Statement by the founder: About NuclearCrimes.org

My name is Andrew Kishner and in a nutshell I'm a thirtysomething American 'armchair warrior'-turned-activist. The transition happened in Kanab, Utah, in April 2006 when I first learned on the evening news about the controversy surrounding 'Divine Strake,' which was to be an unusually large conventional bomb explosion on the Department of Energy's Nevada Test Site.  Like most people who did not grow up in the American West, I had no clue about this place, the Nevada Test Site. I quickly realized that learning about it was no easy task.  But time was of the essence: in a matter of weeks the Pentagon-sponsored 700-ton chemical explosive experiment they were calling 'Divine Strake' and planning for June 2, 2006, would be spewing radioactive soils from the test site into a mushroom cloud that would float downwind to Kanab and her neighbors in Utah.   Fear was in the air.  Many people had questions.  And many questions had no answers.

Although reluctant to share my views at first, I eventually decided to place all of my research on these issues (Nevada Test Site, bunker busters, past contamination, etc..) on www.StopDivineStrake.com. In addition to 'webmastering' the only internet site dedicated to the topic of Divine Strake, I worked alongside grassroots groups and nonprofits in the Stop Divine Strake Coalition.  In the end, thanks to the efforts of many, especially the citizens of Utah and veteran Salt Lake City television anchor Terry Wood, that frightful saga in American history came to a somewhat pleasant ending: the Pentagon appeased Utah's voluminous public outcry against Divine Strake in a February 2007 press release that nearly everyone took to mean 'They cancelled Divine Strake.'  

Having traveled to and even (for a short time) studied in shady parts of the globe where low- and high-level deception in government and business were less concealed and more obvious than in the United States, I was accustomed to 'not buying' the absolute assurances of those in authority and it was 'easier' for me to 'disbelieve in' other DOE or Pentagon assurances.  I felt that the Pentagon's cryptic press release in 2007 kept the door open for them to conduct Divine Strake (albeit a smaller test) outside of public view and knowledge (learn more about baby Divine Strakes planned for the test site here).  I also felt that the downwind public wasn't "in the clear" from other fallout-related issues stemming from high-level deception in the Department of Energy and the actions of her predecessor organizations, including the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.

I was thoroughly hooked, and in 2007 I set up Idealist.ws as a website to initially host my investigative reporting on a DOE radiation monitoring coverup during a 2007 Utah wildfire and also to address the 1996 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Nevada Test Site, which is a NEPA (National Environmental Protection Act) document that is the best place to focus efforts on nipping future Divine Strakes in the bud.  Years and about two dozen research 'investigations' later, in the summer of 2011, Idealist.ws became NuclearCrimes.org but the transition was marked by more than just a name change...and in January 2012, I began the slow process of turning the site into a book (free, online)!