Patches & the IOM C-123 Agent Orange Report

Visiting the USAF Museum, Wright-Patterson AFB and home of "Patches," our Agent Orange-contaminated C-123.

To all post-Vietnam C-123 Veterans: if you haven't already, contact VA and arrange your Agent Orange Registry physical. This is a free comprehensive exam looking for any possible Agent Orange exposure medical issues and it is vital whether you have any such illnesses or not. The first friend I talk into having the physical was found to have a life-threatening heart problem, and the physical perhaps saved his life. Call VA now!

I'm holding the report from the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Sciences that convinced the VA our aircraft had been contaminated, we were exposed to Agent Orange, and we were harmed greatly by that exposure. Behind me is Patches, now decontaminated, of course. CDC actually notified VA that Patches and our other aircraft were too contaminated to be flown in American airspace, and the crews all should have been wearing full hazmat!

The report summary can be downloaded free at https://www.google.com/url…

The archives at the museum revealed the evidence of testing back in 1979 and 1994 and 1996, and the evidence that USAF bioenvironmental scientists concluded the airplane was "heavily contaminated with dioxin on all test surfaces, STILL after its last spray missions in 1968 during the Vietnam War.

We started flying Patches in 1972 and were exposed to the Agent Orange residue for the next decade. Although the CDC informed VA and USAF that the aircrews and maintainers had been exposed, officials at VA continued to insist otherwise and stated VA had "an overwhelming preponderance of evidence" against any harm being done.

In 2014 it became clear, based on the IOM study and the report I'm holding, that VA's position was based solely on its policy decision to block additional Agent Orange claims like ours. Policy, not science. Policy, not law.

The US Senate agreed. Under leadership from Senator Burr of North Carolina and Senator Merkley of Oregon the Senate blocked all VA confirmations until the C-123 issue was resolved. The national commander of the VFW testified to Congress that that full benefits for C-123 vets must be authorized,  All six major veterans organizations insisted VA act, with the Vietnam Veterans of America leading their joint efforts.

The media was behind us all the way. The first press coverage was in early 2011 in the Air Force Times where reporter Patricia Kime detailed our USAF Inspector General complaint wherein the service was asked, but refused, to notify our veterans of their potential exposures. Subsequent articles appeared in the Washington Post, Springfield Republican, American Legion Magazine, the Oregonian, Associated Press, CBS News, Pittsburgh Gazette, NPR All Things Considered, Boston Globe, Air Force Magazine, plus Military.Com and other Internet outlets. Air Force Times and the Springfield Republican both ran editorials insisting VA act in our behalf.

In 2009 Dr. Alvin Young, VA's principal consultant on Agent Orange, had strongly recommended to the USAF the immediate destruction of all C-123s stored in a hazardous material quarantine section of Davis-Mothan Air Force Base because, among other reasons, our already exposed air crews and maintenance veterans might approach the VA seeking care for Agent Orange illnesses. Destruction of the aircraft would help prevent such claims, especially, as it was pointed out, if the aircraft disappeared without public attention. Preventing claims seems to of been awfully important to the VA and so many others. It seemed so important to Dr. Young because in 2011 he denigrated us as "trash haulers, freeloaders looking for a tax-free dollar from a sympathetic congressman." The VA certainly found the right voice to help it oppose our claims – VA had found a man who holds us in contempt to help VA avoid treating our illnesses.

In 2013 Dr. Young was in the middle of his unique VA two year $600,000 no-bid sole source Agent Orange consulting contract. He urged Mr. James Sampsel at the VA Agent Orange desk to "hold the line" (his words) against our claims. For his part, Mr. Sampsel informed his VA colleagues and supervisors that all proof confirming our exposure submitted to VA by independent scientific authorities and other federal agencies (CDC, DOD, USPHS, NIH)  was merely the real "problem" for VA – proof Mr. Sampsel and others in VBA would ignore despite VA regulation VAM21-1MR and despite the Veterans Claims Assistance Act.

Dr. Terry Walters at the VHA Post-Deployment Health Section, told the Associated Press that a line had to be drawn against our claims. Hold the line, indeed!

