Interview with Paul Guthals, April 14, 2005

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Paul Guthals April 14, 2005 Los Alamos, New Mexico Interview Conducted By Mary Palevsky © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Paul Guthals April 14, 2005 Conducted by Mary Palevsky Table of Contents Introduction: birth ( 1929, Colorado), family background, childhood in New Mexico, military service with 37th Infantry Division during Korean War, postwar education at Eastern New Mexico University, employed by Los Alamos National Laboratory [ LANL] 1 Recalls being a “ Downwinder from Trinity” while living in Clovis, NM during World War II 3 Remembers hearing about Hiroshima and Nagasaki 5 Becomes Project Leader for Nuclear Bomb Cloud Sampling at LANL 6 Recalls meeting wife Gloria while assigned to National Guard duty at Fort Bliss, TX 7 Details radiation sampling work on Operation Hardtack in the Pacific 8 Discusses radiochemistry work done on radiation samples 13 Talks about work on VA radiation exposure program, specifically B- 47 flight over China 15 Concern for radiation safety, specifically washing down planes after sampling flights 17 Determining radiation contamination on Johnston Atoll, 18 Radiation sampling for nuclear rocket program and other detonations at NTS 19 Describes accidents involved nuclear rocket reactor 20 Details airplane accident while sampling at NTS 21 Talks about readiness study done at NTS 24 Atmospheric studies done with NOAA and NCAR in Alaska and South America 26 Discusses involvement in Operation Hardtack II and Sedan test 29 Details on drill backs 31 Work as Quality Assurance person for Yucca Mountain project, and final position as Quality Manager for LANL prior to retirement in 1991 32 Gloria Guthals’ work at LANL 35 Recalls position as LANL Project Leader and relationship with military 36 Talks about Congressional investigation of radiation exposure victims 38 Role of laboratories and defense work in winning World War II and the Cold War 40 Conclusion: possible relationship between radiation exposure and disease 41 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Paul Guthals April 14, 2005 in Los Alamos, NM Conducted by Mary Palevsky [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disc 1. Mary Palevsky: Mr. Guthals, thank you so much for meeting with me today. And I thought we could start by you saying your full name, place of birth, date of birth, and some of your background and how you ended up being here doing the work that you did. Paul Guthals: My name is Paul Robert Guthals, and I was born in Fowler, Colorado, which is thirty- five miles east of Pueblo on the Arkansas River. My father was a certified butter maker. And he went to work for Trinidad Creamery Company. And if you have been around New Mexico, that’s one of our big butter makers. They make Colorado Gold, and it’s for sale in grocery stores. But anyway, eventually he went to New Mexico, Clovis, and started a butter making plant there for Trinidad Creamery. We came to New Mexico in 1932. And I so I’ve been around a few days. What year were you born, again? Nineteen twenty- nine. My dad was the manager of that creamery company and was doing that until the year I graduated from the ninth grade. Then he and my mother started their own business, and they were buying cream, eggs, poultry and so on; we had a poultry processing plant. We did poultry processing and sold a lot of our poultry and eggs to the Department of Defense [ DoD], if you will, facilities that were around us. We had a small battalion that was hooked up with the railroads because Clovis is one of the big centers on the old Santa Fe freight system; then we had Cannon Air Force Base, which is still in business. And so, I got acquainted with a lot of people, and I worked in my family’s business until I essentially went with Uncle Sam. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 During the Korean War, I joined Uncle Sam’s Army and went to basic training, and eventually to Officer Candidate training. I became an infantry officer during the Korean War, even though I didn’t have to go to Korea. I was in the 37th Infantry Division, which was a former National Guard division, had been to Korea and came back, Ohio National Guard, and I was a company commander there. And so I took care of those details and my commitments, and then when I finished up my tours, I went back to school. And I went to Eastern New Mexico University and I was in mathematics and chemistry. So I was looking for a job once I got all that done. And my wife, Gloria, and I— before we got married, I was a National Guardsman down at Fort Bliss, Texas— I came up to visit her one weekend and we drove up to Los Alamos, and it was just soon after they took the gates down [ February 1957]. And we came through the Valle Grande and in— the personnel office was where the police station is now, by the pond. So I stopped in there and had a conversation with one of the personnel people and he says, Oh, here’s your application. We want it back right away. And so, I took that home and I