“Truth is an arrow, and the gate is narrow, that it passes through” Bob Dylan

This website is about my family’s work for social justice and civil rights

on the House Judiciary Committee and throughout the world,

and about my work for thirty-two years as a federal research engineer

with the United States Department of Energy

and as a civil rights activist in Pittsburgh.

Dr. Douglas Shaffer, MD; Jennie M. Shaffer, Vice President of the WV Education Association; Reverand. Dr. Dallas B.  Shaffer, PhD; Vera Lynne Shaffer PharmD; and Franklin D.

Vera Lynne, Douglas and Franklin D.

Reverend

Dr. Dallas B. Shaffer

 Father

 US Army VFW

Professor of US History

 and Political Science,

Episcopal Priest

My father, Dr. Dallas B. Shaffer, was an honorable US Army Veteran who served on foreign soil (Guam and Korea), a Professor of US History and Political Science, Chair of the Social Sciences Department at Potomac State College of WVU, and an Episcopal Priest. 

For ten years, he was the Campaign Manager and Senior Advisor to Attorney Congressman Harley O. Staggers Jr when the Attorney Congressman was on the House Judiciary Committee and House Committee for Veterans Affairs.

He and his friend Franklin D. Cleckley were raised in McDowell County, WV, one of the poorest Counties in the United States. 

Justice

Franklin D. Cleckley

US Navy JAG

Three tours in Vietnam First African American WV Supreme Court Justice and Professor of Law at WVU

The Secretary of Defense called Navy JAG Cleckley the most sought-after attorney in Vietnam.  He established the Franklin D. Cleckley Foundation for the purpose of providing assistance for the educational and employment needs of people with prior criminal records.

He is the recipient of the WV NAACP Thurgood Marshall Award.

 Below is a Social Justice Award that Justice Cleckley gave to my father.

 Attorney Congressman

 Harley O. Staggers Jr.

House Committees on the Judiciary and

Veterans Affairs

Click here or on the photos to learn about my father’s good works, and to see his peer-reviewed journal publications, including An Essay on Ending Racism  published by The Episcopal Church. 

You can also see a letter he wrote for Attorney Congressman Harley O. Staggers Jr to review then send to the Honorable Chair of the House Judiciary Committee Peter Rodino.  It’s about your civil rights.

To the right is a photo of Peter Rodino standing beside Martin Luther King Jr as LBJ signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

ABOUT MY MOTHER’S SERVICE FOR OUR COUNTRY

My mother, Jennie M. Shaffer, née Lininger, on the steps of the West Virginia State Capitol Building rallying 20,000 striking K-12 teachers during the WV Teachers’ Strike of 1990.

She is leading 5000 teachers as they sing the song by Pete Seeger “This land is your land”   Click here or on the photo of my mother to watch Pete Seeger and Bruce Springssteen sing This Land is Your Land at the inauguration of the first African American President of the United States Barack H. Obama

My mother was a WV coal miner’s daughter.  After her father finished third grade, he worked full-time in the Humphrey mines near Morgantown, WV, for the rest of his life. 

Mom was a high school teacher, Vice President of the West Virginia Education Association (WVEA), and a civil rights activist. In 1990, she and her friend Kyetta Meadows (President of the WVEA) asked 20,000 teachers to walk in solidarity out of their classrooms and into the streets on an “illegal” strike to shut down the WV K-12 school system.  WV teachers were the lowest paid in the United States. 

After 11 days in the streets, WV teachers returned to their classrooms

 with a 15% pay raise.

“AND LET US ALWAYS BE MINDFUL OF THE POOR”

Every prayer I heard my father say in my life ended with this

“and let us always be mindful of the poor”

During the Great Depression his family in WV often went without food.

My parents raised me and my little brother to get as much education in the sciences as we could, then to serve our country as federal employees.

ABOUT MY LITTLE BROTHER’S FEDERAL SERVICE

For his education in the sciences, Doug earned a Pharmacy Degree and a Medical Degree from WVU, then a Master of Hospital Administration from Duke University. 

He entered federal service with the US National Institutes of Health, then joined the US Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. 

