A REPORT BASED ON THE DALLAS TIMES HERALD, NOVEMBER 16, 1978

COMMENTS FROM STREET TALK NETWORK ABOUT THIS POST-

1. Do your own research on the information provided and then come up with your own conclusions.

2. This article contains many names and other information that can be researched.

3. Trust your gut feeling on information provided as this post may contain slanted information.

4. Tell me what you think about all these experiments of people.

The November 16, 1978, Dallas Times Herald article tells the story of A. McGinnis, a West Virginia veteran who learned—33 years after the event—that the United States Army had deliberately exposed him to mustard gas during a secret chemical-warfare experiment.

The article was not originally investigated by the Times Herald. The “(AP)” beside the Parkersburg dateline identifies it as an Associated Press wire report reprinted by the Dallas newspaper. It also refers to an earlier AP story that had raised the possibility that radiation was used during the same series of experiments. The Army’s subsequent response denied that nuclear material was involved but acknowledged McGinnis’s participation in mustard-gas testing.

That distinction matters: the clipping is itself an AP article, while also reporting the consequences of an earlier AP investigation. I was unable to locate a publicly accessible copy of that earlier wire story, so its claims should not be reconstructed beyond what the Times Herald clipping reports.

What happened to A. McGinnis

McGinnis was 53 years old in 1978 and undergoing chemotherapy for what the article described as extensive cancer. He also reported kidney difficulties and sterility, which he believed resulted from the 1945 experiment.

His congressman, Representative Robert H. Mollohan of West Virginia, requested information from the Army. General Bernard W. Rogers, then Army chief of staff, replied that McGinnis had participated in chemical-warfare testing on San José Island, off the Pacific coast of Panama.

According to the Army information quoted in the article:

• The overall test group contained approximately 133 soldiers.
• About two-thirds reportedly were Puerto Rican.
• Testing on San José Island ran from February 16 through April 21, 1945.
• McGinnis’s particular group participated from March 21 through April 4.
• The stated purpose was to determine the effects of chemical-warfare agents under field conditions and evaluate protective clothing.
• Participants wore fatigues covered by rubberized protective suits, along with goggles and other headgear.
• On March 29, 1945, Army aircraft dropped bombs containing “HT,” a mixture of sulfur mustard and thickened mustard agent, on or near the troops.

The Army’s records called the men “volunteers” and claimed they had received commendations for meritorious service. But the article gives no evidence that they were fully informed about the chemical, its carcinogenic potential, the possibility of permanent injury, or their right to refuse without consequences.

In a rigid military command structure—particularly one that included segregated Puerto Rican troops—the word “volunteer” does not necessarily establish free, informed consent.

McGinnis’s description of the test

McGinnis remembered being instructed to jam his bayonet-mounted rifle into the ground and lean forward against it when an airplane flew overhead. He said that after the gas was released, “everything turned black.”

The newspaper reported that trees were stripped of their leaves and that animals screamed, staggered and died. McGinnis described the men as being “in a hell of a shape” the following morning.

He also remembered a persistent sensation in his throat:

“I was just choking all the time and hurting down in there.”

By 1978, doctors had removed malignant tumors from his throat and stomach. He said his chemotherapy alone cost approximately $1,100 per month—an enormous expense in 1978.

The article’s final paragraph is especially important. Meredith Robb, a spokesman for Representative Mollohan, said the Army’s letter might not help McGinnis obtain compensation because it stopped short of admitting that mustard gas caused his cancer.

This became a recurring pattern: the government acknowledged that a test occurred but required the injured veteran to prove a medical connection decades later, often after records had disappeared and the participant had been ordered never to discuss the experiment.

What the Army admitted—and what it did not

The Army’s response apparently conceded three central facts:

1. McGinnis was a participant in chemical-warfare testing.

2. Mustard agent was used.

3. The testing took place on San José Island in 1945.

It denied that nuclear materials were involved. But it did not accept financial responsibility for McGinnis’s medical care and did not concede that mustard gas caused his cancers, kidney problems or sterility.

That left McGinnis in a cruel evidentiary position. He could prove that the Army exposed him to mustard gas, but the Army still expected him to prove what portion of his illness was caused by that exposure more than three decades earlier.

