new i guess north carolina we will come to order this is the hearing on the foreign affairs subcommittee on asia pacific and the global environment the basic theme or topic of discussion at this hearing so call are foreign responsibility what can we do to help the victims of agent orange i told my colleague who is the ranking member of this subcommittee is on his way and i appreciate his efforts of joining me and  objection all of the statements of our witnesses who will be testifying this morning will be made part of the record i want to especially welcome the representative of the department of state my good friend the article deputy appropriate time he will be given an opportunity to testify before this subcommittee he doing so i have an opening statement that i will be taking is made as part of the record and perhaps by that time my good friend mr meadows will be here to offer his opening statement as well i've said earlier the seamer the area of discussion in this morning's hearing is entitled our forgotten responsibility what can we do to help the victims of agent orange in forty years i returned to vietnam after serving there not trying as a young soldier at the height of the tet offensive alone my younger brother teil o'neal who had served since passed on i wore his yellow aloha shirt so he could return with me since he too served in vietnam my brother and i were young then and our country was at war neither of us knew if we would come back from vietnam in a body bag or if we wouldn't come back to live and see our families again like so many we made at home and i'd like to offer this special tribute to all our men and women who proudly honored you pay this special tribute to them who proudly served in the armed services of our nation during the vietnam war especially some sixty thousand of our brave soldiers and marines sailors and airmen who were killed in that terrible conflict and let alone some hundreds of thousands of our men and women in military uniform so forty years later the world isn't a different place my brother passed away two years ago and to this day i don't know what may be the consequences of his death as well since he too served at that period where today it's the policy of the united states to normalize relations with the republic of vietnam in part normalizing relations means coming to terms with our past my time in vietnam last november was a clear reminder that good people everywhere no matter what country what culture want to seeing things in life a sense of happiness contentment prosperity for their families children and their children's children i don't think the american dream is any different from the good people living it vietnam or any other country or the world for that matter at a closing dinner hosted by the national assembly of the hotel human city i had long discussions with members of their foreign affairs committee who had also served in the vietnam war and although we were once  we embraced each other as friends who share the same hopes and dreams for our families of countries i was also honored to meet with the vice president ms un t d one who is a remarkable and inspirational woman having as a minority regime to the top levels of the vietnamese government in her no lawyer met with the deputy national assemblies chairperson ms tang the fallen who is also to be commended and recognized for her accomplishments as one of vietnam's top national leaders i also had the privilege of meeting with vice foreign minister mr levi and bang who i knew while he previously served as ambassador of vietnam to the united states and my generation i don't think any of us expected that the day would come when we would meet under favorable circumstances but that day did come and the day has come for us to talk and openly and frankly as friends about our forgotten responsibility to all the victims of agent orange some have tried to discourage this hearing from moving forward on the premise that this is a subject that we should not publicly be discussing is out to be done privately and without the public knowing about this issue i do believe that any business worth doing is worth doing in the light of day this is why i commend the aspen institute and the ford foundation for establishing the u s vietnam dialogue group on agent orange and i pleased that members of the dialogue group are courageous enough to be with us today to discuss ways in which congress can be of assistance to my knowledge this is one of the few times in the history of the us congress that a hearing has been hell an agent orange which includes the views of our vietnamese counterparts it is important for us to hear their concerns as several studies estimate that from the year nine one to nine hundred seventy one the u s military sprayed more than eleven million gallons of agent orange in vietnam agent orange was manufactured under the auspices  direction of the department of defense contracts would serve all companies including dod chemical and monsanto company dioxin a toxic kammen it contaminant known to be one of the deadliest chemicals made by man was an unwanted and unforeseen byproduct that is thought to be responsible for most of the medical problems associated with exposure to agent orange this is a kind of situation to say that we've had every good intentions but it produced unintended consequences at the time in one thousand sixty one the department of defense or the pentagon for that matter claimed that the use of agent orange was necessary to defoliate vietnam's dense jungle in order to deprive the viet cong vietnamese forces of hiding places however the classified documents agent orange had and i quote little effect little effect on military operations according to have felt consultants group and the review that was made the documents also suggested the chemical companies in the department of defense knew as early as one hundred sixty seven of the potential long term health risks and sought to quote censor relevant news reports fearing meaning dol chemical company mr burnham reports that in one thousand sixty five and i quote scientists from four rival chemical companies attended a closed meeting at the dow chemical companies headquarters subject was the health hazards of dioxin according to the report dow chemical again not want its findings about dioxin to be made known fearing a congressional investigation more than thirty years later while research clearly shows that agent orange was much more hazardous than anyone would admit the us and vietnamese victims have not been adequately compensated and written and vietnam has not been cleaned up ironically the chemical company is now doing business in vietnam but refuses to help the victims of agent orange while a war is ugly so are the cover ups in my opinion the dow chemical company and other every other chemical company involved to step to the plate and do what is right by the victims of agent orange just as tobacco manufacturers have begun to settle lawsuits brought on as a result of their false claims that the effects of smoking tobacco does not cause lung cancer and the united states in my humble opinion has a high high moral duty and responsibility and should also help clean up to go environment to this day agent orange dioxin remains in the eco system in vietnam studies alarmingly high concentration in soils foods human blood human breast milk in adults and children and having areas in close proximity to former us military installations despite these funny findings the united states according to our state department has only provided two million dollars for technical and scientific activities to help clean up vietnam while last year public law one ten twenty eight set aside three million dollars for environmental remediation and support health programs and communities near the cities as a march this year the u s state department had not released these funds or determine how they would be spent in contrast from the year two thousand and three the year two thousand and six the united states appropriated thirty five point seven billion dollars for iraq reconstruction project for germany according to the congressional research service quote in constant you two hundred two thousand five dollars the united states provided a total of twenty one point three billion dollars in assistance from nine hundred forty six to nine with sixty percent in economic grants and nearly thirty percent in economic loans and they remain joint military aid total u s assistance to japan from forty six to nine hundred fifty two was roughly fifteen point two billion dollars in two thousand and five dollars of which seventy seven percent whether you had twenty three percent were in loans it's a question that is raised why can't we do more for our u veterans and the victims of agent orange in vietnam we can and in my humble opinion we should do more and this is why i am pleased in our witnesses have accepted this invitation to testify helping hurricane katrina recovery efforts and will soon be en route to the palestinian territories despite the demands of his hectic schedule that mr isaacson has submitted a statement for the record and without objection his statement will be made part of the record on behalf of the victims of agent orange and i personally i want to thank him for his generosity of time and the tremendous service he gives to the people from all different walks of life  i recognize my good friend the gentleman ranking member of our subcommittee gentleman from illinois mr mansell for his opening statement thank you mr chairman that was a magnificent opening statement itself and i want to thank you on behalf of the united states congress for your distinguished service in vietnam and your passion for this subject it's it's without  hesitation that i am delighted to serve as the ranking member of this subcommittee and