i am not aware that congress has appropriated substantial funds for that kind of an effort, but i support those. i think those are enormously important. we have seen a lot of coal job s because in large part of environmental regulations and because of competition from low-cost natural gas. that is the way the market should work. in opportunities where there is to help workers, i think that is important. the idea that $40 million are 140 million dollars, it does not replace the economic activity. if that number is correct, it is a symbolic gesture. kind of a drop in the bucket in terms of the impact we are seeing in cold communities around the country. host: democrat line. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call.

i would wish that people would realize that we are .iving in a different time everything is changing. nothing is the same. and buggy days are over. you want to go back to that? no. the ice age is gone. everything is changing. some people want to keep trying to live in the past. a lot of the people that want to live in the past, i'm looking at you, you want to support the coal industry, but i bet you are getting a lot of money from the coal industry. you look at the coal industry, in the hospitals, i find babies connected to oxygen tanks. the grocery store, people cannot breathe clean air. we have more asthma and diseases . we have to clean up the air.

can clean it up, we need to clean it up. you really love those coal miners, you need to explain it to them, and work with the government to retrain them and give them better job so they will not be dying in the graveyards of their working in. please, mister. please. america loves money. the love of money is killing us. we put the love of money above loving human beings. we always talk about saving money. money is made to be spent. we have to balance the budget. we don't love people anymore. host: apologies for cutting you off. guest: of course i agree. need to agrees that we ensure that we have clean air for all citizens. .omething you said is not right you suggested somehow the air is

getting worse. you are seeing more cases of asthma, or whatever it is. throughout the united states, air quality is much better then it has been since a late 1960's and before. we have substantially cleaner youby any measure, with the are talking southern california, north carolina, the eastern seaboard, because of efforts that have then made -- been made by environmental protection agencies. we have dramatically reduced air pollution. we can continue to have low-cost, reliable, affordable electricity while continuing to improve air quality. that is an enormously important thing. i've spent much of my career working on effective air already regulations. we can have clean air and affordable, reliable, electricity. we are not talking about the

technology of the past. modern, high efficiency, coal-fired power plants eating built all around the world. they are the most effect give way to provide affordable, reliable, electricity. to say it is a mistake we are talking about a technology of the past. it is continuing to be used and built around the world. 2001-2005, he was an associate counsel, george h.w. bush involved in the passage of the clean air act amend that of 1990. pennsylvania, republican line. good morning. i spent a lot of time working in the utility industry, i am an electrical engineer. agent or, 50 years later. an update on the situation in with the warnam

legacies project. for two decades at the school, collaborating with research institutions, government agencies, and civil society organizations to address emerging problems in international affairs. this includes climate change, human security. of war andnsequences conflict prevention. for our work in southeast asia, i would like to acknowledge the role the foundation has played in supporting those, particularly with respect to southeast asian issues. the meeting today is timely. it is one week before president inma travels to take part the summit of leaders of the

association of southeast asian nation. is, the third sitting president to visit that country, as you may have heard. subjectedy has been to a secret war during the age of the vietnam war. what has been the legacy of this war, and what might president obama the able to accomplish in terms of improving relations for the future with the laos people's democratic republic? perspectives their on this issue are 2 of the most seasoned observers and advocates. youresolution of the of

jeanette legacy of the wars in laos and vietnam and the enduring impact on the population of those countries. the founder and executive director of the war legacies project. she began her work on peace and ,econciliation in laos, vietnam and cambodia in the head 1980's. through on the ground collaboration has become one of the most informed specialists on agent orange data collection. is jacqueline, who we are pleased to welcome back to the school from which he .raduated from 1968 to 1970 she worked in saigon, which is now ho chi minh city. at the time, she met with families with severely deformed

babies and witness the defoliation caused by agent orange. that is the name given to the chemicals sprayed over the forest at areas of southern vietnam and laos to expose the supply routes taken by north vietnam. she has lived and worked in laos since 1978 to uncover the lingering postwar trauma caused by heavy bombing and chemical spraying. she and her deceased husband started the work on the laos agent orange survey in 1999. after susan and jackie talk i answeringthey will be questions and taking comments. andse join me and wil -- welcoming them.

[applause] >> thank you very much. very happy to be here and that you came out on this beautiful late august day. 1995, since the middle 90's i have been working on this issue. let me say a few more words about my organization, the war legacies project. we are a small not-for-profit organization and vermont. we work to provide comprehensive support to families in southeast asia who have been impacted by that war. we 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. andlso work with veterans their families who are trying to

understand more about the impacts of agent orange. why laos now? one.pped i have been lucky to work with jackie, who is not only an an expert ins, but driving through fields and streams in southern laos -- not streams, roaring rivers to get to the villages where we were. myself.ng ahead of i want to bring you back to one of the first press conferences that president kennedy gave after he took office on march 23 , 1961. let me see if i can play this clip. >> the president's press conference, march 23, 1961.

