All language subtitles for Meltdown.three.mile.island.S01E03.NF.WEBRip.x264-SMURF+ION10.English-WWW.MY-SUBS.CO

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I've been pretty frightened
at times in my life.

That time was pretty close to the top.

You get pushed into a corner.

You don't have anywhere to go
but to come out swingin'.

And so that's why I made
the decisions I made.

After everything that happened
to me at Three Mile Island,

I was convinced
that plant had the potential

to cause another accident scenario

that would not only
destroy the nuclear industry

but could destroy people.

Millions of lives were at stake.

I live in East Texas.

I grew up in the state of Missouri
during the Vietnam era.

Like all young guys in those days,
I knew I wasn't gonna survive the draft.

And sure enough, one night,
my wife was sitting at the table,

and I could tell she had been cryin',

and she handed me my draft notice.

So I went down
the very first thing the next morning

to the local Navy recruiter,

but the only thing they had available
was a naval nuclear power program.

It was a six-year enlistment.

So, I took it.

Your next six months will be
at a Navy nuclear prototype facility.

When I first got to nuke school,
there was a sign that said,

"Men that pass through here
are about to receive a $50,000 education."

And one of my classmates
climbed up there one night and wrote,

"Shoved up your butt a nickel at a time."
You know?

You went through everything
from all the chemistry,

the metallurgical aspects of reactors,
reactor physics, pump theory,

electrical theory, you name it.

And I was one of the few
non-degree'd guys.

So, yeah, I had to bust my butt.

And both my sons were born
when I was in the Navy.

And they wouldn't
let me go home to see 'em.

But everyone aboard the ship
has a responsibility

in the area of safety.

In the Navy, I discovered
a love that I never knew existed before

because nuclear power was just it for me.

But I'd never had anybody

place such a high expectation
on performance on me

like the admiral did.

This is the reactor of the Navy's
first nuclear-powered submarine,

the Nautilus.

Admiral Rickover is considered
the father of the nuclear navy.

He created a reactor in a submarine
that would make a submarine,

a true submarine, never have to surface.

I would charge Hell with a bucket of sand
if that man was leading me

because he made
the nuclear submarine world safe.

Now this is made just as safe

as the plants
in the Atomic Energy Commission.

And the admiral gave me
a professional code that is unrivaled.

"Be responsible." That was his philosophy.

Every decision you made
had to be responsible.

The accident at Pennsylvania's
Three Mile Island nuclear plant

shocked the nation,

which has been looking to nuclear energy

as a way to solve
our dependence on foreign oil.

And now, in the wake of TMI,

utility companies have canceled plans
to build 51 new nuclear plants.

Nuclear opponents who would
shut down every reactor in the country

simply are not in touch
with our needs for tomorrow.

But nuclear advocates who would pretend
that nothing was changed

by our vigil at Three Mile Island
simply are out of touch with reality.

The accident
really threw a curveball

into the general public's acceptance

of power produced by nuclear reactors.

We must now begin the long
and perhaps more arduous task

of assessing
what the long-term consequences

of this event will be.

But I believe in the promise
of nuclear energy.

And so when I was presented
with a golden opportunity

to take part in the cleanup
at Three Mile Island,

I leaped at the opportunity to do it
because I could focus

on making the future
of the entire nuclear industry safe.

I got everything all set up,

made all the arrangements
I needed to make.

A few weeks before I was to report

to start work at Three Mile Island...

my wife was killed in a wreck.

There was a car wreck
leavin' a bar one night,

and she did not make it.

I don't wanna talk about it.

So that was it.

In June of 1980, I arrived
at Three Mile Island and began work,

myself and my two sons.

Cleaning up the mess
left by the accident at Three Mile Island

has spawned a new industry

with more than a thousand
government workers now on the scene.

In 1980, I was sent to basically be

the director of the NRC's on-site office

at Three Mile Island,

and ensure public health and safety
for the cleanup.

Radioactivity levels
are so high,

one hundred times the lethal dose now
inside this containment area,

that there's a massive cleanup job ahead.

