5 times the U.S. government revealed secrets it tried to keep hidden

Here are five instances when the U.S. government eventually owned up to programs and incidents that it initially kept secret.

Human experiments: Scientists exposed vulnerable Americans to radiation 

In 1945, the same year it dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, the U.S. government began experiments investigating the effects of radiation on the human body. Scientists administered doses of plutonium, a radioactive chemical, to 18 people over the course of two years. Their subjects included Americans living with terminal illness, children, and unhoused people.

Ebb Cade, a construction worker from Tennessee, was one of the subjects. After he broke his arm and leg in a car accident in March 1945, doctors delayed treating his fractures for weeks until they could inject him with plutonium and see how it impacted his bones. He died eight years later.

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In the subsequent years, more experiments got off the ground, expanding to incarcerated people, seniors, and servicemen––and they were all exposed to radiation without their consent.

In response to unethical Nazi experiments on subjects in concentration camps during World War II, a framework outlining humane principles for medical research was laid out in April 1947. Understanding that “they might have to answer for their actions” someday, as Connelly put it, American officials involved with the radiation experiments made moves to classify them.