SECTION 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE DEFENSE NUCLEAR AGENCY AND THE NTPR PROGRAM The United States Government, primarily through the Manhattan Engineer District and its successor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), conducted some 235 nuclear weapons tests from 1945 to 1962, during the atmospheric test series. Pacific. The testing was principally in Nevada and the An estimated 200,000 Department of Defense (DOD) personnel, military and civilian, took part in the tests, and many were exposed to low levels of ionizing radiation in the performance of various activities. In March 1977, 15 years after the last above-ground nuclear test, the Veterans Administration (VA) office in Boise, Idaho, received a claim for disability benefits from retired Army Sergeant Paul R. Cooper. A patient at the VA hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, Cooper attributed his acute myelocytic leukemia to the radiation exposure he had received as a particip&nt in Shot SMOKY, conducted on 31 August 1957 as part of the 1957 series of nuclear tests, Operation PLUMBBOB. later reversed its decision. The VA initially denied Cooper’s claim but The appeals board noted that sufficient signs of the disease had been present when Cooper was on active duty to support the claim as service connected. The board did not comment, however, on Cooper's assertion that his leukemia resulted directly from radiation exposure he had received at Shot SMOKY. The VA decision on the Cooper claim initiated a series of events that ultimately involved the military services, the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the Department of Health and Human Services, and the White House. Questions fueling that involvement concerned, among other issues, the possible radiation doses received by test participants and the posgible long-term health effects resulting from those doses. This chapter describes the origins and the early history of the NIPR effort, when the program acquired its primary focus. delineate the program's scope and accomplishments. Subsequent sections The chapter concludes with ot a summary of radiation doses.