sent it in right away. And [ 00: 05: 00] in those days, it was, oh, two to four weeks, probably, before you could get your Q- clearance. Well, I went home and helped in my father’s store for a little bit longer, and I waited, and I waited a little over a month and I didn’t hear anything, so I thought, Wow, something’s wrong here. So I called the Los Alamos personnel people and they said, Oh, yeah, you did everything right and we have sent it in. The AEC [ Atomic Energy Commission] in those days were the people who did the clearance work. And it was being handled out of the Albuquerque, New Mexico, office. And so they said, Here’s a phone number of a person down there. Why don’t you see what’s going on with them? So I called, and I said I UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 had a top secret clearance when I was in the service, when I was on active duty and I was still a Guardsman with my clearance. So when I talked to this person down at Albuquerque he says, Yeah, we requested from the Department of Defense your history on your clearance and everything, but we haven’t received it. And I said, Well, you haven’t checked with anybody? [ And he says], No. No. And I said, OK. And I still had a few connections here and there, so I called up and found out that indeed the Department of Defense had sent my records about a week after they got the request, which was about a month earlier. So I called the guys back up here [ Los Alamos] and in Albuquerque and told them what I found out. They did still have copies of my original records, so they put in for my clearance paperwork again and in less than two weeks, I was up here without my clearance, without my Q. So I spent a couple of weeks in the library, which was in the same building. And then I went to work at the lab, after I got my badge and everything. And my predecessor, who was supposed to be around about a year and get me into the business, left in a month- and- a- half. And here I am, faced with an overseas operation with a month- and- a- half exposure, if you will, to the test program, but mostly local. Let me ask you a question. Yesterday on the phone, you mentioned that you were a“ Downwinder from Trinity.” Yes. I’m wondering if we could go back a little bit to what you knew about during World War II, because that’s interesting because then you end up here post- war. So let’s go back. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 OK. They actually did Trinity, I think I was still a senior in high school, and we did not have any information on what was going to happen. And you’re living...? In Clovis. In Clovis, still. Which was downwind. And so a day or so after they did Trinity, I already had a driver’s license and everything and I started going out on one of the knobs north of town, looking for Trinity 2, of course, which never happened. So what was the— in Clovis, did you hear something? Did you see something? No. We had no indication that anything had happened. None whatsoever. And we were completely uninformed. So when you say you were looking for Trinity 2, what was that about? Well, they still weren’t advertising anything they were going to do, and they had just barely said that they did Trinity. So there was some indication that something had happened. Yes. And of course, it was seen by people if they happened to be up, but it was early in the morning and so not many people saw it. And they did not have a lot of downwind checkpoints, if you will, or sampling stations on that event. Later on, at the Nevada Test Site, as you know, we had a lot of sampling ground stations in addition to our airplane sampling. Well, since they [ 00: 10: 00] didn’t tell us that anything else was going to happen, I just went out to the “ Knob” because I knew from what I had read that if they did another one, I would see it. And my later experience, you know, yes, I hid my eyes when it went off because I was airborne when we set UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 them off. And so I had to learn a lot about what could potentially happen to you from one of our explosions. Just another past World War II question. You’re aware of something. What kind of connection, if any, do you make once the actual atomic bombings at the end of the war take place? Do you connect with what you knew had happened near you or—? I’m just curious how much information you had. Yes, eventually— well, you know the boys’ ranch [ Los Alamos Ranch School] was here and was taken over by the Corps of Engineers, and that’s what it got started before it was Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, is what we were called early on, not Los Alamos National Laboratory. Well, yes, I was at— I don’t know whether you know where Battleship Rock is or not, but if you go down the back road to Jemez Springs— Yes, I do know where that is. — to Albuquerque, well, Battleship Rock is a big monumental chunk of rocks on the left- hand side of the road as you’re going south. Well, I was there at summer camp, which was right across the creek there. That’s where the two Jemez streams