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Karl Grossman (left) sharing
Space Command Vision for 2020 with a journalist during Global Network
protest at the Treasury Department in Washington DC. Grossman has
been the leading journalist on the nukes in space story since the late
1980's. He just had a flurry of stories about the
Mars rover
Curiosity being powered by nuclear devices. Karl was recently
honored by Networking Magazine with the following story about his long
time efforts against nuclear power.
It was a perfectly sublime Saturday evening in the Hamptons — with
flowers blooming and restaurants hopping, yet it was a bookstore in Sag
Harbor that saw the most action — with a standing-room only crowd
gathered inside, pressing their way toward the podium to hear what a
journalist had to say. It was no ordinary journalist, of course. It was
one of the last surviving, vigilant watchdog journalists Karl Grossman,
speaking about his 50 year career as an investigative reporter, at the
very popular Canio’s bookstore in Sag Harbor.
For years, Grossman has developed a following through his interviews,
his columns in Long Island newspapers, his “enviro-exposes,” his
documentaries that spotlight environmental toxins, and his books such as
Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power (1980);
The Poison Conspiracy (1982); Nicaragua: America’s New Vietnam? (1984);
Power Crazy:Is LILCO Turning Shoreham Into America’s Chernobyl? (1986);
The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet (1997)
and Weapons in Space (2001). His television program Enviro Close-Up is
in 200 countries, and he’s written and narrated TV documentaries for
EnviroVideo.
Few have taken their Journalism responsibilities as seriously as
Grossman. At one point, seven to 11 nuclear power plants were planned
for Long Island, and, after researching the dire health effects linked
to radiation, Grossman wrote articles and the book that opened a
dialogue regarding the dangers of having a nuclear backyard. “The very
exposure was enough to solve the problem,” said Grossman.
Former Governor Mario Cuomo eventually stood against creating such an
environment.
Horror Stories
Now the journalist is concerned with the radiation leakage from the
Japanese nuclear meltdown and what he calls the “coverup of Fukushima:”
His physician sources tell him 1 million people will die of radiation
poisoning resulting from the malfunction of the Fukushima Daiichi
Nuclear Power Station, yet pro-nuclear groups claim there will be no
public ill-effects. The situation mimics the information gathered in his
first book, Cover Up: What You are Not Supposed to Know about Nuclear
Power (available for a free download
here)
“I did a new preface right after Fukushima,” said Grossman, reading from
the book.“I started off (the preface) we’ve not been informed about
nuclear power. We’ve not been told and that is done on purpose. Keeping
the public in the dark was deemed necessary by the promoters of nuclear
power.”
During the
interview with Networking®, Grossman sat in his home in Sag Harbor,
surrounded by stacks of meticulous overstuffed paper files. He has a
mine of information that often predates the Internet — spanning decades,
from deep research he has done and special reports he has obtained from
years of cultivating sources on the inside. Public advocates and
warriors for the environment often get a bad rap for going off half
cocked, but as Grossman cited information and discussed topics, he
repeatedly fished out news clippings and government documents to back up
his words until, what amassed, was a credible unstated creed: it is a
journalist’s job to expose corruption in order to keep the public safe…
and if corruption runs wild, the public needs to be warned.
“What you do, when you do this kind of work, is you look for the horror
story,” said Grossman. His horror stories have investigated toxic
pesticides, the
hazards of fueling space probes with nuclear energy, and cancer
clusters created by nuclear power.
From CopyBoy to International Resource
He began his journalist days as a copyboy, answering phones, and passing
on the horror stories to the investigative journalist at his newspaper.
Now he receives hundreds of emails each day from insiders within his
networks, alerting him to environmental and nuclear news. The hardest
part of the job is backing up what they’re saying with documentation.
Yet he does. Even if it takes thousands of phone calls and hundreds of
Freedom of Information requests.
“The power of the press is enormous and you only want to use it when you
are absolutely certain you’ve got a case together,” he said.
In fact, he may be one of the few people in the world who has documents
about things such as the potential consequences of accidents with
plutonium fueled space probes, that he says could potentially shower
deadly radiation over the earth. He has put this inside knowledge and
documentation onto slides, and lectured internationally through the
Macrae Speakers and Entertainment agency (www.macraespeakers.com).
