ustxtxb_obs_1994_04_08_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

Fredna Allen CARMEN GARCIA Elmerine Whitfield CARMEN GARCIA medical records, she took advantage of the unscheduled arrival of a network news crew at her mother’s home on a day Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary was scheduled to call her there. O’Leary, who had been advised on the day of the scheduled phone call that news cameras were present, promised to do what she could to get the DOE records to Fredna Allen and her daughter. On March 2, the DOE released some medical records. “They gave them to us in redacted form,” Garrison said, “with the patients’ names and other important information blacked out.” But with the information Welsome had already compiled, she was able to identify all but three of the 18 secret subjects of the plutonium experiments. \(Welsome was traveling and not available Asked if she believed that the agency is intentionally stonewalling, or if the slow delivery of the documents is caused by bureaucratic mismanagement, Garrison said that what is happening is intentional, but she is not certain that Washington is responsible for it: “I think that what’s going on here,” Garrison said, “is that in the regional offices the local folks have the documents. And they’re obviously in control of them. And they know what’s in it. And those documents are embarrassing. They don’t want to produce them; In fact, somebody in Chicago I spoke to said as much to me. We understand that the same thing might apply to the folks out in the Albuquerque area, too, where they feel fairly autonomous, that they are protected. And if the central office doesn’t know that the documents even exist there, then how are they going to enforce [FOIA] requests? On the other hand, while I think that the central office is well-intentioned, I’m also concerned about what I see as some foot-dragging here. “There are some indications,” Garrison also said after the March 2 release of records, “that there were more than 18 people involved in the studies.” If so, Energy Secretary O’Leary, who attracted wider attention to the story with her public apology on behalf of the government when the Tribune published the story in November, and then by bringing the topic up again in a December 7 press conference, could make a difference. “I have to think that what she and her senior staff folks intend to do is very laudable,” Garrison said in February. “My problem is that, while I applaud what she says, I’m concerned that they haven’t performed. And I don’t know whether it’s because of other people, the bureaucrats, are stalling on this process and they don’t know about [it], or, if in fact there is something else going on.” Welsome also thinks O’Leary has helped keep the story alive. “I don’t think she’s a heroine as she has been depicted in the media,” Welsome said. “But while her predecessors probably would have covered it up, she said she was appalled and shamedby what had been done.” Elmer Allen died of respiratory failure, in a nursing home in Italy, in June of 1991. He was 80. He had never consented to, nor was he ever informed of, what had been done to him, although his family physician knew and was told to inform the DOE when Allen died. In March, Elmerine Whitfield finally received some of the medical records the secretary of energy promised to help secure. There was no information about what happened prior to 1972, “nothing significant” in them she said. Whitfield said that she will get the complete records. “I am doing this for my mother,” she said. But another comment suggests another motive. “I want those records,” she said. “You know, I learned more from Eileen than I learned from the records they sent us. … Now I know that when I was growing up in Italy, I didn’t live with Elmer Allen. I lived with Cal-3.” 6 APRIL 8, 1994