ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS
SANTA FE PANEL MEETING

REED TUCKSON, M.D.
RUTH MACKLIN, Ph.D.
DUNCAN THOMAS, Ph.D.

January 30, 1995
9:15 a.m.
201 West Marcy Street
Santa Fe, New Mexico

REPORTED BY: Barbara M. Gillooly, RPR-CP, NM CCR #289
Barbara Harris Court Reporters
201 Twelfth Street Northwest
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102

DR. TUCKSON: We're going to begin our efforts and ask you all to
come forward. My name is Reed Tuckson, and I am the chairperson
of the Outreach Committee for our work. I will give a couple of
minutes of introduction about the formalities and the mechanisms
by which we will proceed, but we on the Outreach Committee and in
fact the Committee as a whole understand fully the degree of
emotional hurt and pain and the seriousness with which so many of
you approach these issues. There are lives that have been lost
and lives that have been seriously compromised, and as such, we
have developed some rituals as we have gone about our work
throughout the country. I'd like Betty Allen to come forward, who
is a member of the outreach community and she has asked and we
would certainly enjoy if she would give us just two minutes of a
centering experience as we go forward. Usually we have a little
space for them to sit or podium, but unfortunately we'll have to
do it with you standing. Welcome and thank you.

MS. ALLEN: My name is Betty Allen. I am the granddaughter of Paul
Jacobs, Study Number 45 who was used in Cincinnati's experiment.
We have been given the honor of bringing Santa Fe a special
message from the families of CROSCP and the Cincinnati Task Force
on Radiation Experiments. We also bring some good news from
Cincinnati about Judge Becka's decision. For the first time
(inaudible) has been drawn into American law and is being used in
our case as the ethical standard for those who experimented on
our relatives.

MS. ALLEN: My name is Angel Allen. I'm the great granddaughter of
Paul Jacobs, Case Number 45 in the Cincinnati experiment. I would
like to ask everyone present to help us by bowing your heads for
a moment of silence (inaudible) the radiation experiments.

CROSCP lights this candle to represent our unity. We light this
candle to represent all of those who paid the ultimate price of
man's misuse of the human condition. We light this candle to
represent unity for all of those who worked throughout their
lives to fight for justice of themselves, as well as their loved
ones. May God give us all strength, unity and courage to
continue. Amen.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you for coming, again, and thank you both. Mr.
Garcia, Jerry Garcia? We now ask Mr. Jerry Garcia, as the
official government person here, to officially put us into
session so we can begin.

MR. GARCIA: As the designated federal official, I hereby call
this meeting to order.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you. I assume people are working on sound. Can
folks in the back hear us? Can you hear us okay? Is it really
troublesome? In the interim I'll be speaking up. Let me ask
Steve, Steve, would you go and see if the witness microphones are
working? It is extremely important that everyone can hear
everything. And if they need to be adjusted up as people talk --
talk into one of those, would you, please.

MR. KLAIDMAN: Can you hear me in the back of the room with this
microphone?

DR. TUCKSON: It seems that mine is better, and the witnesses' are
working, and I think we're okay.

Thank you for joining us. We have a very long day today. A lot of
you have been nice enough, gracious enough, concerned enough to
come forward. In the interest of time, I will try to cut my
comments, my introductory comments, to an absolute minimum only
taking time to remind you that this is a meeting of the Advisory
Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. We are a 14-member
committee, and you are seeing a group called the Outreach
Committee that various of us have been going around the country
holding forums, such as the one today, designed to make sure that
we are hearing from Americans, where Americans live, about what
they think we need to know and hear as we go about our work. Our
Committee is comprised of nationally recognized experts in the
areas of bioethics, history of science, radiation biology,
oncology, radiology, law, public health, nuclear medicine and so
forth. We also have a representative of us that's listed as a
public representative. We were appointed by President Clinton in
April of '94, and we are to prepare a report which will be due
later this year. Let me emphasize that our work is not yet
complete. We are nearing the three-quarter mark of our work. The
things that we hear today are being given to us in time for us to
be able to use. Your testimony, the discomfort that you may have
suffered to get here, all of that is well worth it. We have not
made up our minds. We have many issues which we are still
exploring. I would have to ask you to, in terms of your
expectations of us, we, as a committee, are not in a position to
share conclusions that the committee has made because, in fact,
we, as a committee, have not yet made conclusions, and so we are
still very much about the business of listening and learning. Our
report will be given to an interagency working group, which is
comprised of the secretaries of the Departments of Defense,
Energy, Health and Human Services, Justice, Veterans Affairs and
the directors of the CIA and the Office of Management and Budget,
as well as the administrator of the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration.

Our charter includes the investigation of experiments conducted
since 1944 with ionizing radiation, the investigation of specific
intentional releases of radiation into the environment, and the
recommendation to the working group of remedies for abuses of
human subjects in past experiments and of recommending policies
to improve ethical practices in today's research.

Having given that as a general overview, the way in which -- by
the way, if there is anyone who is more interested in these in
more detail to see whether their issues focus in on our specific
mandate, the documents that I'm reading from are in the back of
the room and you can go back and get those at your convenience.
We will employ a mechanism of a seven-minute presentation format.
We have a list of people that we already know are registered to
speak. However, if you have not checked in with Kris, who is
wearing all black today -- Kris raise your hand. There she is. If
you have not yet checked in, it is important that you do so so
that we will know that you're here or we'll know that you want to
be here if you're not already on the list. So that's important.
We have a timer. The timer is the worst part of our experience.
The Committee hates to rush people who have things to say. On the
other hand, there are some folks who are already scheduled very
late in the day, who are going to be very angry at me personally
if they don't get a chance to talk. So that if it seems that we
are less than sensitive about this time business to those on the
front end, please note that we do respect you, that we're not
mean people, but that we have a lot of weight on our shoulders
for those that come by, and we really do want to hear from
everyone. So I hope you understand that and ask you to respect
the light. The yellow light goes on at three minutes before the
end, and that gives you a chance to pace yourself. If you spend
all seven minutes in your presentation to us, it means we don't
get to talk to you. We don't get to ask you questions. And that's
a trade-off that you can make based on your determination of how
you want to use your time.

My name is Reed Tuckson. I am fortunate to be able to chair the
Outreach Committee. When I am not doing this, I am the president
of Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science, which is
located in South Central Los Angeles, California. My interests
are, I'm an internist by training, and I have an interest in
public health, serving as the Commissioner of Public Health for
our nation's Capitol for many years, as well as being on the
Board of the American Public Health Association. To my left is
Duncan Thomas, and to his left is Ruth Macklin, and let me turn
to Duncan and Ruth and have them introduce themselves to you.

DR. THOMAS: My name is Duncan Thomas. I'm from the University of
Southern California, Department of Preventive Medicine, where I
work as an epidemiologist and prior statistician. I became
interested in radiation research maybe 15 years ago when I
undertook a review of the literature on radon and other matters
for the Atomic Energy Control Board (inaudible). I was then a
professor at McGill University in Montreal. Since then I've
become involved as one of the senior coinvestigators in the
studies of leukemia and thyroid diseases in people connected with
the Nevada Test Site. I've worked with the National Academy of
Sciences BEIR V Committee, which has got me interested in the
atomic bomb survivors. I continue to have a scientific interest
in the uranium mine story and am still working on the science of
that interest actually, but my experience on this committee has
opened up my eyes to the human -- the historical and ethical side
of the story, as well, so this is a part of the story that I am
very actively involved with on this committee. And that's really
probably enough about myself.

DR. MACKLIN: I'm Ruth Macklin. I'm a professor of bioethics at
the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which is located in the
Bronx, New York, and my work at that institution is teaching
ethics to medical students, postgraduate physicians, nurses and
other health professionals. In addition, I serve on the medical
school's institutional review board, which is the committee that
reviews research involving human subjects. My original
educational background was in philosophy. I contribute to the
professional literature and also try and write and speak as much
as possible to the general public about a variety of issues in
medicine. One of my areas of specialization is in research
involving human subjects.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you. And the other person that is here with us
today is a senior member of the staff, Steve Klaidman. Steve,
would you introduce yourself?

MR. KLAIDMAN: Yes. I'm the counselor to the committee and
director of communications. My background is in newspaper
journalism for the most part, and I've written books about
journalism ethics and about press coverage of issues like
experimentation with ionizing radiation.

DR. TUCKSON: I invite Mr. Stewart Udall to the microphone to make
a presentation, Mr. Udall being former Secretary of the Interior
of the United States. I would like to, just as a final
introductory comment, say to those of you who are not in the
habit of testifying in public that sometimes this can be
difficult for people, particularly those who are shy. I really
would say that this room is a little big. It doesn't have a lot
of rugs or carpets to make it a little more friendly; somewhat
austere. I would urge you to relax. This I hope will be a
nonpressured experience. We really do care about what you have to
say to us, and we are interested in you as a person and you in
what you have to say to us, so if any of you are anxious about
doing this work, please relax. You're among friends, and we hope
this will be an enjoyable, as well as a very intense day. And
with that Mr. Udall. Thank you very much for traveling so far to
be with us today.

MR. UDALL: Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the Committee for
coming to Santa Fe. This is in many ways the source, New Mexico,
I refer to it generally, many of the atomic activities and many
of the experiments involved in installations in this state, so I
thank you for coming here. This is not my first appearance, as
most of you know, before the Committee. I appeared before your
committee in July. I had published a book that came out in June.
I have a chapter on the uranium miner tragedy in that book. This
is so important that if members of the Committee do not have
sufficient copies, I'll supply them. I made my presentation.
Subsequent to that, in August, I filed a fact brief with the
Committee, with documents, and I furnished copies this morning,
and I just wanted to briefly summarize the position that I have
taken on behalf of the uranium miners. I speak in particular for
Navajo Indian uranium miners, who are some of the earliest and
who sustained some of the heaviest radiation exposures, but I
speak for all of the uranium miners. Many of them are my clients.
Some of them are not. But I believe this may have been one of the
earliest and one of the most devastating human experiments. It
occurred to me last summer the uranium miners and the way that
they were handled, this was -- this meets the definition of the
experiment that you're talking about. I put a cover sheet on my
fact brief that I filed last August. I want to read it, because
it summarizes, as best I could, the situation.

Assume that a corporation, say, or a government knows that its
industrial workers have been and are being exposed to life
threatening doses of radiation. Is it an experiment, or is it
genuine medical research if that entity elects to study the
health effects of the exposures rather than to take aggressive
action to abate the source of the radiation?

I have presented evidence earlier, and I hope you've talked to
Dr. Merrill Eisenbud by now, when uranium mining started in this
country at the very beginning, the top health and safety people
of the Atomic Energy Commission went out to Grand Junction,
Colorado. They saw the problem. They saw the solution. The
tragedy was avoidable. There was a solution. It was cheap. Just
bring in some fans and ventilate the mines and blow the radon
gases out. The Atomic Energy Commission turned its back on the
subject, and there were people in the United States Public Health
Service who were so appalled that they refused to turn their
backs, and they began trying to work to get something done. And
the story is told in these documents.

I would remind you, you are going back to the 1940's. Most of the
Navajo miners in particular, I hope the new president of the
Navajo Tribe, Albert Hale, one of the miners who worked with me
beginning 16 years ago, will come and tell this, but many of
them, or most of them were illiterate. In terms of a problem like
this, a person who is illiterate is a child. At least that's my
conception of it. They knew nothing. They were told nothing. And
the government people in effect said, "Well, it looks like there
might be a problem. Let's pretend that we don't know how serious
it is, and let's study it." That's the tragedy, and that's what
happened, and I hope that you will give this very serious
consideration. Thank you.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very much. Any questions from the panel?

DR. THOMAS: There are so many questions here that it's hard to
know where to begin. One of the documents which you provided in
this fact brief is the publication Uranium Miners (inaudible),
which you mentioned, which I gather appeared after 1959. Prior to
that, do we have any written documentation for what might have
been told to uranium miners about the hazards of their job?

MR. UDALL: Dr. Thomas, I don't know. I've studied this. I've
lived with it. I have a private archive of documents. I know of
no instance where miners, Indian or non-Indian, were told the
nature of the danger and the nature of the problem. In fact, I
have in that packet a letter from a prominent consultant, a
doctor at Rochester, who congratulated the Public Health Service
for not warning the miners, and this sort of exemplifies the
attitude of the Atomic Energy Commission at that time. This
pamphlet that you refer to is the first thing that we found in
our research where the miners were given something and were told
"Now, there's a problem here." They didn't print it in Navajo.
The Navajo Indians knew nothing about it. It's a tragic document
to me.

DR. THOMAS: That memo, I believe it was from Dr. William Bale, is
that the one you refer to?

THE WITNESS: Yes, Dr. William Bale.

DR. THOMAS: It's so tragic, it's worth reading into the record.
"They seem," here referring to the Public Health Service, "They
seem" (inaudible) "their work so far would not unduly harm the
miners <unreadable word> to hidden hazards that may exist or in
any way impede the mine operations." That leads me to assert the
other question. You described regulation as something that was
cheap and easy to do. Can you enlighten me a little bit as to why
all the resistance to undertaking this very simple measure?

MR. UDALL: Dr. Thomas, I'm baffled by this. The problem of
silicosis arose in the '20's and '30's, and that profession knew
about it. The mining companies, the copper companies, for
example, and others in the West pitched in. There was a solution.
There went the mines. You see, the drilling is not dry drilling.
It's wet drilling and so on. The solution was known. As far as
the national security aspect was concerned, there was no danger
of impeding the flow of uranium; they just had to spend a little
money on safety and on ventilation, and that's the real tragedy.
Some people were so shortsighted, they said "Well, now, let's
keep the uranium flowing." In fact, this -- when Dr. Eisenbud
went out to Grand Junction in 1948, the Soviet Union had not
exploded their first nuclear bomb. The race for nuclear weapons
was not on at the beginning. That's one of the curious aspects of
it.

DR. THOMAS: One more, if I can. Another theme of the committee is
the role of secrecy in all of this, in all of the operations of
government at the time, and this comes up repeatedly in this
story, as well, not for national security reasons, but more for,
well, as we talked a moment ago, to avoid alarming the miners and
so on. I want to read another excerpt from one of the documents
you provided. This is a memo from Dr. Holaday, May 29, 1950,
where he says, "I believe we should keep these results," here
referring to the levels of radon in the mines, "confidential
until we've been able to decide what our policy will be in this
matter." In any sense do you see this as a national security
issue, or what was behind the thing in those days, and why would
an official with the U.S. Public Health Service write anything
like this, which is a point of view which, in most of the other
documentation we looked at, has been the stance taken by the
Atomic Energy Commission, whereas we've always conceived the PHS
as the good guys, so we're fighting a losing battle?

