Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

In 1985 the National Academies of Science (NAS) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) did the first of numerous research projects on the Edgewood Test veterans. There were no alarming statistics found at that time, but by the release of the March 2003 IOM report based on the Edgewood test veterans the numbers were staggering, 40% of the 7120 men were dead, 2098 men, and of the 4022 men they did find still alive 54% or 2200 men were disabled for a combined rate of 74.43% death and disability rate. The data was gathered in FY2000 under a DOD contract released by the RAC Committee looking into Gulf War Issues.

The fact the way the contract was written, the IOM ignored all KNOWN medical problems caused by exposure to Sarin and other Chemical Weapons (CW)  from the two prominent studies released up to that point a study by a German Doctor Karl Heinz Lohs who worked with Wermacht soldiers from 1945 thru 1975 and SIPRI released the report in 1975 http://www.sipri.org/conten ts/cbwarfare/Publications/p dfs/cw-delayed.pdf   they showed long term medical problems to the cardiac, pulmonary, gastrointestinal and neurological systems, another study by the National Institute of Health (NIH) in January 1994 also found long term cardiac effects, gastrointestinal, pulmonary and neurological medical problems,    Toxicity of the Organophosphate Chemical Warfare Agents GA, GB, and VX: Implic   yet Dr. William Page of the IOM ignored the findings of these two studies. He determined the only known problem to be caused by exposure to Sarin was sleep disorders and brain tumors at the rate of 25 per 100,000 personnel, that would have been affected by the CW release at Kamisayah Iraq in March 1991.

The multitude of medical symptoms in the Veteran Affairs list of undiagnosed medical problems that they are currently making compensation payments to the Gulf War Veterans is the laundry list of all known medical problems related to exposure of CW as shown by the above two studies.

The main problem that the March 2003 IOM Report  http://www.iom.edu/CMS/3795 4913/5842.aspx  shows is that the Edgewood test veterans on who this report was based, shows the high death and disability rate of these 7120 men in 2000 when the majority of these men would have been 65 or younger. Most of the men used in the Cold War experiments were born in 1935 or after, the doctors and scientists of Edgewood liked to use, young, healthy males in the experiments. The volunteers were prescreened mentally and physically before selection to the "medical research unit".

One can only assume that DOD was given an advance copy of the report since they were the agency that funded it. Yet is was not until the summer of 2004 that the findings of brain tumors being linked to the Sarin exposure at Kamisayah was publicly announced. A year later, why the delay?  

In October 2003 the Veterans Administration published this manual to inform Doctors and other health treatment personnel at the VA medical centers on the different Chemical, Biological and Radiological weapons experiments and what they would be seeing from the veterans that would be related to the tests. This was 28 years after the last experiments were stopped. The manual makes no mention of the IOM's March 2003 findings why? http://www1.va.gov/vhi/docs /CBR_www.pdf   pages 20-23 deal with the Cold War era experiments, they mention the March 2003 IOM report but none of the serious numbers of the men affected, it was just ignored, why? Pages 33 and 37 show there are NO KNOWN tests to determine exposure from months ago let alone decades ago. Yet in an interview on April 6, 2006, with a MS Lisa Friedman of the LA Newsgroup a VA Spokesman Mr. Pamperin stated to her that the VA feels no one was hurt by the experiments but if they were  they needed to go to a VA hospital and have tests run on them to show if they were exposed and what medical problems are related to it, and if they deserved compensation they would receive it.  http://www.vawatchdog.org/o ld%20newsflashes%20APR%2006 /newsflash04-03-2006-8.htm  This is a link to MS Friedmans article.

It also discusses a Mr. Len Sistek Jr. of the House, VA Committee who was sent my Congressmen Lane Evans and Ted Strickland to Fort Detrick and EDgewood Arsenal to obtain from them the names of the 2300 men of the biological tests at Fort Detrick from 1952 thru 1972 and the names of the 7120 men used at Edgewood Arsenal used in the CW tests and drug tests from 1952 thru 1975. On April 28 2005, the two Congressmen sent Secretary R.James Nicholson this letter along with a sealed envelope with the names of the 10,000 veterans http://veterans.house.gov/d emocratic/officialcorr/4-28 -05exposure.htm  On October 5, 2005, Secretary Nicholson sent this reply back to them stating he felt their lists were "useless" and he was sending them to DOD for them to identify the men. http://veterans.house.gov/d emocratic/officialcorr/pdf 10-5-05arsenal.pdf

This on face value seems reasonable, but when you look behind this it makes one question if it was necessary or politically expedient method of burying the issue again, to coincide with previous DOD announcements. In 2004 DOD has told the GAO investigators that they would not be able to identify any men other than the SHAD/112 veterans before 2009, that had been exposed to hazardous materials, http://www.gao.gov/new.item s/d04410.pdf  page 20 specifically mentions the 7120 men of Edgewood Arsenal. The problem with this answer is that DOD had paid for the IOM to find these men in FY2000 for the March 2003 IOM Sarin study, all that is required for the Veterans Affairs to get the mens names and addresses is a release of the information held by the IOM, authorized by the Department of Defense, the problem with that is the head of DOD, Secretary of Defense is one of the two men from the Ford Administration that knew and authorized the funding for the experiments and as Chief of Staff of the Ford Administration has approved the continuation of the experiments when they inherited them from the Nixon Administration.

