Senator BENNETT. Thank you. That is reassuring. I am just reinforcing to you, Mr. Secretary, what I said to Secretary O'Leary. It is one thing to go back in the past and dig up what has been done, and I think that should be done, but I think the first question should be are we all right right now, and make sure we focus on that, and I am delighted with the response.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no other questions.

Chairman GLENN. Thank you very much. In the military, too, we want to find out some time how many of these people volunteered and how many were volunteered. You know, we are looking for volunteers today; we will take Smith, Mather, Brown and Keener. You just volunteered for whatever it was.

Secretary BROWN. That is a good question, Senator.

Chairman GLENN. Some of that may have occurred in the past, too. Thank you very much. We will have additional questions for you, I am sure, and we would appreciate an early response so we can include them as part of the record.

Our next panel is on the Federal agencies' role: Dr. Harold Smith, Assistant to the Secretary for Atomic Energy, Department of Defense, accompanied by Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hagemann. The next accompanying person here is Col. John Glenn, which I found of interest, of the U.S. Army Medical Service Corporation, Acting Chairman of the Army Surgeon General's Human Subjects Research Review Board. And we have Dr. Donald Henderson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health and Science, Department of Health and Human Services.

We welcome all of you this morning. Dr. Smith, we look forward to your testimony here. I am sorry we have taken so long this morning here, but I think you know the interest there is in this and why we have gone as long as we have this morning.

Senator COHEN. Mr. Chairman, could I respectfully suggest that Col. John Glenn be sent out to Ohio to respond to any of the criticism you have received?

Chairman GLENN. I would appreciate that. I don't know what the Ohio press is going to do when John Glenn is questioning John Glenn here and how this comes out in the Ohio press, but we hope it all comes out in good order.

Dr. Smith, go ahead. Thank you.

TESTIMONY OF HAROLD SMITH,1 ASSISTANT TO THE SECRETARY FOR ATOMIC ENERGY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, ACCOMPANIED BY MAJ. GEN. KENNETH HAGEMANN, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE NUCLEAR AGENCY; COL. JOHN GLENN, ACTING CHAIRMAN, ARMY SURGEON GENERAL'S HUMAN SUBJECT RESEARCH REVIEW BOARD; AND COL. CHARLES H. HOKE, JR., CHIEF, DEPARTMENT OF VIRUS DISEASES, WALTER REED ARMY INSTITUTE OF RESEARCH

Dr. H. SMITH. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, it is an honor for me to appear before you today on behalf of the Department of Defense. As you have just covered, Mr. Chairman, I am accompanied by Major General Hagemann, Director of the Defense Nuclear Agency, who will testify about the nuclear test per

1 The prepared statement of Dr. H. Smith appears on page 102.

sonnel review, a very important program, and, as you have currently noted, Mr. Chairman, Col. John Fraser Glenn of the Department's Human Subject Research Review Board, and Col. Charles Hoke, Chief of the Department of Virus Diseases at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, who can provide you with expert testimony on how the Department of Defense, the military services and all DOD agencies currently conduct experiments involving human subjects and the human protections under which those experiments are allowed to be conducted. With the permission of the Committee, their statements will follow mine.

Chairman GLENN. Without objection, they will be included in the record as though delivered.

Dr. H. SMITH. At the outset of my remarks, Mr. Chairman, let me compliment you and this Committee for the continued and persistent interest you have demonstrated over the years on the broad issues of participation by humans in experimentation and protection of human subjects, including informed consent. You have been in the forefront of those concerns and have made a real contribution to elevating our national consciousness to the need for more accountability for all sponsors of experiments in which humans participated.

Indeed, you and your colleague, Senator Sasser, have been firm in your longstanding commitment to Government that is open and accountable to the people it serves. You are to be commended for all your efforts in that regard. This hearing is yet another stage in this Committee's effort to open up a part of Government which for too long remained closed to the American people. We applaud your persistence and share your dedication to these principles. Chairman GLENN. Thank you.

