On the Media; Part 1; [1994-01-23--excerpt], Radiation Experiments: Getting the Story

Eight hundred pregnant women fed radioactive iron; prison inmates whose testicles were exposed to X-rays; retarded children given radioactive breakfast cereal; and 18 unsuspecting patients injected with plutonium, the deadliest substance known to man. These are some of the secret government tests horrified Americans have been learning about over the past several weeks. In this hour of On the Media, we'll talk with Eileen Welsome, the Albuquerque Tribune reporter who broke the story that has shocked America and is changing government policy. How did she do it? We'll be joined by environmental reporter Keith Schneider of The New York Times and nuclear physics professor Michio Kaku. That's On the Media right after this news. So stay tuned for. From National Public Radio News in Washington, I'm Laura Knoy. Two aftershocks hit the Los Angeles area early this morning. There are no reports of injuries or injury or damage. The tremors measured three point seven and 4.0 on the Richter scale.

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Chiapas, Absolon Catriona's, in exchange for members of their organization captured by the Mexican army. Mr. Camacho said the release of the former governor would increase the possibilities for peace. He also praised the general amnesty passed by the Mexican Congress on Friday, saying it was a sign that the Mexican government was ready to improve the conditions of poverty and injustice, which had pushed the indigenous people into office to take up weapons. Daniel Schweimler for the BBC. Israeli officials say a meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO leader Yasser Arafat in Oslo this weekend produced progress, but no breakthrough. NPR's Linda Gradstein reports from Jerusalem. Peres and Arafat met in Oslo last night after both attended the funeral of Norwegian Foreign Minister Johann Jorgen Hulst, who had served as a mediator in secret Israel PLO talks. The two men agreed to meet again in Switzerland next weekend. There were reports that both sides came with new proposals and that an agreement on control of border crossings was close before today's cabinet meeting.

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Christie Whitman's cabinet nominees tomorrow. Lawmakers there will also consider repealing a 1985 law banning state investments in South Africa. Still no water and gas for South Brooklyn residents affected by the water main break. Con Ed says 16 of the 63 buildings flooded by water suffered structural damage and power can't be restored until they are fixed. One man was killed and another wounded as they allegedly tried to rob patrons of a Queens social club. None of the 20 people inside were injured. Police say three masked men burst inside and announced a robbery, but the people inside didn't cooperate. Shots were then fired. None of the patrons were arrested. The New York Civil Liberties Union is setting up a clinic to help people with complaints of police misconduct and will help victims when they appear before the recently created Civilian Complaint Review Board, students from area law schools will help with instructions and assistance, and football fans will see whether the Buffalo Bills can make a fourth trip in a row to the Super Bowl today. They played Joe Montana and the Kansas City Chiefs today in Buffalo and the other

conference championship game. The San Francisco 49ers face the Dallas Cowboys today. Seven of the Australian Open, Pete Sampras and Steffi Graf both advanced in the NBA. The Nets beat Golden State 124 to ninety eight. And in the NHL all star game, the East beat the West nine to eight, mostly cloudy today, chance of some flurries later on this afternoon. Highs in the mid 30s, mostly cloudy, not so cold tonight. Lows in the lower 30s, winds around 15 miles per hour, mostly sunny and warmer tomorrow. Highs in the mid 40s right now. Twenty four degrees and cloudy in Central Park. This is WNYC New York Public Radio. It's 11 06. In the 1940s, in the wake of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the beginning of the Cold War, and at a time when Nazi doctors were being tried for war crimes, secret United States government tests involving radiation were being carried out on human guinea pigs over the years.

