ML20150C258
| ML20150C258 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Wolf Creek  |
| Issue date: | 06/27/1986 |
| From: | Carol Hill AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20150C176 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-87-800 NUDOCS 8803180102 | |
| Download: ML20150C258 (94) | |
Text
,
o ORIGINAL f
UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION IN THE MATTER OF: DOCKET NO:
INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEW Of Charles Hill TAKEN BY: Donald D. Driskill !
Senior Investigator
- e. ...
Office of Investigations NRC - Region IV ,')N'D I LOCATION: PAGES:
2-93 inb:mation in this record vas deletd DATE: June 27, 1986 M3UM in a:c:rdan:e with the eda gNY% ^
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D O N O T 7. "w; O S ~c f
ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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Official Reportm q
444 North Capitol Street ,i
[486 -004 washington. D.C. 20001 a:::n j N '
pgt: ,,[ _ C? k E'0 2:0) 8803100102 000314 NAT1oNwTot covtuct G3 00 #
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, 2 DO NOT JiSCLCa.
( 1 MR. DRISKILL: Okay. For the record, this 2 is an interview of Charles C. Hill 3
4
)
5 Present at this interview are Mr. Bill and represe.nting 6 the NRC, myself, Donald D. Driskill.
7 As agreed, this interview is being 8 transcribed by court reporter, Chris Smith. The subject 9 matter of this interview concerns the Quality First 10 program at the Wolf Creek Generating Station, Burlington, 11 Kansas.
12 Mr. Hill, would you please stand and raise 13 your right hand.
14 lBbSLES C,_ BILL, 15 being first duly sworn, was examined and testified as :
16 f oll ows : +
17 E5b51Bb2105 '
l 18 By_534_DEISEJLL:
l i 19 0 Chip, what is your current job title? -
20 A I am currently a Director of Field Services l 21 22 0 And how long have you been employed by 23 A Approximately two years.
24 Q You were previously employed by the Kansas 25 Gas and Electric Quality First program, is that not b,7C- SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (619) ?A7-04A4
o 3
1 correct?
{'
2 A I worked in that program. My actual 3 employer there was Nova Power Company.
4 Q And what time period were you employed 5 there?
6 A Approximately the first pa r t of March '84 7 through the last week of September '84 during the initial 8 startup of the program, of the 01 program.
9 Q Nere you initially involved in the startup 10 of the program?
11 A Yeah. Part of my responsibilities for over 12 the, say, the first month or so was to work with the 13 supervisor of the program, Owen Thero, T-h-e-r-o, 14 and develop procedures and miscellaneous techniques 15 required to implement the program.
16 Q So, it was basically you and Thero involved 17 in developing the procedures used by the 01 program in 18 its initial --
19 A That's correct. -
20 0 Has KG&E management at all involved in the 21 ' preparation of these procedures?
22 A They had approval responsibility for the 23 procedure for the program. The original construction of
. 24 the program was, came out of an event that had to do with 25 some Daniel inspectors. I think they called them the SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989
e . . . . -
4 f 1 Daniel 6, or something like that, in regard to EVAC, HVAC 2 work.
3 The utility had received allecations through 4 an intervenor group that things were bad, and they went 5
about performing their in-house investigations, talking 6 to the people, the investigators, in this case, and 7 working with them to determine the facts of the case.
8 And finally, they were successful in 9 demonstrating that there were misunderstandings involved 10 with the inspectors rather than a great deal of problem 11 with the actual hardware.
12 They did, in fact, have to do a lot of
( 13 hardware repairs, but the, the gist of it was that it l 14 came out to be pretty beneficial f or the utility, and l
l 15 that, from what I understand, was the germ that got them 16 thinking about implementing the 01 program.
17 Once they got going with the idea, Owen 16 pursued that with Bill Rudolph, who was at that time the 19 QA manager at Nolf Creek. And the two of them, again, as
~
20 I understand it -- I wasn't directly party here -- but l 21 history has it that they worked with Grant and Koester to
^
22 get the initial concept and then the initial approval to 23 go ahead with the program. <
24 0 Okay. Initially, when you were setting this 25 program up, who was the individual with oversight, direct SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
6 --
4
{ 1 oversight over the program?
2 A At first it was Bill Rudolph. The program 3 reported to the QA manager, Bill Rudolph, and later, it 4 was determined that there was a conflict, so, owen as 5 lead of the program, responsible party f or the program, 6 then reported directly to Dick Grant.
7 0 Nho is?
8 A Who was the corporate QA manager. He was at 9 that time.
10 Q How much later was this after, say, after, 11 say, the initiation of the program?
12 A I'm guessing a little bit here, but I think
( 13 it was probably in the June time f rame when that c ame 14 out. He had eome initial investigation work that pointed 15 toward the QA organization as being at f ault, and it was 16 decided -- I don't really remember.
, 17 It sticks in my mind that it was kind of a 18 stormy decision process, but that, for the betterment of 19 the program, that instead of reporting to the QA group, 20 the program would report to the same level that all other 21 programs under Quality reported to.
l 2 22 So, and I think that happened about June of 23 '84 is when that change came about.
. 24 0 Nhen you say there were some problems
(- 25 initially, were they problems with Rudolph not wanting to SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
e - . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6
( 1 admit that his own people --
2 A Right.
3 0 -- may have erred in some f ashion?
4 A Nell, I think there's a little bit of that.
5 Plus Rudolph is, my characterization, the type of person 6 that is very territorial, and likes to keep things under 7 control, so to speak.
8 He was aware that there were some 9 dif ficulties in the QA department, and is a lot nicer if 10 you have tight control over that than if you don't. So, 11 I think that the combination there, one is, that being 12 parochial over the issues and over the program, and then 13 his apparent uneasy feeling about the way the QA group 14 was running combined to have him want to keep control of 15 it.
16 Q Basically, then, he didn't want to advertise 17 his own in-house investigation problems by having the 18 investigation point out shortcomings?
19 A He definitely didn't want to do that.
20 Q Nas there any interf erence by Rudolph with 21 ~ respect to the reports or the conduct of the 22 investigations that were perf ormed relative to these 23 various matters?
24 A Probably, yes. To a certain degree, that 25 probably the first thing, and as I remember now, the SMIT 8 REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
l 7
i l yvw tii2j ,hj ; ] I l' ,r a i v ., ; . _ . ,.
1 thing that kicked this whole deal in, we need to get out 1
('
! 2 from reporting to him, was the case involving the -- last 3 name was I can't -- I think his first name was 4 It's one of the first two or three cases that came 5 in the door.
6 Q Bow do you spell that?
7 A Anyway, what happened there 8 was that --
l 9 Q Excuse me. Off the record.
10 (of f-the-record discussion.)
11 A Looking at the first five in both the BOTS.
12 l ooks like it might be a L_
( 13 Q But basically, it was in that --
14 A It was in --
15 0 --
initial --
! 16 A It was in the first little bit. I think it i
17 was the first three or four, that one looked like it was 18 number five, but the first three or f our files that were 19 opened.
i 20 Anyway, he was suspected of, by the Q A side 21 'of the houae, of being a person that was going to take, 22 say, Pearl Barbor information to the intervenor group or 23 who knows what.
24 And somehow or another, the QA manager got 25 the bug that he was taking material off site, drawings or ew,-o o c nn o - e ue incuev tat u og7.nogo
e s 8
, 1 notes and things of that sort, and, in fact, he was
(
2 leaving site, that's why he came through the program.
3 Nell, as he was in having his interview --
4 Q Exit interview?
5 A Exit interview with the, at that time Owen 6 and I performed, were performing the exit interview.
7 Later, we f ound out that the OA manager had had the 8 security guards go out to the parking lot and go through 9 his car, I think it was a pickup. I don't remember much 10 more than that.
11 They went through the car, got what they 12 supposed to be KG&E notes, procedures, things of that 13 sort, and brought them back to the guard house, somewhere
(
14 on the property, and shredded all of the inf ormation.
15 Anyway, that was hushed up. I think it went 16 to roster, who was legal counsel for KGEE, and it just --
17 that aspect of it just kind of died.
18 That incident was a precipitating event f or 19 us to want to get out from under Rudolph in a reporting 20 function. He didn't like the action he took.
21 Ne didn't like the method that the follow-up 22 on it was handled. Ne didn't feel that it was 23 appropriate for the program to report to his office.
24 That, aside from the fact that there's always the 25 conflict of interest in there.
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
9
{ 1 Q You did not recognize this conflict of 2 interest prior to this thing occurring?
3 A It was recognized and discussed, but there 4 wasn' t any motivation f or, to -- for management to 5 f ollow-up on it. Rudolph was a golden boy, so to speak, 6 in the eyes of Grant and -- well, maybe not so much in 7 Grant, but definitely had the support of upper 8 management.
I 9 So, you know, he could -- it's one of those 10 perspectives where he could do no wrong type of thing, 11 and this is a Quality type of activity, and he's the 12 Quality manager, so he ought to do it.
( 13 This incident helped focus the fact that it 14 wouldn't be real good to have the program reporting to 15 him.
16 Q Did you recognize in the early stages when 3
17 you were involved in the preparation of the procedural 1
18 aspects of the 01 program and development of a reporting i
19 chain that, did you recognize that KGEE management was in 20 any way trying to develop a program which would be used 21 'to cover up problems or influence the direction of 22 investigations, or did it appear to be .a program which l 23 was going to be allowed to independently run its course 24 and do a good job?
25 A Yeah, the latter there. The initial SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
10 1 perception that I had, Don, on that, was they were truly 2 interested in doing it. And they were coming from the 3 point that, look how great this previous exercise worked, 4 and how much trouble it can keep us out of.
5 And at this time, GAP was starting to come 6 into the picture down there, and they felt that it was to 7 their benefit to talk with exiting employees to acquire 8 their concerns so they wouldn't have to take them to the 9 NRC or they wouldn't take them to an outside 10 organization.
11 I think that is truly what their initial 12 intents were. I f eel strongly that once the program got
( 13 rolling, and the number of concerns started to mount up.
14 that they, at that time, began to get concern or have 15 concern over the program because things were surfacing 16 that were not easy to take care of.
17 I think a good example of what they expected 18 from the program is that initially it was staffed with 19 three people and a secretary. I think when I left there, 20 there were probably thirty-five or f orty people involved 21 in the program. Maybe not that many. Say, twenty to 22 twenty-five people involved in the program.
23 And, in fact, midway through -- and I think 24 this was middle June, July time frame, and we, of course,
. 25 recognized that we had a backlog that the three of us SMITH R E PORTI NG AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
4 11 !
l 1 were going to get killed with.
[
2 And at that time, we still were reporting to 3 Rudolph, and we convinced him that, hey, we need to get 4 more people in here to get these things investigated, and 5 that process was initiated.
6 0 This was what time frame?
7 A I think late June, June, July, in there 8 sometime. Again, it's kind of fuzzy. It might have even 9 been earlier thank that.
10 Q You had already developed through your exit 11 interviews and allegations coming to you from various 12 sources, including your hot line, you had already 13 developed a quite large backlog of things to investigate?
14 A Ye r.h . In view of having only three, three 15 people dedicated to that operation -- I think, really, we 16 had four, because Owen was there and there was 17 and myself and the secretary.
18 But between people exiting -- we were 19 starting to go'into a ramp-down in construction 20 activities, and between just .the number of people that 21 'were flowing through the trailer and the investigations 22 that started to come on the books, it was real clear that 23 we would have been there f or five years with just the
. 24 f our of us having to work the load.
25 It was not uncommon i*n a lot of cases to run SMITH REPORTING AG EN CY (615) 267-0989 [, 7/tq q q
~
12 fif ty to seventy people through that trailer in a day
{ l 2 through the exit interview process. And, of course, when 3 you're doing that, you can't investigate.
4 So, we -- Owen initiated the search or 5 the -- yeah, the search f or more people. And, in f act, 6 at that time we probably interviewed over half of the 7 people that finally came on board that were there when 8 Chuck Snyder took over the operation.
9 Q Nell, with the exception of the initial 10 problem you had with Rudolph --
11 A Nhat was the next probl em?
12 Q sith the exception of that, did you have any 13 , other -- did you have any other probleus of management 14 interference in the first three or four months?
15 A Yeah. Again, the time frame is cicudy, but 16 I think definitely we did. Where things really started i
.7 to take a turn f or the worst was over the, what did they 18 call them, MSSNRs? That was Material Structural Steel 19 Held Rod Reports, I think.
20 Q Yes.
21 A Ne got into that, had an allegation that was 22 substantial, and if substantiated in detail, would have 23 put their entire ANS structural steel welding program in, 24 into an indeterminant status.
25 Ne did some initial prowling around in that SMITH RE PORTI NG AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 l
l
13 1 investigation to develop leads and what's cooking ty pes
(
2 of things, and then who was with the 3 program at that time, drew the assignment to investigate 4 those activities further.
5 To make it fairly short, we found 6 information that indicated, we f elt conclusively, that 7 their records program for structural steel was totally l
8 inadequate, and, in fact, that they couldn't demonstrate 1 4 1 9 ,through records that they erected probably fifty to 10 seventy percent of the steel at all. The records just 11 weren't adequate to be used for records in accordance 12 with AHS. -
13 0 They didn't provide the required l
l 14 traceability?
15 A They, generally, they didn't provide l 16 anything. You couldn't, you couldn't trace -- well, l
l 17 first of all, the reports were incomplete, and f orty to 18 fif ty percent cf them were j ust missing. No one could l 19 find them.
l l 20 The ones you were able to get your hands on l
l 21 'oftentimes turned out to be incomplete. The references 22 to the particular welds were inaccurate, either through 23 la ter drawing revision or just errors at the time.
24 So, you really -- I think he had a deal --
25 again, this is really trying to pull out of memory, but I SMIT 8 REPORTING AG EN CY (615) 267-0989
14 I think we had, came up with a conclusion that we had maybe 2 five to seven percent of the records that we needed in 3 the s tr u ctu ral steel area to demonstrate commitments that 4 had been made to the NRC.
5 So, this, obviously, was a big thing. At 6 this time, they are anticipating licensing, or at least 7 fuel load in the October, November time f rame of '84, and 8 now all of a sudden, there's this big monkey wrench in i
9 their structural steel program.
10 That incident was elevated quickly to 11 Daniels site management, senior site management. Dick 12 Grant for KG&E got involved with it, as did Bill Rudolph
( 13 14 and so on and so f orth.
presentistg our case.
And Mr. at the time was 15 Q Nho is Mr.
16 A Re worked for the 01 program.
17 Q Oh, okay.
18 A He -- well, he was a pretty aggressive 19 f ell ow. He's a young guy and had a lot of piss and 20 vinegar in him and not too much tact and diplomacy. And 21 it didn't take him long with the f acts that he had in 22 hand to really upset KG&E and Daniels senior management 23 pe opl e. He's a very tenacious young f ellow.
24 Be proceeded through that, sometimes under 25 the accompaniment of Owen, sometimes on his own, to SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 7.h j@tN kb
Emmmmmmmmmmmmmm I
15 1 participate in these various meetings.
2 And the outcome of that for 3 a 4
i 5 That shocked us quite a bit, and I think 6 really demonstrated quite clearly what the direction from 7 there on out was going to be with the program.
8 This was probably the first major or 9 critical issue that had been identified, and the response 10 was from where we were coming, was not one of, well, l
11 here's the pecbl em, now let's look at how big it is and 12 get our hands around it and so we can resolve it, but it l 13 was, the problem isn't there, we don't need those 14 records, we've talked about this before, so on and so 15 forth.
16 When I left, they still hadn't resolved that 17 issue. They had at that time elevated the thing, the ,
18 issue of the structural steel dwal up through Bechtel, 19 and they were going to perf orm an intensive type of 20 walk-down inside of containment, a sampling-type plan to 21 ' inspect a large number of structural steel welds, and 22 based on that sample, determine whether or not things 23 were copecetic in the structural steel weld business.
24 Again, I'm not familiar with the outcome.
% 25 obviously, since they licensed it somehow or another, SMITH REPORTING AG EN CY (615) 267-0989
~
16 1 they were able to resolve those issues.
{
2 The point remains, though, very, very 3 cl ea rly, that they were - "they" in this case being 4 Daniels and KG4E -- were completely out of compliance 5 with ANS requirements, and also with their commitments to i 6 NRC in regards to their structural steel welding program.
7 Q Are you aware as to whether KGEE may have 8 submitted a 50.55(e) notification relative to this matter ,
9 to the NRC Region IV office?
10 A I, I don't remember, Don. I know we 11 generated -- I shouldn't say I know. I think that we
! 12 generated a potential reportable f orm and kicked that ,
( 13 into the system.
- 14 Q That's the 01 program?
15 A Right, the 01 program at that time that we 16 filled out a, our, took the initiating steps to initiate l 17 a 50.55(e).
l 18 Q That would have gone to Rudolph?
l 19 A Right, that would have gone back to the QA 20 program. I don't remember what happened on that 21 particular item. That job brings back to aind another 22 thing.
23 Ne did one later on down the line af ter that 5
. 24 in regards to pipe cleanliness I can't remember for 25 sure. I think it was a pipe cleanliness stir with TMI SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
17 I where we generated a potential one, and it didn't get out 2 of the Q A of f ice. They didn't say, QA, Quality 3 Assurance, didn't say that it was a significant breakdown 4 in any of the Appendix B requirements.
5 Q Nas that the investigation that related to 6 the TMI fellow who was not actually conducting the 7 inspections of pipe cleanliness, or he was falsifying the 8 reports on?
9 A It spun out of that. It spun out of that.
10 I think we got into a deal with external stainless steel 11 pipe cleanliness in the main steam loops, and the fact 12 that TMI was not operating in such a fashion to maintain
( 13 or assure the extremely low halide concentration levels 14 that were required by spec, and TMI in this case being, I ,
15 think, Tech Metals?
16 0 Yeah.
17 A The, again, the result of that was that 18 there were halide concentrations significantly above --
J 19 we're talking f actors of a hundred above that allowed by 20 specification on the external stainless steel loops in 21 'the main steam piping in the containment. 1 22 No went around and generated or initiated 23 our 50.55(e) suggestion there, and that got hung up in 24 the QA department, didn't get out.
25 Q Essentially, they were saying it was a SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989
18 1 nonsaiety-related issue?
2 A Not so much nonsafety, but they said it 3 didn't represent a significant breakdown in Appendix B 4 requirements. I think that was their position. It's 5 loco, but that's what they were arguing.
6 Q Going back to the problem we were discussing 7 a few minutes ago, did NRC ever become aware of the 8 probl em in the --
9 A Nith the loops?
10 Q Hith the steel weld?
11 A External cleanliness?
12 Q No, not that, the issue we were dis;ussing f 13 earlier.
14 A Structural steel?
15 Q Structural steel problems.
16 A I don't know what their involvement, the 17 detail of it. I don't see any way that they wouldn't 18 have been involved in it. The issue made it to the 19 corporate level offices of KG&E, and Bechtel was 20 involved.
21 Yeah, in fact, they had a meeting up there 22 at which the NRC Region IV was in attendance where 23 Bechtel outlined the plan that they were going to use to
,. 24 correct or address the condition, so they would have been
. 25 aware of that issue, the IE groJP would have, but --
l SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989 l
i _
19 .
1 0 Who's the NRC resident inspector at that 2 time?
3 A I don't remember his name. He was a f ellow 4 that hired on, it was his first stint with the NRC and he j 5 had foruerly been out at at NPPSS in the document control 6 area, from what I understand.
7 I can't remember his name. I want to say 8 Bandy or Bundy or something like that, but I can't 9 remember his name. ,
10 Q But essentia11 , what came out of this was 11 the 01 program as.a iesult 12 of his tenacious pursuance of the issue with KG&E
( 13 management.
14 Therefore, you and owen recognized that you 15 had to handle these things a little more caref ully, at 16 least with respect to the manner in which they were 1 17 presented to management if you intended to continue with 18 the investigation or get management support in conducting 19 the investigation?
l 20 A Yeah. Let me take that in a couple of 21 parts. I feel, 22 definitely because -
l l j 23 because of that incident, or that series of incidents.
l 24 The management position that would be argued
. 25 would be that -- well, he wasis't really able to f ulfill l
i -
9 0 ra n k k ,
20 f 1 his role there.
(
2 He, like I stated earlier, was tenacious and 3 young and not real smooth at times, but those are factors 4 that, when you're discussing technical issues or 5 technical deficiencies, they really shouldn't be weighed 6 in the meeting.
7 If a problem is presented and it, indeed, is 8 a problem, management should have the sophistication to 9 resolve the issue, rather than have a meeting, you know, 10 disintegrate by refusing what's before them.
11 So, yeah, he did -- he got what we 12 considered a demotion. I don't have any idea, but
( 13 probably, I would suspect that there was no change in his 14 pay, but definitely there was a change in status.
15 Q1 at that time was a, you know, big program 6
16 on site, a lot of attention, a lot of effort on it. It 17 was a program that required you to do a lot of 18 independent work.
19 You had a substantial amount of pressure day 20 in and day out, because of the amount of work you had on 21 backlog, plus meeting duties of the day. And, generally, 22 it was a f airly prestigious job.
23 He was put back in the QA auditing group 24 where his workload probably was cut by, oh, five or six 25 fold. He would take assignments that were handed down SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
l 21 1 through the line and go out and do a surveillance here or a surveillance there. hhereas before, he was in charge 2
3 of his own activities and was in the flow or the heart of 4 the plant operations.
5 Q Not to belabor the topic relative to but who was his immediate supervisor? Nould 6 ,
7 that have been yourself or Owen?
8 A Ow e n , y e ah, at that time in Q1, Owen was his 9 immediate supervisor.
10 0 Mould Owen have given him a good evaluation 11 f or the work he had done?
12 A I -- he would have given him a good evaluation along the lines of what he had done. Like I 13 141 said earlier, was young, so he would have had less 15 than outstanding ranks in thoroughness and so on and so 16 forth.
17 But, again, I think that shouldn't'be 18 cont a;ed with this particular instance where he had, in 19 fact, done an outstanding job in collecting the data.
20 Q I see.
21 'A I worked 'with him to get his going on the 22 case f airly extensively, brought his up to speed on and 23 traceability requirements and so on and so f orth, 24 kind of watched him on this thing. I didn't have a lead 25 capacity over him, but was, you know, helping him along 7 D//~~'
anice SMITH REPORTIDG AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
r l
22 f
- 1 here and there.
2 Q Did, to your knowledge, Owen have any 3 discussions with Rudolph or anyone else in management 4h relative to moving 5 A Owen was extremely upset over it, and I --
6 again, it's fuzzy, but I think tha 7 Grant. Grant said Owen 8 found out about it, and when he found out, he was very, 9 very upset over it.
10 Bis -- I think I -- gosh, it's a while back.
11 I was either present or was very well brief ed on a 12 meeting that Owen had with Grant and Rudolph over that 13 issue, and the outcome of which was, well, 14 ff the job.
15 0 Again, I may have asked you this bef ore, 16 what time frame was this, June, July of '847 17 A I -- y e ah, I'd say in that time frame.
18 Checking personnel records would be pretty easy to 19 establish that.
20 0 And going back to my long question a f ew 21 minutes ago, did you and Owen perceive this to be a move 22 by management which you f elt might inhibit your 23 independence in the future?
24 A Yeah. I -- it was perceived that way. I 25 personally thought it was kind of humorous, the reason i
. . . . . - - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... .... Oh nc Nr/
23 1 being that the facts were so cl ea r, and for anyone to 2 even think that they could argue against them was 3 ludicrous.
4 The case tha- had put together was, for 5 the most part, air tight. You know, there was a couple 6 little misses here and there, but it was a very clear 7 case of nonconf ormance with requirements, and at a very 8 significant, of a very significant magnitude.
9 That, obviously, tipped their hand. My 10 first indication was, really, what went on in the 11 case, which was up f ront. I think that was in May, maybe 12 April, end of April.
( 13 But that attitude gave me my first glimpse 14 of, hey, well, this isn't right, and if people were as l
l 15 interested as they say they were in fixing things and 16 resolving issues, that wouldn't have happened. This 17 confirmed that feeling, the deal vit N 18 And, y eah, I think at that time, it was 19 fairly clear that management was not real friendly 1
i 20 towards the program. As the number of concerns grew, l
21 they became less and less friendly.
22 I remember a meeting before left us 23 there where Grant had come down, and we had been accused
,. 24 by, I think the construction department, it was either 25 the construction department or the startup department, of sme es-tim Ac tm < 615, 4%t, n,po#ao
. 24 1 using Gestapo tactics in our questioning, and we had 2 quite a discussion over that.
3 I remember Grant said, said to me that, 4 ' hell, you know, you go after these guys," he said, 5 'you're asking them these hard questions, and you don't 7
6 fill them in on what's going on, and you just start 7 asking the questions," so on and so f orth, 'and they're 8 afraid."
9 And we got into quite a discussion about 10 they don't have any reason to be afraid unless they're 11 hiding something, and we got into a very loud discussion 12 over those issues.
13 The fact that if these people think we' re 14 using Gestapo tactics, my position was that, then they've 15 got something they are hiding, and he didn't like that.
16 Be didn't care for that at all.
17 So, that was a -- that was another 18 indication to me that, as the problems grew in number, 19 that -- and then they were, essentially, through that 20 conversation and a f ew others, were trying to limit or at 21 least get some bounds on us in our questioning techniques 22 and investigative techniques.
23 As f ar as I was concerned, from me 24 personally, it had no effects. I think f or -- and f or 25 Owen, it didn't have an effect on him f rom the point of SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989
25
/ 70 1 view of not asking questions. V 2 I think it adversely affected 3 to the point where, f or quite a while af ter that, it was 4 bard to get to really go out and do an investigation, 5 per se.
\
6 Q What wa capac._/ at that time?
7 A was on contract to 8 general counsel's office out of Nichita, and -- yeah, 9 hichita, and had come into the program with the purported 10 reason of being the person that would take care of drugs 11 and intimidation and harassment and things of that 12 nature. And, anyway, that's what he was there for.
( 13 0 So, you f eel like these discussions with 14 Grant relative to the manner in which you interviewed 15 people and so on would have discouraged 16 A That's my, yeah, that's my personal opinion.
l 17 I -- again, he had a saying that, "Well, if they want a l
18 blue suit, you give them a blue suit. "
19 And that, as I remember it, there were a lot 20 more of those blue suits sayings coming out af ter that 21 discussion than bef ore.
l 22 It's difficult. You' re dealing, as you're l
23 aware, you're dealing with issues that are controversial, 24 issues where people are accused of lying or at least 25 doing inappropriate activities that are embarrassing, so SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) s,xm/en 267-0989
. - - - _ - - - - . . - - _ _ . - - _ - . . - ~ . -- -.-- _ . . _ _ . . - . -
l !
l .
26 !
r i f 1 on and so f orth, and you have to ask h6td questions. And i l l 2 if you don't ask the hard questions, you don't find out l
3 what's going on.
l 4 It's really a lot easier not to ask those 5 questions. And if senior management is sitting there 6 saying you're questioning these people too hard or you're 7 too severe in your questioning, you know, the guy takes 8 that direction and backs off.
9 Q Let me go back and ask you a couple of 10 questions relative to some of the things that we've 11 discussed. .
12 Nith respect to being 13 do you recall any memorandums 14 or documentation that was generated as a result of that 15 nove which might have explaine 16 17 A No, I'm not aware of any of the paperwork at 18 all. I think something -- he got a normal transfer paper i
19 or talked a deal with Grant or the persor.nel guy there on a
20 site at the time, but I don't remember anything.
21 Q Mith respect to these meetings that you've 22 described like with Grant relative to the alleged Gestapo l 23 tactics and so on, was there ever any documentation ,
l I 24 generated? i 25 A No.
a 1
-n h b* I i
-- - -- - . - . , .w-. -
27 1 0 Did you prepare a memo to the file that 2 says, yeah, we've been in a meeting with Grant discussing 3 this?
4 A No. Grant had a habit early on in the 5 program to drop by, oh, maybe once a week and sit down 6 for twenty and thirty minutes and, ' Gentlemen, how is it 7 going?" ,
l 8 There's also quite a bit of traffic from 9 other utilities through the program, and he'd walk the 10 people in through the Q1 f acility to show them what it 11 was like, this, that and the other, and he'd sit down and 12 talk with us then. It was just one of those normal,
( 13 normt1 meetings that occurred.
14 Owen may have generated a meno on it, but I 15 didn't, and I'm not aware of any that were generated over 16 that. I think that if jogged, Owen would remember that 17 event, al so, or that meeting.
18 It really stuck in my mind, because I got 19 into it, to some degree, with Grant over his concepts of 20 questioning techniques. I took it as a pretty severe 21 ' personal affront, you know, when someone -- you hire me 22 to do a job, and then tell me I can't use the tools that 8
23 go along with the job to do it. I was upset over it.
24 It's very clear in my mind.
. 25 0 Was there a bottom line with regard to the SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
. 28 1 discussion on that particular day, any agreements made?
(
2 A Not really. Grant said, "You guys just have 3 got to take it easy," and we said, "Sure."
4 The intent there, at least on my part was, I 5 was going to do my job, and I didn't feel that I had been 6 out of line or had been practicing Gestapo tactics. Ne 7 were asking questions, and they were pointed questions, 8 did you do this or didn't you, and that type of a thing, 9 which to me, didn't require any thing el se.
10 Owen was my superior there, and I really 11 didn't care what Grant had to do say. I didn't work f or 12 Grant. You know, in the organizational chain I did, but
( 13 I didn't directly. As long as my superior is not 14 displeased with my work, I, you know, I could care what 15 the corporate boys say.
16 0 Did, after that point in time, did Owen feel 17 that his job may be threatened if you continued to --
l 18 A Yeah.
19 Q -- u s e t h e s am e --
20 A At that time, I don't think it was the case.
21 It was after the fact, we both thought it was kind of 22 humorous. You know, it's the typical comedy picture of a 23 man that knows nothing about QA being the Corporate QA 24 Manager, Jr whatever, Corporate QA Director, I guess, for this utility. His very attitude reeks of non-QA. And, 25 SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
. 29
( 1 so, that becomes humorous when you're down in the 2 trenches. .
3 I, again, don't think Owen, and you can ask 4 him, of course, but definitely I didn't think at that 5 time that Grant had the stamina or courage or ability to 6 try to interf ere with the program. And I still don't 7 think that he was the final person.
8 He portrayed the picture of a pawn. He 10 d way 11 of getting along with people, and I feel was put in that 12 position as a yes-man.
13 Be'd been out at Palo Verde and had been, 14 let's say, management f riendly in the quality area. I 15 never saw a decision that he made. The decisions. wer e 16 made below him or above him. Be seemed like he was 17 constantly in a crossfire of mistakes. Didn't have, 13 didn't have a good comprehension of the program.
19 Q Nas his immediate supervisor Koester?
20 A I don't -- I think at one time that may have 21 'been the case. I wasn't really that f amiliar with people 22 up above. I know Koester would come to the site and meet 23 with Grant, but I wasn't -- I don't remember the 24 organisational chart.
25 I would suspect it would be Koester or l
l {S 4 l
l SMITH R E PORTI NG AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 1
l
. 30 I perhaps someone above Koester, because he, being the
(. 2 corporate manager, would have to report to a fairly high
! 3 level.
4 MR. DRISKILL: Let's just take a quick 5 break. The time is 10: 05.
6 (Short recess.)
7 MR. DRISKILL: Back on the record. The time 8 is 10:20.
9 BY.BBa.DBISEILL:
10 o he've taken few minutes to get some 11 refreshments and discuss some records, including a 01 12 document I have here, which is an organizational chart 13 which shows R. M. Grant as answering to or being 14 supervised by G. L. Koester, which was one of the last I
15 things I asked you.
16 A Right. Of course, the Quality P!'at 17 manager, who is shown on this chert as C. A. Snyder, this 18 chart is dated 9/14/84.
19 0 hith regard to the 01 program, it was 20' originally just a few of you, like three investigators 21 and a secretary?
22 A Right.
23 0 Yourself, Thero and
^
c :: gow. con...n.,oo..i.th.t. ,ou 7D/ b z;/ 6 SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267 0989
31 1 said that f rom its very inception, you began to develop a 2 very large backlog of investigations. How long after 3 that did you begin hiring additional investigators?
4 A I think -- again, it's fuzzy, Don, but I 5 think that we were starting to interview people towards 6 the end of May, the first part of June to come in as 7 investigators.
8 Q Did you have approval to hire some?
9 A Yeah. The -- it was -- at that time Rudolph 10 was still in control. Yeah. Okay. Rudolph was in 11 control. The program -- Owen reported to Rudolph, and he 12 had arranged f or various people to come to us through
( 13' diff erent shops, and I think some from Bechtel and the 14 like.
15 So, he had approved that. The approval for 16 that, more than likely, would be would have been at Grant 9
17 level or hire.
l 18 Q How many people were you going to be allowed 19 to hire?
20 A I think there was a discussion at the time 21 that we needed to get between fif teen and twenty
, 22 investigators on board to work the load we were getting.
23 he had made some projections based on the 24 number of allegations made, the number of people that had
-. 25 been through, and then compared that to the number of l
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
32 1 people that we had to go through in the ramp-down 2 process, and figured that we needed about twenty people.
3 Q So, Rudolph and Grant at least were 4 cooperating to the extent they allowed you to hire people 5 to do the job?
6 A At that time, yeah.
7 Q Did you hire that many people prior to your 8 leaving?
9 A I think -- and again, it's fuzzy, but I 10 think we probably had about eight to ten people on board.
11 Well, when I left, there was a f ull complement, he 12 probably had fif teen to twenty new people hired.
( 13 What happened is, as they came in, I assumed 14 the lead capacity f or investigators, and at one time I 15 think anybe had f our or five, maybe six people working 16 f or me doing investigations on stuf f that I had been lO 17 18 assigned to1C*70 him, and I think do. Bhad a couple o as still doing his own stuf f.
19 But, anyway, at that time, we got a ringer 20 in the group, and we called him Bechtel Bob. I've been 21 trying to think of his last name, and I can't, but he was 22 later the investigations manager.
23 0 I've got a list of names here that I was 24 given somewhere along there of individuals who previously 25 worked there. It might help refresh your memory.
&,, 7M 7 0 SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
33 1 A Re's on this chart here as the
('
2 investigations lead. This chart is the Q1 organization 3 chart dated 9/14. He shows here as the lead for the 4 investigators, R. L. Scott.
5 Mr. Scott came in out of the blue. He, Owen 6 and I had interviewed, and p rticipated in some of 7 the interview processes, actual on-sight interviews of 8 all the people that we hired.
9 he felt that resume review, which was the 10 normal practice, was not sufficient, due to the type of 11 job that we were working with.
12 So, we had in-person interviews with
( 13 everyone that we hired, and with the exception of this 14 Bob Scott.
15 Bob Scott appears one day. He's introduced 16 to us by Dick Grant, and with raving reviews and a resume 17 and says that, you know, he knows Bob and has worked with 18 Bob and so on and so f orth, and he's going to be a great 19 contribution to the program.
20 nell, Bob was assigned to work under me at 21 that time, and my -- af ter working with him probably for 22 about a week, he was assigned a case to work, and his 23 perf ormance on that case was very poor.
24 De didn't have an ability to define the 25 pertinent issuess in the case, and he was very, very
,oer SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 l
34
( l prone to getting documentation that bad a signature on it 2 that said Part A is okay, f or an example, and here's the 3 signature, and that signature is in accordance with 4 procedure. He would then accept that document at face 5 value, as a rebuttal, so to speak, to an allegation that 6 was made.
- . 7 That's not the way we did business.
8 Generally, if the allegation was a part was bad, we'd 9 look at the par t. If a program is bad, we look at the 10 program. We would not just collect the supporting 11 documentation, but also any documentation that appeared 12 to be poor.
13 I had a couple of discussions with owen when
- 14 this guy came in, because I was upset, one, because we
- 15 hadn't interviewed him, and I wouldn't have hired him, if 16 w t- had interviewed him.
I 17 So, I went to Owen over it, and I drew him l 18 as a guy in my group, and I was upset that he was in my 19 group. So, I discussed that briefly with owen, and it 1
i 20 turns out that the word on the street was that this guy i 21 'was being becught in to replace Owen. This was grapevine 22 talk.
23 He sure couldn't investigate anything, and
- 24 hs had all the background of being a rollover type of guy 25 f rom the point of view of investigations, and his initial SMITH RE PORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
35 1 work under me indicated that, yeah, in f act, he's typical
(
2 Bechtel QA, which is rollover QA.
3 He didn't have any particular area of 4 expertise. He was not real technically oriented, wasn't 10 5 real program oriented, and looked to me pretty much to be 6 like a ringer.
7 And the fact that Grant had brought him in 8 out of the blue and had by-passed our normal interview 9 process that we had done for the group puts some 10 suspicions there.
11 Anyway, he -- it was suspected, then, and it 12 was going through the grapevine that this Bechtel Bob was
( 13 brought in to replace Owen.
j 14 So, things started to fly quite a bit there.
15 I think owen had a couple of conversations with Grant 16 over this guy, because the -- as time went on, it becama l 17 apparent that this guy was, he was chowing down with 14 Grant, was with Grant after hours and this kind of thing, 19 which is, there's nothing wrong with that, of course, but 20 it's unusual f or a ground level investigator to be 21 horsing around with the corporate director of QA. That's 22 not normal protocol.
23 So, Owen, at one -- at one time there, after I
l 24 this had gone on a little while af ter he had been there a
( - 25 while, had gone to Grant -- I was with him. I don't SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
. 36 1 remember what we were doing, but we were over in the 2 Admin. Building.
3 I was with owen and Owen put it to Grant, he 4 said, " Are you guys planning on putting Bob over in 5 charge of the program?'
6 And Dick Grant pulls the Bible out of his 7 desk drawer, puts it on the table, he puts his hand on 8 the Bible, he says, he says, "I'm swearing on this Bible 9 that I would never do that, I want you in charge of that 10 program,' so on and so forth.
11 I think this was the date, as I recall, was 12 the 20th or the 21st, and I don't remember the month, but 13 two days later out comes an org. chart dated the previous
(
14 day of that meeting with Chuck 5 yder in there as the 15 boss, where Chuck Snyder, it reflects it was similar to 16 this 9/14 org. chart here.
17 So, Grant was sitting there swearing on the 18 Bible, telling Owen and myself that, no, we want you to 19 remain as the lead of the program and all these kinds of 20 good things, when, in fact, an org. chart had been put 21 out the previous day, it wasn't out f or distribution yet, 22 but it had been put out the previous day indicating that 23 not only was Owen not going to be in charge of the 24 program, but was going to be -- I think -- yeah, he was
(' . 25 going to be now the lead over just the interview group.
(
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 i
37 i So, I think that characterized Grant's 2 intelrity to a "T,' and also his inability generally to 3 make any kind of an intelligent decision or in any way 4 relate honestly to the people that worked f or him or the 5 people that he works with.
6 From that point in time, it was all 7 downhill. Chuck Snyder took over and did so with a 8 vengence, so to speak. I remember, again, I don't 9 remember the exact day that that happened or the month, 10 even, but I remember the initial meeting we had.
11 And he -- this is remembering now in an era 12 of where some intimidation and harassment has been
( 13 expressed, so on and so forth, but his opening meeting to 14 the whole group was we're here to work together and that 15 kind of stuff, and the closing statement was something to 16 the effect that you guys are going to do it my way or 17 you're going to learn it to do it my way, something like 18 that, and if you can't do it my way, then there isn't any r
- 19 place f or you here in the program.
20 That might not sound too surprising, but, l
21 again, Snyder's background was that of a construction i 22 bum, construction superintendent, pusher in the 23 construction process. And his -- he came up, f rom what I 24 understand, anyway, through KG&E working with the 25 ' construction hands.
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
, 38 1 And I think he'd be good at that, you know.
(
2 He's a dynamo, charging guy, but has, at least in the 3 brief experience I had, I suspect I was there maybe a 4 month after he came in, has no concept of program process 5 control, control techniques or any of the attributes that 6 are required to successfully perform assurance functions 7 that were necessary in the Q1 program.
8 0 At the time Snyder came in, did either you 9 or Owen know that a supervisor was going to be placed in 10 the program over Owen?
11 A This was announced to us -- no, we didn't.
12 This was announced to us, like, say, on a Monday morning
( 13 or Tuesday morning or something like that, and he was in 11 14 place that afternoon.
15 So, it might have been the f ollowing day, but there was no discussion with owen about it. In fact, 16 i
17 you know, I think it was the previou2 date of this l 18 happening, Grant sitting there with his hand on the Bible 19 saying Owen is going to run the program forever, you 20 know.
21 So, it was a shock. Ne thought at the time l
22 that this Bechtel Bob was going to be the guy that would l
23 take over the program, and the grapevine didn't have l
. .4 anything in it at that time as I remember about Snyder 25 even being around.
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
~.
39 i
1 He was working f or Gary Fouts over in l
(
2 construction, or was maybe not working for routs but was 3 doing construction-type activities, and it was just 4 amazing that KGEE would pull him into the, into the 5 Quality world, so to speak.
6 0 Had, to your knowledge, Owen been having 7 some problems with Grant or Rudolph or someone like that 8 which would have in some way justified bringing a 9 supervisor in?
10 A % hell, there were problems with Rudolph over 11 the ) case, because we called Rudolph on the carpet 12 over that and got his side of the story. And he 13 maintains that, yes, he had conversations with the people 14 at Arizona Power, but that he didn't say not, don't hire 15 this guy.
I 16 0 Did you run a second case relative to 17 on blackball?
18 A Maybe we did, because I didn't see it in the 19 first ones, but that sight have been a later case in the 20 file, because it came back, it should be referenced 21 inside the flies, one should reference the other. I 22 think I remember those internal file references.
23 But, a nyw a y, Rudolph was, in my opinion,
.. 24 carried. That was one of the few times Owen and I l
25 interviewed him over that. I think Cven and I did or l 6,7 c v 70, pga4, SMITH REPORTING AG EN CY (615) 267-0989 l
40 (1641 1 maybe nd I.
2 But in regards to that blackballing 3 incident, we interviewed him, and more or less repeated 4 the statemente that we had presented to the APS people, 5 and that was the first time that I had ever reen Rudolph 6 show visible signs of losing his cool, so to speak.
7 He appeared to be scared, he flushed, I can 8 see it today, his veins were pumping. He was a slender, 9 tall fellow, and the veins were pumping around on the 10 side of his check, the side of his neck, rather, and he 11 was very visibly upset, like a kid with his hand in the 12 cookie jar, so to speak.
13 But that ev e nt preceded this, and 14 obviously -- well, not obviously, but I think probably 15 was the most serious thing to Rudolph directly that came 16 out of the whole program.
17 Q has Rudolph still over the program at that 18 ti'e?
19 A I don't remember. I think -- I think not.
?P 20 I think that's the event -- I don't 21 the8 event, Temember the time f rame, but th event is what 22 proceeded the deal with the truck where they broke into 23 the truck and took his papers, proceeded Rudolph. I
.. 24 think this particular, at the time that this blackball
. 25 came in, that Rudolph was no longer in charge of the 6,7e
- 7D SMITH REPORTItG AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
. 41 1 program.
2 I think at that time Owen was reporting 3 directly to Grant, or maybe even -- yeah, I think it was 4 to Grant, maybe to Koester, but I don't remember the 5 reporting. I'm pretty sure that at that time we were not 6 reporting to Rudolph anymore because he was surprised 7 about it. Anyway, that would be one thing, one incident.
8 of course, the structural steel weld record 9 incident was another one that was very unpopular. He 10 also had a bundle of complaints that we were starting to 11 substantiate on the startup program, which was very --
12 well, what should I say?
( 13 Q Righ visibility?
14 A Yeah, it had extremely high visibility, but 15 also extreme potential danger to our f uel load date. The 16 startup operation was, at that time, still trying to 17 figure out how to flush pipes, had a lot of pre-op work 18 to do.
19 And what our initial results were showing 20 was that they lost control of j ust about every mechanical 21 process that you'd normally use like that. They lost 22 control of valving when they broke valves down to get 23 into the systems to flush, they lost traceability or 24 didn't maintain traceability on the internals of the 25 valves.
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
e
. 42 1 They reassembled valves, and j ust grabbing
(
2 pieces out of boxes, out of bins that weren't really 3 controlled, and these are, you know, saf ety-related Class 4 I valves that we're talking about. So, what, in effect, 5 that did was void the data reports, the MPP-1 data 6 reports which says that your valves are no longer 7 certified.
8 So, that kind of stuff was going on. They 12 9 didn't have good records to demonstrate what, in fact, 10 they hydro-ed, what they had flushed, what they hadn't, 11 so on and so forth.
12 And to fix those problems, you're talking, 13 oh, even with a full dedicated crew once they acknowledge 14 that it's a problem, you're talking nine months to a year 15 and a half to fix that, and we're sitting here about at 16 that time maybe six months or less from anticipating fuel 17 load.
18 So, definitely, what was happening or the 19 problems that were being identified, and our initial 20 substantiation rate that we got into was such that they 21 weren't going to be able to make f uel load in the 22 December time frame, which was what their schedule was.
23 And at that time, then, I f eel the reason 24 they brought Snyder in was to, quote, resolve the issues.
25 Snyder had worked f or KG&E f or a while on and of f. He SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
, 43 I was in INPO f or a while, and again, like I said earlier, 2 he's just a human dynamo.
3 Probably the thing that gave him the nod to 4 get the lead over the Q1 program was that he had led 5 KG&E's internal prudency review when the KCC, I think, 6 was doing their investigation of KGat for prudency.
7 Snyder was in charge of the KG&E group that responded to 8 these people, and pretty well pulled the wool over their 9 eyes.
10 So, he had at that time established a 11 substantial relationship with Koester, and I think became 12 the guy to put in the position, because he was able to
( 13 keep the KCC f rom getting into KG&E's shorts over 14 prudency.
15 Q Who is KCC7 16 A I think that's Kansas, maybe it's --
17 something Kansas corporation. I -- their job, they are 18 like the, they are the boys that decide rates and so on.
19 Q Like public utility commission?
20 A Like a commission. Kansas Corporatior.
21 Commission or something. I don't know. They are -- it 22 might not be KCC. It might be KKC or something like 23 that. But they are the boys that say, yeah, you can 24 raise the rates or no, Sye can't.
( 25 They had a bunch of youngsters in there SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
i
, 44 l
1 doing the review. Kids right out of school or not even 2 out of school yet who had absolutely no concept of what 3 they were looking at. And Snyder just bedazzled them, 4 you know.
5 They'd asked for -- well. what's this mean?
6 He'd give them a stack of paper that high, you know, a 7 foot high or so, and they'd plow through that and they 8 didn't know what they were seeing or any of that stuff.
9 So, I think that that definitely was why 10 Snyder was put in there. He had al so bird-dogged pipe 11 cleanliness programs earlier f or them when the NRC came 12 down on KG&E. I think that was probably about in the '79 13 time frame, for lack of internal cleanliness controls f or
( l 14 all their safety-related piping. Snyder headed up a task -
15 f orce to make sure the pipe was clean. And, so, he had 16 done these various things.
17 The other thing that really disappointed me I
18 was that we had had, received allegations over the i
! 19 cleanliness of the pipe, and in particular, the dissolvo l l 20 tape, d-i-s-s-o-1-v-o, that had been used in constructing 21 argon dans during the welding process.
22 So, this stuff is -- the tape that was f ound l
! 23 out -- everyone else in the industry knew it apparently but holf Creek, but the tape has extremely high halide f 24 25 concentration (
l SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989 l
45
( 1 When applied to stainless steel, the 2 adhesive of the tape doesn't go away when the dam washes
.i 3 out. So, it stays on the pipe, and induces stress 4 corrosion cracking. i think it's intergranular stress 5 corrosion cracking. Anyway, that was a substantial 6 issue.
7 And in addition to that, they had two by 8 four's in tool boxes and other types of things inside the l
9 piping that they had found inside the piping.
10 So, they had to do a pretty substantial 11 review of, or not review, an actual physical program, cut l
12 pipe apart, go in and clean it out, hydrolize it, things ;
( 13 like that to get it clean. Snyder was in charge of that.
14 he had received earlier on in the program 15 allegations that that process hadn't been perf ormed very 13
- 16 well, I drew that investigation, and that was one of the 17 things that I managed to keep up with in addition to the 18 other backlog.
19 Nell, again, I don't remember numbers here, 20 but I found, or substantiated the investigation that, no, 21 in this case, Chuck Snyder had not, Construction had not 22 adequately perf ormed their cleanliness job on the pipe, '
i 23 and, no, they couldn't say that they had removed all the r
24 dissolvo tape, which was a critical issue, f ( 25 And I wrote up, I think at the time what we i
SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989 l l
. 46
( 1 call ed Q PVs, Quality Program Violations, and I wrote two 2 of those and fought with Mr. Snyder, at that time he was 3 in the construction department, but fought with Mr.
4 Snyder on several occasions over those QPVs.
5 As the issuer of QPV, it is your obligation 6 to go to the party that committed the sins, so the speak, 7 and discuss it with the him and get his understanding.
8 The resolution of that goes through his 9 house and goes through him. He writes a response, he 10 says I agree or disagree, and then they put the QPV back 11 in the Quality program.
12 Well, his kept coming back "I disagree."
l
( 13 And so they get elevated to dif f erent levels of Q PVs.
14 You can play this game f or a month or two months bef ore 15 you get down to actually taking care of business.
l 16 But we had had an ongoing deal over there.
17 And generally, what the problem was, is Chuck maintained 18 that they went through every piece of pipe that KG&E had l
l l 19 in the plant, but he couldn't demonstrate it. He 20 couldn't show with the generally poor records that were 21 maintained what happened.
l 22 The other main problem they had is that when i
23 they started this great adventure, they did not have any 24 types of procedures in place. So, it wasn't clear what, 1 (( 25 in fact, they were doing with the documentation that is l
l SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
47
( 1 currently available.
2 There is documentation that said, yeah, we 3 looked at this pipe and it's okay, but we don't know what 4 "okay " is, and it wasn't well-defined. And as it turns 5 out, the definition ~ of "okay" had changed many times 6 during the course of that process.
7 So, he was sitting there at that point in 8 time with generally a cleanliness program that couldn't, 9 for all intents and purposes, be verified. It was 10 indeterminant and he didn't want to accept that, okay?
11 Hell, we fought that f or a while. Then he t
l 12 comes over and takes over the Q1 group. Okay. And now 13 he's my supervisor. And I still have these open QPVs.
i l 14 So, and he's still the person they' re written against, so 15 to speak, he's the responsible person f or resolution.
16 So, he and I went round and round. Ne had 17 probably a thirty-five, f orty-five minute discussion in 18 his office one af ternoon. It was probably about three or 19 f our days bef ore I quit, and --
1 20 Q Just you and Snyder?
21 A Yeah, and everyone else in the double-wide 22 trail er was partaking, because it was very loud f or quite 23 w hil e. Snyder is a very intimidating sort of person.
. 24 Be doesn't know requirements, he doesn't 25 know codes, specifications. Be ha's a general SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
48 1 understanding of how they kind of work, doesn't
(
2 understand Appendix B at all. And, so, the way he gets 3 things down is by yelling, and kind of lik you 4 know, raising your voice, hollering and getting excited.
5 So, anyway, we went in there. I said, 6 "Listen, I've got to get these resolved." I said, "He've 7 discussed these and you're wrong and I'm right and why l
8 don' t you j ust sign them off and we'll get on with fixing 9 the problem?"
10 And he took exception to that. So, we went 11 through Appendix B and went through the concepts of 12 traceability, went through the concepts of audits and 13 went through the concepts of records and went through the 14 concepts of nonconformance processes and went through the 15- concepts of corrective actions, and he finally quit, and 16 he gave up, because I had backed him into a logical 17 corner where he didn't have responses to the questions.
18 So, he quit. He said, "Okay. I'll take 19 care of it." So, he sent them back over to Construction 20 and told Construction to go ahead and work these things 21 'out.
22 I found out a few days after that, that that 23 didn't really happen. At that juncture, I think I might 14
.. 24 have written a note to him, or memo, but I told him that 25 I had to escalate the thing up through the QA program and SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989 7D $
/
49 1 so on and so forth.
{
2 And we had a little tiff over that, and that 3 as far as I remember is about the end of it. I said, 4 "Listen, I'm not -- you gave us the ultimatum, you know, 5 I don't choose to work in the program," and so on and so 6 forth. You know, you do your stuff. So, I headed out of 7 there after that.
8 Q Are you saying you basically resigned as a 9 result of this?
10 A Yeah. That was the reason I resigned. I 11 didn't sit down and tell Snyder I'm resigning. I told 12 hir I was disappointed with his decision.- I thought it 13 lacked integrity, something to that effect, and went back l 14 and took off and call ed in -- I think it was on a 1
15 Thursday or Friday, called in the following Monday and 16 resigned over the phone.
l 17 So, that is how I went out of there. Again, l
l 18 in the meantime, this, those same types of pressures, I 19 think a lot of that was brought about by his general I
20 ignorance, and that was applied to the people that I had 21 had working under me before Snyder came in.
22 Some of the investigators that I had had 23 working f or me were experiencing similar types of l
24 pressures, so on and so forth.
I
~ 25 0 Who would some of these investigators have SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
.v.... ._.
50 1 been?
(
2 A One guy's name, I believe was 3
4 Q Are their names on that list or on that 5 sheet?
6 A Yeah, they probably would be. Let's see. I 7 had ,- I think this was one of 8 the that I worked with. I can't remember 9 the name there f or sure. I don't even 10 see n this list.
11 Q Here's a list of some handwritten names here 12 (indicating).
13 A Re's not on here. He was -- he did work -- t
(
14 ' you got more over here. Let's see. I think was, 15 too. There's one of those two were-16 working f or me. Yeah, there's and 17 got into some pretty heavy ASME l 18 probless.
I 19 Anyway, you know, they were experiencing j
< 20 similar types of things under Mr. Scott, not that Scott 21 would say do this or don't do that. Scott would submit 22 the report to Snyder, Snyder would say, no, this is not 23 going to work, Snyder would have a talk with the guys, ,
24 say this isn't quite the way this ought to be, and that ,
25 kind of pressure. I
51
( 1 0 This was af ter you were gone or bef ore you 2 were gone?
3 A This was occurring while I was there. Like 4 on this 9/14 org. chart, we're over here or I'm over here 5 in the interview section. Okay. I used to be this guy's 6 boss, Robert Scott's boss, with probably f our or five 7 investigators under me.
8 So, after this big shakeup comes, I'm over 9 here under the interview section, these investigators are 10 now working under Scott. I still am in a transition 11 stage where I have responsibilities f or things that are 12 open or actively under investigation, and thas's what I 13 was closing out my bag there.
14 At the time this chart came out, all our 15 f ormal responsibilities were were to talk to people when 16 they come in the door for exits. So, effectively, the 17 initial investigation group had been totally eliminated 18 from the investigation process.
19 Q So, they had taken Snyder and made him
! 20 director of the program, and put Scott over the 21 investigations. So, basically, they had a chain of 22 command at least with respect to the investigations that 23 would concede or agree to conclusions which --
24 A Yeah. These are kind of hard words, but
(, Snyder's method of operation has been very clearly
~ 25 SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
52
( 1 demonstrated in the p4st. He was Koester's boy, okay?
2 That showed up in the pipe cleanliness thing 3 and his trip to INPO and his prudency, prudency work that 4 he did later on.
5 To anyone with two eyes and maybe thirty 6 minutes' worth of nuclear experience, Snyder doesn't know 7 anything about programming. He does know how to push 8 pe o pl e , and *".at, again, was very obvious by his 9 background.
10 Scott, again, with a thirty-minute 11 evaluation, is a person that will do anything he's told.
12 And he's not very good at it.
13 So, what had happened was that, what with 15 14 the reorganization, Snyder is now in charge of that, has 15 a relatively poor understanding of requirements and 16 Appendix B type applications and general assurance 17 things. He's a pusher.
18 All other responsibility or the working end 19 of the program is now under Scott, the investigation side 20 of the house. They are the ones that do the work, do the 21 investigations and say this is substantiated or this 22 isn't substantiated.
23 So, essentially, Snyder has direct control
. 24 through Scott, because Scott is a wimp, so to speak, over 25 all of the outcomes of the investigations.
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
. 53 l And from evidence that we had, it was
(
2 Snyder 's tendency to, in some cases like with the 3 blackballing case, flat out change the report, and in 4 other cases that are second-hand, have the investigators 5 write and rewrite and rewrite the reports until he gets 6 what he wants to see.
7 Q Did you ever keep copies of your drafts of 8 your reports which they f orced you to change?
9 A At the time I didn't. I think Owen might 10 have copies of particularly that blackballing report.
11 They were -- all of our reports were maintained in the 12 f il e s , okay?
13 So, I didn't have any need to do that, 14 because, supposedly, the files were in an integral body, 15 the report would go in, if there was a revision to it, 16 the revision would go in and so on and so f orth.
17 Q Did you always see the revision?
18 A I didn't always see what would go out.
19 Definitely once I moved into the interview side of the 20 house, I no longer had anything to do f ormally with the 21 ' reports at all.
22 Q Did you ever hear people that were in the 23 investigation section indicate that they had written a
- . 24 report with a certain, with a particular conclusion that
. 25 was changed by either Scott or snyder without their SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
l
- 54 1 knowledge? p 2 A Yeah. -- well, without their consent?
3 Q Yes.
4 A Yes. -
I heard mentic7 that, and also l 5 also, while I was still there, that was 6 pretty early on in the takeover. I think Snyder had only 7 been in power, say, f or twenty or thirty days at that 8 time.
l 9 But, anyway, what the program mutated to was 10 one where you have generally a probably very capable l
l 11 concrete superintendent doing extremely detailed or i
12 responsible f or extremely detailed technical and 13 wrongdoing harassment types of investigations, of which 14 he has no demonstrated expertise.
1S Q Let me ask you this. Did you ever take 16 allegations f rom people -- or let me reconstruct the 17 question.
18 Did Snyder review the allegations before 19 they were given to the investigations section?
20 A I know Scott would have because that's how the assignments were made. Now, I, I can't say f or sure.
21 22 I would not be, let's say I would not be at all surprised 23 if that happened, because the assignments were made by 24 Scott f rom his viewing of the allegations. 1 25 0 Are you aware of his directing someone as to ;
G, 7 C 4 '))) W j SMITH REPORTING AG EN CY (615) 267-0/89
\
( 1 the conclusion before the investigation was done?
2 A Not Scott. I -- I'm not aware of Scott 3 doing that. Again, what I've heard from these other 4 folks that I've already mentioned was that they present 5 their report and come up, or are faced -- they take it to 6 Scott, it comes back from Scott, and Scott says, no, you 7 can't do this. They say why, he says, well, let's go 8 talk to Snyder type of deal, and then Snyder tells them 9 what's wrong.
10 Hell, according to these folks, what Snyder 11 was saying in regards to their reports was just off the 12 vall.
13 So, that's what was related to me. And I . y) 14 know particularly of first-hand knowledge with the 15 thing, the blackballing incident, and then also with the 16 OPVs on the cleanliness program that that was definitely 17 his attitude and approach.
18 I don't think there's anyone in the world 19 that can intimidate me, and I think that probably any one 20 of those other people in that program woulo have been 21 'ntimidated i by Snyder during my discussion or the
, 22 discussion we had over those --
23 0 Pipo cl eanliness?
24 A Pipe cleanliness issues. He was extremely 25 loud, belligerent, red in the face, up and down out of 6,7 C9 7b SMITH R E PORTING AG EN CY (615) 267-0989
56 g 1 his chair, yelling.
2 0 In other words, the other investigators that 3 were there would have gone along with his demands that 4 the conclusions be changed rather than be fired or --
5 A Maybe not so much be fired, but j ust not 6 have to face that kind of a frontal at ta ck .
7 Q I see.
8 A I mean, boys in the business are pretty --
l 9 that have been around f or any time at all realize, like 16 10 always says, they want a blue suit, give them a blue 11 suited, you know.
12 That's, in many cases, an accepted process.
13 That's one of the reason the nuke business is about out 14 of business is that people have not stood up to managers 15 or supervisors that were just flat out wrong.
16 They don't in Bechtel, you don't get ahead 17 by doing that, and on most jobs you don't get ahead by 18 doino that. Of late, you tend to get fired if you do 19 that.
l 20 So, just the discussion itself that we br.-
l ~
21 and the decibel level at which it took place would have -
22 been enough for, I would say probably over half the 23 people in that investigative staf f to not want to mess l
. 24 with snyder, and I really --
4
. 25 Q It would have intimidated them?
(oi? C. 4 '79 , Y n d
< SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
57
(
1 A Ch, yes. Yes. I think just my discussion 2 with him at that level of loudness was intimidating, or 3 had an intimidating effect on the group. The guy is bad 4 news when it comes to trying to resolve issues.
5 0 Let me ask you, based on my own review of 6 the Q1 program back in, I think May of 1985, I notice 7 several different things that I'd like to ask you about
[
8 and see if. see if you noticed these things a year prior 9 to the time I was there, if they had occurred then.
10 A One was the drug cases were sent to security 11 and then to Gary Fouts and seemed to die?
12 A Right.
13 0 No corrective action taken. Are you aware 14 of anything like that? g 15 A Generally, was the f ellow that was doing 16 most of the drug work. That was what he was brought on 17 board to do.
18 Q Did he work for the 01 program or did he 19 work f or the security department?
20 A orked for the 01 program and be also ,
21 worked f or the general counsel. Most of the time, 22 although be had dual responsibilities while he was on l
l 23 site, he was f or the Q1 program.
l ,, 24 Initially, he started to run some stuff
. 25 down, and -- I'm trying to remember time, time frames on 1
I bp7CY2M j SMIT 8 REPORTING AG EN CY (615) 267-0989
i t
58 l
1 it. I can't do it.
(
2 But there was one really big snafu, and what 3 it boiled down to was we had gotten some drug 4 information, and it kind of had been sitting on the 5 sidelines. I don't remember why right now.
6 But, anyway got geared up on it and 7 started doing some prowling around, talking to people on 8 site, and I guess talking to some people of f site and 9 some of leads started panning out, we were getting 10 corroborating information from different sources.
11 And we generated a list of names. And these 12 guys, per allegations and per the sources that we had,
( 13 were all involved in substantial drug traf fic, okay?
14 They votfld make buys on site, via the telephone -- let's 15 see. Yeah, that could be it. I'm not -- I think it was 16 j was the first tee or first kickoff into that.
l 17 Then there's another f ellow that came in 18 later. His name was I think that ,
19 gave us independent testimony with some of these same 20 people involved. I think that's about the time frame of l 21 when this drug thing really got -- that this drug thing 22 really got going from standpoint.
23 Anyway, the -- he started prowling around,
, 24 and the word came down, I don't remember where it came 25 down f rom, well, we're not in the drug business, just s,wna
59 l l
l 1 turn this stuff over to security.
2 So, we turned it over to security, and about 3 a day later or maybe even less than that, that list of 4 names of people that had been accused of dealing drugs 5 and using drugs on and off site was like f reely available 6 over on Daniels' side of the house. l I
7 Fouts got ahold of it and raised all kinds 8 of havoc, and we went into meetings, I wasn't a part of l
9 those, but what I understand is that Fouts made a lot of 10 accusations and wanted the 01 program shut down, things 11 like that, f or letting this stuf f out, making a big fuss 12 over it.
( 13 And what happened is security somehow or i 14 another had given the names to Fouts, and somewhere in l
l 15 that transfer process, that list of names had been, l 16 somohow, somehow that list of names was made available to 17 several individuals, and there were many, many zeroxed 18 copies of it made and distributed to the Daniel people, 19 you know.
l 20 So, from that point on -- now, I don't l
l 21 remember if it happened bef ore that point or if that was l
l 22 the initiation of it, but they put Fouts in charge of i 17 l 23 following up on all those types of things, on drugs, on l - 24 theft, on things of that sort.
l 25 Our interaction with Fouts on technical l
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 l
60 i
1 issues -- again, this would be my opinion here, but it 2 would be, that he couldn't any more handle or know what's 3 going on drugwise than he did in the construction 4 business.
5 You know, he was not a real competent 6 individual when it comes to grasping the facts and 7 dealing with them. He had a bunch of lieutenants that 8 would go out and do his business, and they were schedule 9 driven and chart driven, and that's more or less how he 10 ran the organization.
11 The position of being able to dig into 12 something and look at it if it wasn't there, like if the 13
( two by four wasn't laying on the floor with blood on it 14 and the gun having the smoke come out of it, then it 15 didn't happen, you know, there was no damage done.
16 So, somehow or another, Fouts ended up with 17 that stuff. And I -- like I said, that's about all the 18 detail that I remember with that. I think owen is 19 probably more f amiliar with that than I.
20 Q Just for my review, it appeared that most of 21 the drug cases or allegations regarding drug use and '
22 trafficking and that sort of thing were not handled by 23 the 01 program, they went somewhere else?
24 A Right. '
25 Q For.the most part, appeared to be SMITB REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989 '
l
61
( 1 unsatisfactorily resolved?
2 A Right. Again, the -- see, what happened 3
there, Don, there, and really with a lot of technical 4
issues, was that the investigator was put in the position 5
that he had to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, in 6
fact, was the case, and you'd have five minutes to prove 7 it.
8 So, if you couldn't prove it, rather than j 9 going out developing l eads, f ollowing up and doing an 10 investigation on the topic, it was closed. You know, we 11 don't have any inf ormation that shows that this stuff is 12 a legit complaint, and then close it out based on that 13 type of rationale.
14 0 Were the investigators allowed to go back 15 and do additional interviews of the source? !
16 A I know when we were doing it, we could do 17 that. I heard from one of the guys, probably, I think it 18 was while I was in Clinton, that would have been about 19 March of '85, that they had really curtailed the 20 interview process and activities.
l 21 It was to the point where you really l
22 couldn't go out and investigate anything because of the 23 diff erent constraints that were placed on the program.
, , 24 I don' t remember specifically what those 1
25 were, but I know the people that are involved or were l
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
u 62
(
- 1 involved in it would be aware of it.
2 Q Did this come about as a result of Snyder's 3 direction of the program?
4 A Again, speculation here, I'd say that would 5 be a natural outcome of it. Generally, what happened 6 with KGEE, like we've seen at other utilities that are 7 self-directed with these things or where the safe team 8 is, is that one of the things that becomes paramount is 9
that just the shear number of allegations that get raised 10 plays a threat on meeting the license date because they 11 have to be addressed.
12 So, a smart utility man says we got to stop
( 13' these allegations. And I think probably a study that you 14 fellows might want to do would be compare the rate of 15 concerns expressed up to the point in time that Snyder i 16 took over the program, and then from the point in time i
! 17 Snyder was in control to the end of the program.
18 I think you'd probably find out that eighty 19 percent or so of the concerns were expressed while Owen .
20 was in charge of the program, and after that, peopl e 21 didn't partake of the program anymore.
2 ?. O To your knowledge, was there ever any 23 instances where allegations were not given a number, not 24 investigated, they were just trashed?
25 A No, I don't know anything about that. I SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
o . . .
63 don't even remember hearing anything about that j I 2 happening.
3 I know, I remember a couple of discussions 4 we had in the transfer process where Scott was in charge, 5 or at least coordinating, getting all of this stuff into 6 a computer base.
7 See, that was another one of our initial 8 problems, was that we didn't have any computers I
9 all ocated to us. So, this was all a word processing 10 f unction instead of a data base f unction, which was 11 extremely time consuming.
12 But somewhere in that process, there were
( 13 some discussions, and again, this is vague, but there are 14 some discussions about, well, that's really not how we 15 want to phrase that concern.
16 And I was in a couple of discussions with l 18 17 Snyder over that. I didn't at the time see any big deal 18 over it, because the files, if the files and all the 19 things that are in the files are there, but after -
20 reviewing that matrix you have that I looked at of a list 21 of concerns, that there are some of those in there either 22 that are, that that has been done to a degree that it 23 changed the intent of the concern, or the concerns are 24 missing.
25 0 or the significance of the problem --
SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989
. 64 1 A Is diminished.
[
2 O Is diminished?
3 A Right. And again, I think the thing that --
4 again, what I was looking at is on the technical issues 5 there, in some cases concerns are substantiated, and 6 then, you know, maybe a page, page down, the same concern 7 is not substantiated, you know. So, something is hokey 8 there.
9 You know, either the descriptions aren't 10 adequate or someone didn't investigate the problem right 11 because it can't be true one time and false the next.
12 So, that type of thing, I noticed, also pops up, pops up i
( 13 in there.
14 I really feel that from our initial base, 15 that -- and I looked at the structural steel concerns, 16 and most of those were unsubstantiated. Also, there's 17 quite a few that I noticed in the startup area that were 18 substantiated without nerit. Material controls things, 19 that valve deal that we discussed earlier, loss of 20 traceability of Class I valves was substantiated without 21 merit.
22 That's ridiculous, you know. It's -- you 23 either have it or you don't have it. You either have 24 merit or you don't have merit. You can't have a
( . 25 substantiated case without merit.
1 SMITB REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 l
. 65 l
1 Q When say say without merit, they're
(
2 referring to safety-related merit. It may be 3 substantiated but it has no impacted on safety?
4 A Okay, the ones on the valves are Class I 5 valves, so they were saf ety-related. But I really feel 6 that -- let's say if an obj ective, independent third 7 party went in to do a review on those safety concerns, 8 that they would find similarly to what you f ound on your i 9 harassment and wrongdoing areas, that a lot of the 10 investigations are insufficient. I don't feel that the 11 NRC in their technical review of the concerns did en 12 adequate job. I know --
( 13 0 You're saying the NRC's review of 14 investigations concerning technical matters --
15 A Right.
16 0 -- viz the inspection? I don't know.
17 You've had an opportunity to briefly review my notes 18 relative to the investigations pertaining to alleged 19 wrongdoings?
20 A Right.
21 Q Which I reviewed?
22 A Right.
23 Q And as you can see, I disagree with some
. 24 facet of most of those investigations?
25 A Right.
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
66 1
1 Q Al though, you may have found some that you !
[
2 disagreed with. I recognize you haven't had adequate 3 time to review all of these in detail?
4 A Right.
5 Q But I think for the most pa r t -- and you 6 haven't seen my --
7 A Huh-huh.
8 0 You just discussed it generally, my 9 evaluation of the program with respect to the issues of 10 wrongdoing?
11 A Right. But I think, and again, from the 12 several that I've looked at, I can see the points that 13 you've heard made here. It's hard for me to judge based 14 on, without having a file to look at. But at the same 15 time, the points that are documented and the notes you 16 referred to are well taken.
17 I feel, again, with the technical issues, 18 just based on the data that we had collected and had in 19 file at the time I left there, that the same review by an 20 objective third party would find a similar pattern.
21 - In other words, technical concerns that had 22 been bought off, so to speak, by the utility and also 23 bought off by the NRC would, in fact, be concerns that 24 would still have to be addressed.
( 25 Just to get right to the point, I don't feel SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
67 1 that the NRC, the IE group, or I don't know if NRR was
(
2 involved there, but I don't think they did an adequate 3 job in the review of those technical issues.
4 Q I was reviewing the statement that you 5 provided to Mark Emerson on July 23rd, 1985. Let's stop 6 or for a second.
7 (Off-the-record discussion.)
8 Q And I noticed some discussion there of a 9 drug investigation. I just wanted to ask you, was that 10 the drug investigation you were referring to a few 11 minutes ago that --
12 A Yeah, that was -- that was -- yeah, I'm
( ( 13 looking at the same document. That's the one that I was
! 14 talking about.
15 Q I think it's number or
~
16 A c410 Yeah, that -- yeah, there's the name 17 See, came in with testimony that jived 18 with the testimony ( ad provided in 19 That's what spun this thing of f and got us working into !
20 it.
21 0 And your conclusion was that this l
22 investigation was not adequately resolved by the utility, 23 once it was referred to the --
24 A I -- well --
25 Q Or I'm not sure maybe that you even came to G,7Cd?Dflaf b SMITB REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 i
l l
l 68 l
- l 1 any conclusion?
2 A Yeah, I don't think we got into it in any 3 detail. It was shuf fled of f to Buffalo over to the 4 construction group.
5 Q But based on your recollection of this 6 matter, there was some merit to the allegations which , G 7 were made by and 8 Ithere was some --
9 A Yes, it's like outcry testimony. You know, 10 you got two totally independent sources that don't know 11 each other and two different circumstances coming 12 together and giving you the same story f rom dif f erent 13 sides.
14 And I think the thing that was disturbing, I 15 think even at this time perhaps that Fouts had been in 16 the position cf being responsible f or these types of 17 activities. And I think what happened is we took this 18 over ourselves of our own initiative because it was 1
19 dealing with Quality activities.
20 The guys that were accused of using drugs C- f 21 ,
22 And, so, we went ahead and pursued 23 th a on our own.
24 I think that's, that's what happened. And 25 then we got burned, so to speak, because routs was SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 bi?C170 /
i l Oh !
69 supposed to be in charge of this stuff, and took it ov e r
( 1 2 after that, I guess.
3 Q You don't feel he was adequately resolving l
4 or giving any attention to these things?
5 A I don't think Fouts has the capacity to, you 6 know. I, in this particular one, I don't remember now, 7 trying to look at it here, but I don't remember now, I l 8 don't think there was any resolution to this by the time 9 I lef t in any of my interactions with Fouts or his 10 department with the exception of a very f ew empl oy ee s 11 that worked for him, they were not fix-it oriented, they 12 were deny-it oriented.
13 And in drug cases, from what I understood, again, I think this is from but their procedure was 14 15 to call security to have them run a records check, and if 1
l 16 the guy came back clean, that was it, no investigation 17 was done, no type of surveillance was done, so on and so .
18 forth.
19 0 I'd like to address your attention to this 20 other statement that you gave to Mark emerson on April 21 'the 10th, 1985, and I believe it relates to the l
22 structural stee1 matter ou investigated based on l
and l 23 allegations from i
! 25 A Right.
l b ] C. 4 [340 [TTm SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
70 l
l Q And your belief that your investigation l [
1 2 proved these allegations to be true and accurate. I 3 believe in your statement that you indicate that as a l
4 result of Snyder's involvement in that investigation, it 5 was basically, it was basically put to rest as being 6 unsubstantiated or without merit, is that correct?
7 A Yeah, that is.
8 0 Has that with your concurrence or without?
9 A Not with my concurrence. I don't think --
10 I'm recalling now, I don't think -- I'm recalling now i 11 that when I -- at the time I left, this issue hadn't been 12 resolved. There were draf t QPVs or some type of Quality 13 document written up on these problems, on the l
l 14 falsification of the records, so on and so forth.
l In fact, this is an extension of the 15 discussion we had earlier today about It's 16 j
17 in that same area.
l I think was working with this, or 18 19 on this as one of my investigators, and was, in fact, in 20 charge of documenting or generating the Quality 21 violations. When I left, as best I recall, those hadn't 22 been f ormally issued. They were to be issued, but hadn't 23 been approved or gone through the review by Snyder at 24 that time.
25 0 Uh-huh.
