Listen To This3lesson 35

The Senate is in the midst of its first impeachment trial in more than half a decade. Senators are hearing arguments in the case of Nevada Judge Harry Claiborne, a convicted tax evader, who has refused to give up his seat on the Federal bench. Linda Wertheimer has more. "The prosecutors are members of the House of Representatives, presenting the case for impeachment to the Senate, the defense Judge Claiborne and his attorneys. Judge Claiborne's attorney makes the argument that although Claiborne plainly did fail to pay the income tax he owed, he did not willfully evade tax. He made a mistake. Further, that the federal prosecutors who brought the case against him were engaged in a vendetta to remove the judge from the bench. The prosecutors from the House argue in return that the government's conduct is not on trial, Judge Claiborne's is; that the evidence against him which resulted in his conviction is sufficient to convict him here as well. The Senate has set aside two days for this trial. I'm Linda Wertheimer at the Capitol."


A House committee issued a report on the shuttle Challenger disaster today. In it, the panel blames pressure to fly the shuttles twice a month for the accident that killed seven astronauts. And it says that pressure still exists within NASA, endangering future flights of the shuttle program. NASA today postponed the rollout of the space shuttle Atlantis onto the launch pad, at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Rain and lightning storms were in the area and the Space Agency decided not to take a chance moving the shuttle. It's scheduled for seven weeks of tests, including some to check out an astronaut escape system. The rollout has been rescheduled for Thursday. (Editor's note: There seems to be a mistake in the first news item. "More than half a decade" in the first sentence should be "more than half a century." Please compare "Section Two" and "Supplementary Reading.")


The first impeachment proceeding in the United States Senate in fifty years began today, the trial of Federal Judge Harry E. Claiborne of Nevada. Judge Claiborne is a convicted felon, now serving a prison term for income tax evasion. He has refused to resign from the bench and has demanded a trial in the Senate, the only constitutional means of removing a federal judge from office. NPR's Linda Wertheimer is following that trial.
Early this morning, the presiding officer of the Senate, who was at that time Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, summoned Senators to a historic occasion, a trial in the Senate. The Senate will now proceed, he said, as a court of impeachment.
"The Sergeant at Arms will make the proclamation."
"All persons are commanded to keep silence, on pain of imprisonment while the House of Representatives is exhibiting the Senate of the United States articles of impeachment against Judge harry E. Claiborne."
That was the Sergeant at Arms, Ernest Garcia, who then rang the bells for the Senators to appear for a live quorum. At least fifty-one members of the Senate must be present during this trial. As the Senators filed in, they saw sitting at long tables in the well of the Senate the prosecution and the defense. The prosecutors are members of the House who exhibit in the constitutional term the articles of impeachment to the Senate. The defense, Judge Claiborne and his attorneys, including a former Senator, Howard Cannon of Nevada. The two tables face the one hundred desks of the Senators who will serve as judge and jury in this trial. The attorney for the defense led off with some prefatory remarks. Oscar Goodman told the Senate that Judge Claiborne insisted on this trial because he believes that he is innocent. But the center of the argument made by Judge Claiborne's attorney is that the judge was rail-roaded into prison by over enthusiastic prosecution.
"He has been caught in the vortex of a constitutional crisis, a situation that has to affect every member of this body, because, God forbid, it could happen to them where Judge Claiborne became victimized as a result of a vendetta of the Justice Department, and the strike force, and a special agent in charge of the FBI who came to the Nevada desert to bury the American flag there."
Attorney Goodman's charge was answered in prefatory remarks again by Congressman Henry Hide of Illinois, a member of the House, in effect acting for the prosecution.
"Judge Claiborne isn't here because of any alleged misconduct by the government. He's here because he was tried and convicted beyond a reasonable doubt given the presumption of innocence by a jury of twelve people. His motion for a new trial was denied, his appeal to the ninth circuit was denied, his motion for rehearing and ban was denied, and his Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court was denied. That's why he's here."
Judge Claiborne was convicted of income tax evasion, willfully filing false returns which failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars of income. Claiborne's defense is that he make a mistake but did not commit a crime, and further the prosecutors pursued of a vendetta against him. Members of the House argued that whatever the prosecutors' conduct, it is Claiborne who is on trial in the Senate. Congressman Peter Rodino, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee argued that Judge Claiborne's contention that he made a mistake is simply not credible.
"According to Judge Claiborne, an individual can hire the most incompetent tax preparer, participate in the most irresponsible treatment of basic tax concepts, create sales of assets that do not exist, fail even to bother to read the return, enjoy a refund of thousands of dollars, and simply wait for an audit."
Late in the day, Judge Claiborne spoke in his own defense. "I wanted to talk to you." He said to the Senators. "I wanted you to see me. I feel," he said, "like a piece of meat torn between two dogs." "I want to be honest with every member of this body. I would much rather, right today, be almost any place than here. But I knew when I was convicted that this was the place that I had to come."
Claiborne told the Senate that young Turks in the Justice Department are head hunters looking for prosecutions which will gain them the most publicity. The Senate is deciding now in closed session what to do about the articles of impeachment against Judge Claiborne. Impeachment requires a two-thirds votes of the members present. I'm Linda Wertheimer at the Capitol.


