Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
NARRATOR: There is a hidden side of America,
secret, mysterious, forbidden, where nothing is what it seems.
JFK.
MAN: Something is terribly wrong. There has been a shooting.
NARRATOR: 50 years later,
there are new questions that need to be answered...
18 witnesses died mysteriously.
NARRATOR: ...and a new witness who's never been interviewed.
STYLES BUTLER: While I was in the stairwell,
I did not see Lee Harvey Oswald at all.
MAN: Roll the car.
...investigated like never before.
[ Gunshot ]
BAKER: If I was the second gunman,
I would have already had an exit strategy.
NARRATOR: Why does the government ban
cellphones, radios, and wireless electronics
in this town...
Look at my phone. There's nothing. Can you see that?
NARRATOR: ...and track down every illegal signal?
We've caught Wi-Fi, electric blankets.
NARRATOR: What are they trying to protect?
Do you guys use any of these telescopes to spy?
Why is this complex called the most dangerous place in America?
All the radioactivity is inside of it.
Tons of radioactive waste buried a half-mile underground.
But is the waste inside each container a ticking time bomb?
That material is gonna get out, and it's gonna poison somebody.
NARRATOR: It's time to look
behind the secrets, mysteries, and conspiracies.
This is "America Declassified."
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
Dallas, Texas.
America's ninth-largest city.
Home to more than 1.2 million people.
But it's infamous for a few city blocks
where America's innocence was destroyed
and its destiny changed forever.
It's a story we know all too well.
MAN: Apparently, something is wrong here.
Something is terribly wrong.
NARRATOR: Dealey Plaza.
Several police officers racing up the hill.
The Texas School Book Depository.
Something has happened in the motorcade route.
The grassy knoll.
There are numerous people running up the hill...
...alongside Elm Street.
Dallas is where President John F. Kennedy
was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
50 years later,
conspiracy theories still abound.
90% of the people in the United States
believe President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy.
The other 10% work for the media or the government.
NARRATOR: The Warren Commission Report
is the government's official version of events.
After a 10-month investigation,
the commission found that Lee Harvey Oswald alone
fired three shots at President Kennedy
from this building.
Mike Baker is an ex-CIA operative
trained in sniper techniques.
He's in Dallas to investigate the assassination
based on his personal experience.
He'll stage a test that's never been done,
one that sheds new light on the theory of a second gunman.
He'll also look at the official scenario.
Well, this is it.
This is the Texas School Book Depository.
As the story goes, Lee Harvey Oswald
was positioned right up there on the sixth floor,
in that end window.
Stationed up there, he fired three shots on the motorcade
as the motorcade passed right by here.
NARRATOR: The Warren Commission Report says Oswald acted alone.
Oswald insisted he was innocent
but never got the chance to reveal what he knew.
He was killed by a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby
just two days after Kennedy was assassinated
Lee Oswald has been shot.
Today, many believe Oswald was not the only gunman.
Some say he didn't fire a single shot.
A plaque on the Texas School Book Depository
even allows for doubt about Oswald's guilt.
Look at this.
"On November 22, 1963,
the building gained national notoriety
when Lee Harvey Oswald" -- and look at this --
"allegedly shot and killed President John F. Kennedy
from a sixth-floor window
as the presidential motorcade passed the site."
How interesting is that?
I mean, the use of the word "allegedly"
in this plaque, on this building.
NARRATOR: The most widely-held conspiracy theory
centers around the belief
that a second sniper fired from this area --
a sloping hill just a few feet from the motorcade
known as the grassy knoll.
BELZER: The grassy knoll is important
because, as they say, the kill shot was here.
And, of course, that means a second gunman,
a second gunman means conspiracy,
and conspiracy means we have yet to be told
the full truth of the assassination.
NARRATOR: The Warren Report concluded that Oswald fired a bolt-action rifle
and within roughly five to seven seconds
got off three shots.
Oswald was a mediocre shot according to a marine buddy,
perhaps incapable of the deadly-accurate rapid-fire
needed to carry out the attack.
Mike will examine both locations.
