[Peace-discuss] CNN censors the news

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

CNN has been censored for years by DOD experts assigned to CNN in Atlanta. 

For example this story was killed too  because Shad continues today.  and we 
are going to destroy Iraq because of the same but not even as bad of actions. 
 

doug

**

DoD Releases Information on 1960 tests

WASHINGTON, January 4, 2002 (DeploymentLINK) - In the 1960s, the Department 
of Defense conducted a series of chemical and biological warfare 
vulnerability tests on naval ships known collectively as Project Shipboard 
Hazard and Defense. Over the past 10 years, some individual veterans 
expressed concern to the Department of Veterans Affairs that their 
participation in these tests may have exposed them to harmful substances.

In August 2000, the VA asked the DoD for help in obtaining information needed 
to clarify claims information from servicemembers who believed they might 
have been exposed to harmful substances during their participation in SHAD 
exercises. Specifically, VA claims experts needed to know what type of 
substances veterans may have been exposed to, and when they may have been 
exposed. The simulants or agents used, dates of the tests and which vessels 
were involved are key to determine if there should be a concern today. The 
Defense Department then began an investigation to determine possible medical 
hazards which may have been associated with these tests and recently released 
the first in a series of fact sheets about the exercises. Dee Dodson Morris 
is coordinating this ongoing investigation. Her 22-year career in the Army 
Chemical Corps gives her distinctive understanding of these tests.

"Simulants replaced actual chemical and biological warfare agents in most of 
these tests," she said, "but some plans involved the use of actual chemical 
and biological warfare agents. However, so far we have found no evidence to 
indicate that participation in Project SHAD caused harmful health effects at 
the time."

Getting the facts has proven to be a challenge for a number of reasons, she 
said. The SHAD tests were intended to show how vulnerable Navy ships were to 
chemical or biological warfare agents. The objective was to learn how 
chemical or biological warfare agents would disperse throughout a ship, and 
to use that information to develop procedures to protect crewmembers and 
decontaminate ships. Naturally, the entire program was classified. And, as 
Morris points out, it was a different time.

"This was the cold war era," she says. "There was a much different view 
within the U.S. government of what kind of information was shared with the 
public."

There are other challenges, too. Morris is attempting to reconstruct events 
that occurred almost 40 years ago. The research information was archived, but 
not filed electronically, and in some instances facilities were closed and 
original records were destroyed or forwarded elsewhere. Investigators believe 
there were more than a hundred individual tests planned under the SHAD 
program with unrelated names, but the lack of test results may indicate that 
many tests were never actually executed.

The SHAD program was planned and conducted by the Army’s Deseret Test Center. 
However, the tests were done on Navy ships. Both services kept separate, but 
service-specific records of the results. Nobody in either service had 
gathered the pieces together. For the past year, Morris and her team have 
been searching throughout the DoD system for data, systematically targeting 
the places these records may have been tucked away.

"We know that the Deseret Test Center documents were taken over by Dugway 
Proving Grounds in Utah," Morris says. "We also know some of those documents 
went to Fort Detrick."

The process has been painstaking. Paper and microfiche records have been 
combed by hand, important bits of information pieced together and added to a 
list of materials which then had to go through the Pentagon’s 
declassification process. This investigation has required the close 
cooperation of the VA, the Military Veterans Health Coordinating Board, the 
Assistant Secretaries for Manpower and Reserve Affairs of the Army and Navy, 
and elements of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The Under Secretary 
of the Army also worked to expeditiously declassify needed documentation.

Data collected for each test includes the test dates, identification of ships 
and units involved, test locations, simulants/agents/decontaminants used and 
test methods employed. Morris’ investigators have gone through thousands of 
classified documents, and she says there are thousands more to look at.

In addition to finding information that may help the VA answer concerns of 
participants of SHAD tests, Morris says looking closely at the record keeping 
during SHAD tests has provided great insight into the importance for current 
and future military research to document the informed consent process and 
inform people involved in operational or medical testing of the final results.

"We must accurately document the facts so that, if we later find that 
something that today we believe is not harmful turns out to be more harmful 
than we thought, we can go back and make it right," said Morris.

Officials say the SHAD investigation has also laid the groundwork for any 
future investigations of its type. Aside from creating a system for searching 
out specific documents, Morris and her team have helped to solidify the 
relationship DoD has with the VA for answering deployment health-related 
concerns together.

"We have given them confidence that they can ask a question and get 
information that is useful to determine if a veteran was in a given place at 
a given time and if he or she may have been exposed to a given substance," 
Morris says.

The investigation into SHAD tests continues, and more fact sheets will be 
released as information is developed. Veterans who believe they were involved 
in SHAD exercises and desire medical evaluations should call the VA Health 
Benefits Service Center toll-free at (877) 222-8387.