Message #1168

[Kenneth H. Young]

We had a one and a half hour private presentation with Mr Stogran and his team.

Yesterday, March 23, 2010 at 13:00 hrs. Kelly Franklin, Gary Goode, Celeste Sampson (A BC member of Widows on a Warpath) and I gave a CFB Gagetown (Chemical Defoliation Program) presentation to The Veterans Ombudsman Mr. Stogran and his five man team in Legion 172, Esquimalt BC.
 
We arrived a bit early (Military training doesn't allow me to do any differently) and we proceeded to do Recce to place. Kelly and I had been there before when I gave a speech about Gagetown for the 2005 election. We were expected by the Legion and, well received by them and were later presented their own board room to conduct our interview and presentations.
 
Mr. Stogran and his team arrived about 20 minutes later and we began introducing ourselves and got into some small talk. We had just eaten but he and his team hadn't and they wanted to get on with the presentation and eat later.
 
As pre arranged Gary started with his very well research presentation concerning Cantox Environmental and their past incorrect assessments, demonstrated that their employees were in fact ex-Health Canada and in one case an ex-Dow Chemical/Health Canada employee. He demonstrated how much and how often they have been cleaning up Government messes or rather white washing them. Meg Sears presentation which is a couple of hundred pages totally destroying the Cantox report was presented to them.
 
He then went on to demonstrate how much government and chemical industry Dalhousie has been granted since their favorable report for the BGAFFP and I mentioned how they had watered down the results by (1) not contacting one single veteran who was in Gagetown at the time of the spraying, using instead recently arrived soldiers and (2) by adding 40,000 citizens from Fredericton who were no where near any of the sprayings. Adding that they might as well have done the report on people from Moscow, for all that it actually pertained to Gagetown.
 
Gary then went into showing how the VAC has discontinued giving the benefit of the doubt to Veterans when it comes to CFB Gagetown, using his own file and that of others who have received a pension with the exact same conditions. the numbers were given that as of Jan 10, 2010 there had been 3071 pension requests for CFB Gagetown and AO wile only 36 pensions had been granted or just over 1%, about the same as the ex-gratia payments did.
 
I then tied them all together presented some more insight to the problems which Gary had been talking about and passed the floor over to Kelly.
 
Kelly, presented documentation tying the US and Canadian Government collaborations into not only the 66/67 2 and 1/2 barrels of chemical but 61 to date chemical testing's including the US Air Force hiring 10 times in 65 and 66 an Okanagan Helicopter to spray as much as 55,616 gals in 15 days in 65. He also using documentation demonstrated that it was not only related to SEA (South East Asia) but that that the money for the Canadian firm was paid from a SEA account.
 
I at this point interrupted to point out that even though they didn't mention which chemicals were sprayed of where they were sprayed, that we can assume that because of the date and the fact that almost all other chemicals had already been tested in CFB Gagetown, that these chemicals would have had to have been Agent White and that because the Canadian government has assured us that the only spraying of Vietnam Chemicals took place in CFB Gagetown we can also assume that this spraying did also. and that the amounts of chemicals were not neither on the DND list nor in their totals for chemicals used in CFB Gagetown.
 
Kelly continued by presenting his own time line of chemical use in Gagetown when compared against the time line of US chemicals used in Vietnam which clearly demonstrated that every single chemical use in Vietnam was first tested in CFB Gagetown before it was ever used in Vietnam. The head of Vietnam and SEA spraying operations was also often in CFB Gagetown as an advisor on our spray program and that even in their (the US Military) manual on the spraying operation for South East Asia, CFB Gagetown is mentioned and this manual has the very same project number as many of the Canadian Documents we have received.
 
Basically Kelly proved with documents that CFB Gagetown was a chemical test sight for the US military and the US war effort in SEA.
 
Kelly had many more documents but on DVD which would be past on the the Ombudsman's staff.
 
Celeste Sampson, told of her story and how she was denied both pension and ex-gratia payments and that on appeal she was told that she wasn't eligible because her husband was on leave during the spraying. Note: Her husband John had also died before Harpers Feb 6th date.
 
I then took the floor and tied all of our presentations together. I didn't have much to say at the meeting because I had already sent my presentation to all parties concerned and answered questions instead.
 
My presentation concerned debunking the rhetoric of Ottawa, DND and Greg Thompson. I showed beyond any doubt that many of the chemicals Ottawa had been spraying were unregistered chemicals and even the ones that were should never have been registered because both they and the chemical industry had never done the required tests or studied to have them registered, that the chemical industry had not been making our chemical differently. I proved that that Dow Chemical knew about the dioxin problem with Dow Chemical internal documents and I also told him that everyone needs to start looking at Agent White with HCB.
 
The idea that Ottawa would be off the hook because they lost the documents was also discussed and we let him know that there was one hell of a lot of documents out there if someone had the power to court order them. We explained the condition and the continued pollution at CFB Gagetown and that soldiers are still at danger.
 
I showed them the math on how many people should have been compensated by BGAFFP's own documents and that if it was designed to provide for only 4,500 that Ottawa already knew how many were dead. I demonstrated the costs of medications and uncovered medical procedures which many would have to pay out of pocket, told them my Gagetown story, showed them how the Freedom of information is being denied by inflating the number of pages covering even the smallest of subjects due mostly to Email.
 
Needless to say I did insert, "MY OPINION."
 
We wrapped up by presenting him with hundreds of pages and one DVD of documentation collaborating each and every point which we brought up.
 
Mr. Stogran Asked what we were hoping for from his office and we mentioned a Boots on the ground sort of a presumptive clause such as the US has for US soldiers in Vietnam and his recommendation for a Full public and Judicial Inquiry to be created. He then asked me if the only solution was to close down Gagetown and I replied absolutely not and that if Denang Vietnam  and some of the rivers in the US can be cleaned up so can Gagetown. That it was only a matter of money and the will. Also that this approach would in fact create even more jobs. I also mentioned that as the word gets out about the pollution still there, that foreign countries will be less willing to send their soldiers, so the clean up should be started ASAP.
 
It must be mentioned that both Mr. Stogran and his team's mouths dropped in disbelief and shock many time during our presentation and his team were chomping at the bit to get our documentation, and that we presented no statements which were not backed up with documentation, well except my opinion. LOL
 
We were asked for our Email addresses and phone numbers because he wants his office and investigators to keep in touch with us as he knew that we had not presented him with even 1% of the documents that we have nor the insight from having read them all and connected many of the pieces.
 
All in All I believe that we all came away from this meeting with very positive feelings. We were told that much of this and the information that we gave him would be put up on his web site.
 
We shall see.


Ken Young