delighted to serve under congressman phelim of a for his outstanding leadership we faced something similar to this in the gulf war and i worked together with senator kay bailey hutchinson and actually ross perot at that time and i know chairman you were involved in the in the huge lift to actually reverse the presumption for disability of those who were exposed to x chemicals during the time of the what we call the first gulf war in the early ninety's and and i was honored with the fact that the national coalition the gulf war the vietnam veterans a gave me the distinguished award for two thousand and one for the service that i had the honor of providing to our men and women in uniform and mr chairman i look forward to the testimony you can see the entire time but obviously thank you for your for your leadership and courage in this area and i thank my good friend the gentleman for his current comments i don't know where this is going to but we've got to start somewhere and that more than anything the purpose of having oversight hearings like this is to establish the record bear out the facts the evidence the information not only for the education of our american public but to let them know that this is just the people of vietnam that were subjected to this in but even our own men and women in uniform now i know th of the department of office of maritime southeast asia director of office of mainland southeast asia my gosh one of the other directorships have you been under he has had assignments in vietnam the philippines hong kong brazil and turkey serve also under the konami was office the monetary affairs system myself as a resident of california graduated university of california davis and also at the always a personal welcome for me to you and to again thank you for taking the time from your busy schedule to join with us to give us the benefit of some of the great happenings at the  delving into the specific topic of agent orange i would like to briefly comment on the overall relations between the united states and vietnam since re establishing diplomatic ties in one thousand nine hundred five our relationship has made major strides and  in progress on issues ranging from trade liberalization to protection of religious freedom to nuclear safety as well as providing a platform for more usefully discussing our differences our progress in recovery and accounting for the remains of americans hundred five so important relationship and one where we're trying to build a good future based on shared interests we implement a broad foreign assistance program in vietnam which supports economic reform and good governance civil society health and security our assistance includes programs to address genuine humanitarian needs including a hiv aids treatment and prevention and support for those with disabilities without regard to cost since one thousand nine hundred ninety nine states funded approximately forty three million dollars in programs in vietnam to support people with disabilities this includes significant contributions from the leahy war victims fund on the specific issue of this of this hearing agent orange has long been a sensitive issue for both countries and we've differed over the lasting impact of the defoliant on vietnam however in recent years we've moved beyond finger pointing and engaged in practice constructive cooperation with the support of additional funds from congress we are moving ahead in a multilateral effort to help vietnam address environmental contamination and related health concerns our governments have engaged in joint cooperation on the issue of dioxin contamination since two thousand and one u s assistance is provided in the spirit of cooperation with the ho strengthening the scientific capacity and infrastructure of vietnam's research institutions and improving the ability of the government of vietnam to protect the environment and promote public health for future generations united states does not recognize any legal liability for damages alleged to be related to agent orange we continue to stress that discussion of the effects of agent orange need to be based on credible scientific research that meets international standards examples of our ongoing bilateral cooperation on agent orange include the formation of a joint advisory committee composed of u s and vietnam vietnamese government officials and experts to review possible joint activities joint workshops conducted by the u s department of defense and the vietnamese ministry of defense which united states shared remediation experiences and provided detail historical information about agent orange loading and storage operations and a five year two million dollar project the u s environmental protection agency carried out to build capacity for laboratory analysis of dioxin and side evaluation design airport we're continuing to build on these cooperative efforts with the support of the us congress in may two thousand seven president bush signed the fiscal year two thousand and seven supplemental appropriations bill that included three million dollars to be used for quote environmental remediation and health activities unquote that hot spots in vietnam the newly established usa id mission in vietnam is the lead implementing agency coordinating efforts to put these use these funds to good use the first one million dollars will be used to finance house and rehabilitation activities and in on and to establish an agent orange program coordinator the balance of the funds will support the pre design planning and initiation of health and environmental mitigation activities building on u s programs that support sampling analysis dioxin containment and anon and efforts to upgrade the vietnamese scientific capacity usa id has already identified health related projects and there's an area for possible funding and is now advertising to fill the coordinator position us assistance compliments an increasingly multilateral approach to agent orange in vietnam and encourages participation from a variety of other sources u s government shares the goals of a clean safe environment and of general disability assistance with many partners the ford foundation and the united nations development program are examples of leaders in this area u s engagement has catalyzed these efforts and we look forward to coordinating our projects with our partners in conclusion we will continue to pursue constructive ways to work with the government of vietnam and other donors to address concerns related to agent orange and dioxin our efforts will focus on supporting vietnamese efforts to ensure a safe environment and assisting vietnamese living with disabilities regardless of the costs in particular we will seek to work with vietnamese scientists and health experts to address vietnam's concern over human exposure to dioxin and other toxins in the environment and will support the add ons for motion of good prenatal prenatal care to minimize disabilities thank you for giving me the opportunity to to appear before you i welcome your questions that that's the stage in our and it ocurred some thirty forty years ago we move beyond the finger pointing i agree with you but that still doesn't take away the fact that the issue is still there does not recognize any legal liability for damages alleged to be related to agent orange can you explain why the united states does not want to claim responsibility for this ten year period i don't  that comes out to be dioxin one of the most deadly us agents or chemical substance ever devised by the hand of man and i am i to hear that for this ten year period the u s just simply says we take no responsibility for what we did to them and by the way this is not just to the northern it means armies these are people in south vietnam themselves these are our friends these are the people that we're supposed to be protecting and  and help that fight alongside the so called entourage of communism this country and i would appreciate your comment on this thank you mr chairman i confess i am not a lawyer and i would have i'm not a lawyer both of i understand from our lawyers that it's a rather complicated legal issue and but that our lawyers have determined i think over many years that we do not accept any legal liability for agent orange but i think what's important is can i ask you if your lawyers or department could submit for the record their legal opinions stating that they claim no responsibility my government our government's claims no responsibility for this incident or this thing that has happened in vietnam for this ten year period i'd appreciate it  we will provide the legal reasoning but what i want to stress for chairman is we understand and acknowledge the vietnamese concerns and we are trying to move forward while not accepting the legal liability we do except that they have concerns about health and environment and we're working with them to try out some moral responsibility i would say well i think what we've done in this relationship as you know there's been a whole range of issues that broadly fall into the category of legacies of the war and i think part of what enabled us to build this relationship is that even when there may not be agreement on legal obligations i think both of our governments have tried to address the other side's concerns in a practical way and that's that's really been an i think a pillar of this relationship over the last would you agree with me mr secretary that we want to make this distinctly clear the use of asian or is wasn't just to use against the enemy forces so the enemy soldiers who want to put it also in compass those who are friends of our government and our country south vietnamese were just as much exposed to agent orange as the envy forces or the viet cong i just want to be clear if we're clear on this so that we can kind of proceeded to suggest