Part 13 (2/2)

Harold Bibeau, who partic.i.p.ated in the testicular irradiation experiments at the Oregon State Penitentiary, read an excerpt from Carl h.e.l.leras deposition in which the doctor admitted under oath he didnat fully disclose the cancer risk to the convicts because he didnat want to frighten them. Dr. h.e.l.ler amust have taken Personal Ethics 101 at the University of Buchenwald,a Bibeau said, referring to the infamous n.a.z.i death camp.18 In Sante Fe, New Mexico, several inches of powdery snow covered the roof of the brown adobe building where one of the Advisory Committeeas last outreach meetings was held on January 30, 1995. Scattered through the audience were atomic veterans, uranium miners, Native Alaskans, the son and grandson of two of the plutonium patients, the wives of several former Utah convicts, and scientists who worked down the road at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Bill Holmes, the grandson of Albert Stevens, the first California patient injected with plutonium, strongly condemned the scientists who performed the experiment: aThe people who did this to my grandfather had only to ask themselves how they would feel if they were in his place.19 Any code of ethics or scientific experiment involving humans must, it seems to me, begin and end with that very simple question.a Rosalie Jones and Bernice Brogan traveled down from Utah to tell the panel how their husbands, former convicts at Utah State Prison, received multiple injections of radioactive materials. Four of the babies fathered by ten of the men in the experiment subsequently died of birth defects. aThe path to h.e.l.l is paved with good intentions,a said Brogan, one of the women whose infants died.20 aUs mothers, we were given the path to h.e.l.l.a William Tsosie worked at a uranium mine near s.h.i.+prock, New Mexico, for seven and a half years. His clothes covered with uranium dust, he went home to his wife and children at the end of each s.h.i.+ft. He often ate supper or played with the children without changing clothes or bathing. Tsosie once took back to his trailer a chunk of high-grade uranium ore and placed the rock on the window above his bed. aWe never been told what it is until later on, and itas too late.21 Weare already contaminated. Weare already exposed,a he said.

Barney Bailey was ordered onto the battles.h.i.+p New York two hours after the underwater bomb, Shot Baker, was detonated during Operation Crossroads. Located near the center of the bullas-eye, the battles.h.i.+p was listing badly when the young man boarded. aWe were there three days, three days and three nights on that s.h.i.+p.22 No warning, no protective clothing. We never heard of radiation. We were seventeen-year-old kids, most of us. We had no idea.a The Santa Fe audience stirred angrily as three retired Los Alamos scientists walked to the witness table. Among them where George Voelz, who had examined Karen Silkwood, and Don Petersen, who had sc.r.a.ped Cecil Kelleyas diarrhea and vomit from the walls and floor of the emergency room. Petersen vividly described the scientific astampedea to get radioisotopes after the war. aNow all of a sudden there was this bonanza.23 You could ask Oak Ridge, and Oak Ridge would provide you with information and with a tracer, a radiotracer, and you could approach your experiment in a way that had never been possible before. Now that enthusiasm overshadowed any soul searching about ethical considerations.a Petersen was so excited about the possibilities of radioisotopes and so confident that small amounts posed little risk that he used two of his own children in radioactive iodine tracer studies. aMy five-year-old took one look at this, and she said she didnat want anything to do with it, so she got to stay home.24 The six-year-old and the eight-year-old were very interested in this, and they partic.i.p.ated.a Each of the children received about fifteen millirem of radiation, the equivalent of what a tourist in Sante Fe gets in thirteen days, he recalled. (Sante Feans are exposed to more radiation because the city is more than a mile above sea level.) aI guess itas a fine line,a remarked committee member Duncan Thomas, abetween a child consenting in full knowledge of all the facts, and being consented by their parents who are talking them into it.a25 Petersen responded, aThere is no question but what their daddy talked them into it but he was only two-thirds successful.a The final outreach meeting was held March 2 in the grand ballroom of Knoxvilleas Radisson Summit Hill Hotel. In their neatly coiffed hairdos and carefully pressed dresses, the women who once attended Vanderbilt Universityas prenatal clinic ticked off the strange illnesses that had befallen them or their children after they drank the radioactive iron c.o.c.ktails. Emma Craft said, aI want you to tell President Clinton that I want an apology from somebody and I want some answers.a26 Ron Hamm, whose mother was pregnant with him when she drank the c.o.c.ktail, said, aWe were violated in the worst possible way.27 I was a fetus, I had no choice. My mother was an unsuspecting young lady and she had no choice. But what did happen to her in that room, in my estimation, was tantamount to rape.a Frank Comas, a physician, appeared before the presidentas Advisory Committee to defend the work done by the Oak Ridge doctors. aIt is with some sadness and also some annoyance, I must confess, that I am obliged to try to exonerate ourselves for something perceived by some as devilish acts where science was G.o.d and d.a.m.n all other considerations.a28