The tests were written up in some of the scientific literature in this country. And in 1986, Congressman Edward Markey of Massachusetts released a report documenting three decades of such tests. But the report and its findings received scant media attention relegated to inside pages and one day stories. Now, of course, almost everyone is aware of the unfolding story of those tests, tests which included giving radioactive iron supplements to hundreds of pregnant women, radioactive material to retarded children, allowing radioactive fallout from atomic bomb tests to drift over ranch's backyards, soldiers and civilians. And as Newsweek magazine noted, the worst disclosures may be yet to come. Why? Why are we just now learning about how the government used human guinea pigs during the Cold War and what caused these experiments to come to light now? Hi, this is All in the Media. And I'm Alex Jones. One reason these experiments are coming to light is that an incredibly determined,

hardworking reporter at a small paper in Albuquerque, New Mexico, got wind of a story, felt a sense of moral outrage and kept at it for six years while continuing to meet her daily deadlines until she had the information she needed to print it. She's Eileen Welsome of the Albuquerque Tribune, and I'm honored to have her, is one of my guests in this hour of the show. Welcome, Eileen. Hi, Eileen. I want to find out how you got the story of the 18 people injected with plutonium, that how you tracked it down and identified some of the patients. But first, let me introduce my other guests. On the phone from Michigan is Keith Schneider, a New York Times environmental reporter who credits Eileen Welsome with bringing these experiments to the attention of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary. His own page one stories on the experiments and the Clinton administration's reaction to them have, as Eileen says, put the story in context and also gave it the national exposure that made it a bombshell instead of a land mine. Keith, welcome.

Thank you. Also joining me in the studio is Michio Kaku, professor of nuclear physics at City College and City University of New York. He's the author of many books, including the upcoming Hyperspace A Scientific Odyssey Through the Parallel Universe Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension, which, despite its intimidating title, is a popular book to be published by Oxford University Press next month. A protege of William Top Edward Teller, he became a critic of U.S. nuclear policies. And he has a lot to say about the role of the press in covering these issues. Welcome, Dr. Kaku. Glad to be here, Alex. Eileen, let's start with you. What you've what you've uncovered is a dramatic story about radiation, but it's from our perspective, the press story that we're most interested in. And I wondered if you would tell us how you first became aware and then how you tracked over. I don't know how many years the story until the moment when you actually had it under your byline in the Albuquerque Tribune. OK, I came across the story in 1987,

several months after the Markey report was issued. It was a footnote in a in a declassified document on animal experiments and what was then called the weapons laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. And it was a footnote. It was a footnote in it. And I was actually at the time looking into these radioactive animal dumps at the Air Force base. And I wanted to know what they were doing with animals over there. And they had been putting various isotopes down into their stomachs and watching tumors develop, etc. and then they toss the carcasses out out in these pits. Yeah. So I came across this footnote referencing plutonium that had been injected into human beings and I was absolutely stunned by it. So I thought that following day I went to the university library and began researching the study itself, looking

at that footnote and other scientific documents related to the use of plutonium in human beings and subsequently came across the mark. You report did an extra search, came across the fact that it had been reported in the media, oh, perhaps six months earlier, reported in the media and just sort of dropped that, as best I can tell from my computer search, was that it was. Sort of a one day story that it that there was in all the major publications essentially saying, you know, that human beings for 30 years had been used as nuclear guinea pigs, that they had been injected with plutonium that they had and ingested. The other isotopes are made to eat dirt from the Nevada test site, et cetera, et cetera. But it had first been reported and I wanted to point this out, 1976, by science trends there in Washington, D.C. and it seemed like the story that I've given it a lot of thought.

And it's like the in particular, the people I wrote about, these 18 people sort of would rise up in the in the American consciousness and it just sort of subside back into untapped history. Well, as I understand it, your idea was to find the people. That was what you set out to do. That's correct. I mean, it was it was a 50 year old trail and it was and I doubt it very much that I would have any luck in uncovering these people. So what I did was I put my data in a file over the years and then I went off on a fellowship. And then when I came back, I pulled out my file and started reading some of the documents that I had gotten. And my eye fell on the words Italy, Texas, where one of the patients identified as Calc three lived. And that and within five minutes I had identified this man or what I believe to be this man is a gentleman by the name of Elmer