that they're the enemy we're the good guys so therefore only the enemy should be subjected to agent orange i think that's a very correct way of looking at the situation that we find ourselves sharing my understanding of the use of agent orange was that it wasn't intended as a weapon against the enemy but that it was used as you said as a default lant through various parts of the country so yes i agree with you it was not targeted against the enemy and would have been used throughout different parts of the country as a default and rather than as a weapon and so any concerns health or environmental related to that and also stored for example in certain areas like the denali airport so any environmental or health concerns following from that would would not be necessarily related to the enemy in the war my understanding the beginning of the uses of herbicide started at the time of president john f kennedy when he issued executive order nine hundred sixty one when he was still alive and then in one nine hundred sixty five six sixty seven they now claim then with the idea hey we've got a real problem here with his services because it contains dioxin now my understanding is correct me if i'm wrong but chemical companies knew about this they knew about this did the department of defense do about this that's my question to the pointing not pointing fingers at who did right to a good run but you think there's somewhere along the line that maybe we may be at some point that the governments of the united states in vietnam and the chemical companies responsible the be three entities involved in this whole situation that maybe by putting our our resources together that we could probably then give some help and assistance to the people of vietnam and not just them bearing the burden of the thousands or whatever it is i'm told at least a million vietnamese were exposed as a general it's mr secretary and this is not just enemy forces these are innocent civilians every day life in my own experience living in the trying for all i know we had a big military base right there in the trunk for all i know i might have dioxin in my own body and my brother may have died because of this but i don't know why but i just wanted to  share with you my concerns that i'm i'm i'm a tortured by this idea that we could just simply say in writing we claim no legal responsibility so therefore go fly a kite do you think that maybe our country is greater than this if there is this this is one thing that i'm so proud and telling other people's from other cultures and other countries why our democracy is such a powerful force in the world to be reckoned with is because of our ability to correct our mistakes and take corrective action we did this against the harsh ration against one hundred ten thousand japanese american women and children whom we had car straight and put in prison camps during world war two and completely denied them of their constitute these are americans these are americans who just happen to be of japanese ancestry we put them in concentration camps confiscated their properties separated  families and what we did we find it took as years to come around to say we do apologize to our fellow americans for the wrong that we committed against a twenty thousand dollars pittance it's not the money but it's the principle that we made at least we were that big enough to say we did wrong and we want to do something to compensate at least to show that we truly are that haitian that that should apologize for what we did against japanese americans we did this also have nothing to do with it i can see i find it very difficult to accept that well mr chairman i don't think we're saying that i think we are saying that we don't accept legal liability however we as i mentioned earlier  also acknowledged the vietnamese concerns about the health and environmental impact of the use of agent orange and so without accepting legal liability let me rephrase that because we don't accept doesn't mean that we can't work with the vietnamese to address their concerns and that's what we're trying to do and that's what we've been doing since two thousand and one and now with this three million dollars from the fiscal year zero seven supplemental where we are working with our vietnamese friends to try to address concerns both on the house side and environmental side so there's a legal issue there that where we've you know i've stated our position you know we're not here and i think the term you know telling them to go when i want to share with you and where did i learn from my native away because it's it's a whole wide word wow wow means all talk but no substance three million dollars for all these years and this is all our government is willing to help but providing for the to take care of the health and environmental concerns of something that did not do our government did this and i want to thank again aspen institute and the ford foundation for them volunteers coming forward as foundations to to even show some sense of compassion i hope mr secretary that somewhere along the line in the pecking order of secretary rice or members of the cabinet or the president himself pricked his conscience and if you ever have the experience of going through those hospitals and seeing deform children not adult children totally innocent from any of the problems of the males and i'm i'm torn by this research if we can afford constructing a nine hundred million dollar embassy in baghdad i'm sure somewhere along the line we could find more than three million dollars to help the victims of these people who are who are exposed to this terrible pushing for this three million dollars appropriation to do to address the issue of agent orange but we need to do more and i want to ask for your help of course seven months from now we might have a new president you think we might have a different policy towards think we've been working with vietnam in the health area in a significant way i mean i would suggest that one issue is how much we spend specifically on issues related to agent orange but there is a lot of cooperation assistance going on with the at nama the fast majority of our assistance for vietnam which i think is about seventy four million dollars this year is in the health area some of it hiv aids some of the variety of other things so we're doing a lot in the health area we've done a lot again using money from the leahy war victims fund i think i mentioned forty three million dollars that we've spent in vietnam various health part of the trouble is there is certainly disability in vietnam and birth defects i've seen them too and it is really heart wrenching there's not very good scientific evidence about what caused it or good links not a very good there's not a good comprehensive scientific information about how many of those birth defects were caused by x y or z but what we've been doing is saying we're not going to what we can do is help and what we ought to do is help and provide assistance to people even without scientific evidence of what exactly caused it there's still value in the relationship and on a humanitarian basis providing assistance so that's what we've been doing well i didn't mean to interrupt you when you say that not enough scientific evidence is proven if there was presence of dioxin it is asian origin substances that we use chemical or towards the united states because to my knowledge i don't know of any vietnamese he didn't see or anything that we've ever found if the vietnamese themselves used asian origin against our military person it's this was a blanket thing that we did which exposed also the south vietnamese people who were supposed to be there to protect and to help and their government that they had at the time so i  just i just want to ask your opinion if perhaps a concerted effort perhaps as a part of the vietnamese government our government and this chemical companies responsible for of course you know you as a chemical government has said don't blame us talk to the department of feds are the ones that contracted us to provide them with this agent then we go to the federal government for them and says don't blame us because we're a sovereign entity we cannot be sued unless we we accept your lawsuit in court trying to say that but where then is our moral responsibility i'm not going to suggest that it's g i joe often by the way there was such an outrage from among our vietnam veterans that they have to fight they have to claw themselves every foot of the way even against the congress and administrations to get some benefits and what we settle for one hundred eighty million dollars as a settlement for this issue that has been in existence now for forty or fifty years so we help our military might which is fight that's our responsibility but the issue in the question before mr secretary what can we do to to show that maybe to lighten the burden that the governor of vietnam had had to bear to provide for the health of the so many of these abnormal children became as victims of this terrible substance that we had put on them and i'm trying to find out and if as a way to help the vietnamese government  it's nice we don't claim any legal liability how about our moral responsibility to society these people are not animals they're human beings and i know that in the time of war sometimes we think when your body gets killed next to you you come with all kinds of beautiful thoughts and seeking vengeance and wanted to do harm and in the worst way because that's what war brings out to anybody we become like animals and not looking at each other as human beings unfortunately but that's the reality of war and i say i pray to god that i my children or my children will never have to see through what i went through or my brother or any other soldier i think it was john macarthur who said the person who