44.

CLOSING THE BOOK.

As the hearings progressed, the committee tried to figure out a way to judge the experiments. A subtle rift soon appeared in the companionable facade the group presented to the public. According to an executive order from President Clinton, the committeeas task was to find out whether there was a clear medical or scientific purpose for the experiments; whether appropriate medical follow-up was conducted; and whether the experiments met the ethical and scientific standards, including the standards of informed consent, that prevailed at the time and that exist today.1 Once that evaluation had been completed, the group could then make recommendations about the need for notification and medical follow-up for the experimental subjects or their descendants.

The instructions from the president clearly indicated that the committee would have to make judgments. But most of the members were hesitant to do so. Instead they wanted to write a descriptive account of the experiments and focus their energy on trying to make recommendations that would ensure that unethical experiments would not occur in the future. aWe donat want to pa.s.s severe moral judgments, particularly because itas much more important to really look at the present,a said Jay Katz, a venerable ethicist from Yale University who had escaped n.a.z.i Germany with his family when he was a child.2 Although Katz was a gentle and empathetic man, he, like other committee members, seemed to treat the radiation experiments as if they were an abstract, historical event. He frequently argued that the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s were a period of aethical chaosa in medicine and that the radiation experimenters shouldnat be singled out. Paternalism governed the relations.h.i.+p between doctor and patient during that period, he a.s.serted, and patients were rarely informed of anything.

The other panelists shared Katzas reluctance to make judgments about the individual experimenters. But their hesitation was based more on the sketchy nature of the doc.u.ments and the fact that the experimenters werenat alive or available to defend their actions. Patricia King, one of the two attorneys, said, aI felt then and I feel now that we were not structured to make judgments in individual cases absent some pretty clear evidence.a3 The idea of judging also didnat sit well with Henry Royal, a radiologist at Was.h.i.+ngton University who perhaps more than anyone else represented the experimentersa viewpoint. The doctors, he argued, may have gotten oral consent from the patients. aWhat I would like to know,a he said in an interview, ais what did the investigator say to the patient?a Ruth Macklin, a professor at Albert Einstein College in the Bronx and perhaps the most eloquent of the three ethicists, refused to let her colleagues off the hook so easily.4 If the panel did not want to make judgments, she said, athen we canat talk about anyone having been wronged by the conduct and we canat begin to talk about remedies.a5 Macklin argued that the committee needed to hold individuals accountable in order to deter future researchers from performing unethical experiments and to provide justice to the victims.

