Documentary on atomic veterans tells of families' plights

Pat Broudy, widow of a Marine major who was exposed to radiation from nuclear bomb blasts, tells of his harrowing experience in the front trenches at the Nevada Test Site in a new documentary.

Broudy has waged a 23-year war to win compensation for those exposed to radiation.

Her husband, Maj. Chuck Broudy, died in 1977 of lymphatic cancer after spending September and October 1945 in the Nagasaki, Japan, the second target of a nuclear weapon. He was also at the Nevada Test Site, close to one of the largest atomic bombs blasted into the air.

"He said, 'Get the kids up at 4:30 in the morning and face east, and you'll see something you'll never forget," ' Broudy says in the film "Declassified: Human Experimentation," which airs at 9 p.m. tonight on the History Channel, Cox cable channel 43.

It was the 1957 nuclear explosion "Hood" that Broudy says is unforgettable.

"I saw Hood," Broudy says. "I saw this bright light in the sky, which slowly diminished. That's the only time (Broudy) ever talked about that experience."

Her husband, like an estimated 200,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines exposed to radiation to see how they maneuvered on an atomic battlefield, was sworn to secrecy.

He witnessed three atomic blasts in the 1957 series "Plumbob," when 27 experiments were exploded in Nevada's desert. Hood, on July 5, 1957, had the nuclear punch of 74,000 tons of TNT.

About 20 years later, while applying underarm deodorant, the major discovered a large lump. "We immediately went to the doctors," Broudy says.

The medical specialists delivered the news -- lympho-sarcoma, a form of invasive cancer -- over the phone to Broudy, who was with her four children in Southern California.

"I was totally unprepared of course, and I didn't know what to do," she says. For six months her husband held his own during chemotherapy.

Before he died the major contacted an attorney. "And it was at that time, for the first time, Chuck told me something about his exposure," his wife says.

President Clinton offered atomic veterans and their families a glimmer of hope in 1993 when he appointed a committee to investigate human radiation experiments. The committee was formed after Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eileen Welsome discovered the names of 18 people who had been injected with plutonium without their knowledge by doctors hired by the government.

Although some compensation for uranium miners was approved because of the committee's work, thousands of men and women (both military and Nevada Test Site workers) have not received anything.

"The government is waiting for us all to die," Broudy says at the end of her segment. "Most of the men have already died, or they are on their way. There are widows that have died. We're all old."

Many of the veterans' widows cannot find evidence that their husbands participated in the experiments. Without records, they cannot ask for compensation, Broudy says.

"There are no records," Broudy says. "And when they ask for compensation for disability and indemnity compensation from the VA, (government officials) say prove it. They've got the documents. We don't have the documents. They've got the proof. We don't have the proof."

Despite efforts by Clinton's committee, millions of pages of reports, data and documents about nuclear weapons testing remain buried in secrecy.

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