The Pentagon’s War on America: Poisoned Patriots

8/14/2019 The Pentagons War on America: Poisoned Patriots

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has faded into the background for many of the survivors as a reason to put their stories forward.

Now what they want most is awareness of what they have gone through, how they were treated

by the military they served, and the continuing damage inflicted on families who even now are

sometimes denied health benefits by a government that has never admitted responsibility.

The story of Camp Lejeune and the people who were sickened there has been told in pieces over

the years, only to disappear, flare up again and die down. Now, recently uncovered information

much of it damning to the Marine Corps and federal health officials can be made available

and the story told with fresh insights. The picture that emerges, after interviewing veterans who

lost children to rare diseases and after extensively reviewing a variety of private and public

documents, is of a site where up to a million people were potentially affected over the years and

where the Marine Corps continually put people in harms way without warning.

The Latvian platoon marches in the Pass in Review

as part of Exercise COOPERATIVE OSPREY '98's

closing ceremony at Camp Lejeune.

Photo by SGT Thopgmas W. Ammnos

Camp Lejeune was pushed back into the national spotlight in late April, when the Agency for

Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), a branch of the Centers for Disease Control


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and Prevention (CDC), announced that the Marine Corps had for years systematically

misrepresented the nature and scope of historical water contamination at the site. The military

has long denied that water saturated with trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE),

degreasing and dry cleaning solvents now known to have permeated the bases drinking and

bathing water systems for decades, was responsible for the multitude of cancers and other rare

health problems experienced by former base residents and civilians living near the fence line.

Although the problem was identified as far back as 1980 by military engineers testing water

treatment systems, the last contaminated well was left running until 1987. By then, according to

information from a 2007 U.S. House of Representatives hearing on the issue, up to one million

people could have been affected by the tainted water.

That number may underestimate the damage, because the contamination is now known to be

even worse than previously suspected. In 1997, ATSDR issued a report that largely exonerated

the military. More than a decade later, on April 28, 2009, it withdrew that report and announced

that the Marine Corps for years concealed the fact that benzene, a known human carcinogen

found in gasoline, was found at high levels during well testing in 1984 alongside the other

already familiar contaminants. This breakthrough is giving some veterans new hope that a fuller

picture of what happened to them at Camp Lejeune will soon emerge.

The Marine Corps misrepresentations described by federal health officials are, according to

former Camp Lejeune residents, part of a much larger pattern. Ex-military personnel who lived at

various times at Camp Lejeune spoke to Natural Resources News Service of having watched

their children waste away, wondering how they had failed to protect them, and of later

developing their own unexplained health complications. In all instances, the military and

Veterans Health Administration (VHA) argued that there was insufficient evidence that TCE and

PCE were responsible.


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Maj. Gen. L. H. Buehl

United States Marine Corps

As the record shows, it was in the militarys financial interest to do so. Testing at the base from

October 1980 to March 1981 showed that water at one of the camps treatment plants was, in the

original reports words, highly contaminated with then-unnamed volatile organic compounds, a

chemical group that includes TCE and PCE. The contaminants were specifically identified in

1982, but the water systems were allowed to continue servicing homes, schools, swimming pools

and other facilities on and around the base. It was not until July 1984 that base officials began

testing individual wells; by February 1985, they had shut down 10 with high solvent readings.

According to the Associated Press (AP), one well had TCE levels as high as 18,900 parts per

billion; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now states that water is unsafe to drink with

TCE levels higher than 5 parts per billion. Despite these anomalous reading, closed wells were

periodically turned back on throughout 1985 to ease temporary water shortages. In April 1985,

Major General L. H. Buehl told residents of Tarawa Terrace, a nearby residential area, that the


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wells had been shut down strictly as a precaution based on minute chemical readings. The

affected wells were closed for good only in 1987; Buehl is now deceased.

Sick veterans and former residents, noticing a pattern, started pushing for an investigation.

