Our final speaker is Anthony Guarisco who is with the Alliance of Atomic Veterans. He will be the final speaker on the panel and then Pat Broudy is going to kick off the audience discussion. So we should still have 20 minutes for audience participation kicked off by Pat Broudy.

MR. GUARISCO: Thank you very much.

My name is Anthony Guarisco. I have the honor to have been asked by the veterans of our organization to be their Director, which means that I get to sweep out the floors in the office and empty the wastebaskets and other things that go along with the job. And the Alliance of Atomic Veterans is a small group of atomic veterans. We are not the big organization.

You could probably make 1,000 VFW's out of our organization, maybe even more. And we are mostly older veterans, World War II vets, Korean. Most of us are combat vets. We were not just at the Nevada Test Site but we were in the Pacific or in Europe. We have many of our veterans who are Vietnam vets that were in testing and then went to Vietnam. And I use the word testing because I want you to understand that the word testing is the wrong word to use in terms of what happened to the atomic veterans.

What we were involved in was nuclear experimentation, nuclear weapons exploding, exploding to take the information of how men and equipment could actually, if they did survive, be able to conduct a nuclear war.

Now, I'm not going to get into whether it was good or whether it was bad because I've done it too many times over the last 20 years. And I'm not here to trash anybody. I'm not here to try to tell you the sad stories of what happened to atomic veterans. Plenty of that has been written.

What I've been sent here to do is to talk about how we can come to some kind of an end to the atomic veterans issue.

For many years, our organization took the position that if the proper epidemiological studies were conducted for the atomic veterans, we know what the answers would be to that epidemiology. We knew what had happened to us. We were there. We were refused, for whatever reason, in 1983 when we asked for this. The Veterans Administration stated that it just wasn't a fundable thing and that what it would do is just cause worries for the atomic veterans and their wives.

Well, we answered that was that the burden and hurt is not knowing what's happening with our children who were suffering with chromosome aberrations passed on to our children by the atomic veterans because of their participation in nuclear weapons. It's the truth. It's the truth. That's it.

The Defense Nuclear Agency was developed in 1975, I believe, right in there, and their reason for being was to make sure, make sure that they did exactly what you heard. And make sure that while they're doing that, they protected the development of nuclear weapons.

Now, whether or not you want to believe the Defense Nuclear Agency and their fact sheets or whether or not you want to believe the veterans that actually participated in nuclear weapons explosions, that's going to be your decision. And that's the last I'm going to say about the Defense Nuclear Agency.

As far as the Veterans Administration goes, or the Department of Energy or the Department of Defense, over the 20 years that we have been in this issue, we have found out that there are many, many good people in every one of those departments or agencies that are working hard to do what they can do for the atomic veterans or to do their job every day. If you have something in the country that doesn't work because it's broke, we don't feel that it's time to batter each other. I'm talking about veterans and I'm not talking about nobody else. We don't feel that there's anything that's ever going to come to a conclusion with fisticuffs, whether it be with fists or with words.

But we think there is a way to bring this issue to an end and that's what I have been sent here to ask, to request, to demand. That the DOD, the Department of Energy and the VA meet with the Alliance of Atomic Veterans and any other veterans organizations that are atomic vets that want to participate and that we sit down and we look at another way of coming to a conclusion on this issue.

Please, don't do any more studies for us. Okay? We watched you study for 20 years. I mean, don't spend any more of the taxpayers' research money. Because had the Veterans Administration conducted the epidemiology that we asked for in 1983, the cost would have been less than the cost for one propeller on one submarine.

At that time, they told us it was too expensive. So I would hate to ask the question today. We feel that any type of epidemiology that could be conducted today under the restraints and what this country is going through would be meaningless for us.

The history of the atomic veterans is that we were ordered to do something. And if we're guilty of anything it's obeying orders. I don't think that you're going to find American citizens who wear uniforms from all over the country saying, hey, why don't I tell them that I got hurt over here in a nuclear explosion. I mean, you know, it's like this is what seems to be the thing that's happening.

People want people to believe nothing happened. So, I mean, I think that setting that aside and accepting what our President asked of us is the way to come to an end of this issue. Our President said that he wanted to have something quickly that could bring an end to this issue. He was speaking of all radiation victims, of course, and our organization can only speak for atomic vets. We think that we have something that can happen and we want to do that by working with the Department of Energy. We want to do it by working with the Veterans Administration and working with the Department of Defense. And we feel that we can do that.

