It’s funny how “cover-up” and “Bush administration” are quickly becoming synonymous.
Demagogue’s Eugene Oregon noted yesterday that Jack Spadaro, who has spent his adult life in government and has worked in Republican and Democratic administrations, is accusing the Bush administration of covering up the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States. It’s a pretty shocking story.
It’s worth noting that Spadaro is not a partisan activist. Up until recently, he’s headed up the National Mine Health and Safety Academy, which is responsible for training mining inspectors and keeping people who live near mines safe.
Spadaro lost his job last year, however, after charging the Bush administration of whitewashing an investigation into a devastating coal disaster. CBS ran this report over the weekend.
“I had never seen anything so corrupt and lawless in my entire career, what I saw regarding interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States,” says Spadaro.
“I’ve been in government since Richard Nixon. I’ve been through the Reagan administration, Carter and Clinton. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
What he’s talking about is what he calls a government cover-up of an investigation into a disaster 25 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill.
It happened in October of 2000, when 300 million gallons of coal slurry — thick pudding-like waste from mining operations — flooded land, polluted rivers and destroyed property in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. The slurry contained hazardous chemicals, including arsenic and mercury.
“It polluted 100 miles of stream, killed everything in the streams, all the way to the Ohio River,” says Spadaro, who was second in command of the team investigating the accident.
Government regulators, including Spadaro, were prepared to go after Massey Energy Company, which owns the impoundment, with serious fines and possible criminal charges. Then the Bush administration intervened.
[A]ll that changed when the Bush administration took over and decided that the country needed more energy — and less regulation of energy companies. The investigation into Massey Energy, a generous contributor to the Republican Party, was cut short.
“The Bush administration came in and the scope of our investigation was considerably shortened, and we were told to wrap it up in a few weeks,” says Spadaro.
“They cut it off. They did,” says Ellen Smith, who publishes the country’s only newsletter devoted entirely to mine safety and health. She’s been writing about the mining industry for 16 years.
“People I spoke with, who were on the investigation team, told me that they believed it was absolutely cut short, that they had more work to do and they were told to wrap it up,” says Smith.
“It appeared to me they thought we were getting too close to issuing serious violations to the mining company,” says Spadaro.
When Spadaro complained the Labor Department’s inspector general, the office said Spadaro is wrong. He’s not buying it.
“That statement is a lie, is a flat out lie,” says Spadaro.
“I do not trust the IG report. So much information was withheld from the public,” adds Smith, who was shocked to see that about half of the report had been blanked out by the government. “If you look through this report, you will see huge black marks. …They were withholding information that may or may not have proved Spadaro’s allegations. And we will never know what that report says.”
CBS tried to talk to Massey Energy, the Department of Labor, and Dave Lauriski, who was a former mining industry mining executive, and who Bush naturally tapped to be the new head of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy. Not a single one of them wanted to talk about this. What a shock.