hates war the most are our soldiers and what we try to do is to prevent war as much as possible i'm sorry to say that i think we gulf war syndrome essentially what we did was we changed the presumption so that if man or woman in uniform were within a certain geographical area and that that person developed certain types of physical maladies that the presumption would be  an exposure that would be compensable i note that there are two different standards for eligibility one is for health coverage health benefits which i realize is much broader in the military and the other is for disability compensation as to the latter there's a list of certain maladies and they realize this is a very technical question but it actually goes to the fairness of the compensation that the men and women in uniform who claim exposure are entitled over the ever discussed the fact that there's a different standard for health coverage as opposed to disability for men and women in uniform who claim to have been exposed to agent orange in vietnam part of the relationship with vietnam but i think it's the veterans administration that i don't know is the short answer i don't know because we don't deal with the u s veterans piece of this that's done i think by the veterans administration the reason i  raise that is that that might be a good bridge because the v a has recognized that exposure could result in health benefits but it could also health care benefits but it could also result in to the statement that i realize the government has to make that it's not responsible for the for the exposure but i bring that out because we're involved in some very there have a little bit easier time going on disability than they are now that's just a suggestion then and i don't expect a response from them because i know that's out of your area but what do you think about something like that well don't accept legal liability but we do see great value for the relationship and on humanitarian terms of working with our vietnamese counterparts to try to address their concerns so when i say we don't accept legal liability that doesn't mean that we're not willing or interested in working with the vietnamese on this issue which is why we have these programs moving ahead and i hope it's something that we can on the on the environmental side as well so we are working with the vietnamese on this it's taken a while from the end of the war there were some difficult discussions a decade or so ago but it's evolving and we are pleased that we're able to work with the vietnamese on to help hiv aids malaria and these other illnesses around the world fifty billion dollars now there's a funding so let's not call it legal liability this law to get into this legal lease i know i realize as a member of the diplomatic cor and helping them but i believe that maybe we could be part of more and more hands lift the weight a little lighter maybe on the part of our government on the part of our friendly chemical companies and the vietnamese government i think if we all work together that on a humanitarian basis just three million dollars what could you possibly do with three million dollars for surgery to help a serious very very serious situation soldiers who died in world war two are still unaccounted for to this day i must commend the government of vietnam and they are making every effort to look for the safety for the remains of our six hundred twenty seven soldiers that are still not being able to be found i note with interest you might say that this is about as i realize this is a very sensitive issue a very sensitive issue in the minds of many of our veterans seven sixty six our national media national leaders portrayed old man as the most evil person was that ever lived on this planet die hard communist atheist hater of americans over the years as i started reading more and more books about this man all he was trying to do was to get rid of french colonialism that existed there for a one hundred years before we even came to the picture how many americans knew about this in terms of  the complexity of the situation that we found ourselves in the south east asia it wasn't just to contain communism the british were a colonial colonizing china burma the dutch were coloniz indonesia the french and vietnam and laos and cambodia and so i get to debate with some of my colleagues why is it that many of the asian leaders ended up becoming marxists and socialists because the worst examples of freedom and democracy mr mr secretary are our european allies who went to asia and colonized these countries gave them the worst example of what freedom and democracy meant and americans knew about this so that you know i just wanted to share with you my trying to understand a little more the vietnamese did not attack our country we went there chose a wars a matter of choice against the people and an ideology or doctrine that we believe that if you get numb falls a communist has the rest of the world will become communist well guess what mom is still a communist country they've  getting into a free market system similar to communist china home by the way exported over three hundred forty billion dollars worth of goods to the united states last year because of the consumer demand in our own markets here in the united states i don't mean to give you a lecture on this ms secretary but can we forever delete this word legal terminology and just say why don't we look at it from a humanitarian point of view and then we can work together with  government and i hope to god to break the conscience of the top executives of these chemical companies for a second just for a moment that if they did there's knowingly present some dioxin agent orange that's unconscionable that's unethical and i don't know what to say if you were a businessman would you be willing to do this knowing me it's costing the lives of people years later and to this day it's still going on mr secretary i don't mean to badger here this morning you have been such a patient a good witness for the administration but i do want to thank you sincerely for for coming here to share with us the views of the administration concerning this issue and that all my brothers and sisters who served in vietnam war if they hear from the press is on my voice there is a program for our vietnam veterans the agent orange i didn't recent years and years that they should seek consultations with the veterans administration is that they could give get assistance i wish i could say the same if we could do for our friends in vietnam that also miss katherine delfino the associate professor of southeast asian studies edmund wallace school of foreign affairs at georgetown university thank you for coming in she's currently also the director of the aspen institute project on agent orange dr von cherokee and the chief international officer of the american association for the advancement of science a member of the u s vietnam dialogue democratic lawyers which is composed of what ninety countries members from since nine hundred forty six with the vietnamese lawyers association approached and that was involved  lawsuit the vietnamese veterans association and victims of agent orange and she's worked extensively with a vietnam agent orange relief and responsibility campaign  this morning don't be mistaken with the fact that members of the subcommittee are not here because this is how we operate but one thing is for sure we do have a record and that's the most important thing i'm trying to build here and  i want you to know how much i really appreciate your making the effort to come and testify before this subcommittee and especially dr flung for coming all the way from vietnam to share with us some of her experience in having to deal with this babies born among them about two percent before forty years ago when i was an intern at the lever for the first time in my life a severely deformed baby it had no praying no limbs it was too horrible for me i was no c s well meeting shaking and how was the scared young mother she was in shock when she saw her baby then she cry for many hours many days she thought that she had committed some unforgivable mistake and was being punished by god you can imagine how much she suffered things then every day or two i have witnessed such both effects and modest sufferings but for many years i didn't know what caused these tragic evan my country scale for more than ten years with my colleagues i started to study the problem spraying of agent orange and that toxic chemicals not veterans should be rightly compensated and in one thousand eight hundred eighty five the mountain vietnam veterans lawsuits against the chemical companies that produce an orange was settled out of this historic hearing and inviting me to testify i will be brief and i'll leave my longer remarks for the record i am a social scientist not a hard scientist or a physician and so i'm going to focus my testimony on the impact of the agent orange issue on us the number relations i strongly agree with you sir should that united states has a moral responsibility to address this issue in vietnam i also believe that doing so in a significant invisible manner will help us vietnam relations both in the short medium and the long term and i'd like to speak about that specifically the united states and vietnam individually had to make the horrific discovery of the impact of agent orange in isolation of one another in the one nine hundred seventy s and one nine hundred eighty s when the normalization process began it was not an issue that was off the table and one reason for that i believe is that neither side wanted to enter into an issue they thought would derail that process as you know the normalization process was a so called road map a linear progression in which individual benchmarks are met before progress could be made at the present