I don't want to go into it today because I know that we have limited time. But we're calling to have a meeting and then ask them if they will sit down with us.

Am I going over my time?

MS. MATHER: Yes.

MR. GUARISCO: Oh, I'm very sorry.

MS. MATHER: You're cutting into Pat Broudy's time.

MR. GUARISCO: Okay. And I hope that can happen. Because I know if we can do it, that we can finally bring an end to an issue that should have been taken care of at least 40 years ago.

Thank you.

MS. MATHER: Okay. We'll pass the mike down to Pat Broudy and let her introduce -- make some remarks and then introduce the audience participation because we do want to hear from all of you.

And could I see sort of a show of hands of people who have comments they'd like to make?

(Show of hands.)

Okay. We'll try. We have 20 minutes.

MS. BROUDY: Okay. I'm going to try to keep this brief but when I get started, it's kind of hard to stop.

My name is Pat Broudy. I'm the Legislative Director for the National Association of Atomic Veterans.

I'm responding to Recommendation Number 5 on page A-11 of the report. NAAV concurs with the Committee's recommendation that the Human Radiation Interagency Working Group, together with Congress, amend the provisions of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 to include other similarly situated groups, such as those exposed to intentional releases.

In addition to the Committee's recommendations, we recommend that all persons covered under that law be awarded the same monetary sum, the highest of $100,000 paid to the uranium miners. That they all be covered for the same illness, including lung cancers and other lung ailments to which the uranium miners are eligible. That there be no offsets for Social Security benefits, veterans' benefits or other U.S. governmental payments paid for the same illness. That there be no restrictions -- coffee consumption, cigarette smoking, residence, length of time in the area, no working level month restrictions and any and all other restrictions contained in Public Law 101-426 and 101-510.

We recommend that the so-called Warner Amendment, repealed in Public Law 101-426 and reinstated in Public Law 101-510 be again repealed completely.

Recommendation 6. NAAV concurs with the Committee's suggestion that the report of the National Institutes of Health Ad Hoc Working Group to develop radio-epidemiological tables now relied upon to determine whether relief is appropriate for veterans who participated in atomic testing be reviewed and updated. Those tables admittedly are the first version, 1985, and are based on the knowledge in existence in 1974.

Page 79 of the tables, and I'll quote: "Our present knowledge is far from complete and the tables can be regarded as no more than a guide to causation. Each element of the probability of causation calculation has its own uncertainties."

In spite of this admission and the outdated information the table contain, as recently as August 29th, 1994, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jesse Brown, sent a fax sheet to Honorable Lane Evans and co-signers of the letter endorsing our suggestion of inclusion of the radiogenic illnesses in Public Law 98-542, with the presumptive cancers in Public Law 100-321 and 102-578.

This fact sheet was prepared by the Undersecretary for Benefits and is condensed from the tables referred to above. The Secretary also sent a similar fact sheet to me, quoting from the flawed 1985 mortality study of nuclear weapons test participants by the National Academy of Sciences, now being repeated by those same entities, the National Academy and the DNA.

The Secretary further informed Senator John D. Rockefeller on July 18, 1994 that as of that date only 414 claims had been granted under the presumptive laws promulgated in -- oh, I'm sorry -- yes. Excuse me -- promulgated in 1988 and 1992 out of over 15,000 filed.

The Advisory Committee further recommends to the Human -- this is another on page A-12: "The Advisory Committee further recommends to the Human Radiation Interagency Working Group that it review whether existing laws governing compensation of atomic veterans are now administered in ways that best balance allocation of resources between financial compensation to eligible atomic veterans and administrative costs, including the costs and scientific credibility of dose reconstruction."

The Committee found that the government did not maintain adequate records of all veteran participants. The Committee urged the Working Group, in conjunction with Congress, to address the concerns promptly. There are five concerns listed in which we concur. I would like to address the last one, Number 5, in detail.

I asks: "Is the time and money spent on contractors and consultants and administering the program be better spent on directly aiding veterans and their survivors?" Our answer is a resounding yes.

A letter from the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to Senator John D. Rockefeller dated July 18, 1994 states: 414 out of 15,818 claims were granted on a presumptive basis. These did not need dose reconstructions. We have tried to obtain the number of claims granted under Public Law 98-542 which requires dose reconstruction. We have been unable to obtain this information from the VA. As of the end of September 1991, over 12,000 claims have been received for disability or death alleged to have resulted from exposure to ionizing radiation under both Public Law 100-321 and Public Law 98-542. Out of those, 258 were granted and 167 of them were survivors. Twenty-five veterans were rated at zero percent.

