Dear friends --
As mentioned in our June 2 letter and again in yesterday's Bulletin, we are offering a "walking seminar" on nuclear weapons inside and outside the National Museum for Nuclear Science and History. We will meet at 10 am in front of the Museum, which is located at 601 Eubank SE. At this point, our small supply of free tickets is already claimed, so adults can count on paying $34 for the day, unless we can arrange some other last-minute dispensation.
We are currently engaged in a flurry of calls and letters related to next week's travel to DC, where we hope to address a number of issues with congressional and committee staff including expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the pit production which serves it.
Not included in the June 2 letter was a planned "summit" and action in Los Alamos on Saturday July 11. Mark your calendars if you are interested.
A few of you may be interested in the following comment I wrote this morning in the Santa Fe New Mexican, regarding this good article ("Former 'New Mexican' managing editor remembered for speaking 'truth to power'"):
The series in question can be seen at https://lasg.org/press/1991/SFNM_Fouling_the_Nest_17Feb1991.pdf. The problems at LANL were understated, not overstated, by this pathbreaking series, as subsequent history shows. All the reporters and the photographer who worked on the series left the paper -- fired, as Robin Martin said. It is a real mark of shame that McKinney instantly intervened at the behest of LANL director Sig Hecker ("his good friend") and LANL's lawyers, who were seen coming to the New Mexican offices to bully the newspaper into immediately printing a special Sunday magazine rebutting the paper's own good work. Why in the world would it be normal or acceptable for McKinney to need to know, let alone "edit" that particular series?
Robin Martin's quotes here show that she is still under the sway of the LANL BS to which the New Mexican is particularly vulnerable. To this day the New Mexican looks the other way rather than cover the biggest LANL issues. Reporters are allowed to report on safety and the environment, the latter issues sometimes exaggerated given the hysteria that inhabits some of the NGO world, but is not allowed to report not on the shocking scale and purposes of what LANL is doing -- its missions. The paper seeks far and wide for distant "experts" that color within the same narrow lines. Then as now, the newspaper seems to serve a certain nomenklatura of power largely defined by LANL and the Democratic Party. Mitchell's crime was that he did not understand that LANL was untouchable. If only Robin would allow the present managing editor and reporters to open the aperture of the Overton Window to question the vast and increasing waste at LANL, which clearly does NOT create economic development, contrary to what she implies here. The case of Rio Arriba County is a natural "tell" for whether LANL benefits the region. Please see If Los Alamos is bringing economic development to New Mexico, why is the neighboring County of Rio Arriba performing so poorly?, LASG research note, updated May 16, 2025. Northern New Mexico will never develop socially and economically until its opinion and political leaders get their minds and hearts out of the labs.
Fascism as Mussolini defined it -- the unity of government and corporate power -- has already come to Santa Fe. LANL is now the nation's sole plutonium pit factory, slowly getting going in what will be a $30 billion effort once it is fully up and operating ("see Plutonium "pit" production now a $60 billion program -- $20 billion down, $40 billion to go, press release, Jun 8, 2026). Congress is at this moment considering doubling LANL's long-term pit mission, in both the House and the Senate. Have you reported on this? We have done nearly all the homework for you; see the background emails sent to your able reporter Alaina Mencinger and our press releases. Congress, the GAO, the White House, and NNSA (which is on our website almost daily) pay attention to them, but you do not. No matter what credentials and track record we bring, we are not in your social circles, which seems to be what counts.
"Science"? The only real science LANL has is devoted to global domination, nearly all of it in the form of nuclear weapons, with production now the leading component. LANL spending -- nuclear welfarism -- has been a complete socioeconomic failure, despite unwavering loyalty from our ideologically sheep-dipped delegation. Please help them and all of us. Open your eyes. Find your way again, so others can too. At present, the paper functions mostly as a LANL propaganda asset, with just enough limited critique to appear independent and prevent development of any real political resistance. You lost a good man in Mitchell. His firing was utterly unjustified and shameful. There are no excuses.
I was pleased that Steve Terrell, quoted in the article, "liked" that comment.
The newspaper has drifted far to the political right over the past three and a half decades, in our view. As has Santa Fe as a whole.
For reference, here is the article in its entirety: Former 'New Mexican' managing editor remembered for speaking 'truth to power':
David Mitchell, 1935-2026
Former 'New Mexican' managing editor remembered for speaking 'truth to power'
By Elizabeth Anne Andrews For The New Mexican 7 hrs ago 1
Those who worked with David Mitchell initially found him intimidating.
A former managing editor of The Santa Fe New Mexican, Mitchell was known for marking up the newspaper’s front page every day and displaying it in the newsroom.
While he was harsh on mistakes, however, Mitchell was supportive when writers did something right, said Steve Terrell, a longtime New Mexican reporter who retired in 2019.
“He was always full of surprises,” Terrell said.
Mitchell — who was fired from his position by then-New Mexican owner Robert McKinney in 1991 following a series of articles critical of Los Alamos National Laboratory — died June 4 in Tucson, Ariz., from a neurodegenerative disease. He was 90 years old.
Mitchell was born in Illinois in 1935. He served in the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps and graduated with a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Iowa State University.
He had worked at The New Mexican as managing editor for three years before his termination. He also worked at The Wall Street Journal and The Tucson Citizen. In 2006, he published a travel book, The Insider’s Arizona Guidebook.
Longtime New Mexico journalist Thom Cole, a former Santa Fe New Mexican reporter who had worked with Mitchell on the controversial Los Alamos investigative series, called Mitchell a “reporter’s editor.”
“He gave reporters the support needed to do their jobs, and he didn’t flinch to back them up when an article in the newspaper made someone uncomfortable,” Cole said. “David spoke truth to power, both within and from outside the New Mexican. That cost him a job he truly loved.”
Terrell described a time when Mitchell brought Hollywood star Robert Redford, who long had ties to Santa Fe, into the newsroom. Although everyone else was starstruck by the actor and director, Mitchell wasn’t fazed because the two had been fraternity brothers at the University of Colorado.
Another former reporter, Cheryl Wittenauer, said Terrell let Redford read her work while she was writing.
“It was all I could do to keep it together,” she said.
Wittenauer described Mitchell’s enthusiasm about stories his reporters were working on.
“He had this distinctive body language and way of talking to you when he was jazzed about a story. He’d put his foot on your desk or chair and lean into you to make a point,” she said. “Crazily, it made you feel acknowledged, important and in the David Mitchell circle of influence.”
In 1991, Mitchell assigned and edited a series of articles investigating environmental hazards at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which received backlash from both the lab and McKinney.
“As far as the fallout, it was immediate. Los Alamos didn’t like the way it was framed — thought it put them in a bad light,” Cole said.
Terrell described the loss of Mitchell and some reporters at the time as “one of the lowest points in morale at The New Mexican.”
“I think in the long run it made us stronger — not him being fired but the reaction against his being fired,” Terrell said.
New Mexican owner Robin Martin, McKinney’s daughter, said her father was on a family trip when the story broke, and he wasn’t previously informed the series was in the works.
“He had found out about the series from his good friend, the lab director. He was a great proponent of the Lab, but the reason he fired the editor and reporters was because they had not warned him the series would be published,” she said in a statement.
“I suspect if he had known,” she added, “he would have edited it, asked for more information about the lab’s accomplishments and employment of northern New Mexicans, and let it run.”
Mitchell went on to work at other newspapers, including a stint as editor at The Las Cruces Sun-News, said his wife, Cheryl Mano Mitchell.
Best wishes,
Greg
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