A veteran government bureaucrat with 30 years experience blows the whistle on the Bush administration by appearing on
60 minutes. No this isn't about Richard Clarke. It's about Jack Spadaro. He's an engineer from National Mine Health and Safety Academy (MSHA), a branch of the Department of Labor.
"I had never seen anything so corrupt and lawless in my entire career, what I saw regarding interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States," says Spadaro.
"I've been in government since Richard Nixon. I've been through the Reagan administration, Carter and Clinton. I've never seen anything like this."
What he's talking about is what he calls a government cover-up of an investigation into a disaster 25 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill.
The disaster itself cannot be blamed on the Bush administration. But we can blame Bush for crippling the investigation and levying appallingly low fines. You see, company is a big campaign contributor to the Bush.
During the investigation carried out by Spadaro and his colleagues, it came out that there had been a previous spill in 1994 at the same impoundment. The mining company claimed it had taken measures to make sure it wouldn't happen again, but an engineer working for the company said the problem had not been fixed, and that both he and the company knew another spill was virtually inevitable...
The investigators were going to cite the coal company for serious violations that would probably have led to large fines and even criminal charges.
But all that changed when the Bush administration took over and decided that the country needed more energy -- and less regulation of energy companies. The investigation into Massey Energy, a generous contributor to the Republican Party, was cut short...
Originally, Spadaro says his investigating team wanted to cite the company for eight violations. But in the end, Massey Energy was only cited for two violations, and had to pay approximately $110,000 in fines - not a lot for the fifth largest mining company in America.
There's much more to the story including a subsequent botched investigation, a demotion for the whistleblower, and flouting of laws concerning open bidding for contracts.