The Clinton administration is embarking on a massive, governmentwide paper search to learn how many Americans deliberately were subjected to radiation experiments during the early years of the Cold War.
"If people were wronged, we're going to make it right," White House adviser George Stephanopoulos said Tuesday on NBC, a day after an interagency task force met for the first time to map out the records collection effort.Stephanopoulos indicated the records search would extend to the Central Intelligence Agency. "We're going to be working with the CIA, and we expect good participation," he said.
White House communications director Mark Gearan said Monday that President Clinton intended to work with Congress on getting compensation for any victims who have been wronged by questionable radiation experimentation.
Meanwhile, thousands of callers jammed a toll-free telephone line at the Energy Department that was set up two weeks ago to allow people to provide information about improper human radiation testing, much of it in the 1940s and 1950s.
"Our lines are swamped," said Mary Ann Freeman, a department spokeswoman. She said there have been as many as 10,000 calls a day, with many people unable to reach one of 12 operators on duty.
Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, who has promised full disclosure of radiation experimentation, has said as many as 800 individuals may have been subjected to questionable testing.
But others, including Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., have suggested the number could be much higher. Markey held hearings in 1986 on human radiation tests and outlined some of the experimentation in a report that year.
But he said the Energy Department then refused to cooperate by providing further documents.
Markey, appearing Tuesday on NBC, had praise for the Clinton administration's performance, saying that the administration had been "breathtakingly open about records that have been closed for over 45 years."
Gearan took a swipe at the Bush and Reagan administrations, saying they ignored the findings by Markey's subcommittee and refused to cooperate by making public documents related to the testing.
"Nothing was followed up," Gearan said.
He said that the interagency task force planned to meet regularly and that a half-dozen departments and agencies were examining their records and files to try to pinpoint any improper radiation experiments.
The search is expected to cover tens of thousands of documents, many of them in government archives, but many others in the hands of private research institutions, hospitals, laboratories and former government contractors.
"It is quite an enormous undertaking," said Tara O'Toole, assistant energy secretary for safety and environment. She said it likely will take months.
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