The Karen Silkwood Story

My theory is that she was purposely contaminating herself during the end there. so to martyr herself for the cause.

realistically, it wouldn't make much sense for the plant or the AEC to coverup the mishandling of dangerous material.... by poisoning someone with that very dangerous material. it would only prove and empower her cause.

Its sad but the reality of life is this is nothing.

There are entire villages being eradicated in remote parts of the world just so people can make a billion off natural resources. Killing one person wouldnt even break a sweat. If people need proof that corporation are soulless entities abusing humans for profit then there is no hope for humanity. you would have to be a brain dead zombie not to see the writing on the wall.

Thanks for the info, OP. I had never heard of this until today, but I do find it quite interesting. My question is, who WAS this girl? She must have been pretty darn smart. She worked at a pretty high tech nuclear place, and clearly knew what she was doing? Do I put it past her to potentially try setting up the evidence in her favor? No. But I can certainly see the possibility of her being murdered.

Originally posted by Bisman
My theory is that she was purposely contaminating herself during the end there. so to martyr herself for the cause.

realistically, it wouldn't make much sense for the plant or the AEC to coverup the mishandling of dangerous material.... by poisoning someone with that very dangerous material. it would only prove and empower her cause.

It honestly depends on how regulations were set back then... In the 70's it may have been a little more lenient than nowadays...

Originally posted by Rising Against
reply to post by ANNED

 

I worked for Kerr-McGee and was exposed to dioxin.

Wow, sounds like an "interesting" company alright.

What did you think of the claims make by Silkwood out of curiosity, particularly about safety conditions and the like?

I would believe the Silkwood story as true after seeing all the other things that KM has done and how they have hide the information from employees and ex employees

The company hid a lot of things from there employees and was able to because they never had to report in plant hazardous chemicals or conditions that never left the plant boundaries.

If like in my case the chemicals were used in house to process other chemicals and never left the plant the company was never required to list them with the EPA.
in many of these cases the chemicals were not found till the plant was sold was closed and removed leaving land that was later found contaminated.

www.mindfully.org...

Kerr-mcgee spun off a company called TRONOX from there oil business to take the heat for these sites and to protect there oil company from these lawsuits.
Unfortunately they also put all the non oil retirements in this same company.

Wow RA,

as usual a very interesting and well researched thread with some yet (to me) unknown facts!

Sometimes it's unbelievable what's happening in the dark

S+F for you!

Another great thread RA! s&f!! The murder of Karen Silkwood is one of the classic cases of the elimination of a whistle blower.She was murdered.Kerr/Macgee acted odd through the whole thing.

Great thread OP! I suppose opening your mouth is quite hazardous to your health? Whatever Ms. Silkwood found must have been something of great importance to Kerr-McGee and their bottom line? I understand that in any company there is a chance of isolated instances of negligence in regards to safety standards, but she may have very well uncovered instances of gross negligence on the part of her employers? It could have put the company out of business with costly litigation, and severe penalties by the federal government. Whistle blowers have been silenced before, and often under mysterious circumstances. Her story is not a new one, but another indication of a disturbing trend.

The company she worked for has a long history of shortchanging the public about their business practices. In a town I grew up in they were alleged to have illegally dumped and improperly stored massive amounts of radioactive materials. They did the usual corporate two-step of hiring an army of lawyers and speaking out of the side of their mouth about the issue to the public. The article below describes the battle between town residents and the corporation to have the stuff removed.

Assault on Mount Thorium

West Chicago also can claim higher-than-normal cancer rates, a giant mound of radioactive materials in the middle of town, and the only four Superfund hazardous waste sites in Illinois where radiation is the prime contaminant. But true to the city's unique nature, they're some of the prettiest hazardous waste sites you'll ever see.

Even the infamous mound--"Mount Thorium" it's sometimes called--looks benign, save for the barbed wire fence and the Caution Radioactive Materials signs that decorate it.

The mound was started in the 30s and has kept growing. Today it measures approximately 500,000 cubic yards of thorium and uranium "mill tailings," sludge, contaminated soil, and building debris. But its most impressive feature is a radioactive half-life of 14 billion years. It will be radioactive approximately forever.