Allen. And how did that how did that I mean, this is a tiny little place in Texas. So what did you do? What I did was I looked at those words on my document. I said, oh, my God, this is this man could live in Italy. So I called Italy, Texas. I described the gentleman I was looking for. I knew that he was about 80 years old, that he was an African-American, that I knew his left leg was missing. So I thought he might have been a veteran. So I sort of tactfully asked if there was a veterans organization. Who did you call? City Hall? Italy's city hall. And and, you know, I identified myself, said who I was looking for. And they said, well, you're looking for Elmer Allen, but he died a year ago. Would you like his wife number? And I said, well, yes. And I immediately called his wife. His wife was oh, she's in her late 70s now.

She said she she was very, very nice woman. She said, call me tomorrow. I'm going to be at my daughter's house. I did talk to the daughter, Almario Whitfield, who testified this week before Congress. And then I flew to Dallas within the next day or two and met with them. How how enthusiastic were your own editors about this rather quixotic quest of yours? My editors were not enthusiastic at all. They were just sort of just that was well, that's Eileen there she goes against all crazy, crazy Eileen on another goose chase. And so what I did and in fact, when I came back that Monday, I think I discovered this on a Friday in nineteen eighty seven. On Monday, I came racing in saying, oh my God, you know, at that point I still believe that perhaps this had never been reported before. I said, my God, the government injected these people with plutonium and

this is incredible. And I was told by the then city editor, well, I mean, we hired you to be our neighborhood reporter. So, you know, that's your job. So I just basically kind of basically ignored him and continued to collect my data. And but it was not until 1992 when I absolutely had one of the patients in hand, that the paper became excited about it. And and it was a month or so thereafter that we that we filed our second Freedom of Information Act using documents we'd received from the Department of Energy and using our lawyers. How how cooperative were the government agencies in the nuclear agencies that you that you dealt with? They were completely uncooperative, completely. They stonewalled us for four years. And I can say that unequivocally.

And anybody who doubts that can look at the can look at the paperwork. The correspondence can talk to our lawyers about the day by day activities between our small newspaper and the Department of Energy. All of which brings me to the most ironic point of all, which is that here we struggled for. Four years to get out the information on this 50 year old experiment, which, by the way, made me more and more angry, you know, with each rebuff, you know, by the government, I'd say, well, you know, why are they so stingy? This is what agencies owe the government. Will you mostly dealing with I was dealing with the Department of Energy and their Freedom of Information Act people. And I kept, you know, me but myself and the lawyers, we'd say, oh, what's their problem? This is 50 years old. It didn't happen on their watch. Why are they guarding this? Why were they I, I don't know. I mean, unless unless they were were were savvier than

me and knew that this was just going to go around and there was Pandora's box. Exactly. It just. Or is or is the governor here in New Mexico said it opened a box of Pandora's box. Do you want when you finally got the goods and were able to do your you were you were about to do you said there was an ironic situation that after four years, what was that thought? Well, what happened is it's here we were blocked by the Department of Energy for four years and then we published our series. And then three weeks later, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary comes forward at the national press conference in Washington, D.C. and openly discusses the plutonium experiment. And she says in a passive voice, five names have been released as if to imply, oh, this is just another secret, or, you know, that we're kind of getting off our chest.

And it's the position of of of our newspaper that I don't believe that Secretary O'Leary would have ever done this had three weeks earlier. We not publish the series which was done. And I emphasize that in spite of the Department of Energy and this was the Clinton administration, Department of Energy as well, that you got stonewalling from the Clinton people as well as from the Bush and Reagan people. That's correct. For the last year that our lawyer was negotiating with the Department of Energy, Secretary O'Leary was heading that agency. Mm hmm. Um, let me ask you, Snyder, you you've been dealing with this. You have you know, I know you've written about it as well. Is your experience with the Department of Energy consistent with what Eileen is saying at The New York Times? We've had a project to look at the deterioration, the conditions, the environmental effects and the health effects of the nuclear weapons industry, which is owned and managed by the Department of Energy since 1987.