For too many years the VA "held their line" and denied every single claim submitted by our veterans of the post-Vietnam C-123 spray aircraft. While being paid by VA Dr. Young testified before the Institute of Medicine C-123 committee against our exposure claims. He even attacked the IOM report after its publication in January 2015 using arguments similar to ones used earlier when Dow and Monsanto sponsored him. But the committee saw through that. The committee also criticized VA and USAF for routinely dismissing, ignoring or minimizing  proof of veterans' exposures

In June 2015, the Institute of Medicine report I'm holding in the photo was acted upon by Secretary McDonald. He brought truth, science, law, and compassion into the process at last. The 2100 of us who volunteered to serve our country by flying and maintaining our aircraft willingly accepted the hazards of aviation service and now are acknowledged to have also endured hazardous toxin exposures for which the VA will now care.

As VA Secretary McDonald said to me at the White House, "We won." He meant "We" the veterans and "We" the VA, No longer adversaries.

Let's not let this happen again to other veterans facing toxic exposures.

It needs to be repeated: From the very beginning, VA science and policy were 100% WRONG on C-123 Agent Orange

In fact, VA was wrong and was determined to prevent our disability claims as a matter of policy regardless of the science involved. From the very beginning our search for help, VA ignored it's fundamental obligation to us as veterans.

No other veteran or veterans organization, supported in the scientific claims for harmful Agent Orange exposure by the CDC and other federal agencies as well as dozens of independent positions and university based scientists, has faced such an automatic VA opposition.  Today's perspective, 18 months after the release of the Institute of Medicine C-123 Report, clearly shows VA opposition was policy-based. VA simply had no scientific or legal basis to oppose the claims – yet they did.

Rather than permit us the benefit of the doubt required by law and M21-1MR they immediately took an adversarial position. That was most perfectly expressed by Mr. Thomas Murphy (Director, VBA Pension and Compensation) when on February 28 2013 he insisted no amount of proof from whatever source would be accepted by VA to support our claims.

Mr. Murphy explained that Veterans Health Administration Public Health decided upon our first inquiries back in early 2011 that, no matter what, C-123 vets were not exposed and VA would deny every claim. VA would do this while insisting that every claim would be considered on a case-by-case basis... and then automatically denied.

As regards the requirement to give us benefit of the doubt, VA reserved it for itself and denied it to the veterans. Even after support for our exposures was submitted to the VA by the CDC ATSDR as well as the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, DoD JSRRC and dozens of independent physicians and researchers VA stuck to its illogical and unscientific as well as blatantly anti-veteran position

Nothing illustrates the deception VA used against us better than the simple comparison of the May 2011 VA position statement (below, formulated by Dr. Terry Walters and her colleagues in VHA Public Health) and the final report on us published by the Institute of Medicine in January 2015.

Let's look at VA's five bullet points:
1) Correct, but irrelevant. The 1991 Agent Orange Act requires VA to treat all veterans exposed to Agent Orange if they have relevant illnesses. VA repeatedly assured Congress and the public via the Federal Register that it would do so.
2) Deceptive. There is only the issue of exposure, not the kind of exposure. For the purpose of opposing our claims, VA introduced the idea of remote/secondary exposure and claimed it made proven contamination of our aircraft no different than the theoretical contamination of the equipment used in Vietnam.
3) Ridiculous! VA stated it would ignore all proof of exposure from whatever source such as the CDC. We did not know it for years but VA had unscientifically redefined the word exposure to require bioavailability for exposure to be recognized. VA created its own unique redefinition of exposure to block our exposure claims, and were criticized for doing so by leaders in other federal health agencies. Even under this redefined exposure, VA should have acknowledged the bioavailability of the C-123 Agent Orange contamination when the CDC informed of them that veterans had a 200 times greater risk of cancer. VA uses Dorland's  Illustrated Medical Dictionary as the standard text of definitions... except for the word exposure.
4) Deceptive. The 1991 Agent Orange Act eliminated the requirement that a veteran establish medical nexus of illnesses associated with Agent Orange and instead provided a presumption. The scientific evidence suggested as missing was already established by the Institute of Medicine and it's numerous earlier reports. Further, as with the first point, VA have a legal obligation as well as the duty under its own regulations to treat all veterans with a proven Agent Orange exposure.
5) The last bullet point is perhaps the VA's most blatant policy driven deception. The opinions referenced as supporting our claims came from the CDC ATSDR, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and dozens of university scientists and independent physicians. Rather than acknowledging this volume of proof, the VA Agent Orange desk in Veterans Benefits Administration simply asserted that it had "an overwhelming preponderance of proof" against our exposures. In fact there was no such proof against our exposure claims and VA insistence otherwise was merely a policy statement. The IOM C-123 Agent Orange Report relied on the same body of evidence to reach an opposite conclusion – veterans were indeed exposed!

