Four
months after the Pentagon acknowledged that thousands of U.S.
soldiers, sailors and Marines might have been exposed to
dangerous chemical or biological agents during top-secret
tests in the 1960s, only a fraction of those possibly affected
have been identified and none has been contacted.
The
secret tests, which took place aboard ships primarily in the
Pacific Ocean, have been the subject of complaints by a
handful of veterans for more than a decade. Their concerns
arose after military reunions at which the veterans discovered
that some of their shipmates were sick and that more than 100
had died.
The
U.S. Defense Department began investigating the 1960s-era
military files 13 months ago. That was after CBS News and
several congressmen stirred up a controversy over the secret
U.S. military history of biological and chemical spraying of
U.S. Navy and Marine vessels near Hawaii and California.
Neither
the Pentagon nor federal health officials have written any of
the veterans to let them know what they were sprayed with.
Federal health officials are preparing to send out notices to
a fraction of them. Veterans' advocates say military and
health officials are too slow to assist veterans who could be
seriously ill and without financial resources.
Health
care costs are not an issue for 65-year-old Gerald Foster, a
retired Navy veteran of more the 23 years service, but he'd
still like to know whether weapons testing contributed to the
rare immune disorder that crippled his lungs.
The Pearl
Harbor-based light tug that Foster skippered from 1964 to 1966
was among several vessels sprayed with simulated and real
chemical and biological agents from U.S. aircraft above.
Foster
said his crew was protected during the spraying, by wearing
chemical suits and masks. Caged monkeys were the test
subjects. Foster said he believes the sailors became sick from
the toxic chemicals used to clean the tugs after the spraying.
Foster
has suffered for 12 years from an unusual disorder, he said.
He walks around breathing heavily with the assistance of a
supplemental oxygen tank. His health care is provided at no
cost by the Naval retirement community where he lives.
But
Foster said he knows of others involved in the operations who
now have cancer and other diseases who aren't as well cared
for.
"All of us should have been monitored and we
were not," he said. "The crew, these are our people,
and we needed to take care of them and that was not done. That
was just wrong."
Vietnam Veterans of America has
complained to U.S. Veterans Affairs Department Secretary
Anthony J. Principi about the delay in notification. U.S. Rep.
Michael Thompson, D-Calif., has pressed defense department
officials to explain how far their investigation has reached
into military archives.
"Rep. Thompson is very
discouraged that it has taken this long to get information to
the veterans," said Mandy Kenney, Thompson's spokeswoman.
She said that after meeting with department officials last
week, Thompson hopes the information will be sent out in
January.
Rick Weidman, director of government relations
for the Vietnam Veterans of America, said the continuing delay
in notifying veterans of their hazardous exposures
"betrays an attitude toward the veterans that we
encounter elsewhere with women and minorities."
"This
can be characterized as a set of ugly attitudes and prejudices
that some of us have started to call `vetism,'" he said.
Principi has been cooperative, said Weidman, but the VA
supervisors below him have dragged out the process.
Only
three test exercises have been identified by the defense
department so far. Weidman said that as many as 10,000
personnel could have been involved in tests during the 1960s.
The defense department, however, has identified only 1,100
service members, using the military files on the operations.
The ultimate potential number of veterans exposed to the
hazards could be much higher; the defense department says it
is investigating beyond those three projects — into
approximately 110, all told.
Spokesmen
for Veterans Affairs and the defense department said delays in
contacting veterans are due to long arduous searches through
paper files and difficulties in locating their Social Security
numbers.
“We
anticipate providing information on five to six tests in the
next month or so and five or six more shortly thereafter,”
said Austin Camacho, a spokesman for the defense department's
Deployment Health Support Directorate. He said the process of
searching files was so time-consuming that there is no
estimate of when the inquiry will be finished.
Barbara
Goodno, a spokeswoman for the defense department, said the
task of notifying veterans was assigned to health officials
because they are responsible for retired service members. She
said the department has given the VA all the information found
so far on those exposed to the hazards.
Veterans Say They Became Sick Because Of 1960s
Experiments