The Plutonium Files (79 page)

The eighteen patients were injected with plutonium citrate or plutonium nitrate, both soluble forms of plutonium that are excreted in the urine. But only a few thousand people, at most, who worked in the weapons complex over the last fifty years have been exposed to those particular plutonium compounds. As Brady explains it, the majority of the world’s population, including test-site participants, have been exposed to plutonium
oxide,
a compound that is created during a nuclear detonation. And plutonium oxide, for the most part, stays in the lungs and lymph nodes and cannot be detected in the urine. Thus the data from the injectees are applicable to perhaps a few thousand workers in the nuclear weapons complex and not to the many hundreds of thousands of people exposed to global fallout.

During the heyday of the atmospheric testing program, thousands of urine samples were taken regularly from test-site workers and, to a lesser extent, military troops and examined for plutonium. Those test results invariably produced false negatives—that is, no evidence of contamination that could be confirmed. In fact, Brady said, many of the soldiers and test-site workers could have had a significant amount of plutonium in the lungs, but it would not have been detectable in the urine. “How ironic,” he added.
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“The federal government has spent millions of dollars analyzing urine samples for something we now know doesn’t even show up in urine!”

One of the most disturbing revelations was the pervasive deception that the doctors, scientists, and military officials routinely engaged in even before the first bomb had been detonated. And General Leslie Groves lied egregiously when he testified to Congress in 1945 about the radiation effects of the bomb. “A pleasant way to die,” he said—fully aware of how dreadful such deaths really are. Groves knew what happened to the Japanese victims, and he knew what had happened a great deal closer to home, when one of the scientists in the Los Alamos lab was fatally
injured. His sidekick, Stafford Warren, downplayed the fatalities and lingering deaths in Japan. By not fully disclosing the human suffering caused by those bombings, they did a grave disservice. Furthermore, General Groves got it exactly backward when he told congressmen, “In the end, I think that the atomic bomb will be considered as a byproduct of the atomic age.”
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The culture bred by the Manhattan Project caused a blanket of secrecy to be thrown over everything related to atomic weapons. The secrecy was essential during the Manhattan Project, but it hardened into a protective and impenetrable shell after the war. The secrecy cut researchers off from the healthy sunlight of inquiry that would surely have put a stop to some of the experiments and perhaps reduced the number of atmospheric tests. Many of the scientists, such as Carl Heller and C. Alvin Paulsen, were instructed to avoid publicity, and several studies, such as Eugene Saenger’s, were halted only after they received public attention.

Working behind their security fences, the scientists developed a them-against-us mentality. This attitude was often manifested in a distrust of the public and disdain for scientific opponents. The “cleared” researchers even began to think alike, which accounts in part for the remarkably similar statements issued whenever a controversy erupted. The web of deception and denial looks in retrospect like a vast conspiracy, but in actuality it was simply a reflection of the shared attitudes and beliefs of the scientists and bureaucrats who were inducted into the weapons program at a time of national urgency and never abandoned their belief that nuclear war was imminent. This collective body of ideas was passed down through the generations and is only now beginning to be dislodged. But the intensity of the attacks upon Hazel O’Leary, who played an active role in trying to dismantle this culture of secrecy, shows what a hold it has on us still. In fact, the pendulum began swinging back toward secrecy in the spring of 1999 when allegations emerged that China may have stolen some of our nuclear secrets. Numerous steps were undertaken to bolster security in the nation’s weapons labs, and the Office of Declassification was renamed the Office of Nuclear and National Security to reflect the changed priorities.

As far back as 1947 much of the secrecy was prompted by fear of lawsuits and adverse public relations. But where did this worry over lawsuits, the fretting about public relations, come from? After all, this was a patriotic era when most Americans trusted their government, when
conspiracy theories did not abound, and when lawsuits were not filed over a spilled cup of coffee.

The fear of lawsuits dates back to the 1920s and 1930s, when the young women who painted the watch dials inadvertently ingested radium and later developed cancer. Their deaths triggered numerous lawsuits and an outpouring of sympathy throughout the world. Many of the Manhattan Project doctors, such as Stafford Warren, Louis Hempelmann, Robert Stone, and Joseph Hamilton, were acutely aware of the tragedy and sought to avoid similar lawsuits from being filed by workers in the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.

During the war, the bomb makers believed that lawsuits would jeopardize the secrecy of the project. After the war, they worried that lawsuits would jeopardize the continued development of nuclear weapons.

The Veterans Administration in 1947 considered establishing a “confidential” Atomic Medicine Division to deal with potential disability claims from soldiers and sailors involved in the weapons tests. Wrote one physician, “It was felt unwise to publicize unduly the probable adverse effects of exposure to radioactive materials.
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The use of nuclear energy at this time was so sensitive that unfavorable reaction might have jeopardized future developments in the field.”

As a public information officer for the AEC explained after the first series of bombs were detonated in Nevada: “During the period from August 1945 until early 1951, the public had been subjected to a diet of Sunday-magazine sensationalized reports of atomic weapons.
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There had been created a mass fear of radioactive effects and perhaps a feeling that if one atomic bomb were exploded many cities in areas distant from the site would be disintegrated.”