>> i want to make a brief statement about laos. it is important for all americans to understand this difficult and potentially dangerous problem. with generalon eisenhower before the inauguration on january 19, we spent more time on this hard matter than any other thing. then, it is before the administration as the most immediate of the problems that we found upon taking office. >> that was probably -- i was not around in 1961, but maybe the last of the public heard about laos for the most part. he went on to state "i want to make it clear to the american people and the rest of the world all we want in laos is peace not

war. a truly neutral government, not a cold war pond. a resolution at the conference table, not on the battlefield." unfortunately, we would not be here today if that turned out to be true. shortly after that press , the president handed over the war effort in laos to nextia, and over the 10-years they conducted a multibillion-dollar war effort throughout laos that we heard very little about in this country, if anything. 40 years later, much of the information about the secret war in laos is still unknown. it is still classified information. bits and pieces have been released, but we do not have the

full picture of what happened during the war in laos. president obama, when he goes to it will be addressing one of the war that we do know about. 2000 u.s. state department release the bombing records in vietnam and laos. u.s. began to increase efforts on addressing the impact of unexploded ordinance throughout the country. there are still casualties today, but they have been dropping over the years. obama, isent, planning on announcing an increase to 20 million for the effort to clean up unexploded ordinance in laos and provide assistance to those who have

been affected, like this young boy. u.s. has not addressed any aspects of the use of agent orange and other chemicals throughout southern -- throughout laos. this is not even on their radar screen. that is why we are here to we are trying to put it on their screen. we do know that the u.s. air force, the ranch hand spray program, sprayed in parts of southern laos along the ho chi minh trail region of the country. this is basically from the province to the south to the cambodian border, bordering the conof vietnam down to tune in vietnam.

about 200, we know from the -- i do notased know why that is popping up. c-123 ranch hand program, andons of agent orange agent blue and agent white were sprayed throughout laos for defoliation and to target crops. this is only a partial record. you can see in parts of southern a fewoday, and this is kilometers from the vietnam border, you cannot tell clearly in this slide, but the top of the ridge line of the mountain is what appears to be from defoliation. we know this actual area was sprayed.

the area to the far right is more likely rice production. the top ridge line, which is where a lot of the herbicides were targeted. what we do not know, really, is how much spraying was done by the cia. we have, i have spoken to some hadamerica, we know the cia its own private airline, air of many military members who took a little bit of a leave from the efforts in vietnam or came over specifically and were flying as civilians in unmarked planes as part of the cia effort here in one of the air america pilots told me that they did fit a

plane to spray herbicide in 1969 outside of monte -- outside tien along the ridge line at the northern part of the photo. records -- the --'s are great were in laos cia's secret war in laos talks about how ambassador sullivan ordered spring to be done in 1969 with planes out of thailand. around theprayed

northern singquang to do perimeter spraying around the base to clear the foliage. there are bits and pieces that come out and people there who say we did spray elsewhere, but none of that information is officially public. it is all answered little -- it cedotal at this point. we are trying to uncover this 40 years later. suspect that some of those bases, this is in vietnam not laos, but we suspect some landing zones, there are 450 landing zones throughout laos,

some large, some used for weeks or months, some throughout the war effort, but we suspect that there were barrels like these stored on the basis, even if they were only used for perimeter spraying. the concern is, and we suspect ien base was one where barrels were stored. th --oblem is, a long of a lot of the basis that were cleared became population settlements. they were already populated, but after the war effort, people would go to the base that was cleared and settle. that is the concern. if there were barrels stored on the bases, chances are dioxin has leached out of the barrels into the ground and could be causing a public health risk.

we do not know, because we do not know from the cia were if they wereor using these chemicals. it is one of the big question marks. we do know a lot about the impact of agent orange in vietnam. u.s. released spray records from the ranch hand organization based in canada did an extensive amount of research to identify where out of all of those thousands of bases and landing ,ones, other sites in vietnam where the u.s. had a presence, how many would be a potential dioxin hotspot today? after looking at the various sites and talking to the vietnamese military, they narrowed it to 28 potential

hotspots throughout the southern part of vietnam. those, which you probably cannot see, but they , three of in red those were where the ranch hands ' spray program was located. millions of euros of the herbicides were stored on the paces. those are significant hotspots today. some of to 400, 500 times the limit of contamination required to begin remediation efforts. looked at the air bases in laos to see if we can come up

with a similar list. unlike in vietnam where they did testing on the ground to see if there was dioxin, none of these tested, laos have been except for number 14, an army base. testing and limited found elevated levels of dioxin in the soil. the other bases have not been tested at all. fromrrowed down the list 450 by deciding how long the base was used by the u.s. military, whether there is a population center nearby, because then a dioxin hotspot would be a concern, and we even at google earth. they had the technology to look through satellites. if there seemse

to be cleared regions around the bases. we came up with this list. only potential places where we thought because of the geography, history of 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 long-term environmental impacts of agent orange. spraye, we have vast records, so we know where it was sprayed. the vietnamese have records of populations who are living in the sprayed areas.