VA Conclusions Rigged Uo To Deny Claims For Five Years:
1) "Even though residual Agent Orange may be detected in C-123 aircraft by laboratory techniques years after Agent Orange use, it must be remembered that there is no bio-availability of TCDD in these aircraft. "

2) "The potential for exposure to Agent Orange and TCDD and subsequent development of any adverse health effects from flying in potentially contaminated C-123 aircraft years after the Vietnam War is essentially zero."

Terry J, Walters, MD MPH: Director, Environmental Health, VHA

BUT, the Institute of Medicine concluded after studying the same data:
1)  Veterans suffered bioavailability of the dioxin aboard the aircraft by all three possible routes (dermal, inhalation, and ingestion.) IOM specifically disproved the VA theory of no bioavailability of dried dioxin advanced by VHA Post-Deployment Public Health. That flawed concept was earlier advanced by Dr. Alvin Young who actually argued against any hazards of Agent Orange in his article "Environmental fate of TCDD and Agent orange and Bioavailability To Troops in Vietnam."  A frequent VA and DoD consultant, Young was beneficiary of a no-bid sole source $600,000 consulting contract most of which focused on our aircraft.
2) "Reservists experienced increases in their risks of adverse health outcomes." In fact, the CDC told VA veterans had a 200 fold greater risk of cancer.

VA Defies NIH & CDC – Insists Dioxin is Harmless

The Department of Veterans Affairs defies scientific opinions from leading health experts at CDC, EPA, OHSA, the National Toxicology Program, National Institutes of Health, and elsewhere throughout the government. VA has refused veterans' dioxin exposure disability claims on the basis of dioxin being harmless. The veteran had claimed exposure to Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, the common name for the toxin TCDD.

"In summary, there is no conclusive evidence of TCDD causing any adverse health effects."

This statement summarizes VA's denial of a veteran's claim based on Agent Orange exposure aboard the Air Force Agent Orange spray C-123 transports, flown after the war until 1982. Agent Orange is simply harmless?

The summary is the official position of Veterans Benefits Administration executive Mr. Tom Murphy. Mr. Murphy is Director, Compensation and Pension Service, and heads VA's organization managing disability claims. His statement, over his signature, was read back to him at his office in February 2012, in the event of a possible misquote or typo. It was not retracted or modified and he allows it to stand as part of his decision to refuse VA medical care for an Air Force veteran's prostate cancer, a recognized Agent Orange exposure ailment.

Mr. Murphy did mention he could not be familiar with every document leaving his office over his signature, but again, permitted no change or modification of this unusual statement, even considering that it served as his basis for refusing medical care for a veteran's cancer, as well as several other ailments the VA associates with Agent Orange.

A year after being submitted, the veteran's claim was denied in 2012. The claim remains denied over two years later, still in appeal in the VA' s additional two to three year long process with the Board of Veterans Appeals. There, such an obvious scientific mistake is nearly certain to be corrected, but the process (called remand) merely sends the claim back to the original VA office with the errors pointed out and instructions to reconsider.

More years thus await a cancer victim seeking a VA's help surviving terrible illnesses. If he or she survives, it will only be because care was found somewhere other the the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Veterans who served in Vietnam are all presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange and are provided care. VA had been asked by Congress and veterans service organizations about meeting the needs of veterans exposed outside Vietnam and three times via the Federal Register VA assured Congress that all exposed veterans are to be treated. Here, by pretending both that Agent Orange is harmless and exposed vets somehow weren't' exposed per the VA's unique definition of "exposure," VA's unofficial policy of blocking disability claims perfected. Why?

VA is determined, as its Deputy Chief Consultant of Post Deployment informed the Associated Press, with denying Agent Orange claims because, "You have to draw the line somewhere." Other federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, CDC, OHSA and EPA, are concerned with health, not drawing lines over veterans' TCDD exposure claims. At VA, veterans' health and survival comes second to "draw line somewhere." In such denials, VA carefully considered the input received from Dow and Monsanto, who along with the VA's $300,000 per year Agent Orange consultant, strongly oppose veterans' exposure benefits.

This was strongly opposed by the Committee of Concerned Scientists and Physicians, with Dr. Jeanne Stellman of Columbia University as the corresponding scientist. The input of these dozens of experts was ignored because VA had predetermined (in VHA's Post Deployment Health Section) that all the claims were to be denied regardless of proofs and evidence.

