THE GUINEA PIGS OF VIETNAM: The use of Agent Orange and other pesticides and poisons in the Vietnam War
Some time ago, I heard that three Vietnam veterans of my acquaintance had suicided. One blew his head off in Tasmania. One shot his head off in front of DVA staff in a small Victorian town; and another hung himself from the ceiling of the family home on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, where his wife could find him. At least one of those men had just been discharged a couple of days earlier from his local hospital where he’d been treated for war-related matters — the legacy of having served in the Vietnam War.
Perhaps, like so many of the rest of us have heard, he was told to “Put it behind you.” Or to “Get on with your life”. Platitudes like that cut us veterans deep, because those who speak them have no real understanding of what it has been like to have fought in that war.
The fact is, you can’t hold in the sadness forever.
When we veterans learn of such tragedies, two things happen. First, we imagine some actuarial bean-counter in the Department of Veterans Affairs sitting there like some buzzard, focused on the computer in front of him. He smiles, then presses the “delete” button, and another war veteran disappears off the system. Then, secondly, the old question come flooding back to haunt us. Why? Why is this happening so often? And why are Vietnam veterans so prone to it? Why is it that veterans of that war are still so embittered, so alienated, and so isolated that the only escape is to take one’s own life?
We know part of the answer. The rest is out there.
***
Two women travelled to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra a few years back. It was a Sunday afternoon, and after the usual security checks, the women were allowed to work away at their leisure in the Research section.
They had gone to continue their research into the use of chemicals on Australian servicemen during the Vietnam War.
For Jean Williams, it was just another day of research. Previously, she had written Cry in the Wilderness — a probing, insightful analysis of both the political hypocrisy surrounding Australia’s involvement in the War, and an expose of the use of defoliants during it.
For ten long years, Williams had researched her topic, and while she suspected that the truth about the use of various toxic agents and their effects on Australia’s military personnel had not been fully revealed, she thought she had come to the end of the road as far as her efforts were concerned.
But there was one aspect she did want to pursue — the use of the tablet, Dapsone. It had been a treatment for leprosy, but was trialled in Vietnam as an anti-malarial measure on a number of Australian units. It was an experiment that went tragically and horribly wrong.
But this day, her off-sider, Sue Porter, brought up the usual thirty files they studied, then accidentally pressed another key on her terminal. To the amazement of them both, out popped another few hundred references!
With limited time available to them, the women pored over them.
Amazement turned to horror. What they had stumbled on were files relating to Operation Desert, the record of chemical and biological testing carried out on a small Australian town in 1964 and 1966, as a prelude to their use in Vietnam — a war we hadn’t even committed to yet.
One of those files, File №886-R1–11, whose contents are believed to be so startling, and so disturbing so as not to be released to the Australian public, has since gone “missing” from the Memorial.
The Vietnam veteran had already experienced the horrors of guerilla war, fought in an uncompromising manner by an enemy who had the support of the locals, knew the geography better, and had been fighting guerilla-style for decades. To learn that he had come home with a terrible legacy that would hang over them all the rest of the days of his life was devastating.
It had been done under the relatively benign names for the processes — Operations Ranch Hand, Traildust and Desert. Ranch Hand had originally been called Operation Hades. Considering it was a deliberate violation of the Geneva Accords, and considering the living hell many veterans have experienced as a consequence, perhaps it should have retained the former name.
***
In 1964 and again in 1966, Australian Army officers including a Major E. Holt, as well as other scientific men like George Lugg (a former chemistry professor at a Melbourne University) conducted certain chemical and biological tests in the Innisfail region of northern Queensland.
This was known as Operation Desert.
These experiments are recorded in Jock McCulloch’s book, The Politics of Agent Orange, as ‘clearly within the context of chemical warfare.’
Using various combinations of toxic chemicals, including Dimethylsulphoxide (later banned completely), Diquat and Tordon (members of the Agent Orange group), they sprayed large areas of the catchment area around Gregory Falls.
File №295/66 from the Department of Supply was cleared for public release on December 3rd, 1982, refers specifically to those spraying operations.