And Eileen's experience with the Freedom of Information Act is it typifies what we experience as well, as you put it, in FOIA request. And months later, the Department of Energy would reply with, we don't have the documents, we can't find the documents, we don't know where they are. We we'd appeal the decision and then at some point they trickle out. Our project was helped immensely by the Department of Energy's own top officials and some whistleblowers who came forward and were very upset by the conditions that they found. Well, Eileen, let me ask you, if you did not get cooperation from them, how did you get these names aside from the one that you detected in Italy, Texas? Well, the the the uncovering the identities, the path was similar to the way I uncovered MRL. And it was through a lot of luck and a lot of long shots. For example, I uncovered the identity of a gentleman by the name

of of of Albert Stevens with the help of a 1945 letter. And then I enlisted the aid of a genealogist who was of retirement age who helped me find this man and his children. And for that, I mean, she she she charged us 25 dollars and we gave her genealogical society a fifty dollar check. But I credit her with finding the identity of CAT1 one. So it was using really, really unusual techniques. Listen, what you did is first class journalism. We're going to take a break. We're going to be right back. And we're going to be talking with Dr. Michio Kaku and Keith Schneider, as well as Eilene about this issue and about the the the the reasons why it has taken so long for these things to come out. Stick with us. We'll be back right after this.

I'm Ray Suarez. This Monday on Talk of the Nation, part two of our series on the Ten Commandments. We'll discuss the second coming. Thou shalt not make going to be any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above all, that is in the earth beneath all that is in the water under the earth. But what happens when a man becomes the creator? I will discuss the whole nature of the making of images when I appear on this Talk of the Nation program. Sculptor Leonard Basken Monday on NPR's Talk of the Nation weekday afternoons at two on WNYC AM 820. News and Talk around the Clock. You're listening to On the Media on WNYC New York Public Radio. The forecast for this Sunday, mostly cloudy skies. There is the chance of flurries later on today. Highs in the mid 30s tonight, mostly cloudy, not as cold, though. Lows in the lower 30s. Winds around 15 miles per hour, mostly sunny and warmer tomorrow. Right now, 24 and cloudy. This is WNYC New York Public Radio. I'm Alex Jones. We're back with all the media, my guest this hour talking about nuclear, the radiation experiments that have been been exposed recently by the government,

by journalists and the government has acknowledged. Our Schnieder, environmental reporter for The New York Times, Eileen Welsome, who broke the story for the Albuquerque Tribune, and Dr. Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the Graduate Center City University of New York. Dr. Kaku, you have actually been somewhat critical of the idea that it was these human interest stories that Eilene put together, this humanizing of this, that is that is really sort of galvanized the public and turned this into a story that is captured wide popular appeal. Why do you consider that to be a criticism? Well, if you saw today's New York Times as a cartoon, a person, ask the media, how come you don't cover Bosnia more? And the media reporter says, what? You mean somebody cut off a penis in Bosnia that we didn't know about? I think I think future historians, when they look back at the culture and I think future historians

looking back at the Cold War will declare that the press failed miserably to expose the excesses of the Cold War. In other words, in a democracy, you have to have checks and balances and there has to be a media which critiques the administration policies. I help some of the people in 1986 put together a Senate congressman, Ed Markey, whose report on these tiny experiments. And as soon as that hot potato hit the press, it was dropped just like a hot potato. And I talked to many of the reporters as to why this hot potato was dropped back in 1986 when we helped to assemble this report. And they said, well, look, I mean, give me a break. Look, Ronald Reagan is in power. The evil empire is in. The media has been intimidated by Ronald Reagan. And if you want to protect your sources, if you want to make sure that you get the inside track on the Pentagon, you don't tweak the nose of the Pentagon in the middle of the Cold War and expect that your sources are still going to talk to you. Plus the fact. Can you tell us who said that to you?