He wants to see how likely a kill shot could be landed
from either spot.
The sixth floor of the Book Depository
is now a museum dedicated to the JFK assassination.
The seventh floor is almost unchanged since 1963.
This is a special visit.
I've been given access to the seventh floor
of the School Book Depository building.
Basically, I am one floor above where Lee Harvey Oswald
was positioned that fateful day to take his three shots.
And there it is.
This is essentially the vantage point for Oswald
that day.
You've got clear point as the motorcade rolls through.
You acquire the target.
Bam, bam, bam.
The distance is not a problem.
The wind condition's not a problem.
Visibility certainly not. Speed of target not a problem.
And Lee Harvey Oswald worked here at the Book Depository,
so he had an opportunity to actually recon his position,
and that is a huge advantage for somebody in that situation.
NARRATOR: Shortly after the assassination, authorities recovered
an Italian-made, 6.5-millimeter bolt-action rifle
on the sixth floor.
One persistent question is whether Oswald fired it.
Some believe in an alternative theory.
When President Kennedy was shot,
Lee Harvey Oswald was not on the sixth floor
of the School Book Depository.
NARRATOR: The evidence --
President Kennedy was shot at 12:30 P.M.
Just two minutes later, a Dallas police officer
saw Oswald in a second-floor lunchroom,
calmly drinking a soft drink.
If Oswald was the assassin,
he had to be racing down from the sixth floor
on the building's only staircase between 12:30 and 12:32.
It turns out that two eyewitnesses
were actually on the stairs
when Oswald was supposedly there.
Sandra Styles was working
on the fourth floor of the Book Depository
on the day of the assassination.
This is her first televised interview.
Sandra watched the president's motorcade
approach the Book Depository from her office window.
The motorcade turned left onto Elm Street,
and as it got just past the turn,
we heard the three shots.
The presidential car stopped.
We could see Mrs. Kennedy's hot-pink suit moving around,
and that was about all that we could see.
My coworker Vicki Adams said,
"Let's go down and see what's happening."
NARRATOR: That could have put Sandra and Vicki
in the stairwell at the same time
Lee Harvey Oswald should have been racing down the stairs.
While I was in the stairwell,
I did not see Lee Harvey Oswald at all.
NARRATOR: Sandra's coworker Vicki Adams didn't see Oswald either.
Vicki told her story to the Warren Commission in 1964.
Then, she disappeared.
Author Barry Ernest spent 35 years tracking her down.
When I located her, Vicki told me she feared for her life
because her account
seriously undermined the commission's conclusion
that Oswald had fired from the sixth floor.
NARRATOR: Whether it was Oswald or someone else
who fired shots from the sixth floor is open for debate.
One of the few undisputed facts
is where Kennedy was when he was shot.
Right here, where this "X" is,
marks the approximate spot where the first shot hit Kennedy,
fired from up there,
where supposedly Lee Harvey Oswald was positioned,
on the sixth floor at that end window,
about 175 feet to this shot.
Then two more shots fired, the last one being the fatal shot,
which was about 265 feet away from that window.
NARRATOR: We know where the bullets landed.
The question is whether the fatal shot was fired
from the Book Depository or the grassy knoll.
According to the films taken at the time,
after the shots rang out,
the majority of people in Dealey Plaza
rushed not towards the Texas School Book Depository,
but towards the grassy knoll.
NARRATOR: The wooden fence on the grassy knoll
is clearly visible
from this unassuming two-story building --
a railroad switching tower.
The tower and its unique vantage point
can be seen in aerial photos of Dealey Plaza.
A railroad switchman named Lee Bowers
was working in this tower at the time of the assassination.
He might have seen something from here
he wasn't supposed to see.
Lee Bowers gave an on-camera interview in March 1966.
He recalled seeing two strangers behind the fence
on the grassy knoll.
Bowers claimed that at the time of the shots,
he saw either smoke or a flash of light.
Was it even possible for Bowers to see smoke or a muzzle flash
from inside the switching tower?
The building is closed to the public,
but Mike Baker has secured special access
so he and assassination researcher Jim Marrs
can put Bowers' stunning account to the test.