Eventually the group came up with an ingenious compromise that sidestepped the issue of whether individuals should be held culpable and ensured that a unanimous report would be delivered to the president. The committee declared that separate judgments could be made about the wrongness of an action and the blameworthiness of the person who committed the act. Simply put, it separated the experiments from the experimenters. aIf experiments violated basic ethical principles, inst.i.tutional or organizational policies or rules of professional ethics,a the panel wrote, athen they were and will always be wrong.6 Whether and how much anyone should be blamed for these wrongs are separate questions.a While the committee was trying to develop its ethical framework, the political atmosphere in Was.h.i.+ngton s.h.i.+fted dramatically. For the first time in forty years, Republicans captured a majority in both houses of Congress during the November 1994 elections. Social programs were out; fiscal austerity was in. Some panelists said the changed atmosphere didnat color their work at all. But others confessed it had a profound effect on their deliberations and the recommendations they eventually sent to President Clinton. Remembered panelist Eli Glatstein, a radiation oncologist: aThe mind-set of the Republicans, particularly the young House members, was so extreme and so partisan that it toned down virtually every decision that the committee could reach.7 It was very clear that we wanted to have recommendations that Congress would take up. It was clear that our scope had to be toned down after that election. The last thing the committee wanted was to make recommendations that would be refused.a One immediate response to the changed political climate was the committeeas reluctance to ask the White House for an extension to complete its work. By December of 1994, a month after the elections, it was clear the group was not going to finish its a.s.signment in its one-year time frame. Eventually the panel did get a six-month extension and a pared-down staff to help draft its final report, but it was not nearly enough time to adequately a.n.a.lyze and synthesize the voluminous doc.u.mentary record.

Many contemporary scientists defended the Cold War experiments when the controversy first erupted, claiming that ethical standards were different in the past from what they are today. But the doc.u.ments clearly showed that government officials recognized decades ago that the voluntary and understanding consent of the human subject was essential for an experiment to be ethical. The Atomic Energy Commission had rules by 1947 and the Defense Department by 1953 requiring researchers to obtain the consent of sick patients for therapeutic and nontherapeutic experiments.

Furthermore, the doc.u.ments show that the experimenters understood the rules. Thomas s.h.i.+pman, the physician who supervised Los Alamosas health division through much of the Cold War, advised the Los Alamos Medical Center in 1951 that patients should not be given non-therapeutic irradiation unless the procedures were explained and consent obtained. aIn other words, we should not carry out on a patient a procedure even mildly experimental while intimating to the patient that this is part of his regular treatment.8 The situation, it seems to me, is quite comparable to the use of a relatively new drug.a The writings of Robert Stone, an inveterate experimenter, also show that physicians, even during World War II, recognized that they needed the consent from sick patients for experiments. Of the patients exposed to total body irradiation during the Manhattan Project, Stone wrote, aNo signed consent was received from the patient, but the treatment was explained to them by the physicians and they, in full knowledge and facts, accepted the treatments.a9 While Stone may not have always followed the rules, records show that he was also extremely familiar with the AMAas code of ethics and the Nuremberg Code. During a meeting at UCSFas Cancer Board in 1952, he argued against an experiment in which an investigator proposed transferring malignant melanoma cells to terminally ill patients.12 aDr. Stone stated that he felt such a procedure was not in line with the basic principles governing human experimentation outlined at the War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg or the code of ethics regarding human experimentation adopted by the American Medical a.s.sociation.10 In particular, the investigator could not terminate the experiment and it would not seem to serve any purpose to benefit humanity.a The Cancer Board subsequently refused to allow the experiment to proceed.

The formerly cla.s.sified transcripts of the TBI debates held at the Pentagon demonstrate clearly that both military and civilian scientists were familiar with the Nuremberg Code. The code was even read aloud at the Pentagon during a November 10, 1952 meeting of the Committee on Chemical Warfare.11 Despite the new evidence, Jay Katz continued to a.s.sert his long-held belief that the researchers did not think the Nuremberg Code had practical bearing on their work. aThe Nuremberg Code is an aspirational code and, as Iave observed, it speaks to the stars,a he declared at one meeting. aIt is a doc.u.ment not for earthlings, but for the heavens.a Although many new decla.s.sified doc.u.ments showed unequivocally that there were rules and ethical guidelines governing the radiation experiments, Katz dismissed them as bureaucratic alip service.a In a separate statement appended to the committeeas final report, he wrote: aMost references to consent (with rare exceptions) that we uncovered in governmental doc.u.ments or in exchanges between officials and their medical consultants were meaningless words, which conveyed no appreciation of the nature and quality of disclosure that must be provided if patient-subjects were truly to be given a choice to accept or decline partic.i.p.ation in research.13 Form, not substance, punctuated most of the policies on consent during the Cold War period.a (Katz makes the same argument about the consent process in many contemporary experiments.) The Advisory Committee also a.s.serted that experimenters had a tradition of obtaining consent from ahealthy subjectsa but not from apatient-subjects.a For some reason, the committee expended considerable intellectual effort trying to prove there were different practices for these two groups, but the theory is not substantiated by the written evidence.