Dr. H. SMITH. The Department of Defense shares with its partners in the Human Radiation Interagency Working Group a commitment to a comprehensive search of its records and the release of the information it discovers. DOD has been a full partner in the interagency working group and has been active in all discussions of the group since its inception.

Secretary of Defense Les Aspin has appointed personnel from the highest levels of the Department to each of the Subcommittees organized by the interagency working group. Each appointee serves in a dual capacity. Each is deeply involved in the work of his or her interagency Subcommittee and is also an integral part of the Department's efforts.

I cannot emphasize enough the high priority placed upon this project by Secretary Aspin. As appointments were made to the interagency working group, he also established within the Department a working group which I direct under the guidance of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition. Our task is to coordinate the Department's research and retrieval effort. In constituting that group, the Secretary charged it to, "move quickly and thoroughly on this matter. It should be given high priority." At every opportunity, he has emphasized the seriousness of our task and the need to cooperate in this important undertaking.

Our effort is being driven by five principles. First, we want it to be thorough. Every agency will take every possible action to ensure that its search is comprehensive and omits nothing. Second, it will

be done as quickly as possible. Records of human radiation experiments will be collected and cataloged as soon as possible.

Third, all due care will be exercised to preserve the records. Fourth, the integrity of the process must be preserved to ensure that it retains its credibility in the long term. Finally, the process must result in an open accounting of the Department's past action in human radiation experiments.

To achieve those goals, Secretary Aspin initially directed all military services and all other DOD agency heads to retain all documents related to human ionizing radiation experiments. Furthermore, he directed persons responsible for routine document disposal to preserve any such records which they may discover.

When the interagency working group issued its formal directive outlining the scope of the search, DOD convened an all-hands meeting to ensure that all DOD agencies fully understand_the tasks to be undertaken. Secretary Aspin and Under Secretary John Deutch attended that meeting to provide specific instructions to all DOD agencies on the exact execution of the tasks at hand.

It is important to understand that this is a discovery process requiring some time before a full report can be provided to the Congress and to the people of this country. We have read or heard media reports of these types of experiments. They will all be part of our overall search. In the interim, we want to make it clear and emphasize to you that we are fully committed to this effort. We are acting expeditiously to find and catalog records. We will collect those records and review them. We will release them as comprehensively and as soon as possible, recognizing that we must proceed in a way that protects the privacy of citizens who may have been participants wittingly or unwittingly in those experiments.

Let me give you some specifics. We have attempted to organize our effort to meet both short- and long-term objectives. The Department is establishing a command center headed by a rear admiral to be the collection point and clearinghouse for records discovered in this process. As one might imagine, this retrieval will require an extensive search. With facilities located all over the country and the world, we cannot be certain where we might find records of experiments. This is not a situation where we can go to the dark cellars or attics of the Department or its agencies, find a box labeled "human radiation experiments," dust it off and release the documents inside.

It is going to be much more difficult and labor-intensive as each of the agencies within the Department search their files and their archives. The Department will not be deterred by the complexity or the difficulty of the project. We are committed to that search. The command center was established based upon the experience of the Department in the nuclear test personnel review, the NTPR, which will come up over and over again. It provides a central focal point to which agencies will refer records they may discover. We felt we needed a place for those records to be cataloged and reviewed. That will be the purpose of the command center.

Overseeing the work of the center will be a steering committee composed of DOD personnel who are involved with the work of the interagency working group. This represents a serious commitment

of resources to this project and an organization that can efficiently and effectively oversee it.

As you know, the Department of Health and Human Services issued in 1974 the definitive Federal policy regarding controls to be exercised by the Government in sponsored experiments in which humans are involved. Investigators in these experiments use rigorous protocols to ensure that individual consent is truly informed, that institution review boards are independent and assertive, and that all scientific and medical research standards are met.

My Department of Defense colleagues on this panel, Colonel Glenn and Colonel Hoke, are here to address protocol issues from the perspective of those within the Department who oversee research projects and those who execute such projects.

