booktv. >> thanks for coming tonight. this book is about tweet to cities. the first two season the world to manufacture plutonium. one was american -- you want me to -- ..

and turner communities into different kinds of communities. i'll explain what i mean, but first i want to tell you why that into this project. i don't know who this tourist is, but she's pretty. i went into doesn't forward to the chernobyl zone and wrote an article about it. an added or contacted me and wanted me to read the whole book about this pivotal moment in history. there's about five books about chernobyl. i looked into it and i realize there's these two places in the world, these two plutonium plants that have more. chernobyl is a household word. but who's heard of my word in this, handford. [inaudible] >> was there last summer. so i thought maybe i'd rather tell a story about these two

places. as i started looking into it, i was concerned, why don't we know much about it? of course, chernobyl was an accident that occurred in the course of a couple of days. the cameras rolled the next couple of months. it was a camera ready event. same as fukushima. these places, these plutonium sides, they weren't really many accident. not big words. they were military sites, so they were closed off. so there accidents, nobody knew about it. so what i realized is all this radiation occurred by design. these were disasters by design. they dumped as part of the operating order, tons and tons of radioactive waste and to the ground, into the local rivers and up into the air. anatomy was a really chilling realization. these aren't small bomb labs.

there's tens of thousands of workers at each place. for four decades, hundreds of thousands of people went through these places, saw what was happening, witnessed it and no one said anything. not in a dictatorial soviet union or the democratic united states. why was that? what made these people so complacent and silent, complicit? the more i thought about it, the more i realized that the answer to this was this word i made up, plutopia. the both of these two plutonium plants bond special, exclusive, limited access cities just for the plant operators. they and only they could live in these towns. i created this group of workers. and this is a group of workers and the soviet union in 1950s.

if you understand anything about the soviet union in 1950s, it was a hungry, but replays. these people like anything but. so that's if they came to realize is that these talents were the reason why people remain silent. basically they created towns where working-class plant operators were paid and lived like middle classes. and in so doing, they started to associate and identify with their superiors. their bosses, plant managers, engineers and physicists who read these places. these netopia were so attractive. it was nice to be in a place for the chosen few lived that they sort of purchased these people and very special way so much explained to you tonight. first of may to you is bit about how they were built. they were as my son would say,

j&r mess, these plants. they take up the size of a half of the county. there's a half dozen reactors. about the size of a cruise ship, with a process to get it down to a little bit of plutonium. the american army corps are ground on the plant in 1943, and tvd or kpt generals broke ground on the soviet plan. first i thought, they are going to build this militarized labor and this is a picture of the first presidential cam at handford. it has 60,000 construction workers who were there to build the plants. and i had all the charms of a minimum security prison. it also had all the social

problems. single, micro workers fought to install then murdered. it was heavily guarded. this is a picture of the women's section of camp handford, where the women lived. the cards. they are. this is a little more focus. you can see women carried a package. they were there to keep the women say for the wolves. this is the kind of place it was. despite very good day, people hated camp handford. at the peak of construction in 1944, hundreds of workers but does the job every day. there is a lot of talk about a labor crisis. we can't get enough workers. assessing the documents. i looked into it. there were plenty of workers paid 100,000 african-americans will find it for the draft.

couldn't go to the army because they were going to say. hundreds of thousands of mexican americans in agricultural aaa camps rolling around the agricultural interior of the great plains, ready to work. african-americans and mexican americans were considered not to be trustworthy. so they didn't hire them. the naacp finally pressured them to hire a minimum quota of 10% african-americans. then the army corps and dupont by jim croce pacific northwest and set up quarters for african-americans and white workers and they kept the mexicans in this whole separate town. and they watched the workers closely, the construction workers. here is an amazing shot of an african-american woman he put into a paddy wagon driven off. no one will see your anesthetic

in. she said something a suspect or did something or you had a suspicious pattern, join a union or some unlike that. so these are very controlled, especially watched places. rather than hire minority workers, built a prison camp next to the construction site. this is from a prison industries inc. i may have my prisoners working at the plant building it. this is on the construction phrase rather than hire minorities to solve the labor crisis. the soviets built in the middle of the country is the key of this between these two cities. they are similar to the 1946. in 1946, the soviets really had no business building an atomic weapon in. very devastated by the war. 25 million are homeless. 27 elion had them killed during the war. 30,000 industries had been

demolished in the bombing raids. they had no cement, no steel and very short on labor. so what they did is decided to build the most available labor they had. prisoners. they turned the whole job to the cooler construction companies. these are prisoners of war, german pows and there's also soviet pows. when they came back, security officials considered they had been traitors and i put them into the filtration camps and basically what is in them in the soviet union. so here's a shot of the soviet laborers, prisoners building a state-of-the-art nuclear reactor with the tools of the egyptian pharaohs. and it's clear from the record that they called their camp camp

