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Summarized: Panama Agent Orange, PCB, DDT, Chlordane, Chemical, Mustard Gas, U.S. Records Classified Exposure Data Panama Canal Commission Source

Panama

US Chemical Weapons in Panama: A Dangerous Legacy

An edited version of the report, "Test Tube Republic: Chemical Weapons Tests in Panama and U.S. Responsibility," authored by John Lindsay-Poland of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, with the active collaboration of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, Greenpeace, Panamanian Center for Research and Social Action (CEASPA) and Center for Latin American Studies (CELA). On August 30, the Panamanian people voted down the referendum of President Pérez Balladares to run for reelection. With "El Toro" out of the race, no one knows who will receive the Panama Canal from the United States on December 31, 1999. Much more important, no one yet knows if the territories that Panama will receive will be clean and safe.
In Panama, the United States had an active chemical weapons program from at least 1930 until 1968. From 1930 to 1946, this program focused on canal defense. From 1943 until 1968, the program aimed to test chemical munitions under tropical conditions. Dozens of tons of mustard gas and phosgene were stockpiled at a number of sites in Panama, particularly from the 1930s to the 1950s. Unused and dud chemical munitions were also abandoned in Panama.

The San José Project

In searching for a jungle testing ground for chemical weapons, the Chemical Warfare Service sought a jungle site with "lack of human habitation, safety distances to nearby islands, tropical jungle, good water, absence of disease and poisonous snakes," and accessibility to nearby airfields controlled by the US military. In October 1943, Colonel Robert McLeod searched up and down the coasts of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru, Panama and the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. Discarding, among others, Panama's penal colony on Coiba Island because the presence of prisoners might have "complicated our problems," McLeod settled on San José Island, the second largest island of the Perlas group in Panama Bay.

Chemical Weapons Tests Continue in the 1950s

the Tropical Test Team, a Chemical Corps unit that included 20 personnel, conducted tests of distilled mustard gas every three months in Panama. The tests included pressure tests of one-ton containers of mustard, as well as freezing of the distilled mustard. The team conducted most tests of toxic materials in Curundu, as well as some on a knoll on the Chiva-Chiva Trail. Toxic materials were stored in a large open building in Cerro Tigre. In 1961, the US Army Chemical Corps participated in a transport exercise called Swamp Fox I, which took place primarily in the Darién region of Panama, not far from Colombia. The US Army Tropic Test Center used a site on Empire Range to test tear gas grenades in 1965, according to an assessment of the active ranges.

Nerve Agent Tests

Documents show at least four tests in Panama with live chemical munitions from 1964 to 1968 (VX gas-filled M-23 mines, rockets and projectiles, and sarin rockets). The tests were part of a range of tests under Arctic, desert and tropical conditions to which chemical munitions were usually subjected. Twenty-four M23 mines were shipped to each site in late 1963 or early 1964. Each mine contained 10.5 pounds of VX agent. Since ten milligrams of VX agent constitutes a lethal dose, each one had enough nerve agent for nearly half a million lethal doses.

Post-1968 Activity

On November 19, 1969, the US Congress passed Public Law 91-121, which prohibited deployment, storage or disposal of lethal chemical or biological agents outside the United States unless the host country was first notified. For overseas locations under US jurisdiction, the law required prior notice to Congress. We have found no documentation of the storage or testing of live lethal chemical agents in Panama since 1968.

One exception to this is that the US military has acknowledged "limited, controlled laboratory testing of some tear gas agents" in Panama since 1979. At chemical test sites, In 1987, the Army's 193d Infantry Brigade conducted a training exercise in Panama called "NBC Stakes," designed to prepare soldiers for potential chemical combat. ("NBC" stands for nuclear, biological and chemical.) Soldiers had to pass through simulated contamination by chemical agents and nuclear radiation while keeping their gas masks and other protective gear on.

The Tropic Test Center (TTC) continues in the 1990s to test equipment designed to detect and defend against chemical agents under tropical conditions. "There has been a significant increase over the past two years in the testing of this type of equipment," the TTC wrote in July 1997. The TTC emphasized that "testing this type of equipment involves no use of actual agents," but uses simulants instead.

