE manual chapter, Chapter 8 I think it is, on investigative guidelines, I guess it is, in the analysis of where that particular invest 19ation didn't follow those particular guidelines. I don t think it ever went in, now.
Mr. Alcot: You don't know who made the decision to delet'e it?
Mr. Sinclair:- Well, if I were to say anything about it, I have to go on heresy again, and I think Gamble advised me much later on of course when it came in, it wasn't written until much later on, that it was not put in at Mr. Cumings direction. He said we're just not putting it in now.
That might be overstating it, it might have been Mr.
Schnebelen.
Mr. Aloot: Do you happen to know or have any reason to suspect what the reason was for that portion to be deleted?
Mr. Sinclair: I'll have to give you the same response I made before.
Perception was that Mr. Cummings mind, or management that was not necessary to report, to give a report on the investigative sufficiency or adequacy.
Mr. Alcot: Any other changes?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, it's hard at this date to go back. There was, you know, a lot of reviewing and changing and some things, I think might have even gotten put back in.
Mr. Alott: (Could not here this).
Mr. Sinclair: Now, that's a good point. I forgot about that. That had been written up as... I am not sure how much of that was in the sumary though, other than maybe at a general recap or knowledge that an inspector had reported that they might have had, what he considered more generic deficiencies at the plant. . .
Mr. Aloot: Who decided to take out the Harpster interview?
Mr. Sinclair: I'd say Mr. Cumings. I can't say total unequivocably, but I know after it was out we had some discussions about whether, what we should do with it.
Mr. Alcot: Is there any reason for deleting the Herpster interview these past few times?
Mr. Sinclair: I don't remember t:1at specifically. I mean, I just know that it was not to be incorporated into the report, and I don't know if there was a decision that was given to us about the status of why, or why it would or would not be
included. It's just that it was something that we had and something had to be done with it, and if there were some discussions about the merits of it, you know, yes or no, to be included, I don't remember. The best I could do would be to go with what I've said a couple of times previously. A decision, on the part of the director, was that it didn't relate, it didn't pertain to the effort of what we were trying to do.
Mr. Alcot: Do you have the same feelings?
Mr. Sinclair: No.
Mr. Aloo't: What was your view of the significance or relevance of the Harpster interview?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, as I just stated, in terms of interviewing people, relevant to, I think this investigative assignment, ok, certain leads that came up were things that were done in field activity, were to be documented. When we did that, that there was some, even peripheral, I have a loss of words here... , peripherally relate. If we did it and there was no, if we weren't expanding beyond some kind of investigative control or scoping, I said well let's just leave it in, it doesn't detract, even if it doesn't add a lot, you know. But, I didn't have as much trouble if you wanted to ask me in terms of prioritizing or something like that. With Harpster, although I thought well, just leave it in there as I did with the FBI type thing, which was part of an allegation or something. I said well, hey, let's report it, I mean we did it, we talked about it, here's their response and let's just get all the infonnation that we found out during these couple months on the record, and'1f, you know, it's somewhat related, there is no reason for them to go through any exercise to take it out. Quite candidly, I have a hard time understanding why your deleting things. You know, I mean I am not into that. I don't know what you get...it seems to me you can only end up being criticized or losing, ok, if you take, I mean you can't, there is an extreme, you can report too much and you can do too much but if you've got people with experience, and they're going through and they are doing their fob, and they give you a little bit more, it doesn't really hurt you. But, you can end up losing if you start mak ng some decision to take stuff out.
Mr. Alcot: Do you think the report was weaker without the H.rpster inverview or do the conclusions have t be based on your report of the facts .
Mr. Sinclair: Well, in hindsight.
I think the Harpster interview was
i 9
significant, primarily. Not because of Harpster's e perceptions or comments about people and things, but because if he was involved with that facility far three years, which predated this investigation that Region III did, and he said they had generic problems down there and then we had an investigation that was done by Region III, that said even though we only had five specific things that were given to us that we don't find anything wrong then I think that's significant. I think that say's hey, here's a guy that's been telling the Region and the licensee for three years that they've got problems that somebody's got to address. Then we had a region investigation, as they want to call it, and went down and said, unsubstantiated, no problem. And then we turn
- around and do an investigation and say that's not accurate, what sum of and most of what the allegations are here are, in fact, accurate. So, you know, in that sense it detracted, as did, I think, the other stuff. We got.... iny feelings were made known at the time.