construction. that is no model of present my control and order. they won enough cars come as a prisoners without to guard themselves. this sort of prison warlords took over in a world of terrifying violence. an civilian manager and engineer was found after witnessing a couple, while that in a cement foundation of the reactor. prisoners pot and drank install and gambled and murdered. there is no regular housing. prisoners lived in tents and underground dugouts. civilian workers, this is a shot, made their own housing out of fat materials. they slowly, then it to 49 this scam. now the question is who is going to work in these plutonium plants? at first they thought both

american leaders and soviet leaders that they would put soldiers in their edmonton garrison and make plutonium. they would be secure workers. after they watch this construction camps and saw how single migrant millworkers coming loose and broadband took off in uncontrollable ways, they realized that was impossible, that they could not have workers who are going to be as volatile as the product they were about to make. so what should we do? who should be the people who work in these plants? strangely enough, the answer to finding workers in this first atomic plan was the nuclear family. i can't find many references to nuclear family before this plant. so to secure trusted workers for these plants, leaders in both

countries state-funded limited access cities were civilian plant workers who would live rooted in nuclear family fitness atomic cities. this is rich lemony scent washing 10. you can see off in the distance there is yet more housing. his cinema is getting the award for the best christmas decorations. this guy has the best stout girl. here's the soviet tom. downtown park and the soviet deadline. now to secure these new cities, american and soviet security agents said a pretty intricate

security systems. papers selected applicants for their political and ethnic reliability. in richland, they selected mostly for whiteness. they even had trouble higher a jewish at this plant and and a rejected african-americans mexican-americans, anyone with a left-leaning pass. the soviet union enterprise leaders surrounded the town at the double road barbed wire fence and gate eight and guarded it, take enough for los alamos. mma select it for political and ethnic reliability. those are mostly people who are fresh in our ukrainian nationality. there's a lot of vocal by skiers around tartare speared they did not hire them. this is from a dupont per share. remember it's a pretty amazing photo really. they hired a lot of women and put them in the most dangerous jobs, and the chemical

processing plant. here's a more contemporary photo of the soviet cities so close to maldive. i couldn't ever enter it. here's the soviet workers. and here's an aerial shot the cia took a minute and six these. france's palace was just flying over as source when he was downed in his u2 played in 1962. this is one of the shots he was trying to get, the want of complex that was a plutonium plant and residential quarters. so how do you keep workers giving away secrets? in the usual ways. security officials made workers find security outs in the hat to renew genuinely. in richland, they wiretap phones, read people's mail global survey did rank seven

farmers of the super community recreation programs in the schools. the kgb took similar measures. selection of a security outcome of surveillance. they took even further. they lacked people and for the first 10 years that they could not leave without permission. they could not be discounted cage. these measures were just the first circle of security really. ironically, this powerful men charged with building the first nuclear weapons in the world were really concerned in the correspondence about schools, how is it, right relational programs, health care. most are even sometimes a chemical processing plant in nuclear reactors. they wanted to make sure they kept these workers happy. the best way to keep them happy was to make sure they are prosperous and affluent and let the good life. prosperity also ensured a good measure of additional control.

let me show you. this is kind of to remind people to keep quiet. there's a russian version of that. i don't need to translate it. it's exactly what the american one says. here's richland again. you can see it looks like a postwar suburb. remember, it was built in 1943. the country's first strip mall comes to richland. you can see the militarization of the landscape so much for the postwar landscape comes through in this wartime model city. the richmond is a strange place. the locals called it the gold coast. the federal government owns all the property. the company, dupont and the general electric man ship for the federal government and they hired an architect to design a

series of standard houses that were reproduced thumbnails are designed to shopping centers and residential development. and then dupont built and ran to town so my hospital in the entire region that only residents could go to. they select the business days through an application process them and gave them to dismiss enrichment. buy men's clothing store, et cetera. but to make sure they didn't couch, they set prices at high price checkers do make sure they weren't overcharging. in the absence of any tax revenue coming g allocated federal funds for schools, parks, hospital peer workers paid no local taxes, cut pay 30% more. a lot of locals said this is a weird place. this is socialism. this is fascism. very much in the current vp of

the people who lived in richmond but hey. what they love most was the housing. they could rent for $35 a month a freestanding house that looked like a house that someone in management with that said. that was really terrific. here's a few pictures. here's the shopping mall. everybody says it was a really great place to grow up. so this is the house once was finished he would run for about $35 a month. nobody who didn't work the plant. you had to work the plant could live in richland. if you are a minority and a construction worker janitorial work at the plant come you can't live in the talent. you can live only across the river and a place called pasco. and pasco you could only live in the pasco caddo. that's for people who had dark

skin could live. this is a shack you could rent for $100 then. here's another shot from the pasco caddo. my mom used to say it's expensive to be poor. so across the atlantic, while these towns built streams of agricultural prosperity, here's downtown pasco. we're going rest of the 1950s. richland really boomed with these federal funds. this pride in their town inspired were irrational as the modern sense good love of the bomb. stilted the mascot is the richland bombers. they still have them ushered the as their logo. not the local thugs the city called the people of the chocolate eaters.

