Deseret News
Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Air-check testimony conflicts; Supervisor is charged with changing records

By Joe Bauman
Deseret Morning News

A log sheet recording the testing of an air monitoring device at the Army's Chemical Agent Munitions Demilitarization System carries a strange notation, according to testimony in federal court Tuesday afternoon.

Testimony about allegedly changed records was at the heart of the government's case against David James Yarbrough, a Stockton resident who was supervisor of the air monitoring unit at CAMDS. He is charged with eight felony counts of making false statements to the government.

On July 22, 2002, Connie Clements tested monitoring station 570 at CAMDS's Chemical Test Facility, located on the Army's Deseret Chemical Depot near Stockton, Tooele County. The check was part of a baseline test to see whether monitoring stations were functioning well at the facility, where workers handle toxic material while developing new technology to destroy chemical weapons.

The monitoring stations, called ACAMS (Area Continuous Air Monitoring System) are checked to ensure they will detect any release of nerve or blister agent into the air. If they do, warnings would sound, allowing workers to protect themselves from potentially lethal vapor.

Clements testified that her testing of a station showed it had failed but that her figures had been changed to give the station a passing grade.

On Tuesday, several monitoring systems mechanics testified that records used in the baseline test did not reflect actual checks they had carried out.

However, defense lawyer Earl Xaiz brought out witness statements that seemed to support his contention that Yarbrough sometimes used figures acquired from other sources.

Under cross-examination, monitoring systems mechanic Dennis Oliver Craner said he sometimes gave Yarbrough verbal reports on the range of readings.

Cherice Day, a statistician who generated computer studies showing whether ACAMS had passed their baseline tests, said she used figures from operational logs on the first seven days of a 10-day test and five monitor stations failed.

But then Yarbrough brought in his personal worksheets of data for the final three days that had different numbers, she said, and "told me to go back and make the data match his personal sheets and run the (test) report again."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott J. Thorley asked what happened when the computer analyzed the new figures. "They all passed," she said.

She talked about this with her supervisor, Day said. Yarbrough asked for his data sheets back, and she gave them to him but said she had to keep copies for her records.

"He seemed taken aback," she said.

Afterwards, he showed her computer printouts and "told me he had to prove to me that he was not a crook." But, she added, "some of the numbers were close and some weren't."

She described his behavior: "It was very odd. He was being way too nice. Over-the-top nice."

Rick S. Clyde, who checked into conflicting figures, said Yarbrough told him a data sheet involved in the matter was his own information, not part of a government report. Clyde told him to keep it locked up so it would not be used in an official report, he said.

Yarbrough told him he kept the data sheet on his desk and jotted down notes when people told him about readings.

If someone had told him Yarbrough had given this information to Day to enter into the computer analysis, would that have alarmed him? Clyde said it would have.

E-mail: bau@desnews.com