For example, uranium miners were assured that working in the mines was not dangerous, even though U.S. Health Service officials knew beyond doubt that a vast majority of miners would die of radiation diseases. One study, kept secret from miners, estimated an 80 percent mortality rate among uranium miners.

They also kept secrets from those living in the path of radiation from more than 100 above-ground nuclear tests in Nevada from 1951 to 1963. Government propaganda at the time extolled the safety of the tests at the same time tests were coordinated so prevailing winds would blow the radiation toward sparsely populated Utah and Nevada — states with little political clout.

Atomic Energy Commission chairman Gordon Dean once dismissed this entire region as suitable only for the disposal of razor blades.

Leavitt notes with a sense of weary irony that these are some of the same federal entities, or successor agencies, that are now asking Utahns to trust them that high-level nuclear waste storage is safe.

"I hope the federal government has improved on its trustworthiness, and I think it has," Leavitt said. "Call it a sense of optimism seasoned with a sense of reality. But I have no illusions that they will look at their own interests and they will cast our public safety issues adrift at sea."

It wouldn't be the first time.

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E-mail: spang@desnews.com; donna@desnews.com