MR. UDALL: I spent hours with Mr. Holaday. We became very good
friends. I took his deposition three times under oath. There was
a culture of secrecy developed. It certainly permeated Los
Alamos; I can tell you that, and they leaned on these people, and
they influenced them. In the Holaday documents, one of the most
horrible things they disclosed -- because we had a radiation
standard, it was 10 micro-macro-curies; some of them wanted to
increase it a bit -- they went into the mines and found radiation
of 40,000; 80,000; 30,000; and this, to many health and safety
persons, was horrifying, and you find some of that in Holaday's
documents. You know, the story is told, but it was -- there was a
culture of secrecy, and you have to understand, as I think I do,
because I lived through it, that the cold war invocated that in
the American people. We went along with it, unfortunately.

DR. TUCKSON: Next question?

DR. MACKLIN: I'll keep my question very brief. Mr. Udall, in your
covering statement, which you read and accompanied your document,
you have the question, "Is it an experiment or is it genuine
medical research if that entity elects to study the health" and
so on. It's very important for the Committee, who has been
grappling since our beginnings, to understand how different
people construe the terms "experiment," "medical research" and
"study." So could you just elaborate briefly to make clear to us
what you have in mind in that statement?

MR. UDALL: The two key words in that statement are "know," I
believe, or what do you know, and is it life threatening? I mean,
there are different degrees of danger, I'm sure. Some of the
experiments that you were studying not much was known, so they
say, "Well, let's find what the effect of this radiation is." The
knowledge was so extensive, I believe, with regard to radon, the
radium dial painters, and you've gone through that tragedy. Dr.
Robley Evans of MIT had done studies. There were standards fixed,
radiation protection standards officially fixed at that time. So
ignoring that, with that kind of knowledge, if you then, rather
than take action to protect the health of the people, and this
was life threatening; they knew that there would be an epidemic
of lung cancer; this was known, then if you say, "Well, let's
pretend we don't know enough, that we're not certain, and let's
follow these people through time," that's what they did, knowing
that there was a 12-year -- 10-year, 12-year latency period, that
the harm wouldn't show up for ten years; they knew that, then I
can only characterize this as an experiment, with that kind of
knowledge.

DR. MACKLIN: Thank you.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very much, sir. Let me just, in closing,
ask your -- I can't ignore that you've been a cabinet official of
the United States Government. You're familiar with how committees
like this work, how we -- the climate in the environment in which
our report will be received. In summary, what are your
expectations? What is your advice to us and this committee?

MR. UDALL: I'm glad you asked me that question, because
government went through this once before. In 1979, about this
time of year, there were hearings that got national attention
conducted by Senator Kennedy and Senator Hatch, The Odd Couple we
called them, and these were dramatic hearings. They involved the
downwinders, the uranium miners. They got into it when Dr.
Merrill Eisenbud testified, so on, and then the Carter
Administration appointed a task force to study the problem. They
did not do what President Clinton did and appoint an advisory
committee of experts, such as your council consists of. They just
appointed bureaucrats, most of whom had vested interests, people
from DOE, from the old Atomic Energy Commission, so on. They went
into a closet. They didn't hold hearings like you're holding.
They went into a closet; they came out with a report, and this
came out in 1980, during a presidential election year. It was
just suppressed and covered up and nothing was done about it. I
believe the great value of this kind of prestigious committee of
nationally known experts in these various fields, that you have
an opportunity in your findings, recommendations, conclusions to
summarize this whole business, to, in effect, lay down a charter.
Now, the next level committee, the lawyers and other people in
Washington, God knows what they'll do with your recommendations,
but I urge you to be bold, candid and honest for the benefit not
of simply the people who are harmed, but for the benefit of the
American people and our culture.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very much, sir. We appreciate you coming
to see us.

Let me invite now Mr. Ray Michael, Ms. Darcy Thrall, Mr. Tyler
Mercier -- actually, I'll tell you what, I just noticed how many
chairs are there. I'll just list the order, and just be prepared
to go in that order. So what we'll have is Mr. Ray Michael will
come forward now. Darcy Thrall, you'll be prepared to come after
Mr. Michael, Mr. Mercier after that, then Bob Hoffman, Mr. D. H.
Bob Hoffman, Mr. Theodore A. Garcia and Mr. Bill Holmes. That
will be the order for the first section, and then we'll take a
break after that. So we'll go Mr. Michael, Ms. Thrall, Mr.
Mercier, Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Garcia, Mr. Holmes. That will be our
first group. I hope I pronounced your name properly, sir.

MR. MICHAEL: Yes, sir, you did; however, you've got the hometown,
the town where I'm from, in error. It is no longer Hot Springs.
It is now Truth or Consequences. That's the name of the town now.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you.

MR. MICHAEL: Named after the TV show, Ralph Edwards' TV show,
Truth or Consequences.

DR. TUCKSON: Let your time begin.
MR. MICHAEL: I'm glad to be able to partake in this, and after I
got involved in it, in T or C, that's what our town is referred
to as, I started interviewing people, those that worked on the
project, those that worked out at Jackass Flats, Nevada, in that
detail; I myself worked on the project out in the South Pacific.
I was on the Hard Tack Project and projects after that. And after
our bomb tests out there, instead of going down and getting drunk
with the rest of the fellows, I went out and played around in the
water, unknown to me that I was going to be contaminated, unknown
to me that I would be deaf at this hour of the day in my life,
unknown to me that I would be two-and-a-half inches shorter now
than I was 15 years ago. And I've tried to get compensation, but
I can't. Those that I have interviewed down there, one
grandfather told about his grandchild, no hands, two claws for
hands. And those that told about their grandchildren, two boys
were born, their spine was not fused to their hips. The man's
daughter has a severe head problem. She cannot concentrate. She
does have problems. Now, I have these names and addresses. I sent
them to Miss Gates of the NAAV. I sent her, I believe there were
eight of them and on three children and grandchildren that were
affected by the after-events of this fallout. I myself, I'm just
like the rest of you. I just need help, clinical help. I tried to
find a doctor here in New Mexico that could treat this, and I
can't find one, and according to our little bulletin that we got
here from the Veterans Association, there are very few doctors
that will try to treat us. I have tried twice to get my ear
checked where they had removed cancer from it. Would you believe
they had to run their finger up my rectum to check it? They
didn't once look in my ear. Three different doctors, not once did
they look in my ear. (Inaudible) that's how my chest was
examined. I'm a little bit irate, and I won't deny it, but I
document everything I do. Anybody wants to call me, I'll tell you
right now, the tape recorder is attached to my telephone. All I'm
asking for is help. That's all the rest of them are asking for.

I checked into the law. I think it would be nice if we made a
class action suit against the federal government to compensate us
and help us with our medical benefits. I believe that could be
done under Title 482 of the United States Code of Ethics.

Now, is there anything else that you gentlemen would like to ask
me?

DR. THOMAS: I'm unclear on one thing. Did you say that you had
filed an application for compensation with the VA?

MR. MICHAEL: I beg your pardon?

DR. THOMAS: Have you filed an application for compensation with
the VA?

MR. MICHAEL: Yes, sir. It was rejected three times.

DR. THOMAS: And what conditions were you asking compensation for?

MR. MICHAEL: For the damage that's been done to me.

DR. THOMAS: My understanding that the Radiation Exposure Veterans
Compensation Act has this list of presumptive conditions. Was it
one of those that you --

MR. MICHAEL: A. J. Green (sic) wrote me a letter and told me that
I was not entitled to any compensation. They only paid on certain
conditions.

DR. THOMAS: So their stated reason for rejecting your claim was
because you weren't one of those presumed --

MR. MICHAEL: One of those higher number listed. I was not on the
list of the higher number. But I do have a list where I think
there are 25 of them on the list, of different compensations that
are being paid for.

DR. THOMAS: And the same would apply, then, to all of those other
individuals that you mentioned whose offspring or grandchildren
were born with various forms of birth defects. Is that right?

MR. MICHAEL: I am not well educated, or that well educated, but I
have a firm belief that it alters our genes, and it will alter
generation after generation.

DR. TUCKSON: The information that you have discovered from
calling and talking to people, you mentioned you've turned over
to someone, and who is that again?

MR. MICHAEL: Do what?

DR. TUCKSON: That you gave the information to that you
discovered?

MR. MICHAEL: Miss Gates.

DR. TUCKSON: Okay. So that's important for us, and let me just
say for the audience and so that you understand, the way our
committee works is that we are blessed to have associated with
the Committee a number of very bright, talented staff, who are
expert in various areas in their own right. Many of them are here
with us today, and so that when they hear things like this, they
then know that they can go -- and then they know who these folks
are, so they're able to go and follow that up. So one of the
things I want to assure the audience is that there are some times
that we will actually have to direct you to various persons on
the staff because something needs to get followed up. Sometimes
they'll just do it on their own from what you say.

Thank you very much, Mr. Michael. We very much appreciate your
coming, and we'll be able to get that information because they
have other information at the site you suggested.

MR. MICHAEL: If she doesn't have it, I have a duplication of it
at home.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you so much.

Can I just have the staff folks that are here, would you just
raise your hands, as well? So that for those of you, again, who
have particular things that can't be done in the seven minutes,
they've come all the way from Washington, D.C., to be here, so
they're taking this very seriously, as well, and just know that
they don't drop the ball because we also ask them, follow up
after we go back home. So this is all very seriously dealt with.

Next let me ask Ms. Darcy Thrall, who has been with us before, to
come up, and thank you for coming.

MS. THRALL: Obviously not much can be told in seven minutes, so I
am prepared to submit most of my information to you and just
catch you up on things that have happened. Approximately a year
ago today I went public with the story that I was taken from my
second grade class in Washington, near Hanford, and fed white
liquid and run through what I found out to be a whole body
counter. And by meeting before the Committee, it allowed
information finally to be released to me that had not been
released prior to that. I believe I was misinformed about the
information I got, and then on my own, I found what I believe to
be much closer to the proper information in 1962. And during the
last year I've experienced, earlier in the year of '94, about
three months of very annoying harassment, and in the past month I
have experienced a tremendous amount of life threatening
harassment that is intolerable. And I brought information about
all of that today and pictures, if you -- since I have the
negatives, if you want to use any of the pictures, you may. I
also brought the information that I contend is what I went
through in 1962, rather than what I received.

I only have a short time, and you may have questions, so I would
like to read this briefly. "To the members of the Committee: In
closing I would like to share with you a letter faxed this
morning to Secretary O'Leary by the Task Force on Radiation and
Human Rights. In the letter the Task Force requests a personal
meeting with Mrs. O'Leary to discuss a number of concerns; one,
initiating a joint DOE task force outreach program to find all of
the experiment victims; two, to request an investigation of my
own situation; three, to discuss task force concerns with respect
to the makeup of the new Bioethics Commission that is to be
established by the White House; four, and finally, to request
Secretary O'Leary's support for extending the life of the
President's Advisory Committee to insure that you are able to
complete your investigation of the experiment victims to the
fullest extent possible."

Do you have any questions?

DR. TUCKSON: Yes. First of all, let me just say that because you
have this other new information, one of the things that's very
important is that you'll sit with somebody on the staff, of
course after your testimony. Will you have time to stay and do
that?

MS. THRALL: Yes, I will.

DR. TUCKSON: Who is the person that will be following up with
Darcy? Okay. So you've got that connection made.

Let me just say that on this issue of the harassment, I was very
concerned when I was alerted about that and spent some time
talking to our folks to try to understand what that was about.
I'm concerned that being a part of the process and having you as
a part of that process, it may put you at some risk. Can I be
assured that officials are investigating this and that the local
police and so forth are involved in this?

MS. THRALL: Actually, in my opinion no. The police are aware.
I've documented everything with them. They have been to my home.
They have been called there on occasions. They assigned a
detective because they consider this malicious harassment now.
The detective assigned to me is Detective Terry Carlson, who
works for Hanford DOE, and I find that very controversial. He's
-- when I met with him, he did not tell me who he worked for. I
don't know why he withheld that information, but it has caused a
distrust, in my heart, with him. When he came to my home, he did
nothing more than sit on my couch and not even bother to get up
to look to see where the evidence was, to look at my animals, to
look around and see if there was anything that I could do to make
my home and my property protected better, which he told me he
would do. And then he had, what I consider, the audacity to ask
that myself, my boyfriend and possibly my daughter go take a lie
detector test, implying that maybe we were harming our own
animals, and that was about the biggest slap in the face I've
ever had.

DR. THOMAS: I -- I'm just appalled. I don't know what to say.

MS. THRALL: So am I.

DR. THOMAS: I just wonder whether this is -- I really don't know
what our commission can do and yet, it seems to me some more
active form of protection would be called for, at least somebody
should be told, a person with comfort -- in comfort and interest
in your position, if the facts should bear out what you've just
told us. It is clearly quite an inappropriate response from the
local police force, who really ought to be at least interested in
this action, so I would like to at least follow up and establish
what the facts are, and if necessary, say something to a person
in authority.

DR. MACKLIN: Yes, I agree with my colleague, Dr. Thomas, about
the horrors of this episode in that you have two stories to tell;
one is what happened to you as a member of your second grade
class and now what is happening to you as a result of disclosing
and coming before this committee.

MS. THRALL: Yes.

DR. MACKLIN: You've presented your story and the facts of your
earlier -- the earlier situation before. My question is, since
there were others, and you told the Committee before that you
knew the names and the families of others who were involved those
many years ago, have any of those people also -- have you been in
contact with them, and have they submitted anything that might
also put them at risk? That is, I'm trying to connect what
happened to you and others then and what's happening now. I mean,
I don't think my question is very clear, but you're part of a
group, a known group or a group that could be identified. You've
had both the courage and the thought to bring your story to this
committee, whereas others have not. But I'm wondering if others
were also victims and have come forward or in some way made
themselves public and whether anything has happened to them, to
your knowledge.

MS. THRALL: I think I know what you're asking. I have found a few
more people who went through the same exact thing that I went
through. They are not willing to come public. One of them works
at Hanford and is in fear of losing his position there. Another
person I know of, from what has happened to me, will not say a
word. And then there's the one that I'm -- I always thought went
through the same thing the same year and the same day that I did,
who was murdered in 1975, and her parents are now looking into
finding if she had a dietary study done and are going to give me
that information and the ability to use it.

DR. MACKLIN: You mentioned specifically someone who works at
Hanford and that person's specific fear is losing his or her job.
Did any one of the people you know express a concern, not a fear
from the company or those who are in a position of management,
but perhaps from people in the community or from workers who
might not want this story told to the public?

MS. THRALL: Both.

DR. MACKLIN: Both.