i called them not because they have special rations of chocolate and sausage gumbo out of which were to clean that radiation from the body. that and other beloved product, vodka. chocolate was an unbelievable luxury industry events in the postwar period in the soviet union. by the early 50s, residents had more than chocolate. they had really nice housing at private apartments. they had a city built -- designed by lundgren architect. they had eaters, recreational centers, grade schools. they pay 50% more than everybody else. best of all a good start hungry russia they have shops that were carried to the best shops for the elite in moscow. as one woman said, we had in the stores every day kratzer caviar.

it was like we already live -- that communism had already arrived. and stock stores were an unbelievable luxury and russia at the time. his more shots at the housing. they had a yacht club. even the preschools had endorsed in a pool spirit of israelis heard of them believable. but this is how most people in provincial russia, especially in siberia where this was lived in the nearby town, lines formed at 2:00 a.m. they'd still be there at 2:00 a.m. the next morning. people had, you know, the debasement dugouts administered disappear, coughing and and debasement dugouts. for the local settlements around that were utilitarian name they

can suppress those. so for many people who arrived in these towns, who lived in the interior west and in siberia, arrived and utopia was akin to winning the golden ticket. a person had arrived in the material comfort and prosperity they had never expect you to achieve in a lifetime. an interviewer by the name of ralph myrick remembers his childhood in the new mac to come mining town of company tenements. when dupont of his family into this house, a two-bedroom prefab plywood house. his mother cried tears of joy. she never looked in a place with appliances and plumbing. she never lived in a place that was so new and so clean.

ralph said his father worried all the time. he worried that he would, the plant was shut down and he does his job. he worried the supply of plutonium would be satiated and he would lose his job. he worried someone as that would be something wrong. like miss behave in high school and loses job over that. everybody knew if you lost your job at the plant come you had a week to get out of town. bob's father understood that nowhere else but his less than high school education and skills could he support his family so well as in richland. so the real fear people thought was the fear of losing their place in a special card at the. same thing in the soviet union. i mean, if you sprout to match

or beat up your wife or got drunk on the job, you are hauled before a party meeting and threatened with eviction. if your kid misbehaving school, dressed like elvis pressley, listen to the voice of america, that kid was sent to boarding school, never to return to his or her parents in the close city. there is a major accident, big explosion in 1957 at the soviet plan. it was a visible accident. fallout was one of the city. lots of people turning the party card, quit their jobs in last. i found all the correspondence. two months later they are bright and i can see. please take us back. we can't live outside of the close city. so even when the charm of these places was so great that even when they knew their health was on the line, they chose to go for the sword of consumer pluto be a good hope for themselves in

the cities. but i am trying to say is that really took a village or a small city to produce a few kilograms of plutonium. both of these places coming in no, richland got the all-america city award in 1961. the prize as the best socialist city. the name is up but not that they said is a suburb that won this prize. they were very desirable places to live. but the funny thing is on this front, and miss the comfort and admit, engineers and sign this were quietly can emanating around the landscape was millions, hundreds of millions of curious of act gave a waste. the nastiest stuff on the assembly line of nuclear production, nuclear arms

production. you need 100 tons of uranium and you bathe it through a series of chemical, very toxic chemical baths to take down to one kilogram of plutonium. you need about seven grams of plutonium for a bomb. set each of these places produced hundreds and thousands of gallons of nuclear waste. the high-level waste, one dixie cup in this room, we repeat them in so everybody across the street. this stuff is extremely toxic. because the nuclear security officials told the security ronnie's faces as well as the talented people lived, nobody learned about the spread of this can emanation until after chernobyl basically. they also didn't learn about the health effects of the monitoring they were secretly doing as these places were going on, as

the dumping was going on. it is just a target. here's an aerial shot. this is an aerial shot of the river right there in lots of waste is going into the columbia river. in richland, they were very secretive. they did monitor for radioactive waste, just to see how much was there, but they did it secretly. these guys are within us and no one can get in there. if they are on the ranchers are, they would dress as cowboys and they would rankle the local ranchers sheep and put this counter up to the tirade at the sheep to measure the radioactive iodine can't turn and say this is something that helps the vigor of your sheep they would tell the local ranchers. they wrote classified documents that the biggest fear was not at

the danger from exposure to radioactive waste, but danger from exposure to public hysteria. that was the real threat. they started to change the language to make it really about, not a public-health issue, but a public relations issue. zero security agents took secrecy a step further. they build the plant in the city from being off the map entirely. and rich than also they had deceived the exhibit with door prizes and bathing beauties and talked about the safety of the plant. here's the soviet case. there's a bunch of links around the plant and they took everything off the map in clinton state. they also theatergoers plutonium uranium could be spoken in the top workers had to guess that they were making bombs for the most part.

