U.S. tested Agent Orange in Panama, accounts say
Mark Graffis
From: Panama News <pma...@panama.c-com.net>
08/20/99
By Tod Robberson / The Dallas Morning News
PANAMA CITY - The United States military conducted secret tests of Agent
Orange and other toxic herbicides in Panama during the 1960s and '70s,
potentially exposing many civilians and military personnel to lethal
chemicals, according to documents and eyewitness accounts.
According to these accounts, which the U.S. military says remain
unproven, hundreds of barrels of Agent Orange were shipped to Panama at
the height of the Vietnam War, then sprayed on jungle areas in an effort
to simulate the tropical battlefield conditions of Southeast Asia.
The Panamanian government has, for years, attempted to obtain proof from
the United States that it used lethal chemical weapons and herbicides in
the country, in an effort to obtain compensation for cleanup costs as well
as possible damages.
Panama already is seeking as much as $500 million from the U.S. military
in damages and cleanup costs related to thousands of acres of rangeland
used for weapons and ammunition tests since World War II. Officials in
Panama say the addition of claims for Agent Orange-related exposure could
cause liability claims against the U.S. government to skyrocket.
The U.S. military will complete a scheduled withdrawal from Panama on
Dec. 31 as required under the 1979 Panama Canal treaties. The U.S.
Southern Command, the operational authority in Panama, said it was not
aware of any tests involving Agent Orange in that country.
"Our bottom line on our side is that we have no knowledge that it
happened. We have no evidence that Agent Orange was actually sprayed in
Panama," said Raul Duany, a Southern Command spokesman. If Agent Orange
was sprayed, he added, "it wouldn't pose a threat today because it should
have dissipated by now."
Death benefits
But the Veterans Affairs Department has acknowledged that the use of
Agent Orange or similar toxic herbicides contributed to the deaths of at
least three U.S. servicemen stationed in Panama in the 1960s and '70s,
said Bill Russo, an attorney for the Washington-based Vietnam Veterans of
America. Their wives, including a Texas woman, are receiving
service-related death benefits as a result of their husbands' exposure.
One such case was of Spec. Donald Jones, an Army telecommunications
specialist whose survivors say he was exposed to Agent Orange while
serving in Panama from 1971 to 1974. He died in 1997 of non-Hodgkins
lymphoma, a cancerous condition typically linked to Agent Orange exposure.
When presented with the evidence, the VA agreed that Mr. Jones had been
exposed to the herbicide, said his widow, Pamela Jones of Pleasanton,
Texas.
His and other cases have set a rare precedent for the government, which
until recently has granted benefits for Agent Orange exposure almost
exclusively to veterans of the Vietnam War, Mr. Russo said.
"The fact is that when people think of Agent Orange, they think of
Vietnam. But that just scratches the surface," he said.
In testimony at a VA hearing regarding Mr. Jones' case in November 1997,
Charles M. Bartlett, former operations officer for herbicide research at
the Army biological research and development laboratories at Fort
Deitrich, Md., stated that "several hundred drums" of Agent Orange were
shipped to Panama in the late 1960s for tests.
"All of the material was originally shipped . . . to Fort Clayton in
[the] Canal Zone. That was an area under U.S. control, and it was a safe
area with vegetation similar to Vietnam, and so we wanted to test it
there," he said, adding that a number of 55-gallon drums were left at Fort
Clayton after the tests.
"We shipped it from Fort Deitrich. We shipped it to Panama, and it was in
the typical black drum with the orange stripe," Mr. Bartlett said,
according to a transcript of the November 1997 VA hearing. "And, so, we
shipped Agent Orange to Panama."
Mr. Bartlett could not be reached for comment.
Eyewitnesses
Panamanians as well as Americans may have been exposed to Agent Orange
sprayed on at least one test site in Panama, according to documents and
eyewitness accounts obtained by The Dallas Morning News.
An American veteran who served in Panama from 1968 to 1971 said he
witnessed the spraying at a test site close to the Panama Canal and near a
popular beach, a recreation center, a sporting club and a lake from which
Panama City's drinking water is drawn.
"This is the strongest evidence to emerge that the chemical Agent Orange
was tested here," said Fernando Manfredo, Panama's liaison official in
charge of investigating the environmental legacy of the century-long U.S.
presence in the country.