DR. TUCKSON: Again, it's going to be very important that we here
get -- the staff get from you the new information, or your
analysis of the information that was sent to you which you
started your testimony with. Second, let me just say that we will
do what Duncan suggests and continue to follow up on our end. I
don't know what the Committee can do, but I think we can at least
put energy to this, and we have, by the way. The staff has been
very good at making sure that every time you write to them, they
fax it to me. I've got several communications with them. I've
been following this from Los Angeles, and in fact, Steve, what's
been the latest in terms of what we've been doing?

MR. KLAIDMAN: Well, we've passed this on to the Justice
Department through our interagency working group member. As Dr.
Tuckson mentioned earlier, the Committee reports to an
eight-agency working group. One of those agencies is the
Department of Justice. They now know about your case, and we will
follow up on that.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you.

MS. THRALL: I would also like to say that in just the last month,
what has happened has probably caused one of the biggest changes
in my whole life and the outlook I have on who to trust and who
not to trust and just how I feel in safety.

DR. TUCKSON: I'm sorry to hear that, and again, although some of
this may not be within the confines of the Committee, one thing
is for sure, that part of the reason of your charter was to
create a climate of openness in American life, and that's why we
are particularly concerned with the comments that you're making.
So we'll do all that we can to try to make sure that this is an
open process in American life. Thank you for your continued
participation.

MS. THRALL: I appreciate it.

DR. TUCKSON: Good luck to you.

Mr. Tyler Mercier from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

MR. MERCIER: Thank you very much for coming. It's a delight to
have you here in Santa Fe so I can tell you what our concerns
are. My history to this is I began being concerned about health
effects of Los Alamos operations in 1990 when (inaudible) agreed
to fund a half-million-dollar health study which is in the second
phase. That has been a positive finding. We have found four times
the national rate for thyroid cancer since 1984 in Los Alamos
County. There has been an extensive plea from north of Los Alamos
County for a health study, and for whatever reason, that has
fallen on deaf ears. There have been allegations that there are
high rates of thyroid cancer in Northern New Mexico. As a result
of your committee's work, records have been declassified. I want
to go over them very briefly with this map. You've got it in
front of you. I think it will help. In our health study we have
not -- these are not classified. Declassifying them made them
available to the public in time for us to include the findings in
our last meeting. I prefer to start from the last page, Page 69,
so if you would go to the back of the document, I've highlighted
some of the key issues. What was specifically declassified was
376, 372 atmospheric nuclear tests done in Los Alamos County
starting in 1949, and in Section 5 you'll see we talk about a
cloud of contamination passed over the west gate of Los Alamos.
This was one of the first five shots, and the contamination was
so heavy, they had the fire department wash the roads off to
prevent people from getting contaminated when they drove their
cars through there. And it was determined at this point to get
meteorological assistance so they made sure that when the tests
were done, the fallout would not fall on the town. If you go to
the next page, you'll notice specifically that the --

DR. TUCKSON: Which page?

MR. MERCIER: Page 79. Start at the back. Go from the back
forward.

DR. TUCKSON: Okay.

MR. MERCIER: You saw where the fire department washed off the
roads. You see on Page 79 that the radioactive cloud, this is a
couple of shots later, has generally blown to the north and east
of Bayo Canyon. On this map what you see in the center of the
green dot, the center of the cross-eye, is Bayo Canyon. So 370
shots, and we now go through documents later, we see our protocol
is established where they only fired the shot when the wind was
blowing to the northeast or to the northwest, and most of them
are fired from shots -- or the shots were fired when the wind was
blowing to the northeast. At this point in time, that's where
most of the population of this region lived. I mean, half of it
is Spanish, and half of it Native American. Go to the next page,
on Page 76, you see where the documents released clearly indicate
that significant amounts of radioactivity were being deposited in
the area and in the community, and then if you go to the next
shot, the next page, Page 95, they have set up a protocol. Says
they're only going to fire shots when the wind is coming out of
the southern quadrant. They're not going to allow this
contamination to blow onto the personnel at Los Alamos, which is
a very small number of people at this point in time. If you go to
Page 107, you'll see that there is a discussion, highlights of
the fallout in excess of four miles. And if you'll notice on Page
124, you'll see that there were high rates of radiation, and some
of the instruments even went off the scale from the fallout
clouds. And you see on Page 369 that the activities at Bayo
Canyon actually increased and the sources they were detonating
became much larger, the radioactive content and explosive
content. On Page 380 you see even higher levels of radiation, but
on this map, in this shot, this would be very close to the San
Ildefonso Pueblo, where this road goes across the Rio Grande. And
then on the last page you see where they had an abortive shot and
you saw levels of radiation that would have been lethal within
approximately four hours.

The key issue that your committee's releasing this document has
raised is what appears to be a callous disregard for the
well-being and lives of the Native Americans and Spanish in our
community. We see extremely high doses. We see extensive efforts
with meteorological help so that they make sure that the
radiological doses that are delivered are delivered to the
Spanish and Native Americans of our community, and I would like
to see the Committee recommend that a health study be funded by
the DOE on this so we know the extent of the health effects that
took place and environmental studies to see whether there is some
residual contamination from these 370 shots.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very much. Remind me just quickly, again,
you mentioned in your earlier testimony that there is a study
underway. Who is conducting this study that talked about the four
times increase in thyroid disease?

MR. MERCIER: That is the New Mexico Department of Health, and
that started in 1991, and the rates have continued to increase.
The increase starts about 1984.

DR. TUCKSON: And that half-million dollars to support that was
federal or state money?

MR. MERCIER: That was federal.

DR. TUCKSON: That was DOE money.

MR. MERCIER: Yes.

DR. TUCKSON: And this study is not also looking at these two
questions and issues that you brought today?

MR. MERCIER: No, and there have been numerous requests from the
people in the northwestern quadrant of this map for a health
study to include them, and we don't seem to be able to get the
funding for a study to include those populations.

DR. TUCKSON: Ruth?

DR. MACKLIN: The documents that you just presented to us, it's
evident that people outside of the biochemistry laboratory at Los
Alamos were alerted and had to take some action. For example, you
point out that the fire department washed the contaminated
section of the roads.

MR. MERCIER: These are just the roads in Los Alamos County.

DR. MACKLIN: It doesn't matter, but they were not employees of
the AEC.

MR. MERCIER: Yes, they would have been.

DR. MACKLIN: They would have been. Okay. My other question was
the need for a meteorologist to give predictions in advance.
Here's my question -- it seems as if there were others; now
you're saying they were all employees and that makes it a little
different, but my question goes to whether any of the other
people in the community at the time, such as firemen,
meteorologists or anyone, was aware of the nature of the danger
and what was being done.

MR. MERCIER: The documents do not indicate that the fire
department even knows why it was necessary to wash the road down.
The meteorologist was from Kirtland Air Force Base, was a member
of the military.

DR. THOMAS: When we were doing the study of thyroid disease in
people at the Nevada test site, we were greatly aided by the
existence of substantial records of levels of iodine-131
contamination throughout the State of Utah and the other areas
which we studied, so that we could actually compute and estimate
the thyroid situation in a set of subjects. I gather such data
exists in this case. Can you tell me anything in this material
that's been declassified that would at least establish deposition
patterns and what the effects would be and that sort of thing?

MR. MERCIER: Yes. I gave you very abbreviated versions of the
documents I've culled from thousands of pages, and we have
indications of six tons of iodine that was released into the
canyons in this area. The documents we have do not indicate what
the exact isotope was. We also have --

DR. THOMAS: You mentioned iodine specifically, though.

MR. MERCIER: Right.

DR. THOMAS: There appears to be a loop here. My understanding was
that most of the activities at Bayo Canyon were implosion tests,
using radioiodine.

MR. MERCIER: Yes.

DR. THOMAS: Is that right?

MR. MERCIER: No, not really. The iodine came from TA-21, and
documents indicated that it came from the decay of technetium,
and I presume this was not --

DR. THOMAS: That was part of the implosion tests or some other
activity?

MR. MERCIER: No. There were huge releases of iodine that were not
a part of the implosion tests. It is my understanding that this
was -- the implosion tests resulted in seizing clouds, and there
has been a biological -- an environmental study in this area, in
Los Alamos County, and there are plumes of seizing. Those have
not included the adjoining pueblos and Spanish communities that
the documents indicated also were being contaminated.

DR. THOMAS: The excerpts which you read to us here indicate
substantial areas of contamination within two or three miles of
Bayo Canyon. It appears from this map that that's still well
short of your major settlement, but presumably that's -- there
are declining levels of contamination beyond that.

MR. MERCIER: Look at the top of the map at Abiquiu. They had
tracked the clouds from some of these shots as far as Abiquiu.

DR. THOMAS: I'm sorry, I don't see it.

MR. MERCIER: At the very top.

DR. THOMAS: Oh, I see.

MR. MERCIER: So there are also -- there were 370 shots. I haven't
given you the details on all of them. One of the shots they had
tracked high levels of contamination up to ten miles. But again,
in this instance, not to be crude, but it's probable that there
were much -- you know, what we see in the documents is a cloud
went to the northeast and to the northwest, and we don't care
about that. Was very little monitoring of the site.

DR. THOMAS: On that staff memorandum, refers to four atmospheric
radiation tracking tests in 1950, found positive measurable
quantities of contamination as far away as 70 miles to the east.
Can you help with this with respect to -- relative to all of the
other activities that were going on at Los Alamos?

MR. MERCIER: Yes. That's in this set of documents that I
reviewed, and what I'm talking about was just four of the fairly
small amounts of radiation in terms of the document, you know,
what they considered at least was relatively small compared to
the normal shots and particularly in the later parts of that shot
series.

DR. THOMAS: Would it be possible for the investigators who are
doing this thyroid study that you described to come up with some
sort of quantitative measurement of dose or at least a level of
exposure?

MR. MERCIER: I don't know. The documents that you at least
indicated. There may be other documents that have more detailed
monitoring data in them, but we have yet to see them released.

DR. THOMAS: The concern is that there's wide geographic variation
of just natural incidents of various thyroid cancers, and what
really, I think, was the most compelling feature of the Utah
studies was this ability to pin it down to fallout exposure and
not have to track it in terms of prior -- that's why I encourage
you to --

MR. MERCIER: Yeah. Good point. One thing that's probably relevant
here, and that is that it's four times the national average
countywide. Most of it is in the two census tracts adjacent to
Bayo Canyon. That also happens to be there when they plugged
iodine releases from other operations, but we can't discover Bayo
Canyon tests from them.

DR. TUCKSON: We know how to reach you. Is that right?

MR. MERCIER: Yes.

DR. TUCKSON: You have been having conversations with members of
our staff?

MR. MERCIER: Yes, and thank you.

DR. TUCKSON: Who have you been dealing with?

MR. MERCIER: Kristin Crotty? Is that right?

DR. TUCKSON: Yes. And I want to be sure that we have the stuff
that was released that he's responding to. We also have that,
don't we? So -- I just want to make sure -- make sure that you
know that so we can look at the full text.

MR. MERCIER: Do you want copies of the -- I have not included in
my data package to you the state studies of the thyroid cancer,
so I'm happy to provide that to you.

DR. TUCKSON: Yes, we would.

DR. THOMAS: The individual you should speak to on staff is not
here at this meeting. The individual is Mark Goodman. He's with
Los Alamos Environmental Studies.

MR. MERCIER: Okay.

DR. TUCKSON: You want to make sure that Mark has the data to
follow up the environmental studies. Thank you very much. That's
very, very helpful.

We will have a statement read by Wally Cummins, who will read a
statement from Mr. Bob Hoffman I understand. Welcome, and good to
see you again.

MR. CUMMINS: Thank you. Bob was very pleased that the Committee
was able to come to a place where he could present his views and
his concerns. What I have to say here today is being said on his
behalf as director of the Hanford Atomic Veterans organization.
I'll be very brief and respond to any questions you have from his
point of view, and if there is anything that I can add onto that
on my own, I'll be happy to do so. The message that he has to
give you is really very simple. There were 50,000 veterans at
Hanford, not 10,000 veterans as the Defense Nuclear Agency would
have us believe. During the period of the Green Run, with the
averages that we've been able to figure with the data that we
have and the data base, the Hanford Veterans Cancer Mortality
Study, there could have been as many as 6,000 men and women who
were exposed at the time of the Green Run, and Bob and the
organization would like to ask the Committee to make a
recommendation to the appropriate agency of the government that
these people be found and if given charge of the Committee, I --
speaking for myself, it would seem that the organization would
have to ask that the people who were exposed during the Green Run
as an experiment be found and notified that they were exposed
because the majority of these people do not know that they were
exposed at that time. We would also like to ask the Committee,
that is to say Hanford Atomic Veterans, that they make a
recommendation to the appropriate agencies of the government that
experiments on veterans, whether Desert Storm, Korea, Vietnam or
those who were stationed at the nuclear weapons production
facilities, that the recommendation be made that these kind of
experiments cease. That's the end of statement.

Could I ask a question, and that is just a mechanical question.
In terms of these figures, Bob's people that worked with me --
and I have a statement, and I will submit a statement in writing;
his statement will be written and submitted to you, is there a
process by which the Committee can respond to that statement and
to these requests and say that the Committee notes and takes note
of?

DR. TUCKSON: I think that it's -- what we can do is we try to
understand the particulars of the Green Run, to be able then to
-- to be able to look and see if we can discover how many people
were exposed, how many people were there, whether it was 50,000
or whether it was 10,000. I think we can at least try to
understand that matter, and that you are raising the question at
least allows us to -- gives us another key as to a critical
question we are trying to determine. So the answer is as we come
to that understanding, we'll -- let's see what happens.

DR. THOMAS: You concluded your remarks with a statement that, you
recall, that this committee would make a statement to the effect
that these experiments cease, or have I got that right? The
implication being that it's your understanding that similar
experiments to the Green Run are still underway at the moment. Am
I putting words in your mouth?

MR. CUMMINS: Not similar, necessarily, to the Green Run. As he
was preparing the statement, we had a number of discussions about
the points that he wanted to make. About the time he was in the
process of finishing his statement, the Rockefeller report came
out, the staff of -- Senator Rockefeller's committee staff,
saying that they had indications that the medications given to
troops in Desert Storm were part of a human experiment. I can't
comment on that one way or the other, but that's something that
creates a great problem, particularly for the Hanford Veterans,
because they feel that in the Green Run they were experiments.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very much. And would you thank Mr. Hoffman
for preparing the statement?

Mr. Theodore A. Garcia.

