A Trust Betrayed

by Mike Magner

  The letter from Faye made its way to Capitol Hill and prompted a request by Senator Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, for an investigation by the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the CDC and the ATSDR. “The hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families who lived at Camp Lejeune are anticipating that the ATSDR reports will provide them with the information they need to become informed about the scope and severity of the water contamination and educate them on the possible association between their exposures and current and future health effects,” Burr wrote to Inspector General Daniel Levinson.17

  Ensminger also raised the issue of the Marine Corps’ redactions at a March 2012 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The federal agency investigating the contamination “estimates that as many as one million people were exposed to horrendous levels of carcinogenic chemicals through their drinking water at Camp Lejeune,” Ensminger told the committee. “These people need the uncensored truth concerning their exposures so they can be more vigilant about their and their family’s health.” Other members of Congress joined the chorus of protests, but their efforts fell short. When the final modeling study for the Hadnot Point water system at Camp Lejeune was published in March 2013, much of the information about the wells was redacted.18

  Against the backdrop of Marine Corps stonewalling, Congress slowly worked its way toward action on Lejeune’s contamination and its effects. Legislation enacted in 2011 called for a report by the end of the year on the processing of claims by enlisted personnel and veterans seeking health benefits and compensation for environmental exposures on military bases. In the House, Democratic congressmen Brad Miller of North Carolina and John Dingell of Michigan were pushing a bill to provide health care for victims of Camp Lejeune’s contamination and were facing minimal resistance.19

  The Senate was a different story. In early 2011, at the start of the 112th Congress, North Carolina’s Senator Burr reintroduced the same bill he had sponsored in the previous Congress, the Caring for Camp Lejeune Veterans Act. Cosponsored by his Democratic colleague from North Carolina, Senator Kay Hagan, the bill would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide health care for any current service member, veteran, or family member who had been exposed to water contamination at Camp Lejeune before tainted wells were shut down in 1985. “We now have another shot at doing the right thing for the thousands of Navy and Marine veterans and their families who were harmed during their service to our country,” Burr said. “While we continue to seek more answers, we can minimize further suffering by allowing Lejeune veterans and their families to receive the care they need and deserve.”20

  Members of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, including its new chairman in 2011, Democratic senator Patty Murray of Washington, had a different idea than Burr and Hagan, however. They argued that since the Defense Department had been responsible for the pollution at Camp Lejeune, the Pentagon—not the VA—should pay for the victims’ health care. There were several problems with that approach, though. First, the Defense Department’s health-care program, known as TRICARE, operated a little differently in every state, depending on which insurance providers and medical services had been contracted. There were concerns among veterans, who were enrolled in the VA’s health program, that if they went to a DOD provider and mentioned their exposure to contaminants at Camp Lejeune, they would be met with blank stares. At least the VA had a national program and its employees could be trained to be aware of potential health problems caused by Lejeune’s drinking water. More important, veterans such as Ensminger who had been fighting the military over the Lejeune pollution no longer trusted the DOD to be sympathetic to their health problems. They could foresee enormous difficulties getting care if the Defense Department was responsible for providing it. And finally, there was resistance to having the DOD fund veterans’ care in the Senate Armed Services Committee, which was responsible for the Pentagon’s budget. Senators on the committee were aware of all the litigation pending against the military over the Lejeune pollution, and they knew that any law stating that the Defense Department must be held responsible for the damages it had caused would open the door for thousands of claims for compensation.

  Of course, there were concerns about Burr’s bill coming from the Veterans Affairs Department. VA Administrator Eric Shinseki made clear in statements to Congress that if everyone who spent time at Camp Lejeune was eligible for health-care coverage from his agency, as many as a million new people could be added to its rolls at a cost exceeding $4 billion over ten years. Veterans’ groups heard this and called it a travesty if family members were put ahead of veterans for health care at the VA. Number crunchers at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) did the required analysis of Burr’s bill and found the VA’s cost figure to be inflated because it assumed that all of the estimated million people who spent time at Lejeune before 1985 were still alive in 2011. The CBO cut that estimate down to around 650,000 people who potentially had been exposed and had not yet passed away, cutting the cost estimate for VA coverage nearly in half. Then Burr and his cosponsor agreed to limit the eligibility for coverage to people who had spent a minimum of thirty days at Camp Lejeune between 1957 and 1987; in addition, only specific types of diseases that were linked to the base contaminants would be covered. Those were the fourteen specific health problems that had been listed in the 2009 National Research Council report as potentially linked to the Lejeune pollution—esophageal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, leukemia, multiple myeloma, myleodysplasic syndromes, renal toxicity, hepatic steatosis, female infertility, miscarriage, scleroderma, and neurobehavioral effects—plus one more added by Burr’s staff at the request of victims, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The limitations helped to reduce the projected cost of VA health care for Lejeune victims to less than $350 million over five years.

