OSHA Whistleblowers & Hunters Point Shipyard Treasure Island Cover-up By Harris & SF Pols

OSHA Whistleblowers and Hunters Point Shipyard Cover-up, WorkWeek Radio 6 years ago. February 14, 2018 the then Attorney General of California Xavier Becerra (now the head of HHS) who could be making an investigation.

This is Steve Zeltzer with KPFA Work week Radio.
This month is Black History Month and the story and struggles of the African American Community in Hunters Point / BayView and the Environmental Racism along with the corruption at Hunters Point and Treasure Island are the focus of our program today.

0:42 Steve Zeltzer: During the Second World War tens of thousands of workers including African Americans came to the Bay Area for jobs. Since this was military work, it allowed for African American workers to work for the first time in the war industry. The Hunters Point Shipyard was a major site for nuclear testing of Naval Ships and many there were contaminated in the Marshall Islands during nuclear testing and they were brought to Hunters Point and sandblasted leaving the radioactive material in the shipyard and bay

1:09 Steve Zeltzer: At the same time Treasure Island was also a base which became highly contaminated

1:15 Steve Zeltzer: Housing for the workers at Hunters Point was built by the military and in 1956 it became San Francisco Public Housing.

The Health of the Hunters Point Bay View community have faced dire problems.
1:26 Steve Zeltzer: Over 50 percent of the children have asthma and other illnesses including cancer which has been the cost of living next to the Hunters Point Shipyard and the failure to have proper healthcare.

1:35 Steve Zeltzer: The majority of the community was African American families and workers. As a result of serious contamination including radiation and chemicals the site became a Superfund site.

1:45 Steve Zeltzer: One of driving forces that Politicians like Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Senator Feinstein organized was to turn the site over to developer and the biggest one is Lennar Housing and Lennar Urban.

1:57 Steve Zeltzer: Since becoming a Superfund Site nearly one billion dollars have been spent to supposedly clean it up.
2:04 Steve Zeltzer: At the same time there have been serious allegations of a cover up of fraudulent testing of contaminates at Hunters Point and Treasure Island. In fact, workers at Test America which is the largest testing company in America have been fired and whistleblowers who said the tests at Hunters Point Shipyard and Treasure Island were fake.

2:21 Steve Zeltzer: Even an OSHA investigator and lawyer Darrel Whitman was bullied and fired after he tried to protect a whistleblower, Mike Madry.

2:31 Steve Zeltzer: Tetra Tech which had hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts has also fired whistleblowers which has been widely publicized.

2:37 Steve Zeltzer: The Question we will be looking at is how and why there was a cover up and why politicians like the Mayors of San Francisco, District Attorneys like former DA Kamala Harris who is now a US Senator, along with Congresswoman Pelosi, and Senator Feinstein have refused to call for state and federal congressional hearings.

2:54 Steve Zeltzer: the Navy last month admitted that after spending nearly 1 billion dollars, that much of the testing was fraudulent and even that the housing has been built on contaminated sites with fake testing, has been done with fake testing.

3:10 Steve Zeltzer: We will hear from some of the whistleblowers like Michael Madry at Test America, Darrell Whitman a former OSHA investigator. We will also be joined by Dr Ray Tompkins who has been fighting for decades to do proper testing to protect the residents and Mary Radcliff the publisher of the San Francisco Bay View which has led the way in exposing the systemic cover up and corruption at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

3:32 Steve Zeltzer: But first we will hear from Michael Madry who is a quality assurance manager at Test America, the largest testing company in the United States and was doing testing at Hunters Point/ Bay View and Treasure Island.

3:42 I am with Michael Madry, he was a quality assurance manager at Test America in San Bruno and he was involved in studying, testing that was done on asbestos and other material at Hunters Point Shipyard and Bay View.

3:56 Steve Zeltzer: Welcome to WorkWeek radio Michael

Michael: Thank you.