they also were very secretive and the soviet union about the dumping. 1949, and it ran under these underground waste tanks used to score the highest level ways. they either had to stop production or figure out what else to do with the waste. but humans like to do with waste is either buried in the ground or put it in a river and let somebody else do it. so they had a river and between 1949 and 1951 day down 3.2 million into the river for people who have no wiles. there is supposed to pass real bash and totters in a turn for the river, they do-not-call what are their livestock and crops in it. when people want down the river in the 251, scientists are

taking measurements and then measured the bellies of children. they did so in a step back because the children themselves have become dangerous sources of radiation. because they had taken in so much. the first people basically to get sick were workers. in the american case, the official story and you'll still hear this if you have any official report from hanford, there is nobody who died from radiation at the plant. strangely enough i found two cases. one man put to autopsies. one in 1952 thought over. he went home, lay down on the couch and died. his wife called the local ge run hospital. the thought or said this man died of a heart condition. she was suspicious. the fbi had been following her around town. his coworkers said came by by a

city guy does. she was returning the body to chicago for the funeral. she asked the coroner, what do you think i husband died of? >> he died of radiation. strangely enough, so the important evidence from the body is missing. deliver, kidneys, gone. so she gives a second autopsy to the ge lawyers. the ge lawyers are on the plane to chicago within a week, trying to get the coroner to retract its autopsy. they didn't manage to do, but they did manage to retract any information from the legal case then ensues to the wife got no compensation for this. more importantly, hanford is a clean record of having no radiation and these stats. and the soviet union, sick

workers rally big problem. remember the plant was built based darvin, underfed, poorly housed prisoners. from the first day of operation can the soviets had. in known tags at all, they were dirty, contaminated places to work. lots of people were working in a period they're also working with a rubber gloves, no rubber boots. in one case, at 11 they were sitting on boxes can take immediate place. it was just a nightmare. within a few years, by 1951, first and prisoners, and very thick. they are losing their hair, vomiting good after that there are these girls who show up. there were 21 years old, given a clean bill of health to get hired. they start creeping around, lose their appetite, complain about extreme pain and enjoyed it and then they start to look set to

no old and they had severe anemia and start to lose their hair. the doc or is there in the back of a grocer in the firm. the doctors don't have record because of security to how much he does these girls got at work. they learn to take from changes in the blood when a worker has been over exposed. they come up with a diagnosis. so far only give it called chronic radio explosion. these girls eventually died from it in the late 20s after a few years of work at the plant. about 23% of the first workers at the plant eventually, but the chronic radiation syndrome, just her to rise to early age --

aging, chronic disorders and anemia. sick workers very big problem of course because both countries have nuclear production is perfectly safe. if you have sick workers, that belies that point. a rash of illnesses and this has to be extremely telling. people were looking out these kinds of things here so they solve the problem by dividing the territory and the working classes. so when i was the next day, when there was an dangerous ground needed to be worked on, if they needed to build new reactors under smokestacks or work along the river, descent and temporary workers, prisoners in the camps nearby, workers from pasco, minority vapors from pasco and send them in his jumpers to work in dangerous ground under for a couple of months, maybe a couple of years and then these people would leave.

they would leave any possible radio isotope state ingested and we've attend an the epidemiological trace. so it meant that plutonium cities presented a picture of how the pink populations. this is a mirage, but an extremely useful mirage. the people in these towns, it helps them. they were very loyal and peachtree at eight and god and in a sense was purchased by the sense they were select workers living in this really plump towns better than every other town around. they did better in sports, veteran education, better in housing. this kind of consumptive superiority gives them confidence in their leaders.

false confidence, the confidence indeed it was. the fact that they lived in these towns that had no indigent, noel julie. the average age is 26. no unemployed, no poverty about commitment they fell like they were better than everybody else in the ceramic territories and leaders are making the right decisions because look what a great place they gave us. they love to count the, you know , the average educational age, the number of appliances, everything that was better, data to enumerate and talk about it. and they would say things like, you know, machines, appliances, cars are far more dangerous than production. in many ways this did give them another protection. the people in richland drink milk shifted from minnesota on purpose.

there are quality of water was monitored. so too with the food when the kinks decreeing kircher, was monitored to make sure it was clean. the soviet union they did the same thing. gynecologists even let dr. week fetuses prophylactically abort them in case there were any birth defects became that. so these were indeed true in part because they were younger and more affluent and have far better health care, but also because this modern consumers, they did not live up to radioactive landscape. now, in contrast, these people who lived along the checchi router, who had no wells, who trade in this radioactive river, which they had no idea was to give. as years went by, people came up

with the sentence of chronic radiation syndrome. on top of that they had diary to master the of leukemia, infertility and hard diseases and uncommonly high numbers of birth defects. they have nothing to do you put is that enough the landscape. they were not modern consumers. they've got almost nothing in stores. these are the kinds of numbers you can't for the potatoes and mushrooms they find on the side of the road. i did a lot of interviews with the people who lived in a still existing villages in here i am nervously trying to avoid eating a meal, all made from homegrown vom choose and potatoes and tomatoes. i keep saying i'm not hungry. they keep saying we can't talk unless you eat. it all became very uncomfortable to say the least.

