White House Double Duty

Richard Belzer is a name you might not have heard before, and if it were up to the Pentagon, you probably wouldn't know it now.

Belzer is an economist and private consultant who once worked for the government as an expert on the rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate. This is the same compound that leaked from a weapons facility in Henderson, Nevada, contaminating the waters of Lake Mead, which spills over the Hoover Dam and eventually flows from faucets in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix. In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency released a draft risk assessment that established a safety threshold of one part per billion for the chemical, which can cause thyroid dysfunction in newborns, among other deleterious effects. It would have cost the Pentagon billions to clean up the contamination, but before long, the EPA revised the safety limit to 29 parts per billion. In 2004 NRDC filed suit against the Pentagon and the White House under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking to expose any backroom dealings that might have led to the revised risk assessment. Among the documents uncovered in NRDC's investigation: receipts that prove Belzer was working for Lockheed Martin, a Pentagon contractor, at the same time he was supposed to be acting solely as an in-house White House contractor. A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled in September that any documents shared with Belzer, as well as documents about perchlorate's health effects, contamination of drinking water, and cleanup must be made public.