Now,
cleanup is not a short job at all.

We were in a situation
which was never encountered before.

Nobody had ever had
an internally melted core,

all this damage, all this radioactivity.

So there's the stabilization phase,
the first couple of months.

Then for the next year,
you gotta disassemble the core

to put the fuel into engineered canisters
and ship it off site.

The cost of what
has been called "a historic cleanup"

is so high because
of the extremely sensitive

and potentially dangerous
nature of the accident.

The estimated cost of all that
is one billion dollars.

Three Mile Island
cost 700 million to build,

and it operated for less than 90 days.

So, we're thrown into this.

Where's the money gonna come from,

and where is the technology
gonna come from?

So the people that own the plant
outsourced the job to Bechtel.

Bechtel is like the 51st state,
the nuclear state.

It's your one-stop-shop
for nuclear cleanups.

Bechtel had been involved
in the nuclear industry since day one.

They were the largest privately-owned
construction enterprise in the world.

Very well politically connected.

I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...

That I will faithfully execute...

When Ronald Reagan
was meeting with all the powers that be

to get him to throw his hat in the ring
for the 1980 election,

Steve Bechtel
was one of the people that was there.

What contracts have we got?

You have people like
Caspar Weinberger and George Shultz

that served on their board,
and there's a power play.

The cleanup was larger
than Three Mile Island itself.

It was about
the survival of the nuclear industry.

So Bechtel had become

the major decommissioning contractor
for the cleanup.

And we knew we needed to do it safely.

But we also had a sense of urgency to it.

The longer the cleanup
continues, it's generally agreed,

the greater the chance something else
could go wrong with the plant.

There were major milestones
set up with the management

to recover from the accident.

We had nine feet of water in the basement
that was highly radioactive.

We had to get that out.

Then gather up contaminated materials,
with the ultimate being

the melted fuel core
inside the reactor vessel itself.

That was the goal.

But, first and foremost,
you had to vent the containment.

It's supposed to take
as long as a month

to force radioactive krypton gas
into the air

from inside the crippled nuclear reactor
at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

The question of credibility
has cropped up many times

since last year's accident.

People were terrified.

We've already been exposed,
our children, our family,

everybody's been exposed
to God knows how much.

And then they want to vent on top of it.

The people's feeling
was summed up very quickly.

All for releasing the krypton applaud.

Those against releasing the krypton...

I never used to question before,

and now I question everything.

According to the vice president
of the power company,

residents have nothing to worry about.

That's not to say
that we won't encounter

additional equipment problems,

but there's not a need for concern.

That infuriated me because to me
it was really a dog and pony show.

This is real life.
This is what we are living.

And we wanna have answers
to what our options are,

and what we can do,
and what you are gonna do to protect us.

Joyce Corradi bought this van
with double gas tanks for a quick getaway.

She is one of those
who can't stand any more anxiety.

It's hard to live here
when you know that when a siren blows,

that you hope
it's a friend's house on fire

instead of something wrong on the island.

That's a hard way to live.

Despite assurances,

people living close to the plant
decided to leave.

We evacuated,
we left while they vented.

It's just not worth it.

My family is too important.

I'd much rather be home today, but...

Can Metropolitan Edison
and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

ever dispel the fears of nearby residents?

We went to meet Lake Barrett
who was the head of the NRC on the island.

I told him,
"I want you to look into my face,

and I want you to remember

every decision that you make
about nuclear power."

"There are people like me
that you involve,

and you must take us into consideration."

Well, the community was very
concerned about anything nuclear going on.

There was an air of distrust.

So people say
this, that, "They mislead this..."

I don't have time
for drama in my life, okay?

And emotion, uh...
I, I respect people's emotions.

I respect Joyce
and those people very, very much.

But I'm so saddened

by them being further traumatized
by scare stories in the news.

The NRC held
this meeting to explain

Met-Ed's proposed plan to vent
krypton gas from the containment building.

Keep your krypton! Keep your krypton!