it is estimated 4.2 million vietnamese lived in areas sprayed during wartime. how many of those are affected by the dioxin in the herbicide? the vietnamese estimate 3 million have some health impact. 150,000 children are born with disabilities. that is a bit of a controversial point that we can talk about in the question and answer time, but i am not going into the scientific debate at this point. providing, ofeen those 3 dioxin hotspot, the u.s. has started to work with the vietnamese to clear up the da n ang hotspot. this is the start of the cleanup nang where they compiled

the soil that was on the air base onto a gigantic oven that was several football fields wide. the electricn probes to heat the soil above 365 celsius to break down the dioxin in the soil. of the soil, contaminated soil in da nang has been decontaminated in that way. they have started the second process. million u.s.-funded project to decontaminate the soil in da nang. that soil will go back onto the .ir base to expand the runway it will be at the point of 150 parts per trillion, anyone who follows the environmental

standards that the new epa standard is for industrial sites. it will be below that. the u.s. has invested since 2007, when the first funding came out of senator leahy's office at $3 million to address the agent orange dioxin issue in vietnam. it has increased over the years. i like to take a tiny bit of credit for that. overe point now that it is $140 million allocated by the u.s. government to address the dioxin contamination problem in vietnam. of that 140 million, $37 million has gone to health care. the u.s. does not say this is funding for people that have been affected by agent orange. they address disabilities

regardless of cause in vietnam. through our efforts, and efforts of my colleagues, we have targeted the money that has gone to people in vietnam who have severe multiple disabilities. who live in former sprayed areas of the country. we have been pushing them in the direction of getting funding to those whom the vietnamese believe our agent orange-impacted. we know more about dioxin these days than when the war first started. in 1991 interested -- entrusted the research on dioxin. and the herbicides used in vietnam, to see what health conditions might be related, or

have association to the herbicides or a auxin. they found 20 different conditions. some have sufficient evidence. they have different categorization whether there is sufficient evidence, suggested, or no. they have sufficient or suggested evidence to an .ssociation with dioxin many are the same conditions that the vietnamese say are related to exposure to dioxin. benefits todes veterans who have one of 15 different conditions, or in the case of their offspring, spinal butifida. that is the only birth defect that they acknowledge might be related to the fathers exposure to agent orange in vietnam.

, ofou are a female veteran which there are only 8000 of the war in vietnam, the va will provide compensation to your child if you have one of many different types of birth defects. cleft palate, cleft lip, hit , allasia -- hip dysplasia kinds of different conditions. basically, any condition that does not have a known cause or family history. ofare very limited members children receiving the benefits. 8000, and only these are rare conditions. they make it clear this is not due to agent orange, but service in vietnam. there is a clarification. if you are a female who served in vietnam, if you were a laos were or vietnam woman, you

and it now for 10 years and exposed to whatever environmental condition was that caused birth defects. i see many of these conditions in my work in laos and vietnam. they say that the vietnamese about 150,000 children and now grandchildren of those who were exposed from the north down to the south, or ,iving in the sprayed areas have a birth defect caused by their parents' or grandparents' exposure to agent orange . we are still learning. causesal studies, dioxin

birth abnormalities, miscarriages, congenital to four minis. that is proven in animal studies, but you cannot do that kind of study in a human or you have to look at studies to compare populations that are exposed and not exposed, and it is difficult to get the smoking gun proof that dioxin is causing these disabilities. in part because a condition like this is rare. you would need a large population to cvs elevated elevated to see these levels. more studies are being conducted, which even 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 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 cannot make a straight line, but there is enough, for me, evidence that i think there is something here. when it comes to actually working with children that we have come across in our work in laos and vietnam it does not matter the cause. what we need to do is to help this child with a severe cleft lip. i will turn it over to you. i do not know what this is. there you go. >> she is far more

technologically capable than i am. i am too old. but, i am a good driver. obtained for the first time the bombing records in 1999. records it was because of a conversation over a swimming full with -- swimming pool with the american ambassador when she said to my husband and i we need a goodwill gesture to present to the lao to get better mia/pow's. on can you suggest anything? we said get the bombing records and the chemical/herbicide records. we did not realize she would

come up with the herbicide records. she did. in 1999, it is the first time that we have concrete u.s. air force records that indicate that there was spraying of herbicides in laos from major aircraft. that you see in the green portions, maybe you can point it out. you saw a better picture of it earlier, the more intense picture. like a does not look lot, but when you look at the data it is repeated spraying over nine years, constantly. my brother-in-law used to fly on some of those planes. he was a mechanic in the cia. he was in civilian clothing.

she told me that the spring missions happened sometimes as much as two times a month. he is a farmer. he said the chemicals were much stronger than anything we used ehre. -- we used here. of 250 times stronger. 50 times stronger. he died a year and a half ago of alzheimer's disease related to his agent orange exposure. his father died a year and a year and half ago related to his exposure as well. toot of americans are talks seem to know someone who died of those kinds of problems that susan was talking about. some children with those problems. was a secret in our family.