Jim, we're up here on the second floor
of the old railroad switching tower.
You can see some of the old gear is still here.
It's fantastic.
This is where Lee Bowers worked for years
and was working on the day of the 22nd of November 1963
as that motorcade passed by.
Now, tell me why Bowers' testimony is so important.
He was one of the only persons
who had a clear, unobstructed, bird's-eye view
of what was going on behind the picket fence.
From the switching tower,
Mike can see the fence some 300 feet away.
The fence has been replaced several times
since November of '63,
but its size and position is unchanged
since Bowers made his dramatic observation.
He mentioned that he could see at least two people
behind the picket fence at the time of the shooting.
Did he report anything else?
Did he see anything else that he disclosed?
He said that something unusual caught his eye --
a flash, a puff of smoke.
Here's what I want to do.
We're up here with that same vantage point
that Lee Bowers had as the motorcade went by.
I want to set up a test and see
if we can actually see a muzzle flash or a puff of smoke
from where we're standing.
Mike arranges for an experienced marksman with a rifle and scope
to set up behind the fence on the grassy knoll.
This test is a first.
In the 50 years since JFK was shot,
no one has ever attempted it.
The shooter has loaded his rifle with blanks.
He positions himself in the area
where Bowers saw mysterious strangers.
It's a very clear vantage point from here.
Tell me how this would have looked differently
back then, in '63.
Well, not much.
The only big difference is is now today it's paved.
As you can see, the road dips down
so you can't actually see the road,
so there's really nothing to look at except who's behind the fence line.
Who's behind the fence. All right.
Well, our shooter's in position. Let's see what we get.
Shooter, stand by.
In 3...2...1.
Fire.
NARRATOR: Former CIA officer Mike Baker
is in Dallas, Texas, investigating new leads
in a possible conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.
Did witness Lee Bowers glimpse a second gunman
firing a rifle from behind a fence on the grassy knoll?
I want to set up a test and see
if we can actually see a muzzle flash or a puff of smoke
from where we're standing.
This history-making test may prove the point.
Our shooter's in position. Let's see what we get.
Shooter, stand by.
In 3...2...1.
Fire.
[ Gunshot ]
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
No problem.
That's clear as day.
And that's what Lee Bowers reported seeing.
That tells us that Lee Bowers' testimony is entirely credible.
Ready in 3...
Mike repeats the test several times...
Fire.
...each time with the same results.
Mike has shown that smoke and muzzle flash
is visible from Bowers' vantage point.
He still needs to prove that a gunman can land a kill shot
from behind the grassy knoll fence.
Mike's training as a CIA officer
included learning sniper techniques.
He'll rely on that background to examine the grassy knoll theory.
This is perhaps the first time
anyone has actually tested the second-gunman theory
using a rifle and shooter behind the grassy knoll fence.
Is a kill shot even feasible from this position?
Mike has arranged for this limo to follow the president's route
and move at the same speed -- 11 miles per hour.
All right. I'm behind the fence here on the grassy knoll,
overlooking where the motorcade is going to pass by.
I've got good concealment.
It's not cover. It's concealment.
This is approximately where
Lee Bowers reported seeing two individuals.
I'm gonna see if I can get off a good-quality shot
as the motorcade passes by.
MAN #1: Roll the car.
MAN #2: Cameras rolling.
Motorcade approaching.
Acquire the target.
[ Gunshot ]
Distance not a problem.
Speed of the target not difficult.
And now my big issue is getting out of here.
I've got to get off the "X."
So theoretically, if I was the second gunman,
prior to getting up here,
I would have already had an exit strategy.
Well, I think we've broken new ground here.
To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever tested
to find out if Lee Bowers could have seen what he said he saw.
But we did.
This lends tremendous credibility
to the story of Lee Bowers
and to the idea of conspiracy
and a shot from the grassy knoll.
NARRATOR: Did Lee Bowers actually see something
from this railroad tower he wasn't supposed to see?
Six months after his interview,
Lee Bowers died in a suspicious one-car accident
in the town of Midlothian, Texas.
