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[Mr. TOP SECRET]

By SCOTT SAYARE
NY Times

PARIS — The French military deliberately exposed enlisted men to nuclear radiation in the Sahara Desert in 1961 in order to study resulting physical and psychological effects, according to a classified 1998 report published Tuesday by a French daily, Le Parisien.

While the exposure of French military personnel to nuclear radiation during weapons tests has been well documented, the 1998 report appears to represent the only concrete indication to date that military officials intentionally subjected soldiers to potentially dangerous conditions. The Defense Ministry commissioned the report in 1996, following the termination of France’s nuclear testing program.

The Defense Ministry on Tuesday maintained that France had never knowingly placed individuals in harm’s way.

“We do not use men as guinea pigs,” said a spokeswoman, Stéphanie Prunier, adding that the ministry had publicly acknowledged in a 2007 report the “military exercises” conducted at Algerian testing sites.

France for decades rejected links between its nuclear testing programs and health problems amongst the military and civilian personnel involved in them, but the government last year announced the creation of a victims’ compensation program. The program has drawn criticism from veterans, however, who call it too limited in scope.

The 1998 report was first obtained about a year ago by French Center for Documentation and Research on Peace and Conflicts, which waited for an opportune moment to release it, according to its president, Patrice Bouveret. That moment arrived with the debate over the compensation program.

The report details the atomic test known as Green Jerboa, the last of four French above-ground nuclear tests performed in the Algerian desert. The test, conducted on April 25, 1961, was accompanied by a series of “tactical experiments” involving some 300 army personnel, according to Le Parisien.

In the hours following the blast, at least one group was sent to within 275 meters of ground zero in order to “study attack possibilities in contaminated zones”; a corollary goal of the maneuvers was “to study the physiological and psychological effects produced on men by nuclear arms, in order to glean the elements necessary for the physical preparation and moral training of the modern combatant,” according to the document.

“You have to place it in the context of cold war priorities,” cautioned Dr. Bruno Tertrais, a senior research fellow at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research and a former Defense Ministry adviser. “Ground maneuvers in a nuclear environment were conducted by most, if not all, nuclear capable countries.”

“There was a widespread expectation,” he continued, “that the soldier of the future would have to fight in a nuclear atmosphere.”

According to the classified report published Tuesday, the “Green Jerboa” tests indicated that “special clothing would offer only relative protection” for infantry called to fight in a contaminated zone, and that “the time spent by units in such a zone would have to be reduced.”

Veterans said the documents confirmed what they long believed.

“For me, this is not a revelation,” said Alain Peyrot, a representative of the French Association of Veterans of Nuclear Tests, referring to the document published Tuesday. Mr. Peyrot, 64, served as a “decontaminator” in the French Navy during nuclear tests in the Sahara and French Polynesia in 1965 and 1966.

“We knew these things,” he said, but in the military “it was obey and shut up.”

France conducted 210 nuclear weapons tests in the Algerian Sahara and French Polynesia between 1960 and 1996. The Defense Ministry has estimated that a total 150,000 military personnel and civilians may have suffered adverse health consequences as a result.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/world/europe/17france.html