Word: metallic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Since the Vice President took office, the Energy Department's cleanup division, headed until recently by a Gore protege, has awarded Haney's Molten Metal Technology $33 million to test its process on the poisoned remains of nuclear-weapons proving grounds--more money than 17 other companies have received collectively to do the same job. More startling is that the department kept lavishing dollars on the firm until this March, despite the advice of the government's own experts who, according to documents obtained by TIME, repeatedly challenged the effectiveness of Molten Metal's technology. They recommended the funding...
...spokesman for Gore insisted last week that there was no connection between Molten Metal's success at securing government subsidies and the contributions Haney made to the Vice President and his party. But in this case, Gore did not need to pick up the phone to have direct influence on the fortunes of Haney's company; Haney had all the right connections. His lobbyist, Peter Knight, is the hub of Gore's political circle. He ran Gore's House and Senate office for years, helped finance his campaigns and chaired the Clinton-Gore re-election effort in 1996. In Knight...
What resulted was an unambiguous marriage of money and power illustrated by a few important dates: on March 24, 1994, Grumbly's office upped Haney's original $1.2 million award by $9 million--the same day the Democratic Party recorded a $15,000 contribution from Molten Metal. Fifteen months later, the Clinton-Gore campaign credited Haney and nine of his executives with $10,000 in contributions, the very day that Molten Metal landed an additional $10 million in research funds...
...circle widened after Molten Metal joined forces with another Knight client, the defense contractor Lockheed Martin, to pursue cleanup contracts. That company gave $100,000 to the Democratic Party last June. Three months later, the new partners were awarded a $27 million contract from Grumbly's staff to propose a clean-up strategy for one of the nation's most polluted nuclear sites, in Richland, Wash. The contract qualified the companies to bid later for the $5 billion cleanup...
...break down air pollutants, first went looking for government work in the last weeks of the Bush Administration. His technology, which neutralizes toxic detritus in a vat of iron heated to 3,000[degrees] F, seemed like a promising solution for the Energy Department's nuclear mess. So Molten Metal was chosen as one of 18 firms to obtain research grants. But even then there were some skeptical voices: Energy Department consultants warned in 1992 that Haney's process offered "no significant advantage" to "justify its preferred development" over rivals...