Many of you have heard or read about my mess in 1974 while I was in the Army at a place called Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland this diary was written in August 2006 by TxSharon and I have been pushing Congress and anyone else who would listen for help for these men, there were originally 7120 enlisted men used in the experiments.
Today the lawsuit that was filed states that they think there are about 3000 survivors. I learned about the lawsuit by reading it in the news here at my favorite veterans site VA Watchdog.org
MKULTRA "TEST VETS" SUE CIA, DoD AND U.S. ARMY --
Complaint asks the Court to determine that Defendants'
actions were illegal and that Defendants have a duty to notify
all victims and to provide them with health care going forward.
The "Test Vets" may soon get their day in Court.
Below is a statement from Morrison & Foerster regarding a lawsuit just filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
It is self-explanatory.
For more about "Test Vets," use the VA Watchdog search engine... click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/...
arch.php?q=test+vets&op=ph
And, for a copy of the entire complaint filed in Court, click here...
The case is Vietnam Veterans of America v. CIA, 09-37, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
I then went looking and found other stories about it.
Bloomberg News has this
The veterans say they and others were treated like guinea pigs in tests involving nerve gas, hallucinogenic drugs and mind-control experiments that left civilians and military people who unwittingly volunteered for the program with permanent disabilities. The tests, codenamed MKULTRA, began in the 1940s at a Maryland Army base and continued to about 1976, they said.
"What is not historical about these tests is the impact they had on the enlisted men," Gordon Erspamer, an attorney with Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco, said today at a news conference. "They have never been compensated, they have been denied health care, they have been left alone for more than 30 years."
The lawsuit, filed today in federal court in San Francisco, names as defendants the CIA, which allegedly funded the experiments, and the Defense Department. It seeks court orders declaring the experiments violated international law and forcing the government to notify and provide health care to people who participated in the tests.
The lawyer handling this was also the lawyer on the recent California Court Case on PTSD and Veterans for Common Sense to try and force the VA to speed up the compensation claims process.
The firm handled that lawsuit pro bono just as they are handling this new case for us veterans. I wish they had included a clause about forcing the government to identify all the soldiers used, so that widows of the over 4000 suspected dead veterans would also be notified of their spouses use in the experiments and that they may be entitled to veterans survivor benefits and medical care, if the deceased spouses death can be linked to the exposures at Edgewood Arsenal.
The experiments started in 1955, 54 years ago, they were stopped in 1975, 34 years ago, it is past time for the government to step up and do the right thing for these veterans and their families, I am just sorry it has taken a lawsuit to force the issue.
So much for the sacred "PROMISE" this promise wasn't kept by any administration for the past 50 years. Ignore it long enough and we will all die and then they won't have to deal with it.
Canada and Great Britain have all made monetary settlements with their "test veterans" why is the United States the last nation to do so?