ATSDR, which is responsible for assessing the health implications of contamination at

Superfund cleanup sites, disappointed many in the Camp Lejeune community in 1997 when it

found that adults had little or no increased cancer risk from contaminated water and declined

to rule on possible effects on developing fetuses. Instead, the report recommended fetal effects

should be studied an effort that, 12 years later, has no end in sight, despite intense pressure

from a few federal lawmakers and a vocal group of former residents to provide some closure for

those who lost family members and often their own health.

Committee on Energy and Commerce House of

Representatives 2002. Photo from Archives.

Who are these poisoned patriots, as a 2007 House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing

chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) labeled them? Tom Townsend, a former Marine Corps

major who lived at Camp Lejeune in the mid-50s and again in the 1960s, was working

temporarily at Camp Garcia, a now-deactivated airfield on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico,


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when he heard his infant son being cared for at Camp Lejeune with Townsends wife had

developed a rare heart defect. My bosses said I was invaluable and I couldnt go [see him], but

after some sparring I got on a plane and left, Townsend recalled. After he reached his family,

My son turned blue after a day in the hospital. They decided to take him to Bethesda Naval

Hospital several hours away in Maryland, hoping to save his life, although Townsend couldnt

make the trip himself. When his wife, who he said had poor depth perception, made the drive

alone, she found at Bethesda that although there was a notice inside the medical area to expect

her child, people were playing cards, they werent ready, Townsend said. She was a mild-

mannered Catholic, and she took a chunk out of their ass.

Their son didnt survive his condition long. After he passed away, Townsend remembered, I was

told to go back to Camp Garcia, and my wife had to clear out our house at Camp Lejeune. I

didnt feel we were being taken care of too well. Marines should act better than that. I dont

know if my bosses were scared or what, but we left. His wife died in 2006, after 52 years of

marriage, when she developed what Townsend called an abdomen growth despite years of

vigorous health. Its still a mystery how it developed, he said. She worked out every day. She

could do more pushups than I ever could.


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Sam Sims, who lived at Camp Lejeune from 1969 to 1971 and again from 1975 until his

discharge the following year, had it worse. In 1970 his five-month-old daughter Pamela became

ill while he was in and out of the country, he said. He and his wife couldnt figure out why

she was crying day and night until she abruptly passed away. According to medical records

reviewed for this story, the official cause of death was hemorrhagic pulmonary edema and

pneumonia brought on by fibrocystic disease of the pancreas, which is highly unusual in

infants. A year later, the same process played out: another daughter, listed only as Infant Sims,

was born Dec. 28, 1971 and died Jan. 5, 1972 of died of hypocalcemia, cause undetermined,

manifested by severe convulsions. A third daughter, Bridgett, died of dehydration and sepsis

in 1973 when she was a week old. At first, Sims said, I didnt know if I had a disease from

overseas that could have affected his children. He noted that he has two grown children,

including a forty-one-year-old son born before the family moved to Camp Lejeune whos never

had a health problem in his life.


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Sims didnt know what to do, and his superiors were hard pressed to respond to three

unexplained deaths in one family. The Marine Corps thought I was doing something to my

kids, he said and so when, despite everything, he attempted to reenlist in 1976, they declared

him ineligible and put me out. After that, by his own reckoning, he bounced from job to job,

always carrying a guilty feeling about something you think you might have caused. Despite

never fighting in Vietnam, he was diagnosed by a non-military contract doctor during a VHA

evaluation as having permanent and totally disabling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), for

which he now receives benefits. As for a separate disability claim he filed in 2000 with the Navy,

They just tell me theyre working on my case. Sims did not know when he filled out the

paperwork nine years ago that he was entering the federal governments equivalent ofAlice in

Wonderland.

The Cover-up.

When someone applies to the VHA for health coverage benefits, they are evaluated by either an

Administration doctor or, if one is not readily available, a non-government private practice

physician on a contract basis. The customary practice, according to Jim Vance, the director of the

VHA office in Boise, Idaho, is for a petitioner to specify the condition for which they need

medical attention when they first apply.


