Category: Declassified

• The Green Run (1949)

  The Green Run was a real radiological release conducted at Hanford in December 1949 and later became one of the clearest examples of a rumor that was substantially confirmed by declassification. Contemporary suspicion held that the government had deliberately released radioactive iodine over parts of Washington state to see how contamination moved through the environment and how monitoring systems performed. Later documentation confirmed the intentional nature of the experiment. The remaining disputes concern scope, intent, and communication, not whether a deliberate release occurred.