82 DASA 2019-2 within a year, as l recall. I think it actually preceded our official announcement, FREMONT-SMITH: We're not the only government that didn't know how to handle a radioactive accident, If you will all remember how the British Government fumbled the Wind Scale accident, announcing . beforehand that there was no danger of any kind at all and then grad- think every government gets caught in this kind of thing or is in danger of getting caught in this kind of thing. But the first thing to do on the government's part is to deny that anything dangerous has happened, which is almost standard procedure, and then gradually it leaks out, whereas actually this is the way that people lose faith in the governinent. The credibility gap gets bigger and bigger, and I think certainly this is true in this country. If something happened and if we had a firm announcement from the government of this, the nee ually having to admit that there was more and more, and then the milk all had to be dumped. J think that our lessons are there, but I people of this country wouldn't have much confidence in this. WARREN: This is true in industrial practice, too. If somebody let's loose a noxious chemical, they deny everything and then face the issue hours later or days later, The trouble is that their insur- ance figures are involved and the cost of paying off is involved, and they want to keep it as limited as possible, We are somewhat in the same frame of mind at the government level, aren't we? TAYLOR: It seems to me it's a very, very important fact of life that the worldwide public has lost confidence in the official spokesmen. of the governments of several nations as a result of a consistent denial... FREMONT-SMITH: Of the truth. TAYLOR: .. . of the truth by spokesmen for these governments, and that’s the state of affairs that now exists. Then weare also talking about the credibility eens: ene ome Nmapget ye oe ae FREMONT-SMITH: gap between the younger generation and the adult generation in any country which is part of the same thing. We have lied to the youngsters repeatedly, again and again, and the youngsters don't have any confidence in the adult world. [thinkit’s a very broad problem we're talking about. This may be true in a good many other countries, ter,