Charles H. Eccleston


Charles H. Eccleston is an American author, consultant and lecturer in US National Environmental Policy Act. Dr. Eccleston has received many awards including the National Association of Environmental Professional's Outstanding Achievement Award, the NAEP's Outstanding Environmental Leadership Award, and his college's Outstanding Alumni Award. He is listed in Marquis’ Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in America as one of the leading authorities on preparing Environmental Impact Statements and the NEPA. He has written 10 books and authored over 70 environmental and scientific publications. His books are used by professionals and in university curriculum. His recent works include: The EIS Book, NEPA and Environmental Planning, Global Environmental Policy, Inside Energy, and Preparing NEPA Environmental Assessments. He developed a suite of peer-reviewed tools and techniques for improving and streamlining NEPA. Many of these tools are used by government agencies and in legal cases:
He was an employee of the United States Energy Department, and later worked at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Eccleston charged that to minimize public concern and opposition, NRC management had intentionally mislead the public by dismissing significant nuclear safety and environmental issues in the EISs prepared for re-licensing the nation's fleet of nuclear power reactors; specifically, NRC management stated that the risk posed by a nuclear accident, such as a full-scale meltdown, was so small that the agency could dismiss the issue from its EIS analysis. Using the Risk-Uncertainty Test, Eccleston concluded that such a sweeping assertion was scientifically irresponsible, particularly given the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima accidents. He further concluded that NRC management concealed the actual risk posed to the nation, at large, by disregarding one of the basic EIS requirements to assess the cumulative risk of a major nuclear accident; specifically, he charged that NRC management had intentionally underestimated the actual the risk posed from over 100 operating nuclear reactors by approximately two orders of magnitude. A special Washington State Legislature Nuclear Power Task corroborated his findings in a section of their final report titled, "Doesn’t NRC address consequences of severe accident in EIS for relicensing?".
Eccleston, a U.S. citizen who had been living in Davao City in the Philippines since 2011, was terminated from his employment at the NRC in 2010. He was detained by Philippine authorities in Manila, Philippines, on March 27, 2015, and deported to the United States to face U.S. criminal charges. He initially came to the attention of the FBI in 2013 after he entered a foreign embassy in Manila and offered to sell a list of over 5,000 e-mail accounts of all officials, engineers and employees of a U.S. government energy agency. He said that he was able to retrieve this information because he was an employee of a U.S. government agency, held a top secret security clearance and had access to the agency’s network. He asked for $18,800 for the accounts, stating they were “top secret.” When asked what he would do if that foreign country was not interested in obtaining the U.S. government information he was offering, he stated he would offer the information to China, Iran or Venezuela, as he believed these countries would be interested in the information. On February 2, 2016, he pled guilty to one count of "attempted unauthorized access and intentional damage to a protected computer". In his guilty plea, he admitted scheming to cause damage to the computer network of the DOE through e-mails that he believed would deliver a computer virus to particular employees. He was incarcerated as inmate number 68974-112 and was released on July 15, 2016.

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