## "Plutonium Files"
Book Review

This is an informal review with excerpts, by email, from Lynn Weed. To read the testimony from the official U.S. Government hearings, the section where three MKULTRA child victims were able to testify, click here.

    From:             Lynn Weed
    To:               Eleanor White
    Subject:          Plutonium Files
    Date sent:        Tue, 26 Jun 2001 15:24:03 -0000

    Dear Eleanor,

    The name of the book is "The Plutonium Files" by Eileen Welsome, Published
    by the Dial Press, Random House, Inc. NY 1999  ISBN 0-385-31402-7.
    Subtitle: "America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War".  The book
    was a gift to me from Tom McClellan, a Manhattan resident, musician, fellow
    of victim of mc testing/abuses.

    Some of these tests might have been precursors to what we are experiencing
    now:

    Pg. 253 "Thus the comments made at Fort Monroe show that even before the
    first large-scale troop maneuvers were held, the armed forces planned to
    ignore inhalation hazards and considered collecting the data with
    instruments that would result in lower reported exposures for troops.  These
    remarks, when combined with the cavalier attitude exhibited by Cooney and
    other high-ranking officers toward radiation hazards, strongly suggest that
    some troops rreceived greater doses than what has officially been reported.

    Before the maneuvers began, the Pentagon's Joint Panel on the Medical
    Aspects of Atomic Warfare met to thrash out a shopping list of questions
    that needed to be answered at the upcoming bomb tests.  "It is of course,
    obvious," the panel acknowledge, "that a test of a new and untried atomic
    bomb is not a place to have an unlimited number of people milling about."
    The top-secret panel was formed in 1949, the year the Soviets exploded their
    first bomb, but it's not clear when it was dissolved.  Little was known
    about the Joint Panle until 1994, when a stack of its records was obtained
    by the Clinton Committee.  Those records show that James Cooney, Louis
    Hempelmann, Robley Evens and Hymer Friedell served as members of
    consultants.

    Among other things, the "shopping list" prepared by the Joint Panel called
    for an investigation into the Psychological effects of nuclear explosions on
    troops, research into the efficiency of protective clothing and devices, the
    measurement of radioisotopes in the body fluids of weapons test personnel,
    orientation flights in the vicinity of nuclear explosions, and studies on
    the effects of the atomic flash on the human eye.  It so happened tht the
    psychological tests, the orientation flights, and the flashblindness studies
    would all begin in the fall of 1951 and continue for the next decade."

    continuing on pg 263

    "Afterward, the troops went to a decontamination station where they were
    swept off with brooms and monitored for radiation.  "If the radiation
    intensity could not be lowered to 0.01 r/hr the individual was to shower and
    change his clothing, and vehicles were to be washed," an official summary of
    the test noted.  Some of the soldiers underwent psychological testing to
    determine the effectiveness of indoctrination programs.  Researchers from
    HumRRO, the Human Resources Research Organization, an Army contractor based
    at
    George Washington University, found the troops' confidence in the use of
    atomic weapons had "increased materially".  But psychologists from the John
    Hopkins University Operations REsearch Office, known as ORO, claimed their
    studies showed deep worry and anxiety among the troops despite the
    indoctrination lectures."

    There is also a reference to the "Cardoza" ruling in NY which is very
    significant for a lawsuit based on unauthorized testing.

    p. 213
    "In 1908 a woman named Mary E. Schloendorff sued the Society New York
    Hospital, [(unrelated to radiation experiments )comment added to text]
    claiming that she had not given her consent for an operation in which a
    fibroid tumor was removed from her stomach.  Following the procedure, she
    developed gangrene in her left arm and several fingers were amputated.  Upon
    appeal Benjamin Cardoza, who later went on to become a Supreme Court Judge,
    issued his now-famous ruling, "In the case at hand, the wrong complained of
    is not merely negligence.  It is trespass.  Every human being of adult years
    and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own
    body; and a surgeon who performs an operation without his patient's consent
    commits an assault for which he is liable in damages."

    Concerning funding:
    p. 208, 209

    "Researchers throughout the United States used the radioisotopes in
    thousands of human experiments.  As these experiments involved minute
    amounts of radioactive materials, they are often called "tracer studies".

    Congress allocated $175 million to the AEC in 1947 with up to $5 million to
    be reserved for cancer research that did not duplicate the work of other
    public or private agencies.  At that time the $5 million was a huge sum, and
    more money than some AEC officials believed could bespent on legimate
    projects.  Under Shields Warren's direction, three AEC cancer hospitals were
    eventually set up:  the Argonne Cancer REsearch Hospital, located in Chicago
    next to Billings Hospital, the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies in
    Tennessee and a 48 bed facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory near
    Upton, New York.  During the next 3 to 4 decades, scores of human
    experiments using radioisotopes and external radioactive sources were
    conducted at these facilities."