It had initially been marked “RESTRICTED” because it detailed the chemical agents used in the aerial spraying experiments conducted in that area. The chemicals named above are among the most toxic of all chemicals.
Dimethylsulphoxide was an accelerating agent used to speed up the intake of chemicals into vegetation (and into the bodies of its handlers when any spill occurred!)
These tests were carried out to test the effectiveness of the chemical agents on foliage, and were also used to determine the most successful defoliant combinations.
Later, in 1967, these men flew to Vietnam to initiate ground-spraying operations around Australian bases. The experiments carried out at Innisfail formed the basis of such procedures, and determined the blend of chemicals used.
The base-spraying was called Project Orion.
The File relating to these tests, is but one of the now “missing” files. Veterans should demand that it be ‘found’ immediately.
***
The Dow Chemical Company of the U.S.A. who, along with Monsanto Australia Ltd. produced the greater percentage of all toxic chemicals used in Vietnam, was in receipt of advice as early as 1964 that exposure to dioxins (a most potent poison used in weed killing compounds like the defoliants used in Vietnam) could result in ‘general organ toxicity’ as well as ‘psychopathological and other systematic’ problems for those exposed to them.
In fact, Dow had to shut down part of its plant in Midland, Michigan, because a number of its workers had contracted chloracne, a skin and nerve disease caused by direct contact with dioxin.
The widespread use of these chemical compounds was something altogether new. It was not adequately researched, nor fully tested. But what the heck, they were used anyway. There weren’t many scientists trudging the jungles and paddy fields of Vietnam. Just soldiers mostly, ordinary expendable men. Guinea pigs.
As Dr. James Clarey of the U.S. Air Force stated in testimony to the U.S. Congress, ‘When we military scientists initiated the herbicide program in the ‘60’s, 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 concentration than the civilian version due to lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on the enemy, none of us were overly concerned…
It wasn’t until well after the Vietnam War concluded that a new branch of science, immunotoxicology, was developed to explore the effects of environmental chemicals on human health.
This was too late for many Vietnam veterans who had already died, or who were now beginning to manifest a staggering range of serious illnesses after being exposed to a range of the substances fighting for their country.
***
From 1962 until 1971, the U.S. Air Force sprayed over forty billion litres of various poisons on the landscape of Vietnam. These chemicals (or “agents”) were mostly labelled by colour — orange, purple, pink, green, blue and white. The seemingly innocuous titles belied what they were — dioxin-based compounds intended to defoliate the land, expose the enemy’s trails, supply routes and living areas, and destroy his food sources.
In addition, billions of litres of D.D.T., Paraquat, Dalpon, Bromacil, Monuron, Lindane, Malathion, and P145 were sprayed (by Australian ground forces as well), making it the deadliest cocktail of chemicals ever used in a war zone. They were sprayed from helicopters, planes, boats, trucks and back-packs.
The various chemicals inhibited primary and secondary immune responses, caused DNA damage and sundry other side-effects. Of them all, perhaps Bromacil, one of the more heavily used chemicals around Australian base camps, has caused most of the chronic health problems of Vietnam veterans.
All servicemen were exposed to the various combinations of poisons, not only in the jungles outside the wire perimeter of Nui Dat, but in the water supplies we drank and showered under. In some instances, tankers used to carry defoliant poisons were then used to carry water supplies, without proper cleansing.
The Evatt Royal Commission concluded in 1985 that veterans were not adversely affected by their exposure to chemicals, a result that devastated veterans, and a result that needs to be placed in the same context as the Vietnam War — political lie, expediency, and betrayal of the men who fought.
Evatt ignored, or discounted, a stunning abundance of proof that veterans had been affected by their exposure to contaminants. This proof included substantial comment like that offered by a Dr. van Tiggelen (who had extensive experience in geriatrics, as well as other areas) who compared the health of Australian veterans with that of farmers who had handled similar poisons for over fifteen years!
He held that the combined effects of various chemical agents produced a distinct neuro-psychiatric syndrome. This was then compounded by the realities of jungle combat, and exacerbated by the reactions of ordinary Australians when the veteran came home.