time and us vietnam relations were really seeing a flowering  relations in so many ways we no longer have a road map we have what many people have called a multilane highway with a number of issues at play and also a great greater number of actors in us vietnam relations and i think one interesting indication of that is that at the beginning of the decade the most famous american to visit vietnam was president clinton at the end of the decade the most famous american was bill gates i think that there are three main reasons why increased assistance and adequate assistance to this issue in vietnam would be very good for the relationship first is that expansion of the relationship in the growing importance of us vietnam ties the enormous present an economic superstar in the world in southeast asia and the united states is the largest trading partner for vietnam trade has quadrupled in this decade as well vietnam is a growing leader in nominet way will be very important in addition security ties with the country are becoming increasingly salient increasingly important for obvious reasons developing those ties will be a slow incremental across a cautious process but they will become increasingly important at the same time i think there's a serious deficit of trust in the relationship that does not in any way mitigate all of the progress that has been made in all of the goodwill on both sides a deficit that really will not be able to undergird the sorts of of relations that both sides would like to have until we settle some of the issues of the war and i think paradoxically we won't be able to move forward until we look back and we heal some of those issues and looking back lastly i would point out that this issue the issue of agent orange has a very high profile in vietnam and it's very sensitive in vietnam and i think it's fully equivalent if not more so to the profile that the p a issue has had in the united states and it's not simply a government to government issue if you go to vietnam almost on a weekly basis there are charity concerts that are given by artists to benefit the victims of agent orange and that sort of thing we have talked a lot in the policy community in the past several years about the so called loss of soft power the united states abroad the drop in in approval rates for the united states abroad and i think this is one of the best single examples of how increased activity and increased assistance could very much benefit our public diplomacy program and our image you know for all practical purposes it's a very low hanging fruit and i'm somewhat puzzled as to why the united states doesn't recognize that in his public diplomacy program initially the united states government has been very reluctant to enter into this issue even within this decade and in my evaluation some of the early activities were not very successful in the past couple of years there has been a momentum building both with some funding as well as with in this is quite important a lot of public park private partnerships as well i think that there are six things that can we can start on now that would really benefit this issue in both the mid in the long run first the executive branch needs to develop a stronger constituency for this issue within its own ranks it really doesn't have much and progress on this issue advocacy for this issue has really been upon individuals rather than the broader policy and in my own experience in the state department i don't think that's going to change until they hear from the political levels within the administration and i think that's one place we should look like and i think this this endeavor really would benefit from having standalone legislation both in terms of raising the profile of it as well as eventually securing funds that that can really address these profound and long term needs i salute earmark i think it's wonderful and certainly was necessary but i don't think that simply earmark earmark is going to address that third advocacy groups need to educate the american policy community and the american public as well there's a great ignorance in the american public about the effects of agent orange both in the united states and more seriously in vietnam and hearings like this i think are very important i was struck in my own work as a professor to see when i did a survey of the syllable of university courses in the united states that teach the vietnam war that agent orange and war legacy issues are seldom mentioned if at all and that's one place to start i do also believe that we do need to increase our assistance in our efforts with our u s veterans and i think this is a twinned issue not only for the obvious humanitarian reasons but because i think that support in the american public will increase for helping vietnam if we also continue to look after our own and  increase our efforts i also think that some effort should be made to determine the extent to which the war time exposure to agent orange has affected vietnamese americans this is something that some vietnamese american leaders h quietly exploring but they are effectively orphaned in this issue they're not eligible for compensation from the veterans administration and it would be good to in a very cautious way to go forward and look at this and lastly i  do think that vietnam should be the absolute center of this effort because of the amount of of agent orange that was sprayed but when we have made significant inroads i think we do you need to take those best practices and look to laos and testify on this important topic of agent orange legacy well my day job is as the chief international officer for the american association for the science i am serving in this position today's testimony as a member of the u s dialogue group on agent orange the persistent problem associated with agent orange contamination remains a contentious legacy of the war leading to some bilateral tension between our governments addressing this both through governmental mechanisms as well as through civil society partnerships presents an opportunity to build a stronger and sustainable relationship with this strategically important and economically vibrant asian a country my written statement addresses many of the scientific issues and some of the scope of the spring as well as some of the health impacts and environmental impacts of the spring but i would like to focus today my oral remarks for my remarks on the issue of collaborative efforts in fact many of the things that my colleague catherine mentioned today particularly through civil society engagement to address asian origin as in vietnam dealing with the agent orange legacy is becoming a greater part of the official bilateral relationship one need only look at the joint statement between president bush and president win in two thousand and six which was the first one to acknowledge dioxin contamination as a lead the war they agreed to collaborative efforts to clean up the os and hotspots of former u s military bases and increase humanitarian assistance the scale and scope of the problem is so large and solutions really so costly that government action is required that said bilateral civil society partnerships are also critical for identifying and addressing specific needs in an efficient and collaborative manner as such a number of us private foundations are getting involved for example and the reason why i'm here the ford foundation has invested nearly four and a half million dollars to address agent orange contamination and its impact on the environment and human populations as part of this effort is funded efforts of the aspen institute and convened by a national committee with the u s and vietnamese co chairs the u s vietnam dialogue group on agent orange of which two members are here today this dialogue group of which i am a member brings together policy makers and scientists from both nations to strengthen cooperation between the two countries and to identify resources to help mitigate the problem the dialogue group has identified five main areas program priority areas for attention for stakeholders including one to support clean clean up and former u s military air bases to to expand support for treatment and education centers for victims three to assist in developing a dioxin testing laboratory in vietnam for to train local communities on environmental restoration of affected land and five to continue educating advocating is catherine mentioned to build support for ongoing efforts in the united states in fact addressing agent orange issues through such collaborative efforts augment governmental endeavors and in fact increases the efficiency and in many ways the effectiveness of many of these responses further meeting these challenges through such partnerships represents an opportunity for us civil society to engage in the act of as my colleague mentioned soft diplomacy my own experiences reflect this and the value of the potential scientists the scientists interaction as a critical tool for building bilateral good will which may translate may translate into improved bilateral relationships i'd look at the polling that takes place around the world that shows the respect that the us science has around the world particularly as an agent for good in meeting many of the social issues as with other international scientific engagements our work with vietnamese scientific community allows us to move beyond many of the politically contentious issues instead we're able to focus on finding solutions to challenges relate to environment health and long term measurement and monitoring i believe that the u s scientific community can continue to work in partnership with the vietnamese scientists to build capacity and integrate been vietnamese scientists into a rapidly developing global science enterprise the proposal for a high resolution dioxin