EDITOR'S NOTE: In the weeks after the April 26, 1986, explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, it was difficult to get any information about the scope of the disaster, aside from terse announcements from the government of the Soviet Union.
Acting on a telephone tip, then-Associated Press Moscow correspondent Carol J. Williams and another Western journalist drove to a cemetery in the northwestern part of the capital, where they discovered the simple graves of some of the victims. The journalists were briefly detained by police at the cemetery and accused of trespassing but were able to see workers digging the graves for the victims.