Some say it was no accident.
BAKER: What I want to do now is
get out to the crash site where Lee Bowers died.
And right along here,
you can see 67 itself is a large, multilane freeway
But next to it, there is a small, two-lane service road,
which may well have been the original 67.
But to be honest, in order to pinpoint the exact location,
I think I'm going to need to get some local expertise.
NARRATOR: Mike tracks down
an ex-SWAT team cop and veteran accident investigator
to determine if Bowers could have been murdered.
Identifying the location was a problem.
It took quite a bit of research, first of all,
to identify what was the original highway in 1966.
Looking at survey maps, state highway maps,
I was able to identify
that there is a section of the original highway 67
that still does exist.
Lee Bowers' accident was on the original Highway 67.
It's now a service road for the newer freeway next to it.
Bowers died when his car slammed into a concrete barrier.
Mr. Bowers coming southwest, coming down the roadway,
loses control.
The guardrails would not have been in place
to have prevented him from going off the road
or what they call a road departure type collision.
This is what he would have collided.
This right here? Okay.
And that's a pretty solid piece of concrete.
Yes, it is.
So, speed limit of 70 miles an hour.
Cars of that day coming in this direction,
hitting head-on into this,
you can see instantaneous death.
But why did Bowers suddenly go off the road?
BELZER: The cause of death --
wounds suffered in an automobile crash.
The official verdict -- accidental.
That's the official verdict.
NARRATOR: Some theorize Bowers suffered a sneezing fit
or heart attack
and lost control of the car.
But to many,
the accident looks suspiciously like a targeted killing,
a deliberate hit designed to silence a witness.
Lee Bowers was driving down the road,
and witnesses saw a black car,
you know, nudge him and kill him.
You know, and that's classic CIA *** manual.
NARRATOR: Was Lee Bowers singled out for elimination?
Mike Baker investigates the possibility
that a mysterious car
followed Bowers onto the isolated highway,
drove him off the road, and killed him.
NARRATOR: Lee Bowers died in a suspicious car accident
on a Texas highway outside of Dallas.
Was it a professional hit
intended to eliminate a key witness
to the assassination of President Kennedy?
Mike Baker is retracing the last stretch of Bowers' fatal ride.
Now, you remember,
we're traveling on a two-way, narrow freeway.
This thing has a 70 mile an hour speed limit.
Suddenly, you've got a second car, possibly,
according to this unidentified witness,
pulling up alongside.
And did that second car cause the accident...
...that killed Lee Bowers?
NARRATOR: This is Lee Bowers' death certificate.
Curiously, no accident report was ever filed,
and for reasons no one can explain,
no autopsy report was created, either.
Most suspicious, the body of Lee Bowers
was cremated within hours of his death.
Let's go back to that time, 1966.
Was cremation a common occurrence?
Very uncommon.
It was about 3% in 1960 compared to 40% in 2010.
Okay. And when was the body cremated?
Probably, in all likelihood, that evening,
because a funeral service was held the next day.
Which negates the possibility down the road
of exhuming the body
and actually getting a cause of death.
Yeah.
Lee Bowers is one of many witnesses
who seem to have met untimely deaths.
18 witnesses to the JFK assassination
died mysteriously within three years.
The odds of that happening are --
and this is the London Times' actuary's findings --
100,000 trillion to 1.
Coincidence or conspiracy?
My view is that if you look at the Warren Commission Report,
there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people
I would classify as key witnesses.
And over the course of years, people are going to die.
MAN: It appears as though something has happened
in the motorcade route.
NARRATOR: A half-century has passed
since President Kennedy was assassinated.
The debate over whether there was a conspiracy
has often eclipsed the tragedy itself.
The president was hit in the head.
A man died that day.
Our president was murdered.
Let's always remember
that he was murdered that day in broad daylight.
NARRATOR: Even today, it's impossible not to be haunted
by the tragic events of November 1963
while walking around Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
MAN: The president of the United States is dead.
NARRATOR: Meet Michael Stevens.
He's a science and technology expert,
and he's just crossed into the quiet zone.
Take a look at the radio.
