Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara.

On July 16th, 1945, the US Army tested the world’s first nuclear bomb in the New Mexico desert. It was the culmination of the Manhattan Project, a program to develop the first atomic weapon during World War II. Just a few weeks later, the same bomb would devastate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The new film Oppenheimer tells the story of the creation of that weapon and its initial detonation at the Trinity Test site in New Mexico. Since the film’s premiere, attention has grown on the Downwinders, residents near the explosion site who suffered severe health issues due to radioactive fallout. The Senate recently voted to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to cover those affected by the Trinity Test. And President Biden has signaled his support.

Joining me to discuss the impact of the nuclear bomb on US residents and this bipartisan push for compensation is Tina Cordova. She’s the co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. Tina, welcome to the show.

Tina Cordova:

Thank you, Preet. Thank you for inviting me to discuss this very important subject.

Preet Bharara:

It is indeed very important. So first, just a little bit of background. How many generations have you been in New Mexico?

Tina Cordova:

I’ve been… Well, in New Mexico, we’ve lived here for hundreds if not thousands of years. They’ve recently found footprints near my home that date back 23,000 years. I can trace my family to the area where I grew up for seven generations.

Preet Bharara:

That’s a lot of generations. So take people back to that day, July 16th, 1945, the first atom bomb ever to be detonated anywhere in the world. We saw some of it in the movie and people have heard about it and learned about it in school. Can you just describe the scene and what happened after that?

Tina Cordova:

I can describe it from the people’s perspective that lived as close as 12 miles, 20 miles, or in the case of my little village, 45 miles. People have always described it as one of those events that was forever etched in their memory. It was just such a profound event to experience a flash of light that was brighter than the sun itself at 5:30 in the morning essentially. And then also to experience having been knocked out of bed or having your windows break or everything fall out of your cupboards was just a profound experience that affected people for the rest of their lives.

Everybody told me, that I have ever spoken to about this, that they actually thought it was the end of the world. And most people thought the only thing that they could do was drop to their knees and pray. And you can well imagine, it appeared to them as though the sun was rising in the west instead of the east for those people who lived where I grew up because the test site was west of those small towns. And so, it was an experience like no other they’d ever experienced, and there was no information available. I mean-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So what was told when you have a dramatic event like that, remind folks what, if anything the government said about what happened?

Tina Cordova:

Well, they didn’t warn anybody before or afterwards, but there was a false narrative that was… Actually, they prepared a false news release that was distributed to the news agencies that said that an ammunition dump on what was called the Alamogordo Bombing Range had blown up, but that there was no harm done, no loss of life, and basically go on with your lives the way you always have, it’s nothing to be concerned about.

Preet Bharara:

People will say, “Well, the government should have taken responsibility and there should have been compensation.” We’ll talk about those efforts in a moment that have been a long time coming. But people will say, “Well, look, it was a secret program. It would’ve undermined the war effort if too much information was given.” What do you say about that?

Tina Cordova:

Well, first of all, we didn’t live in a time when there was a lot of information sharing. Nobody had a telephone, nobody had a TV, very few people had a radio, and newspapers were only printed occasionally and shared. So to have evacuated people who lived let’s say within the 50-mile radius of the test site would’ve truly had no consequence to the secrecy of the test. And so, I say absolutely a falsehood. At the very least, they should have evacuated the 13,000 people that lived within a 50-mile radius to the test site.

Part of the narrative has always been that the area was remote, inhabited, that no one lived here and no one was harmed. But we know because we’ve done the research and we’ve collected the data from the 1940 census data, and there were actually a little over 13,000 people in 1940 living within a 50-mile radius. And if you extend that radius to 150 miles, there were half a million people. It encompassed some large cities like Albuquerque and El Paso.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Talk about what scientists and doctors have determined the health effects were that were attributable to that detonation.

Tina Cordova:

Well, I think we need to also recognize, Preet, that at the time in 1945, it was already a well-established fact that exposure to radiation was detrimental to human health. The government had done a pretest of Trinity. They used conventional explosives in May of 1945 laced with plutonium so they could track fallout, and they knew that the bomb was going to create a lot of fallout. It’s a well-established fact then and it remains so today that exposure to radiation causes damage to cells, eventually tissue organs, and it causes all sorts of problems. Primarily cancer is what people recognize. What we’ve known and seen in our communities is that we’ve displayed very high instance of cancers and many generations of cancers.

