MS. PLAZA: Mr. Dennis Roper. Would you identify your association?

MR. ROPER: My name is Dennis Roper. I am a Special Assistant for Government Affairs underneath the George Ahmaogak Administration for the North Slope Borough.

Excuse me?

(Pause.)

MR. ROPER: Again, my name is Dennis Roper, I am a Special Assistant for Government Affairs for the North Slope Borough. That is a political subdivision of the State of Alaska. It encompasses about 89 square miles of the farthest north territory.

I have sat here now for two days. I have sat through other radiation hearings. I have been introduced as an expert. And I have to tell you people in this room, that I certainly don=t feel like an expert. I feel very small and very humble being in your presence. Actually I believe that I am sitting, looking out at the audience and looking at the experts. Last night in my hotel room, about three o=clock in the morning, I said to myself, AWhat am I going to say to these people tomorrow? Am I going to read a canned deposition, so to speak, or affidavit that has been prepared for me?@ I manage a division of the North Slope Borough. I have at my disposal nine attorneys. I have the best lobbyists in the State of Alaska and in Washington, D.C. that money can buy. We have under contract super attorneys. And I almost feel guilty when I listen to the plight of many people in this room. So, as I make my presentation here, I do want you to know that I feel humble. I am going to try to address recommendations, not necessarily seven and eight. They don=t really pertain to the Alaskan Native issue. Obviously you take a look at me, I am not an Alaskan native. But, I have been in Alaska for 25 years. I have lived since 1980 in the Arctic. I raised my children up there. My wife is an Alaskan native. She is not a Inupiat, she is an Alauop. And for those that have studied your history, you have probably heard of Ancipuar Island, that is where they set off a nuclear bomb in the >70s, my wife has worked and lived there. We have heard a lot about fallout from the Russian nuclear activities. I sit here as I listen to you folks, I hear my daughter says, AGee, what did I ingest while we were living in the Arctic?@

So with that little brief history, I would like to bring to your attention, two items that took place up there. One of that my colleague from the Air Force mentioned, I am going to call it Iodine 131. Now this little experiment encompassed about 180 Eskimos and Indians. I said 180, 102, excuse me. I was looking at another item. Essentially as he has described, radioactive isotopes were ingested to do thyroid studies. In other words they were asking, trying to figure out how come the Eskimos could stay warm in the winter.

Now before I move on, there is a gentleman in the audience, his name is Joseph Ballot, he is a Inupiat Eskimo from Constaboo and I would like Joseph to stand up. He has something he wants to say to me.

MR. BALLOT: Thank you, my real name is Amankut, for the purpose of the Federal Government, my name is Joseph Ballot.

(Spoke in Inupiat Language.)

MR. ROPER: Thank you, Joseph.

Now, I am not going to pick on somebody on this panel. I am going to pick a gentleman, sitting over to my right, I believe he is a gentleman and it is not to pick on him, but I am going to ask Colonel Bailey if he could tell me what Joseph has just said to me.

COLONEL BAILEY: I don=t have the foggiest.

MR. ROPER: Ladies and Gentlemen, Joseph with his native Inupiat language. He just asked me if I wanted to participate in a medical experiment. In the 1950s --

(Applause.)

MR. ROPER: In 1950, the scientists and the physicians descended upon the Inupiat. And what did they say? They said, we are going to show you an

x-ray. We are going to show you various things about your body and we want you to participate in this. You just heard the language, folks, those people couldn=t speak English. They couldn=t even write it. So, there certainly wasn=t any consent.

I have already been told I only have two minutes, so I am going to move on a little bit.

But, in talking about Iodine 131, one of the comments that I wanted to make to the Advisory Committee and to the Working Group, is that under recommendation three, when the apologies were certainly stated that they should be given, a little courtesy is due the Inupiats. The Inupiat people live in a remote area. They are not able to see the President of the United States on C-Span.

Now, the Borough has undertook a major responsibility. And the Inupiats that are in living in the North Slope do have an advantage. We are borough that has some dollars available. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have sued the Federal Government. We sued them for 400 million dollars. I am not sure if we are going to win or not, but we are going to give it one heck of a try.