Mr. Murphy was manifestly wrong in his statement regarding TCDD being harmless. Rather, TCDD is the most toxic and potent of the toxins.  To VA a denied claim, even if eventually overturned in the veteran's favor,  is a win-win situation because VA is able to deny medical care for many years in the process. Years when caring for cancer and heart disease patients becomes a very expensive proposition.

Here's what the National Institutes of Health tells us about about dioxin:

"TCDD dioxin is listed as a human carcinogen in the Thirteenth Report on Carcinogens published by the National Toxicology Program because it causes cancer, particularly lung cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. 

Exposure to high levels of dioxins can cause reproductive and development problems, suppression of the immune system, increased heart disease and diabetes, changes in hormonal levels, liver damage, and abnormalities of the pancreas, circulatory, and respiratory systems. 

Exposure to low levels of TCDD can cause dermatitis, gastrointestinal problems, and excessive body hair. 

Exposure to low levels of all dioxins can cause a burning sensation in the eyes, nose, and throat; headache; dizziness; fatigue; blurred vision; urinary tract disorders; muscle and joint pain; impaired muscle coordination; nausea; and vomiting."

Here's what the Department of Veterans Affairs and Mr. Murphy tells us about dioxin:

 "Claim Denied." "In summary, there is no conclusive evidence of TCDD causing  any adverse health effects."  

The statement might be scientifically and medically wrong and absolutely contrary to experts throughout the government (as well as in the VA!) but Mr. Murphy's objective was met: VA drew its line and, as the VA and Office of Secretary of Defense Agent Orange consultant put it, veterans he considers "freeloaders, trash-haulers looking for a tax-free dollar from a sympathetic congressman" were told to seek care elsewhere...anywhere but the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Mr. Murphy's statement thus gets another claim out of the infamous VA backlog by the easy step of denying it, and helps resolve VA's budget and long lines in VA hospitals by keeping Agent Orange veterans' decisions denied as long as possible.

If only veterans could turn to Mr. Murphy to resolve their cancers with his pen as readily as he solves VA's problems.

CDC: Full HAZMAT Suits Should Have Been Used on C-123s Due to Agent Orange Contamination

It is official: CDC analyzed test results of C-123s previously flown for spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam, and issued the following conclusion to the Institute of Medicine on June 16. The IOM is reviewing C-123 veterans' Agent Orange exposures.

CDC wrote:

Above: CDC Report to VA/IOM, page 6

Above: AF inspectors at C-123 Quarantine Site, 2009. Wearing HAZMAT protection as 

specified by base safetyofficials. In 2014 CDC concluded full HAZMAT should have been required for 

crews flying and maintaining the C-123s between 1972-1982, however AF elected not to inform 

aircrews of lingering Agent Orange contamination or any safety precautions. (USAF Photo)

REPEAT: C-123 Veterans Are NOT Eligible for Agent Orange Registry Exam

Thanks for the continuing emails, but I must repeast: C-123 veterans are excluded...NOT
ELIGIBLE...for the VA's Agent Orange Registry Exam.

I have double-checked this with Dr. Terry Walters, Deputy Chief Consultant of VHA's Post Deployment Public Health Section. She confirms that the registry exam is ONLY for the following:

•Vietnam Veterans
•DMZ veterans between certain years
•Thai air base veterans of specific years, bases and specific duty assignments
•Certain small Thai army facilities
•Veterans with service at one of the bases chosen by Dr. Al Young to be listed in his 2006 DOD list
•Veterans who believe they handled liquid Agent Orange, sprayed it or tested it and were thus exposed

VA's web page spells it out and no changes have been made since Dr. Walter's policy was explained last year.

Secretary's Promise to Veterans of All Conflicts

We will not let our Veterans languish without hope for service-connected disabilities resulting from their service. (then-Secretary Shinseki, August 2010)

C-123 veterans have not only been "languishing," but have been actively opposed in our seeking medical care for proven exposures. ("We cannot permit C-123 claims." "We have to draw the line somewhere." - VA Public Health Post Deployment Health)

VA has even redefined exposure to its own purposes to prevent exposure claims, and disregarded obligations repeated three times in the Federal Register to treat all veterans exposed to military herbicides with presumptive service connection.

Senate Staffer Support!

They're still working hard for us! Senators and their staffs, from both parties, have given countless hours to the C-123 problems. We're not forgotten. There seem to be weekly meetings and conferences between the senators and VA, their staffs and VA, anybody and everybody who is involved. Before his confirmation, now-Secretary McDonald had the C-123 issued briefed by Senator Merkley's staff.