we could not talk about it. he was not able to talk about it publicly. we went out to the barn to talk about it, because he did not want his wife to know. this was after he retired. so, the secret has to come out. we half to expose it. it is affecting the children of children of children. spraye looked at the records and the poverty records in laos, we see that the bright .ed here matches the orange here is where i want to explain to you our findings in the field. untilare remote villages five years ago. we could barely get to some of

these districts without walking for two or three days in the jungle. there are some people here who have done that. an easy place to service. medically, it is difficult for people to get to hospitals. these areas, what did they look like before? had families out there with head of10, 20, 50, 100 cattle and buffalo. by most asian standards. they had plenty of fish, crops, rice beforepland and

the war. after the war, things changed. during the war these people had to evacuate the villages because ran right through them. they went into the mountain-area and were still sprayed. they talk about taking huge holes to secure their families. they would have to move those holes every three days to four days because the bombing might come again. these people are the people that we are looking at today. the grandparents tell us very clearly that they feel poor today. that they were not poor before the war. drove them into deep poverty.

it is a food issue today, in the sense that the nutrition seems to be much lower than the rest of laos. statistics clear enough on all of this, because laos has very few scientists, as does vietnam. , you see some of the villages we are targeting. it is based on the spray records submitted by the u.s. air force. we are hoping that by going into these villages and simply seeing how many people have the kinds of disabilities we see in vietnam that seem to be related to dioxin is number one. number two, we ask for the history, we record the history

of the elders about the war and what happened, the spraying, and we ask them to tell the history. planesll us about the flying in formation. sometimes, they talk about helicopters. sometimes, about other planes. they can tell the difference -130 and ac b-52. most americans can't, but they can. today havese people no idea that what happened to them 40 years ago is having a consequence, potentially, on their children. they have never made that connection. this is a difference between laos and vietnam. you ask a vietnamese farmer what , and what aree

the consequences today, and they talk about deformities and issues they face. you ask in laos, they do not know. big difference between the two countries. here, we find similar cases. this is a microcephaly child. .his is a hydrocephalus child hospital.wei she had just gone there. they're trying to relieve the swelling. it has gotten worse and worse. ssedshould have been addre when she was born in vietnam. people in her village and area did not know that she should go

immediately to the hospital. that baby could have been relieved from the beginning. a lot of this has to do with services not yet reaching those areas, and the local people understanding that they can help their child to get better. found an unusual number of cleft palates, cleft lips, and in the case on the left, spina bifida. picture, we talked with ,overnment district officials and all of a sudden a few days p,ter, incomes on what's ap the cell phone, a picture of

this baby. it is clearly spina bifida. to thediately said parents, would you like to have this child checked? has the child ever been checked? no. we sent the child to wei hospital. it was the closest. it turns out the child not only had spina bifida, but hydrocephalus, the swelling of the brain. that child has been serviced with some funds we have four assistance. this is yin. at that time she was 13 years old, now 14. handas doubled -- left

double clubbed foot and a serious hip issue. was it caused by polio? what is actually going on here? we weren't sure. parentsow that her lived under the spraying. so did her grandparents. leaves those 2 points coming together, leads us to say that it is probable that she could have been affected today. yin is now outside of the capital, but she is also being serviced. i will have a picture of her later. she has now had one of her legs

addressed. it will take a series of operations over the next four to five years to help her if we can. this are children like that people are now sending us photos. we do not know if this is the cause of agent orange. we have to visit the family first. ,t makes us think, investigate and help regardless, these are children and we do need to help. there is no assistance. the usl assistance does not help them. this is in wei, where the baby with the spina bifida was treated by vietnamese doctors. they were very helpful. we used students that were

to beng in the hospital translators. it gelled together. their villages are closer to vietnam then it would be to transport them to the capital of laos. constantlyhat we look for as we go through the villages is where are they getting water supply? we take a look around. we take her out where there might have been areas sprayed in the mountains. we are particularly concerned in a place like this where the water supply is coming into an area that is a bomb crater. here, we have to ask ourselves,

is there a contamination. in this particular village, we with 30 cases of people relationship to agent orange dioxin. 30 cases. the population is only 300. that is a lot of cases for a village. it puts a big question mark. this will be one of the target places for us to go and do testing for dioxin. what we aress of doing, we are always trying to set with villagers and have them relate their story about what happened during the war. how was their life before the war, what happened during the war, and what happened after the

war. that gives us a picture that they went from feeling well off, or adequately fed, to being rather poor. there are significant differences between vietnam and laos. first, the u.s. military controlled the war in vietnam. they were the ones determining the flights and bombing patterns. in laos you have the cia. also, the u.s. ambassador. it is one of the first times that a u.s. ambassador is charged with deciding bombing routes. were 3.2m, there , americanldiers

