Oak Ridge, Tennessee will never be the same again. Thank God.
Nuclear weapons facilities had for decades suppressed worker concerns with sadistic techniques that shock the conscience.
The end of the Cold War and the enactment of environmental whistleblower laws empowered Bud, encouraged by an uppity law review reject, a 1986 Memphis State law grad who had clerked for Nahum Litt, the U.S. Department of Labor Chief Administrative Law Judge, to help put fear on trial,
The transformative case of Varnadore v. Oak Ridge National Laboratory helped transform a peculiar and dysfunctional institution, one that I first got to know as Appalachian Observer Editor, investigating toxic pollution by Union Carbide at the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant, including the largest mercury pollution event in world history (4.2 million pounds emitted into creeks and groundwater and workers' lungs and brains without any protection for anyone).
Here is that 1992 story, followed by Bud's 2013 NewYork Times obituary:
The Labor Department has upheld the claim of a technician at a Government nuclear laboratory in Tennessee who said that after he complained about safety, plant managers retaliated by ordering him to sit in a room filled with toxic and radioactive chemicals and do useless work.
The finding runs directly counter to the assertion of the Energy Secretary, James D. Watkins, that a "culture change" has taken place at the government-owned plants, in which employees are free to come forward and voice their safety concerns.
The technician, Charles D. Varnadore, an employee at Oak Ridge National Laboratory since 1974, was isolated from other employees in early 1991, the department's Nashville district director said in his Jan. 31 ruling, and was assigned to work in rooms that were "questionable in meeting safe standards for use as office space."
The government contractor that runs the laboratory is seeking to reverse the ruling on appeal, and Mr. Varnadore's lawyers have already filed their own appeal, on the ground that the ruling does not address their request for $1.5 million in damages. Complaints and Afterward
Mr. Varnadore, a 50-year-old mechanic, said that one reason for retaliation against him was that he appeared on the CBS Evening News last year, in a segment about elevated cancer rates among Oak Ridge personnel, expressing concern about the prevalence of cancer among fellow workers.
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Mr. Varnadore himself had an operation for colon cancer in 1989, a cancer that he linked to longterm exposure to radiation. After the operation, he had 52 weeks of chemotherapy, ending in August 1990; he worked fewer than half of the days in that period.
After his chemotherapy, Mr. Varnadore returned to work on a steady basis. He soon began complaining about the way in which soil samples were being prepared for laboratory analysis, saying some of them were not refrigerated, as procedures called for. The effect would be to allow some of the pollutants to evaporate before they could be analyzed.
The Energy Department says the laboratory's operator, Martin Marietta Energy Systems, has had repeated problems preparing soil samples.
Mr. Varnadore was first isolated from other workers and supervisors early in 1991. After he appeared on CBS News in March, he was transfered to a room containing radioactive waste. In September he was moved to another room, which contained mercury, radioactive materials and asbestos. His lawyers called the rooms "indoor waste dumps." He was moved out of the second room in November after his lawyers complained.
Edward A. Slavin Jr., a lawyer with the Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based group that seeks to protect whistle-blowers, said, "What they did borders on attempted murder, knowingly putting a cancer patient with a suppressed immune system in there."
Mr. Varnadore was also represented by the American Environmental Health Studies Project, a Washington-based group.
The Oak Ridge laboratory is owned by the Department of Energy and operated by Martin Marietta Energy Systems. The laboratory, which dates from the Manhattan Project, has a history of extensive environmental problems, but this is the first time a Government agency has found attempts at worker intimidation there.
The general counsel for Martin Marietta Energy Systems, G. Wilson Horde, said that the ruling was "based on incorrect findings of fact and opinions of law," and that the company would appeal to the Secretary of Labor. The ruling, Mr. Horde noted, was based on the finding of a single investigator, without giving the company the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses.
The ruling is also a slap at Martin Marietta, which at an annual awards night in May 1991 honored the head of Mr. Varnadore's department, W. D. Shults, "for superior leadership" and "management contributions to the laboratory and the company."
Mr. Shults did not respond to a telephone message left at his office yesterday. Steven L. Wyatt, a spokesman for the Energy Department at Oak Ridge, said his department had no comment on the Labor Department ruling. Discrimination Is Found
Mr. Horde denied that Mr. Varnadore had ever been assigned "make-work" or otherwise penalized. "His history of employment is such that he has never been discriminated against," Mr. Horde said. "The company has leaned over backwards to keep him employed."
But George Friday, the district director in the Nashville office of the Labor Department's Wage-Hour Division, ruled that in violation of the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act and two other Federal laws Mr. Varnadore suffered "discrimination" for raising safety issues. The ruling stated that the discrimination included "creating a hostile work environment, giving him assignments which were not commensurate with his abilities" and "isolating him from employees and supervisors," as well as giving him poor performance reviews.
The Labor Department ordered that Mr. Varnadore be restored "to an appropriate position with all compensation, terms, conditions and privileges of his employment" and that he be reimbursed for legal costs. Mr. Varnadore said he had not yet been reassigned to meaningful work, adding that he would like to return to a job that made use of his mechanical appitude.
Mr. Varnadore described his current work as janitorial or make-work clerical tasks.
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Charles Varnadore, Whistle-Blower at Lab, Dies at 71
After Charles D. Varnadore complained about safety at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where he worked as a technician, his bosses moved him to an office containing radioactive waste. When an industrial hygienist recommended that either he or the waste be moved, he was put in a room contaminated with mercury.
Mr. Varnadore fought back, publicizing questionable safety practices at Oak Ridge, a federal nuclear research center that had helped develop the atomic bomb, and his own treatment, which he characterized as retaliation for his outspokenness.
His complaints drew national attention, and he found allies in the federal government.