Unfortunately, I can. It was back in 1980. You tell us what institutions. Unfortunately, I can't. However, if I'm on this show again, I will be more than happy to assemble many of these individuals I talked to. The point is, these individuals told me that some of them actually did file reports to their editors about this, but they were blue penciled. The editors got nervous, quote unquote. I was told and said, look, this is too hot. This is saying that we're not John Wayne. We're up against the Russians. We're John Wayne. We're the good guys. It's the Russians who don't believe in the sanctity of life. And now these reports are saying that it's us who don't believe in the sanctity of life, not the Russians. And that was a hot potato that had to be dropped. And that's why back in 1986, when when friends of mine helped to put together that report, it dropped like a rock. Keith Schneider. Yes. Respond to that, if you would. I can't respond specifically to Eighty-six because I was covering something else. I realized that's a poor excuse. But one of the one of the real problems with the Cold War, this national security apparatus, is that it was so tightly kept, it was so

tightly held, and that when reporters in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s went to the Atomic Energy Commission and its successor, the Department of Energy, to ask about this, the government simply lied. They lied in court. They lied in scientific forums and they lied in the press. And it wasn't until about 1979 when the Carter administration made public 20000 pages of documents related to fallout hazards from the Nevada test site that the American people and journalists began to understand the full scope of what was happening. Not until then. There's one part of the story is anecdotal evidence, but the other part to put together such a sensitive story about human irradiation, experimentation or any of the other sensitive health effects pieces of the of the radiation story is you have to have some sort of confirmation. You have to have some sort of government input. And if the government's own legal experts and own medical experts are not telling the truth, it's so difficult to get at it.

And that was the problem with this story. Well, let me ask you, Dr. Kaku has said that the press, including major institutions, I assume he means all the big ones were intimidated by the by the sort of idea that the Reagan administration was was, you know, fighting the Cold War at a high level with. I don't. I don't. At The New York Times and other and other journalistic gathering, news gathering organization, I don't necessarily buy that. They were intimidated by the story. What I could what I do understand at many other places is that there is a journalists are intimidated by this. Or itself, it's very complex. We're dealing with medical effects, radiation, Curies, REM's Rad's Miller, Nano Curie's, all sorts of strange sounding radio nucleate. And looking at this body of data which is presented in such a technical way, most reporters will say, how do I make sense of this? But Keith, I think you have a point that it is technical, but you realize that these

people were hit with 40 times the lethal dose of radiation that will kill a person. This radiation would kill a horse, kill a stable of horses. It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that this radiation was extremely dangerous to people 40 times the lethal dose. And yet this story was dropped even by The New York Times, The Washington Post back in 1986, because I think the media realize that Ronald Reagan was a very popular president and that he was up against this evil empire. And there was a tendency by the media to kowtow to the Reagan administration back then. I'm not going to be a defender of the media in the 1980s and 90s. I'm not certain that we're in a golden age of media, but I just don't buy that they were intimidated by Reagan. There are other issues, other issues at work here. One was that Congress itself never pushed this issue. One of the things that distinguishes what's happening now from what happened in 1986 is the fact that Elian came forward, put a human face on a a story that had been around for 20 years. And at the same time, the government itself responded

to it. Hazel O'Leary stood up and said she was going to do something about it. And therefore you have and then in the White House got involved and put forward a process. So the story began to have its own legs. We had not only the breaking of one experiment, we had other experiments that were coming before we had the White House respond and we had a running story. Yeah, but it which gives it the momentum that it never had before. Yeah, but, Keith, what builds the momentum back in 86, all the ingredients of this momentum was there. The only difference is that the Cold War is over and now certain stories are safe. For example, the story of 17 nuclear sites that you very adequately expose in The New York Times. We physicists knew about this for the last 25 years, that we had 17 rotting nuclear sites like open sores on the planet Earth. But every time I've been at these places, I've been at most of these 17 sites. I've done press conferences at these 17 sites. And these are company towns. People would come up to me afterwards and said, we just can't run your story. You were criticizing the Department of Energy, the United States.

