Between Heaven and Hell

by Alan Rimmer

  But two hours before the detonation one of the main cables to the main camp at Desert Rock malfunctioned and O’Connor and two others went out to investigate. One of the men went forward to the bomb tower and returned looking shaken. He told his buddies he’d seen a ‘bunch of weirdoes’ close to the tower-mounted bomb, tethered alongside dogs and sheep. Close by was an unconnected plastic covered terminal box and a remote-control camera positioned about 60 yards away, its lens pointing toward the bunker’s centre.

  O’Connor never really thought about the story until after the detonation when he was required to brave the radioactive dust storm to make his way to a field telephone 1,000 yards ahead. As he rounded a sandbank wall which sheltered a trench and a bench, he made a terrifying discovery. He is quoted as saying: “A guy had crawled behind the bunker, his face full of blood from his nose and mouth.”

  The corporal claimed that wires were attached to the man. He recalled: “I smelled burning flesh. I knew the smell all too well. In Korea, the South Koreans disposed of their dead by burning them in barrels. As in the case of Bob Carter, O’Connor soon learned not to talk about what he had seen after he was taken to a base where he was shown an endless stream of propaganda films; ten straight days of how the bomb hurts “them -- not us.”

  He said: “The movies started with quick flashes of Mickey Mouse, Tojo, Donald Duck, Hitler, someone’s mother, then Hiroshima…”But when he asked about the writhing man he had seen near ground zero, he was ignored. Surprisingly candid, or deliberately vague, the chief spokesman of the US Defence Nuclear Agency told the newspaper: “We can neither confirm nor deny Mr O’Connor’s allegations.”

  Stories like this abounded among the 250,000 American servicemen who took part in nuclear weapon tests. And although they were often dismissed as “paranoid ramblings”, the US government didn’t seem to have any qualms about using their civilian population for the dubious purposes of scientific experimentation.

  In 1987 a U.S. Congressman discovered official documents which described grotesque experiments on civilians. In an address to Congress, Representative Edward Markey said his evidence proved that hundreds of Americans were used as nuclear guinea pigs during 30 years of ‘Nazi-like’ experiments. He said a total of 695 civilians were deliberately contaminated to discover the effects of nuclear radiation.

  The experiments, which took place from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, included feeding people milk from irradiated cows and contaminated fish from rivers near discharges from nuclear plants. Hospital patients were deliberately fed radioactive materials, and nuclear waste was placed on patients’ hands to see what effect it had on them. In another bizarre experiment 131 prisoners had their testes repeatedly x-rayed to determine the effects on human fertility.

  Mr Markey told Congress: “These experiments and others shock the conscience of the nation. They raise one major, horrifying question: did the intense desire to know the consequences of radioactive exposure after the dawn of the atomic age lead American scientists to mimic the kind of demented human experiments conducted by the Nazis?”

  In 1994 President Clinton assembled a committee of experts in medicine, ethics and law, to investigate just how far the US Government had been prepared to carry out radiation experiments on human beings. The committee found there occurred thousands of examples, as well as hundreds of cases of deliberate releases of radiation.

  America’s record of the use of human beings as radiation test subjects has clear parallels with Britain. The Dr Strangelove-type activities show how readily both governments were prepared to use both servicemen and the civilians in their quest for nuclear knowledge.

  Karl Morgan, the founder of Health Physics, the discipline which approaches questions of radioactive dose and effects has revealed how both governments shared information on the effects of radiation on the body.

  He said they consulted on a daily basis with members of both military and medical establishments. “As the cold war heated up the pressures to keep your mouth shut increased,” he said. “A lot of people in the scientific establishment were told that it was unpatriotic and somewhat treasonous to publicly indicate that large numbers of people may be put at risk as a result of these activities.”

  British scientists unashamedly embraced this philosophy. A raft of declassified documents relating to large-scale experiments on humans was uncovered at the Public Records Office.

