[9:00 a.m.]

COL. BAILEY: Good morning. I'm Colonel Claud Bailey, Jr. I'm very privileged this morning to be the Moderator for this great occasion. I represent a lot of people in the Department of Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, the government.

Again, I'm very pleased to do this.

I see this as an opportunity for the government and the stakeholders to get together and make a difference in our government, so I'm very pleased about that.

You all can see I'm a soldier. I mean, it's obvious I'm a solder. Almost 30 years of interfacing, interacting with people. So for me this is very exciting.

I see Sandra Reid from Oak Ridge. She burst my eardrum the other day.

Dr. Oscar Rosen, the National Director of the Atomic Veterans. I've met some other people here.

Pat Broudy, where are you, ma'am? I've seen her at the Advisory Committee meetings a number of times. Some other people.

We have from Senator Stevens' office and Senator Glenn's office, two distinguished persons there, Chris Kline and Mr. Heltzer. I just met him. So we have a lot of interests, widespread interest in this issue, this event.

It's very important today that as a group we communicate. Why is it important that we communicate? I've got to tell you a little story that happened to be about 1978 why communication is so important.

I was assigned as a young captain at Holmstead Air Force Base with an Air Defense Unit. One of my charges was to go out with an unfortunate duty, solemn duty, to notify mothers and fathers when their sons or daughters were killed either in combat or an accident, et cetera.

Well, this particular day in April, I had the sad occasion to go out in Miami-Hialeah, Florida -- anybody from Florida, Hialeah, Florida -- to notify a family that their son had been killed in an automobile accident in North Carolina. Very painful. I always hated that duty, but I had to do it.

We normally would take a translator with us in Miami because a lot of Hispanic people live there and they spoke Spanish, but this time we didn't have a translator. This is a true story. And so Mr. Foley and I, my partner, went out to the house and we were going to try to make the communication. Mr. Foley spoke halting Spanish.

We went into the house. Mr. Foley talked to the father for a few minutes and explained -- supposedly explained that I'm Captain Bailey, here to notify him regretfully that his son had died in an automobile accident in Carolina.

When Mr. Foley got done, the father grabbed a butcher knife and started chasing me through the house, out into the parking lot. He chased me about 10 minutes. And then 15 minutes eventually the police came. We got it under control.

I found out Mr. Foley somehow or another the translation came out that Colonel Bailey had killed his son with an automobile. That's a true story.

(Laughter.)

It's important that we communicate. That's what we're going to be about today, communicating, sharing information, communicating.

The next incident occurred, had to do with attention to detail. Again, I was the casualty officer and I had to make a notification again to a family that their son had died in Vietnam. And normally when I go to a house in a government car, you drive up, the family -- you can tell right away the family gets distraught. They get concerned. They start screaming, "Please don't tell me."

But I noticed that this mother, she was smiling. "Coming on in. Have some tea." Normally, again, the people would be screaming and going on.

So I walked in and I said, "Ma'am, I regret to tell you on behalf of the government that your son was killed in action in Vietnam." She said, "What are you talking about, man." She said, "Bobby, come here." And her son was in the living room there.

And what had happened, mistakenly the people who passed on the name gave the wrong name for the wrong house in the wrong city.

You've got to pay attention to detail. And we're about to pay attention to detail today, staying focused.

But I wanted to just share those two stories with you. They've caused me to be very attentive to detail. And my boss, Dr. Soper, can attest to that.

Again, it's a small group. We have a chance to make history.

Now, I know that a lot of you may not agree with the Advisory Committee's report, but that's okay. But we've got to stay focused today on what we're here for, and we're here today, the government and you -- I've got to remember that -- the government and you, to address the responses, proposed responses that the government is preparing to provide to the White House, to the President, and to the National Bio-Ethics Advisory Commission. We've got to stay focused on those issues.

Any issues beyond that, of course, we can talk about them. But the primary issues are those five responses that we're trying to work to give input, collective input, with your input. And for me, for Bailey, that's significant.

Further perspective. Just think about it. For the first time in a long time or the first time maybe in our history, the government has saw fit to open its books to look at declassified documents. And I was privy to play in that. Sat on a number of declassification boards providing those documents to the Advisory Committee so that you citizens could better understand the government and what it has done or has not done. That's significant.

And you are playing a part of that. That's significant. Maybe more so than anything else we're going to do. Think about this business of openness. You are playing a first step part in the openness of our government and you're going to give direct input. That's significant.

So today, we're asking that we stay focused. We're Acie? Acie is not here. I wanted Acie to collect all weapons, especially butcher knifes.

(Laughter.)

Okay. Especially butcher knifes. All weapons.

There are some things that we cannot address today. This is not about litigation. This is clearly not about litigation. There are some personal litigations that are ongoing, administrative actions that are ongoing but this is not the forum to address those issues. You may want to address policy, but this is not the forum to address those kind of issues.

As I indicated earlier, Senator Glenn and Senator Stevens have interest in what we're doing. You may be aware that there are going to be hearings on about the 12th of March attendant to some of these issues, follow-on issues. So there are a lot of things that are going on that affect you in improving the system and the openness of government and we'll talk about some of those things later on in the process; about public access, about medical monitoring, about the issue concerning the Native Alaskans, et cetera, et cetera.