soldiers, observing, seeing, experiencing, agonizing. in laos there were 3000 covert troops in civilian clothing said condit to the cia -- clothing said condit to -- secondedc to the cia. they are not allowed to talk about it for many decades. 25-years before my brother-in-law felt comfortable to talk to us about it. families learn a lot about the vietnam war and very war.e about the laos next to nothing. isyou ask americans, where laos? they cannot pinpoint it on the map. our taxpayer money went to

multibillions of warfare in the country. a lot of people, and this is a point i want to make strongly, call laos a sideshow. excuse me. multi-billions went into laos. a sideshow? nine years and 10 years of warfare, is that a sideshow? i do not think so. foreign media experienced vietnam intensely, firsthand. put on the plants, went everywhere. foreign media in laos, couldn't top are you are not allowed go on the air america plans like you were in vietnam. we did not get a record of it from our media.

the vietnamese and foreign people heard daily about the war on tv, radio, and press. i'm talking about local people. in vietnam, you could hear it all. in laos, nothing. hardly anything about the war. when my husband and i arrived in 1978 in the capital, the most educated area of the country, very few people knew what had gone on in places like the ho chi minh trail area. very few, unless they had actually lived it and then there. -- and been there. us. shocked bombing and herbicide spraying took place in vietnam close to the major centers of population.

close to theppen centers of major population in laos. it happened far away, into the mountains, into the areas where no one goes unless you live there. every vietnamese, rich or poor, became affected by the war. ao was affected by the war. most of the bombing affected 1/3 to one half of the population. the other half did not seem to know there he much about what went on. they were shocked when my husband and i brought back photographs of the bombing that we witnessed in 1978, the effects of it. they were shocked.

congress held constant hearings about via, the bombing and the spring. in laos, we got the first hearing in 1971, then a series after that until 1975, then finished. nothing else was hurt about that issue, until we opened the p.o.w./mia issue, and the u.s. congress began to take interest in unexploded ordinance. you cannot go into these areas without cleaning the area first, because you do not want your personnel to be hurt. congress holds continual hearings on the bombing and the vietnam.since 1966 in

there is not much said about 1971.until the first wave of refugees who come here from vietnam, and who deded with that -- who si with the u.s. in the war, they talk a lot about the war. they were followed up by economic refugees. the refugees who came from laos where the cia troops in the beginning. later, the second wave was economic. what you find is a lot of the people, the first wave new about the war. didsecond wave of refugees not know much about the war. they do not talk much about

spraying and bombing. they were mostly coming from the river areas. so, we do not get the intense discussion about the bombing and the spraying. those are the differences that we see. these are some of the barrels that we found in areas areas. these could be gasoline barrels or agent orange barrels. we do not know for sure. they were used for collection of water by the village. this was taken in 2014 -- 2015, sorry. war has brought many problems in the postwar area. one of the most important things for me that i question when i

came to gw, was why do we not talk about postwar consequences? yearsally takes 20 to 40 to recover from serious warfare. ask any european who live through world war ii. we half to hav -- we have to have mechanisms to help each other recover. of issues that we couldthe united states think about for goodwill measures. ensure thatnt to humanitarian assistance gets to disabled persons in the former wartime war zones that were

sprayed as well as bombed. these are the areas of high poverty. that is one area where we could increase goodwill, adding simple legislation. words could be inserted into the current legislation for humanitarian assistance to include the sprayed areas. then, the babies with the disabilities of limbs which were not caused by bombs but by congenital birth defects could be addressed. to push thatying the 2017 bill for humanitarian addressce in laos would the people in the southern regions that were definitely , and maybe might be

having the consequences of that. 's assistance already includes the sprayed victims. laos' does not. simple wording. another issue is that we want to urge the u.s. to increase support to special facilities that would help assist these children and adults who have congenital birth defects in their area. to these people to travel the capital, where the best hospitals are, is very difficult. $20, yin's about -- couldould have

never take her to even the district hospital. 3 was not too far away, about crossings of major streams, six is what itmlettes would take. her mother has tuberculosis and her father is 65 years old and is getting weak. she never saw a doctor. until she was 13 years old. need to have facilities close to these people. there is hardly anything there. even at the district level, the hospitals are very modest and very understaffed. they for sure would not be able to operate on some of these severe difficulties, but at

further. the u.s. could also quietly bases ande old cia residuesfor looting that need to be cleaned up and remediation, address your remediation if it is needed. we created a lot of landing spots all around laos. it is unbelievable when the old village talked about this used to be the old american landing spot. and it is in the middle of remote areas where there is a village all around its. and -- around it. and for sure they sprayed by hand around those outposts when they were being used.

part.s. could take incorporates june with the economic and laos -- take part in cooperative action with laos and vietnam in cleaning up old pollutants, like dioxin. an ambassador, who is in vietnam, is interested in this idea of pulling together u.s. teams lao, and to come together and talk further about how to be very practical about addressing some of these issues. --hope that will come from come forward in the near future. and i have just received word would like to make

a study commissioned with some senior people to look at how vietnam has been addressing with thenge, dioxin united states at this time. that is a totally new opening that we have gotten in the past week. the u.s. could declassified the --declassify the records inside laos, and especially the agent orange or dioxin spraying use, because those are the spots we really need to investigate, whether there are residues and whether we need to provide humanitarian assistance.