“I’m going to see that there’s a new day here if it’s the last thing I do on this job,” Steven Blush, an Energy Department official, told CBS News in 1992.
Later that year, the department verified 16 of 26 safety violations identified by Mr. Varnadore, and it ordered Martin Marietta Energy Systems, the contractor the government had employed to run Oak Ridge, to fix all of them.
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Mr. Varnadore’s complaints also led to stronger laws and practices governing employees who dare to blow the whistle on powerful employers.
His death at 71 on March 7 drew little notice, however. It went unreported except for a classified advertisement in The Knoxville News Sentinel, and the ad made no mention of any whistle-blowing. Even a former lawyer of his, Ed Slavin, had no idea that Mr. Varnadore had died until learning about it recently. He then told The New York Times.
Mr. Varnadore died at his home in Lenoir City, Tenn., said his wife, Frances. Asked about the cause, she said, “He got tired of fighting.”
His difficulties began in 1990, after he returned to work following colon cancer surgery. He found that his replacement had shortcomings in handling lab samples, and he pointed this out to his superiors. He also complained about his new assignment, operating mechanical arms to handle radioactive materials; he had been blinded in his left eye as a child and had poor depth perception.
“I tried it and made a hell of a mess,” he told The Houston Chronicle in 1993. “I didn’t think it was right for me to make this mess and have other people exposed to it.”
Mr. Varnadore began to receive negative performance evaluations after many years of good ones. He was shunted from assignment to assignment so frequently that he was nicknamed “the technician on roller skates.” In March 1991, he was given a storage room as an office to write reports and keep records of his work as a roving technician. The room contained bags and drums of radioactive waste, as well as bags of asbestos and chemical waste.
Later that month, he appeared on the “CBS Evening News” and expressed his concern about elevated cancer rates among Oak Ridge personnel. In November that year, he filed the first of several whistle-blower complaints to the Labor Department, invoking federal statutes promising immunity.
In February 1992, the department’s wage and hour division ruled in his favor, a judgment that was strongly supported by an administrative judge in June 1993.
“The only conclusion which can be drawn from this record is that they intentionally put him under stress with full knowledge that he was a cancer patient recovering from extensive surgery and lengthy chemotherapy,” the judge, Theodor P. Von Brand, wrote in his decision. “Under the circumstances, he was particularly vulnerable to the workplace stresses to which he was subjected.”
Judge Von Brand sent the matter to the labor secretary, Robert B. Reich, so that damages could be assessed against Martin Marietta. Instead, Mr. Reich dismissed some of Mr. Varnadore’s charges on the ground that they had been filed too late, and he dismissed others because he did not believe that they had been proved conclusively. A panel appointed by Mr. Reich found that while there had been retaliation against Mr. Varnadore, it was not pervasive. It threw out the rest of Mr. Varnadore’s claims, and in 1998 a federal appeals court supported these high-level reversals.
Martin Marietta denied permitting any safety or environmental irregularities. While it did not deny the existence of radiation, mercury and other chemicals in Mr. Varnadore’s offices, it said they were not present in quantities large enough to be dangerous.
Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed in 1995 to become Lockheed Martin. Five years later, it was replaced at Oak Ridge by UT-Battelle, a partnership between the University of Tennessee and Battelle Memorial Institute.
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It could be said that Mr. Varnadore lost his case. But Nahum Litt, the Labor Department’s chief administrative law judge from 1979 to 1994, said in an interview that there was a larger lesson to be learned: It is hard to succeed as a whistle-blower.
Most top officials, Mr. Litt said, do not like whistle-blower protection laws. “It didn’t seem to matter how persuasive the evidence might be,” he said.
Mr. Slavin, the lawyer, saw victories in the Varnadore case, nonetheless. One was the Energy Department reforms. Another was a new willingness among nuclear workers to report abuses. “No other whistle-blower will ever be treated that way again,” Mr. Slavin said in an interview.
Charles Douglas Varnadore was born in Tullahoma, Tenn., on March 24, 1941, and after high school, he followed his grandfather and father to Oak Ridge. Known as Bud, he worked at the complex’s massive K-25 plant, which used a gaseous diffusion method to enrich uranium. He combined technical expertise with excellent manual dexterity and often fixed executives’ cars. When K-25 ceased operation in 1987, he was laid off.
He then applied to be a technician in Oak Ridge’s analytic chemistry division and was accepted. His first job was to analyze soil samples from nuclear plants that were being decommissioned. He soon complained that some soil samples were not refrigerated, as was required, and that as a result, pollutants were allowed to evaporate before they could be analyzed. The Energy Department confirmed in 1992 that Martin Marietta had repeated problems preparing soil samples.
Mr. Varnadore also complained that a secretary had been told by her supervisors to put radioactive samples on the front seat of a pickup she was driving. In March 1991, he was assigned to a “home base” — a term for offices used by technicians — that contained the radioactive material. After the industrial hygienist advised that either he or the material be moved, Mr. Varnadore was placed in a room that had been a mercury reclamation center. Visible mercury, which is poisonous to the nervous system, was in several places in the room.
After the Labor Department began investigating his accusations, one question that arose was whether his bosses had threatened to send Mr. Varnadore back to the first office, the one with the radioactive material. Mr. Reich ruled that the threat — if it had been made — did not matter, because the return move never happened.
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Mr. Varnadore retired around 2000. In 2003, he was one of 23 people convicted in federal court of conspiring to deal guns without a license. His wife said he had been trying to sell his gun collection. He served 27 months in prison.
Besides his wife, the former Frances Simmons, Mr. Varnadore is survived by a stepson, Chip Bishop.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: Charles Varnadore, Whistle-Blower at Lab, Dies at 71. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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