laboratory provides a great example of this approach the collaboration between the government of vietnam u s based around asians and the scientific community to develop a high resolution dioxin testing center in vietnam will ultimately levy any scientists t test their own environmental and really more critically human samples rather than outsourcing them to foreign laboratories in europe and canada with continued international collaboration and training this lab may contribute to the peer reviewed literature on a range of potential environmental contaminants have impacted national and regional scales more importantly this lab will provide a training facility for future generations of vietnamese scientists this technically trained next generation will not only contribute to the continued economic innovation and growth in vietnam but also provide a window of opportunity for scientific collaboration with counterparts around the world and particularly with the united states it is really time to address the legacy of war by working together and putting it behind us so that our rapidly growing bilateral relationship can flourish thank you mr chairman for giving me the time for these remarks thank you very much a holding this hearing today ordinarily vietnam veterans of america we stick to veterans issues and domestic policy and it's in our constitution that we do not take stands on things outside of veterans issues broadly defined two of those issues beginning in december of one nine hundred eighty one vietnam veterans of america sent our first delegation back to be president bobby muller and there were two items on the agenda one was the fullest possible accounting for s and you've got to talk to the people who own the country now and secondly is the issue of agent orange vietnam is the natural laboratory where you can do the epidemiological studies particularly in the north you know exactly who went south it is a little bit different a diet but it's basically a margin it's gene pool and you can track those populations and compare them to those who are progeny of those who didn't go to the south as opposed to those that so that we press from nine hundred eighty one with many delegations going to be nominees to issues beginning in the early one nine hundred ninety s we launched the veterans initiative which was collecting information about grave science for where in v a and be a punk and they and their opponents in that war might have grave sites and turned it over to their veterans organization of vietnam and in return they get information back from villages that they would give the veterans association that they may not give to their government one thing that's common around the world is no matter where you live ordinary persons don't want to truck with government but they will talk to the veterans association so we would then turn that over to r j pak command and to the ambassador and the briefing on a way out of country and and so the vietnamese believe we've helped them locate many of their m i a s which were three hundred and fifty some odd thousand in a very small country and they've located about thirty five thousand men and told us that the information that we've supplied that came from american veterans was useful so when there is a here it's warrior to warrior former warrior to former warrior reaching out to help the families on the other side resolve their emotional issues and find out what happened to their loved one on the issue of agent orange beginning in mid ninety's we started to really push on we were able beginning in one nine hundred ninety nine ninety eight ninety nine to get funding inserted into the national institute for environmental health budget in order to move forward and start research in vietnam and nothing happened because the was reluctance on the vietnamese side according to the in i h s we then and then president in two thousand thomas h cory who is an infantry men shot through the chest in service with the calves in a show was able to prevail and come to an agreement with the vietnamese agreed to move forward and then in the fall of two thousand and one we finally got in i to agree to move forward to do a conference and to do an agreement in february and in february beginning of march two thousand and two that conference was held it was there in the national conferences on dioxin every year but this was the first international conference on agent orange there was also a smaller subsequent conference that was healthy and came out of that a demo you to move forward on two fronts one abt me logical studies in vietnam that were jointly conducted and and environmental assessment the country wide and low cost remediation that could be conducted unfortunately the epidemiological studies never got started at all and s studies which stopped and that's where we are today the impact here is that some of what needed to happen and what the vietnamese rightly wanted for their people was capital infusion session  access to capital and markets and the world trade and funds to do the health care they believe from the outset that research was moot that it was clear and apparent the need and the connection and however for american veterans that's not so for many diseases and the state department statement of the gentleman who spoke earlier today robust peer reviewed science that meets international standards and they always use that same phrase but i want to tell you ain't nobody else going to fund research into agent orange or agent blue or agent pink or malice ion impact or anything else in vietnam if it's not the federal government they're the only ones going to fund it and they use this phrase over and over and over again and in fact at this moment there is not a single agent orange related study funded by the federal government not by v a not by d o d not by e p a not by a by no one by no one and so therefore if you couple that with the fact that a million and a half for the medical follow up agency to process the data left over from the end of the ranch and study of that closed down last year to even maintain that data and make it accessible to scientists for mining that data if you will in future peer reviewed scientific literature and the fact that they have stopped against the law the national vietnam consequence on the other side is that the science is not going to be there for the vietnamese we are all for anything that is going to help our counterparts in vietnam including the humanitarian aid that you talked about earlier and  that three million is a foot through the door but i'm not surprised at all to discover that state hasn't yet actually let any money and begun work the most positive things that's happened in all this is the action of the ford foundation and i commend them for stepping in and for seeking out the aspen institute and for moving this issue forward to do an assessment and start some remediation efforts at least of some of the hot spots in vietnam because the ammo you frankly is dead at this point and i don't know one thing that just last point is this or there is some consistency on the part of the federal government jerry kramer the famous n f l player guard six time pro bowler with the green bay packers was once asked once what do you think about vince lombardi and his response was coach will embark he is the fairest man i've ever met he treats us all like dogs and in ad sense the federal government has been consistent in treating the vietnamese people and american veterans and their families the same misjudgement be glad to answer any questions and thank you very much for your leadership sir we're going to thank you for your testimony i'm go remember that statement from barney i thought it was the other one too the only thing good is winning is winning you're probably quoted better than i do but i do miss ma fallin and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to testify on this important issue of our forgotten responsibility the victims of aging are and this issue has been with us for a long time without a comprehensive solution i have submitted to the testimony that my written testimony i'm not going to read it but i want to emphasize a few points first of all the  because i am a lawyer and i am involved in the case that involves the vietnamese victims i do have some views on the legal issues and whether i have nothing against lawyers except  s i can agree with you on some aspects of that the what i do want to do is talk about the legal issues a little bit because i think the legal does inform the moral and i don't think  the question of how we came to use agent orange is specifically has been specifically addressed in these hearings and i do want to indicate that there actually was a legal opinion that was sought by president kennedy that there actually was a dispute between department of defense that wanted to use this nice chemical weapon to destroy could you provide those two documents for the record as you just said about president kennedy and there was another opinion japanese and we asked for a legal opinion as to whether or not that was using those kinds of agents was legal in part because the united states has ratified something called the hague convention of one thousand zero seven which among other things outlaws the use of poison and poisoned weapons in war now because it's a ratify treaty under article six section two of our constitution is actually a domestic law it's not just international law it's domestic law time the the fact that it was a violation of the the hague convention was never conceded nobody conceded that it wasn't a violation of the hague convention or prior conventions that existed prior to hague which hague codified and those include retaliation does not in my view undercut the fact that hague has still is the existing law and it's and it's the law that should be followed