Agent Orange [1]:
Operation Trail Dust
pic credit: courtesy of William A. Buckingham
by Robert Allen
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US veterans of the American war in Vietnam (1961-1975) and Vietnamese workers are locked in a legal battle in a New York court, seeking compensation for their injuries. In the first of a three-part series on Agent Orange, Robert Allen explains the history of the dioxin-contaminated biological weapon and sumarises the court case.
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Phan Thi Phi Phi has indelible memories of the American war in Vietnam. For five years, between April 1966 and July 1971, she saw the horrors of warfare. As a physician in Quang Nam and Quang Ngai provinces she treated the maimed and wounded. As director of Number One Hospital, which operated mobile units near rivers and streams and close to the Ho Chi Minh trail valley, she stared into a heart of darkness - a gloom so pervasive that it is still present in Vietnam today, almost 30 years after the end of the war.
Dr Phi Phi knew what she was letting herself in for when she arrived in the jungle. The Ho Chi Minh trail, which allowed the Vietnamese to transport 60 tons of aid per day and 20,000 soldiers a month from Hanoi to the edge of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), snaked through the forests where Dr Phi Phi and her colleagues set up hospital units.
When the trail was established in the early years of the war, the trek south was a hardship that took six months to endure. One in ten of those who carried supplies succumbed to malaria and other diseases. As the war progressed the trail brought a constant stream of Vietnamese soldiers accompanied by American bombs. It also brought something else, a horror so deadly it could not be imagined.
The American war in Vietnam began in 1961 when the fledgling administration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy inherited a conflict it did not want. It was a conflict that would escalate into a full-scale war in the post-JFK period, but in 1961 it was about the US-supported southern Republic of Vietnam government and how the Americans could aid its war against the northern Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Vietnamese National Liberation Front.
Kennedy's administration did not want a global war machine. This contrasted with the interests of American business - specifically the armaments and electronics corporations but also the interests of the chemical industry giants, which, since 1940, had co-operated with the Pentagon on biological weapons research.
With big business keen to see an escalation of the war, the Kennedy administration was keen to bring about its end and when counter-insurgency operations were suggested they were given clearance. A memo from the State department to President Kennedy on 'Defoliant Operations in Vietnam', dated November 24, 1961, suggested that defoliation was an accepted tactic of war. President Kennedy was told that the north Vietnamese and the NLF operated in forests and mangroves, and were using a trail through heavily forested valleys to bring aid, weapons and personnel.
Specially prepared herbicides, he was told, could be used for defoliation. At the end of November 1961, believing that the north Vietnamese and NLF could be routed from the jungle, President Kennedy approved a joint recommendation from the departments of State and of Defense to initiate biological warfare in Vietnam. The order was for defoliation only. With the co-operation of the South Vietnam government, Operation Trail Dust was put into practice. At long last the US military had the chance to use a biological weapon it had been preparing for almost 20 years.
In 1940 scientists isolated indoleacetic acid - the hormone that regulates growth in plants - as part of a programme to synthesise plant compounds. Among these were 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T) - simple bondings of chlorine and phenol. Researchers discovered that tiny amounts of these synthetic plant hormones were capable of stimulating plants. When they increased the dose they learned that these synthetic hormones could also kill. Researchers realised that each compound had different effects on different plants. In combination these phenoxy herbicides formed a lethal weapon against unwanted vegetation.
It was Professor E. J. Kraus, head of the Botany Department of the University of Chicago, who alerted the US military to the existence of these hormone-like substances. Kraus suggested to the military that it might be interested in "the toxic properties of growth regulating substances for the destruction of crops or the limitation of crop production".
By 1943 Kraus had recommend 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T to a US National Academy of Sciences committee on biological warfare. A year later Kraus moved to the US army's centre for biological warfare at Camp (later Fort) Detrick. But the plan to use 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T to destroy enemy crops was thwarted by peace when the 1939-45 war ended. The research, however, continued. Kraus oversaw a programme that resulted in the screening of approximately 1200 compounds. Eventually some of these compounds were tested on tropical vegetation in Puerto Rico and Thailand. By 1961, when President Kennedy gave the order for their use in Vietnam, the military was ready with six chemical mixtures - named Agent White (2,4-D, picloram); Agent Blue (cacodylic acid); Agent Green (2,4,5-T); Agent Orange (2,4-D, 2,4,5-T); Agent Pink (2,4,5-T) and Agent Purple (2,4-D, 2,4,5-T). The US military had successfully tested Purple in 1959 at Fort Drum in New York, and US Army veterans allege that the military sprayed toxic chemicals on Flamenco Island in Panama in 1958.
Kennedy administration policy initially emphasised that the South Vietnam government would only be assisted with the herbicide operation. A 1962 pact assigned the ownership of the herbicides to the South Vietnam government, and South Vietnam soldiers handled their loading and transportation when they reached Vietnamese territory. The plans for herbicide use were co-ordinated by the US Embassy to the South Vietnam government, the US Military Assistance Command of Vietnam and a subdivision of the Saigon General Staff of the South Vietnam government, codenamed Committee 202.
From August 10, 1961 when airplanes targeted Kontum, for five months US military personnel using South Vietnam aircraft conducted tests using the new herbicides. By January 1962, after President Kennedy's order, the first shipments of the herbicides started to arrive.
Purple, Pink and Green were used to defoliate forest and mangrove. The spraying was done by airplane, helicopter, truck, boat, and by soldiers on foot. Throughout 1962 spraying of all targets required prior approval from the White House, until later in the year President Kennedy delegated limited power to the joint US/South Vietnam staff in Vietnam.