I used to walk by that hill as a kid. There was radiation deposits at a park and other areas as well. There were radiation warning signs all over town that I recall. In the end, the radioactive materials was removed through no small feat on the part of town activists, but the company put up every roadblock possible to keep that stuff there. It took years to decide what to do with all of it. Just a little background on Kerr-McGee and their practices in the nuclear industry. Perhaps she was on to something? Great thread!

Originally posted by Rising Against
reply to post by PhoenixOD

 

Hey there, thanks for adding that documentary. Funnily enough I literally just added it to my last post too.

I'm going to give it a watch later on when I have the time. What did you think of it out of curiosity?

I'm a little surprised you didn't mention the fact that the real film of Karens life starred Meryl Streep for which she won an oscar, so I think more people will be aware of this than you think.

ETA: That's not to say it's not an important story and doesn't deserve to be retold, your OP is as thorough as ever.

Here we see the meat and potatoes, the read dig in kind of thread that absolutely MAKES ATS. Thank you for your time and dedication to putting out a fantastic piece of investigative reporting.

The Karen Silkwood story happens to be what started me off in conspiracy theories. I was young, impressionable and NO ONE could convince me this young woman deliberately contaminated herself. I saw SMEAR before I knew what 'smear' even was.

I truly appreciate seeing this info brought back to life. Thank you.

peace

Originally posted by Rising Against
The official cause of death was "one-car sleeping-driver accident," but surely this is a tough one to believe? I mean she was on her way to quite possibly the biggest meeting of her life, the meeting which would blow this story wide open in fact. How could she simply fall asleep? It makes no sense to me. She was even found at around 8pm so it wasn't exactly late. Bumps to the back of her car (which can be seen in the above image) could also be observed, as well as skid marks on the road indicating she was breaking heavily and was perhaps bumped off the road by another car and thus was not asleep at the time of her death.

It's not a tough one to believe, that's probably why they used it. I have no doubt she met foul play. But I've fallen asleep at the wheel more times than I can remember, so I feel "experienced" enough to discuss this bit.

She was on her way to the biggest meeting of her life? Probably didn't get much sleep the night before thinking about it.

She was found at 8pm and it wasn't late enough? You can fall asleep at 9am if you're tired enough.

Skid marks on the road suggest she didn't fall asleep? Hey, I've always woken up before I left the road too.

Not trying to debunk your theory at all, but the only people I've met that have said "how can you fall asleep while driving" are usually the type that only drive 30 minutes a day because they have to pick their kids up from school.

Why would someone want to kill her? Nothing changed due to her death and from what i read it was a one car accident. If she had something prepared or documents then someone else would have known about them or what they contained, copies etc. Furthermore, do people really die in accidents from being run off the road? I think that only happens in movies. If someone is trying to make you crash you slow down or just completely stop instead of speeding up.

reply to post by Rising Against


Great post, I have the DVD with Meryl Streep. Very interesting story must watch the documentary.

So the theory is, she exposed herself to radioactive material on purpose and fell asleep at the wheel?

1) skid marks on road and damage to back of the car
2) no indication of irregular radiation levels in her car
3) high levels of radiation in suspicious places throughout her house

Even the worste detective in the world could see how this really went down...

Another well thought out and thought provoking thread from you. I don't know how you find the time to do these in depth articles but they are greatly appreciated. Thank you!

reply to post by Malcher

Why would someone want to kill her?

As I explained in my opening posts she was literally hours away from a meeting with a New York Times reporter who was seemingly prepared to write a story on the company and thus blow the whistle on the case.

That's why she was on the road in the first place.. she was travelling to this meeting. That's possibly why someone would try to kill her.

If she had something prepared or documents then someone else would have known about them or what they contained, copies etc.

People do different thing's in different scenarios, not everyone does what you would perhaps do. Like I said, she was looking to share her documents as well but she never got the chance..

Furthermore, do people really die in accidents from being run off the road? I think that only happens in movies.