come together, the east and the west, to make the one Jemez River. Well, yes, I was there when they did Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And I had a humongous big portable radio and that’s how we heard about these two detonations. And of course, we knew something was likely to happen again but once more, we were not in on any of the details. And I think maybe I was in my dad’s car on that one or another one— where Sandoval County comes up to what’s now Los Alamos County— there was a cattle guard and a gate, and that was as far as you could come up past the Valles Caldera. You could not get into Los Alamos. And State Road 4, which was later open and there was a guard station on the back UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 road. I don’t know whether you know where that is or not. You go out the back road here up from the lab, go around, and the check station is still there but it’s not active. I was just looking at an old map of how things used to be around the lab, so I’ll go check that. And that was there even when they had the gate up the road there and you couldn’t come down State Road 4. I came back, went to school, finished up my degree work, and was looking for a place to go to work because I didn’t want to waste my degree work working in my dad’s store. So this time you could come down from Jemez Springs. Was the guard gate is still there when you come to get your application? The building was there but you could drive in and come down what’s now Highway 501 and come on down, cross the bridge, and come into town. And that’s when I came to the personnel office and they gave me the application “ paperwork” and said, Get this back to us quick as you can. Now when you’re applying, is there a specific position or it’s just a position at the lab? Well, yes, they told me a little bit about it before I sent my application in, and so I had some idea, a very brief idea, and like I said, I didn’t even meet my predecessor till I came up to work. And what was, not the official name, but what was the position called or something? [ 00: 15: 00] Well, I was the Project Leader for Nuclear Bomb Cloud Sampling. Right away. That was your first position. Right away. Yes. I came up in November and my predecessor left the first of January, and we went overseas, I think, in April or March. And yes, that was a big splash in my life and a tremendous responsibility. The squadron in Kirtland [ Air Force Base, New Mexico], at that time I think we had about three hundred people, and in my position they essentially, all worked for UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 me. Even the squadron commander was, at that juncture, was a major. Eventually we had a lieutenant colonel and a colonel being the squadron commander. But you’re a civilian at this point. Yes, always. Always a civilian. And were you a flyer in the Korean War? Did you yourself���? I went to pilot training after I was discharged from my full- time job. I was still a Reservist. And then when I came back, I became a National Guard member and I had a group of helicopters, so I had helicopters in Santa Fe’s airport. And while I was still at Fort Bliss, I was in school there. And so I came back up to check on my helicopter things and one of my pilots says, Oh, do you want something to do tomorrow night? Saturday. And I said, Oh, well, maybe so. And he says, Well, let me see what I can do. So at 7: 30 Saturday morning he called me up and says, Oh, I want to take you over to meet this young lady. And I said, Oh, no blind date, huh? And so he comes and picks me up and we go over to— Gloria was living with a couple of other young ladies at that time. She was working in Santa Fe. And anyway, we went over to their apartment, and the reason behind this was she wouldn’t go out with anybody who was shorter than she was if she had her heels on. And they were wearing heels like that [ indicating height] in those days. So we went over, and the first thing she wanted me to do was to back up to her and see how tall I was. That’s a good story. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 Well, that was the beginning. And it was after that, I was still at Fort Bliss when we ran around and I told you about going to the personnel office. And we didn’t get married until about a year later. Then I’ll come back to that in a minute. The reason I was going to Fort Bliss was at the time I was a captain and I was in school so that I could be prepared to make up through full colonel. Well, I did that, and then they changed my organization from the one I was in to an ordnance outfit. I was the commander. That unit was given notice that it was going to be activated and sent to Berlin in the last Berlin crisis. Well, the National Guard in their [ 00: 20: 00] infinite wisdom sent the laboratory a government employee questionnaire. We were not government employees. We still aren’t. University of California employees. That’s right. Well, I was a State of California employee, and I’ll get to that in a little bit. So were some of these other people you’ve