(Applause.)

MR. ROPER: We are also doing something else that the Federal Government hasn=t done, at the Borough=s own expense, all medical records of the participants are being reviewed. Each surviving victim is receiving a complete physical examination and for their life there will be follow-up and we are going to pay for it.

(Applause.)

MR. ROPER: I am going to move onto the next item, just because of time. You have probably heard of Project Chariot. Boy, this was a humdinger. Project Chariot took place in a little village up there called Point Hope. And in 1958 the Atomic Energy Committee had a great idea, they were going to do an experiment, Harvard Excavation and guess how they were going to do it? They were going to blow a hole in the Inupiats= land. Now, the local people, the local natives, they raised enough cane. They got that stopped. But, before they left, meaning the Atomic Energy, or Nuclear Commission, they left a bunch of radio isotopes there. And about 30 years later a gentleman at the University of Fairbanks, he revealed the letter that essentially said that. This obviously became a big concern to the native people because this radio material was left where they hunt for their food, that makes up most of their diet.

Now, the Department of Energy and we do commend them, they came up, and they removed tons and tone of this contaminated soil and brought it down to the lower fort aid. Now, I am not sure which one of you got it, but we are happy that is it gone from the North Slope.

MR. BAILEY: Mr. Roper, if I may interject here, you came so far and I like that example, you have got two more minutes.

MR. ROPER: Okay, thank you very much.

In regards to the recommendations, because that is why I am up here. We certainly that Project Chariot falls underneath recommendation five of the Advisory Committee=s final report. Recommendation five asks the Working Group and Congress to consider amending the provisions of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 to encompass additional populations who were environmentally exposed to radiation from government nuclear activities.

Now, in conclusion, we have heard mention here of the oversight hearing and for Government Affairs it is going to take place on March 12th. We consider ourselves pretty fortunate because the chairman of that committee is Ted Stevens from Alaska. Now for those of you that are going to be able to attend that, you are not going to have to listen to me, because Mayor George Ahmaogak and the participants are going to be there. And I guarantee, folks, they are going to light up the room.

I also want to say to you, survivors, stakeholders out there, I gave you a little bit of background, obviously I am part of the System. I know how government works. I know how to raise money. I have raised a lot of money for political candidates. I went down there and found a lot of money for the North Slope Borough. But, you have my word, even though the North Slope Borough is not a member of the Task Force on Radiation, we will be in there fighting for all of you to try to accommodate, seeking funds, not only for you as stakeholders, but also to try to help the people over in the agencies that see their budgets, you know, getting cut.

So, with that I will close and say thank you. And certainly answer any questions that you might ask.

MS. PLAZA: I would like to recognize Ray Koonuk, if he is in here today. Okay. What about David Harding? I think you have something to say to us.

MR. HARDING: David Harding from North Slope Borough. We are running out of time here and so I will make it very brief. You have heard the North Slope Borough=s response to the Advisory Committee Report and Ray Koonuk is one of the local experts on radiation issues. He is the Mayor of the Village of Point Hope that was affected by Project Chariot. We hope that he will be here to give you more detail than I could.

I would just reiterate that the Borough is determined to make this process responsive in ways that build on the work of the Advisory Committee and that lead to Government actions that will yield a response to any physical harm that we might be able to identify among our people who were exposed. As well as the lingering fears that they feel, that may seem small from such a great distance, but back home they loom very large.

And I guess the other thing is and most important is that we believe that the Government, that any government response should flow from an understanding of the trust responsibility that the Government has to the native people and to the heightened level of responsibility for health care that is fundamental to that relationship. So I will just leave it at that. Thank you.

MS. PLAZA: Questions?

MR. SAGE: I am sorry, I am Mike Sage with CDC. I would ask a couple of questions about what we were doing in the Marshall Islands and I just wanted to clarify that.

About a year, a little over a year ago, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister Health of the Marshall Islands visited CDC, had a long conversation about things going on in the Marshall Islands activities, we had going on there. And asked us for assistance in looking at radiation issues specifically thyroid disease on islands other than Rongelap and Utirik. I think it sounded to some people in the audience like we will go look at the populations of Rongelap and Utirik and who have been heavily studied and DOE has a continuing program. We agreed to work with the Government of Marshall Islands, funded the Ministry of Health there to look at some of these issues and to provide them technical assistance. And that is where we are at this point.