  One of them referred to an incident in 1953 when scientists at the Windscale nuclear plant in Cumbria deliberately released thyroid cancer-inducing radioactive iodine 131 into the atmosphere with the specific objective of measuring the uptake of the deadly material in the surrounding population.

  Under pressure the plant’s chief medical officer, Dr Geoffrey Schofield admitted in a statement to the West Cumbrian Health Authority: “It is true that the radioactive release in 1953 was not an accident. It was a deliberate discharge as part of the operations during early nuclear reprocessing under the military program at a time when Britain was preparing its first atomic bombs. There was a need for secrecy as a matter of national security and information about the discharge has only recently been released.”

  Since this admission the Ministry of Defence has tried to downgrade its significance and importance. Experts connected with the nuclear industry have gone on record to state that the emission was so small as to make it negligible. These placatory statements were made in the face of further discoveries that children and animals near the plant had been poisoned with iodine in the weeks following the “controlled emission.”

  But these assurances were exposed as yet another cold war lie when a document referring to the incident came to light. In plain and unambiguous language, the scientist responsible for the deliberate discharge admitted: “With regard to the discharges from Windscale, the intention has been to discharge substantial amounts of radioactivity as part of a deliberate scientific experiment, and the aims of the experiment would have been defeated if the level of actual discharge had been kept to a minimum.” (emphasis added).

  Other documents revealed examples of more clandestine activities on human beings including an admission that dozens of people drank, inhaled or were injected with radioactive isotopes as part of a series of secret experiments carried out by the nuclear industry in the 1960s.

  The tests, exposing humans to radioactive caesium, iodine, strontium and uranium, were carried out on so-called “volunteers.” One proposal even envisaged injecting plutonium into elderly people to help assess contamination risks.

  A report marked “confidential” said 10 volunteers from Harwell in Oxfordshire drank a liquid containing caesium-132 and caesium-134 in November 1962. Two volunteers from Windscale also ingested strontium 90 to investigate "uptake by the gut". A further 18 volunteers at Harwell in 1964 breathed in a vapour of methyl iodide-132 to test its retention in the thyroid gland. If anyone became ill as a result, the memo said, they would be able to sue for damages, though the risk was dismissed as "negligible".

  Yet another memo discussed the "ethical problems" of feeding radioactively contaminated whelks from near Sellafield (formerly Windscale) to children. A memo from 1962 referred to grotesque US experiments in which elderly and sick hospital patients were injected with plutonium. The memo, from scientists at Harwell, suggested carrying out similar experiments in the UK, mentioning old people as potential candidates.

  One bizarre document disclosed that in 1972, 21 Punjabi women in Coventry, many of whom did not speak English, were secretly involved in tests using radioactive iodine. The women had gone to their doctor with ailments that ranged from arthritic knees to migraine. They ended up as part of a nutrition experiment which involved eating radioactive chapattis delivered to their door.

  This immoral use of civilians in nuclear experiments exposes an alarming willingness by the authorities to use human beings in questionable activities under the guise of cold war expediency.

  The existence of these experiments was a closely guar
ded secret for decades as governments and their scientific stooges scrambled to keep up with the latest advances in nuclear know-how. And there is evidence that in order to keep a lid on these nefarious activities, governments and commercial interests would stop at nothing, even murder.

  DIRTY TRICKS

  In 1974 union activist Karen Silkwood, aged 28, was investigating serious health risks in the nuclear fuels production plant in Oklahoma where she worked. At the time she was in the process of exposing a cover-up at the company after her home was mysteriously contaminated with plutonium.

  Later, while taking incriminating documents to an investigative reporter, Silkwood was killed when her car drove into a ditch.

  The circumstances became the subject of enormous speculation after a sleep-inducing drug was found in her body, along with traces of plutonium. There was also evidence of mysterious dents in the rear of her car suggesting she may have been deliberately shunted off the road.