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Lexington Veterans Affairs Medical Center

Photo by Russell and Sydney Poore

The problem for Townsend, Sims, and countless other Camp Lejeune veterans is that the VHA

has no well-established protocol for handling claims of toxic exposure except in cases of Agent

Orange, Vance said. Rather, in cases like Camp Lejeune, When someone says, I was exposed to

fill in the blank, we ask if they want to file a claim. If they say yes, the disability they claim

that is, the specific symptoms they are required to outline during the initial application is

what the VA doctor at the medical center tests for. Doctors know to look for diabetes, since that

condition is a leading indicator that Agent Orange is present in the system, Vance said. But no

similar indicators exist for claims of TCE or any other contamination. The doctor listens to the

patient and then, in theory, evaluates the patients health based on this conversation, Vance said.

That is not always what happens.

According to private files Townsend made available for this story, he specifically asked his

examining doctor like Sims, a non-government contractor from a private practice to

evaluate his neuropathy, an uncommon nervous system disorder that his personal physician had

decided was likely due to his chemical exposures at Camp Lejeune. The examining doctor, Adam

Browning, made a note for his assistant not to bother: The veteran has made a claim for

neuropathy due to chemical exposure as well. You are not to consider that claim at this time


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because we have not confirmed his exposure. This exam is exclusively to determine if he has a

service related radiculopathy. In the margin of the file noting this decision, Townsend wrote,

The exposure [at Camp Lejeune] date[s] back to 1957-1987 per ATSDR/CDC public health

data. Where have you been? I have lost a son and a wife to this government-generated water

system. To boot I have severe neuropathy diagnosed as most likely caused by this exposure.

This was a FAKE EXAM by the VA and you knew it!

Such sentiments extend in the Camp Lejeune community far beyond Townsend. According to a

House Science and Technology oversight subcommittee report released in March, The Agency

for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry: Problems in the Past, Potential for the Future?, the

U.S. Veterans Administration has specifically cited the flawed [1997] ATSDR public health

assessment to deny at least one veteran a woman named Denita McCall medical benefits

for illnesses they believe were due to toxic exposures while based at Camp Lejeune on several

occasions. Jeff Dimond, a CDC spokesman, said using the 1997 report in that way is a

misrepresentation of its findings. Indeed, he said, Weve told the VHA that denying benefits


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based on that report is a misuse of science. ATSDR Deputy Director Tom Sinks, according to

Dimond, sent a letter to the VHA in March spelling out ATSDRs position and demanding that

the Administration reverse course.

But even ostensibly favorable benefits rulings can come at a cost. Although his PTSD diagnosis

helped Sam Sims receive benefits, he called it a mixed blessing: based on Sims accounts of his

Camp Lejeune experiences, the non-military contract doctor who evaluated him declared him to

be delusional and potentially dangerous to himself. Sims admitted that many veterans commit

suicide based on something they thought they did, which can cover a host of real or imagined

sins; however, sounding perfectly calm during an interview, Sims said that, whatever his doctor

believed, Im mad, but Im not crazy enough to kill myself. Indeed, rather than delusional, he

sounded like a man who wanted to live to see a resolution. Theres a lot of people walking

around with spina bifida, or [mental health problems], and people just need to know about the

environmental health history of Camp Lejeune, he said. They run it on TV for one day and you

dont hear about it any more. You can pass people in the street and tell them about it, and a lot of

people dont react.


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Two CH-46 "Sea Knights" perform an

evacuation exercise at Camp Lejeune.

Photo by Cpl. Aaron Rooks

How do former residents themselves react when the facts are before them? One of the most

powerful feelings veterans experience when they learn about the water contamination, strangely

enough, is relief. Sims now sees himself primarily as a victim of circumstance rather than

somehow responsible, as he feared he was. Im just relieved to know [it wasnt me]. Ive been

walking around for 35 years with this monkey on my back. Townsend said much the same:

when he saw a notice 10 years ago that ATSDR was looking to speak with mothers who bore

children at the base between 1968, when medical records were first computerized, and 1985, it

relieved the guilt in my heart that Id done something to [my son]. At the same time, before his

wife died she was relieved. It got the guilt out of her system.