Mr. Alcot: To whom?
Mr. Sincliar: To Mr. Cunnings. That we were taking too narrow of a view of this thing and it's not going to do anybody any service.
Mr. Alcot: Let me ask you, was the review of this investigation taking, and let's say July 1981, was that view consistent with the view taken of January 1981 when the investigation was scoped?
Mr. Sinclair: I don't know what you mean by view.
Mr. Aloot: I mean, you must have determined what the focus of your ,
investigation was going to be in January when you first I started this.
Mr. Sinclair: Right.
Mr. Alcot: And consistent with that focus you conduct a whole series .
of interviews.
Mr. Sinclair: Right.
Mr. Aloot: In the review stage of say July, certain interviews, certain information that was acquired furtherance of the January focus, were no longer relevant. Was there a change in how, in what the purpose of this investigation was all about? Was there a change in that?
Mr. Sinclair: There had to be. I guess if you were asking.
t
- 6-Mr. Alcot: Ok.
Mr. Sinclair: There had to be.
Mr. Alcot: Now Mr. Cumings did participate in the meeting with hele.
Mr. Sinclair: Right.
Mr. Aloot: So, put the... turn the question around. Was his view of-the scoping investigation in July the same as Mr.
Cumings' view, the same as his view of January?
Mr. Sinclair: I can't answer it. I mean you asking me to answer for him.
Mr. Aloot: No, no. Your perception.
- Mr. Sinclair: No, after I have been through this now, your describe this for me two hours before the . It changed, didn't it, that's a given. Your not dealing with academics, it happened. I didn't have a lot of discussion as to why we were going down as though there were viewed, or why things were being looked at different. I don't challenge Mr. Cumings' ability to manage, but I will stand my ground and always have stood my gound on making sure that the record reflects what's done, and I did. And, did it change? Yes, it did. Did ,
th3 report end up looking different than was initially '
put together by myself Gamble, and then sent forward?
Yes, it did. Did my perception change about what we were supposed to determine? No. Did I think that I had changed so that we had gond beyond , the mandate of the request? No. Did I think that I had a comitment from management, in January, to do that? Yes. Did I think that in July? No.
Mr. Aloot: I see. Basically, you've answer the question that I was trying to get at. - -
Do you think that the support for any of the conclusions in this report comes to final remark, the support for those conclusions or was any way weakened by i the modifications , taking the Harpster interview, taking out the discussion of the Chicago PM allegations.
Mr. Sinclair: Well, I think I know where we are heading. The sumary in the final report, as it exists today, ok, is not, is not, ok, weakened by the supporting documentation or the
. removal hereof of what's in the report. In fact, if anything now, the report itself, the interviews and
- everyth' ng overpower the sumary. (Laughter). Ok, the e , ~ . . . m -.,_ ,. --m_ _ . - , _ y - _ ,,_ _ _ . - - - . _ . --w._ ,__ -,.,._ _ _ - e,__m.- -,.--.~~.y....- ---
n .
sumary is not complete, I mean if you look at it in that sense. If you look at it now, then the interviews are much too extensive to report what the summary says. I mean the interviews didn't change, so that all of the questions that were believed to be significant at the time to address the issue, are still there, and the report contains that infonnation. Even absence.
Harpster, FBI and so on. It's hard to make an analogy.
The sumary is about as big as a softball. The report is about as big as a basketball, I mean in tenns of information.
Judge Hoyt: How do you, in your opinion Mr. Sinclair, think that there was such an emphasis on wanting to zero in on changing this sumary? ,
Mr. Sinclair: I...I don't know. I mean, I consider rnyself fairly intelligent, I don't know. I, the basic feeling, ok, is that maybe it was just going to be too harmful,'or too critical, those are the wrong words, because your not trying to be critical, your just trying to report, but it was going to have too much emphasis, or it was going to make too big a question about the Regior's investigation, maybe more, maybe more than the investigation. And if that carre out, I mean if it was going to come out, then I am purely speculating, that that came out that way, that, you know, it was going to lead to something else, so the thing to do was say, we went, we saw, they didn't make it, it was inadequate. But, it's the classic thing that you get challenged on in any kind of activity. fhe most critical areas of the investigations because when you start saying your actually doing the investigatigating thing, they fully expect you to hold to some standard, and my personal dilema was that I had been looking, reviewing I & E pretty extended through the time, had been through South Texas also, and I had seen all this .