among among relates specifically to the use of the chemical that they knew was a poison and from our perspective even though it was used as a herbicide when you put poison in herbicides you fundamentally change its character and that's really the th but cramer said just so that it's clear that he was the head of the judge advocate general corps was that you can use herbicides although he conceded that in japan he said you could use them because even though they're poisoning crops and that's a poison the japanese won't be able to come back at us because they used poison against dogs in the russian dogs in the in the japanese war but on the safe side if you're going to use these kinds of weapons or these kinds of materials they can be used as long as they are harmless to man and as long as they have been tested to know that they are not going to hurt the land thought will animals people either directly through the at the application or indirectly through ingesting now the fact is that thinking that it was going to create exactly what you said hostility among our friendly friendly government friendly people in south vietnam against us for using these agents and so he used and and in if you can use these things but they have to be harmless to man they have to be harmless to the individuals well they never were tested never never tested and in fact there have been books written about this and that cited in my testimony that the department of defense which actually knew that the oxen was a very terrible chemical and in fact had rejected use of dioxin directly as a chemical agent because it was too dangerous didn't think about it much i think there was this view of we have these chemicals and better living through chemistry we can we can accomplish a military goal of etc but there's no question that and i'm going to tell you  i'm biased on this that that there was a violation of of the law in hague when we used these the hague convention when we use these chemicals now i do want to i do want to say that you noted in your in your opening statement dow convince convened a meeting with all these chemical companies to try to see if they could limit their access in the in the in the ir product and because they were getting internally their own research was showing something very horrible and v k row as to who was that head toxicolog has said he couldn't find a level below which you weren't getting liver damage in rabbits so they knew now the next the next issue then is what  happened is that the united states was testing through the by an ethics laboratory the agents that were being used and they were coming up with her ethic her a thick result and instead epidemiology animal data we stopped using it it was banned both nationally and internationally and i think that's an important point is it was because of animal behavior not all this human epidemiology we're talking about that we stopped using it now what's been the impact and we we i know there's been a lot of testimony about the impact on us the enemy's relations and i've been to be at na many times because my clients  are vietnamese in fact this is the last ghost of this war and there's a documentary film with that title and it's based on the statements by u s state department officials which make that claim that this is the last issue that needs to be resolved but let's talk about some of the things that are the result of the legacy of not testing this this first of all but what's really horrible to me is that it didn't have to be there the chemical companies knew how to create these agents in a manufacturing process that would have virtually eliminated that oxman was the bore and your mouth said it was a slow process low heat and you could virtually eliminate the doctrine and the oxen had nothing to do with the so with absolutely had no military necessity what so ever that that to me is one of the major tragedies and the other thing is that we used it and i think the according to jean stillman and the papers that were that have actually done have come out as a result of some studies on the on the exposure assessment about ten times the concentration was used in vietnam as was used to do weed killing in the united states and this has this is this is one of the reasons why we're seeing the kinds of results from hatfield and they and their people one of the other thing that is fairly new is that we now know where scientists are now knowing that dioxin acts like a hormone and there are various receptor cells in the in the d needs and it then gets into the cell and that's when the d n a damage happens and this is something that's relatively new in terms of the understanding the mechanism of how dioxin works and this is this is a very important issue in terms of future studies and and evaluation i'm not going to go into what the dialogue group has found because they've already been hearing testified but it seems to me that clearly there is an immediate immediate need to clean up these hot spots because it's going to continue to develop in the environment you have bio accumulation in the fish in the in the in the food chain and the continued to accumulate the the dioxin in the in the food chain this is going to continue for third fourth fifth generations that we're going to be seeing these these birth defects we're now seeing them in third generation now bottom line is that the u s soldiers all of the soldiers and now there are their claims being made in korea and new zealand and other places where our allies work these things have to be resolved they have  resolved quickly and i applaud you and i applaud the committee for taking this on and you know whether we can all sit down in a room with the chemical companies the united states government and see if we can come up with a reasonable solution that's something maybe for a later day but i think this is testimony this hearing certainly starts that process and i would agree with a number of my colleagues on some of the are there are suggestions that frankly i want to thank you so last night very very telling and this is something that i hope that the american public will become more aware of of this issue of agent orange dr newman since you  children of vietnam you're talking about a span of about how many years have you witnessed this the time that you became as a doctor  s i don't want to go outside of your mom i just want to know exactly what kind of a structure that we have place in vietnam first in terms of well for that matter how much funding there's a governor vietnam put into the agent orange project i'm curious  ixia my office is going to be dialoguing with your embassy here in washington to sort it yeah i would like to have want to know how much resources the government of vietnam is putting into this as you know i stated earlier with our secretary my show when i said i'm looking at the concept of a working together bird sharing if you will for one i certainly don't want vietnam to bear the full burden but i think maybe if we have the help of the u s government as well as the chemical companies hopefully or also our foundations that are willing to provide also assistance i'm just trying to get a  figure in terms of what kind of a priority is a vietnam you know we have a saying here in washington if you want to know what your priorities are look at the budget and if you have a billion dollar the only putting out fifty million dollars for agent orange that doesn't that's not very convincing to us here in the congress that vietnam is very serious about the issue now this doesn't excuse my own government suggesting that three million dollars or forty three million dollars that we've given as to indicate also you know we think it's important but you know we have a war in iraq we've got the all these other issues that we have to contend with but i would maybe somebody here from the vietnamese embassies here and hearing that i definitely am going to pursue this more timms every exactly how much resources and what kind of a priority is the government of you know putting on this because she's how i'm going to make my case with my colleagues in the congress it's like saying well where do we go from here and i know you're a medical doctor you're not a statistician or someone that deals with the politics of all this but i didn't mean to burden you with this but i was just curious if but at least from the medical side how many teams of doctors do you have in vietnam that are on a daily basis on a you know really looking into this problem in caring for the deformed children people with defects in all this as a result of being exposed to agent orange dioxin yeah i think that i'll i'll when you submit that for the record can you give us more details of how much of  the medical resources doctors nurses or whatever i just want to get a picture of of what what amount of resources your government committed in addressing the issue of agent orange yeah yeah just like what we're discussing here and what we're trying to do there's two phases i'm looking at this now one in terms of the health conditions and one is the environmental cleanup and how that's i think those are two basic areas that we want to kind of have a sense of division here of who can do better who can do best if perhaps providing for this kind of service in the cleanup but the deity with normal defects health conditions another question is children shown and how many years it stays it's about every seven years it diminishes and however the you mentioned reference to have field report earlier in their testing of the soil at the bat special forces camp in the  aking our frame of reference for the kind of medical and scientific equipment we consider as a matter of course doesn't apply to vietnam they are struggling very hard to modernize their society they don't have a system  of public medical records is an