Mystery of the nuclear whistleblower

A vicious assault on an ex-employee of the Los Alamos weapons lab is the latest in a series of unsolved incidents

Mark Townsend in New York
Sunday June 12, 2005
The Observer

It had been the worst of blind dates; the no-show. Eventually, just before 2am, Tommy Hook conceded defeat and slunk away from the gaudy strip bar. As he traipsed across the neon-bathed parking lot of Cheeks nightclub, he would have wondered what became of his non-committal partner.

Hours earlier Hook, 52, had received a call from a fellow employee at the Los Alamos National Laboratory imploring him to head to the Santa Fe nightspot and hover by the bar. An excited, hushed voice had promised to corroborate Hook's explosive findings into massive financial irregularities at the birthplace of the nuclear bomb and proposed site for the Bush administration's new generation of atomic weapons.