An Enemy From Within?

This story was published in A-section on Monday, July 15, 2002.

By Lisa Eisenhauer
Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Jim Druckemiller says the letter he got last month was a long time coming. Too long, in fact.

More than 30 years ago, he and thousands of other Navy sailors were unknowingly exposed to potentially dangerous biological agents during military tests. But it wasn't until June that the Department of Veterans Affairs sent out letters telling some of them about the tests and suggesting that they undergo checkups to see if the tests have affected their health.

They were waiting for us to die and go away so the problems would go away," said Druckemiller, who now lives in Topeka, Kan.

But Druckemiller and other veterans who believe that they have illnesses linked to military tests, vaccines or exposure to chemicals during their time in the service have soldiered on in their battle for information and treatment. They also want an admission from the military that veterans who are already chronically ill and others who have died should have been alerted long ago about their exposure.

Now, lawmakers who once dismissed claims of unexplained illnesses and government agencies that denied any knowledge of their cause may be coming around:

* In December, the government acknowledged that soldiers who served in the Gulf War were nearly twice as likely to develop Lou Gehrig's disease as were other military personnel. The VA said it would immediately offer disability and survivor benefits to Gulf War veterans with the disease as well as research the cause. A few months later, a panel appointed by the VA secretary urged an investigation of the veterans' neurological problems and $450 million for studies.

* In May, the Defense Department acknowledged that nerve agents such as sarin were secretly sprayed on U.S. ships - including the Navy destroyer that Druckemiller served on - in the 1960s to test their effects. Last Wednesday, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee asked officials from the VA and the Defense Department about the disclosures and why the military has waited for decades to release details.

* In February, lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced the a bill that would require the Defense Department to disclose classified information on tests that might have exposed service members to chemical and biological tests.

* This fall, Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., plans to hold hearings that will look into what a spokeswoman called the "full scope" of the military's biological and chemical agents.

The Vietnam Veterans of America hopes to figure prominently into those hearings. The group has been prodding defense and VA officials to release details on the 1960s testing program known as Project SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense Project) since sketchy details about it surfaced in December 2000.

Project SHAD

Roy Goin of Rossville, Ill., remembers the SHAD test well. A 22-year Navy veteran who also spent eight years in the reserve, he was aboard the destroyer Power in port at Newfoundland when airplanes buzzed the ship and dropped a cloud of something. He and others on the ship, clad only on their normal Navy attire, collected air samples. And then strangers in gear resembling spacesuits came aboard, did some tests, and left.

He wasn't suspicious, he said, because no one suggested he had any reason to be - until recently, when he heard reports that the military may have been testing toxic gases. Those reports hit home, he said, because he's been suffering from respiratory problems for three years and doctors haven't been able to find a cause.

Last month, he got a letter from the VA telling him, officially, about his exposure.

The Defense Department's Dee Dodson Morris said early research into SHAD suggests that the tests might not have posed as many risks as some veterans believe.

Research has shown that some of the dozens of tests used nontoxic materials that simulated biological or chemical agents. But in those tests that didn't, almost all of the veterans who have come forward to say they took part say that they had proper protective gear or were moved to areas that shielded them from the agents.

Truth and treatment

Steve Robinson, executive director of the Vietnam Veterans of America's National Gulf War Resource Center, says the group plans to keep the pressure on until the military bureaucracy opens its records and gives veterans the full story. The group also wants an independent investigation into the testing.

Robinson is looking hopefully toward the promised Senate hearings. "We're gonna bring the gatekeepers to the table and make them talk," he said, referring to the military officials who have refused to disclose information.

The veterans' group's president, Tom Corey, says in the end the hope is to get the military to belatedly do right by veterans. "The VVA's position from the start has been to seek the truth about these tests and to get treatment for these veterans," Corey said.

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., says his mission is the same. Thompson introduced the Veterans Right-To-Know Act in the House. He said it was spurred by concerns from a constituent who believes that his two bouts with cancer are tied to SHAD testing.

Over the course of three years the military started by denying that tests took place, Thompson said. Then officials acknowledged that the tests were done but only with harmless agents that simulated dangerous ones, he said. Finally, they admitted that the tests with the potentially dangerous agents occurred but still insisted that there is no proof that serious harm was done and that those people who were subjected to the tests, even unknowingly, had proper protective gear.

Thompson believes that stonewalling by the armed forces is slowly ending and the truth about the testing is trickling out at the prodding of veterans and their supporters.

"So far, it's working," he said of the pressure for disclosures. "It's just not working fast enough."

Gulf War suspicions

Joyce Riley, a nurse who served stateside during the Gulf War, doesn't share the optimism of Thompson and others that the tide is turning in favor of ailing veterans.

Riley, of Versailles in central Missouri, believes that either vaccines that she had to undergo before she went on active duty in 1991 or exposure to veterans who returned from the battle zone caused her neurological damage. She says the symptoms were severe for about four years, including at times leaving her too weak to stand.

By 1995, she had become convinced that her ailments and those she was hearing about among other veterans of the Gulf War era were linked.

She started an advocacy group called American Gulf War Veterans Association. Her activism has drawn a steady stream of inquiries and letters from Gulf War veterans who tell her about their ailments and ask for her help.

Over the years, she said, the letters - with their stories of appeals for care that were turned done by VA hospitals and rejected requests for information from military officials - have gone from sad to tragic. They led her to believe that the Gulf War exposed veterans to a "time- release" disease that is taking a steadily heavier toll on their health.

"The severity of the problem is a lot worse now," Riley said. "Now they're dying."

Riley isn't looking to Congress to help the veterans. She says that reports back at least as far as 1994 have pointed out their problems and no remedies have come from Capitol Hill.

In her view, there's only one hope for redress: "It's going to have to be a criminal investigation."

Classified information

Officials at both the VA and Defense Department say they can understand that veterans are frustrated that details about testing that happened long ago are only now coming out and at the slow pace of the disclosures. They say they are working as quickly as possible to get information to veterans.

But they list the following roadblocks:

* National security concerns that require agency officials to carefully scrutinize records related to the testing before declassifying relevant parts.

* The fact that the records are neither computerized nor in some cases easily located.

* The need for coordination between the agencies to identify where the tests were done and what personnel were involved before the veterans can be tracked down.

Part of the Defense Department's response was to set up an agency called the Deployment Health Support Directorate, charged with using lessons from past conflicts and military testing to figure out how to protect veterans' health in the future.

That doesn't appease Roy Goin, the Navy veteran with respiratory problems.

He may never find the source of his ailment, but he knows the source of his anger: military leaders who waited years to tell veterans like him that they had been guinea pigs in potentially dangerous experiments.

"It's definitely not right to do that your own people," he said of the secretive tests.

Like other veterans, he says the recent revelations have made him wary of the leaders of the military in which he had been proud to serve.

"You volunteer for things (like military duty) and you think you know what is happening." he said. "We didn't know what was happening."

NATIONAL FOCUS\THE MILITARY'S EXPOSURE TO SECRET TESTS\Reporter Lisa Eisenhauer: \

E-mail: leisenhauer@post-dispatch.com \

Phone: 202-298-6880



Published in the A-section section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Monday, July 15, 2002.
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