The contractor for the Defense Nuclear Agency, the DNA, Science Applications International, Incorporated, SAIC, charges $3,000 for each dose reconstruction. The period 1978 to 1994 was a total of 13,598,939. The total funding for the NTPR for that same period is $96,500,000. The total is $110,098,939.

It's a shame -- I'm sorry. Am I finished?

MS. MATHER: Thirty seconds.

MS. BROUDY: What I'd like to say is that out of the few hundred claims that have been adjudicated and the millions and millions of dollars that have been spent to try and get around the issue of dose reconstruction by the DNA, we find this absolutely outrageous.

Thank you.

MS. MATHER: Okay. I want to thank all the panelists and I think we'll want to take -- I have the mike so we'll want to take some comments from the audience.

I saw your hand first.

MS. CAMPOS-INFANTINO: Please keep your comments brief since there are only 14 minutes left and we want to give people the opportunity to speak.

MR. SMITH: Thank you.

I'm Tom Smith and I'm an atomic veteran. I've been to 17 shots in Eniwetok and I would like to be a little bit self-serving, even though Lincoln is a very gracious person and I know his daughter Pat very well, I have suffered from so many maladies that you could not write them all down. I have to go to the computer to figure them out.

I've had 25 major operations, and I mean major. The Veterans Department or the VA says that I did not get enough radiation to cause any of this. There is no history in my family of diabetes. There is no history in my family of degenerative disk disease. There's no history in my family of liver disease. There is no history in my family for anything that I have.

I have a picture here I showed the Colonel earlier. This is one of three underwater shots. We were so close we received damage to our ship. However, we were not close enough to be radiated. And I would like the panel to see it and anyone else who would be interested in taking a look at it. It's an official copy of an Air Force photograph.

This ship in the foreground is a Liberty ship and was used as a target ship. It had been used at numerous tests. It was alongside my ship for repairs and for equipment to be put on. After this particular shot, it was too hot to use as a test ship any longer, so what we had to do is go down into the ship and cut holes in the bulkheads between the sections so the water would equalize when we sank it.

And then they talk about dose reconstruction. How can you do dose reconstruction when people were everywhere?

Orville Kelly, when the first atomic veteran that established the atomic veterans association died, he was station on Jap 10 Island. Jap 10 Island was right next to Eniwetok Island. And after Orville was stationed there, they made it an R&R station. That's where we went to go swimming, drink beer and play around. And that was the station that Orville Kelly received his total dose and he died of multiple myeloma.

Thank you.

MS. MATHER: I saw someone on this side.

MR. STEINBACH: Yes. Just several comments about -- I'm sorry. John Steinbach, Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee. And we primarily work with atomic bomb survivors and they also consider themselves to be experiment victims and also have a lot to say about the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission.

But to the point at hand, on Recommendation Number 5, the question I would have -- the comment is that studies are underway to look at communities and my question, you know, what the studies are and what the peer review process is and so on, because there's been a lot of studies that have been done and there really needs to be a great deal of scrutiny to those studies.

And for Recommendation Number 6, the Department of Veterans Affairs is establishing a taskforce. Does anybody know are atomic veterans going to be on that taskforce? Because this has been one thing that the victims-survivors community has been saying over and over again. Please, put us on. I mean, it's legally binding to do it and so far, it's just not happening and here's another taskforce. Are there going to be atomic vets on there?

Also, you're going to be doing -- evaluating the likelihood of injury. Are they going to revisit the question of the offspring? Which is a very important question because the atomic veterans are not all getting quite elderly. Most of them or many of them -- probably most of them are dead now. And they're very concerned about the future.

Then the last thing is -- and this really leaps out at me. The report is going to recommend the most feasible way to accomplish updating the epidemiological tables. And that bothers me a lot. What does feasible mean? It could mean a lot of things. Feasible for the VA? Are we talking in terms of money and so on and so forth?

So I would really look at that when you do the final report and try to be a little bit more specific.

MS. MATHER: Thank you.

MR. BROWN: Cooper Brown. I want to take this opportunity to address this comment to Dr. Mather. Acie Byrd and I had sent a letter through the Taskforce to the Secretary, Secretary Brown, on behalf of the Atomic Veterans. And rather than getting into the substance of it, I thought the shorthand would be we got a response back from you and it sort of missed the point. And the point was -- and I think -- Lincoln, don't you have the letter? Maybe we could get that into the record.