already interviewed. Well anyway, they sent that, and the laboratory in their infinite wisdom answered it. And so since I was not— well, no, I was going to be going overseas on this laboratory mission and they put that in their response. Well, in less than two weeks, the National Guard had kicked me out. They’d kicked me out in my then- current educational level and rank and everything, and the standby Reserve says, Oh, hey, you’re not qualified in this group, so in less than two weeks I was out of the Reserve unit. So then I came back and did my overseas thing and— Now what was that were you going overseas with the lab, what was that job? The one I mentioned, as the Project Leader of Bomb Cloud Sampling. Right but— What was the program? What was the—? Right, what was the deal? Can you tell me about that? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 I think that was [ Operation] Hardtack I. So you’re in the Pacific. Yes. I was at Enewetak. And we had our airplanes from Kirtland and we took them with us and, of course, we sampled devices that were at Bikini also, and we did them in Enewetak. And then later on, we had sort of a second edition and— now I’m in the wrong operation. But we did do some work out of Johnston Atoll. And of course we began by going to Hickam [ Air Force Base] in Hawaii and then on down to the South Pacific. But walk me through a little bit what— you said you were thrown into this. The guy that was supposed to here a year was only here a couple months. Walk me through so the layperson could understand what that means when you’re in the Pacific and you’re going to get these samples. Well, being the Project Leader, I had a very broad responsibility. First off, I was responsible for collecting the samples that we had predetermined how much of the fission debris or how much of the bomb debris did we need. And also, we wanted to have representative samples. And so, as I mentioned earlier, I was airborne when the detonation went off. Yes, tell me about that a little bit. Well, the main reason for that was so that I could see how the cloud developed and how did the wind shear it, and where did— direction did it go. And then also I needed to have some idea of what the radiation levels were going to be for my sampler people. So we did all that, and started sampling usually on a smaller yield one, at about thirty minutes to an hour after the detonation. And how does that work? Then you’re sampling. Tell me what that involves technically. Well, the sampling was about what had happened radiologically in the detonation of the device, and in that we could determine the fission yield, if you understand [ 00: 25: 00] what that is. And eventually when we got into more detailed devices in the hydrogen bombs, so to speak, we could UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 have some idea of what happened or didn’t happen in producing the hydrogen bomb part of that explosion. And so what we did with the samples, we would pick them up and what we had— you’re going to get that video and what I told you about, right? I will. You just have to tell me how and I will. It will give you how things were supposed to be done. Well, all right, we would come back to the— Wait. One question. I’m a questioner when I don’t understand. You physically fly through the cloud in half- an- hour to an hour, and the samples are being picked up through filters, is that right? Yes, I was getting to that. OK, good. Yes. And you’ll see this in the film, we had had several other airplanes. This one, when I started, was with the B- 57 B model, which was a two- place airplane, two engines, and we had samplers out on the wings— That’s what I wanted to know. — that were thirty inches in diameter, and we controlled them from the cockpit. And so when I would direct somebody into the cloud, I wanted to know, first off, where they were relative to what; I might not be able to see them because when they flew into the cloud, sometimes they’d be visably lost. And we had radiation detection equipment in the airplanes: an integrating dosimeter, which is the same as what your film badge is, and we had a rate meter in the cockpit which told us what we were being exposed to— A rate meter? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 Yes. That was R per hour. And then we had a second rate meter that the detector was out in our sampler, and so when we opened the sampler valve up on the front, we could see whether we were getting some radioactivity into the sampler. And of course, my responsibility was to get the crew in and out, first, safely, and secondly, with the desired sample. And we determined the fission sample size before we left the cloud. We had experience on earlier tests, and the radiochemists and I would get together and determine what the crew exposure would be, and that was the big issue. Before you left here, literally, the lab. Yes. We would do the prediction, and then that was one of my responsibilities— to, in the pre- flight briefing, I would tell the crewmembers what to expect and what their upper limit was. And I didn’t