Between 1962 and 1970, the United States sprayed nearly 20 million gallons of herbicides, including 11.2 million gallons of the defoliant Agent Orange, on some 1.5 million hectares (approximately 10-14%) of South Vietnam, particularly in the Mekong Delta, Central Highlands and DMZ regions. The herbicides contained TCDD, the most toxic form of dioxin. One third of the sprayed areas were covered more than once, and 52,000 hectares were sprayed more than four times. The spraying was finally stopped in 1971 after scientists disclosed that Agent Orange caused birth defects in laboratory animals.

There is little argument that the spraying of Agent Orange had a devastating effect on Vietnam’s environment. In place of vast green forests are swaths of barren countryside that support almost no vegetation, save a weed locally known as ‘American grass’ that is useless for feeding livestock. When it comes to effects on human health, however, controversy still reigns.

A large body of scientific evidence strongly indicates that the TCDD found in the herbicide negatively affects human health. Studies conducted by the World Health Organization, National Academy of Sciences, and the Environmental Protection Agency have proven that TCDD dioxin is a human carcinogen. Dioxin exposure is associated with a variety of cancers such as Hodgkin’s disease, soft tissue sarcoma, lung cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, digestive tract cancers, oral cavity cancer, renal (kidney) cancer, leukemia and breast cancer in women. Exposure to TCDD is also associated with a range of other ailments, including altered liver function, weakening of the immune system, impairment of the developing nervous system and endocrine system, reproductive problems including spinal bifida and miscarriage, and increased prevalence of heart disease and diabetes.

Fetuses, infants and children are particularly sensitive to TCDD dioxin exposure, which can negatively affect neurodevelopment and behavior, and is associated with an increased prevalence of developmental delays, lower IQ, low birth weight, behavior disorders, decreased height in girls at adolescence, hearing loss, and a reduced immune response.

The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) presently pays compensation to US veterans of the Vietnam war for nine cancers, a nerve disorder and Type-II diabetes, based on veterans’ presumed exposure to Agent Orange. The VA also pays compensation for children of Vietnam War veterans born with the debilitating birth defect spina bifida. The VA’s decision to pay compensation is based on findings issued by the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine (IOM), which has also recently reported a possible association between parents’ exposure to Agent Orange and children’s chances of developing leukemia.

Despite the large body of scientific evidence and the fact that numerous US government entities have acknowledged links between TCDD exposure and a variety of ailments, other US government officials continue to question whether there is any solid proof that Agent Orange adversely affects human health in any significant way. While it cannot be ascertained whether this position is political or based on an honest scientific disagreement, a State Department official, speaking on background, has admitted that if the US Government thoroughly researches the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam, it would likely be exposing itself to legal liability.

Some Vietnamese government officials are also reluctant to publicly address the problem, perhaps concerned that widespread publicity concerning the issue could severely damage fish and beef exports. The controversy surrounding Agent Orange is compounded by conflicting estimates put forth by Vietnamese authorities regarding the number of Agent Orange victims in Vietnam, which range from 70,000 to 1,000,000. In a comprehensive and reputedly objective two-year nation-wide survey that was concluded last year, Vietnamese health specialists could actually identify just 30,000 victims of Agent Orange nation-wide. It is against this backdrop that the United States and Vietnamese governments agreed last year to conduct joint research on Agent Orange.

While the joint US-Vietnam Agent Orange study has yet to commence, other international-standard studies have already been conducted in Vietnam. Between 1994 and 1998, Hatfield Consultants Ltd., a Canadian environmental consulting company comprised of environmental biologists and chemists, conducted an in-depth study on the environmental and physical effects of Agent Orange exposure/contamination in and around an old US airbase located in the A Loui Valley (Thua Thien-Hue Province).