before, so the last thing in the world I want to do is put out a report that didn't say anything. You know, we had been reviewing.them saying your not carrying an investigative activity far enough, your not answering the question. In essence, we turned around and almost did the same thing. We said this investigation, this one right here, if you want to make that definition, make it very, you know, it's inadequate. And if that's the case, those guidelines were never established; that's all they wanted to do, was go out there and check from this date to this date and make sure, you know, all those pieces of paper right there, nothing outside of that, and that was the end of the story. You're always are going out to answer basic questions, and they did that, but that wasn't...
Mr. Alcot: The sumary here was
l 8-
, Mr. Sinclair: Yes, it didn't get to the, here is where it slipped, ok, l I mean, basic, an absolute basic. If you have criteria,
- and are written, and everybody is supposed to be aware !
! of, and I mean that may be a problem there, that they're l l not aware of, so then you publish it and again if it's
- all there in writing, and then you got a set of facts ;
l that go totally contrary to that, then maybe you do want to republish that or you do want to restate it. And then you won't have that problem again, because the next time everybody won't be able to say I didn't know about it,
! but when you remove that, you know, just one small example is what was happening here, then we just said hey look, on this date whenever if finished in May 1980, ,
these two guys down here didn't make it, ok, and that's ,
really in essence; that's where the sumary kind of ended up, that the investigation was inadequate and therefore ;
I mean it could go to the next step, Phillip and Ward and :
Vandel didn't make it. And, I discussed this in Janaury .
l with Mr. Cumings. We're not going to do a misconduct l case again. If the idea here is to go out and get Gerry -
Phillip's for not doing an adequate job, he said I don't '
want any part of it. l Mr. Alcot: Is it your feeling that the sense of the final report is a misconduct type of... :
Mr. Sinclair: Oh, absolutely. If you look at all, I mean I am not
- privileged to what's going on with this law suit on so on, but some of the documentation that I've seen going to the hill and so on, that whole thing is being characterized as a personnel type matter. That is totally contrary to what we talked about. That's .
established...
Mr. Aloot: In January?
Mr. Sinclair: Right. We didn't decide that. I mean tFat was not a decision. It's in the report, it's the presentation that was given to the Regional Administrator and all of those people, and they said hey, do we need laywers, are we in trouble? Absolutely not. Ok, we want to look at this program out here, we want to see if you guys got your procedures in place, true, the managers are investigators, do they really investigate and all that
- i. kind of stuff. We are not focusing on any individual, that's exactly what we told them. And they said, ok, that makes us feel a little better, although they knew we were going to come down on them probably if we found something. And, I mean, it's right in the report. If l you have Gerry Phillip today, long after he's retired, ok, he thinks that I gave him a snowjob, he thinks I went out there and really did a job on him.
l l
.g.
Mr. Aloot: Mr. Phillip is retired?
Mr. Sinclair: Yes. -
J Mr. Alcot: Where does he live? ,
Mr. Sinclair: Well, he lives right in Chicago, I saw in the offices about a week or two, but, you know, he left.
Mr. Alcot: Do you have his phone number? '
Mr. Sinclair: No, no I don't. That's heresy. I heard that somebody said that he was real unhappy with me and I never had had a chance to get back to him. Not that I would have brought it up anyway, you know. He personnally, when he read that, about and challenged his profession to, you know.... Let me add something, since '
I have already kind of gotten.into this. We were meeting in January and this discussion came up to make a distinction not an employee in this in kind of a case, I stated, ok, and this should be recalled by everybody that was in that meeting, that by the standards of the things that I had reviewed in I & E, and the type of investigatigation reports that they put out, ok, if, in N fact, anything was true, Gerry Phillip's report, the one that was being criticized by GAT,_was, in fact, one of the best reports that an I & E investigator puts out. It contained more detail, more laymen's language, or understandable facts, because a lot of it tends to be confused with technical interpretation, which are sometimes not even understandable than any of them. So, I for one, would not go out there and focus on this guys work product when I knew that I could go to the IE fileroom and go anywhere else and dig a whole bunch of things out that were much worse, and I made myself real clear on that, everybody knew what we were talking about.