In 2003, Doug helped Dr. Anthony Fauci start President George W. Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Program. PEPFAR is the largest funding commitment ($110 billion) by any nation in the world to address a single disease.

To implement the PEPFAR Program, Doug lived in Kenya and Rwanda for 20 years with some of the poorest people in the world suffering from HIV/AIDS.

The PEPFAR program has now saved 25 million lives.

After 27 years of federal service, Doug retired in 2024 as the Associate Director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Global Policy and Strategy.

The FDA is the largest and most powerful
regulatory agency in the world

Here’s Doug’s new job in the private sector:

Dr. Douglas N. Shaffer, MD Deputy Director of Global Affairs, International Vaccine Institute

“Doug Shaffer, a public health leader whose heart is as big as Africa itself. We at the FDA Office of Global Strategy & Policy are honored to have had the opportunity to know him as a colleague.”

The International Vaccine Institute appoints

Dr. Douglas N. Shaffer as Deputy Director General of Global Affairs and Communications

July 24, 2024 – SEOUL, Republic of Korea – The International Vaccine Institute is pleased to announce that Dr. Douglas Shaffer will join as IVI’s Deputy Director General of Global Affairs & Communications on August 26, 2024.

The International Vaccine Institute accelerates the development of vaccines for poverty-associated infectious diseases that sicken or kill millions of people every year, primarily in low- and middle-income countries. Though they have limited commercial potential, these vaccines are vital to global health. Through training and the transfer of knowledge, technology, and resources, we work with countries to achieve vaccine security and protect their people.

Doug also served as an Attending Physician treating our military personnel at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center

Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Brack Hattler, MD, PhD,

 battlefield surgeon

in Vietnam.

ALL GAVE SOME

SOME GAVE ALL

My colleague and friend for 30 years, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Brack Hattler, MD, PhD, was a battlefield surgeon in Vietnam and Chief of Organ Transplant Services at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

In Vietnam he watched helplessly as US soldiers suffocated because their lungs had been damaged by chemicals of war.

This inspired Dr. Hattler to invent the Hattler Respiratory Support Catheter. It can be quickly inserted to temporarily function as a lung.  I helped Dr. Hattler develop his catheter in my Particle Flow Analysis Lab . 

In 1992 I co-authored with Dr. Hattler and Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering Dr. Harvey S. Borovetz, the original paper introducing the Hattler Respiratory Support Catheter. We published our paper in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Society of Artificial Internal Organs.

Click here for more about my work with
Lieutenant ColonelDr. Hattler , MD, PhD.

Anatomical configuration of The Hattler Respiratory Support Catheter.

YOU ARE NOT

FORGOTTEN

US Navy Chaplain Captain Richard Black.

A TRIBUTE TO THE GREAT VIETNAM VETS
I knew, loved, and worked with, including
US Air Force Pilot Joe Kittinger. 
He was a Prisoner of War (POW) in the cell next to cell of POW Hero John McCain
at the Hanoi Hilton . And my father-in-law and mentor for ten years, US Navy Chaplain Captain Richard Black.  He did three tours in Vietnam. He was in Con Thein during some of the fiercest fighting in Vietnam. 

In 1967, 1410 US Marines were killed and 9000 wounded. Marines called Con Thien

“HELL ON THE HILL OF ANGLES”

US Air Force Pilot Joe Kittinger.  World record setter for a free fall

 from space to earth.

Click here to watch Captain Black’s prayer for
“sacrificial military service for our beloved country”
at the dedication of the Joe Kittinger Memorial in Orlando.  I was there.

For my education in the sciences, I earned a Bachelor of Science Degree and a Master of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from WVU.  On August 6, 1986, I entered federal service with the US Department of Energy’s Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center. In 1990, I invented, and in 1994 patented ( US Patent 5,333,044 “Fluorescent Image Tracking Velocimetry” ), a flow imaging technology to see and measure the flow of inorganic particles through power plants and the flow of blood cells in artificial hearts and lungs. My US Patent 5,333,044 was made possible by my access to nuclear weapons technologies from the US’s and UK’s premier nuclear weapons labs.

