Friday, October 23, 2015
NATION/WORLD
Probe ¿nds EPA error caused mine spill Facing GOP queries, Clinton
Page 8A
East Oregonian
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP)
— Government investigators
squarely blamed the U.S.
Environmental
Protection
Agency on Thursday for a
3 million-gallon wastewater
spill from a Colorado
gold mine, saying an EPA
cleanup crew rushed its
work and failed to consider
the complex engineering
involved, triggering the very
blowout it hoped to avoid.
The spill that fouled
rivers in three states would
have been avoided had the
EPA team checked on water
levels inside the Gold King
Mine before digging into a
collapsed and leaking mine
entrance, Interior Department
investigators concluded.
The technical report on
the causes of the Aug. 5 spill
has implications across the
United States, where similar
disasters could lurk among
an estimated hundreds of
thousands of abandoned
mines that have yet to be
cleaned up. The total cost
of containing this mining
industry mess could top $50
billion, according to govern-
ment estimates.
The root causes of the
Colorado accident began
decades ago, when mining
companies altered the Àow
of water through a series of
interconnected tunnels in
the extensively mined Upper
Animas River watershed, the
seeks to close book on Benghazi
Associated Press
AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, file
In this Aug. 12 file photo, water flows through a se-
ries of retention ponds built to contain and filter out
heavy metals and chemicals from the Gold King mine
chemical accident, in the spillway about 1/4 mile
downstream from the mine, outside Silverton, Colo.
report says.
EPA documents show
its of¿cials knew of the
potential for a major blowout
from the Gold King Mine
near Silverton as early as
June 2014. After the spill,
EPA of¿cials described the
blowout as “likely inevi-
table” because millions of
gallons of pressurized water
had been bottling up inside
the mine.
The Interior report directly
refutes that assertion. It says
the cleanup team could have
used a drill rig to bore into
the mine tunnel from above,
safely gauging the danger
of a blowout and planning
the excavation accordingly.
Instead, the EPA crew, with
the agreement of Colorado
mining of¿cials, assumed
the mine was only partially
inundated.
“This error resulted in
development of a plan to
open the mine in a manner
that appeared to guard
against blowout, but instead
led directly to the failure,”
according to engineers
from Interior’s Bureau of
Reclamation, who spent
two months evaluating the
accident.
The blowout tainted rivers
in Colorado, Utah, New
Mexico, and on the Navajo
Nation with dangerous heavy
metals including arsenic.
Nurse quarantined over Ebola fears sues Gov. Christie
TRENTON, N.J. (AP)
— A nurse who had contact
with Ebola patients in West
Africa and was quarantined
at a New Jersey hospital
when she returned sued
Gov. Chris Christie and state
health of¿cials on Thursday,
saying they illegally held her
against her will.
The American Civil
Liberties Union of New
Jersey and a New <ork ¿rm
¿led the federal civil rights
lawsuit in Newark for Kaci
Hickox. Besides Christie, the
lawsuit names as defendants
former state health commis-
sioner Mary O’Dowd and
other health department
employees.
The lawsuit seeks at least
$250,000 in compensatory
and punitive damages, and
Hickox’s lawyers say they
hope the case will change a
quarantine policy they allege
was driven by politics, not by
public health concerns.
Hickox, 34, was working
with
Doctors
Without
Borders in Sierra Leone
during last year’s Ebola
outbreak, which killed
thousands of people. When
she returned via Newark
Liberty International Airport
she was stopped, questioned
and sent to stay in a tent
outside a Newark hospital
despite having no symptoms
of the disease, which is
spread through direct contact
with the bodily Àuids of
an infected person who’s
showing symptoms.
“I felt like I was being
manipulated. I was literally
in the dark,” Hickox, who
lives in Oregon, said at a
New York news conference
via Skype. “It was so hard.
I felt completely alone and
completely vulnerable, and I
was scared.”
She
said
Christie’s
decision to quarantine her
was made out of fear and
was politically motivated,
although she didn’t elaborate.
Christie, a Republican, was
considering a run for pres-
ident and has since entered
the race.
Christie’s of¿ce isn’t
commenting on the pending
legal matter, a spokesman
said.
Christie said last year he
was doing his duty to keep
people safe. When asked
then about a possible lawsuit,
he said he’s been sued lots of
times: “Get in line,” he said.
“I’m happy to take it on.”
WASHINGTON
—
Hillary Rodham Clinton
strove to close the book on
the worst episode of her
tenure as secretary of state
Thursday, battling hours of
Republican questions in a
hearing that grew contentious
but revealed little new about
the 2012 attacks in Benghazi,
/ibya She ¿rmly defended
her record while seeking to
avoid any mishap that might
damage her presidential
campaign.
Pressed about events
before and after the deaths of
four Americans, Clinton had
confrontational exchanges
with several GOP lawmakers
but also ¿elded supportive
queries from Democrats. The
most combative moments
focused on accusations about
the Obama administration’s
shifting early public accounts
of the attacks.
However, ¿ve hours into
the hearing, Republicans had
yet to ask the Democratic
presidential front-runner a
single question about the
night of Sept. 11, 2012, itself.