So they know we're here, and they know full well we're not getting younger and we're not getting better. This is the plain situation, and the years VA is taking seem to be a tactical approach on their part....wait us out, given our life expectancies, and the fact that the only thing potentially lost is the catch-up disability check.

In the interim, for every day VA delays a claim and for every year a denied claim sits awaiting BVA attention, both VBA and VHA save millions by ordering our vets out of their hospitals, telling us seek care elsewhere as best we can. Waiting lists for appointments are gamed this way, too, by keeping our eligibility delayed as long as possible.

VA pays no penalty, regardless of how illegal or outrageous their claims decisions
. VA raters face no criticism or correction...the claims sit on desks for years, get denied for improper reasons following orders from C&P or VHA that they be denied, and then years pass before the widows get a big brown envelope long down the road.

But we have highly motivated staffers working for our senators (particularly Senators Merkley, Bennet, Burr, Udall, and Chambliss.) In the House, it seems to be only Congresswoman Bonamici, although others have signed her joint letter to the Secretary, and Congressman Neal wrote a letter himself just this year, although we've been detailing the problem to his office for three years without response.

As for VA employees, including SES, there have been changes and start-up orientations, but while smiles are friendly and they are mostly our fellow veterans, their oft-stated mission seems unchanged: they want to "draw a line somewhere," "VA cannot permit any C-123 claims," etc.

Anything that they can do to prevent C-123 exposure claims, including wording the charge to the Institute of Medicine to avoid asking the relevant question, "were they exposed," and instead asking IOM to decide "how much harmful exposure was there" to which they've responded in several studies that individual assessments just cannot be made, especially with such a small population.

Society of Toxicology Takes No Notice of VA's Redefinition of "Exposure"

Repeated requests to the leadership of the Society of Toxicology (SOT) as suggested to us by senior federal government scientists and agency heads, has proved unproductive.

In sum, the SOT let stand unchallenged, and therefore passively endorsed, an action by the VA to redefine "exposure" to require proof of bioavailability as a component. In 2012, the VA presented a poster display at the SOT's San Francisco conference, using the poster to review Agent Orange issues and to introduce VA's internal redefinition of a standard scientific term – exposure. In their poster, VA stated "Exposure=Contamination Field+Bioavailability."

'Tain't so! Exposure is defined, according to the CDC's authoritative Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, as:

Exposure Contact with a substance by swallowing, breathing, or touching the skin or eyes. Exposure may be short-term [acute exposure], of intermediate duration, or long-term [chronic exposure].

Anybody see "bioavailability" there? Nope. Bioavailability, which is the specific impact of a substance on the body (such as caffeine in coffee making the blood pressure increase) is impossible to establish for individuals exposed to Agent Orange. In fact, it takes huge populations, such as the entire corps of Vietnam War veterans, to establish significant epidemiological conclusions about Agent Orange illnesses such as prostate cancer, ALS, IHD and other life-threatening diseases.

So why did VA introduce a redefinition of a scientific term which flies in the face of toxicologists and other health science professionals? Simple...they made bioavailability a requirement of exposure to prevent C-123 veterans from claiming Agent Orange exposure. Policy, not science, in this step!

The law states that exposed veterans will be treated for their Agent Orange illnesses, regardless of where they were exposed. That word...exposed...is what VA needed to challenge in order to deny dioxin-exposed veterans' claims. They couldn't challenge the fact of our duties aboard contaminated former Agent Orange spray aircraft. They couldn't challenge either our diseases or the fact of the C-123's lingering contamination.

So...they invented the pretense that nobody is exposed to a toxin unless and until proof of bioavailability can be offered by the individual. And we can't do that. We obviously have the Agent Orange illnesses and we meet the definition of "exposed" used by the EPA, CDC, USPHS and other authorities, so the VA invented their own definition of the word to insure they had an out for denying our claims.

Thus our appeal to SOT leadership. We asked that they comment on the VA's use of the SOT San Francisco meeting as a platform for attacking veterans benefits through twisted, phony science.

But repeated requests for SOT to do something have failed. They stand mute. Weeks ago, we were assured their leadership would discuss the issue during a high-level conference call, but nothing has happened even with several recent inquiries and reminders of how important this word "exposure" has become.

They should read the definition of "professional" and should also re-read their own definition of "toxicology" because it includes the communication of the effects of agents.

