This mans name is Wesley Carter. Lets see if any of our readers have some relevant feedback.
Sir:
The 505th at Hill AFB and AMARG Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ together manage the Air Force’s fleet of stored surplus aircraft. In 2010 their collection of Vietnam-era C-123K/UC-123K were destroyed due to the dioxin contamination which remained ever since their last wartime spray mission.
The 505th Public Affairs staff worked with consultants who were particularly sensitive to the “Agent Orange” and “dioxin” power-packed words and the publicity likely attendant to such an event, the only time the Air Force had ever been forced to destroy surplus aircraft by shredding (because shredded metal does not meet EPA guidelines for contaminated materials, thus avoiding a threatened $3 billion fine) and then smelting to destroy the dioxin.
Along with friends, I flew the C-123K for ten years 1972-1982, and beginning in April 2011 started reading about the aircraft’s history online, and submitting FOIAs to see if this is where so many of my unit’s veterans are getting Agent Orange-presumptive illnesses. I found, in particular, test after test establishing the aircraft remaining “heavily contaminated, extremely dangerous, extremely hazardous, extremely contaminated”…the Air Force laboratories’ words.
But I also found a 1996 recommendation from the Air Force Office of Environmental Law to “keep this information within official channels only”, channels which apparently have never included us as aircrews. Along with other Stan/Eval flight examiners, I was supposed to be one of the most expert, most qualified, most experienced, most reliable flyers in my crew specialty…but I never was informed. The only “conversation” I eve had with the Air Force was about the stink of the airplanes when I first started flying them in 1972 and was told it was left over from Vietnam.
The press releases dealing with the destruction of 21 aircraft were crafted to keep the words in proper English and to discuss an event, but it was “word-smithing” to use true words for telling a lie. In all the AF documents the reason the 21 aircraft were destroyed was because of the dioxin residue – in the press release the aircraft were destroyed because they were aged Vietnam-era airplanes no longer flying, and the words first used in press release drafts “Agent Orange” and “dioxin” were replaced with the less-threatening and less- attention getting “herbicide”. Lies with truthful words. The press, supposed to rely on the basics of a military unit’s press releases, was completely misled.
We have among our flyers started a blog to post all the documents we’ve been piling up from the Freedom of Information Act. Tom Philpott of Gannett did a nice story about us at the end of May but did not touch on the false press releases…at that time we throughout the old airplanes were still sitting in storage at Davis-Monthan’s Bone yard.
Can you help? The VA is denying that we’ve ever had Agent Orange exposure, even though the Air Force’s own lab tests over 30 years say we flew contaminated airplanes. I feel this has both editorial and news value…I want the story driven!