3:59 Steve Zeltzer: So Michael why don’t you discuss what you discovered there, the kind of falsification that was going on as far the testing and also who you went to rectify this and get so action by the government which is supposed to do oversight on these tests.
4:14 Mike Madry: From what I understand any laboratories doing testing for the DOD, navy have to be accredited by the DOD. My employer put in a bid for Asbestos remediation and they were not accredited. So, I pointed this out to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI, the Attorney General for Northern California. I believe the to Pelosi and Feinstein, to Senators there or Representatives and nobody really did anything. I wrote them a letter in 2014 I think, July

4:59 Steve Zeltzer: To let them know that in fact there was fraud at the Hunters Point Shipyard/ Were you surprised that you got no response from them?

5:07 Mike Madry: Not really because that’s been the typical response from anybody that I ever contacted. Basically, nobody seemed interested in Investigating the allegations.

5:21 Steve Zeltzer: What does this mean, the fact that you and other whistleblowers were retaliated against and removed and they went ahead and allowed the development of the housing development to go, to be built on property that is contaminated.

5:32 Mike Madry: Well, it puts the health and welfare of the public at risk.

5:38 Steve Zeltzer: And you all went to the EPA?

5:40 Mike Madry: Yeah, I sent a complaint to the EPA Region 9 Office, I believe the EPA administrator at that time was Blumfeld or Blumenfeld and I never received any response from him. I contacted the office of Inspector General in Washington and they declined to investigate as well.

6:06 Steve Zeltzer: You’re an investigator from OSHA, Darrel Whitman who is a lawyer and was with the whistleblower protection program. He tried to defend you, what happened to him?

6:16 Mike Madry: They terminated him right after he gave a deposition for my case, he was terminated

6:23 Steve Zeltzer: And what did he say in the deposition.

6:24 Mike Madry: Basically that the OSHA Region 9 Management did not properly adjudicate my whistleblower complaint, there was a cover up there as well.

6:38 Steve Zeltzer: So another words you as a worker for a private company, the largest testing company of the United States, Test America retaliated against and you went to OSHA to file a complaint and apparently found merit in your complaint and then he the investigator Darrell Whitman himself was retaliated against by OSHA for trying to do his job and defend you who had been retaliated against for exposing the fact that there was fraud and corruption at Hunters Point shipyard testing that was being done.

7:08 Mike Madry: Yes, that was one of the direct connections to my case.

7:13 Steve Zeltzer: What do you think the ramifications are for Senator Feinstein and Congresswoman Pelosi who was also the head of the Democratic Party, that they were provided the information about this fake testing, about the corruption and they were basically silent about it and kept it covered up.

7:30 Mike Madry: I think they by not acting, they knew or had knowledge of a felony and they did nothing. The basically facilitated the fraud, they are accessories.
7:43 Steve Zeltzer: Do you think that the US Attorney be investigating them and possibly prosecuting them for fraud?

7:49 Mike Madry: I think so Yeah, I’d like to see something done finally!

7:52 Steve Zeltzer: That was Michael Mabry and now we are going to go to OSHA Federal Investigator Darrel Whitman

7:57 Darrel Whitman: When I became aware of the corruption between OSHA and the companies and the collusion that was going on and I began to reach out to people in the chain of command as it were. The senior people in OSHA, the Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez, Senator Feinstein, Senator Boxer, Barbara Lee my congresswoman over in Oakland
the House and Senate Committees that have oversight responsibilities for OSHA, and the White House. And I sent them documents, I sent them copies of letters, and I never heard anything from them, which was a little surprising until of course they launched a major purge based on my letter of all of the attorney investigators in San Francisco that I worked with. But over the years you get to see a pattern with the corporations and their relationships with OSHA. There is quite an interesting group of law firms which is a big issue here, the law firms act as a conduit between the corporations and the federal government.

9:13 Steve Zeltzer: Are you saying that Congresswoman Pelosi and Senator Feinstein were actually informed about serious issues.

