Area 51_ An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base - Annie Jacobsen [234]
18. to secure the government contracts to clean things up: And what a massive market it would become. In addition to future nuclear accidents, there would be a colossal amount of radiation detection work to be done in, on, and around the Pacific Proving Ground. Between 1946 and 1958, the Atomic Energy Commission had exploded forty nuclear bombs, including the largest thermonuclear bomb ever exploded by the United States, the fifteen-megaton Castle Bravo bomb—a thousand times as powerful as the weapon dropped on Hiroshima. In June of 1971, an EG&G crew was dispatched to Eniwetok Atoll by the Atomic Energy Commission “for the purposes of pre-cleanup surveying.” EG&G had armed, wired, and fired all the bombs in the Pacific. Now, using radiation detection equipment, the company determined that the island was still uninhabitable by all life forms in the water and the air—even after thirteen years. But clean-up efforts could begin. These efforts would take decades, cost untold dollars, and involve several different contractors. EG&G would lead the way.
19. EG&G had been taking radiation measurements: Interviews with Al O’Donnell, Jim Freedman; Eniwetok Precleanup Survey Soil and Terrestrial, Radiation Survey (Lynch, Gudiksen and Jones) No. 44878; draft revised 5/14/73.
20. corporate headquarters won’t say: Interview with Meagan Stafford, EG&G/URS public relations, Sard Verbinnen & Co., July 16, 2010.
21. President Clinton was in 1994: Interview with EG&G engineer. DOE Openness Initiative, Human Radiation Experiments, EG&G Energy Measurements, Las Vegas, Nevada, Finding Aids, Radioactive Fallout: “EG&G/EM played an important role in monitoring airborne radiation from weapons testing, and it retained many records relating to monitoring air-borne radiation including reports on the Nevada Aerial Tracking Systems for the 1960s. The company has developed a computerized inventory of the collection which includes some 24,000 classified documents, films, view-graphs, and other materials. Currently the company is attempting to reorganize its archives into a usable collection designed to accommodate future research efforts. The dismantling process that was begun in 1986 has been halted. The CIC will retain fallout records from the aboveground testing program. All other original research documentation, film, note-books, and other records relating to EG&G/EM’s important role in monitoring airborne radiation and weapons testing, including reports and maps of cloud tracking still housed at EM, will be retained by EM. Classified Material Control (CMC) contains numerous reports on later testing programs and Aerial Tracking Systems reports for the 1960s. The company also holds original survey data for the period before 1971, but this has not been inventoried. There is an effort under way to obtain the funding to inventory and create a computerized database for these records.”
22. the president did not have a need-to-know: Interview with EG&G engineer.
23. one-line reference: Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments Final Report, 506–507.
24. If Area 51 had a doppelgänger: At Groom Lake, for a thirteen-year period beginning in 1955, the CIA and the U.S. Air Force comanaged spy plane programs using science and technology to advance the art of aerial espionage. Forty miles to the southwest, at Jackass Flats, beginning around 1955 and for a period of seventeen years, the Atomic Energy Commission, NASA, and the Department of Defense comanaged nuclear rocket programs using science and technology to try to get man to Mars. There is an interesting paradox. At Area 51, the spy plane programs were funded by black budgets, meaning their existence was hidden from Congress and the public. Not until they were declassified by the CIA—the U-2 program in 1998 and the A-12 Oxcart program in 2007—were their existences confirmed. The term Area 51 has remained redacted, or blacked out, from declassified documents. When Air Force and CIA officials are