so one day i came out of my house and the girl was staying there temporarily because we were waiting the doctor, for the doctor to operate on her. rode in the dust of my something in lao. she now had one foot fixed she can stand on it. but she cannot quite walk because the other foot does not work right. it displays like a chicken leg. waiting for the

doctor, maybe at the end of this year, maybe at the beginning of next year to come back again to operate. he is a british doctor who is going to try and help her. and we wouldy more like to help them. but we have got to have the data. you have got to stop the dioxin and hopefully raise this issue a little bit more so this does not happen again. thank you. [applause] ms. yarr: wow. andk you very much, susan, this is a really thought-provoking and presentation that

really gets us some insight as to what it really takes to get to the bottom of these issues. it is not just looking for the data in archives. it is getting into the villages. it is talking to people. what hearing from them they can tell us about their lives, both before and after the war. you very much. if i could start off, i am sure we will have lots of questions for you, but to have your list, if i may, and given that we are here at the university, it strikes me that one of the -- would you think that a really good use of our development assistance with the two trading scientists -- to training scientists, training epidemiologists, training people

barrelslook at those and see if there was dioxin inside or something else. do you think that could be perhaps added to your list of -- your wish list for what the u.s. government could do as a way in this post-conflict time? ms. yarr: yes, definitely. the lao people are very different in one major aspect in terms of education. in 1978, when my husband and i first went to work intensely in laos and in vietnam, we noted that the number of people who had even graduated from high school was only 5% in the entire country. this is 1978.

and the entire population has only 5% who graduated from high school. the number of those who had gone % toniversity was about 1.5 2%. and you compare that to vietnam where you had numerous people who had achieved university education and had even ph.d.'s. ofthey are in great need further advanced educational opportunities. and particularly in the deep sciences, such as epidemiology, i believe we have one epidemiologists in the entire country at this point, and he is brand new. so one.

areeed also people who first in science so they can ver insidehow the -- so they can understandsed how the process of dioxin get in the human chain. that is a question that always intrigues people -- how does it get into us? where does it lie? dioxin is not water soluble. fact of stored in the adhere to dioxin can soil particles, and the fish were animals who are grazing in that dioxin-contaminated zone will it just the dioxin chemical tigers in their body and they s in their -- chemical

body and they would be stored in the fat. dioxin get stored in the human body. that is a way to remove dioxin from your body is to breast-feed. so women who are breast-feeding will transmit the dioxin to the fatty aspect of their breastmilk to their infant. that is part of the problem. the reason the u.s. government is spending millions of dollars in -- to clean up the dioxin contamination in the soil is that testing is done in a population that surrounded that did --, this -- surrounded that lake, had i levels of dioxin in their blood. everybody in industrialized nations has dioxin in their

blood. that is part of the chemical process that created during the manufacturing of herbicides. eight to 10 parts per billion. they were finally people who live in the hot spot who had hundreds of parts per trillion in their blood. that was true -- that was proven that 40 years after the war that base was causing a public health impact on the population, who were eating animals that were raised on that race. the same thing was founded in another place, by the way. let me add one other story. this is a story about the united states. we have a major diocese contamination issue in a place called pines beach, missouri. missouri, it was a

small town, a couple thousand and one of their dirt roads was going to be paid with field in missouri. i live in misery, so i understand this. after having this done, someone noticed that these very well-off resources had collapsed and -- well off rate horses had collapsed and died. horses had collapsed and died. the only place they could figure out was the track around which they ran had been paved with such of enfield. and they started checking out the roads, and the roads in this area were checked out. then they started checking out the kids, and he found the kids

in the school had 200 parts per trillion in their bloodstream. the town was destroyed. moved. and this is 1983. google go up on youtube, beach, and you will know about. most missourians know about it, but not much of the united states does. what happened to those people? i asked an epa official. that is a good question. i do not know if we followed up. so far i have not had an answer yet. i would like to know if they had children that have these problems. so we had it here as well. and where did that dioxin, from? the manufacturing of agent orange.