MR. CONN: Hi, I am Steve Conn. I am a retired professor from the University of Alaska and currently Executive Director of Alaska Public Interest Research Group and we have been doing, for some years, prior to the O=Leary announcement and then after document research on this subject.

I wanted to just underscore a couple of points that seemed to fit here. First, the North Slope Borough is to be commended for focusing its resources and attention on the situation, not only of the Eskimos of the North Slope, but of the Alaskan Natives in general and their situation. Without their vigorous pursuit of this, I don=t and encouraging Senator Stevens to hold the hearing, I think many people would have been left at the gate on this subject.

In the business of, I am a researcher and one problem that, we had fully anticipated a kind of openness and I want to connect this to the subject of the trust responsibility. There is no question in our minds that on these two Alaskan experiments as well as the Navaho uranium mining as well Laguna open pit, that there was complicity on the part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in serving up people in the case of the Navaho, Laguna, Pueblo people to work in those mines, the employment service. It was part of their policy to get people off the reservation, get them into wage earning jobs, whatever the risk. And there was no question further in my mind that in Indian Health Service was complicit in the Iodine 131 experiment in Alaska in the >50s and was knowledgeable about the research about radiation in the food chain. Well, unfortunately, though, the process did not disclose the records from BIA or Indian Health Service, that would underscore a breach of a legal trust responsibility duty. I mean, this no simply a moral duty, not that moral is simple, but it is underscored by congressional mandates to secure the health and well being of these people and given the time period, and their exposure to Western culture that was a trust that the Alaskan natives and Navaho people and Pueblo people truly deserved and were entitled to in and of itself, it is a breach.

There is a second factor related to openness and records and since I have to leave for Alaska this afternoon, and will probably miss the question section, it seems to fit here. Many studies were done under contract by, to the Air Force, for example, in the case of the Iodine 131, an independent science on a contract, the food chain in the Alaska situation, with a scientist from the Hanford Lab. Many of these were published out and we know about these because of the published out results, but those of you who are academics, many of you are retired academics it appears, as I am, are well aware that these were paid for by AEC under constraints of confidentiality and secrecy. In other words, what field notes and the original drafts were submitted to AEC or similar agencies and vetted and censored in only what was allowed out, did come out and was published in the >60s and so forth. What we need to see and what, for example, to know all the participants in the Iodine 131 study, as for example, are the original documents that the academics prepared, the original field notes and in the process of reaching out for documentation? This is a critical element. If you could go back to a doctor and let=s say Doctor H, who did many studies of radiation in the food chain and is still alive, as a matter of fact, and say to him, AWhat did you submit as a condition of your contract? Let=s us see your field notes. Let=s us see some of those.@ I don=t know whether you would call them Government documents or not, but they were brought and paid for by the Government. And that essential information would lead to some results that people are very hungry to find out. And that would lead to this, a greater reflection of the openness process.

So, in other words, I am suggesting that questions beyond, did you give radiation to an individual be asked, and I also asking the contractee, who participated in many of these studies, be reached out and that their original field notes and documents, like most academics, most of us don=t throw anything away, you know. We have it in our file cabinets. All that needs to be is now the question needs to be asked, the request needs to be made. And I thank you very much.

MS. PLAZA: Thank you. Do we have other questions?

MR. BALLOT: Thank you. I am Joe Ballot, I live at Cotsbu, Alaska and I work at an association called Manikao. We are contractors with Indian Health Service, with BIA, with the State of Alaska and we provide health and social services for 12 communities. Of the 12 communities, Point Hope is one of the communities. And I will be testifying before the House Interior Subcommittee tomorrow on appropriations, trying to give justification on why we need more funding to provide better medical services to Point Hope. And I would like to share some of the comments that I will be sharing as my testimony. I won=t take very much time.