but these communities where they lived, have to live up to radioactive landscape. it's been devastating in terms of the public how. most of the kids. this one village i was dissonant 7% of the villages does mutinous healthy. 45% of the kids have birth defects. this kid was in the hospital. he died an immune disorder. and so there is a warehouse of a collection. it's a strange collection of babies, fetuses that were aborted or good as stillborn. there's a lot of these photos, but these are the kids that came out that were born. jnana says were saying not ready in the 40s at the third

generation of people exposed to radiation would have the most problems and you can sort of see that some of these pictures here. now, it was easy to discredit these poor farmers. the same thing going on among downwind farmers in eastern washington 10. the pop-up and say we are sick or we don't feel well. after chernobyl there was a there's a lot of radiation we learned about. we think we've been so late and our health has been undermined by the plans. the scientists at the plants would say no, you're not sick for radiation. that's impossible. you are sick because you drank too much. you're sick because your. your sick because you radio tokyo, but not for the plant. were you going to believe? the scientists are uneducated farmers. people who lived in to tokyo for a long time consider themselves smarter, more educated than

their, from a neighbor's comments is easy to dismiss the claims that the neighbors next door. i think that's a really important point. even after chernobyl blew the lid off this place is activists activist or be back at the contamination and nick cave and rings. record is damning. even then, people who lived in these towns defended them. in richland, they formed the hanford family and they went out and actively opposed antinuclear activists in the 1980s, defending their plant, defending their bomb. i thought that was so strange. these people who prided themselves on their education were continuing, insisting on remaining in occurrence about the territories around them and the severe contamination in a territory they called home.

you know what, i first started this book thinking i read about the nuclear security state. i was curious about these pioneers of security. the people who are blind to put their arms out for a pack down, send their kid to a full body scanner, put their on the front stoop every week for a test. i mean, who are these people? they are pioneers, all willing to do that now. i wanted to know about that. i sort of imagine a monument to them. kids with their arms out for the pat down and the father fathers started looking nervously on another sort of how they handing over this sample. but i realized in the course of writing this book that there was another kind of moment that i would rather memorialize and another cited here he is i want

about. that was the people who lived in these contaminated environments, have families that were devastated by elements. the kinds of illnesses that were hard to figure out. yes, they were cancers, the cancers came later or problems at the circulation track, of the digestive tract or collation system after severe problems for communities, after having sick kids, kids birth defects, kids who don't feel well. living with chronic fatigue, living with chronic pain. these people organized in the late 1980s in the late 1990s and became the downwinders and the groups in russia called the weight mice. they insisted on knowing the record and they continued to insist to this day that living under his landscape is something no one should ever have to do and shouldering the burden of our radio genetic legacy is something that should be limited

to that and should go no further. so i'm not just another kind of monument by people who are being pushed along in wheelchairs and others are caring along and oxygen intake. some are walking slowly and some are children. but there were people who sort of refuse to give up in that way. i want to show you one last photo to leave you with. skipped a bunch of others. this is a school play in asterisk. out of 100,000 births, this is 900 kids are born with birth defects. that's a really high rate. it is usually around two or three. and so this is a special school. and i think this photo does a great job of illustrating how

the people -- the welfare states that produce utopia and produce these places also produce people who will become chronic welfare cases themselves. it is some thing to consider is to go forward into the renaissance. thank you. clap back to i.t. questions? >> questions, comments? [inaudible] >> you know, access is a great question because it difficult. there was this archive i could work in as an historian, but it could not get into that town. i matter how hard i tried. a connection through sam nunn, there was no way i could get in. as the food news that more intense, the more difficult it became.

so i had to little tiny hat in a village outside of the close city. i had a wood burning stove and mystery of modern cell phone. that was from a contact inside the close city and she would call me and say i got one for you. someone for you to interview. i will put bimini cab and drive them out to you. i would say great. we would meet in a neutral location. the person who owns the hyatt didn't want to be associated with business areas and are viewing of nuclear witnesses. so i go to the third location. at all felt like a cheap spy novel. sometimes they would show up. sometimes it may this is so nervous. i can't tell you are american.

others would just look at me and say who are you anyway? i was then an american historian and they would turn around. the few people brave enough to talk to me, about two dozen, told me amazing stories about what it happened. they mostly told many stories because they had signed security oats for 50 years. but they were not because they were sick or their grandkids the sick were sent and had happened pivotal and they wanted the story to be known. my story is biased that way then the people most willing to talk to me had asked to grind. adding a mac >> 2006. even in richland, a lot of people wouldn't talk to me strangely enough.