    Concerning the "wall of silence ... cracking"

    Although information on the human radiation experiments occassionally made
    its way into obscure journals, the scientists managed to pursue their
    studies without drawing much public attention to their projects.  This was
    due in large part, of course, to the deliberate efforst on the part of the
    researchers and their government funders to keep the experimentation quiet.
    But the silence was also the result of the media's complacency and lack of
    sophistication.  Activities related to nuclear weapons involved a
    labyrinthine bureaucracy and complicated scientific and technical issues,
    and spokesmen for the nuclear weapons industry were adept at manipulating
    the press.  Controversial information was difficult to obtain and oftentimes
    documents were deliberately classified to keep them away from reporters.
    With tight deadlines and long obstacles, many journalists wound up reporting
    what they were told.  Slowly though, the wall of silence began to crack."

    p.  423

    " The test ban victory notwithstanding.  O"leary recognized that if she was
    going to succeed in making any permanent, long-term reforms, she would have
    to begin by reversing the "culture of secrecy" that had been created by the
    Manhattan Project.  that meant, among other things, declassifying documents
    and revising the long-standing practiceof compartmentalization -- the old
    idea promulgated by General Leslie Groves that workers should know only what
    they need to know to do their jobs and nothing more.  Gover's policy was
    beginning to backfire.  "

    ....

    " O'Leary also changed the name of the Office of Classification to the
    Office of Declassification and instructed A. Bryan Siebert, the director to
    develop a plan for making more documents available to the public.  Siebert
    readily embraced O'Leary's oders:  "I have been in the program for 20 to 30
    years and it has been clear to me that classification has been used against
    the public time and time again.  I thought it was wrong"  he said.  "

    This is out in print and paperback.  The issues it raises are the same
    issues we are raising.

    Lynn

    From:             Lynn Weed
    To:               Eleanor White
    Subject:          re:  "The Plutonium Files" related issues
    Date sent:        Tue, 26 Jun 2001 22:53:48 -0000

    Dear Eleanor,

    It seems that the radiation studies may have been early versions of what
    they are doing to us now -- or that our "testing" is somehow being
    rationalized as being necessary for military "readiness". I'm sending these
    excerpts from the book:
    Lynn

    p. 346, 347 ("The Plutonium Files" by Eileen Wilsome)

         "Often the patients were moved to a private room after irradiation so
    that their mental state could be better evaluated.  What's more, the doctors
    told their military funders, "there are no other patients receiving
    radiation therapy with whom the patient can exchange experiences."  These
    psychological studies were another important component of the experiment and
    became more elaborate as the years went on.  Tests were administered to
    measure the patients' depression, hope, denial, and pessimism.  Brief
    interviews were conducted before and after irradiation and then "scored" for
    cognitive dysfunction.  Many of the patients were so sick after they were
    irradiated that they could not complete all the testing.  Herb Varin
    remembers his mother Nina Cline, complaining about the constant barrage of
    questioning.  "I tell them I'm feeling terrible but they just want to talk
    to me,"  Varin recalled his mother saying.  The psychological research was
    pertinent to the military, the Cincinnati doctors wrote, because of the way
    TBI affected thought processes:

           Following exposure to acute whole or partial body radiation it
    is possible that there will be significant impairment of the        decision
    making capability of key personnel who have major        command
    responsibilities.  This concern has  become more        important in recent
    years since the findings that complex        electronic systems can be
    rendered inoperative by very high        doses of radiation.  Thus it is
    necessary to maintain        dependence on the human being.  It is quite
    possible that even        moderately high doses or dose rates could produce
    impairment of        cognitive processes either of an obvious or of a subtle
    nature        which in moments of stress would impair or defeat a military
          operation.  In order to gain understanding of such possible
    changes it is necessary to seek changes in cognitive processes        and
    decrease in the capability to perform highly technical        processes."

        Some of these tests were done anticipating space travel:

    p. 358, 359 (IBID)

        "The radiation sources were located in a larger, outer, heavily shielded
    room.  the patients were able to move about freely while they were
    continuously exposed to a low-level sea of radiation.  Attached to the
    patient's body were electrodes and an umbilical cord that measured cardiac
    and respiratory signals.  The data were fed into a computer and stored for
    later analysis by NASA.  Occasionally rats were hung in between the walls of
    the two rooms and irradiated simultaneously with the human patients.

        LETBI cost $26 million.  The AEC picked up the tab for the design and
    construction of the chamber and NASA contributed $2.2 million which was used
    mostly to pay the salaries of Lushbaugh and a technician, and to buy some
    monitoring equipment.

       A third high-dose irradiation facility was constructed at the animal
    research laboratory run by the U of Tennessee's School of Agriculture.
    Referred to in some documents as HETBI, an acronym which apparently stood
    for the High Exposure Total Body Irradiator, the chamber delivered massive
    doses of radiation within minutes to plants, seeds, and large animals such
    as cows and horses.  It became operational in 1970 and was used by ORINS
    researchers to irradiate four patients undergoing bone marrow transplants.
    One worker who was irradiating seeds accidentally recevied a large dose of
    radiation in the high-exposure facility and developed acute leukemia ten
    years later.