Our Sixth Secretary of Energy

Four Star Admiral James D. Watkins

   
The photo on the right shows Distinguished Dr. Borovetz and Admiral Watkins with me in my lab at the DOE Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center. Harvey was showing The Admiral an artificial heart we were working on, the Novacor Left Ventricular Assist Device. It was in clinical trials at Pittsburgh Presbyterian Hospital, St Louis Medical Center and Stanford Medical Research Institute.  Admiral Watkins was Commander of the Pacific Fleet and a protégé of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover is known as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy”

Our Twelfth Secretary of Energy

Nobel Laureate Dr. Steven Chu

   
In the photo, I am seated, NETL Director  Dr. Anthony V. Cugini is on the right, and on the left is Research Chemist Bob Warzinski.
The lady in red is a DOE press handler.

In the center is Secretary of Energy Nobel Laureate Dr Steven Chu.  He is levitating atoms in his hand to show us how he won a Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing a technology to capture and levitate atoms with coherent electromagnetic waves.

Dr. Chu did his Nobel winning research at the
DOE Lawrance Berkeley National Laboratory.

On September 1, 2023, we lost a great champion for our country, our ninth Secretary of Energy
and twenty-first Ambassador to the United Nations

The Honorable Bill Richardson-Lopez III

Click here to see a letter I received from
Secretary of Energy Ambassador Richardson

Jimmy Carter
US Navy Officer
USS Seawolf

Nuclear Submarine.

Click here for my tribute and thanks
to my hometown heroes, Congressmen Harley O. Staggers Sr and his son Attorney Congressman Harley O. “Buckey” Staggers Jr, and to a US Navy Officer and engineer on the USS Seawolf Nuclear Submarine. His name is Jimmy Carter. When I was 16 years old, their work to end the Energy Crisis of the 1970’s at the Camp David Peace Accords inspired me to become an engineer, then to serve our country in the United States Department of Energy .

Harley Staggers

US Navy Air Navigator, WWII,

In 1977, President Carter and Congressman Staggers Sr (Chair of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce) founded and funded the United States Department of Energy.  The USDOE develops the nuclear fuel that powers our country, our nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and other nuclear propelled naval combatants.

ABOUT MY WORK

FOUNDING THE 15TH DOE NATIONAL LABORATORY

I was a member of the Institutional Strategic Planning Team that created the 15th National Laboratory of the United States, the USDOE National Energy Technology Laboratory. 

Click here or on the images below  to see my name on the original charter for the DOE NETL, and a letter from Senator Robert C. Byrd (Senate Majority Leader, Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Senate Pro Tempore) to a junior WV State Senator, Attorney Harley O. “Buckey” Staggers Jr

“Make no mistake. We will fight this with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused, and we will do whatever is necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy.  Because there has never been a leak of this size, at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology. That's why I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge”   President Barack H. Obama

I was one of those engineers. 

US Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen, National Incident Commander of the Unified Command for the DWH crisis

I was on the lead team responding to the Deepwater Horizon oil leak crisis: the Plume Team of the Flow Rate Technical Group of the National Incident Command .  Our team was led by Dr. Marcia McNutt.  At that time, she was the first woman to serve as the Director of the US Geological Survey since it was founded in 1879.  She is now the first woman to serve as the President of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The NAS was founded by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to serve as pro bono “Advisers to the Nation” on all scientific matters

Dr. Marcia McNutt

then Director of the US Geological Survey, now President of the National Academy of Sciences

The Plume Team of the National Incident Command at the
NOAA Command Center in Seattle.  Dr. McNutt is in the middle.
I am on the far right.

An award from the Director of the US Geological Survey for my
“Exemplary Service to the Nation”

Prof. Ömer Savaş,

UC Berkeley, Commando Squad Leader, Turkish Army

About my research on deep sea oil leaks at Naval Weapons Station Earle, UC Berkeley, and the
USDOE National Energy Technology Laboratory.

My work at Naval Weapons Station Earle was funded ($738,000) by the USDOI Bureau of Safety & Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).

BSEE is a federal law enforcement agency.

