University. I am pleased to welcome you all this afternoon as well as the audience at cspan. It is an important issue. I am very glad that you are here. This is a timely session, would i say, living with the consequences of agent orange dioxin 50 years later. An update on the situation in laos and vietnam from the war legacies project. For over two decades. Here at the Elliot School, we have collaborated with research institutes, universities, Government Agencies and Civil Society organizations to address emerging problems in international affairs. These include things like Climate Change and Human Security and also the consequences of war and conflict preven chun. I would like to for our work in Southeast Asia particularly acknowledge the role that the foundation has played in supporting this particularly with respect to Southeast Asia issues. The meeting today is timely. It is just a week before president obama travels to laos to take part in the summit of leaders of the association of Southeast Asian nations or asean. He is, as you may have heard, the first sitting president to visit that country. It is a country that you may know has been subjected also to a secret war during the days of the vietnam war. What has been the legacy of this war . What might president obama be able to accomplish in terms of improving relations for the future with the laos People Democratic republic . Here to share their perspectives on this issues are two of the most seasoned aobservers and advocates for the just resolution of the unfortunate legacies of the wars in laos and vietnam and their enduring impact on the population of those countries. Susan hammond on my far left is founder and executive director of the war legacies project. She began her work on peace and reconciliation in vietnam, laos and cambodia in the mid 1980s. Through her determined research and on the ground collaboration with local organizations has become one of the most informed specialists on agent orange data collection. With her is jacqueline p chagnon, whom we are pleased to welcome back to the Elliot School from which she graduated. From 1968 to 1970, she worked in si sigh began which is now hochimon city. They witnessed the defoalation caused by agent orange. Thats the name given to the chemical sprayed over the forested area of Southern Vietnam and laos in order to expose the supply routes taken by north vietnam. She has lived and worked in laos since 1978 to uncover the lingering postwar traumas caused by heavy bombing and chemical spraying. She and her deceased husband, roger, started the work on the Laos Agent Orange survey in 1999. After susan and jacques talk, i know they will be very happy to receive your questions and comments. Please join me in welcoming susan and jacque. Thank you very much. Very happy to be here and happy that you came out on this beautiful late august day. One correction. 1995. Sips the mid90s, i have been working on this issue. In the mid80s, i was still at smith. So first let me say a few more words about my organization. The war legacies project. We are a small, not for Profit Organization base the in vermont that works to provide comprehensive support to families in Southeast Asia who have been impacted by that war. We also work to raise awareness in the u. S. About the war in Southeast Asia. Many people know more about the war in vietnam. Very few about the war in laos. We also work with veterans and their families to understand the impact about agent orange. Why laos now . I skipped one. I have been lucky too to work with jacque, who is not only an expert on laos but an expert driving through fields and streams throughout southern laos. Not streaming, roaring rivers to get to the rural villages where we were. I am going ahead of myself here. I want to bring you back to one of the first press conferences that president kennedy gave after he took office. This was march 23rd, 1961. Let me see if i can play this little clip and see if it works. The president s press conference from the new Statement Department auditorium, march 23rd, 1961. I want to make a brief statement about laos. It is, i think, important for all americans to understand this difficult and potentially dangerous problem. In my last conversation with general eisenhower, the day before the inauguration on january 19th, we spent more time on this matter than any other thing. Since then, it has been before the administration as the most immediate of the problems that we found upon taking office. That was probably i mean i wasnt around in 1961 but might have been the last American Public heard about laos for the most part. He later went on to state that i want to make it clear to American People and to all of the world that all we want in laos is peace, not war, a truly neutral government, not a cold war pond. The settlement concluded at the conference table but not on the battlefield. Unfortunately, we would not be here today if that happened to turn out to be true because shortly after that press conference the president handed over the war effort in laos to the cia and over the next ten years, they conducted a multibillion dollar war effort throughout laos that we heard very little about in this country, if anything. Forty years later, much of this information about the secret war in laos is still unknown. It is still classified information. Bits and piece vs. Been released over the year we do not have the full picture of what happened during the war in laos. President obama, when he goes to laos, will be addressing one of the legacies of the war that we do know about, about 2000, the u. S. State Department Released the bombing records, both in vietnam and laos and the u. S. Began to increase their efforts p on addressing the impact of unex plik tiff ordinance throughout the country. There are still casualties today but they have been dropping over the years. President obama is planning to announce an increase to about 20 million for the effort to clean up unexploded ordinance in laos and provide assistance