Whatever guilt has been relieved, the legal and medical battles continue. The Navy legal office

says more than 1,500 former Camp Lejeune residents have filed claims totaling approximately

$33.8 billion in damages. Those claims, it says, will not be addressed until ATSDR completes a

study of TCE and PCE fetal effects at Camp Lejeune, which will likely not happen for years.

That assessment will depend heavily on a separate ATSDR study, just now getting underway,

attempting to model the path and volume of chemically contaminated water during the years in

question. Because that time is by now more than two decades past, relevant records will be


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difficult to locate. Although ATSDR says it hopes to have results by next summer, Dimond called

that a real loose target at this point because of the complexity of the information needed.

When we try to model water from 30 years ago how, where and when chemicals got into the

water supply its a huge study. It may take longer than hoped to complete it, he said, because

theres a period in there where [Marine Corps] data on the pumps is missing from the late

1980s. We dont have an answer about why. All kidding aside, why the Marine Corps has or

doesnt have documents I wouldnt touch with a 10-foot pole.

Once ATSDR has some idea of where the contaminated water got to, the next step will be

figuring out who actually lived in the vicinity and when, which Dimond called a daunting task

in its own right. At the height of the Vietnam War, We ran a lot of bodies through that area, a

highly transient population, he said, and investigators face the prospect of tracking down non-

Marines who lived there, divorced wives, widows, people who changed their names. Although

federal health officials believe Camp Lejeune contamination is indeed responsible for many of

the health problems former residents attribute to it Were pretty sure women in the first

trimester of pregnancy who drank the water, their kids have a higher propensity for non-

Hodgkins lymphoma, he pointed to as one example there is no list of medical conditions that

the government can officially recognize as related or unrelated to residence at Camp Lejeune.

Camp Lejeune High School


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Photo from the Dept. of Energy website

Based on just such scientific obstacles, the National Academy of Sciences released a Marine

Corps-funded report June 13 declaring, essentially, that an expert panel could not reach any

conclusions about whether Camp Lejeune residents have a case: There were divergent views

among the committee members about the probability that each would assign to whether adverse

health effects have in fact occurred, it stated, but there was consensus among them that

scientific research is unable to provide more definitive answers to that question. The committee

was not sanguine about the possibility of better news, declaring in the report summary,

Limitations in population size, data availability, and data quality cannot be overcome. . . . Even

if ATSDRs planned work goes forward successfully, the outcome of the efforts is unlikely to

determine conclusively whether Camp Lejeune residents were adversely affected by exposure to

water contaminants. This collection of uncertainties and long waits is what stands between

former residents petitions for damages and any Navy decision to grant them.

But curiously missing documents and inconclusive studies are not the only hurdles these families

face.

Running the Gauntlet.

The military is not the only hurdle in the path of families poisoned at Camp Lejuene. ATSDR

faces its own accusations of mishandling and misrepresenting information. When Townsend filed

a 2003 Freedom of Information Act request to view some of the supporting documents

referenced in ATSDRs 1997 report, he was told by a Health and Human Services Department

official that the files are no longer in CDCs possession.

Specifically, the records were lost during a 1998 office move. As a result, CDC no longer has

records that would respond to your request, other than the public health assessment itself.


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ATSDR had a different explanation: A search of our record[s] failed to reveal any documents

pertaining to your request. Program staff stated that the referenced material was either destroyed

or misplaced during an agency physical move this past October which would have been in

2002, not 1998.

Dr. Howard Frumkin testifies before the

House Science and Technology Committee.

Photo provided by the US House of Representatives

Pressed to explain this discrepancy, ATSDR Director Howard Frumkin wrote to Jerome

Ensminger, a Camp Lejeune veteran who lost his 9-year-old daughter to leukemia and now

collaborates with Townsend on information-gathering projects, on May 4, 2007: We

acknowledge that the references used for the development of the 1997 public health assessment

are no longer available in [ATSDRs] files. A move of ATSDR staff resulted in our files of Camp

Lejeune-related documents being temporarily relocated. A private contractor mistakenly disposed

of the documents. Although unfortunate that the material referenced in the public health

assessment is no longer available in ATSDRs files, the original information and data, with the

exception of original ATSDR references, may still be available from their original sources.

