ML20150C279
| ML20150C279 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Wolf Creek  |
| Issue date: | 06/03/1987 |
| From: | Scott R AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20150C176 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-87-800 NUDOCS 8803180109 | |
| Download: ML20150C279 (149) | |
Text
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_s-I'./ESTIGATIVE INTERVIS4 OF RCB ERT L. SCOTT CONDUCTED BY:
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MR. H. BROOKS GRIFFIN, Senior Investigator, Of fice of Investigation, United Statet. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
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MR. J AY E. SILBERG, Esquire, Shaw, Pittman, Potts &
Trwbridge, 2300 N Street, N.W., Wa shington, D. C. 20037
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- For Mr. Robert L. Scott * *
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The above, styled proceeding was taken by Marvey J. Tor.s, Court Reporter, CCR LS. #251, at the Holiday in. Russellville, Arkansas on June 3rd, 19 87 at 10 :10 a.m.
l EXHIBIT 880328
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liR. GRIFFIN:
For the record, this is an intervicw self 2
of Robert L. Scott, spel l ed S-c.o-t-t.
You' re employed at this 3
time; is that right?
4 MR. S COTT That's correct.
5 MR. GRIFFIN:
The location of the interview is 6
Russellville, Arkansas.
The date is June the 3rd, 1987 and the 7
time is 10 :05 a.m.
Present at this interview are Robert Scott, 8
and his personal representative, Jay Silbergs and myself, Brooks 9
Grif fin, on behal f of NRC.
The interview is being transcribed by 10 a court reporter, 11 Bob, I need you to stand and raise your right hand so I can 12 swear you to the content of your testimony.
r' 13 (Witness complies.)
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14 MR. GRIFFIN:
Do you swear that the information 15 you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing 16 but the truth, so help you God?
17 MR. S COTT I do.
18 MR. GRIFFIN:
Thank you.
19 EXAMINATION 20 BY MR. GRIFFIN:
21 Q.
Bef ore we proceed with the interview, I have a couple of 22 questions for you about Mr. Silberg's presence here today.
23 What's your understanding of his reason f or being here?
24 A.
I had asked Mr. Silberg to be here in my behalf as a 25 witness of these proceedings, i
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1 Q.
For the purposes of this intervicw, is he representing you 2
or is he representing KG&E?
3 A.
He's representing me.
4 Q.
Bob, would you tell me about your background in the nuclear 5
indust ry?
6 A.
Yes, sir.
My background in the nucicar industry spans f rom 7
1968.
Nuclear industry, meaning at that time, was I began with a 8
company that was manuf acturing internal core components f c : navy l
9 nucicar reactors.
The company was located in St. Louis, 10 Missouri, called -- the name of the company was Unidynamics, a 11 division of Universal d'atch Company.
My position with the 12 company was I was hired a s a Production Welding Engineer.
13 However, while awaiting AECO cicarance, my responsibilities were 14 to develop inspection planning f or a quality engineering group, 15 I was with that company some eight months. I believe, or nine i
16 months.
And my tenure with them was all in the quality l
17 engineering fic1d.
18 I went to work af ter that with a company in Redlands, 19 California. Lockheed Propulsion Company.
They had been awarded a 20 contract by General Electric on what was called cell segment l
21 housing, naval internal core component manuf acturing process.
I i
22 was hired as a Senior Quality Engineering Planner.
I worked in 23 daat position some six months or so and was promoted to group 24 lead f or that particular proj ect, responsible f or all the quality 25 enginecring planning ef forts for the manuf acturing process of i
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these components.
I 1cf t Unidynamics -- not Unidynamics, but i
2 Lockhced Propulsion sometime in early 1970, I believe, around 3
Jan ua ry, Februa ry 197 0.
I received a phonc call from 4
Westinghouse Nucicar Engineering Systems, a division out of 5
Pittsburgh, Pennysivania and they asked me if I would be 6
interested in working f or their company and I intervieacd witt 7
them in California.
Some three weeks later I was asked to go to 8
Pittsburg for an interview and was interviewed by four of their 9
senior managers, and some two or three weeks af ter that, I was 10 hired as a Senior Quality Assurance Enginecr.
I might add. I was 11 a little surprised at the time and did not understand why an l
L 12 extensive interview process occurred with that company, but I l
i 13 learned later on I was one of the first, apparently, non degree'd i
i l
14 senior engineers that was over hired.
I was later told their 15 decision to hire me was based on interview results and upon my 16 career achievements in the field of quality.
17 I worked in the capacity of Senior Quality Engineer with 18 Westinghouse f or approximately 18 months, I believe.
I was in
}
19 Pittsburgh for a year and they transf erred me to the west coast 20 as a QA representative f or vendor programs, to watch those t
i 21 programs and, of course, monitor their progress and so forth.
i 22 During that time, we -- I had leased of fice space or 23 Westinghouse Nuclear Division leased of fice space f rom the Heat l
24 Transf er Division of Westinghouse there in Orange, California.
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l 25 They had run into some problems.
"They" being the Heat Transfer i
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1 Division, ran into some problems getting their product completed.
2 Of course, contract requirements -- the basic problem was they 3
were required to have an N-1 or N stamp -- an N stamp for j
4 pressure vessels they were contracted to manuf acture.
And they 5
had made some three attempts to obtain that and this was in 1971 6
under the new code, ASME Code, which was new to the industry.
We 7
had worked with draf ted standards of the Code up to that point l
8 and in their attempt to achieve that authorization, N stamp 9
authori:ation -- they had tried some three or four times and 10 f ailed their exam, if you will, and/or their review by ASME Code.
11 I was asked to review their program and make 12 recommendations to revise their program or whatever it took to l
13 achieve a successf ul review by the Code Committee and obtain N 14 stamp authorization.
I performed that task and made 15 recommendations that they scrap the program they had and start i
16 over f rom scratch.
I was subsequently asked to take that task on 17 as a full Manager for Westinghouse and did so sometime in, I 18 believe, late March or early April, and by June or late July, 19 carly July, had obtained the N stamp for that company.
20 Subsequent to that, I lef t Westinghouse to become self employed 21 and try a business venture in welding engineering in the state of 22 Arizona and went into a partnership which was not the wisest I
f 23 thing to do, I learned later on.
I l
24 Q.
Bob, f or the purpose of this interview and in the interest l
l 25 of time, all I want is to get a f ull understanding of your f
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1 back ground.
Could you j ump to your next nuclear related j
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function?
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A.
Sure.
I, subsequent to that, went to work f or Bechtel i
4 Power Corporation in September of 197 3.
The employment took 5
place here in Russellville, Arkansas.
I was hired as a Senior l
6 Quality Assurance engineer and worked on the Arkansas Nuclear One 7
Proj ec t.
Some six months af ter being hired, I was promoted to 8
PCA E, Proj ect Quality Assurance Engineer for this proj ect.
And I t
9 served in that capacity f or some f our years.
My next assignment i
i 10 with them was the Grand Gulf project in Mississippi.
I was 11 promoted to f ull manager at that time and became manager of 1
i 12 Quality Assurance for them at Grand Gulf and served in that f
i 13 capacity f or some f our years f rom 1977 to 19 01.
i 14 At that time, I was asked to take on a special assignment I
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15 for Bechtel in the state of Washington on the WPPSS Proj ect.
The 1
16 as signmen t, basically, was to work with a major mechanical j
17 contractor on Unit one to assist in revicaing all the l
18 documentation that had been accumulated or generated over a I
r 19 period of some eight years to determine whether or not the j
20 installation or the documentation substantiated that the i
f i
1 21 installation was a good installation or not, and if not, to i
l 22 identify those areas that were not so that they could be c
23 reexamined and/or replaced, if necessary, or accepted.
I 24 During that process, I was assigned -- of course, I wa s a i
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25 Bechtel employee, but I was in a sense segunded (phonetic) over r'
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to this major contractor who at that time was WBo.
I t wa s a 2
j oint venture between Wright, Schuch a r t, Harbor & Ocry.
I was 3
responsibic for developing the program and the process, to rcvicw 4
all the docunentation that had been generated over, as I 5
mentioned, some eight year period of time, and to systematically 6
detemine whether or not the installation was good or bad.
The 7
ef forts required that we staf f up with technical and competent 8
personnel.
I think that level reached some 400 engineers or 9
better.
i 10 MR. SILBEFG :
Those were people working f or you?
11 A.
Yes, that's correct.
They were responsible to me.
This 12 was including, you kno,i, supervision of prof essional engineers, 13 technical people, clerical people and whoever.
I must clarify l
14 here that none of the inspecti~on group answered to me.
This was 15 engineering cfforts.
And once we pulled the infomation 16 together, we put it into a f ormalized, finalized documentation 17 package and subnitted it to that quality organi:ation for their l
18 final review, acceptance or rej ection.
And that ef fort was 19 originally anticipated to take scrne two years.
We were abic to 20 accomplish it in sorne 11 months, I believe.
And primarily, the 21 reason for our ability to do that was based upon the methodology 3
22 we had used in developing the program.
23 I was personally responsible for extensive training of 24 individual s.
I f c1t that my responsibility to that operation and 25 especially to my people was to provide them with the tools to do BUSHMAll COURT REPORTI!)G, ItiC.
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the job with ~~ those tools, basically, were to identify cicarly 2
the obj ectives of the program ef forts ~~ and also a means of 3
achieving those obj ectives.
We were highly successf ul in it 4
because we had qualified people, good instruction and so f orth.
5 I believe it was at the end of that ef fort, sometime in 6
1983, I'm not certain of the date, but I was asked to.take a 7
special assignment for senior management at Midland, Michigan.
8 The vice-president had asked that I review the Midland Quality 9
Program and conditions there and make recommendations to them.
10 That ef fort took some two to three weeks.
I made my 11 recommendations and they, in turn, asked that I make the same 12 recomme,ndation to the client, our utility at that time.
I did so 13 and the client accepted the recommendation and restructured their 14 organization according to the program.
15 At that time, I was also made aware that I had been 16 selected by my senior management, then, at Bechtel to be the 17 Manager of Quality for the Zimmer Proj ect that we had been asked 18
-- Bechtel had been asked to come in and assist them in some of 19 the problems they were having there, ba sically, documentation and 20 to be able to substantiate whether or not the product was good, 21 bad or indif ferent.
And I believe it was in ~~ sometime in -- I 22 can' t remember exactly the date, but it was 19 83 or so, I 23 believe, and -- I think it was seven months, or approximately 24 seven months, I was still located in Washington, but I flew each 25 week back and forth to the project in Ohio and would go to the i
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home of fice in Michigan until we were asked to mobilize and move 2
onto the site in Cincinnati; a t which time, we, of course, moved 3
f rom Wa shington state up there.
I was on that project until the 4
proj ect was canceled.
And at that time was asked to go back to 5
Midland to assist them in their ef forts there.
6 I had asked my management that I be allowed to take some 7
time of f f rom the nuclear ef forts, if you will.
I had been under 8
a lot of pressure, strain, prof essionally, if you will.
The 9
ef forts f rom the time of the Washington Project through the 10 Zimmer ef forts were very extensive and personally had taken a 11 toll.
I was asked to be put on holding status and was granted 12 that request f o'r some 2-1/2 months af ter the Zimmer Proj ect had 13 been closed down.
{
i
'14 Some 2-1/2 months later, I was called by senior management I
15 out of Ann Arbor, Michigan and asked if I was ready to go back to 16 work and I said, yes, I thought I was.
And I was asked to take a j.
17 position in the client organization at the Midland Project as 18 Superintendent of Quality Control of the technical branch.
I 19 accepted tha t position.
I went there in -- I believe it was 20 sometime in the month of late June or early July, I believe of 21 19 83 or '84.
I can't remember now for certain which year it was.
22 How ever, the ef fort lasted for about some two to three months and 23 the project was canceled, unfortunately.
24 I was, then, asked to go to the Wolf Creek Proj ect to 25 assist them in the investigative process regarding their Q1 t
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1 Program, Quality First Program involving investigative processes 2
and accepted that position.
Went there, as I say, as an 3
investigator working for Owen Thero and a man by the name of Chip 4
Hill.
5 Q.
Let me break in on you here.
So Bechtel was the one that 6
arranged for the job at Q1?
7 A.
That's true.
8 Q.
Okay.
And were you hired in as a Bechtel employee?
9 A.
Yes.
10 Q.
Okay.
11 A.
B echtel employee.
12 Q.
Who interviewed you f or your Q1?
13 MR. SILBERG :
Before we get into that, one point 14 on your background that I think would be usef ul to have on the 15 record ~~ even though I think you said you were non degree'd, you 16 are a Registered Prof essional Engineer?
17 A.
Tha t's correct.
I am a Registered Professional Engineer, 18 Quality Engineering.
That was awarded, if you will, based upon 19 experience and achievement in the career field of Quality
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20 Engineering.
21 MR. SILBERG :
Is that unusual for non degree'd 22 people to be registered?
23 A.
I think it is.
The application that I submitted was quite 24 extensive.
And I was to come to learn later on that the 25 acceptance of that application and the granting of the Registered i
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Prof essional Engineer License was based upon career achievement 2
and/or accomplishment, if you will.
3 MR. SILBERG :
Thank you.
4 MR. GRIFFIN:
Anything else?
(No response.)
6 A.
A lot of my experience, primarily, if you went back to 7
r eview i t is that I, in most cases, have started out within a 8
capacity of the worker, the doer, if you will, and then I have 9
management skills and abilities to motivate people, to design 10 programs, and to achieve the obj ectives.
And that's been 11 recognized by employers that I have had.
And I have some basic 12 philosophics about doing a job and how it is to be achieved.
And
{
13 no one thing is done by one individuals it takes a combination 14 and team ef fort to accomplish obj ectives.
And I have always f elt 15 extremely responsible to my people that I provide ther with the 16 tools to do the job and to train them and to guide them toaard l
l 17 the objectives that have been established for us.
18 one other thing I might make mention of is that, as a 19 manager of people, I have had the opportunity to work with l
20 hundreds of people.
And the reaard that I received f rom that, 21 primarily, was to see that those people go on to bigger and l
22 better things.
I have had experiences where people have tried to 23 pass themselves of f as prof essionals and I have very quickly been l
24 able to recognize, based upon my exper ence with people, that 25 they were not professionals; that they were doing just that, 1
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1 passing themselves of f and found a way to do that.
In our l
2 business, that's not too dif ficult to do, unf ortuna tely, 3
sometimes.
4 But when that was recognized, I would work extensively with 5
those individuals to try to bring their best ef forts forth for l
6 the benefit of the proj ect and/or obj ectives and, most 7
impor tan tly, for the benefit of that individual self.
S ome times 8
I was -- most of the time I was very successf ul.
But there were 9
occasions where I was not.successf ul and these people f elt they 1
10 knew it all and f or their own self interest they obj ected, and 1
11 when that occurred, if they were not able to produce the product 12 that they were hired to do and in a prof essional manner, then, in 13 my opinion, they were not doing themselves any good or the a
i 14 company they were working f or, and I would release thoss people.
15 Q.
These are people subordinate to you, as opposed to your l
16 superiors?
i 17 A.
Yes, sir.
That's correct.
18 Q.
Okay.
19 A.
I have also had occasion, in a likewise f ashion, to take t
l 20 issue at dif ferent times with my superiors.
And I don' t mean to 21 be, nor was I ever derogatory, but constructively, I would take 22 issue with them.
However, if they insisted on going in a 23 different direction, as long as in my mind it would achieve those 24 objectives and in a positive way not to discredit anybody or 25 a ny thing, then I would f ollow whatever they would recommend.
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1 There were occasions where I disagreed with senior management l
2 and --
3 Q.
Are you talking about any particular site?
Do you have a 4
partic ula r site in mind?
5 A.
No, I'm not talking about sites.
I'm talking about former 6
employers when I would disagree with them, I would find another 7
j ob, basically, l
8 Q.
I see.
9 A.
Anyhow,
~~
10 Q.
Well, why don' t we break f or cof f ee.
11 (Short break.)
12 Q.
We' re back on the record.
I had to take a little
{ ~
13 refreshment break.
Bob, when you were. hired into Q1, was it as l
14 an investiga tor?
15 A.
Originally, yes, sir.
16 Q.
From the testimony I have taken with other Q1 people before l
17 today, some had the impression that maybe you were hired 18 into the Q1 Program, originally, to hold some supervisory 19 position, even though, initially, you had the title Q1 20 Inv estiga tor.
Is there any truth to that?
Did they indicate to 21 you when you were hired that they intended that you would be a 22 manager in the program?
23 A.
No.
They told me that they needed help ~~ I was told that 1
24 KG&E needed help in their Q1 Program and I was asked to come down 25 in the capacity as an Investigator.
And I had no preconceived l
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I f elt competent, pe rson al ly, tha t I might be abic to 2
offer some assistance, but I did not know that until I got there 3
and had an opportunity to review the program and see what th ey --
4 what the program consisted of, see what kind of people we had 5
doing the job and so forth.
6 Q.
So it was intended originally that you were going to work 7
cases?
8 A.
That's correct.
Under the direction of, of course, the 9
program and under the direction of Owen Thero and Chip Hill.
10 Q.
Did you actually work any cases?
11 A.
I started working on one particular case; yes, sir, I did.
12 I don' t remember -- well, wait a minute.
It was on -- it was on 13 a concern regarding the Daniel's CAR Program.
_' a 14 Q.
I'm f amiliar with that one.
Did you ever complete that 15 investiga tion?
16 A.
No, sir, I did not.
17 Q.
When were you actually -- when did you come on board with 18 Q1?
Do you remember the month and year?
19 A.
No, sir, I really don't.
20 Q.
Ac tually, i t wa s 19 84, bu t you don' t know ~~
21 A.
I don' t recall the exact month or what have you.
22 Q.
Was it before Chuck Snyder became the manager of Q1?
23 A.
Yes, sir, it was.
24 Q.
I think that was -- I think he came on in August.
Would 25 that give you any kind of ref erence as to when you might have --
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lm e-1 A.
It might have been some -- maybe a week or two or three 2
weeks, maybe, before Chuck was named head or manager of Q1.
3 Q.
One of the unusual things that I heard in relation to you, 4
Bob, was that when interviewing Mr. Thero, he made a statement 5
which I would like for you to respond to, and that was tha t'in 6
spite of the f act you were hired in Q1 investigation as the -- or 7
Q1 Program as an Investigator that it was his obj ection that you 8
were not perf orming the investigations that were assigned to you, 9
and that led him to believe that you were getting your direction 10 f rom somebody else when you first began working there.
Is there 11 any ~~ I'd like for you --
12 A.
That's a -- that's interesting to hear that kind of 13 statement.
Mr. Thero put me through the Q1 Program fundamental
{'
14 requirements like anyone else, explained the program to me.
15 There was some four or five new engineers when I came on board.
16 We were all going through the process, I think, at the same time.
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17 Af ter going through our prelimina ry r equirements, r eviewing 18 certain programmatic requirements and documents and testing that 19 we had reviewed and understood these things, I understood that 20 Mr. Hill would be assigning us our investigative assignments.
l 21 When I turned in my paper that said that I had reviewed all the 22 program preliminary things and so f orth and understood, I was 23 assigned this particular case by Chip Hill.
And to my t
24 recollection, Chip said to -- he handed -- Chip handed me a 25 concern on a sheet of paper that was, I believe, typewritten and i ~
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there was a plan which was one-liners that said, "Here's the 2
approach you should take. '
I went f rom that point back to the 3
of fice or the trailer th ey had us housed in and developed a 4
matrix -- what I call a ' matrix approach to this problem.
I was 5
told that before I enacted that to go over and discuss it with 6
Chip Hill, see if he agreed with it.
I did so and immediately 7
went to work on that ef fort.
8 Q.
So he accepted your work plan ~~
9 A.
He certainly did.
10 Q.
-- which was a lot more involved?
11 A.
He certainly did.
And he a t one time ~~ to my knowledge, 12 Owen Thero and also Chip commented they thought it was a
^
13
{- J practical approach and a good plan, and I was doing a fine job.
14 And to hear this statement now is a little discouraging.
15 Q.
Well, maybe you misunderstood what I was saying.
They were 16
~~ the observation made was that you were hired as an 17 Investigator, you were assigned cases, but it seemed you were 18 spending your time working on things that were not related to the 19 as signment and --
20 A.
I don't understand what they ~~ I disagree with that; okay?
l 21 To t ally.
22 Q.
So you were working on this case?
23 A.
Tha t's correct.
24 Q.
What was your approach, your investigative approach to this l
l 25 case, this one that obviously became ~~ is one of the more high I
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1 profile things that came out of Q1 because of later controversy 2
that we'll get into later in this interview?
3 A.
Yes.
4 Q.
What was your approach to this problem with the CARS?
5 A.
I took the ~~ f rom what I can remember, the approach I took 6
was that I listed down -- I listed the CARS that had been 7
r ev is ed.
I looked at all the CARS and eliminated those that had 8
not had revisions because, to my recollection of the concern, it 9
said that CARS had been revised to the extent that they were no 10 longer effective.
And I think there was implied or specifi* ally 11 sta ted tha t tha t wa s a t th e r eques t of mana gemen t tha t th ey be 12 revised to the point t.,
' ney no longer were ef f ective f or 13 corrective action.
trang the concern, is what I focused in f.s
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l 14 on.
15 There was another statement, if I recall, that went on f rom 16 there that said the CARS, as a result of this revision process, 17 were not ef fective, or something to that.
I don' t remember the 18 specific thing.
But what I'm saying is, the reason for the 19 approach that I took -- I didn't look at all the CARS in the I
l 20 program in depth.
I selected those that had been revised 21 because, to me, that's what the allegation was pointing at.
It f
22 was not saying that the entire CAR program was no good; it was 23 saying that some of the CARS had been revised, apparently, from 24 the concerned individual's mind, by peer pressure or management 25 pressure to do away with the probicm without really getting it T
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resolved with good corrective action.
2 Q.
When you began your program, you began with your matrix.
3 Did you also -- in the time you were working on this as an 4
Investigator, did you look into the aspects of whether there had 5
been management pressure involved in this supposed 6
inef fectiveness of the CAR Program?
7 A.
Basically, what I did was look at the revised CAR and 8
a ttempted to a scertain, first of all:
Why was it revised? Was 9
it logical to have revised it?
I interviewed some engineering 10 people in the Daniels organization that was responsible at the 11 time for the revision process.
I don' t remember exactly how f ar l
12 I got into the investigation when I was asked to go into a
~
13 meeting and learned that I was going or was being asked to become 14 a Lead, if you will, in the Q1 organization.
I don' t remember 15 all the specific details of the investigation.
I just remember 16 what my approach was, basically, and the methodology was to i
l 17 attempt to establish that there was management pressure or, no, 18 there was not.
As f ar as I got into my investigation, I didn't 19 see any evidence of management pressure to change those or revisc 20 those CARS.
They were logical revisions, f rom what I saw.
I 21 Q.
How far along did you get into this investigation? Were 22 you halfway through, were you almost through, were you just 23 barely started?
24 A.
If I recall, I was approximarcly, maybe, two-thirds through 25 th e r evi ew of CARS.
But as far as being able to say that I was, t
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you know, halfway through the investigative process, to draw a 2
final conclusion, I can' t say that because I wasn' t able to go 3
through -- I don' t know how long it would have taken.
I don't 4
know where the rest of the train would have taken me.
5 Q.
I understand.
Tell me about your elevation to Q1 Lead.
6 How did that come about?
7 A.
Owen Thero came to the trailer one af ternoon -- Owen Thero 8
came to the trailer one af ternoon and said, "Dick Grant wants us 9
to meet him in his of fice.
We're going to have a meeting.
And 10 Mr. Glenn Koester is going to be there and we're going to talk I
11 about changes in the organization."
12 Q.
Prior to that did you receive any contacts f rom anybody in
~
13 the organization to indicate these changes were going to be made?
14 Had you been approached?
15 A.
Not in the organization.
There wasn' t ~~ no, I don't 16 recall any indications prior to that time.
I understood at one l
f 17 time that there was concern with the program and its progress.
I And Owen had expressed that they were way behind, they had a l
18 19 ba cklog.
You know, they were hiring people to try to get this 20 thing moving forward.
They were trying to achieve the objective, 21 of course, in a more timely f ashion.
And whether or not that was 22 going to take a programmatic change or management change, or what l
23 have you, I didn' t know what f orm that was coming in.