Although hopes were high for the committee, it became apparent over a matter of months that the group didnat have the political will or the desire to thoroughly probe the Cold War experiments. Both Ruth Faden and Jay Katz appeared to be more interested in finding out whether informed consent rules were being followed by contemporary experimentersa”certainly a worthwhile endeavor but not the one for which they had been hired. Other members, such as Henry Royal, were determined to see that the reputation of the radiation research community was not unduly smeared. And Kenneth Feinberg, the other lawyer on the committee, was alleged by critics to have been placed on the panel to ensure that compensation to subjects would be kept low. Feinberg denied the allegations, but he did argue at one meeting that the evidence was too amarginala14 for the committee to use as a basis for remedies. aItas interesting. It tells a story. But itas hardly the stuff for recommending to the Congress that somebody get $50,000 or medical monitoring or a life insurance policy or health insurance or even a letter of apology.a With the conservative political atmosphere, the group also was not about to recommend remedies or medical monitoring that would have cost millions of dollars and have required congressional approval. Oncologist Eli Glatstein said any effort to recommend compensation for the veterans, for example, awent out the windowa when the Republicans took over Congress.15 aThere was no sympathy for that.a Still, there was a voluminous record that unequivocally showed that thousands of unethical experiments had occurred during the Cold War. How was the panel to deal with that?

Again they invoked the difference between actor and act, condemning the experiment but not the experimenter. In their final report, which numbers 925 pages, the group did find that many of the studies were unethical, that doctors routinely violated their patientsa trust, and that subjects were not fully informed. With few exceptions, though, the panel declared no one was harmed, no one was to blame, and no one needed medical monitoring. aThis report is the worst thing to happen to medical ethics since the Bible,a said David Egilman, a physician and professor at Brown University, and one of the people who helped spur the congressional investigation into the human experiments in the mid-1980s.16 aItas constructed so that you can knowingly do something wrong to someone and not be punished; not only not punished but not even found responsible. Think about applying that to anything else in life!a In brief, the committee managed to come up with only one very small group that was eligible for monetary compensation. In a tortuously worded statement, the panel declared that anyone who had been used in an experiment in which the government tried to keep information secret out of fear of embarra.s.sment or potential liability should be compensated. Although deception was rife in all the experiments, and in many of them for precisely those reasons, the only experimental subjects the panel specified as fitting into this category were the relatives of the plutonium injectees, a woman known as CAL-Z, who was injected with zirconium in 1948 by Berkeley scientists, and the fourteen people used in the Met Labas total-body irradiation experiment at the Chicago Tumor Clinic. Practically speaking, the only people who would actually receive any money were the families of the plutonium injectees because the ident.i.ties of the zirconium patient and the fourteen TBI subjects have never been revealed.

The committee also made a general recommendation that subjects who were harmed in experiments that were not intended to have any therapeutic benefit be compensated. Many of the controversial projects, such as the testicular irradiation experiments, fell into this category. But the panel said it could not make specific recommendations about those experiments because it didnat have time to undertake the individualized fact-finding.

Finally, the committee recommended that people who were used in radiation experiments in which they were not harmed but did not give their informed consent should be given a personalized apology. This recommendation was directed at the atracera studies, which comprised the majority of experiments done during the Cold War. With scant scientific data on which to base their conclusion and no information whatsoever about the ident.i.ties of people used in the experiments, the Advisory Committee a.s.serted repeatedly that most of the atracera studies caused no physical harm. But some of the tracer studies did, in fact, deliver large doses, and itas impossible to say with certainty that no harm occurred without going to individual cases.

