OCT-NOV 97 - HOME

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

For over twenty years (1974-1994) the U.S. Government conducted a wide range of secret experiments on unwitting Ameri-can citizens, exploring the hazards posed by nuclear radiation. The participating medical doctors, scientists, and researchers managed to keep their secrets from the American people. The feat is virtually without rival except in fiction. Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Purloined Letter" describes how a master spy succeeds in hiding a monumentally incriminating document from the prying eyes of the French Surete. He hides it by leaving it in plain sight on top of a pile of papers on his desk.

In 1996 the government published a 620-page book titled The Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report of the President's Advisory Committee.

Here is an example of its style and content:

The Advisory Committee's charter identified thirteen releases: one related to the testing of intelligence equipment ("the Green Run"), eight radiological warfare tests, and four releases of radioactive lanthulam ("Rala") to test the mechanism of the atomic bomb. The Advisory Committee received information on more than sixty radiological warfare releases that took place in the period 1944-1961. We identified farther intentional releases of a kind that were not described in the charter. These included the releases of radiation to study its environmental pathways and the release of radiation in connection with outdoor tests related to the development of nuclear reactors, as well as to the development of nuclear-powered rockets and airplanes.

Most releases took place in and around three sites that constitute the nation's weapons complex, notably Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; Los Alamos, New Mexico and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. Releases related to radiological warfare tests took place primarily at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Radioactive material was also released into the environment for research purposes at other locations; for example, fallout from the Nevada Test Site was inserted in the tundra of Alaska.

Suppose that you were "the government." And suppose you sensed a political necessity requiring you to make the facts public? How would you go about it? Who would you choose to write it? And in what venue would you publish it?

You would choose an unimpeachable committee to publish the results of an impeccably objective and exhaustive investigation. You would present it in a report so densely documented and so numbingly written that no one but an obsessive-compulsive could get through it. What you would have accomplished is analagous to what workers do when they go on strike by "working to rule." You would have avoided your duty by exhaustively carrying it out.

What would happen then? Virtually nothing. Nothing until a nit-picking reporter pieced together the human implications of the horror by interviewing some of the victims, and then publishing her blockbusting newspaper series. Only then did a courageous Secretary of the Department of Energy threaten to blow the whistle on the whole twenty years of dirty-work. Appointment of the President's Advisory Committee followed. But even that initiative was smothered by the eventual result. Since publication of the Report, the government has issued a bulletin promising to set things right. Things have still not been set right. (Please see adendum).

What have we learned? Other than yet another lesson about the necessity of a free press, we have not learned very much-except, perhaps a little more about the architectonics of cover-up. The following outlines a step-by-step sequence of official reactions to allegations of official malfeasance.

·It never happened.

·It happened-but it wasn't us who did it.

·We did it-because we had to do it. The country needed it.

·We would have told you about it because we believe that governments should be open.

·Unfortunately, we had to keep it secret, because, if we published it, the enemy could figure out our intelligence circuits. (Letting you know also lets them know.)

·In any event, we will never do it again.

·We will never do it again because we have now created safeguards against that kind of thing.

·But if we ever have to do it again, we will tell you.

·If we do not tell you at once, we will tell you as soon as we can.

·And if we can't tell you as soon as we can, ....

Addendum
Assertions of Principle as a Substitute for Applying Principle in PracticE

One of the stigmata of corrupt practices-by whole governments or their smallest units-is the intensity and frequency of statements defending honesty and decency and opposing all forms of double dealing. This strategy enables them to defend in rhetoric the policies which their officers are routinely violating in practice.

Poisoning without Poisoners or Victims

A case in point is provided by the exhaustive report of the Advisory Committee. In its 620-page account of the covert radiation of human beings, the Committee found that, indeed, people had been poisoned-but could find or name few, if any, poisoners. Victims, too, there had been, but they also were hard to find. Who and what had victimized them? Obviously, the system.

The Advisory Committee struggled with this problem in the preface of its report--and had the decency to give credit where it was due:

The Albuquerque Tribune for the first time publicly revealed the names of Americans who had been injected with plutonium, the man-made material that was the key ingredient of the atom bomb. Reporter Eileen Welsome put a human face to what previously had been anonymous data published in official reports.

The Committee's discomfort with its mandate to describe wrongs without identifying wrong-doers has prompted subsequent face-saving efforts by the goverment. In a document disingenuously titled, "Building Public Trust," the government finally addresses the issue of anonymous perpetrators and victims:

Notwithstanding the difficulties of undertaking individual notifications, the government reaffirms its continuing commitment to openness. (p.23)

But on page 27 we learn:

DOE notified subjects of plutonium and uranium injection experiments, or their next of kin, when these could be located. In addition, DOE asked all its facilities to provide detailed information about the availability of data relating to individual subjects, the feasibility of notification, and whether the notification process had occurred.

Note the shift from detailed information about subjects to the question of its availability. The signal could hardly be clearer. The government is saying, in effect, "If you can't give us the names, then discuss the problem of their availability."

Finally, on page 30, the document for the first time faces the thorny question of financial compensation:

The Advisory Committee recommended that the government provide financial compensation to subjects of human radiation in two cases. First, those cases in which efforts were made to keep information secret from those individuals and their families, or from the public, for the purpose of avoiding legal liability, or both, and where this secrecy had the effect of denying individuals the opportunity to pursue potential grievances. Secondly, those experiments. . . that did not involve a prospect of direct medical benefit, or in which interventions were presented as conventional or standard practice, and physical injury attributable to the experiment resulted.

Note how each of these conditions heightens the difficulties which must be surmounted before individuals can establish allowable claims. But suppose they succeed, what then?

The DOJ (Department of Justice) is using the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) claims process, or other existing law, to consider compensation as part of the settlement of relevant claims. Thus, individuals can file claims using a well established process (italics supplied).

In other words, if all else fails them, let the s.o.b.s sue.

OCT-NOV 97 -- HOME -- Archives -- Electrons to the Editor