Veterans Meet Confusion in Agent Orange Claims Rush

Confusion is often a constant of military life, and the tradition held true Wednesday for about 70 Vietnam veterans who went to the Vietnam Veterans Outreach Center in Northridge seeking help to meet a court-ordered deadline in a class-action suit over Agent Orange.

Agent Orange, a powerful defoliant, was sprayed over wide areas of Vietnam to eliminate foliage that could conceal enemy troops, stirring a controversy over whether wartime exposure is causing veterans serious medical problems today.

Most of them said they had learned only this week, through television news programs, that they had to register with a federal court in New York by midnight Wednesday to become eligible to claim part of the $180-million settlement offered by chemical companies that manufactured the defoliant. The veterans, the latest of 130 who have appeared at the center since last week, were partly misinformed, the federal court clerk said, leading to the confusion. The court order does not apply to all cases, and the deadline has been extended for some applicants.

Baffling Problems

Thinking the deadline was upon them, the veterans filled out forms in a room featuring an exhibit of Vietnam War memorabilia and discussed medical problems they say baffle them and their doctors, problems they fear are delayed wounds of the war they fought years ago.

Doug Campbell, 35, of Pomona, who served in a Marine Corps reconnaissance unit in 1970, passed the time explaining to his 11-year-old son, Jason, the meaning of the items in the exhibit--a flak jacket, muddy jungle boots, green berets, unit patches, bits of camouflage uniforms and a helmet that still bears the fading word “short,” the former wearer’s happy declaration that he had almost completed his tour and would soon be on his way home.

“I did a lot of patrolling on intelligence missions in areas that were heavily sprayed with Agent Orange,” Campbell said. “Today I still get a lot of moles and skin growths, and my hands go numb and tingly sometimes.

“The main reason I’m here is for my four children, to make sure they’re eligible if they ever develop problems linked to this thing.”

The center, one of five such offices in the Los Angeles area run by the Veterans Administration, provides maps and records of Agent Orange spraying missions. The staff distributes forms to send to the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, which has jurisdiction over a class-action suit brought by veterans groups against the seven chemical companies that manufactured Agent Orange.

The judge had earlier set a deadline requiring applications to join the suit--and thus become eligible for a possible share in the settlement fund--be postmarked no later than midnight Wednesday.

Unknown to many veterans and their VA advisers, however, U.S. District Court Judge Jack Weinstein, acting on a request by the Vietnam Veterans of America, had granted some extensions two weeks ago. Weinstein ordered that any registration arriving by Jan. 15 be accepted, no matter when it was mailed, and that any veteran who requested a registration form by Wednesday night be given 30 days to return it.

100,000 Applications

All 2.7 million veterans who spent time in Vietnam are eligible to apply. More than 100,000 applications have been received, said Weinstein’s clerk, Robert Heinemann.

Althoug the deadline applies only to veterans who allege they already have problems caused by the chemical, it does not prevent those who develop symptoms later from applying then, Heinemann added. “The settlement itself even speaks of after-born children,” he noted.

Who will receive money from the fund, or even who will choose the recipients, will not be determined for some time, he said.

In a settlement reached just before the trial began, the chemical companies agreed to set up the fund, one of the largest product liability settlements ever, but they specifically refused to accept that Agent Orange caused the veterans’ medical problems.

Agent Orange contained dioxin, one of the most potent of poisons, which has been linked to cancer and nerve and organ damage. The chemical companies argue that the amount to which Vietnam veterans were exposed was too minute to be dangerous.

Veterans maintain that, besides direct contact, they were poisoned by consuming dioxin-tainted food and water, and that there have been too many cases of strange illnesses among veterans and birth defects in their children to attribute to chance.

The question is still open. A 1983 Defense Department study of 1,269 Air Force crewmen assigned to spraying planes, who were often soaked with the chemical daily as they worked, found no unusual incidence of cancer among them after 20 years. But the study cautioned that some affects may take longer than 20 years to appear.

At the center, Thomas W. Garnella, 42, of Upland, a former medical administration officer and now a Rancho Cucamonga school administrator, said he saw no Agent Orange in Vietnam and never gave a thought to it “until I heard recently that we were drinking it in the water.” He said he had just learned from records kept at the center that he was stationed in “one of the heaviest sprayed areas.”

“My wife and I have been trying for 15 years to have a child and we can’t. The doctors say they can’t tell why not, that everything seems to be working normally, but we just can’t.”

Simba Wiley Roberts, 36, of North Hollywood, a former sergeant in the 4th Division and now a traffic manager for a Canoga Park aerospace company, said he has “a rash in my groin that just won’t go away. A lot of guys I met here have it.”

He remembers the planes spraying Agent Orange on areas he passed through. He was delighted to see them at the time, he said, because the defoliated areas eliminated fears that he was walking into an ambush.

Visibility was limited “in the regular jungle, and then we’d reach one of the ‘dead forests’ and all of a sudden we could see for days. We really appreciated it then.”

“But I’m sure there was Agent Orange in the water we drank.

Al Paz, 33, of Valencia, a former helicopter crewman, said he flew defoliation missions in 1970, and for the last five years “every now and then I urinate blood. The doctors don’t know why.”