And, I said if anything, we got a problem here with the way the program is run, and they knew it all, you know, there was no challenge to us, not like, well in that case you don't do it; we'll have somebody else do the investigation. It was agreed on.
l Mr. Aloot: Do you have any feel for why the review process took l i basically longer than the investigation period? I am i talking a period of approximately four months. '
Mr. Sinclair. Yes.
Mr. Aloot: First draft, the final additions...
Mr. Sinclair: That wasn't unusual.
L 0 0
.L Mr. Aloot: That length of time, or that amount of discussion?
Mr. Sinclair: That length of time.
. Mr. Aloot: How many have that amount of discussion back and forth about....
Mr. Sinclair: Well, maybe not the level of discussion, I mean, because in this case, I think that I had more discussion with Mr.
Cumings about the report and summary than I had on a lot of . If your talking about the time that the, you know, say the rough draft, or the thing is initialed and put together and have it go up through the assistant director, and under the director, by the time the official office version goes out, that length of time is not that unusual. I say that in the sense that I was not surprised that it would take us that long. I mean, forgetting my intimate involvement in it, it wouldn't surprise me to see a report go off the investigator's desk and up through the channels and not see that thing for a month.
Mr. Alcot: Mr. Sinclair, do you know why members of OIA were sent to Region III on March 3 and 4, 1981.
Mr. Sinclair: March 3 and 4?
Mr. Alcot: Excuse me, August 3 and 4, 1981?
Mr. Sinclair: In hindsight, after the fact...
Mr. Alcot: You weren't participating.
Mr. Sinclair: No, I tMnk if my memory serves me right I've got a calendar that's got a lot of this stuff written on it. I had come back from leave and I think that was the week, I think that was probably on leave the last two weeks of July. When I got back, Dave Gamble and Art Schnebelen o were not in the office, and I don't think initially I asked to find out where they were, I wasn't looking for him other than to say, hey, you know, I was back from leave then they called in and said they were in Chicago, and I didn't know why and something else came up. I had some discussions with Art Schnebelen and Dave Gamble on the phone and they told me they were out there with a copy of the report to have the interviewees review their interviews and see if there are any errors or mistakes in the report. And, if I can keep the order right...
Mr. Alcot: Is that coman?
Mr. Sinclair: No. I guess I didn't ask any questions until I got an explanation from both Schnebelen and Gamble. They hadn't
s l
gone through all the interviews yet, in fact, they just, I don't think I talked to him Monday, or whatever; I
- think it was a Tuesday maybe the second day they called me because they had done some work and they had some more people to talk to and I forget what other dates right to my days, but during that week whatever the two days are.
I think it was like a Monday or Tuesday. And then they were going to read the sumary of the report to the group before departing the region.
Mr. Aloot: Was that comon?
Mr. Sinclair: No. Well, I asked, I said I have a big question. What happens if you reinterview them and they challenge what was already written? And the response was well we're not going to, we won't make any changes of correct information. They're just challenging now, that won't
. change inything, and we won't really make any insignificant changes, if they're just challenging minor stuff, but if had to do, I don't know how the definition comes up because its totally alienated, ok.
Mr. Aloot: As an investigator?
Mr. Sinclair: Yes, as an investigator. I'll tell you the second reason why it's alienated. If,you're going to start a program like this that, ok, somebody makes a distinction as to what is an error, ok, and it's significant enough to change so that we don't write an error in the report.
Fine. I don't know how we know that at this late date, because we're back five months after, six months after we did the initial interview, and I said are we going to write that up, are we going to write either corporate in the initial and the original interview and they were also interviewed on such and such a date to reflect the ,
date. No. And, I said, I was just flabbergasted, and I j say well, ok, then we'll write up the new interview, a !
total new interview on this day to day interview and they l
, reviewed their interview and they took exceptions to the !
following item and we found that that hasn't really ,
changed so we still stand with as reported, or make a l t
change and say we made an error and we changed it as a 1 result of this and you know reverifying something. No, i was their response. We are not documenting the fact we're reinterviewing. And I said no, no, no. So Schnebelen told me that that's Mr. Cummings direction, ok.
Mr. Aloot: That no interview....