you know, they were worried about job security for years. they start producing plutonium in 1964 and then went to one of the seven is coming to industrializing. the best job security in the world is the half-life of plutonium, which is 24,000 years. so they said this is the country's largest superfund site. $100 billion is the price tag so far for the cleanup and that is only going to get higher now. [inaudible] >> high-level waste tanks are leaking. it's a terrible mess. [inaudible] >> because they are great jobs they are. they're going to have to look after that way for 240,000 years. [inaudible] >> it's still the same people that say, radiation -- eating a certain amount of it. there is permissible levels.

they have a language that makes it digestible, literally. [inaudible] >> no, no. you guys blew it. >> there seems to be a great similarity in the approach, and the structural approach between the american scientist and military people and the counterparts in the soviet union. and i wonder, even that sounds bizarre, was there any effort to come paired notes with hair, kind of like an exchange of plans, or was this completely hidden thing? >> they used to say if you dug a hole down through the earth, you would end up in richland.

that is how i think of them, to places her father in an access around each other. there's espionage. the americans were photographing and testing the air. you could read from radioactive isotopes carbon filters on planes. you can read the derivation quite easily if those radioactive isotopes. they have a signature from each that they come from. so they could know a great deal of may 2 contino great deal about what the russians were producing and how. the russians also had spies in the united states. of course the entire manhattan project was infiltrated by spies. stalin knew about the american atomic bomb before truman. said they are very much a conversation with one another. whenever the americans do something that reduce a bomb. the americans produce the hydrogen bomb and so on the one. the escalation is very direct.

>> i was referring to the city planning. the whole approach of creating this upper-class, relative to the air -- >> the soviets copied the americans do not. they said was elected mayor? what are the security arrangements? how were people living? still in second in command at all that it is a shame. he asked where questions. it's very much an american knockoff, disclosed nuclear city, gated and walled off with people what end. at the los alamos was during the war. >> i am shocked that residents were not enraged by would have been. imagine bearing children.

>> yeah, worked very closely with one woman who grew up in richland and her father was at the safety plan. everybody likes to talk about and how they expand cancers in medical problems they produce thousands of big mosquito problems. they have fogging trucks, jeeps as part of the militarization landscape. military surplus jeeps with military surplus ddt fog and accounts. the kids loved to run. they love the smell, probably got a little high off of it. her father matter never let her run. so many years later when he died a very characteristic direct cancer, his wife is arty type of thyroid cancer and radioactive iodine from the stacks goes into the thyroid almost strictly.

they mimic biological functions in minerals the body needs. so plutonium go straight to the bone marrow because the body soak seductress like it does calcium. radioactive iodine mimics iodine. once they are there, safely embedded in your oregon companies start to generate power and energy and it bounces against cells and create it themselves what's been become tumors and cancers. her fathers in the hospital, speaking to her through a tracheotomy in saying there is nothing wrong with a gland. against all evidence to the contrary, he refuses to believe the plant was the reason he has thyroid cancer, why his wife of thyroid cancer, way too out of his three have died and why his daughter is very ill.

i think i was part of it for a lot of people who lived there. they felt like there from her neighbors were accusing them of making them sick and creating these problems and benefiting from it. so it was a very hard pill to swallow to accept that these towns had done not. i.d. imac >> when i went to the spillages, i would usually just go for the day. i contacted the city was a human rights lawyer helping these people. a real hero in the story. she would show up in a trunk the cab would have several pounds of marinated pork. she'd say don't worry. i've got some clean meat in the car we can all eat now.

i've been fending off it, which is a brute thing to do for anybody, but especially in russia. >> can they understand the connection? >> i wasn't saying it's too radiated to me for one day and you eat it for everyday. your kid is funny and you're the cutest bunny. supported by further warranty and that's it treaties about search team and had a vocabulary of about xt were spared [inaudible] >> you know, i cannot get people from the scientific establishment. so far the science journals has been positively reviewed. they say that i am sort of partisan, but credible. i worked with a retired professor who is a physicist and

also his degree in engineering had to grow up in richland. he was very much a defender of richland when they met. i said we hoped me with these documents? he was very generous with his time. harry windsor. and then by the time we were through collaborating after several years, he was a conspiracy theorist. he was so angry about what had happened about his daughter had been through. so the general reception has been pretty good so far. it's only been out about six months. [inaudible] >> i think fukushima is really -- the outcome of the book is being translated into japanese. all the water rushing underneath if you question the plant taking radioactive isotopes and putting them in the ocean. scientists are saying it's in the ocean, a big body of water.

