Agent Orange: History, Science, and the Politics of Uncertainty

Notes

[ 249 ] Notes The following abbreviations are used in the notes: ALY Alvin L. Young Collection on Agent Orange, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, Maryland ANZ Archives New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand AOCRF Agent Orange Claims Resolution Files, NARA Record Group 341/190 AOLF Agent Orange Litigation Files, NARA Record Group 341/190 FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States MACJ3-06 Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Surface Operations Division: Chemical Warfare Operations, NARA Record Group 472/270 MACJ3-09 Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Chemical Operations Division: Herbicide Operations NARA Record Group 472/270 MACV–CORDS Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support, NARA Record Group 472/270 NARA National Archives II, College Park, Maryland NYT New York Times RG Record Group TTU Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University WP Washington Post INTRODUCTION 1. Mike Baker, “Diabetes Now Tops Vietnam Vets’ Claims,” Associated Press Report, August 30, 2010. Baker, who reviewed several veterans’ files under a Freedom of Information Act Request, notes in the article that there “is no record” of the veteran’s journey but that he was nevertheless able to make a successful claim based on it. Although the Veterans Administration became the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1989, I will use the abbreviation VA throughout to avoid confusion and to reflect the term used by most veterans and policymakers. 2. Interview with author, April 20, 2008. 3. The full names for 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T are 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid and 2,4,5-Trichlorophenoxyacetic acid, respectively. 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-paradioxin , more commonly known as 2,3,7,8-TCDD, or simply TCDD, is one of dozens of toxins known collectively as dioxins. Its name is derived from the location [ 250 ] NOTES TO PAGE 3 of the chlorine atoms on the molecule (positions 2, 3, 7, and 8), and their position relative to the benzene and oxygen atoms. The configuration of these components on the TCDD molecule makes 2,3,7,8-TCDD by far the most toxic form of dioxin, thousands of times more toxic than other polychlorinated dioxins. TCDD can be produced by a number of processes, including the manufacture of herbicides such as 2,4,5-T. Throughout this book, unless otherwise noted, when I refer to dioxin or to Agent Orange and its associated dioxin, I am referring to 2,3,7,8-TCDD. Similarly , while it is critical to understand that Agent Orange and TCDD are distinct and noninterchangeable things, for reasons of brevity I will refer to Agent Orange in most sections of the book without always qualifying it as Agent Orange and its associated dioxin, a more accurate but also a more cumbersome phrase. For more on the makeup, history, and characteristics of dioxins and of TCDD, see Alastair Hay, The Chemical Scythe: Lessons of 2,4,5-T and Dioxin (New York: Plenum Press, 1982). 4. For instance, George Herring’s America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950–1975, one of the most widely used textbook accounts of the war, has only two sentences about the use of herbicides in Vietnam. Herring, America’s Longest War (1979; repr. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 168. Marilyn Young’s The Vietnam Wars (New York: Harper-Perennial, 1991) devotes only about three paragraphs to the issue, two of which appear in the epilogue (see 82, 190–91, 325–26). Even Ronald Frankum’s Like Rolling Thunder: The Air War in Vietnam 1964–1975 has only eight pages on defoliation (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2005). 5. For the traditional military approach, see William Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand: The Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia, 1961–1971(Washington: Office of Air Force History, 1982); and Paul Cecil, Herbicidal Warfare: The Ranch Hand Project in Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1986). Cecil’s is perhaps the best-known work on the subject. Cecil is a veteran of Operation Ranch Hand, however, and, like Buckingham, is overly sympathetic to the U.S. military and now somewhat outdated in his discussions of science and medical developments in the field. For the advocacy approach, see Fred A. Wilcox, Waiting for an Army to Die (1989; repr. Cabin John, MD: Seven Locks Press, 2011); and Jock McCulloch, The Politics of Agent Orange (Richmond, Australia: Heinemann Books, 1984). More recently Wilbur Scott’s Vietnam Veterans since the War: The Politics of PTSD, Agent Orange, and the National Memorial (Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 2004) has taken this school in a much...