Correspondent Blair Koch took one for the team last month. At the end of June we asked Koch, who often writes for us but who is not on staff, to cover an Idaho Energy Complex presentation in Glenns Ferry.

The IEC is a 1,600-megawatt nuclear power plant that a private firm, Alternate Energy Holdings, hopes to build near Mountain Home.

In hindsight, it would have been more humane to ask her to French-kiss a rattler.

As public meetings go, it was a donnybrook. Anti-nuke activist/Twin Falls doctor Peter Rickards even managed to get himself charged with trespassing and battery.

Blair snapped a photo of Rickards being hooked up by a sheriff's deputy, but Boise freelancer Claudio Beagarie's shot was a bit better composed. We paid him our standard $30 fee and used it with Koch's article.

Just another day at the old word factory - until we heard from James E. Cooper of Boise, who described himself as an IEC investor.

In a letter to AEH President Don Gillispie that was also sent to news organizations around the region - and printed by at least one - Cooper accused Koch and Beagarie of acting in an unprofessional way and of "fabrication of a news story."

In Cooper's view, Koch and Beagarie were way too cozy with members of the anti-nuke Snake River Alliance, and Koch responded negatively when Cooper suggested that she interview Gillispie.

"The subsequent article in the Times-News by Blair Koch clearly shows an agenda to anyone who attended that meeting, and included the photograph taken by Claudio Beagarie," Cooper said, without illuminating elaboration. "I was surprised to see his photo with her article, since they represented different papers."

Next we heard from Martin Johncox, Gillispie's Boise PR consultant, saying he wouldn't respond to calls for comment from Koch:

"At the Glenns Ferry meeting, we noticed Ms. Koch had a collaborative relationship with the Snake River Alliance and possibly Peter Rickards and we do not believe she could write a balanced story about us," Johncox wrote. "We provided her with a detailed statement about the events at the Glenns Ferry meeting, little of which made it into her story. Also, your paper recently ran a photo taken by Claudio Beagarie, who masqueraded as an Arbiter (a Boise weekly) reporter and who carpooled to the Glenns Ferry meeting with SRA representatives. Given the apparently cozy relationship that exists here, it is not in our interest, nor in the interest of a well-informed public to respond to these questions."

Koch seemed baffled by the complaints, since she's never covered the nuclear power issue before and couldn't pick an SRA member out of a lineup. Nor does she have a relationship with Rickards, though she has talked to him twice on unrelated stories.

When Koch tracked down Cooper on July 2 he described the woman he saw knoodling with the other side as "a middle-aged woman with–silvering/graying, shoulder-length hair."

Our Blair Koch is a close-cropped redhead who has yet to see the sun rise on her 30th birthday.

Cooper, she tells me, acknowledged his error and promised to send a recantation letter to Gillispie and to the Times-News. We haven't seen it yet.

After several attempts last week to call Johncox, I sent him two different e-mails asking for additional information. On Thursday he surfaced with an acknowledgement that he, too, was mistaken and wanted to apologize.

Mistakes happen, of course, but it's disturbing that the IEC folks have decided to take such a shoot-from-the-lip approach.

Gillispie, you may recall, tore into former Times-News reporter Matt Christensen in February when he had the temerity to accurately quote Jerome County Commissioner Diana Obenauer when she said she would like to have some influence on the future of the IEC plant because she would be living downwind from it.

Rather than respond to Obenauer's concern, Gillispie instead attacked the reporter, saying that "New reactor designs make any release of radioactive material virtually impossible, yet (the) media continue to fan 'downwind' hysteria."

I don't know much about reactors, but I do know a public relations strategy when I see one.

Gillispie and his team are trying to deflect legitimate questions by damning the questioner. And they're apparently willing to blow up the thinnest "evidence" of bias - or no evidence at all - to justify their desire to avoid independent inquiry.

IEC folks have the right to remain silent, of course. We can't force them to participate in the public debate.

But that won't stop Blair Koch, or any of us, from asking questions.

Editor James G. Wright may be reached at 735-3255 or james.wright@lee.net.