HOT CARGO

...In fact, the comings and goings of the unmarked convoys are no secret to people who take an interest in such things...

...The courier teams who operate these "safe secure trailers" work round-the-clock shifts, stopping only long enough for food and fuel, on trips lasting as long as ten days or two weeks...

...A thirty-two-year veteran of DOE and the Atomic Energy Commission, Mc-Kinney—by reputation a hard-nosed, uncompromising disciplinarian—had helped to build and shape the courier unit as an elite paramilitary force...

...The GAO found some merit in all the allegations...

...Around the second day you start hitting the point where you are exhausted and you doze—doze is all I can say...

...Is upper management treating the couriers any better these days...

...11 "Rifles have been shoved into facility employees' stomachs during security exercises...

...Why are they losing their struggle...

...In 1984, it resulted in an award of $811,818 to forty-eight couriers—almost one-third of the force—for back pay they earned on the road...

...The convoy, which had come from the Department's Pantex nuclear warhead assembly plant near Amarillo, Texas, was about to stop for food and fuel at a service station on Interstate Highway 15 outside Helena...

...The extra weight throws off the suspension system and makes the slightest crack in the pavement feel like a trip-hammer blow...

...We cannot tolerate the thought we would lose custody...

...Couriers told of cab and sleeper temperatures ranging from twenty degrees in winter to 118 in summer, and of improvised coolers that succeeded only in spraying water on the feet of the hapless occupants...

...Now walk to the rear of the car...

...The Department of Energy (DOE), which produces the weapons, owns the trucks, and employs the drivers, assures us that its highway transportation system is safe and secure...

...Once a bump in the road sent a trucker Samuel H. Day Jr., a member of The Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board, wrote "H-Bombs on Our Highways" in the November 1984 issue...

...The captain in charge let his stern expression dissolve into a grin...

...The answers are hard to come by in the atmosphere of secrecy that shrouds DOE's nuclear weapons activities...

...Andis and Payne looked at each other, then slowly unstrapped their service revolvers and laid them on the car floor...

...The Lucero story, pieced together from the accounts of eyewitnesses, investigators, DOE officials, and attorneys, brings to light a troublesome encounter between three couriers and a Montana sheriffs posse...

...We took off our weapons only to relieve a very serious situation," wrote An-dis...

...with the backing of their union, Local 2255 of the American Federation of Government Employees, appealed to the United States Merit Systems Protection Board and promised to take the case higher if necessary...

...The couriers had unquestionably departed from the Department's strict rules about remaining armed and in control of their vehicles at all times...

...On the surface, the Baca case posed a simple question of equity: Is it fair to interrupt a worker's rest without compensation for the interruption...

...The sheriff had ordered it intercepted...

...Each man concluded that reaching inside his shirt for his metal identification badge would be suicidal...

...In the spring of 1978, a year before the Lucero incident, Phillip R. Baca and forty-seven other couriers filed claims for back pay, arguing that they should be remunerated for work-related interruptions of their off-duty sleep time...

...Unknown to them, their Chevrolet Suburban van bearing Texas license plates had been mistaken for a drug-runner's vehicle...

...The bombs and warheads move in specially designed rolling vaults—the "safe secure trailers...

...The officers peered through the windshield, satisfying themselves that no one remained inside, and put their weapons away...

...To Lee B. McKinney, director of the Transportation Safeguards Division, the situation was not so obvious, however...

...The complete disregard for your responsibilities as a courier and courier-in-charge," he continued, "jeopardized the shipment of sensitive material and made vulnerable the vehicle, .357 revolvers loaded with magnum ammunition, auxiliary firearms, sensitive communications equipment and electronics gear...

...The convoy commander, Trinidad R. Sanchez, agreed: "I would have a very hard time trying to explain to anybody's family the fact that an officer made a mistake and discharged a weapon because he thought he saw a man go for a weapon, while in fact he was trying to furnish some form of ID...

...On October 15, 1979...

...Not for several days, after the crew's return to the courier base at Pantex, did the Department of Energy get the full story...

...If Rocky Flats is "one of the best," one can only wonder what the worst is like...

...Slowly, and with infinite relief, the three couriers produced their badges, making it immediately evident to the officers that a mistake had been made...

...The officers ordered him out...

...He warned them to stay out of the car, saying it contained classified material...

...Most of the half dozen reached by telephone checked first with their supervisors and then declined to be interviewed...

...I have seen couriers get so frustrated with it after three or four days on the road with no sleep that they literally kick those doors out because they were impossible to put up with," Carmean told the court...

