Chem Student Says His Work Isn’t Dangerous

The problem was not the explosive materials he kept in his apartment, even if Washington State University police said they could have blown up the 96-unit Nez Perce complex.

Rather, Hugh Putnam argued from the Whitman County Jail on Thursday, it’s that a rocket scientist can’t get any respect these days. “You make sparklers and they think you’re a maniac,” he said. “It’s strictly an ignorant fear.”

The 38-year-old chemistry major declined to discuss in detail his stockpile of propellants, explosives and other materials that filled the police’s 42-page search warrant inventory. He feared hurting his defense against a felony explosives charge, for which he appears in court today.

But Putnam, clearly distraught over the March 31 arrest that he says stands to ruin his family and education and jeopardize his health, insists he took safeguards to keep his materials from exploding.

Fuels were kept on one side of his apartment, he said. Oxidizers, which provide oxygen to help fuel explosives and propellants, were on the other side. Colors - barium for a green flame, cupric oxide for a blue one and so on - were kept in between.

“Some of them are toxic, but none of them are capable of burning,” he said.

He had no bombs, he said, criticizing a recent Spokesman-Review account for making him sound like a ‘60s-style “radical madman.”He could not, as WSU Police Chief Robert Wilson suggested, power an Apollo rocket.”Actually, I could not have made enough rocket fuel for a tactical missile like a TOW 2,” he said. “They (the police) just want to generate as much negative publicity as they can.”

Whatever he had - and police used seven 55-gallon drums to cart away chemicals, fuses and more - it was enough for university housing officials to evict Putnam for violating the weapons and explosives portion of his housing contract.

“For reasons of safety and noise control,” the contract forbids a range of things that includes “fireworks and pyrotechnics.” Putnam also allegedly broke the school’s firearm policy by keeping five rifles and a “zip gun” that police found after going through his apartment.

School officials also have suspended him pending proceedings before the student affairs conduct board.

The school has given Putnam 10 days to appeal the suspension, but he said he can’t make the $10,000 bond on which he is being held.

He said school officials are paranoid, claiming the school has been rattled by several other bomb-related incidents.

In 1979, a distraught Seattle man strapped on a homemade bomb and blew himself up in a residence hall. In 1991, a bomb hoax delayed the Apple Cup football game in Martin Stadium, and in 1993, one WSU football player was killed and another lost his hand when a pipe bomb they built went off prematurely in their car.

Putnam’s eviction and suspension are just two of his more recent misfortunes, which stretch back nearly to his days at Eastmont High School in East Wenatchee.

Back then, “he was a genius when it came to explosives,” recalled one former classmate. Asking not to be named, the classmate recalled that Putnam, using shotgun casings and gunpowder, could make small bombs that would explode when thrown.

“I’m a serious student,” Putnam said. “I want to become a propellants and explosives engineer. Other than that, I probably shouldn’t say anything.”

A little later, he said: “My whole dream about this is to make a reloadable sounding rocket for inexpensive testing.”

Sounding rockets are launched into the upper level of the atmosphere to take measurements and gather air samples for testing.

After graduating from high school in 1974, Putnam said he had a 3.84 grade point average at Wenatchee Valley Junior College and was enrolled in Western Washington University when “my health fell apart.”

Six surgeries later and a bout with cancer, he had no bowel and a part of his lower stomach was removed, forcing him to use a bag for his waste. He said he resided in a storage shed for six years, living on Social Security benefits.

He enrolled at WSU last fall, but struggled with an illness that wasn’t diagnosed as diabetes until February. He recently broke his right arm playing with his 3-year-old daughter, who was living with him and her mother, Dorothy Jean Wiedel, in the WSU apartment until the eviction. The daughter was placed with Child Protective Services Wednesday. Wiedel is staying for now in a Colfax motel.

“I’ve had a rough life,” Putnam said. “I finally come up with a family and a beautiful daughter, which is something I thought I’d never have. Now I’ve lost all that. And it’s all primarily due to the fact that what was once a respectable occupation is now looked down upon.”