Unwanted Controversy
Anxious to counter its increasing credibility problems, in 1954 the Atomic Energy Commission entered into an
off-site radioactivity surveillance agreement with the U.S. Public Health Service.132
Not until 1979 did the terms of the AEC-PHS arrangement become public knowledge. After award-winning
journalist Gordon Eliot White, Washington correspondent for the Salt Lake City daily The Deseret News, dislodged
more than fifteen thousand A-test documents he reported that "PHS furnished trained personnel who worked under
AEC funding and under strict AEC control." Their mission was not to ensure public health, but rather "to protect the
test site from controversy."133
The 1954 pact prohibited the PHS from any public release of its radiation data or "dissemination of information
connected with activities under this agreement, except as prescribed by the AEC . . ." At the end of the year AEC
tossed in a stipulation that any unauthorized release of information to the public could subject "the Public Health
Service, its agents, employees, or subcontractors, to criminal liability" under the Atomic Energy Act.134
The AEC-PHS off-site monitoring agreement remained in effect not only during the last nine years (1954 to
1962) of atmospheric nuclear blasts at the Nevada Test Site, but also for the first eight years (1963 to 1970) of large
underground nuclear bomb tests in Nevada.135 Those underground detonations also spewed large quantities of
radioactivity downwind for hundreds of miles.136
Despite the intense and pervasive downwind fallout from the Nevada Test Site in 1953 Washington remained
enthusiastic for more continental nuclear weapons detonations. The prevailing sentiment at the federal level was
aptly expressed in a letter to the acting chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Thomas E. Murray, written by
AEC Biology and Medicine Advisory Committee head Dr. Elvin C. Stakman on March 25, 1954:
Paraphrasing General Forrest’s famous saying, "Victory goes to the nation that gits there fastest with the
mostest and bestest weapons." This is no less true in the atomic age.
It is therefore essential to continue the Nevada Proving Grounds in order to achieve maximum speed in
the development of weapons. Speed is essential to national survival.
In emergencies such as this some risks, immediate and long term, must be accepted. These risks should
be frankly and publicly acknowledged. However, the policy of minimizing these risks must be continued in
both the local and national interest.137
Perhaps some unlikely victims of the Nevada test program were the Hollywood cast and film crew of Howard
Hughes’s production The Conqueror. In 1954 John Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead, and producerdirector
Dick Powell filmed on the sandy dunes outside of St. George, Utah. They were there for three months.
A quarter century later John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, and Dick Powell had all died of cancer.
Wayne, a heavy smoker, succumbed to cancer of his lungs, throat, and stomach in 1979; Hayward died of skin,
breast and uterine cancer in 1975; Moorehead passed away from uterine cancer in 1974. Another star of the movie,
Pedro Armendariz, developed kidney cancer in 1960 and was later struck with terminal cancer of the lymphatic
system. Dick Powell died from lymph cancer when it spread to his lungs in 1963.138
The coincidence of these cases was placed into a larger pattern when People magazine researched the subsequent
health of the entire Hollywood entourage that had worked on location in St. George. They found that out of 220
people in the cast and crew, ninety-one had contracted cancer by late 1980, and half of the cancer victims had died of
the disease.139 (This survey did not include the couple of hundred local American Indians who served as extras in
the film.)
"With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic," remarked University of Utah radiological health
director Dr. Robert C. Pendleton.140 For two decades Pendleton had been warning that radioactive "hot spots"
remained in numerous Utah locations, even after atmospheric testing had ceased.141 Added Dr. Ronald S. Oseas of
the Harbor UCLA Medical Center: "It is known that radiation contributes to the risk of cancer. With these numbers,
it is highly probable that the Conqueror group was affected by that additive effect."142
Ellen Powell, Michael Wayne, and Susan Hayward’s son Tim Barker had accompanied their parents to the set in
1954. Tim Barker told of his mother’s protracted cancer: "She was in a fetal position, and she had lost her
swallowing reflex, she had pneumonia and she had lost her hair." In 1968 he had a benign tumor removed from his
mouth. Michael Wayne later suffered from skin cancer. Barker echoed the sentiments of many residents downwind
from the test site when he asked, "If the Government knew there was a possibility of exposure, why didn’t they just
warn us?"143
Federal nuclear authorities had long been aware of the deep resentment that had taken hold in numerous
communities within a radius of several hundred miles of the Nevada Test Site. But the specter of culpability for the
cancer deaths of such popular public figures caused concern at usually stolid government bureaus. At the Pentagon
one official of the Defense Nuclear Agency responded to the news by murmuring, "Please, God, don’t let us have
killed John Wayne."144
132. Forgotten Guinea Pigs, p. 18; see also pp. 19-22.
133. Deseret News, April 5, 1979.
134. Ibid. Summarizing the agreement, White’s article added that PHS "was not permitted to set up a Nevada office until AEC approved the security
arrangements, even though PHS was ordered only to measure readings outside the proving grounds. AEC retained the right of full access, at any time of day
or night, to the PHS offices so commission officers could determine ‘security obligations (to the AEC) are being met.’ The ultimate responsibility for the
off-site monitoring was retained by AEC . . ."
135. In 1970 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assumed operational authority for monitoring outside the Nevada Test Site. What agreements the EPA
endorsed in secret covenants—with the AEC and its successor atomic military agency, the U.S. Department of Energy—remained a subject of speculation for
anyone except those with high security clearances. Critics noted that EPA’s radiation monitoring program remained heavily staffed by former AEC officials
as the 1980s began.
136. Underground nuclear test leaks information and references are in Chapter Five.
137. Dr. Elvin C. Stakman to Thomas E. Murray, March 25, 1954.
138. People, November 10, 1980, pp. 42-47.
139. Ibid., p. 42.
140. Ibid.
141. The Conqueror health statistics were especially startling because no atom bombs were exploded in Nevada the year that the movie was filmed (1954); cast
and crew were exposed to residual radioactivity left by Nevada atomic tests in previous years (1951-1953).
142. People, November 10, 1980, p. 44.
143. Ibid., p. 46.
144. Ibid.