Ge Perpetuates Hanford’s Sins

The world was still reeling from the Nuremberg Trials when the Atomic Energy Commission adopted a policy in 1947 that required written permission from Americans before they were used as subjects of nuclear experimentation.

Then it promptly ignored its own policy.

Only now are Americans learning about clandestine experiments conducted in the name of Cold War defense. And they’re horrific. Unsuspecting hospital patients injected with plutonium; prisoners whose testicles were bombarded with X-rays until they were sterile; retarded children fed radioactive cereal; and, of course, the 1949 Hanford Green Run, where Eastern Washington residents were deliberately and unknowingly exposed to radioactive iodine.

A paper trail made public this week by the White House’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments also revealed the Atomic Energy Commission took body parts from dead babies and adults - all the while lying to the press and the public about the body- snatching program.

So much for candor. It’s this kind of duplicity that fuels the fiery rhetoric of anti-government types. It’s no wonder conspiracy theories meet with such acceptance when Americans learn about past crimes and coverups by its leaders.

Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary was shocked when she discovered the depth and depravity of these experiments, and she and President Clinton have led the charge for openness since last year. The White House committee formed to disclose the ugly past was a necessary step.

But it falls short in one regard. Private contractors, paid to run government programs during the Cold War era, are balking. They are hiding behind lawyers, saying they don’t have an obligation to turn over documents about the experiments because they’re privately owned.

Wrong. Billions of government dollars - that’s taxpayer money, mind you - went to those companies. The public is entitled to a full accounting of what was done in the name of weapons production.

O’Leary’s committee should use its considerable clout to force these companies to comply with the Freedom of Information Act, starting with a request by The Spokesman-Review for secret General Electric Co. memos that detail human experiments that “appear to have violated (Washington’s) criminal code,” as one letter says.

Americans will have a hard time trusting its government until they feel they’re being dealt with fairly and honestly.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Anne Windishar/For the editorial board