But there 24 was some indications that there probably would be.
I didn' t know 25 who that individual was going to be, or individuals was going to BUS HMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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i be up to that time.
2 Q.
So the first you knew was --
3 A.
The meeting.
4 Q.
Could you tell me what happened in that meeting?
5 A.
I don't remember the specifics, other than I was asked by, 6
I believe, it was Mr. Grant, if I would take the position of 7
Investigator Lead.
Like, to have Mr. Thero do the interview 8
process and set it up into two groups, primarily, and I was also 9
told a t that time, that I was introduced to Chuck Snyder, that 10 Chuck was going to be the manager of the operation.
11 Q.
Had you known Chuck before?
12 A.
No, sir, I had not.
I understood he worked f or Bechtel 13 before.
Now, I had seen Chuck on the job.
There is no question 14 about it.
But really I didn' t know him, per se.
I understood, 15 af ter I got to know Chuck some, that he had worked on the 16 Arkansas Proj ect, but I think that was maybe a little before my 17 time on the Arkansas Project.
18 Q.
All right.
As a result of this meeting, did you become 19 Supervisor over the investigative staf f in Q17 20 A.
Yes, what staf f there was there at the time.
I think we 21 had four investigators, maybe five.
But at the time, also, we 22 were asked to enhance the program.
23 Q.
By additional hiring?
24 A.
Well, by additional hiring, but also to enhance the program 25 by revision process, a s necessa ry.
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When ycu say "We were asked," who is 2
"we"?
3 A.
Owen Thero, myself, and Chuck Snyder.
4 MR. SILBERG :
And who did the asking?
5 A.
It came f rom, I believe, -- I think -- I thought it was 6
f rom Mr. Grant.
7 MR. SILBERG :
Okay.
8 Q.
(BY MR. GRIFFIN:)
Was Mr. Koester a t this meeting?
9 A.
Yes, sir.
10 Q.
Did he have any input or did he indicate what his 11 expectations were?
12 A.
No, sir.
I don' t remember, specifically, what he said.
He t'
~
13 told us that he was, you know -- he told us these changes were 14 going to be made.
I don' t recall the specific conversation.
15 Q.
Who told you; Koester or Grant?
16 A.
Both Mr. Grant and Mr. Koester.
l 17 Q.
Okay.
18 A.
And I don' t know which one said first.
19 Q.
All right.
20 MR. SILBERG :
When you say "told," told what?
1 21 About the changes or enhancement of the program?
22 MR. GRIFFIN:
My question was aimed at who, I was 23 trying to figure out who was running the show here.
Whose 24 meeting was it? Was it Grant's decision or Mr. Koester's 25 decision?
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A.
I had the feeling it was Mr. Kocster's meeting.
2 Q.
All right.
Did you immediately assume your new duties as 3
Supervisor?
4 A.
Yes, sir.
That af ternoon I was asked to work with Owen.
5 We did so.
We went and sat down and -- I had some suggestions, 6
and we sat down that af ternoon and started looking at the 7
programmatic aspects of it.
We continued to operate under the 8
existing program.
There was an announcement made that af ternoon 9
in the Q1 investigation trailer.
Everybody was called together 10 and told that an organization change was taking place and the 11 reasons why it was taking place, and there would be some upcoming 12 changes to the program and that even/one was asked to, you know, 13 cooperate and work together as a team to see that -- you know, to l
a l
14 obtain a common goal or obj ective.
15 Q.
Whose meeting was this?
Chuck's?
16 A.
It was -- yes, sir, it was Chuck's.
Well, wait a minute.
l 17 I'm not real certain of that.
If I recall, I think Owen called i
18 the meeting because everyone up to that point answered to Owen 19 Thero.
And Owen, I believe, made the announcement of the changes 20 and introduced Chuck; okay?
21 Q.
Uh-h uh.
22 A.
No, I believe that was Owen Thero's meeting.
23 Q.
During this meeting, did Chuck express to the staf f what 24 his expectations were?
25 A.
If I recall correctly, yes.
He expected us to continue on r
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1 in the f ashion tha t we had been working.
And tha t ~~ you know, 2
saying that there will be some changes in the programmatic 3
aspects that Bob and owen would be working on and he wanted to 4
have the cooperation of everyone.
If they had any problem to 5
come bring them to him or -- whatever he could do to help in the 6
process.
7 Q.
Okay.
In my interviews with people, with many of the 8
people that attended tha t meeting, Bob, there was some language 9
or some explanations of what was said there that are on a little 10 bit dif ferent vein than wha t you're describing.
Some people said 11 that Snyder's comments to the assembled staf f about what they 12 intended to accomplish was more in terms of a mandate, and that
{~
13 is that, we're going to have these substantial number of open 14 investigations closed by December 1984, so that they wouldn't 15 interf ere with the f uel load date.
16 A.
I don' t remember that ever being said during that meeting.
17 Q.
And that beyond that, there were also statements that, "If 18 there's anybody present" and don' t take these words literally, 19 but something in the essence of, "If there's anybody here that 20 doesn' t think they can support or meet what our goal is here, you 21 might consider seeking other employment."
22 A.
I don' t recall that statement being made, specifically, no.
23 Q.
Do you remember anything like that statement, even if net 24 specifically tha t statement?
25 A.
No, sir, I don't.
Other than we were to work as a group, a f
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1 team ef fort to accomplish a common objective.
2 Q.
As f ar as ~~ I'm sure the people in the meeting ~~ I'm 3
making the assumption here that we're indicating a desire to 4
support the f uel load date, but what I'm speaking of is in 5
relation to, "The case is closed. "
6 A.
That was part of the obj ective was to try to attempt to 7
meet the fuel load date.
8 Q.
Of course.
9 A.
But you know, if that could be achieved, that's f ine.
10 Tha t's a goal and obj ective.
But to my knowledge, there was 11 never a mandate, never a mandate that these things would be 12 accomplished by fuel load or else.
That's totally ridiculous.
13 Q.
do as f ar as you heard, Chuck made no such statements and 14 did not indicate anything like that?
I l
15 A.
No.
No, sir.
That was a common goal or obj ective.
And 16 tha t's in the beat interest of everyone concerned in the proj ect, 17 ev eryone.
18 Q.
Bob, how much involvement did you have when you assumed 19 your new duties in revising the procedures for Q1?
20 A.
When you say "how much," I primarily looked at the -- and I 21 can't tell you exactly how much, but I looked primarily at the 22 investigative process portion of the program and made suggestions 23 to revise portions of that program that I thought would be more 24 ef fective for the user, if you will.
It provided more guidance 25 to the user, r
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MR. SILBERG The use:r being the investigator?
2 A.
The investiga tor.
That's correct.
As I think I mentioned 3
carlier, my approach to any problem or goal or obj ective is to 4
try to provide the individual that's responsib' le for achieving 5
the task with clear direction, clear understanding of what's 6
required of him, what the obj ectives are and how to get to that 7
point f rom ABC and so forth.
And so I looked at the programmatic 8
aspects of the investigative process.
I worked with Owen Thero.
9 He looked at the interview process and we tried -- we mold that 10 toge ther, those recommendations and revised the program l
11 accordingly.
12 I suggested, f or example, that the program be more specific 13 to the investiga tive approach.
And wha t, for example, would an
.{
14 investigator do once he runs into a situation or concern that he l
l 15 sees outside the realm of the expressed allegation or concern, 16 individual concern?
And I suggested and we did adopt a tool 17 called a QFO, I believe, Quality First Observation.
In other f
18 words, I told my people that -- or even bef ore I told my people, 19 I said, "Hey, there's going to come an occasion when an l
20 investigator during the investigative process is going to run l
21 across something that may not be in line with the concern, may 22 not appear to be in line with the concerned -- individual 23 concerned, if you will, for the allegation, but he should not 24 ignore that.
We have prof essionals here that if they see 25 something that appears to be wrong, they should go ahead, I r
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1 think, and identify that and let's turn it over to the 2
responsible organization within the utility to f ollow up on that 3
concern.
4 Q.
On that same subj ect, Bob, in interviewing a sizable number 5
of Q1 investigators, many of them expressed strong reservations 6
about the use of this Q1 Observation document because they had 7
the personal opinion that they would have rather incorporated 8
this new deficiency or this new problem into their ongoing 9
investigation of that issue.
And a lot expressed an opinion that 10 by documenting and sending it over to another organization, th ey 11 didn' t think there would be time to respond.
They considered the 12 use of observations and the prohibition that they pick up thesc 13 new issues or these related issues to what they were specifically
{
14 asked to investiga te, as curtailing their f reedom to get 15 resolution to potential significant problems.
Did you institute, 16 yoursel f, the use of observations or was this Mr. Snyder's --
17 A.
No, sir, I instituted that, and I'll explain why.
One of 18 the problems that we had early under the program before it was 19 revised, was that an investigator, f rom some of the things I had 20 observed, would take of f with a plan, okay, and he observed 21 something else and then he would take of f on that and what would 22 happen was that the original concern would ainost get lost 23 because the tentacles would start growing of f of this.
The guy 24 finds something else and something else.
And it would just grow.
And this thing that grew f rom a point of concern, now grew to be 25 r
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a monster.
It got out of control and out of hand.
The group 2'
there would never have been able to, I don' t believe, ever close 3
out all the concerns.
A person, if they do not have a specific 4
plan and stick to that plan to reach a specific goal or obj ective 5
and they keep going outside, it can mu shroom and mushroom and 6
mushroom and you never achieve any results.
7 Now, the QFO was not designed to take away f rom the 8
process, if you will.
It was designed to provide a method of 9
assuring that nothing did get dropped down in a crack; that if an 10 investigator finds something he's got a concern about, he doesn' t 11 have the time or shouldn' t ~~ I don' t think should have taken the 12 time to pursue it f urther, but he should pursue it f ar enough to 13 identify some meat as to what his concern is so that some other
{'
14 organization can take that and f ollow up.
But he should stick to 15 his assigned objective, and that is to identify or determine 16 whether or not the allegation that he ~~ or the case he's working 17 on has merit or does not have merit.
I can' t understand --
18 Q.
I'm going to explain it to you.
19 A.
Okay.
I'm sor ry.
20 Q.
The NRC uses an approach that is a little dif ferent f rom 21 what you're describing here.
If somebody says that a welder is 22 making deficient welds and if you'll go look at such and such a 23 w eld j oin t tha t h e w elded, it will prove it, we don' t just go 24 look at that one weld and if --
L 25 A.
We don' t either.
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Q.
2 prohibitions that were described to me.
In other words, go look 3
a t th e w eld.
If somebody says, this man was intimidated, go talk 4
to that man.
And this comes under the general heading of, how 5
are the Q1 investigations scoped?
The former Q1 investigators, 6
many that I interviewed, believe that by requiring the use of 7
observations and prohibiting them to expand their investigations 8
to properly scope the problem at the outset of the investigation 9
was one of the shortcomings of the program.
10 A.
Not true.
That was never, ever instructed to those people, 11 They were instructed to develop a plan or approach specific to 12 the concern or allegation.
If during the course of their 13 investiga tion, they found another problem, if it was relative to 14 the concern, they were to pursue that.
The program was never 15 designed to put arms around the investigator or to cripple him so 16 that he could not achieve the obj ective.
I don' t know where 17 th ey're coming f r om here.
18 Q.
The idea is, as you said before and heard described by 19 others in Q1 management, if the allegation is that this is a bad 20 weld, j ust look at that weld.
21 A.
That's not true.
That's not necessarily true.
If the 22 allegation said that that's a bad weld, and the investigator --
if he said that's his approach, okay, and he then went and looked 23 24 at a bad weld, he should have probably looked at other welds to 25 deteomine tha t. I don.' t agree with that, that we told him that or e
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'l agreed tha t -- if a guy said tha t's a bad weld, tha t's the only 2
weld to look at.
3 Q.
I'm telling you, Bob, that a maj ority of people that used 4
to work under your supervision in this program, a large number of 5
them interpreted Chuck and your instructions to them in this 6
regard, as taking a more narrow approach.
And that this was the 7
end resul t.
8 A.
I see.
9 Q.
As I've done case reviews -- I've not looked at all the 10 files.
I used a sampling based upon my interviews with these 11 f ormer Q1 people.
I used the methodology, 3You tell me what you 12 think is wrong.
What case file should I look at as an example of 13 what you' re telling me?"
And I looked at enough of them to see l
14 that these interviews were condensed to one or two lines l
l 15 describing the allegation.
And then, in many instances, there 16 were -- dae issues were somehow resolved with one or two 17 interviews or one or two documents.
i 18 MR. SILBERG :
Now, you're raising a dif ferent 19 issue.
The question of whether the interviews were too narrow is l
20 dif ferent from whether the investigation was too narrow.
21 MR. GRIFFIN:
Right.
But I j ust wanted to give 22 you a f ull picture here of -- not only did we find the NRC 23 critical ~~ I'm talking about some of the earlier reviews of the l
24 NRC ~~ critical of the narrowed scope of the investigative i
25 process, but that related to that.
I'm j ust trying to be f air T'
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here, Jay, in that there was not great detail contained in some 2
of the --
3 A.
You mentioned earlier NRC reviews, a program that they' re 4
critical "- d3a t's the first time I hear that they're critical of 5
the program.
Is this ~~
6 Q.
It's something that KG&E did not have access to until years 7
later, unfortunately.
8 A.
This is af ter the f act?
9 Q.
Uh-h uh.
10 A.
Amazing.
We had gentlemen there f rom OI.
We had gentlemen 11 there f rom Region IV.
12 Q.
Those are the regions I'm talking about.
13 A.
I see.
It's interesting that they would wait this long to a
14 tell us we had a problem.
If they were there, I would have 15 thought we would learn about that.
16 Q.
I have had that expressed to me by a lot of people in Q1, 17 indicating they feel it would be more productive had the NRC --
18 A.
It surely would have.
19 Q.
-- made recommendations earlier on.
20 A.
You know, that -- and I don' t care what utility it is, the 21 industry as a whole can use all the help it can get, 22 constructively, if we could work more together.
But if someone 23 sees a problem, I think they have an obligation to say, "Hey, we 24 see a better way to go here."
25 Q.
Let me make one comment on that to give you a -- maybe to r
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give you some understanding of why things have come down the way 1
2 they have, and that is, the NRC Of fice of Investigation is 3
invariably always looking back in time.
The investigation I'm 4
currently conducting is of a relatively brief period of time in 5
late 19 84.
I'm really focusing f rom August through December 6
1984.
Some aspects, like the origin of the program start in March '84 and go all the way up to March '85, when f uel load 7
f the f ocus of my i' vestigation is this n
I 8
occurred.
But really, 9
relatively brief period of time --
10 A.
I see.
11 Q.
~~ when all of these cases were closed.
And what I'm trying to determine is whether these ~~ there was adequate 12 13 investigation done on these cases.
And obviously, no one case
{'
leads to a conclusion that it's a good program or one case leads l
14 15 to the conclusion it's a bad program.
But in talhing to the people -- when I talk to a majority of people in a program and 16 the people in the program themselves think that it's a deficient 17 i
program or that it has serious shortcomings, the NRC continues to l
18 19 have concerns about that.
And in going through this line of I
20 questioning today, you as a Supervisor, I think, can give me a better understanding of what your intentions were as you changed 21 22 die procedures or as you revised things or as you gave So that's the reason f or this line of questioning.
23 instructions.
That's the reason we are looking back so far in time because we 24 want to know or make a determination '.c our oan minds as to 25 r
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whether 01 investigations, during this brief period of time, were 2
adequate to resolve employee concerns.
3 A.
I hope you can appreciate my f rustrations during this 4
interview process to learn at this time that we had people that l
5 f elt that that program was so deficient and so restrained.
Th ey 6
should have expressed that a t the time, and they didn't.
There 7
was a couple of times I can recall -- when I say "they didn't,"
8 there were some concerns raised when we introduced the QFO.
I 9
don't remember the specific individual's name, but we explained 10 to them why, and it was my understanding at the time that they 11 were perfectly satisfied with that explanation and understood.
l 12 If they didn' t, I would have thought they would have taken it to 13 a higher authority or even come back to me and said, "H ey, we 14 j ust don't agree with you," but they ~~ that j ust didn't happen.
15 Q.
Well, you may have misunderstood me.
The primary concern 16 about the use of observations was f rom Q1 employees themselves.
Tha t 's who --
18 A.
That's what I'm talking about:
Q1 employees.
Those 19 f ellows worked under my direction; okay?
And if they had that 20 much concern, gracious, why didn' t they really express that at l
21 that time?
l 22 Q.
Some of them believe they did, but I see a dif ference of
)
23 opinion here.
24 A.
Yes, sir, I totally disagree.
l 25 Q.
Let me make one more comment about NRC revica's.
Th ey had I
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1 reviews going on in the technical cnd so I was also taking 2
reviews -- the report that was issued by OI, the first report 3
that f ell with them, so happened, f ell within the time f rame of 4
the period I'm investigating.
I don' t have at my fingertips the 5
day of Mr. Ward's report ~~
6 MR. SILBERG :
December of ' 84.
7 Q.
-- bu t, essentially, his report was not even made available 8
to his director until af ter the period in which I'm looking at l
i 9
the program.
So maybe it would have been helpf ul in 1985 if ~~
10 MR. S ILBERG :
Mr. Ward's report was written f or 11 his director.
It was written to Ben Hayes.
12 MR. GRIFFIN:
Right, but what I'm saying, Jay, is
[ ~
13 tha t I'm looking, primarily, at what was going on in the program L.J 14 f rom August to December.
Even if the OI had come in and made a 15
~~ said "We want to have a meeting," -- the KG&E -- "We want to 16 make some strong points.
We want to see changes in the program,"
f l
I'm not sure that that would have curtailed the need to look t
l 17 18 the program during the critical period when these hundreds of 19 allegations or investigations were closed.
20 MR. S ILB ERG Except Ward was out there in t
21 September.
If he saw those major problems, he had an obligation 22 to tell his boss earlier and not wait f our months.
Why did Ward 23 wait four months?
24 MR. GRIFFIN:
Well, he did his review in September i
25 and October.
And all I can tell you is that the l'RC OI gathers e;
LYA l
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facts.
In this case he was doing an evaluation, not an 2
investiga tion.
And the person that could have used this 3
information, had he chosen to do so, didn' t receive it until 4
December.
OI didn' t have a policy of -- does not do exit 5
intervi ews.
We gather f acts.
We do not coach the utilities on 6
how to conduct this or any other aspect of this program as we 7
proceed with our f act gathering.
That is just not our function.
3 We don' t do it.
We don' t do exits.
I have seen that of t 9
repeated criticism of OI for not f urnishing them.
However, like r
10 I say, I'm looking at events that occurred before the director of f
11 OI had this document shoaing these criticisms in his hands.
12 Q.
(BY MR. GRIFFIN )
Let's r'eturn to the -- I want to know 13 more about what changes in the Q1 procedures tha t you initiated.
.' J 14 We've talked about observations.
What other changes did you make i
15 in Q17 16 A.
Clarification as to how an inspector, I think, should 17 approach an investigative process.
I was instrumental in that.
18 I can' t remember the specifics now.
It's been some time.
But I 19 do remember the QFO process, some better guidelines on 20 investigative process.
21 Q.
How about f ormat f or the investigative report? Who created 22 that?
23 A.
I think that was a combination of the original progrcm 24 developed by Owen Thero and others before my time.
25 Q.
Okay.
So you didn't really change the f ormat?
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r --
I 1
A.
Not to a ny grea t extent that I recall, i f a t all.
I don't 2
recall that.
We made some changes to its yes, we did I recall 3
we did make some changes to it, but the extent of it, I don't 4
recall.
5 Q.
Another one of the concerns raised by some f ormer 01 6'
investigators was that there was a prohibition enacted by Mr.
7 Snyder that investigators could not discuss their cases among 8
themselves.
Did you have any involvement in establishing this l
9 policy?
10 A.
To some degree, yes.
Let me explain why.
My observation 11 of the investigators ~~ some of them, not at l of them -- some of 12 them was that th -y were sometimes sitting in the trailer talking 13 to each other about parallel cases, and rather than going out
{
14 themselves to inves*. iga te and find actual f acts, I f ound th ey 15 were saying, "Oh, w ell, tha t's like my situation. "
They would I
16 take that information as gospel withcue checking it out 17 thems elves.
I said, "H ey, yo u j u s t do n ' t do tha t. " Okay?
18 Another thing I found was that they were getting of f the ~~
19 of f their oan plans, if you will.
They were straying.
And th ey 20 were doing a lot of surmising of things that could bo without l
21 going.and verifying, if you will.
And that concerned me.
There 22 was a lot of disturbance.
You know, I had individuals that came l
23 to me -- my investigators that came to me and said, "H ey, B ob,
24 can you quiet these guys down over here?"
He said, "I've got 25 these two guys and they never shut up."
And this didn' t happen rib BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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36 f-1 overnight.
This was something that was, you knew, going on for a 2
period of time.
And I started observing that and I said, 3
"Gentlemen, you know, wha t you need to do is, you have an 4
assigned task, you have an assigned plan that you have developed 5
here.
You need to go do that.
I will see every report that 6
comes through here.
I will see circumstances wherein I think you 7
should talk to so and so investigator because there is a parallel 8
here. "
Okay?
And in f act, if I see where I think this case 9
needs to be looked at in a like type fashion as another case 10 because they are so close, we may sit and talk together, then 11 we'll do it tha t way, but under a controlled f ashion, rather than 12 uncontrolled situations that were disturbing and nonproductive to 13 the investigation process.
14 Q.
You have given, yet, a new slant on this particular issue.
15 Some of the Q1 investigators that I interviewed indicated 16 prohibition was implemented f or two reasons, one being that they 17 wanted to -- they figured it was user control in the 18 investigative processes and the conclusion of one investigator --
19 A.
Lord, no.
20 Q.
And that another part of it had to do with they wanted to 21 get the cases closed more quickly; so therefore, if they couldn' t 22 draw on the technical expertise of their f ellow investigators, 23 tha t it would tend to make the cases shorter and --
24 A.
Wrong.
We provided them with technical expertise, true 25 technical expertise.
If they needed that, we provided that LJ BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 individual or individual s, if they needed technical expertisc 2
outside their realm of expertise.
That's totally without merit.
3 Q.
I'm drawing on my memory here, but I think Mr. Snyder's 4
primary criticism of the investigators discussing the cases among 5
themselves was the f act that cases -- that he considered it a 6
waste of time for them to talk among themselves.
He wanted t hem 7
to work and not talk.
So everybody seems to have a little bit 8
different slant of why this prohibition was implemented.
I l
9 suppose there's room in here for several interpretations and I 10 certainly have received several now.
But I appreciate your 11 explanation.
12 A.
In cases I encouraged some of our people to work together 13 as a team, if the case appeared to warrant that.
You know, one
{..a t
l 14 guy may have heavier expertise in the NDE and another have 15 heavier expertise in the testing program and so forth.
And if l
16 the allegation was in that a rea of concern, if you will, I put 17 these f ellows together and had them coordinate and work together.
18 We didn' t totally prohibit people f rom discussing their cases 19 with each other.
20 Q.
The testimony I received f rom some peof.e in the program i
21 was that the prohibition was total.
You couldn't discuss it in i
l 22 the trailer, you couldn' t discuss it in the field, you couldn' t 23 discuss it af ter work.
It was total, t
24 A.
Not true.
25 Q.
All right.
That's not what you intended?
I r
CJ BUSle'AN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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No, sir, not ever.
Tha t would be counterproductive to the 2
whoin program intent.
What we wanted was prof essional people 3
doing a professional job in a professional manner, not a lot af 4
guys sitting around bulling and eating up time that they didn' t 5
have to eat up.
It should be productive time.
6 MR. SILB ERG s When you said the prohibition wasn' t 7
total, under what circumstances would you have allowed or 8
anticipated that they would have talked together on concerns?
9 A.
As I have mentioned earlier, if ~~ and it happened on 10 several occasions ~~ if an investigator saw a concern or a 11 problem ** 1et's say an observation to him that he knew of 12 another investigator working on, he would como and tell the guy 13 or he could come tell me and I called them together.
It was when 14 they would sit in the trailer and they would start telling a 15 story and this other guy would say, "Yeah, you know, I just 16 talked to old Joe so and so here, and you know what I'm finding 17 out?"
