Next month will mark the 40th anniversary of health and safety activist Karen Silkwood's highly suspicious death in a car accident as she was going to meet journalists and give them confidential documents about safety issues at a Kerr-McGee plutonium plant in Oklahoma, and I would like to urge anyone reading my post to buy (and read) "The Killing of Karen Silkwood" by Richard Rashke. Silkwood was made famous by a movie with Meryl Streep, who portrays her, but the movie has had mixed reviews and is not currently available on Amazon except from resellers. The book, though, is spellbinding - Rashke is an exceptionally talented writer and you just can't put his book down until you reach the end. His account obliterates the official, convenient theory that Silkwood was driving while under the influence of drugs and alcohol and fell asleep at the wheel. (Warning: the book will make you feel very despondent about law enforcement agencies, although the lead investigator in the Silkwood case benefited from the insights from one anonymous FBI source, who - in that sense - single-handedly saved the honor of the agency.) It also makes a convincing case that she was pushed off the road, that she couldn't get back on it because the other car was blocking her way, and that since she kept her eyes on the car blocking her while she was driving on the shoulder, she didn't see the cement culvert that her car ultimately crashed into.
But the bulk of the book isn't really about Silkwood: it's about the investigation of her death, which (as told by Richard Rashke) basically screams "cover-up" from beginning to end with repeated stonewalling, mysterious deaths of people about to be interrogated, a psychic who described in stunning detail the drivers of the cars behind Silkwood on the evening of her murder (one has the impression that the locals would have known exactly who Rashke was talking about, at least for the first driver) and the theory of a plutonium ring that secretly provided plutonium to countries friendly to the United States - although only a theory, this would explain why people in high places really didn't want Silkwood to publicize the fact there was missing plutonium at the Kerr-McGee plant.
This last part bothered me the most about the book, precisely because the author makes the case so convincingly: in the end, Silkwood doesn't seem to have been killed because of her principles but because she was inconvenient to some great plan, far bigger than herself, that she played a tiny role in. I found that sad. She was also apparently poisoned before her death (exposed to large amounts of radiation without her knowledge, which would likely have caused cancer had she lived) and relentlessly smeared after her death. The book won't make you feel proud of the judicial system either - the large monetary award to the Silkwood family became a meager $5,000 on appeal and the case was settled out of court after the Supreme Court found in Silkwood's favor. Yet, it is an important work. Looking at the world with rose-colored glasses has never helped anyone, and Rashke's book, while careful to separate theories from the documented facts uncovered by investigators on the case, provides a sobering account of what happens when the system decides to crush one of its own.
Comments