The Hatfield study is widely considered to be one of the most thorough studies ever conducted on Agent Orange to date. Among the study’s significant findings are that many residents of A Luoi born after the war have high levels of dioxin in their blood, indicating that dioxin contaminants from Agent Orange are still present in the environment, and are being taken up by humans through the food chain. This could be happening through the consumption of animal flesh, especially from fish, which are cultivated in ponds. Another possibility is through direct contact with contaminated soil.

According to the Hatfield report, if the soil contamination levels found in A So commune were discovered in a western jurisdiction, this would result in the area being declared a "contaminated site". Dioxin levels found in fish would trigger a consumption advisory process, and possibly prohibitions against consumption.

Given these high contamination levels, it is no surprise that the blood of A Luoi Valley residents has elevated levels of dioxin compared to persons from most other areas of the world. Dioxin levels in breast milk of young nursing mothers is also elevated when compared to world levels. There is also a much higher prevalence of physical birth defects in the valley compared to similar communities that were never exposed to Agent Orange.

The fact that there are numerous old airstrips and fire bases littered across southern Vietnam, bases where herbicides were once stored, dumped, and heavily sprayed, make it logical to conclude, as the Hatfield report states, that "the existence of other ‘hot spots’ is likely."

Other studies have already proven this fact out. At the old Bien Hoa air base outside of Ho Chi Minh City, where 7,500 gallons of Agent Orange were spilled during the war, blood samples from 19 of 20 residents tested in 1999 revealed dioxin levels up to 135 times higher than from Vietnamese persons not exposed to Agent Orange. It is thought that these heightened dioxin levels are first and foremost due to the consumption of contaminated fish. Even residents who did not live in Bien Hoa during the war have elevated levels of dioxin in their blood, further indicating that dioxin is likely still being taken up through the food chain.

Other international studies have also found high levels of dioxin contamination persisting in the blood, tissue, and breast milk of Vietnamese living in sprayed areas. Researchers examining levels of TCDD in fatty tissues have found a mean of 14.7 parts per trillion (ppt) among southern Vietnamese, as compared to 0.6 ppt among people living in unsprayed areas of the north. In the village of Cam Nghia, which was heavily sprayed with Agent Orange on two separate occasions during the war, one of every ten children suffers from a serious birth defect. Dr. Arnold Schecter, Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Texas-Southwestern and author of the Bien Hoa study, has found dioxin levels in the breast milk of Vietnamese mothers up to 450 times the average of levels found in the milk and blood of Americans.

According to Dr. Schecter, the situation in Bien Hoa (and by implication, other areas of Vietnam), "would be considered a public health emergency in the US and immediate action taken."

The Hatfield Group scientists concur. When the group revealed its findings in A Loui, researcher Mark Hatfield noted that, "[a]ny place in the West or Japan that had such high dioxin readings would immediately be evacuated and a huge chemical cleanup launched." Researcher David Levy recommended that families at the site be immediately evacuated, and local officials did eventually move one dozen families away from the site.

Nevertheless, children and their families in A Luoi and other hotspots continue to be exposed to Agent Orange, which, according to the vast weight of scientific evidence, is likely imperiling their health. This problem is not likely to go away. Once dioxins reach the environment, they are highly persistent and accumulate in the tissues of animals. Human exposure is maintained through the ingestion of contaminated foods, and breast milk can also be a significant source of dioxin for infants. Since dioxin exposure can be significantly reduced through inexpensive changes to diets, the Hatfield Group recommends that people living in or near potential ‘hot spots’ be educated about the importance of avoiding the consumption of animal products, particularly fat and organ meat.

Without effective mitigation, more children living in ‘hot spot’ areas will continue to fall victim to the ravages of Agent Orange. While millions will be invested in conducting further studies of this problem, children and others being exposed to and negatively affected by dioxin will not receive any benefits from this expensive undertaking.

During the same time of the Agent Orange defoliation in Viet Nam, the US also was also secretly spraying toxic herbicides in southern Laos and northeastern Cambodia. Until recently the US has kept data about these defoliation actions closed and unavailable.

