Tom Harkin: “I have an amendment to correct an absurdity in our application of important secrecy policies. This issue would be a…”

“I have an amendment to correct an absurdity in our application of important secrecy policies. This issue would be a laughable example of bureaucratic intransigence except that it is harming workers who may have gotten sick from working on our nuclear weapons. I'm sure that by now all my colleagues are aware that many of our citizens were exposed to radioactive and other hazardous materials at nuclear weapons production plants in the United States. While working to protect our national security, workers at places like Paducah, Kentucky, Portsmouth, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee were subjected to severe hazards, sometimes without their knowledge or consent. We recently passed an amendment to provide compensation to some of those who became seriously ill because of their dangerous work at nuclear weapons plants. The dangers at these plants thrived in the darkness of government secrecy. Public oversight was especially weak at a factory for assembling and disassembling nuclear weapons at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Middletown, Iowa. I first found out about the nuclear weapons work there from a constituent letter from a former worker, Robert Anderson. He was concerned that his non-Hodgkins lymphoma was caused by exposures at the plant. But when I asked the Department of Energy about the plant, at first they denied that any nuclear weapons work took place there.”