And another guy says, "Yeah, I'm reviewing records in this 18 area and do you know what I'm finding out?"
And I say, "Wait a 19 minute.
What is the relevancy of what you say and you say and 20 you say toaard your specific case?"
And come to find out, nine 21 times out of ten, there was no relevan?y.
Okay?
If there had 22 been, the way they were doing it or conducting it was not 23 produc tive.
It was non helpf ul because it was disturbing 24 ev en/ thing.
They were going on and on and on in this thing.
25 O.
We've seen people critical of certain aspects of the ri t.s BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING. INC.
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program who did give you strong marks or high marks in your 2
ability to organize re? a*ed cases and to track and trend related 3
issues so tha t ~~
4 A.
We did that.
5 Q.
~~ there was not a duplica tion of ef f ort.
People on one 6
hand r.re saying I didn't like this aspect of the program or this 7
aspect, but there were strengths implemented and you, 8
specifically, were named as having been good in organizing the 9
inf ormation and trending.
10 A.
We were concerned that there could be conditions that could 11 be helpf ul to the other case.
These things are going to cross.
12 They have to at times.
That was the reason we developed that 13 tracking mechanism, to keep a close observation so that we could
{
14 prof essionally and constructively take two individuals and 15 cooperate their investigative processes if it was relevant to a 16 concern or case.
We didn't want to drop anything in the crack, 17 so to speak.
18 The intent of that program was to identify whether there 19 was a real problem with that plant in any way, shape, or form; 20 okay?
It's in the interest of public health and saf ety, the safe 21 operation of that plant.
It's very costly, as we all know, to 22 have a situation to go astray and cause that plant at some time 23 or other to be shut down, or worse than that, to have a 24 ca tas troph e.
So in other words, we were very cautious of that 25 and tried to be very thorough and complete in the organization of r
Ls BUSIF.AN COURT R EPORTING, INC.
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the program and the handling and trending of the program, so we
'~
2 didn' t mise anything.
We wanted to do the best j ob we could f or 3
the utility and the public interest.
4 Q.
A dif ferent subj ect.
Did you consider it legitimate to 5
close out Q1 investigations when a, what I'll describe as a, 6
higher-tiered document was created which addressed the same 7
situa tion, like an NCR or a CAR? Was that a programmatic 8
decision to use these higher tiered documents to close out 9
investiga tions?
10 A.
B rook s, I'm not -- I can' t recall how we handled that.
11 Q.
Well, in looking at the master list which contains just 12 brief descriptions of cases, I would see ref erence numbers to
[
13 CARS and NCRS.
I'm sure you're familiar with this -- I think you 4
LJ i
14 are -- description of each case, a brief description of each case 15 and the related ~~ whether it was substantiated or not and 16 related to QFAR's or QPV's or QPD's, just kind of a quick or 17 ready reference to the allegations.
i 18 A.
I didn' t maintenance this, but...
19 Q.
Did you ever see that while you were working in Q1?
20 A.
I really can' t recall.
21 Q.
W ell, even though the brief description ~~
22 A.
(Witness reviews document.)
This is a status report.
23 Q.
Yeah.
Even though the descriptions are brief and some 24 people described them as not exactly on point, I have been using this document to try to help individual investigatiors recall 25 e
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cases tha t diey worked on.
This may have been something created 2
af ter you l ef t the program.
3 A.
Yeah.
I can' t say I recognize this document.
4 Q.
Anyway, there are action reports that are ref erenced.
5 A.
Let me ask you this:
Are we saying that the -- well, the 6
investigation was performed, a conclusion was drawn ---
7 Q.
No.
1 8
A.
-- that there either was -- that the case was with merit or 9
without merit?
And let's say that if the case turned out it was 10
-- had merit, that the concern was valid, but we closed the case 11 out once we saw another corrective action document that would 12 resolve the problem.
Is that what you're saying?
Could we do 13 tha t?
14 Q.
No, a little bit dif ferent slant than that.
As an 15 investigator who's pursuing an allegation assigned to him, if he 16 discovered there was an NRC or a CAR or some like document that 17 was considered, as they say, a higher-tiered document --
18 A.
Uh-huh.
19 Q.
-- then the investigation would be stopped and the NCR 20 would be referenced as the close out on that particular issue?
21 Was there --
22 A.
I don't think I recall that the word -- the guy would stop.
23 Okay?
If he assured himself that, for example, the NCR had been 24 initiated to resolve a condition, and if he satisfied himself 25 that that would resolve a condition but did not provide any more r
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BUSIO!AN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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than he needed to make the determination of a valid case or not, 2
then I would say, yeah, it would be all right.
Do you understand 3
wha t I'm saying?
4 Q.
Yes, I think I do.
I'm not going to bombard y'all all day 5
with the aspect of dif ferences f rom your perspective and Mr.
6 Synder's, but he seemed to have a strong recollectio'n during this 7
. period of time that that was an approach, if I recall correctly.
8 That was an approach that was taken; that if there was a document 9
such as a CAR that was aircady in existence and the scope of this 10 allegation he f elt was directly within what that CAR was going to 11 correct or recognize, that Q1 had done its job, in effect.
There i
12 was no need f or 01 to do an independent investigation because it 13 was going to be resolved.
An example would be the pipe 14 cl eanlines s, internal pipe cicanliness issue.
15 There were a series of allegations late in the program that 16 brushing was going on related to Dissolvo tape appearing on the i
17 screens during flushes.
And f rom the f ew cases, I don' t know how 18 many allegations came in during this period, but I saw a f ew in 19 my rather quick case review which indicated that the NCR for pipe 20 cleanliness xas referenced relative to these allegations; i
21 therefore, there were no new investigations of subsequent issues 22 relative to pipe cleanliness because they were ~~ CAR 19, or 23 what eve r i t was, is going to resolve that.
So tha t -- I'm sor ry, 24 not CAR 19.
It's NCR.
NCR, whatever number it was, was going to i
l 25 resolve all internal pipe cleanliness problems, so therefore, no
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inves tiga tion.
But you don' t have a recollection of ~~
2 A.
No.
3 Q.
+~ a, conscious decision made to say, "Okay.
An NCR 4
exists" w.
5 A.
No, I don' t.
6 MR. SILBERG :
Would that have been a sensible way 7
to approach the problem, if a concern came in and an investigator 8
found that there was a CAR or NCR on the subj ect ard satisfied 9
himself that the concern f ell within the scope or ' the CAR or NCR?
10 A.
Wait a minute.
The program required that a conclusion be 11 drawn, a conclusion that the allegation was either valid or non 12 valids okay?
Irregardless if they used a CAR or anything else in 13 the process, he had to be able to draw that conclusion.
..J 14 Q.
The explanation you have j ust given is my understanding of 15 what the program was intended to ber however, I,
personally, have 16 criticism of, in some files that I looked at, that they ' re not --
17 there's not a great deal of documentation that much work 18 occurred.
But I have seen in some of the ones that ref erenced 19 these other documents there seems to be little or no 20 investigative activities performed, so I j umped to the 21 conclu sion.
And, like I say, some people have endorsed this.
22 A.
Well, what we -- I do know that in reports that I recall 23 r evi ewing, where there was made reference to a CAR so and so was 24 in process to correct the condition, okay, we may draw the 25 conclusion that says this problem is with merit.
This concern is O
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I with merit.
The action requested of someone to resolve that 2
concern was not required because CAR so and so was in place and 3
would resolve that issue.
4 Q.
I understand, Bob, that if you draw a ~~ if Q1 drew a 5
conclusion and they sent the findings to the af fected 6
crganization --
7 A.
Tha t's true.
l 8
Q.
~~ and they had a CAR, that was their decision ~~
9 A.
S ur e.
10 Q.
-- whether they thought the CAR -- but what I'm saying ~~
t 11 A.
We did follow up to see that what actually did take place i
l 12 would satisfy the problem.
13 Q.
The point I'm getting at here -- and you've already i
14 answered this -- were new allegations not investigated because i
l 15 CAR's or NCR's existed related to that issue, or potentially
)
16 related to that issue?
17 A.
I don' t r ecall that.
18 Q.
Okay.-
19 MR. SILBERG Would it be your conclusion ~~ if a l
r j
20 concern came in say on Dissolvo tape and there was already a CAR
{
21 out there on Dissolvo tape, was that in and of itself enough to 22 conclude that the concern was substantiated or you would have to 23 do something?
f 24 A.
Not necessarily.
I'd have to see -- I couldn' t use that to j
t 25 give you a "Yes" or "No "
I'd have to see a specific case.
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BUSHMAN COURT REPORTIM3, INC.
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1 can' t answer your question.
s 2
I mean, it might be or it might not 3
be, depending on the specifics of the --
4 A.
I wouldn't even venture to say it might be or it might not 5
be.
I really can' t answer that.
I'd have to see the specifics.
6 Q.
(BY MR. GRIFFIN )
When you j oined Q1, what was your 7
understanding of how Q1 would treat drug allegations that were 8
received by interviewers?
9 A.
When I j oined Q1, I understood there was a gentleman that l
10 had investigative criminal expertise that would handle all of MN 11 those, cases.'
i i
12 Q.
sir.
He had -- I think, he had been a 13 A.
/,y e s,
14 former
/ or something of that nature, and they 15 would all be handled by him.
Now, what happened to him af ter he I
16 did an investigation, I don't know.
In the beginning --
17 Q.
As a Q1 Supervisor, were you responsible f or assigning
[
18 nvestiga tions?
19 A.
Some of his investigations, not all of then, that I recall.
I s
e s
20 Q.
Who else besides[
did investigations?
21 A.
I don' t recall.
I really don' t.
Let's see.
I can't i
l l
22 remember exactly how we handled part of that program.
There were 1
23 some wrongdoing concerns.
Drug concerns.
Some of those I never 24 looked at.
But me of his reports that were more, you know, l
25 applicable to hardware or something like that. I did look at t
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2 Q.
Who would have looked at -- I mean, you're a Supervisor.
3 Who would have looked a t -- if he's a Q1 Investigator, he's doing 4
Q1 cases, you're a Q1 Supervisor, who would have given him 5
assigntnents and reviewed his reports?
6 A.
His assignments -- we gave him his assignments if they f ell 7
into his realm of expertise.
I'm trying to remember.
In the 8
beginning, before I was in that position, I don' t knw how th ey 9
. handled that.
I can' t remember for certain whether I assigned --
10 I don't kLos that I assigned all his reports.
I'm trying to 11 answer your question.
It could have been Chuck Snyder.
12 Q.
Let me j ump in here.
Based on what I have had the benefit t'
13 of learning f rom Chuck, he didn't claim credit for any such I__.
i 14 activity.
I will help you along here and tell you that based on 15 my interviews with all the people I have h' 1 an opportsnity to
/
( <1, w'7h \\
16 talk to, I know that Mr.I on occasion, was asked to do 17 investigations for legal in Wichita.
That is one area that part
/
18 of hin time was spent working f or them.
However, Mr./
19 was on the Q1 books for closing a large, large number of 20 investigations f or Q1 and you were Supervisor during the s,une 21 period.
22 A.
During that period, I probably would have signed his 23 reports; yes.
24 Q.
Can I assume you also would be the one t).at assigned the 25 reports?
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A.
Yes.
But I cannot tell you I assigned all his reports.
6,2 C+1D 2
Q.
Did you assign Mr.
rug allegations, because 3
there were quite a f ew based on the file reviews.
You're looking 4
at computer printouts, you know, these f our case categories.
5 There's quite a f ew.
I don' t have the exact number.
6 A.
I think there -- this is where I'm having problems.
Some 7
of -- if I recall, some of the drug concerns -- were they not 8
turned over to legal?
9 Q.
There were a f ew, ba sed on my inf ormation.
There were some 10 tha t were, bu t ~~
11 A.
Those that weren' t, then I probably signed of f on them.
12 Q.
Okay.
Let me help you out a little bit.
13 A.
Okay.
14 Q.
I have taken enough testimony f rom the 01 investigators and 15 Mr.
and Snyder to knw that early on in the program 16 there was, apparently, a decision made that Q1 was not going to 17 investigate drug allegations.
They took a lot of drug 18 allegations --
19 A.
Yes.
20 Q.
-- but they didn' t investiga te them.
And some of the 21 supervisors and managers were allegedly using drugs.
And there 22 was a lot -- there were a lot of comments about the f act that 23 this was, at this time, a 01 f unction, but it was not 24 investigated by Q1 and subsequent drug allegations were not 25 investigated by Q1.
L BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 A.
That was before my time.
Mr. Thero and, I think, Mr. Hill i
l 2
were responsible for the program at that time.
3 Q.
Well, do you -- you seem not to know, but let me ask one 4
additional question.
I know Q1 intervieacts were taking drug 5
allega tions.
They would record them if it was an exiting 6
interview or hotline call or a walk in wanted to talk about 7
drugs.
They would take allegations.
As a Q1 Supervisor, did you 8
have any -- did you perform any duties relative to seeing that e
9 these were transferred to outside of Q1 for investigation to site i
10 security or whoever else?
l i
11 A.
I can' t recall.
I really don't recall.
l 12 Q.
Bob, would you explain to me the distinction made on 13 computer printouts as to whether -- what does it mean when an
~~
i 14 allegation is substantiated? What does that mean to you?
i 15 A.
It meant to me that the concern expressed by the concerned l
16 individual was valid; that we found that, in f act, there was a 17 condition that existed that substantiated the person's concern.
i 18 Q.
What he said was true?
i i
19 A.
Yeah, what he said was true.
Now, the extent of that with 20 regard to its ef f ect on the product, that may va ry.
l 21 Q.
If one of the concerns was substantiated, but without i
22 merit, what did tha t mean?
i l
23 A.
We found that the individual concern was valid but that the b
24 ef fect of that concern on the hardware or whatever was not -- non l
I l
25 existent, was not adverse.
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Q.
So it required no corrective action?
2 A.
Yes.
3 Q.
Who made the decision whether it was a substantiated i
4 concern, whether it was with or without merit?
5 A.
Primarily, the investigator with many times the assistance 6
of a technical expertised individual we needed that --
7 Q.
One of the allegations made to NRC by f ormer Q1 8
investigators is that they would have -- the individual 9
investigators would recall investigations they had performed 10 where they had substantiated, they believed, important findings, l
11 only to find out later on, even during my interview with then, i
12 that they were listed in the files as having no merit, r equiring t'
13 no action.
And, of course, they had f ound what they considered L
14 significant findings that were written of f as no merit and they 1
I 15 believed the decision that they had no merit was made by a i
16 Supervisor.
L 17 A.
Wrong.
18 Q.
You don't have any recollection --
1 19 A.
No, si r.
I would like to have a specific case there.
You 20 knm, it could have -- there could have been cases wherein the 21 decision was finally made if that individual, for whatever i
l 22 reason, didn't finish the investigation or finished it and then, i
r 23 you know, was laid of f or something.
I don' t knw.
But I don't 24 recall where Supervisors -- I knw I didn' t come down and say i
j 25 that the thing has no merit.
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That is what I needed to --
I 2
A.
No, I did not make decisions.
I may have been instrumental i
3 in discussions with investigators if daey said, "I think that it i
4 has me,rit,- that you know that could be."
I would say, "Please 5
explain tha t to me. "
And it may turn out that I would say, 6
"Maybe you ought to go talk to this individual who has technical 7
expertise before you finalize your conclusions."
He may go talk 8
to him and come back and say, "Bob, based on our discussion, I 9
don't think now that there was any merit to this thing.
There 10 j ust isn' t. "
That's how it came down.
That doesn' t mean -- on 11 another case, I had a guy come back and say, "You bet, from a j
12 technical standpoint, there is merit."
And that's the way it r'
13 went down.
L__
l 14 Q.
How closely did you monitor Q1 investigations as they were 15 in process or progress?
l 16 A.
Fairly close in the beginning.
When I say "in the l
17 beginning," the beginning of the program and especially when I 18 had new investigators because I f elt it my obligation to be conscious of his abilities and assist him where he may be having 19 20 problems.
And so I monitored the progress pretty closely.
Once i
the individual had been with us for some time, had done, you 21 i
22 know, a number of investigations and we saw that he was able to 23 handle himself and whatever, I didn't stay on top of him, so to i
i 24 speak.
They also always knew if they had a problem that that was i
my responsibility to assist them in any way I could to solve the 25 t
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1 problem.
2 Q.
Did you ever try to influence any of the investigators to 3
- say, "I see how far you are in this.
I think you have gone far 4
enough to get resolutions.
I think you should stop right 5
here" --
6 A.
No.
7 Q.
"and write up your conclusions"?
8 A.
No, no t -- I can' t remember a specific time that ever j
9 happened.
My question primarily to those people was, "Do you i
10 feel comfortable that you have gone far enough to be able to draw i
11 that conclusion?"
I had occasions when they would draw a 12 conclusion and I knew there was no way they could have drawn that 13 conclusion, prof essionally, because they had not gone f ar enough.
14 I would suggest they go f urther.
15 Q.
That brings me to an important part of what my 16 investigation has found, and that is,
and also Mr. Ward and i
17 their subt.equent review of case files by Mr. Driscoll, another OI 18 representative, partic ula rly.
His review was a wrongdoing in a l
19 case, and there were about 100 of them or something like that we.
20 found.
And I agree with what I have seen, that they have i
{
21 expressed this issue.
And that is that many of the case files I
22 don' t contain very much documentation.
And in interviewing Q1 23 investigators, most have indicated, given investigations, that l
24 there was a lot more investigative ef fort actually expended by 25 them than is documented.
Now, your signature appears on most of I
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52 f-1 these investigative files or investigative reports indicating 2
your acceptance of the work product.
What kinds of decisions did 3
you and Mr. Snyder -- you and Mr. Thero, whoever *. make in 4
determining what type of documentation was going to be contained 5
in these files?
As a Supervisor, what kinds of documentation did 6
you require?
7 A.
Let me see if I understand what you're saying.
Are you 8
saying, what was my method of decision making?
9 Q.
What were your expectations as f ar as the amount of 10 documentation that these people were going to have to put in the 11 file to convince you that they had donc an investigation that 12 was-,
~
13 A.
I can' t answer that, specifically.
L.
14 MR. SILBERG Are you talking about the end 15 product report?
16 Q.
Report and, potentially, back up documentation.
17 A.
Back up documentation.
I would have to know a specific 18 case example.
You kno.', some cases would require maybe very 19 little, if any, back up documentation because it's a matter of 20 record.
Those records and files are available within the system.
21 Okay?
22 Q.
So maybe if you ref erence the material that would be 23 suf ficient documentation?
24 A.
Yes.
Yes.
25 Q.
In mp case file reviews, I'll give you some examples, not v
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by case number because we have -- there's too many.
We could be 2
here all day.
I'm capable of reaching into these, which I've 3
been doing seven months, and pulling out individual case numbers, 4
but I don' t think that's necessary if you will take what I say as 5
valid examples.
Say, allegations of harassment and intimidation.
6 A.
Can you take another example?
7 Q.
You don't like that one?
8 A.
No, I have nothing to do so much with harrassment.
9 Q.
There were quite a f ew investigations conducted by Q1 on 10 haras sment, f alsification, discrimination, and things that are l
11 wrongdoings like -- I'd say there's almost 100 of them.
12 A.
Okay.
Okay.
l l
i
{-
13 Q.
Your eignature appears on the investigative reports, so I 14 don' t see how we can dismiss that.
15 A.
When you say harrassment and intimidation, I recall that 16 there were some cases of that.
W ell, le t 's go on.
l 17 Q.
Let me give you a better understanding.
l l
18 A.
I'd appreciate it.
Can you give me a specific case?
Maybe l
19 I cut you too short.
Give me an example.
l 20 Q.
Let me give you a hypothetical.
Let me give you some 1
21 background here.
The NRC inspection staf f came in and did a 22 series of reviews and, gener ally, there were favorable 23 conclusions or findings relative to Q1 investigations.
So far, 24 in the documentation that exists, most criticisms of Q1 have come 25 from OI's.
What I was looking at were those, roughly, 100 Q1 i
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investigations that dealt with things that are wrongdoings:
2 f alsifications, harrassment, intimidation, discrimination, things 3
like that.
4 A.
Uh-huh.
5 O.
The hypothetical -- and I'm only of fering a hypothetical 6
because I don't want to dig one out that exists.
But a QC 7
inspector alleges he's been -- he and his crew have been harassed 8
and intimidated by a QC Supervisor.
Okay?
Some of the flies I 9
revicaed would shoa the allegations -- would show investigative 10 plans -- I'm going to interview the QC Inspector and QC 11 Supervisor or I'm going to --
12 A.
Right.
We had such cases; yeah.
13 Q.
The investigative plan was going to -- indicates a great 14 deal of work would take places however, the investigative file 15 would contain ref erence to a person accused of being the 16 intimidator and that would be, essentially, all the investigative 17 work that is documented.
l 18 A.
No.
19 Q.
The NRC has been and continues to be critical of the 20 approach of going and asking the bad boy if he did anything wrong 21 and he says "No" and everybody goes home happy.
We don' t 22 consider that a valid, investigative process, but your name 23 appears -- shoes as signing of f on this work.
24 A.
I don't remember anything the way you portrayed it in that 25 f ashion where we j ust ask the bad guy and it's all over.
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Q.
That's all the case file demonstrated.
2 A.
Okay.
But all interviews were conducted; okay.
I kn ow ~ ~
3 I recall a particular case I think of
. I can't remember my 4
investigator's name, but anyway, he interviewed and he would 5
document or he documented the interview process.
He interviews 6
the bad guy, so to speak, okay? And he also, then, intervica ed 7
people that worked for the bad guy, so to speak, and drew his
[
i l
8 conclusions based upon those other interviews, all the L
t 9
batervi ews.
1 10 Q.
That's what the NRC would expect to see.
11 A.
S ur e.
I 12 Q.
If a guy is alleged to have been harrassed and intimidated, 13 you would like to see the crew interviewed.
{
l 14 A.
Yes.
15 Q.
Somebody who could corroborate or ref ute the allegati.ons.
f 16 A.
We did that.
17 Q.
That is not what some of the files say.
I'll give you 18 another example before we move on.
Are there any cases -,
l 19 A.
Not that I recall that specifically says we j ust 20 Onterviewed the bad guy and dropped it.
4 l
21 MR. SILBERG :
Are there other cases where some of J
22 One files might not reflect actual interviews?
i 23 A.
Shouldn' t be.
24 Q.
Well, let me give you another example, and this is one of I
25 the more obvious ones like this.
l f~-
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1 A.
oka.
jgp Iclosed several wrongdoing investigations by 2
Q.
i 3
referencing a discussion with 19 randomly picked QC Inspectors 4
across the whole spectrum of QC's at the site, in which they 5
supposedly held discussions on six topics.
In my r evi ew of the 6
files, I saw wrongdoing allegations closed as being 7
unsubstantiated, referencing these discussions with these 19 l
8 randomly selectly QC Inspectors of the six topics.
Now, what was 9
particularly of fensive to me was that none of the six topics had 10 anything to do with the allegations, that they were not even 11 within the most general scope of any of the six topics and the i
12 f act these people were coding inspectors, electrical inspectors, 13 me chanics.
And then, I look at the investigative reports and I 14 see your signature on it.
I see general endorsement of this type 1
15 of approach to close a wrongdoing issue, and it's not,, you j
16 know, as an investigator, I do this f or a living and I look at j
17 wrongdoing allegations and to pick something unrelated and do a 18 shotgun approach -- if I talked to 19 inspectors..
19 A.
Let me ask you.. I don't recall the specific case.
20 Q.
This was to close several cases.
I saw this same list of 21 19 OI people interviewed and their names are not given.
It just f
22 says "Talked to 19 inspectors."
Then, the six topics are there 23 and then "unsubstantiated".
24 A.
I don't remember such a situation; okay?
25 Q.
The reason it's so important that I ask you about this, k
L i
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Bob, is that as you sign of f, you know, you're the last bastion 2
of quality control on these things and my question is, do you 3
endorse. did you endorse such superficial ef forts to resolve 4
inv estiga ting?
5 A.
I did not endorse any superficial ef forts.
6 0.
Do you consider that a thorough investigation of a 7
wrongdoing?
8 A.
I would have to look at the specific case with all the back 9
up information before I could say I would consider that or I 10 would not.