Today the Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes full-body mustard-gas exposure as associated with several presumptive illnesses, including cancers of the respiratory tract, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic eye disorders and, in certain circumstances, acute non-lymphocytic leukemia. A veteran at a recognized testing site may not have to prove the causal connection disease by disease in the manner McGinnis faced in 1978. VA mustard-gas eligibility information

The government’s later recognition does not prove that every illness McGinnis suffered—including his kidney disease and sterility—was caused by mustard agent. It does, however, show that the Army’s refusal in 1978 to recognize any connection was far more doubtful than the response letter suggested.

A much larger mustard-gas program

McGinnis was not part of a small, isolated incident. Historians and later investigations determined that at least 60,000 American service members participated in mustard-agent and Lewisite testing during World War II.

The experiments generally fell into three categories:

• Patch tests, in which liquid agent was placed directly on a soldier’s skin.
• Chamber tests, in which groups of soldiers wearing protective equipment were enclosed in gas chambers.
• Field tests, in which gas was dispersed over soldiers, terrain or mock battlefields to evaluate equipment, clothing and military performance.

Some tests were intended to improve masks and protective garments before a possible chemical attack. That military purpose did not excuse deceptive recruitment, inadequate safety protections, intentional racial selection, secrecy orders or the failure to provide lifelong medical surveillance.

A 1993 Government Accountability Office investigation found that the military had difficulty identifying experimental subjects and that incomplete military information hindered veterans seeking benefits. GAO also found that secrecy and poor records created lasting problems for exposed veterans. GAO report on secret chemical and biological testing

The VA did not begin a major mustard-gas outreach campaign until 1993. In 2018 it announced that it would reconsider previously denied World War II claims after Congress expanded the recognized testing locations. VA review of previously denied claims

By then, most participants had died.

Puerto Rican soldiers and explicitly racial testing

The racial composition of McGinnis’s unit was not accidental. Military researchers conducted tests intended to determine whether mustard gas affected racial groups differently.

Puerto Rican troops were used on San José Island. Other experimental programs selected African American and Japanese American soldiers, with white soldiers sometimes serving as the comparison group. Researchers investigated the pseudoscientific idea that darker skin might provide greater resistance to mustard burns or that supposed racial biology might affect chemical susceptibility.

No meaningful racial protection was found. Mustard gas damaged human tissue regardless of race.

The racial structure of the program nevertheless caused several layers of harm:

• Minority troops were selected on the basis of racial theories.
• Segregated units made it easier to assemble subjects by race.
• Puerto Rican soldiers were tested at a distant installation outside the continental United States.
• Japanese American soldiers were tested while their families and communities were enduring wartime incarceration and discrimination.
• Black soldiers served in a segregated military where refusing an order or “volunteer” assignment could carry serious consequences.

A later investigation based on government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act identified at least eight race-oriented mustard-gas projects involving Black or Japanese American troops and a separate program involving Puerto Rican soldiers. PBS report on race-based mustard-gas experiments

Secrecy compounded the injuries

Participants were commonly sworn to secrecy. This created consequences far beyond national-security classification:

• Veterans could not fully explain their exposure to civilian doctors.
• Some doctors treated symptoms without knowing the patient had been subjected to chemical warfare agents.
• Families did not understand why veterans suffered chronic breathing, skin or psychological problems.
• Veterans sometimes believed that discussing the tests could lead to punishment.
• Disability claims were rejected because neither the veteran nor the VA could locate adequate documentation.
• No comprehensive, long-term medical monitoring system followed all participants.

A study of 363 mustard-gas test veterans later found current full post-traumatic stress disorder in approximately 32 percent and partial PTSD in another 10 percent. Particularly important factors included the severity of symptoms during testing and the prohibition against discussing the experience.

Similar abuses involving other vulnerable groups

The mustard-gas program belongs to a larger history in which researchers repeatedly selected people who possessed less power to refuse: enlisted soldiers, prisoners, institutionalized children, poor hospital patients, racial minorities, Indigenous people and pregnant women.

Not every case below was identical. Some were deliberate exposure experiments; others involved withholding treatment, inadequate disclosure, coercive reproductive procedures or nontherapeutic radiation. What connects them is the exploitation of unequal power.

Black men and families: the Tuskegee syphilis study

From 1932 until 1972, the United States Public Health Service followed 600 Black men in Alabama—399 with syphilis and 201 controls. The men were told that they were being treated for “bad blood.” They were not deliberately infected, but informed consent was not obtained, and effective penicillin treatment was withheld after it became standard.

The consequences extended to wives and children because untreated participants could transmit syphilis to their partners and unborn children. The government did not end the project until journalists exposed it. CDC history of the Tuskegee study

Institutionalized children: Fernald and Wrentham

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, children at the Fernald School in Massachusetts were given breakfast foods containing radioactive iron and calcium. The research was funded by the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Institutes of Health and the Quaker Oats Company.