9:22 Darrell Whitman: Senator Feinstein certainly was, again I never had direct contact with Nancy Pelosi because she wasn’t my congressperson. I did with Barbara Lee/

9:33 Steve Zeltzer: What did you talk to Barbara Lee about, what did you send her

9:37: Darrell Whitman: I sent her, copied her on all the documents, all the reports I was making to this group which included Secretary Perez, and the house and senate and the white House. So, her office was getting this information plus I went over a couple of occasions and interviews with her senior staff and learned while I was there you see her senior staff members believed they were under surveillance because they were too friendly to whistleblowers and to people who were complaining about what was going on in the federal government.

10:18 Steve Zeltzer: did Congresswoman Lee make an inquiry to the US Navy and to the Department of Justice about the retaliation against whistleblowers?

10:26 Mike Madry: No

10:27: Steve Zeltzer: these issues

10:28: Mike Madry: No, It is a scandal, it is a scandal because Congresswoman Lee’s office had been receiving complaints as I was told by senior staff for a couple of years out of the Department of Labor, now the federal building in San Francsico about wide spread problems, attacks on employees, particularly for EEO, and for disabilities and for issues about their personal health and safety and she did nothing. She did nothing about that. Congress is either unable or unwilling to take responsibility for the corruption in the federal government. This doesn’t stop with me, it doesn’t stop with the Department of labor, it goes to a lot of other agencies. So, when I hear reports about the falsification of tests at Hunters Point, it falls into the pattern of, of course this is going on and where were the federal agencies involved, where were they in maintaining, trying to get some kind of integrity in this process. Who was minding the farm with this multibillion dollar project and a half of a billion dollars in public funds that was going into it, who is monitoring that, who is supposed to be responsible for that?

11:49 Steve Zeltzer: And you have been listening to Darrell Whitman, who I interviewed, he was a Federal OSHA Investigator who began to investigate the coverup that was going on really at Hunters Point Bay View and Treasure Island and also joining us on WorkWeek radio this afternoon is Dr. Ray Tomkins who is a long time researcher scientist who has been fighting to get proper testing at Hunters Point Bay View.

And Bay View Publisher Mary Radcliff who has actually in her newspaper have provided the most extensive and in-depth reporting on the fight to protect the health and safety of the residents and also the cover-up and I think it has made a major contribution to reporting in the United States on this issue. Welcome to both of you to WorkWeek Radio.

12:33 Mary Radcliff and Ray Tomkins: Thank You, Hi Mary, it’s Ray.

12:34 Steve Zeltzer: Mary I am happy to have you and Ray here on Black History Month because the Black community in Hunters Point Bay View has really been the recipient of this poisoning that has gone on for decades at the shipyard.

And now we learn last month that the Navy has admitted that there was fraud in the testing and wea re talking about a billion dollars that has been spent, over 500 million dollars and now it’s fraud. You’ve been reporting on this for years in the San Francisco Bay View and yet no investigation? How do you explain that, Mary?

13:09 Mary Radcliff: Well, I think that some of the names that have been dropped already like Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein are an explanation. They and other very very powerful people, Gavin Newsom was deeply involved, probably still is, have financial interest in the success of the development of the shipyard. And they obviously do not want any interference and fraud is simply not important. Way back when, see we’ve been trying to blow the whistle and I really enjoyed hearing the whistleblowers too because they’re heroes. We have been trying to blow the whistle for a very long time, way back when the shipyard was first transferred and that was Nancy Pelosi who wanted, but not transferred, it was, what do you call it, when the base was closed. It was one of the first bases to be closed in the epidemic of base closures that went on in the late 80’s early 90’s and Nancy was one of the first ones and I’m sure that she had her eye on making a profit off of it from the very beginning. We raised and Ray can talk about this much better than I can, we raised the issue of an awful lot of breast cancer among especially young black mothers in
Bay View Hunters Point which was not right and not normal and Nancy Pelosi absolutely refused to believe that or admit that pollution, because we believe that it came from the toxic soups that we swim in here in the Bay View Hunters Point could possibly caused cancer.

