"The principle of medical and surgical morality…consists in never performing
on man an experiment which might be harmful to him to any extent, even
though the result might be highly advantageous to science, i.e., to the health
of others…it is immoral, then, to make an experiment on man when it is
dangerous to him, even though the result may be useful to others."
(French physician Claude Bernard, 1865)[3]
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A complex case study requires a variety of research methods to adequately address the
issue; one methodology will not suffice in this type of multi-layered, multi-dimensional,
long-sustained problematic. In fact, no single methodological approach would come
close to explaining, or even defining the problem. When we look to the existing
literature, some theories can explain part of the organizational dynamics and actions that
occur in this case study. We can examine contributing elements such obedience, group
influence/groupthink, rationalization, compartmentalization, tapping into ordinary
attributes and personal goals to harness enthusiastic participation, dehumanization of
outsiders (victims in particular), and the climate of the times. All of these help us to
understand the events herein, in part. Yet complex crimes or acts of harm by an
organization over an extended period of time, involving the contributions of thousands of
seemingly “normal” people (no ill-intent) require us to go further in our explanation. Do
all of the participants even realize that they are participating in harmful acts?
If the victims don't know a harmful act has occurred, should we assume that the internal
organizational participants know? Certainly some participants have full and complete
knowledge, but do all?
My task was to look at this complex phenomenon from the vantage point of this specific
case study. The actions of participants are not sufficiently explained by existing theory.
The medical model does not suffice to explain organizational dynamics here, because the
individuals that supported and advanced the projects for the military-scientist elites, were
likely not pathological or deviant. In fact, one could argue that behind the efforts of the
Manhattan-Rochester Coalition were normal, high-functioning universities and other
institutions in this particular case. Indeed, this helped in part, to conceal the activities of
the organization. The human rights model does not explain what occurred, either. At the
time that the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition emerged at the end of WWII and the
beginning of the Cold War, American exceptionalism was at a peak.
The elite decisionmakers of the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition felt justified for their actions,
in that they believed that they must preserve American freedom, as the most important place freedom
and rights, in order to preserve world freedom. This in fact, was the basis of Cold War
ideology. Indeed, it was the suspension of the human rights model, that allowed for
ethical and social autism. The criminology model perhaps best explains the actions seen
herein, except it too, falls short. There was indeed, criminal behavior at the top of the
decision tree in the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition, and state crime is certainly applicable
here. Crimes against humanity could also be applied effectively in this context. Yet, we
cannot explain the actions of the thousands of underlings—many of whom did not fully
understand the role that they were playing in advancing the project as a whole, or even
what the project was, in part because it was highly classified. The vast support staff
beneath the decision-makers, advanced the harmful acts as ordered by the elites of the
coalition, even if unbeknownst to that staff. The fundamental question here is however,
how the thousands of underlings (seemingly good people and citizens in other spheres of
their lives), who moved in and out of the organization over a period of many decades,
came to participate in harmful actions on behalf of the organization.
Early reviews of secondary sources had all posited that the St. Louis aerosol study was
related to bioweapons and/or chemical weapons. Primary sources—in this case Army
documents-- also implied that the St. Louis tests were related to bioweapons, but
evidence was in fact quite scant, and agencies were not forthcoming with information. I
followed the chemical/biological direction set out by the earlier researchers and the
Army, and as a result, found many imposing brick walls in my path, whereby I would
reroute along another fissure to explore. There were vague mentions of the St. Louis
study, but nothing substantive in the literature, anywhere. I initially spent many hours
reviewing material related to radiation studies, but became nervous that I was burning
time on the calendar that I could ill afford, so I abandoned that tract, and re-doubled my
efforts towards chemical and biological weapons testing. My task of unveiling the facts
of this case study was not an easy one. Through this painstaking process, I initially spent
many hundreds of hours looking for a radioactive needle in a chemical-biological
haystack.
