Video of Sleeping Guards Shakes Nuclear Industry
January 5th, 2008Via: Washington Post:
Kerry Beal was taken aback when he discovered last March that many of his fellow security guards at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania were taking regular naps in what they called “the ready room.”
When he spoke to supervisors at his company, Wackenhut Corp., they told Beal to be a team player. When he alerted the regional office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, regulators let the matter drop after the plant’s owner, Exelon, said it found no evidence of guards asleep on the job.
So Beal videotaped the sleeping guards. The tape, eventually given to WCBS, a CBS television affiliate in New York City, showed the armed workers snoozing against walls, slumped on tabletops or with eyes closed and heads bobbing.
The fallout of the broadcast is still being felt. Last month, Exelon, the country’s largest provider of nuclear power, fired Wackenhut, which had guarded each of its 10 nuclear plants. The NRC is reviewing its own oversight procedures, having failed to heed Beal’s warning.
Related: Astonishing Security Breach at South African Nuclear Facility
Real-life Homer Simpsons
What must have unnerved alot of people about this is that Peach Bottom is just down the Susquehanna from Three Mile Island. I live not far from there, and if they are staffed by Homer Simpsons, then they have high standards in employees, for this area. Most folks in these parts are more like Barney the drunk.
Wackenhut is good people, not celebrated enough what with the GWOT-era contractor-complex ex$$travaganza.
What a hoot.
Next they’ll be videotaping me napping at my desk.
(I can’t eat starch or sugar while working a desk job without going into a sleep stupor).
But seriously, hey Ebbing? Wackenhut good people?
These folks are guarding not only private nuclear facilities, but have contracts with the U.S. fed to guard the nuclear weapons complex facilities throughout the U.S. And many reports on their performance show that they really suck at their jobs whilst nursing at the government teat.
Wackenhut (the subject of my undergraduate thesis – we had to examine a company on the NYSE from top to bottom) used to have a cover on their annual report that showed men wearing black ski masks over their faces whilst holding machine guns!
Yah. They also put that perimeter fence around Ollie’s North’s house when he was on trial for Iran Contra. But talk about the fox guarding the chicken coop, Wackenhut was also positioned to be the “people” to ship the arms in said scandal.
This company- Wackenhut- and the whole concept of a company providing “private” security was born in the brains of the Reagan administration, and certainly, born from the brain of G.H.W. Bush. Wackenhut gave birth to Blackwater. And so on and so on. There has been a mighty move to privatize security for public purposes since the Repub’s started this trend. Oh and lets not forget that we need these companies to “protect” us from TERRORISM, while all the regular folk, such as those in the National Guard are making less than minimum wage, getting their bodies, minds, and souls blown to bits in Iraq, while these “security companies” are raking in the dirty, laundered U.S. dollar on fed contracts.
Wackenhut – I don’t know about the people who get hired to work for them. But This Is NOT A GOOD Company. They are more like the folks who would check ur-anus for suspected contraband while you fly the “friendly skies.” The type that fly people to another country for torture e.g., rendition. There is no limit to what you can or cannot do when you have a contract with the C.I.A.