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (61T5 o26Ip0989w
71 1
( 1 A qd Again, this is pretty f uzzy recollection, 2 but contacted me several times when I was up at 3 Clinton wanting to know what was going on. He indicated 4 that Daniels, and then he later came up to Clinton, also, 5 coincidence, I wasn't involved with that.
6 But he indicated, I think while I was up 7 there, that Daniels was coming up to make him an offer, 8 so to speak, to drop all this harassment type of stuff.
9 I don't really know what the final outcome 10 was or how KGTE found in that file, but we had
! 11 documented a considerable amount of evidence that i 12 indicated that they were pressuring him, that he was l ( 13 harassed, and that, in fact, is why he was let go.
14 They maintained, again as I recall, that i
15 they canned him because he came in late or came in late 16 three days in a row or something to that effect.
17 But we did a review -- I, in fact, ran the 18 review down and time records on who had been late and who 19 hadn't and what the resulting action has been.
20 There is flat out no correlation or no way l
21 ~
t hat they could def end based on those records that a guy l
' 22 that comes in two or three minutes late or five minutes 23 late or half an hour late even can be justifiably t
24 terminated.
25 Ne wanted at the time to get into a more
- c,,7c y 70,/wdT*a SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989
72 1 detailed investigation, but we didn't do that. The i,
2 initial information led us to believe that Daniels, in 3 this case, used those rules to get rid of the people that 4 were on their bad list, and that's the only time they 5 were used.
6 The guys that were in good, the good ole' 7 boy types of deals could come in late. They might get a 8 memo or they might get a warning, but they surely 9 wouldn't be disciplined in any degree, let alone fired 10 for those types of, you know, minor, extremely minor 11 violations.
12 0 Selective use of the procedures to terminate 13 people that --
14 A Right.
15 Q --
that were not in their favor?
16 A Right. I f elt very strongly that a thorough 17 review, I don't know if even Daniels' times records are 18 even available f or that job, but a thorough review of 19 those records would demonstrate that point very 20 concl us iv ely.
21 0 So, in summary, basically, you feel that the 22 program was used by management through Snyder to limit 23 the number of allegations that were being received, and 24 to ef f ectively cov ' up, at least in some instances, 25 findings that were being, or resulting from some of the I
SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989
1 i
. 73 t
l l 1 investigations?
i 2 A Yeah. To -- generally, to that, I agree to j 3 that concept. I don't really think Snyder or anyone else l 4 is smart enough or was smart enough to know how to cut 5 down on the incoming allegations.
6 I think that just happened because of their
~7 generally negative attitude that they displayed towards 8 the program.
9 Q hell, obviously, if employees are coming to 10 the program and the findings are always negative, in 11 other words, that 01 is never finding what we say to be 12 true when in fact we know it is, word of that spreads 13 through the --
(
14 A Right.
15 0 -- empl oyee popul a tion?
16 A Prudent management of the program would be 17 continually evaluating that data, what's my rate of 18 concern received. It indicates, that number or 19 statistics indicates the general health of the program.
20 I'm not aware that Snyder ever did that, or Grant ever 21 did that.
22 If you suddenly have a substantial change in 23 the number of concerns received, there should be some 24 explanation for that if you're, in fact, interested in 25 getting concerns into the program and for the purpose of SMITH REPOHTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
)
o 74 1
J 1 resolution.
[ 2 So, I would say that in this situation,
\
3 although I can't say that it was done by design, it at 4 least was done by neglect.
5 0 Hould you consider it to be a by-product of 6 the fact that investigations were not being properly 7 resolved?
8 A Yeah, I think that and the general attitude 9 that the investigators displayed about the site. You 10 know, it's -- the investigators working in the type of 11 environment that Snyder developed talked about that to 12 people that they interviewed,. or discussed with or do 13 their reports with their buddies. It doesn't, I don't 14 think, take much time -- and, again, I think a real l
15 interesting study would be to do that comparison before i
16 and after on concern received, but it doesn't take much 17 time to discredit a program like that that's primarily i
18 built on trust to start with.
19 Owen had a very good reputation amongst the 20 workers at the site. Obviously, not everybody knew him, 21 but a lot of people knew him and a lot of people trusted i
22 him, and that tended to acke the program click.
23 Me got out, and our investigative style
[
24 initially when and myself and Owen were doing the leg work on the investigations and later when some of the l ( 25 A
SMITB REPORTING AGENCY (615) 7O[7-0989P<n 2 %
i l 1
i
- 75 1 peopl e, new people came in and were under us was 2 extremely thorough, time consuming but very thorough, and 3 generally, when we were through an investigation, we had 4 enough detail available to make a very conclusive 5 statement.
1 6 People liked that, you know. Their concern 7 comes in, there is interest expressed on the part of the 8 utility through the 01 group to do a good up-f ront j ob of 9 the investigation.
, 10 As soon as that disappears, the bad P. R. by l
l 11 word of mouth quickly wipes out the program, and I think l
l 12 that combination there is what happened.
( 13 It's hard, again, to say that that was the 14 intent, okay? I thinx it was definitely expected by 15 Koester that Snyder would be able to handle, handle the 16 job. He handled the prudency review, he handled the pipe 17 cleanliness program.
18 So, I think that Koester, likewise, would l
19 have the upmost confidence that Snyder would be able to 20 handle the close out of these concerns in a timely 21 manner.
l 22 Q And in a manner that was beneficial to the 23 utility 7
! 24 A Yeah. Snyder had worked in very dif ficult 25 areas in the prudency review and, to my knowledge, i
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
76 1 nothing ever that was in any degree adverse to the 2 utility surfaced on that.
3 0 Yeah, but the -- what I'm looking for is do 4 you believe that Koester told Snyder when he gave him the 5 job that he wanted him to limit the effectiveness of the 6 Q1 program with respect to these investigations? If he 7 didn't, it was inevitable that the fuel load date was 8 going to have to be moved back as a result of it?
l 9 A Yeah. As you're aware, Don, that's, without 10 being privy to direct inf ormation, that is teally hard to 11 make a statement on. I can speculate on that, and, you 12 know, my opinion f rom looking at Snyder's background, 13 knowing him relatively briefly, knowing that Koester knew
(
14 Snyder f or a period of years, either Koester would have 15 to be an idiot or Koester suspected that Snyder would l
16 resolve the issues without bringing any blame down on the i
17 utility.
! 18 I don't see how Koester would think that a 19 person could do that without somehow or another less than 20 adequately addressing the prob'lems.
21 Q But you don't think that Snyder came in 22 without some sort of direction, do you?
f 23 A Ch, no, Snyder had a very clear mandate, i 24 okay? His mandate -- I think he even expressed that in 25 the opening meeting. His mandate was to resolve these SMITB REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
. 77 l
( 1 issues by December, and get on with f uel load. And that 2 direction was from Koester. Again, I don't know that.
3 Q The obviously underlying meaning to that 4 would be to get rid of some of these allegations because 5 if you continue to conduct time consuming 6 investigations --
7 A Right.
8 0 -- and which were being substantiated, 9 you're obviously going to have problems which are going 10 to, first of all, take past December to resolve, and 11 second --
l 12 A Right.
( 13 Q And secondly, are' going to impact on the 14 f uel l oad date?
15 A Yeah. Those elements are definitely in the 16 picture. The thing that -- and like I said, my opinion
! 17 would be that Koester would have mailed a statement to 18 Snyder that says get those damn things closed, get them 19 out of our hair, we don't want to see any problems out of 20 this thing, this is a bunch of hype, blahdy, blahdy, 21 blah, and go out and take care of them.
22 I guess the big question I've got on the 23 thing, and again it becomes speculation on my part is 24 where the intent lies.
- s. 25 If Snyder is just idiotic to the point he SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
78 1 feels what he was doing was right, or does he know deep i
2 in his heart or even not deep in his heart that what he 3 was doing was wrong?
4 It's my belief that a person can' t be stupid 5 enough to believe that what he was doing was right.
6 Consequently, I would think that he would have had some 7 intent to, say, cover up the activities that were there.
8 The only direct information, again, that 9 I've got that I can base that on was the deal regarding 10 the blackballing incident and my direct discussions with 11 him regard pipe cleanliness.
12 And in both of those matters, he acted in a 13 way so as to make it extremely dif ficult f or the actual 14 condition to be identified.
15 It's hard to say that he was covering up.
16 Again, I would characterize that as covering up. So, 17 that's about it.
18 Q What was the conclusion on the investigation 19 that was done on the blackballing incident?
20 A The conclusion on that was that, in fact, 21 the blackballing, that blackballing had occurred, that 22 Rudolph had blackballed th 23 Q Does the report say that?
24 A The initial report said that. There were 25 two drafts, and the third report went out with signature SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989
I 79 1 1 on it, it was Owen's duty at that time to sign it, and he ;
2 signed it and sent it to Snyder, and it came back 3 changed.
4 I don't think Owen re-signed it after that, 5 but I think the report went out changed. And what the ;
6 file currently reflects, I have no idea.
7 But originally, it reflected that the 8 conclusion of the investigation was that had, in 9 fact, been blackballed.
10 0 The text of the report was changed?
11 A Yeah, the one that went out was, because it 12 wasn't substantiated.
13 0 You say there was evidence to, like, tape 14 recordings and so on which substantiated the conclusion?
15 A Yeah, I had direct conversations with the 16 two APS people involved and had those calls recorded, and 17 transcripts of those were in the file.
18 It was amusing, because it wasn't 19 twenty-four hours after the existence of those 20 transcripts became available or became known thai; Koester l
21 issued the ultimatum to our group, and they recalled our tape recorders, took our tape recorders away from us. Ne 22 23 could no longer use tape recorders. ;
I 24 That's another thing that Sr.yder played on, ,
l
( 25 too, is it was normal for me during the course of an l C,,7c +70, pohN SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989 i
80
, 1 investigation or interview to use a tape recorder with 1
2 the person's permission. And they didn't want that to 3 happen. The excuse given was, well, you get -- it takes 4 too long, you get too much extraneous detail and yoe 5 start second-guessing what the guy has got to say.
6 And, again, what we found in that pa r ticul ar 7 situation, or at l east my opinion ,was, is that a lot of 8 the things that we had come up with, we wouldn't have 9 been coming up with if we hadn't had a transcript of the 10 tape.
11 When you're taking notes, you just don't get 12 the entire flavor of what goes on in, say, in a two hour And we -- I found those very useful, both
( 13 conversation.
14 in the interview process and also in the interview 15 process of an investigation during an investigation.
16 But after those transcripts came out, the 17 tape recorders were yanked and we were f orbidden to use 18 them again, you know.
19 Again, if you eliminate the amount of detail 20 that's available, you cut down on the concerns. I feel 21 that was a direct ef f ort to do that.
22 Q Nell, I suppose that you would recommend 23 that I talk to Owen?
24 A Yes.
k 25 Q Nhich I, of course, as you know, I intend to SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
i i
l 81
, 1 do. hould you recommend that I talk to 2 A You may or may not. I don' t know how much 3 ould really be willing to say. I don't think ha'd l
4 have a big problem talking with you. He was definitely 5 troubled, he stayed on with the program until its 6 conclusion or until they let him go, I think around 7 December of that year, the end of December.
8 But he had several conversations with Owen, 9 and he was troubled over what they were doing, what he 10 was doing, generally, you know, just looking the other 11 way type of things. He might shed some inf ormation on 12 that.
( 13 I .think a person that would be beneficial to 14 talk. to would be to run down tha fellowanq 15 They were there as the program progressed, and 16 could shed some light on the questions you posed to me 17 earlier about Snyder's involvement with reports.
18 I think that they could tell you first hand 19 that, yeah, Snyder messed with the reports, wouldn't let 20 reports go out, and possibly, in fact, even exerted 21 visible intimidating tactics on them to get them to l 22 modify reports to, say, a management-f riendly position.
23 I think that those f ellows would be veil worth your while 24 to talk with them on them.
25 Q There were a lot of people hired in the 267(o 9e%70 y/cm i SMITB REPORTING AG ENCY (615) ,0989
' 82 4
l 1 program I guess af ter you lef t?
2 A Right.
3 0 That you would not be aware of or wouldn't 4 know about?
5 A Right.
6 Q Row long was Owen there af ter you lef t?
7 A I think Owen lef t about the end of October.
8 He, I think he was there about another month. He fought 9 out I think a couple more reports and bailed out.
10 Be just -- you know, there's no way he was 11 going to stay on with the types of things that were 12 t.sking place. It took him, I guess, a little longer than 13 me to see what was cooking. He has more confidence in
(
14 the raanagement.
15 0 Nho was the secretary at the time you were 16 there? .
A gal by the name of )I 17 A 18 think 19 0 Nas she aware of what was going on?
20 A Yeah, kind of. She's a nice gal 21 She, from.the point of 22 view of realizing the activities, she, I think, had a
) ,
23 good sense of the change of attitude and environment, you 24 know, you can sense that.