During the US Secret War in Laos (1960-1975) and the Secret Bombing of Cambodia (1970-72), the CIA and secret US military units sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange, Agent White, and Agent Blue on North Vietnamese supply lines (the "Ho Chi Minh Trail"). Although linked to the Vietnam War, the Lao and Cambodia wars also had their own characteristics. Covert spraying also occurred in other areas far from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to weaken the strength of the leftist revolutionary Pathet Lao forces and deny them food sources. Hand -spraying also occurred around top secret encampments of the CIA-US military forces.

The secret nature of US intervention in Laos and Cambodia meant that spraying was officially denied during and after the war. The sprayed areas were under the control of local leftist revolutionary forces.

According to a document revealed by the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine in 1997, "Military documents report the use of herbicides over areas of Laos, particularly near the Vietnam border and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The purpose of the operation in Laos was to expose foot trails, roads and other lines of communication that led into Vietnam. Herbicide operations began in December 1965 (sic); within a 6-month period, more than 200,000 gallons of herbicide had been sprayed over approximately 1500 km of roads and trails in Laos."

Air Force historian William Buckingham, author of the 1982 report "Operation Ranch Hand", had access to Laos and Cambodia data but was not allowed to disclose it. Maps of spraying missions released for Vietnam research show many flights extending to the borders of Laos and Cambodia where the lines abruptly stop. Records on the herbicide sprayings in these countries were classified top secret. Military personnel who flew on the Lao and Cambodia spraying (and bombing) missions are still restricted from speaking about those incidents.

In the 1980’s the American Friends Service Committee’s field office in the Lao PDR made several requests for defoliation records, but was told by the US Embassy that the records were "unavailable." In 1999, the Department of Defense turned over the first set of decoded, declassified herbicide flight records to the Lao Government’s Unexploded Ordnance Program (UXO Lao), which mapped out the locations of the herbicide spraying.

The UXO-held data set has many gaps, including air spraying during the heaviest warfare years (1968 –71), pre-1966 air spraying and hand spraying around base perimeters. There is no public repository of this data in the US as of February 2002. Most importantly, no records on defoliation have yet come from the CIA, which played a major role in the Lao and Cambodia wars.

The first on-the-ground soil and blood tests in Laos were conducted in July 2001 by dioxin specialist Dr. Arnold Schecter and Roger Rumpf. After an initial visit to one site in Laos (Sepone District, Savannakhet Province), Dr. Schecter stresses the need for sufficient funds to complete a thorough sampling study in both Laos and Cambodia. Since Agent Orange contaminated with dioxin was sprayed in at least seven provinces in Laos, an extensive study is necessary to determine dioxin levels in people, food and the environment and the health and development consequences on people living in these areas.

Along the southeastern part of the Lao panhandle and northeastern Cambodia live indigenous ethnic groups who remain among the poorest, least educated, and most sickly peoples of the region. As these ethnic groups live in under-served regions, have marginal advocacy capabilities, and lack scientific knowledge of dioxin contamination, problems with health and environmental conditions can remain unknown for decades. The US Government and the corporations who profited from Agent Orange have a responsibility to assist affected communities in Southeast Asia, just as they have spent millions to clean up contamination inside the US. Both the spraying itself and the subsequent denial of information to exposed peoples constitute human rights violations that need to be corrected.

It is time for full accountability on the secret spraying of herbicides in Laos and Cambodia. Two years ago, Congress appropriated $850,000 for collaborative Agent Orange research with Vietnam. Last year, this amount was renewed and extended to include all countries in Southeast Asia. Thirty years after herbicide spraying ceased, there is finally an opportunity to cooperate with Laos and Cambodia to discover the truth about the environmental effects of the Secret War.

One such research effort, Project LAOS (Lao Agent Orange Survey) has received official approval from the Lao Government and will be working with Lao environmental and medical specialists. As the first Agent Orange program in Laos, the project arranged for four Lao to attend the March 2002 international symposium on Agent Orange in Hanoi. For more information, please contact Roger Rumpf (rojacmir@earthlink.net).