We can't run this story. I heard that so many Liteky speak clearly. And I've been following what Dr. Kaku was referring to of the 17 sites around the country where the where the government tested, developed and manufactured nuclear weapons, all of all of which are quite heavily polluted, all of which expose their own workers and residents around them to various levels of radiation that the government now says may be unsafe. I have been following that story since I was a cub reporter in Wilkes-Barre and I went to South Carolina and covered one of the plants in South Carolina, the Savannah River plant. When we when we at The New York Times. And we got a sense when finally put this story together that this was a national story, had huge economic and environmental and health implications and proposed it to our editors. Max Frankel, the executive editor of The New York Times, said, bring it forward as fast as you can. And since 1987, we have published, I don't know, three, 400 articles, not only myself, but Matthew Wald, one of our energy and environmental reporters and other reporters at the Times when Eileen came forward with this new

look at it, at a problem that's been persisting and existing for 20 years, we jumped right on it. We we we have published since mid-December, I don't know, 10, 12 stories and have now project to go after it. So all this stuff about intimidation, I don't understand. I mean, I can't put together why things don't happen. Well, Keith, why you don't buy that. I do not buy that. We were intimidated. Let let me let me let me give out our number because we want our listeners to get into this discussion. Our number is two one two two six seven nine six nine two. That's two six seven WNYC. And we'd like to hear what you, our listeners have to say about about the press aspects of this. Please focus that. That's what we're talking about today. It's not the horror of the experience experiments themselves. That's that's another issue. We're talking about the press today. Eileen, let me ask you, do you do you subscribe to the intimidation of the press theory or more? What Keith is saying, that the real issue was that the story itself is intimidating

and without some sort of of of a breakthrough with the government, you really had a story that was not much more than a one day story. I, I, I agree with Keith. Even here in New Mexico, where we're surrounded by military installations and national laboratories and much of the economy is fueled by that. I don't cover the labs, but I can assure you that if I did find something to report at. Out at Los Alamos or San Diego, that was negative, I wouldn't hesitate to do it, so, you know, say something. Sure, but let her finish, first of all. But what I want to say is that I do agree I do agree with Keith is that is that it's sort of like the SNL bailout. You know, the stories are very intimidating. They're complex. They take a long time to figure it out. Sometimes reporters don't have the time to do that. And then if you have one side saying X happened and you had the government

saying, no, it didn't, it sort of stops your story, you know, and you've got to get confirmation from other sources. So, you know, I have never bought the idea that the press and certainly I can speak for myself, I could care less about who's in power or who's president. And if I find a good story, I'm going to go after it. Now, that misses the point. And I've never met another journalist that doesn't feel the same way, whether they're here in New Mexico or some other city. If we find a good story, we go. No, I think you missed the point. The point is not that journalists can't be crusading in his or her mind. The point is that the editors at the top levels will tend to blue pencil and shelve certain stories and not put resources in certain stories because they're too hot, they're intimidating. I mean, the government says these stories are unfavorable to our position. We're in the middle of a Cold War. And like I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico just last week and I did a press conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I had a chance to talk to all the major news media in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When I came to the airport, I realized that there were 2100 hydrogen warheads stored at the Kirtland Air Force Base. And I mentioned that. What about the possibility of an airline accident and the media to a man and a woman? They said we can't touch that. You're talking about the fact that Albuquerque is, quote, a company town, not Sandia Laboratories has an enormous presence in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Turning on the evening news, there was almost no mention of any of the tremendous turmoil going on in the weapons laboratory with the stationing of hydrogen warheads, with the possibility of dangerous accidents in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I think you're being naive and I say this in a good way. I see this in a good way. I mean, we all have to take our knocks. But I think you're being very naive to think that stories like this are the average kind of stories in the middle of a Cold War. These stories were squashed. I can give you a chance to respond. OK, I'd like to know who who didn't report that story and who you met with in Albuquerque, number one.

