I'm from the Government and I'm Here to Kill You Page 4

  His mother was driving a few miles to the north with his younger brother Kent when she was detained by a deputy sheriff, who explained that he had received orders to stop vehicles coming up the highway. She noticed that the air smelled terrible, but had no way to know that they were inhaling the by-products of an atomic detonation. Two decades later, Kent Whipple, a nonsmoker, would die of lung cancer at the age of thirty-eight.6

  The cloud swept on. In a few hours, it had covered 150 miles and was depositing its radioactive load on the small town of St. George, Utah. The residents noticed fine ash falling and a strange metallic taste in their mouths. Agatha Mannering was on her knees weeding her garden as the ashes fell. Her shirt had ridden up, and the ash settled on the skin of her back, leaving radiation burns where it had landed.7 Elma Mackelprang was watering her sheep when the strange material descended. She became nauseous and her hair began to fall out.8

  East of St. George, rancher Elmer Jackson was moving his cattle to a new watering area when the ash began to settle. He, too, developed deep radiation burns that took years to heal. He would die of thyroid cancer twenty years later.9

  A hundred miles north of St. George, Oleta Nelson and her family watched the pinkish-tan cloud sweep over them. That night, all the exposed areas of her skin turned beet red and she began vomiting. When she washed her hair a few days later, her husband Isaac heard her scream. Her long hair had slipped off her head and was lying in the washbasin. “She was as bald as old Yul Brynner to halfway back,” Isaac would later recall. She had been a vigorous woman of thirty-one, but now her health began to decline, and she died of brain cancer in 1965, aged forty-one.10

  The Public Health Service had stationed Frank Butrico in St. George as a radiation monitor. He watched in shock as the needle rose on his radiation measuring device, stopping only when it hit the peg at the high end of the scale. He notified the test site, and then tried to sound a warning. By the time he found the telephone number for a radio station in a nearby town, and the station began broadcasting calls to stay indoors, most of the fallout had come down. Butrico went to his hotel room to shower off and discard the clothes he wore.11

  A CHERNOBYL IN THE SOUTHWEST

  Those on the receiving end of Harry’s fallout, the “downwinders,” nicknamed the shot “Dirty Harry.” Harry was indeed the dirtiest of the hundred atomic warheads detonated aboveground at the Nevada Test Site. To gain an idea of the contamination that resulted, we can take one particularly nasty form of fallout, radioactive iodine, or I-131. The I-131 fallout that lands on pasture grass can be ingested by cattle, which excrete it in their milk and thus pass it on to humans, especially children. Once people drink the milk, their bodies will concentrate the I-131 in the thyroid gland. This fallout component, I-131, is thus particularly dangerous, especially when children are in the fallout zone.

  The Three Mile Island reactor accident released a mere twenty curies of I-131 and resulted in widespread panic and a voluntary evacuation of more than a thousand square miles.12

  The 2011 Fukushima reactor incident, when a Japanese reactor complex was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami, released more than five million curies of I-131; three hundred thousand people were evacuated.13

  The all-time record for reactor disasters is Chernobyl, where a reactor core exploded, blew open the containment vessel, and burned in the open air. Nearly thirty years later, the thousand square miles surrounding the site remain designated as an “exclusion zone” where only temporary entry is permitted. Chernobyl released about forty million curies of I-131.

  The nuclear tests in Nevada released more than 150 million curies of I-131. Dirty Harry alone made up thirty million of that total, far exceeding the contamination created by Fukushima and approaching that of Chernobyl.14 No one was informed or evacuated, and unwarned Americans continued to eat crops and meat produced within the contaminated area, and to give their children milk from cows that grazed on contaminated grass. No one knows how many more Americans were exposed to radiation as these animals were sold and slaughtered.

