Part 14 (2/2)

By contrast, the findings of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments were disappointing and timid. Even committee member Jay Katz admitted in an interview after the panel had been disbanded that the members did not asufficiently condemna many of the experiments.8 Although the groupas final report is factual and contains much new information, its conclusions are weak and fail to come to terms with many of the controversial studies.

Collectively, the doc.u.ments show that the atomic veterans were put at risk without their knowledge. The extent of the risk will probably never be known with certainty because the pa.s.sage of time has obliterated information trails and record keeping was shoddy and incomplete. Many veterans were put in harmas way for a frivolous and unconscionable purpose: public relations. Military leaders, such as General James c.o.o.ney, wanted to prove to the troops and the American public that the scorched earth left by an atomic detonation was perfectly inhabitable soon after the blast. The federal government, as California Senator Alan Cranston observed in 1984, has a moral obligation to the atomic veterans that has not been fulfilled.

Residents who lived downwind of Hanford and other weapons sites arguably could also be considered subjects of what the Advisory Committee termed aexperiments of opportunity.a Certainly the residents were not told of the dangers from the plant emissions and many were the subsequent objects of scientific study, which was not identified as such.

Although many of the experimental subjects and their relatives were disappointed by the governmentas response, the American people nevertheless gained a vast amount of knowledge from the doc.u.ments about the Cold War. Itas as if a submerged continent has risen to the surface. There are peaks and valleys and still lots of shadows, but the contours are better understood.

Much of the information is disturbing, shocking, and will serve as a cautionary tale about the corrupting power of secrecy, the danger of special interest groups, the excesses of science and medicine, and the need to monitor closely the activities of civilian and military weapons makers. aThe breathtaking advances in science and technology demand we always keep our ethical watch light burning.9 No matter how rapid the pace of change, it can never outrun our core convictions that have stood us so well as a nation for more than two hundred years now, through many different scientific revolutions,a President Clinton observed when he accepted the Advisory Committeeas report.

In the records are the voices of the little-known men who walked the corridors of power during the Cold War. In his humorless reports to the Manhattan Engineer District, a careful reader can ferret out the callous recklessness that drove Joseph Hamilton to take such risks with his life and the lives of others. The fear and frustration that scientists at Los Alamos felt as the kilogram amounts of plutonium began arriving is almost palpable in the exchange of memos between Louis Hempelmann and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Los Alamos chemist Wright Langham and physician Samuel Ba.s.sett reveal their capacity for self-deception as they struggle to maintain a gentlemanly decorum in the midst of discussions about blood, urine, and feces. n.o.bel laureate Willard Libby strikes one of the most lunatic notes of the Cold War when he turns to his peers and wistfully remarks, aIf anybody knows how to do a good job of body s.n.a.t.c.hing, they will really be serving their country.a Most of the men who wrote the memos and reports, delivered their opinions behind closed doors, are dead. The committees and boards they once served on are defunct and forgotten. Even the buildings where they once met have been razed. Still, there is an invisible but nonetheless real thread connecting that past to our present and even our future. These scientists helped to shape the policies that have affected the health of thousands of Americans. Indeed, we are still reaping the consequences.

Scientists at the National Cancer Inst.i.tute in late 1997 estimated that bomb tests conducted in Nevada during the 1950s may cause 10,000 to 75,00010 extra thyroid cancers. Seventy percent of the cancers, or as many as 52,500 malignancies, have yet to be diagnosed. Three-fourths of the cancers are expected to develop in people who were younger than five at the time of the exposure. These current and future cancer patients are the baby boomers who guzzled milk from the cows that grazed on the contaminated fields that Stafford Warren warned about in his 1947 speech at Yale University. aThere were few, if any, Americans in the contiguous forty-eight states at the time that were not exposed to some level of fallout,a Dr.11 Richard D. Klausner, director of the National Cancer Inst.i.tute, said in 1997.