MR. GARCIA: Before my time starts, I would like to bring in a few
items to you. Okay? I have sent my brochures to the Committee,
but I wanted to add a couple of things.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, staff, atomic veterans,
ladies and gentlemen, I portray death because I am an atomic
veteran. I come before you as a symbol that I want to address the
Committee as an atomic veteran, what it is to be an atomic
veteran. I'm a dying veteran. Mr. Chairman, Committee, staff,
atomic veterans, ladies and gentlemen, as I sit here, I have come
before many places around the country addressing myself and
talking about the atomic veterans. At the time I'm the New Mexico
State Commander, been appointed, and I have three suitcases full
of material that I have compiled in 35 years. In that portion of
time, I have nine operations that I have sent to you that I have
just briefly talked about. Now, for the people here I will just
make a short briefing. In the course of this time I have had
those nine operations, and I have made claims through the VA
twice and been denied because I have not met the cancers;
although they have removed cancer; they have removed 14 inches of
my colon. I've had intensive operations which I have been very
sick. I didn't know what it was to sleep in a bed because of all
the problems in my stomach. I, for about 30 years, up till 1989,
I slept in a recliner. I could just look back and see my family,
and my wife would always say, "When are you coming to bed?"
"Well," I said, "I'll be in bed shortly, as soon as all these
gases will simmer down." Now, in the course of this time, I've
been married twice. My first wife had two children. My first born
died after I gave him a blood transfusion. My second wife has had
two miscarriages before, although I do have two children with
her. My first wife had, also, two miscarriages. My oldest
daughter had two miscarriages, and she has not been able to
conceive. My youngest daughter has had two miscarriages, although
she has two children. Now, as I said, in the course of time, I
feel that because of me the path of the flight I feel could be
attributed to those illnesses. I have been diagnosed with PTSD,
as well, because of the stresses. I have seen my family that have
always been concerned about me -- and it's real bad for me to go
out in the desert and cry. I've shed a lot of tears. Right now I
have been -- I'm going to a psychiatrist, and I'm in counseling.
But it's awfully sad that I go before committees around the
country and have to go over it and over it again. I have been to
Washington, D.C. I've lobbied. I have gone to New York City and
lobbied, and nothing has worked. I have -- before my time is up,
I would like to make a couple of recommendations, if I may, that
in all this time, the committees have gone around the country
talking to the atomic veterans. The atomic veterans -- as a
matter of fact, I had one veteran that was supposed to meet me
here from California, a Medal of Honor recipient. I had another
man, I don't know whether he'll show up today, but he was a
Prisoner of War. Now, what I symbolize here are two brothers of
mine that were highly decorated. They're what I call a
conventional war; they were honored with their medals and their
compensations which I call a conventional war with all this
glory. On the other hand, I am an atomic veteran that I symbolize
death, as I have mentioned, because I come with an unconventional
war. We have not been recognized. We have not been given no
medals; we have not been given no recognition. They're still
going on with the cold war all this time, and there has been
nothing other than passed a few bills by the Congress, by the few
bills -- I mean laws the president signed. I've gone down -- I go
down with a lot of presidents that I have sent letters, and you
have before you some of the letters that I did send, but
Committee Members, I feel that the atomic veterans have not been
paid justice; therefore, our invisible wounds are there and
they're -- they're dying. The man that was supposed to be here
says, "Ted, it's possible that I might not be alive when you get
back." I wanted him to fax me a letter. He says, "I can't even go
out." He's confined today.

Well, I'm very sad, because all this time I have gone before
many, many committee members, and I've sympathized, and records
don't mean a darn thing. I've got records to show, from
presidents down to senators, representatives, and always just to
sympathize, that "We are trying to do whatever we can." Well,
there we are. Hadn't been done that much. We only want
compensation to be paid for our invisible wounds, the same way
that the visible veteran has been honored.

So, as I see, my time is getting up, but again, I plead to you
that something is done soon. I'll just read one little item in
one of the fact sheets here. I represent the atomic veterans for
1946, Able and Baker, the bombs that were shot after Nagasaki and
Hiroshima. The Crossroads Operation, they're still talking two
years more of extensive tests they want to conduct. So, you know,
the Committee goes around talking to the vets. Why don't they go
to the vaults and get all the secrets that are there to finalize
this instead of talking to us? We've talked our heads off. So,
Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for coming to our native state
here, New Mexico, and I hope that something will be done soon.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very much, as well. I wanted to leave you
at least with an assurance that we are going, and very early in
the day, about the results of our ethics as they need to be
classified material in a variety of places. I would hope that,
again, you would see our talking to the veterans, even though
you've been talking a lot, as being important, as well, and that
we need to do both and we are doing both, and you have been a
wonderful participant. We don't have time for real questions. One
thing I want to make sure of is that we have the -- we may have
it -- the actual diagnoses that have been made in your case, such
that we might be able to just look and see how that fits against
the list of items that currently are -- do we have that? I don't
see that either. If you have not supplied us with that, because
really so much of what you're saying hangs on understanding what
the diagnoses are; I don't want you to actually reveal that in
public, but if you could just make sure we get a copy of that.

MR. GARCIA: I will be happy to give it to your aide.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very much for coming, sir.

The last presentation for the first panel, before we take a very
short break, but who will get all of our interviewing attention,
is Mr. Bill Holmes of Fulsom, California.

MR. HOLMES: The photograph is so you'll have something to look at
besides numbers of letters when you think of my grandfather. In
1945 when my grandfather, Albert Stevens, was injected with
plutonium at UCSF so the effects could be compared to the effects
in rats, I was almost four years old, just 38 days younger than
the four-year-old boy who was also injected with plutonium at
UCSF. I think about my two boys and how small and trusting and
innocent they were when they were four.

A few months ago I read the documents released by the Energy
Department concerning my grandfather. It was overwhelming.
Looking back at it, I can see that as I was learning what was
done and said and by whom, I was also looking for any signs of an
awareness by these people of the legal and moral quagmire into
which they were sinking. I saw enough to convince anyone that
they were very much aware that they might be faced with some
accountability for their actions in the steps they took to assure
the utmost secrecy of their deeds. But beyond awareness of
culpability, I was looking for some signs of human feelings, of
any kind of remorse or thought for my grandfather and what his
life meant to him and to us.

I was disappointed to find so little feeling on their part and
others who defend them.

I remember my skin crawling in horror, and I was shaking all over
as I watched a tape made of a C-SPAN news coverage of testimony
about this and I listened to the list of things that were removed
from my grandfather's insides to be studied for signs of damage
from his injection of plutonium. It's like I could close my eyes
and see all those things they took out of him lined up on a tray.
I felt a great emptiness inside myself after listening to that.

Just as the word "plutonium" rolls smoothly from the tongue, so
did the jaws of these scientist-doctors and military people close
smoothly, silently and forever over the life of my grandfather.

I remember my grandfather talking to his canaries and finches to
get them to sing for his small grandson. There was a piano that
he let me bang on until nobody could stand it anymore and he
would lower the cover over the keys. In the backyard he had a
wonderful orange tree with the sweetest oranges, and along one
wall were blackberries loaded with fruit in the summer. In the
garden there was rhubarb, and my grandmother would make stewed
rhubarb and rhubarb pie.

I learned a tremendous amount about the outdoors from my other
grandfather, but Al Stevens did very little out of doors during
the time that I knew him. He was not able to be very active at
all. But his spirit was still strong. His sense of humor remained
with him. He was always joking about something.

I don't want to think of my grandfather as some kind of victim. I
want to think of him as having beaten those scientists, as rising
above them, having the last laugh, surviving in spite of them.
They tried to cheapen his life by lowering it to the level of a
laboratory rat while pretending to themselves that their lives
were worth more than his. He was never guilty of such atrocities.
He never had the protection of a university or the military or an
industrial giant or the government. He was naked and defenseless.

In Yakima, Washington, not far from Spokane, where what is left
of my grandfather's ashes are kept for further study of the
radioactive effects of plutonium on people, my first son was born
in September, 1964. My grandfather met Steve the next summer, in
1965. In 1966 Albert Stevens died.

This Christmas I received a delightful video of my granddaughter
learning to walk and talk and dance. Life goes on. I confess I am
a very proud grandfather and a very proud grandson.

Perhaps these doctors and scientists and others have
grandchildren of their own. If so, I'm sure they view the careers
of their grandparents with pride, for their accomplishments are
many. These grandchildren are not faced with the scalding
proposition that their grandfather was seen by powerful and
accomplished people as having no more value than a laboratory rat
in one of their experiments and that his life could be simply
thrown away when they were done with it.

These people placed a higher value on their careers than on the
lives of the people they used to advance those careers. They felt
like they could wipe their boots on my grandfather's life and get
away with it.

I find it offensive to hear people saying that it was all right
to do these things at the time. The people in Nuremberg had their
excuses, too. There was no excuse then, just the same as there is
no excuse now and for the same reasons.

The people who did this to my grandfather have only to ask
themselves how they would feel if they were in his place. Any
code of ethics or scientific experiment involving humans must, it
seems to me, begin and end with that very simple question.

We have the opportunity to learn from mistakes. There is a
valuable lesson in all of this, and it should be utilized, not
ignored, or the same mistakes will be repeated. There is
apparently not much of a structure in place today to keep this
kind of thing from happening again and again.

I don't want to clog up my heart with feelings of revenge, but my
head tells me that without some personal accountability for these
actions, the message will remain very clear to those involved in
human experimentation that if you have a dirty little secret and
you can keep it hidden long enough with the help of your
colleagues and government, then you have nothing to worry about,
no fear of any damage to reputation or estate.

If the consequences for such crimes against humanity are small,
then the crimes themselves will be regarded as small and petty
and not worth worrying about.

I think some acknowledgment of this should be placed on each
campus where these crimes occurred, in some prominent spot in the
science and medical departments. Perhaps a list of the doctors
and scientists and their various awards and recognitions and
opposite them a list of the people they did these things to and a
short history of what they did to each one. Something that will
acknowledge that this occurred and that it was done by rather
prestigious people. Something that will remind with less intent
of destroying reputations than in using this as an example for
others to beware of losing sight of their own humanity in the
pursuit of their goals.

Please don't let this issue be something that is shelved until it
can disappear under the carpet once more. If you truly have an
opportunity to be effective, then for the sake of us all, put
some restrictions in place.

I want very much to personalize this issue because I think it's
important for us to be aware that decisions are made on a very
personal level, and any steps to raise the consciousness of the
scientific-industrial-military community must take this into
account. Suggestions and guidelines are not enough. There must be
spelled out specific penalties to dissuade the same type of drive
for recognition and personal gain that will cause someone to
overstep the boundaries of humanity. They should never again be
allowed to flaunt their power and authority in such brutal
fashion.

In trying to write this, I found myself saying the same things
with different words: Number one, this should never have been
allowed to happen. Number two, what was done was brutal, callous,
careless and arrogant. Number three, specific steps must be taken
to discourage further proliferation of a similar attitude in the
field of human experimentation. And number four, sunlight is far
more healing than darkness.

With that, may I remind all of us that the uncovering of this
began with one person from Albuquerque and her moral outrage,
determination, courage and perseverance. She, by herself, has
done more to heal these wounds than anyone.

I pray that God will take special care of my grandfather.

A statement on behalf of the Task Force on Radiation and Human
Rights. The Task Force will be presenting a position paper on the
issue of remedies at the Advisory Committee's February meeting.
At this time the Task Force would nevertheless like to share with
the committee members who are here today the following concern:
The issue of remedies is more than a matter of compensation. The
Task Force is strongly committed to the proposition that justice
for the experiment survivors and the living relatives of the
victims requires restitution. The survivors and the families must
be made whole. Consequently, any recommendations from the
Advisory Committee to the President and the Congress must address
the need for health care for experiment victims still living.
Concerns as to possible genetic effects passed on to children
must be addressed. Any proposal for the establishment of an
administrative compensation program cannot be exclusive. Other
rights and remedies, such as those existing in the courts,
against the government and the private parties who conducted the
experiments must be preserved. To the extent that artificial
legal barriers to exercising one's rights in court exist, such as
statutes of limitation and government sovereign immunities, the
Advisory Committee should recommend to Congress that they be
removed.

Thank you for your time and for listening to me.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you for an extraordinarily powerful
presentation, and the time and energy that you spent in
reproducing these pictures was, at least for me, worth it. I am
extremely -- I think I feel a certain connectiveness to your
grandfather, the way you describe him. This picture goes a long
way to do that. I wish we had more time. I do think we're at the
end. But again, I must say I was very moved by your comments, and
it will make a difference.

MR. HOLMES: Thank you very much.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you, sir.

We're scheduled for a break. We will resume at exactly on the
hour, at exactly 11:00 o'clock. I have on my list Mr. Manuel
Pino, then Mr. Alvino Waconda, Mr. Curtis Francisco, Ms. Dorothy
Purley, Mr. Harry Lester, Mr. Milton Stadt, Mr. Clyde Gardner,
Mr. Stanley Paytiamo, and I will be taught how to say your name
without disrespecting you, I hope during the break. We will
resume on the hour exactly.

(Brief recess.)

DR. TUCKSON: We're going to resume. If those in the back would
either continue their conversations outside or come on in, one or
the other. We're welcoming Mr. Manuel Pino, who is here, and
Manuel, do you want to start by letting us know where you live?

MR. PINO: My name is Manuel Pino. I am from the Pueblo of Acoma.
I am currently employed as an instructor at Arizona State
University in the school of justice studies. I would like to
welcome the Committee to pueblo country in that our oral
traditions, our oral stories handed down to us from our
grandmothers and grandfathers tell us that we have been in this
land from time immemorial, and it is great, for a change, to see
an agency appointed by the federal government coming to our
homelands because so many times in the past, to present
testimony, as we're doing here today, we have had to make that
long, expensive trip to Washington, D.C., so it's good to see you
here in our homeland for a change. Thank you.

We are here -- I am from Acoma Pueblo. My brothers and my sister
here are from the neighboring pueblo to the east, Laguna. We live
approximately 60 miles west of Albuquerque, along Interstate 40.
Both of our pueblos are located within a 30-mile radius of the
Grants Mineral Belt. The Grants Mineral Belt housed over 60
uranium mines and over seven mills during the years -- during the
early years of the 1950's to the mid-1980's. Being downwind and
downstream from this intensive development area, we have
experienced not only environmental degradation to our land,
health problems, but also, we have seen change to our traditional
and cultural lifestyle.

As a sociologist, I have made this my research orientation, to
document these impacts that have changed the lives of our people
by this boom-bust cycle of uranium mining and milling of the
area. I personally have uncles, aunts, cousins, and my own father
who at one time worked in the uranium mining industry. I have a
grandmother, a maternal grandmother, who died of cancer, and
living in the area throughout my life, I have seen the
development process from its inception, being born in 1952; I am
now 43 years old, and I have seen many of our tribal members
succumb to all types of cancerous illnesses as a result of
working in the uranium mines and mills.