  The effects of that contamination were staggering. A 1984 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association compared the health histories of Mormons (who avoid drinking and smoking) living in the most heavily hit fallout areas with those of Mormons living elsewhere in Utah. The study found that those from the fallout areas were 60 percent more likely to develop cancer. For forms of cancer particularly linked to radiation, the situation was much worse:

  • Leukemia was 500 percent more frequent;

  • Thyroid cancer rates were elevated by more than 800 percent;

  • Bone cancers increased by a factor of ten;

  • Brain cancer and melanoma rates more than doubled.15

  Not that the downwinders needed to wait for a study. Josephine Simkins lived in the small town of Enterprise, Utah, just over a hundred miles downwind from the atomic test shots. She lost her husband and two other family members to cancer. Interviewed in 1988, she recalled: “One little girl, born and raised here, is dying of brain cancer. One little girl had bone cancer in her teens. There [are] others that died of leukemia…. Then the other cancers started showing up. Lots of breast cancer. They’ve realized now that nearly everyone who died for years died of cancer. There are hardly any other deaths in town beside cancer.”16

  THE REAL ISSUE

  Was the atomic testing necessary? Certainly. In mid-1949, under Joseph Stalin, a mass murderer on a par with Hitler, the Soviets had detonated their own atomic bomb and trained more than a hundred infantry and tank divisions for action in Europe. Civil wars between pro- and anticommunist forces were ongoing in China and in Greece. A Communist government had just seized control of Czechoslovakia, and pro-Soviet forces had tried to take over Yugoslavia. The Korean War began in 1950, and an initial American victory was met by a massive Red Chinese counterattack.

  The development of atomic weapons was still in its infancy and many questions remained. Several of the Nevada bombs “fizzled” because of errors in design. What were the best materials and construction techniques for a bomb? Could it be made small enough to be carried by a battlefield rocket or fired by an artillery piece? Could a uranium bomb be used to initiate a hydrogen bomb, a thermonuclear bomb, which would have far greater power? Only testing could answer these questions.

  That these tests were necessary in the abstract cannot, however, resolve the question of whether the tests were carried out responsibly, with efforts to minimize the danger to Americans in the vicinity.

  Even in the 1950s, government officials knew that radioactive fallout was deadly. Studies of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima survivors had shown massive increases—400 to 500 percent—in leukemia.17 Leukemia is a fast-onset cancer—its rise began quickly and peaked about six years after the bombs were dropped—so it stood to reason that other, more slowly developing, forms of cancer would follow.

  The government was certainly in no position to argue that it was ignorant of the risks posed by radiation. The tests had been set in a remote desert area for just that reason and were postponed whenever winds might cause the fallout to fall on more populous or important places such as Las Vegas or California. One explosion was postponed eleven times due to “unfavorable winds which would distribute radioactive fallout onto populated areas.”18 Downwinders joked that, since they lived in an “uninhabited” area, they must be “uninhabitants.”

  Perhaps, when a nation confronts a serious danger, a small number of people must be put at risk for the safety of the greater number. But shouldn’t those put at risk be honestly informed, put in a position to protect themselves as best they can, and perhaps even be compensated for what they must endure for the good of all? The risks of fallout could be minimized if people were made aware of them. Stay indoors while the nuclear ash is coming down; shower and launder clothes afterward; don’t drink or give your kids locally produced milk for a time. Cattle that ingest I-131 from their feed will excrete it in their milk, but it has
a half-life of only eight days.

  All these were simple protective measures that the downwinders would likely have taken if they had been candidly informed of the need for them.

  THE GOVERNMENT MISLEADS THE PUBLIC

  In advance of the tests, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) distributed handbills describing what might be expected. The handbills assured the reader that “health and safety authorities have determined that no danger from or as a result of the AEC test activities may be expected outside the limits of the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range. All necessary precautions, including radiological surveys and patrolling the surrounding territory, will be taken to ensure that safety conditions are maintained.”19 The AEC sought to assure area residents that everything was safe, and the press blindly accepted the assurances. When the AEC chairman claimed that the fallout’s radiation was less than that of a wristwatch’s luminous dial, the Ogden Standard-Examiner, a Utah paper, ran it without question under the headline “Derides Fear of Radiation.”20