And you have your packets and we need to again stay focused, stay on time.

Again, on behalf of -- I would be remiss on behalf of Secretary Hazel O'Leary, Dr. Tara O'Toole, I'd like to welcome you all to this workshop and we're going to be expecting you all to participate and I know you will, particularly Sandy Reid. That's an inside thing we've got going there.

But again, we've got to stay focused.

Administrative note. We're a little bit crowded and USDA was so gracious to let us use their facility. When we go out in the hallway, let's try to be very mindful that we've got other offices in the area and try to keep it down. Appreciate that.

I've been working this project now for about two plus years and I want to introduce a few people who have been heavily engaged both on the government side and on the stakeholder side in making this thing happen.

First, I'd like to -- and I will introduce her formally, Dr. Tara O'Toole. I've had the occasion to sit in a number of meetings with her and she, like Secretary Hazel O'Leary, has tremendous energy and she's been driving these men -- I mean, she keeps us on task. My boss, Dr. Soper, can tell you. And it's just wonderful to have women in charge. I like that. That's great.

My boss, Ms. Joan Ma Pierre is not here today, is a woman. Love it. I read her lips every morning. It's just great.

But we're going to have a great day.

Without further adieu, we need to get started. I'd like for you all to meet -- again, I have the highest respect for Dr. Tara O'Toole. She has been the person who chaired the Interagency Working Group Staff Committee, if you will. Has been responsible for the overall oversight of the government's effort. She has kept us on task. She is one of the most dedicated and professional, most thorough people that I've known.

Again, I'm very proud and privileged to introduce to you Dr. Tara O'Toole, Department of Energy.

DR. O'TOOLE: Well, thank you very much for being here and welcome on behalf of the Human Radiation Experiment's Interagency Working Group.

I'm going to take only a tiny portion of the time allotted to me on your program. We deliberately injected a certain amount of play time in there so we could stay on schedule.

As most of you know, the Interagency Working Group was created in January 1994 when President Clinton directed the Secretaries of Energy, Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Directors of NASA and the CIA to locate all available records on human radiation experiments and make these records available to the Presidential Advisory Committee and eventually to the public.

Therein ensued a very interesting 18 months of work on behalf of the government and the Advisory Committee. And much of that work, as Colonel Bailey mentioned, was supervised and conducted by the government staff who are represented here in this room today and who will be on the panels today and tomorrow.

Now, the Interagency Working Group has been charged by the President with the task of responding to the Advisory Committee's recommendations and we are here today to hear from you, from the citizens and family members who were subjects of human radiation experiments and your advocates and representatives, from some invited experts and from government staff members on how the Administration might best respond to these recommendations.

As Colonel Bailey said, we can entertain discussion on other matters but to the degree that you can give us specific advice and input on what the particular government responses to those recommendations might be, how we might best shape then, you'll be very valuable and you will have made a significant contribution to our very daunting effort to respond responsibly.

Now, several weeks ago when we began planning this meeting and started looking around town for a meeting room, we discovered that there were no meeting rooms available, partly because the Westinghouse Science Fair is in town. And as I understand, some of you are in hotels with 2,000 or 3,000 teenagers here in Washington celebrate this event.

So, again, I apologize for the smallness of the room, but we were seeking a venue that was both accommodating and small enough to allow real dialogue and discussion to take place. And that's what we're going to attempt today.

Because of the size of the room, we need to be very patient. We need to be careful not to step on each other's toes, figuratively or literally. And as Claud said, we need to try and be mindful of the noise 100 people make outside the room while others are working.

But again, our determination, our aim, is to have as much constructive dialogue as we possibly can, in keeping with the entire intent and spirit of openness that Secretary O'Leary inaugurated when she first announced her intention to get to the true story of human radiation experiments almost two years ago.

The government staff who have been working the radiation experiments beat are very proud, I think, of our effort, to surface these documents and make them available.

We are also more than anyone aware of the flaws and limitations of our efforts and we truly are looking forward to your suggestions as to how we can do better.

Transcripts of this meeting will be available by the end of the week to anybody who wants them and we fully expect that the comments and suggestions that are offered here today and tomorrow will be incorporated into the working group's final response to the President.

In the interest of honestly and openness, I want to be clear that it will be the working group's decision, the Interagency Working Group's decisions as to what does get presented to the President. But again, we are very eager for your input.

We are also eager, speaking for the government, to turn the recommendations and the knowledge unearthed in the last two years into action. As a political appointee in I hope will be the first term of the Clinton Administration, I must tell you that we are all very aware of the clock ticking and of the need to take action. We all want the same things basically. We all want government that is open and responsive and serves the people in honest justice.

And as we go through the next two days, I would ask us to remember a lesson that one learns early in government service. The perfect is often enemy of the good. Let us see if in what I trust will be very interesting discussions in the next two days we can come up with some constructive and useful and practical ways of going forward together.

So with that, I look forward to the next two days of discussion and I'm going to turn it over to our Mediator.