When the auditors complained, they said, they were harassed until they resigned. The auditors said the contractors deliberately bypassed safety measures, turned off monitors and alarms, falsified documents, did not report spills, dumped hazardous wastes on the ground and illegally sent waste from a pit contaminated with plutonium to a public landfill. Those contentions shed a different light on what state and federal officials told the public about the contractors' problems at the site. And in internal documents, federal officials shared some of the auditors' concerns. The division, and Energy Department officials, said at the time that the violations resulted from oversights or from problems created before the contractors took over.
Someone gets lazy.
Or they think they're doing right. That review, signed by John M. Wilcynski, manager of the Energy Department's Idaho Operations Office, said that three major accidents, including the deaths of two workers, had occurred. He recommended that the contract be put out for bid. Jim Fetig, a spokesman for the Lockheed Martin Corporation, based in Bethesda, Md., said that there might have been environmental missteps in Idaho, but that none were intentional. Waste was stored improperly in some cases, he said, but it was hard to find out what old storage tanks contained.