The first surprising thing about this event, was the total absence of Lao themselves, the lack of any significant organisation or movement behind this group of foreign activists. The students to whom they refer do not represent a large part of the population. Laos is not Burma, and therefore in Laos we do not have an opposition movement to the regime, which finds solid support from within the country itself.

Maybe, these activists forgot to find out what was really happening in Laos? Maybe they should understand that democracy is intimately linked to the safeguarding of the sovereignty of a country? Such attacks on one of the world’s last communist countries seems at times to be a delayed (cold) war. Multi-Party democratic systems provide no guarantee that human rights will be respected, as is shown by the situations in countries such as Malaysia, Thailand or Colombia.

Living and working here in Laos, one thing you learn is that the vast majority of the Lao people do not feel the need to question the political system which has brought them twenty-five years of peace. We should not forget that Laos was the victim of an undeclared, and "secret", war for more than ten years. This allowed democratic countries such as the United States to bomb this country without any consideration for international conventions or legitimacy. Still today, more than 200 people die every year from unexploded ordnance.

This respect for a political system does not stop the Lao people from criticising certain measures taken by their government. Neither do they desist from worrying about problems of corruption and the lack of any palpable economic upsurge following the Asian crisis. These different subjects are echoed in village conversations, mass organisations and sometimes even in the press, which is nevertheless controlled. We often sit in on meetings where villagers and the district and provincial authorities talk together about their development plans. They evaluate and criticise the results of certain measures, such as agricultural techniques proposed by the Minister or the campaign of prevention against malaria run by the health service. Even if the situation is far from being perfect, it can be said that freedom, democracy, and reconciliation exist in daily life, in ways and forms that are not always those which at first we recognise.

In 1986, following many years of isolation, Laos set about a long process of opening itself up to the world. This was not without difficulties. This integration into the international community is being recognised more and more and has led to numerous changes in economic life, political openness and the adaptation of Lao institutions to the needs of a globalized world. Even though Laos remains one of the least-developed countries in the world, the government has set the ambitious target of climbing out of this "sinister group" by the year 2020. This aim requires reform in all areas, including the political system. The international community, under the auspices of the United Nations pledged its support to the government and population of Laos in this massive undertaking during the Round Table of Donors, who met in December 2000 in Vientiane. In October 2001, the UNDP program in Laos published a brochure detailing the participation of Laos in the different international treaties of the United Nations. It underlined the real effort being made by the county to sign and realise a growing number of treaties and conventions.

It is these efforts being made by the government and population of Laos which we, westerners, should support so that they can define their own future, rather than distributing leaflets in a country that we barely know. Moreover, taking into account the not so inspiring realities of multi-party systems in many non-western countries of the world, we should contribute positively to the reflection on how to better integrate respect of human rights, democracy and development in whatever political system that a nation wants to adopt.

Following the end of the American War in Indochina in 1975, many South Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians who had worked with the US emigrated here or fled as refugees. Others remained behind, and a few continued a guerrilla struggle from the mountains. In the US, the majority of immigrants no longer took a political interest in their countries of origin. Growing numbers of former refugees have made visits to their country of origin for family and business reasons. Whether they approve or disapprove of the new political, social and economic order, they have come to terms with its existence.

However, public political discourse in the US is still dominated by exile groups flying their former flag and giving speeches about returning one day as victors. Among them is a radical core of true believers still seeking to reverse the results of the Indochina War. Reminiscent of the darkest days of the Cold War, the publications and websites of these groups are filled with passionate denunciations of the current governments in Phnom Penh, Vientiane and Hanoi. Since they also employ the language of human rights, democracy, and freedom, their statements may resonate with many Americans, but the actions of the most extreme groups prove otherwise. A selection of the most colorful and dangerous:

Cambodian Freedom Fighters (www.cffighters.org): This Long Beach, CA-based group organized an armed attack on Phnom Penh in November, 2000 in which unwitting conscripts were given weapons and brought into the capital by train. The CFF immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, after which many of its leaders were captured along the Thai-Cambodian border. Close to sixty members were convicted and given prison sentences in Cambodia last year. An additional 14 were sentenced to terms of five years to life on February 28, 2002.

