William E. Smith Interview, 11 July 2001(a)

WS

Somebody did. I was on scene, I was still on duty the next day.

JK

Right.

WS

And I'm not sure, I can't remember. I think it was a maintenance lieutenant or something of that nature came and was doing the investigation, so I went out as well to let them know that this is strange because we had never in my experience there found a gate wide open -- with those locks that we had. It was, you know, unless you had a key—or unless you broke the lock. The lock was not broken. The gate was open. And we just knew we had somebody on that site with all the weird things going on.

JK

Right. You know, the timing of that is very suggestive because it was right in the middle of when things were going on.

WS

Right, right. And so we did that—go through the process of investigating the site and all the other things were locked and buttoned down, but that gate being open, we were not happy with that. As a matter of fact, I think that's why they sent somebody out, since we did find that strange situation like that, and they did find radiation on part of the site that was away from the missile —on the parking area. Typically, you had the missile and you had a service area, which was right next to it. Most of the time that's where we got into, legally, we had keys to that and opened up that thing and get down inside and check it out.

JK

Right, the support equipment.

WS

Yes. When I was working as an inspector, I used to hide down there from the guys and scare the doo-doo out of them under the subfloor and things like that. Well, we went through that whole process, and I was with my crew when they did that, I sort of as supervisor decided that I needed to go out there and find out what's going on. I stayed with the crew, which I didn't have to, as being in charge of the security of the site. Anyway, and so that's how I knew what went on. When the lieutenant was out there, they did find a circular ring of low-grade radiation, and he called it low-grade such that it would not be enough to contaminate people, but it was nonetheless a circular pattern of radiation. That freaked us out. I am telling you, right then I said, "Oh, shucks." He was serious about that, and I was, you know, I was there and saw where he had seen this pattern, and I said, "Now, what could that be?" Now, I wanted to go back and mention something else to you as well.

JK

Sure, sure.

WS

I don't know which of the sites made the alarm initially. I know that we had been watching these lights at Oscar for a couple of days before we said anything. They had been moving back and forth. So we were sitting at the desk, and we usually shut the lights out at night and, you know, about 9:00 or so, after it got dark, we'd see these lights, and I kept wondering, I said, Why is it that these lights are doing this? Number one, why would we have helicopters out that late at night? Because the reason I

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