Nation's DU article

["Michael C. Baker" <mcbaker@lanl.gov>]

Here is a copy of The Nation's DU article copyrighted in 1996.  This 
ought to give you an idea of the slant the television program with 
Nation consultants will take.

Mike Baker

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      The Pentagon's Radioactive Bullet
      An investigative report
 
      By Bill Mesler
      -------------------
 
      It is about two feet long, cylindrical and far denser than steel.
      When fired from a U.S. Army M1 Abrams tank, it is capable of drilling
      a hole through the strongest of tank armors. The makers of this
      tank-killing ammunition say it is the best in the world. But there is
      one problem with the Pentagon's super bullet: It is made of
      radioactive waste.
 
      The first time the Army used this "depleted uranium" (D.U.)
      ammunition on a battlefield was during the Gulf War, in 1991. Yet
      despite Pentagon assurances that only a small number of U.S. troops
      were exposed to dangerous levels of D.U., a two-month investigation
      by The Nation has discovered that hundreds and perhaps thousands of
      U.S. veterans were unknowingly exposed to potentially hazardous
      levels of depleted uranium, or uranium-238, in the Persian Gulf. Some
      soldiers inhaled it when they pulled wounded comrades from tanks hit
      by D.U. "friendly fire" or when they clambered into destroyed Iraqi
      vehicles. Others picked up expended rounds as war trophies. Thousands
      of other Americans were near accidental explosions of D.U. munitions.
 
      The Army never told combat engineer Dwayne Mowrer or his fellow
      soldiers in the First Infantry Division much about D.U. But the G.I.s
      learned how effective the radioactive rounds were as the "Big Red
      One" made its way up the carnage-ridden four-lane Kuwaiti road known
      as the "highway of death." Mowrer and his company saw the unique
      signature of a D.U. hit on nearly half the disabled Iraqi vehicles
      encountered. "It leaves a nice round hole, almost like someone had
      welded it out," Mowrer recalled.
 
      What Mowrer and others didn't know was that D.U. is highly toxic and,
      according to the Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety, can
      cause lung cancer, bone cancer and kidney disease. All they heard
      were rumors.
 
      "Once in a while you'd hear some guy say 'Hey, I heard those things
      were radioactive,'" Mowrer said. "Of course, everybody else says,
      'Yeah, right!' We really thought we were in the new enlightened Army.
      We thought all that Agent Orange stuff and human radiation
      experiments were a thing of the past."
 
      So Mowrer and his comrades didn't worry when a forty-ton HEMTT
      transport vehicle packed with D.U. rounds accidentally exploded near
      their camp. "We heard this tremendous boom and saw this black cloud
      blowing our way," he said. "The cloud went right over us, blew right
      over our camp."
 
      Before they left the gulf, Mowrer and other soldiers in the 651st
      Combat Support Attachment began experiencing strange flulike
      symptoms. He figured the symptoms would fade once he was back in the
      United States. They didn't. Mowrer's personal doctor and physicians
      at the local Veterans Administration could find nothing wrong with
      him. Meanwhile, his health worsened: fatigue, memory loss, bloody
      noses and diarrhea. Then the single parent of two began experiencing
      problems with motor skills, bloody stools, bleeding gums, rashes and
      strange bumps on his eyelids, nose and tongue. Mowrer thinks his
      problems can be traced to his exposure to D.U.
 
      The Pentagon says problems like Mowrer's could not have been caused
      by D.U., a weapon that many Americans have heard mentioned, if at
      all, only in the movie Courage Under Fire, which was based on a
      real-life D.U. friendly-fire incident. The Defense Department insists
      that D.U. radiation is relatively harmless -- only about 60 percent
      as radioactive as regular uranium. When properly encased, D.U. gives
      off so little radiation, the Pentagon says, that a soldier would have
      to sit surrounded by it for twenty hours to get the equivalent
      radiation of one chest X-ray. (According to scientists, a D.U.
      antitank round outside its metal casing can emit as much radiation in
      one hour as fifty chest X-rays.) Plus, the military brass argues that
      D.U. rounds so effectively destroyed Iraqi tanks that the weapons
      saved many more U.S. lives than radiation from them could possibly
      endanger.
 
