THE WHITE HOUSE
                                    
                      Office of the Press Secretary
                                    
________________________________________________________________________ 
For Immediate Release                                                                            January 18, 1994 
                                    
                                    
                     PRESIDENT SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER
                                    
                                FORMING 
                                    
            ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS


The Clinton Administration today continued efforts to uncover the nature and extent of
government-sponsored experiments on individuals involving intentional exposure to ionizing
radiation.  The President today released an Executive Order that will establish an Advisory
Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.  The Advisory Committee, to be made up of
outside-government experts in medicine, science and ethics, will provide to the Human Radiation
Interagency Working Group advice and recommendations on human radiation experiments
conducted by the government since the 1940's.  This Advisory Committee shall comply with the
terms of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

 In other actions:

*     On January 3, 1994, the White House called for the formation of a Human Radiation
Interagency Working Group to coordinate the government-wide effort to uncover the nature and
extent of any government sponsored experiments on individuals involving intentional exposure to
ionizing radiation.  The members of the Human Radiation Interagency Working Group include the
Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the
Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the Attorney General, the Administrator of the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Director of Central Intelligence, and the Director of
the Office of Management and Budget. 

*     Christine Varney, Secretary to the Cabinet, will issue a memorandum tomorrow to federal
departments and agencies with formal instructions concerning the retrieval and inventory of
records on human radiation experiments consistent with discussions by staff of the Human
Radiation Interagency Working Group.  The memo calls for each agency to establish procedures
for document handling and review. 

*     The Human Radiation Hotline service will soon be upgraded to handle 500 calls an hour.