I press "scan," and it just rolls and rolls and rolls.
There's nothing.
Look at my phone. No signal. There's nothing.
You see that?
I feel very off the grid.
It's a little exhilarating, though.
The experiment has begun,
and I don't know how this is gonna go.
NARRATOR: Michael is definitely off the grid.
He's deep into the lush Allegheny Mountain range
that spans parts of Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.
And within the range,
the federal government has set up a restricted area
that most Americans know nothing about.
Roughly 110 by 120 miles,
this isolated rectangle of land is under special restrictions.
It's known as the quiet zone.
BAMFORD: Nobody can have cellphones. Nobody can have radios.
It's very restrictive of what kind of electronics can be used
in that entire radio quiet zone.
NARRATOR: More than 20,000 residents live under this strict regiment.
Many towns and cities might face an outright rebellion
with such absolute controls,
but not here.
Even devices unrelated to communications,
such as toasters, electric blankets, or spark plugs
emit electromagnetic waves
and are restricted or banned.
Many of the devices Michael depends on are useless here.
All right, so, I have no service on my phone,
and sure enough, there's no Wi-Fi,
there's no Internet, so there's no Google Earth.
NARRATOR: Why is such technology treated like an enemy invasion,
and why is this place so different
than the rest of America?
For answers, Michael heads into the heart of the quiet zone,
the tiny town of Green Bank, West Virginia,
population 147.
This is where the quiet zone rules are the most severe.
This is our national quiet zone,
so we have no cell service, no Wi-Fi, nothing.
A high-tech surveillance van patrols the town,
ready to track down anyone using wireless electronics.
BAUSERMAN: We've caught Wi-Fi, electric blankets, dog clippers,
electric fences, and noisy power-pole insulators.
NARRATOR: Jonah Bauserman works as a frequency technician
for the Interference Protection Group.
He's one of two enforcers.
When they go off-duty, electronic monitors stand guard.
Jonah's daily mission --
to make certain the quiet zone stays silent.
STEVENS: Tell me about this equipment.
We've got just a receiver, regular receiver here,
and then the top piece of equipment
can actually show the direction
of the radio-frequency interference.
Well, you know what I'd like to do?
We're gonna set our audio guy somewhere in town,
broadcasting some interference.
We're gonna see if we can detect him and find him.
Jonah has no idea where in town the sound man is hiding.
I put this wireless transmitter on my shotgun microphone,
and the thing only has a range of like 500 feet,
so finding it seems pretty like a pretty long shot to me.
BAUSERMAN: I've set up my spectrum analyzer
to the frequency that I think he's at,
set up my Doppler system to give us a bearing
so we'll know which direction to drive.
NARRATOR: You would think it would be like
finding an electronic needle in a haystack.
STEVENS: So what's the first sign of radio interference?
What do you look for?
Any kind of a signal that would pop up.
Oh, look. There's one right there.
You think that's him?
Well, we should be able to look at our Doppler system here
and get a relative idea.
It tells us that we need to drive in this direction,
which is straight in front of us here pretty much.
Let's find this perpetrator.
I think they might have found us.
There he is. There's our audio guy.
We got him.
NARRATOR: The quiet zone maintains its silence
thanks to its frequency patrolmen.
But who benefits from such strict rules?
The answer towers over the whole town.
It's called the Green Bank Telescope,
and it's the largest fully steerable radio telescope
in the world.
STEVENS: Look at that.
It's huge!
This is where tourists usually get to see it from.
This is the observation deck.
But we have unprecedented access.
We're gonna get close.
NARRATOR: The Green Bank Radio Telescope
is part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
The observatory was among the primary reasons
the quiet zone was created.
It's one of few such places anywhere on the planet.
Most people think of telescopes
as seeing through lenses or mirrors,
but these are radio telescopes.
They listen for the electromagnetic signals
radiated by distant stars.
Anything close by that emits a competing frequency,
from wireless phones to electric blankets,
will interfere with these dim signals from deep space.
But what is so valuable about this information
that justifies the harsh limits of the quiet zone?
The only way to answer that question
is to go inside the highly-restricted area.