As has been expressed previously here today, we, as Mr. Udall so
eloquently presented this morning, we were the guinea pigs of
this industry. Our people, like the Navajo, were uninformed when
we went in and sought employment in the industry. We were given
very little health benefits. We were not really fully informed in
the negotiation process that went on between our tribal
government, the federal government and the corporate entities who
conducted their business over the 30-year period. So we come here
with great reluctance, and we don't know if we can trust the
federal government. Because as Indian people, not just pueblo
people, but Indian people throughout this land, we have seen the
United States Government make over 400 treaties with our people,
and they have a very good track record because they have broken
every one of those treaties.

So we come here, and we testify again before a federal
governmental committee that is going to report to the interagency
committee and eventually to the President and the Congress, not
knowing whether our testimony again is going to go before blind
eyes and deaf ears. Those of us who have been involved in this
struggle have presented testimony after testimony before
committees on health, committees on the environment, before all
the federal regulating agencies of the United States Government.
We have experienced being the only group of people ignored in the
development of environmental legislation and environmental laws.
We are always an afterthought. We always have to seek amendments
to include the indigenous people of this country in their laws.
We have seen desecration to our tradition, our culture in the
form of the world's deepest uranium mine shaft being dug into our
sacred mountain, Coeschema (sic), what you people call Mount
Taylor. We have seen the largest open pit uranium mine in the
world in our neighboring pueblo, Laguna. We have seen the largest
producing mill in the history of the uranium industry 15 miles up
the road from our pueblo, and as I said, we are experiencing all
this cultural change, and we are the only group of people who
have to have our religion legislated in the halls of Congress.
Since 1978 we have had Congress negotiating our destination when
the United States Constitution is supposed to guarantee freedom
of religion to all people. Well, I think the United States
Government meant freedom of religion except for Indians.

When we come to you and we tell you that our Mother Earth is
sacred, your experts and your scientists may disclose this as
myth, but to us it's our religion; it's our culture; it's our way
of life. We have seen those things destroyed before our very
eyes, and we could go on and on and present documentation about
the environmental degradation to our air, to our land, to our
water, but I think it's important that you take back to Congress
and to the President that environmental genocide also includes
desecration to our religious cultural world view, and we have
documented this in our studies which we will present to the
interagency committee within a month. We have been meeting here
for about the past two years trying to document this information,
and my colleagues here today sitting with me at the table will
get more detailed about their experiences as uranium miners, as
people living in contaminated communities, and I wish we had more
time, but I would like to appreciate the time I have been given
to present this testimony before you here today. Thank you.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very much, sir. And you fully got our
attention. Thank you. We may come back and ask you some questions
in a moment, depending on, I think, whether or not some of those
questions are answered by other comments by your colleagues.

Mr. Alvino Waconda.

MR. WACONDA: Good morning. My name is Al Waconda. I live in the
Village of Paguate, New Mexico. This is in very close proximity
to the Jackpile Mine. First of all, I would like to read this
letter to you as proof that we were intentionally exposed. This
letter was dated August 27, 1953. It's to Mr. Allen B. Look,
Chief Arizona Section, Health and Safety Service, Bureau of
Mines, and it's from Duncan A. Holaday, Senior Sanitary Engineer.

"Dear Allen: This is in reply to your letter of August 12, 1953,
which arrived just as I was leaving town on a field trip. Mr.
Rodriguez certainly found a rather high concentration of
radioactive dust in the Jackpile Mine, and I hope that Anaconda
will take some immediate measures to correct these conditions.

"I saw Mr. J. W. Warden at Behotch (sic) and mentioned the
situation to him so that the home office will be appraised of the
situation. While it is true that you could obtain this daily
exposure to radiation in less than two minutes of exposure to
concentrations such as exist in this mine, it is also true that
exposures can be averaged over a working period of at least a
week. Of course, this will only give you about ten minutes' worth
a night, so I cannot say enough for the situation in particular
to do this.

"Frankly, I do not know whether acute exposures such as these are
more damaging than are chronic exposures. For external radiation,
more radiation can be tolerated if the exposure is spread over a
period of time than if it is obtained all at once. The same
situation may be true for internal exposure.

"We have not worn respirators in the mines primarily because we
actually do not spend 80 days a year in high concentrations.
Also, the psychological effect on the miners will probably not be
very good.

"The level of 100 microcuries per liter, which we propose, was
based on the exposure of an individual for a working lifetime,
and so I do not believe that there are any real hazards involved
in spending relatively few days per year at such high
concentrations as exist in some of these mines; however, this is
only my opinion, and I have no facts with which to support it.

"I admit (inaudible) I see the meter go off scale and stay that
way. We have taken samples in some mines where the journal
remained off scale for three hours. In such cases we have not
resampled such areas until control measures have been installed,
as we could see no reason in exposing ourselves just to obtain
additional samples.

"To summarize all this, I feel that there is probably no real
hazard involved in relatively brief exposures to high levels of
radiation but certainly could not object to someone else's desire
to protect himself by wearing a respirator.

"This is probably not very helpful to you, but it is as good
information as I can give you at this time."

At (inaudible) we were intentionally exposed to radiation. We
were never told how dangerous this uranium was. I worked at the
mine for 11 years, seven years in open pit mining and four years
in underground mining. I started working as a pole man. We took
readings of the whole bay. Many times the meter needle went off
scale. I later operated heavy equipment, equipment contaminated
with the ore and, of course, asbestos everywhere. When I worked
underground, again we were intentionally exposed, but the
Anaconda Company offered us bonus pay for producing large amounts
of high-grade ore. This bonus pay also led to many unsafe working
conditions.

Now for the unjustices. Along with never being told about the
danger from radiation, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act,
which became law in 1990, provides compensation to the many that
were exposed to radiation. Briefly it states that the United
States shall recognize and assume responsibility for the harm
done to these individuals. Open pit miners and millers were
totally left out, along with the underground miners that worked
back in 1971. We were also exposed to this same radiation and
other airborne hazards. Unfortunately, RECA is an injustice to
the many that are supposed to receive compensation because of the
documentation that they request.

We know that radiation is the cause of cancer, respiratory and
other health problems that we have at Laguna. My own family has
suffered. My father died from leukemia after working at the mine.
My wife suffered four miscarriages, most likely the result from
living close to a mine and from the contaminated clothing that I
brought home for her to wash. We also know that in the United
States, the mining companies have known about radiation for
decades.

My work experiences and family sufferings are not mine alone.
There were hundreds that worked at the mine, and also many
community members were exposed to the radiation from airborne
particulates.

I would like to thank this committee for holding these hearings,
but most important, we would like you to take action to the many
problems and injustices that we present before you. Thank you.

DR. TUCKSON: I think what we'll do is, let's go ahead and hear
from all of you and come back and ask questions of you
individually.

DR. THOMAS: Could I just get this? The date of that letter that
you read to us, is there a date on that letter?

MR. WACONDA: August 27, 1953.

DR. THOMAS: And it's from Dr. Holaday? Is that right?

MR. WACONDA: Yes.

DR. THOMAS: Thank you.

DR. TUCKSON: Our next presenter is Mr. Curtis Francisco.

MR. FRANCISCO: Yes. First of all, I'd like to clarify something
here. I am here on behalf of the Village of Paguate, and as
Alvino has stated and Manny has stated, we have been exposed to a
lot of things, and it's just recently that the Village of Paguate
(inaudible), they wanted to have their concerns voiced, and they
created a committee, which basically I got started. I'm the
newest person on this and I guess the youngest person.

My concerns are for my village because we are the most directly
affected from the Jackpile Mine. Our village is located less than
300 feet from the edge of the mine. And as Alvino and Manny
stated, it's the largest open pit mine in the free world, or in
the world period.

We know from -- well, especially I, I'm a geologist by trade.
That's what I went to school for, and I consider my education to
be the only good thing that ever came out of the mine. I
personally did not work there because it shut down before I
graduated from high school. But I've been subjected to things all
my life from that area, from the mine blasting through times of
the clouds of dust covering us. I can remember my grandmother
bringing us into the house at noon and putting us under the table
when there were blasts. The walls would shake. I remember
cabinets falling off the walls, the walls knocking, and it was
like going through an earthquake three times a day for
30-some-odd years.

No one really knows the extent to which our people have suffered,
and no one really seems to care. The federal government has, as
Manny and Alvino stated, has a poor track record with our people.
Especially the pueblo people, when you look at the fact that we
have had dealings with them for probably well over a hundred
years. Our culture has survived through time, but due to this
government and this country that we now live in, we are dying.
Our livelihood, our way of life, everything is now in jeopardy,
and we come to you not to beg or plead but to demand that
something be done.

We don't know the full extent of what has happened to us or what
we have been subjected to, but it is my contention and my own
personal belief that we members of the Village of Paguate and the
Pueblo of Laguna are still being subjected -- we are still
subjected to radiation and ongoing experiments. We don't know
what's going on or what is happening. We have just begun some
radon surveys throughout the village, and we're trying to get the
(inaudible) tested, but it's a slow process.

You have to understand our way of life and the way that we do
things. It's very different from the way you work and the way
your society functions. So all I can say is that I hope something
from our testimony here will come about and that our concerns and
our views will not be displaced as those of a bunch of irate
American Indians who come here just to beg and plead to the
federal government when you describe our comments, but we do have
valid concerns, and we do hope that you take them seriously,
because what affects us will also be affecting the rest of the
state. Some 30-some miles from us over land, as the crow flies,
is the state's most populated area, which is Albuquerque, and
with the airport emissions that we have now, we don't know how
that's affecting them, and we don't want to be labeled or be
liable for anything that happens at that area. They're sandwiched
between two national labs, so they're getting it from three
directions, the natural source and then the labs.

We are at the source that was mined. Granted, it's naturally
occurring, but under Superfund law, and I worked with the
Superfund early on, once the mine is -- a naturally occurring
product has been removed, man has done something to it, it then
constitutes hazardous waste, and I forget the page and section
that you can find this in, HR (inaudible) publishes.

So I would just hope that you would relay this as our concerns
and not read us as a bunch of irate people, but we do have valid
concerns. Thank you.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very, very much, as well.

Let's hear finally from Ms. Dorothy Purley. Welcome, and thank
you.

MS. PURLEY: Good morning. My name is Dorothy Ann Purley.

DR. TUCKSON: I'm sorry, could you move a little closer to the
microphone? I'm sorry to stop you, but let me just make everybody
aware that the transcriber tries her best to get every single
word. All of the transcriptions are then made available to the
rest of the staff, and eventually the Committee gets, if not the
verbatim transcript, we get a very detailed summary of that. So
the reason why we're so fanatic about talking into the microphone
is that every word you say goes into the record, and it's
important that we get it. Sorry for the interruption.

MS. PURLEY: Good morning. My name is Dorothy Ann Purley. I'm a
Native American woman from the Pueblo of Laguna. Our pueblo is
located 62 miles west of Albuquerque. There are seven villages
located in the Pueblo of Laguna. The village I come from is
called Paguate. It is where you find the world's largest open pit
uranium mine.

In 1953 the Anaconda Jackpile Uranium Mine was opened. It seemed
like a dream come true. Since almost all of us were considered
below the poverty level, it was a Godsend. At that time we did
not perceive or have any knowledge of the dangers of radiation.
All that we were concerned about was our daily living.

I was a teenager when the Anaconda Jackpile Mine first began its
operations. Through my lifetime I have seen and experienced many
changes of both myself and my people. Our once beautiful land was
torn and gutted. Our orchards (inaudible) were ripped apart. Soon
my people began to suffer. As time went on, I started hearing
about my friends and relatives dying of cancer. People started
becoming affected with upper respiratory illness, such as
bronchitis and asthma. Our children and teens were being affected
with tumors and leukemia. Babies were born with retardation,
birth defects. I wondered what was going on. I still did not
realize that we were being exposed to radiation.

In 1975 I began my employment with the Anaconda Jackpile Mine. My
job was driving a dump truck loaded with high-grade uranium ore.
I would drive the ore to the stockpile or to the presser to be
transported to the mill site. Since high-grade ore, uranium ore,
contains a high amount of radiation, my exposure was great. At
that time I did not have knowledge of the potential dangers that
I was facing.

In the late '80's my health started to change. I started losing
weight and developed a cold that would not go away. A couple of
years later I noticed some lumps in my right breast and underarm.
I checked into the hospital for a biopsy. About a week later I
was diagnosed with lymphoma, which is a cancer of the immune
system. The doctors at the UNM Cancer Center could not decide
what form of treatment to give me. I have a rare type of
lymphoma. They finally decided on high-dose chemotherapy. I was
given four powerful drugs at once. These drugs, which are pills,
have also caused serious side effects in my body. I have suffered
through great losses. My hair and my teeth are falling out. The
circulation in my feet and hands are poor. I stumble and drop
things often. My sight is being affected, and now I have to wear
glasses. I also have to walk with a cane.

All these physical hardships cannot compare with the emotional
turmoil that I have to face. The hardest part is I can no longer
ride bikes or go on field trips with my oldest grandson. I cannot
hold my three-year-old grandson or run and play ball with him.
I've lost so much strength, and my grandson cannot understand, I
cannot do that.

I have recently found out something. In 1953, when the mine began
to operate, they had knowledge of the dangers of radiation. A
letter had been written from a scientist warning not to prolong
humans to exposure. We were never made aware of this letter. If
we had been, perhaps my people and I could have made better
choices, but we never were given the chance.

Thank you for your time and consideration. God bless you.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Let me ask just a general question. Given the health team, the
health resources available to you, the Indian Health Service, the
state government, the Anaconda Company, how were you to
understand what health interventions had been available to your
people living in these areas, and has anybody been tracking the
number of cases of cancer or other diseases such that there would
be -- somebody would have a record of it and then could have
alerted and then perhaps could have done some investigation of
it?

MR. PINO: Although we have an Indian Health Service unit on our
reservation, we, in the late 1970's, at the height of production,
tried to initiate health studies with the assistance of the
Indian Health Service, however, to no avail. The University of
New Mexico Cancer Research Center has documented cancer studies
on -- quite extensively on miners in the Grants Mineral Belt but
not specifically Laguna and Acoma miners. So therefore, we have,
as concerned citizens within both communities, have just begun to
develop a registry of miners who have contracted respiratory and
cancerous related illnesses, which we are in the process of
documenting without assistance from the state government, without
assistance from our tribal government, without assistance from
the federal government. We have tried to pursue funding through
private foundations, and we have worked with the Cancer Center,
and we are now in the process, given the fact that one of our
tribal members is now one of the chief administrators of the UNM
Cancer Center, of starting to see some results in the area of a
health study developing.