Evatt himself never fought in Vietnam. Nor did he drink of its waters. Nor did he trudge the defoliated jungles. Nor did the barristers who delivered the case on behalf of the government. Nor did the medical and scientific “experts” who paraded before the Commission to support the government position. Nor did the vast army of bureaucrats who adopted Evatt’s findings.
That’s the real pity of it. It would be a different story if they had.
The thousands of veterans in the U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand who are dying today from the rarest of cancers and assorted health conditions did.
***
The Australian Army lies. Always has. Probably always will.
This is one of the tragedies of the matter for men like me, because I had joined the army in the first place believing it to be the most honourable of institutions.
I remember when I first enlisted, this Recruiting Officer assured me that should I ever be wounded, the Army would look after its own. No question about it.
Yeah, sure. What a lot of bullshit that turned out to be.
So the army lies all right, when it suits them. And especially when their political masters require it of them. Because the fact is, for politicians, of course, lying is all in a day’s work. No conscience required there.
Check out some facts.
In 1970, a Major A. Galvin stated categorically that the Australian Army did not use specific defoliant agents in Vietnam. This was the Army’s ‘official’ response.
But later, a Lt. Craig Steele (a hygiene officer in Vietnam) stated in a letter to Sir William Keys, President of the R.S.L., ‘The decision to defoliate was made by myself and other Headquarter officers. I cannot elaborate on the chemical composition or the names of the defoliants.’
Then, in an affidavit filed on the 1st May, 1980, Steel adds, ‘I had in my possession written guidelines on Agents Orange, Blue, and Hyvar. These guidelines carried the explicit warnings in bold print that the misuse of these chemicals may result in sterility and/or congenital abnormalities in humans.’ These guidelines had been in place from day one.
And a 22- page report (HQAFV) listed under the Australian War Memorial 181 series, held in its Printed Records Section, is titled, Instructions for Spraying Herbicides. And File No. R890–5–13 (H1ATF) makes direct reference to a defoliant team operating at Nui Dat, and includes map overlays of Nui Dat and the whole 111 Corps area, showing areas already defoliated.
From 1967, the Australian government received reports from the Field Operational Research Section on a quarterly basis, and in 1969 the U.S. Secretary of the Department of the Army personally briefed Australia’s Malcolm Fraser about the herbicide program.
But in 1978, federal Labor politician John Kerin questioned the then Minister for Defence, James Killen, as to how many Vietnam veterans had been affected by Agent Orange. Killen denied that the Australian Defence Force had used Agent Orange at all.
Vietnam veterans have no truck with politicians of either political persuasion. Liars, all of them, at some stage. Or cowards. Men who send other men’s sons off to fight wars, then hide their own, and then themselves.
Count them. Menzies, Holt, Fraser, Lynch, Cairns, Hawke, Keating, Howard, Beazley. You might as well add Fischer to the list, even though he was a veteran of the war himself, but after his efforts at the battle of Coral, no one expected much more of him. He’s never stood up for battling vets. Just another politician to despise.
Hawke, in particular, is held in no regard by veterans. It was he who introduced the Australian Archives Act of 1983. Its purpose? To effectively deny veterans from accessing specific files relating to the use of toxic chemicals in Vietnam.
Another of those files, (A419–1–140 Parts 1&2 Warfare-Chemical/Gas-Agent Orange- Operations Branch Aspects) is marked “SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL”. It is just one of many to be so classified.
One must ask why, after more than six decades, that information is still hidden from the Australian public?
Why are so many files, especially those of the so-called “Malaria Trials” marked not to be released until the year 2020, “..in the interests of national security”?
Why have Vietnam veterans been denied access to these files?
Probably for the same reason the people of Innisfail were never informed that Operation Desert was being carried out on their doorstep at Gregory Falls. And why the residents of that town have had such a high incidence of cancers in the many decades since.
The government is waiting for us all to die is all. That’s why. Simple economic politics.