Mike Holstine, business manager at the observatory,
has granted us exclusive access.
HOLSTINE: Hello, Michael.
Thanks for meeting me.
I'm very good.
The problem is much of our camera gear is electronic...
Kind of like to look at the equipment that you're gonna bring in.
...technology our crew takes for granted is banned here.
Now, I've got a couple of wireless mikes here.
Okay. The wireless mikes we can't take in,
because they will definitely be a transmitter.
The closer you get to the telescope,
the more strict the rules become.
Even a car's spark plugs create too much radio interference.
We're having to switch to a diesel car
because our car has a spark plug.
This electromagnetic-radiation meter
tells us we are up at a pretty high range,
especially compared to the diesel car.
Let's go check that one out.
So over here, the electromagnetic-radiation meter
is only giving us about a one -- actually a little bit under one,
which means it's safe enough to drive up to the telescope.
So let's take it.
NARRATOR: Michael hopes to get close enough
to the mysterious telescope to at least touch it,
but he's in for a surprise.
NARRATOR: Science journalist Michael Stevens
has entered the quiet zone
in this 13,000-square-mile chunk of wilderness
straddling the Virginias.
The government has outlawed wireless communications
and electrical devices that emit electromagnetic signals.
Look at my phone. There's nothing. Can you see that?
NARRATOR: The reason --
this mysterious telescope that sends signals into deep space.
Look at that.
Michael wants to check out this colossal structure
and the smaller telescope surrounding it.
How close am I gonna be able to get today?
Well, we're actually gonna go on the telescope.
We're gonna go on it.
Hopefully you're not afraid of heights.
We will go up to about 450 feet above ground level.
The Green Bank Radio Telescope
is taller than the Statue of Liberty.
The entire steel and aluminum structure
weighs almost 17 million pounds,
and the reflecting area Michael is walking on spans 2.3 acres.
How big is that?
Most college-football stadiums could easily fit inside it.
HOLSTINE: When people think of an observatory,
they usually think it's on top of a mountain.
But if you notice, we're in a valley.
We're a bowl for radio telescopes.
These mountains provide protection
from various radio signals coming in from elsewhere.
Earth is a great insulator.
But key questions remain.
What kind of data is collected here,
who's collecting it, and what are they using it for?
So, Mike, in the age of spying,
a lot of people are talking about listening.
Do you guys use any of these telescopes to spy?
No, we don't.
All of these radio telescopes here
are solely dedicated to radio astronomy science.
Almost all of the data that comes out of these
is freely available to any scientist on the planet.
So what do these telescopes actually show us?
We're going inside the observatory
to see for ourselves.
So if you would, just please step over the threshold.
STEVENS: Why step over it?
This door is part of the electromagnetic shielding.
Electromagnetic waves can't enter this room,
STEVENS: Wow.
I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Karen O'Neil.
So, what are you guys looking for?
O'NEIL: Well, right now, we're using the telescope
to look at the universe to study the universe
to try to understand how the universe began
and, ultimately, how life began.
The telescope studies hydrogen gas
that dates back to the origin of the universe
during the so called Big ***
10 billion to 15 billion years ago.
What is so mind-blowing is that we know that that gas
is some of the very first hydrogen
that ever formed in our universe,
and we're watching it create stars and galaxies
just like it did when the universe began.
That's correct. So this is what we call the cosmic web.
It's that neutral hydrogen that was formed
back in the earliest days of the universe.
And what we can see now is some of it
is just now beginning to fall into galaxies to form stars.
This telescope is reaching galaxies
millions of light-years away
to answer some of humankind's most vexing questions
about our universe.
It's a big reward for a little peace and quiet.
On the other side of the country,
scientists face a more down-to-earth
and far more hazardous problem...
...the radioactive waste at Hanford, Washington.
Hanford's nuclear reactors made the plutonium
for some 60,000 atomic weapons,
a process that left behind dozens of tanks
full of highly-toxic liquid radioactive waste.
Decades later,
government officials are still stuck with it.
They've only been able to dispose of
the lowest-level waste,
and even that has touched off a raging controversy.