DR. TUCKSON: So that, again, just -- let me make sure. It is very
difficult for me to ignore your testimony. I would imagine we're
not the first to have heard it. It would seem, then, that the
state health department, in collaboration with Indian Health
Service, would be in a position where they could and would have
gone through, because we're not talking about an enormously large
number of people, and documented and reviewed the records and
been able to say whether or not your experience, which you
related so painfully, was atypical or unusual or was part of a
cluster of other cases. And I guess the question becomes is, are
you saying that now, finally, people are putting that work
together? Is there somebody that we can call so that we can get a
-- the most precise scientific understanding of this, or are you
saying to us that things are still in disarray, and that there is
no one place we can go to get the answers to the questions?

MR. FRANCISCO: Let me reply to that. First of all, this is my own
personal opinion, the Indian Health Service is a joke. They
provide very little services to us as an Indian people. They keep
cutting back on the services that they do provide, and to the
best of my knowledge, they have done nothing to track the cancer
studies. Second of all, the State of New Mexico has no
jurisdiction on Indian land or really any concern, other than now
with the gaming issue, they want the tribes to pay money. That's
a separate issue. But in the past, the State of New Mexico has
had no concern because they have no jurisdiction. So there is
nothing that the State of New Mexico has done for the pueblos,
specifically Laguna, Acoma. Now, there are 19 pueblo tribes in
New Mexico, and we are speaking from two, and I need to clarify a
point, and I hope to make this point. We don't -- we here from
Laguna do not represent the Pueblo of Laguna, but we represent
our village. We are sanctioned by the Village of Paguate, but
we're not sanctioned by the Pueblo of Laguna. But Laguna has a
structure unlike any of the other pueblos in that we can be
sanctioned by our village, and we have been. So we are an
official committee, not just a group of people here. So you need
to understand the way that our structure works and our government
works.

But back to the question of where you can get things. As far as I
know, there is not any one point you can go or any one place you
can go to get information. We have begun the process to try to
gather what we can and to do the best that we can with the
resources that we have among us and that we are able to get, but
as of yet, we don't have anything compiled.

DR. TUCKSON: Let me just ask, because I know my colleagues want
to ask questions as well, do you have a letter that you have
written or anyone has written recently to the IHS, to the Indian
Health Service, that says, "We are concerned that people are
having a high episode of cancer and other issues, and it needs to
be explored, within 300 feet away from a uranium pit mine, and it
just seems to us that there's reason for concern"? Have you asked
that in writing? Has somebody ignored that?

MR. PINO: I've met several times with service unit directors, a
number of times sat on the hospital board. Because of the
confidentiality factor, we would have had to go into individual
records of those former miners who had been diagnosed and get
some sort of release to get into their private medical records.
Because of the extensive work that this would take, you know, in
going into -- first we'd have to identify the population, because
most of the -- the majority of the work is, what you heard from
Alvino and Dorothy, you were told that most of the contaminants
of open pit mining would dissipate up into the air, but as time
progressed, ten years after the mine closed, in 1982, in that
ten-year time period, you know, we see a growing increase of
numbers of these cancer-related illnesses, and just within the
last two years we started to document this type of information.
At Acoma it's even worse because Jackpile Mine is one central
location on the Laguna Reservation. The tribal work force at
Acoma, which was over 80 percent of the male tribal work force,
during the development period worked in mines and mills
throughout the Grants Mineral Belt, so their employment records
are spread in numerous mines and mills across the companies that
were doing business in that area. So it is quite a
research-intensive undertaking to develop that with no money you
know, with no funds from the state or no funds from the federal
government. You know, it's been very difficult to do that.

DR. TUCKSON: Did you want to make a comment on that?

MS. PURLEY: Yes. I just want to kind of add in, our village is
such a small community, and people are aware of what's going on.
Nowadays people come out and say, "Did you know so and so died of
cancer?" I have a brother-in-law who has got cancer. He worked at
the mine. Again, you know, the company knew in 1953 that so much
radiation was in that valley, and I don't know why the company
didn't do anything about it. This is where it really hits me so
hard, because I myself had been healthy. I didn't find out until
I had been diagnosed with something.

DR. TUCKSON: Did you want to make a brief comment?

MR. WACONDA: Yes. Back in 1985, when hearings were being held,
also, many community members voiced their concern over the health
issues. This was during the time when the EIS's fee ran up, and
the service unit director from the ACR Hospital requested to get
some kind of funding to do a health study. He never received any
type of money and none of the health issues were ever addressed
in the EIS, although, many people voiced their concern.

DR. MACKLIN: I have a number of rather specific factual
questions, and forgive me for any ignorance I may display or any
memory failure for some of the things that you said. One
question, all the mines that you're now discussing, were they all
operated by Anaconda, or were there other mine operators? I mean,
if you could elaborate a little on who the owners were, who owned
and operated the mines.

MS. PURLEY: When the mine first started up, Anaconda and Isabel
Construction were both combined together, but Isabel left and
Anaconda continued. Then a little while later, ARCO took over
because, from what we heard, there wasn't that much (inaudible)
Anaconda forced ARCO to go into mining.

DR. MACKLIN: And these are private companies? Is that correct?

MR. PINO: Yes.

DR. MACKLIN: Because it's my understanding that there were AEC,
Atomic Energy Commission-owned mines.

MR. PINO: Right. Most of the uranium produced at this mine and
most of the mines in the Grants Mineral Belt worked for the
Department of Defense, and in the Grants Mineral Belt, where
other Indian people worked, Navajos and other people included,
were numerous companies, Kerr-McGee, Gulf, Chevron, Exxon, United
Nuclear, Sohio, Western.

DR. MACKLIN: Among your relatives and communities, were they
aware of the connection between these mines owned by private
industry and the Department of Defense and the Department of
Energy?

MR. PINO: Not really, no.

DR. MACKLIN: Let me just ask a couple of other specific questions
of Mr. Waconda, since you told us that you yourself worked in the
mines. What were the dates in which you -- did you say you worked
for 16 years and --

MR. WACONDA: I worked for 11 years.

DR. MACKLIN: From when to when?

MR. WACONDA: 1971 until the market dropped in 1982.

DR. MACKLIN: One of the reasons I'm interested in, or the
Committee will be interested in these questions is that in the
earlier period, that is the period in which the letter that you
read, arguments have been made whether they're correct or not
about how little was known of some of the dangers. Now, the
Committee is exploring all those things. By the time you worked
in the mines, a great deal more was known about the risks to the
miners. So my questions, a couple of specific questions to you,
relate to what the practices were in the mines and by the mine
operators and anyone else during the time you were there
beginning in the 1970's. Let me give you an example of the kinds
of questions so that you can elaborate. For example, you
mentioned that one of the things you did was watch these needles
on the detectors and saw that they were off the scale at some
points. What were you told you were watching for, and what did
you know about the degree of danger, or were these just needles
on some scale you were told to watch? Also, during that period,
were the miners offered or given respirators, that is protection,
and what was the practice at that time? And then finally, did
you, while you were working there, ever see inspectors in the
mines, and if so, did you know what they were doing? And I'll
repeat these questions, but if you can sort of flush out your
account for us about these things, I think it will be helpful.

MR. WACONDA: Getting back to the inspection, when I was working
underground, we always knew when the inspectors were coming, and
these were mine inspectors, so any of the danger areas we always
cleaned up and hid those dangers from them, and we put up "Keep
Out" signs, and like I said, all this was for bonus pay.

DR. MACKLIN: You were told and instructed to do that? In other
words, you were alerted to the pending visits of the inspectors,
and then you did things to sort of clean things up right before
they came to visit.

MR. WACONDA: I never heard directly from the mine officials
themselves, but everyone knew when the inspectors were coming, so
we always put "Keep Out" signs on the areas that we didn't want
them to go into, but once they left, we took the signs back down
and worked back in those areas, and you know, back to 1971, they
say the ventilation was good at that time. Blasting still took
place, and you still had to put your vent bags back in the area
of this blasting, so you would grab the bag and run into those
areas and hold your breath as long as you could and drop your
ventilation bags back in there to force out that contaminated
dust, but you still had to breathe all that, whether or not
ventilation was there or not. You still took all that in within
your lungs.

DR. MACKLIN: And from the standpoint of you and the other miners,
what did you at the time perceive or what were you told about the
dangers from the contamination? I really want to focus on two
questions. First, what did you perceive or know, and separately
from that, what were you told? Because you may have had a good
sense that there were some dangers there, but it's also important
to know whether anyone really alerted you to those dangers.

MR. WACONDA: I think everyone was told there was some type of
danger, but we didn't understand what that meant. The officials
never told us, "This is radiation. This is what it does to your
body." They never stressed those points.

And when you get back to the dust masks, you know, at a later
time in the period when we worked there, there was dust masks
available, but it was just to keep the dust out. They didn't say
if you breathe in these particulates what it was going to do to
your health. So it -- it was there, but they didn't stress the
importance of having those respirators.

And when we were talking about using these counters, you know,
when the meter went off scale, my job was to map out the areas
for the workers to excavate. And we were there daily. We were
standing and monitoring. We probed different areas to map out the
high-grade ore and separate that from the low-grade and the
waste. So we were doing this daily. We were walking among the
areas.

DR. MACKLIN: Just one more very brief question. During the 11
years that you worked in the mines, did anything change? Was any
information given to you later that had not been given sooner?
Were any protections added or any -- was the ventilation
improved? Did you see any improvement during that 11-year period
when you were there?

MR. WACONDA: I can't personally say that I saw any improvement.
As far as the respirators, it was there whether they were going
to wear them or not. And there was times that certain miners were
given radiation badges, but they were never informed as to what
levels they read. Out of my years that I worked there, I was
never given a badge.

DR. TUCKSON: Did they ever draw blood from you at any time,
anything like that? Any tissue samples that you participated in?

MR. WACONDA: When the mine was shutting down, they did give us a
short medical screen, but up until now, we have no idea what the
result of those examinations were. No one has given us any type
of information.

DR. THOMAS: The most relevant samples that I -- we're referring
to were sputum samples. Did anyone ever ask you to cough into a
little jar?

MS. PURLEY: Yes, we were. We were asked -- I was one of the --
the employee that got three letters from the doctor, but I was
told not to open anything, just to give it back to the boss or
the manager. Up until now I'm still wondering what did those
letters indicate? Did they already know I was diagnosed as having
cancer? A lot of these things go back, because it being an open
pit mine and my people being exposed, nobody -- we weren't aware
of what was going on.

DR. THOMAS: Did I understand that you in fact actually did give
some samples?

MS. PURLEY: Yes. Also, I didn't include, I had three miscarriages
while I was working at the mine.

DR. THOMAS: And before you gave those samples, were you given any
sort of a consent document to sign and told that you were
participating in a medical study?

MS. PURLEY: I don't recall. The only thing I was told that it was
sort of like an examination for -- I don't really remember.

DR. TUCKSON: Let me make sure I understand what you said. Which
came first, the letters from physicians that you were asked not
to open or giving the sputum?

MS. PURLEY: After the examination was done, there was letters
that were given to me, and I was to take it back to the office,
and I did, and up to now, I don't recall anybody telling me what
was in those letters. It's still a great puzzle to me right now.
I often wondered.

DR. TUCKSON: We are short of time, but this is important for us
to understand. You had been working there for a short or a long
time when you were given the exam?

MS. PURLEY: I worked eight years, and this was sort of almost
close -- towards the closing point when the women employees were
fired.

DR. TUCKSON: So then you were given an exam.

MS. PURLEY: Yes.

DR. TUCKSON: You were asked to give some sputum.

MS. PURLEY: Yes.

DR. TUCKSON: And then later did they send you something, or right
there on the spot they gave you a letter?

MS. PURLEY: It was a couple days later they did send letters.

DR. TUCKSON: They sent them to you?

MS. PURLEY: Yes.

DR. TUCKSON: At work or at home?

MS. PURLEY: At home.

DR. TUCKSON: So a couple of days after the exam, they sent you a
letter at home.

MS. PURLEY: Yes. The first letter came, and I had to go back and
repeat what I did, and then the next two letters came.

DR. TUCKSON: Did they say why you had to go back and repeat?

MS. PURLEY: No. I was never told why.

DR. TUCKSON: Did it say "because of concern about abnormality"
and "do it again," anything like that?

MS. PURLEY: Nothing at all.

DR. TUCKSON: Now, when you got the second letter, you were told
not to open that letter?

MS. PURLEY: Yes.

DR. TUCKSON: But they sent it to your house, so I imagine you
opened it.

MS. PURLEY: It was through the mail.

DR. TUCKSON: But did you open it at home?

MS. PURLEY: No, because I was told not to open it, but to give it
back to the office.

DR. TUCKSON: Who told you not to open the letter?

MS. PURLEY: By the physician that conducted the examination.

DR. TUCKSON: And what office were you told to give the letter
back to?

MS. PURLEY: Back to the main office.

DR. TUCKSON: Was that a physician office or a business?

MS. PURLEY: The mine where everybody goes to, the mine office.

DR. TUCKSON: Okay. Now, it's a little unusual that -- and as you
say, you know, different cultures, there's a difference in how
you respond to things. You made that point earlier. It's hard for
me to understand that if you -- if somebody sent you a letter
from a physician to your home, I would open it. Just help us
understand why you didn't open it.

MS. PURLEY: Because when -- being raised as a Native American
Indian, my dad used to sit at the dinner table with us, and this
is what he always told us: Never ask too many questions because
you're bound to get into trouble. So this, I guess, is one of --
or my reason why it never occurred to me to open it. And I was
told, you know, you have every right to open it, something that
you have to know, but you know, I, as an Indian, working to
support my child, I guess it never really occurred to me.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you. And when you sent those letters back in
to the office, it wasn't to the medical office. It was just to
the regular business office.

MS. PURLEY: Yes.

DR. TUCKSON: And other people did the same thing.

MS. PURLEY: Yes. From what I heard, a couple of them did the same
thing.

DR. TUCKSON: Okay. Duncan, I'm sorry.

DR. THOMAS: I guess I'm still puzzled about this. If the doctor
didn't want you to open it and wanted you to give it to the mine
people, why didn't he just mail it to the mine office in the
first place?

MS. PURLEY: I don't know. That's something I'm still -- I'm
confused, too.

DR. THOMAS: The other area that I want to pursue with the four of
you just a short while is your experiences with the Radiation
Exposure Compensation Act. We've heard testimony previously from
others that Native Americans have substantially greater
difficulty, there are more barriers in their way to meeting the
documentation requirements of that Act, and I'd just like to hear
from the four of you whether or not you can elaborate on these
points any further. What is it that you feel is the greatest
difficulty in meeting the requirements of this Act?