  The AEC’s own staff was issued film badges to measure their radiation exposure, but the agency showed little concern for the impact of radiation on the public. In May 1952, the Salt Lake Tribune ran an editorial titled “We Don’t Know Enough,” stating that the radioactivity was worrisome despite scientists’ reassurances. The editorial mildly concluded: “One nagging thought is that we (the scientists, really) don’t know enough about radioactivity to be absolutely sure of its dangers.”21

  The AEC responded in characteristic harshness with a letter to the editor that ran below the title “Controls Make Atomic Tests Harmless.” The letter assured readers that the AEC “can state categorically that at no time has radioactivity from AEC test operations been harmful to any human, animal, or crop.”22

  Then came Dirty Harry. Geiger counters maxed out, cars were stopped at roadblocks, a town was told to stay indoors, and radiation burns appeared on children, adults, and animals wherever the fallout hit skin. People reported widespread nausea, hair loss, and other symptoms of radiation poisoning. It was hard to explain these things away as harmless. But the AEC gave it its best shot. AEC press releases explained that Harry’s fallout was “slightly more than usual.”23 This was a doubtful way to explain a radiation release that approached that of the later Chernobyl disaster, but the United Press dutifully reported:

  Residents near the Nevada-Utah border were reassured today that there was no harmful radioactivity in “fallout” that drifted over that area after an unusually powerful atomic blast.

  A few hours after yesterday’s dawn atomic blast on the southern Nevada desert, radioactivity was detected along border highways and forced residents of one Utah town to rush indoors…. However, the Atomic Safety Commission said its monitors did not register radioactivity in the border area strong enough to harm human beings.24

  A few days later, an AEC official spoke to a meeting of scientists, assuring them that measurements of fallout in Salt Lake City and Idaho Falls were consistently within permissible levels. The Provo Sunday Herald ran a summary under the headline “Radiation in Atomic Tests Held Negligible.”25 No one seems to have noted that Harry’s fallout had swept westward across southern Utah, and Salt Lake City (let alone Idaho Falls) was never in its path. A nice trick if one can get away with it.

  An article headlined “No Danger in Nevada Nuclear Tests” reported an interview with a government scientific advisor who treated exposure to radiation as a minor annoyance. He admitted that the tests had “caused some inconveniences by forcing people in southwestern Utah to remain briefly indoors,” but promised that “we are trying to minimize the inconveniences.”26

  THE COVER-UPS BEGIN

  In the months after Dirty Harry, some 1,400 pregnant ewes and nearly 3,000 lambs who had been grazing downwind (or about 12 percent and 25 percent, respectively, of those affected) died after showing symptoms of radiation poisoning. The surviving ewes often delivered grotesquely deformed lambs.27

  Ranchers who depended upon their sheep herds for economic survival saw the effects within weeks. Adult sheep were left with strange skin burns and wool that fell off at the slightest touch. One rancher rented a bulldozer to dig a mass grave for his flock.28

  Eventually, word of the sheep losses reached AEC headquarters, and it ordered an investigation, which immediately turned up evidence that the sheep had consumed massive quantities of radioactive iodine, I-131. When an AEC veterinarian applied a Geiger counter to the sheep’s thyroids, the needle pegged at its maximum. “This is hotter than a two-dollar pistol!” he exclaimed in shock.29 His report to the atomic test site management attributed the sheep losses to fallout. The test site management in turn arranged for a panel of veterinarians to review the evidence; the panel’s preliminary report, authored by Dr. Arthur Wolff of the Public Health Service, concluded that the sheep losses were due to fallout, citing the high radiation levels found in the animals’ thyroids and skin burns that matched those found in radiation experiments.

  To understand what happened next, you must understand bureaucracy. Theoretically, an agency is run by a director or a commission, but there is a much more powerful force in any large organization. An agency is run by its permanent staff, the “Omnipotent Peons,” or OPs, as some jestingly identify themselves, and their single-minded mission is to protect the agency and to grow it. This is partially a matter of self-interest and partially a matter of emotional investment in the agency’s functions. To take an example with which I have familiarity: Park Service tends to attract people who like parks, and they quickly come to take the view that if operating and expanding parks require treating some people unfairly, that unfairness is just the price of advancing the public good.

