"Where Is My Country?"

Agent Orange's victims step up demands for compensation

The young men had expected long ago to have memories of the Viet Nam War behind them and concentrate on their growing families and civilian careers. But when 300 Long Island, N.Y., veterans, wives and children met at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Bay Shore, they exchanged tales of a terror that has deformed their lives. Jim Albrigtsen, 30, is in almost constant pain from pus-filled lumps under his skin. Mike Ryan, 34, has recovered from a similar affliction, but his eight-year-old daughter Kerry has 18 birth defects, including missing bones in her right arm and intestinal malformations. Ronald De Boer, 31, has a healthy three-year-old daughter but doubts that he will father any more children; he has lost one testicle to cancer, which is extremely rare in a man that young.

The former soldiers are united by more than their pain; they gathered to hear a report on what may be the biggest product-liability case ever filed, and surely one of the most unusual. With some 3,000 other Viet Nam veterans across the country, they are plaintiffs in a suit against five companies that made a defoliant called Agent Orange, which the veterans believe is the cause of their maladies.

The Air Force sprayed Agent Orange heavily over Viet Nam to lay bare thousands of acres of jungle in which Viet Cong guerrillas were thought to be hiding. An Army handout for one such mission, Operation Ranch Hand in 1966, assured the troops that "the sprayed chemical is nontoxic to human or animal life." But Agent Orange was contaminated by a byproduct of the manufacturing process, dioxin, which is perhaps the most toxic synthetic chemical known. When a few pounds of it were released into the air by an explosion at an Italian chemical plant in 1976, more than 700 people in the town of Seveso were evacuated. Some of them have never been allowed to return to their homes, which are still contaminated. About 350 lbs. of dioxin were contained in the 11 million gal. of the herbicide sprayed on Viet Nam. Dioxin can cause a variety of torments, including a skin disorder called chloracne, liver damage and cancer. In addition, a researcher for the Food and Drug Administration once estimated that dioxin is "100,000 to a million times more potent" than thalidomide in causing birth defects among the children of people exposed to it.

Veterans, and their children who were conceived after the war, began displaying symptoms identical to those known to be caused by dioxin poisoning shortly after the servicemen returned to the U.S., but they and their doctors long failed to connect their illnesses to Agent Orange. After reading about the Seveso incident, however, Paul Reutershan, a veteran who was suffering from cancer of the colon, filed suit in 1977. He died the next year, at age 28, but by then Victor Yannacone Jr., the lawyer who had brought the 1966 suit that helped ban DDT, had taken up his case. The defendants are Dow Chemical Co., Monsanto Co., Thompson-Hayward Chemical Co., Hercules Inc. and Diamond Shamrock Corp.

Yannacone contends that the companies knew that Agent Orange was highly dangerous, but failed to warn either the Pentagon or servicemen who might come in contact with it. He is asking the federal district court in Westbury, Long Island, to order the companies to pay a percentage of their future profits--the amount to be determined by the court --into a trust fund for the compensation and care of all Viet Nam G.I.s and their children injured by dioxin. The sum at stake could easily run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, or even billions, as Agent Orange Victims International finds more purported sufferers and adds their names to the suit. At least 50,000 G.I.s served in the areas where Agent Orange was sprayed.

No date has been set for a trial, and when it does begin it could drag on for years. But the companies already have asked permission to sue the Government to recover any money that the court may eventually make them pay to the veterans. The companies claim that the Government mandated the manufacturing specifications for Agent Orange and then misused them. The veterans cannot sue the Government; a 1950 Supreme Court decision bars suits by servicemen who have been injured on duty because of negligence by military personnel.

The Government has refused any responsibility for the servicemen's plight. The veterans are especially bitter because they cannot get disability payments or free treatment from the Veterans Administration for the illnesses that they believe were caused by dioxin. Says Albrigtsen: "When you go in to a VA hospital and say you are an Agent Orange victim, they look at you as if you were nuts."

The VA's position is that the veterans cannot prove that their maladies and those of their children were caused by use of Agent Orange in Viet Nam. Bills recently introduced in Congress by Democratic Representative David Bonior of Michigan and Republican Senator John Heinz III of Pennsylvania would grant free treatment for any veteran who could establish that he had served in specified areas of Viet Nam where Agent Orange was sprayed. But Democratic Representative Thomas Downey of New York warned veterans attending the Long Island meeting that the bill will pass only if they apply heavy political pressure. Said Downey: "You've got to hold our feet to the fire."

A number of his listeners were cynical about their chances. Said Mike Ryan: "I was there when my country needed me. Where is my country now that I need help?"

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