They are hysterical,
non-meaningful arguments.

With the advent of the accident,

the future of the entire nuclear industry
was cast into doubt.

So there became an impetus
on the political side

and in the industrial side
to push the cleanup faster.

And my experiences
at Three Mile Island was,

yes, they would take
every shortcut they possibly could.

Bechtel had a reputation

for a "get it done no matter what"
type of company.

To begin with, in order to vent,
the Bechtel personnel had decided

they would build
this huge filtration train,

and they would pump
all of the radioactive gases out of there.

Well, in the process,
they put duct tape over it.

Duct tape is good for a lot of things.
You can ask any redneck.

They can do anything
with duct tape and baling wire.

But you can't stop radioactivity with it.

A small amount
of radioactive gas

drifted through a filter,
up the stack, into the air.

The vent was stopped at 8:04.
They got an alarm on the stack monitor.

The venting of krypton gas
from the containment building

is just the beginning of the cleanup.

Following all that,
we were going to have to design a shield

to protect the people
working in the reactor compartment

from radiation exposure.

And Bechtel was asking people to volunteer
to go in, trying to make it look like

you were really accomplishin'
something great for humanity.

I refused to make
any reactor building entry

because you don't know
what you're walkin' into.

People were limited
to minutes at the most

to be inside the reactor building.

This took a period of months,

and we had not started to process

any of the high-level radioactive waste
from the accident.

People are concerned
about how slowly

the cleanup of the damaged plant is going.

Some don't believe those working
on the plant know what they are doing.

The utility says
the cleanup will be finished in 1983.

The NRC says
it will take at least through '84.

But the two sides agree on one thing,
the fact that the cleanup cost is soaring.

Some of it has not progressed
as rapid we'd like,

and I think that
it will eventually operate again.

Uh, I'm personally
dedicated to ensuring that

we have the opportunity to do that.

The cleanup's over-budget,
behind schedule.

So the owner of the plant,
GPU, establish a milestone schedule.

Additional dollars would not be
turned loose to Bechtel

until each milestone
had been accomplished.

And so the closer it came to a milestone,

the more pressure was put on us
by Bechtel to accomplish the schedule.

Millions of dollars were at stake.

And that was about the time
Larry King was hired.

The executive vice president was
unhappy with the way things were movin'.

So they decided to hire me,
figurin' that I could help out.

And I got off to a bad start with Bechtel

because they were
trying to get it done fast.

Larry demonstrated to me his attitude
about gettin' the job done is,

"Get it done right the first time."

The milestone that started the trouble
was the reactor building polar crane.

That became the only important thing
to pay attention to.

The accident caused
melting down in the core.

There were melted fuel rods
and debris in the bottom of the reactor.

And we were going to lift the reactor
vessel head with the polar crane

to get all that stuff out of there.

But the accident,

combined with venting
all of that radioactive water and steam,

had exposed the polar crane to radiation.

We had to replace
it all with brand-new cable,

put all brand-new brakes on.

Everything had to be spiffy neat

to ensure that you're operating
your polar crane safely.

And so I went to review
all the modification documentation

that would've been done
about the polar crane.

There was none.

The head Bechtel manager on site
didn't wanna spend the money.

He wanted it done faster.

As Parks found out,
Bechtel had jury-rigged some parts.

They didn't put in the parts
that were there before the accident.

I thought, "This is a serious situation."

"It's no time to be foolin' around,
or cutting corners or anything else."

And right after that, Ed Gischel,

who was the director of engineering
workin' for me, came and said,

"We shouldn't allow that crane to
be lifted unless they load test it first."

So when they both came to me,
I decided, "I agree with you."

"We're not gonna lift the head,
and I'm not gonna sign for it."

So I went up to the next level,
called the Vice President of GPU.

And I remember, he got very angry with me

because I told them
either he knew what was goin' on,

and he didn't pay any attention to it,

or he didn't know what was goin' on.

And in either case, it was a problem.

