Los Alamos Lab Whistleblower Beaten Outside Bar, Police Investigate

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - A Los Alamos lab whistleblower scheduled to testify before Congress about alleged financial irregularities was badly beaten outside a bar - an attack his wife and lawyer believe was designed to silence him. Police said that they were investigating the circumstances of the incident which, according to his wife, left Tommy Hook hospitalized Monday with a broken jaw and other injuries.

Police Deputy Chief Eric Johnson said officers found Hooks after responding to a reported assault at the Cheeks Night Club about 2 a.m. Sunday. He provided few other details.

"We are working jointly with the FBI, trying to determine what may have happened and what the assault may have stemmed from," Johnson said.

Hook's wife, Susan, alleged the assailants told her husband during the attack: "If you know what's good for you, you'll keep your mouth shut."

Tommy Hook and another whistleblower sued the University of California in March, alleging that after they uncovered management failures, university and lab managers tried to make their jobs miserable so they would quit.

Hook, a former internal auditor who now works at another job at the lab, had been scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee later this month.

According to Susan Hook, her husband received a call late Saturday from someone wanting to meet with him at a bar. She said her husband told her the man never showed up, but that as he was leaving the parking lot, a group of men pulled him from his car and beat him.

"They left him in the parking lot for dead," said Tommy Hook's lawyer, Robert Rothstein.

Rothstein said the assailants didn't take Hook's wallet, other personal belongings or car. Without any other motive, it appears the beating was related to his whistleblowing, Rothstein contended.

Los Alamos lab spokesman Kevin Roark called the beating a "senseless and brutal act and should not be tolerated."

The lab and UC also issued a joint statement decrying the violence. "Director (Robert) Kuckuck, the University of California and the laboratory believe that any form of physical violence toward an individual is unacceptable," the statement read.

I was about to post this, but wanted a more mainstream source:

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001590.html

Los Alamos Whistleblower Assaulted

Los Alamos whistleblower "Tommy Hook is still hospitalized today after being brutally assaulted over the weekend," the Project on Government Oversight is saying. "A group of three to four assailants threatened Hook to keep silent, in apparent reference to his upcoming Congressional testimony on fraud at Los Alamos."

Mr. Hook was slated to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee this month. Congressional staff from the Committee were already scheduled to arrive Tuesday, June 7th to investigate Tommy Hook's allegations. Also flying out tomorrow is the Project On Government Oversight's Senior Investigator Peter Stockton who investigated the 1974 murder of nuclear whistleblower Karen Silkwood in his previous position as a Congressional investigator.
Mr. Hook had planned at the end of last week to meet an individual who claimed to have corroborating information about fraud at Los Alamos. That individual never attended the meeting. Late Saturday evening, someone who might have been posing as that individual called Mr. Hook and asked to meet with him at a bar in Santa Fe. He went to the bar and waited but that person never showed up. When Mr. Hook got into his car to leave, attackers pulled him out of the car and brutally assaulted him. The assailants threatened Mr. Hook to keep silent. A bouncer at the bar intervened and broke up the attack. Mr. Hook was hospitalized in an Emergency Room with severe trauma to his face and head, including a fractured jaw, and a herniated disk. He is heavily medicated today and unable to speak to the media.
Mr. Hook and whistleblower Chuck Montano appeared on the CBS Evening News earlier this year. Audit reports conducted by Mr. Hook and Mr. Montano in 2002-2004 found a disturbing pattern of financial irregularities in the Los Alamos Lab's procurement division. In compliance with Department of Energy (DOE) requirements, Mr. Hook and Mr. Montano produced a report assessing the Lab's contracting operations. Lab supervisors refused to allow the report to be submitted to DOE, instead submitting a report that glossed over the problems identified by Mr. Hook and Mr. Montano.

Although a lab spokesman once told the Albuquerque Journal's Adam Rankin that "retaliation against whistleblowers is not tolerated," the fact is that Los Alamos officials have been pretty vicious with whistleblowers in years past. But the assaults have always been financial, or political, up until now. I've never heard of anything like this.

There's going to be a conference call with Hook's wife and his partner, Montano, in a few hours. I'll let you know what happens.

THERE'S MORE: The conference call is done. Details are above, here. And background on Hook's long war with Los Alamos management is here.

AND MORE: As John notes, "Interfering with a witness is against the law. Let's hope the GOP Congress does something about this."

I must be such a skeptic. Mrs. Hook says her husband doesn't 'frequent' bars but agreed to go to a late night meeting with an unnamed man who never showed up at the Cheeks Night Club.

Why in the world would he go to an allegedly unfamiliar bar and stay there until the early hours of the morning? Couldn't he have told the unnamed phone caller that he'd meet him tomorrow morning someplace else? We don't know who the phone caller was, and it would be equally interesting to find out if anyone at the Cheeks had ever seen Hook before.

I'm not buying this story.

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