Tons of Gases Stored in Panama

The United States had 84 tons of mustard gas, 10 tons of phosgene, 800 phosgene shells, 900 Livens projectors, 647 chemical cylinders, and 2,377 4.2-inch mustard-charged mortar rounds on hand. in the Canal Zone. The space included chemical munitions storage magazines in seven bases: Camp Paraíso, Fort Clayton, Corozal Post, Albrook Field, Howard Field, Río Hato, France Field and Fort Gulick. Most chemical munitions before the San José Project was established, however, were stored at Cerro Tigre, where a monorail hoist had been installed to move munitions In the 1950s chemical munitions continued to be stored at Cerro Tigre. Nerve agents tested from approximately 1964 to 1968 were also stored at Cerro Tigre and Chemical munition flown into San Jose Island were stored at Rio Hato.

Chemical Weapons Tests

The first chemical weapons test using live agents test using live agent known to be carried out in Panama occurred on Fort Clayton before the United States' entry into World War II.

From available documents, the numbers of munitions tested are known for 18 of the 130 tests conducted on San José Island. In these tests 4,397 chemical munitions were fired, for an average of 244 in each test. Most of the munitions fired—3,816—were 4.2" mortars charged with Cyanogen Chloride, mustard or phosgene, but the chemical munitions also included bombs from 100 pounds to 1,000 pounds in weight and 105mm Howitzer shells

Reports on four tests of nerve agent-filled warheads were obtained for this study. The US Army Tropic Test Center (TTC) conducted the tests between 1964 and 1968 "to determine the effects of environment on the storage"—and, in two of them, on the operation—of the warheads. Three of the tests were for VX agent weapons. The fourth test concerned 29 sarin 115-millimeter rockets. The weapons were to be stored for approximately two years, "outdoors on pallets under ventilated cover," and periodically tested for leaks, pressure, visual defects and integrity of the agent. The three tests of M-55 rockets and VX rockets and projectiles were accompanied by 120 simulant-filled weapons for each test series.

The nerve agent tests were most likely conducted somewhere within the canal area, since from 1964 to 1968 the only site outside the canal area controlled by the US military was Río Hato. The TTC used 54 other sites as well, all within the canal area. A summary of the San José Project written by the military for the Carter White House in 1979 said that "known munitions were destroyed and detoxified" when the island was evacuated. But the reported added: "In some tests, complete functioning of munitions could not be verified because of the jungle and marsh environment." In other words, the United States was aware in the 1970s that chemical munitions remained on the land at San José Island.

Chemical munitions that the military still hoped to use were moved into the Canal Zone. Two of the project's officers wrote: "The materiel owned by San José was stored wherever space could be found. Some of it was placed in the basements of barracks, more in an abandoned motor pool, and a toxic yard was established at the mouth of the Chagres River on the Fort Sherman Reservation." They did not elaborate on this alarming declaration. The toxic materials at Fort Sherman were stored there for "rehabilitation," according to a later account, which may have meant leaks from munitions in need of repair. We have found no records documenting what the United States did with chemical bombs stored at Río Hato.

A version of this statement was featured on the front page of a Panamanian newspaper on April 13, 1998. In an implicit admission of it, a spokesman for the US Department of Defense, whose identity was not disclosed, was reported in an official document to have told officials of Panama's Interoceanic Region Authority (ARI) that "there is no danger of contamination by toxic gases in France Field, since the materials buried there by US troops in World War II have already dissipated."

According to the report, the US Defense Department evaluated the need to remove the airstrip of the then-existing airport to remove the material buried there before the transfer of the area in 1979, when the Panama Canal Treaties entered into force. The Defense Department experts concluded that the effort was not justified, since the gases in question did not represent then or now any risk, considering that their useful life is less than ten years

The Army has also implicitly recognized that there are chemical burial sites in Panama by refusing to release part of a document listing "suspected overseas burial sites" produced by the US Army Chemical and Biological Command in 1993. If there were no burial sites of chemical agent or munitions in Panama, the Command presumably would have said so in declining to release the document. However, even without the list of burial sites, souvenir seekers, erosion and development may eventually uncover their locations. As noted earlier, Chiva Chiva Trail was a demolition and disposal site for toxic munitions from 1952 to 1956

Potential Long-Term Dangers//A "Short Shelf Life"?

DOD treaty implementation director Richard McSeveney made a striking claim about chemical munitions—"they have a short shelf life." His statement echoes the other military officer's reported statement to Panamanian officials that chemical agent or munition in burial sites has "dissipated." However, neither official offered any substantiating data or precedent for their assertions.

Chemical agent that has been sprayed or exploded does dissipate, but agent that is stored or abandoned in canisters or drums can survive for decades. "Where nerve and other [chemical warfare] agents hydrolyze quite readily," writes John Hart, an expert on abandoned chemical weapons, "mustard does so only very slowly. Instead a hardened, protective gel forms around its exterior. The mustard in the interior can remain active for decades." This is why fishermen in the Baltic Sea are still sometimes injured by chemical weapons, dumped there more than 50 years ago, which they catch in their nets.