...One case set forth the physical punishment suffered by the crews who transport and guard the nuclear bombs on our highways...

...Then a third, a fourth, and a fifth...

...Beneath the surface lurked the larger issue—one still unresolved—of the wear and tear on workers' health and safety imposed by the Department's national security regulations...

...Both methods are now employed in Great Britain...

...Once a day, on average, a convoy of unmarked vehicles driven and guarded by armed, plain-clothed couriers leaves a nuclear weapons factory or military depot somewhere in the United States with a strategic nuclear cargo destined for one or more of a hundred other facilities scattered across the country...

...Design of the crews' quarters makes sleep next to impossible and sometimes leads to serious injury...

...You, the driver, step from the car with your hands over your head...

...When I put the question to the couriers themselves, I ran into a stone wall...

...The operator of this unlicensed, unregulated delivery fleet—its purpose, the transportation of nuclear bombs and warheads—is the Government itself...

...Discovery of two court cases filed by couriers, however, has enabled The Progressive to document conditions in the Department of Energy's Transportation Safeguards Division...

...According to Carmean's testimony, "On a concrete slab highway all those little cracks that you hear in your car will send the guy in the sleeper six inches off the mattress because it jars them so hard...

...What really goes on is a secret protected in the name of "national security...

...The Department of Energy did not agree...

...Her section chief said, "I can't order them not to talk, but I strongly advise them not to...

...Richard Lucero, the "courier-in-charge" of the vehicle, was resting on a mattress in the back of the car as the incident unfolded...

...A few weeks later, the three men...

...Was the Department suggesting that its agents should have shot it out with the sheriffs deputies rather than relinquish control...

...Later that day, the couriers shared the story of their hair-raising experience with the other six members of the convoy crew...

...Some couriers it even takes longer...

...THE Government's fixation—secrecy as its first line of defense against nuclear terrorists—puts the public at risk of contact with radioactive, explosive matter Is Judge Nettesheim's trust in the Department well-placed...

...The answers are simple...

...H taking chances with the lives of couriers and local law-enforcement officers who are unaware of the mission of the unmarked convoys, and 11 evading the public scrutiny that is a fact of life for other Government agencies endowed with multi-billion-dollar budgets...

...The three were guardians of a shipment of nuclear warheads they were sworn to protect with their lives, and they faced an unanticipated confrontation with the sheriffs department of Lewis and Clark County, Montana...

...Emerging from the car, his gunbelt obscured from view, Lucero spoke to two officers who approached him with their revolvers drawn...

...He was a four-year veteran with an outstanding record and a recent commendation for exceptional service...

...Robert B. An-dis, driving an unmarked DOE car, barely had time to blurt the words into his radio microphone before the pursuing patrol car was on top of him, its red and blue lights flashing...

...In November 1983, the suit culminated in a three-day Federal Claims Court hearing which was considered so sensitive that it was held behind closed and guarded doors at Kirtland Air Force Base...

...Or convoys like the present ones could be assigned police escorts...

...About three miles behind them was a twenty-five-ton armor-plated semi-trailer carrying the nuclear shipment, presumably a load of Minute-man missile warheads destined for Malmstrom Air Force Base near Great Falls, Montana, another two hours up the road...

...In his reply, which announced his approval of the suspensions, McKinney wrote that terrorists could easily have acquired the uniforms, decals, sirens, and squad-car lights to stage a fake police action...

...Another time, a crew member had to be flown home and placed in traction because of back paralysis caused by the constant jolting...

...The driver reached for the microphone again: "We're surrounded...

...I just am not tired enough, because the ride is so rough and it's so uncomfortable and maybe the heating or air conditioning is not working properly, that it's just literally impossible to sleep the first twenty-four hours...

...As he braked to a stop on the shoulder of the road, a second car appeared in his rear-view mirror...

...Even from the police...

...DOE news releases and public relations officers paint a reassuring picture of vital cargoes guided to their appointed destinations by atomic-age pony-express teams—romantically dubbed "suicide jockeys"—who work hand-in-hand with local law-enforcement personnel...

...Does the Department's about-face in the Lucero case mean that it has changed its view on shooting first and asking questions later...

...Over the radio came a puzzled response, but neither Andis nor the other two crew members had time just then to offer fuller explanations...

...We're Federal officers," the two couriers said, but the police paid no attention...

...All of us, the couriers included, would be best served by discontinuing the production and transportation of these instruments of annihilation...