Myself, Ed Gischel, and Larry King

knew all of these modifications
had been made,

but we could not come up with how many.

Where the material all came from?

Who did the verification?

Nothin'.

Bechtel management, they...

"No. We gotta get it done.
Just do it. Do it now."

Organizations rot from the top down.
They do not rot from the bottom up.

If management does not establish
the control parameters

that everybody is expected to behave
in a nuclear power plant,

you're flirtin' with
tickling the belly of the dragon.

And the potential
consequences with a reactor...

are damn dangerous.

You can stumble into a situation
you can't walk out of.

There is still over a thousand pounds

of highly-radioactive nuclear fuel

within the bowels
of the reactor at Three Mile Island.

If something failed
on that reactor building polar crane

when we were in the process
of removing that head,

there was a concern
that if you dropped the head,

that we could cause
enough of a fracture in the reactor vessel

where we could approach a China Syndrome.

We could disturb that fuel to the point
where we would initiate supercriticality,

at which point it would've
ejected masses of radioactive metal,

or it would've burned
through the bottom of the reactor.

And if it broke, we would not be able
to keep the core covered.

We would never regain entry to that
reactor building in any of our lifetimes

because the radiation levels
escaping would be horrendous.

You would be evacuating
Eastern Pennsylvania,

possibly all the way down
to Washington, DC.

At that time,

two million people lived within
a 50-mile radius of Three Mile Island.

If Bechtel had used
the reactor building polar crane

as they intended to do in March of 1983,

those people won't have a chance.

We had the potential for killing 'em.

Period.

At 4:00 a.m., March 28th, 1979,

the accident began
on the number two reactor

at Pennsylvania's
Three Mile Island nuclear plant.

Later, federal investigators said

the reactor had come within
30 to 60 minutes of a meltdown.

It took nearly
three years just to complete

the first phase of the cleanup,
but the hardest,

most uncertain part of the radioactive
cleanup has not even begun,

the reactor itself.

The community
is focused on two issues.

One is we're starting to deal with the
emerging impacts of the cleanup of TMI,

and also Unit 1, the reactor
that wasn't involved in the accident,

was shut down during refueling.

People were freaked out
that this plant may start again.

Unit 1 has been shut down
ever since the accident three years ago.

The owners, General Public Utilities,

have asked the NRC
for permission to restart Unit 1.

And at this point,

the standing of GPU, of Bechtel,
of Met-Ed in the community is very low.

A local referendum
showed that, by more than two to one,

people in the area are opposed
to the reopening of the power plant.

That was
the prevailing public sentiment,

"We don't want this plant restarted."
And opposition coalesced.

No, no, we won't go! No, no, we won't go!

When I found out
that they wanted to restart Unit 1,

I joined a group
along with my friend Paula

called PANE,
"People Against Nuclear Energy."

Gentlemen, we live in the daily
repercussions of this accident.

Daily ventings, the storage
of high-level waste on that island,

and the total incompetence of GPU.

Every Sunday, I went to the island.

I would be at the gate with a sign
to keep Unit 1 from going back online.

No restart! No restart! No restart!

After we had become
active in the community,

I saw government cars
would come and write down license plates

of people that were in these meetings.

I naively said to Paula,
"Why are they here?"

You know, I said,

"Look, you're bein' paranoid.
We're small fish in the sea."

So naive.

It really frightened me.

And so I called Eric Epstein in Middletown
at their meeting headquarters.

I said, "Eric, do you hear that?"

He goes, "Yeah, Joyce,
our phones are being tapped."

The main driver here
is still makin' money.

These companies went to any lengths,

any lengths to make sure that
Three Mile Island Unit 1 would restart.

I didn't want my kids
exposed to anything else.

I did not want that plant to reopen
more than anything.

That has been
the driving force of both of us.

I really wanted to be able...

...to look my children in the eye

and tell them I had done my very best,

that I had really tried
to make sure that they were safe.

That was the thing
that meant the most to me.

Is it possible that you're
going to have a billion-dollar mausoleum?