Our experience indicates that chemical warfare agents remaining in storage containers or munitions, or otherwise retained in bulk quantities, can retain essentially all of their toxic agent properties for many years. Even unexploded munitions recovered from the World War One era are often found to contain chemical warfare materiel whose toxic effects have been but little degraded by the passage of time. For this reason, recovered suspect chemical warfare munitions and containers must be treated with extreme care, and handled and disposed of only by properly trained authorities. Moreover, when chemical warfare agents degrade, they often turn into compounds that are also very toxic to humans, particularly if exposed to drinking water.

The US Record: "Classified"

The complete transfer of canal-area lands under the Panama Canal Treaties by December 31, 1999 creates a key historical moment. Panamanians will soon have full sovereignty over and responsibility for these properties. Because the lands have been under US control for over 90 years, most Panamanians have little or no idea of their history of use, especially of military activities, which have typically been kept secret. A responsible reversion of these lands must include the transfer by the United States government to Panama of all historical documents related to activities that have had impacts on canal area lands. The record of information transfers to date falls considerably short of that goal.

According to Panamanian officials and records, the Government of Panama has repeatedly and formally requested documents from the United States on chemical weapons tests in Panama. On January 28, 1997, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested a series of documents including one on "Detection Chemical Agent, Nerve Vapor." On August 1, 1997, the Ministry broadened its request for information to documents on chemical weapons tests generally. The Ministry also requested relevant portions of a list of "suspected overseas burial sites." But, according to Foreign Ministry officials, the United States had not given Panama a single document on chemical weapons programs conducted in Panama—until June 1998, as this report was in preparation. At that time, the United States released to Panama copies of the four nerve agent test reports cited above. In all other cases, US military officials have responded with brief letters describing chemical warfare activities in general terms.

In June 1997, the Fellowship of Reconciliation also requested portions of the 1993 annex listing suspected overseas chemical munitions burial sites. The request, made for the section of the document that dealt with suspected sites in Panama, was denied. The denial was appealed in July 1997, and the appeal was denied in May 1998. The reasons given for denying the annex are instructive. The Army General Counsel's Office stated that the document is correctly classified "because the requested material contains information concerning weapons systems and information of a foreign government, and the information could assist in the development or use of weapons of mass destruction." In other words, the Army may be conceding that the chemical agents abandoned in Panama have not simply "dissipated" into a harmless state or even into a militarily useless condition.

The Department of Defense's problems with disclosing historical information about its activities are systemic. Dugway Proving Ground, located in Utah, was the controlling agency for chemical weapons programs in Panama in the 1950s. During the course of this study, a "key-word search" of documents referring to Panama, Tropic Test and several other words or phrases done by its technical library came up with 2,252 documents. The base commander subsequently denied a request by the Fellowship of Reconciliation to visit the Dugway library, even though Dugway's legal and intelligence offices had approved it. A former project manager of the Tropic Test Center, contracted by the Defense Department to research TTC's projects in Panama, had a similar experience when he requested to use the technical library and historical office of the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, which served as headquarters for US chemical warfare programs for many years.

Biological Warfare Programs

The Army authorized MARU to test a live-attenuated vaccine on horses in the field, and Peters describes such tests on Costa Rica's Pacific coast. VEE has persisted for long periods in Panama. Troops training at Fort Sherman in 1981 contracted it, an exposure that was linked to VEE in 1970, when the military was actively experimenting with VEE.

The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research reported "An outbreak of Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis (VEE) occurred in a unit of military personnel who had gone to Panama for jungle training in 1981. Exposure was linked to training in October in an area of Fort Sherman that was previously implicated over ten years ago. An intensive serological survey identified five cases presenting fever, chills and headaches. VEE remains a threat to US forces deployed to specific areas of Central America."

We also have not found documents indicating the testing or use of Agent Orange or other defoliants in Panama, though we do not discount the possibility that defoliants may have been tested there. The United States also appears to be in violation of international legal requirements that regulate particular types of environmental problems, such as hazardous wastes, and activities that endanger biological diversity. The United States has also disregarded the substantial body of international law relating to protection of human rights and the environment, which lays out the rights of the Panamanian people and government, as well as obligations of the US government.