As an example, in my own family, I’m the fourth generation to have cancer after Trinity. And now we have a fifth generation. I have a 23-year-old niece that was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in November. I wish I could say my family’s unique. We are not. We see this all the time in New Mexico. And so, we have been dealing with the consequences ever since. The government’s never come back to do an epidemiological study to track or trace what happened to the population here. And the truth is, no one even stayed around 24 hours after the test to basically develop some sort of information that could be shared with us about what happened and what we might do to take care of ourselves.

Preet Bharara:

So it’s my understanding that the government never acknowledged that people who were harmed from radiation exposure from not just the detonation of Trinity, but many others as well. But then in 1990, a law was passed where there was an acknowledgement and funds were put in place for people who were harmed by nuclear bomb detonations in other places, but not Trinity. Is that right?

Tina Cordova:

That is absolutely true.

Preet Bharara:

So why was Trinity left out?

Tina Cordova:

That’s the 2.5 billion dollar question. That’s how much the fund has paid out-

Preet Bharara:

It’s the first site. It’s the first site. It seems people listening will probably be wondering, “Well, if they’re admitting it in some cases, why not for the first ever detonation in the entire country?”

Tina Cordova:

Well, it’s very counterintuitive. And just as a matter of example, we were downwind of the Nevada test site also, New Mexico was. By the time they started testing in Nevada, we had monitoring stations all over the country. And a lot of them were focused in the American West because they knew the fallout would be concentrated here. So the monitoring stations that were in place in New Mexico showed that we received high levels of dosing from the Nevada test site. But it’s very counterintuitive. And just so that you know, they compensate people in Winslow, Arizona, 259 miles from the Nevada test site, but they don’t compensate people in New Mexico that live 12 miles from the test site. And it just is obviously very unjust. It’s obviously not fair.

Preet Bharara:

But is there any explanation? Were there bad politicians in New Mexico? Were people trying to hide something more than they were in other places? It doesn’t compute.

Tina Cordova:

I think you’ve actually described it very well. I think it was a very inconvenient truth. It’s a very inconvenient truth. We had two senators like every other state in 1990 when the fund was established. I also know that in New Mexico, we have two of the three nuclear labs. We have two of the three Department of Energy labs located in New Mexico. I think it’s really hard to hold out a hand and say, “Give us every dime that you can for these national labs” and then hold out the other hand and say, “But oh, please send something our way also to take care of all the people that have been made sick through this industry.”

Preet Bharara:

So now as we were discussing just before we hit the record button, there is some hope not just for compensation for the people near the Trinity Project, but also an acknowledgement, which I think you have said is important to you and important to your community as well. We’re also talking about the movie Oppenheimer that I mentioned in the intro. What’s your sense of whether or not that movie, and I know you have many feelings about the film, whether that movie has given your cause and momentum?

Tina Cordova:

Well, when they came here to film the Oppenheimer movie, we did outreach through every means that we could think of to reach the filmmakers, to engage with them, and to ask them to consider adding a panel at the end of the movie that would reflect on the sacrifice and the suffering of the people of New Mexico who were basically enlisted into the service of our country as part of the Manhattan Project and the Trinity Test and who have basically been suffering ever since. We’ve experienced a certain level of sacrifice and suffering as a result of the establishment of the Manhattan Project and the test here in New Mexico.

And then even after the film was produced, I’m friends with Olivia Fermi, her grandfather’s Enrico Fermi. She contacted me and said, “Do you know about this film?” And this was in January of this year. And I said, “I certainly do. They filmed it here.” And she said, “We need to reach out to them. They need to tell at least part of the history of the Downwinders.” And I said, “Well, please have at it. Maybe the last name Fermi will have more encouragement than the last name Cordova.”