I can't sit here three years later and tell you, 11 without looking at this thing again, why I made the decision to 12 accept that investigator's report or conclusion.
I am just not 13 able to do that.
{'
14 Q.
Well, I know
. and I told this to everybody else I 15 inte rvi ewed.
I know it's very dif ficult to test each person's 16 memory and to talk to them about these things without being 17 surrounded by thousands of pounds of Q1 case files and to dig 18 into each one.
19 A.
I understand.
I'm not trying to ~~ I'm trying to remember 20 to the best of my ability.
I can. you know, investigators 21 operate in dif f erent f ashions.
They had dif ferent levels of 22 expertise, okay, which in same cases was to their advantage or it 23 could have been to their disadvantage.
I tried to work knoaing 24 that individual, and based upon his report and his back up 25 inf ormation and our discussions, basically, is how I dr ew my rb BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 conclusions and acceptance of his reports.
2 MR. SILBERG When you said his level of expertise i
3 could work to a disadvantage **
4 A.
It would.
We had some investiga tive personnel that were so 5
experienced that they understood a situation, and I think in 6
their minds they would draw conclusions, that were probably 7
correct conclusions, that the ef fect of the condition, okay, was 4
8 not detrimental to the installation because the guy knew that j
9 area of, expertise.
He knew testing or he knew welding or NDE or i
10 something, someone.
That could work to the program's i
11 disadvantage to some degree because it was not well enough 12 documented.
Maybe he had reports or something.
r*'
13 MR. SILBERG :
What did you do when you came across L
14 a situation like that?
15 A.
A lot of times -- well, in most every case, if I could not, 16 through the review of an individual's report, or if I could not, 17 based on his reports and back up inf ormation, I would say, " H ey,
18 there is just not enough meat here."
I cannot tell you how many 19 reports I turned back.
There j ust wasn' t enough there.
And it 20 wasn't that dae guy didn't do a thorough enough investigations he 21 just wasn't documenting what all he did, okay, in that final 22 report.
And I would give it back.
I would say, "Partner, I just 23 don' t have enough -- there's not enough meat here.
How did you 24 draw that conclusion?"
"W el l, I talked to",, "Say that.
Say 25 you talked to so and so and document that."
Or he would say, "I
L-BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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I went out and reviewed or I inspected so and so."
I'd say, "Say 2
that in your report. "
Because they were not saying thau.
Okay?
3 There were just a lot of times that I turned them back.
I just 4
didn' t have enough there.
5 Q.
I want to digress f or a minute.
You said -- this is the J
6 second question that you answered and you have given me back as a
i 7
your answer my main criticism that I have expressed earlier in l
8 interviews of the program.
Your answer to me is my criticism of I
9 the program.
Has Mr. Silberg ~~ since he's attended these i
10 carlier interviews, has he coached you as to --
?
11 A.
Oh, no.
No, sir, he has definitely not coached me in any 12 f a shion.
l i
13 Q.
Yo.ur responses mirror my concerns, even though your l
14
.,;ponses, from my point of view, are inconsistent with what 4
t I
i 15 those files display.
And when Mr. Silberg here is acting as your i
1 16 personal representative, when I hear, you know, your testimony is
(
l j
17 conflicting with your Supervisor, Mr. Snyder, on some of these 1
18 points, my only concern is, if you're being led down a path here, 3
)
19 I want to know it.
l 20 MR. SILB ERG I resent that.
l 21 A.
I do to.
I 22 Q.
Because ~~
l 23 A.
I really do.
i 24 MR. SILBERG :
I resent the implication that I am 25 putting words in his mouth as to things he doesn't believe or l
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that are not true.
2 MR. GRIFFIN: What I'm saying, Jay, is, that NRC 3
continues to have concern about whether people who request an 4
attorney and hire an attorney f rom someahere to represent all the 5
peaple that are interviewed -- I have found instances where 6
interviewees f urther in the process seem to have benefit of 7
tastimony that would have been available only in the interview 8
process early on in the interviews.
Anytin.c NRC sees what could 9
potentially bt coaching or somebody repeating t them what could, 10 patentially, have come out of earlier interviews, then that would 11 be departure f rom your right to be here, that is, as his personal 12 representative.
So when I see that, I f eel obligated to stop the 13 process and ask the interviewee, is this truly your belief or
{
14 have you discussed this with an attorney who has sat in on other 15 interviews, and has your opinion been influenced?
First of all, it is really 17 inappropriate for you to explore what the client and attorney 18 have talked about.
That violates client / attorney privilege.
19 Second, the f act that his view may be similar or dissimilar f rom 20 your views, if those are his views -- and he's sworn that he's 21 going to tell the truth,, that's really irrelevant.
22 A.
Let me try to clarify something to your question.
23 MR. GRIFFIN:
Let me -- I want Jay to understand, 24 since he's been a nice guy during all of this and he thinks I 25 have said something of fensive.
I must preserve the integrity of r
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1 my investigation.
You may know in your mind you would not do 2
anything like that.
I have experienced other instances where 3
other attorneys I know, unquestionably, have used their right as 4
a personal representative to, at best, influence the outcomo of f
5 NRC inquiries and investigations.
I will tell you some of the 6
more clear, cut examples.
I have had an attorney in an interview 7
stand up and object to questions, not on behalf of an individual 8
or his concerns, but on behalf of the compary, a clear cut case 9
of departure f rom representing the individual and going back to 10 representing --
11 A.
I can assure you, Mr. Grif fin, that I have not been 12 coa ched.
I came here willingly.
r' 13 MR. GRIFFIN:
I understand that.
l L _.
14 A.
And I am going to do the best of my ability to answer your
[
l 15 questions and these are my answers.
No coaching has taken place.
16 I want you to thoroughly understand that.
I am a pt : es sional.
17 My prof essional integrity many times has been on the line.
And 18 I'm very sorry to hear that you feel there has been some coaching 19 along the line here.
Because of the **
20 MR. GRIFFIN:
I'm asking die question, if it 21 occurred.
I'm not drawing a conclusion that it has.
Don't take i
i I
22 it tha t f a r.
23 A.
Something has caused you to ask that question.
24 MR. SILBERG I think even if you have that 25 suspicion, legally, that is an improper question because that is i
i Ls l
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1 my relationship with my client, no t the compa ny.
But this client i
2 and how I -, what conversations you have with yours and I have i
3 with my clients, are really not an appropriate subject for you to t
4 ask questions.
5 MR. GRIFFIN:
Just to give me an understanding of l
6 what your view of this right as his representative, do you think 1
7 it would be proper for you to convey to a subsequent interviewee r
8 the results of the interview that you attended early on as a i
i 9
representative, would it be proper for you to tell him what Chuck j
i 10 Snyder told me?
If it's nothing confidential or that 5
12 is adverse to Chuck's interest or that comes from documents that 13 I receive f rom various places.
For instance, I've seen files
__s i
14 that you guys have compiled, reports that you guys have compiled.
i 15 I have a lot of inf ormation that I have on the 01 program and i
4 16 when I sat down and told Bob what I thought the discussion was 17 going to be about, I'm drawing on a wealth of knoaledge.
l f
If you're taking what you 19 specifically learned as you'r* representing individuals
. let's i
20 say Chuck Snyder, since he was one of the longer interviews.
Do I
21 you think it's proper f or you to tell him what Chuck's responses L
l 22 were to a particular question I asked?
j l
23 MR. SILBERG :
If Chuck -- let me turn the question I
i 24 around.
If I talked to somebody that you have interviewed and
[
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i 25 af ter the interview, I say, "You' re not obligated to tell me l
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1 a nything.
You don't even have to tell me that you had an l
2 interview, but if you want, I would sure be interested to.kncw 3
wha t the intervi ew wa s about. "
And he said, "Okay.
I know I'm l
3 i
4 not obligated to tell you anything.
I don' t work f or the company i
5 anymore.
I'm another company's employee, but here is what 6
happened."
I can certainly use that inf ormation.
That's not j
7 confidential to you.
i 8
MR. GRIE FIN:
But what I'm talking about is what l
9 you learn as you're sitting here as a personal representative of i
10 the interviewee, do you think it's proper f or you to go and give l
l 11 that information to a subsequent interviewee?
l i
i 12 MR. SILBERG In an abstract matter and with no I
l r'
13 conflict of interest, I think the answer to that, le gally, is l
L.
l l
14 yes.
I can't say that I have done that here, but j ust putting 15 aside,, as an abstract legal matter, where there is no conflict j
l 16 of interest, if I relate two clients -, asstrning that it's two i
1 17 dif ferent utility companies, in two dif ferent proceedings, I sit i
18 down and have a client to lawyer discussion on a technical issue, I
l 19 perhaps, with one client.
I can use that information when I sit
[
f 20 dcwn with another client, unless there's a conflict.
You knot, 21 understanding normal, legal conflict of interest, I can do that j
3 l
l 22 legally.
And I don't see that this occasion is any dif ferent.
I l
23 As long as there is,, if there is a conflict, then I cannot, i
i l
24 first of all, be in that interview.
But I really think that this l
t i
25 is beyond the scope of this discussion.
{
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MR. GRIFFIN:
I want you both to understand why I 2
asked the question in the first place.
I have to try to preserve 3
the integrity,, and that could mean a lot of things, but 4
integrity of the investigation in that you have the right to have 5
a personal representative.
6 A.
Yes, sir.
7 Q.
(BY MR. GRIFFIN:)
This man represents you?
8 A.
Yes.
9 MR. SILBERG :
You bet I do.
10 Q.
If he were here representing the utility, the utility has 11 no right to have a representative here.
12 A.
I understand that.
13 Q.
That is NRC policy.
~
14 MR. SILBERG :
And I have a right to prepare him to 15 the best of my ability for this interview.
16 A.
But when you say is there any cer ching; no, sir, no 17 coa ching.
18 MR. GRIFFIN :
My question is to you, does the best 19 of your ability include taking what you have learned in previous 20 interviews and saying, "Here is what Chuck told Brooks last week i
21 or the week before last.
Here is his response.
Tell me what 22 your response is," because the potential to influence the 23 prospective Laterviewee would be adverse to **
24 MR. SILBERG :
First of all, if that were true, I l
25 don't see I have any ability to adversely af fect or influence I
u_ J l
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1 what this gentleman is saying.
He is no t --
2 A.
What I understand that to mean, basically, is this:
That 3
I'm going to listen to what this individual says, so and so says, 4
and I'm going to change it and slant my opinion or decision and 5
responses to you in line with somebody else's.
And let me just 6
restate,,
7 Q.
(BY MR. GRIFFIN:)
That's the potential bad thing that 8
could happen.
9 A.
The potential is there, but let me tell you semething, Mr.
10 Griffin.
I resent that because I'm a professional and I would 11 not do that.
I don' t care who e,
let me tell you something.
12 When I was hired by a company, any company, if management at any
{
time or anyone ever came up against my prof essional decision 13 14 making with regard to the integrity of a product or something l
15 like that, I would not,, I would take management head-on.
16 Because if I rolled over, so to speak, or I did what that guy 17 thought I ought to do, I'm not doing him a service and I'm doing 18 myself a disservice and him a disservice.
Do you know what I'm 19 saying?
20 Q.
Yes.
I feel the same way about my process.
21 A.
The same thing here when you ask me these questions, I'm i
22 telling you what Bob Scott, ac a professional and as an 23 experienced individual,, I'm telling you what Bob Scott would do 24 or what Bob Scott thinks and so f orth, not what someone else 25 said.
I don' t ca r e wha t th ey s ay.
That's their opinion and r
L BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 their cecision making, wha t ever.
But as a prof es sional e,-
and my 2
prof ~essional integritt is based upon Bob Scott, not what somebody 3
else said or whatever because I may disagree with what that 4
individual says.
5 Q.
Abs olut ely.
6 A.
I'm going to tell you what I say and if that disagrees, 7
then that's just the way it f alls out or if it agrees, that's 8
whatever f alls out.
l 9
Q.
I'm j ust trying to be sure that that is not -- that's what 10 I want to be assured of.
11 A.
I hope you are.
12 Q.
The NRC goes abom constantly on a day,to, day basis 13 gathering information f rom licensees, and Ehey expect Ebe 1
14 information they receive to be accurate and they expect f or it to 15 be forthcoming.
16 A.
You bet.
17 Q.
They expect it to be voluntary.
i 19 A.
You bet.
19 Q.
The Of fice of Investigation is treated a little bit I
20 dif ferently in the scheme of things because many of them do l
l 21 request legal counsel and the NRC **
22 A.
Do you want to know why I asked for *, are you interested 23 in knowing why I asked f or a third party to be here?
24 Q.
Go ahead and tell me.
25 A.
I'm concerned with the bureaucratic process that I see in e
u BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 the industry and in the government process today, to some degree.
2 And I'm concerned from this standpoint.
In my profession ~~ what 3
I have done in my profession in working for companies and so 4
forth was done in sincere honesty and to the best of my ability.
5 I see individuals in the industry that are making accusations, 6
doing certain things that are totally out of line, discr editing 7
professionals that really had good intent and did the best of 8
their ability; all right?
I have seen that testimony taken by 9
other individuals and baisted and used in the political processes 10 to the point that the guy that was the good guy, so to speak, 11 ends up being the bad guy.
That bothers me.
17 Q.
I understand what you're saying and the NRC acknowledges r
13 your right to have a representative.
L.
14 A.
My friend, I have learned through age and experience, that 15 the only one that looks out for Bob Scott is Bob Scott f rom a 16 professional standpoint or anything else.
That's basically why.
17 Q.
Out of all the potential personal representatives tha t you 18 could have had, and if you wanted to have an attorney, out of all 19 the thousands and thousands of attorneys in this country, how did 20 you happen to choose Jay?
21 A.
I knew Jay and had met him earlier.
And I sa-id this is 22 KG&E's program; I worked for KG&E in a sense to help them to meet 23 their goals and obj ectives.
He surely must know what is going on 24 in this process.
So I said, I want Jay.
25 Q.
I see, r-L_s BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 A.
I'm trying to,, you know, I wanted -- I don' t know who the 2
best lawyer in the world is.
I don' t even know that I need a 3
lawyer, but I want somebody who knows something about the 4
concerns that happened, if you will.
5 MR. GRIFFIN:
I understand what you're saying, 6
Bob.
And I understand what you're saying, Jay.
If you can only 7
empathize even for only a moment with the NR'C's concern that we 8
do want these inquiries to not be ~~ we want them to be valid and 9
have meaning.
We want them to not be influenced by a 10 representative or interf ered with or obstructed.
And anytine we 11 see anything that could even remotely, potentially, have ill 12 ef fects in that area, we' re going to ask these quest.iors.
I have
'~
13 your answer and I have your explanation, Jay.
I have no concerns
~
14 about it.
But when I see these things, I'm obliga ted to t' top 15 because I have interviewed people just like this before and they 16 have said the wrong things.
I say, "Why is this attorney here?"
17 And, "He's here to make sure I don't screw up and say something 18 that will hurt the company. " When I hear that, what am I 19 supposed to do?
20 MR. SILB ERG Here is a guy that doesn' t work f or 21 the company anymore and, frankly, one of the reasons he doesn't 22 work f or the company anymore is because of these kinds of 23 inves tiga tions.
24 A.
Yes, sir.
l l
25 MR. GRIFFIN:
I talked to Bob yesterday, and,, I e-k sJ l
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don' t know what kind of investigation you think this is.
Just the idea.
3 MR. GRIFFIN:
The regulatory body?
Just because somebody, after the 5
fact, has to justify a professional, I mean, in an arena like 6
this, when every time he does this, his honesty gets 7
challenged,,
8 MR. GRIFFIN:
I hope you didn' t take it that way.
l 9
That's not the way I meant it.
You seem to be very forthright 10 and seem to know what your,, you seem to have a strong reaction 11 to this.
My whole question was aimed at finding out, 12 reestablishing what y'all's relationship is by this interview
~'
13 here today.
If I have of fended a nybody, I apologize.
I am here to preserve the integrity of this investigation by assuring that 14 15 nobody is attempting or has attempted, whether they did so 16 successf ully or not, to change your testimony, to influence it or 17 carry it in a certain direction.
Like I say, it was not to give l
18 offense.
19 A.
I hope you understand that did not occur.
20 MR. GRIFFIN:
Right.
That's my understanding of 21 it.
l 22 A.
I would not let it occur, my f riend.
It j ust wouldn' t i
23 happen.
24 MR. GRIFFIN:
I don' t know you, but I have to ask i
l 25 the question.
I F7 bb.
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A.
All right.
Understood.
2 MR. GRIFFIN:
My people expect me to -- if we see 3
something that we think could adversely influence the NRC's right 4
to receive information and accuracy of information, we are going 5
to stop and ask those little unpleasant questions.
They are unpleasant.
I think that 7
line of questioning is what gives Io a bad name.
I think,, if I
8 this happens a lot, I think that's a bad name it deserves.
S You and I, I thought, had developed a good relationship.
10 MR. GRIFFIN:
I wish you wouldn' t take such 11 offense.
Let's discuss this of f the record.
12 (Of f,the-record discussion.)
13 (Short break.)
MR. GRIFFIN:
We held a discussion here of f the 14 15 record in which Jay and Bob have alleviated my concerns about 16 what may have been any undue influence on this.
I'm prepared to 17 proceed.
I appreciate y' all's explanation to me.
And I hope you 18 did not tt' e of f ense.
The NRC works very hard to make sure 19 certain things do not occur that would preclude us from getting 20 f actual inf orma tion, relative to our inquiries.
And by asking l
21-these questions, it's not my intention to be of fensive.
If I did l
22 not communicate well what I needed to communicate, you, again, 23 have my apology.
I appreciate y'all's willingness to stay l
24 hitched and be responsive so I can get resolutions.
25 A.
I appreciate your concern and I appreciate the explanation.
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and constructively, le t 's go f o rwa rd, if we can, and do wha t we 2
can to help you in this issue.
3 Q.
Bob, were you involved in any of the hiring subsequent to 4
your being the lead, hiring of the Q1 investigators?
5 A.
Yes, sir, I was.
I was in this f ashion.
One, when I 6
accepted the position of lead investigating,, lead group, many 7
of the individuals that later on came into the organization had 8
already been interviewed by other than myself; okay?
For 9
example, they've been interviewed by KG&E people, Bill Rudolph, 10 for example, and daey've been interviewed by Owen Thero and 11 others.
They've been hired before I had an opportunity to look 12 at their credentials or to even talk to them.
However, as time f.~ J 13 proceeded on, af ter I was in that position, and we continued to I h'ad the opportunity to review some of these 14 staff up, 15 individuals and interviewed them before we hired them; yes.
I 16 don't remember the exact names or numbers, but I did have that 17 opportunity.
18 Q.
In my interview with Mr. Snyder, he expressed general i
19 criticisms of what he calls or refers to,, I hope I'm fairly 20 evaluating his testimony,, that he was critical of what he i
21 called QA types filling an investigative role.
He expressed an 22 opinion that he thought constructors and engineers were better l
23 equipped to perform this function.
And in taking testimony from 24 a lot of the f ormer Q1 investigators, they seem to have, in a 25 sense, kind of expressed this to me, that they feel there were r-I LJ BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 essentially two camps within Q1, former QA people and this new 2
group hired under ~~ by you and by Mr. Snyder that were the 3
constructors or the contract oriented people.
4 Did you and Chuck make a conscious decision to go for a 5
dif ferent type of contract to fill those investigative positions?
6 Did you have any concerns about the merit of one group over 7
another?
l 8
A.
Let me try to answer it.
Did Chuck and I make a conscious l
9 decision to do that?
I don ' t recall a t a ny time tha t we sa t down 10 and said, "Hey, we're not going to have any more QA people," or 11 this kind of thing.
That never occurred.
What I did suggest in 12 discussions with Chuck was that we needed a mixed bag, if you f
13 will.
We needed both, quality assurance people engineers or L.s 14 quality engineering people -- people with quality, primarily 15 quality assurance or engineering backgrounds, I think, have the 16 expertise and experience with regard to understanding of good 17 audit practices, investigative practices.
But by the same token, 18 they have their limitations, also.
Some of them do.
19 I feel tha t,, I felt and still do, yet, that there also 20 needed to be same technical expertise, f or example, a graduate l
21 civil engineer or a graduate piping engineer or maybe not even 22 necessarily a graduate, but if he has the ability or credentials 23 to demonstrate that he has that technical expertise, that you 24 need that because many of the quality assurance or engineering 25 type people were not that heavy, technically, in one field or the r
L_ J BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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g other.
And it's been my experience that a lot of them came up 2
through inspection chains, if you will, and that's all the/ do in 3
their world; okay?
So I f elt we needed a mixed group in. this 4
application to give us all the real tools we really needed to do 5
the best job.
6 Q.
Let me switch subj ects on you here.
What involvement did 7
you have in setting case priorities?
8 A.
How do you mean that?
9 Q.
How did you determine what cases were going to be assigned 10 and to whom and wha t ceder?
11 A.
The order, basically, was, as the concerns came in, of 12 course, we recorded them; okay?
And as they came in, as we had 13 individuals available with that expertise in line with the
{
14 concern,, for example, if it was a concern involving testing, 15 okay, as soon as we had an investigator with that expertise or 16 some of that background, we would assign it to him.
17 Q.
Okay.
Dif ferent subj ect.
What did your signature on a Q1 18 report of investigation or investigative report, what did that 19 mean? What did that signify?
20 A.
Basically, it signified that I f elt that there was enough 21 information there, for th e mos t part, to substantiate the 22 conclusion drawn by the investigator.
As I may have mentioned 23 earlier, there were,, on several occasions, reports would come 24 to me and say, here was the concern.
Here is the approach I 25 took.
I had earlier agreed with the approach, but in some cases 7
L.
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1 I found that the approach had not been f ulfilled complete enough.
2 There wasn' t enough obj ective evidence here.
I would say, " H ey,
3 I think you need to go back and look a little f urther in this 4
area," or "You didn' t f ollow your plan here or it doesn' t appear 5
- I don' t have enough meat here to tell me how you drew your 6
conclu sions. "
And when I f elt there was enough there, then, I 7
would signify, by signing of f, than it appears that the 8
conclusion drawn has enough meat to it, f rom what I can see here, 9
to be valid.
10 Q.
Let me make an observation, then I would like for you to 11 respond to it.
I've heard several themes as I have gone through 12 the interviews, not only with f ormer Q1 investigators, but with i3 supervisors, too, and that is, that it was never anybody's intent
_J 14 to f ully document their investigative ef forts.
In other wo.rds, 15 they interviewed ten people during the course of their 16 investigation, but it was never their intent to have detailed 17 notes or any kind of summaries of what each individual said.
18 I've had,, the general theme I heard is that it was never 19 anybody's intent to f ully document the findings of the file 20 r eview s.
And consistent with what I saw in my case reviews a lot 21 of times, the allegation itself is contained in one or two 22 sentence descriptions.
There are no interview notes present f rom 23 the Q1 interviewers.
No matter how detailed or how superficial 24 the original allegation was received, of tentimes, these are j ust 25 not present.
It's just one or two sentences describing the e
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nature of the allegations.
2 A.
That must have been in the later concerns because there 3
were files that we would go back to that had more description of 4
the individual concerns.
5 Q.
Some of the early ones had tape, recorded transcripts and 6
even the tapes itself.
I mean, there is no just one way.
This 7
is like any program; you see people who did massive ef forts over 8
here and people who did superficial ef forts, documents that would 9
indicate -, you know, I mean, everything you can imagine is 10 possible there.
Some of them are over detailed, some ramble, 11 some contain extraneous inf ormation.
12 A.
We continually,, we talk about this.
When I say "we",, I F
13 talk to the interview lead and the interviewers.
I said,, you L;
14 know, they were expressing some problems they f elt they were 15 having.
They couldn' t pinpoint what the guy's real concern or 16 individual's real concern was sometimes.
It was dif ficult.
17 They'd start talking about a subj ect and they would start 18 rambling around and say, "Wait a minute," because we have to have 19 a f airly specific concern to be able to take of f on it; okay?
20 And in dae early days, it was kind of dif ficult to adaicve that.
21 Q.
The point I'm making is, I'm saying based on my review and 22 testimony I've taken in early and late days, where there's a 23 transcript, obviously, you could see what the whole testimony 24 was.
But later on, this process seemed to have been streamlined 25 to where somebody tried to get down as concisely as possible what c-L_J BUSW.AN COURT REIORTING, INC.