This is the epicenter of the heated debate --
the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP,
26 miles east of Carlsbad, New Mexico.
It's America's only permanent depository for nuclear waste.
The facility moves containers of irradiated materials
into a massive underground storage area,
where they're supposed to remain forever.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
is a very, very dangerous facility.
It is not gonna contain the nuclear waste
that's already been put into it.
That material is gonna get out,
and it's gonna poison somebody somewhere.
NARRATOR: Plutonium-239,
the type usually placed in nuclear weapons,
has a half-life of 24,000 years.
Can radioactive waste really be safely stored for millennia,
or will it slowly leak out and poison the New Mexico desert?
The disposal site is strictly off-limits to the public,
but its operators are eager to prove it's safe,
and they've given our investigator, Cara Santa Maria,
permission to enter this secure site.
But before her official visit,
Cara conducts a quick reconnaissance unsupervised.
SANTA MARIA: I really wanted to come out here in darkness,
when they weren't expecting me,
and kind of see what this facility is like.
NARRATOR: Cara's looking for after-hours deliveries
on the chance
authorities are secretly moving high-level nuclear waste
into the site.
But during her nighttime observation,
the only truck on the road speeds past the facility.
SANTA MARIA: This time of night, I mean, it's a ghost town.
There's no one there.
NARRATOR: Cara leaves the stakeout empty-handed,
but tomorrow, she's going inside.
NARRATOR: The emptiness of New Mexico's southern desert
is interrupted by a cluster of industrial buildings
26 miles east of Carlsbad.
This isolated site is the nation's
only permanent storage site for radioactive waste.
Some say it's the most dangerous place in America.
The heart of the facility is a cavernous burial vault
2,000 feet beneath the desert floor.
It will be the final resting place
for an estimated 200,000 tons of nuclear waste.
But only low-level radioactive discards can be buried here.
That means tools, rags, protective clothing,
and other items that touched plutonium,
not the highly radioactive material itself.
All that's still at Hanford and a few other such sites,
waiting for safe disposal in the future.
The government chose New Mexico as a disposal site
for low-level radioactive materials
because of its isolation and unique geology.
250 million years ago, this all was an inland sea.
It left a layer of salt 3,000 feet thick.
Now, far beneath the desert,
it's the largest salt deposit in the United States.
Scientists determined that the depth and stability of the salt
made it the safest place to bury the nuclear waste.
SANTA MARIA: I can see why they put it out here.
There's not a soul in sight.
This is a highly-restricted facility.
We weren't allowed to film the surveillance cameras
or other high-tech security features.
The roughly 600 employees passed a detailed background check
before they were hired.
They scan their I.D. cards every time they enter or leave.
Cara also had to pass a background check
before she was allowed on-site.
There you go.
First thing you need to do is put on this hard hat.
Roger Nelson is the chief scientist at the facility.
And when you're underground,
you want it to be on all the time.
He prepares Cara for the dangers she could encounter below.
This is a radiation monitor.
This measurement measures the amount
that's instantaneous or in real time.
I see. So I can use this
to look at radiation coming off of something.
This protects me.
This tells me what my reading is the whole time I'm underground.
Okay.
SANTA MARIA: I've never been in a mine before where there's no light
and there's no quick ways to get out,
so this should be interesting.
Here we go.
Ready for a five-minute trip down, you said.
Wow.
NARRATOR: Cara and Roger are dropping 400 feet per minute
through the Earth.
The five-minute ride takes Cara half a mile underground.
She'll be far from daylight and surrounded by nuclear waste.
Roger takes Cara down a mile-long corridor
that feeds eight storage chambers
cut directly into walls of salt.
Each chamber is 300 feet long, the size of a football field.
The chambers are 13 feet high and 33 feet across.
Anywhere from 300 to 500 containers
fit in a burial chamber.
Then, workers cut a new chamber into the salt.
Over time, the walls and ceilings of the disposal chambers
will collapse,
crushing the containers and freeing the waste.
The radioactivity will be contained by the salt
like a bug in amber --
at least that's the theory.
