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of the iceberg.

During my investigation, on several occasions I discovered that the official reports regarding the location and deployment of vessels involved in these tests differed remarkably from the locations reported by crew members who actually sailed on these vessels during the same period. Since we are talking about events that happened forty years ago, it is entirely possible that Seaman Jones might have forgotten whether he was cruising off Charleston or Norfolk on any particular day. It is completely unreasonable, however, to believe that Jones was mistaken about which coast he was cruising. Most of us do know the difference between San Diego and Boston.

I remain reluctant to accuse the DoD of deliberately obfuscating the problem. I recognize that many of the records are very difficult to obtain and correlate, especially so since all this happened before the computerization of military records. Nevertheless, it appears that those assigned to get the facts are depending on only these official reports. They seem to be expending heroic effort to unearth records wherever they may be stashed, but I see no indication that anyone is attempting to gather information from still living crew members themselves, in order to establish the actual events.

Former Sen. Max Cleland, D-GA, who was chairman of the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee, had announced that he will investigate whether the Pentagon intended to use American sailors as human guinea pigs during the 1960s testing of chemical weapons aboard Navy ships.

Cleland, a veteran who lost both legs and an arm in a Vietnam grenade blast, said he was pushing for open hearings, but the Pentagon insisted that some of the material stay classified.

I find it difficult to understand why something tested nearly half a century ago still needs to remain classified. The health and welfare of several thousand affected veterans is infinitely more important than keeping a secret that no longer matters.

Winkenwerder says, "We plan to augment staff as needed to finish this task efficiently and quickly. We owe our SHAD veterans resolution to events that took place four decades ago."

To date the Veterans Administration has sent notification letters to only about 600 identified participants. A cursory investigation reveals several thousand other affected participants who should be notified as well. It is time to pull all the stops and investigate Project SHAD in complete open detail.

Every day SHAD participants die, some for reasons that may very well be related to these experiments. It is time for the DoD to acknowledge its responsibility and to assign this investigation the highest priority. Investigators must examine the entire record, not just the military records stashed away in dusty archives. Crew members must be interviewed and their statements correlated by a central office until a complete picture emerges, and we know what really happened up and down our coasts on so many vessels to thousands of unwitting participants during this shameful chapter in our country's military history.

Learn more about this author, Robert Williscroft.
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