Thus the weaponeers recognized that they would have to allay the public’s fear of atomic weapons in order to keep the production plants operating and nurture the budding fields of nuclear medicine and nuclear power. This meant an aggressive propaganda campaign about the “friendly atom” and the suppression of all potentially negative stories about health hazards related to atomic energy.

It’s difficult to describe how pervasive, how all-encompassing this propaganda campaign was. In the films of the atmospheric testing program now being declassified by the Department of Energy, military officials continually emphasize how safe the bomb tests are, how vital they are to the security of the free world, how glorious the future of mankind will be when the full potential of the atom has been realized. “It’s a huge
fraternity, this order of the mushroom, and it’s growing all the time,” one narrator crowed.
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AEC officials routinely suppressed information about environmental contamination caused by the weapons plants and the health risks posed by fallout from the atmospheric testing program. In the case of the people who lived downwind of the Nevada site or the atomic plants, the suppression continued even when scientists knew the public should be warned of dangerous levels of radioactivity in order to protect themselves. “The functionaries who executed this policy were not evil men, but rather loyal men who wore blinders and fulfilled their missions with such dedication and zeal that these virtues, in excess, resulted in dishonorable deeds,” wrote Stewart Udall, a former secretary of the interior as well as an attorney who has represented Nevada’s downwinders and the uranium miners.
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For five decades the public remained largely ignorant of the systematic nature of human radiation experiments. Secrecy, compounded by the insular, inbred nature of the atomic establishment, helped keep the experiments from becoming known. But the fact is, the Manhattan Project veterans and their proteges controlled virtually all the information. They sat on the boards that set radiation standards, consulted at meetings where further human experimentation was discussed, investigated nuclear accidents, and served as expert witnesses in radiation injury cases. The Manhattan Project researchers also worked in a professional world that remained remarkably stable. Once the project itself had been disbanded, the scientists got jobs in the weapons laboratories and at universities, many of which had contracts with the Atomic Energy Commission, and they remained in these jobs for the rest of their lives.

The experiments conducted after the war generally were not secret. But the results were published in obscure journals or laboratory health reports that were inaccessible to the public. Furthermore, many of the policy discussions surrounding the purpose of the experiments were kept secret.

As the oral histories conducted by the Advisory Committee show, the radiation experiments were not an anomaly. Unethical human experimentation occurred in many medical fields in the decades following World War II. Money was plentiful and scientists were eager to conduct research, publish scientific papers, and climb the academic ladder. It was a time when certain medical doctors acted like predators and viewed their patients as little more than white mice. Although human experimentation is necessary to eradicate disease, there is nevertheless some
thing unsettling about the powerful deciding that the powerless should sacrifice themselves to science.

Another of the ethical horrors was the melding of military and medical agendas. The large total-body irradiation experiments conducted after the war probably would not have been done without funding by the armed forces. Eugene Saenger said he didn’t know if he would have conducted the TBI experiment had he not gotten money from the military. Saenger also said that he might have halted the experiment had investigators found a biological marker, or “dosimeter,” which could have been used to accurately measure radiation exposure.

The low-dose irradiation chamber in Oak Ridge was built at a time when NASA was exploring the effects of low-level radiation on astronauts. Those experiments, too, probably would never have gone forward without the space agency’s interest. Carl Heller and C. Alvin Paulsen had no experience using radiation and most likely would never have proceeded with their testicular irradiation experiments without encouragement and funding from the AEC.

It was not until 1993, with the admission by Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary, that the size of the experimentation program began to be revealed. O’Leary’s acknowledgment was a radical departure for a bureaucracy steeped in secrecy and arrogance. President Clinton supported O’Leary’s efforts to make all documents public, and even notoriously closed agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency were dragged into the search effort. But Hazel O’Leary was the public official who took the greatest risk and paid the greatest price for making public such a controversial chapter in Cold War history. Through her efforts, a massive and secretive bureaucracy was nudged farther into the bright light of truth.

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 “sufficiently condemn” many of the experiments.
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Although the group’s 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 documents 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 passage of time has obliterated information trails and record keeping was shoddy and incomplete. Many
veterans were put in harm’s way for a frivolous and unconscionable purpose: public relations. Military leaders, such as General James Cooney, 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 “experiments of opportunity.” 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 government’s response, the American people nevertheless gained a vast amount of knowledge from the documents about the Cold War. It’s 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. “The breathtaking advances in science and technology demand we always keep our ethical watch light burning.
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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,” President Clinton observed when he accepted the Advisory Committee’s 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 Bassett reveal their capacity for self-deception as they struggle to maintain a gentlemanly decorum in the midst of discussions
about blood, urine, and feces. Nobel laureate Willard Libby strikes one of the most lunatic notes of the Cold War when he turns to his peers and wistfully remarks, “If anybody knows how to do a good job of body snatching, they will really be serving their country.”