A Trust Betrayed (30 page)

The victims of the contamination were dumbfounded by the report. “We couldn't figure out why the
NRC
was so in bed with the Navy,” said Partain. A little digging shed some light on the possible reasons for the committee's blanket exoneration of the Marine Corps for causing health problems at Camp Lejeune.

Ensminger discovered, in talking with Clapp, a highly regarded epidemiologist who had been asked to review the
NRC
report before it was released, that Clapp's dissenting comments had been left out of the document. He also learned that as the
NAS
report was being prepared for publication, the scientific panel had assigned a scientist at the Honeywell Corporation—a company second only to the US military in the number of Superfund sites for which it is a responsible party—to manage peer-review comments by independent scientists. The potential conflict raised concerns that any conclusions saying that health problems could not be linked to contaminants would benefit Honeywell's defense in Superfund cases. Not only was there no mention of Clapp's disagreement with the committee's conclusions in the report, but the National Academies told Ensminger that the peer-review comments would never be released to the public.

Ensminger and Partain uncovered an even more damning document as well, one implying that the National Research Council report had been soft on the Marine Corps for a reason. In May
2009—a month before the report was released—the National Academies of Sciences had signed a $600,000 contract with the Navy agreeing to serve as consultants in helping the military to explain the effects of the water contamination, or lack of them, on people who had lived at Lejeune. Bill Levesque, the reporter who had written about Mike Partain at the
St. Petersburg Times
, obtained a copy of the contract and wrote a story about it in November 2009, five months after the release of the report. “Federal scientists and critics of the Marine Corps say the contract . . . is a blatant conflict of interest, and some critics say it calls into question the accuracy of an
NRC
report that already has been criticized by some scientists,” Levesque wrote. “They've beaten us to death with the
NRC
report and pulled the wool over everybody's eyes,” Partain was quoted as saying in the story. “The
NRC
report smelled rotten,” he said, “and now we have a deal that smells even worse.”
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The article quoted the response of a spokesman for the Marines, Captain Brian Block, who said the contract was part of its continuing relationship with the
NRC
and would aid the Corps' efforts to better understand the potential health effects of polluted water. “The Marine Corps initially declined to confirm the existence of the contract when the
Times
asked about it earlier in the week,” wrote Levesque. “Block, the Corps spokesman, said in an e-mail, ‘We will not discuss future contracts until they are finalized.' In fact, the contract was finalized on May 1. The Marine Corps also provided, at the
Times
request, a financial breakdown of the $14 million the Corps has publicly maintained it spent on Camp Lejeune research. The list did not contain the $600,000
NRC
contract. When asked about it, the Corps did not respond.”
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Officials at the
ATSDR
, whose plans for further studies of health problems at Lejeune had been discouraged by the National Research Council committee, were furious about the consulting
contract between the
NRC
and the Navy. “The direct funding of peer review by the agency responsible for contaminating the Camp Lejeune drinking water creates a perceived conflict of interest unacceptable to the community of veterans and their families exposed,” wrote Thomas Sinks, deputy director at the health agency, in a letter to the Marine Corps and Navy.
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Regardless of the seemingly tainted process for evaluating the effects of Camp Lejeune's water pollution, the committee's report was a severe setback to the slow but steady progress that the
ATSDR
had been making in its studies. It also dampened the ability of the affected victims to get their story out. “When the
NRC
report came out it sucked the air out of the Camp Lejeune story,” Partain said. CNN canceled its plans for a story about the male breast cancer victims. “It was probably the darkest time I remember because we were pretty much on the brink of being wiped out,” Partain added.

But Levesque wasn't giving up. On July 3, 2009, another story on the male breast cancer cases was published under his byline in the
St. Petersburg Times
. Six more cases had been found in just the past week in Florida, all with time spent at Camp Lejeune, Levesque reported. “Male breast cancer is exceedingly rare,” his story said. “Just 1,900 men are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer this year compared with nearly 200,000 women, the American Cancer Society says. A man has a 1-in-1,000 lifetime chance of getting the disease. Men who get it are often over 70, though it is rare even in older males.”
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Boston University scientist Richard Clapp told Levesque that he was very concerned. “My gut tells me this is unusual and needs to be looked into,” he said. “I'm sure there are still more out there in other states.”
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CNN came back again, and this time the national cable network did the story in a big way—in two segments that ran on September 24 and 25, 2010. The stories featured Partain and other
men who had spent time at Lejeune and now had breast cancer, now numbering more than twenty. “Jerry [Ensminger] called me and was blown away,” Partain said. “He told me it was the anniversary of Janey's death.”

ATSDR
epidemiologist Frank Bove told CNN that the level of contamination in one sample taken at Camp Lejeune was “the highest I've ever seen in a public water system in this country.” But he was cautious: “Whether exposures were long enough and high enough at Camp Lejeune to cause disease—that's the question.” Clapp also appeared in the CNN stories and was more emphatic. “I think if cancer of the breast in men or other kinds of cancer have been linked to this exposure, that we ought to know about that,” he said. “The families deserve that. The veterans themselves should know about that, and they should be compensated if the link can be made.”
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Soon after the stories ran, the number of male breast cancer cases tracked down by Partain rose to fifty. “The media was fascinated by the story,” he said. “It was such an irony that the roughest, toughest men in the world were being affected by a women's disease.”

