Hired by some of the country's wealthiest citizens in America's Gilded Age, members of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency infiltrated unions, protected strikebreakers, and worked to keep union
supporters out of plants and mines.
Even though a
supporter of nuclear power, Charpak was one
of three signatories to an editorial in the French daily Libération in August that called for a halt to the building
of the experimental fusion reactor ITER in the south
of France because the cost
of the project has running
out of control and the
plant will be «unusable.»