| Article Last Updated: 12/07/2005 |
| Veterans
group wants suit on secret testing reopened WASHINGTON - A Vietnam veterans group asked an appeals court Tuesday to revive its lawsuit against Defense Department officials who allegedly covered up a secret Utah-based chemical and biological testing program. The case was brought by about 20 veterans who say they were exposed - many of them unknowingly - to harmful agents as part of a series of tests in 1963 and 1964, operated out of the Army's Deseret Test Center at Fort Douglas. For three decades, the Pentagon concealed information on the Shipboard Hazard and Decontamination tests, known as SHAD, from the veterans and the Veterans Administration, which denied benefits in some cases because claims couldn't be proved. The veterans are seeking damages from Pentagon officials they say violated their constitutional rights and prevented them from obtaining VA benefits by conspiring to cover up the project. “[The Pentagon] thinks we're so stupid we can't see through their lies,” said John Eckman, who was a machinists mate aboard a ship used in the Copper Head test off the coast of Newfoundland. “That's an insult to me.” Earlier this year, a federal judge dismissed the case, saying the veterans couldn't prove they were misled from the time the tests were conducted. Attorneys for the veterans asked the three-judge appeals court panel to reinstate the case Tuesday, saying the vets are entitled to relief. “We're talking about a systematic, decades-long cover-up which has essentially affected thousands of veterans, including those in this courtroom . . . who have served their country and in return for their service were used as human guinea pigs,” said David Cynamon, attorney for the veterans. Judge Thomas Griffith, a former general counsel at Brigham Young University, questioned why the veterans couldn't take the information and go back to the VA to have their claims reviewed. Cynamon said courts can rule in favor of plaintiffs who have had their constitutional rights violated as a remedy for harm already suffered, even if the option of going back to the VA remains. The government lawyer, Charles Scarborough, said the veterans are trying to circumvent the established benefits process. Furthermore, he said, Congress has acted to address the veterans' grievances, forcing the Pentagon to release records and providing health benefits to the affected veterans. The three-judge panel will rule on the appeal at a later date. The case is closely tied to another appeal, also argued Tuesday, in which a class of about 415,000 veterans and civilians seeking damages for their exposure to radiation during atomic tests in New Mexico, Nevada and the Pacific and after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They say their claims have been denied because the military has refused to release pertinent medical records. Charles Clark was part of the occupation force in Nagasaki. He arrived aboard a submarine and said he and his shipmates spent months walking the streets and drinking and washing in the reservoir not knowing that they were contaminated with radiation. He has had more than 160 growths removed from his face, has had reconstructive surgery on his nose, and is losing vision in his right eye. His benefit claims were denied based on the Pentagon's exposure models. Clark said the Pentagon has done “anything they can do to make us feel like less of a citizen.” The SHAD tests were part of Project 112, a program devised in 1962 to gauge chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Most of the 50 Project 112 tests, running until 1974, used “simulants” in place of actual chemical or biological agents, but some used actual sarin or VX nerve agents. The secretive tests involved 5,842 soldiers and sailors, and an unknown number of civilians may also have been exposed. The tests were classified and the soldiers sworn to secrecy. Nine of the Project 112 tests were conducted at Utah's Dugway Proving Ground. The SHAD tests, with code names like Autumn Gold, Eager Belle and Copper Head, often involved spraying the ships with a simulated agent, believed harmless at the time. Since then, the simulated agents have been tied to health problems, as have the chemicals used to decontaminate the ships in some cases. |