MR. WACONDA: I guess the greatest difficulty that we have is that
we're not even included in this Act.

DR. THOMAS: You're not?

MR. WACONDA: We're not.

DR. THOMAS: I thought the Act covered all uranium workers.

MR. WACONDA: It does not cover open pit miners. It does not cover
millers. It does not cover the underground workers that worked
there after 1971.

DR. THOMAS: I see. I see.

DR. TUCKSON: One question.

MR. KLAIDMAN: Mr. Francisco, you mentioned earlier, I thought,
that only very recently you had begun to take radon readings. Am
I right about that?

MR. FRANCISCO: Yes. Our committee just started that recently, and
we used the resources that we have available to us with the All
Indian Pueblo Council. We have a radon program there, but the
Pueblo of Laguna has been reluctant to have these tests done, but
our community that we reside in has been asking for a lot of
answers to questions, and as a result, we were informed, and that
was the first step that we took, was to have radon testing done
in some of the homes throughout the village. Currently I think
we've had -- there's over 20 of them have been tested. Our
population in our village is a little -- we have around 1500
people that are registered from there and probably close to 1200
that actually reside there. We're the largest of the Laguna
villages, and so we have a wide range of homes that are being
tested. We have several generations of HUD homes. The first
generation being built with native materials, which are rock,
sandstone, which are the ore-bearing unit from the area, and then
later being built with substandard supplies that the contractors
unscrupulously decided to use to cut corners. We have
documentation from this. I have talked to a gentleman that
currently works with the State of New Mexico, that worked with a
contractor there, and he stated that he was appalled at the way
that they were building these homes. We also have a lot of the
old traditional homes which were built out of native materials
there, and are ore-bearing materials, such as my grandparents'
home, which was tested for radon.

MR. KLAIDMAN: What levels are you finding?

MR. FRANCISCO: Well, the level that they found when they used the
canisters for the survey was 14.5 picocuries per liter, and at
the radon program they announced to my grandparents if they would
be willing to participate in a two-day continuous monitoring
study. The level then went up to 15. And they have been living in
this home for over 50 years now. And so we really don't know
what's going on, but we have several homes of this type that need
to be tested still, and we're just compiling the data.

DR. TUCKSON: We're going to have to break off. Let me make sure,
Mr. Pino, it would be important for staff to get the name and the
number, if we can, of your colleague at the University of New
Mexico who's now head of the cancer division there. Maybe have
someone we can contact that we can have look at this.

Let me just say to you all we -- I cannot promise you and I'm not
going to today tell you that all the concerns that you have, that
you presented earlier, you know, that we'll make all the things
go away. I don't want to make any promises. That would be
irresponsible. The scope of this committee is very broad. There
are a number of, you know -- but I will tell you this we're going
to do our doggone best. We're obviously going to take this and
have taken this very seriously, but it was extremely important,
even though I've done terrible damage to our schedule, the kind
of information and dialogue we had. That's why we're out here.
And we could not have gotten this sort of sensitivity,
particularly, ma'am, to the point that you made at the end, which
was extremely important, about the letter and that sort of thing
and what your father told you. We would just not have understood
that. And so if we are going to make any recommendations that
have to do with, you know, your community, it's a different level
of sensitivity than we now have as we try to approach that. I
don't want to promise anything. We'll see what we can do. I just
hope you feel like it was worth your time to come out here, and I
thank you very, very much, all of you.

MR. PINO: And we will be sending you some supporting
documentation within a month. And just one concluding statement,
the Jackpile Open Pit Uranium Mine is currently being called, by
the Tribe of Laguna, successfully reclaimed. It's the first time
that an attempt at an open pit uranium mine reclamation project
has taken place in the world. So we're -- we've got our eyes and
ears open, too. Thank you very much.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very much.

Let me ask Mr. Harry Lester to come forward. Mr. Lester, sorry
that I got a little behind on the schedule, but you'll certainly
have your full seven minutes. We're a strong committee, Mr.
Lester. We've got plenty of endurance, so we've got time.

MR. LESTER: I'll try to stay within the time limit. My name is
Harry Lester. I'm going to be very careful about what I say
today, and I've been careful in the statement I've provided the
Committee because the United States Government, because of my
work in nuclear weapons, classifies me as an extremely sensitive
individual. I have been warned on more than one occasion by the
Department of Defense to be very careful.

I spent my career in the Air Force in 1952 to 1956 in a research
and development command which later became known as a special
weapons command, the 4925th at Kirtland Air Force Base and the
4930th at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands.

In the Marshall Islands I took part in Operation Castle. That's
the first test of a deliverable hydrogen bomb. Most people know
it as Shot Bravo. So I'm one of the people who did this.

I went to Eniwetok, and all of this was in 1953, and I was an
aide to the commanding officer of the 4930th. I won't say
anything about the radiation. And here's a key point, key point
that I want to make, that the Air Force did conduct its own human
radiation experiments. Now, they never admitted or denied this,
but I want to point out that they did do it. Task Force 7
operation plan provided that after the tests were completed,
every individual was to be off the island as soon as possible on
a first on, first off basis. People started leaving all at once.
My CO called me in and said, "Congratulations, but you've been
selected as the NCOIC to clean up Eniwetok to return to the
Army." Eniwetok was an Army garrison between tests, and they
would not accept the island back until it had been cleaned of all
debris. Cleaning Eniwetok involved cleaning, I will just say,
this debris left over from the tests, taking it out in the ocean
and deep sixing it, and a lot of that debris is hot. The
government doesn't like that, I couldn't care.

But anyway, I appealed this decision, and I got this -- because
of the plan, I appealed this ruling that I would be there,
because young NCO's and officers were just abundant in the Air
Force, and I got this letter back from General Powers, General of
the Air Force, and he complimented me on all I had done and said
that he was suspending -- because of war, he was suspending the
Rules of War and the Rules of Task Force 7 and that I would
remain there, and then I would go back to Kirtland Air Force
Base, and I did. And soon I began experiencing morning sickness
similar to that of an expectant mother, and we all know now that
that is one of the things you get from overexposure to radiation.
Now, the Army medical officers don't want Air Force personnel
there. An Army medical officer prepared a memorandum to Hickam,
Headquarters Task Force 7, and said in his opinion I had been
overexposed to radiation. Hickam wrote back and said it didn't
think that was the case. Anyway, I would be leaving very shortly
and all that.

When I got to Kirtland, I was assigned back in the 4925th, but I
was assigned to the 4929th test development, and test development
has to do very closely with nuclear weapons, and I did some
contractor compliance work in Nevada, Jackass Flats and Camp
Mercury, at Los Alamos and Sandia Base and then some other
nuclear installations throughout the country. Basically it was
after what had happened with the Rosenberg's military test of
civilians, so every reporter went out and inventoried certain
things.

While I was in Kirtland, I began being shipped to Lovelace about
every six months for examination. This was unusual for the
military because the military you normally get one physical a
year and that's it, and I remember wondering why they were doing
this. And Lovelace was a leader in nuclear medicine back in the
'50's and '60's. I still didn't know what we were dealing with.
You're not very intelligent, I guess, when you're 24.

Before I went in the military, I was a top high school and
college athlete. When I looked at my picture before I left for
Eniwetok and after I came back, people cannot believe that's the
same person, thin and everything. Two weeks before -- here's the
key point. Two weeks before I was discharged, I stopped over at
Wing Headquarters to see an old friend from Eniwetok, and he took
a folder and pushed it across the desk to me, and he didn't say
anything, just pushed it across the desk and said, "Open it." I
opened it, and there, about midway down the page was my name, and
on the right side of it was some columns, and there were values
in those columns. So all of these -- this time that I had been
sent to Lovelace and all this, they were taking the -- they were
checking their data. And they knew this. This friend of mine
said, "I'd watch my health if I were you after I get out." So I
knew at that time.

When I got discharged, the discharging officer went over my
military file with me, and in that file was the memorandum from
the medical officer at Eniwetok. I was having dental problems,
and the Kirtland dental officer had written a memorandum to the
VA stating that there might be a relationship between my dental
problems and radiation. And then, of course, my oath of secrecy
was in there and my agreement not to leave the country for two
years. So they were all in there then.

When I was in the inactive reserve, I would get sent every six
months to a facility for a checkup, but nobody else was getting
sent for a checkup. And by the way, I was assigned to the 9th
Bomber Nuclear Wing.

In 1989 I was diagnosed as having lung cancer, and it
necessitated removing the third lobe of the left lung. It had a
shiny tumor on it about like that, and the doctors told my wife
and I that it had nothing to do with my early casual smoking back
when I was in Eniwetok, that it had probably to do with
radiation, herbicides, pesticides and that type of thing.

So I filed a complaint with the VA. This has become a laughing
matter. I filed a complaint with the VA in August, 1990, and I
attempted to get my military records, and nothing happened.
Senator Domenici, I finally got him involved, he wrote to the
Department of the Air Force and said, "Supply those records." The
Air Force wrote back and said that my records were located at St.
Louis, Randolph Air Force Base, Brooks Air Force Base, Nellis
Base in Nevada and the DNA in Washington. So I wrote all these
places. They sent me nothing. Then I found out that the VA had
obtained a file from St. Louis. So I had it sent from these
people. Well, they sent me a copy of C File. C File is your
colds, flat feet, that type of thing. So all of these military
records have not been found as of this date. Mostly what was
shipped back from (inaudible) is that I was a badge person. "We
don't have them. We can't find them, but we'll keep looking, and
if we ever do find them, we'll send them to you." That's mostly
what you get. Brooks Air Force Base, same thing. "We know you
were there, but we don't have anything." So the claim has been
kicking around, and I won't say anything about how the government
has treated these radiated veterans because I'm sure you've heard
about this. Lung cancer is not a presumptive disease. So the VA
has been kicking it around all this time. The records, I found
something, I'm sure you've seen this before, but it was a
newspaper article about Radiation Subjects, Public Kept in Dark,
it listed the VA right in there.

My complaint basically is not that I was involved in research
work, because we have to do research, and I think that nuclear
weapons put an end to the cold war, so that's all right. I really
would like to have been told about it, and I wasn't told, and I
think that's the fallacy of the whole thing. If I had known --
and let me say this, my medical bills since 1957 have run into
the hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's ulcers that don't
heal, tumors that show up, dental problems, that's everything.
Maybe if we could look at it in a realistic sense, if radiation
kills you all at once, you'd be happy, because you'll never be
well afterwards. I couldn't play sports after I came back. There
was no way. I'm sure there are a lot of other veterans in this
same category.

I think the powers to be, and I have written this to senators, I
have written it to everyone, we should straighten out this whole
thing as it pertains to veterans. We should not have this
destruction of military records. We should not. Kick these people
around for years. I have a lot of friends of mine that are dead,
they're gone, unfortunately. So my only complaint is, I wasn't
told.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very much. I hope that at some point maybe
-- I don't know that we could be of any more help in trying to
uncover your records. The staff has been doing a miraculous
thing, that's not their prime job in life as part of this
committee, to discover records, but in the course of trying to
understand what witnesses have said to us and to track those down
as examples of larger practices, they have been doing a pretty
fantastic job of it. I would urge you to see someone from the
staff on the front row over there. Thank you for taking your time
to be here, sir. We've got to move on, unfortunately, but thank
you very much. You've been very helpful.

Mr. Milton Stadt?

MR. PAYTIAMO: Mr. Paytiamo.

DR. TUCKSON: Stanley?

MR. PAYTIAMO: Yeah.

DR. TUCKSON: Actually, the list that I have has Mr. Milton Stadt
and then Mr. Clyde Gardner, and then it's your turn. Thank you
for being up here earlier.

Mr. Milton Stadt. Is that the way you say it?

MR. STADT: Yes. My name is Milton Stadt. I'm here from Rochester,
New York, where 11 patients were radiated at the Strong Memorial
Hospital. This was conducted by the U of R. I'd like to start out
by saying that the people on the President's Advisory Committee
have been given one of the most important decisions that will be
made in yours and my lifetime and will affect everyone in this
country. I also hope that the people who give your conclusive
report will do the just and honest thing and pass laws that will
never allow these heinous crimes to happen again.

The deceitful and disgusting crimes that were done to my mother
by the government of the United States is a horrible example of
what some people can do to their own kind. This affected not only
my mother, but my father, as well as myself. This crime was done
by our government and some of its doctors who thought they were
above the laws of this land. They obviously lost the fact that
these patients were also human.

When I heard what was done to my mother 50 years ago, I was
totally appalled. My wife, children, grandchildren, relatives and
friends have discussed this incident and could not fathom how
something so bizarre could happen in a country that stands for
freedom and justice. I might not be surprised to hear of
something like this going on in another country, but certainly
not in my country, not in America.

Every day I watch the news and read the newspaper and thank God
for being born in America. Maybe we all ought to really read the
Declaration of Independence again and recite the Pledge of
Allegiance. I think some of us have forgotten these words and
what they stand for.

I said that part first. That was my end, but I don't want to run
out of time. My mother, Jan Stadt, had a number HP-8. She was
injected with plutonium on March 9th, 1946. She was 41 years old,
and I was 11 years old at the time. My mother and father were
never told or asked for any kind of consent to have this done to
them. My mother lived to the age of 74, which was amazing in
itself. Thirty years of her life, after her injections, she was a
drug addict. I, as a child, in school, in high school, my dad
worked trip work, I had to get up in the middle of the night,
sterilize needles, fill them with Demerol, and she would inject
herself with Demerol for the pain. After I left high school, they
went to a pill farm, and my mother was in a horrible existence
for all of her life.

Someone came to our house once to ask my father where all the
drugs were going, someone from the federal government, I think. I
was very young, and I didn't know what was going on too much. And
after he explained what was going on, I imagine they called the
doctor's office and the drugstore. Along in here, the family
doctor, as I understand it from the records, was told what went
on, and he had the choice to tell my mother, or father, what
happened to her. This was a long time afterwards. This doctor
chose not to tell.

There is a paragraph in my mother's records, above it it says
they are examining the radiation in the skeletal remains of a
rat. In the next paragraph my mother's name is mentioned. She was
nothing more than a rat in an experiment conducted by people who
should never have been allowed to even practice medicine.

The people in Rochester that are in my group, we got together,
and we found there were orders to exhume the bodies. These bodies
were exhumed. Some of them gave consent. There was an order to
exhume my mother's body. It appears that it was not followed
through. Of these bodies that were exhumed -- I believe if you
exhume a body for something, it's put back in the ground in a
fairly short time, like maybe a week. I'm not sure on this. These
bodies were kept out of the ground for three to eight years. If
we went back, I would bet, and dug these coffins up, there is
nothing in them because somebody used all of our loved ones'
bodies for some kind of testing. One of the people in our group,
his uncle's body was exhumed, and every now and then he hears
someplace where they did some tests on it. His loved one is still
not back in the ground.

