On the Media; Part 2; [1994-01-23--excerpt], Radiation Experiments: Getting the Story

Also felt like they might have been subjected to experiments back in the 40s and 50s and 60s, and I think that the caller has a good point about we need to keep current. But right now, I'm overwhelmed with with trying to track down these chimps. Well, what about what the caller said about current experiments? Do you think that those are I mean, do you think those experiments ended, you know, 30 years ago? I don't know. You know, I. I hesitate to answer because I don't know the answer to. Do you have a sense? We are we are tracking several leads, fairly good ones on current and near current. That is mid to late 80s experimentation involving this kind of work. Again, you run into this very difficult barrier to overcome, and that is how do you confirm them? The repository of documentation is the government's anecdotal evidence is only one part of the story. And on such a sensitive story, you need to dig out the documents. We have begun a Freedom of Information Act requests to the appropriate agencies

and we have begun looking for the researchers involved. This is painstaking reporting, as Eileen knows, from spending six years finding five people and and all of the all of the tips have to be confirmed. And in order to do that, you have to do it piece by piece by piece. It's very difficult. Which goes back to the original point that Dr. Kaku was saying, who was intimidated? I submit that the most intimidating part of this story is the story itself. That is to confirm it, to confirm it and explain it and interpret it for readers. Dr. Kaku, I don't think the facts of that interpret intimidating. I think there are a lot of nuclear physicist like myself that speak English, that understands how much radiation will kill a horse, that understands that these humans were subjected to a fabulous amount, incredible amounts of radiation. And what about the willing to speak to the press? But what about today, though? I mean, what about the current experiments in individuals? I mean, do you have evidence or knowledge that of of experiments going on today?

Okay, let me say two things. First of all, the Newsweek magazine article of last week and the last paragraph hinted that the real story, the real story behind this is yet to come out and the fact that American citizens were used as stand ins for enemy troops to protect new kinds of nuclear weapons. My own theory is that these weapons were going to be waste bombs, that we were going to drop nuclear waste on North Korea. I recently did an FOIA on the Korean War and I got access to General MacArthur is talks to General Eisenhower, who became president. And MacArthur said that he had a secret plan to end the war in Korea and that was to drop a waste bomb, the byproduct of nuclear manufacture, quote unquote, on the North Koreans. And I think that Eisenhower was very curious about the effects of radiation on citizens being exposed in Nevada and Utah because the North Koreans were dug in and hardened bunker positions. In other words, the real story is that the United States was not quite the good guys, the John Waynes that are slow to slow to anger during the Korean War, but in fact were trigger happy and wanted to use cobalt 60 and other kinds of nuclear

byproducts of nuclear manufacture on the North Koreans and wanted to hit them with nuclear weapons. I think we have to keep in mind that there were people who did, but obviously they didn't. They they were constrained and that did not happen. But the Freedom of Information Act, a minute that I have from the National Security Agency shows that Eisenhower was had already selected the targets for nuclear annihilation to airfields in North Korea, for example. There have been these sorts of I mean, during the nuclear stuff, there was always that kind of targeting. But I mean, it's remarkable to me that nobody's dropped a bomb. Right. Let me let me ask you, Keith, what about the question of and Dr. Kaku as well. What about the question of a kind of hysteria building about this idea that I mean, is is the story now out of control in a way, or is there is there a danger of that? I don't think this story is anywhere near out of control like the Bobbit story or others of that ilk. I used to say that Mike Tyson's marriage got more press attention than

our than our efforts in the late 80s to uncover the environmental contamination of these weapons plants. Readers are interested in it. Do you think that, as Newsweek said, that the most, you know, astonishing revelations are yet to come? But I think they were guessing. You know, I don't think they know anything more than what they published. One would have to assume, given the millions of documents that are still under lock and key at the Department of Energy, that there are some pretty amazing secrets still to be unleashed. We've learned in the last eight years that the Atomic Energy Commission and the military secretly released 500000 cubic. A radioactive iodine, I mean, an enormous amount of radioactive iodine, over hundreds of thousands of people in the Pacific Northwest with no effort to warn children, adults, elderly, anybody. And the government in 1990 admitted that there was enough radiation that was released to harm people. We know that the people downwind of the

Nevada test site were periodically systematically exposed to very high levels of radiation through the 1950s. We know that people were experimented on thanks to Eileen and others who have helped uncover these stories. So, yeah, they're going to be some things in there that are pretty shocking constants. I don't know whether we've answered your question or not, but it looks like there is more to come. Thank you for calling Luke in Astoria. Hi. My question, a few weeks ago, it may actually have been on this broadcast. There were reporters discussing the nature of investigative reporting and they were talking about the fact that it's the most expensive kind of reporting that there is because you have to start out not knowing what the return is going to be and you have to devote resources. And I'd like to have your guests address the possible idea that not as much investigative reporting gets done because it's so expensive. Keith Schneider?

