The quest for answers for thousands of veterans sickened — in some cases terminally — by contaminated water at Camp Lejuene has been stymied by a federal agency that refuses to hand over key documents, attorneys from Yale Law School charged Wednesday.
(FOX)- The Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in federal court Wednesday against the Department of Veterans Affairs for allegedly withholding information on a group of “experts” denying claims for scores of veterans exposed to cancer-causing chemicals at the North Carolina base.
The suit, which represents two veterans groups, seeks to compel the VA to respond to a December 2015 FOIA request about the SME program — an anonymous group of “subject matter experts” who render medical opinions on the veterans exposed to toxic water at Camp Lejuene between 1953 and 1987.
Since the program’s launch three years ago, the rate of Camp Lejeune toxic water disability claims being approved has dropped from approximately 25 percent to 8 percent, according to VA statistics. Advocates for veterans want to know who the purported experts passing judgment on the claims are, and how they arrive at their conclusions.
“The VA has yet to provide an official response to the request or even to provide a single responsive record,” Rory Minnis, a former Marine and second-year Yale law student, told reporters Wednesday.
“For several years now, Camp Lejeune advocates, individual veterans, and the media have repeatedly requested informationon the SMEs’ credentials, training, methodology, and programmechanics. Yet, the SME program remains a black box,” said Minnis. “The VA’s failure to respond to our clients’ FOIA request is just the latest instance in a long pattern of foot-dragging and misdirection in response to inquiries about the SME program.”
Between 1953 and 1987, nearly 1 million veterans, their families and civilian employees at Camp Lejeune were exposed to drinking and bathing water contaminated with dry cleaning chemicals, degreasers and a host of other toxins. Many base residents developed illnesses — including rare cancers — and disabilities in the aftermath.
According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, “past exposures from the 1950s through February 1985 to trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachloroethylene (PCE), vinyl chloride, and other contaminants in the drinking water at the Camp Lejeune likely increased the risk of cancers (kidney, multiple myeloma, leukemias, and others), adverse birth outcomes, and other adverse health effects of residents (including infants and children), civilian workers, Marines and Naval personnel at Camp Lejeune.”