example of the way in which exist in western countries and they are moving the country very quickly there per capita income has almost doubled but it's still one of the poorest countries in the world and despite that they do their doggoned is to provide health care to everybody so it's that frame of reference the when we visited a hospital in denying a few years ago they had an autoclave there that was one hundred thirty four vented from the french and that was still in use a sense they've got the new out of clay and part of the effort before is to have them have the scientific equipment to be able they have the mines they have the energy they have the skills but they needed the equipment and then so i says to get the equipment for things like a mass gas spectrometer prior to them getting it it costs eleven hundred dollars a pop one blood sample to do a  have it shipped back so it's out of the reach of even many american universities once again i come back to unless the u s government funds it that's the only place where there's enough resources to do this kind of basic research with it was considered a sensitive issue on both sides but then we just left it there is that seems to be the way things went thank you mr chairman first of all it was i have to say my own assessment of the road map was that it was  symmetrical and one of the pressures the sort of damocles that were over the vietnamese government was lifting the embargo and so getting into a protracted issue would have been very difficult the issues that side or legacy issues it really was not until one thousand nine hundred scientists and humanitarian groups began to try to push this issue into the policy community and it really wasn't until the early part of this decade that anything was done between the two governments on this at all i believe we have almost probably over a million americans living in our country assessments are monitoring american service organizations to prepare and submit with one of their member board members who is a professor of medicine at johns hopkins a and our unsolicited proposal and we worked with them to priorities at the moment so there's no way it's like why didn't you get hired is it because you're a combat vet or what is it somebody actually have a better resume and a better fit for the job it's one of those things how do you prove that  have to be a doctor or scientist but do you think that they've been to terms if something could be done with our vietnamese american community associations or organizations throughout the country and just by say hey  have there been any unusual results of vietnamese children being born in this country that should be given a red flag right there without even going through the c d c or any of these and i hate studies but just pure common sense say hey you've got a problem here and then systematically the fact it does exist among the vietnamese coming from vietnam i but i'm glad you have noted the fact that and i h's rejected requests for on the impact if any dioxin among the vietnamese americans who moved from vietnam i'm very curious as i'm quite sure this is the kind of issue that is so sensitive even families don't even want to medical professionals my concerns are tricky and i don't want to study this thing to death i think we need to produce some results as i'm sure with all the facts and data i don't think we need to but some are nice colleagues are going to be very critical of this effort on my part as chairing chairman of the subcommittee but i honestly believe this is the greatness of america for what it is as a nation i don't think we can continue to bring this issue congress to make sure that we do something at least on a humanitarian basis but i have all every respect for our legal profession and you know legal profession i don't know what to say but i'm saying that this is something beyond being legal you know something could be legal and yet could be very immoral if that's a better way of saying it and i think we've got a moral issue here just society that we need to address as i'm sure that and  i only just i'm going to be working very closely with this here about to see what submission of more data and information we're trying to build a record here we're trying to to see where all this is going to filter out hopefully as  stated earlier we need to stand alone so legislation for this and as massive a situation that we find ourselves in with all of this having a laboratory vietnam is a laboratory itself all we need to do now is to put the tools give them the tools in this phase where they could do this themselves as i'm sure they'll be willing to do it if we just give them the the tools and the chances i said i have so many questions i don't know where to start i guess to some a done deal we've already talked about it and i'm saying we're past pointing fingers i think now we're looking at from one human being to another human being let's help those poor people out there in vietnam and even our own vietnam veterans who have still been struggling with this issue and where our government civilian authority has been giving us the run around that i think is inexcusable that's the reason why we have oversight hearings and our constitutional mandate and responsibility as a congress and i feel that we will fail in our responsibility if we don't bring this out to the open and for public discussion not only for the better understanding of the american public because this american taxpayers money and i think the average american just want to know how the money is being spent if it's been for the for helping other human beings i don't think any american will object to that but that's  me but i i just cannot thank all of your enough for being mr wait a minute mr mayor as chairman i have one question you when you were talking in ms miers testimony we've done a lot of research in the last ten years we thought we knew agent orange pretty well until we started to dig into the project she added some chemical and biological testing and we discovered at the kennedy library in boston the project one twelve and project one twelve we were the first ones to start part and then finally the o d s knowledge that project one twelve as you know former secretary mcnamara mentioned was for everything in neat little things and they what they did is take all chemical and biological and we believe pharmacological testing and put it under the rubric and that rubric was project one twelve included in that was the entire herbicides program with that memo that was five point eight seven argument it's been for years what i mean by that it was shipped a vietnam in a powder form and it was mixed there by contractors they knew this stuff was dangerous and they knew how to extricate liability is sorry the army of the republic of vietnam south i know you and i know that but for the record i just want to make sure they and so that officer would sign off on the orders so we weren't spraying it we were doing it at our quest of our allies so it never was actually owned by the government and the next year and  year because again in powder form the difference is one point eight pounds versus what was actually the minimum which was five point eight five and that's a hell of a difference in terms of the strength of the whatever it is that your spring the only point is that we have a great number of documents that were tailor talk about agent orange during the time it was project part of project one twelve but it was only separated in one thousand nine hundred sixty nine because henry kissinger did not want to go back to the renegotiation in seventy one of the international treaty treaty on chemical and biological weapons with having agent orange because it wasn't just the voice station it was also crop destruction which is specifically illegal and so he wanted it out of the project one twelve on paper they moved it all the way out of there and that's how i became separated so i'm not an attorney either mr chairman i'm just a vietnam veteran with an exposed and that in over three thousand hamlets and and that data is actually in a database that could be used for study court of appeals well actually the court of appeals yesterday turned down our request for going up to the supreme yes we are but they did mention in a footnote in the opinion that they really thought indirectly that congress should address that and they quite pointing out that congress had already appropriated this three million dollars doesn't take a rocket scientist opinion this is a matter of public policy not a question of l purposes for with was the consequences and now we have to face up to and and resolve the problem thank you so much for being here and again please do not hesitate to keep in touch with my office we'll pursue this subcommittee is going to continue to pursue this is you and some people i know are going to be very critical of the this effort on the part of the chairman to do this the candle doesn't burn out on this issue i think we ought to pursue it and every way possible not to accuse of any the idea that i know i'm not into that i just let's just solve the problem i think dr drake in your idea about having a lab but i can't see why just would be such a horrible thing to do i think we can find out with some solution to give the tools to be the scientists and the people that can go there  and then really do this a better job than what we've been doing i don't know who it is that is trying to circumvent or surprise whatever it is that it think that that there are agent orange issue is not to be discussed for way for what  reason but i guess because of my own personal experiences i'm a byproduct of medicine for all i know i might have dioxin in my own body and i don't know what because i was right there sixty seven sixty eight so who knows i might get a little benefit from the veteran