Okay. Right here. From reading the Advisory Committee's report, what jumped out at us -- and we tried to get this in front of the Secretary on behalf of the Atomic Veterans. I know they would still like to meet with Mr. Brown to talk about this -- is the distinct possibility that the troop maneuvers at the test site constituted a mass experimentation and varying degrees of exposure over an extended period of time.

In essence, General Cooney got his way, if we reflect back to the debate that took place in '48 or '94. General Cooney -- I see Colonel Bailey shaking his head. He knows the discussion I'm talking about with the AEC scientists. And what we would like is an investigation into that.

Secondly, there appears to be in the Advisory Committee's recommendations and in the government's response to the recommendation about what you do as remedy where you have a clear case of experimentation on enlisted personnel, the fundamental flaw in the thinking -- and I'd just like to get this in front of people to look at -- and that is, that having identified -- the Advisory Committee having identified clear instances of experimentation on atomic veterans, when then addressing the question of remedy, they put it back into the context of health risk and medical consequences of that experimentation and concluded, therefore, nothing needs to be done because the risk that they were put to would be no greater than what many of the veterans were already put at risk on.

We would like to submit that in this particular instance what is being ignored is the fact that you have a violation of military personnel's constitutional and civil rights. And for that, there should be some consideration of a remedy, whether that's compensation or takes the form of access to justice or what have you. Nevertheless, that violation of civil rights, constitutional rights, should be addressed.

The Advisory Committee acknowledges that those types of violations should result in some type of compensation when there are future violations, when we look at the chapters dealing with prospective remedies. They failed to use the same logic in addressing the past wrong and we would like to see this government address the issue in the historical context.

Thank you.

MR. ENSIGN: Yes. My name is Todd Ensign. I'm a Director of Citizen Soldier. We are a combined active duty GI and veterans rights advocacy organization, which means, of course, today we're back here in Washington on the issue of the Persian Gulf veterans of which over 60,000 have come into VA's and military medical centers already seeking answers for their unexplained and chronic illness, including a number of forms of cancer.

I wanted to bring the focus here to the difference in the treatment that Agent Orange veterans very belatedly received and then put this before the Working Group.

First, just to say that next year we're at the 20 year anniversary of Paul Cooper and the -- reference the one CDC doctor, Dr. Glen Caldwell, in the Smokey Study. Now that wasn't, of course, the first time that people had become sick or died from leukemia or other radiogenic cancers. But for some reason it began to attract attention. A critical mass, can we say, was generated. And in '77, the first groups of veterans began to be identified.

So I say to the Working Group, we're talking about 20 years now. And if nothing else you come way from this meeting with, the sense of frustration, deep anger, bitterness, a sense of being violated, which is palpable. It's very strong. And if for no other reason than just public policy and fair treatment, I think it's time to say, look, we may in the past have put up barriers which have blocked recovery that some people may have deserved. Yes, we may have kept out a few that maybe didn't, quote, deserve it. But I think it's time to put that aside and say let's treat them

all fairly.

And the way that the Agent Orange veteran has been treated is that if they produce evidence of certain types of ailments, cancers -- I won't bother to list them now -- they must merely show service in the Indochina theater. And I think the reason for that difference is twofold.

One, the National Academy of Sciences did a massive literature review of the known effects of dioxin. And there really wasn't any way to debate it any longer. Really, every reputable scientist in this country who was on that panel signed off and said, yes, there certainly is presumptive evidence of causation.

And so the atomic veteran is treated differently today. And as Pat said, I think it's outrageous. One out of every five dollars that's spent on the question of dosimetry is spent to help veterans. By that, I'm trying to be clear. $20 million is spent to pay claims and $110 million is spent to basically deny the claims that people pose.

And I think you've got to in the future look forward and let's say let's change what's been done. Maybe the past had its reasons. We don't have to keep defending the nuclear weapons industry and the nuclear power industry. Let's move forward and treat atomic veterans as Agent Orange veterans are treated. Give them all a presumption that they were harmed and deserve justice.

MS. MATHER: One last comment.

MR. FARBER: Hi. Stuart Farber, Radium Assessment Project.

Something Cooper Brown said made me think of this. The basic ethical framework set up by the Advisory Committee that was presented was that if something was done in terms of radiation experiment it was presented as standard or noncontroversial at the time it was done. And the treatment involved -- there was evidence of harm, then the people so treated deserved full government apology and compensation to them or their surviving family members.

