NRC staffers quietly become gun-toting cops

‘Criminal aspect’ to every case
And Caputo’s chief deputy, James Fitzgerald, said that because any of the office’s cases could eventually result in criminal charges if picked up by the Justice Department, “Every investigation we conduct has a civil and criminal aspect to it.”

Caputo said he sought deputy status for his agents because it was recommended in a “peer review” done by another law enforcement agency. He would not name the agency nor provide the report.

The recommendation that the NRC seek blanket deputation for its agents, and Caputo’s intent to do so, were mentioned on the sixth page of a nine-page document sent to the five-member NRC on June 1, 2005. The NRC provided a copy to MSNBC.com, but redacted most of it. The only other recommendation from the peer review that was not blacked out was that the NRC consider congressional action to “help establish the law enforcement identity of the NRC OI.” NRC officials rejected that.

Because NRC commissioners did not question the recommendation, the agency’s staff considered it approved. “In this case, there being no response, that’s an affirmative,” said NRC Public Affairs Director Eliot Brenner. Nor was there any public discussion.

On Oct. 14, 2005, the U.S. Marshals Service informed Caputo that his request for blanket deputation had been granted for a year. In November 2006, a three-year renewal was granted.

Before the blanket deputation, the Marshals Service had been fielding an increasing number of requests from Caputo for deputation of individual OI agents since 2001. Prior to that, OI had requested that only a single agent be deputized in the thousands of cases it had handled since 1982.

NRC spokesman Dave McIntyre said the change was due to "operational experience ... the general climate following 9/11 ... and increased requests from the Justice Department for NRC OI assistance in investigating cases we referred for potential criminal prosecution."

In letters and forms submitted to the marshals in pursuit of deputy status, Caputo listed a variety of tasks: “to make arrests or execute search warrants,” “render witness protection,” and “conduct electronic and/or normal surveillance related activities” and participate in “various joint terrorism task forces.”

In an interview with MSNBC.com, Caputo acknowledged that OI had not made any arrests since its formation. He said his agents served two search warrants in 2006, when the office handled 266 cases. He declined to say whether OI agents had conducted electronic surveillance or provided witness protection. Nor would he discuss their work on “joint terrorism task forces.”

'Nickel and dime questions'
“You have a lot of ... nickel and dime questions that we’re not going to touch,” said Brenner, who joined Caputo, Fitzgerald and two other NRC staff members in a conference call with MSNBC.com.

Caputo also would not say what kind of weapons his agents carry, although “they’ve got the latitude to carry them whenever they need to.” He said agents are generally hired with many years of experience in other federal law enforcement agencies and they “use very, very good common sense and judgment in terms of when they need to carry their weapons.”

In his 2005 bid for blanket deputation, Caputo said his agents “routinely interview witnesses and suspects in potentially dangerous circumstances … late night/early morning, in remote locations and in hostile environments.”

That characterization was dismissed as "just ridiculous” by Billie Garde, a lawyer who has worked extensively on cases involving the NRC.

“Nuclear power plants are in remote locations but I have been interviewing witnesses there for my entire career and I’m a grandmother," she said. "I don’t need a gun.”

Garde said she can’t think of any instance in which OI agents would need to be deputized. “OI doesn’t have anybody in the field unless they’re doing an investigation. The fact is the OI guys are sitting at desks in regional offices. They’re investigating complaints from whistleblowers about paperwork fraud."

'At most ... white collar crimes'
Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an engineer who worked at nuclear plants for 17 years before joining the watchdog group, has such a low opinion of OI that he sought unsuccessfully in 1998 to get it disbanded. He also can’t think of any reasons the office would need deputy status. “At most, they’re looking at white collar crimes,” he said.

He finds it particularly galling that OI has used witness protection as a reason to seek deputy status. When he tried to get protection for a Tennessee whistleblower who was receiving threats, Lochbaum said, the NRC “said if they kill him or blow him up, something like that, then we can investigate that and see if that violated any of our regulations. But it’s not our job to protect these guys.”

The tasks listed in Caputo’s letters to the Marshals Service also seem at odds with many of the “Significant Cases” listed in the office’s recent annual reports: a guard failing to report his arrest for habitual traffic offenses; the operator of a research reactor modifying equipment without authorization; a doctor lying about a licensing matter; a power plant operator sleeping on the job.

In recent years, the office did participate in criminal investigations of a major problem at a nuclear power plant and massive fraud at a valve manufacturing company, both in Ohio. But the defendants, who were accused of lying to the government or conspiracy to commit fraud, were engineers and executives, not felons with violent backgrounds.

Overall, criminal prosecutions stemming from OI investigations are exceedingly rare. While the office notes that it refers dozens of cases every year to the Justice Department for “prosecutive determination,” from 2000 to 2005 criminal probes were launched in just seven of 244 referrals.

Caputo acknowledged that his office does not follow a 1988 agreement with the Justice Department, particularly a provision that says NRC agents are only to “assist” law enforcement agencies in criminal investigations when asked to do so in a written request signed by “a United States attorney or deputy assistant attorney general, as appropriate.”

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