Deseret News
Sunday, October 9, 1994

RED TAPE SLOWS DOWN SEARCH FOR DOCUMENTS ON TESTS

Deseret News request triggers a complex paper chase involving Air Force and several agencies.
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By Lee Davidson, Washington Correspondent

Even though they were not classified as secret, government documents about nuclear "meltdown" experiments in Utah required a complicated paper chase through government bureaucracy to obtain.

In classic bureaucratic style, the chase involved the Air Force, Army and the Energy Department - with several agencies within them saying they doubted the documents existed or that they couldn't release them once they were found.

In as simple of terms as possible, here's what happened. But be forewarned: You'll need to read real slowly or plan to read this several times. A paper and pencil - to make a diagram - might also be helpful.

It started when the Deseret News was told by a staffer at the Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Test-ing that he noticed a mention of the tests in some materials it obtained about Cold War experiments.

They provided few details but said Kirtland Air Force Base at Albuquerque, N.M., had been in charge.

The Deseret News made a Freedom of Information Act request for the report on the tests. But it was told they could not be found without more detailed information on the title.

To obtain that, the Deseret News located an unclassified Energy Department history of radiation testing and ordered a microfiche copy for $50. A footnote contained the precise name of the report on the Air Force testing at Dugway.

The Deseret News submitted another FOIA request to Kirtland Air Force Base with that title. The base again said it could not find the report and suggested it be requested instead from an Energy Department regional office in New Mexico.

The newspaper filed a request with the Energy Department and also filed another with Dugway Proving Ground - in hopes that its large technical library had kept a copy of it.

Dugway soon notified the Deseret News that it had found a copy but could not release it under Army rules (even though it was unclassified) because it was an Air Force - not an Army - report. So it sent the report to Air Force officials at the Pentagon to see if they would release it.

The Pentagon later sent a letter saying it had in turn sent the documents to an Energy Department laboratory in New Mexico for review and possible release.

Meanwhile, responding to a separate request, the Energy Department said it could not find the documents at offices in New Mexico (including the lab where the Pentagon had just sent the Dugway copy) so it was sending the request to an Air Force archives office in Alabama. Energy Department lab eventually released the documents (which came from the Army via the Air Force). They happened to arrive the same day as a letter from the Air Force archive office saying it couldn't find them (responding to a request originally sent to the Energy Department).

The first requests were made in July. The documents arrived the last week of September. The Deseret News has previously received documents at were once secret in less time, although some FOIA requests to
other agencies (such as the FBI) have taken up to five years to fill.

Make sense?