So Between SEC of Defense Rumsfelds, role in the human chemical weapons and drug tests and his replacement in 1975 as White House Chief of Staff Richard B Cheney as a member of the National Security Council had a hand in the continuation of these experiments that violated international law, the Nuremberg Codes of 1947. To "find" these men or their widows now, will open a can of worms that the Bush Administration  does not want to deal with, now that their sole reason for going to war with Iraq, has become the fact that he used CW's on the Kurds, I don't know about you, but I find the fact that these  men used drugs like LSD, PCP and other hallucinogenic and chemical weapons on their own soldiers to be more of a crime or as much of a crime that Saddam has been accused of.

As one of the youngest soldiers used in these experiments, I am fortunate to be one of the 54% that is disabled, but at least I am still alive, after a stroke at age 36, the first of seven heart attacks at age 38, triple bypass at 41 and in a power chair at 48. I resent the fact that due to deliberate actions on behalf of DOD, to keep the 7120 men of Edgewood Arsenal and the 2300 men of Fort Detrick from being identified until 2009 after the Bush Administration leaves office, the widows and veterans are being deprived of their obviously deserved veterans benefits.

Congress has all but turned a blind eye to this situation, except for the attempt by Lane Evans and Ted Strickland, no one is doing anything. I have contacted my legislators, but in a completely Republican State of South Carolina, my elected officials do nothing, I have met personally with Congressman Joe Wilson SC02, on August 9th 2005, he told my wife and I: why didn't they use animals?  He promised to help, then his aide in Columbia was activated for Katrina Relief, then he quit, then I got a letter that stated that if anyone ever got a bill to the floor dealing with the Edgewood Arsenal test veterans issues, he would vote for it. He would not sponsor any such legislation though.

I have attempted to contact Senator Lindesy Graham over this, but I seriously doubt if it has ever reached his desk, stopped by staffers who work for him. Congress has abdicated any and all oversight over this administration, the fact that this open "secret" has been in the public domain since 1975, it is thoroughly shameful that the federal government has not taken care of these veterans who were harmed by their "volunteering" for a "safe" program. It is totally despicable that these multimillionaires in power are denying disabled veteran their full benefits so they can have an attempt to live life as comfortably as possible before they die prematurely from medical problems caused or aggravated by their use in these experiments.

For some of the widows the veterans benefits would mean an end to the decision to either buy food or their medications this month, the benefits due them from their spouse's use in these tests would bring those choices to a stop, the medical and financial compensation would ease their burdened lives. The sad part is many of them do not even know that their husbands were ever used in these experiments, due to National Security Documents the volunteers signed, we were told that if we discussed this with Doctors, family members, etc., we would be court martialed and sent to Leaveworth barracks for a minimum of 25 years.

Since this became public in 1975 many of the veterans myself included were in places where we never heard about it, there was no Internet in 1975, I was overseas, the Army papers never carried any article about the Church Commission. Forgotten was the experiments in my case until October 2002, when the VA told me I could no longer work and I was totally disabled due to my heart disease. I started looking at what in my life had caused all this at such an early age, what I learned about the Edgewood Tests, bothered me, made me mad, the more I learned the worse it became.

Then the Army claimed I was never used in any "secret" experiments, they wrote one congressman, that many veterans think they were used in "secret tests" when in fact they had only done regular annual gas chamber exercises. I never claimed to be used in a "secret" test, the Edgewood LSD experiments were already well known. Then they said yes, I volunteered but I was sent home sick on 10 July 1974. I had to send Senator Larry Craig and Admiral Daniel Cooper copies of the documents that showed I arrived for inprocessing at Edgewood on 25 June 1974 and the document that showed I out processed from Edgewood on 22 August 1974, after 59 days at the test facility.

Now I have been told just because I was there  does not mean I was ever used in any experiments, then I was told I only listened to a radio, then this picture was found on the Internet it is a still from a 1992 documentary from the A&E Channel titled Bad Trip to Edgewood  Propaganda Matrix - Multimedia - Bad Trip to Edgewood   this is the still in question   http://www.thewhyfiles.net/ images/edgewood03.jpg  It was taken sometime between June 25 and August 21, 1974, at Edgewood Arsenal, I was 18 years old.

My records also show I was exposed to a disease called Nisseria Menengides, a Doctor from the VA recently told my wife and I that the normal protocol for that disease is quarantine and heavy antibiotic treatments, well in July 1974 the Army sent me from Aberdeen Proving Grounds home for a 10 day convalescent leave to California knowing that I had tested positive for it. This brings up a few questions of it's own, how did they know to test me for this exotic disease? Why was the protocol not followed? Why was I sent home to mingle among my friends and family with this disease?

The questions I have is for Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney are

How can you two justify taking this nation to war on the basis that Saddam used CW on his own people, with your personal history involving Chemical Weapons?

Why won't you call the IOM Rick Erdtman at 202-334-1925 and tell him to release the names and addresses that the IOM accumulated during the data gathering in FY2000?

Is the fact that the death and disability rate of the Edgewood test veterans an indication of what the Gulf War veterans have to face in the next 10-20 years as far as death and disability?

How do you two sleep at night with all this in your heads?