The Los Alamos whistleblower story has gone national, with the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the AP all picking up the tale of Tommy Hook's assault. All the accounts are painful to read. But the most heart-breaking moment in the coverage comes at the end of this Santa Fe New Mexican piece.
Susan Hook cried as photographs of her disfigured husband were shown to news reporters. She said today is their 30th wedding anniversary. She said she had to cancel a Hawaiian cruise they had planned to take. When a reporter asked whether her husband could be lying, she said he was not the type to go to bars. "We just aren't dancers or bar people," she said. "And he'd been in bed."
He usually accompanied her to Albuquerque, but he was too tired and overwhelmed with the upcoming hearing, she said. He suffers from a heart condition, and he is recovering from a stroke and shoulder surgery. He had been back to work just three weeks. When she talked to him on the phone after 10 p.m. Saturday, he told her he had a last-minute meeting with the auditor at a bar... "I've known Tommy for many years, and this is not in character with him to be going to bars," [Hook's partner Chuck] Montano added. "He's been my boss, and we've never even had a drink together."
Ian Hoffman, the dean of the nuclear lab reporters, has a good round-up, too, noting that the local and federal authorities seem to be taking the case very seriously. "FBI agents are investigating the beating as a civil-rights violation, but impeding a congressional investigation also is a federal felony," he writes.
