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President Clinton hoped a report this week from the commission he
appointed to investigate Cold War radiation tests would close the book
on secret government experiments.
But at best only a third of the work toward that goal was completed by
his President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.
The biggest problem is, simply, it looked only at radiation
experiments - not the thousands of other chemical and biological
warfare tests conducted nationwide but especially in Utah.
The committee did give the nation a much more clear picture of the
breadth of radiation experiments and the secrecy and dangers behind
them - and an idea of how to prevent future problems.
But the nation still knows relatively little about the chemical and
germ warfare testing - which may have been more extensive.
Dan Guttman, executive director of the president's soon-to-disbanded
commission, acknowledges that is a problem.
"I would hope that someday a similar commission would follow the trail
of biological and chemical testing. I think we have established a
trailhead for that - maybe for the Department of Defense or a similar
agency to follow," he told the Deseret News.
"A lot of the early documents we found about secrecy were written not
only about radiation experiments, but maybe more so for biological and
chemical work. Biologicals especially were more of a concern for
officials at the time," he said.
However, politicians - and the commissions they create - react just as
far as public pressure pushes. And when this commission was formed,
public was concerned just about radiation tests.
That came after the national media had been unearthing details of
radiation tests ranging from injecting people with plutonium without
their knowledge to finding secret, intentional releases of radioactive
gas near nuclear weapons facilities.
Then Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary vowed new openness about such
experiments conducted by her agency and its predecessors. And amid
resulting press attention, Clinton appointed his commission - but only
to look at radiation experiments.
The panel's greatest achievement may have been helping to unearth
documents about 4,000 such tests as Clinton ordered agencies from the
Defense Department to the CIA, NASA and Energy Department to search
files and hand over all related documents.
That not only helped the committee unearth secret tests but created an
atmosphere where agencies were more responsive to Deseret News
requests that unearthed tests ranging from intentional meltdowns of
nuclear reactors in the Utah desert to dozens of radiological weapons
tests scattering radioactive dust there.
Frankly, the Deseret News and the committee's staff compared notes
often to swap information that each had found. The resulting picture
on radiation experiments is likely as clear as it will ever be with
surviving documents.
The president should appoint a similar commission now to allow similar
work with biological and chemical arms.
The Deseret News and victim groups have for years continually found
pieces of the puzzle to what happened in such tests - including at
least 328 open-air germ tests at Dugway Proving Ground, release of
15,000 pounds of nerve agent at tests there and tests that
intentionally exposed soldiers to such weaponry.
Deseret News has also found groups that feel they were injured by such
tests, ranging from Dugway workers who helped conduct tests to
ranchers living nearby who have suffered symptoms of what may be
low-level exposure to nerve agent.
The tests didn't just affect Utah. The Deseret News, for example,
found a series of Dugway tests that dropped toxic cadmium sulfide over
virtually all states east of the Rockies to help determine how germ
weapons might spread. Many have questioned whether cadmium poisoning
reported near drop zones resulted from them.
If the government is ever to truly close the book on Cold War tests
and overcome the suspicion they created, it must look at the chemical
and germ warfare chapters too.
As President Clinton said this week as he received the report on
radiation tests, "When the government does wrong, we have a moral
responsibility to admit it." |
