Operation Hades was developed by the Pentagon‘s Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA) as a scheme to defoliate guerilla controlled areas of Vietnam.
Objectives of defoliation were to destroy the triple canopy jungle that would
flush out the guerilla fighter for conventional warfare, to clear the
waterways and roads of areas of concealment for ambush, establish fields of
fire around bases and to avoid infiltration and surprise attacks, and finally,
to deny food to the enemy. The Vietnamese charged that defoliation was a
weapon of mass destruction and ecocide that was not aimed at the fighter, but
employed against the entire people and their environment, causing death by
poisoning and starvation. C-47 aircraft sprayed 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D on 5,000
acres in 1962. In 1967 1.5 million acres of jungle and 221,000 acres of crop
land were sprayed. Spraying ended in 1971 with 6 million acres covered with
107 million pounds of herbicide. About 10 to 15 percent of the total area
sprayed was crop lands. Annual sales of herbicide increased from 12.5 million
in 1966 to 79.8 million in 1969. Dow, Hercules, Monsanto, Diamond Shamrock,
and seven other companies shared the war time profits.
The name of the spray operation was
changed to Operation Ranch Hand but the insignia patch retained the satanic
symbol of a devil with a pitch fork.
During WWII the University of Chicago studied chlorophenols for their affect
on plant metabolism. A small application will promote rapid growth while a
larger dose will make the plant grow so fast it literally explodes and dies.
The special mixture of Agent Orange used in Vietnam consisted of 2,4,5-T and
2,4-D in equal amounts. The mixture was thirteen times more concentrated than
that used domestically. Agent White added Picloram which was made by DOW but
so long lasting in the environment it was never allowed to be used on US soil.
Agent Blue contained highly poisonous cacodylic acid and was 54 percent
arsenic.
The affects of spraying 2500 acres and 1000 inhabitants were reported by a
doctor in October 1964. ―At first the people felt sick and had some diarrhea,
then difficulty breathing followed by low blood pressure; some cases had
trouble with their optic nerve and went blind. Pregnant women gave birth to
still born or premature children. Most of the affected cattle died from
serious diarrhea, and river fish floated on the surface of the water belly-up,
soon after the chemicals were spread.‖ Reports of human poisoning brought
diplomatic pressure on the US from other nations to respond.
The US State Dept replied in March
1966 stating, ―The herbicides used are non-toxic and not dangerous to man or
animal life. The land is not affected for future use.‖
The National Academy of Sciences received 80% of their money from the DOD and
was considered an arm of the government. The elite organization determined
that it was inconclusive whether Agent Orange caused human deaths and that it
was important that the matter receive further scrutiny in the future to
determine the question.
(Does anyone know for sure if NAS receives any where close to 80% of their funding from DoD and by default our own government? If that is anywhere close to being correct; then how does any law conclude these people that are making scientific legal decisions have any business doing so. Is this something that our Congress just happen to not tell us "the victims or the plaintiffs" or did they not know? Can anyone say that if they are receiving anywhere close to the 80% from the defendant they are no longer qualified to pass judgment on anything. Considering the decision making processes are not transparent to the victims, subjective at best, and unchallengeable in any forum. Nice neat package of government collusion especially when one considers we have Dr. David Chu running the DoD benefits who would sell his soul to recoup one penny from a government caused dying soldier. )
In response Professors Pfeiffer and Orians from the University of Washington independently obtained funding and did a field study on their own in Vietnam at the height of the war. They reported on cases of illness in humans and animals living in sprayed areas, widespread ecological damage and permanent destruction of ancient forests, commercial timberlands and rubber tree cultures. In late 1969 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) formed a committee headed up by Mathew Meselson, a Harvard biologist with a mandate to study Agent Orange in Vietnam.
Through their efforts LBJ received a petition with 5,000 signatures of scientists urging him to stop spraying on the grounds of establishing a dangerous precedent in chemical and biological warfare. The Food and Drug Administration had finished a study in 1965 but the report was concealed. In 1969 the report was leaked to Meselson. It showed that in 1964, the prestigious Bionetics Research Laboratory tested industrial compounds for carcinogenic and fetus deforming affects in lab animals. The tests showed small doses of 2,4,5-T caused birth defects in rats and mice. The FDA, DOD and DOA knew about the report but no one else saw it. DOW Chemical had applied pressure to the FDA to bury the report. The strategy that DOW chemical used to combat the now public report was to claim that chemical impurities in the test batch were responsible for the alarming results. The contamination was an impurity produced during manufacture referred to as 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin, or simply Dioxin.