And so, Nancy brought an expert from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta out here to Bay View Hunters Point to our little health clinic and held a news conference and had the guy say no there’s absolutely no chance that there can be a cause and effect. So that sent Dr. Tomkins to work with his students and they did some research back in the days before there was google so it was a lot harder and found that there was, wasn’t it in Sweden Ray, that you found a study and from then on there were many more studies that showed that it can certainly cause cancer.

16:00 Dr. Ray Tomkins: Go back to October 95, Scientific America, and Xenoestrogen on page. It is the back part of that October issue, Dr. Lou Brenamen, a cancer researcher and a PhD., MD, PhD, brought the whole issues up and educated me on the whole relationship there of the Xenoestrogen where it comes out of the family of DDTs and those old chemicals and it mimics estrogen in a woman’s body and it’s a perfect chemical receptor. And then it causes more veins, more veins around the milk glands and you get a mathematical curve where you get an increase in tumors and then cancer.
Dr Gillis deputy Gillis did the first concentrated look at Pfab Bay View Hunters Point and at that point, (Sigh) Bay View had the highest breast cancer rate for African American women in the world!

And then it’s like the scientists they turn around and startlooking using the African proverb, they look for mustard seeds in Elephant Dung, oh she did not take it a long enough spread or it should have been this long or linear, Hell if she had the money, we would have found out more. I looked at where the clusters, where the women living at and then Dr. Lou Brenamen, Lou did some work and that he found women, African American Women, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, no 26 year olds, 27 year olds, women having had children should be at the low end of breast cancer cause you exfoliate, they breast feed their children and we later wanted to do a study see if breast milk was safe, that was blocked by the San Francisco Environment Department .

18:03 Steve Zeltzer: And what year was that blocked?
18:04 Dr. Ray Tomkins: That was when PG&E gave out 13 million for polluting the neighborhood from 1928 until 2006. And they said no, no human studies, I was so angry about it that the gentleman that I was doing a joint from the state toxic control board said, Understand the laws, they are here not to protect the people but to protect the corporations. And that he was on his way to do a study in Russia on cancer.

18:38 Steve Zeltzer: And we are hearing from Dr. Ray Tomkins who is a long time researcher and fighting for test to really protect the people of Bay View Hunters Point but also graduate of San Francisco State Strike Yeah we were together

18:51 Dr. Ray Tomkins Yeah we were together, those principles hold true today

18:54 Steve Zeltzer: It’s genocide, It’s environmental racism, and also city departments you talk about Gavin Newsom, they were aware, I mean they were in those exposes, Mary your paper has really led the way in one article after another. Exposing the cover up, exposing the illnesses, and even NBC Bay Area they have covered these whistleblowers and yet not one investigation by the District Attorney, Gaskin, the previous District Attorney Kamala Harris, she was in charge of the district Attorney when these whistleblowers were saying they were being coerced, they were being threatened and being retaliated against and they could have taken action. You have today the Attorney General of California Xavier Becerra (now the head of HHS) who could be making an investigation. There has been no investigation by any government attorney general, or oversight agency as to why fake testing has been going on at the Hunters Point Bay View and now at Treasure Island and yet they say we have a democracy. Has there been any accountability and have people been held accountable for the retaliation against Whistleblowers who were trying to do their job?

20:04 Dr Ray Tomkins: In my opinion NO! And the reason why I say that given the history of Ameri Test well from the fire in 2000 that you had Rajiv Batiar turn around when I had the city and the health board, he was the head of the Environment Division which we lobbied to get set up in the health department

20:28 Steve Zeltzer: And there was an underground fire at Hunters Point of toxic material.
they talked over each other here.

20:29 Dr. Ray Tomkins: That burnt. In the Superfund Site, under stand that fire burnt underground for 105 days and that the surface fire was for about 6 hours plus. The city ran the firefighters in there without any masks on a chemical fire. When we had the meeting at the gym the firefighters came back and thanked me for putting my foot on the lieutenant’s behind asked him where did he learn his firefighting skills? Why are you putting water on a chemical fire? You’re supposed to use foam. They were told if they open their mouth they won’t have a job, so they remained silent.