       The exposures in LETBI mimicked the low, chronic radiation doses that
    astronauts were likely to encounter when they traveled through space.  The
    information, wrote the Oak Ridge scientists, was "increasingly more relevant
    to the occupational medical needs of deep space exploration where exposures
    are expected to be small, multiple and randomly timed." The HETBI data would
    be useful in the event of a serious accident "like that which could occur
    during extra-vehicular activities in space from the unexpected occurrence of
    a large solar flare or in an accident resulting from the use of nuclear
    energy propulsion systems."

      Records also reveal that the Army was funding a study on the irradiated
    patients to find out how single, repeated, or protracted doses affected the
    intestinal bacteria of exposed patients.  NASA was also provided this data
    "without additional costs."  Thus the data from patients irradiated in METBI
    and LETBI were used in multiple investigations:  Oak Ridge scientists used
    the information in their search for a biological dosimeter and to better
    learn      how to treat accident victims; NASA used the data in  its space
    missions; and the Army used the findings to better predict soldiers'
    reactions on the nuclear battlefield."

        The secrecy of unauthorized testing and the ethical and legal
    implications of secrecy --

    p. 481-486   (IBID)

         " When Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary acknowledged that the federal
    government had conducted radiation experiments on its own people, thousands
    of callers had flooded a hot line set up by the DOE:  What was going on?
    Had we become a nation of paranoiacs?  A country of guinea pigs?  Or had
    O'Leary touched on something that resonated deeply with the American public?

    Certainly the radiation experiments raised complex questons that go to the
    core of our society: the trust between a government and its people, the
    subjugation of individuals to the interest of the state, and the ethical
    dilemma associated with the development of weapons of mass destruction.

    But what O'leary did in a dramatic and unexpected way was confirm the hunch
    that all was not well beneath the soothing no harm, do danger statements
    that accompanied the reports of nuclear blasts, spills, and accidents of the
    Cold War.  Her admission produced an electrifying response, something akin
    to the emotions a person might feel after being subjected to a lifetime of
    vague allusions and abrupt silences and suddently learning a dark family
    secret he or she had always suspected.

    When the Nevada Test Site opened in 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission
    warned its public relations men to approach the tests "matter-of-factly" and
    not go overboard in emphasizing how safe the explosions were going to be.
    Such a campaign might be interpreted as one of the "lady doth protest too
    much", an AEC official cautioned.

    The bomb project's public relations machine succeeded in keeping a lid on
    the experiments for fifty years.  Its spokesmen were able to blame the
    fallout controversy, the illnesses of the atomic veterans, and the diseases
    of the downwinders on sudden wind shifts, misinformed scientists, the
    overactive imagination of agine soldiers, and even Communits propagandists.
    But the radiation experiments revealed a deliberate intent, a willingness to
    inflict harm or the risk of harm, which could not be explained away so
    easily.  Somebody inserted the needle into the human vein, mixed the
    radioisotopes in the paper cup, or flipped the switch that delivered a
    potentially lethal dose of whole-body radiation.  There is no denying that:

        .  Thousands of Americans were used as laboratory animals in radiation
    experiments funded by the federal government.  Many of the subjects were not
    asked for their consent or given accurate information about the nature of
    these experiments.  Some didn't learn they or their loved ones had been used
    as guinea pigs until 1994 or 1995 .  Some still don't know, and never will.

         .  Many of the doctors and scientists who performed these experiments
    routinely violated their patient's trust and engaged in deception.  They
    ignored the Hippocratic Oath, the 1946 American Medical Association
    guidelines, the Nuremberg Code, as well as policies adopted by the Atomic
    Energy Commission in 1947 and by the DEfense Department in 1953.  Civil and
    criminal laws may also have been broken.  Beyond everything else, the
    experimenters violated a fundamental right that belongs to all competent
    adults:  the right to control one's body.

        .  Although the majority of the experiments were the so-called tracer
    studies, which involved administering radioactive materials in quantities so
    small that they probably caused no harm, most scientists agree that no dose
    can absolutely be called safe.

         .   Some studies are known to have had very serious consequences.  The
    total-body irradiation experiments caused intense suffering and premature
    death in some patients.  The radium rod treatments and some of the
    radioactive iodine experiments increased the risk of head, neck and thyroid
    cancers and other secondary disorders."

    . . .

      "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 Seanger's, were halted
    only after they received public attention."

    .  .    .

        "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."

    .    .   .

         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."

         .      .       .

        "Although many of the experimental subjects and their relativeswere
    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 lost 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.  No matter how rapid the pace of change, it
    can never outrun our core conviction 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." (IBID).