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Whispers at Work
20/20
Friday, Jan. 28, 2000 (This is an unedited, uncorrected transcript.) Prepared by Burrelle's Information Services, which takes sole responsibility for accuracy of transcription.
BARBARA WALTERS Good evening and welcome to 20/20 FRIDAY. You are about to meet a man who lived through a terrifying ordeal, all because his boss made one phone call. The man was handcuffed, drugged, locked up in a mental ward against his will. And why? He says simply because he spoke up at work. Chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross has a frightening story for any worker.
BRIAN ROSS, ABCNEWS (VO) In the small rural county in South Carolina where his family has lived since the Revolutionary War, Gary McClain has driven the same road to the same job, to the same factory for some 17 years. Until one day last summer.
GARY MCCLAIN I was going through New Ellenton on Highway 19.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) The day Gary McClain became labeled an imminent threat, a possible workplace time bomb.
GARY MCCLAIN There was, at least, six patrol cars stopped me right in the middle of the road, yelling, 'Turn off your truck. Get out of the truck and keep your hands where we can see them.'
BRIAN ROSS (VO) It was the beginning of a trip into a dark world filled with innuendo, fear and the power of a big corporation.
GARY MCCLAIN The officers was coming from this direction, from that direction, from my side and behind me.
BRIAN ROSS With guns?
GARY MCCLAIN With guns drawn.
BRIAN ROSS How?
GARY MCCLAIN Aimed at me.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) In the course of less than an hour, 45-year-old Gary McClain, a man with no criminal record, no record of violence on the job, would be handcuffed, detained, refused a lawyer, drugged and involuntarily committed as mentally ill.
GARY MCCLAIN It was like a nightmare. I mean, but it - it was really happening to you.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) McClain is a church-going man, well-read and thoughtful. Unmarried, he says the only mental health problems he ever had involved counseling for depression and a few visits a year to a local psychiatrist, something millions of Americans do.
GARY MCCLAIN And I went over there voluntarily, because I was having trouble with some depression.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) But his confidential mental health record would later be distorted and used against him. McClain worked for the huge oil products conglomerate Tenneco at Tenneco's plastic packaging plant in Beach Island, South Carolina, which produces plastic food trays and Hefty plastic plates, a Tenneco brand name.
JOE GARRISON The plant employs a little over 250 employees...
BRIAN ROSS (VO) It was plant manager Joe Garrison who, along with Tenneco corporate executives, made the decision to call the sheriff, based on what Garrison says were complaints from other workers.
JOE GARRISON Members of my staff relayed concerns and fears from employees that talked to them.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Yet, in the course of an hour-long interview with 20/20, Garrison was unable to cite a single concrete threat or statement made by McClain, referring only to the vague hearsay complaints of employees and managers whose names and positions Garrison refused to provide.
JOE GARRISON There ar - are at least 20.
BRIAN ROSS At least 20? Do you have a list somewhere?
JOE GARRISON No, I don't.
BRIAN ROSS And 20 people all said they were afraid of Gary McClain.
JOE GARRISON They didn't - some said they were specifically afraid, but some said they were concerned.
BRIAN ROSS What were they afraid of?
JOE GARRISON They were afraid of working - of coming to work.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) But it turns out the great fear of Gary McClain began around the same time he became known at the plant for trying to organize a union, he says to protect older, higher-paid workers like himself. Wearing a red cap from the Operating Engineers of the AFL-CIO.
GARY MCCLAIN I believe in standing up for what I believe in.
BRIAN ROSS So you became very public about it?
GARY MCCLAIN Yeah, I became very vocal about it, too.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) It was July 28th last year when McClain, in front of everyone on his shift, challenged plant manager Joe Garrison over the union. The union you opposed?
JOE GARRISON A union a - I opposed - yes, a - Gary raised his voice...
BRIAN ROSS He interrupted you?
JOE GARRISON He interrupted me.
GARY MCCLAIN I asked him point-blank, I said, 'Why don't you let a union representative come in here and speak to all the crews?' And he said, 'We have enough of those in here already.' And he said, 'Dismiss.'
BRIAN ROSS You were on a collision course.
GARY MCCLAIN Oh, yes, I was - I was marked.
BRIAN ROSS Did you have a gun?
GARY MCCLAIN No. I didn't have any weapons.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) It was the very next day that Tenneco contacted the Aiken County Sheriff, which used a SWAT team, the canine team and the sheriff himself to take Gary McClain into custody as he drove to work, unarmed.
GARY MCCLAIN They put me in handcuffs, they walked me to a patrol car. While I was sitting in the patrol car, this officer came over the air on the radio saying, 'We got that Tenneco package.'