You've obviously never heard of the name Lee Bowers. He was a witness to the JFK assassination which is a case I research often. He was killed in 1966 after witnesses claimed his car was "run off the road by another blacked out car." He was alive long enough to tell paramedics he felt as though he was "drugged" a short while before the crash. There's a very clear motive for his death also...

I did a thread on it before: Lee Bowers - A Murdered Witness

Point is it does happen and it has happened to other people before. The Bowers case was even long before Silkwood's case.

If someone is trying to make you crash you slow down or just completely stop instead of speeding up.

For all we know silkwood's car was attacked suddenly by another person in their car. For all we know she had very little time to react before her car was knocked off the road.

And no, some people do speed up.. to, Oh I dunno, try to get away from the person trying to crash into them perhaps.

reply to post by Bisman

My theory is that she was purposely contaminating herself during the end there. so to martyr herself for the cause.

See I find that hard to believe personally. I mean this was a mother we're talking about here, a wife too. Would she really go to the trouble of slowly killing herself and contaminating the home where she was staying... for which she was not the only person living there, in order to hope people catch up and suspect the company was involved?

I don't know, I just don't think someone would do that. Maybe she was right, maybe someone was doing it to her. Who knows. All we can do is speculate really.

I remember following her story closely as there were chemical companies in the area where I lived.

In 1971 I built a large mobile home park that had it's own water and sewer system.

The EPD was on us like white on rice with regulations concerning the water and sewer systems.

The rules were very strict and at any time during the operation of our park we were subject to unanounced visits from EPD officals

There were other huge paper and chemical companies in our same county and the EPD was required to give these companies three days notice prior to a visit to their operations.

This makes no logical sense as the paper and chemical compnies were dumping toxic waste into our rivers and we now are warned to not eat fish from these same rivers.

The only polution my company could have done was very minscuile and would have been raw sewage from our swer plant.

The only only problem we could have had was not having enough chlorine in our water system..

I can proudly state we always received perfect inspections from EPD.

No matter how you slice the Karen Silkwood story or any other suspect action concerning contamination you may find your answer if you simply follow the money trail.

Big money talks.

I sincerely believe the situation has gotton better concerning polution and contamination due to Karen and her work.

We now have many watch dog groups that do watch the industries.

About the accident....It was insinuated she had injested quaaludes.
This was a very available and popular drug to abuse at that time.

Nobody with half a brain, and Karen was very intellegent, would use quaaludes and drive anywhere and especially not to an interview with a news person.
You could not function properly while abusing quaaludes and that is a fact.
Maybe there is someone else on this board that is old enough to remember quaalude users bouncing off walls.

Very few people believed the concockted story of karens death.

There were many other investigations being done during the seventies by very brave workers that will never see the light of day.

Karen Silkwood was warned that her life was in danger.
She did not need the warning as she already knew she was walking on dangerous ground.

Thank you for this thread.
I will never forget that brave woman who gave her life for what she believed was the right thing to do for humanity.

reply to post by Jakes51


Hey Jakes51, thank you for that great post! I had no idea about that. I'm just reading through that article right now, and I urge everyone else reading this post to do the same:

West Chicago vs. Kerr-McGee--Warning: Exposure to Hazardous Wastes Can Cause Community Activism

Just stumbled across another interesting read as well, this being a look at the company of Keer-McGee and I found a section discussing Karen Silkwood and how her family went onto successfully sue for well over 1 million dollars:

Silkwood, a 28 year-old lab technician at Cimarron and one of the union's most active members, was involved in substantiating the charges before the Atomic Energy Commission. Silkwood had suffered radiation exposure in a series of unexplained incidents and had then been killed in an automobile crash while on her way to meet with an Atomic Energy Commission official and a New York Times reporter. Although never confirmed, her untimely death led to speculation of foul play and prompted a federal investigation into safety and security at the plant. Following additional problems with worker contamination and a National Public Radio report alleging the misplacement of a significant quantity of plutonium, the company finally shut down the Cimarron plant. In 1986 Karen Silkwood's family settled an $11.5 million plutonium-contamination lawsuit against Kerr-McGee for $1.38 million with Kerr-McGee admitting no liability in the case.

(Source)

The above link goes into detail on this company and It's history as well. Certainly worth a read.