It was when I was well into researching chemical and biological weapons and
not finding much substantive information on the St. Louis study, when I picked up Eileen
Welsome?s book The Plutonium Files. Her book had lingered on my bookcase for about
a year, and I had no time for what was now relegated to recreational reading. As I drifted
off to sleep each night however, I read bits of Welsome?s book, and chords of familiarity
slowly unfolded for me. Events and familiar names aligned in provocative ways with my
own research. Pieces of the puzzle continued to fit together, and early one Sunday
morning, I had the jarring realization that the St. Louis aerosol study was much more
aligned with radioactive military testing than with bioweapons or chemical weapons
projects, and that a network of Manhattan-Project related scientists seemed to be tied to
the St. Louis study. I found this revelation literally breathtaking, and the daunting task of
putting this information together even more so.
I sent out at least forty Freedom of Information Act requests to every agency that had
potential involvement, and that in itself, was a test in fortitude as request after request
came back with not a single sheet of data or information. The Army at Aberdeen Proving
Ground finally came through, where paralegal Brian May provided me with a “blizzard”
of documents in electronic format. This gave me more needles in more haystacks, along
with concrete evidence confirming the blizzarding tactic as a response to public inquiry.
I spent endless hours reading dry military data to find the hidden gems within the old
military reports. Indeed, there were a few there. After some often-terse written
communications with the Office of the Command Judge Advocate at the Department of
the Army, Dugway Proving Ground, I was provided with another blizzard of documents
at a nominal fee.
Appreciative for anything through FOIA, I was nevertheless
disappointed that Dugway continued to deny some documents to the public (and to
researchers such as myself), by their own admission. In fact, some documents were
available for distribution to government agencies only, including a very important,
Behavior of Aerosol Clouds within Cities, Part 2; technical Summary, April 1954, which
summarized the findings of the St. Louis study. Dugway refused to provide this crucial
document to me, even after I appealed the decline. Nevertheless, I appreciate the
hundreds of pages of documents that were provided to me by Kateni Leakehe, Major,
U.S. Army, Command Judge Advocate at Dugway Proving Ground. The FOIA
responses that I received varied from mostly blatant denial, to stonewalling, and
blizzarding. Clearly, the control of information that played such a key role in the St.
Louis aerosol study and the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition?s work, and was essential to
generating ethical and social autism, was impacting my own research as well.
Information is still controlled through the same mechanisms, and this became quite
obvious as I attempted to gather, declassify, and analyze government documents, a full
six decades after the first aerosol experiment in St. Louis. The mechanisms that were
used to maintain the lock on military information related to the St. Louis aerosol studies
when I requested documents for this project, and the mechanisms used to control
information outflow and thus public inquiry and critical analysis internally through the
Manhattan Rochester Coalition during the past several decades while testing was
ongoing, were identical. Thus, theory and methods were brought together in this study.
I pulled and reviewed hundreds of news articles from Lexis-Nexis, along with regional,
national, and international newspaper searches, as related to chemical, biological, and
nuclear weapons testing, hoping to find a mention about the St. Louis study.
Some of the most fruitful finds came from Congressional reports, which discussed human subject
testing overall. In the 1990?s, under the direction of President Bill Clinton, Hazel
O?Leary cleared the way for release of tens of thousands of documents related to humansubject
testing. Indeed, she played a heroic role in truth seeking for scholars, reporters,
lawyers, and American citizens who were victimized by human subject tests.
Unfortunately, despite the release of these many documents during the Clinton
administration, the military continues to maintain a high level of secrecy related to the St.
Louis study- something I found curious, given the release of official records that have
revealed some extraordinarily revolting experiments by the military during the same time
period. As in the 1950s and 1960s, today the St. Louis aerosol study still remains mostly
hidden.
