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Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Strip Club Stories Vary For Auditor

By Adam Rankin and Jeremy Pawloski
Journal Staff Writers
    Differing accounts have emerged about the activities of a Los Alamos National Laboratory whistle-blower before he was beaten outside a Santa Fe strip club early Sunday morning.
    A dancer at the topless bar Cheeks said Tuesday afternoon that Tommy Hook had received a lap dance inside the club earlier the night of the beating.
    But Bob Rothstein, attorney for the longtime LANL auditor, said a private investigator who talked to employees of Cheeks on Cerrillos Road was told that Hook didn't interact with any of the club's dancers.
    There was no improper behavior, no tips for dancers or anything like that, Rothstein said.
    Hook, who has filed for protection as a U.S. Department of Energy whistle-blower over alleged financial irregularities at the lab, told his wife from his Santa Fe hospital bed early Sunday morning that he was lured to Cheeks by a mysterious late-night call from someone who said they had information about fraud at the Los Alamos lab.
    Susan Hook said her husband waited at the club's bar for more than an hour for the caller to show, allegedly with information that would be useful for Hook's whistle-blower case and a pending retaliation lawsuit against the University of California, which runs LANL. Hook also was scheduled to talk to a congressional investigator this week.
    When the alleged caller didn't show after more than an hour, Hook made his way to his car parked near the exit at about the time the club closed at 2 a.m., Hook told his wife.
    Susan Hook and Rothstein said four to six men pulled Hook from his car before he could drive away, told him to keep his mouth shut and beat him to near unconsciousness.
    But according to a Cheeks dancer, Hook did more than just wait by the bar.
    "He did get a lap-dance from the waitress," Jeanette McCalip, a dancer who was working at Cheeks on Saturday night, said of the whistle-blower.
    McCalip said she saw Hook when she got off work Sunday lying beat up on the ground outside the club's door, surrounded by customers who were leaving. McCalip said she recognized Hook as the same man who got a lap-dance from a waitress inside the bar, because it is her standard practice to keep an eye on all the customers.
    Cheeks attorney Roger Percino said Tuesday that club owner Elmo Montoya spoke with McCalip and she related a similar story.
    But Rothstein said Hook is sticking by his account.
    Rothstein said a private investigator got an entirely different story when he interviewed several Cheeks employees.
    "We've had a private investigator who interviewed the manager, the bartender and two security guards," he said. "All four of them confirmed that Tommy sat at the bar, he was drinking light beer, didn't have any interactions with the girls who were dancing there."
    "That is what they told our investigator before things changed," he said, referring the reports of a lap dance for Hook.
    All four employees interviewed by the investigator also said they didn't see anything that happened in the parking lot, Rothstein said.
    Montoya, the club owner, said Tuesday that law enforcement officers instructed him to not speak about the incident, but he did say Hook probably wouldn't have lived if it weren't for a Cheeks security guard who helped disrupt the fight.
    "My security employee did save the guy's life," he said.
    Montoya said a doorman near the club's side door, behind the bar, heard a commotion in the parking lot outside. Rothstein said it was the doorman who called the police.
    Other questions about Hook's story have started to circulate.
    Rothstein said he had heard allegations that Hook's beating was over a simple altercation in the parking lot between Hook and another customer and that possibly Hook backed his car into someone, precipitating the fight.
    Rothstein said that story has not been confirmed and that when Hook's LANL co-worker and friend Chuck Montaño retrieved Hook's car from the Cheeks parking lot, it was parked in a space beside the club.
    Rothstein said he also was told that when emergency medical technicians arrived to care for Hook, Hook's car was still running but couldn't say whether it was in a parking space.
    Hook was discharged from St. Vincent Regional Medical Center Tuesday evening, a hospital spokesman said.
    Hook and Montaño sued LANL, UC and several top lab officials in March for allegedly retaliating against the two for uncovering persistent financial problems that officials say have been fixed.
    Montaño, who is also a DOE whistle-blower, said Hook's car showed no signs of damage when he retrieved it on Monday morning.
    "There is no evidence of any kind of dents or anything on his vehicle, there was nothing to indicate that he backed up into anybody," he said.
    A CBS news report quoted unnamed law enforcement officials as saying Hook's version of the incident appears to have some inconsistencies.
    Rothstein said these anonymous leaks are upsetting to Hook:
    "He is pretty upset with the idea that information gets leaked selectively by law enforcement officials, and is not surprised that Cheeks would circle the wagons and put the blame on the victim."
    Susan Hook said on Monday that she and her husband do not frequent bars and that he probably didn't even know that Cheeks was a strip club.
    She said her husband probably would have made the 50-minute drive to Cheeks from their Los Alamos home late Saturday night just to meet the caller who asked for the late-night meeting in an effort to get information that might be important for his case.
    Hook was scheduled to meet with an investigator with the House Energy and Commerce Committee today in preparation for an as-yet-unscheduled congressional hearing on whistle-blower treatment at Los Alamos.
    Hook's wife said the hearing had been tentatively scheduled for June but had to be rescheduled because it interfered with their plans for a 30th wedding anniversary trip to Hawaii, which had to be canceled because of Hook's beating. The hearing has not been rescheduled.
    Montaño said he met with the congressional investigator Tuesday afternoon. Rothstein said the investigator was trying to schedule a time to interview Hook later in the week.