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Secret air base to be hit with lawsuit

Defense and intelligence agencies will be sued Monday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas by a Washington, D.C., law professor who claims they violated hazardous waste laws at the secret Groom Lake air base in Lincoln County.

The lawsuit will name Secretary of Defense William Perry, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who is representing employees and former workers at the Groom Lake base, said Friday.

The lawsuit is the second that will be filed this month on allegations that hazardous wastes were illegally burned in open trenches at Groom Lake, 35 miles west of Alamo.

In an Aug. 2 lawsuit Turley filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, he claimed the Environmental Protection Agency failed to inspect the Groom Lake base, where workers said they were denied protective clothing for handling hazardous wastes.

That lawsuit named EPA Administrator Carol Browner as defendant and six John Doe plaintiffs. Chief Judge John Garret Penn allowed the plaintiffs to use fictitious names because Turley said they feared reprisal from the government.

Concerning the case he will file Monday, Turley said, "We hope to show the military and intelligence agencies cannot unilaterally create a secret enclave through which they can violate environmental and criminal laws with impunity."

He said his clients in Monday's filing will include six John Does and one named plaintiff, Helen Frost, a Las Vegas widow, whose husband was a former base worker who died in 1989.

Frost claimed in a 1993 lawsuit that her husband's death was linked to inhaling toxic fumes while he worked atop hangars and buildings downwind of trenches where former workers have said hazardous materials, including radar-absorbing stealth coatings, were routinely burned during the 1980s.

A federal judge dismissed the wrongful death suit, ruling that Frost did not prove dioxins in the fumes hastened her husband's death from a liver disorder.

Turley said Helen Frost is representative of a large number of widows and family members who have asked him for legal assistance.

"We have decided to use only one of the widows and only six of the workers because of possible concerns with reprisals. The government has already threatened my clients with severe reprisals if they ever broke their silence about what happened at the Groom Lake base," Turley said.

The Groom dry lake bed is the site of an active government installation where high-altitude, high-speed spy planes and other military aircraft have been tested, including the F-117A Stealth fighter, according to aviation industry sources and witnesses who have observed the base.

Turley said, "Our Nevada filing will go to the heart of the allegations. We believe the Air Force will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the existence" of the Groom Lake base, also known as Area 51.

"It is clear, that secrecy at Groom Lake became a magnet for illegal activities that could never have occurred at conventional federal facilities," he said.

"The use of secrecy in this case has little to do with the national security purpose of this facility. The military is using secrecy to hide what are environmental and, possibly, criminal violations," Turley said in a telephone interview from his office. He is director of the pro bono Environmental Crimes Project at the university's National Law Center.

Turley said the Groom Lake base became "something of an irresistible temptation for certain agencies and contractors in the Stealth program."