BRIAN ROSS 'We got that Tenneco package?'
GARY MCCLAIN Yeah, he said 'that Tenneco package.'
BRIAN ROSS Referring to you, you think?
GARY MCCLAIN Right. I was the Tenneco package.
SHERIFF HOWARD SELLERS What they told us was this individual had frightened them and frightened co-workers.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Aiken County Sheriff Howard Sellers says it was the kind of report from a major company that he couldn't ignore. Particularly since the Aiken County area has twice in the last five years been the scene of workplace violence, with six people killed. Something Tenneco says was very much on the minds of its employees.
JOE GARRISON They were saying things like, 'I don't want to sit next to a member of management in case Gary comes in and I'm in the line of fire.'
BRIAN ROSS You have his personnel file available to you?
JOE GARRISON There is a personnel file for Mr. McClain.
BRIAN ROSS In that file, was there any incident in the last two or three years that would suggest he is this dangerous person?
JOE GARRISON There's nothing in his file that I'm aware of that would suggest that.
BRIAN ROSS You know there have been many cases where disgruntled employees at big companies, small companies...
GARY MCCLAIN I know that, and that's what Tenneco's planned on. They're building up everybody's fears. You know, trying to make them think that I'm a dangerous person. And I - I'm not. I never threatened anybody out there.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Unlike Gary McClain, the alleged killers in the two shootings around Aiken County had records of specific threats and violence.
HOWARD SELLERS We acted on - I think, responsibly with information we had at the time.
BRIAN ROSS Did they tell you that he was active in trying to organize a union?
HOWARD SELLERS No, they did not.
JOE GARRISON I didn't tell - or the company didn't make the sheriff aware that this was a union supporter and that's why...
BRIAN ROSS You withheld that information from him?
JOE GARRISON I - it's not that we withheld it. It wasn't germane to our concerns.
BRIAN ROSS Do you wish they had told you that?
HOWARD SELLERS I think it would have been very helpful.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) As a legal justification to stop McClain, the sheriff used an unserved, four-year-old arrest warrant that grew out a feud with a neighbor. McClain, an avid outdoorsman, had fired his hunting rifle in the back of his yard.
GARY MCCLAIN I had a bullet in the chamber, it would not come out, so I fired it because I didn't want to leave a live round in my chamber and, you know, have a loaded gun in the house like that.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) At the time, 1995, deputies ruled the complaint unfounded and the warrant the neighbor swore out sat ignored among thousands of such minor warrants in a bureaucratic backlog, until Tenneco called. As a practical matter, it wasn't really a high priority?
HOWARD SELLERS No, it wasn't - it was a very low priority.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) In fact, the warrant wasn't even served when McClain was stopped. Instead of taking him to the county jail, the armed deputies delivered a handcuffed McClain to the county hospital for a mental evaluation.
HOWARD SELLERS He appeared to be confused. He appeared to be agitated...
BRIAN ROSS Wouldn't you be if you were stopped by your own SWAT team?
HOWARD SELLERS Yes, sir. And we chose to have take the route of having him evaluated, to see if there was anything to this mental health allegation against him.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Based on hospital records, Tenneco's vague, unverified description of McClain as a threat appears to have been simply passed on by sheriff's deputies to the emergency room doctor and apparently accepted as evidence enough that McClain was mentally ill and posed a substantial risk to himself and others.
GARY MCCLAIN They told me they was wanting me to take a shot. I don't know what kind of medication it was. And I told them, 'No, I'm not taking it.' So then, the nurse called in the two deputies to hold me. And they gave me the shot.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Under an emergency provision in South Carolina law, McClain was then taken by sheriff's deputies to a mental hospital where he would spend two weeks detained and drugged against his will before a judge finally released him. Did you think you'd ever get out of there?
GARY MCCLAIN At the time, I di - I didn't know if I was going to get out. I said, 'I haven't done anything to be here.' You know, I - I'd speak up. But see, they looked at that as being mentally ill.
BRIAN ROSS More evidence...
GARY MCCLAIN Right.
BRIAN ROSS ...that you were mentally ill?
GARY MCCLAIN Because the more I denounced it, the more they - the more it convinced them, 'Oh, this man is sick. He's delusional.'
BRIAN ROSS (VO) The hospital records tell the nightmare. "Patient denies allegations. Patient has an angry affect. Patient refuses medication."
GARY MCCLAIN Here I was, you know, telling the truth, and nobody believed me. And I cried.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) A psychiatrist appointed by the judge to evaluate McClain has now said McClain is not in need of any further treatment. And McClain suing Tenneco and the sheriff for what he claims is a violation of his civil rights, a case gaining great attention in the American labor movement.