Mr. Sinclair: Thatnorecordofthereinterviewing,andboyIkept thinking that's something I can't live; I didn't know what I was going to do at the moment, and either that day
I talked to Gamble or when we got and I said look, and then I was instructed by Mr. Schnebelen to go back through all our notes that I had~taken from the January / February time-frame when we did the initial work, and check the coments that were made in August against what was said. And people were taking exception to the way certain things were characterized in the report in their interviews and if, I'll just give you my personal assessment. It was insignificant, but I knew what was happening. Everybody did not want to go on the record the way we were protraying it, which in my view, was fairly objective. What I ended up doing was, there were 4
a lot of quotable statements made, and I said, I thought
, well I don't want to make this guy look bad, and I mean I know what he is saying to me, but I am not going to say
.something really dumb, like they did. And in that sense, what I had, well he told me to make those changes if we didn't, you know, if it wasn't accurate, I did. I made the changes, and I put the quotes in, you know, I mean that was...
Mr. Alcot: They looked worse in your mind.
Mr. Sinclair: Yes sure, and I put then in in quotes, here's what they said, and because Schnebelen was saying this is the way it's going to be.
Mr. Aloot: Did he incidate who told him or was it Mr. Cumings that told Mr. Schnebelen that's the way it's going to be or did Mr. Schnebelen make that decision on his own?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, no, the changes, and here's what they, if.they are changes to be made, and here's what they're saying, if they don't want to say that, they don't think that's accurate. I said well, I told them well hey look the only thing I can de, if I go back and you're telling me I that these are the points that you want to see if my notes mflect that, well I don't think there were any ;
exceptions, except for the fact that we may' have took -a I more step-back appraisal and wrote it in a more objective l or accepted appraisalogy or something like that. '
Mr. Alcot: Do you have a privy to a telephone conversation between Mr. Cumings and Mr. Keppler on or about August 4,1981?
l Mr. Sinclair: Yes, well I think I came in at the end of it, I think I was either called in or I was coming up with something.
I went into Mr. Cumings' office, now that you mention it, I think it was at the end because, you know, I wasn't paying attention to what he was saying, but he was talking, and then Mr. Cummings said to me that that was Keppler or getting off and phone and said I was just talking with Jim Keppler, and he said something to me
like he wanted to know who wrote the sumary. Yes, no that had to follow, Gamble and Schnebelen must have been there still, he called and said who wrote the sumary?
And, Jim said to me kind of a, you know, just a joking manner, that I told him you did, but, you know, then he said no, I told him I wrote it, and Keppler said this is just he said that's just devastating.
Mr. Alcot: The sumary was devastating?
Mr. Sinclair: Yes, just devastating.
Mr. Aloot: The sumary that was less than you had originally proposed?
Mr. Sinclair: Well, yes. Let's not get into quantitive....my '
perceptions are, ok, and I am likely 180* off was that the sumary had gone the original way, it put enough perception in it and enough of the facts to put credit where credit was, but to put liabilities and shortcomings where they are, now just factually mind you, no terms of inadequacy or any of that, and just say hey look it just just looks like you didn't follow all these procedures, and it didn't really start to-get into any type of a comentary, and you notice the way the sumary finally ends up, it gets into a little bit of, they really didn't try to keep it fairly objective, but it got into more of a conclusion and even giving them a shortball, you know, get right on that one issue. So it was more narrowly, factually, I think that's right written where at- the same time it had a conclusionary impact that was probably more than I think would have come out in the original. It wouldn't have looked so much like a, I don't know what to say......
Mr. Alcot: Inditement?
Mr. Sinclair:. Inditement, or yes, it did, initially just would have come out, well this, these are the short ones here, these are the others, here's all the facts that we got in on it and we're not making any conclusions which I said leave 4
to the memo.
- Mr. Aloot: To the Commission...
Mr. Sinclair: I said yes, you want to write all that, you know, go ahead, indite him, but do it on a memo, just leave this thing entact.
Mr. Alcot: When you were privied of this coversation, telephone i
conversation, or later stages of it, did you overhear any modifications that were agreed to by Mr. Cumings?
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4 Mr. Sinclair: Funny you should ask that. I am not certain I do, but that somehow rings a bell. You know, I don't remember if they did, for some reason I want to say they didn't, but there is sanething familiar about what you said, but I can't give you any more than that.