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his concern was.
2 A.
That's correct.
That's correct.
3 Q.
Now, why af ter extensive interview processes, just giving 4
the assumption here that Q1 interviewers were doing an adequate 5
job, why did they choose to document so lightly the results of 6
their work?
7 MR. SILBERG :
You're talking about the 8
interviewers now?
9 Q.
The interviewers, yeah.
Why, as we review these files, do f
10 we only have a one or two sentence description of these 1
11 allegations, where based on the testimony I've taken, the 12 baterviews of the employees were much more extensive?
13 A.
I can't answer your question, other than we needed to know 14 what tha t individual's real concern was so we could go 15 investigate that.
We went so f ar as to, you know, af ter the 16 Laterview process with the concerned individual to read back to 17 him what we thought he had said and,, "Is that your concern,"
18 for example, in an attempt to get it down so we could resolve his 19 concern.
20 Q.
Now, I understand the investigator is going to try to get a 21 clear picture in his mind of, "What exactly is the issue I've 22 been asked to investigate?"
23 A.
Right.
24 Q.
That could maybe be contained in one or two sentences.
l 25 A.
Yes.
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1 Q.
But these interviews, tha t 's all tha t 's ther e to eval ua t e.
2 I'm not saying this is necessarily indictment on the system; I'm 3
just saying the interviewer may have spent 30 minutes or an hour 4
talking to the f ellow, but it's all condensed doan to one or two 5
sentences, "This is his concerns."
And tha t 's all tha t the 6
investigator is going to have to use to f ollow up.
He said he 7
didn' t know where the pipe was or when this occurred, he didn't 8
know the names of his crew members.
I mean, all that is missing.
9 And my question to you is, as the Supervisor, did you accept the 10 approach of distilling the contents of these interviews down to 11 just one or two sentences?
12 A.
For the most part, yes.
I wanted to have, you know, 13 something fairly,, as specific as possible.
There were some we 14 couldn' t get specific on, and it was very dif ficult to 15 investigate those.
16 Q.
I know some of chem are not specific.
Exiting interviews 17 you might write one sentence.
But I'm talking more about the 18 ones where there was a chance to interview.
Let me continue in 19 this same vein.
Let me make sure that it's 21 correct tha t you didn't control the interview process.
Tha t was 22 under Paul Serillo (phonetic) 23 A.
No.
I went back several times.
I can recall on several 24 occasions I said to the interview people responsible for the 25 interview proces s,, I'd say, "H ey, get as specific as you can,"
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I 78 f-1 because it's dif ficult for my investigators to take of f on some 2
wild goose chases that are j ust, you know,,
3 Q.
Well, that's why I was asking whether you're willing to 4
accept what I saw when I reviewed the files, and that is, if the 5
file had contained,, the man said that there was damaged pipe 6
here, but he said he didn't know the location, he didn't know 7
when it was and he knew it was on somebody's group.
That type of 8
inf ormation is not there.
What you're icf t with is, "There's a t
l 9
damaged pipe somewhere in the plant.
We don't know where.
10 Here's your assignment, Mr. Investigator.
Do what you will. "
11 A.
No.
We had some vagueness, like you say, I don' t r ecall, 12 specifically.
I know they occurred.
[ ~
13 Q.
What I'm really talking about here is, just the LJ 14 documentation that the 01 investigators chose to place in those 15 files.
In a lot of instances, in the cases I reviewed, ther e's 16 very little inf ormation.
And my only question is, and you've 17-already answered this,' you accepted this as a valid approach, to 18 concentrate and make a concise statement of what the employee's I would have dif ficulty with that, but --
19 concern was.
20 MR. SILBERG :
Are you assuming that there was more 21 documentation on the interviews that was discarded?
22 MR. GRIFFIN:
There was more inf ormation that was 23 not documented, is what I'm saying.
Now, on the other side of 24 this same thing,,
25 MR. SILBERG :
I thirk what Bob is saying is, and r
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1 correct me if I'm wrong, tha t th e inte rvi ews, a s f a r a s you kn ow,
2 documented all the inf ormation that was usef ul to specify what 3
the concern was.
4 A.
To the best of their ability; yes.
There were cases where 5
we went back to the concerned individual to try to get him to be 6
more specific and pin it down to help us get lined out on where 7
to go.
8 Q.
From the interviews I've taken, there seems to be more 9
instances where the investigator says, "I can' t investigate.
10 This is not specific enough."
They don' t have access to the 11 exiting employee anymore and have expressed grave concern of the 12 interviewing process.
Some have given testimony to the NRC '
13 saying, "I've complained to Q1 Supervision about the lack of 14 specificity, the f act that the interviews are not,, even if 15 interviews were detailed, the interview results are not detailed; 16 and therefore, we don' t have access to this inf ormation.
It's 17 lost forever because it was not documented.
Tha t wa s j us t a 18 criticism of the people, the investigator said.
Now, the other 19 side of that same coin --
20 MR. SILBERG :
Well, j ust to f ollow up, did anyone 1
21 ever complain to you ** I mean, have any of your investigators l
22 ever complained to you about the lack of documentation on the 23 intervi ews?
24 A.
Lack of inf ormation, yes.
So what we try to do and did do, 25 I had them get back with the concerned individual, working back r
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through the interview.
2 Q.
But a lot of times these people are gone, their terminated 3
and th ey're @ne.
4 A.
That's right.
What I'm tel ing you is, even though they n9 forexample.(I.
nD 5
were gone, we'd track them down, 6 j' as an individual that e,
one of my investigators that we had 7
such a situation,, I don' t remember the specifics,, but we 8
called that individual and we finally,, we finally got a hold of 9
him; okay?
10 Q.
I remember that one.
I am f amiliar with that.
He came 11 back on site?
12 A.
One of them did.
r(
13 Q.
I r emembe r tha t.
L 14 A.
Yeah.
We went to whatever length, and I can appreciate,,
15 one of my investigators said, "H ey, B ob, ther e's j us t,, I've got 16 to talk to this guy to get a better understanding."
17 MR. SILBERG :
Did you also talk to the 18 interviewers or the interview lead to say, "Get more specific 19 information in your",, "When you document the concerns, get more 20 specific inf ormation"?
l 21 A.
Yes.
"We need more specific inf ormation. "
Yeah, on l
l 22 occasion that occurred.
You be t.
23 Q.
Another thing that I saw, and this is not,, I'm not the i
24 first one that has expressed this criticism.
Some of the other 25 NRC reviews of Q1 of this same period, some of the investigative u
l BUSFDOW 000RT REPORTING, INC.
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1 reports would contain statements like, "I interviewed five 2
people, and I talked",, "and I looked at certain NCR's. "
And 3
they would write the NCR number and that would bc,, I'm using 4
this as an example of the extent of documentation contained in 5
the file to indicate what the investigator had done to resolve 6
the issue.
7 In other words, he's telling you, as the Supervisor, in his 8
investigative report that he talked to five people and looked at 9
these documents and here are the document numbers.
Did you 10 endorse or did you accept, by your signature appearing on those 11 investigative reports, the f act that the file did not contain 12 what those five people said:
who they were, where they worked, i
r 13 and this type of lack of documentation?
La l
14 A.
I don't recall that ever,, I don' t recall any case where 15 that occurred.
They would name the people.
16 Q.
Would not name the people.
Just say, "I talked to five 17 peopl e, " and that's it.
l 18 A.
I don't recall such a case.
19 Q.
Well, I ' m t ry ing,,
20 A.
It would have been dif ficult,, to me it would have been l
21 dif ficult for me to accept to say, "I just talked to five 22 p eopl e. "
"What did you talk to them about," something like that.
23 Q.
Some of the questions the NRC has for Ql, even in 19 87, is 24 why did you guys choose to have so little documentation to 25 support it?
And the general answer I perceive,, I'm telling you IL.;
BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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82 T~
1 this e,
the general answer that I have received is, "It was never 2
our intention to document things like",, for instance, you guys 3
did an OI.
We need to get resolutions on these problems.
If it 4
was a hardware deficiency, we needed to get it identified and 5
fixed.
We didn' t spend enough time, as maybe NRC would have 6
liked,,
7 A.
I think that's what,,
8 Q.
,, to document our background.
9 A.
Yeah.
10 Q.
Now, the question here is, in reviewing these files, 11 there's an indication e,
some people contend that there was a 12 great deal more ef fort put into these investigations than is r
13 reflected by those files.
Do you believe that is true?
L_;
14 A.
That could be true.
That could be true.
As I mentioned 15 carlier,, I think I did,, if I f elt that there was enough 16 information to substantiate the concivsions drawn, okay v,
he may 17 have done more; okay?
If it wasn' t documented, then I don't 18 knoa.
t 19 Q.
That leads me to my next question.
It has made me 20 suspicious that maybe Q1 investigators were conveying to you a 21 great deal more information verbally; that you discussed findings 22 that led you to accept this man's evaluations, his judgments, his 23 conclusions, and that NRC, coming in two or three years later, 24 looking in the files and seeing sparse documents,,
25 A.
To some degree, I would have to,, I would almost have to
- t. J BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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agree with you.
2 Q.
It's one thing we search f or f rom the very beginning,, but 3
since the NRC has already concluded that the files do not, in a 4
lot of cases, adequately document the investigative ef forts that 5
support the conclusions, we're looking for other explanations 6
f rom the other various intervieaees as we go through this process 7
to understand why the files exist in the condition that they do.
8 A.
For clarification in my mind, when you say "the NRC," are 9
you saying all the NRC people that have looked at this or are you 10 speaking of OI, or are you speaking of,,
11 Q.
W ell, I guess, the most critical is definitely OI.
12 A.
The reason I ask that question, is that I recall when we 13 had Region IV pec ple, NRC people, that looked at our files and
{
14 looked at our processes and so f orth, and it was my understanding 15 that their conclusions were that we were e,
we did have adequate 16 files, so on and so f orth on these cases.
There may have been a 17 case or something that they would ask a question about that 18 didn' t,, but once we discussed the thing with them, they said, i
19 "I can see tha t now. "
Okay?
So that's,, for my understanding i
20 because I didn't,, I don' t recall where that concern was 21 expressed or, you know, we thought,, I thought they,, we were 22 doing an adequate j ob.
I really did.
That the files were l
23 adequate to be able to show how we drew our conclusions and that 24 the obj ectives had been met.
25 Q.
Okay.
I understand your testimony.
Bob, as the contracts F
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were running out, say in October, November, December for the 2
contract employees working in Ql, were there cases that were 3
incomplete being reassigned to other investigators to do the last 4
investigative leads to close out these investigations?
5 A.
Would you repeat that now?
6 Q.
As the Q1 investigators are ROF'd and their contracts were 7
coming to an end, or for whatever reason, they were leaving the 8
program --
9 A.
Okay.
I 10 Q.
-- and they were being laid of f in small groups, were there 11 cases that were incomplete and reassigned to other investigators?
12 A.
I don' t recall that occurring.
I think we tried to r
13 schedule their release dates based upon cases they had and when L.-
14 they f elt they would conclude those.
There may have been 15 occasion, but I don' t recall any, where we went ahead and laid 16 the man of f and had somebody else to finish out his report.
We i
17 just didn' t want tha t to occur.
18 Q.
All right.
At the time that you j oined 01, had the use of 19 tape recorders already been stopped or was it stopped while you 20 were there?
21 A.
I really don' t recall.
I don' t recall.
I know that in the 22 baterview process a t one time there were tape recorders.
And I 23 don't recall when those were actually stopped.
And I don' t L
24 remember why we stopped them, re ally.
I don' t know why they were 25 stopped.
'u a BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 Q.
Okay.
2 A.
We had tape recorders going af ter hours of concerns that 3
might have ccrue in.
4 MR. SILB ERG You' re ref erring to the telephone -
5 hu tline?
6 A.
Yeah, the hotline systens yeah.
7 Q.
I'm talking about during the interview process.
8 A.
Oh, no.
4"lp 9
Q.
Were you working as the Q1 Lead wheng
) conducted 10 his investigation on the allegation of the blackballing of a guy tact 10 ~
11 named
, for a j ob at Arizona Public Service?
12 A.
I do n' t know.
I do n ' t,,
13 Q.
You don't remember that one?
14 A.
No, sir, I do n' t.
l 15 Q.
During the time that you were in Q1, was there ever a purge i
16 of the files that,, were documents removed f rom the files for 17 any particular reason?
18 A.
I don't recall that.
l 19 Q.
Did you ever request people t.o review their files and 20 remove documents for any reason whatsoever?
21 A.
I seem to recall that at one time I asked my investigators 22
,,yes, I asked the investigators to review their files, and if 23 they had documentation or anything in there that was not relevant 24 to their case, that I f elt they ought to disregard it.
One of i
25 the reasons for that, these guys were asking for extra file
~7 BUSHMAN COURT REPORTI!Ki, INC.
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86 r7 1
cabinets and we were limited on space.
I said, "If you really 2
need that, we will provide it.
But if you have inf ormation that 3
is not relevant to a particular case, that I would suggest you 4
throw the stuf f away. "
And that's, ba sically, it.
5 Q.
Did that extend to notes that would have indicated what 6
their investigative processes would have been?
7 A.
I don' t think so.
8 Q.
Did you specify what it was they were to throw away?
9 A.
No, I didn't, not specifically.
I said, "Anything 10 pertinent to your case or pertinent to your investigative 11 process, you want to keep tha t if you feel it's relevant, but 12 anything else irrelevant I suggest you j ust trash it."
r(
13 Q.
Okay.
Bob, there was an investigation QCI84,083, Item 2.
L.
It was the second of two investi,gations.
This was performed by, 14 a f ellow namedg,.
n ) related to sczne problem he 15 I think, i
16 thought he had identified relating to Swipe Tests in random 17 samplings on external pipe cleanliness.
Chloride had been 18 discovered on a pipe.
f,[7CY l
19 In his investigative process, apparently,f..,
jfoundthat y
20 there had been an original sample, and that the number of 21 deficiences identified during this sample was larger than would 22 be acceptable.
And so the sample was expanded.
And there was a 23 two part allegation of potential wrongdoing:
One, that only the I
24 pipes that were going to be sampled were cleaneds and two, that 25 some of the deficiencies identified in the earlier samples, some L
l BUSmiAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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of the parts of disassembled valves,, I'm sor ry.
I'm mixing up 2
ba*o cases here.
That only the parts that had been,, that were 3
to be sampled had been cicaned.
Do you remember this case?
4 A.
Not specifically, sir, not at all.
5 Q.
I had two cases run together there.
Sorry.
Let me ask you 6
,, I don' t think there's a real need to go through this case by 7
case.
There was a series of wrongdoing investigations performed 6 7Fr?
8 by Mr 9
A.
Uh-huh, 10 Q.
Early in the program, he made some real pointed calls 11 saying, "Yes, discrimination has occurred.
Harrassment and 12 intimidation has occurred."
But later in the process, a lot of 13 his cases, 01 cases, were eventually used by Wichita Legal in
{
14 settling with people who had alleged harrassment, intimidation l
15 and discrimination filed either with the Department of Labo' r or 16 Kansas Heman Resources.
Did you, as his Supervisor, give him any l
17 Onstructions or arrive at any conclusions as to how Q1 was going
/ o.470 s
touseMrgf jinvestigative finoings on these issues 18 19 that were now going into court?
20 A.
No, sir.
21 Q.
Did the court's findings or potential court findings 22 influence the conclusions on the part of you, as the Supervisor, 23 to influence any conclusions you may,,
24 A.
No, sir, l
25 Q.
,, have drawn relative to the validity of one or the other R
u BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 of these wrongdoing cases?
2 A.
No.
I didn't knoa what the.' were doing with the cases that 3
Issinghof f used.
It would not have influenced me anyway.
4 Q.
Okay.
You've said that several times.
As a Q1 Supervisor,
/; b.9N%
why didn' t you know what{
was doing?
He worked for 5
6 you.
7 A.
Maybe I misunderstood you.
What I said,, what I meant to
~
8 say there was that I didn't know what legal was doing with his 9
resul t s.
Okay?
10 Q.
Well, I'll give you an example.
I don' t renember which i
N 11 f elicw it was, but
' started a Q1 investigation,,
12 A.
Uh, huh, r(
13 Q.
,, ar.d the close out of the investigation was, he t..
14 accompanied the Daniels' man to Clinton or scrne other site and
,/
15 tney settled out of court.
That'sMr.j who was 16 co;npleting his 01 ef forts by helping Daniels settle a e,
an out 17 of court settlement?
18 A.
Did I sign that report?
19 Q.
I can't tell you at this time.
20 A.
I don't recall.
21 Q.
The reason I'm going to this line of questioning is, that I sawMr.{,e N4, investigative skills used in a variety of 22 23 ways.
Sometimes he would draw hard, pointed conclusions.
Like
/
T 24 he concluded that Mr. Rudolph blackballed Mr.[
/ and yet, 25 that wasn't the ultimate Q1 conclusion, but that was the BUS &'Jdi CDURT REPORTING, IN C.
(501) 372,5115 6,70rf9h + %
89 IT 1
investigator's conclu sion.
In other instances, we,,
2 MR. SILBERG :
Well, we went through that.
There's 3
nothing in the file that says that.
4 MR. GRIFFIN:
No, j ust the investiga tor's 5
tes timo ny.
Correct.
To you but not to me.
7 MR. GRIFFIN:
Yeah.
8 Q.
And another instance, like the example I gave, where he's 9
helping Daniel negotiate.
What my question is, I'm trying to 10 achieve same understanding f rom you, as a Q1 Supervisor, as to
( 6 na J1n 11 what role Mr.
/really filled in the scheme of things 12 because sanetimes he would do a thorough investigation, close out 13 the issue, make his call, other times he seems to have,, his 14 role seemed to have changed midstream.
Instead of being an 15 investigator, now he would be performing another f unction, 16 helping to resolve potential court or litigation issues.
Did you 17 monitor his activities?
i 18 A.
Not totally, r.o.
If he was working f or Legal, I,, that i
19 wasn't working for Quality First.
l 20 Q.
Did you have any contact with Legal as to how,,
21 A.
No, sir.
No, sir.
l 22 Q.
- Okay, f
23 A.
They may have used his investigator results for some, 24 purpose that they have.
I don' t know that, but Chuck probably 25 would have knoan that.
Chuck Snyder.
F u
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'[
1 Q.
In the case of scne of the wrongdoing cases, like 2
hara ssment, intimidat'on and discrimination and f alsification of ffaAG11D %
3 records, I'm telling you tha%I did make some calls 4
where he said this did occur and somebody was discriminated 5
a gains t.
Somebody was harrassed and intimidated.
6 A.
If that was the case, reports would say such and,,
7 Q.
It does.
8 A.
And he would substantiate such and say, "Hey, I found it to 9
be with merit," and I would sign it of f.
10 Q.
And that's what the reports do say.
My question to you is, 11 do you know of any instances where there were any repercussions 12 of actions to the people found to have been the harrassers and r
13 intimidators or discriminators or f alsifiers?
14 A.
I can' t recall any specifics.
I knew there were some 15 changes within Daniel's organization, management changes.
I 16 can't say it was a result of, you kncw, cur findings, 17 necessarily.
18 Q.
okay.
Let me visit with you on one thing that we touched 19 on before and that's the use of QFO's and observations.
20 A.
Yes, sir.
21 Q.
One of the complaints I heard most of ten repeated was, 22 QFO's were not being addressed in a timely manner.
23 A.
That occurred early on, I think.
24 Q.
Were they addressed before fuel load; do you kncw?
25 A.
They,, you bet.
They started addressing then before f uel l
l BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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load because we expressed a concern.
And if I rec al l, to sor.c 2
degree, that concern was expressed through Chuck to the QA 3
Manager and they did start picking up on those.
4 Q.
Okay.
5 A.
That ef f ort, if I recall correctly, did start occuring 6
before f uel load.
Now, whether they got them all finished before 7
fuel load, I don' t know.
See, I lef t -, before f uel was loaded, 8
I believe I lef t before the first organization was to take 9
another assignment f or KG&E.
When was f uel load?
10 MR. S ILBERG :
Ma rch?
Is that right?
l 11 MR. GRIFFIN:
March of '85.
12 A.
Okay.
And I think sometime in December, I lef t the Q1 13 Program, I believe, and went over and worked directly f or Bill
..a 14 Rudolph, Mr. Dick Grant and took a test for them in their quality 15 engineering group on integrated inspection and maintenance 16 procedure s, integrating those procedures.
17 Q.
Let's move on to the issue regarding.
Early in 18 the Laterview today you said that you had set up a matrix and you 19 actually started this investigation,,
20 A.
Yes, sir, I did.
21 Q.
,, into this issue.
When you became Supervisor, whac 22 happened to this case?
23 A.
The case was put back in the file because we were going 24 through the reorganization and so forth.
And I don't remember 25 the specific time frame.
I didn't continue on with it because I BUS FD'JJi COURT REPORTING, INC.
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i now had new duties to take on.
But as quickly as we could, we were to reassign those or reassign that and I did reassign that 2
particular case to get it, you know,, and I don't recall the 3
timing as to how long that was between the time that I filed that 4
partial investigation I did and we picked it up again.
5 came on board with us and he went through 6
But when Mr 7
his basic training, so to speak, into the program, it wac And I don't kncw if I specifically assigned 8
reassigned to him.
9 that to him or if assigned it to him.
We had a mechanism set up where assignments were actually done, fcr the 10 11 mos t pa r t, by And as one of the tracking mechanisms we had to track all concerns and to coordinate and 12 If we had concerns make sure that we weren't missing anything.
i 13 So ould 14 running parallel, he did duplicating and so f orth.
make assignments, and I think he may have assigned this 15 partiular one, picked it up again and assigned it to Mr.
16 work on this caser do you remember?
17 Q.
How long did I don't remembpg specifically, but it was,, it seened to 18 A.
me it was like a month or maybe a month and a half.
19 Did you have occasion during that period to discuss the 20 Q.
21 progress of the case wit 22 A.
Yes.
Yes.
See, whe
,, af ter he completed his, you 23 knew, basic,, I'll call it training, if you will, into the program, the program obj ectives, where the program. that hc 24 that he understood understand and so on and so forth,, you kncs, N
25 u
BUSIMAN COURT REPORTDjG, INC.
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1 what his responsibilities were, and he was assigned the case and l
2 it particularly had to do with particular things I'd worked on.
I said,.( QL7 % develop your plan, your approach and so forth, 3
4 and I'll review your plan," because, see, these fellows are new, 5
just starting out.
I wanted to give them whatever guidance I
~
6 could, if they needed it, if I f elt they needed it.
Did you tell/mn s/to adopt your plan 7
MR. SILBERG :
/
I 8
and carry it out?
4 9
A.
No. What I did, he picked up whet I had done and revie ed I
10 tha t.
And when I discussed with him on his development of his 11 plan, I said, "You may elect to go in the manner I have."
And I I
12 explained to him why I had developed a matrix type approacht 13 okayi But I said, "If you elect to go another way, then, let's 1N[;'
see what you want to do, how you want to go about it."
And he
~
14 15 did.
He elected to go in a dif ferant f ashion.
What concerned me i
f 16 was that the f ashion he was going was kind of,, it was a And on several occasions I said,(,nn \\
, are l
17 raEbling approach.
you sure you feel confident that you can meet the objective; that 18
.I 19 being that you can follow this kind of plan and be able to draw a i
20 conclusion with regard to this concern?"
"Oh, yeah, man."
21 And a little later on in the process,, and this is based 22 upon experience in dealing with people that I'm about to tall 1
A couple of days,, and I don't know the specific timing, 23 you.
i 24 but a couple of days went by.
And I always reviewed the progress 25 of my people, especially the new ones that were starting out in i
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the program.
And I documented that.
And a couple of days or so 2
went by and I said, "Let's take a look where you are."
And he 3
showed me scrne of his notes and I was sort of shocked.
I got 70 N real concerned because f rom what I read, I said,(g y what is I
4 5
the relevance of what you're saying here to the concern?
Can you 6
explain that to me?
How does this fit in your plan?"
"W ell, 7
man, I saw that when I was,," you know.
"W el l, that's fine, but 8
what is the relevance of that?"
okay?
And he really couldn' t 9
pin it dcun.
So I suggested that he go back to his plan or be 10 more specific and so f orth.