The people of this area are
rightfully skeptical about this facility.

And the burden of proof lies
with those who would...

an extraordinarily heavy burden of proof,

lies with those who would
reactivate this facility.

Previously, I thought that
people wavin' their arms in the air

and sayin' "no nukes" and all that,

I thought they were really uneducated
to how safe the plant was.

But what started changin' my mind

was my experiences at Three Mile Island.

And then when I lived in Middletown,

I thought the people there were
amongst the nicest people I've ever met.

And I was introduced to Betty Quackenbush,
and I started dating her.

Her daughter was catchin' the bus
on the mornin' of the accident

within 1,000 yards of Unit 2 reactor.

There, that's me.

My mom met Rick Parks
when I was ten, almost eleven.

Pictures of Rick and my mother.

I took to him right away.

He had that accent that I liked
with a little twang.

That's what I said, "You're twangin'."

Oh, my gosh. It's so long ago.

He came into our lives

and made the family unit
that I've always wanted.

Nikki was the closest thing
to a daughter I'll ever have.

And so I tried to be
as much of a father to her as I could.

I knew that Rick
worked at Three Mile Island.

And one of the things
that I really started going back to

is I always had
these re-occurring nightmares.

Nikki told me a lot
about her fears with Three Mile Island.

She did tell me one time that
she wasn't as worried about it anymore

because she knew I'd take care of 'em.

Definitely reminded me, "Be responsible."

You had to show unfailing protection
for the general public.

And at that time, Bechtel was
going forward with the polar crane.

Myself, Ed Gischel, and Larry King

were asking them to review everything
with an approach to overall safety.

But Bechtel did not wanna hear anything.

So Larry said, "Well..."

"Go tell the NRC."

So, I did.

Parks felt that they weren't
following the procedures well,

that there could be an explosion
of some sort. It's not safe.

Bad things are gonna happen
when they use that crane.

I think I looked at it,
and I didn't agree with him, okay?

And if the merits of the argument
don't warrant action, I'm done with 'em.

The head NRC agent on site, Lake Barrett,
was lettin' 'em get away with it,

sayin', "We're gonna do this
with Bechtel construction,

and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

can take their silly-ass rules
and shove 'em."

And whatever he told me,
I didn't, obviously... go along with it.

He may not have liked it.

He said, "Because of
the procedures of this and this and this..."

And I did not go into the drama
and the soap operas

about whose procedures
were the better procedures.

We certainly want them
to speak their piece.

But we analyzed what he had to say.

I was satisfied that
that crane was safe enough.

Now, is it zero risk? Never zero.

Okay? Was it acceptable risk
to move forward and defuel? Yes.

And therefore I approved it.

I asked him for confidentiality.

But Lake Barrett compromised
my identity to Bechtel...

intentionally.

No, I did not. It's a small place, right?

Kind of, people know
that he, he had a problem with it.

Would it be a secret that he probably
came to see me? Probably not.

Okay?

If you got the head guy on the NRC

playin' patty-cake with the utility
and lettin' 'em run wild,

how can you trust the NRC?

You'd have to have a camera
on both corners of their mouth

to figure out which one
they were lying out of.

Having the NRC
watch nuclear plants

is like having a fox watch the hen house

They're not regulating the industry.

They're hand-in-hand
with the damn Bechtel.

And then Bechtel came to me
on the use of the polar crane and said,

"What am I worried about?
The NRC says it's okay."

"You ought to sign off."

And I refused to sign off on it.

So I was actually, uh...

stoppin' progress,
stoppin' 'em from gettin' their money.

They fired him.

That is how they handle dissent.

There were intimidation factors
with Gischel too.

After he identified the problem
with the polar crane,

they wanted to get rid of him.

They ordered Ed Gischel
to a psychological evaluation

and not allowed to come back
on the job site until he,

"passed the psychological evaluation."

Now, that sounds to me

like the Stalinist tactics
I read about when I was studying history.

I knew my days were numbered.

Got up the next morning
to go out and go to work.

