Senator Burr (NC) Statement on C-123 Agent Orange Claims

Bipartisan Group of Senators Urge Action from VA for Care & Benefits of C-123 Veterans Exposed to Toxic Agent Orange

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Richard Burr (R-NC), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote to Department of Veterans’ Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald requesting that the department utilize its existing statutory authority to provide care and benefits to veterans exposed to toxic herbicide residue decades ago while they served on aircraft used to spray Agent Orange in Vietnam. 

“Justice for these veterans is long overdue and you have the authority and the ability to finally right this wrong,” the Senators wrote. "For nearly four years, the VA denied these reservists’ exposure to toxic Agent Orange residue in contaminated C-123s. On January 9, 2015, the Institute of Medicine issued a final report… which ‘emphatically' rejected VA’s assertion as to exposure. As a result, we understand you conceded that this group of veterans was, in fact, exposed to toxic Agent Orange herbicide. However, we also understand a question has arisen about whether some of these reserve airmen satisfy the statutory definition of ‘veteran' for purposes of eligibility for VA benefits. We fundamentally disagree and believe VA’s precedential interpretations of the relevant statute and the policy principle and legal precedent of construing statutes in favor of veterans requires VA to find these reservists eligible for benefits. We ask that you stand by those interpretations, which we outline in this letter, and which show that no additional statutory authority is necessary for you to immediately begin providing care and benefits to the C-123 veterans.”

By Holly Zachariah
The Columbus Dispatch  •  Saturday May 2, 2015

As a young man, Ralph DeSanto Jr. took apart the valves in front of him, valves that had come from C-123 aircraft that had repeatedly sprayed Agent Orange over Vietnam.

Each time he popped a rubber seal, he said, a tiny plume of red dust rose up. Inside each valve was the crystallized chemical from the herbicide that was widely deployed to kill the vegetation that concealed the enemy in the jungles and forests during the Vietnam War.

DeSanto never once thought that he should be worried, that he may be putting himself in danger, that with every touch of those airplane parts or with any swipe of residue he might have been increasing his risk for diseases.

But pressure is increasing by the day for the Veterans Administration to heed its own commissioned report released in January by the Institute of Medicine that said flight and maintenance crews such as the one that DeSanto was part of were exposed to high levels of dioxin. Advocates say the VA should expand the list of those eligible to receive benefits and care for Agent Orange-related claims to include them.

Until now, because those crew members were Air Force reservists and not classified as active-duty personnel, the VA has denied them veteran status and has not allowed their claims to any Agent Orange-related illnesses.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and six other senators last week sent a bipartisan letter to VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald, urging him to immediately use his executive authority to clear the way for the reservists’ claims.

“The VA’s position has been disappointing,” the letter reads. “It is our desire to see that C-123 veterans who suffer today because of service-related exposure to Agent Orange receive the help they need.”

Such a move could include as many as 2,100 former Air Force reservists from three bases, including perhaps as many as 1,200 who worked at Rickenbacker from 1972 to the mid-1980s, when the last C-123 that had been used to spray the chemical left the base.