Sept. 10 — To the Editor:
I am responding to a recent letter to the editor
from David Wickham on Sept. 7 that criticized a letter I had previously
written on our government's chemical warfare with Agent Orange in
Vietnam.
Wickham said the resultant health effects that
happened to Vietnamese and our veterans were "unintended consequences"
and "certainly not the result of some deliberate attempt to injure or
kill humans." I suggest Wickham research further about the tragic
history of Agent Orange.
Admiral E.R. Zumwalt
submitted a classified report to the Veterans Administration in 1990
concerning associated health effects from Agent Orange exposure. The
classified report is now available online at http://www.gulfwarvets.com/ao.html.
In this report, it is disclosed the military "dispensed Agent Orange in
concentrations six to 25 times the manufacturer's suggested rate."
Furthermore, Zumwalt quotes Dr. David Clary, a government scientist who
worked with Agent Orange, as saying, "When we (military scientists)
initiated the herbicide program in the 1960s, we were aware of the
potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. We
were even aware that the 'military' formulation had a higher dioxin
concentration than the 'civilian' version due to the lower cost and
speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on
the 'enemy,' none of us were overly concerned."
September 15, 2013 — To the Editor:
Agent Orange was criminal.
I
am writing to add a bit of information about our government's decision
to use Agent Orange and the subsequent cover-up. In his recent letter,
Mr. Meinhold documents that our Department of Defense knew they were
spraying dioxin, a very, very powerful carcinogen, citing specifics from
Admiral Zumwalt's 1990 report to the VA.
In the mid-1960s, I was a support member to a
team, led by a company president and comprised of scientists and
lawyers, whose sole purpose was to convince the Department of Defense
that spraying Agent Orange in areas that might be inhabited by humans
would be criminal, a crime against humanity. We believed that dioxin was
among the most hazardous substances known to man and that if "they"
understood, they would abandon this idea. After several presentations at
the Pentagon detailing the hazards, the team failed to convince and,
shockingly, the decision was made to spray in even higher, more toxic
concentrations.
I can remember vividly sitting
in a final debriefing meeting and witnessing the dismay, disbelief,
revulsion from these senior executives that our government would take
this decision. The company president decided to make one last stand,
deciding to refuse to produce a component required in Agent Orange
manufacture. Within days, he was told that unless he complied with the
DOD's directive to produce, he would be charged and tried for treason.
An act of conscience would make a respected executive, a community
leader, into a war criminal. The rest is history and, as Mr. Meinhold
states, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, and our
soldiers contracted a variety of dioxin-caused cancers.
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