Abstract

Duck & Cover-Up

The U.S. Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary has started a revolution in official openness. She has described herself as appalled, shocked and deeply saddened by four decades of government-sponsored human radiation experiments. A woman of great personal magnetism, she cheerfully admitted to knowing little about the U.S. Department of Energy's immense nuclear weapons complex. She Invited Greenpeace and the disarmament-oriented Military Production Network to meet with her at her office. She is fiercely pushing minority- and gender-balanced hiring. Critics have charged that such openness will cripple the entire national security apparatus. Members of the scientific and medical establishment defend the experiments, saying that they produced valuable data and that the doses in question were harmless.