Cancer in the native Alaskan population is a fast rising cause for moiety and morality. Now, second only to accidents as the leading cause of death. Atmospheric weapon testing in the 1950s to 1970s and specific experimental radiation testing on villagers in Northwest Alaska may have introduced contamination directly linked to an increased incident of cancer, especially in the Village of Point Hope. Dumping of radioactive materials have been documented. Other records about human experimentation have been revealed, although, some remain classified and are unavailable for concerned citizens and researchers. That this experimentation and disregard for atmospheric pollution, most certainly involved questionable ethics and unnecessary risks for the residents of Point Hope, particularly, would be hard to deny.

We are aware that the U.S. Public Health Service participated in experiment with the Division of Biology and with Medicine Projects Gamble and Sunshine. The Public Health Service and their native hospitals participated in activities which can be considered experiments of opportunity. In other words, Alaskan native misfortunates necessitating surgery, were viewed by doctors as opportunities to participate in the Gamble and Sunshine projects.

The revelation that radioactive waste from Project Chariot were buried near Point Hope has been an enormous impact on that village. All the residents participated in food gathering activities in the vicinity of that village and caribou have grazed over Tonura, covering radioactive soil and polluted by atmospheric testing and are hunted and eaten by local Inupiat. Fish also used for food, swim in streams feed by runoff by the Tonura. There is enormous concern that the very food, water and air required for survival is slowly poisoning our people.

The residents of Point Hope and their faith shaken in the medical community and country. Their anger toward and mistrust of caregivers is prominent. The pressure for more and more specialized services is great from residents of Point Hope. The cost of this increased demand are seen directly in dollars spent on services including travel and in treatment conflicts, that then lead to duplicated and higher cost services. A plan to provide some additional services to the village through a military civilian partnership exercise, this spring, was abandoned because of strong misgivings about allowing military health providers to work in that village. This deep mistrust was stated by one Point Hope resident in a public meeting as a hard felt plea, don=t take advantage of us. This was followed by reference to the potential for lawsuits, as protection for people made vulnerable in the shame by their country=s callous disregard for their safety and dignity. The unanswered questions add to their stress and compounds the family and the social concerns.

We have been aware for some time now that we know that we are being contaminated through the atmosphere. We are being contaminated through the ground that we live off of. We are contaminated through the waters that we have to live with. We have lived a subsistence life style based on the land and the sea. And we know that we are a problem because we are the ones that are contaminated, just as much as the Federal Government being the problem. And we want to be part of the solution. In order for us to be part of the solution, we need access to classified documents that we know of that Steve Conn has made reference to, that are being held up someplace within the bureaucracy that we need access to that. We need to find out exactly what has happened, so that we can be part of the solution in helping ourselves either get healed or we can provide better medical care for our own people. Thank you.

MR. BAILEY: Was that the last question? One more question.

MS. GORDON: I am Janet Gordon from Utah downwinder. I would like to make four points that I would like to have this committee be sure they consider.

(1) That the data that you are basing your conclusions on and that you are dealing with and that you are basing our exposure rates on, is based, I give you a quote from Dr. Paul Tompkins, Director of the Federal Regulatory Commission to commissioners of the AEC in September 25 of 1952 said and I quote, AThe basic approach to the report would be to start with a simple straightforward statement of conclusions. We would then identify the major questions that could be expected to be asked in connection with the conclusions. It would then be a straightforward matter to select the key scientific consultants, whose opinions should be sought in order to substantiate the validity of the conclusions.@ When you do that kind of science you come up with the answers you want in advance and then you substantiate them, that has been what has been done to all of us. Native, downwinders, soldiers, all of us. So the materials that you are basing your decisions on, are flawed to start with, scientifically, morally. Remember that. And remember that the data, the doses, the dose reconstructions are all done in the same fashion.

I would like, secondly, to commend the North Shore Borough and I would recommend that the Department of Energy and that the Federal Government in considering how to deal with our people, the people that they have exposed willy nilly, take as a basic of a model for the rest of the downwinders, what they are already doing for their people. And we all are entitled to that kind of care and consideration. And that it be made part of RECA.

