Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie told the Washington Examiner Thursday that legislation is needed before the Department of Veteran Affairs can help those Veterans suffering from a range of illnesses related to toxic exposure in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
But the small subset of Veterans who spent time at a contaminated Uzbek airbase that served as a northern staging ground for the invasion of Afghanistan has long called on a simple Department of Defense regulation change and the VA to cooperate.
“We don’t want our Veterans to go through what Vietnam Veterans went through in terms of not knowing,” Wilkie told the Washington Examiner in a Thursday press call hosted by Inside Sources.
“Now, the Congress does have to change legislation,” Wilkie said, describing a statutory change to the percentage a Veteran is considered disabled after a service-related injury. “We don’t deny medical services to any Veteran who is sick.”
But K2 Veteran and retired Army Staff Sgt. Mark Jackson told the Washington Examiner that Wilkie was splitting hairs to obfuscate the problem.
“Secretary Wilkie is providing the same vague platitudes that we’ve been getting for 20 years,” said Jackson, who served at the secret base known as “K2” in Karshi-Khanabad, Uzbekistan.
“It’s ironic that he says that he’s trying to prevent what happened to Vietnam Veterans because it’s already happening to us,” he said.
“He’s technically correct, any sick Veteran can go in and get care,” he explained. “That’s the point is that, without preventative care and early intervention, all we’re going to have is sick Veterans.”
Jackson said Veterans are denied preventive screenings to detect rare cancers related to their exposure. Now, he and other K2 Veterans are hoping legislation or an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act will force the VA and the Pentagon to act.
Asked by the Washington Examiner if he has asked Defense Secretary Mark Esper to conduct the required epidemiological studies that a law would mandate, Wilkie only said the K2 was among a host of things the two agencies discuss.
Recently declassified Department of Defense surveys from the time are the first official admission that the old Soviet base was unsafe. But still, since the base was secret and the studies hidden, the Pentagon did not include it on official registries that allow service members to get preventive care.
“Talk to enough widows, talk to enough of these Veterans who aren’t getting any care,” said Jackson, who suffers thyroid and gastrointestinal problems related to radiation exposure at K2.
“We now have declassified documents that say 100% of personnel were exposed to radiation during the duration of their tour between 2001 and 2005," he said.
VA press secretary Christina Noel recently told the Washington Examiner that the VA has begun a study of K2 Veterans' illnesses that is expected to yield initial results within 18 months. Jackson said none of the K2 Veterans he knows have heard from the VA yet about the study.
Thousands of K2 Veterans knew that something was wrong when they first arrived at the snowy base quickly stood up in the post-9/11 confusion.
They experienced headaches and gastrointestinal problems during their service. Some developed rare cancers soon after, others years later. The Veterans later learned their base was built on a bombed-out chemical weapons factory, had dangerous levels of radiation, and they were breathing fumes from disposed fuels.
The Pentagon estimates that about 10,000 service members spent time at K2. Those who also spent time in Iraq or Afghanistan were included in 2018 legislation to cover illnesses related to burn pits.
K2 was never included in the registries. Other Pentagon directives deem certain illnesses “presumptive” based on a service area and afford preventive care.
“We are stuck in this weird Kafkaesque purgatory where the absence one word, Uzbekistan, is preventing us from being able to get on those preventative registries so that we could get tested,” said Jackson.
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