The Advisory Committee also constructed a peculiar ethical argument that linked the wrongness of an experiment to physical harm. aIt should be emphasized,a the final report observed, athat often these non-therapeutic experiments on unconsenting patients const.i.tuted only minor wrongs.17 Often there was little or no risk to patient-subjects and no inconvenience. Although it is always morally offensive to use a person as a means only, as the burden on the patient-subject decreased, so did the seriousness of the wrong.a Many critics took aim at this position, including editorial writers at the Boston Globe, the newspaper that broke the first stories on the radio active breakfast cereal experiments done at the Fernald school. The Globe editorial said: Beyond the question of harm, beyond the evil of duplicity, the most unfortunate casualty of the Cold War radiation agenda was the simple capacity of individuals to make informed decisions about their own bodies.18 Unfortunately, the committee does not seem to lend the principle of self-determination the same value it accords some of the others in its list of moral precepts. Rather, it seems to focus on risks to patients. The panel admits that the nonconsensual use of humans in nontherapeutic experiments is always an affront, but it says, aAs the burden on the patient-subject decreased, so too did the seriousness of the wrong.a That construction lets the government off too easily, for it does not a.s.sign blame based upon the essential nature of the action it-selfa”the use of an innocent person as a test animala”but rather, fosters a retrospective opinion that allows less-bad outcomes to ameliorate the actionas inherent wrong. The committeeas recommendation that some of those experimented upon without consent deserve only apologies is informed by this belief.

Once the panel had determined that most of the experiments were harmless, troublesome questions about whether the thousands of Americans who had been used in the studies should be notified and offered medical monitoring went away. If no one was harmed, then there was no need for notification and medical monitoring. In an early draft of its final report, the group did recommend medical monitoring for prisoners who had their t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es irradiated, but the panel changed its mind after it concluded that the cancer risk to the subjects was even smaller than what the original experimenters had calculated. Even Carl h.e.l.ler, disabled by a stroke and lying on a plastic mattress, told attorneys in 1976 that the prisoners should be monitored for the rest of their lives. If the committee had recommended medical monitoring for one group of test subjects, it would have been hard-pressed not to recommend the same follow-up for people used in other experiments.

The panel based its recommendation against notification and medical monitoring on an unusual set of guidelines that were much more restrictive than what other public health agencies use. The criteria were (1) whether the person would have a greater than a 1 in 1,000 chances of dying from a fatal cancer as a result of the radiation exposure and (2) whether early detection and treatment would medically benefit the test subject.

In a paper sharply critical of the committeeas work, Brown Universityas David Egilman points out that other federal agencies, such as the National Inst.i.tute of Occupational Safety and Health, have determined that all partic.i.p.ants in any research study must be notified of the results, even if they show no health risk.19 Furthermore, he added that most agencies use a threshold of 1 in 1 million when evaluating health risks. By limiting the a.n.a.lysis to cancer mortality only, Egilman said the panel also avoided the sticky issue of other radiation-induced diseases and nonfatal malignancies, such as thyroid tumors, which are extremely painful and dependent on early intervention and medical monitoring for cure.

Even using its own highly restrictive guidelines, the committee found several groups of experimental subjects who were at risk of contracting a fatal malignancy as a result of their radiation exposure, including those who had undergone nasopharyngeal radium treatments and children who were the subjects of radioactive iodine studies. But the panel concluded notification and follow-up was still not warranted because screening methods were not very good and there was no evidence that the subjects would receive any medical benefit from early detection and treatment.

Ironically, the National Inst.i.tutes of Health had recommended in 1977 that children who received the nasal radium treatments be examined every one to two years, Egilman points out.20 And early detection and treatment did benefit some experimental victims. John McCarthy, a political science professor in California subjected to the radium nasal treatments as a child, decided to get a check up after reading a 1994 newspaper article about the procedure. During the exam, his doctor found two small tumors on his thyroid. aIave got pretty good odds,a he told a reporter.21 aHad I not known about the risk of these treatments and begun to do some routine monitoring, I probably would not have addressed it for another five to eight years and the prognosis would have gone down sharply.a Radiation oncologist Eli Glatstein believed patients given the radium nasal treatments should be medically monitored but was outvoted thirteen to one. Glatstein later told Stewart Farber, a Rhode Island health physicist who first brought the experiments to the publicas attention, that it was anot salable in todayas political environmenta to recommend screening for so many victims.22 The committee did not hold one scientist accountable nor did it single out any inst.i.tution for blame. Instead, it chose to condemn the entire federal government and the medical profession, a condemnation so broad that it was the equivalent of blaming no one. Even the generic condemnation of physicians was written in a timid, tentative voice: To characterize a great profession as having engaged over many years in unethical conducta”years in which ma.s.sive progress was being made in curbing mankindas greatest illsa”may strike some as arrogant and unreasonable.23 However, fair a.s.sessment indicates that the circ.u.mstance was one of those times in history in which wrongs were committed by very decent people who were in a position to know that a specific aspect of their interactions with others should be improved.