  Since then, her story has achieved worldwide fame as the subject of many books, magazine and newspaper articles, and even a major motion picture. The story spawned a spate of allegations from nuclear activists who believed they were being spied upon and even ‘terminated’ by the evil forces of the pro-nuclear lobby.

  As the conspiracy theories swept like wildfire across the political landscape, it wasn’t long before it ignited Britain’s very own Silkwood legend in the unlikely form of grandmother and rose-grower Hilda Murrell.

  Mrs Murrell was found dead near her home just before she was due to give evidence at a public inquiry into the Sizewell B nuclear reactor where she was scheduled to present her paper "An Ordinary Citizen's View of Radioactive Waste Management".

  But before she could do so, her home in Shrewsbury was burgled and she was abducted in her own car which many witnesses reported seeing being driven erratically through the town and surrounding countryside. The vehicle was abandoned in a country lane five miles outside Shrewsbury but it was three days before her body was discovered. She had been beaten and stabbed and dumped in a wood where she died of hypothermia.

  Mrs Murrell was the aunt of Royal Navy Commander Robert Green, a former naval intelligence officer who was wrongly accused of leaking intelligence to Scottish MP Tam Dalyell. This was to the effect that the sub that sank the Argentine vessel the Belgrano during the 1982 Falklands War was carrying torpedoes with nuclear warheads.

  Just before Murrell died, Dalyell was asking detailed questions about the Belgrano’s movements before it was sunk. Dalyell later shocked Parliament when he alleged in Parliament that British Intelligence had been involved in Mrs Murrell’s murder.

  Many years later DNA evidence linked her death to a burglar who fuelled more conspiracy theories when he insisted that he did not act alone. Many still believe Mrs Murrell’s death was caused by mysterious government agents

  This suggestion of shadowy government agencies engaged in all manner of skullduggery is common currency in the anti-nuclear movement. Even Ken McGinley, who always treated the wilder allegations with scepticism believes he was targeted.

  Both he and his wife insist their home has been spied on by mysterious men in cars, but more seriously he believes his tyres were deliberately slashed after he left his car at Glasgow airport before flying to London for a meeting.

  McGinley recalled how the nearside tyre blew on the motorway as he returned to his home a few days later: “Luckily, I was only doing about 50 mph and managed to guide the car onto the hard shoulder. The tyre was shredded, but I noticed the other tyre had been cut in a most precise way: around the rim, close to the hub. I took the wheel to a garage and they found there was only about a millimetre of rubber protecting the tyre. The garage man said it had been done deliberately.”

  McGinley admitted he was rattled, but tried to shrug off the incident, but there were other incidents that disturbed him greatly such as the sudden death of Dr John Reissland, a scientist who was initially put in charge of the study by the National Radiological Protection Board to look into health problems among nuclear veterans.

  Dr Reissland had apparently gone to the attic of his home after hearing a noise. As he clambered into the loft space there was a loud bang followed by a fire which killed him. At the time McGinley had been working closely with Dr Reissland providing facts and figures for the study, and a bond of trust had formed between them. Dr Reissland, according to McGinley, was sympathetic to the veterans’ cause, and told him on more than one occasion that numbers of blood cancer deaths and cancer incidents were “very significant.”

  After his shocking death, the coroner recorded an accidental verdict, but the anti-nuclear lobby had their suspicions. McGinley’s merely commented that it was a “convenient death” for the government. But there were other occurrences which gave him cause for somber reflection.

  Not long after Dr Reissland’s death, he was accosted by two intelligence officers, one British, the other America, as he sat minding his own business on the ferry to Dunoon. He recognized the first man as a Ministry of Defence security officer, the second man he thought he may have seen at the American sub base in Rosyth.

  McGinley recalled: “The British guy sat down next to me and asked how I was doing. To be honest I never liked the man and I hoped he would go away, but before I could say anything we were joined by an American, from the Rosyth base who I knew was with naval intelligence.

