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Hot Spots

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Parent Issue
Day
17
Month
June
Year
1976
OCR Text

By Jan

Jacque Srouji was fired from the Nashville Tennessean early in May when it was found she was an undercover informer for the FBI. Srouji is the author of a soon-to-be released book which supports nuclear power, and at the same time contains material which is highly critical of the personal life of an Oklahoma nuclear power plant worker who died mysteriously in 1974.

The worker, Karen Silkwood, was employed at the Kerr-McGee plutonium processing plant. She died in a car crash which the FBI calls an accident; her labor union claims she may have been murdered. Silkwood was on her way to meet with reporters and union officials, allegedly to give them information on safety violations at the nuclear plant. Somehow, Srouji was leaked 1000 FBI reports on the Silkwood case. --reports which the FBI refused to give to COngressional investigators. The House Small Business Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy is currently holding hearings on the death of Silkwood. Sub committee chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), in letters to the Justice Department and the FBI, told the agencies that they must be prepared to answer questions on the death of Silkwood. 

 

In what appears to be another attempt to discredit those working for the passage of the Nuclear Safeguards initiative in California June 8, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced over the Memorial Day weekend an “alert” at the nation’s 58 nuclear power plants, including three in Michigan. 

 

The information the NRC supposedly received contents that “nuclear extremists” have threatened to occupy a nuclear plant in the West or Midwest. One power company official reported that a midget submarine had been stolen, the significance of which is unclear. Possibly the “nuclear-extremist” will try to torpedo the Fermi plant on Lake Erie? 

 

The NRC says that some nuclear plants would not be able to withstand an attack by three armed intruders-

 

Prezzato

 

-which is even more reason to close them all down. Obviously, the government and the energy industry will stop at nothing to discredit the efforts of those who have rightly tried to inform the public of the dangers of the peace-time use of nuclear energy. 

 

In other Bicentennial year scare tactics, Philadelphia Mayor Frank “Ratso” Rizzo has asked the U.S. government for 15,000 army troops to guard against “radical leftists” who may disrupt the city’s July 4 celebration. Rizzo apparently intends to give the Bicentennial a touch of real American symbolism by turning the country into an armed camp. His concern is a group calling themselves the “Rich Off Our Backs--July 4 Coalition”, which has planned a series of marches and parades. The Coalition says it has no intention of disrupting the formal Bicentennial proceedings. 

 

Armed camps, indeed! Zodiac News Service reports that the U.S. Park Police in Washington, D.C. has been putting its officers through mock drills, pretending that an armed terrorist has taken over the Washington Monument and is picking off tourists. ANS also reports that FBI DIrector Clarence Kelley has publicly stated that Burean informants are warning about an assault on Washington by the Weather Underground--who, in Kelley’s words, “intend to turn the Washington Monument into a Roman candle.”

 

While Michigan contends with its PBB contamination of livestock and dairy products, Indiana is having similar problems with PBB relative--Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB). The toxic chemical came to Indiana farmers and consumers by way of Bloomington, Ind. Sewer slide, which farmers used as a fertilizer last November. The PCB came into the slide by way of the Westinghouse plant in Bloomington, which uses PCB in the manufacture of electrical capacitors. Westinghouse discharges three to eight pounds of the chemical into the sewage system daily.