The children were recruited into what was called a “science club.” Parents received incomplete or misleading information, while children were offered extra milk, outings and special attention.

In 1961, 70 children at the Wrentham State School received radioactive iodine in a government-funded study concerning protection from radioactive fallout.

The federal Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments concluded that these studies placed an unfair burden on institutionalized children whose interests were less protected than those of socially privileged children. Federal report on radiation experiments involving children

Children at Willowbrook

Between 1963 and 1966, institutionalized children at Willowbrook State School in New York were deliberately given material containing hepatitis virus. Researchers wanted to study the progression of hepatitis and possible preventive treatments.

Although parental permission forms were used, federal research-ethics materials note that the procedures were presented as vaccinations and that access to the overcrowded institution may have been tied to enrollment in the research—creating powerful pressure on desperate parents. HHS research-ethics history

Pregnant women and unborn children: Vanderbilt

In the 1940s, approximately 820 poor pregnant white women at Vanderbilt University were given radioactive iron. The study involved the Tennessee Department of Health and partial Public Health Service funding.

Federal investigators later found indications that the women did not know they were participating in a radiation experiment. The radioactive material crossed the placenta, exposing developing fetuses. A follow-up reported several cancers among exposed offspring but none in a similarly sized control group; because dose records were incomplete, investigators could not establish a definitive causal conclusion.

The federal radiation committee found 27 studies between 1944 and 1974 involving pregnant or nursing women, 19 of which offered no direct medical benefit to the subjects. Federal findings on the Vanderbilt experiment

Prisoners: testicular irradiation

Between 1963 and 1973, 131 prisoners in Oregon and Washington underwent experimental irradiation of their testicles. The experiments studied radiation’s effects on sperm and reproductive biology and served Atomic Energy Commission and national-security interests. They offered no therapeutic benefit to the prisoners.

The prisoners received payments, but investigators did not adequately explain such matters as the possibility of genetic damage or later medical procedures. Oregon corrections officials eventually halted experimentation after concluding that prisoners could not provide genuinely free consent within a prison environment. Advisory Committee report on prisoner irradiation

Indigenous women: sterilization through the Indian Health Service

The Indian Health Service case was not principally an experimental study, but it belongs in the history of government medical abuses against vulnerable populations.

GAO found that 3,406 sterilizations were performed on Indigenous women in four IHS regions during fiscal years 1973–1976. Three thousand and one involved women of childbearing age. Although forms appeared in medical files, many did not meet informed-consent requirements, and the reviewed regions were generally not complying with IHS regulations.

The procedures permanently affected women’s reproductive lives, families and tribal communities. 1976 GAO investigation of Indian Health Service practices

Declassification and the Freedom of Information Act

Much of this history became public through several different mechanisms that should not be confused:

• Formal declassification removed national-security restrictions from categories of military records.
• Freedom of Information Act requests forced agencies to search for and release particular records, sometimes with redactions.
• Congressional investigations obtained testimony and agency files.
• GAO investigations compared military, VA and medical records.
• Lawsuits produced documents through discovery.
• Journalists interviewed survivors and connected individual accounts to government files.
• The Department of Energy’s 1990s “Openness Initiative” searched for records of human radiation experiments.

Government disclosure was incomplete. Records had been lost, destroyed, mislabeled or separated among agencies. Privacy restrictions also kept some identifying information closed. Therefore, declassification did not instantly create a complete list of every subject or every exposure.

The central lesson of the McGinnis case

A. McGinnis’s experience shows that the injury was not confined to what happened beneath an Army aircraft on March 29, 1945. It continued through decades of secrecy, uncertainty, inadequate medical information, expensive treatment and government reluctance to accept responsibility.

The Army knew what substance it had released. McGinnis did not.

The Army kept the records. McGinnis had to fight to obtain them.

The Army described the men as volunteers. The surviving veteran described choking, darkness, devastated vegetation, dying animals and lasting disease.

The Army finally acknowledged the test—but still would not promise to pay for his care.

That pattern appears repeatedly in the histories of minority soldiers, Black men in Tuskegee, institutionalized children, prisoners, poor pregnant women and Indigenous women: those controlling the institutions also controlled the information. The people subjected to the procedures often learned the full truth only after journalists, congressional investigators, families and researchers forced government records into public view.