And number two, in all in all in my 15 years as a reporter, I have never had a story blueline. The impression that you have, however, is is common and it's shared by a lot of people. And and I want to say that your criticism of the media in part is justified in the way we have covered the Cold War, in the way the news media did cover the savings and loan bailout. Where were we? We we do have problems. We need to be you know, we need to be more Hawkeye's about these things. So, I mean, I'm not naive, but I've never personally had a story blue lined and said, oh, that's too hot. Let's take a look. Okay, this is someone told me that's too hot. I would quit. Let's take a caller. James from Huntington, New York, hello. Hello. I'd like to know who knew at that time what a lethal dose was and how did they find that out? And just generally, like under the circumstances of the war

effort at the time, what other ways were there to find out this this information? Excellent question. The Hiroshima data provides and the Nagasaki data provides the largest epidemiological source of information. It's been known for decades exactly how much radiation will kill a human being. So therefore, much of the information gleaned from these radiation studies that were kept secret is actually rather marginal. I think some of these scientists are trying to puff themselves up by saying this information was extremely valuable. I've read the literature. I got my Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley, where some of these experiments were authorized. The results we got from these experiments were marginal at best. Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the largest source by far, by several orders of magnitude in terms of finding out how dangerous radiation is to a human being. But is this from we're focusing on we're focusing on the media aspects of it. I'm sorry. We've really got to do that. Thank you very much. James Carroll Gallagher. How good of you to call. Thank you. Carol Gallagher is the author of American Ground Zero The Secret Nuclear War.

What's your thought? I'm appalled by Keith Schneider. He wrote the foreword to my book. The truth is that in 1984, I went to Tom Wicker at The New York Times with my material, and he told me that paper was, quote, too conservative for this kind of thing. I kept on going back and back. Back to The New York Times all these years, finally I became a source for Keith Schneider and gave him the unlisted phone number of Stewart Udall turned him on to all my people I had been interviewing since 1982. I went to Kathleen Ryan, who was the photo editor of the New York Times magazine with my pictures just a few years ago. She told me they would be interested if I could also have pictures of similar people from the nuclear test site in Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union. So in other words, they want to balance that with equal atrocities in other countries. The truth is, I did a book which the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a Nobel laureate organization called the Definitive Study of the Effects, the human effects of nuclear testing.

And all these years I've been stonewalled, including every single publisher in the Western world, who said that this book was too depressing and too expensive to produce and and just nobody would want to read it. It would never become a bestseller. And the truth is that the media and the publishing industry would like to ignore this until finally it becomes safe to expose it and then everybody's on the bandwagon. So finally, I got a publisher in 1991. It was the MIT Press, the very people who put many scientists into the Manhattan Project. They published it and suddenly Random House got on the wagon and they're publishing the paperback in the spring. But the truth is, nobody wanted to hear about this. When Markit came out with his report, he was just ignored. There is no freedom of the press unless you work for The New York Times when you get the FOI is sometimes answered. But small papers and I congratulate and congratulate Eileen to get this kind of information is unbelievably difficult and to get it published is even more difficult.

And I can imagine the hell she went through with her editors at the beginning of this story. Because I've been there. I've been there. And nobody wanted to hear about this until we had an administration that could bear to look at it. You say Keith wrote the introduction to your book. Yes. Keith, what's your response to what Carol said? That's not been my experience at the Times. I wasn't there in 84. Nobody ever came to me and said, stop what you're doing. But nothing but encouraging what we've done in our work, in my work, in the math work on the weapons. And I believe it's a club with the major newspapers. Unless you're part of the club, if you're an independent, you can just kiss your material goodbye. We're going to we're going to take a break now and we're going to be coming back and talking more about this and especially about the sort of the phenomenon that to a degree illustrates what Carol has to say, because it was really not until Keith Schneider wrote his stories that this became a blockbuster kind of kind of story nationally. Now, was that also because the secretary of energy came out the way she did? I don't know. We want to talk about that.

