Another danger for whistleblowers

[Wes Bucey]

News item offered for general comment:

Los Alamos Lab Whistleblower Beaten
Jun 6, 10:50 PM (ET)
By DEBORAH BAKER
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - A Los Alamos lab whistleblower scheduled to testify before Congress about alleged financial irregularities was badly beaten outside a bar - an attack his wife and lawyer believe was designed to silence him.
Police and the FBI said that they were investigating the circumstances of the incident which, according to his wife, left Tommy Hook hospitalized Monday with a broken jaw and other injuries.

Police Deputy Chief Eric Johnson said officers found Hook after responding to a reported assault at the Cheeks Night Club about 2 a.m. Sunday. He provided few other details.

"We are working jointly with the FBI, trying to determine what may have happened and what the assault may have stemmed from," Johnson said. FBI spokesman Bill Elwell described the agency's inquiry as preliminary.

Hook's wife, Susan, alleged the assailants told her husband during the attack: "If you know what's good for you, you'll keep your mouth shut."

Tommy Hook and another whistleblower sued the University of California in March, alleging that after they uncovered management failures, university and lab managers tried to make their jobs miserable so they would quit.
Hook, a former internal auditor who now works at another job at the lab, had been scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee later this month.

According to Susan Hook, her husband received a call late Saturday from someone wanting to meet with him at a bar. She said her husband told her the man never showed up, but that as he was leaving the parking lot, a group of men pulled him from his car and beat him.

"They left him in the parking lot for dead," said Tommy Hook's lawyer, Robert Rothstein.

Rothstein said the assailants didn't take Hook's wallet, other personal belongings or car. Without any other motive, it appears the beating was related to his whistleblowing, Rothstein contended.

Susan Hook said her husband did not frequent bars.

Los Alamos lab spokesman Kevin Roark called the beating a "senseless and brutal act and should not be tolerated."

The lab and UC also issued a joint statement decrying the violence. "Director (Robert) Kuckuck, the University of California and the laboratory believe that any form of physical violence toward an individual is unacceptable," the statement read.

 

[AllanJ]

News item offered for general comment:

"Los Alamos lab spokesman Kevin Roark called the beating a "senseless and brutal act and should not be tolerated."

The lab and UC also issued a joint statement decrying the violence. "Director (Robert) Kuckuck, the University of California and the laboratory believe that any form of physical violence toward an individual is unacceptable," the statement read. "

I do not see anything in either of those statements that is a denial of involvement by either of those two organizations.

 

[Wes Bucey]

I do not see anything in either of those statements that is a denial of involvement by either of those two organizations.

I recall the movie "Becket" wherein King Henry II (played by Peter O'Toole) mutters an imprecation when he is particularly vexed by Becket (played by Richard Burton) to the effect, "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" This is overheard by some Court hangers-on who proceed to murder Becket.

Could something similar have occurred?

Incidentally, King Henry II WAS guilty of the things Becket vexed him on.

 

[Jim Wynne]

I recall the movie "Becket" wherein King Henry II (played by Peter O'Toole) mutters an imprecation when he is particularly vexed by Becket (played by Richard Burton) to the effect, "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" This is overheard by some Court hangers-on who proceed to murder Becket.

Could something similar have occurred?

Incidentally, King Henry II WAS guilty of the things Becket vexed him on.

We need to remember a few things before backhandedly accusing Los Alamos and the University of California of hiring thugs: The victim was at a bar at 2:00 AM, and apparently didn't think it unusual to be called to meet somone there at that hour of the day. God only knows why he was there, or what else might have happened that might have prompted the assault. I personally know people who had untoward things happen to them while carousing in the middle of the night and made up stories the next day to explain the bruises. This is a great example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy--man blows whistle, man gets snot beat out of him, therefore the beating was because of the whistleblowing.