there were several factories all around st. louis that were making it. and the man who did the chip and fi got residue from thee factoriesl, and that isd how it came into the environment of times be. fascinating little story, and the 30-minute video will tell you the story more deeply. we can open it up for questions and comments. >> [indiscernible] vietnam was such a public thing. [indiscernible] ms. chagnon: it is a very good question. i have never been able to get an answer from a u.s. official that was involved in it. os was supposed to

be neutral according to an agreement that was signed in 1961. actorsre were several trying to get into the act. one was the soviet union at that time, and then the united states. the united states moved in after the french got defeated at -- in vietnam, and then laos became independent. and so at this point, the united states wants to influence laos. s up a secret build startingr the period in 1958. llay were looking for guerri soldiers. lao -- allere both

ic groupsethn participated to some degree, but not all groups. you cannot say that all ethnic groups supported the cia. that is totally incorrect. and they created a secret military i think because of the neutrality agreement. they did not want to admit that it was really going on. so when people flew in, let's in to cia agent flew the air base, they never went through vientiane. you did not even know they were there, because it was a restricted area. so their operations were kept very, very quiet and undercover. that pbs film

called "american experiences," there is one whole series on vietnam, and one portion of that series is laos and cambodia. and there is an excellent discussion in that film with the former cia agent about how this occurs and what takes place. we were afraid that china was and thatbe a player china would then come down and swooped down and take over laos, take over thailand, take over much of southeast asia. i do not think china had the desire or ambition to do that at that point. frankly, right now they are doing an amazing takeover through capitalism, through investment.

and it is shocking everybody. it is distressing in some ways because there is a lot of difficult things happening inside various countries. why it wasquestion kept secret? congress did not approve going into laos. ms. chagnon: that is right. >> and one of the reasons we went in was to interrupt the flow of supplies in the ho chi lao.trail, which was in ms. chagnon: yesms. chagnon:, but that comes later. we were in laos -- we were already forming the secret army 1962.1 -- the war in vietnam against in 1965. the bombing of laos begins five months before the bombing in

destin bombing in laos begins five months before the bombing in vietnam. to theou are referring bombing, because there was also the incursion of the troops into lao -- the actual american troops went o.to lo0a ms. chagnon: yes, later, that was in 1971 but there were not a lot of troops in uniform. they were always in civilian dress. and ias in uniform went into lao. april of 1971. ms. chagnon: that was a terrible situation. told it was to

interrupt the flow of supplies on the ho chi minh trail. that was the military reason. disastrous: it was a undertaking for the vietnamese that went in as well, as the americans. battle, butrible has not been recorded very well. one of the areas we are working in. >> i also had a question. given all the evidence, what is it that there is so much resistance to acknowledging that agent orange has caused all these consequences? that is a good question as well. you could say part of it is financial. taking responsibility for not just those in vietnam who have congenital deformities that may

be caused by agent orange. vietnam veterans here and veterans of the war in laos and cambodia also are born with disabilities, deformities. there is a new group that started about three or four years ago called the children of the veterans health alliance. primarily a facebook group, the i do not know what the number is, but there are several thousand children of veterans who are part of this group who are sharing about what types of health issues they are facing today, and their children are v.a. doesay, that the not a knowledg acknowledged. part of it is a financial question, and the evidence is really -- we have it in animal studies, but you cannot inject a human with dioxin and see what

it does to its offspring. there is not evidence of a direct link. become the excuse to do nothing, that there is no scientific proof that this causes problems in humans, but there is no scientific proof that there is not. and the iom that comes up with veterans thats the v.a. determines what diseases may be receiving benefits, they only look at existing studies. they do not do their run research. done,ook at what has been what research is already out there, and they determine where they find there is evidence of association. rare of these -- the defects, there is no research that has been done.

they typically rely on the lack of scientific evidence as an excuse not to say that you cannot say 100%, so it must not be. >> if it is largely financial driven, i saw on one of the slides that there is compensation for service in vietnam. ift is the difference i there is compensation for service in vietnam, but not for a link to agent orange? for those birth defects that are found among the children of female veterans, there were only 8000 mainly nurses who were serving the country. -- spina bifida -- it is hard to get out of the v.a. the details of how much money is going to spina bifida, how much money is going to veterans with parkinson's. they do not break down their records, so it is hard to know

those numbers. vietnam-era veterans, there is so much money going to that population. but it is not broken down by condition. iom finds another condition that they believe is associated, like stroke was at hypertensionly, hear was added, well, you are talking about a population of 3 million veterans who served in the country. i do not know how many are alive today. they are in a 60's, 70's. 80's whenwas in his he died. chances are a lot of them have that condition. part of it is financial, but also the v.a. is often careful to say people who talk about why

veterans in america benefits as opposed to, say, vietnamese who have the same condition, they hear it is very political. we are going to support our veterans. but that does not mean we are going to do the same in a country that was our former enemy. >> the pictures are heartbreaking. was there wasght poison gas in world war i, and there were rules of war, and conventions. where would agent orange, blue, white and all these classes fit things? scheme of i'm against all war, but if you are called to fight a war, how is this supposed to be able to be used on civilian populations and legalities and that caps t kind of stuff?