***
The 171 Air Despatch Unit of the Australian Air Force sprayed its deadly defoliants across the Province under Australian care on a daily basis, and yet Defence Department histories have no record of precisely which herbicides, or what combinations of them they carried.
In some instances, wind shifts carried the poisons into areas they weren’t meant for. At other times, the chemicals were dropped with explosive time-delay fuses into areas occupied by Australian soldiers. There is anecdotal evidence that other more clumsy methods were used, like dropping huge drums of chemicals, then shooting them as they fell to cause them to burn and spray.
The area around the Australian base at Nui Dat itself, was heavily sprayed.
The techniques, and the mixture of chemicals, are outlined in early correspondence from Lugg and Holt. It’s marked “SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL” as well.
A helicopter was used. Trucks carried 300 gallons of a mixture of water, Reglone, Grammoxone, Tordon, DMSO and Agral.
Hand-spraying teams manifested various medical problems including the breakdown of mucus membranes, the ulceration of lips, profuse nose-bleeding, and severe conjunctivitis.
It was obvious then, right from the start, that handling those chemicals had significant health risks.
So what did the Army do?Rostered the teams from a variety of units, that’s what. May as well spread it around.
***
Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jnr., retired of the United States Navy concluded in a report to the U.S.A. Secretary of Veterans Affairs that there was an absolute relationship between exposure to Agent Orange (generally accepted as the singular name which covers all the chemicals used) and the following health problems: non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; chloracne and a host of other skin disorders; lip cancer; bone cancer; soft tissue sarcoma; birth defects; skin cancer; porphyria cutanea, tarda and other liver disorders; Hodgkin’s disease; hematopoietic diseases; multiple myeloma; neurological defects; auto-immune diseases and disorders; leukaemia; lung cancer; kidney cancer; pancreatic cancer; stomach cancer; nasal, pharyngeal and esophagea cancers; prostate cancer, testicular cancer; liver cancer; colon cancer; psychosocial effects and gastrointestinal diseases.
He further confirmed that unlike civilian applications of the various compounds, Agent Orange was sprayed undiluted — in most cases between six and twenty-five times the manufacturer’s suggested rate.
The Vietnam Veteran’ Association of Australia submits that large numbers of veteran’s children have suffered congenital abnormalities including harelip; cleft palate; spina bifida; heart problems; mislocation of vital organs and many other significant disabilities as a result of exposure to the defoliants used in Vietnam while they served.
Dr. John Pollack had access to an American Veterans Affairs document (again classified as “Never to be Released”) which expressly noted Agent Orange’s high toxicity and its thalidomide-like effects on newborn, deformed children.
Pollack also confirmed that dioxin damaged skin, blood, the immune system, nervous tissue, damaged the reproductive systems, caused gastrointestinal disturbances, mutagenacity of the D.N.A., and chromosome alterations. It also affected behavioural and psychological functions.
A suicide rate far above the national average is apparently linked to the psychological, and brain damage effects caused by the chemical contaminants.
As well, the prevalence of particularly rare cancers is a feature of the Vietnam veteran’s health. Sudden heart attack is just the latest thing to be added to the list.
Bismark Brown camouflage paint was issued to selected personnel (Special Air Service and Army Training Team members) and has only been recently confirmed to contain a dye used in the leather industry. Now it is revealed that it causes death from aplastic anaemia.
What angers veterans most is that all this, the successive governments knew.
***
Timing can be everything.
I arrived in Vietnam on 23rd December, 1968. Just a month earlier, supposedly only for a month’s trial, three Australian military units were given the drug Dapsone. With a particularly virulent strain of malaria (falciparum) affecting soldiers in country, Dapsone was combined with Paludrine in an attempt to combat it.
When I joined the 4th Battalion in February, they were still taking it, and indeed, I took it for the whole of my tour.
Initially, the units were: 1 R.A.R.; 4 R.A.R.; and 12 Field Regiment (but excluding 161 Field Battery). Evidence confirms that the 3rd Battalion took it for their entire tour, and anecdotal evidence suggests that the New Zealand contingent took it as well.
