| June 1989: Federal agents raided Rocky Flats Nuclear
Weapons Plant, a facility on the Colorado plains that made plutonium triggers for nuclear
warheads, looking for evidence of environmental wrongdoing. June
28, 1989June
28, 1989: A special, federal grand jury was impaneled to investigate
allegations of environmental crimes committed by officials from the U.S. Department of
Energy, which owns Rocky Flats, and Rockwell International Corp., the plant operator. The
alleged crimes included illegal dumping of pollutants in creeks and falsification of
waste-storage records. This special grand jury was dedicated solely to the Rocky
Flats case; the investigation was expected to be so time-consuming that a regular grand
jury couldn't handle it and other investigations at the same time.
August 1, 1989August 1, 1989: The grand jurors-23 of them-were sworn in and
started their probe. Twenty-three alternate jurors also took the oath of secrecy. A simple
majority of 12 jurors would have been needed to indict the officials allegedly involved in
the crimes.
May 18, 1991: May 18, 1991: The Denver Post reported that two Rocky
Flats plant managers and six to eight former managers, all of whom were Rockwell employees
before the government ended Rockwell's contract, were targets of the investigation.
April 1992April 1992: After the 2 1/2-year grand-jury investigation, U.S.
Attorney Mike Norton arrived at a plea bargain with Rockwell: the company pleaded guilty
to five felony and five misdemeanor violations of federal environmetal law and paid an
$18.5 million fine. Because prosecutors refused to help them, grand jurors prepared a
report of their findings on their own.
September 25, 1992: September 25, 1992: Federal Judge Sherman Finesilver ruled that
the grand jury report would remain sealed.
September 29, 1992: September 29, 1992: Westword, an alternative weekly
newspaper, printed a detailed acoount of the jurors' accusations and quoted extensively
from their report despite Finesilver's ruling that it had to remain secret.
October 1992October 1992: The Justice Department responded to an appeal of
Sherman's ruling by saying the grand jury's report was "littered with factual
inaccuracies, unsupported by legal conclusions and statements...not supported by a
preponderance of the evidence." It did not meet the requirements of a federal staute
allowing special grand jury reports to be made public in organized crime cases, they said.
October 3, 1992: October 3, 1992: After reports that U.S. Attorney General Mike
Norton had referred grand jury leaks to the Justice Department, U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder
called for a new grand jury and an independent prosecutor to investigate Rocky Flats.
"Frankly, Mr. Attorney General," she wrote in a letter, "it is not the
grand jurors but the U.S. attorney who ought to be investigated. From what I gather, the
U.S. attorney did everything he could to sweep the entire scandal under a rug. Worse, it
was a Department of Justice rug."
October 17, 1992: October 17, 1992: Finesilver announced he was calling for the
Justice Department to investigate whether grand jurors had breached their oath of secrecy
by leaking information to Westword.
November 1992November 1992: Twelve of the 23 grand jurors wrote a letter to
President Clinton asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the
government's plea bargain with Rockwell.
January 1993January 1993: Subcommittee released report
January 27: Finesilver released an edited version of
the grand jury report.
November 26, 1996: Grand jurors asked U.S. District Judge Matsch
to give them a hearing to voice their complaints, and he asked them to first submit an
outline of their accusations by Feb. 24. "What I looked at, frankly, was appointing
another grand jury to look into this grand jury," Matsch said upon hearing the
jurors' request. Grand jurors asked U.S. District Judge Matsch
to give them a hearing to voice their complaints, and he asked them to first submit an
outline of their accusations by Feb. 24. "What I looked at, frankly, was appointing
another grand jury to look into this grand jury," Matsch said upon hearing the
jurors' request. November 26, 1996: Grand jurors asked U.S. District Judge Matsch
to give them a hearing to voice their complaints, and he asked them to first submit an
outline of their accusations by Feb. 24. "What I looked at, frankly, was appointing
another grand jury to look into this grand jury," Matsch said upon hearing the
jurors' request. |