In Operation Ranch Hand: The Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia, 1961-1971, William Buckingham revealed how the decision to begin destroying Vietnam's stable crops - beans, manioc, corn, bananas, tomato, pineapple and rice - was gradually wrestled from Washington.
"The decision to begin destroying crops with herbicides was longer in coming, even though President [Ngo Dinh] Diem was an early and enthusiastic advocate of crop destruction. He maintained that he knew where the Viet Cong crops were, and South Vietnamese officials had difficulty in understanding why the Americans wouldn't give them a readily-available chemical that would accomplish with much less effort what they were already doing by cutting, pulling, and burning. Although the Defense Department favored chemical crop destruction, several influential people in the State Department, notably Roger Hilsman and W. Averell Harriman, were opposed. They argued that there was no way to insure that only Viet Cong crops would be killed, and the inevitable mistakes would alienate the rural South Vietnamese people. Hilsman maintained that the use of this technology would enable the Viet Cong to argue that the U.S. represented 'foreign imperialist barbarism,' and Harriman urged that crop destruction should be postponed to a later stage in the counterinsurgency struggle when the Viet Cong would not be so closely intermingled with the people."
On October 2, 1962, President Kennedy decided to allow restricted spraying of crops.
By 1964, with Kennedy assassinated, the war escalated and with it the use of the phenoxy herbicides. Authority and restrictions were gradually relaxed and the areas sprayed expanded from forest and mangrove to include Vietnam's crops. In July 1965 Purple, Pink and Green were replaced by Orange and White when the operation went airborne under the codename Hades. The spraying was done from the air by camouflaged Fairchild C-123 planes fitted with 1000 gallon tanks and removable identification insignia in what became known as Operation Ranch Hand.
When they performed crop destruction missions, US military documents reveal that the aircraft bore South Vietnam insignia, the US Air Force flight crews wore civilian clothing and were accompanied by a South Vietnam army crew member, all working under the US departments of Defense and State, codename Farmgate, with the sole purpose of "decreasing enemy food supplies". In 1965 almost half of the total spraying was designed to destroy crops, a war crime in contravention of international law.
Agent Orange comprised of almost two-thirds of the herbicides sprayed, 95% of it from the air. Approximately 20,000 missions were flown. Between July 1965 and June 1970 13.05 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed over Indochina, in Laos and Cambodia (Kampuchea) as well as Vietnam. A frequent target of the Ranch Hand operation was the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which received the bulk of what has since been described as the largest chemical warfare operation in history.
It has been estimated that up to four million Vietnamese were exposed to herbicides between 1961 and 1971. It is not known how many of the 4.2 million US personnel deployed in Vietnam were exposed. Anyone - like Joseph Isaacson, a US Air Force crew chief who handled the herbicides at any of the US bases in Vietnam - Bien Hoa, Da Nang, Nha Trang, Phu Cat, plus the Aluoi and Asau valleys - faced exposure. They also included Vietnamese workers like Dr Phi Phi.
Now, in a legendary legal battle as long as the war itself, she is joined with veteran Joseph Isaacson in a compensation fight in the courts of New York seeking justice for the hurt and pain caused by Agent Orange and its deadly toxic contaminant - dioxin.
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Robert Allen
Next: Heart of Darkness
This series on Agent Orange, its deadly toxicity and the legal battle to bring compensation to its victims also appears in The Morning Star, London.
Robert Allen is the author of The Dioxin War: Truth and Lies about a Perfect Poison, Pluto Press [see below], and a forthcoming book, Orange, on the story of Agent Orange and its victims.
Robert Allen is the author of Dioxin War: Truth & Lies About A Perfect Poison, Pluto Press, London/Ann Arbor/Dublin and University of Michigan, US, published in July 2004. Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.
Book Description
This is a book about Dioxin, one of the most poisonous chemicals known to humanity. It was the toxic component of Agent Orange, used by the US military to defoliate huge tracts of Vietnam during the war in the 60s and 70s.
It can be found in pesticides, plastics, solvents, detergents and cosmetics. Dioxin has been revealed as a human carcinogen, and has been associated with heart disease, liver damage, hormonal disruption, reproductive disorders, developmental destruction and neurological impairment.
The Dioxin War is the story of the people who fought to reveal the truth about dioxin. Huge multinationals Dow and Monsanto both manufactured Agent Orange. Robert Allen reveals the attempts by the chemical industry, in collusion with regulatory and health authorities, to cover up the true impact of dioxin on human health. He tells the remarkable story of how a small, dedicated group of people managed to bring the truth about dioxin into the public domain and into the courts - and win.
Robert Allen is the author of No Global: The People of Ireland versus the Multinationals, Pluto Press, London/Ann Arbor/Dublin, published in April 2004. Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.
Book Description
Ireland's economy has seen phenomenal growth since the 1990s, as a result of an earlier decision by the state to chase foreign investment, largely from US corporates. As a result, manufacturers of raw chemicals, pharmaceuticals and highly dangerous substances came to Ireland, where they could make toxic products free from the strict controls imposed by other nations.
Robert Allen's book reveals the consequences to human health and the environment of the Irish state's love affair with the multinational chemical industry. The cost to Irish society was a series of ecological and social outrages, starting in the 1970s and continuing into the 2000s.
No Global is a lesson for countries who seek to encourage multinationals at the expense of the health their population and the delicate nature of their ecosystems. It is also a heart-warming record of the successful campaigns fought by local people to protect themselves and their environment from polluting industry
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