Rediscovering the Past

Congress investigates injuries caused by atomic tests

To the troops stationed at the Army's Camp Desert Rock in Nevada in the early 1950s, it must have seemed like an innocent joke. After being required to witness explosions of atomic weapons, some of the men were given commemorative diplomas certifying their successful completion of courses in "alpha ray education, beta ray orientation, gamma ray examination and nuclear radiation." As an added fillip, the mock documents declared them to be "perfect physical wrecks."

Nearly 30 years later, no one is amused. Among the soldiers and civilians who watched the mushroom clouds erupt over Nevada and Utah in the 1950s and early 1960s there has been a disturbingly high incidence of cancer, notably leukemia. Convinced that the disease resulted from radiation exposure, hundreds of veterans or their families, as well as local residents, have filed claims against the Government for millions of dollars in damages.

On Capitol Hill last week, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy convened a joint session of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Human Resources Health and Scientific Research Subcommittee.

What emerged from the latest testimony and the hundreds of pages of declassified documents released by Kennedy is a disheartening story. Almost every time the old Atomic Energy Commission was asked by the military to permit troops closer to ground zero or increase their radiation exposure, the AEC ignored its own safety standards and acquiesced. Items:

P: In March 1952, calling the regulation "tactically unrealistic," the Pentagon pressed the AEC to relax its rule that soldiers must be kept at least seven miles away from ground zero. Though the AEC's Division of Biology and Medicine warned of eye damage and burns, though not cancer, its Division of Military Application allowed the troops within four miles. The military's reasoning: the soldiers could more easily "exploit the enemy's position" after the blast.

P: By October 1952, to simulate actual combat conditions, the Pentagon was asking to raise the permissible level of ionizing radiation that soldiers could receive from the AEC limit of 3.9 roentgens over 13 weeks to 3 roentgens of "prompt whole-body nuclear radiation"--that is, the exposure during the explosion--"plus an additional 3 roentgens in post-detonation maneuvering." Again the AEC agreed.

P: By 1958 the AEC was developing "clean" atomic bombs, which produced very little fallout. But citing the military's desire for some degree of off-site radiation for troop-training purposes, the AEC agreed not to limit such fallout.

Testifying before the subcommittee, former AEC Commissioner Eugene Zuckert tried to defend these troubling actions. Said he: "The balance was allowed to tip to the military. They knew the implications. I don't think it was our responsibility to override them." Kennedy himself acknowledged that the tests were staged at the height of the cold war and before many of the effects of radiation were known.

In any case, the big questions remain: How to certify claims of injury and how to speed up the slow compensation process. Appearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, headed by Alan Cranston of California, several A-bomb veterans complained that they were being hopelessly stalled: much of the documentation telling how much radiation they received is either unavailable or nonexistent. Of the 330 disability claims filed with the Veterans Administration, only 17 have been granted. The amount: about $130,000 annually to the veterans or their survivors.

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