Priority care OK'd for exposed vets

WASHINGTON — The House unanimously passed a bill Wednesday to offer priority medical care to veterans who may have been exposed to such toxins as anthrax and nerve gas during once-secret tests at sea — tests designed by Army scientists in Utah.

That soon may help end years-long pleas for help by participants in those secretive tests, called Project SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense), and its parent set of tests, called Project 112.

Both were designed at the now defunct Deseret Test Center at Fort Douglas and later at Dugway Proving Ground to test chemical and biological arms defenses during the 1960s and early '70s. SHAD tests often had ships pass through clouds of nerve or other agents to test decontamination, detection and protection equipment.

The Deseret News revealed those tests publicly eight years ago. It obtained test reports through Freedom of Information Act requests after sailors who blamed cancer and nervous system ills on those tests contacted the newspaper seeking help.

However, the Pentagon continued to insist until last year that the tests did not occur or were not dangerous — preventing sailors from receiving medial care at Veterans Affairs hospitals.

After pressure from veterans, members of Congress and the media, the Pentagon last year finally acknowledged the tests indeed occurred and were dangerous — and had exposed participants to real germ and chemical weapons plus less-dangerous simulants. It reviewed records at Dugway to identify the scope of the tests.

It concluded last June that 5,842 members of the military were present at the various tests, and many were exposed unwittingly.

Besides the 21 series of tests that it confirmed had occurred at sea, it also found 29 related series of tests on land in Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, Maryland, Florida, Georgia, Panama, Canada and the United Kingdom. (The Deseret News has shown through the years that thousands of other chemical and biological arms trials also occurred in Utah throughout the Cold War.)

At the urging of Rep. Jim Matheson and other House members, the Pentagon has kept open its investigation into Project SHAD to try to identify more tests and participants. For example, it has not found documentation about 84 series of tests that were planned for Project 112 and has suggested that they never occurred.