My van wouldn't start.

I look at the battery cables,
and sure enough,

the negative cable
is just a little bit loose.

So I go to get my little toolbox
beneath the passenger seat

and what do I find?

A bag of marijuana.

I mean, there is a Santa Claus,

but he never dropped pot in my house
or my van before come Christmas time,

and it wasn't Christmas time.

So, I took the pot
in the house and flushed it.

And then, sure enough,

as I'm drivin' on the island that day,
I'm waved over.

I had never been searched.

Never.

They were settin' me up to be fired

with no recourse.

That same day,

all of my positions of authority
in the reactor building polar crane

were removed from me
by Bechtel management.

So, I no longer had anything
that I could stop them with.

I was the one that was the danger

because I had put it in writin' to the NRC

that this is an unreviewed
nuclear safety question.

And when I left work that day,
I was scared.

And when I walked in,
Betty took one look at me and said,

"What is wrong?"

And I told her,
"I think I need an attorney."

"I think I'm in trouble at work."

I was working late,
and I got a phone call.

I answered, "Hello,
Government Accountability Project."

The voice on the other
end of the phone said,

"I'm not gonna tell you who I am."

He said that he had
significant issues at a nuclear plant.

He wasn't gonna
tell me the name of the plant.

But he needed help.

At that time, the Government
Accountability Project, or GAP,

was the leading organization
representing nuclear whistleblowers,

and I persuaded him that if there were
issues of that big significance,

I was willing to meet with him that night.

He told me the name of a bar,
and he would be sitting at the bar,

wearing an oxblood leather jacket

and holding a tube
of engineering drawings.

I introduced myself,
and then I just sat there for a while,

and he didn't say anything.

And I thought, "Okay."

This is not going well.

Billie was my first contact with
the Government Accountability Project.

And I know I was cagey with her because,

for all I know,

you could be the biggest
anti-nuclear organization in the world,

and here I'm gonna give you something

that's gonna slap
the nuclear industry around.

He was incredibly nervous.

But when he finished his beer, he said,

"Okay, let's go talk."
And we went to a booth.

It didn't take long for me to
find out that she too was a whistleblower.

In my own case,

my boss threatened to see to it
that I lost custody of my kids

if I ever exposed what he did.

And it happened.
I lost custody of my children for a year.

And I'm thinkin',
"This woman is someone to respect."

"Someone to admire."

And I threw the dice.

Rick rolled out the drawings
and started to explain to me

what was supposed to have been inspected

to ensure that the polar crane
had survived all those years

in a highly-radioactive environment
and would still work.

The documents not only contained
proof that it was a potential problem,

but the proof that
his management team knew about it

and were determined to proceed anyway.

It's the kind of document
you look at and you go,

"Somebody's going to jail for this."

I explained,
"We're runnin' out of time."

"If we screw this up,

we won't have a second chance."

The NRC commissioners
were scheduled to vote next week

on whether or not
to allow the cleanup to proceed.

We had five days.

And so I try to persuade him

that he was gonna have to do
more than just talk to me.

It's not a happy existence
when you make yourself known to people,

and you cast a very negative light
on their actions.

People tend to wanna come after you
with a little bit of hurt in their eyes.

It was a legitimate fear
in their decision-making process

about whether or not to go forward.

I mean, I would say at least
half of the workers that I've represented

over the years
from the nuclear power industry

at some point early in their disclosures

say, "I don't wanna be
the next Karen Silkwood."

Karen Silkwood
was a 28-year-old union activist

in November 1974,

working here at Kerr-McGee's
Cimarron facility as a lab technician.

Karen Silkwood had worked
at a nuclear facility in Oklahoma

and was reporting issues
about the failure to keep workers safe.

Silkwood died
in a car crash on this road,

on her way to meet
a New York Times reporter.

She had concerns
about excess radiation.

And when she was on her way
to meet with this newspaper reporter

to give proof of her allegations,

she died in a car wreck.

A single-car car wreck.

The late Karen Silkwood
found contaminated with plutonium.