Before she proceeds, Cara must complete a final safety check.
Up ahead, she will face
a higher risk of radioactive contamination.
NARRATOR: Science writer Cara Santa Maria
is 2,000 feet below the New Mexico desert
in a vast burial vault for low-level radioactive waste.
Some call it the most dangerous place in America.
Roger Nelson, chief scientist at the facility,
is taking Cara into the storage area.
But to avoid contamination from radioactive particles,
she has to follow some strict safety procedures.
So, here I would like you to stop
and take anything out of your purse,
any gum or cosmetics you might carry in there,
that you would inadvertently put in your mouth.
We don't want to have anybody forget.
Bottles of water, anything that I can go into, ingest.
Okay. Can do.
Get that out of your purse. Put it here.
It's a simple precaution,
but it will prevent Cara from accidentally consuming
dangerous radioactive particles.
SANTA MARIA: Now we're really deep into the mine.
We're headed almost to where the waste is disposed of currently.
NARRATOR: Airborne radioactive particles
are the biggest threat down here.
Breathing them is a possible death sentence.
To prevent particles from escaping,
containers are never opened at the facility.
A steady stream of sealed containers
arrives in the underground.
Random containers are X-rayed before burial
to confirm they contain low-level waste.
This drum holds an inverted spray can,
some tubing and wire, a light bulb,
and a beaker lying on its side containing a scraper --
everyday equipment tainted by radiation.
PYLE: They like to act like they know exactly what it is,
but in point of fact,
records were kept very poorly during the Cold War frenzy
to build so many bombs,
so we don't always know what's in the waste
and how it's gonna interact with the next barrel over.
NARRATOR: Whether or not their complete contents are known,
new containers arrive every day.
It doesn't seem to bother the truckers bringing it in.
WORDEN: I think I'm doing a good job
as far as cleaning up the environment,
so when my grandkids and their kids and that grow up,
it'll be a whole lot cleaner and a whole lot safer
for them to be dealing with it.
Almost every person who is a proponent of this facility
is a proponent because they profit from it financially.
NARRATOR: As of May 2013,
the New Mexico facility was about half-full.
Cara, you still seem a little worried or hesitant
Yeah.
There are radioactive materials inside.
So you're saying the container itself is not radioactive.
All the radioactivity is inside of it.
Contained inside.
Just to show you, let me put this gamma meter up here.
You can see it reads absolute zero.
And I just want to make sure -- It's on.
Zero.
And you're right up against it.
The facility will be filled to capacity by 2034.
When that happens, workers will turn off the lights,
close the doors, and leave the waste for eternity.
PYLE: I think that it's a very poor idea,
a very poor design to create a waste-disposal site
that is supposed to collapse in on itself,
making the nuclear waste
and the chemical things that are mixed in with it
irretrievable and invisible.
NELSON: This is a remnant of the Cold War.
We're putting it away, getting it out of the biosphere forever,
and the Russians are doing the same.
And that's a good feeling.
NARRATOR: But not everyone's feeling uplifted.
The arrival of super-toxic, high-level radioactive waste
from Hanford
is viewed as an imminent threat.
PYLE: The high-level waste is really nasty stuff.
It's also mixed with a lot of incredibly toxic chemicals.
This facility was never designed to contain it
and doesn't have a prayer of holding it safely.
That's a different kind of waste not allowed at WIPP.
It's prohibited specifically with the agreement
between the state of New Mexico and the federal government.
NARRATOR: But despite these earlier agreements,
federal officials are now pushing to rewrite the rules.
In March 2013,
the Department of Energy revealed its new plan.
It will certify Hanford's high-level tank waste,
currently banned from the New Mexico facility,
as acceptable for disposal there.
PYLE: I am here as a witness
to say this is a wrong thing to do
and there's a lot of other people
that feel exactly the same way I do.
We are not gonna sit back and let this happen without a fight.
NARRATOR: But for now, the low-level waste keeps coming,
five truckloads a day, like clockwork.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
will likely continue to be controversial,
perhaps for the next 10,000 years,
as it tries to hold America's radioactive waste safely.