The rage I have for the things that were done to my mother by
another human being is so devastating, it is very hard to deal
with. I am trying to put this rage behind me, but it is always on
my mind. I thank you very much for letting me come and speak to
your panel, and I hope desperately that something positive can be
done for not just -- this thing involves every citizen of the
United States. Thank you very much.

DR. TUCKSON: Just so we're on the right line, quickly tell me,
how did you come across the information?

MR. STADT: In 1993, James Ware, who works for Hazel O'Leary,
called me on the phone. I was sitting there, and he told me that
Hazel O'Leary would like to talk to me, and they had records of
my mother, and they would send them to me. I said, "What are you
talking about?" He said, "Well, she was injected with plutonium."
It was called The Product. It was such a secret thing, it was
called The Product, which you all know. My wife looked at me, she
couldn't hear the conversation, she says, "This is about your
mother." That was the first time in my life I ever heard that
this was done.

DR. TUCKSON: In any of those records did you come to find out why
she was in the hospital?

MR. STADT: Yes. My mother went in for scleroderma, which is a
skin disorder, and a duodenal ulcer, and somehow she got pushed
over into this lab where these monsters were --

DR. TUCKSON: Do you have the records now --

MR. STADT: Yes.

DR. TUCKSON: -- from the hospital?

MR. STADT: All of the ones that are there. There are some missing
ones.

DR. TUCKSON: But you have those records.

MR. STADT: Yes.

DR. TUCKSON: Would you get those to us?

MR. STADT: Yes. To your panel? Be glad to.

DR. TUCKSON: Yes. She's right over there. We need to get a copy
of those so we can understand.

And finally, this last business about your family physician, how
did you come to suspect that that family physician was
communicating with someone --

MR. STADT: There was other reports someplace in here that the
doctors were told, some of the family doctors, that this was done
to these people, and the doctors had a choice of telling the
people that this was done to them or not.

DR. TUCKSON: You don't have that information.

MR. STADT: I don't have that information.

DR. TUCKSON: That's from your association of people in Rochester?

MR. STADT: Yeah. It probably is written down someplace. Also,
which is a wild thing, before I forget, excuse me, sorry I'm
running over, my mother had a cervical rib operation, and I
happened to think of this all at once when I was watching
something on TV. There was a scar on her collarbone, and I will
bet my life on it the only reason that was done was to get a bone
sample in order to see how much radiation was in her body.

DR. TUCKSON: Please, if you'd share those, and thank you for
coming.

MR. STADT: Thank you very much for the opportunity.

DR. TUCKSON: Mr. Clyde Gardner.

Mr. Gardner, welcome, and thank you for joining us.

MR. GARDNER: Thank you. First, I'd like to say thank you. To give
my testimony I'd like to read a memorandum that I've prepared. It
is to Kristin Crotty. It is from me, Clyde H. Gardner, Senior
Chief Petty Officer, U.S. Navy Retired. While serving aboard Navy
Star USS Gurley DD-783 (sic), attached to Joint Task Force 8, I
was a participant in nuclear testing in the Pacific Ocean during
May through July, 1962. The tests were in the vicinity of
Christmas Island, and the test series was named Dominic 2.
Although most of the crew were protected inside the interior of
the ship during the nuclear tests, I was randomly selected to be
placed on an open main deck on the ship with minimum protection.
In addition to shoes and socks, I was instructed to wear only a
pair of trousers and a T-shirt. A film badge was clipped to my
T-shirt, and a dosimeter was placed in the pocket of my trousers.
I was instructed to stand either on the port side of the ship or
the starboard side, whichever was in the direction of the nuclear
tests. I was told to listen to a countdown from ten to zero that
was to be passed from the bridge over the personnel address
system. During the countdown, I was to turn away from the blast
and shield my eyes with my hands. After word was passed from the
bridge that all was clear, via the PA system, I was to turn and
view the fireball in the atmosphere.

The full realization that I was being used as a guinea pig did
not occur until the end of the first test. After it was declared
that the test was over, cleaning parties were ordered to commence
cleaning the ship. Even though I was minimally protected during
the test, cleaning parties emerged from the interior of the ship
bound in full dress protective clothing.

I have received letters from the Defense Nuclear Agency and the
Department of the Navy. Both letters indicated that for personnel
involved in the atmospheric nuclear weapons test program, the
risk of any adverse effects from exposures to ionizing radiation
was very slight.

Personally my health problems have included the removal of a
nonmal -- malignant growth from my thyroid and multiple skin
problems. Since my involvement in the nuclear tests, I have had a
skin cancer removed from my chest. In addition, I have had
numerous precancerous growths removed from the upper part of my
body, specifically the head, face, ears, neck, chest, back, arms
and hands. I sincerely believe that my problems can be directly
attributed to exposure to ionizing radiation associated with
nuclear tests.

In summary, I would like to say that the purpose of this
memorandum is not for selfish reasons. The main purpose of this
memorandum is to lend support to others that have been less
fortunate than I. Many have suffered severe health problems, and
many have died as a result of exposure to ionizing radiation.
There is no justification for a government to subject its
citizens to an agent that might cause irreparable harm. If a
government performs such an act, it should assume full
responsibility and take care of individuals that have been
adversely affected. Thank you.

DR. MACKLIN: Mr. Gardner, you said in your statement that you
were randomly selected to be placed on the main deck and then
instructed to stand on either the port side or the starboard
side. My first questions are, was anyone else, were others
randomly selected, and were you given any choice at all, or is
your word "instructed" exactly what you mean here?

MR. GARDNER: Yes. Others were studied. The majority of the crew
were inside the ship. We had no choice.

DR. MACKLIN: So others were selected, as you were.

MR. GARDNER: Yes.

DR. MACKLIN: And then you were instructed, after the countdown,
to turn and view the fireball.

MR. GARDNER: Yes.

DR. MACKLIN: What happened after that? I mean, you do say that
you were -- you recognized then that you were being used as a
guinea pig, and the cleaning parties came and cleaned up the ship
and they had all the protective clothing, but were you asked any
questions, given any physical tests, given any questionnaires?
That is, following the exposure, being told to view the blast,
were there any other things that were done or questioned of you,
either psychological or physical, to get your responses or your
reactions?

MR. GARDNER: No.

DR. TUCKSON: So in other words, you just did this. You went up on
the deck, did what they told you to do, and then that was the end
of it.

MR. GARDNER: Yes. Well, at the end of the test, we turned our
film badges in and our dosimeters.

DR. TUCKSON: So the film badges and the dosimeters you turned in.

MR. GARDNER: Yes.

DR. TUCKSON: Other than that, there was no other contact with
you. It was like "Thank you," and you went on to do the rest of
your duty and that was it?

MR. GARDNER: Well, not until 1981, 1982. January, '81, I received
a letter from the Defense Nuclear Agency. 1982 I received a
letter from the Department of the Navy. They just more or less
tried to assuage that there was no risk involved. It was an
unsolicited letter, both letters.

DR. TUCKSON: So, I think, as I understand, you went up on deck.
You were chosen to go up on deck.

MR. GARDNER: I was directed to go up on deck by my provision
officer.

DR. TUCKSON: You go up on deck. You're wearing the film badge and
so forth. You watch the events. It's over. You hand your stuff
in, and you go on with your life.

MR. GARDNER: During the period of, say, May to July, I kept the
film badge on my person. At the end of that period, I turned the
film badge in and the dosimeter.

DR. TUCKSON: And no more was said about all this, and all of a
sudden, out of nowhere, in 1981 you get a letter that says, "By
the way, what happened to you earlier was okay."

MR. GARDNER: Yeah. "Don't worry about it."

DR. TUCKSON: How did they find you?

MR. GARDNER: I'm retired Navy. Evidently they have records.

DR. TUCKSON: Who sent you the letter, by the way? What division?
Was it the -- what part of the government sent you this letter?

MR. GARDNER: I have it in a folder, if you would like that.

DR. TUCKSON: Maybe if you could give us the items. I was just
kind of curious as to who decided it was important enough that
they go back in and look at that.

MR. GARDNER: Over here?

DR. TUCKSON: Yes. Thank you very much. I appreciate your coming.
It was very helpful to us.

MR. GARDNER: Thanks again.

DR. TUCKSON: And she'll get a copy of that.

Well, sir, you have the full attention of all of us because
you're last before lunch, and so we're able to give this to you.
Mr. Stanley -- pronounce it for me.

MR. PAYTIAMO: Paytiamo.

DR. TUCKSON: -- Paytiamo. Thank you, sir.

MR. PAYTIAMO: Good morning. My name is Stanley Paytiamo. I'm an
environmental protection specialist. I also have served
(inaudible) in my pueblo. And first, in line with our Indian
custom, I'd like to exchange with every person present a sincere
heartfelt handshake. I also bring you the friendly greetings of
the Acoma people.

I'm going to skip the background I gave you. I'm going to go over
to Page 3. In the middle: The problem of water quality and
quantity at Acoma as uranium development occurred in the area
from the early 1950's through the mid-1980's. During this period,
hundreds of uranium mines and mills were developed to supply the
United States Government with uranium for the growth -- growing
Atomic Energy Program, the defense industry and later, nuclear
power plants. Being located downstream and downwind of the most
intensive uranium development in the area of the United States
created environmental problems never experienced before. They are
being destroyed by the mining methods and Grants Wastewater
Treatment Plant, which went to zero discharge in 1993. The river
is plagued by serious documented problems, including violation of
the Clean Water Act and the New Mexico Water Quality Act.

Approximately 500 Acomas worked at the uranium mines and
(inaudible) and Paguate mines. (Inaudible) has impaired the air,
water, land, human and animal population. Environmental
regulations were violated by the state, federal and municipal
governments in the area creating environmental injustice still
being litigated in the courts today.

March 23rd, 1994, the first of the nuclear radiation experimental
records went out. I contacted the Indian Health Service area
office to see if there were any records, and I was told that "If
we do have the records, you probably won't get them." I
personally contacted the Indian Health Service area director
which shows the Pueblo of Acoma, and she advised me to contact
DOE directly.

After that, I made several phone calls, with no luck, and
finally, on January 26th, I found a person in San Francisco, who
was on the same committee as I was, and I gave him a copy of the
memo, or I showed it to him, and he indicated that he might be
able to steer me into the right directions.

I hope someone can answer the following questions because we
still have able Americans employed at Los Alamos Laboratory, in
Albuquerque, military bases, and also down in Alamogordo. Out of
the seven questions, I would like to only ask the first one. Why
were the human radiation experiments performed? Did any of the
Indian Health Service health facilities or contract services in
our state participate?

Recommendations. I would like to recommend a reserved seat on the
membership of this committee for Native Americans so they can be
involved. Sometimes certain groups do not approve of this because
they claim that too much time expressing our concerns are taken
up.

Then I want to skip over to the bottom of 5, Page 5. Since I did
not receive a radiation experiment memo until lately, I would
like to keep our record open until we can obtain information so
we can make it available to you.

In closing, the Pueblo of Acoma is known as the oldest
continuously inhabited community in North America. We are proud
of our traditional existence, and at the same time we take pride
in our community's effort in addressing present day and future
environmental protection concerns for Acoma people.

This concludes my prepared statement. I'll be happy to respond to
the questions that you may have. Thank you again for the
opportunity to come before this Advisory Committee on Nuclear
Radiation Experiments.

DR. TUCKSON: Thank you very much, sir. Any questions?

What I think is -- first of all, this is very professionally done
testimony that you delivered to us, and I just can't help but
note that if somebody doesn't want you to serve or members of
your community to serve on committees because you take up too
much time expressing your concerns, well you certainly didn't
abide by that by your presentation today. I think one of the
things that is important, that you asked us to keep the record
open. As we try to understand what you have presented to us, it
may not be that we were able to give it all the attention that is
necessary or that it deserves in our committee report, given that
we are -- you know, given the scope of what we are to do. One of
the things I think at issue now is, and is important for you to
pay attention to, is what happens after our committee's work is
done. Certainly we have taken testimony from people all around
the country, some of which we can't get all in -- all the issues
into our report, so there will have to be some continued work,
but I think that one of the things that we're going to have to
pay careful attention to, or what you challenge us to do, is to
insure that we recommend the most intelligent way of having some
follow-up for those issues that we're not able to fully explore
ourselves, and I think that's an important issue for us, and so
one of the things you might do, as you comment to us again, as
you stay in touch with us, would be to give us some of your
suggestions about how to make sure that your community and
concerns can be well addressed, and in particular, because I
think we kind of got a lot of it from the panel of the people at
the beginning of this section, this notion of how do communities
that have not been traditionally a part of the compensation in
American life, how are their interests protected as we go
forward? I don't want to make a speech on this thing. We've got
to go to break. But I think one of the things that, when we all
were appointed to this committee, we were appointed because we
believed that the government was sincere in opening up the
windows and letting the light shine in, and so what happens in
the aftermath is going to be very important. And so the best
ideas that you can give us on how to do that will be very
important, as well. Thanks for taking the time, sir.

MR. PAYTIAMO: One last comment I need to make was that there was
another statement that I would like to make, and that will be
included in the later part, you were asking the panel members
about the cancer rate. We did obtain a cancer rate, because at
Acoma we do have a very high rate of cancer, and the Indian
Health Service gave us a computer printout, and some of our
citizens, some of those are listed there. So Indian Health
Service does have the numbers on cancer rate at each of the 19
pueblos in the state.

DR. TUCKSON: Okay. We'll look into that. Thank you all. We're
going to resume at 1:15. If you have not checked in with Kris,
who is in the lovely black ensemble, waving her hand, you need to
make sure you do that; otherwise, you'll be mad at me because I
didn't call your name, and I don't want that to happen. 1:15.

(Lunch recess.)

ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS
SANTA FE PANEL MEETING

CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION

I, Barbara M. Gillooly, CCR No. 289, DO HEREBY CERTIFY that on
January 30, 1995, the foregoing proceedings were taken before me
at the request of the Department of Energy.

I FURTHER CERTIFY that I did report in stenographic shorthand the
proceedings set forth herein, and the foregoing is a true and
correct transcript of the proceedings had, to the best of my
ability.

I FURTHER CERTIFY that I am neither employed by nor related to
any of the parties hereto, and that I have no interest whatsoever
in the final disposition of these proceedings in any court.

Barbara M. Gillooly, RPR-CP
Certified Court Reporter #289
License Expires: 12-31-95

ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON
HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS