$100 million lawsuit - Walter Reed Army Medical Centre - Radiation Research (Boy Scout Troop)

Uniontown Pennsylvania (Colleen Gentilcore) Herald Standard

August 22, 1996

SEARCH FOR TRUTH: German-born adoptee works to document that he was used as a human guinea pig: A Uniontown man and hiw wife have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, seeking $400 million and answers to questions about suspected biomedical and radiation experiments.

Peter L. and Carol Lewis of Uniiontown have been trying for two years to get the government to answer questiions about the radiation and biomedical experiments he believes he endured as a child. But while the Clinton administration has pledged to be open in releasing documents relating to radiation experiments conducted by the government for 30 years beginning in 1944, no one has provided the couple with any information.

The Lewises recently filed a lawsuit against the United States of America, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Army and the CIA asking for $100 million on each of four counts. Lewis, 50, who was born Peter Anton Nussloch, Germany, believes that he and his biological sister, Anne Lewis Bybee of Tennessee, who died of cancer in 1991 at age 43, were adopted from an orphanage by an Army couple for the sole purpose of being used for experiments in Germany, Michigan and Maryland. He also contends her death was caused by an accidental overdose of radiation during the experiments.

Lewis' adoptive parents, Master Sgt. John Lewis and Sgt. Olivia Lewis, brought him and his sister to this country in 1952. His adoptive father died in October of 1995; his adoptive mother, living in a Dayton, Ohio, retirement home, is now in her 90's and deaf, he said. In 1968, Lewis moved to this area with his wife, a Fayette County native. In a letter to Col. Claud Bailey Jr. of the Department of Defense Radiation Experiments Command Center, Lewis said his adoptive mother told him he was bought for $1000 and that the army owned him. While living at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center complex, Lewis said, part of the radiation experiments were conducted when he was a member of the center's Boy Scout troop 95. He believes Walter Reed officials formed the group, of which his father was the scout leader, to conduct experiments on the children.

Pictures he found after his father's death last year show him in a Scout uniform lying in machines. "The one picture - I laid in the drawer of the machine and it was closed," wrote Lewis. "I held a gun-type mechanism which I was told to hold to my throat and the technician would say when to pull the trigger. Inside of the machine was a soft blue light." For one week in 1959, when he was 13 years old, Lewis said he was kept under guard in an isolation ward in a semi-conscious state. "I have several scars of about 20 bone biopsy punctures over my body from head to foot. My food tasted artificial and I was questioned about it so I assume it was doctored with radium. Blood was taken and all of my body wastes and urine were collected. Wire filaments were inserted into my body. I do not know why. Two of them I pulled out a short time after the experiments. My mother took the filaments with tweezers - she would not touch them with her fingers - and put them in a brown envelope and sealed it and said I would have to go back to Walter Reed. I still carry a foreign object in my arm."

Lewis said for many years he was confused about what was actually done to him. When he asked a radiation expert about the holes taken from his skin and bone, he was told they were biopsies. Through his research and reading, he now understands some of the procedures. He recalls having liquid forced into his nasal passages and read later that nasopharyngeal irradiation was done on a large scale at that time. Lewis also claims his mother gave him pills which caused hallucinations and nightmares. He now believes they were LSD.

"My German citizenship was violated as well as my American citizenship," Lewis wrote in the letter to Bailey. "I was abused mentally, physically and emotionally for all those years." In addition to the emotional damage, Lewis claims in the lawsuit that he has permanent scarring all over ...

Department of Defense Radiation Experiments Command Center in Alexandria, Va. The letter, which is not signed, states: "From the information you provided in your letter, it is possible that you may have been involved in a study to measure the level of gamma radioactivity in humans. Such a study was conducted at Walter Reed Army Medical Center during the time frame you cite in your letter." However, three months later, another letter from the Department of Defense denies there was ever any testing done at Walter Reed. Lewis said he has as evidence a photograph of himself and other Boy Scouts at Walter Reed. "The government official in the photograph is holding a log book opened to a page titled, "Walter Reed Army Institute of Research Division of Nuclear Medicine."

"All my life I never talked to anyone about it. Who would have believed it?" Lewis said. His decision to hide the details of his childhood - even from his family - changed in 1994 when Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary announced publicly that the experiments were conducted from 1944 to about 1974 and would be investigated. It was then that Lewis told his wife all he had experienced. "I always knew something was wrong but didn't know what," said Mrs. Lewis, adding that she noticed scars on her husband soon after they were married. "I am indignant on his behalf," she said. "No one should have to grow up like that." Lewis said, "When I told her, she kept after me and said, "You've got to talk to your parents about this," he recalled.

President Clinton's independent advisory committee formed in 1994 did compile thousands of pages of information on the radiation testing. However, nothing details any testing done at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington, D.C. where Lewis said much of his testing was done. He believes that a Boy Scout troop formed out of that center was for the purpose of conducting radiation experiments.

The Lewises, using the Freedom of Information Act, have managed to collect thousands of pages of information on radiation testing. While the government advisory panel findings show that the tests were also done on children, the government contends that it did not ...

The panel's report also states that with the exception of a few broader radiation experiments, they know almost nothing about the identity of the children on whom the tests were performed. Lewis believes many may have been foreign adoptees like himself and charges that he knows orf at least five other children brought to the United States by adoptive parents. "At the task force meeting, no one else had a story like this," said Lewis.

On February 26 and 27 of this year, the couple attended a workshop organized by the advisory committee. Lewis who testified during that proceeding, believes that was a turning point because after he told his story he was given a claim number, which means he was finally acknowledged as a victim. Lewis' attorney, Thomas O. Schmitt of the Pittsburgh law firm Fluke, Weiers & Schmitt, P.C. did not return phone calls seeking comment nor did the United States Department of Defense.

Photos in newspaper article:

Above: From the Lewis family photo album: Peter L. Lewis has collected photographs and thousands of pages of documents and information in an effort to back up his claim that the U.S. government used him as a human guinea pig.

Right: Young Peter Lewis with a Boy Scout troop he believes was formed for the purpose of conducting government-sanctioned radiation and biomedical experiments

Far left: A photograph of Lewis lying in a purported radiation machine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Lewis said he was exposed to radiation that day and other times

Left: Peter Lewis, his sister, Anne, and their adoptive parents with Leonard Heaton, then director at Walter Reed. HEATON LATER BECAME U.S. SURGEON GENERAL.