I think that that's true. I don't think that's again, I'm defending my own newspaper because I think that we're I'm defending my own newspaper. I think that's true in many other media outlets. But at the Times, there's been a tremendous investment in investigative reporting. Are we have a tremendous investigative reporter in Washington, two of them, Steve Engelberg and Jeff Gerth, who are working the Whitewater case. They were working the Whitewater case in Arkansas starting in March 1992. We have another tremendous investigative reporter in New York, Dean Baquet, who spent months uncovering the the relationship between Iraq and US agricultural export loans. The paper has invested, you know, enormous amounts of resources in my work and in the nuclear weapons industry and and other investigative efforts. But I think generally the caller's inference is correct. Dr. Kaku? I think that there is a restraint there because their lack of resources,

I think, is largely secondary in the sense that reporters are paid to find and track down stories like this. I'm a nuclear physicist. I'm paid by the government to find the unified field theory. The government pays me money to track down leads and do all sorts of different kinds of things that are quite expensive on the computer. I'm paid to do this. This is my job. The reward, maybe a Nobel Prize, maybe a Pulitzer Prize for a journalist. That's what journalists are paid for. And I don't think that the bellyaching on the part of the journalists is of supreme importance. I think what's more important is, one, stonewalling by the government and also stonewalling by the editors, self-censorship that a lot of these editors self-censorship themselves. And there's no conspiracy to do this. But editors simply say this is too hot to handle. I'm going to get a lot of flak from the White House. My sources are going to disappear. I'm going to get a lot of angry letters to the editor saying that you should go back to Russia. I'm simply not going to print this kind of material that I think is one of the biggest impediments to a democracy where the checks and balances during the Cold War were simply put out of whack. A democracy implies an informed citizenry.

How can the citizens decide how much money to spend to bankrupt the Russians unless they know exactly what's happening when we bankrupt ourselves during the Cold War? Luke in Astoria, thank you for calling. Thank you. Arnold in Brooklyn. Yes, I've been listening to this discussion and I never know. I mean, I've heard a lot of discussions like this. I never know really what to think is like listening to people, government spokesmen. So if I don't know whether it's naiveté or dishonesty, I can I can never altogether tell that. I think we've got a. Go ahead. Are you there? Hello. I guess we've had a problem. I'm sorry. Arnold Elliot in Brooklyn. Oh, are you there? Arnold. Arnold. OK, I'm sorry. Lou in Manhattan, right? Yes. Hello. I'm sorry. We seem to I think I don't know whether it was my fault or someone else's, but somehow we lost Arnold. If you'll call back, we'll put you on. OK, here's a point of reference for you people.

April 1989, National Geographic living with radiation, lots of pictures and a heck of a lot of information about contamination and the sites. They even have maps of the sites. This is the National Geographic. Yes, sir. National Geographic, April nineteen eighty nine. Living with radiation, page four of three. Well, you know, the thing is, Doctor, Dr. Kaku, you have criticized the sort of humanizing, but it seems that the humanizing in one respect is a reason why this story is. Something that people are now, you know, becoming very concerned about, right, I think there has been a conscious or unconscious media blockade to keep this information away from the people. And the way to get around this media blockade is precisely the human interest. And that's why I think Eilene hit pay dirt for her courageous reporting. And the way to get around the media blockade is to humanize these stories. And I think that that's one of the reasons why journalists recently have had so

much success, while 20, 30 years ago these same journalists would have essentially just wrung their hands and flung their hands in the air and say, it's too difficult a story. I can't get anything published. Nobody wants to hear the bad news about the nuclear industry. So I think that's one way to get around the media blockade. Well, let me ask you, not only got a short time to go here, but let me ask each of you. Do you think that this story is going to gather momentum now? Keith, what do you think? It'll gather momentum pretty much on the pace that the government's going to release documents, I think. How much confidence do you have that they will? I'm fairly confident they will have staked an enormous amount. I mean, Hazel O'Leary and the White House as a stake, an enormous amount of their own personal prestige on making public these documents. So I take them at their face value. Dr. Kaku. Well, Keith, as well as many other individuals have done Freedom of Information acts. And you get a lot of black marker stuff over all the hot stuff. All the real hot material implicating the government will be

simply whited out and inked out by the government in order to have damage control. So I agree that this story will be paced by the rate at which these documents are going to be released, but they'll be really real slowly. You think it's going to go down? Thank you. Do you have any sense that this administration is different from the ones in the past about this? Yeah, I think this administration doesn't feel responsible for the Republicans who, of course, did most of these things. And second of all, it is the end of the Cold War is not such a hot potato like it was during the Truman or Eisenhower administrations. So I think the Clinton administration is going to be more honest. But let's let's call a spade a spade. A lot of the material will be very slowly released and will be blacked out. Eileen, let me ask you as a final word, are you going to continue pursuing this story? I'm going to continue pursuing these stories as I can confirm them, which Keith mentioned is a very difficult process. And my concern right now is with regards to the administration, if, in fact, it is going to end up being a dog and pony show and

if the media will lose interest and all these all these people who allege they've been victimized or that they've been victims of these human radiation experiments, if the government for political purposes, if if Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary for political purposes, has raised the hopes of Eileen, I'm going to have to cut you off, unfortunately. We want to thank Keith Schneider, Eileen Welsome, and Michiko Kaku. On the Media is a production of WNYC New York Public Radio in association with the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. I'm Alex Jones. We hope you'll stay with us for our next hour when we looking at the state of The New York Times. Stick with us. Hello, this is Tom Keith reminding you that radio tubes are a.