He'd say, "okay, man, whatever you "Wait a minute, f on m)it'snotwhat I want; 11 want."
I said, 12 it's what you, as a prof essional, should want or need to be able 13 t o do thi s j ob. "
14 Q.
Did you have several such sessions with him?
1.5 A.
Yes, sir.
16 Q.
Well, to kind of speed things up here, I realize, as you 17 said earlier, he continued to work on this case for quite a long 18 time.
19 A.
Yeah.
20 Q.
And did you continue to be critical of his,,
21 A.
I tried not to be critical.
22 Q.
or to give him direction relative to his scoping of the 23 case?
24 A.
For a period of time -, and, quite f rankly, I kind of gave 25 up because he wasn' t, apparently, understanding or listening to 3
BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 what I was saying.
And I was getting quite concerned that he may 2
not have the ability or may not comprehend what we were toring to 3
achieve and how to approach that.
And I mentioned this to Chuck 4
Snyder on occasions.
I don't remember when or how many times, 5
but I said, "I'm concerned about this particular individual."
6 And I said, "I'm going to give him some more time.
I'll give the 7
guy the benefit of the doubt."
He had credentials, on paper 8
anyway.
And I wanted to try to do all I could to bring him 9
around because we needed good people to do a job and to bring **
10 and we had time invested in this individuals okay?
And try to 11 bring him along.
f 12 I tell you what *, one of the things that really kind of l
[
13 got me about him and caused me to really have doubts about him L.;
i 14 being in the Q1 Program all together, he made a statement to me 15 one af ternoon.
He said, "Man, j u s t t ell me wha t you want, and f
i 16 I'll write anything you want."
That got me.
I don't need that e
17 kind of people in that kind of an operation.
I f
18 Q.
Was this at the end, during one of these --
19 A.
That was getting close to the end of his e,
20 Q.
Well, I'm talking about, is 'this during his results or did 21 this statement he made take place during one of y' alls b
22 discussions about the direction of his investigations?
i 23 A.
It**
24 Q.
What I'm asking is, was this a statement of f rustration on l
l 25 his part?
3 e
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BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 A.
No.
It didn' t appear tha t way; no.
k.d tha t ' s wha t r e all y 2
got me.
I could understand if the guy was saying, "Hey, get off 3
my back.
What do you want?
I'll just give you",, that's not 4
the way it came about.
He said, "Hey, man, j ust what do you r' % s.
5 want?
I'll",, and I said, I want you to be satisfied 6
with hcu you draw your conclusions, but I want it based on iacts; 7
all right?
And I want you to take a systematic approach."
He 8
- says, "I am systematic."
I said, "I don' t quite agree with you l
9 and her e's why I don' t. "
Then, he'd say, "Okay.
I'll do it this 10 way."
And I'd say, "Ncw, look.
I appreciate that but don't do 11 it just because,, I'm not telling you to, but you, the 12 investigator, needs to be satisfied."
a n..,
l leventually turn in an investigative report to l
-)
13 Q.
Did 14 you?
15 A.
Not a f ormal, final report, per se.
It was,, I'll tell 1
(
16 you what happened.
At some point in time I said, "Where do you i
l 17 stand on it?"
He said, "I'm rasdy to wrap it up. "
I said, "Have l
18 you written your report yet, your draf t report?"
And he said, 19 "No, man.
I'm writing it.. "
I said, "Okay.
When you finish it, 20 I would like to review than," because by this time, I was very 21 doubtf ul, without even seeing this guy's report, okay, or any that we were going to be able to accept it.
22 f acsimile repc t,
Had he coweyed to you what his conclusions might be at 23 Q.
24 that point in time' 25 A.
No, not total conclusions; no, sir.
L 1
BUSHMAN COURT REPORTIN3, INC.
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1 Q.
Did you have a sense of what his conclusions might be?
2 A.
Did I have a sense?
3 Q.
(Attorney nods.)
4 A.
Not relative to the concern, no.
He had expressed concerns 5
to me that I couldn't relate to the allegations okay?
He did 6
turn in a draf t report, and when I read that report, I was 7
con /inced that the individual was just not capable or did not 8
understand.
And we had expended enough time, and rather than continue on, I f elt that it was best just to cut it of f right 9
10 there.
You knoa, the costs, the element of time and everything 11 else just wasn't worthwhile.
12 Q.
So what happened? What happened next?
13 A.
Af ter I're/iewed the report, I t ol d him tha t,, I don' t
{
14 remember my specific wording, but something to the ef fect that I 15 was just disappointed.
I said, how,, "What is the relevance of 16 some of these things toaard this?
It j ust doesn' t make sense."
17
'Well, man, what do you want? " Isaid,[
we've been 18 talking for several weeks.
I hoped that I conveyed to you the 19 approach that I expected; that you would understand the program, 20 and it's very apparent that you haven't.
And this, to me, is not a prof essional product in line with the scope of this program and 21 22 the obj ectives, and we just don't need your services anymore."
23 Q.
Was he tenninated on that day?
24 A.
Yes, sir.
25 Q.
Okay. This was with concurrence of Snyder?
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A.
I told Chuck,, af ter I reviewed the report, I said, "Look, 2
Chuck, it's my prof essional opinion that this gentleman j ust 3
isn't going to make the grade for Q1, and I want to teminate 4
him."
He said, "W el l, if you f eel that way, S
terminate him. "
6 MR. SILBERG :
So the sequence was that he gave you 7
a draft report.
Was tha t handwritten?
8 A.
It was handwritten.
9 MR. SILB ERG c And then you reviewed it?
10 A.
Yes.
11 MR. SILBERG :
And then you told,,
12 A.
Talked to Chuck.
-[s 13 MR. S 3L1' ER3 :
You told Chuck that you were going 14 to terminate him or you wanted to terminate him?
1.5 A.
I wanted to terminate him.
16 MR. SILBERG :
And then Chuck said,,
17 A.
And I told him why.
18 MR. SILBERG And Chuck said that you e '41d do 19 that or he would do it?
20 A.
He said, "Go ahead and terminate him and then notify his 21 company that we no longer need his services."
d I attempted to But I told,[
"As f ar as I'm 22 do that and wasn' t successf ul.
23 concerned, we no longer need your services.
I would like for you 24 to start checking out this af ternoon."
He looked at me and said, 25 "Right ncw? "
And I said, "Yes, sir," because in my mind, it was J
BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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' senseless to keep paying money for something that you're not 2
getting the product f rom.
He said, "0kay, man."
I said., "Go to 3
.- do you understand the program; that you've got to go through 4
an exit interview and all this process?"
he said, "Sure, man.
5 No problem."
He said,, he kept saying, "S ur e.
No problem."
6 And he never,, I mean, there was no disgruntling.
The guy never 7
said,, you know, he didn't get hot, mad or anything else to me.
8 And when he walked out the trailer door and started processing 9
out, I thought, "Well, he understands and he's acting as a 10 prof essional and that's the end of that "
I learned later, T
11 though, that he was upset and he went over to NRC and that's his 12 prerogative,,
13 Q.
True.
14 A.
,, and that's fine.
15 Q.
What did you do with the handwritten investigative report?
l6 A.
His investigative report, I put it in a file, I documented 17 the termination, co=versational process, what have you, and 18' turned that file over,, I believe, I turned it over to Chuck 19 Snyder.
20 Q.
Do you knw what he did with it?
21 A.
No, sir, I don' t.
I don't recall, specifically.
He may 22 have turned it over to Legal or somebody.
I' don' t knw.
23 Q.
When I went dwn and ooked at his file, I didn't see any ch 3 24 evidence in the Q1 file of
) investigative report.
Was 25 there a conscious decision,,
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BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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A.
Probably not.
Probably not because afterwards,, see, I 2
made a decision that what he had just did not do the job for us.
3 (Brict interruption.)
4 A.
What I did is, I took the case as if it had never been 5
investigated and started it over with a new investigator, b ac.41 6
Q.
This was reassigned to..
(phonetic)?
i
, yes, sir, it w&s.
j 7
A.
/
en n s I
8 Q.
Did he scope the investigation dif ferently than y
s 9
A.
Yes, sir, he did.
10 Q.
Did he endorse your scoping or your matrix approach?
11 A.
Not exactly, but he did use a matrix approach; yes, sir.
I finish 12 c.
While you were still Supervisor there, did
)
13 his investigation?
l 14 A.
Yes, sir, he did.
~15 Q.
Did you accept his conclusions?
l 16 A.
Yes, sir, I did.
17 Q.
If I remember correctly, oncluded the allegation 1
was substantiated based on the one CAR that had been revised l
18 19 quite a f ew times is that your recollection?
20 A.
Yes, sir.
21 Q.
When I did my case review at Wolf Creek, I eventually f ound
,ons 22 a copy of Mr./
' handwritten investigative report.
Legal had
\\
23 a copy of it.
And if I remember correctly, Mr.
ad quite a l
l 24 f ew findings contained in the report, relative to this issue.
He l
l 25 had substantiated the allegation.
Is that your recollection?
l
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BUS HMAN,.COUR, T, REPORTING,
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1 A.
I don' t remember, specifically.
I know he had written up 2
some Quaf s, whatever,,
3 Q.
I gues s tha t's Q,u,,
4 A.
But that's not the right terminology.
In so many programs 5
we call a corrective action document so many dif ferent thingst 6
okay?
7 Q.
I understand.
8 A.
But he had written same things up and the relevance of them 9
towards the case just,, I couldn' t accept.
And I don' t know 10 what we ever did with those, if anything.
And I think the reason 11 that we had,, that I didn' t direct that there be any f ollow up 12 was that I j ust,, I couldn't accept the individual products.
I 13 had no e,
what am I trying to say,, no confidence in what he had 14 come up with.
15 Q.
Let me make an observation to get you to comment.
Based on my review of,, not on my review but the NRC inspector's review 16
- f. n rJ1I 17 of the j nvestigative report of Mr.
and the draf t by Mr.
- isD,
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)it was concluded by us that the scoping of the 18 19 investigation was quite dif f erent between the two people.
- One,
/1h s 20 investigated a much more narrcw range than Mr.
/ had, expanded 21 the,, what he read,, what he thought might be proper, was on a 22 much, much larger scale.
Is this consistent with what you were 23 seeing when you looked at this?
The problem I had was,, I didn't know what he was looking 24 A.
I mean, he was coming up with something,, he weald say 25 at.
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BUSHM>di COURT REPORTING. INC.
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i there's a proced ure tha t's inadequate.
So I said, "Wait a 2
minute.
What's the relevance of what you say is a procedural 3
inad equacy? "
How did he conclude that?
There's no evidence as 4
to how he concluded that.
What is the relevance toaards this 5
concern?
I couldn' t put it together.
He seemed to be rambling 6
in several directions that j ust didn't make sense.
When I would 7
ask him about that, h e ' d s ay, "Man, tha t's, you know, CAR so and l
l 8
so."
And I would try to drive back to the point, "Did you find 9
that because of the revision process? Why was the revision in 10 the first place?
And was that revision a degradation to the 11 original" **
12 Q.
Intent of the CAR?
"intent of of CAR 7" And he came back and said, "Man, I 13 A.
{
14 don' t kn ow.
But there's a problem with this procedure here.
15 They can' t do that "
You know.
16 Q.
Okay.
Well, the reason I made the observation I did a 17 while ago is that I see this whole thing, this incident, as a l
18 dif ference in scoping.
You didn' t agree with the way it was 19 s coped.
Did you disagree with his findings?
Did you rearite his 20 findings and determine in your own mind they were not valid 21 findings?
Or is what you're saying is that you continued to have 22 a problem with the way he scoped his investigation?
23 A.
I had a probicm with the way he scoped his investigation 24 because it did not appear to me to be relevant to the 25 allegations; okay?
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MR. SILBERG :
But there's a second part, I think, 2
that we need to get on the record, and that is -- I think what I 3
heard you say before is that you also could not give any credence 4
to his findings because of the unprof essional way that he 5
approached the whole problem, 6
A.
That's right.
The guy appeared to be very critical of 7
proc ed ures.
My experience is there are,, there can be 100 8
dif f erent ways to accomplish somethings okay? But a procedure, 9
for example, is written to accomplish an objective.
And there 10 may be another way to accomplish the same obj ective.
And what 11 I've found in my experience with auditors, inspection personnel, 12 if you will, over the years is that they would like to see it i
13 done another way, their way.
It's no better.
It would achieve
~
14 the same results.
So just because it's not done their way, rather than being done the way the program is written to be done, 15 And that's what came across to me f rom Mr.f 16 it's no good.
17 Q.
I understand wha t you're saying.
I have encountered that 18 even within the NRC.
The questions I think most of the f ormer Q1 19 investigators had who were present when all of this was 20 unf olding, your loud discussions -- I'm not talking about you 21 being loud, but discussions overheard by Q1 investigators in these meetings that you had with[.w
/ about his pursuance of this 22 23 thing, and then the day of his tennination, I have gotten the 24 impression that a lot of it related to the scoping, but the --
/
N 25 did you make a conscious decision not to include Mr.
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report in the Q1 file?
2 A.
Not necessarily, no.
Like I said earlier, I think I f elt 3
that he had missed the boat entirely.
What he had was not 4
rel evant.
5 Q.
I understand your testimony.
6 A.
I f elt it would be better, rather than to put something 7
like that in a file -- I didn't want the next man coming on to be l
8 influenced by me or anyone.
An investigator's responsibility, 9
based on his expertise and knoaledge of the program requirements and so forth, his responsibility was to scope out the plan, to 10 11 investigate problems, to either substantiate or negate a concern, 12 an allegation.
r
.i 13 Q.
Bob, given the f act that this.all unf olded pretty quickly, D"N 14 and you were aware that Mr. /
/had made some concerns, whatever 15 they were, knoan to the NRC.
Do you think it was legitimate to 16 remove his work product f rom the file?
17 A.
I didn't do that intentionally.
What I did was turned 'that 18 file over to, I believe, Mr. Snyder, 19 MR. SILBERG When you say you turned the file l
over, was that the file on One antire concern or just,,
1 20 21 A.
Yeah. Well, no, not the entire concern.
The product that si ad produced, okay, his draf t report.
And I documented h
22 Mr.
J my actions, my observations of the individual, and I gave that to j
f 23 24 Chucks okay? What happened with it f rom that point forward, I'm l
l It may have been turned over to Legal 25 not sure.
I'm not sure.
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or ** I'm not sure.
But we didn' t use that, ckay, because I 2
didn't think it was necessary to use it.
3 Q.
okay.
Let me make a comment that was voiced to me by scrae 4
of the f ormer Q1 investigators.
And I'd like to get you to make 5
an observation about or make a response.
Many of the Q1 6
investigators I interviewed, apparently, knew enough about this y on s conflict as it was ongoing to realize that Mr{
was going 7
8 f urther into this than you and others intended that he go.
In 9
other words, he was branching out in other areas and looking at 10 other aspects of the CAR program that maybe were beyond the 11 scope, depending on whose definition you wanted to use, of the 12 original allegation.
H ow'ev e r, through these periodic reviews nm.
that you conducted, that Mr.f.
was not stopped or prohibited 13
~
14 from pursuing the case, which is consistent with what you told Hoaever, usey've expressed grave concern about the f act that 15 me.
t..m Mr.f had made a conclusion, that he had an investigative 16 17 conclusion relative to the issue and that you simply had not
~
18 accepted it and that it was discarded, done away withs that it 19 was not included in the file and that it was your intent to 20 remove it, get rid of it.
21 A.
No.
No.
No.
I had no malice of thought toaard what he 22 had done in the case or anything.
As it turned out, the case was 23 investigated by a competent individual that came up with, 24 basically, a same conclusion:
that the allegation had merit.
f fenrn3k l
25 Q.
Yeah, but I've looked at the file and Mrl scoped l
I(
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it as much, I suppose, as you had and in a much more narrower 2
sense.
3 A.
When you say "narrower sense," how do you mean narrower 4
sense?
g 5
Q.
In relation to the way Mr.
'did.
He scoped it on a 6
much larger **
.m l
7 A.
Mr.#
didn't scope, s
t 8
Q.
Well, he would disagree with you and he did when he went to 9
the NRC.
10 A.
Okay.
But the records and documents, and you base your 11 conclusions, I'm sure, on f acts.
12 Q.
I haven't made any conclusions.
13 A.
Well, you're going to and you'll base them on f acts and 14 obj ective evidence, I hope.
And that file or the product that he 15 produced, if I recall correctly, okay, there was no scoping, l
16 meaningful scoping in line with the allegation.
l 17 Q.
Okay.
I understand what your testimony is. Bob.
What I,,
18 let me of fer this up to you because I knw this is a 19 controversial issue, this whole incident, eve rything.
I had one "IthinkMr.ltw 20 of our technical people look at it.
He said, 21,
obviously went beyond the original intent of the allegation.
22 Here's the allegation.
He looked at much more than that."
This 23 is the NRC inspector telling me this.
Here's whe.t was originally A.s s 24
,, here's the original allegation and here's what Mr t looked 25 at, a much broader area.
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"If you have those concerns, put it on 1
A.
/
2 a QFO; okay? Give it to another organization who is responsibic 3
for that and let them f ollow up on it."
4 Q.
But he didn't do that.
5 A.
No, he didn't.
6 Q.
B ised on the testimony I've taken f rom other Q1 10.
tha t 7
investigators, you had these periodic meetings with Mr.
8 were overheard by the other people and, yet, you didn't stop him 9
f rom proceeding with his investigations is that right?
10 A.
Not with his investigation.
What I attempted to do was to 11 get him to f ocus back, and I thought he understood that.
And the 12 gentleman,, or the individual went out and continued to pursue 13 his path of thinking.
And, you know, and I'd came back and take
)
14 a look and it was getting very upsetting because,, and that's 15 what allowed me or caused me to draw my conclusions that this man 16 was either not capable, he didn't understand or something was either.. he just couldn't do the job.
17
- wrong, 18 MR. SILBERG :
You started to tell the story about your having another NRC person rwie[c.0tu.%,heport.And you i
19
, had gone way outside the scope of 20 said that he agreed that f
21 the concern.
22 MR. GRIFFIN:
Yeah. that's what I'm telling you.
23 MR. SILBERG N ow, I thought you were also 24 implying, or maybe said in passing, that this other NRC person g'
\\
25 f elt there was merit in whag
)had doner is that true or not?
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MR. G: TIFFIN:
Yes, that's true., The inspector I 2
had who reviewe ( 17 %
) work said, in reviewing what was 2
nl%
apparently, Mr/c had some, what he 3
available there t. at, 4
believed to be significant findings.
Yes, they were beyond the 5
scope of the original allegation.
6 I understand your testimory, Bob, about your scoping 7
problem, the dif ficulties you had with him.
But what the NRC is lef t with here is, Mr.f e n) investigative work product is not i
8 9
in the file.
And, apparently, even though his conclusions are 10 outside the scope of what you thought the investigation should 11 be, the NRC, in reviewing this in hindsite, says there were 12 significant findings.
We believe there were significant findings made by Mr.f which, of course, as a result of this whole
[.
13 14 af fair were never addressed.
I 4
l 1.5 MR. SILB ERG But the important point, I think, is 16 Bob's conclusions when he reviewed the report as to whether
/
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l 17 /,
sfinding were significant or were reliable.
And maybe, you j
18 know, you did look,, it's true that you did look at those,,
i 19 A.
Sure, I did.
20 MR. SILBERG
,, when you reviewed the report.
4 21 A.
And I just couldn't accept them.
22 Q.
(BY MR. GRIFFIN )
Well, the reason I've been pushing and j
i 23 pursuing this and caming at it from so many dif ferent ways is, I i
i 24 wanted to get a good solid f eel f or the purpose of this 25 Oste rvi ew, as to whether you looked at and were more of fended and f
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1 put of f and didn' t accept the scoping or whether you did, in 2
fact, look at his findings and say, "I don't think your findings 3
are legitimate." That's the distinction I was trying to get a 4
good handle on here because I was concerned that maybe you said, 5
"You didn' t scope this properly therefore, I'm not.. what you 6
have done is not valid."
or I want to know if Bob Scott looked 7
at his findings and said, "I looked a t your findings and, based 8
on prof essional judgment, your findings are invalid.
They have 9
no basis.
In f act, they' re not real.
I don't accept them,"
1D 10 because we are lef t with Mr.
work product and his 11 findings, nevertheless, even though they were not in the Q1 file.
12 We hope to find out how f ar you went in evaluating his findings.
13 A.
I didn't go any f urther with them.
~
14 HR. SILBER 3:
No, but you did evaluate them.
1.5 A.
S ur e, I did.
I took a look at them and f rom what I could 16 see, okay, I had no confidence level that what he was stating, 17 oka'y, was valid because of his performance record, if you will.
So you based your conclusions not 19 just on the reports but also on the discussions you'd had the 20 month before?
21 A.
That's right.
And also I know how some people operater that 22 being, that there are many ways to achieve an objectiver okay?
23 And because in his opinion, which by this time was questionable 24 in my mind, they didn't do it the way that we would have done it 25 or thought it should be done.
So I wrapped the file up, when it r
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1 was all done, I gave it to my Supervisor and it went f rom there.
2 No, I don't recall,,
)h. N nothing was ever done wit ((
3 Q.
As f ar as you know, f
4 investigative findings?
5 A.
I can' t say that, specifically, because there -- I'm sure 6
if we went back through +, relatively sure, if we went back 7
through all the investigative processes that occurred that we 8
would find somewhere, either through Q1 ef forts or quality 9
assurance that,,
g 7DN 10 Q.
I'm talking about as a result of Mr.1 work.
I know 4
11 that people have looked at CARS before out there and stuf f like On %
12 that.
I'm talking about, do you know if anybody took Mr.
I 13 finding and said,,
14 A.
No, sir, I don' t.
15 Q.
,, there's going to be a QFAR or something,,
16 A.
No, I don' t I don' t know that.
17 Q.'
,, generated to respond to his findings?
18 A.
No.
No, sir, I don' t.
19 MR. S ILB ERG But the reason is because Bob had 20 looked at it and decided that he could not give him any credence 21 at all.
22 Q.
That's my understanding of his testimony.
23 MR. SILBERG :
Is that what you're saying?
24 A.
Yes, sir.
25 MR. SILBERG :
I'm j ust curious.
You said the LJ BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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former inves 'gators you talked to were upset because they
/ 10 2
thought \\
findings were discarded or ignored.
Was that 3
something they knew about at the time or something which they 4
learned about as part of this investigation?
5 MR. GRIFFIN:
At the time because all of this 6
whole thing was being played out in the of fice, apparently.
7 A.
See, no one ever expressed that concern to me.
8 Q.
(BY MR. GRIFFIN )
Ic '
- n move on to a dif f erent subj ect.
9 I'
tes t your memory.
Yo ay not remember this.
Mr.
10 /
inv estiga tion,
- alated to, I think, the l
11 brief description as vague, walk-seed ures. When I[nQ h
\\
reviewed this file, I could not fir.d any evidence of Mr.f) 12 T
13 work.
In other words, there were no documents in there that 14 contained his name or acy evidence that he ha made any is contribution, and yet, Mr. S ny de r and Mr
'and other people 6
had strong recollections of extensive ef forts on his part in this 17
- file, Do you have any of fering explanation as to why the file 18 contains no evidence of investigative work?
19 MR. SILBERG Was that during his tour of duty 20 because that's a very early nunber?
soun$s like it was 21 before you came on board.
I don' t know.
22 A.
I don' t kncw.
23 Q.
I'll get you an answer.
(Counsel reviews doctrnents.)
24 Yeah, you're right.
This was closed in July.
You've never heard 05 of that one?
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1 A.
I don't recognize it.
2 Q.
Let me ask you about another one.
This one was the one I 3
was getting confused with a question I was asking earlier:
4 Item 1.
There was an investigation about the disassembly of special scope valves in which they realized that 5
6 the valves were reassembled without maintaining uraceability on In other words, parts were intermingled, and 7
the par ts.
8 appa rently, the valves had -- there were at least two types of valves so that scrac parts, although interchangeable, had l
9 l
10 dif ferent capabilities of withstanding, you kncw, pressure or 11 whatever.
And the result of this led to a bag and tag type 12 requirement f or the disassembly of these valves.
13 Hcwever, there was a subsequent allegation and a subsequent i
l 14 Q1 investigation.
And this is the one I think I said earlier Mr.
had handled.