Ensminger viewed the message as unresponsive, and as the March report from the House science

oversight panel noted a few weeks before ATSDR withdrew its findings, he legitimately


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questions how the leader of a federal scientific public health agency can stand behind a

document which contains no supporting information or data. He is particularly perturbed by how

cavalier Dr. Frumkin has been to this and other critical public health issues. How cavalier?

ATSDR first knew in 2004 that benzene had once contaminated some Camp Lejeune wells,

according to Dimond, but did not retract its report until earlier this year. The original report was

based on the Marine Corps telling ATSDR that benzene contamination was present at the base

but that affected wells were closed. Underselling the point slightly, Dimond said, We

subsequently found that was not the case.

Between ATSDRs ineptitude and the militarys apparent stonewalling, the lack of any clear

answers had gotten so bad by 2005 that the EPA opened a criminal investigation led by Tyler

Amon, a prosecutor who was then detailed to the Justice Department (DOJ). At Stupaks 2007

poisoned patriots hearing, Amon said under oath eleventh-hour pressure from the Bush

Administration not to appear meant that the committee had to subpoena him to force his

testimony that his team had considered charging civilian Navy employees with obstruction of

justice. The Navy, which exercises some executive authority over the Marine Corps and owns the

land on which Camp Lejeune is located, had resisted funding any health impact studies at the site

despite the existence of a statutory requirement, he said; perhaps worse, the Navy failed to close

the contaminated water system even years after it knew about the problem. According to a June

13, 2007, AP article titled Congress probes legacy of poison water in N.C., Amon told the

committee that some [Navy] employees interviewed during the criminal investigation appeared

coached and were not forthcoming with details, and that the military had failed to produce

documents he had requested.

Despite this evidence of an orchestrated cover-up, Amon would never release any report on the

results of the investigation. Townsend, the former major, was present at the DOJ meeting where


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the announcement was made. There were about 19 attorneys all wringing their hands saying

they decided not to release the report. They gave us all kinds of crocodile tears, he said.

Townsend found it strange that no new information would be released because there was such a

wealth of available data and testimony to draw on. I gave Tyler about 50 names of affected

residents to interview, he said; others did the same. DOJ has never explained its silence on the

matter, and Amon referred multiple requests for an interview to an EPA spokesman, who said

only that the agency is not going to speculate on whether the investigation will ever be

reopened and responded to a question about why Amon never released a report by pointing to

DOJs original statement on the issue, which reads in part: The fact that the actions in question

were taken prior to the promulgation of legally enforceable standards regarding safe drinking

water precludes criminal prosecutions against any of the parties involved.

As part of its investigation, Amons legal team interviewed Marie Socha, once an ATSDR health

expert overseeing Camp Lejeune issues. According to her, during the course of the investigation

the team requested her green books, official government records detailing her conversations

with Camp Lejeune veterans and other former residents about their health problems and when

they had lived at the base. She moved from ATSDR to CDC, its parent organization, in the

middle of the investigation, she said, and as a result, I was told they couldnt give my green

books back because I wasnt at ATSDR any more an explanation that struck her as odd.

Rather than fight the decision, she requested to have the books, with their wealth of first-hand

information from dozens of affected residents, stored in ATSDRs archives, although she is


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unsure of their status today or whether the EPA retains any copies. Of her time handling Camp

Lejeune, she only said, I loved these people. It was a painful time for them.

Several sources described Socha as sympathetic to sick residents concerns about the water they

drank, and she herself said she worked 12-hour days five days a week answering phone calls,

taking notes and compiling a record of the scope of victims health problems. However, upon

leaving CDC, she left it all behind. Because this project consumed my life for so long, when I

left it I just stepped out and havent gone back, she said. After two brief phone interviews for

this story, one of which included her description of being inaccurately quoted by a journalist in

the past, she abruptly declined any further contact, writing in a brief e-mail that I have decided

to abstain. A subsequent phone call was not returned.