The newly formed EPA issued a ban on the use of 2,4,5-T in the US and the
military claimed they would use other agents for defoliation when available,
then continued spraying Agent Orange. DOW claimed that Agent Orange normally
contained none or a few parts per million of Dioxin. Domestic stocks tested at
approx. 13 ppm Dioxin while the chemical used in Vietnam contained 47 ppm or
higher. Scientific reports that showed evidence of harm were either ignored or
actively suppressed while studies that were inconclusive were used by the
government to justify continued spraying.
Dioxin is the most toxic man made chemical on earth. FDA researcher Dr.
Jacqueline Verrett proved that only 1 part per Trillion was sufficient to
cause deformity in embryos and if it were diluted one million times it would
still be as toxic to a fetus as thalidomide, using the same tests. There is no
safe dose of dioxin, no matter how small. The agents 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D were
shown to cause cancer in lab animals by themselves, without the dioxin
present. DOW chemical agreed to a temporary halt in the use of 2,4,5-T but was
fighting to protect the pervasive domestic use of 2,4-D. Dow was able to go to
court and successfully fight the ban on 2,4,5-T and thus saved their lucrative
sales in the American market as well as worldwide sales of both herbicides.
The burden of scientific proof was successfully shifted from the manufacturer
of the toxic chemicals onto the plaintiffs who were forced to prove
conclusively that dioxin and the herbicides caused disease and mutation in
humans. Studies funded by industry showed 2,4,5-T without dioxin was safe
while independent studies such as the Bionetics study showed that ―pure‖
2,4,5-T without dioxin was mutagenic. The 1970 Meselson report carried the
greatest weight in the scientific community because of its thoroughness‘. In
one heavily sprayed province still births and miscarriages were
disproportionately high. In Saigon there was an epidemic of spina bifida, a
birth defect linked to Agent Orange. This prestigious report prompted congress
in 1970 to fund a new study by the National Academy of Sciences which would be
administered by the DOD. The result would again be inconclusive on the
question of human illness and death.
The Rand Corporation is a government ―think tank‖ that in 1967 estimated
325,000 Vietnamese villagers had been affected by spraying. Millions had been
forcibly relocated by the spraying and bombing into ―Strategic Hamlets‖ or
resettlement camps under US control. Strategic Hamlets had been designed to
separate the civilian population from the guerilla fighters and deny them
support in the field. The program had been a dismal failure as the hamlets
themselves were infiltrated. When victory began to turn to stalemate and
defeat, the defoliation operation was used as a means of punishment. The Rand
study indicated that one answer to wars of liberation was to force farmers
into urban centers. Conventional military victory and counter-insurgency
techniques did not ensure victory. By driving the people off the land the
spray program would not allow rural revolutionary movements to gather
sufficient strength to succeed. Air Force General Curtis LeMay advocated using
nuclear weapons to bomb the Vietnamese ―back to the stone age‖. This same
psychology was the driving force behind the strategy to drive people off the
land in order to achieve victory. The ―battle for hearts and minds‖ had long
been given up. Rand estimated that 88 percent of the villagers blamed the US
for the destruction of their crops and 74 percent expressed outright hatred.
Agent Orange was a used as a chemical warfare agent to drive the people into
the cities and deny the enemy recruits and support.
Industrial accidents with Agent Orange manufacture had occurred with some
regularity since 1937. DOW was the site of the first such accident that
poisoned plant workers and caused a primary symptom, chloracne. DOW refused to
fund a company doctor‘s request to test the chemicals on lab animals.
In 1949, 228 workers at the Monsanto
plant in Nitro, West Virginia developed chloracne, severe pain in skeletal
muscles, shortness of breath, intolerance to cold, swollen liver, loss of
sensation in extremities, fatigue, irritability, insomnia, loss of libido, and
vertigo.
These
symptoms are virtually identical to those of the Vietnam veterans.
Boy how many of us have these
symptoms or worse.
An accident in Germany in 1954 led to the identification of dioxin as the
cause of illness and the results on its toxicity were made known with the
publication of the results in scientific journals in 1957.
In 1964 as the major phase of spraying was about to get underway an accident
at a DOW facility led to an investigation that identified dioxin as the source
of poisoning and illness. Results of the accident were not published but were
communicated to the other manufacturers of the herbicide. 1964 is the date at
which it can be proved that DOW knew about the chemical toxicity of dioxin and
suppressed this information.