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN This is, you know, over the top. I've never seen a company before literally get the local authorities to conspire to put an employee in a mental institution for doing this.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) We asked Georgetown University law professor Michael Gottesman, who's handled numerous union cases before the Supreme Court, including that of nuclear worker Karen Silkwood, to look at this case, which he called a new low in anti-union tactics.
MICHAEL GOTTESMAN It's diabolically clever, because it accomplishes all the purposes that firing the employee would do, but it accomplishes even more. If we put him away in a mental institution, we've really shut him up. Who's going to step up and say, 'OK, I'm next. Since Gary is no longer here, I'm the one who's going to stand up and argue for why we should have a union.'
BRIAN ROSS (VO) In fact, the union says its efforts to organize at the Tenneco plant have been stopped dead. We weren't allowed on the plant property and with security guards watching, most workers wouldn't stop to talk. One who did said McClain was a bit of a loner but no threat to anyone. Was he threatening people because of the union or...
MAN No.
BRIAN ROSS No?
MAN They might have took it as a threat because of the way he is, because he is a pretty alone - a quiet person to his self.
BRIAN ROSS Is he insane?
MAN No.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) There are some Tenneco plants around the country which are unionized, and, since the case became public, Tenneco has maintained that what happened to Gary McClain had nothing to do with the union and was the sole responsibility of the sheriff's office.
JOE GARRISON We gave them no encouragement, no suggestions. We a - we just made them aware of a situation that was going on in our plant.
BRIAN ROSS You had nothing to do with him being locked up as mentally ill?
JOE GARRISON Absolutely not.
BRIAN ROSS You really believe that?
JOE GARRISON I - I certainly believe that. I know that...
BRIAN ROSS Are you saying that the position had as union organizer had nothing to do with it?
JOE GARRISON It had nothing to do with it.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) But that's very much called into question by what a top Tenneco executive allegedly said when he contacted Gary McClain's personal psychiatrist in Aiken, South Carolina, using McClain's personnel records to do so. In a memo written the same day McClain was picked up, the psychiatrist says Tenneco's director of occupational health, a Dr. Burley, contacted him and described McClain as "very much involved in drumming up support for the union" and displaying "paranoid thinking a behaviors." Had the Dr. Burley ever met Gary McClain?
JOE GARRISON I don't believe that Dr. Burley ever me - met Mr. McClain.
BRIAN ROSS Did he ever examine him?
JOE GARRISON If he didn't meet him, I don't think he could have examined him.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Nevertheless, according to the memo, the Tenneco doctor, Dr. Burley, from his office in New York, said he believed 'Mr. McClain suffered from a mental illness, appeared to be dangerous,' and, Dr. Burley said, he would be passing on his views to the sheriff to 'initiate an involuntary commitment.' Tenneco would not permit Dr. Burley to talk with 20/20.
PROFESSOR GREGG BLOCHE It is the sort of thing that went on in the Soviet Union. Except that the Soviets did it with a bit more due process.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Law professor Gregg Bloche, also a psychiatrist, says the memo clearly shows that Tenneco was concerned about the union and raises serious questions about how big companies, like Tenneco, try to pry into employee health records.
GREGG BLOCHE If you see a psychiatrist, if you just have something embarrassing that's physically wrong with you that you wouldn't want your employer and the world, potentially, to know, you don't have protection. That's what 160 million Americans who get their health insurance through the workplace need to be worried about.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) At the request of the sheriff, the FBI has now been asked to investigate the case of Gary McClain, who hasn't worked a day since he was declared mentally ill.
GARY MCCLAIN To be done that way and - and you know there's not anything wrong with you and for somebody to treat you like you're just some sicko, it hurts.
BARBARA WALTERS Brian, Gary McClain is in his 40s and has years ahead in which to work. Is he employable?
BRIAN ROSS Well, it's the kind of accusation that once made is - leaves a stigma very hard, if not impossible, to remove. And Gary wonders how to ever explain it to a future boss.
BARBARA WALTERS So how do things stand now?
BRIAN ROSS Well, Tenneco is paying him, but they won't let him on the property. And they won't give him his job back unless he sees a psychiatrist they appoint. Meantime, he's appealing to the National Labor Relations Board and a ruling could come very shortly.
BARBARA WALTERS And if the ruling is in his favor, then they have to hire him back?
BRIAN ROSS That's exactly right.
BARBARA WALTERS Even though it might not be a very pleasant place for him to...
BRIAN ROSS (VO) That's what he fears. Very tough situation for Gary.
BARBARA WALTERS Tough situation all around. Thank you, Brian. I do want to tell our viewers that you and Dr. Gregg Bloche, who is one of the experts in Brian's report, are going to be available to chat online with anyone who has questions. Right after this program?