C-123 Veterans Retain Law Firm of Davis Wright Tremaine in Freedom of Information Struggle

The C-123 Veterans Association has retained the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP to help us obtain documents denied by the Department of Veterans Affairs and by the US Air Force. Both agencies ignored our Freedom of Information Act Requests, or tried to assert that no such documents exist!

We've been stonewalled for years by both the VA and the AF in our search for C-123 information. Especially withheld from us have been correspondence and studies referred to in the VA's pages where VA denies any connection between our contaminated C-123K aircraft and Agent Orange illnesses.

The Freedom of Information Act requests are meant to gain access to the government's information. Actually...it is OUR information and it is our RIGHT to get it. That RIGHT has been abused by both VA and the USAF, but the team at DWT is challenging the authorities on our behalf. Can you believe it? The VA actually says on their FOIA web page "It is VA's policy to release information to the fullest extent under the law." Actually, the President encourages agencies to freely release materials without forcing citizens to resort to the FOIA requests, but both VA and USAF ignore the President's wishes as requests and abuse us on our FOIA requests.

Stay tuned for news on what we've asked, what's been released, how DWT has helped us, and the impact such official documentation has on our struggle for Agent Orange service connection from the Department of Veterans Affairs!