...K "A machine gun, attached to an armored personnel carrier, has been pointed at street level during routine security patrols, endangering facility employees...

...Ordinarily, the inner workings of nuclear-weapons transportation are carefully screened from the public...

...The overriding danger, of course, is the weapons themselves, should they be put to the uses for which they are designed...

...The testimony of convoy commander Richard Patrick Carmean was typical: "There is no way that I can get any sleep for the first twenty-four hours on a trip...

...In 1984, the claim was settled out of court with an award averaging $ 17,000 per courier...

...In the Federal Claims Court hearing room, courier after courier described what they go through trying to get some sleep on a safe secure trailer...

...Asked to state the current instructions to couriers on what to do if approached at gunpoint by law enforcement officers, Jackson offered this ambiguous response: "Given a specific threat, couriers are required to take that action necessary to protect a shipment in their custody, following established standard operating procedures and using the combative skills acquired during tactical training...

...injuring two security guards...

...Dated April 22, 1985, and released several months later, it concerns a GAO investigation at the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production facility operated by Rockwell International near Denver, Colorado...

...They looked nervous...

...We didn't want these people to be any more nervous than they obviously were," added Payne...

...It was May 15, 1979, just outside Helena...

...There's a third man in the car," Payne called out, mindful that an unexpected move by Lucero or the police could lead to gunfire...

...Why doesn't the Federal Government do something about their grievances...

...Stay in your car until you are told to get out," said a voice over the police loudspeaker...

...WAS the Department suggesting that its agents should have shot it out with the sheriff's deputies rather than relinquish control...

...DOE's secret, and that of its bureaucratic predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, includes: 11 exposing the unsuspecting American public to an invisible network of nuclear weapons-bearing trucks and trains that reaches into every state and through or around many of the nation's biggest cities...

...In the summer of 1979, as the Lucero case worked its way toward his desk, a Chicago Tribune feature writer quoted McKinney as saying, "It is totally an unacceptable idea that we would ever lose a shipment to attack or anything else...

...He did not provide details on the new operating procedures but indicated that they include closer liaison with state and local law enforcement agencies...

...It was clearly obvious, or at least should have been, that the surrounding officers were in fact Montana law enforcement officers and not a terrorist group," wrote Lucero's attorney, Mike Moore of Amarillo, in a letter requesting dismissal of the charges...

...Still, all had turned out well, and it seemed the incident would soon be forgotten...

...We're being pulled over...

...After hearing the drivers' complaints, Federal Claims Court Judge Christine C. Nettesheim proposed a settlement of the back-pay issue that both sides accepted...

...But such sensible reforms would first have to overcome the nuclear establishment's fixation with secrecy as its first line of defense against terrorists...

...The allegations are: 11 "A machine gun, attached to a pickup truck, misfired during a training exercise...

...Fearing the worst, Lucero hired a lawyer and began collecting supportive statements from the other convoy members...

...An organization based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, runs a nationwide fleet of trucks and escort cars whose armed drivers have orders to shoot, if necessary, to protect their cargoes...

...THEY were guarding a shipment off nuelear warheads, sworn to protect them with their lives—and facing a gun-toting posse who took them for drug-runners First Andis, then Payne, emerged from the vehicle, hands up, to find half a dozen officers standing by their squad cars, holsters unsnapped and hands on their weapons...

...Short of that unlikely reversal of national policy, two alternative ways of transporting nuclear warheads and their component parts and ingredients would enhance public safety and security...

...If the couriers believe that their lives are in danger or that the convoy is under attack, they are authorized to use whatever minimal but necessary force is required...

...Welcome to Lewis and Clark County," he said...

...Then, on November 19, President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order removing DOE nuclear weapons couriers and a host of other Federal workers with sensitive national security duties from labor-union protection...

...One said guardedly that conditions were about the same...

...The same law firm that represented the three Lucero couriers also handled the Baca case...

...But relief came in January 1980, when the Department of Energy reopened the case of the three couriers, rescinded the disciplinary action, and restored their back pay...

...But the trade-off also places the broader public at risk...

...David G. Jackson, director of public affairs for the Albuquerque Operations office, told me the Department has determined, after a review of the case, that "the disciplinary action taken was excessive and it was decided to use the incident as a lesson learned in developing operating procedures to prevent a repeat of the situation...

...Also a problem is the ventilation equipment, which is supposed to cope with the stifling conditions brought about by the sealed, bullet-proof windows...

...The convoys log four to five million miles a year...