CFF’s president, Chhun Yasith, who was convicted in absentia, continues to prepare tax returns in Long Beach and maintains, "We’re not terrorists; we have a website!" The US Ambassador to Cambodia, Kent Wiedemann, has confirmed that the FBI is investigating Chhun for activities that might violate the Neutrality Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from attempting to overthrow another country’s government.

All political parties in Cambodia have disavowed links with the CFF. Cambodian requests to extradite Chhun have gone unheeded by the US, though the FBI presumably keeps a close watch on his activities. The CFF appears to be unsophisticated in terms of public relations and has no presence in Washington.

Lao Veterans of America (www.laoveterans.com): The Lao Veterans, headquartered in Fresno with nationwide chapters, are the latest in a series of front groups organized by former Hmong general and CIA client Vang Pao. Sources close to the LVA suggest that it has a dual objective: securing citizenship and veterans’ benefits for Hmong and other Lao-American veterans, and raising funds for their own benefit and for the Hmong insurgency in Laos. An associated organization, the Lao Human Rights Council in Eau Claire, WI (www.laohumrights.org) uses human rights issues (often wildly exaggerated) to attempt to build anti-Lao Government sentiment in the US.

Through their clandestine contacts inside Laos, the Lao Veterans may be implicated in some of the bombings that hit Laos in 2000. Two members, Houa Ly and Michael Vang (nephew of the general) disappeared around the Thai-Lao border in April 1999 carrying an estimated $84,000 in cash for the insurgency. The Lao Veterans and affiliated groups have used the Ly-Vang case to argue for a more antagonistic US policy towards Laos.

The so-called "Hmong lobby" is well-organized and effective at lobbying. Philip Smith, who identifies himself with the fictitious Center for Public Policy Analysis and the misnamed Congressional Forum on Laos, served as a paid Washington lobbyist for the Lao Veterans from 1996-2001, but now is reportedly operating on his own.

The Montagnard Foundation: This association of ethnic minority peoples aims to establish an independent state of "Dega" in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It is identified as the remnant or successor of FULRO, a CIA-funded group that continued guerrilla activities in Cambodia and Vietnam through at least the 1980’s. The Foundation is based in Spartanburg, SC, though the majority of former FULRO members and other highlanders live in North Carolina. The foundation’s activities are supported by a group of US Special Forces veterans, Save the Montagnard People, Inc. (www.montagnards.org).

The Montagnard Foundation claims to be nonviolent, and there is no public evidence of their current involvement in armed activities. However, the organization was involved in inciting the February 2001 unrest in the Central Highlands, which the group’s website refers to as "our peaceful demonstration." The foundation has also reportedly encouraged disaffected highlanders to flee to Cambodia as refugees, in hopes of bringing them to resettle in the US.

Government of Free Vietnam:. This overseas Vietnamese group, led by Nguyen Huu Chanh, is responsible for bomb attacks on Vietnamese embassies and attempts to disrupt festivals and public events inside Vietnam. One well-publicized stunt involved a pilot dropping leaflets over Saigon during President Clinton’s visit in November 2000; the pilot was later captured.

In connection with a bomb planted at the Vietnamese Embassy in Bangkok in June 2001, the FBI arrested Free Vietnam member Vo Van Duc in California (October 2001). This is believed to be the first-ever such arrest made in the US. The Free Vietnam website describes the formation of the group in detail and claimed that in 1990 it had the "active support of the AFL-CIO", as well as front organizations and businesses operating in Vietnam and neighboring countries.