For sick former residents, it can be difficult to know where to turn for accurate information about

Camp Lejeune. As a result, they have formed their own information-sharing networks that rely as

little as possible on official pronouncements. Groups with names like The Few, The Proud, The

Forgotten and Toxic Homefront Empowered Survivors Take All Necessary Defense (THE

STAND) have sprung up over the years, attempting to get federal lawmakers attention. There

have been a few successes: Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), who sits on the Armed Services

Committee, sent a May 13 letter to acting Secretary of the Navy B. J. Penn requesting a meeting

to determine what has caused these information gaps in the historic record, noting that some

victims have been waiting more than two decades for closure. Following the release of the

recent NAS report, she called for hearings on whether it adequately considered previous

scientific analyses of the site. She was joined in these efforts by Sen. Richard Burr, her

Republican counterpart in the state who is the ranking member of the Veterans Affairs

Committee.


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However, it is unlikely, if history is any guide, that new legislation will result. What little

Congressional attention has been paid to Camp Lejeune over the years has come in the form of

either just such meetings or scattered hearings, at most resulting in mandates for further studies

by federal agencies. A congressional aide in Hagans office declined to comment on the

conversation with Penn because it was not a public event. A staff member with the House

Science and Technology Committee, which held detailed hearings on ATSDRs poor information

management and decision-making processes, said that despite some Committee interest, there are

no concrete plans to further address Camp Lejeune at this time.

Marines load onto an MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft

during jump training at Camp Lejeune, June 5, 2009.

Photo by USMC Lance Corporal John A. Faria

What would resolution really look like? It is a difficult question to answer, especially because the

collected story of up to a million people made sick by decades of contaminated water is a hard

one to tell. To put it in measurable terms, the $33.8 billion sought by the relatively few Camp

Lejeune victims who have filed official claims is equivalent to, according to the Navys own

numbers, the entire outstanding Navy order for 48 V-22 Osprey airplane/helicopters, which have

become an infamous boondoggle because of maintenance and performance problems with their

vertical takeoff and landing technology. As just one example of multiple technical failures, the


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Marine Corps Times in February 2009 reported that the Ospreys rotors could literally blow other

helicopters off amphibious assault ships flight decks. Yet the military continues to purchase

Ospreys. It offers no compensation to Camp Lejeune victims.

What about putting the story in more human terms? Townsend related previous efforts by several

news outlets, includingRedbook, People and CNN, among others, to contact victims at various

times and report on their lives. Townsend has a list of sick former residents who agreed to be

interviewed for those stories, as well as their contact information and even which organization

first contacted them for a proposed article or broadcast. For one reason or another, none of these

projects ever came to fruition, he said. Their stories have largely never been told.

Dimond, the CDC spokesman, said that even at the end of ATSDRs lengthy research efforts,

people made ill at Camp Lejeune may not have the full accounting they want. It would take a

lawyer to answer any death or disability claims, he said. Our guys will come up with the

science. . . . How that data is used is not something we can answer. Ultimately, he suggested,

nothing short of Hollywood could truly capture the depth and scope of what Camp Lejeune has

come to mean to some people, and could come to mean to others who remain unaware of its role

in their lives. While the 1995 bookA Civil Action focused on a small group of people and two

potentially TCE-contaminated wells in Woburn, Mass., he pointed out, Camp Lejeune has over

100 wells and hundreds of thousands of people. If two wells will create a bestselling book and

movie, you tell me what 100 will get you.

The Pentagons War on America

Next: An Interview with Ray DuBois The Bush Administrations Top Military

Environmental Official.


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DuBois said, When I was presented with these environmental challenges, my immediate

thought, quite frankly, was not the birds and bees but families. Ive lived in military installations.

We have to keep them safe for the people who live, work, train and visit there.

See how he responded to these challenges.

Documents

The Pentagon’s War on America: Poisoned Patriots