Too often, important events fall through the cracks of common knowledge. More often, they are shoved there. Forgotten history usually gets that way when it is repressed, again and again, by the mass media. You might not know that this month in history…

August 1, 1986 - Attny. Gordon Erspamer was in Washington D.C. conducting the deposition of Stephen Tomasek, along with several other members of the VA's central Compensation and Pension Services (CPS) office. When questioned about their refusal to produce requested documents pursuant to Erspamer's investigation, Tomasek admitted under oath that he and the others had intentionally shredded thousands of records pertaining to veteran claims on illnesses related to radiation exposure while in military service. Further deposition of CPS employees confirmed that the shredded documents included radiation dose estimates from the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) for specific veterans who participated in a variety of atomic bomb testing conducted by the U.S. government.

For most of the world, the struggle of veterans suffering from Gulf War Syndrome or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a dead issue. Unfortunately, the issue of "Atomic Veterans" is much older and more obscure. They are a forgotten generation.

After the first detonation at Camp Trinity and two devastating Japanese field tests on August 6 and 9 of 1945, U.S. scientists were clearly aware that working with nuclear weapons was dangerous. Even so, they proceeded immediately to plan a variety of nuclear experiments using exponentially more powerful bombs. They were so big in fact, that the scientists were forced to move from the New Mexico test site, all the way out to remote areas of the Pacific Ocean.

From 1946 to '62, the U.S. government detonated multiple-megaton bombs (the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions were measured in kilotons) near inhabited Pacific islands with the assistance of both civilian contractors and military personnel. In all, hundreds of thousands of participants were told repeatedly that they had absolutely nothing to fear from exposure to ionizing radiation. These assertions were outrageously nave at best, and led to some of the worst cases of criminal negligence in history.

Many of these were large-scale operations that required several ships and months of planning. They were rarely altered in favor of civilian interest. On two occasions, the entire island populations were relocated when found within blast range.

The inhabitants of Bikini Island were moved to another, one-sixth its size, with inadequate food or water to support them. They stayed there, and then on a third island, only for only a few months at a time before being placed on one that was inhabitable.

In the seventies, when Bikini Island was deemed safe enough, a group of the original inhabitants returned to resume their old lives. After a couple of years they sued the U.S. for a complete survey of the island, which uncovered alarming levels of Cesium 137 in their bodies. They were evacuated immediately and paid hundreds of millions by the U.S. in compensation.

Other Pacific islanders were not so lucky. The people of Rongelap Atoll were not initially within "unacceptable" distance of a planned atomic blast. However, as the time of detonation arrived, the weather conditions turned unfavorable with a strong wind blowing east toward Rongelap and three other inhabited islands. The operation was carried out anyway and atomic fallout was raining down on all of them in hours.

This resulted in widespread vomiting, skin irritation and loss of hair. A few days later, the various islanders were evacuated. Later, a study by the Brooklyn National Laboratory concluded that "Even though the radioactive contamination of Rongelap Island is considered perfectly safe for human habitation, the levels of activity are higher than those found in other inhabited locations in the world. The habitation of these people on the island will afford most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings."

They were reinstalled on Rongelap and, in the early sixties, those exposed to fallout began developing thyroid tumors. The people of Rongelap now have an uncommonly high percentage of mentally retarded births, as well as youth suicide. The U.S. has to date paid them nearly $1 million in damages. This is not as generous as it may seem when you consider that Japan was given over $15 million for a fishing boat that was caught in the area of that blast.

As horrible as these cases are, what's really disgusting (excuse me for getting emotional here) is that they make our government seem pretty responsible compared to their rampant unaccountability toward the veterans who were forced to participate in this often reckless nuclear atmospheric testing.

As dangerously close as atomic bomb detonations often were to civilian inhabitants, the military personnel conducting them were even closer. One ship, the USS Rowan, was ordered to sail underneath an atomic cloud immediately after detonation to take electronic readings. To clarify just how insane that is, let me point out that this occurred in 1962"after 17 years of research on nuclear explosions and ionizing radiation. This! ! was actually one of the very last nuclear tests ever allowed above ground (they continued to test underground in Nevada until '92), which might explain the "go for it" attitude and why they never bothered to collect the crew's radiation badges.

Servicemen assigned to the ships that set up and monitored these detonations were often encouraged to come up the deck to observe the explosions, though there was never adequate protection for all of them. One crewmember's account recalls, "Special goggles were issued to all the senior personnel first and most of us non-rates didn't receive the protective goggles.

"However special instructions were given to sit on the flight deck. Bring your knees up. Close your eyes and cover your eyes with one hand. Then lower your head and hand into the crook of your other arm and in that configuration place your head on your knees. In other words, eyes shut. Hand over eyes. Other arm over your hand and eyes then onto your knees. This was some sort of "triple protection" for us non-rates who didn't rate goggles. Anyway, you still saw the light from the blast through all this `protection'. Directly after the light flash through the skin came the heat wave which gave somewhat of a sunburn to the back of the neck and other exposed skin that we weren't told to cover."

After a few minuets, they were instructed to uncover, and he describes the effect that the bomb created over the water. "The sky was pure black and the water was pure black and the light given off from the atomic blast was pure white. The other ships of JTF-8 were illuminated in Technicolor against pure black. Instantaneously you were in a surreal world…then after five minutes or so the order was given that everyone could look up at the atomic cloud."