you can stand in the ocean and not get it. what happens is fish swimming in the columbia river in the 1940s, dish and redirect the water with a concentration of 3%, the fish so that the greater concentrations of the fish a 40% of radioactivity in their bodies. [inaudible] >> ready. so what happens is because radioactive tapes quickly goes up the food chain towards humans. so we might be eating fish 10 years from now. this stuff is forever in the fish might have radiation in it. we keep doing that. but the other toxins we taken from stuff dumped on and dumped on our apples and networks logistically with radiation. my fear is that sardi happened

but again it 30 years to get to a new norm of what it means to be human, biologically. where the cancer epidemic, but we don't talk about it or recognize it. childhood cancers to be medical rarity. advertising chemotherapy. we having the nerve our midterms about we expect biologically from our bodies and i think that will continue to decline with autoimmune disorders have a strange and powerful allergies, people with digestive problems, circulation system problems, et cetera in higher rates of cancer. >> a little bit about the militarization of the landscape. can you talk a little bit more about what that means? [inaudible] >> let's start with the strip

all. the strip mall is great in richland because you have this building, this big or cannot around it. the perky blonde is handy because people are affluent and cars. but if there is a crisis, if there is a bomb threat or scare or accident at the plant, everybody can retrieve to that big tilting and around it is a fire break. the perky mustards has a fire break. and they are writing about this. national defense highways, which i drove on to get here. the growth of a big arteries which had followed them as is every american suburbs he can get a lot of people out of town really fast. the national defense education act. for excellent schools focus on stem, on science and dodgy and they also taught russian.

it goes on and on really about how the landscape gets militarized. the new kinds of crops growing in many ways they are grown, ddt is a surplus from world war ii that was spread on crops. so were fertilizers, also surplus from the war. ..

>> the government underwriting loans. if you're african-american, you can't get a loan, because you can't live in that all-white suburb by definition. and that, those kinds of divisions in the landscape, too, i think are a product of the militarization and the great postwar changes. >> is it bad or is it just the opposite? >> how so? >> as you said before, richmond became like a southern town in some respects. there's a transplanting of jim crow and racial segregation that may not have existed in that part of the country beforehand. so is it, you know, a militarization of civilian life, or is it, you know, either because of expediency or just

plain and simple, like, racial bias is it just a reflection of the hierarchy of society at that particular time? i mean, you know, you've had racial inequality all over the country, but the military historically has had a lot of southern -- >> right, yeah. >> -- you know -- >> yeah. i think richmond is more like downtown baltimore and taos, right in it's the difference between a blighted older area that no longer -- you know, you can't even get a loan there because of -- and the new, the brand new suburb where even wants to live who can. and that kind of segregation, that kind of spatial segregation

occurred in the postwar period and all over the country. not just in the south. you had a question back there. >> what's your next project? >> well, i'm writing a book about a guy who was american -- russian-american by the name of boris, and he was in on this manhattan project security from the ground up, but before that he had fought in the russian civil war on the side of the monarchists. he was an old tsarist, pretty anti-semitic, very much anti-communist. and so he get into the manhattan project security, and he's the guy who's hounding robert oppenheimer and all of oppenheimer's students because 24er7 all from east european stock and he was sure they were going to sell the bomb or give the bomb to the soviets. so he goes with the american army to europe for the liberation, and he's zooming around trying to find german

scientists. and he billets with these nazis, nazis who were, you know, using prisoners as human subjects to test their theories and their new drugs and their new supercolds, all that. and he likes these guys a lot. he didn't like oppenheimer, but he likes the nazi scientists because they're anti-semitic, they're nationalists, they're imperialists. and he gets them paper clipped to united states, and they start working in american labs throughout the country. there's 1500 of these guys. also a lot of nazi intelligence guys come in, because they knew the soviet union as they were fighting them. and what you find in the postwar period is this strange uptick in testing on human subjects. in the united states in the postwar period after nuremberg. the americans are certainly testing not tuskegee 33 guys, a couple hundred a year, but tens

of thousands of voluntary and involuntary subjects. a lot of them are soldiers, children in wards, orphanages, people in asylums. and, of course, a lot of minorities. it's a pretty awful story. and i think this this guy is onf those soldiers who brings the cold war warriors who brings the old hatreds of the crumbling european empire and refreshes them in america. that's my new book. it's an unhappy topic. [laughter] >> well, this is great. >> thank you. finish. [applause] every time we have a wonderful author in, we always give them an ivy button, a plug for the ivy book shop. and hopefully in better soil than -- [inaudible] this was made, i think, in west virginia. so let's hope for the best.

test it out, come back in 20 years, let us know how it worked out. [laughter] i thank you. i'm hoping that you'll be here to sign for those of you who haven't purchased the book yet, consider purchasing it from us, and thank you again for coming. >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv it's c-span.org or tweet us at

twitter.com/booktv. >> this is a memoir, first of all. it's a little bit of a memoir of my travels in russia. it's a memoir of a number of the people who are in the book. we've gone through 20 years together, so it's a memoir of the last 20 years since the receive -- soviet union fell apart. it's a history of the oil industry, but also in parallel it's a history of russia these past 20 years, the initial collapse in the 1990s and then the gradual recovery the decade after. so we end up with the russia that we see today after this long cycle, and the russian oil industry has gone through the same cycle. it's a biography, it's a multiple biography of a number of people but in particular of the clan that emerged in the 1990s from the city of st. petersburg and came to moscow with putin in the year