Despite the hundreds of intentional releases of radioactive material that took place over population centers without the publicas knowledge, the Advisory Committee did not recommend that such releases be banned. Instead the group advised that an independent panel review any proposed releases in the future to make sure the secrecy was being maintained for bona fide national security reasons and that measures were taken to reduce risk. Along similar lines, the committee also did not advocate that cla.s.sified research with human subjects be outlawed. aImportant national security goals,a the group wrote, amay suffer if human subjects research projects making unique and irreplaceable contributions were foreclosed.a24 Instead the panel urged the Clinton administration to develop regulations so that subjects of future cla.s.sified research would be protected, adequately informed, and the doc.u.ments decla.s.sified as soon as possible. (The federal government did subsequently develop new rules for cla.s.sified research.) The panel also failed to lay to rest the long-standing and bitter controversy involving the atomic veterans; it simply chastised the military for not keeping accurate records and urged that epidemiological tables used in compensating veterans be updated. The Advisory Committee was well aware that the federal government has spent millions on questionable dose reconstructions and, by comparison, pennies on veterans. But instead of issuing a strong statement that would help correct this grave injustice, the panel merely urged the government to determine whether existing laws were being administered in ways that abest balance allocation of resources between financial compensation to eligible atomic veterans and administrative costs, including the costs and scientific credibility of dose reconstruction.a25 Although Ruth Faden had pledged to leave the record irrefutably straight,a the panel left the historical record in some ways, murkier than ever. Not surprisingly, its findings were a great disappointment to the experimental subjects and their families. Jerry Mousso, the nephew of one of the Rochester plutonium patients, said, I guess the government really won.26 All the culprits that planned and executed this thing got away with it.a Brenda Weaver, the Hanford woman whose daughter was born without eyes, observed, A book has been opened, a page read, and then itas been closed.a27 Fred Boyce, one of the Fernald boys who partic.i.p.ated in the Science Club, said, aFor them to turn around and say that a little apology is enough a is just beyond belief.a28 And finally, Ron Hamm, who was exposed as a fetus to radiation when his mother was given the radioactive iron c.o.c.ktail at Vanderbilt University, spoke for many when he said, I do feel betrayed and I feel abused by this committeeas report.a29

45.

A PRESIDENTIAL APOLOGY.

