A bunch of veterans who served at Karshi-Khanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan in the course of the Afghan War say they cannot get the Pentagon to declassify details about the toxins they might have been uncovered to.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
In the early years of the warfare in Afghanistan, the U.S. army relied closely on an airbase in Uzbekistan that was often known as K2. K2 is now recognized for an additional cause – poisonous publicity. Veterans who served there have reported uncommon illnesses or cancers, and plenty of have died. Now they’re demanding solutions from the Pentagon, as NPR’s Quil Lawrence experiences.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: For 20 years now, Kim Brooks has been combating a warfare she by no means signed up for.
KIM BROOKS: My husband, Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Brooks, was a 1989 West Point graduate.
LAWRENCE: They married the following 12 months and had 4 youngsters by the point 9/11 occurred. Tim deployed to a base referred to as Karshi-Khanabad – K2 – in Uzbekistan close to the Afghan border. Troops there talked about irritating mud and unusual chemical compounds seeping up by way of the bottom. Tim got here residence, and shortly after, he began listening to rumors about uranium and different toxins. A 12 months later, he had a seizure at a command ceremony as he was getting ready to deploy to Iraq. At the hospital, the information wasn’t good – mind most cancers.
BROOKS: The physician tells us that Tim has a stage 3 astrocytoma, and it is aggressive, and he has most likely 11 months max to dwell. You know, we make it out to the car parking zone, and Tim collapses on the bottom in tears, sobbing. So he is 6-foot-5. He’s on the bottom, and he is sobbing.
LAWRENCE: Tim beat the prediction by a month. He died a 12 months later, nonetheless on energetic obligation with the Army. Of their 4 youngsters, one went to West Point and later Iraq. Another is now a lawyer on the Yale Veterans Legal Services Clinic, which helped file a lawsuit this week.
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STEVE NELSON: I’m the director of presidency affairs and a board member for the Stronghold Freedom Foundation. I want to thank Senator Blumenthal in your continued help and being right here in the present day. I might additionally wish to thank the CVLC for internet hosting us in the present day and serving to us in our journey.
LAWRENCE: Steve Nelson, with the Stronghold Freedom Foundation, spoke at a press convention saying the go well with introduced as a result of the Pentagon has not answered a freedom of data request, a FOIA.
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NELSON: This FOIA litigation seeks to pressure the federal government to supply a listing of the toxins it found and documented at K2. This data is being inexplicably and shamefully withheld.
LAWRENCE: The Pentagon referred NPR’s question to the Department of Justice, which declined to touch upon why this data is not being launched. Fifteen thousand vets served at K2. Hundreds of them say they’re sick, however they cannot even inform docs what to deal with them for till they know what was contaminating the bottom.
MARK JACKSON: When I used to be there, some dudes got here off a C-17 carrying moon fits, carrying Geiger counters, and I used to be in working shorts and a T-shirt.
LAWRENCE: Mark Jackson served 4 fight excursions. He spoke to me final week, after which he rushed himself to the emergency room when the sepsis in considered one of his elbows burst. He’s obtained extreme osteoporosis, anemia, and his thyroid failed and was eliminated.
JACKSON: I’ve had surgical procedure 4 instances up to now six months, and I think about myself fortunate as a result of it isn’t most cancers.
LAWRENCE: Jackson’s service was acknowledged with a Bronze Star medal pinned on by Lloyd Austin, then a common, now Secretary of Defense. Jackson now needs Secretary Austin to acknowledge him once more and the entire different K2 veterans by releasing the knowledge they should survive.
Quil Lawrence, NPR News.
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