The
committee’s
chairman, Trey Gowdy,
portrayed the panel as
focused on the facts after
comments by fellow Republi-
cans describing it as an effort
designed to hurt Clinton’s
presidential bid. Democrats
have pounced on those earlier
remarks and have pointed
out that the probe has now
cost U.S. taxpayers more
than $4.5 million and, after
17 months, has lasted longer
than the 1970s Watergate
investigation.
Gowdy, a former federal
prosecutor, said the Repub-
licans’ efforts were not a
prosecution.
Contradicting him, Rep.
Adam Smith, a Democrat from
Washington, told Clinton: “The
purpose of this committee is to
prosecute you.”
In one tense moment,
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan
of Ohio accused Clinton of
deliberately misleading the
public by linking the Beng-
hazi violence at ¿rst to an
Internet video insulting the
Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Democratic presidential candidate, former Secretary
of State Hillary Rodham Clinton listens as she testi-
fies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday.
Clinton, stone-faced for
much of the hearing, smiled
in bemusement as Jordan
cut her off from answering.
Eventually given the chance
to comment, she said only
that “some” people had
wanted to use the video to
justify the attack that killed
Ambassador Chris Steven
and three other Americans,
and that she rejected that
justi¿cation.
The argument went to the
origins of the disagreement
over Benghazi and how
President Barack Obama and
his top aides represented the
attack in the ¿nal weeks of his
re-election campaign. And
it reÀected some of the raw
emotion the deadly violence
continues
to
provoke,
something Clinton will have
to face over the next year of
her White House bid even if
the Republican-led special
investigation loses steam.
For Clinton, the political
theater offered opportunity
and potential pitfalls. It gave
her a high-pro¿le platform
to show her self-control and
command of foreign policy.
But it also left her vulnerable
to claims that she helped polit-
icize the Benghazi tragedy.
“There were probably a
number of different motiva-
tions” for the attack, Clinton
said, describing a time when
competing strands of intel-
ligence were being received
and no clear picture had yet
emerged. Speaking directly
to Jordan, she said: “The
insinuations that you are
making do a great disservice”
to the diplomats and others
involved.
“I’m sorry that it doesn’t
¿t your narrative. I can only
tell you what the facts were,”
Clinton said.
There were no gaffes
for Clinton and — beyond
that exchange— few heated
interactions. She never raised
her voice as she had at a
Senate hearing on Benghazi
in January 2013, when she
shouted: “What difference,
at this point, does it make?”
Given that Republicans
campaigned off that oft-re-
peated sound bite, the lack
of an indelible image from
Thursday’s hearing will have
suited Clinton’s campaign
¿ne.
Instead, it was the panel’s
members who engaged
among themselves in the
nastiest ¿ght, with Clinton
merely observing. Democrats
pressed for the release of the
full transcript of a Clinton
adviser’s private testimony,
drawing Gowdy of South
Carolina, into an angry
debate. The panel eventually
voted against the release, all
Democrats in favor, Repub-
licans against.
Gowdy, a former federal
prosecutor, said an important
question remains unan-
swered: Why were security
requests denied? why was the
military not ready to respond
quickly on the 11th anniver-
sary of 9/11 and why did
the Obama administration
change its story about the
nature of the attacks in the
weeks afterward?
BRIEFLY
Russia shows
military might in
Syria, also pushes
diplomacy
in Vienna, joined by their
counterparts from Saudi
Arabia and Turkey, both
staunch critics of President
Bashar Assad.
HEMEIMEEM AIR
BASE, Syria (AP) — As
Russia unleashed waves of
warplanes Thursday from
this air base in western Syria
to pound militant targets,
President Vladimir Putin
pushed diplomatic efforts
with the West, stressing the
need “to consider each other
as allies in a common ¿ght.”
Russia put its military
muscle on display, bringing
Moscow-based reporters to
view a day’s worth of ¿ghter
jets roaring off a runway
in dozens of sorties as
helicopter gunships patrolled
the edges of the sprawling
facility.
Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov and U.S.
Secretary of State John
Kerry will meet Friday
American killed in
raid to free Iraqis
held by IS
WASHINGTON
(AP) — Believing that
Islamic State captives held
on a compound in northern
Iraq faced “imminent mass
execution,” dozens of U.S.
special operations troops
and Iraqi forces raided
the site Thursday, freeing
approximately 70 Iraqi
prisoners in an operation that
saw the ¿rst American killed
in combat in the country
since the U.S. campaign
against IS began in 2014,
of¿cials said.
The raiders killed and
captured a number of
militants and recovered what
the Pentagon called a trove
of intelligence about the
terrorist organization.
The U.S. service
member who died was not
publicly identi¿ed pending
noti¿cation of relatives.
Of¿cials said this was the
¿rst American combat
death in Iraq since the U.S.
began its counter-IS military
campaign in August 2014.
Pentagon press secretary
Peter Cook said target of
the raid was a prison near
the town of Hawija and that
the raid was undertaken at
the request of the Kurdish
Regional Government, the
semi-autonomous body
that governs the Kurdish
region of northern Iraq. He
said U.S. special operations
forces supported what he
called an Iraqi peshmerga
rescue operation. The
peshmerga are the Kurdish
region’s organized militia.
The U.S. has worked closely
with them in training.
Eat Smart for Your Heart
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Join us for Veterans Day,
Wednesday, November 11, 2015 in
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