2000. and you could sum up the last 20 years of russian history by saying that this is the revenge of st. petersburg over moscow as the clans from st. petersburg take over and are very largely without much exaggeration are in command. this is very much a st. petersburg crowd. so it's a history of the emergence of that controlled, and this is the latest chapter in the 300-year rivalry between the two capitals. so it's a tale of two cities. it's a murder mystery, but i can't give you the names of the guilty ones in every case. [laughter] but you can draw your own conclusions. there are some marvelous unsolved mysteries that may be unraveled someday. most never will. it used to be said in russia in the 1990s that you could tell if a business was profitable from the trail of bodies that led to the front door of the

business involved. if there were no bodies, it wasn't worth paying attention to, because it couldn't possibly be profitable. i'll leave it to your imagination why, for example, the international red cross was highly profitable by that measure in the 1990s in russia. one clue is the subsidies that you could get for the import of tax-free tobacco and alcohol to benefit good causes such as the red cross. this was profitable and, therefore, of interest. it's even a science fiction story. because what we're dealing here really when you come right down to it is the meeting of two alien civilizations after 70 years of the soviet period. the oil industry in particular grew up in almost complete isolation from the west, and this is virtually a unique case. we have other places where oil

industries have grown up, where oil industries are run by national oil companies. but in almost every case, in fact, in every case these industries were first founded by foreigners and then were taken over. not so in the case of russia where from the 1920s on at any rate for all practical purposes the oil industry was home grown and developed its own culture, its own civilization even as the soviet union did with its own language and its own culture. i sometimes like to tell my classes that the story of russia in the 20th century is very much that of a people who decided that a capitalism didn't work, so it's as though they all piled into a space capsule and took off and landed on the planet mars and started a completely different civilization in which the market was thrown out and prices and profits and private ownership and built that civilization and actually made it run for nearly six, seven

decades. not well, but it ran. and then they decided that it wasn't working particularly well, so they all piled back into their space capsule and came back to earth. which is something remarkable. this is something russians do every so often. they will conduct these massive social science experiments on themselves. this isn't the first time they've done it. so here they are back on earth again, and the oil industry suddenly faced the world oil industry. and so the book is very much how these two civilizations have come to terms with one another which has not been easy. because these past 20 years have been a time of revolution in the global oil industry. and so suddenly you land on earth, and you suddenly find yourself -- at least in the oil industry -- faced with a race. the question is, how have the russians done in that race? talented oil people that they are, talented engineering culture that they are.

that's part of the story. the book is, has tragic heroes and tragic anti-heroes, one of whom is in jail, mikhail federcovsky, and i want today avoid making it the story of him and yet in the end in the man who was briefly the richest man in russia who ran the most successful private oil company in russia at the time of his arrest in 2003, this man has been in jail now for nearly ten years. in october 2013 he will will hae been in jail for ten years. and this very much is the result of a blood match with his nemesis, vladimir putin. and, of course, one of the big questions is, when will he get out? no one knows. but the other question is, what

exactly did he do? and there has been a great deal of coverage of mikhail federkovsky, and i didn't want to add to that whole literature. but what i have tried to do is go into his company, and i've had interviews with a number of the players inside his company to find out what was unique about the company, what was unique that it enabled it to double oil production in four short years? how was that done? so you'll find there was a chapter on that side of the story. and then lastly i have to say that this is a story of guilty love, which i'll come back to if you ask me. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv of.org. booktv.org. >> since 1998, c-span2's booktv has shown over 40,000 hours of programming with top

nonfiction authors including bob woodward. >> we were going to do the book after he died, but he preempted that, and i was horrified, quite honestly. and then i was flighted. >> i always felt that people are really more alike than they are different, and so the artist in me rose to that occasion, that if i can create something that is so moving and that permits a kind of distance that you sometimes need from what is painful, then people will understand. and understanding is basically what is fundamental. >> but the point is that no argument is given to that effect, none of the relevant facts are considered, and this is regarded as one of the half dozen cases where just war theory entails that the use of military force was legitimate. >> we're the only national television network devoted exclusively to nonfiction books

every weekend. throughout the fall we're marking 15 years of booktv on c-span2. >> pulitzer prize-winning biographer a. scott berg presents his book, "wilson." this 45 minute presentation oured during booktv's coverage of the national book festival on the national mall in washington d.c. [applause] >> thank you very much. welcome to the opening event to have second day of the 2013 national book festival on this absolutely perfect first day of autumn. if you weres here for the end oc the program yesterday, you know what a contrast this is. my name is jonathan yardly, i'm the book critic of "the washington post." [applause]e "w thank you. thank you very much. the washington post has been a charter sponsor of the national book festival since the festival's inception 13 years ago and