Most information on the movement of nuclear weapons in this country is classified for reasons of security. But some new details are becoming public that suggest that the transporting of nuclear weapons for maintenance and production is much more frequent than is generally known. NPR's David Malthus reports that on any given day, it is likely that US nuclear weapons are being transported on the nation's highways, in the air, and at sea.
America's nuclear arsenal is constantly in flux. Older warheads are retired and dismantled as new ones are built. Some elements of nuclear bombs, like radio active tritium becomes stale over time and must be refurbished. There are changes in storage sites, quality control checks. This routine maintenance and production requires frequent movement of nuclear weapons and components. It is accomplished through a large transportation network that includes specially designated cargo planes of the Air Force, freighters under the control of the Navy, and a fleet of highway tractor trailer rigs operated by the Department of Energy. DOE, which oversees the production, assembly, and testing of nuclear weapons, has forty-five custom-built trucks to transport the weapons to more than one hundred military installations in twenty-two states. Headquarters for the transport operations is Albuquerque, New Mexico. Department spokesman Ben McCarty says the truck fleet logs over four million miles a year hauling their special cargo.
"They'll be carrying nuclear weapons, special nuclear materials, such as plutonium or highly enriched uranium and classified non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons."
Once delivered to military storage facilities, the weapons often are then transported by air or ship to bases around the world. The military, following standard practice, refuses to discuss its nuclear transportation operations. However, the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal research group based in Washington, has used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain military documents on those operations. They were made available to NPR.
Air Force Memoranda state that nuclear weapons are transported, "almost on a daily basis." The military airlift command refers to these missions as "the bully beef express." The Air Force documents show that last year the bully beef crews flew more than a thousand nuclear weapons flights. Recently, the Navy revealed, perhaps inadvertently, in public documents, information that indicates some of its nuclear weapons are ferried across the Atlantic in commercial cargo ships operated by civilians. The ships reportedly carry a small contingent of Navy personnel for security and communications, but it appears that the freighters rely heavily on their anonymity for security.
William Arkin of the Institute for Policy Studies has done intensive research on the transportation of nuclear weapons.
"We live with the illusion that nuclear weapons are safely secured away, all in underground missile silos in South Dakota and Montana and Wyoming. And instead, we see a system which requires constant care and feeding, repair, constant movement, which comes into contact with the soldiers and civilian technicians on a daily basis."
Arkin points out that each year, several thousand military and civilian personnel handling nuclear weapons are permanently disqualified for such duty because of alcohol abuse, use of illegal drugs, and other personal problems. But defense officials say this is a sign of the military's diligence, not danger. Of the one hundred thousand nuclear weapons handlers, about thirty-three hundred lost their clearances last year. The most disqualified in any recent year has been five thousand. But human and mechanical failures have caused serious problems in the past. The Defense Department says there have been thirty-two accidents involving nuclear weapons, the last one in 1980. At least ten caused leakage of radioactive materials. None has caused a nuclear explosion. Spokesman Ben McCarty of the Department of Energy says nuclear weapons trucks have been involved in eleven accidents over the years, mainly from icy roads which caused the trucks to flip over. But he says there's never been any danger to the public.
"We have never had an accident that resulted in a release of radio-activity from one of these trucks or in any damage to the cargo in these trucks."
Air Force documents show that pilots transporting nuclear weapons today are told to avoid flying over heavily populated areas to the maximum extent possible. General D.H. Cassidy of the Military Airlift Command praised the "bully beef express" for its outstanding safety record in an internal memo last year. But he also warned the crews about complacency after Air Force personnel mentioned on a non-secure telephone the nature of the cargo on two nuclear weapons flight. Military Airlift Command Regulation No. 55-141 tells the crews how to respond to a hijacking attempt. "Never allow a hostile force to capture or control a nuclear weapon," it says, "even if it means risking the lives of any hostages that might have been taken." The regulation instructs the crews on when to use CDS—the command disable system, which is attached to some nuclear weapons. "CDS," the regulation says, "internally destroys the capability of a weapon to achieve a significant nuclear yield." "As a last resort," the regulation says, "nuclear weapons must be destroyed even if it means loss of the aircraft.
The department of Energy says it too takes great precautions against accidents or terrorist attacks. Spokesman Ben McCarty says the trucks that haul nuclear weapons across the country have armor-plated cabs. The drivers are trained and equipped with a number of firearms, and the trucks are escorted by additional armed guards in cars. Ben McMarty, "We know where all the trucks are at all times, and we have both voice and data links to them. And should anything happen to the shipments, the escort vehicles are able to communicate immediately with local or state law enforcement people and the full force of the military establishment should it be required."
While the Department of Energy tries to keep these shipments secret, peace groups have penetrated that secrecy repeatedly. One group, Nuke Watch, has followed the nuclear trucks thousands of miles over the last two years. Other anti-nuke activists line the roadsides and wave banners, alerting highway travellers that nuclear weapons are on the way. Sam Day, the founder of Nuke Watch says the trucks are not difficult to spot even though they are unmarked, with no warning of hazardous cargo.
"The trucks are eighteen wheel semi-trailers. They look a lot like the hundreds of thousands of other semis on the road. The trailers are metal colored. They have peculiar radio antenna above the cab, which is the main way that you recognize them as H-bomb trucks."
"When they spot you, do they take evasive action, try to lose you?"
"They used to, yes. They used to speed up to eighty-five miles an hour, make hairpin turns and generally play cowboy with us."
Sam Day says now that the Energy Department knows who they are, the truck drivers no longer go out of their way to evade the Nuke Watch shadow. The Department's Ben McMarty says Nuke Watch is more of a nuisance than anything else.
"The job of driving these rigs and protecting these rigs is in itself somewhat stressful. These guys have to really, you know, at all times be on the lookout for anything unusual or any suspicious vehicles coming up on them, or things like this. And it adds to their stress load."
The peace groups say they are not out to harass the truck convoys. Their purpose is to emotionalize the arms control issue. Says Nuke Watch Sam Day, "We want to bring home to people the fact that nuclear weapons are rolling through the streets and towns of America regularly." I'm David Malthus in Washington.