to those that have been affected like this young boy here. But, to date, the u. S. Has not addressed any aspects of the u. S. Of agent orange and other chemicals throughout laos. This isnt even on their radar screen. Thats why we are here. We are trying to put it on their screen. We do know that the us air force through their ranch hand herbicide Spray Program sprayed in southern laos along the hochiman trail from the province south boarding the dmz of vietnam down to contoum basically in vietnam. We do know from the records that have been released that in through the c123 Spray Program, thats the ranch hand program, over 291,000 gallons of agent orange and blue and white were played throughout southern laos for defoalation as well as to target crops. This is only a partial record. You can still see in parts of southern laos today. This is in ceravan province a few kilometers from the vietnam border. You cant really see it clearly in this slide. The top of the ridge line of the mountain is what appears to be from defoalation. We can know this area was sprayed. The area to the far right is more likely rice production, the top ridge line which is where a lot of these herbicides were targeted. What we dont know, really, how much spraying was done by the cia. I have spoken to some. The cia had its own private airline, air america, that was made up of many military members who took a little bit of a leave from their efforts in vietnam or came over specifically and were flying as civilians in unmarked planes as part of the air america cia effort. One of the air america pilots told me they did fit a plane to spray herbicide in 1969 outside of longchen which is where the cia had their headquarters. Particularly along the rinl ldg line you see at the northern part of that photo. There are also records from the cias shadow war, the secret war in laos by kenneth convoy. Na that book, he talks about how ambassador sullivan orders splaying to be done along the plain of jars that came out of udong and thailand. They also sprayed around another area, the base in nkong in northern singquong to do perimeter spraying around the base to clear the foliage. There are bits and pieces that come out from people who were there. They tell us, yes, we did spray elsewhere. None of that information is officially public and it is all anecdotal at this point. One of the things we dont know about the war effort in laos is that full story. It is one of the things we are trying to uncover here 40 something years later. We suspect that some of those bases. This is a base in vietnam, not in laos. We suspect some of those landing zones, about 450 different landing zones throughout laos, some large, some used just for a few weeks or months. Others used throughout the war effort. We suspect that there were barrels like these stored on those bases, even if they were just used for perimeter spraying. The concern, of course, is and we suspect the long tieng base was one where barrels were stored. The problem is, a lot of the bases that were cleared for the war effort became population settlements or already were. After the war effort, people would go back and go to that base that had been cleared and they would settle. Thats the concern we have. If there were barrels stored on those bases, chances are that dioxin has leached out of these barrels and into the ground and could be causing a Public Health risk but we just dont know because we do not know from the cia war effort where they were using these chemicals or if they were. It is one of the big question marks we have. We do know a lot about the impact of agent orange in vietnam. Again, the u. S. Released records from the ranch hand spraying. An Organization Called hatfield consultants, based in canada, did an extensive amount of research to identify where of all of those thousands of bases and landing zones and other sites in vietnam where the u. S. Had a presence, how many of those may be a potential dioxin hot spot today. After looking at all the various sites and talking with the vietnamese military, they narrowed that down to about 28 potential hotspots throughout the southern part of vietnam. Three of those, which you probably cant see but they are listed in red on here, fukot, in the northern, dunan, in the center, fukot and in the south, benwha. Three were where the ranch hand Spray Program was located and millions of barrels of these herbicides were stored on those bases and those are significant hotspots today. Some up to 400, 500 times the limit of contamination that would be required to begin remediation efforts. Also, with hatfield, i looked at the air bases in laos, the landing strips in laos, to see whether we could come up with a similar list. Unlike in vietnam, where they actually did some testing on the ground to see if there was actually dioxin. None of these sites in laos have had testing, except for the number 14, the army base which is in tequon base and they found elevated levels of dioxin in the soil there. The other bases have not been tested at all. We narrowed down that list from 450 by deciding how long that base had been used by the u. S. Military, whether there is a Population Center nearby and then a dioxin hot spot would be a concern. We even looked at through google earth, they had the technology to look through satellite. I only had google earth on my finger tips, to see whether there still seemed to be cleared regions around those bases. We came up with this list. As i said, this is only potential places where we thought because of the geography and the history of the use of the base that the u. S. May have had some clearing done with herbicides. The u. S. Has been very involved over the past decade in vietnam to address the longterm environmental impacts of agent orange. We have vast spray records. We know where it was sprayed. The vietnamese have records of populations living in that sprayed area. Jeannie stealthman at Columbia University estimated that about 4. 