And so she reached out using Kai Bird, one of the authors of “American Prometheus,” and he said he would do what he could and he got back to us and said they’re not interested. And so, a panel like that at the end of the movie would’ve taken nothing away from the movie itself. I’m certain that there are people all over the world who have seen the movie, who have wondered, “Well, what about the people that lived in New Mexico?” And I certainly know that that is true because I’ve received emails from people.

So right now I believe that inadvertently the movie has given us a platform to tell this history more widely. I’ve been interviewed by news outlets all over the world, and it’s given us a platform to do that. But we won’t reach the millions of people literally that will watch the movie who would have been encouraged to join with us in our fight for justice if there had been a panel included.

Preet Bharara:

You may underestimate this podcast, Tina.

Tina Cordova:

Preet, please.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. Not millions. Not millions.

Tina Cordova:

I’m sorry. I did not mean to offend.

Preet Bharara:

No, no, that’s all right. No offense taken. I take your point. So you went and saw the film, and I’ve read an account of your going to watch the film. How did you feel sitting there in a movie theater in the dark when you saw the Trinity Test reenacted?

Tina Cordova:

I had reservations about seeing the film. And that morning when I knew that I was going to actually finally see it, I truly had such high levels of anxiety, but I knew I had to do it. I always thought that it would bring me as close to that day, the experience of that day as anything ever would. And so when we got to the point… And I am somebody who has read extensively, so I knew who all the players were. I mean, I could follow along with all of the characters that were introduced because I know this history.

And I knew we were leading up to the test, but I openly wept because I will be honest with you, Preet, all I could think about was my four-year-old father living in a downwind community, drinking mass quantities of fresh cows milk and eating every type of fruit and vegetable and eating fresh eggs in the Eden that was Tularosa. The village I grew up in. My dad developed three cancers he didn’t have risk factors for. They had to remove parts of his tongue twice. He had to learn how to swallow and speak all over again. He was reduced from this very capable, strong, incredibly handsome man to a shell. And that’s all I could think of. That and his generation is gone. My dad would’ve been 82 now, and he’s gone. They’re gone. His generation is gone. They were children at the time. They received very high doses of radiation because they had small body mass, and they’re gone. And I openly wept. I had a release of a lot of anxiety during the film.

Preet Bharara:

Well, no one can blame you for that. On a positive note, as we’ve been discussing, there is now some movement for an acknowledgement of what happened at the Trinity Test and compensation. Could you describe those efforts and what recently happened in the Congress?

Tina Cordova:

Absolutely. We have had a champion representing us in the US Senate that is Senator Ben Ray Luján. And he, even while he was in the House, has entered bills I think 10 times himself now. But we’ve had bills entered 13 times and we’ve never seen a House floor or a Senate floor vote. I’ve testified in Congress. We thought we were close a couple of times and a vote escaped us. But what happened, it was the most unusual pairing actually. Senator Hawley delivered this impassioned speech on the Senate floor recently about how people in the St. Louis area had been harmed during the Manhattan Project because as they went about enriching uranium, they dumped waste into a landfill there. And obviously that waste has now made its way into waterways, et cetera. He was talking about how these people need to be taken care of.

And I actually contacted Senator Luján’s staff and I forwarded the video and I said, “I would highly suggest that you all reach out to him. He’s on Senate judiciary. Senator Hawley could help us.” And they did. And they started a dialogue about how they might be able together to enter an amendment to the NDAA to include Senator Luján’s bill that he’s been entering for 10 years along with the newly created Senator Hawley bill. And that’s what they did. They entered an amendment and they got 61 votes. It was a 61 to 37 vote. It was a bipartisan vote on a nonpartisan issue. And we were ecstatic.

Preet Bharara:

That’s pretty rare these days, right?

Tina Cordova:

You know. You know how rare that is. But this is low hanging fruit. I keep telling everybody. This testing that took place in the American West has damaged our people. We’ve just been left unnoticed, unacknowledged, and we’ve received no help. And it’s time that our government atone for the mistakes that they made when they went about seeking nuclear superiority.

Preet Bharara:

What do you make of President Biden’s support?

