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There seems to be no end to the horrors of Chernobyl. Now 13 years after the disaster, rain is seeping into the facility and leaching radioactive material into ground water. Many fear that the hastily- built concrete "sarcophagus" surrounding the failed nuclear reactor could collapse, spewing radioactive dust hundreds of miles. And as we reported in an exclusive 1996 report in the Monitor, warm spring breezes terrify downwind residents. Yet the worst news could just be emerging: That many suspect the enormous sums intended for the cleanup were stolen. The allegations were made in early March by Ukranian enviro groups and government advisors, who say that only a "few million dollars" intended to mitigate the dangers posed by the destroyed Chernobyl reactor were well spent. According to a report from the EnviroNews Service, as much as $740 million disappeared through graft. Most of the money came from Western governments following Ukraine's 1991 independence from the Soviet Union. The head consultant to the Ukrainian parliment's Chernobyl Committee explained that officials pocked the money by charging twice for the same work, leaving projects incomplete, or simply billing for fictitious jobs. The scam went undetected, according to the whistleblowers, because European officals writing the checks were not experienced with nuclear industry, and because they feared they'd be blamed if another disaster happened while funds were withheld. Even where fraud was earlier known, the bankers didn't protest, according to the report. Responding to a question from a German deputy to the European Parliament, a senior European Commission nuclear safety official admitted that proper accounts existed only for about a third of the total sum paid out. (April 7, 1998)
As reported in the Jan/Feb issue of Quill (the magazine published by the Society of Professional Journalists), the grad students crunched the tax tables for the last five decades, used census reports, and other Federal data. They found that Reagan's tax-code revisions in the 1980s significantly changed the system, making the poorest citizens pay a larger share. Those who earn less than $5,000 fared the worst; today, they keep 18 percent less of their income than they did pre-Reagan Revolution. The middle class fares about the same as they did in 1980, but anyone with an income over $50,000 is doing quite well; today they keep 57 percent more of their income. "It used to be that very poor people and married couples earning less than $5,000 paid no income taxes," noted the study. "And the very rich and single earning $150,000 or more paid 62 percent of income to the government. Today, the same people give, respectively, 15 percent and 32 percent of their income to the Treasury." (April 8, 1998)
Mississippi had the highest number of actions taken against physicians at a rate of 11.76 serious actions per 1,000 physicians. The best state, Minnesota, had only 1.6 serious actions per 1,000 MDs. California ranked 18th, with 4.13 serious actions per thousand doctors. "The overall rate of discipline is dangerously poor, and only an extremely small fraction of the country's doctors face any serious state sanctions despite the fact that an estimated 80,000 patients are killed and 234,000 injured as a result of negligence in hospitals each year, with most cases involving doctors," according to a statement from Public Citizen. Public Citizen says that information on disciplinary action taken against doctors is recorded in the federally funded National Practitioners Data Bank, "...but because that data is kept secret from the public, most patients are unaware that they may have a healthcare provider who may be putting their lives and well-being in jeopardy." The watchdog group is calling for policy changes, including public announcements of physicians whose controlled-substances prescriptions licenses are removed or restricted, announcements by state medical boards of all disciplinary actions, and public access to the National Practitioners Data Bank. (April 8, 1998)
Industry watchers will tell you that this sort of stunt isn't that unusual -- Gates Inc. has always displayed ethics that would make a Robber Baron blush. Run down to your local bookstore and order a copy of Microsoft Secrets by Michael A. Cusumano and Richard W. Selby (Free Press $27.50). Although four years old, its greatest value is its documentation of Microsoft's long history of dirty tricks. Other books have provided glimpses of this unflattering picture, but nowhere else has so much commonplace dishonesty been revealed. Example: when retail sales of DR-DOS surpassed MS-DOS in early 1992, Microsoft started a whispering campaign that this competing version of the operating system might not be compatible with the newly-released Windows 3.1, and even inserted a warning that there might be problems. In truth, Microsoft did not let the company that owned DR-DOS test Windows 3.1 before its official release. Actual problems were rare. The press has consistently ignored this dark side of the Microsoft tale, offering instead fluff: "Gee-whiz" articles about its products, admiring profiles of Gates (even Gates' house), lightweight business features on the company's aquisitions and planned expansion. Perhaps the recent LA Times expose of Microsoft's propoganda campaign is the beginning of a trend towards more critical journalism; if so, you can bet that there will be well-thumbed copies of Microsoft Secrets in more than a few newsrooms. (April 11, 1998)
The latest news came from a newly- revealed intelligence report by the Italian equivalent of the CIA. The Soviets, it seems, bugged the apartment of the Vatican's secretary of state around 1979, hoping to gather information they could use to discredit the newly- elected Pope John Paul II. The report also implies that the KGB was willing to assassinate the Catholic leader: "...the figure of the Pope [would], if necessary, be physically eliminated." This seems to support long- held assumptions that a Communist government (probably Bulgaria) instigated the 1981 attempt on the Pope's life. The Soviets hated the new Polish Pope. His outspoken anti- Communist views made him a heroic figurehead to many in the Eastern Bloc, particularly with the popular Solidarity movement in Poland. And anticipating Reagan's covert funding of the Nicaraguan contras by several years, the Pope began secretly financing Solidarity. Laundering Vatican money through Latin America (mostly Panama), millions were slipped to the Solidarity movement. The Vatican also helped the CIA channel money to Solidarity, which may have been the start of a longer anti-commie alliance between the Church and America's spy agency. (Officially, the arrangement stopped after Sen. Patrick Moynihan discovered this and another operation, where the CIA was using a private corporation to fund anti-Sandinista Catholics in Nicaragua.) Using CIA money or no, the Catholic Church became the most vocal critic of Latin America socialism. The Vatican's main conduit was Banco Ambrosiano, the largest privately-owned bank in Italy. Bank Chairman Roberto Calvi shuffled money between his vaults and the Vatican Bank. In one scheme, the Vatican Bank sold stock at an inflated price to the Vatican's dummy "Laramie" corporation in Panama, using cash advanced by Calvi. It would have netted the Vatican a $60 million profit -- that is, if Calvi had lived. In June, 1982, he was found dead, his body hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge with a brick in the pocket of a melodramatic black monk's robe. In the weeks following his death, Banco Ambrosiano closed after $1.3 billion was found missing. It became Italy's biggest financial scandal since WWII; the director of the Vatican Bank resigned after its ties to Calvi were disclosed (much of the money was later recovered from Vatican Bank accounts), and eventually 33 others were convicted of bank fraud. But who killed Roberto Calvi -- and why? There are (at least) three main suspects:
Or was it a suicide? London police ruled that he had taken his own life, although his family spent a fortune trying to prove otherwise. A follow-up inquest ruled that it couldn't be proven either way. (April 14, 1998)
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