2 million vietnamese lived in areas that were sprayed during the wartime. How many of those are affected by the dioxin that was in the he herbicides. The vietnamese estimate about 3 million have some Health Impacts and about 150,000 children were born with disabilities. That is a bit of a controversial point that we can talk about in the question and answer time if we want to. I am not going into the scientific debate at this point on this issue. The u. S. Has been providing of those three dioxin hotspots i mentioned, the u. S. Has started to work with the p vietnamese to clean up the danang hot spot. This is senator lahey. They piled the contaminated soil into this basically gigantic oven several football fields wide and they termed on the electric probes to heat up the soil to above 365 degrees celsius to break down the dioxin in the soils. At this point now, half of the soil, contaminated soil in danang has been decontaminated in that way. They have now started the second process. So they expect this is about 100 million u. S. Funded project to decontaminate the soil in danang. They are expect ng 2017, it will be completely decontaminated. That soil will go back on the air base as far as we know to expand the runway. It will be at the point of 150 parts per trillion. If anyone follows the environmental standards. Thats the new epa standard for a industrial site. It will be below that. So the u. S. Has invested since 2007 when the first funding came out of senator laheys office of 3 million to address the agent orange dioxin issue in vietnam. Since then, it has increased over the years. I like to take a tiny bit of credit for that at least. P to the point that now it is over 140 million has been allocated by the u. S. Government to address the die objectionic contamination problem. Of that, about 37 million has gone towards health care. The u. S. Does not say that this is for funding for people who have been affected by agent orange. They address disabilities regardless of cause in vietnam. Through our efforts and efforts with my colleagues, we have been able to target the money thats going to us aid to people in vietnam that have severe multiple disabilities, who live in the four sprayed areas of the country. We have been pushing them in the direction of getting the funding to those who the vietnamese believe are agent orange and impacted. We know a lot more about dioxin these days than we did when the war first started. The u. S. In 1991 entrusted the p institute of medicine to examine the research thats been done on dioxin and the herbicides used in vietnam to see what Health Conditions may be related or have an association to those herbicides or dioxins. At this point, they found 20 different conditions. Some have sufficient evidence, they have little different categorization, sufficient evidence, limited, suggested or no. These are the ones that have sufficient evidence or limited suggested evidence of association to dioxin. Many of them are auspices of the same condition the vietnamese have said are related to exposure to dioxin. The v. A. Right now provides benefits to veterans who have one of 15 different conditions. Or, in the case of their offspring, spina bifida. Thats the only birth defect that the v. A. Acknowledges that may be related to the fathers exposure to agent orange. If you are a female veteran, of which there are only about 8,000 of the war in vietnam, the v. A. Will provide compensation to your child if you have one of many different types of birth defects, cleft lip or palate, hip displasia, neural tube effects. All types of conditions. Basically, any condition that does not have a known cause or family history. We are very limited members of children who are receiving these benefits. There are only 8,000 and these are very, very rare conditions. The v. A. Also makes it clear this is not due to agent orange but to service in vietnam. If you are a female that served in vietnam. If you were a lao woman or a vietnamese woman, you were in vietnam for ten years and likely exposed to whatever that environmental condition was that caused birth defects. I see many, many of these conditions in my work in vietnam. The vietnamese believe that about 150,000 children and now grandchildren of those who were exposed came either from the north down to the south to fight or who were living in the sprayed area have a birth defect that may be caused by their parents or grandparents exposure to agent orange. As i said, the science on this, were still learning. In animal studies, it has been shown that dioxin can cause birth ab normalities, miscarriages, birth defects, congenital deformities. That is very proven within animal studies. You cant do that type of study in a human. You have to look at ep deem logical studies to compare populations exposed and not exposed. It is very difficult to get that smoking gun proof that dioxin is causing these disabilities. A condition is very rare. You would need a very larnl population to see these elevated numbers to begin with. We are hopeing that as more epigenetic study are being conducted, in the limited studies done so far, they are showing that environmental toxics can cause problems in future generations. Stress can cause problems in future generations. There has been Research Done after world war ii in holland that the famine during world war ii caused problems within the grandchildren of people in holland that were famished. You cant make a Straight Line but there is enough for me, there is enough evidence that i think there is something here. When it comes to actually working with children that we come across in our work in laos and vietnam, it doesnt matter the cause. What we need to do is help this child that has a severe club foot. Jacque, i am going to turn it over to you. I dont know what that is. There you go. She is far more technologically capable than i am. I am too old. But im a good driver. In laos, we obtained for the first time the bombing records and the spray records in 1999. It was because of a conversation over a Swimming Pool with the <