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Thursday, April 24, 2008

Lab Whistle-Blower Wasn't Out Fishing

By Joline Gutierrez Krueger
Copyright © 2008 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer
    Los Alamos National Laboratory whistle-blower Tommy Hook's divorce began messy, with his wife alleging that he was spending large chunks of the couple's cash on numerous trips to casinos and "gentlemen's clubs."
    Not such a big deal, his attorney says.
    "I imagine a lot of men when they are no longer married look for things to do," said Hook's divorce attorney, Bradford Zeikus. "Some men go fishing. Others go, ah, elsewhere."
    But it was another visit to a strip club nearly three years ago that brought Hook, 55, national notoriety, not to mention a herniated disk, concussion, broken jaw, broken teeth and enough cuts and bruises to render his face into unrecognizable pulp.
    At the time, both Hook and his wife, Susan, intimated that going to strip clubs and casinos was not a regular pastime.
    But late on that June 2005 night while his wife was out of town, Hook said he was lured to Cheeks on Cerrillos Road to meet with an anonymous caller who claimed to have information on LANL.
    No one showed.
    Hook, who had been scheduled to meet with a congressional investigator days later, said he was attacked outside the club at closing time and told by his attackers to keep his mouth shut— a threat he said had to do with his whistle-blower efforts at LANL.
    The attack was covered by CBS, CNN and other national and local media and bloggers.
    Investigations by Santa Fe police and the FBI concluded, however, that Hook's attack had nothing to do with LANL but was a typical boozy bar brawl at closing time, this one prompted by Hook's backing into a pedestrian in the parking lot and becoming belligerent.
    Two men— Joseph Sandoval, 26, and Zeke Nevarez, 29— accepted plea agreements in the attack last May and were sentenced to probation. Both were also ordered to pay restitution to Hook, according to court records.
    Hook also denied paying for a $50 lap dance or telling anybody that he had won $500 from a casino, contrary to what witnesses at Cheeks told police.
    The LANL connection slowly drifted away, save for comments in the blogosphere and by Hook and his wife, until last summer when a prosecutor in the case told reporters about a previous altercation that June 2005 night in which Hook was hit on the back of his head and warned to keep his mouth shut.
    Investigators said Hook had never mentioned being attacked twice, and no other charges were filed in the case.
    Zeikus said the allegations reported in the couple's divorce papers filed in January are no reflection on what may or may not have happened that night.
    He also called the allegations "blown out of proportion" during the initial storm of the divorce. He would neither confirm nor deny their accuracy.
    "That was her allegation," Zeikus said. "There's no finding. There's no judgment. There's no anything."
    But Zeikus acknowledged that since the beating at Cheeks, his client has suffered ongoing mental problems and has been under regular treatment by a psychiatrist.
    According to the divorce papers, Susan Hook became concerned that her husband had "engaged in activities that will severely damage or threaten the parties' financial future" by violating a temporary domestic order that prohibited him from incurring unreasonable or unnecessary debts.
    She noted in the documents that large sums of money had been spent in December 2007 at Sandia Casino and that numerous charges were incurred at "gentlemen's clubs" in Albuquerque, including a huge tab that Christmas Eve.
    Hook, the documents say, also spent large amounts of money on trips to Las Vegas, Nev. He also charged two plane tickets, rental car and hotel and game tickets in January for himself and a "female companion" to attend a Dallas Cowboys game, the documents state.
    Susan Hook said her husband had also purchased another Cowboys ticket, which arrived by express mail to their home but was never used, according to the divorce papers.
    Her attorney, Mickey Barnett, could not specify how much Tommy Hook was alleged to have spent on his strip club spree but said it was in the "hundreds of dollars."
    "It might have been a thousand," Barnett said. "But during a divorce if you spend beyond an $8 lunch, it could be seen as a waste of community property."
    Both attorneys said the parties met April 9 and resolved most of their differences. Both said they expect the divorce proceedings to be concluded amicably within the next 10 days.
    Tommy Hook, whose divorce papers state is now living in Southwest Albuquerque, could not be located for comment.
    Meanwhile, a federal lawsuit filed three years ago by Tommy Hook and fellow former LANL internal auditor Charles Montaño lumbers on.
    Last month, U.S. District Judge Judith Herrera ordered Hook and Montaño to pay $3,037.79 in court costs to a defendant who was granted summary judgments in her favor.
    The lawsuit alleges that the University of California, which operates LANL under a contract with the Department of Energy, retaliated against the men for speaking up about what they said were the lab's financial and procurement problems.
    Hook was granted disability retirement in August 2005, two months after the beating, according to court documents.