  In the middle of 2011, the Department of Veterans Affairs reported that its office in Louisville, Kentucky, that was handling all Camp Lejeune water cases had so far received more than 2,300 claims, but had approved only about a quarter of them. Victims of the contamination stepped up their pressure on Congress. Nearly forty of the men with breast cancer who believed their cancer had been caused by Lejeune’s water sent a letter to President Obama urging him to support Burr’s legislation. “We, the undersigned, are constituents of the largest male breast cancer cluster ever identified—73 men,” the letter said. “What happened to us is no coincidence.”21

  Former senator Elizabeth Dole, who had lost to Hagan in North Carolina’s Senate election in 2008, weighed in with an oped piece that was published in a number of newspapers in January 2012. “The contamination of Camp Lejeune’s water supply, which involves several hundred thousand Marines, sailors, their families and civilian employees who were posted to the installation from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, is a sad chapter in the Marine Corps’ otherwise superlative history,” Dole wrote. “Much of the human suffering caused by this problem could have been avoided if, years ago, some educated soul had picked up the phone and requested a water analysis, if only to err on the side of caution.” Dole said it was now up to Congress to address the problems by providing medical care for victims of the contamination. “The cost of that care may eventually be high in terms of dollars,” she said. “We must, nevertheless, meet our nation’s ethical and moral responsibilities.”22

  In the spring of 2012, Ensminger enlisted an online group, Change.org, to start a petition drive demanding that Congress assist Lejeune’s victims. Within a few weeks it had more than 100,000 signatures. “I hear from people who are suffering from the water every day,” Ensminger said. “We need action, and we can’t wait any longer.” Finally, Congress responded. After passionate pleas for support on the Senate floor by Burr, Hagan, and Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Murray, the Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent (with no roll-call vote needed because no objections were raised) on July 18, 2012. Two week
s later the bill sailed through the House on a voice vote and was headed to the White House for President Obama’s signature.23

  When Obama signed the bill on August 6, 2012, standing beside him in the Oval Office were Jerry Ensminger and Mike Partain; the two producers of the Semper Fi documentary, Rachel Libert and Tony Hardmon; and two members of Congress, Democrat Brad Miller of North Carolina and House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, a Republican from Florida. It was a heady moment for Ensminger. “I never expected to be in the Oval Office, and I never expected to get a bill passed by the House and the Senate,” he said. The signing ceremony lasted only a few minutes, but it was an experience Ensminger and Partain would never forget. As they walked out of the White House on a hot summer day, Ensminger recalled that he could hear the sound of the presidential helicopter rising from the South Lawn. Obama was on his way to an event for his 2012 reelection campaign, knowing he had just gone a long way toward securing the support of thousands of former Marines.

  In January 2013, the ATSDR released another water-modeling report that said the contamination at Lejeune had begun as far back as August 1953, four years earlier than previously believed. A follow-up report two months later pushed the start date for the drinking-water contamination back even further, to around 1948, with the peak levels recorded in the years just before the tainted wells were shut down in 1985. “This reinforces what I always viewed as being the major point here, and that is the levels that existed in the drinking water were astoundingly high, and I’d be very concerned for the health of people who were exposed,” said Gerald LeBlanc, the head of environmental toxicology studies at North Carolina State University. Added Jerry Ensminger: “This is vindication and verification of what I’ve been saying for nearly 16 years. I’ve had to be aggressive to make sure this happened. A lot of people have called me bullheaded and some other choice words. I’m under no illusion that had I not taken such a strong stance on this in the 1990s that we would not be anywhere close to where we are now.”24

  In the spring of 2013, the Associated Press moved a three-part series on the Lejeune contamination that started with a story about the cleanup efforts at the base, nearly thirty years after the tainted wells had been shut down. “We probably have the most aggressive sampling regime for our drinking water than anybody else in the nation,” Bob Lowder, head of environmental quality for the base, said during a tour with an AP reporter. “Maybe in the world.” Lowder said the final remedy for toxic pollution at Lejeune would be in place by 2014. “So, for the most part, we’re on the down-swing,” he said.25

  The final story in the series focused on the tragic legacy of the contamination even as it was being cleaned up. AP reporter Allen Breed talked with Ron Poirier, who had been a Marine technician at Camp Lejeune in the mid-1970s. Poirier told Breed that he had dumped hundreds of gallons of toxic solvents onto the ground while working as an electronics technician at the base. He described how he and his fellow Marines had poured TCE that had been used to clean components into the woods by the Hadnot Point Industrial Area, where water wells were later found to be contaminated with the toxic solvent and other hazardous compounds.26

  “Over the two years, how much did I dispose of?” Poirier asked. “Christ. We used to go through 55 gallons in less than a month. So, you know, if I had to say a rough guess would be 100 gallons a month. . . . It was probably more. That’s a conservative figure.”27

  At the time of the conversation in March 2013, Poirier was battling esophageal cancer—one of the diseases that had been clearly linked to TCE. He died two months later at the age of fifty-eight. But while he was battling the cancer, Poirier had seen a report on NBC featuring Mike Partain and other former Lejeune residents who had been diagnosed with male breast cancer. The report aired in February 2013, and Poirier went online afterward and posted a rough apology.