According to retired U.S. military personnel and other Canal Zone residents, the United States also dumped cancer-causing PCBs, chemical weapons and other toxic waste and used the herbicide Agent Orange, also a suspected carcinogen, to clear the jungle

The full report is available on the Worldwide Web atTop of the Document http://www.nonviolence.org/for/panama
For further information contact:

Fellowship of Reconciliation Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean/Panama Campaign
995 Market St., Ste. 1414
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 495 6334
(415) 495 5628 (fax)
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Additional Research Agent Orange Herbicide, DDT, Chlordane Exposure Statements

David Jewell, a Lockheed-Martin spokesman, declined to specify the types of wastes being received at the company's warehouses at the Corozal Army base outside Panama City but described them as "normal and industrial," including what he called "hazardous materials."

Capt. Larry Winchell, a spokesman for the U.S. Army command that wasbased in Panama until September, said that the wastes include paints,oils, chemicals and some pesticides but that he was unable to be more specific.

Alfredo Smith, a former supervisor for Lockheed-Martin at the Corozal warehouse, said he handled a wide range of toxic materials. "We were handling cyanides, asbestos, poisons, known carcinogens, herbicides, pesticides. Some of this stuff had labels going back to the 1950s. . All of the stuff from the cleanup sites were coming in to us," he said.

Lockheed-Martin provided employees with a list of substances that Mr. Smith and other workers were instructed to be wary of. The list included 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, the potentially dioxin-tainted chemical compounds that became nicknamed Agent Orange during the Vietnam era.

Mr. Smith said he handled several barrels marked 2,4-D but did not recall any marked with 2,4,5-T. He said he regularly handled PCBs, and oil-like coolant used in transformers, which also has been linked to cancer.

Mr. Smith said one Panamanian employee under his supervision began coughing up blood one day on the job after handling an unmarked barrel filled with a chemical powder. Mr. Smith, who says he suffers constant skin rashes, breathing problems, headaches, stomach problems and sexual dysfunction, is suing Lockheed-Martin for compensation for what he says were lax safety procedures at the Corozal facility.

Mr. Jewell said Lockheed-Martin has an exemplary environmental safety program and complies with all Occupational, Safety and Health Administration requirements. He said he could not discuss Mr. Smith's allegations because the matter is in litigation.

It was only when he read a Dallas Morning News report about Agent Orange testing in Panama that Mr. Youngs said he realized there might be a link: He had served in the 8th Special Forces in Panama in 1970 and 1971 and had regularly parachuted into an area he called the "drop zone." He said it was well known at the time that the area had been defoliated with the same chemical being used in Vietnam, although the defoliant was not known at the time as Agent Orange. Mr. Youngs said he never served in Vietnam.

Although the U.S. government says it cannot confirm any use of Agent Orange in Panama, Charles M. Bartlett, the operational commander of the military's defoliant-testing program in the 1960s and early '70s, testified in 1997 that several hundred barrels of Agent Orange had been shipped to Panama for testing. "Whether the government admits it or not, I now know for a fact that Agent Orange was delivered there," Ms. Patton said. "I want to know the answers. Are we going to die of something we were exposed to 30 years ago?"

Jerome Steiner, a former Panama Canal employee, said he regularly sprayed Agent Orange in the early 1970s to control vegetation that threatened to clog a crucial river
outlet feeding the canal. He and others said the herbicide was not known at the time to be dangerous.

An official for the Panama Canal Commission, the U.S. government agency that operates the canal, said the commission did not keep any paperwork before 1973 regarding Agent Orange and could neither confirm nor deny its use.

Berta

I posted an earlier reply to Samy104 reference additional BVA remands for Agent Orange, Pesticides Use Exposure for Soldiers that trained or were permanent party personnel at Canal Zone Bases. I know there must be others on Hadit that may know more and because they've not been diagnosed with any presumptive disease are not speaking out.

File #1 10 pages excerpts from Original document for AO use/unexploded ordinance related to chemical weapons testing Fort Sherman and Pina Range area on the Atlantic side also others may know about Empire Firing & Training Range on the Pacific Fort Kobbe, Clayton, Howard AFB, Rodman Marine Corps Barracks area. When veterans research as one cohesive unit together we may uncover vital pieces of evidence that VA, DOD & Service Branches hide and will never acknowledge that evidence exists. Jumpmaster.


Agent Orange Was Used In Panama-Veterans Have Sole Responsibility For Developing The Facts Proving Their Claim Because VA, DOD & Service Branches Do Not Obey Duty To Assist You Proving Chemical Exposure.pdf
SLPA_FIN_Panama_Caribbean_treasure (Agent Orange Used Fort Sherman, Gulick, Pina Range.pdf