Newspaper: French Exposed Soldiers to Radiation

AP reporting on this guinea pig shocker from French paper on 1961 bomb test. Excerpt:

France's military purposely exposed soldiers to a 1961 nuclear test in the Sahara Desert to study how the atomic bomb would affect their bodies and minds, a French news report said Tuesday, citing a classified defense document.

Reacting to the report in Le Parisien newspaper, the government pledged full transparency. Defense Minister Herve Morin denied that soldiers in the April 25, 1961 operation were used as human guinea pigs, but said ''it is obvious that today nobody would carry out tests in such conditions.''

In total, France conducted 210 nuclear tests, both in the atmosphere and underground, in the Sahara Desert and the South Pacific from 1960-1996. After decades of pressure from victims, the government finally agreed last year to compensate them.

Le Parisien newspaper said it had obtained a 260-page confidential document summarizing France's nuclear tests in the Sahara, including the April 25, 1961 aboveground test, which was code-named ''Gerboise verte'' or green gerboa.