      But the Pentagon has a credibility gap. For years, it has denied that
      U.S. soldiers in the Persian Gulf were exposed to chemical weapons.
      In September Pentagon officials admitted that troops were exposed
      when they destroyed Iraqi stores of chemical weapons, as Congress
      held hearings on "Gulf War Syndrome." The Pentagon also argued, in
      its own defense, that exposure to chemical weapons could not fully
      explain the diverse range of illnesses that have plagued thousands of
      soldiers who served in the Persian Gulf. Exposure to D.U. -- our own
      weaponry, in other words -- could well be among the missing links.
 
      Scientists point out that D.U. becomes much more dangerous when it
      burns. When fired, it combusts on impact. As much as 70 percent of
      the material is released as a radioactive and highly toxic dust that
      can be inhaled or ingested and then trapped in the lungs or kidneys.
      "This is when it becomes most dangerous," says Arjun Makhijani,
      president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. "It
      becomes a powder in the air that can irradiate you." Some scientists
      speculate that veterans' health problems stem from exposure to
      chemical agents combined with D.U., burning oil-field vapors and a
      new nerve-gas vaccine given to U.S. troops. "We know that depleted
      uranium is toxic and can cause diseases," said Dr. Howard Urnovitz, a
      microbiologist who has testified before the Presidential Advisory
      Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses. "We also know these
      soldiers were exposed to large amounts of nerve-gas agents. What we
      don't know is how the combination of these toxic and radioactive
      materials affect the immune system."
 
      Exactly how many U.S. soldiers were exposed to dangerous levels of
      D.U. during the Gulf War remains in dispute. Friendly-fire incidents
      left at least twenty-two veterans with D.U. shrapnel embedded in
      their bodies. The Veterans Administration is also monitoring the
      health of eleven more soldiers who were in tanks hit by D.U. but who
      were not hit by shrapnel, and twenty-five soldiers who helped prepare
      D.U.-contaminated tanks for shipment back to the United States
      without being told of the risk. The tanks were later buried in a
      radioactive waste disposal site run by the Energy Department.
 
      No Protection
 
      The Nation investigation has also discovered that the average
      infantry soldier is still receiving no training on how to protect
      against exposure to D.U., although such training was called for by an
      Army report on depleted uranium completed in June 1995. On the
      training lapses, the Pentagon does acknowledge past mistakes. Today
      the Army is providing new training in D.U. safety procedures for more
      soldiers, particularly members of armor, ordnance or medical teams
      that handle D.U. on a routine basis. "I feel confident that if an
      individual soldier has a need to know, they will be provided that
      training from the basic level on," Army Col. H.E. Wolfe told The
      Nation. But Wolfe confirmed that even now, not all infantry will get
      D.U. training.
 
      Although the full hazards of these weapons are still not known, the
      law allows the President to waive restrictions on the sale of D.U. to
      foreign armies. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information
      Act show that the Pentagon has already sold the radioactive
      ammunition to Thailand, Taiwan, Bahrain, Israel, Saudi Arabia,
      Greece, Korea, Turkey, Kuwait and other countries which the Pentagon
      will not disclose for national security reasons. The proliferation of
      D.U. ammunition around the world boosts the chances that U.S.
      soldiers will eventually be on the receiving end of the devastating
      weapon.
 
      A broad coalition of veterans organizations, environmental groups and
      scientists hope that won't happen. On September 12, they met in
      NewYork to kick off a campaign calling for an international ban on
      D.U. weapons. Even the conservative-minded Veterans of Foreign Wars
      and the American Legion recently passed resolutions calling on the
      Defense Department to reconsider its use of the controversial weapon.
 
      "Clearly the Department of Defense hasn't thought through the use of
      D.U. on the battlefield and what kind of exposures they are
      subjecting our troops to," charged Matt Puglisi, the assistant
      director of veterans affairs and rehabilitation for the American
      Legion. "It is a very effective weapon, which is why the D.O.D.
      really doesn't want to see it re-examined. We only spent a couple of
      days [in winning the Gulf War]. But what if we had a fight that took
      years and years? We could have tens of thousands of vets with D.U.
      shrapnel in them."
 