Mr. Alcot: Do you happen to know that this report was retyped between August 4 and August 77 Mr. Sinclair: Oh, it was.
Mr. Alcot: they did put in an, or the alternative did put an asterisk in the .
Mr. Sinclair: Ok, let me explain that because I may have not been in this deposition, (laugher) and you know, I am up to my ears in this thing. My sole purpose for doing that, alright, and I believe if I had to do it, I don't know why maybe I didn't go in later and tell Jim Cummings that exactly what happened. I just figured that they'll catch it up front anyway, and you know they'll take a look at it before they sign it out. But, I said my feelings were that since we made the changes and we went out in August, ok, is not the way to do business, I don't think. And I think I can get supported by people in management in other agencies so I..., but if they were going to do that, and if they did, then he had to get it on the record because the report was going to be challenged anyway. So the last think in the world you want to do is say is to leave an area where you went out and did reinterviews and made changes no matter how insignificant and then you didn't report it and then have somebody come back and say but I told you six months after the fact I
when you were out here that that wasn't right, and I just thought boy.that could be just absolute catastrophe, you know, I mean we won't have any record of that, and everybody going to start saying but you talked to us in August and I told him that that wasn't the case. And we would have been more, the way we conducted the investigation would have been more deficient or inadequate than the one we were looking at. (Laughter) .
i Mr. Aloot: Is it possible that the trip out to Chicago in August 1981 was not for the purpose of reinterviewing, but to l
provide Region III with advance notice of the report?
Mr. Sinclair: It did. Well, it had that affect. I mean figure each of the interviewees was read their own interview to see what they disagreed with.
Mr. Alcot: You said that that is uncommon. That each interviewee read their interviews?
r Mr. Sinclair: That's a gift. I mean that just never happens. I mean even with the lapse of time'that you brought up that the review process took several months. If you had the notes and you wrote it up and it was fairly current to the time that you did the work, you don't have to go and do that.
The premises you stand by, the investigator's ability to detennine fact, and report objectively, I told Schnebelen in the beginning and I am digressing here I told Schnebelen that if we're going to continue to run, see this has always been an. issue, if this operation has been a continued to run as it has been, alright, then if we have to send all these reviews through you and Jim Cununings and we have to take issue with every interview, you ought to fire every guy in here, ok, because you just said you had to hire all this experience and his people ,
can do this job, and then at the end nobody can do any of I the work, and if that's the case, then you ought to get I rid of us because nobody has any faith in the ability of the investigators to do the job. That kind of stuff went on until Schnebelen retired.
Mr. Aloot: That no longer happens then?
Mr. Sinclair: No, it still happens.
Judge Hoyt: By it still happens you mean this cumbersome review?
Mr. Sinclair: That's what this thing is about.
Judge Hoty: In any other agency where you have ever worked, Mr.
Sinclair, did you have any review at all on...
i Mr. Sinclair: Oh yes. Reports were closely reviewed, but you don't review the content, you review for procedural slipups, or the things that we were doing at Region III. You review to see if they missed an interview that's crucial or they missed getting a piece of evidence that was required, or they missed making a particular contact, and documenting, I mean, it's just a checklist review. Mana~gement sits to l make sure the report gives everything that is required l and that the program, when it's all written down, you
! don't have much problem because it's basically a check- .
list function and that's what management should be in a checking capacity. You don't have that here and didn't have it right up, well, whenever I left, they were still...
Mr. Aloot: What ever happened to the Harpster interview, where did it go?
Mr. Sinclair: Ok, there was a meeting and I think it was decided that the Harpster interview was going to go in a new investigative file, 81-39.
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Mr. Alcot: Was it ever mentio.'ed or discussed that perhaps Harpster'e interview should go into a separate third file with its ovn number?
Mr. Sinclair: Yes, there was a lot cf discussion. It went from keep it in to put it in a file by itself to 81-39 to put in an envelope and sent it back to the Region, j Mr. Aloot: Was it ever.sent back to the Region?
Mr. Sinclair: I don't know. I mean not like that I don't think. No I think a decision was made...
l Mr. Alcot: To slip it under the door.