Dr. Ray Cocco

President and Chief Technical Officer, PSRI in Chicago

• Click here to see my Contract with BSEE
• Click here to see my Final Report to BSEE

For five years I was under a Litigation Hold by the US Department of Justice in the DOJ v. BP Multi District Litigation 2179 “Oil Spill by the Oil Rig Deepwater Horizon” case in the US District Court for Eastern Louisiana, The Honorable US District Court Judge Carl J. Barbier presiding .

Click here to see the DOJ Litigation Hold

Click here for more about the important role I played in stopping the damage being done to 1000 miles of US shoreline of five Gulf States, and in causing British Petroleum to be fined $20.8 billion.  It is the largest single fine of a sin entity in US history

Those funds went to the fifty million people of five Gulf states to recover and rebuild from the damage done by British Petroleum.  The technology of my US Patent 8,391,552 was a critically important tool I used.

On April 22, 2010, two days after the DWH rig exploded, I asked DOE Patent Attorney Jay Potts to submit the patent application, under the watchful eye of DOE Attorney James T. Lucas, the DOE Deputy Director of Intellectual Property and Business Transactions and former General Counsel of the DOE. 

We were prepared to give the US taxpayers the recognition they deserve for funding the development of US Patent 8,391,552 and return some of their hard earned money to them..

“SOMETHING THE PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY SOUGHT FOR 50 YEARS

For three years, 2009, 2010, and 2011, independent experts reviewed my application of the technology of my US Patent 8,391,552 to petrochemical processing units and found it to be “a huge breakthrough” and

“something the petrochemical industry had sought for 50 years.” 

The breakthrough was that I invented technologies to see and measure particle flows inside petrochemical processing units. These units convert crude oil into consumer end-products like gasoline, diesel fuel and plastics.

The annual income of the petrochemical processing industry

 is around one trillion dollars

COMING SOON: How I was forced out of federal service with fabricated false charges and violent coercion, so Trump could give the technology of my US Patent 8,391,552 as a free gift to The Saudi Royal Family. My report will be supported with official DOE documents and under penalty of perjury.

On March 20, 2018, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS), de facto leader of The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, met in The Oval Office with convicted felon Donald Trump.

 Six months later, on October 2, 2018, MBS had Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi murdered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

His body was chopped into small pieces and flushed down a sewer drain.

Why? Because MBS did not like words Kashoggi wrote in the Washington Post.

A heinous violation of Kashoggi’s First Amendment rights.

About being married to a German Jew who lost family in the holocaust, and being attacked immediately after the worst hate crime against Jewish people in our country’s history: the mass killing at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018   (pdf)

About getting “papers” for Russian Jewish scientists who were the subject of antisemitic persecution in Moscow.  The Tree of Life brought them to the US

About my work with experts in the development, detonation, proliferation, proposed use and actual use of nuclear weapons.

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Thomas Merton

About my work as a pacifist and civil rights activist with the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, and as an Executive Officer in the American Federation of Government Employees, Local 1916

Dorothy Day

About my Cooperative
Research and Development Agreements
including the first CRADA between the USDOE and an outside organization,
the University of Pittsburgh
School of Medicine

About my work forecasting the US economy and energy sectors
twenty-five years into the future using the DOE Energy Information Administration’sNational Energy Modeling System

Saturn V Engine

Click here for more about the applications of my US Patents 5,333,044 &8,391,552,including my work on the world’s first micro-turbine heart pump. It was invented by the great rocket engineer Kenneth Clark Butler.

FUN FACT: Ken was an engineer on the team at Aerojet Rocketdyne that developed the main engine for the Saturn V rocket

that sent the first three astronauts to the moon.

Anthony with wife Julianne
and their children

Anthony was a devout Roman Catholic. On January 8, 2014, Anthony commited suicide in a barren woodland near the Pittsburgh site of the DOE NETL. I believe this to be the work of the NETL Law Department.

Anthony with granddaughter

NETL Chief Counsel Susan E. Malie, Magistrate Ronald Arnoni, and Allegheny County Solicitor Luke C. Kelly did the same thing to me.

After 41 months of their attacks, including attacking me immediately after the mass killing at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, on April 7, 2019, I tried to end my life to escape their attacks. 
I was in the ICU and hospital for five days. I barely survived.

If you are having thoughts of ending your life, there is help available. Please call or text 988 or just
click here to chat with someone who understands.