Finally, questions have risen about Government's ethical responsibility to those citizens who may have participated in human radiation experiments. Principally, those questions have focused on possible compensation and on medical followup treatment. At this early stage of the process, this is an issue that requires review and discussion among a number of agencies, as well as requiring the involvement of the Congress. We will certainly participate in those discussions.

Mr. Chairman, we think we have in place a process that will produce answers to the many questions being asked by you, your colleagues in the Congress and by the American people. We are committed to making that process work, and work well, to achieve two primary objectives: first, provide the American people with full disclosure of the Department's role in human radiation experiments it may have sponsored; and, two, by doing so help restore the confidence of the American people in its Government.

If our review determines that American citizens were treated wrongfully by their Government, we believe the American people are owed a full accounting and, where justified, an attempt to right any wrong done to those individuals. There are those who may argue about the mind set at the time or how the ethics of scientific research have progressed since the early days of the cold war. They do not speak for the Department of Defense. We want to learn all we can about the Department's role in human radiation experiments that took place and share that information with the people whom we serve.

Thank you very much.

Senator COHEN [presiding]. Thank you very much, Dr. Smith. Senator Glenn had to depart to go to the floor to cast the first vote of this session. Senator Bennett and I will do likewise as soon as Senator Glenn returns. In the meantime, let me just pose a general question and then perhaps a couple of comments.

You have got a particularly daunting task to sift through what must be volumes and volumes of classified and now declassified documents to uncover the details relating to radiation testing. Can you tell us whether the search has turned up any tests that are not publicly known as of this time?

Dr. H. SMITH. They have turned up no tests of which the public is not already aware, but it is an extensive search that is ongoing and it uses every conceivable means at our disposal-key word searches, newspaper searches, searches of the professional journals,

interviewing of personnel who may have participated, and on and on and on. We are using every mechanism at our disposal to investigate the entire panoply of records.

Mr. Chairman, I wondered if you wanted to hear the statements from my other colleagues.

Senator COHEN. Of course, if they have statements to make. I wasn't aware they were going to make statements, but surely.

TESTIMONY OF MAJ. GEN. KEN HAGEMANN1

Major General HAGEMANN. Good morning, sir. I am Maj. Gen. Ken Hagemann, the Director of the Defense Nuclear Agency. My agency is the executive agent for the nuclear test personnel review program. This is a national program that serves out veterans and other on-site personnel who took part in the U.S. atmospheric nuclear testing. Thank you and your colleagues for giving me this opportunity to update you.

I would like to summarize three major changes that have occurred since Vice Adm. Robert Monroe testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Energy, Nuclear Proliferation and Federal Services back in 1979.

First, our atomic veteran population has been expanded by law to include new classes of individuals in addition to the veterans that were part of the atmospheric nuclear testing program. We now also serve some of the U.S. prisoners of war who were held in Japan, as well as members of the occupational forces of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This expansion occurred in 1988 and effectively doubled our constituents from around 200,000 to approximately 400,000 people that are in the program today.

Second, the Defense Nuclear Agency's role is limited by statute tɔ verifying the participation in U.S. atmospheric nuclear testing and providing radiation exposure information. We provide this data to the veterans, their families and representatives to support their claims with the Department of Veterans of Affairs, the Department of Justice, and also the Department of Labor. Issues regarding health effects, medical care and compensation are the responsibility of those departments.

Third, the average external exposure of 0.5 REM that was cited in the 1979 testimony has been increased to 0.62 REM. I need to point out that this level is still well below the current Federal guideline for occupational exposure, which is 5 REM per year. The nuclear test personnel review does not engage in estimating radiation exposure levels for the general public.

Today, our outreach efforts include a toll-free phone line, articles in veterans magazines, media releases, congressional referrals and, of course, direct contact with veterans and other veterans organizations. We have been in direct contact with over 70,000 veterans and have received about 2,000 new contacts each year over the past 5 years. Since the recent interest in human radiation research, we are seeing a 20-fold increase in calls to the NTPR hot line.

We are extremely pleased that our NTPR experience is now assisting the Department of Defense and the interagency working group in their current effort to examine the issue of ionizing radi

1 The prepared statement of Major General Hagemann appears on page 103.