Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 15, 1994                   TAG: 9401150108
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

REAGAN ADMINISTRATION DENIED RADIATION VICTIMS' PLIGHT

The Energy Department documents show the Reagan administration sought to play down the experiments, arguing against any compensation or follow-up exams for the human subjects.

The department argued there was "no scientific reason" to believe the subjects suffered long-term harm and that follow-up studies would "violate privacy," according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"I was satisfied with our answer. There had not been enough work done to establish that there was a problem," then-Energy Secretary John Herrington said Thursday.

"We're finding out that it's something that needs more scrutiny, and I think it does," said Herrington, now a private lawyer and vice chairman of the state Republican Party in California.

Herrington added that the ongoing Cold War also played a part in the decision not to launch the type of extensive disclosure of past radiation testing begun by the Clinton administration under Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary.

"The department was much more concerned with security and secrecy than today and rightly so," he said.

The impetus seven years ago was a congressional report that - based largely on department files - singled out 31 radiation experiments involving humans, including the injection of plutonium to 18 civilians in the 1940s and radiation experiments on genitals of inmates.

In a Feb. 10, 1987, letter to Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the subcommittee that wrote the report, Herrington maintained that the concerns "appear to have been based on misunderstandings of . . . the principles of human experimentation."

Herrington wrote, "There is no scientific reason to expect that any of the subjects who are not already being monitored will incur any harmful effects. Therefore, there is neither any reason for attempting any further follow-up studies on these subject nor to propose new legislation to compensate them."

The congressional findings outlined in a 39-page report, "American Nuclear Guinea Pigs: Three Decades of Radiation Experiments on U.S. Citizens" barely caused a ripple among the public or inside the Reagan administration.

"It fell on deaf ears," said Markey. The news media treated it as a one-day story.

John Abbotts, a congressional science fellow who worked on the Markey report, said the Energy Department's response was aimed at blunting news media interest. "Their first statements to the press were that it wasn't news because it was historical," he said.

But Herrington placed some fault on Congress, including Markey, who had made his opposition on nuclear issues well known. He said Markey, who shortly after the report was issued shifted committee assignments, never followed up the Energy Department's response.

"If Congress had said, `No, we want you to do more,' we would have done more," Herrington said.

At the time, however, a department staff summary responding to 17 cases cited by Markey repeatedly argued against the need for follow-up or compensation.