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I'm Alex Jones and we're back with all the media. My guest this hour talking about the nuclear radiation story that has hit the country like a blockbuster in Alice. No. Yes. Just a moment. Keith Snyder is my guest, Eileen Elsom and Michio Kaku. And on the phone, we have Carol Gallagher, who has also written about this. I'm sorry. Yes, just one point about what Carol was saying in 1979. On June 2nd, there was a lead in The New York Times that said the sheep started dying in 1953. And to the ranchers around the government's atomic test site in Nevada, the cause seemed obvious. Radiation. This was about the fallout effects from the Nevada test site, something that Carol knows well. That story was written by a Sulzberger Jr., the current publisher of The New York Times when he was a reporter in Washington. I keep I don't know what Carol was told by who at The New York Times, but I know. Now, let me let me make sure that that we understand, Carol, you you say you talk to Tom Wicker, right. And Tom Wicker was a columnist. Yes. But not he was not the editor of The New Yorker.

So I was trying to find my way into The New York Times. It's a labyrinth that's not to be believed. But, you know, I think that you have to have certain credentials. It doesn't matter if you've been living there for seven years and have done totally new work with totally new sources. The point is you have to have the credentials. And even then, I know Keith probably has had some problems and he's done excellent work over the years and I much appreciate it. But yes, I was reading those exactly that article in The New York Times in 1979. And I also was looking at all that material, the 20000 pages that have been released from the department Department of Energy. And the truth is that this material has always been stonewalled until very recently. And even then it was not always given a page one. It was sort of the 17. But but the point is that you and I have the most utmost respect for what Carol has done. But the charge was that the paper was intimidated and that we're not going to do this story. And I reject it.

I mean that. Can I say something interested in this, Susan, since the beginning and has published groundbreaking work on this for decades. Yes and no. OK, look, I got my Ph.D. 32 years ago in nuclear physics. I followed the story for the past 32 years. Only in the last five years have the Eileen's and the kids been able to break these kinds of stories, anything in a very good way. So I don't fault the aliens in the kids of today for not finding that much opposition now that the political tenor has changed. But look, 30 years ago, I talked to the Ilene's and the Keith Snider's of 32 years ago. Back then, they realized that their careers would be shipwrecked. If they touch this story, it was too hot to handle. There are three point three million, three point three miles of classified documents, more skeletons in there. And I think more skeletons are going to indicate that the United States was much more aggressive with regards to perfecting new weapons than previously thought. That's going to be a real test to see whether the media will not pick up the real hot potatoes that are still contained in three point three miles of data. So I think that the keys and islands of today can truthfully say, cross

my heart, hope that I truthfully say that they haven't received that much blue penciling. But the Ilene's and Keith that I work with 32 years ago, when I was still associated, associated with Edward Teller, those people risked having their careers shipwrecked because the nuclear issue was simply taboo. The American people would get maybe a one day notice about a certain issue and then it would die that afternoon. Carol Gallagher, thank you so much for calling in. My pleasure. You very much appreciate. Thanks for covering the issue. Our pleasure. OK, constants in the Bronx. Hello. Hello. What's on your mind? Well, I'd like to commend Mrs Welsome for her efforts to discover that we all second. But you all seem to be obsessed with what went on 30 years ago. What I would like to know is what's going on currently and what are you doing to uncover any possible experimentations that are going on now? Eileen, each of you become a nuclear reporter now, almost exclusively right now.

It seems as if I've become a reporter exclusively on these human radiation tests. And my newspaper, my small newspaper is getting somewhere on the average of 20 to 30 tips a day. I think it started to slow down from atomic veterans, down winders, young adults who 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 tips. Well, what about what the caller said about current experiments? Do you think that those are do you I mean, do you think those experiments ended, you know, 30 years ago? I don't. You know, I have.