The tide was starting to turn against the Marines and in favor of the victims. The
ATSDR
, facing increasing criticism in Congress for declaring in 2007 that trailers containing high levels of formaldehyde posed no threats to the health of hurricane victims who were using them for temporary housing, was like a battleship slowly changing direction. The agency was forced to back off its position on the trailers and admit that the chemical fumes were making people sick. The health agency was also backing away from another report, which had been issued in the spring of 2009. In that document, the
ATSDR
had said that heavy metals and the remains of explosives at the Navy's Vieques Island base in Puerto Rico could not have been a health hazard for the residents there.
The
ATSDR
reversed course in November 2009, however, saying that it had found gaps in its original environmental data from Vieques. Key members of Congress stepped up the pressure. “It seems to have gotten into their culture to do quick and dirty studies and to be willing to say there are no public health consequences,” said Congressman Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat who chaired a House subcommittee investigating federal health research and reports. “People should be able to count on the government to tell them the truth.”
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Miller and the two senators from North Carolina, Republican Richard Burr and Democrat Kay Hagan, were already pushing legislation to require the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide health coverage for enlisted personnel, veterans, and family members who had been harmed by Camp Lejeune's pollution. “We owe those who are sick the benefit of the doubt and the health care they need,” Burr said. But when their bill was considered by the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee in January 2010,
VA
Secretary Eric Shinseki warned that coverage might be needed for as many as 500,000 people at a cost of more than $4 billion over ten years. Democrats on the committee, including then-chairman Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, argued that the Defense Department, which was responsible for the contamination, should be footing the bill for the health problems it caused. Burr and Hagan argued that the Pentagon could no longer be trusted to care for its own. “I can't in good conscience agree to give these brave men and women a false hope that they'll get health care,” Burr said. “Do you really believe the Department of Defense will accept responsibility for this health care when it still doesn't accept responsibility for the contamination?” He vowed to block every nominee for a Navy appointment who came before the Senate until the impasse on health coverage for Lejeune victims was broken.
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While the fight over health care was being waged, key members
of Congress were also waging a battle with the Navy on another front—funding for
ATSDR
studies at Camp Lejeune. In December 2009, the Navy agreed to spend $2 million on a new review of cancer and birth defects in babies conceived or born at the base while some water systems were contaminated. The 1998 study on so-called “birth outcomes” had been inconclusive, but it had indicated that there could have been more than the expected number of health problems among children whose mothers had drunk tainted water. The decision to fund the study did not come easily, though. Congressman Miller of North Carolina and the two members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who were investigating the pollution problems at Lejeune, Congressmen John Dingell and Bart Stupak of Michigan, had to threaten Navy Secretary Ray Mabus with harsh action if the Pentagon kept delaying funds for
ATSDR
studies. “It would be great if the Navy did the right thing for the right reason, but fortunately the law requires any polluter, including the Navy, to pay for the studies necessary to find out just how much harm they've done to innocent people,” Miller, Dingell, and Stupak wrote to Mabus. “The law doesn't make victims of toxic exposure beg and plead a polluter for justice; the law gives them rights.”
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Two months later, citing the National Research Council report saying that further investigation of health problems at Lejeune would be fruitless, the Navy refused to pay $1.6 million for a mortality study of former residents at the base. The timing of the Navy's funding refusal couldn't have been worse, though. Barbara Barrett, a Washington-based reporter for the McClatchy Newspapers in North Carolina, dug up documents in February 2010 showing that over the years, storage tanks and underground pipes at Lejeune probably had leaked as much as 800,000 gallons of fuel
near wells providing water to the Hadnot Point system. One memo Barrett uncovered said that a contractor had told base officials in 1996 that about half a million gallons of the fuel had been recovered. “The other 300,000 gallons? I know what happened to it,” Mike Partain told Barrett. “We drank it.”
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Then, just a few days after Barrett's story was published, the Associated Press reported that a Navy contractor, the Michael Baker Corporation, based in Pennsylvania, had grossly understated the benzene levels found in one well serving the Hadnot Point water system in a report to the
ATSDR
in 1992, just as the federal health agency was beginning its research at the base. The AP found documents showing that benzene in the well had measured 380 parts per billion in 1984, but the 1992 report by the consultants showed the level to be 38 ppb. Then, in a final report on the well that was sent to the
ATSDR
in 1994, the Navy's consultant failed to mention benzene at all. “It was probably a mistake on the part of the contractor, but I can't tell you for certain why it happened,” the Marine Corps spokesman, Captain Brian Block, told the AP's Kevin Maurer. A former enforcement officer for the Environmental Protection Agency, Kyla Bennett, offered a different assessment. “It is weird that it went from 380 to 38 and then it disappeared entirely,” she said. “It does support the contention that they did do it deliberately.”
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