Traces of radiation
poisoning showed up in her blood.

Her supporters
say the car was run off the road,

and the documents disappeared.

Sure does make you wonder.

Whether she was murdered
or not, her death is fuel for an issue

that is still hot
with controversy in this country:

The safety of nuclear power plants.

There were a lot of people
that were threatened,

intimidated by various utilities
across the country.

It can cost you your life.

The Karen Silkwood case
was still goin' on in litigation,

and it was still
a high-profile discussion.

So, the ghost of Karen Silkwood's death
created a culture of fear.

Meeting with Billie was a blur.

But she reassured me enough
that I was willing to go down

and talk to Tom Devine,
the legal director of GAP.

At the Government
Accountability Project,

we worked on around 8,000 cases
supporting whistleblowers.

Rick was something exceptional
because the stakes were much higher here.

There was a greater sense of urgency

than anything that
I've ever worked on before.

Bechtel had scheduled the head lift
for five days after I met Rick.

If the polar crane dropped the reactor
vessel head in the wrong spots,

that would trigger a meltdown

that could take out Philadelphia,
New York City, and Washington DC,

the East Coast of the United States
might not be habitable indefinitely.

We're on the verge of an apocalypse.

We started
working on the affidavit,

and we worked on it non-stop all weekend.

Non-stop.

We finished
the affidavit to present

to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

But, for Rick, knowing what was going
to happen next was unclear to him.

Tom says,

"Well, I think, maybe you should consider
going public with this information."

It would have been the death knell
of the nuclear industry.

That was the big irony.

Rick deeply believed in nuclear power.

I mean, it was his loyalty
to the technology that drove him.

His disclosure would mean permanent
blacklisting in the nuclear industry.

That's the way
organizations react to whistleblowers.

They're a threat,
and they have to be destroyed.

Bechtel and General Public Utilities
would stop at nothing to silence him.

I've wondered, "Why did I do this?"

"Is it worth my career?"

"Is it worth going public?"

I was very concerned, worried.

And when I tried to explain to Betty
what had been going on at work,

and that I was thinkin' of going public,

it was a very tense
and difficult discussion

because she was scared.

She wanted me just to quit and walk away.

But I just could not get her to understand

the potential significance
of what could happen.

You could feel like
there would be a little bit of tension,

but they never really expressed, like,
exactly what was going on.

You know, we always felt safe,

and we had that family unit
that we all wanted.

And when...

When things started to change,
so did the family, and the relationship.

I loved her.
I did not want to lose her.

And I definitely loved the kids.

So, I picked up my sons,

came home,
and as we were walking to my apartment,

I noticed my door was slightly ajar.

It was unlocked. It was open.

I knew then that somebody
had been in my apartment.

That's why I made my boys
wait downstairs with my neighbor.

My intent to go into my room was,
"That's where my guns were."

I walked down the hallway
to where the bathrooms were,

and my sons' bedroom, and my bedroom.

I just kinda kicked the doors open
to see what was in there.

By that time,
I knew the apartment was empty.

No person in there.

It did not appear
that there was anything taken.

The TV was there. Stereo was there.

But they had gone through the closet
where I had my paperwork stored.

It was patently obvious.

The only thing they were interested in
was documentation.

If I had left the documentation there

that I took to Tom Devine
in Washington, DC,

I could not have proven anything.

I talked to the lady downstairs.

She confirmed
she heard someone in my apartment

the night before while I was gone,
and my boys were not home.

That scared me beyond reason
for my family's life,

after my apartment was broken into.

I took that as a message that,

"Your sons are vulnerable,
and we will get you through them."

That's exactly how I took that.

And that made me an enemy for life.

Because you don't threaten my sons.

That's a step too far.

I will kill for them...

and not hesitate.

I knew that they were out
for blood, and they weren't gonna stop.

It was the determination
to not let 'em get away with it.

I mean, I didn't know
what else I could do.

I would tell the world
what I thought they needed to know

before they were goin' to do it,

and I went public.