Justice Dept. Blasted for Curbs on Nuclear Plant Report : Environment: Some members of the federal grand jury had wanted the government to seek bigger fines and prosecute Rockwell officials.

A House subcommittee Monday blasted the U.S. Justice Department for “extreme conservatism and lack of aggressiveness” in curbing a federal grand jury report on environmental crimes at the government’s Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.

A three-year investigation, launched with a 1989 FBI raid on the plant, ended last June with Rockwell International Corp. pleading guilty to a total of 10 criminal counts--five felonies and five misdemeanors--and agreeing to a record $18.5-million fine.

But grand jury leaks subsequently disclosed that members of the panel had wanted a much larger fine and had wanted to indict individual officials of the Seal Beach-based corporation and the U.S. Department of Energy, which owns the facility just outside Denver.

In its report to the parent House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, the investigations subcommittee said that members of the grand jury had been blocked from issuing a final report detailing their position when the Justice Department “forced the prosecutors to refrain from assisting the jurors” in preparing the report.

Jurors went ahead and wrote a report on their own and gave it to U.S. District Judge Sherman G. Finesilver, who approved the settlement last June. Finesilver ordered the report sealed and the Justice Department is now investigating the leak of its contents.

“Serious environmental crimes were committed but no individuals were held responsible,” said Rep. Howard Wolpe (D-Mich.). “The crimes were attributed (by Justice Department attorneys) to a ‘culture’ at DOE--not the actions of responsible individuals. This is the white collar equivalent of blaming an armed robbery on ‘society’--not the individual holding the gun.”

The subcommittee report was forwarded to Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

For some 40 years, Rocky Flats fabricated softball-sized plutonium spheres that form the “triggers” for thermonuclear weapons, creating not only serious problems of radioactive waste management but of toxic contamination by solvents and industrial chemicals.

Rockwell’s fine was the largest ever imposed for toxic waste violations, but members of the grand jury reportedly wanted to set the fine at the cost of cleanup. The Energy Department has estimated that it will take $1.3 billion to clean up Rocky Flats.

In the report released Monday, the subcommittee said that Justice Department officials appeared to have placed “little value on environmental crimes” and had therefore added to the pressure on the U.S. attorney in Denver “to settle for a fine that may have been lower than could have been achieved.”

Although the settlement provided history’s largest fine for toxic waste violations, “significant charges were not pled to” and government lawyers “bargained away their right to fully and accurately inform the public about the conditions, crimes and activities at the Rocky Flats plant.”

Moreover, the settlement eliminated the opportunity for other state or federal agencies to sue Rockwell, a concession that the subcommittee said “was potentially worth millions of dollars to the company.”

Even before the settlement was accepted by the court in Denver, the subcommittee said, congressional investigators were receiving allegations that legitimate charges against the company were being ignored.

When the panel launched its investigation of the case after the settlement, the committee had to subpoena FBI and Justice Department officials. The officials declined to testify in public sessions and refused in closed-door hearings to answer questions about their agencies’ internal deliberations.

Although investigators compiled “significant evidence” of criminal acts by Rockwell officials, the subcommittee reported, “the prosecutors had established a ‘bottom line’ for settlement purposes that there would be ‘no individual felony indictments.’ ”

One prosecutor did continue to press for misdemeanor pleas but “he received little or no support from either main Justice or the U.S. attorney.”

The subcommittee urged the full committee to take further testimony from present and former Justice Department officials involved in the decision to block the special grand jury report. It also suggested that members of the Rocky Flats grand jury who wish to testify before Congress be provided immunity from prosecution.

“These citizens were so offended by the plea agreement with Rockwell that they have placed themselves in legal jeopardy by publicly discussing the settlement,” Wolpe said in his letter transmitting the panel’s report to the full committee.

“Justice is actively investigating grand jury leaks in an effort to make a decision in the near future on indicting members of the grand jury. In my view, it would be both ironic and outrageous if the Department of Justice prosecutes the grand jurors themselves with more vigor than they demonstrated in prosecuting Rockwell for serious environmental crimes.”

In Denver, a member of the grand jury, attorney Kenneth Peck, said Monday afternoon that jurors “are people of high conscience” who are “just doing their duty and they’re kind of perplexed why somebody wants to throw them in jail for doing that.”

The jurors “are great Americans,” Peck said at a news conference. “If you want to know what these people are like, go stand in line” at a grocery store or bus stop “and count off to 23 and those are the people who are serving on that grand jury.”

Times researcher Ann Rovin in Denver contributed to this story.