The NCIas fallout study, which took fourteen years to complete, does not take into account the vast amounts of radioiodine released from tests at the Pacific Proving Ground or the radioiodine released into the atmosphere by nuclear tests conducted by other countries. Nor do the results address the health effects caused by long-lived isotopes of cesium, strontium, plutonium, and carbon, which were released during the blasts and found their way into the bodies of the people living on the planet. All of the baby boomers, a few retired weapons scientists said with an almost macabre cheeriness, have a few atoms of plutonium in their bones.

The doc.u.ments go far in demystifying some of the most secretive aspects of the weapons program. With the unveiling comes understanding and perhaps a basis for communication. President Clinton said he hoped the ma.s.sive release of records would help rebuild the publicas trust in the government. But trust occurs when behavior is consistent and honest over a long period of time. The track record of openness is short. The pitfalls ahead are many. Unnecessary secrets and vast distances still exist between the people inside and outside the fences.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

I am indebted to the many people who enabled me to write this book. It seemed that whenever I hit a rough spota”whether it was in the research, the writing, or the editing phasea”someone appeared and extended a helping hand. In particular, I want to thank the relatives of the deceased people who were unwittingly used in these experiments, as well as those subjects who are still living, who so generously gave of their time, recounting painful moments in their lives and providing me with invaluable doc.u.ments and photographs.

One of the people whom I will never be able to repay is William Jay Brady, who became my unofficial scientific advisor for the project. Having worked at the Nevada Test Site since 1952, Jay not only possesses a firsthand knowledge of many of the events and scientists described in this book but also has a brilliant scientific mind and an almost photographic memory. He read the ma.n.u.script twice and spent many hours tutoring me in physics, mathematics, and radiation biology. Other scientists who helped were Bill Bartlett, John Gofman, Darrell Fisher, George Voelz, William Moss, Roland Finston, John Cobb, and Arthur Upton.

My heartfelt thanks also go to Mary Diecker, an indefatigable researcher who appeared at my house week after week with her arms laden with books and scientific reports. Many of the extraordinary details described in this book were uncovered by Mary during her many trips to the library. I also received research a.s.sistance from Albert Lukban, Lily Wound, Lorlei Metke, and Richard Halsey.

Countless government officials went out of their way to help me. Among the most helpful were employees in the Department of Energy, the very agency that had been so uncooperative when I began this project twelve years ago. I owe a very large thank-you to the DOEas Lori Azim, a lovely and efficient young woman who sent me dozens of doc.u.ments. I also am grateful to Martha DeMarre, Jeff Gordon, and former staffer Cynthia Ashley at the DOEas Coordination and Information Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, for the rapidity with which they responded to my requests for doc.u.ments. Evie Self, a decla.s.sification official at DOE headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., worked a minor miracle when she managed to get the accident report of Jimmy Robinson decla.s.sified by both the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. The report had languished in Was.h.i.+ngton for more than two years and was in danger of being lost until she stepped in. Other government employees who helped were Diana Joy Leute, Ellyn Weiss, Bob Alvarez, Jim Solit, Rick Ray, Pam Bonee, Cheri Abdelnour, and Col. Claud Bailey.

Staffers from President Clintonas Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments were of tremendous a.s.sistance. In particular, I want to thank Dan Guttman, the committeeas executive director, with whom I had many lively discussions. Dan literally opened the committeeas doors to me, allowing me to copy hundreds of doc.u.ments before they were boxed up and s.h.i.+pped to the National Archives. Lanny Keller, Trad Hughes, Gil Whittemore, Patrick Fitzgerald, Gregg Herken, James David, Patricia Perentesis, Jon Harkness, Kristin Crotty, Stephen Klaidman, Gary Stern, Gail Javitt, and Ronald Neuman were also helpful.

Loretta Garrison, formerly an attorney with the Baker & Hostetler law firm, was instrumental in getting many important doc.u.ments on the plutonium experiment released under the Freedom of Information Act. Loretta and her husband, David, also opened their home to me on my many research trips to Was.h.i.+ngton, putting me up in their spare bedroom and supplying me with maps, subway pa.s.ses, and umbrellas as I negotiated my way through Was.h.i.+ngtonas archives and reading rooms. James Houpt, another attorney with the Baker & Hostetler firm, helped keep my original notes and doc.u.ments on the Cecil Kelley case from being subpoenaed by Los Alamos.

