By BARRY MASSEY
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- Stewart Udall, gazing from a road near his home in the pinon-covered foothills, can look westward toward the high desert mesa where scientists at Los Alamos developed the atomic bomb.
In a new book titled, "The Myths of August," the former Arizona congressman and secretary of interior takes aim at the bomb makers and decries decades of government secrecy in "our tragic Cold War affair with the atom."
"We have been in large measure a nation that set the tone for morality in the world," Udall said in a recent interview. "Yet the Cold War caused us to produce patterns of official deceit."
The government's obsession with national security and protecting nuclear secrets, Udall writes, eroded the ethical foundations of American democracy and poisoned the well of public trust in governmental institutions.
It was this Cold War culture, in Udall's view, that made possible seemingly unthinkable government-sanctioned acts that have been publicized recently: injecting people with plutonium and exposing civilians to high levels of radioactive fallout.
"In the cloistered cocoon up at Los Alamos and in the nuclear weapons industry, we told them they were above the law and they were the most important people to the country," Udall says. "But that caused them to do things that were illegal and immoral."
Udall, who helped create the environmental movement as secretary of interior under Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, says his latest book, his fifth, grew out of a decade of work and frustration as a lawyer in radiation cases brought against the government.
One lawsuit was filed on behalf of the families of Navajo men who suffered lung cancer after mining uranium for the government. Another lawsuit sought compensation for people who lived downwind from above-ground nuclear tests in Nevada during the 1950s and early 1960s. Both lawsuits failed.
The experience stirred disbelief and then outrage in Udall about a government in which he had once been an inside player.
Udall, 74, served three terms as an Arizona congressman, starting in 1955. As head of the interior department from 1961 to 1968, Udall helped prepare several landmark environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the Wilderness Act, which protects millions of acres from logging and mining.
In 1979, Udall left Washington to return to Arizona, where he worked with a legal team investigating and preparing the radiation lawsuits.
It was a turning point in his life, Udall says, and the start of a journey that forced him to confront some of the nation's darkest secrets and reassess the actions of his own generation.
In 1989, Udall moved to Santa Fe to be closer to his family.
Udall's 399-page book delivers a stinging critique of the rush to develop the first atomic bomb, the decision to use it against Japan and the decades-long crusade for nuclear weapons superiority over the Soviet Union.
Among the targets of Udall's criticisms:
--The Atomic Energy Commission, which Udall says misled the public about the risks of radioactive fallout, concealed the truth about atmospheric bomb testing and promoted wasteful research into peacetime atomic projects, such as a proposed nuclear-powered airplane during the 1950s.
--Officials at the "bomb factory" at Los Alamos, including its postwar director, Norris Bradbury, whom Udall describes as a key figure behind large atomic blasts in Nevada that exposed the so-called downwinders to high levels of radiation.
--Henry Stimson, secretary of war under Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Truman, who had been one of Udall's heroes as a statesman advocating moral leadership in foreign policy. But in the book, Udall largely blames Stimson for the decision to bomb Hiroshima.
The book's title comes from what Udall calls the "myths and the mythmakers of the Cold War" and the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing of Hiroshima, which he sees as a "starter's gun for a weapons race . .. that would carry the world to the edge of a nuclear abyss."
Among the myths, Udall says, is the idea that dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortened the war and saved the lives of thousands of soldiers and Japanese civilians. He argues the United States failed to pursue peaceable options that could have ended the war earlier and without using the atomic bomb.
By Udall's own admission, many of his conclusions about historic events are not original. But the purpose of his book, Udall says, is to shine a critical light on the half-century of the atomic age, interpret what went wrong and suggest a way for a new generation to free itself from the Cold War mentality.
"Let's be mature enough to face the mistakes of the past. This doesn't diminish the reputations of people. It makes them human to admit that they made spectacular mistakes, such as Hiroshima," Udall says.
Near the end of the book, Udall outlines his post-Cold War prescription: global nuclear disarmament to wipe out all stockpiles of nuclear weapons, an end to testing and development of new nuclear weapons, reducing classified information and secret decision-making by government leaders and further limits on the powers of U.S. spy agencies such as the CIA.
"I've written this book for my children and grandchildren," Udall says. "I don't know whether this book will have any impact. But I hope ... it will help the next generation understand the Cold War and what it did to our country so they can make the changes that need to be made."
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"The Myths of August" is published by Pantheon Books, with a suggested retail price of $25.
AP, 8/94