21:15 Steve Zeltzer: So this has been a heavy heavy coverup and now we learn that Laurence Pelosi, a relative of Nancy Pelosi was actually on the payroll of Lennar, is that the case Mary?

21:22 Mary Radcliff: Yeah he was their head of real estate acquisitions at the time this was all happening and quit just as the conveyance agreement was signed to transfer the property. It is important to remember to that Nancy Pelosi bragged about how she had to twist the Admirals Arm, it was right in The Chronicle, she twisted the Admiral’s arm in order to get parcel A which is the least contaminated part of the shipyard, an area that was mostly residential for naval officers to get that transferred to the city when it wasn’t completely clean and the navy knew it wasn’t completely clean and the navy had been voicing doubts about whether it was a good idea to transfer it, they didn’t want to transfer it. But Nancy Pelosi insisted and the driver at that point was the 49ners needing a stadium. And Lennar wanted to build a stadium on that very landfill that was on fire, that Ray was just describing. That landfill has been described as the dirtiest the most contaminated place in the country. And it was on fire for months and anyway its

22:54 Dr. Ray Tomkins: Parcel E was on fire but Gavin wanted to get the 49ners to build their stadium was on parcel C where they radiated the animals for making the determination what kills you quicker Uranium 235 or Plutonium. And once the 49ners found out what Gavin was proposing to them and that’s when Christopher Axe and other members of the community went down to the 49ners to the young’s home and informed them, that’s when they move down to Santa Clara

23:27 Steve Zeltzer: So the net result of all this collusion I would say between the politicians and the developers and even the fact that the developers had financial connections and they had an interest in basically building these homes and developing, we are talking about a multibillion dollar project, 10 Billion Dollars and

23:46 Dr Ray Tomkins: No its worth more than that, just the shipyard at the end of 20 year cycle it’s 100 billion. Candlestick Point a hundred Billion. Treasure Island, a hundred Billion. You are talking about 300 billion dollars.

24:03 Steve Zeltzer: And they spread the money around, Lennar has spread a lot of money in fact they gave a $500,000 dollar grant to the San Francisco Labor Council for education and those kind of purposes so in the money they have spent to push this development forward and the failure of city agencies, of state agencies, department of pesticides, the federal agencies, the EPA as we heard from Michael Madry

24:27 Dr. Ray Tomkins: With these falsifications or suspected falsification and possibility of fraudulent soil samples and reburying of radioactive soil that they found on the base that then Tetra Tech buried it in another area of the base 3 feet deep, so that you cannot detect it with a surface radiation scan/ So that was a deliberate purpose criminal act in my opinion but that has to be proven but the two issues coming up.

1. The testing that they are going to do. Under the testimony of the former workers when the navy would only meet with the community in police station back in 96, 97.
Wouldn’t meet out in the community, the workers who survived. Back then in those days they didn’t let blacks work in laboratories so she was a white female worker who was dying from a tumor that she developed by plutonium exposure said Ray we spilled and told the board, we spilled radiation all over the base. It’s not just in 816 or 818 these buildings, it’s all over! And that the black men, they went and carried the animals that they radiated about a mile plus to what they call the pit is now referred to the Superfund Site, and they had no protective clothing.

25:57 Steve Zeltzer: And this is still going on, this is what we are talking about.
26:04 Dr Ray Tomkins: And you see in the background UC Santa Cruz verified Dr. Hempshire verified my concerns, Hempshire was the chair of the radiological committee chair of the RAB that the background radiation level right now, the residents are being exposed to is equal to one x ray a month.

26:24: Steve Zeltzer: So, people are still being radiated. OK I want to thank both Dr. Ray Tomkins and Mary Radcliffe for joining us this afternoon for WorkWeek. I think that this exposure of the ongoing cover up and the ongoing health and safety problems for the residents of Bay View Hunters Point and the plans to build the housing, the plans to develop Treasure Island is critical for all.

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