Agent Orange: Camp Carroll Soldier Accepts One Last Mission

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© 2014 ‎(COVVHA) Children Of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance INC
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Steve House didn’t intend to go to war with the U.S. Army, but the way he sees it, he wasn’t given a choice.

House, 55, who lives near Algonac, contends the Army disposed of Agent Orange, Agent Blue, Urox 22, Lindane and other very, very nasty chemicals in a toxic dump at Camp Carroll in South Korea.

How does he know this? In the summer of 1978, as a heavy equipment operator with the 802nd Engineer Battalion, he says he buried hundreds of chemical drums in a ditch the size of a city block.

“The soil was sandy, not a pebble in it,” he recalls. “I could feel the drums busting like grapes beneath the weight of the bulldozer.” And how can he be certain what was in those drums? “We read the labels,” he replies. “The lieutenant took the serial number off every barrel.”

THE PENTAGON says it spent $3 million to $4 million last year to investigate the claims. It also says it could find no evidence of toxic chemicals at the location pinpointed by House. The Republic of Korea Army, or ROK, says it spent another $1.3 million on its inquiry and also came up with no trace of tactical herbicides such as Agent Orange. Earlier this month, Col. Joseph Birchmeier, who led the U.S. side of the Joint Investigation Team, told Stars and Stripes he is “99% confident” Agent Orange never was buried at the base. He also acknowledged a 1% possibility. Military records show a number of chemical drums were removed from Camp Carroll in 1979 and shipped to Utah, where they seem to have disappeared. The records indicate 40 to 60 tons of contaminated dirt also were removed from the site.

NOT EVERYONE is as sanguine as the colonel.

An environmental group, Green Korea, complains the investigators bored down less than 10 feet in their search for contamination. “In this and other ways, the examination methods were inadequate to determine the truth,” it concludes. House says he believes the toxic trench later was capped with 20 to 30 feet of soil, and then paved over. He also says 40 to 60 tons of dirt would represent no more than a fraction of the contaminated ground. He wonders why investigators did not bother to interview the former officers who directed the operation, including a retired colonel who has confirmed many of House’s recollections.

“It’s crap,” he says of the inquiry. “They said they did a thorough investigation, but they never interviewed the colonel or the lieutenant. Most of the people they interviewed were Korean civilians who worked on the base but who were not allowed in the restricted area (where the digging took place).”

IN MORE THAN three hours of interviews, House gave me a detailed account of his time at Camp Carroll. He also shared reams of documents, the fruit of an investigation that has consumed him for the better part of eight years.

“All I’ve ever wanted is the truth,” he says.

Lauren Hager, a former state representative and a friend of House’s late father, asked me to speak with House. No one higher in the political food chain has been as helpful.

House worked for a hospital in Arizona for a few years, but his appeals to U.S. Sen. John McCain went nowhere. He says he also received a polite but useless response from U.S. Rep. Candice Miller.

He says he suspects President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have bought into a long-running cover-up by a Pentagon that fears Agent Orange at least as much as it fears al-Qaida.

“A lot of people think Agent Orange is a dead issue, but it’s not,” he says. “All these Vietnam veterans in their 50s and 60s are dying of cancer, and the country is doing almost nothing for them. We can’t even tell them the truth.”

He says he believes thousands of Korean veterans also were exposed to Agent Orange either at Camp Carroll or on the Demilitarized Zone, where it was used to kill foliage.
Satan claims a soul, but Agent Orange doesn’t necessarily stop with one life. It has been linked to birth defects in the children and grandchildren of those exposed to it. The cost of treating generations of victims, if the government were to acknowledge responsibility, could make the war in Iraq look like a dollar-store bargain.

IN AUGUST 1978, even as House and his comrades began burying chemical drums, news of Love Canal — a toxic nightmare in Niagara Falls, N.Y. — filled the headlines. House speculates the Army brass read those headlines with horror and realized it was time to dispose of evidence of the staging area. He cannot prove any of this, of course, but if his accuracy can be questioned, his sincerity cannot. He believes he has unraveled a deep conspiracy, a situation where unintended consequences overwhelmed officers who sought to contain a devil they could not control.

“I’m not doing this for me. It’s too late for me,” House says, a tear glistening on his cheek. “I’m doing it for the veterans who are sick, and for the Koreans who are sick, and because the truth has value.

“Listen, I knew what I was doing was wrong when I did it. We all did. I was following orders, but I would go home and cry. I went there to protect these people, not to make little kids sick.” Read More…

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© 2014 ‎(COVVHA) Children Of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance INC
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