      The Gulf War Test
 
      The U.S. Army began introducing D.U. ammo into its stockpiles in
      1978, when the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in
      intense competition over which side would develop the most effective
      tank. Washington feared that the Soviets with their T-72 had jumped
      ahead in the development of armor that was nearly impenetrable by
      traditional weapons. It was thought that D.U. rounds could counter
      the improved Soviet armor. But not until Iraq's Soviet-supplied army
      invaded oil-rich Kuwait and President Bush sent an expeditionary
      force of 500,000 to dislodge it was there a chance to battle-test the
      D.U. rounds.
 
      American M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored personnel carriers fired
      D.U. rounds; the A-10 Warthog aircraft, which provided close support
      for combat troops, fired twin 30-millimeter guns with small-caliber
      D.U. bullets. All told, in the 100 hours of the February ground war,
      U.S. tanks fired at least 14,000 large-caliber D.U. rounds, and U.S.
      planes some 940,000 smaller-caliber rounds. D.U. rounds left about
      1,400 Iraqi tanks smoldering in the desert. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf
      recalled one commander saying his unit "went through a whole field of
      burning Iraqi tanks."
 
      The D.U. weapons succeeded beyond the Pentagon's wildest dreams. But
      they received little public attention compared with the fanfare over
      other high-tech weapons: smart bombs, stealth fighters and Patriot
      missiles (which looked good, even if they didn't, as it turned out,
      work). D.U., perhaps the most effective new weapon of them all, was
      mentioned only in passing. "People have a fear of radioactivity and
      radioactive materials," explained Dan Fahey, a former Navy officer
      who served in the gulf. "The Army seems to think that if they are
      going to keep using D.U., the less they tell people about it the
      better."
 
      As the U.S.-led coalition forces swept to victory, many celebrating
      G.I.s scrambled onto -- or into -- disabled Iraqi vehicles. "When you
      get a lot of soldiers out on a battlefield, they are going to be
      curious," observed Chris Kornkven, a staff sergeant with the 304th
      Combat Support Company. "The Gulf War was the first time we saw
      Soviet tanks. Many of us started climbing around these destroyed
      vehicles." Indeed, a study by the Operation Desert Shield/Desert
      Storm Association found that out of 10,051 Gulf War veterans who have
      reported mysterious illnesses, 82 percent had entered captured enemy
      vehicles.
 
      Other soldiers might have been exposed to harmful levels of D.U. as
      they rescued comrades from vehicles hit by friendly fire. A Gulf War
      photo book, Triumph in the Desert, contains one dramatic picture of
      soldiers pulling wounded Americans from the burning hull of an Abrams
      tank that had been hit by a D.U. round. Black smoke from the
      depleted-uranium explosion billows around the rescuers. Still other
      G.I.s picked up fragments of large-caliber D.U. rounds or unexploded
      small rounds and wore them as jewelry, hung around the soldiers'
      necks. "We didn't know any better," said Kornkven. "We didn't find
      out until long after we were home that there even was such a thing as
      D.U."
 
      But the Americans facing perhaps the greatest risk from D.U. were
      those who had been hit by D.U. shrapnel, especially those still
      carrying radioactive fragments in their bodies. Robert Sanders, who
      drove a tank, was one apparent casualty. On the third day of the
      ground war, his tank was hit by a D.U. round fired from another U.S.
      tank. "I had stinging pain in my shoulder and a stinging pain in my
      face from shrapnel," Sanders said.
 
      Military doctors removed the shrapnel. Several years later, however,
      Sanders heard that D.U. was radioactive and toxic, so he obtained his
      medical records. He found an interdepartmental fax saying doctors had
      removed bits of an "unknown metal" from his shoulder and that it was
      "probably D.U." Four years after he was wounded, Sanders took a urine
      test for depleted uranium, which revealed high levels of it in his
      system. The Pentagon had never made an effort to tell him of his
      likely exposure.
 
      Even the end of the ground war on February 28, 1991, did not end the
      threat of exposure to U.S. soldiers. Government documents reveal that
      in one accident alone, at a camp at Doha, about twelve miles from
      Kuwait City, as many as 660 rounds weighing 7,062 pounds burned,
      releasing dark clouds of D.U. particles. Many of the 3,000 U.S.
      troops stationed at the base participated in cleanup operations
      without protective gear and without knowledge of the potential
      dangers.
 