  The top dogs nominally run the agency, but the few dozen top dogs know only the information that the thousands of OPs, staff and middle management, allow them to see. This isolation of leadership from information was particularly acute with the AEC, where the commissioners themselves were headquartered in Washington, D.C., and the testing was being done in Nevada and in the Marshall Islands.

  Dr. Wolff’s report tied fallout to the sheep losses; the AEC’s Omnipotent Peons realized that this was an undesired answer. The AEC commissioners in Washington might reason that what killed sheep might endanger humans and either stop atomic testing or require the agency to inform the people at risk, which would generate an uproar that might have the same effect.

  There was only one solution. OPs worked hard to ensure the commissioners received the “right” information, the information that would let the agency continue atomic testing. All copies of Dr. Wolff’s preliminary report were seized. Another member of the panel, Dr. Richard Thompsett, a veterinarian under contract with AEC, was ordered to rewrite the report and to “eliminate any reference to speculation about radiation damage on animals.”30 He did so, and all copies of the original Wolff report, even the one held by Dr. Thompsett, were destroyed.

  Other possible indications that Dirty Harry had been dangerous were also covered up. Frank Butrico, the Public Health Service monitor in St. George, had reported that his radiation sensor had pegged its needle, reporting radiation levels greater than it was designed to measure. He was ordered to rewrite his report to say that radiation levels were “a little bit above normal but not in the range of being harmful.”31 The atomic test site staff told him, “Let’s try to get this thing quieted down a little bit because if we don’t, then it’s likely that there might be some suggestion made for curtailing the test program. And this, in the interest of our national defense, we cannot do.”32

  The test site personnel were not the only ones covering things up; some middle-level management at AEC’s headquarters had a role to play, as well. When the panel of veterinarians was created, an AEC headquarters staffer named Dr. Gordon Dunning was made its secretary. A Congressional investigation years later documented Dunning’s role in burying the evidence. The Congressional subcommittee found a long-suppressed memo reciting that Dunning “believ
ed it was imperative that he prepare a statement for Commissioner Zuckert of the AEC pertaining to the Utah sheep situation. Dr. Dunning opined that the statement was necessary ‘before Commissioner Zuckert [would] open the purse strings’ for future continental weapons tests.”33

  But, as the Wolff preliminary report had shown, the panel was inclined toward finding that fallout had indeed killed the sheep. Dunning had quite a problem.

  He solved it with a direct approach. At a meeting of the veterinarians’ panel, he asked the members to sign a document as proof of their attendance. The document was actually a memo that Dunning had written, absolving the AEC of all blame for the sheep deaths and claiming that the skin lesions and deaths “cannot at this time be accounted for by radiation or attributed to the atomic tests conducted at the Nevada proving grounds.”34 A note Dunning gave AEC’s head of public relations, Morse Salisbury, shows how far he was willing to go to keep the atomic tests going. Dunning wrote:

  after prolonged discussions I was able to get the group to agree to a series of statements which I thought you would be interested in seeing. The members of the committee signed the original. The statements were finally agreed upon just prior to departure time so that they are not in the most elegant grammatical form but do represent the most tangible statements to date.35

  COVERING UP RADIATION’S HUMAN IMPACTS

  The sheep ranchers’ situation was thus disposed of, at the cost of official honesty. But there was another problem out there, one that would not be so easily evaded. The harm to the sheep—acute radiation poisoning—had been immediate and obvious. The harm to humans—largely cancer—was delayed and subtle. The first public warning came with a test shot named Sedan in the summer of 1962. Sedan was intended to explore peaceful uses for nuclear warheads and demonstrated nicely that if anyone needed a large radioactive hole in the ground, a buried atomic bomb was just the ticket.