And thirdly, in dealing with RECA, recognize that RECA was a token kind of legislation. It was a presumptive legislation. And we were not suppose to have to prove our cases again. We have never been able to get out of an adversarial relationship with the Justice Department. The Justice Department, I think is a misnomener. They do not provide justice for the people. They keep us from justice. They have advocated against us instead of for us, all through this process. We were not suppose to have to reprove our cases. And one of the reasons we accepted such small compensation was because we wouldn=t have to be put through that process again. And my people are put through it every day and all the rest of these people are put through it and yet we are saying, AFix RECA and we will all make it work.@ Remember what you are doing to us when you do that. RECA needs overhaul. And all the downwinders and all of the miners, everybody needs to be given, it needs to be what it is suppose to be.

A bill that is already recognizing what has done to us to remove that adversarial position. We want it fixed.

The Veterans Bill has been amended twice. New cancers have been added. It needs to be amended for the uranium miners. It needs to be amended to include other environmentally exposed people.

And fourthly, remember that a government that can develop something as complex and horrendous as a nuclear weapon, as the Ambassador from the Marshall Islands said, if they are not capable of providing care for the people they willy nilly exposed to their radiation and their danger and their death, they have no business being turned loose with nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons programs. So the programs must either be shutdown or they must put as much effort and energy and money into protecting the citizens these weapons are suppose to be, being developed to protect as the ones they are killing. We are not suppose to being killed by our own government, but that is what has happened. You have heard the testimony for it.

Now anybody that deserves to be turned loose with nuclear weapons, must take the responsibility of the actions and the devastation that they caused to their own people.

MR. BAILEY: We are going to take a one hour lunch break, come back at 1:30.

(Pause.)

MR. BAILEY: Wait.

MR. KOONUK: Thank you, my name is Ray Koonuk. I am from Point Hope, Alaska. We have about two experiments that was going on back in Alaska. One is Project Chariot and the other is the Iodine 131.

Back in the late >50s, early >60s, the Atomic Energy Commission transported contaminated waste from the Nevada Test site. And with this contaminated waste, they buried it under the Tonura, to see how it would migrate and how it would affect the environment in the caribou. And they didn=t tell us for about 30 years and after 30 years we found out that they were doing an experiment with this tracer material.

And before that, before we found out, we were encountering a heavy case of cancer, birth defects within probably 40 years and we encountered about 60 cases. The population, itself, was about 500 back in 1970 when we started getting heavy cases of cancer.

And right now we are still facing cancer.

And this other project, Iodine 131, it is a project that we didn=t even know about until after 30 years. It is a pill that they gave to the natives, a total of 119 natives that they utilized as guinea pigs. And this Iodine 131 is a radioactive capsule that they had let them take, who knows for how long.

I mean, this is sad, you know. This is real sad when our government can do and hide things for 30 years. I am encountering some problems myself. I am have terrible problems. And I couldn=t walk, the longest I couldn=t walk was for five hours, my muscles were so tight. I mean, I am not just going to go and talk about myself, because I see people suffering, too. And I see my animals are suffering, too. And these animals that are suffering, is what we eat and they are contaminated and 3,000 caribou died last fall. Last fall, 3,000 caribou, right around Project Chariot site. From what? Well, they are trying to say they starved. You believe that? Three thousand caribou. And that is what we eat out there.

The other thing is the Russian side, they have dumped a million carriers of radioactive waste in the Arctic Ocean, that is where we hunt our animals, too. And that is where the animals migrate, the whale, the walrus, the seals, the fish. The Department of Defense allotted 10 million dollars to do a sampling study back in >93. And we haven=t seen the reports yet, still waiting for the reports and hopefully someday that they will come out, I hope, with the truth of what is out there in the ocean, too. You have hide so much, you know. It is time to get it out, you know. People of Alaska are suffering, too, like everybody else here.

And I want to thank Cooper Brown for keeping us updated and -- And everybody, I want to thank the Interagency for inviting me down here and the people of Alaska, thank you.

MR. BAILEY: Thank you, Panelists. We are going to take an hour break, come back at 1:35.

(Whereupon, at 12:40 p.m., the meeting was recessed, to reconvene at 1:35 p.m., this same day, Tuesday, February 27, 1996.)