! Mr. Sinclair: Yes, I mean it was like we really weren't here. You
! know, we said hey this is ridiculous. It was related, it was done in this time-frame, you know, it was done on this date, this is why we did it, and management makes
, the decision, take it out, put it in another file, to ahead, you ,know, I don't have to justify it.
j Mr. Alcot: To the best of your recollection, it was put in then, the
- j. 81-39 file,
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. Mr. Sinclair: Yes, I really...I didn't do it. I don't know who did,
.and if it was assigned to them to do or you know, management did it or what happened. Let me make a conn.ent on that though. I forget the dates'of the meetings and when this was discussed about taking that interview, that interview in particular, but I have a feeling it was done fairly early on after the field work was done, it was written up, but I may be off on my dates. But 81-39 as a file in its investigative effort was, I don't think that was started until around the end of May, and it was done for a specific reason and that was an interview and a trip I made to the West Coast to open up the Zimer records issues the problems with the... - -
l Mr. Aloot: The criminal file, wasn't it? l Mr. Sinclair: Well, yes. The appropriate response for that is that we' don't do criminal investigations, but that was...
Mr._Aloot: Do they have any criminal violations, you suspect?
i Mr. Sinclair: Yes, it looked like we had some, you know, some problems with qulaity control records out there and things like that. I don't know what the date was, but it was I guess that., I don't remember the discussion particularly about putting it in 81-39, but it might have been more to j i
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the contacts that we have to put it in another file. I was there while we were discussing that.
Mr. Alcot: Who was the we?
Mr. Sinclair: It was Jim Cummings, and Art Schnebelen, and Dave and myself, I think. I don't think anybody else was involved in it. So I said, yes, well, if your going to put in in an , I guess that's one way to address it.
Mr. Aloot: Judge Hoyt, do you have any questions?
Judge Hoyt: I have one about the summary and I am just trying to locate the...
Mr. Alcot: Do you happen to have any recollection of Mr. Cummings or Mr. Schnebelen ever contacting, by telephone or interview any individuals not mentioned in investigation report?
Mr. Sinclair: I am not sure if I understand that question in terms of the...
Mr. Alcot: Did you get ever have to get an impression that Mr.
Cummings, in.the course of reviewing the interviews or the final summary, make phone calls, to outside the office to anyone regarding the report?
Mr. Sinclair: Yes, I think at least on one or two occasions before we got that report issued, maybe it was at the same time, but before the report was issued. I think he might have been talking to Mr. Stello from I & E.
Mr. Aloot: Anyone in Region III or the licenseer Mr. Sinclair: Well, apparently there was a discussion with Mr. Keppler, and I speculate there was any more than that. I am trying to think of the time-frame. We had an meeting with Mr. Stello and I don't remember if the report was issued yet, I don't think it was. I might be wrong, but I have a calendar that could probably pin that down. But Mr. Stello was upset about the report.
- Mr. Alcot: Prior to its issuance?
Mr. Sinclair: I think so; I might be totally wrong. I've been carrying l a calendar with me for a long time. It's funny I left it f at home.
Mr. Aloot: We may want to see the calendar.
Mr. Sinclair: Yeah, uh, I might, but the reason I, well, seemed if we had the meeting it was awfully late in the game or it would have been too late if we'd issued the report.. 0h.
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I take that back, no, it was issued to the Commission.
Ah, what was happening was there were some Foyer requests on it and there was a lot of...
Mr. Aloot: So, the discussion in the back part was after the report was issued?
Mr. Sinclair: Yeah, right, it was like this report shouldn't go out and it was still being challenged. Mr. Stello was still challenging it, the contact, insignificant, i wasn't right. '
Judge Hoyt:. What form did his challenges take? Calls?
Mr. Sinclair: Oh, no, we had an official meeting; he came over to Mr. Cummings' office. Dave and I and Mr. Stello and Cummings sat down at the table like that and we had a long discussion whether or now there were " false records" as related to one of those well. Whether or not the investigation had actually determined whether or not those well may have been defective and a lot of things, and, you know, it was Mr. Stello's position that the Region did the right job; it wasn't significant, what we were saying was a, maybe not distortion, but it was not the correct way to say it and we had a long discussion.