It is interesting to note that that the same Major E. Holt involved in the “malaria trials” discussed earlier, was also involved in the Dapsone trial, despite the misgivings of a Major-General C. Gurner. It had been determined that Dapsone was “potentially dangerous to blood and bowel”.
Apparently, after the one month’s trial was over, soldiers had developed granulocytopenia, and the use of the drug was officially stopped. But within six months, even knowing what damage it had done to soldiers’ health, Dapsone was reintroduced as an anti-malarial treatment. Doctors decided that the health risks from Dapsone were probably a little less than the prospect of soldiers contracting malaria.
Ten years later, senior toxicologists in Australia and overseas declared that Dapsone was a carcinogenic drug, and a cancer-enhancer! If tested today, it is believed that Dapsone would not be passed as a prescriptive drug.
A study of servicemen who had taken Dapsone, commissioned by Justice Evatt in the Agent Orange Royal Commission Report, confirmed that those servicemen had a statistical increase in cancers of the larynx, bladder, oral and skin melanoma.
This Report was never made public to Vietnam veterans. Well, they wouldn’t, would they.
***
Out in the jungle, we infantryman got a carton of cigarettes every week along with our rations- courtesy of the Australian government. If you were a smoker, it was like manna from heaven. If you weren’t, well, might as well start.
For my part, I never took the habit up, and I have been spared much as a consequence.
On the other hand, the men with Agent Orange poisons already in their system who added smoking to the litany of problems they would eventually have to contend with, would suffer greatly.
It appears that they were mostly American cigarettes — Lucky Strike, Kent, Camel etc. And apparently, some might have been manufactured from tobacco plantations that had been sprayed with D.D.T. and organo-chlorine compounds. So when the smoker inhaled, an interesting chemical reaction took place.
The residue (carbon) combined with the chlorine, formed dioxin — just abut the most potent poison known to man. So not only did our charitable government assist in the nicotine addiction of thousands of veterans, with its concomitant risks of heart and lung disease, it also poisoned them.
And there is a suggestion that at least one brand had asbestos tips!
***
The veteran needs to take a long hard look at the evidence.
Were the tests carried out at Innisfail just an aberration? When one also remembers Maralinga, you’d have to say, probably not.
Same as in the United States.
In 1977, the U.S. Army admitted to having carried out 239 tests of chemical weapons on the innocent populations of various U.S. towns. These included the deliberate release of Serratia bacteria into the San Francisco area from a boat going backwards and forwards up the harbour.
The result was an epidemic of fatal pneumonia.
General William Creasy pointed out to the Senate Subcommittee hearing that chemical weapons required testing on people. There simply was no other way. So why not trial them on your own civilian populations?
Vietnam veterans now believe that they were also part of a test — a test of such scope and magnitude, with all the associated cover-ups and official lies and disregard for the very humanity of its test group, that it is breath-taking in its audacity.
***
At the Vietnam Veteran Convention held in Launceston, Tasmania in 1996, I met Mrs. Jean Williams. Jean had travelled to the Convention on behalf of her son Wayne who had also served with the 4th Battalion. Jean was in her element among the sick veterans, their wives, and the widows. For Jean Williams, the Agent Orange matters were not new.
‘So many veterans have presented similar symptoms. The trouble is, most general practitioners don’t have the faintest idea about the consequences of exposure to Agent Orange, or any of the herbicides, pesticides, and other chemical compounds veterans have been exposed to. They’ve never been taught how to recognise symptoms, or how to treat exposure,’ she told me.
‘Flashbacks. Hallucinations- all symptoms. Men have been poisoned,’ she added. With an arm around one of tghe widows whose man has died since the war, Jean Williams recalled her detailed, intimate knowledge of the slow deaths of other veterans she knew personally. Men like Dey, Warner, McKean, McKinley, Knuckey — most listed in the Mortality Study of Vietnam Veterans as recorded in her first book.
‘The knowledge has come too late,’ she added. It shouldn’t have.
(Don Tate is the author of the best-selling memoir, The War Within, and Anzacs Betrayed which deals with the corruption of historical military history — particularly relating to the 2nd D&E Platoon matter.)