Tina Cordova:

I’m ever grateful for his support. When he was in New Mexico and when he publicly acknowledged his support for us, I was able to talk to him briefly that day. He did not rush through the conversation. He showed a great deal of empathy. I knew that he would because his family has experienced a loss. They lost their son. His son had glioblastoma. And I told the president… Because when I told him I’m a cancer survivor, he leaned forward and whispered, “You know, I lost my son.” And I said, “Of course I do. And do you know how many people I know who have had glioblastoma? Many people. Because it’s not uncommon here. It’s a cancer caused by an environmental exposure. And so we see it all the time.” He said, “I’m with you. I’m going to support you all.” And it was very, very clear to me that he understood what we have been through. And I told him that. I told him, “I knew you would understand this, President Biden, having been through it yourself.”

Preet Bharara:

What’s the prospect for this getting passed into law?

Tina Cordova:

Well, I have been saying more and more these days that this is a winning process now. Members of the House need to understand that it is their constituents that have been most affected. Republican members of the House need to understand that the states that we’re trying to add to RECA are primarily red states. Their states like Utah, like Montana, like Idaho. New Mexico is the only real blue state in the bunch. And so, their constituents are those that have been most affected. This is a non-partisan issue. We need their support, or I guess they can go down in history as the party that blocked justice for the people in the American West who were so horribly affected by the above ground testing that our government conducted.

Preet Bharara:

And when you say RECA, to distinguish from something else we talk about all the time on the show, RICO, RECA is the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that we talked about that was passed into law in 1990. What do you think the timing will be?

Tina Cordova:

Well, that is truly… I don’t have an answer for you. In speaking with Senator Luján, his staff, in speaking with Representative Leger Fernández who’s carrying the bill in the House for us, they are all saying that they truly don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ll know something I’m sure in early September about how this is going to progress. But the two bills, the NDAA passed in… The National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA bill passed in the House is very different from that past in the Senate. And somehow the two sides are going to have to come together and reconcile that. The leadership in the House and the Senate will do that, but we need Speaker McCarthy, we need Representative Jim Jordan to understand that this is a nonpartisan issue and that we are very hopeful that they become part of a solution, that they don’t render this a problem that never gets resolved because the program’s going to sunset in June of 2024. And if that happens, Preet, we’re out of luck and out of time.

Preet Bharara:

So do I take you, Tina, to be exhorting our listeners to contact their members of Congress?

Tina Cordova:

I absolutely am doing that. We’re asking people to reach out to all of their members of Congress and also specifically to people like Senator Schumer who will be involved in the negotiations.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I used to work for Senator Schumer. You hear that, Chuck?

Tina Cordova:

Thank you. I mean, Senator Schumer will have big influence over how this is handled when they get to the negotiations. And people can go to our website, which is trinitydownwinders.com. So trinitydownwinders.com. There are links there to make it easy for people to do outreach. But please contact your members of Congress and let them know that 78 years is long enough for people to wait for justice. We were just innocent American citizens. We pledged allegiance to the flag like everybody else.

And just as a matter of fact, Preet, during World War II, New Mexico per capita had more people enlisted, more people die. We bought more war bonds. We even sold farm equipment. And we were the first people to die in the Pacific after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And so, we are true patriots and we’ve given everything to this.

And let me just also very quickly add that there’s no recognition either in the film Oppenheimer. It’s as though it took place in a vacuum. But there’s no recognition of the fact that we also were the uranium belt. This is where the uranium was mined to make the fissile material used to create the bomb at Nagasaki and at Trinity. Those uranium miners across the Navajo Nation, Laguna and Acoma Pueblo, indigenous lands, there are 1,000 abandoned uranium mill in mine sites where they extracted 32 million tons of uranium. Those miners that worked in that industry after 1971 have never been taken care of, and they’re part of our push to get justice. So they’re referred to as the post 71 uranium workers. They’re also included in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that we’re pushing so hard to pass in Congress.

Preet Bharara:

So there you have it, folks. You have a call to action. Tina Cordova, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your work. It’s a real inspiration. Thank you so much.

Tina Cordova:

Thank you, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

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Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producer is Adam Waller. The editorial producer is Noa Azulai. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Jake Kaplan, Nat Weiner, Namita Shah and Claudia Hernández. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.