"We have asked repeatedly for information about U.S. chemical or weapons
tests here," he said. "We were always told that the information was
classified and couldn't be released, or we were told the information
didn't exist. . . . Our ability to investigate is totally dependent on the
information they give us."
An environmental activist said he would not be surprised by such a
government reaction.
"Because of its record, I would expect the United States to resist,
particularly because of its record on veterans' benefits," said John
Lindsay-Poland, director of the San Francisco-based environmental group
Fellowship of Reconciliation. "There is a very high level of sensitivity
surrounding this issue."
Army Col. David Hunt, the chief liaison officer coordinating the handover
of all U.S. military bases to Panama, said that the government provided
Panama enough information on its tropical field tests this year to fill 23
CD-ROM disks.
"We looked through all available documentation on the Tropical Test
Center of the U.S. Army from the 1960s through the mid-1990s," he said.
"We found no information on the testing of Agent Orange in Panama."
Arnold Schecter, a University of Texas professor of environmental
sciences and a leading authority on herbicides that employ a
cancer-causing chemical dioxin, such as Agent Orange, said the
plant-killing component of Agent Orange would have dissipated quickly if
applied in Panama's rainy, tropical climate.
But Agent Orange's highly toxic dioxin contaminant, he added, "lasts in
soil and sediment for decades."
Nickname
He and other specialists say "Agent Orange" is a nickname given to a
particular chemical herbicide sent in 55-gallon drums to Vietnam in the
1960s and '70s for use in defoliating forests to expose movements of Viet
Cong guerrillas. The nickname came from the drums, which were painted
black with an orange stripe.
The former U.S. serviceman who was based in Panama at that time said he
witnessed the herbicide being sprayed on a roughly 10-acre field, near the
Panama Canal's Gatun Locks, close to where he worked. He spoke on
condition of anonymity, saying he also has a pending claim with the VA for
exposure to Agent Orange while serving in Panama.
The source said he has received a diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy, one
of nine diseases and disorders that the VA accepts as linked to Agent
Orange exposure. The neurological disorder leads to loss of feeling in the
legs and arms and eventual loss of mobility.
"We didn't know it was dangerous. It was a very common practice back then
for the Army to be very aggressive" in the use of chemical herbicides, he
said. "I remember watching the helicopters spraying it on this area one
day, and by the next morning, it was dead. It just turned brown and
disappeared overnight, like someone just came in with a big cutter.
Everybody I worked with saw it."
He said Panamanian children typically fished in the waters of Gatun Lake,
only a few hundred yards from where the herbicide was sprayed. Also nearby
was a popular beach resort and sporting club frequented on weekends by
hundreds of American and Panamanian employees of the Panama Canal.
Mr. Jones apparently was exposed while riding his motorcycle in the area
around that time. Pamela Jones testified at a VA hearing that her husband
developed symptoms typical of Agent Orange exposure shortly afterward. The
first symptom was a massive outbreak of acne on his face and back,
followed by the development of cancer in his lymph glands, she said.
"You can't point a finger. The U.S. did not use these chemicals saying,
'We want to kill people, we want to hurt people.' I'm not going to say
that the government killed him or that they tried to hide it," Mrs. Jones
said in a telephone interview.
She said she was reluctant to discuss the case for fear that the VA would
cancel the medical and educational benefits it has agreed to pay her
family as a result of what it calls Mr. Jones' "service-connected death."
Those benefits did not become available until March or April, she said,
although her husband had symptoms of Agent Orange exposure for more than
20 years.
Tough fight
"I have a conscience regarding that there's a problem for other people
out there who deserve this benefit," she said of the undetermined number
of Americans and Panamanians who also might have been exposed. "I had to
fight eight hours a day, five days a week for this. . . . There are people
out there who probably don't have the time nor stamina to do what I did."
The survivors of at least two other American servicemen are receiving
service-connected death benefits in the United States for claims related
to Agent Orange exposure in Panama, Mr. Russo said.
Federal law makes it relatively easy for Vietnam veterans to obtain such
benefits, Mr. Russo said, because "any vet who served in Vietnam was
presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange at one time or another."
But because the United States had never publicly acknowledged the
herbicide's use in Panama or elsewhere, the law requires extensive proof
before similar benefits can be awarded, he said.
Mrs. Jones said, "That's the bottom line: that the law has to be changed.
It is very unfair that I had to fight the way I did. I did a lot of years
of suffering for my husband - too many to ever commit again in my life."