Veterans Disability

The Defense Department between 1942 and 1975 conducted at least three secret chemical experiments using military personnel as test subjects. Two of these experiments, dating to World War II, involved mustard gas. The third took place during the Cold War and examined the effects of nerve gas and psychochemicals, including LSD. Because of a lack of data, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has found it difficult to decide on the validity of veterans' claims arising from the mustard gas experiments. Few veterans could prove that their health problems were due to their participation in the mustard gas tests; until 1992, VA had approved only 13 of 145 claims for benefits. In July 1992, VA changed its adjudicating procedures for these kinds of claims. To receive compensation, veterans with health problems associated with mustard gas exposure need only show that they participated in the tests. Yet only limited information on the tests is available, including test sites, test dates, and participating military units. Moreover, what little information is available is in records scattered among many military locations. As a result, VA will continue to have difficulty deciding whether veterans' claims are legitimate. VA's only outreach effort to identify test participants was hampered by the limited information available on the testing programs. Only 128 veterans out of the thousands who participated could be identified in 1991 from existing information.

GAO found that: (1) the services conducted three secret military research projects between 1942 and 1975; (2) the Navy did not maintain records for all personnel involved in mustard agent testing during World War II; (3) the Army did not keep records of its mustard agent test activities in a manner that would enable ready identification of soldiers who participated in its World War II chemical tests; (4) the Army's Medical Research and Development Command has the names and service numbers of all test participants and listings of the chemicals to which service members were exposed between 1952 and 1975; (5) prior to July 1992, a veteran had to prove that his disability was service-connected or a result of injuries or disease incurred during a period of military service, and VA disallowed many claims because veterans could not provide evidence of having been injured by mustard gas exposure; (6) veterans with specific health problems known to be associated with mustard gas exposure now only have to prove participation in the testing program; (7) VA believes that, due to the secret nature of testing, veterans might be disadvantaged in proving their entitlement to benefits; (8) VA commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to review medical and scientific literature to determine the long-term health effects of exposure to mustard gas and recommend policy changes for VA consideration; (9) a system is in place for assisting veterans tested with incapacitating agents to obtain information about their testing experiences; (10) the fact that there were few claims from participants in the Army's incapacitating agent testing may be attributable to this group's having been extensively followed; and (11) VA has conducted only one outreach effort to contact veterans who participated in secret chemical and biological experiments, and that initiative was hampered because the names of only a few of the test subjects were known.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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