Many records used in this book came from the private collections of individuals. One of the most generous was Harold Bibeau, a subject in Carl h.e.l.leras testicular irradiation experiment, who sent me the bulk of the doc.u.ments used in the chapter on the prisoner experiments. Other people who opened their personal files included Pat Broudy, Stewart Udall, Katie Kelley, Jackie Kittrell, Doris Baker, Martha Stephens, Sandra Marlow, Peter J. Thompson, Venlo Wolfsohn, Langdon Harrison, and Ubaldo Arizmendi.

Doe West, who chaired the Ma.s.sachusetts task force that investigated the radiation experiments at the Fernald state school, spent hours tracking down photographs for me. I also received help from numerous professional archivists and librarians, including Margaret Moseley, a librarian in Newport News; Loretta Hefner, formerly with Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory; Roger Mead, the archivist at Los Alamos; Terry Fehner, a historian at DOE headquarters in Germantown, Maryland; Sandy Smith, at the National Archives; and Valerie Komor, at the Rockefeller Archive Center.

Scott Ware, the editor of the Albuquerque Tribune, gave me permission to use many of the doc.u.ments and photographs from the original series. Colleagues Dennis Domrzalski, Ed Asher, Dan Vukelich, and Bob Benz were a great help, as were reporters in other cities, including Cory-don Ireland, Tim Bonfield, Karen Dorn Steele, Mary Manning, and Keith Rogers. Countless other individuals provided a.s.sistance, including Ray Poore, Oscar Rosen, Robert Campbell, Don Arbitblit, William Burleson, R. Joseph Parker, E. Cooper Brown, Thomas Fisher, David Egilman, Cliff Honicker, Kitty Alvarez, John Abbotts, James P. c.o.o.ney Jr., Meta h.e.l.ler, John Daniel, Madonna Daniel, Don Byers, James Brascoe, Jeff Petroculley, Ray Heslin, and David Hilgemann.

I am also indebted also to Jim Bettinger, the deputy director of the John S. Knight Fellows.h.i.+p Program at Stanford University, who took time out of his busy schedule to plow throught the first draft of my ma.n.u.script, offering many intelligent suggestions for the revisions and much-needed encouragement. Luis Tovar and Diane Edwards also read the first draft, gently pointing out the rough spots that needed to be smoothed.

I cannot begin to express my thanks to my dear friend, Loydean Thomas, who listened patiently to my ordeals over the years. I also owe a special thanks to my next-door neighbor, Dena Daniel, now eighty-four, who cruised the airwaves, capturing on tape anything that might be related to the project and leaving it on my doorstep each evening.

I am also indebted to my literary agent, Lisa Bankoff, for her unwavering support, as well as to the people at The Dial Press who saw this book through to publication. I have an abiding grat.i.tude to my two wonderful editors, Beth Rashbaum and Susan Kamil. With a ruthless pen and gentle heart, Beth took a grocery bagas worth of ma.n.u.script pages and turned them into this book. Susan guided the project through all its twists and turns. Her commitment was constant, her enthusiasm unflagging, her advice inspiring. I also want to thank Zoe Rice, for her incalculable a.s.sistance and unfailing courtesy; Random Houseas Bill Adams, for his superb legal review; Virginia Norey, Brian Mulligan, and Roberto de Vicq de c.u.mptich, who worked on everything from the jacket to the interior design of the book; Susan Schwartz, publis.h.i.+ng manager, and Johanna Tani, chief copy editor, who shepherded the book through the production process; and copy editor Debra Manette, who culled out more errors than I believed were possible. Those that remain are my own.

And finally to my husband, Jim, I owe my deepest grat.i.tude. He has always believed in this book. More than anything else, it was his love and confidence that carried me through the years. He read the ma.n.u.script at least four times, offered many invaluable suggestions, and endured years of endless discussion about the people and events described here. It is not an exaggeration to say that without Jim, I might not have completed the journey.

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