In the case -- getting back to the issue I'm involved in, the nasal radium experiment, the memo I mentioned of March 27th from the Advisory Committee report, included in that memo was a Navy memo dated February 23rd, '94 in which the Navy admitted that the initial use of radium, nasal radium, on submariners, was a human radiation experiment. They said they were answering a directive from the base commander from the Bureau of Medicine and they answered in the affirmative.

And when you go back to the literature of the day, the initial use of radium was not standard treatment at the time that it was done. There is evidence of harm in the literature. Therefore, the cohort that was addressed there, the nasal radium vets, which was reviewed by the Advisory Committee, meets the criteria for notification, follow-up and apology and compensation. That point was overlooked in the final report.

MS. MATHER: Well, Colonel Bailey is the boss. Do we have one minute left before three?

COL. BAILEY: If I could just have one minute.

MS. MATHER: You want one minute? Okay.

MR. McKAY: Like Tom, I was a veteran of Bikini. I also found out last week that we were in Koure the year before and a ship got contaminated. We had to wash it down and paint it white.

MS. MATHER: Your name, please?

MR. McKAY: Oh, I'm sorry. Charles McKay, member of NAAV and NARS.

Then they go to the next year and go to Bikini where our diving team spent 8/20th until September 6th, from the time of the first bomb drop, which was Able, on July 1st, through Baker, July 25th, to the September 6th, we spent over 60 days, 148 hours underwater as part of the diving team.

You do know that Stafford Warren, head of the radiology team there, convinced the admiral not to have the third test, and that was done shortly after the Baker test. But we continued to dive underwater until the 1st of September, 148 hours.

And I would convey to you folks and the Defense Nuclear Agency, as you look at this, that the decision was made because of the inadequacy of the measuring equipment in terms of measuring radioactivity, the contamination that existed and so forth. And this decision was made rather early in August and yet the bulk of those 148 hours was spent after that time being put underwater on highly contaminated submarines and ships that we were to be put on to raise equipment that measured your radioactivity and the force of the explosion.

So when you look at your dose reconstructions, I think you ought to take that into consideration a little bit. I was given a dose reconstruction of 6/10 of a rem. It was based on 34 badges, of which two were lost and there were an average. And I submit to you, and I ask you with all humility, take a look at that because 6/10 rem was a very low mark and I'm sure it was much more than that that contributed to my colon cancer that I had, which I think definitely was a result of the radiation in excess, way in excess of 6/10 rem.

And I thank you very much.

MR. GUARISCO: I'd like to put something in the record over here, please.

This is a letter or a 8-1/2 x 11 page that has some things that were recommended by the different veterans. And the only one that we put in here and adhere to is Number 12 on this sheet.

If you don't have it, I'd be glad to give you this.

MS. MATHER: Thank you.

MR. GUARISCO: That's the Alliance of Atomic Veterans.

MS. MATHERhat will be included in the record.

DR. ROSEN: Can I have a few seconds?

MS. MATHER: We're cutting into the break and the rest of the afternoon, so -- go ahead.

Say your name, please, first.

COL. BAILEY: State your name.

DR. ROSEN: Oscar Rosen. We all know now that we blame the Defense Nuclear Agency and the dose reconstructions it provides, as one of the main reasons for the denial of most claims. But another reason why claims don't go through is because the majority of veterans and widows when they file claims, they don't know enough about the laws, whether their claims come under the presumptive law or the nonpresumptive law and so forth. And their claims are denied. And then they file appeals. They get caught up in the appeals process, which can take years and great expense.

So, we feel that the VA people who handle these claims, many of them don't know enough about the laws and the service officers don't now enough about the laws.

So in many cases, when veterans and widows have called me to tell me that their claims were denied and I asked them why they were denied and what the claims were filed for, I say, well, you come under the presumptive law or you have kidney cancer. You come under a law that was passed just a few years ago in 1992.

File your claim, again, and specify that you want the claim adjudicated under that specific law. They call me back and say, oh, I got 100 percent. Thank you, Dr. Rosen, for telling me that.

But the VA doesn't go out of its way to handle the claims that way.

MS. MATHER: Well, that's the final comment. I'm not going to try to defend VA but certainly Don England from the Veterans Benefits Administration was here to hear your comments and we do have a presumptive list which our veterans benefits counselors are all aware of and it's actually longer than the presumptive list for Agent Orange.

So, with that, we will conclude this panel and you have a 10 minute break to get back for the final panel today.

(Whereupon, a recess was taken.)