In his investigation he found that,, I 15J 16 think it says "DOD sangling, probability curve," or whatever the correct language is, was employed and the number of deficiencies 17 18 identified when they did this first sample f ell outside the 19 acceptable range of sampling.
So this sample was not ' recorded.
20 The number to be sampled was expanded.
And in the second 21 sampling, scrnehcv deficienciew 'dentified in the first sample had parts that were misntrnbered and did not go into that valve and 22 23 had mysteriously found their way back to the right valve, 24 indicating to the Q1 investigator that somebody had gone out there at night or whatever without proper QC oversight and proper 25 N
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1 work permits and everything and had corrected this problem.
And l
1 2
he reported as such in his 01 investiga tive report.
Do you 4
3 recall this investigation?
4 A.
Not specifically, sir, I don' t.
2 5
Q.
My question, what I was leading up to was, why Q1 didn't 4
i l
6 choose to pursue this obvious wrongdoing as a separate issue, but 7
since you don't know the issue, you can't respond.
8 A.
I can' t answer it.
9 Q.
Let me ask you something, j ust on a methodology approach.
f 10 Had you found a problem like this, there was not an allegation l,
11 made by somebody, necessarily, but he discovered certain aspects, t
12 a problem where somebody was maybe behaving improperly, doing i
r 13 work without verification, without paperwork, is this something l
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14 that you guys would have opened a new case on and pursued or is 15 this something you would have ref erred to somebody else to i
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16 res olve?
17 A.
Something that we more likely would have ref erred to 1
4 18 another organi:ation to investigate, e
l l
1.0 Q.
Like who?
L
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20 A.
Quality Assurance.
QFO.
Just so I understand, in this issue r
l 22.
the obvious wrongdoing, as you characterized it, was not what the
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L 23 concern was about but was something that was found out in the f
f 24 process of investigating the underlying concern?
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Uh-h uh.
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1 MR. SILBERG :
Okay.
2 A.
To me, that's a situation where it's a condition that may 3
be outside the allegation scope but should be f ollowed up on.
We 4
have provided a tool f or that in the program.
5 Q.
I think the part of this whole issue that was of fensive to 6
the former Q1 investigators who were there and were knowledgeabic 7
of what was going on was that, ap paren tly, the Q1 investigator's 8
credentials, technical ability and such were brought into 9
question by Mr. Snyder and by,, let me find out who else was 10 involved.
(Counsel reviews documents.)
Mr. Patrick and Mr.
11 Ruldolph and Mr. Snyder.
Mr. Patrick and Mr. Rudolph came over 12 to discuss whether this Q1 investigator, you know, should be 13 terminated or whether he should be kept on, you know.
Whether he 14 should be terminated because of such findings in the Q1 report.
15 And I thought this was suf ficiently sexy (phonetic) that it might 16 have been brought to your attention, something that occurred 17 maybe before you took over.
This is the question that Patrick 19 and Rudolph c&me over to Snyder to complain,,
20 MR. GRIFFIN:
Yes, that a Q1 file contained 21 conclusions that sanebody had been acting behind the scenes to 22 put these valve parts back in, obviously, violating a bucket f ull 23 of procedures and that they didn't like,, the concern is they 24 didn't'like to see this kind of thing shoaing up in a Q1 report.
25 A.
I'm not aware of that occuring.
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MR. S ILB E PS :
Was there action taken against the 2
investiga tor?
3 MR. GRIFFIN:
Well,,
4 A.
Who wac. the investigator?
5 Q.
I think i tnis case it was Mr.
6 A.
No, stayed right on with us.
7 Q.
All of these people had short-term contracts.
Some Icft 8
before others.
And I have had scrne,
9 A.
If I recall as there right up to the end of the Of investigative,, most investigative process had slwed doen.
10 11 course, I don't know what the time f rame was when,, the concern 12 by Mr. Rudolph and Patrick was made.
One of the allegations that the NRC -eceived f rom f ormer Q1 13 Q.
investigators is that certain people did not produce the results 14 1.5 that Q1 management wanted to see and did not f unction in exactly 16 the manner and were removed.
And some of the names, lik were of f ered up and that some of the people who weren't,, whose 17 philosophies about hw the program should run were not com;etible 18 with your and Mr. Snyder's view, were either terminated or had 19 ar.d Mr.
20 their ROF dates rnoved up, people like Mr.
21
)
90 22 A.
For example, Mr.
. Mr.
if I recall correctly, 23 asked to be able to leave the project.
And I think the reason was that he was to take some kind of ASPC exam or scrne kind of 24 And to meet that time f rame, he wanted to,, he 25 exam back east.
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BUSHMAN COURT REPORTDC. INC.
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i We said, 1
was tTying to wrap up his casc so he could go do that.
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"Fine.
We'll try to accommodate you, but, you knw, you have been on this case and we don't want to have to start all over.
3 4
Hopefully,, if you can finish it, but by the same token caution him not to cut short his investigation of fort in trying to meet 5
And[
id leave and went back and took 6
his own time f rame.
We had started gearing dwn and he called, I don't 7
his exam.
8 knw two or three weeks later.
I f erget the time f rame.
We 9
said, "Hey /
we just don't need you anymore because we're already coming d'wn on our people.
I don't knoa of anyone we 10 I don' t agree wit.h what the concern there,, that's 11 moved up.
12 stated there.
^%
13 Q.
You don't think anybody other than f as removed because of their,, or their termination date was moved up because of 14 15 their,,
)wasn't either because his,, if he had a 16 A.
No, sir.
-~s m.
17 dif ference in philosophy.
I explained why Mr.
was 18 terminated.
19 Q.
Uh huh.
A lot of people that I've interviewed have described the dif ferent shilosophy between Mr. Scyder and say Mr.
20 1
21 Thero.
They thought there were, you knoa, quite a f ew dif ferences between the basic philosophies of hw the program 22 23 should be run.
24 A.
I can' t disagree with that.
A lot of these people are also critical of 25 Q.
I can' t either.
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1 some of the changes that occurred in the Q1 Program but believed 2
that,, that the changes in the program that you implemented and 3
that Chuck implemented were more reflections of Mr. Koester's 4
expectations of how this program should be run.
Did you ever 5
perceive or were you aware of any, you know, substantial changes 6
that were implemented by Koester, either by suggestion or 7
through,,
8 A.
Not ever.
No, sir.
My impression of Mr. Koester's 9
involvement in the program was that he was concerced that the
[
10 program would be, you know, an ef f ective program, to do the j ob 11 that needed to be done with professional people.
And he pro /ided 12 us, to my experience and knowledge, with the tools we needed to c
s
)
13 do it.
If we needed more people, that wasn' t a problem.
Th ey 14 provided the f unds to get those people.
He lef t the job up to 1_5 the experts that had been hired to do the job, for the most part.
16 I don't recall any influence that he tried to impose on us saying 17 tha't, "H ey, I don't want you guys to go this way on this project I
18 or program or whatever.". Not ever.
.s.;,.... n 19 Q.
Did Mr.
'._. l 2 honduct an investigation into this o
/
ss 20 af fair with the termination of Mr.
21 A.
I don' t recall.
I don't believe,, I don't think he did.
l 22 No, sir.
23 Q.
Bob, I want to go through now kind of a laundry list of l
24 what,, they're kind of my summations or my sunnarizing of what I 25 believe have been the main concerns of some of the f ormer Q1
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1 investigators, things that they thought were changed in the 2
program, particularly under Mr. Synder's supervision and your 1
3 supervision.
4 Not so much your influence but more so, I think, a lot of 5
the criticisms by the former employees were aimed at Mr. Synder 6
and his influence.
And I'd like you to respond to same of the 7
charges or allegations, whatever you want to call them, that have 8
been made to the NRC.
I'll pass over the ones we've already 9
cover ed.
10 one of the things that was particularly of fensive to same 11 of the s e g uy s i s tha t th ey we r e *, you kn ow, August and August 12 and September they were turning in Q1 investigative reports which 13 they thought had significant findings.
But at the time they lef t
{
14 the program in November or December, based on their checking of the af fected organizations there still had been no action taken 35 16 on their investigative findings, and they were very concerned that either nothing was going to be done or that nothing was 17 18 going to be done bef ore f uel load.
Did any of these people ever express this type of concern to you, that they didn't feel there 19 20 was meaningful or corrective action being taken?
s I think on one occasion [, o n,expressed a concern and 21 A.
something to the ef f ect that there wasn't anything happening with 22 23 same of the QFO's.
And if I recall correctly, I made a statement I said, "Hey, that's an open document in their file and 24 to him.
they've got to do something with it in same time frame."
You 25 I
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BUSHKW COURT REPORTING, INC.
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can' t just disregard it because sooner or later some time, it's 2
an open document that,, and the whole program was set up on a 3
closed loop system., wherein that at some time they had to be 4
acted upon.
Like I said, they may not be acted upon in the time 5
frame we would like to see, but rest assured, somewhere down the 6
line they've got to do something about it.
7 And I would suggest, if I had my way, they would do it at 8
an early process or an early stage because that's less costly in 9
my personal opinion and professional opinion because let's say 10 that,, and I would give him this as an example.
Let's say that 11 they get on down the road and they find,, and they get into fuel 12 load and they find that, bingo, t' hey really have a serious r
13 problem.
Then, they've got to go back and undo all this.
And 14 you see the costs icvolved.
Jo I would think prudent management
},5 would act upon these things in a timely f ashion.
So I said, "As 16 f ar as your concerns,/
)I can have a similar concern, but 17 that's out of my j urisdiction."
18 Q.
I understand what you're saying.
Once Q1 has reported 19 these concerns, then you guys had met your goals and obligations?
20 A.
Yes, sir.
And someone else had the responsibility to carry i
21 that out.
Hopef ully, they will do it in an expeditious time 22 f rame that would benefit the proj ect as a whole.
At one time and 23 I don't remember the specifics or the time frame, but the concern 24 regarding QFO's not being acted upon. I think, was brought to the 25 attention of senior management and they started acting upon them.
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1 I don' t' remember the exact time frame, but that concern was 2
brought forward.
3 MR. SILBERG :
By Q1?
4 A.
No, sir, it was acted upon by the responsible organization.
5 MR. SILBERG :
No, no.
Who brought the concern 6
forwa rd?
7 A.
Q1 did; yes.
8 Q.
One of the allegations I heard of ten repeated was, I 9
beli ev e, that KG&E management or more specifically, Q1 managers, 10 were limiting the amount of time investigators were allowed to 11 work on investigations and also limiting the scope of the 12 inv estiga tions.
13 A.
Not true.
{
14 Q.
You don' t **
15 A.
No, sir.
l 16 Q.
In no instance did you tell somebody, "That's it.
I don't 17 want you to go any f urther than that.
Wrap it up.
Give me what l
18 you've got.
That's it"?
l l
19 A.
No.
One of the things that I did say on many occasions to 20 the investigators is, "I want you to act expeditiously in your 21 investigative process; however, you are to take what time it 22 needs to take to give this the product we need."
And, basically
- and f urther exp1. nation to them I said, "What I'm telling you 23 5
(
24 is, keep your eyes focused on your plan and keep focusing.
Keep 25 working toaarc that obj ective in an expeditious manner.
Don' t c
b BUSFGUS COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 waste time.
But by the same token, take all the time you need to 2
achieve results that we need to draw a conclusion."
3 Q.
Okay.
Bob, as part of my investigation, one of the things 4
I did is, I used the numbers f urnished by Q1 to put
'gether 5
production statistics for Q1 investigators by yonth and compare 6
that with the number of employees you guys were interviewing on a 7
monthly basis.
And by tha t, I was able to get a closer rate, and 8
also, I was able to track and make a line graph which also shoaed l
9 the number of allegations that were caming into the program.
10 Taking those three f actors and given the hundreds of outstanding 11 allegations at the time, say, tha t you j oined the program, that 12 were yet to be resolved, there was a large number of cases closed 13 in a short period of time.
And the staf f was increased and I
{
14 also f actored that in f or case production.
But at about the time 15 tha t you joined the program, the average closure rate per I
16 investigator was something like three or f our cases a month, some 17 only closing one and others closing ten or twelve or something 18 like that.
19 A.
Yeah.
20 Q.
By the time you get to the month of November e,
- October, l
21
. November, the closure rate has gone up dramatically to like 22 eleven cases per investigator, some closing one and others
(
23 closing 36 or 33.
24 A.
Yes, sir.
25 Q.
It was more than one a day.
9 L
BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 A.
Right.
2 Q.
And I know that some of these casca did not require a lot 3
of in.*estigate ef forts.
4 A.
That's right.
5 Q.
Ho#ever in a given month's time, out of 33 or 36 cases, 6
technical concerns or wrongdoing concerns, some of these numbers 7
seemed rather alarming.
And that,, the best example is one I'm l
8 f amiliar with, wrongdoing.
You've got harrassment, intimida tion, 9
f alsification cases and you're closing an averge of one a day.
10 It seems,, you know, it takes me weeks and months.
This case 11 I've been working on seven months.
If I had a harassment or f
12 intimidation case, it would probably take me three months, if it l
r 13 were more than just a handful of people involved.
And when I see L__
14 closure rates like this, inconsistent with the files, I see, by 15 my standards, very little documentation to support the 16 conclusions one way or the other.
A lot of the peopic in the 17 program drew the conclusions.
The investigators themselves drew 18 the conclusion that shortcuts were being taken.
These were not l
l 19 meaningf ul, thorough investigations.
Ind when I put these i
20 statistics together and saw these closure rates go up 21 dramatically,, you can imagine on a line chart it just makes a And then, 22 big spike right bef ore you get to the December date, 23 essentially, these hundreds of cases are closed.
There's still 24 cases, but the vast majority or bulk of them are gone.
25 A.
There's an explanation f or that.
I e
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i BUSE'AN CDURT REPORTING, INC.
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Okay.
I would like to hear it.
2 A.
We provided the investigator with better tools to work 3
with.
Tools being, better guidance, systematic guidance, revised 4
the program to, you know, help streamline, not to take away f rom 5
the investigative process but to help him,, give him better 6
tools to work with.
And the other thing is, as our investigators 7
,, the longer they were there, the more proficient they became.
8 And the investigative process e,
you know, when these gentlemen 9
first came on board, they didn' t know where the men's room was.
10 And af ter a while, a f ew day s go by, now they know where 11 this group is, this organization is, they got familiar with the 12 plant, they got f ami!.iar with the systems and, naturally, by the r
13 time they first started, it took longer to do some L_
14 inves tiga tions.
Okay?
15 But the longer they were there, the more proficient they 16 became because of their knowledge of the systems, the 17 understanding of the program, the processes anil so f orth.
And we 18 were doing,, based on those f acts, we were able to achieve 19 larger nunbers of investigations being concluded.
There weren' t 20 ar;y shortcuts that I'm aware of because, brother, I'll t ell you, 21 that's one thing I' reiterated again to the investigator.
And I, 22 hopef ully, got that across, that they were responsible for a 23 product.
Okay?
And they were to do a thorough job because they 24 had to stand on that.
Their professional integrity was on the 25 line.
t~
L BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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Q.
Well, what a lot of these people were saying is that the 2
program,, a lot of the investigators are saying the program 3
didn' t have integrity and the reason is, yeah, the tools were 4
there; it was streamlined.
It was streamlined to the point where 5
superficial, meaningless investigations were taking place that 6
were being bought of f by the Supervisors.
7 A.
Where is the e/idence of that?
8 Q.
Well, you go look in the Q1 files and it says, "I
9 interviewed five guys, and I looked at this document," and it's 10 unsubstantiated.
That's the evidence.
11 A.
But that investigator w,
12 Q.
You can draw your own conclusione.
That doesn' t mean the investigation 14 was superficial.
It means there may not have been enough 15 information in the files.
16 Q.
But your closing at a rate of one a day.
l l
17 A.
But I'm telling you, there's v,
you've got to give credit I
18 to the proficiency of the system and the proficiency the 19 individual gains as they go forward.
20 Q.
In looking at this system, I've talked to people who were 21 the system people doing the investigation and the majority of 22 them are critical of the system and many of them did not think 23 tha t it wa s **
But they were the ones producing the 25 investigative reports.
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Producing the product, yeah.
2 Q.
And they were the ones that were under the dominion of 3
these people that they accused of being the ones that are 4
invalidating the credibility of the program.
5 MR. S ILBERG :
But you said yourself that Bob 6
wasn' t the one being accused but yet he's the one signing of f on 7
the reports.
8 Q.
I'm saying that Bob is not the f ocal point.
His name 9
appears on the report.
A lot of people have blamed,, a lot of 10 people in the program blamed Mr. Snyder.
They thought he was the 11 one that was the arm twister, the guy that was really,, that you 12 weren' t really the guy that,,
F 13 A.
I don' t understand that because, see, my responsibility was L_.
14 to have everything,, through my investigators, have it all 15 wrapped up in a neat package and then I hand it to Chuck.
Okay?
16 Chuck didn' t have anything to do with the investigative process, 17 per se.
He was the last guy at the end of the gate.
I would 18 say, "Chuch, her e 's a cas e f ini sh ed. "
I'd hand it to him.
He l
19 would review it.
I'll never f orget one of the things he l
l 20 continually nailed me on as one of his people and that was 1
21 typographical errors.
For example, he' d say, "Your report looks l
22 fine, except you've got this wrong, tha t's wrong.
Get back to f
23 me."
So I don' t understand where this is coming f rom that Chuck 24 is a bad guy because, yeah, he was the head of this thing, if you 25 will, but the people that made it happen, you know, the changes t-L~
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1 to the program and so forth was the Bob Scotts, Owen Theros, Don 2
Daniel s, if you will, and the investiga tors themselves.
And to 3
hear this come back that Chuck is a bad guy and twisted 4
everybody's arms and made them do these things is j ust 5
3ve rwh elming.
6 Q.
Well, let's not put too much emphasis on Bob Scott versus 7
Chuck Snyder.
What I'm saying is, that most people believe that i
8 regardless of what you did, it was really Chuck's doing.
In 9
other words, they just didn' t,, these people,, this is a small 10 point ani it's not really what I'm asking a question about.
It's 11 just an observation I'm making.
And, that is, that your 12 personality is not conducive to being the guy doing the arm r'
13 twis ting, changing the program or hustling people of f or getting L.
14 things closed, or rush, rush, ru sh, to get these cases cleared 15 of f the books before fuel load.
l 16 And the question I was going to bef ore we digressed into 17 this is, the other aspect of my statistics that I plotted was 18 that during the same time that the number of investigations are 19 being completed,, I think there were 212 investigations 20 completed by 24 investigators in the month of November.
I know l
21 there are other variables to be considered that they could have 22 investigated prior to the month of November.
There are other 23 variables I'm aware of.
During this same time, the number of l
24 exiting employees being run through Q1 did not diminish.
In 25 other words, one variable that has to be considered is whether e-L-
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these Q1,, whether the cases can be closed and not interfere 2
with f uel load or whatever, you know, to/ing to get everything of 3
significance that could impede f uc1 load, investigated, resolved, 4
and corrective action impicmented.
5 The number,, according to the statistics of Q1, the number 6
of allegations made beginning in August 19 84, when Chuck took 7
over, regarding case closure goes like this (indicating) up.
And 8
the line f or allegations being taken by Q1 drops of f 9
dramatically.
And the number of exiting interviews, especially 10 employees being interviewed by Q1, remain relatively constant.
11 So the two variables that have to change, if you're going to get 12 resolutions or bring this thing to a close, came to pass.
You'v e F
13 got the opening investigations closed, not very many new L.
(
allegations were made and, essentially, by December 1984, mission 14 l
l 15 accomplished.
Most of the investigations are closed, not all, 16 but most were.
17 So when you take the criticisms of the Q1 investigators l
18 that the majority of them had of the program, do you think it's a 19 credible program?
Do you think these are meaningf ul I
20 investigations?
Do you think these represent an adequate review 21 of these employees' concerns?
A lot of them hold a very strong 22 opinion that, no, they don' t.
Get out of the way of this freight l
23 train.
Nothing will stop f uel load.
24 A.
Again, I have to say, to me, that was alarming when they l
25 say "No," okay, because those guys are saying that e,
those guys l
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are responsible for making sure that it was a credibic program, a 2
credibic product.
All right? What it shows me is, those 3
statistics, that we did have a good program to accomplish the 4
obj ective and we had it staf fed, apparently, with competent 5
people apparently able to do the job in the time frame we would 6
like to see it done.
It wasn't totally completed in that time 7
frame, but to me it says, " H ey, you had a good program," or "You 8'
j ust blew it totally. "
And we did not get an indication that we 9
blew it totally f rom NRC or anyone else.
10 Q.
NRC sees people inside the program saying, "The program is 11 lousy and it's not meaningf ul. "
And you've got,, the statistics 12 show that an inordinate e,
that is my word, "inordinate",, a r
13 large number of cases were closed in a very, very brief period of L
14 time.
It causes e,
that is why this program has been revicaed so l
15 ma ny times.
How can these guys do this?
How can they close this 16 many cases?
How can they take concerns like this and,, and then 17 we go and look at the files and we say, "W el l, there's not a 18 great deal here. "
Now, one of the gratifying parts of the whole 19 program is that some,, f rom my point of view,, is that sone of l
20 the important hardware concerns, technical concerns, received an 21 enormous amount of work.
22 A.
You bet.
23 Q.
I mean, there were j ust all kinds of resources expended by
(
24 Q1 and by the af fected organization when some big things were 25 involved.
As I pointed out in other interviews that Jay has 9
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[~
1 attended, the NRC was even there, when close outs on some of 2
these things came out.
So NRC is confident that those maj or 3
concerns were resolved.
And there's also confidence that Q1 did 4
a good job of getting those concerns identified, verified and 5
getting them to those af fected organizations so they could get 6
them resolved.
The strong criticism comes in the other we these 7
hundreds of other things that did not receive the type of 1
l 8
scrutiny, the type of ef forts that the Q1 investigators i
I 9
themselves thought should be given before these issues'could be 10 closed out.
11 A.
See, I don' t ** I didn' t see any evidence of that last 12 statement you just made.
r 13 Q.
Can you think of any reason why these people would hold L.,
14 this feeling, feel so passionately about it and you knov nothing 15 about it?
They, obviously, didn't feel 17 passionately if they waited until two years af ter the program to 18 tell NRC.
19 A.
That's what keeps haunting me is, why now?
They were part 20 of the program.
They had an opportunity and should have 21 expressed it.
And I'm telling you I was there.
i 1
22 Q.
I've taken a great deal of testimony where people were 23 complaining to supervision.
24 A.
But here's what bothers me, Brooks.
I was there.
I didn't 25 hear that complaining like you're expressing it to me.
Someone u
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1 was not telling the truth somewhere here.
I'm not saying Brooks; 2
I'm saying someone is now a Tuesday quarterback, whatever you 3
want to call them, something.
And they're probably wishing maybe
]
4 they had,, they would have done more.
I don' t know.
5 Q.
I have asked the same or made this same,, drawn the same 6
picture for other people in other intervices that I have done and 7
heard various explanations.
Some people consider Q1 8
investigators to be traitorous individuals who now, for some 9
monetary reason, have decided to voice all these really 10 unpleasant things to NRC.
Others have perceived it as 11 conflicting personalities between Thero and Snyder.
And I've 12 heard j ust every imaginable explanation f or why these e,
such r
13 strong feelings are e/idenced.
I have even heard people 14 suggesting if they f elt that strongly they should have called Q1.
l J. 5 MR. SILBERG Or the NRC.
16 A.
They should have gone to the NRC if thes/ were af raid to 17 come to us with the problem.
I have,,
18 Q.
Obviously, I would not be here unless there were some back 19 in that time frame.
You're saying, *What am I doing here?"
- NRC, 20 as you know, has already done evaluations, subsequent 21 evaluations.
They have done four cases, and then in 19 87, I'm 22 plugging along, so we have put in some ef fort.
23 A.
S ure.
But what I'm saying is, the only individual that I'm 24 aware of that really expressed concern, and I think it was 25 because his professional pride was hurt, isMr.f that I know
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1 of, was the only one.
He went to talk to the NRC which was his 2
right to do.
3 Q.
I have 50 pounds of testimony where people have expressed a 4
little dif ferent slant on the tes timony than you.
I understand 5
your testimony.
