Strange Silence Of Cong. Pelosi & Senator Feinstein Over $1 Billion Fraud At Hunters Point

The Strange Silence Of Congresswomen Pelosi And Senator Diane Feinstein Over The $1 Billion US Fraud Scandal With Tetra Tech at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard

by Steve Zeltzer
KPFA WorkWeek Radio
3/15/18


Over $1 billion has been spent by the Federal government since 2004 to clean up and remediate one of the most highly toxic and radioactive sites in the US at the the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. This super-fund site was used for decades as a Navy Radioactive Laboratory and large Navy ships were towed from the Pacifi where they had been placed close to nuclear tests. They were then sandblasted at the shipyard under a plan to "decontaminate" these ships. Under immense political pressure including reported coercion from Senator Feinstein and Congresswomen Pelosi, the US Navy agreed to turn over the site for development in 2004 and both powerful San Francisco politicians used their political muscle to push eventually hundreds of millions of dollars of Federal funds for the clean-up.

A large part of the remediation was done by one of the largest remediation companies Tetra Tec in the world with $2.6 billion revenue in 2016. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been paid to Tetra Tech for testing and moving the highly contaminated soil. As the project developed, many community activists and environmentalists charged that the project was not being done properly. Dr. Ahimsa Sumchai Porter and Dr. Ray Tomkins have spent decades investigating the development and also demanding that proper testing take place at the site.

One of the first critical questions about the testing on the site came from Test America Quality Assurance Manager Michael Madry. He noticed that the tests by the company on the asbestos were coming back 100% negative. This was statistically impossible and he and another manager learned that the company had reduced the testing from 15 minutes to 50 seconds by using a game pad. When he raised the issue with the company he was bullied, harassed and illegally fired. He went to the Federal Whistleblower Protection Program WPP and Federal investigator and lawyer Darrell Whitman investigated and determined that there should be a merit determination that he indeed had been terminated for making health and safety complaints

Madry who was doing testing on both Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and Treasure Island provided reports of the falsified testing to Congresswomen Pelosi and Senator Diane Feinstein as well to the Environmental Protection Agency. Neither politicians contacted him about the serious falsification of work.

Federal OSHA investigator Darrell Whitman after he completed his report was told to rewrite by his boss Josh Paul who was also a lawyer. This falsification of his report is also a felony under the law. What happened to Federal OSHA official Whitman is that he now become the target of workplace bullying for this report and another OSHA investigations he was conducted. He was later terminated as well along with all the other lawyers at the Region 9 of the Whistleblower Protection Program.
Whitman also provided the documents to Senator Feinstein and also received a response that she had received the documents and wanted to talk to him but that never came through.

The largest group of whistleblowers to also come forward about the falsification of the testing at Hunters Point Bay View and Treasure Island was health and safety inspectors at Tetra Tech. These were also reported that the company was actually doing improper testing and illegal removal of material without proper documentation. They also were bullied, harassed and terminated by Tetra Tech.

This led to a large amount of reports in NBC Bay Area Investigates and even in the San Francisco Chronicle after the workers with their lawyer Dave Anton had a press conference. District Attorney George Gascón’s office even called and the attorney Dave Anton and met with him once and never called back.
In the midst of this growing controversy, the US Navy hired consultants to investigate the testing results by Tetra Tech. In the report by Kathryn A. Higley of the Radeoecology Research the consultants said there was massive fraud by Tetra Tech in the testing at the Hunter Point Naval Shipyard.

The report said: When “sufficiently low levels of contamination were not obtained,” Tetra Tech would fetch samples from a “different area known to have lower radioactivity, and reported as having come from the location being investigated”;

When Tetra Tech found samples or data dirtier or more radioactive than EPA-mandated levels of safety, they were discarded;

Instead of sampling areas with known radioactivity, they would collect samples from nearby areas, and pass those off as coming from the radioactive location;

When low levels of contamination were not “obtained,” they would simply “move 5 to 10 feet in another direction” to collect clean dirt;

Machines used to screen material were ran at a speed too fast to detect radiation;
And soil known to be dirty was blocked from being sent to the offsite lab for testing.

The question today, is why after this wide publicity about the falsification of testing by Tetra Tech and the retaliation against numerous health and safety whistleblowers, there has been complete and total silence by Congresswoman Pelosi and Senator Feinstein?

Does this mean that they are in fact part of the cover-up and fraud on the US government because they have many personal financial connections between this development?

Congresswomen Pelosi’s nephew Lawrence was in fact also a cousin of former mayor Gavin Newsom and Director of Acquisitions for Lennar Corporation out of Florida from January 2002 through March of 2005.
Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum is the owner of Perini Construction and when in November of 2008, Lennar was facing imminent bankruptcy after spending over $5 million – or $50 per vote – to pass Proposition G, a measure designed to gain support of the San Francisco electorate for the Shipyard-Candlestick Park Conceptual Plan and its transfers of state and federal lands. Lennar’s LEN stocks sank to $3.60 per share despite restructuring and partnership with CB Richard Ellis, headed by Richard Blum, husband of Senior Sen. Dianne Feinstein, principle sponsor of the Lennar-funded Proposition G campaign to develop the site.
This past Tuesday March 20, 2018 at Treasure Island a meeting was convened by the US Navy and run by the same Tetra Tech to report on the "clean-up" of the island. Again the question has to be asked how after all this massive fraud and illegal retaliation of whistleblowers why this same company Tetra Tech, is still in charge of this remediation. Maybe Senator Feinstein and Congresswomen Pelosi have some answer to these questions.