John Roberts and the Shoreham Nuke Plant Controversy

[DoYouEverWonder]

Unfortunately I found this too late to post in LBN but here's another log for the Roberts nomination fire. Nice of him to help Reagan break a promise. I get the feeling ethics don't mean much to this guy.



Roberts' legal drill on LI

Supreme Court nominee was lawyer who backed evacuation test, despite county opposition

August 20, 2005

WASHINGTON - As the struggle over an emergency evacuation plan for the Shoreham nuclear power plant raged on Long Island nearly 20 years ago, a little-known White House lawyer played a quiet, if crucial, role by finding a legal way out of a presidential promise.

That lawyer was John G. Roberts, then a young associate White House counsel and now a Supreme Court nominee, and a memo showing his role in Shoreham turned up in the 35,000 pages of Roberts' documents from the 1980s that were released this week.

<snip>

As Freilicher put it, "I'm amazed that the ghost of Shoreham can come back and haunt the nomination of a Supreme Court justice. Shoreham destroyed many lives. I hope it doesn't destroy another."

Dated Jan. 22, 1986, the memo was written by Roberts as Suffolk County government resisted a federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission test-run of an evacuation plan for an emergency at Shoreham.

The county insisted that no plan would work, refused to participate in the test run and made it a misdemeanor for anyone to "stand in" as a county employee during the exercise.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uscort204391168aug20,0,6489349.story?coll=ny-uspolitics-headlines

[acmejack]

1. I get the impression that he thinks justice is for the clever & cash laden

Not the righteous.

[DaveinMD]

2. I remember Shoreham

I grew up on LI during that time period.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. So what promise did Roberts help Reagan break?

I don't know much about the background for this one?

[DaveinMD]

5. basically

Shoreham was a nuclear power plant that it would have killed a ton of people if there was an accident. Local officials didn't want the plant. Reagan did and tried to prove that there could be an evacuation. I was 14 at the time, so my memory could be a bit fuzzy.

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. Thanks, now the story makes more sense

Roberts always seem to come down on the side of wrong, doesn't he?

[shraby]

4. Roberts sure had his fingers in a lot of pies!