We don' t need to speculate at length about this, 6
but it helps me to understand your perspective on why things 7
were, in this f urious time,, all this work, trying to get all 8
these things investigated and reported.
Let me continue with my 1
9 list here of some of the othar aspects of the program that these 10 investigators were critical of.
They alleged there were 11 instances of what they believed to be significant allegations 12 which were reported by Q1 investigators as substantiated and were r-13 subsequently and ultimately reported as unsubstantiated.
Did you L.
14 have an occasion to change an investigator's report?
15 A.
No, sir, not ever would I change one.
16 Q.
We have already talked about no merit things.
You never 17 said substantiated,,
18 A.
In our discussions, I,, you know, he's wrapping up his 19 final report and we may have discussions about something and I 20 say, "Okay.
In your opinion does that have merit?"
He says, i
21 "Yes" or "No."
If it does, und he didn't have enough explanation 22 there in presenting what he was presenting to me, I would say, 23 "You need to better define that."
And on occasion, the 24 individual in their definition process would find that, "Hey, I 25 need to look some more," and would come back and say, "W el l, I r
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t 1
was wrong based upon",, and he would have, you know, the 2
evidence there and make changes.
But no reports to my knoaledge 3
were ever changed by me, Supervisor or Mr. Snyder.
Tha t j us t was 4
not right.
That was not programmatically allowed.
5 Q.
Another criticism was that there were changes in the 01 6
procedures and the day-to, day operating policies to make it 7
easier to close investigations without adequately examining the 8
merit of the allega tion.
9 A.
Is there any specific example of that?
10 Q.
Well, a lot of it had to do with an endorsement of 11
' supervision, like these lightly, lightly documented cases.
In 12 other words, very little evidence is put in the file and there's r'
13 nothing of any consequence in the file, and yet, this is being L
14 accepted by management.
15 A.
That's someone's opinion.
I have to restate that if a 16 concern or allegation was investigated, the investigative process 17 had to stand on its own, approve that, yeah, verily it was or was 18 not valid.
Okay.
Tha t may mean a lot of documentation in the 19 report or not very much documentation.
In other words, it may be 20 an extensive situation or not extensive.
21 Q.
An extension of this is, for example, as you were pointing 22 out a while ago, some of these people that were around a while, 23 and some of them had very fine credentials for the job they were 24 doing, and it was alleged that some of these people were drawing 25 on their experience and expertise in their fields to make e,
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d i
formulate their conclusions on these investigations.
2 A.
We try to guard against that.
3 Q.
And that, rather than a meaningf ul investigation, if there 4
are ten people to talk to, the g uy say s, "I've seen that a t 5
another plant," and those ten people would not be interviewed.
6 A.
That can happen, but we'd say, "H ey, friend, this is not 7
another plant.
This is this plant, this concern.
Go back and 8
get the inf ormation. "
9 Q.
Okay.
10 A.
I think that's human nature to do something like that, but 11 we would say, "Hey, you cannot do tha t here. "
12 Q.
Another allegation was that certain individuals within Q1 r'
13 had conflicts of interest with the issues being investigated.
L.
14 Some examples cited were letters written by Mr. Snyder against 15 concrete expansion anchor bolts which he had authorized as l
16 construction superintendent the release of anchor bolts f rom the 17 warehouse where there was, ap pa ren tly, a violation of procedure.
18 A.
Was this before he was e,
19 Q.
Yes.
Then, as a Q1 investigator, they didn' t think that 20 was legitimate to have him investigating himself, so to speak, so 21 the internal pipe cleanliness issue,,
t 22 A.
He himself did not investigate.
23 Q.
I know Le didn' t conduct any investigation, but they're 24 saying he influenced the course of the investigation, who and how 25 far it went.
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A.
No, sir.
I don' t know of any time that ever occurred.
2 Again, the l'nvestigators were under my jurisdiction, okay, if you 3
will.
Yes, Chuck was my supervisor, which he is responsible for 4
all this guy's,, but when it came to the investigation process, 5
okay, that was the investigator and Bob Scott, primarily.
All 6
right?
The finished product went to Chuck Snyder.
Chuck did not 7
come out and say, "You did not go f ar enough," or "You've gone 8
too f ar. "
That was my responsibility to do that.
That was my 9
responsibility to provide guidance.
10 MR. SILBERG You were not saying that you were
(
l 11 aware Chuck had conflicts of interest?
12 A.
No, I'm not saying that.
What I'm saying is that if --
before he became head of the Q1 operation, he was involved in a T
13 l
14 conflict that later became an allegation; okay?
I have,, I 15 don' t know,, first of all, I don' t think that that occurred, but l
~
16 if it did occur, what I'm saying is that Chuck never would have came out or didn't come out to my knowledge, and say, " H ey,
17 18 you've gone f ar enough in that."
He wasn't involved in the day,to, day on these 19 Q.
20 investiga tions?
21 A.
Not unless,, you know, if there was something I thought he I'
22 needed to be aware of, I would bring it to his attention, yeah.
But investigaHons were done by investigators as assigned to them 23
, n..-
g, 24 by
/or myself and their guidance came primarily from 25 me, r-L BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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Q.
Let me give you another example.
This was repeated by many 2
of the people in the program, and that was the pipe cleanliness, 3
internal pipe cleanliness issue, part of the Dissolvo tape issue 4
and all this.
Chuck had had an important part in the pipe 5
cleanliness program earlier in his career.
They thought that it 6
was not legitimate and that the ongoing various investigations in 7
the pipe cleanliness that were being brought to Q1 were not 8
getting the type of f air hearing and attention and adequate l
9 investigation that the thing merited because Chuck was so deeply 10 invcived in this program and had his own preconceived ideas about 11 what the conclusions should be.
12 A.
See, that can' t be.
If you look at the program and how it r-13 was structured, the organization was structured, it's a chain of L
14 command situation.
And again, Chuck did not get involved in 15 those cases until it was virtually done and I took it into him to 16 sign offs okay?
I signed it of f and took it in for his review.
17 That's how the program was structured.
Now, if during the course guy said, which I don' t recall, 18 of an investigation, you know, &
19 but if he found that, "H ey, Chuck had something to do with it," I 20 don't recall a case where we went to Chuck and said, "Hey, we've 21 gone too far.
Give us advice, or",, I don' t recall any 22 situation like that.
The program was not structured to allow 23 that to occur.
24 Q.
I want to give you an example of some of those pipe 25 cleanliness issues.
If you look on the ref erence list, it 7
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- I'~
references NCR generic,, NCR pipe cleanliness having benefit of 1
2 interviewing Chuck.
He has strong feeling NCR is going to 3
resolve this issue and did resolve it.
If I may make an f
4 observation, I saw reluctance on Chuck's part to say anything was i
t new that could corae up that could adversely af fect pipe 5
cleanliness that would not be ultimately addressed by Nas.( So JUot 6
7 therefore, I f elt he held the opinion that it was beyond the 8
scope of anything that Q1 needed to be concerned about.
- Sure, 9
we'll take the allegation but there is nothing really to s
10 investigate f urther because there's an NCR,,
11 A.
i can't respond to that.
j 12 Q.
Okay.
r 13 A.
I don' t know.
I'm not f amiliar with that situation that I L
i 14 r ec all.
Another issue, Bob, was that there was an allegation by 15 Q.
some of the Q1 investigators that certain other Q1 investigators l
16
\\
17 were closing cases using simple close outs, such as there's a l
is lack of specificity in the interview, therefore, we don' t,, this 19 can' t be investigated because there's not enough information 20 available to us to investigate.
There are a lot of cases, 21 particularly later in the program, you know-as to December of
'84, that a lot of things were being quickly closed as 22 unsubstantiated under,, using this as the type of methodology of 23 1
24 close out.
"We just don' t have enough detail, so we can' t 25 investigate it. "
This is, of course, with the other things we I
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1 discussed today, the f act that in some instances interviews were 2
not very f airly documented and this was an easy write of f, an 3
easy way to get rid of employee concern, and saying lack of 4
specificity.
5 A.
Are these supported?
6 Q.
Did you encounter that much?
7 A.
No, sir.
Like I said earlier, if there was lack of i
8 specificity in the allegation, if that concern existed, we wonid 9
go back to the interview group and attempt to contact that 10 concerned individual sc that we could get specificity that would enable us to go ahead and pursue the concern, because one of the 11 12 obj ectives of the program was to identify if we had some real r'
13 problems.
That's the benefit of that program, one of the big L
14 benefits of that program.
It's another means of checks and 15 balances that gives you an added assurance that, yeah, verily 16 there's something out there that will cause problems possibly to 17 public health and safety.
We're going to find in or catch it in 18 those cases. Wherein we lack specificity, as I said, we go back 19 and try to obtain that.
And I recall very f ew instances that we l
l 20 were not able to do that.
And there may have been scme cases t
21 that we closed based upon that condition.
It was just impossible I
22 to try to go af ter.
23 Q.
I encounter that in the NRC.
I know what you're talking 24 about; some things were just too general.
25 A.
But as f ar as a practice, to use that j ust to close r
I BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC.
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1 something out, no, sir.
We made legitimate attempts, in my 2
opinion, to get all we could get because we would have been 3
shortcutting ours elves, shortcutting the client, shortcutting the 4
public if we took shortcuts like that.
I don' t want what it 5
takes to convince people f rom my viewpoint anyway.
Our interest, 6
okay, overall, was to have an ef fective program and a check and 7
balance that would identif y if that thing was there and that 8
there's a problem there.
That's good common management, 9
economical sense to make e, let's find it, fix it now.
Let's 10 don' t let it come blow up in our f aces down the road two years, 11 eight years or whatever.
12 Q.
On a dif f erent subj ect, Bob, some of the Q1 upper level r
13 mana gemen t, like Chuck and like Mr. Koester that I have already l__
14 interviewed, have made some statements specifically about 15 wrongdoing cases.
And I think if I'm interpreting Mr. Snyder's 16 statement correctly, he says, yes, he sees what he thinks could 17 be interpreted as some weaknesses in the handling of wrongdoing.
18 Mr. Koester had a little stronger opinion on the subj ect and he 19 really didn' t, at his level, think that Q1 really had a very 20 strong commitment, even in the beginning, to do anything in this Do you have any opinion on the usef ulness or the 21 area.
22 thoroughness of the Q1 investigations into the wrongdoing issues?
23 A.
No, sir, I do n ' t.
I really don' t.
24 Q.
Do you think they were given the same attention and 25 s crutiny?
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1 A.
Those tha t I'm aware of, th ey were.
2 Q
Okay.
We didn' t try,, you know, as I hope I have, you know, 3
A.
As far as I war 4
related earlier we handled them all the same.
concerned, there was an obj ective to achieve and you went and 5
6 tried to find out, is there a problem.
We had to have the evidence to either substantiate,, you had to have the evidence 7
to substantiate the individual's,, you know, his conclusions.
8 9
Did it have merit or didn't it?
l As I have gone through interviews, and I have interviewed 10 Q.
11 quite a f ew Q1 people noa, some people would have these lengthy descriptions of all this and seem to have remarkable versions of 12 I looked all the investigative evidence into technical issues.
r 13 f
14 at all these.
I looked at all of that.
I went over here and these people, then I contacted crews in the l
15 talked to managers, l
16 f i eld.
I did all this on technical issues, then I started asking them about a wrongdoing issue and they would have some 17 extraordinarily narrow interpretation of how they should be 18 19 pursued.
20 MR. SILBERG :
I thought all wrongdoing issues were 21 done by 22 Q.
That's simply not the case.
If you look at computer printouts there's many, many people that had wrongdoing issues 23 24 that they were assigned.
And like I say, there's conf usion in my mind, even at this late date, as on any given one i(
25
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was working for you or legal.
2 A.
He worked f or both, but...
3 Q.
But f rom a reporting standpoint, I'm just trying to get 4
your opinion as to whether the same type of ef fort, same degree 5
of ef fort was put into wrongdoing as was put into the things that 6
maybe these guys would have been more comfortMble with, and that 7
is the technical arena.
8 Could you give me some kind of summary statement of what 9
your personal opinion is about the Q1 program?
Do you think it 10 was a good program?
Do you think it had integrity?
Do you think 11 they were credible investigations?
12 A.
Yes, sir, to all those questions.
r 13 Q.
Can you of fer any explanation.to me as to why,, and you l_
14 have to accept my statements on this e,
why so many people who are individually well accredited, people with lots of background, 15 16 lots of knaaledge about the industry, why these e,
so many of the people in the program itself had such strong criticism of the way 17 18 it was doner why they would f eel so strongly about it?
j 19 A.
No, sir, I can' t.
I really can' t.
I don' t inow wha t 20 motivates people in hindsite.
They had the opportunity while 21 there.
It was their responsibility.
In my opinion if they had 22 those concerns, they should have expressed them.
23 Q.
I heard dif f erent statements like, "I'm not going to get in 24 front of that f re.ght train" and things like that.
"I'm not l
25 going to kill of f my career in the nucicar industry.'
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A.
Tha t's ridiculous.
2 Q.
"I'll talk to you Mr. Investigator",, talking about NRC 3
investigators e,
"but you have to understand right out f ront, I 4
thought eveqrthing was j ust fine. "
5 A.
Right there, okay, if I heard that explanation, I would 6
start questioning credibility in the man himself.
7 Q.
I hear that quite a bit as an NRC investigator.
8 A.
I can appreciate maybe you do.
I'm not saying you don' t, 9
Brooks, but here again, as I said to you carlier,, I think I 10 commented earlier,, a man's prof essional or a woman's 11 professional integrity is on the line.
And if he's accepting pay 12 f rom a company, or whatever, to do a j ob, then he's got to take r-13 the whole bag with him.
He's got to do it all.
He's got to L
14 stand up and be counted.
Not using the excuse that, "I don' t 15 want to step in f ront of that freight train," or "I'm afraid my 16 reputation",, that's ridiculous.
I know they do it.
But I say i 17 they're copping out.
If I ever had a problem, and I have had 18 some in my career, with management trying to persuade me in same 19 direction, I would tell them right up front, "Friend, you're 20 screwing around with my life and my credibility, and that's 21 messing with my family.
And I don' t allow that. "
Now, one thing 22 has to give, but if he didn' t back of f, I would find another 23 place to go to work, you see.
24 Q.
That's, essentially, the thing these people, you know, that 25 made observations told me.
That's the part they're trying to r-L-
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avoid.
They didn' t want to go down the road.
2 A.
They need to stand up.
That's unf ortunate.
3 Q.
Those are the ones that don't say anything.
Th ey ' r e not 4
the ones I'm ref erring to.
Let me ask you another,, get your 5
opinion on another subj ect.
Do you think it would be fair, or is 6
it valid for NRC to expect the same degree of investigation, same 7
degree of scrutiny of alleged concerns from a Q1 program, as we f
8 would ourselves, the NRC, the ef forts we put into resolving these 9
concerns?
Is it fair for the NRC to expect that of a program 10 like Q1?
11 A.
Let me try to answer you in this f ashion.
There's a dozen 12 ways to skin a cat.
I, as a professional working for a utility, F
13 for example, may approach an obj ective in one f ashion to attempt L
14 to achieve the same objective that the NRC would.
How you get to 15 your conclusion is one method; how I get to mine is another f
16 method.
I'm not saying yours is wrong; I'm not saying mine is 17 wrong.
And in trying give you my opinion, to what degree to what 18 depth a person needs to go to do that, is very dif ficult to say, f
19 I think in some cases, people can go so f ar that they lose 20 site of the original concern, the original objective; okay?
I 21 think there needs to be some consideration as to their chosen 22 process to a Q1 type program, wherein they don't kill the in other words, kill its ef fectiveness or get people so 23
- program, concerned or afraid to come forth that you destroy the objective 24 25 you're af ter.
That can happen.
So, you know, do I agree that F*
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it's f air for NRC to expect a utility to go f urther in their 2
processes of investigation?
It's dif ficult for me to answer.
I 3
think it has to be weighed very caref ully.
Is it necessary, what 4
is the bottom line? What is the bottom result?
Is it going to 5
kill the program?
Is it going to turn out to cause 6
inef fectiveness of what you're trying to achieve or what?
7 Q.
Of course, the added ingredient for this particular l
8 situation is that you've got a plant ready to go on line and 9
you've got all these outstanding concerns and you need resolution 10 on them and that's the added variable things to the e,
11 MR. S ILBERG :
The more important added variable is 12 that NRC never told us how much they expected.
And if NRC had r-13 said up front, "You can put in one of these programs if you want L.
14 to.
It's voluntary, so you don' t have to have it, but if you put 15 it in, we want you to do investigations just like we do,"
16 assuming we knew how you did your investigations, then the 17 company could make a judgment.
Do I want to investigate 18 resources?
Do I want to have Brooks Grif fin spend seven months 19 looking at wrongdoing allegations and the company would make a 20 j udgment as to whether it's worth,, so you can' t put Bob or l
21 anyone else in a posture af ter the fact of saying, "Should the 22 program have looked like what we do," because we didn't know it l
23 at the time.
24 A.
The pilot program,, when I say pilot program, the program 1
25
- I f elt at the time that this kind of program was *, it was new 1
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1 in the industry; okay?
There had been other attempts that were 2
kind of like the Q1 program.
You know, we did it at Zimmer, for 3
exampl e.
We had concerned indiv iduals and we set up exit 4
interview s.
One of the reasons, of course, was that was another 5
element of identification, possibly a real situation that would 6
have been harmful to the public.
And there were other plants 7
that were caming up with dif ferent,, and it was in a state where 8
we didn' t have guidelines.
9 MR. S ILBERG :
S till don' t.
10 A.
Any regulatory guidelines or anything.
I remember one time 11 the head of OI,, I don' t remember the gentleman's name.
12 Q.
Hayes?
c' 13 A.
Mr. Ben Hayes came out to the proj ect and we had a long L
14 discus sion.
He had two other gentlemen with him, and they were 15 giving us some of their opinions.
We were kind of pulling for 16 this because we want the best things we can have in the industry.
17 Maybe call it pride of authorship.
We wanted the best f or our 18 plant.
Those things,, if there were strong feelings or if there 19 were not, we wanted anything they could of fer; okay?
20 Q.
Let me make an observation.
Mr. Thero, who had a big part 21 in starting the program on site e,
I had individuals describe his 22 approach as being more of a QA approach, something that is ever 23 widening, you know, f ully scoping the allegation, maybe not 24 exactly, but how big is the problem?
And by taking this approach 25 he was delaying closure.
There was a backlog building up.
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1 management change was needed to take a completely dif ferent 2
approach to getting resolution on these things because you can' t 3
have this program growing in the face of f uel load.
We need 4
resolution to these things.
5 A.
May I interrupt?
Not in the f ace of f uel load.
I don't 6
know why this came up.
I can understand why it does because of 7
financial and this kind of thing, but that was not it.
What was 8
happening was, it was growing to a point it wc ild never have been 9
resolved.
10 Q.
I have heard that stated.
11 A.
It could never,, let me tell you another thing about Mr.
12 Thero.
One of his sort of philosophies that I disagreed with and r
13 told him that it was very dangerous for anyone to take the L.
14 philosophy or approach he did.
He prided himself in hearing 15 around the project that his group and him was known as a Gestapo 16 group.
He said, "I think that's great.
I want them all to be 17 afraid of me."
Tha t's sick.
That's wrong.
18 Q.
Your opinions about him and his operations are mirrored by 19 a substantial portion, number of investigators.
There's 20 advocaters of the Snyder regime and advocates of the Thero
)
21 regime.
The NRC has to f actor,, we have to get personalities 22 out of this in the course of our investigation.
What we are lef t 23 with is trying to determine the adequacies of these 24 inv estiga tions.
What we have to look at is the files and talk to 25 the people who did these things, get their impression.
That's n
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146 f-1 wha t we hav e lef t, and it's not simple.
There are a great deal 2
,, there are many variables here that influence these things.
3 A.
I'm not trying to simplify ihr I'm not trying to take 4
sides.
5 Q.
But your f eelings I have heard before.
Other people share 6
your feelings.
Other people share,, let me make one 7
observa tion, and this is not meaningful f or the purpose of this investigation, but generally, NRC endorses a, what I'll call, 8
9 more QA approach to these things.
The first thing we want to know is, when someone makes an allegation, is how big is the 10 11 problem.
We don' t care if it's 100 welds, 150 or 1,000 welds.
12 We want to know what the problem is.
We spend a lot of our time trying to figure out how big the problem is before we start the r
13 L_
14 i nvestigation.
So anytime you're dealing with NRC you have to j
l 15 know the NRC will look at what is the worst case.
16 MR. SILBERG :
Thero's philosophy is not how big is His 17 the problems that's the same as what does the concern mean.
18 philosophy, as Bob described it, and other people have described it to you and you have repeated it here is what are all the other 19 l
problems that could come out of the woodwork when I start to 20 21 investigate the concern.
And let's us, Quality First, also 22 investigate those.
So the Quality First becomes the ultimate I
23 arbitrator, sayint we're going to investigate even/ thing.
24 Everything we find out, whether related to the concern or not, we are going to take under our wing and investigate because we know f
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I9 147 7-1 best or we don't trust anybody or because I don't want my empire 2
to blow or for whatever reason and that's a dif ferent philosophy 3
than wha t,,
4 MR. GRIFFIN:
The investigation was created to 5
endorse that.
6 MR. SILBERG :
That's not the same as saying I 7
don' t want to know how many welds there are.
The concern is 8
there are bad welds.
9 Q.
There's an interpretation that quite a f ew people in the 10 program put on blinders and look at one weld.
11 A.
That's unf ortunate.
12 Q.
Whether you L.are tha t opinion or not,,
r 13 A.
No, sir.
L.
14 Q.
,, there's a maj ority of people in your program that f elt 15 that's what was going on.
They felk that was probably the single 16 most damaging aspect of it, looking at j ust the concern, getting 17 the allegations resolved so that it closed.
And obviously, 18 there's plenty of room here f or 50 dif ferent opinions on the same 19 subject as to how a program like this should be conducted.
NRC 20 would rather work in more concrete areas.
How ev er, in uhis 21 instance, we're looking back at this program.
22 Anyway, for the purpose of my investigation I appreciate 23 your caming in today and giving me your candid responses and I 24 know some of these are very general questions.
A lot of times, I 25 made observations and just asked you to respond.
But I do r
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1 f-1 appreciate you caming here and talking with me.
2 Bob, have I threatened you in any manner or of fered you a 3
reward for this statement?
4 A.
No, sir.
0 Q.
Have you given this statement f reely and voluntarily?
6 A.
Yes, sir.
7 Q.
Is there anything else relative to this whole issue that l
8 you would care to add to this record?
9
.A.
Nothing that I can think of at this time other than,, I 10 don't know if it's appropriate, but I would like to have a copy 11 of this conversation or a transcript of this conversation.
12 Q.
What we do is, when our person signs of f, which is closure r
13 by our measure, f or this issue,, when the case is closed, I'll L
14 be sending all those who have requested, copies of the l
15 transcript.
16 A.
Very gord.
I appreciate it.
17 (The above,c tyled interview was ended at 2 :50 p.m.)
18 19 20 21 22 21 24.
25 F3 L.
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l CERTIFICATE STATE OF ARKANSASe p,
ess.
COUNTY OF RJLASKIe RE:
INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIB4 OF RCBERT L. S COTT I, MARVEY J. TOMS, CCR, of BUSHWW COURT REPORTING, INC., a Notary Public in and f or Pulaski County, Arkansas do hereby certify that the f act; ;tated by me in the caption of the f oregoing inte: view Ore true; and that the foregoing statements were transcribed ly me on the Cimarron Computerized Transcription Systam f rom my machine shorthand notes taken June 3, 19 87 at 10:10 a.m. at the Holiday Inn in Russellville, Arkansas.
I FURTHER CERTIFY that I am neither counsel for, related to, nor employed by any of the parties to the action r-in which this proceeding was taken; and f urther, that I am L
not a relative or empicyee of any attorney or counsel employed by the parties hereto, nor financially interested, or otherwise, in the outcome of this action.
GIVEN UNDER MY HAND AND SEAL OF OFFICE on this the 13th day of June, 19 87.
C L L4 /.9 1 /
l DIS 1
Ma rv ey.7 Toms, C Certificate #253 a Notary ublic d f or Pulaski County, Arkansas My commission expires 11,29,92 i
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,,.,hlUS'HMAN COURT REPORTING
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