In The Plutonium Files, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eileen Welsome reveals for the first time the breadth of the extraordinary fifty-year cover-up surrounding the plutonium injections, as well as the deceitful nature of thousands of other experiments conducted on American citizens in the postwar years.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The "Product" - - The acid taste of Plutonium - - The Rad Lab - - 1942: the Met Lab - - A tolerable dose - - The Manhattan project is launched - - Plutonium rising - - Planning the experiment - - Ebb Cade - - Next in line : Arthur and Albert - - Trinity site - - A "small piece of the sun" - - The quest continues - - The Rochester production line - - A misdiagnosed housewife - - Chicago : upping the dose - - Postwar Berkeley : the final injections - - Atomic utopia - - At a Crossroads - - Comings and goings - - The AEC and the politics of secrecy - - Shields Warren : "patriotic enough to lie" - - "Wrapped in the flag" - - The Vanderbilt women - - The Fernald boys - - The proving ground - - Stalin's Labor Day surprise - - The first GI guinea pigs - - "Hot particles" - - Scorched earth maneuvers - - Citizen volunteers - - The cloud samplers - - Dispatch from ground zero - - The inverted mushroom - - Body-snatching patriots - - "The Buchenwald touch" - - "Mice or men?" - - Houston's "paperclip" doctor - - Cincinnati's battlefield - - The chambers of Oak Ridge - - Captive volunteers : prisoners in Oregon and Washington - - The plutonium experiment : phase two - - "Tragic deaths full of pity and sorrow" - - The reckoning - - "We're coming clean" - - Revelations and tribulations - - January 1994 : the advisory committee on human radiation experiments - - Harvest of sorrow - - Closing the book - - A presidential apology - - "Never again" - - Whitewashes, red herrings, and cold cash.