want them to exceed that limit because we had an overall operational limit on the number of Rem [ Roentgen Equivalent Man] that we were going to be allowed to do. So when they had fulfilled my need, I would send them back to the base. And then at the base, and you’ll see this in the film too, we had Air Force people doing the sample recovery. Now much earlier, there was something which spooked me big time. And, of course, prompted me to take my job very seriously with my Air Force personnel who I was totally responsible for, flying safety and radiation safety. What prompted some of that was very early on, we used B- 17 drones to sample. And in those times, the people in our lab were responsible for removing the samples from the airplane. Well, on one of those flights, [ the drone] got [ 00: 30: 00] back and the paper got away from them, filter paper, and [ the lab sample recovers it] and stuffed it back into the lead pig, eventually. Well, they got very significant beta burns on their hands. And one of my friends still, and other people who were at the lab in radiochemistry in those days, still live here, [ my friend’s] biggest finger is about as big as my little one. They did UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 skin grafts but they couldn’t get them back to how they were before. Well, that of course gave me a real experience to present to my people to keep them careful. They wore radiation protection gloves and special clothes. And in the case of our airplanes, we had the thirty- inch samplers and they had a ring like this on the filter holder. That’s about, what, maybe two inches round, isn’t it? Oh, an inch or an inch- and- a- half. And they had a long pole with a hook on it. And they would go up, and we had the thing, you might say, locked in, and they had holes like that, too. So they would unlock those and then pull the filter out and carry it on the end of this long pole and put it into what we called a lead cave. And it was about this tall and the walls were about this thick. Just so I can remember this, this is, what, maybe three feet tall, you’re saying, and maybe how many inches thick? Oh, it was about two or four. Yes. And on the end of that, we had the “ pig,” we called them, the lead container that we were going to put the samples in to use them when we come back to the lab. Well— So the lead cave holds the smaller lead pig, is that what you’re saying? On the end. All of this will show up in the film. You’ve got to get it. I’ll get it, I promise. When they had it in there, we had a prong thing, and we had the filter paper in two pieces, halves. So we’d reach in and roll it up on this and then push it into the pig, and we had a thing that we could push the filter off of the hooks into the pig. And then we had a long handle with two people that they would take the pig, one on each side of the cave, and move it up to the front end of our trailer, so to speak. Then they would take us out of the cockpit as they would the samplers, on a pallet on a forklift. They would drive up there, we’d open the canopy, and then UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 we’d get our records and everything and get out. Then they’d haul us to the cleanup room, if you want to call it that, where they would monitor us, check our clothes and everything, and if we were “ hot,” we would get into a special shower. This is both in the Pacific and then at Nevada, the same procedure? Yes indeed. In Nevada, we were flying out of Indian Springs Air Force Base, and I have something else to tell you about that a little while later. Then we’d put the pigs into a box and that was what we would send back to Kirtland on an Air Force transport. And I don’t know whether you’ve heard of CARCO or not. CARCO. OK, you tell me. They were the airline that transported people, mainly, between Albuquerque and Los Alamos. But they also took things out to the test site and back. Well, so when we’d get the sample there, they’d pick the boxes up and fly them up to Los Alamos if the weather was good. If [ 00: 35: 00] not, they’d have a truck pick them up and bring them up. And unless you have a badge, you can’t get out to where the radiochemistry lab is. Here. Yes. It’s on Pajarito Road, if you know where that is. You go south on Diamond Drive to where it turns left. That’s Pajarito Road. Yes. Right. And it���s the first site on the left- hand side of the road. I’ve seen the area, I know. There’s a stoplight there. On the right- hand side is the security force people. On the left- hand side is the radiochemistry lab. And that’s where the pigs would go to, and Chief Scientist there would look at my records and decide which ones of the samples they were going to analyze. And UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 typically they wanted a good sample. We made radiation measurements while the samples were still in the sampler so we could compare that with previous samples that we had collected in there and that we had done the analysis on, so we had some better idea about where the good information might be. And