      The Aftermath
 
      At war's end, U.S. forces left behind about 300 tons of expended D.U.
      ammunition in Kuwait and Iraq, a veritable radioactive waste dump
      that could haunt inhabitants of the region for years. In August 1995,
      Iraq presented a study to the United Nations demonstrating sharp
      increases in leukemia and other cancers as well as other unexplained
      diseases around the Basra region in the country's south. Iraqi
      scientists attributed some of the cancers to depleted uranium.
 
      Some U.S. officials and scientists have questioned the Iraqi claims.
      But former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who has made two recent
      trips to Iraq, observes that "the health ministry and doctors
      particularly in Basra and the south are terribly concerned about a
      range of problems that were not experienced before: fetuses with
      tumors, high rates of leukemia." And a secret British Atomic Energy
      Authority report leaked to the London Independent in November 1991
      warned that there was enough depleted uranium left behind in the
      Persian Gulf to account for "500,000 potential deaths" through
      increased cancer rates, although it noted that such a figure was an
      unlikely, worst-case scenario. That figure was based on an estimate
      that only forty tons of D.U. was left behind.
 
      Another study, by Siegwart Gunther, president of the Austrian chapter
      of Yellow Cross International, reported that D.U. projectiles "were
      gathered by children and used as toys." The study noted that a little
      girl who collected twelve of the projectiles died of leukemia.
      Gunther collected some D.U. rounds in southern Iraq and took them to
      Germany for analysis. However, when Gunther entered Germany, the D.U.
      rounds were seized. The authorities claimed that just one projectile
      emitted more radiation in five hours than is allowed per year under
      German regulations.
 
      Cleaning up the radioactive mess in the Persian Gulf would cost
      "billions," even if it were feasible, said Leonard Dietz, an atomic
      scientist who wrote a report on depleted uranium for the Energy
      Department. But the Pentagon maintained in a report that "no
      international law, treaty, regulation, or custom requires the U.S. to
      remediate Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm battlefields."
 
      Those who suggest otherwise have found that they must fight the
      military industry as well as the Pentagon. In January 1993 Eric
      Hoskins, a public health specialist who surveyed Iraq as a member of
      a Harvard team, wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times warning that
      D.U. may be causing health problems in Iraqi children. A few weeks
      later a harsh letter to the editor accused Hoskins of "making readers
      of limited scientific literacy the lawful prey of his hyperbole,"
      which reaches the "bizarre conclusion that the environmental
      aftermath of the Persian Gulf war is not Iraq's fault, but ours!" The
      author, Russell Seitz, was identified as an associate with the "Olin
      Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University."
 
      Though the letter appeared to be the work of a neutral scientist, the
      Olin Institute at Harvard was established by the John M. Olin
      Foundation, which grew out of the manufacturing fortune created by
      the Olin Corporation, currently the nation's only maker of D.U.
      antitank rounds. Seitz did not answer a request from The Nation
      seeking comment.
 
      Despite the Pentagon's love affair with D.U., there is an alternative
      -- tank ammunition made from tungsten. Matt Kagan, a former munitions
      analyst for Jane's Defence Weekly, said the latest developments in
      tungsten technology have made it "almost as effective as D.U." That
      assessment is shared by Bill Arkin, a columnist for The Bulletin of
      the Atomic Scientists who has consulted on D.U. for Greenpeace and
      Human Rights Watch. "It comes down to this," Arkin said. "Is there a
      logical alternative that provides the same military capability and
      doesn't leave us with this legacy? The answer is yes, tungsten."
 
      But tungsten is more expensive and must be imported, while the United
      States has more than 500,000 tons of depleted uranium, waste left
      behind by the production of nuclear weapons and by nuclear
      generators. Scientists have long looked for a way to re-use what
      otherwise must be stored at great expense in remote sites.
 
      "It's just a cost issue," argued Arkin. "But nobody ever thought
      through what would happen when we shoot a lot of this stuff around
      the battlefield. It's not a question of whether a thousand soldiers
      were exposed or fifty soldiers were exposed. We were probably lucky
      in the Gulf War. What happens when we're fighting a war that makes
      the Gulf War look like small potatoes?"
 
      Bill Mesler is a reporter working with the Investigative Fund of The
      Nation Institute.
 
      Copyright (c) 1996, The Nation Company, L.P. All rights reserved.
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