William Clark was a smooth talker, a personable man who spun hard-to-believe tales of adventure in far-flung places.

That's the description given by Alain Svilpe, a lieutenant in the Van Buren County Sheriff's Office and the director of the county's domestic-preparedness office.

Svilpe interacted with Clark in professional settings twice over the past one-and-a-half years, a period when Clark worked at the Palisades Nuclear Plant as head of security. He resigned May 9.

``He seemed like an all-right guy,'' Svilpe said. ``But he would always keep talking about his stories. I questioned a lot of his responses and just told myself, `Well, if you say so.'''

An article in the June edition of Esquire magazine paints Clark as a compulsive liar who fabricated his credentials to employers and others, telling them he did security work for a private contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The article's author, Tom Junod, also wrote that Clark said he was a ``one-man death squad'' who worked as a paid assassin in several countries, including Yemen, Nigeria, Honduras and El Salvador, among others.

Junod also reported that Clark told him he previously worked for Blackwater Corp. and had killed people in Vietnam, New Orleans and Iraq and had top security clearances at the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense.

New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., which owns the Palisades plant, is investigating information from the Esquire article to determine whether further investigation is warranted.

1. S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, has vowed to look into the matter.

``As someone who's been to Palisades numerous times and appreciates the plant's importance to our community, Fred is naturally disturbed by the recent revelations,'' said Sean Bonyun, a spokesman for Upton. ``Security at all of our nation's nuclear facilities is a matter of utmost national interest, and Fred has been in contact with top officials at Entergy, and they agreed to promptly give him a full report on their findings regarding the security breach.''

Clark also was employed at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire, according to a news release from the office of U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass.

Markey, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, has called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to investigate how Clark gained employment at the two plants given his allegedly fabricated credentials.

``If they're handing out sensitive nuclear security jobs to someone who claimed to be a gun for hire, who else are they hiring to secure nuclear materials?'' Rep. Markey asked in the release. ``If the reports about this individual, William E. Clark, are true, there are potentially deadly gaps in the current process used to evaluate prospective employees.''

Svilpe said the office he heads, which prepares the county for terrorist attacks or other emergencies, was ``very disappointed to find out who Clark really was.''

``Let's just say it didn't make us feel comfortable knowing that he was in charge of a nuclear power plant's security,'' he said. ``It's fortunate for us that nothing did happen when he was there.

``It's amazing how someone can be so fake and just slide by everyone. He had everyone fooled.''

By Chris Killian
Special to the Gazette

http://www.mlive.com/news/kzgazette/index.ssf?/base/news-23/117941552180440.xml&coll=7