Nukefinger Invades Fort Knox of Uranium

So there’s this facility known as the “Y-12 National Security Complex” in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which “maintains the safety, security and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile”. We know this because they say so, on the same page where they show a handsome soldier vigilantly guarding our nukes.

Not shown: The hole in the fence.

How did the hole in the fence get there? You can thank Greg Boertje-Obed, Michael Walli and Megan Rice, who infiltrated the highly guarded joint back in July by, how you say, cutting it open.

This created a Big Stink, including two Congressional hearings, and reassurances that it wouldn’t happen again.

And, so far as we know, it hasn’t. They just haven’t bothered yet to fix the fence.

It might interest you to know that Y-12 is considered a “virtually impenetrable installation”, the “Fort Knox of Uranium”. It might also interest you to know that it’s not run directly by the guvmint, but by Babcock & Wilcox and Bechtel. And it’s guarded by Wackenhut, whose safety assurances we can surely trust — if not in Oak Ridge, then at least in Kabul.

And the Evil Masterminds who penetrated the world-class security? Well, they style themselves “Transform Now Plowshares”. Greg is 57, Michael 63.

Youngsters, really. Sister Megan is an 82-year-old nun.

[via jwmcsame]
12 Comments

I dunno – if it’s like most military installations, the outside fence is mostly just so that they can apply “shoot first, ask questions never” to unauthorized people found inside.

The plowshare transformers got to where only one thick hopefully lead wall stood between them and the uranium before they encountered guards whom they wanted to break bread with in a rose and candlelit, biblical ceremony. They should have contracted out to the W maladministration in March 2003 seeing how good they were at finding weapons of mass destruction. The iraqi debacle woulda been over in one night as good as these guys are at finding uranium and such.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/jul/31/more-details-of-stunning-y-12-break-in-offered/

@al2o3cr: Granted, a chain-link fence isn’t going to hold off Nuclear Ninjas, but the big ruckus is because they weren’t supposed to get as far as they did.

@nojo: Wackenhut is now known by the more Orwellian names of G4S or Geo Group and they are the second largest for-profit private prison operator in the US and the world. They didn’t get that profitable by paying their guards union wages.

@SanFranLefty: so wackenhut switched from keeping guys out to keeping guys in?

@jwmcsame: I think they still do both. Depends on the building.

In other news, Speaker Boner went limp today because he was not crazy enough for his teabaggers and, uh, withdrew from a so-called Plan B fight without a vote. If Josh Marshall is right, the only point of Plan B was to show the electorate that the R’s are not willing to take the country into the crapper to protect the tax rates of billionaires. But the teabaggers wouldn’t go there.

@Dodgerblue: And not just teabaggers, but those afraid of facing teabaggers in primaries in two fucking years. I’m sorry, but “I might face a primary battle” is not a good reason for destroying the global economy, Timmy.

@SanFranLefty: They protected my Guatemala City office building, and most of the rest of the capital, in the late 90s. My boss was woken up in the middle of the night when, hilariously, the real police responded to a call about gunshots. The Wackers were in a shootout with competing guards from down the street.

The kicker? My boss found another guard asleep, with a hooker and a bottle of our holiday cheer, in the radio room.

ADD: Feliz cumpleanos!

@jwmcsame: “so wackenhut switched from keeping guys out to keeping guys in?”

@SanFranLefty: “I think they still do both.”

I guess that makes them fans of the old in-and-out (a point confirmed by the story from Guatemala).

And here I thought Wackenhut only provided mall cops. All they seem to do at the local corporate-sponsored-instant-gratification-via-the-excesses-of-capitalism center is drive around in white jeeps with flashing yellow lights.

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