Grossman’s first nuclear documentary, created while he was working as a
journalist for Channel 21, was a calm review of nuclear power — through
what he called journalistic “ping pong” — he interviewed sources on both
sides of the argument for and against nuclear power. He said he was
calmly told by industry experts that nuclear accidents only happened
once in a few hundred years. But when Three Mile Harbor nuclear power
plant malfunctioned and spewed toxins onto Pennsylvania and upstate New
York in 1979, he realized he was witnessing the type of catastrophe he
was told was nearly impossible. He felt he had been “bamboozled” by
people with pro-nuclear interests.
He dug deeper. This time, he created the award-winning documentary,
Three Mile Island Revisited, (able to be seen
here), containing interviews with residents near the power plant who
suffered a “600-fold increase” in cancer after the toxins were released
into their neighborhood, according to the documentary. It showed a
two-headed calf, soaring infant death rates and had interviews with
experts such as Dr. Jay Gould who measured about a million excess deaths
in relation to the toxic cloud that spread between Pennsylvania and
upstate New York, and others who talked about the radiation nuclear
plants routinely released. The documentary won the Worldfest Silver
Award, Houston International Film Festival; the Director’s Citation,
Black Maria Video and Film Festival and was chosen for screening at the
1993 Earth Peace International Film Festival.
Yet as Grossman researched, he said he found that nuclear power plants
have the potential to do much more than melt down. If one of the control
rods fails, nuclear plants have the potential to explode within a
second, he said. The explosion, called a “nuclear runaway” or “power
excursion” or “reactivity accident,” creates a toxic cloud and leaves no
time for a massive evacuation. It has already occurred at Chernobyl, and
a military reactor SR1 in Idaho, said Grossman, while pointing to a
photograph of the explosion in his book.
“Edward Teller (a respected nuclear physicist) declared that because of
the dangers of the nuclear runaway you should only build nuclear power
plants deep underground. But that would be so expensive it wouldn’t be
cost effective.”
Today, Grossman says the horror story of the radiation leaked from
Japan’s nuclear meltdown at Fukushima is beginning to showing up in
infant mortality rates in the U.S. as well as Japan, in places that held
the first radioactive rainfalls, since fetal cells divide more rapidly.
He said he wishes the topic were covered more by the mainstream media.
“This stuff streaming from radiation is getting into the marine (food)
chain,” he said.
Trying to warn the public, he’s written articles in the New York Times,
national magazines and various other newspapers and websites on the
topic. His Op-Eds lambaste the nuclear regulators for approving more
power plants to be built in Georgia, and “extending the operating
licenses of most of the 104 existing plants from 40 to 60 years—although
they were only designed to run for 40 years. That’s because
radioactivity embrittles their metal components and degrades other parts
after 40 years making the plants unsafe to operate. And the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) is now considering extending their licenses
for 80 years,” he wrote.
Posterity
Grossman now favors the instantaneous publishing convenience of the
Internet a true advantage over the year -long process of book writing,
and calls this the “golden age of investigative reporting.” Southampton
Press and Shelter Island Reporter have carried his weekly columns for
years.
His work perpetuates through his army of students. A full professor at
State University of New York College at Old Westbury, he’s taught modern
day Investigative Journalism for 30 years, encouraging his students to
live up to their responsibility of becoming truth seekers for public
good.
Said a former student, journalist and editor Annette Hinkle, “What I
really remember about Karl as a teacher was that he saw those who took
his class, not as students, but as fellow journalists. He shared his
passion for asking hard questions and did not accept pat answers. From
Freedom of Information laws to finding sources on the inside, he
challenged his students to dig deeper when something piqued their
interest or didn’t seem right.“
Grossman’s influence still inspires her. “Sending writers out to uncover
information that the public has the right to know is a big part of what
we do at weekly community newspapers. It’s a basic right for journalists
and Karl has long made it his job to impress that fact upon his
students,” said Hinkle.
Grossman’s awards for investigative reporting include the George Polk,
Generoso Pope, James Aronson and John Peter Zenger Awards, the New York
Press Association, Press Club of Long Island, Society of Professional
Journalists, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Citizens Campaign
for the Environment, New York Civil Liberties Union, Long Island
Coalition for Fair Broadcasting, Citizens Energy Council and Friends of
the Earth.
“Across his more than four decades of investigative work, Karl has made
his mark by examining both the heavily cited and, perhaps most
importantly, frequently not cited pros and cons of policy and debate as
they relate to the environment, sustainability, and energy issues.
Equally if not more important is his continuous call for accountability
at every level of our society on these issues. He has paired this
pursuit with a level of excellence in the classroom that prepares young
journalists not only to report on the news of today but to seek out the
impacts such news will have on our tomorrows.”
- Calvin O. Butts, III, president, SUNY College at Old Westbury
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