  “I had seen them at the base’s social club, but had never spoken to them. They sat either side of me; they were both big men and I felt intimidated. The American eventually asked me how the campaign was going. I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t understand what possible interest this American could have in my campaign, and I told him so. There was a bit of small talk and eventually the two got up and walked away. The incident unsettled me a bit, but I pushed it to the back of my mind.”

  A few days later he was sitting at home when got a phone call from a man with an American accent who introduced himself as “Bill”. According to McGinley: “He said he knew that I took in US men from the sub base and wanted to know if I would have the courtesy to meet him in town because he wanted to speak to me about a private matter.

  “I was mystified and suspicious, but said I would go nevertheless. He arranged to meet me at this little hotel, which was in Queen Street, and this guy was sitting in a small lounge at the back of the hotel. He obviously knew me because he stood up the moment I entered. He was only a small guy, and I asked him what it was all about.

  “By way of answer he asked me if I had received a letter he said he sent me. I told him I received lots of letters; what was it about? Bill looked around to make sure we were not overheard said he had supplied details of a radioactive leak that occurred on board a U.S. submarine some years ago. He said since then a lot of men had gotten sick, but it had also affected their children. He said he had been reading about the things I had been involved with. He said he meant that in a respectful manner. He wanted to talk to me about it, the reason being…and then he started to cry…

  “I just stood there embarrassed. I got him a glass of water. As he composed himself, I told him I had received no letter about American submarines. But I did tell him about the mysterious encounter on the ferry. Bill said that didn’t surprise him as he convinced his mail was routinely monitored and ‘they’ probably just wanted to have a look at me.

  “Bill finally blurted out what he had really come to say: ‘We’ve just had a baby, my wife and me…and there are things wrong with him. My wife is very, very upset and we just wondered, because of the things you’ve been involved with, whether you had any paperwork on that. He went on to say he had been warned by his superiors about spreading rumours. He was told he could get into serious trouble.

  “I just looked at him and said: ‘Several of my members have had babies born with all sorts of deformities. They think it was because they were exposed to radiation, and yes, I do have some literature on that. Medical papers and so on. Is that the sort of thing you are ta
lking about?’

  “Bill nodded, and I asked him if he had been exposed to radiation. He said he had, aboard his sub. He refused to go into details but said it happened a number of years ago in the Pacific, and that some of his shipmate’s wives had also given birth to deformed children. There were quite a few. I asked him what was wrong with his child. He said he had no fingers.

  “I told the young sailor I would see what paperwork I had and forward it on to him at the base. Bill told me not to do that. Apart from the fact it might be opened, he was being sent home next week. Could I send it there? I said of course, and he gave me an address. I eventually sent him a pile of stuff, but that was the last I heard of him.”

  McGinley was, naturally, troubled by all this. He wasn’t surprised that he might be “a target for surveillance” because he was, after all, a well-known anti-nuclear activist who ran a hotel whose clients were US servicemen from a nuclear sub base.

  In fact he would have found it more surprising if they didn’t keep a cautious eye on him. He had already been informed that his phone was tapped. A relative who worked for the Post Office had warned him on the quiet. He was also told his mail was routinely intercepted.

  By this time, and not unnaturally, McGinley was struggling not to join in with the general paranoia that existed over all matters nuclear at the time. But it all came flooding back several months later when “Bill’s” story about a serious radiation leak aboard a US submarine was confirmed. Just as the American said a large number of submariners had been contaminated and several of their wives gave birth to children with deformities.

  Mrs Jackie Jones, the Scots wife of an American submariner reported her son, Clyde, had been born with only half his left arm. But she alleged he was just one of 14 children born at the huge US navy base in Puerto Rico.

  According to Mrs Jones, who was separated from her husband, there had been a US board of inquiry but the proceedings had been secret. The families involved had all been told to keep their mouths shut, but later the authorities admitted there had been a leak and that children had been affected.