...Lucero, in particular, saw little cause for worry...

...H "On July 20, 1984, a security guard's handgun was discharged inside one of the facility's guard towers...

...On the road with the 'suicide Jockeys9 Safety and security depend on the training of the couriers and the toughness of the vehicles—and on a system of secrecy that permits drivers and vehicles to blend inconspicuously into the stream of highway traffic...

...Up front, riding shotgun with Andis and operating the radio systems, was Charles Allen Payne...

...Now," said one of them, "let's see some ID...

...crashing against the ceiling of the sleeping compartment with such force that it took five stitches to close the gash in his head...

...In a moment, the courier van was on its way again...

...11 subjecting employees to working conditions in which personal health and safety take a back seat not only to security but also to the convenience of the bureaucrats...

...the sleeping compartment keeps out some of the noise from the constant radio transmissions, but the vibration of the door just adds to the discomfort...

...There was no solid basis upon which you and your colleagues could have known that these persons were bona fide Montana State police officers at the time you capitulated to them...

...What about the idea that terrorists could dress up to look like police officers...

...As courier-in-charge, Lucero was responsible for the vehicle's safety—and its small arsenal of rifles, shotguns, and grenade launchers, along with its very-high-frequency radio linking the convoy with the DOE control room at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque...

...Narrowly seen, the H-bomb couriers are victims of a common kind of economic exploitation: in exchange for good pay now, they mortgage their future health and well-being...

...But they thought the violations technical at worst and reasonable under the circumstances...

...The real purpose of secrecy in the current transportation system is to lull the unsuspecting public, which remains at risk from the unexamined and unrestrained exercise of bureaucratic power in the dangerous game of nuclear-weapons transportation...

...Lucero was still half-dressed and shaking off the last cobwebs of sleep...

...Such problems—and worse—continue to occur on this major hauling line despite years of complaints by the drivers, who are waging a behind-the-scenes struggle for safer and healthier working conditions...

...DOE's nuclear weapons production complex, turning out thousands of nuclear bombs and warheads yearly, requires a nationwide highway and rail transportation system linking all the factories and depots...

...The convoy commander recommended that the couriers be reprimanded for failing to report the incident more promptly, and that the incident be chalked up to experience...

...The primary function of a courier is to move classified and/or hazardous matter under security, health, and safety requirements and to take whatever action is necessary to prevent its takeover," wrote Thomas C. Miskowicz, second in command of the Transportation Safeguards Division, in a letter to Lucero proposing thirty-day suspensions for the couriers...

...United Steelworkers of America Local 8031, the union that represents most of the facility's employees, "brought four specific security allegations" to the attention of U.S...

...The materials could be shipped by military convoy, as other munitions are often shipped...

...Still further behind was a second escort vehicle, also carrying three armed couriers...

...George Martin Manz (George Martin Manz is a free-lance writer in Regina, Saskatchewan...

...But she declined to rule on working conditions, saying that she agreed with DOE's principal witness, Thomas C. Miskowicz, that the Government is doing the best it can under the circumstances: "It is the nature of the job to include uncomfortable sleep situations," Judge Nettesheim observed...

...Representative Timothy Wirth, who asked the GAO to check into them...

...The main reason for the rough ride is the heavy, three-inch armor plating required by the Department for the custom-built tractors that haul the safe secure trailers...

...But a few weeks after the Montana incident, he was notified that a pay raise he expected was being held up pending an investigation...

...Yet only a year before, the Department of Energy had inspected the guard force at Rocky Flats and commended it for being exemplary and "one of the best within the Department of Energy...

...By relinquishing control...

...One of these was Beverly T. Williams, once DOE's lone female courier and now a clerk in the Pantex Courier Section...

...you permitted a potential takeover of material which is vital to national security and could have endangered the lives of the general public in addition to the lives of your fellow couriers...

...Lucero and the other two couriers began serving thirty-day suspensions without pay...

...The Best and Brightest The four-page document is stamped "RESTRICTED—Not to be released outside the General Accounting Office except on the basis of specific approval by the Office of Congressional Relations...

...A padded door on...

...Open acknowledgement and unambiguous identification of nuclear weapons shipments, guarded by whatever military and police forces are deemed necessary, would relieve the strain on couriers, eliminate the potential hazard to local police, and give the public adequate notice about the presence of radioactive and explosive materials...

...They don't want to talk to you, anyway...

...The other case, brought by thirty-one-year-old courier Richard F. Lucero, involved punishment of another sort...