That communication, so important to science, was twisted by the VA and the SOT has failed to challenge their twisted, policy-driven deceptions. In their passivity, SOT, even though the posters weren't juried, in effect endorses this new VA definition of "exposed" to the harm of veterans and our families.

Agent Orange & C-123: The VA Ignores its Own Documentary Evidence

"JOB ONE: Prevent Claims" should read the bronze plaque at 810 Vermont, the VA's headquarters, rather than Lincoln's famous, more compassionate words from his poetic Second Inaugural.

Chart VHA used to sneak in redefinition of "exposure"

VA's dedication to preventing C-123 Agent Orange claims is one of their particular objectives. Actually, as veterans know too well, the VA its its own worst speed bump in the road to service connection! To better insure denial of these dioxin-exposed veterans who are clearly entitled to care, personnel from VA's Veterans Health Administration's Post-Deployment Health section delivered a poster display at t
he San Francisco gathering of the Society of Toxicology (SOT). Entitled "Agent Orange: The 50 Year History & The Newest Chapter of Concerns," the poster was not subjected to the usual scientific scrutany expected of professional articles. VA simply had their poster designed and put it on a stand.

And then they used it to make sure C-123 veterans are denied Agent Orange exposure claims! 

Our two most recent posts addressed the VA's creation of a special, in-house definition of the scientific concept of "exposure," one created by VA to skirt the law's requirements. VA simply added qualifiers to that word to prevent C-123 veterans from being considered as exposed, even though other federal agencies such as the CDC and NIH have argued otherwise...C-123 veterans were indeed exposed...except in the VA's definition.

But there's more. VA realized that the C-123s were used for spraying Agent Orange during the Vietnam War between 1961-1971 and began service with stateside Air Force units in 1972. The aircraft returned to the US and most had the spray tanks and pipes removed by a contractor at Dothan, Alabama to return to their original C-123K configuration. Many, however, remained in their UC-123K configuration and were assigned to insect control operations at Rickenbacker Field.

VA also realized that dioxin remains toxic and biologically available for quite some time once sprayed in the military herbicide, and VA knew the liquid settled throughout the fuselage and especially, below the cargo deck. Air Force tests even decades later confirmed the toxicity and in 2010 the AF took an extraordinary step of shredding and smelting all remaining C-123 warplanes as toxic waste.

VA acknowledged this lingering contamination, at least recognizing a year's worth of it, in their SOT poster. The fourth paragraph clearly states"

"Inhalation – the least likely contributing route one year after spraying missions due to rapid drying of Agent Orange droplets, movement via wind, and removal of contaminated dust via decontamination efforts after returning from Vietnam."

Spray operations stopped in 1971. Stateside, C-123 veterans began flying the airplanes in 1972. Seems within that "one year after spraying missions" and includes our service, doesn't it?

Toxicology experts familiar with the Air Force research on C-123 operations have examined the issue of C-123 dioxin contamination and exposure via the inhalation route, and argue that it was absolutely a significant risk for aircrews! Vibration and the dirt and dust characteristic of cargo flight operations resulted in crew exposure because dioxin readily binds to dust. 

Flight after flight, breath after breath, aircrews continued to be exposed. Not just the year even VA recognizes, but over the full decade of operations until the C-123 fleet was finally all retired in 1982. IT only remained for the crews to grow ill, and for the VA to formulate policy-driven excuses to deny them care for the full range of Agent Orange-presumptive illnesses.

And that's why a new plaque should be ordered for 810 Vermont Street NW, Washington, D.C.

Veterans Health Administration Perspective on Veterans Agent Orange Exposure

"No C-123 aircrews or Vietnam War ground solders were ever exposed to Agent Orange"
                  - Deputy Director VA Post-Deployment Health
(citing VA definition of "exposure" being: exposure=contaminated field+bioavailability)

VA Perspective on C-123 Veterans' Exposure Claims

VA "CANNOT PERMIT" C-123 AGENT ORANGE EXPOSURE CLAIMS
         - Deputy Director, VA Post-Deployment Health, Veterans Health   Administration
No C-123 CLAIM WILL BE APPROVED REGARDLESS OF PROOF
         - Director, Compensation Services, Veterans Benefit Administration
VA REGULATIONS DON'T PERMIT C-123 VETERANS' EXPOSURE CLAIMS              - Manchester NH Veterans Regional Office
VA HAS NO BLANKET POLICY AGAINST C-123 VETERANS' CLAIMS
               - Secretary Eric Shinski
(it is just that VA doesn't approve them...any of them...ever.)