The National Research Council?s (NRC) Toxicological Assessment of the Army’s Zinc
Cadmium Sulfide Dispersion Tests, proved to be one of the only resources for hard data,
regarding actual release levels of the material sprayed in St. Louis and other cities in the
United States. Notably, the NRC (who by Congressional and Army request, took on the
task of gathering information related to aerosol dispersion tests in St. Louis and several
other cities such as Minneapolis), found its own path stonewalled by the Army. Thus,
even the NRC?s official data had gaping holes and missing data, which I did my best to
fill in from other sources, such as published articles in obscure science journals.
I spent a few days in the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C., where I had some
assistance from wonderful library personnel who were willing to go the extra mile for an
out of town researcher working on a tight deadline. Some excellent documents in their
collection confirmed that I was moving in the right direction with my research, and
provided key points to help understand the early formation of the Manhattan-Rochester
Coalition, and industry?s involvement.
Word of advice, do not wander too far in the basement tunnels of the Library of Congress;
you may never be seen again.
George Washington University?s National Security Archives document collection,
provided a useful collection of research material. The research institute and library
collects and makes available online to researchers, declassified documents pertaining to a
plethora of important topics. Invaluable information can and was found there. Personnel
at Washington University?s Rare Book Room generously opened some files for me, and I
spent a day reading about tooth studies and other fateful events that turned out to be
related to the St. Louis aerosol study, although I?m not sure I realized how useful those
documents would be until much later, when I discovered Projects GABRIEL and
SUNSHINE. Notably, data related to Monsanto was either removed from the file, or had
never been added, which was surprising given their role in management and oversight of
Oak Ridge National Laboratories during the 1940s.
I did not interview participants for this project. Many victims and participants have no
knowledge of the St. Louis aerosol study, so to locate interview subjects would be
extremely difficult and arduous, particularly given the level of secrecy of the project.
That said, oral history transcripts of high-level participants in human-subject radiation
studies have been made available to researchers such as myself, through the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, and I utilized those interview transcripts in
this project. The Oral Histories project was a controversial one at the time, undertaken
by President Clinton?s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, which
examined hundreds of radiation studies on American populations by the military and its
contractors. The committee, headed by physician Ruth Faden, along with a variety of
experts in science, ethics, medicine, and history, painstakingly assembled this oral history
archive of interviews with high-ranking scientists and medical personnel who had
participated in human experiments or were members of the elite Manhattan-Rochester
Coalition, in addition to their various written commission reports and online documents.
The Presidential Advisory Committee?s Oral History Project was a very valuable primary
source, that filled in the interview gap.
The task for many research ventures, is to identify a gap in the literature and attempt to
fill that gap, by way of theory and supporting evidence. There are other times that
existing theory does not sufficiently explain events, and new theory, grounded in
evidence, must be developed. This particular case study is not only instructive in
understanding secrecy of the State and historical events involving the victimization of
vulnerable populations, but in also understanding more about complex organizations, and
how large organizations manage to effectively quash dissent internally to pursue-without
interruption- harmful and/or illegal projects, and how the public can acquire no
awareness of its own victimization at the hand of the State. Indeed, this case study opens
up a Pandora?s box with more questions than answers. Countless times, I would turn a
rock to discover a sinister secret, and find many more layers to peel back to reveal
another piece; I would have hundreds more rocks to sort through until finding the next
hidden secret beneath. This project was a test of fortitude, and it gave me trust in my
researcher?s intuition.
What initially presented as a singular, local, isolated event, burst
into an issue that could have taken me down hundreds of “rabbit holes”, and could have
easily cost me a decade or more, in time. The more that I uncovered of this story, the
more of an enigma the story became. Nevertheless, this complex case study required an
equally complex methodological design to distinguish claims from events. It is my belief
that this piece contributes to the literature in explaining complex organizational dynamics
as it relates to large-scale and long-term internal participation in crime, harm, and
unethical actions, and external responses or non-responses to harmful or unethical
organizational actions.
CHAPTER ONE - METHODOLOGY