Salon.com > Phillip Babich

Ain’t gonna study war no more

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:42:00 +0000

It was Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, 1500 hours. Sgt. Kevin Benderman's company, a unit of the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., had been ordered to assemble and begin preparations for deployment to Iraq. Their plane was leaving for Kuwait that evening. Benderman wasn't with his unit.

Instead, the sergeant was waiting at Brigade Headquarters outside the office of Sgt. Maj. Samuel Coston, one of the battalion chiefs, to say whether he was going to follow orders and get on the plane. One week had passed since Benderman had filed for conscientious objector status, claiming he was morally opposed to war and could not, in good conscience, participate on the battlefield.

For an active-duty soldier, C.O. status is tough to substantiate. After all, Benderman had volunteered to serve and was aware that the Army was not the Peace Corps. He'd been scrambling all week to try to get the necessary visits with a military chaplain and a psychiatrist: According to Army regulations, his claim to be a conscientious objector and his mental stability needed to be evaluated so that his application could be considered. But the chaplain wasn't returning Benderman's phone calls, and the psychiatrist wouldn't see him until the chaplain had.

Wrongful termination for coal-mining official?

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 20:30:00 +0000

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Members of a congressional committee have launched a probe into personnel actions taken against a high-ranking mine safety official who is accusing the Bush administration of engaging in a coverup.

On Nov. 18, three Democratic members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce requested that U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao provide them critical documents and information to help them assess whether Jack Spadaro, the superintendent of the National Mine Safety and Health Academy, is being wrongly terminated.

In April 2001 Spadaro resigned from a government team assigned to determine the causes of the Martin County Coal Co.'s slurry spill on Oct. 11, 2000, an environmental catastrophe that fouled 100 miles of waterways, annihilated wildlife, poisoned drinking water and soil, and caused extensive property damage. An engineer with a career in federal regulatory agencies spanning more than 30 years, Spadaro alleged that the accident-investigation report wouldn't be "complete and accurate" because Bush administration officials had cut the investigation short and severely limited its scope.

Shafted

Thu, 11 Dec 2003 20:30:00 +0000

It's part of the lore at the federal Office of Surface Mining (OSM) -- a unit of the Department of the Interior that regulates the mining industry -- that J. Steven Griles once said that he "wanted to turn the lights out" at the agency. Griles, who today is deputy secretary of the interior, served as the No. 2 man at the Office of Surface Mining under President Reagan, and his comment was music to industry ears: Mining companies had been gunning for the office ever since it came into being in 1977.

In press reports over the years, Griles has neither confirmed nor denied the comment. But the record speaks for itself. As OSM's deputy director, Griles slashed staffing by one-third and dramatically reduced the number of federal inspectors at mine sites.

Ancient history? Fast-forward to 2003: Griles, now in an even more senior position at Interior, is being investigated by the department's inspector general for allegedly violating an ethics agreement. That investigation offers a fresh opportunity to look at Griles' 20-plus-year career as an industry-friendly political appointee and high-powered industry lobbyist. That career appears to have had one primary focus: get government out of the regulation business -- and when you can't do that, get mining executives into government regulation.

Dirty business

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:30:00 +0000

There aren't many people in the United States who have as much experience with rock-and-earth dams and coal slurry impoundments as Jack Spadaro, a distinguished mining engineer who's been working in federal regulatory agencies for almost 30 years. That's why he was selected to be one of eight members of an accident investigation team to determine the causes of the nation's largest coal slurry spill at the Martin County Coal Company in Inez, Kt., on Oct. 11, 2000.

A coal slurry impoundment is a reservoir of thick liquid waste from coal processing that is constructed by damming the mouth of a valley with rock and earth. To residents living near these impoundments, they are disasters waiting to happen. The EPA called the Inez spill the worst environmental catastrophe in the history of the Eastern United States. Far more extensive in damage than the widely known 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska, the Martin County Coal slurry spill dumped an estimated 306 million gallons of toxic sludge down 100 miles of waterways.