President Clinton formally accepted the Advisory Committeeas final report in a quiet ceremony at the White House on the morning of October 3, 1995. Hoisting the heavy blue volume into the air, he said, aThis report I received today is a monumental doc.u.ment in more ways than one.1 It is a very, very important piece of Americaas history.a The president then condemned the experiments in straightforward language, leaving out all the caveats that muddied the committeeas report. He admitted that thousands of government-sponsored radiation experiments took place at hospitals, universities, and military bases throughout the United States during the Cold War. aWhile most of the tests were ethical by any standards, some were unethical, not only by todayas standards, but by the standards of the time in which they were conducted. They failed both the test of our national values and the test of humanity.a Many of the experiments were performed on the atomic veterans and on the sick and the poor, he admitted, without their having any idea of what was being done to them. aInformed consent means your doctor tells you the risk of the treatment you are about to undergo. In too many cases, informed consent was withheld. Americans were kept in the dark about the effects of what was being done to them. The deception extended beyond the test subjects themselves to encompa.s.s their families and the American people as a whole, for these experiments were kept secret. And they were shrouded not for a compelling reason of national security, but for the simple fear of embarra.s.sment, and that was wrong.a The president acknowledged that the subterfuge used during the Cold War had added to the mistrust many Americans feel toward their government. aBecause of stonewalling and evasions in the past, times when a family member or a neighbor suffered an injustice and had nowhere to turn and couldnat even get the facts, some Americans lost faith in the promise of our democracy. Government was very powerful, but very far away and not trusted to be ethical.a Although the committee had labored over the question of whether the radiation victims should receive an apology, Clinton swept away all the conditions and spontaneously offered an apology to all of the people who had been used in the radiation experiments. The government leaders responsible for the experiments were no longer alive to apologize to the people and communities whose lives were adarkened by the shadow of the atom,a he began. aSo today, on behalf of another generation of American leaders and another generation of American citizens, the United States of America offers a sincere apology to those of our citizens who were subjected to these experiments, to their families and to their communities.a Clinton was such a polished speaker, his words came so effortlessly, that the historic significance of what he was saying almost slipped by the audience. He was the first president born after the bombings of Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki, and he had just broken with the official pattern of denial, cover-up, and secrecy that had characterized nearly every controversial issue surrounding the atomic bomb, including the building and dropping of the bomb itself. His speech took sixteen minutes.

With the presidentas apology, the day of reckoning had finally come for the scientists, doctors, and bureaucrats who schemed for decades to keep knowledge of the plutonium injections and other radiation experiments from becoming public. Lawsuits were being brought, public denunciations made, but most of the experimenters were dead and spared the consequences they had feared so long.

Most Americans, in fact, paid little attention whatsoever to Clintonas speech. Two hours later a jury in Los Angeles returned to the courtroom with its verdict in the sensational murder trial of football legend O. J. Simpson. In the frenzied media coverage that followed the innocent verdict, Clintonas remarks on a much vaster question of guilt were reduced to sound bites on the evening news and stories on the inside pages of the nationas newspapers. Not even the clever doctors of the Manhattan Project could have dreamed up such a diversion.

46.

aNEVER AGAINa

With the p.r.o.nouncements by the Advisory Committee and President Clintonas apology, the controversy over the human radiation experiments began to slip from public view. Although her stint as energy secretary was nearly over, Hazel OaLeary was not yet through with her involvement in the horrific scandal she had helped bring to light.

OaLearyas public image had changed dramatically in the three years since her December 7, 1993 press conference. She also had made many formidable enemies as she went about trying to reform the DOEas anachronistic bureaucracy and to dismantle its creaky cold war machinery. When she recommended in the spring of 1993 that the fifteen underground tests planned at the Nevada Test Site be canceled, powerful officials in the Pentagon began viewing her with suspicion. Was the elegant corporate lawyer in the bright tropical suits an antinuclear activist? Many thought so.

aShe was not seen by the Defense Department, at least initially, as especially supportive of the weapons program,a said Al Narath, the former director of Sandia National Laboratories and one of the three weapons lab directors who was summoned to Was.h.i.+ngton for the debate in the tomblike room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of DOE headquarters.1 aShe and I never talked about this, but my guess is she came into the job with sort of a natural, anti-nuclear weapon inclination.a John Nuckolls, the former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who was also summoned to Was.h.i.+ngton, said he was taken aback by the way OaLeary had conducted the meeting. aAnd I was most startled when she invoked her grandmother in response to some of the arguments for why the tests needed to be done, saying she couldnat convince her grandmother of that.2 Thatas THE memorable remark of the meeting. I think I would have felt more comfortable if the issue had been addressed on its merits for the national security of the United States and not for what she, with her lack of understanding and appreciation, could explain to her grandmother. So she suddenly introduced this way of thinking about the problema”can we convince the non-technically trained and oriented person of the validity of these requirements. And I would say I was astonished when she did that.a Frank Gaffney, a former a.s.sistant secretary in the Defense Department during the Reagan administration, compared her 1993 press conference to the j.a.panese attack at Pearl Harbor: aIt is somehow fitting that th

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