The crewman went on to detail the variations in size, shape and color of atomic clouds that he witnessed while serving on that ship at age 19. Today, his doctor must regularly use nitrogen to burn "pre-cancers" off of his arms and face where he was exposed.

To date, thousands of bomb test "participants" have died or been severely debilitated by exposure to ionizing radiation. Despite the obvious correlations, a growing number of these cases rarely qualify for financial aide from the VA. The limited research done by government agencies on the long-term physical effects of exposure is mainly focused on a relatively small spectrum of cancers. Many Atomic Veterans have passed away after spending decades trying to prove a claim that is now on the accepted list of radiation related illness.

Still, it is the task of the VA's claims department (CPS) to investigate every case, obtaining the necessary service and medical records, for signs of possible exposure. In most cases, a veteran's claim is immediately denied because it does not match those that have been repeatedly proven already. Occasionally, a claim is denied even when it has been previously approved because the staff was not adequately trained to recognize it.

Most claims are denied on a daily basis because the CPS, which routinely places the entire burden of discovery on the veteran, has not received all of the necessary documents for consideration within the mere 60 days provided. Often these documents have not been specifically requested and, when they have been, the veteran has not been told that failure to provide every one of them will result in denial of the claim.

Most evidence needed to link claims to radiation exposure has been classified and is exempt from request, even by a government agency. The CPS is also not necessarily obligated to inform the veteran that their claim has been denied, so the one year limit for appeal often passes unnoticed. This is easily overlooked because they tell you that it takes five to ten years to process a claim.

These and many more practices of the CPS seem designed deliberately to confuse and frustrate the veteran into giving up their claim. This aim starts to appear very motivated when you consider the consequences of a successful claim. Since the beginning of U.S. nuclear accountability, awards for exposure have been severe, though sparse. Even a very slight case of confirmed exposure can easily merit several thousands of dollars of compensation a year for life, plus an immediate retroactive payment of ten years or more. When combined with the estimated number of affected veterans, the potential sudden drain on the national budget quickly climbs into the billions.

Defeating the possibility of large-scale claim success is the ill-equipped and inefficient CPS adjudication process, coupled with antiquated laws like one from the Civil War Era that prohibits veterans from spending more that $10 on attorney's fees in litigation against the VA. This effectively bans legal representation for veterans.

That law was successfully overturned in 1984 only to be reinstated the following year by the Supreme Court, who stated that the VA's claims process was essentially non-adversarial and that the law could be helpful in preventing unscrupulous lawyers from sharing too much of settlements for injured veterans. Even if this did not hinder the right to self-determination, the probability of a successful claims for veterans has been shown to increase by 2500 times when represented by attorneys. The lawyers are legally obliged to work free of charge in these instances, which are relatively few.

The 1985 ruling did, however provide an exception wherein lawyers could be paid in class action suits if it were proven that the CPS was sufficiently incapable of processing it adequately. This was how Gordy Erspamer, who had been representing the National Association of Radiation Survivors (NARS), came to discover that the CPS had shredded crucial claim evidence in an effort to conceal constant lapses in due process by their employees.

After speaking to a House committee on Veteran Affairs, Erspamer received an anonymous letter that instructed him to request specific documents from the CPS, which never arrived. A second anonymous letter described commonplace procedural irregularities in claims processing. These included "lost" claims, failure to provide required administrative hearings and unanswered veteran inquiries on the status of their claim. Most shocking of all, was the revelation that CPS employees were encouraged to deny claims prematurely through a merit pay system that provides bonuses for processing claims quickly"even if they have been improperly denied.

This prompted the series of depositions in which CPS employees admitted to having recently destroyed scores of claims evidence. After the start of the lawsuit, the VA had spent months arguing that they should not be required to respond to Erspamer's evidence requests. Meanwhile Michael Dunlap, the Asst. Director of CPS Field Operations, had authorized an unprecedented amount of file purging in several departments. They destroyed a total of 3 million pages of records before this was discovered and the judge issued a court order to stop the shredding.

It was already too late. By that time, only twelve boxes of the requested evidence remained. Though many files stated that the claims had been denied because of "failure to provide due process", there was not sufficient information to prove the case of CPS inability (or unwillingness) to process claims. The court did find, however that there existed a conspiracy within the CPS to conceal the information requested.

As well, several employees who expressed a desire to cooperate with the investigation were subjected to numerous threats and intimidation. One such employee, Ron Abrams, returned from lunch one day to find a Star of David carved into his desk with a swastika in the center. Underneath were the words: "Loyal to the VA?"

The CPS had even lied about its inability to identify the number of claims that had been filed related to radiation exposure. This was an attempt to deny a class action status to the plaintiffs. It was later revealed that the information had been available for years in two separate CPS databases. The VA was ultimately fined for wasting the court's time, but no indictments were handed down for the various obstructions of justice.

Today, though new legislation has passed in attempts to reduce the "us against them" adjudication process, there still exists a remarkable lack of adequate due process for veteran claims. Gordy Erspamer recently told me about a veteran he is representing who has been left totally incapacitated and unemployable by his service-related injuries, but is denied assistance because of a new rule that states that claims of his classification can only be approved three times a year.