25 ne had a pretty f ree-rolling, interested I
h SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
%b'
83 4
1 1 group going when Owen was leading it, and when Snyder got 2 into it, it was worse than a boot camp, you know.
3 0 Nell, of course, as an investigator, one of 4
4 the things that I'm always interested in is documentary 5 evidence and that sort of thing. Testimonial evidence is 6 great, most especially when it's substantiated by a 7 number of various people.
l 8 But are you aware of any documents, aside i
9 f rom the investigative files themselves, which would 10 reflect on the management involvement or management 11 interf erence, management pressure?
12 A With the 01 program?
( 13 0 Nith the Q1 program.
14 A Not really. Again, myself, I, I might 15 regret this some day, but I've never kept or intend to i 16 keep a Pearl Harbor file. Like I said earlier, peopl e 17 don't intimidate me. You know, I'm not worried about 18 working.
l 19 I flat out am not aware of documentation of 20 those things. Now, Owen might have written some menos 21 that I was unaware of or have forgotten about that could 22 offer some of that, or maybe some of the other fellows 23 have, but at this -- I'm not aware of anything other than i
24 the files themselves that would contain any of that 25 information.
SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989 l
l t
. 84 W
1 The f il e, at least when we were doing it, g
2 was pretty comprehensive, you know. If ve had 3 discussions with Dick Grant over a particular issue in a 4 f il e, it was noted in the notes of the file somewhere.
5 And in fact, it was my practice to, the 6 files that I worked with or worked on, to keep those 7 types of notes probably in more detail than thought 8 necessary.
- 9 0 So, if you think that the files are complete 10 at this point in time, they may reflect some notes 11 indicating management at some point, Rudolph, Grant or 12 Snyder, their directions to you relative to particular
( 13 investigations?
14 A Yes, I think definitely in the one regarding 15 the blackballing incident, that that would be the case.
16 There are also status reports that we maintained, and the 17 status report would have a reason f or a slip date, and I 18 know like the ones that I had on the pipe cleanliness 19 where I was fighting with Snyder, you know, my slip dates 20 were annotated in the column, you know.
21 Q Nhat's a slip date?
22 A A slip date is, you have a scheduled date to 23 complete the file, say, June 15th, and comes June 15th, 24 and you're not done, so you slip the date to July 10th
, 25 and give an excuse.
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615! 267-0989
a k 85 i '
1 Q I see.
2 A Make an alibi. And, now, I don't know --
l 3 again, at the time I was there, those were part and 4 parcel of the file. Whether or not they still are, I 5 don't have any idea.
6 But they were a working part of the file, at 7 least under the program that was laid out when I lef t, 8 and would have been maintained as part of the file.
9 Again, like I said, Owen may have generated 10 some memos to Snyder or to Grant or to Rudolph in regards l
to the types of things you're asking about, but I'm not 11 12 aware of any definite documentation. I don't have any.
13 Q There was quite a bit of documentation in 14 the files at the time I reviewed them, but I only had two 15 or three days to review something in the neighborhood of 16 seventy-five files. So, I was looking at the l 17 investigation reports and initial interviews and didn't 18 go through every piece of paper in there.
l 19 A I think, again, it would be the two files 20 that -- and the might have some of that in 21 It. The one -- I don't know the file number on the one 22 with the blackballing incident with but that 23 should have something in it. And the ones regarding the i
24 cleanliness, pipe cleanliness program that I did 25 regarding Snyder would have something or did have t
l h,7C470//h& l SMITH REPORTING AGENCY (615) 267-0989 l
6 86 1 something in it.
2 So, a review of those might shed a little 3 more light on that, but, again, knowing Snyder, I find it 4 almost unbelievable that he would allow something like 5 that to exist in a file. I would suspect that those 6 files are probably pretty tidy by now.
7 Any information that would indicate that 8 their investigation was less than adequate was probably 4
9 discarded. That was a big thing.
10 See, again, when the tape issue came up, he 11 wanted the tapes tossed. Didn't want t a tapes 12 maintained. An d , of course, when you do that, obviously,
(. 13 you lose ycur record. So, I wouldn't be a bit surprised 14 if some of the records that we maintained in the files 15 are no longer there.
16 Q Are you aware of any other individuals, 17 either inside the Q1 program or outside the 01 program 18 that you ever talked with that might be able to provide 19 inf ormation? I mean, I don't know. Did you ever talk to 20 Grant's secretary or Koester's secretary or anybody who 21 would have knowledge relative to what occurred, 22 management's participation or influence on this program 23 that you can recall who I might be able to interview?
24 A Nell, Scott Schum was aware of the 25 initial -- he used to be with NRC out of Region IV.
SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
4 87 w
1 Right now he's out of Palo Verde.
2 I didn't know Scott at all when I 3 was at Wolf Creek, but Cven did, and Scott was, as an NRC l 4 inspector, was fairly cognizant of the management 5 dealings that were going on. He might know something.
6 I'm -- I can't -- I'm trying to remember I
7 names. I don't -- I really don't know anyone that would j 8 be aware of the management stuff. The primaries, again, 9 were Rudolph, Rudolph, Grant, Koester, Snyder. This Bob l
l 10 Scott, he might be an interesting guy to talk to. ,
j 11 0 Is he still there?
l 12 A I have no idea. I do n ' t --
( 13 o I guess if 01 still exists -- I know it i
14 does.
l 15 A Does it? I don't know. I suppose he's done l
16 an outstanding job, you know, he would probably be l 17 retained, but I suspect they'd be able to get you in
[
18 touch with him. He might be interesting. I don't know l l
19 what he'd tell you, but it sure might be interesting to 20 get his perspective on the event. ]
21 Q At this particular point in time, I'a not 22 all that interested about the utility being aware that an !
23 investigation is even underway. They may well know this 24 thing that has been laying here, but as far as I know, 25 they don't.
j SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 lo,9C f bs%
l 88 1 A Yeah.
2 Q And in order to preclude any back fits, so 3 to speak, or any conversations between them relative to 4 what their testimony might be, if I came to talk to them, 5 I'd just assume they not be aware of it at this time".
6 A Yeah. Yeah. Another f ell ow, looking at the 7 names here -- that's terrible. How quickly you f orget.
8 I can picture his face but I can't get his name up.
9 Hell, I don't see it on there.
10 0 You said and --
11 A Yeah, both of those guys would.
12 Q Nere they employed there up until last year
( 13 when the --
I think, got into a sticky wicket with 14 A 15 Snyder in late October or November.
16 Q of '847 17 A Yeah. Yeah. He was on loan to them or 18 under contract f rom EBASCO to the Q1 program, and the 19 guy's pretty sharp. He's on one of the ASME committees.
20 and recognized in the field in civil structural stuff. ,
l i
21 Be's got good credentials and he's pretty intense, also.
22 And he, he had a real, very substantial row with Snyder I
23 over the changing of a reports, okay?
l 24 That's why I suggested that you talk with 25 him, because he should have some very additional 6 7cv 70 M SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-Od89 /
6 89 1 first-hand information there.
2 The other f ellow, I know at the time I j
3 was there originally he worked under my nebulous 4 direction back when things were working, and had 5 expressed to me, as the change took place, that he was 6 getting pressure on his reports. Same way wit 7 And there's one other person, but I don't 8 see the name on here and I cannot pull it up, can't pull 9 it up. As far as the management activities or 10 inv olv ement, other than the guys we've talked about, I l
11 don't, I don't know who.
12 0 Off that list of names, there's probably a number of names there that came on af ter you lef t, so you
( 13 wouldn't know what sort of things they experienced?
14 15 A Yeah. Right. Right.
16 0 But have you talked to anybody that said 17 that the influence by Snyder continued on, or did the 18 program just deteriorate to a level which --
19 A I talked to some guys at Clinton that were, 20 in the QA program up there. They had been down at 01 and .
21 had done their thing and come back to Clinton. It was
. 22 around the first of the year. I can't think of their 23 names, but they were with 00ADREX. l i
5 24 I think you can probably identify them by ;
25 looking at the records at Molf Creek to see who they were SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 w oo p
' 90 i .
l
.- 1 empl oyed by. And any of the people that were employed by 2 QUADREX, you can trace back to Clinton and get in touch 3 with them.
4 But their general comments were, you know, 5 what a dog and pony show, you know, to the effect that
(
, 6 they weren't interested in resolving issues, and they 7 didn't give you 1eeway to do an adequate review or 8 investigation, and that when you did do an investigation, 9 they tended to help you rewrite it to where the issues 10 weren't adequately addressed.
11 So, that, you might want -- I think there 12 were three of those guys that came, they were at Clinton, came down to Mc1f Creek and then went back to Clinton.
( 13 nould anybody at Clinton that you know --
14 0 l
15 A No.
16 0 -- be aware of these people's names?
17 A Yeah, a guy by the name of is 18 probably still there. He's in the QA program, works for 19 the utility, and would probably be f amiliar with those 20 guys, since they were, in fact, in the Q A program. He's l 21 a special assistant to somebody in the QA program. ,
22 Q He works f or the utility?
23 A He works f or the utility, Illinois Power, l 24 right. And a question to him, hey, there were some 25 f ellows that worked down at Clinton f or QUADREX and then f
I l 4,9c GD /
fnb SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 l
o 91 I they came back up to IP in December, January '84, '85 4
2 time frame, can you help me out, who are they, you would 3 probably get a response. If he couldn't do it, he could 4 find out.
5 Q Do you have anything else?
6 A No. I'm tired.
7 Q Chip, have I or any other NRC representative 8 threatened you in any manner or offered you any rewards 9 in return for this statement?
10 A No.
11 Q Have you given this statement freely and 12 voluntarily?
Yes.
( 13 A 14 Q Is there anything f urther you would like to 15 add for the record?
16 A No. I would like to re-emphasize that I 17 discussed earlier the fact that I feel the technical 18 evaluation done by the NRC was inadequate. I think that 19 that showed be redone.
20 I think, either OI should be involved in 21 that, or if they have to, to go to a third party and have 22 them come in and look under OI's guidance. But the data 23 that we had available in our files at the time I lef t 24 indicated a lot of those items should have been 25 substantiated, and in my review of that list last night, SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
92 I they were unsubstantiated.
2 So, based on that, I would --
3 Q You're addressing the review that was of 4 technical concerns investigated by the Q1 program which 5 was reviewed by the NRC Region IV technical peopl e ?
6 A Right.
7 Q During the late spring of 1985?
8 A Right.
9 Q Same time OI did the review of --
10 A Right.
11 Q -- the wrongdoing issues?
12 A Right. Right. I think that -- it's not that I'm saying no -- in observing the NRC, I've observed
( 13 14 the NRC technical boys probably f or about five years now, 15 and my interaction with the technical people at Wolf 16 Creek was such that it led me to believe that they 17 definitely were not interested in addressing issues.
18 I feel that there are technical concerns 19 right now that may have been close to this program that 20 are at best undetermined, but that they need -- let's say 21 a credible review I think should be perf ormed.
22 I don't think the review that was done in 23 the spring of '85 time f rame by Region IV, I guess they 24 had some help f rom NRR, was worth a twit.
25 Q So, basically, you f eel that with respect to SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989
93 e .
i
, 1 the allegations which were made regarding technical
(
2 issues to the 01 program, you feel that some of those, in 3 that they were not addressed properly, may still exist as 4 a technical problem?
5 A Right.
6 Q Even though the plant is currently in
'7 operation?
8 A Right. Right.
9 Q And that based on your review of the 10 documents that I gave you last night, give the appearance 11 that the investigation was either inadequately perf ormed i
12 or that the conclusions were changed?
13 A Unwarranted, changed whatever.
(
14 0 Changed or the report was written in such a 15 manner as to preclude substantiating the alleged problem?
16 A That's correct. That's correct.
17 Q Okay.
18 A That's it. That's all I got.
1 19 MR. DRISKILL: Okay. Ne'11 close the
- 20 interview. Thank you.
21 END OF STATEMENT 22 23 ,
b 24 25 SMITH REPORTING AG ENCY (615) 267-0989 l
e e
CraT:TICATE OF OFTICIAL FironTra
(
This is to certify tha: the attached proceedings befors
- se UNITED STATIS NUCLIAR REGULATORY C 0;'.'!! S S ION in the mt :er of:
NAftE OF PROCIIDING:
Investigative Interview AN INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEW OF:
- i Charles Hill DOCKIT NO.
i PLACI: Of fice of QTC Etowah, Tennessee l
(
- June 27, 1986 ,
~~
were held as herein appears, and that this is the original-
, transcript thereof for the fila of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
1 (siet)GjtLW E d 'bLUl-(TU ID) Christine B. Smith s
( Official Reporter Reporter's Affiliation l
I l
.