DOW and the other producers COULD have known about dioxin decades before the
war. The scientific and medical literature was clear by 1957 and DOW SHOULD
have known about the toxicity. By 1964 DOW DID know about the health effects
of dioxin and chose to conceal this information even though it knew US armed
forces were spraying millions of Vietnamese people and 3 million GI‘s sent to
fight for their country.
Since the end of the war, science has continued to progress despite
obstructions. Sweden showed that exposed workers had a much higher cancer
mortality rate than unexposed workers. University of Wisconsin found that rats
fed on a diet containing 5 ppt Dioxin, half developed malignancies.
In Vietnam, a type of liver cancer that was unknown before Operation Ranch Hand is now the second most common type of cancer in the country.
The Meselson report substantiated the affect of miscarriages and still births
in Vietnam, but the 2,4,5-T poisoning of Alsea, Oregon was proof positive. In
March 1979, the EPA ordered suspension of some uses of 2,4,5-T after studies
of pregnant women in Alsea, Oregon linked increases in miscarriages to periods
of defoliant spraying. These unnecessary events are the result of the vested
interest industry has in the use of 2,4,5-trichlorophenol in consumer
products. Manufacture of paper, adhesives, paints, varnish and lacquer
incorporates dioxin contaminated chlorophenols. Today Dioxin is found by
scientists in mother‘s milk and beef near sprayed range lands and forest
woodlands.
Nearly 3 million Americans served in Vietnam and many thousands of veterans
and their families have paid a terrible price for that service. A study of
these vets concluded that 40 percent had serious emotional difficulties such
as alcohol or narcotics abuse and 75 percent complain of nightmares, problems
maintaining relationships or jobs. Routine exposure to dioxin was more deadly
than war itself and may have already claimed more American lives than the war.
Mike Asman was eighteen when he enlisted in the marines in 1966. He was living
in a small town in Texas, feeling restless, wanting to get way. He left Texas
for basic training and was immediately sent to Danang. He was a weapons
repairman who went out on patrols, sat inside fortified ―firebases‖, and
generally tried to learn how not to get killed. On his first night in country
he and his buddy from basic were in separate fox holes when several Vietnamese
children approached selling cokes. The Marines overpaid in a gesture of
generosity. One of the children, no more than eight years old, dropped a
grenade in his buddy‘s foxhole and killed him. He rarely spoke of his
experiences in Vietnam, but he did note that a lot of the people who got
killed were the best people around him, death it seemed, did not play
favorites. When Mike returned home after his tour in Vietnam he returned with
a heroin habit and an inability to sleep. When family members entered a room
where Mike was sleeping he would roll out of bed and reach for the .45 under
the pillow that was no longer there. Occasional brushes with the law, marital
trouble and an ongoing drug and alcohol problem followed him for the next 20
years. Mike eventually came to terms with the demons that haunted him from
Vietnam, he beat his addictions and moved his family into a house in the
country. Time, group therapy, and family helped Mike to turn his life around.
About 5 years later Mike began to feel tired all the time. Mike Asman was told
he had Non-Hodgkin‘s Lymphoma, due to an error reading an x-ray it had been
found too late, and he had 6 months to live. Before he became too weak, Mike
sold his house and all his belongings and moved his wife and five young
children to Utah to be near his wife‘s parents for emotional support, then he
prepared to die. In six months his 6‘2‖ frame had shrunk to a skeletal form
and Mike‘s face was barely recognizable. He was being given morphine and
oxygen around the clock. Mike died on November 11th, on his 51st birthday
leaving a wife and 5 children. His name does not appear on the Vietnam
Memorial, nor do the names of thousands of others. Shortly after his death the
government program set up to compensate the veteran victims of Agent Orange
related disease was shut down, and compensation was no longer available. Since
most Agent Orange related disease takes 20-30 years to emerge, the vast
majority of affected veterans were never compensated. DOW Chemical continues
to sell 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D all over the world. Danang remains a heavily
contaminated ―hot spot‖ to this day.
(GI Guinea Pigs) THREE:
Cold War 1945-1995
How our Congress and our Presidents live with themselves is beyond my comprehension as to what they have done to an entire generation of a campaigning Army and then deny to the death of that Army. Now watch them all at these upcoming events as to how much they appreciate Veterans. Over 40 years of collusion and cover-up says they talk out of their butts.
Kelley