They said, you know, in the report itself, he was worried ,
about the damage that it was going to do because if it went public that it was going to make the Region look back, ah, we went through some tortured exercises. The
' reports accurate; nobody is trying to make a federal case out of this, uh, my comment was, despite the fact that Mr. Stello was waving the report around he said, it's going to carry a lot of impact; there's a lot of work here. We weren't out to it in; we weren't to overdue anything, and. as far as we're concerned, it's accurate as far as it's presented...and...but, I guess there was a lot of problems with it. We had meetings subsequent to that... ,
Mr. Aloot: You did state previously that you felt the summary that was ultimately adopted was not as complete as the interviews...
Mr. Sinclair: My basic concern if I can put it simply enough, which I can, but whatever was left was accurate, too. 0.K. The i
hardest thing was to keep track because of the changing, to make sure, and I think Mr. Cummings was interested in
i.
that, too, 0.K. I mean, he knew and that's w'hy we were talking, you know, all the time and I was in there, he said, "Is this right?," you know, and I.said, "That's right." Just didn't want to make a point of that, you know, if you'd been reviewing and rewriting which you said something more than right. I was trying to ensure that whatever was said was right, and the rest of it I figured, well, I'll just stick that in my personal files and go about my business. That was my only real concern--to make sure we didn't get caught with anything that was, you know, wasn't accurate, wasn't the way we saw it. That's just part of the asterisk thing; that's what I meant to tell you. .I got off that but I put the asterisks in there, and put the dates and indicated as a footnote that those reinterviews were done in August only to save us from getting any criticism or backlash that we had been...either from anybody that for one reason or another would find have found out that we were out there doing a. lot of work unaccounted for, undocumented, at some late date. You know, just the image is terrible, i forget image, just deal with the facts that we had it all documented and we had a complete record. Before that report was sent over to reproduction, when I went in Mr. Cummings wasn't in the office but Mr. Messenger was, deputy... assistant director for Audits who acted as the deputy, and I told him that we did it. I said, " Hey, look, just for accuracy sake to make sure that the record is fully reflected the asterisk was changed and done as a result of the trip out. 0.K. My feelings are that I probably would have told Jim Cummings that, too.
Mr. Aloot: Did Mr. Cummings ever mention those asterisks to you later on?
4 Mr. Sinclair': No, I say that now; you know, I don't know why. I don't know why I didn't bring it up to him probab.y I should have gone in and said, " Hey, look ..." before that thing went out because it went to the printers to be
, done then it came back and I guess I was just under the assumption that they had looked at it if there was any issue about it we could have resolved it but that was the only thrust about it to get that thing to reflect what actually happened and, I don't know, it got a little confusin~g because the reports actually signed out the 10th, the 7th?
Mr. Aloot: The 7th.
Mr. Sinclair: 0.K. The report wasn't dene on the 7th. The memo was presigned to send it out because I sent that report over to reproduction on the 10th. That was just expediency I think to get the transmittal...
Mr. Aloot: Find you question?
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Judge Hoyt: I don't have one. I think this answered the question.
Mr. Alcot: At this point I think I've exhausted It is possible that I or other members of the team my develop additional questions in this area of interest.
We may want to get back to it.
Mr. Sinclair: That's fine.
Judge Hoyt: Yes, you will be available? You're not going away 4 any time soon?
Mr. Sinclair: On travel and things like that -- next week I will be in Oakland.
Judge Hoyt: Very well, that's it.
Mr. Aloot: I think we'll terminate now and if we identify any other areas we'll oe getting back to you.
Judge Hoyt: We would like to keep that option open with you, Mr. Sinclair.
-Mr. Sinclair: 0.K. That's fine. .
Judge Hoyt: If in the course of reviewing notes, or papers, or calendars that you mentioned earlier you come across any thing that may be pertinent to the questions that have been asked here, we would appreciate a call to either Mr. Alcot's office or mine and we would like to talk with you about that again in the event that you do have something of that nature.
1 Mr. Sinclair: 0.K. that's fine. At this point I'm not sure, you know, I say I'm probably going to be off on the dates somewhat but that's about the best that I can remember and I'm sure from the questioning I do have a
, lot of dates written down. I'm not sure I'll come up with any that's real discrepant.
Judge Hoyt: Perhaps suggest to you that you do check your calendar just to be sure.
Mr. Sinclair: 0.K. fine.
Judge Hoyt: And we'd appreciate that. Thank you. That concludes all the matter recorded on this tape.
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