the Chief Scientist is looking for what kinds of— he’s looking for information about the reaction itself? Yes. See, sometimes we’d put tracers in there and then they would get activated by the nuclear reaction and that would give us a better idea about what fraction of the debris did we have. Actually the radiochemistry thing is pretty complicated to go in, and like I say, the original thing of doing the fission measurements were to say how the fission part of the bomb went off. And of course before we went to thermonuclears, they were all fission. But when we started in the thermonuclears, we had to get smarter, and so that’s why we did some of the more complicated detection things and analysis of the samples that we gathered. But just so I understand the nuts and bolts of it, the filters— oh no, you already told me, you might put tracers in there as well. In the bomb. Yes, and we collected it in the filter. In the filter. But the filter basically is the filter. Where the complication comes in is your analysis? Yes. [ Lawrence] Livermore [ National Laboratory] and an Air Force organization wanted to look at the particulate air samples, the gas samples. And so we had pumps and collected those samples in spheres like this, and pump them up to maybe 1,500 psi [ pounds per square inch]. And typically we here at Los Alamos did not do analysis on those gas samples, we called them. That was Livermore and Air Force, you said? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 Yes, we worked some with the Air Force, and the samples that they collected from other people��s activities were analyzed in their own laboratories. They do not have those anymore, and all of that work is done here at LANL. Now. Now. So the military, the Air Force, is looking for different kinds of things, maybe, than the lab is? Is that why they have their own laboratories early or—? [ 00: 40: 00] No. There might have been somebody that just wanted to be independent. They did a lot of the same kind of analytical work that we did, except their samples typically were collected much later. I flew on a couple or three of their missions, and as I mentioned earlier, I felt very strongly about the RADSAFE [ radiological safety] safety of our people. When I flew with them, I found that they were less worried about that than we were, and they would open the sampler up in the airplane and pick the samples out and put them in a container. And I just went all the way to the top in the Air Force command and said this is not acceptable. And unfortunately, this was not at the beginning of their project, time- wise. It was pretty late. And as you may or may not know, the VA [ Veterans Administration] has radiation exposure- type programs for former military people. I do. That’s right, yes. Yes. And I have only worked on one of those, and if you’re interested in that I’ll tell you about it. Yes. Well, this is much, much later. It was about the time the Chinese were doing their first thermonuclear. And there was a B- 47 from a base in Puerto Rico. And one of my former UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 16 squadron commanders, was there at the time they sent this airplane out to Yokota Air Force Base in Japan. I can’t tell you what their mission was because I don’t even know what they were supposed to be doing. And if I did, I couldn’t tell you. So they left from Puerto Rico and they went to Japan. And the VA claims report that was submitted by one of the air crews’ wives, because he was dead, said that there was a civilian and an Air Force person met them when they got to Yokota. So this former sampling squadron commander says, Oh, that civilian has got to be Paul Guthals. So I was asked to work on this claim. And there were several things that were very troublesome about the request. By this time, the Chinese had already shot down two of our U- 2s. And the B- 47 flew at about thirty thousand feet lower. And so if [ he] went in to the Chinese area, it would be surprising that he made it back out. Well, anyway, when they got back to Yokota, according to the report, they were forced to stay in the airplane for over an hour after their landing. Well, this former Air Force group that I told you about earlier had one of their laboratories at Yokota, and they were still active, and they would have been all over that airplane with a fine- toothed brush if they’d thought it had been radioactive hot. Well, anyway, this gentleman who was being claimed was a four- pack- a- dayer, and died of lung cancer. And the other information that they had in the request just didn’t support that he had had inhalation of active debris. So unfortunately for his widow, I couldn’t give it positive support. Right. And the mission had been at the time to get information about the Chinese bomb. [ 00: 45: 00] Well, yes and no, even though the mission of that particular airplane was not verified to me. I see. Yes, that’s what you said. Yes. And the other people, if there was a bomb, would have been on top of it early on, because of their mission, they looked at the Russian shots, they