  “It is very difficult living with the tought that i took part in this ground polution and facing death from this cancer,” he wrote without going back to correct his typos. “I joined the USMC to serve and protect, not to harm.”28

  In the interview with the AP reporter, Allen Breed, Poirier elaborated on his feelings. “I’m a religious person,” he said. “I believe in the universe. I don’t think it’s a direct thing. But I have guilt, let’s put it that way. I have guilt.” Breed wrote that while Poirier knew he couldn’t change the past, he had a final wish. “When judgment day comes, you know, I hope those people that suffered . . . realize that I didn’t know what I was doing.”29

  16

  CHANGING THE CULTURE

  They think . . . because what they’re doing is important they can do any damn thing they want.

  —REPRESENTATIVE JOHN D. DINGELL (D-MI)

  No doubt the commandant of the Marine Corps, General James Amos, had plenty on his plate in the spring of 2013. Congress had made deep cuts in the Pentagon’s budget, President Obama had a firm plan for disengaging from the war in Afghanistan, new threats to national security were emerging from continued political turmoil in the Middle East, and, closer to home, reports of sexual assault and abuse by members of the military continued popping up in the headlines, putting all the service commanders on the defensive about their enforcement of codes of conduct. Still, it seemed at least remotely plausible that Amos, who was expected to step down soon as commandant after more than forty years in the Navy and Marines, might be able to spare twenty or thirty minutes to discuss the decades-old saga of environmental health issues at Camp Lejeune, which seemed finally to be moving into its closing chapters. Wrong. “I’m afraid the Commandant’s schedule is booked up for the foreseeable future. Sorry about that,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Hayes in an e-mail on June 10, 2013, responding to a long-standing request for an interview with Amos about Camp Lejeune.1

  Then again, the response from Hayes, the press secretary for the commandant, wasn’t surprising. Whenever there has been any significant development in the investigations and studies of Camp Lejeune’s toxic water, the Marine Corps inevitably has declined to comment—even when the Washington Post asked for a response to the report by the commandant’s own panel essentially exonerating the Navy and Marines of any wrongdoing in addressing the pollution problems when they were first discovered. Occasionally, on specific issues, the Marines would issue a statement, but usually only in response to written questions. It was clear, too, that every official comment to the media had been carefully crafted and fully vetted by top brass, especially the Navy lawyers.

  The military’s discussions of Camp Lejeune on Capitol Hill were much the same—mostly characterized as a one-way street. Brooks Tucker, senior policy adviser for national security and veterans’ affairs to the senior senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr, has been present at more than a dozen meetings between his boss and Marine Corps officials. Tucker, a former Marine officer, described one meeting on the Lejeune contamination that was opened by one of the Marine Corps attorneys—later identified as Robert Hogue, counsel to the commandant—with a firm pronouncement: “This is not a negotiation.”

  “They’ve been lawyered up for decades,” Tucker said. “It’s very hard once you have layers and layers of obfuscation—and more so for an institution that has integrity as its core—to come out and say we’ve been lying for forty years.” During the decades that hazardous wastes were building up in some of the base water supplies, it was evident that environmental officials either at Camp Lejeune or in the Navy Facilities Engineering Command at Norfolk, Virginia, were not paying much attention to the problems, Tucker said. “I don’t think anyone really wanted to acknowledge the elephant that was getting bigger,” he said. “There was some turning a blind eye. The talking points were that they were very much concerned about the health issues, but they needed to wait for the science on this.”

  At the same time, Tucker said, “there was a fair amount of bullying going on,” mainly directed at the federal scientists assigned to investigate the effects of Lejeune’s pollution.
And among those researchers at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, “there was a systemic governmental desire to not want to be confrontational with another government branch,” he said. “Plus they’re relying on the agency that caused the pollution to fund the studies.”

  Of course, concerns about potential liabilities, conservatively estimated to be at least several billion dollars, had a lot to do with the military’s hard-line stance. Tucker said that at one meeting with Burr and others on Capitol Hill, the Marine Corps commandant asked rhetorically, “Do we want to open the treasury?” Lawyers at the Justice Department and the Defense Department were all on the same page with their legal strategy, Tucker said: “Delay, delay, delay.” But as a former Marine, Tucker said he was disappointed by the institution’s deep-rooted refusal to respond to the concerns of those who felt they had been harmed by Lejeune’s pollution. “At some point at the mid-level, some of them could have pushed back on the way things were being done,” he said. “I would hesitate to even call them Marines.”

  Brad Miller, the former Democratic congressman from North Carolina who had led investigations of the Lejeune pollution, also expressed dismay at the military’s posture. “I was disappointed in the Marines and the Navy,” Miller said:

  There’s a natural human tendency to try to minimize the harm your agency has done even if it was done before you were there. But they were not pursuing this with the eagerness and enthusiasm they should have. It was not so much covering up. But the liabilities seem so small in comparison to the loyalty they should have felt for their own people. They didn’t come to Congress and say we have a problem and we need to compensate people. The push had to come from people like Jerry [Ensminger] and then Congress, and it was against the resistance of the Marine Corps and the Navy.