that has been a big question of lawsuits that have been filed in the united states by veterans, and in 2004 the emmys also filed a lawsuit in u.s. against the chemical companies about, wasn't this a war crime? thathe courts have ruled the dioxin in this herbicide was a byproduct. it was not supposed to be there. it was created with the chemical 2-4-5-t, oneoduced, of the components of agent orange, and there is a lot of rainbow colors. when they produced that herbicide ,2-4-5-t, they were producing it quickly, and the dioxin typical was created during the manufacturing process. it was not supposed -- it was

not supposed to be in there, and dow was the only onlycal company was the company that tried to reduce the dioxin. all of them had dioxin in the 2-4-5-t. the courts ruled the herbicides were not used as a point, because poisons were in the geneva dimension of time. they were not targeted at humans. they were not targeted to kill. they were targeted to kill trees, so therefore it was not a war crime. that is what the courts have said in the last couple years. since then, the u.s. has signed on to a protocol that forbids first use of these types of chemicals in war. but we used herbicides in

mbia against cooking, but i guess that is war, so that is ok. ms. yarr: any other questions? mentioned, kindly identify yourselves when you -- my name is lewis woolf. i was in laos. i want to thank this gentleman. the may be the first person of my knowledge to ever publicly say that he was on the ground, in uniform in laos. thank you. laos,lt of secrecy around which jackie and i and some of the others who have been in laos and works there -- and jackie and her husband, roger, were in a group called international voluntary services, which was a precursor to the peace corps.

we lived in the villages. we spoke lao. we ate their food. we loved the lao. we love their people and the culture. one thing that escapes public knowledge is this: secrecy around laos, which, for example, today the vietnam war more to my there is no single u.s. military personnel who is identified on the wall as died in laos. it did not happen. maybe some of your colleagues were killed during the operation. some were. even before from outside of -- they were on the ground. maybe some of you have heard about an investigation which was held in detroit in the 1960's,

and the second investigation more recently, where men testified under oath in public, on film, to the fact that they were in laos, in operations in laos. and lastly, i will mention the fact that henry kissinger, when he signed the geneva agreements, you can go and see the paper that he signed, in the national archives. i saw it in the war museum in hanoi, vietnam, and he did not actually sign it. he goes "h k." that is not a signature. a.b. it is fair to say the u.s. -- maybe it is fair to say the rest that are really sign a piece agreement. maybe others did. william sullivan was one of the

key players. the cult of secrecy around the war in laos -- and that is what it was -- a war against the people of laos -- where it was mentioned in the early slides that susan showed that more ance was dropped in laos than anywhere in all warfare. that before the war, which was said to be in the range of 5 million to to 6 million, after the war -- jackie or susan? 6.5 million now. >> before the war it was a lot more. the people of laos have suffered tremendously from a war that it is not known as a war.

i remember reading a few weeks ago that the first medal of honor that went to a veteran that he was awarded the congressional medal of honor -- i cannot remember exactly -- for service in laos, it the first time any person -- and he had gone -- he was a medic -- and he had gone in and say -- i do not remember if it was part of the safe home, but it was worried-something years later that -- it was fortysomething years later that he was honored. before that he could not admit that he was there, and he had saved many lives of his fellow soldiers during that effort. secrecy continues. it was very hard. i have been able to talk to a few -- you have to get introduced, introduced,

introduced before and without for you, and when my father was a veteran, so i am coming at this from an army brat and you have to lay your credentials out before you even get that first open to talk to one of these veterans. now they are starting to write memoirs. you can come across some memoirs online. but they had held on to the secret, many to their graves. sister in lawy did not know her husband had been in laos until six months before he died. his children did not know either. at that point, he was suffering from health timers -- from he could notand remember much. i had the task with my husband,

who was still alive at that time, to explain to them what happened and why they did not know. he had only confided in my husband and i. and it was a very painful, painful events for him. ms. hammond: which brings up the point if you were a veteran who had boots on the ground, you automatically qualify for any conditions that the v.a. acknowledges. if you were in thailand or laos, it is a much harder -- you have to prove exposure. it is not the presumption of exposure that it was in vietnam. you have to prove you were in an area that was sprayed. so that i mentioned that i have not heard from them -- but there are many of these air america and those who went into vietnam

-- i mean, went into laos that may have markets is, that may or some of these conditions, veterans in the vietnam era, who if they were just for one hour, they could qualify for, and these cannot even prove they were there. there are many veterans i believe who are not receiving the assistance from the government, our government, that they should. lao that we are trying to get the help for. ms. yarr: questions? >> i am working for a video free asia from laos. something,e to add because i have worked there for

years in the south. -- agent orange. just traveled through the -- and during that time, i assumed that the spraying of agent becauseas -- or not, the townspeople told me the alongmese -- travel toward the ho chi minh trail at night. and the trail was made of rocks and stones made by the human labor. i was surprised. how was the ho chi minh trail made? together,he rocks all and during that time i was told

that the vietnamese troops traveled during the rainy season, during the rainy season. it wasing that time thick forest. of agent the spraying orange, it works only in 1 --, you see -- only in the rainy season. but when the rainy season comes, cat can we say, the leaves ome. and then five years ago, i was there, and i saw it is very difficult to get to the target area. is in the center of the town of the province. 100 miles from the

but it takes four days to get the area. and the people in that area are very, very low educated. -- and i wasee surprised that the people understand -- they do not know anything about -- they do not know anything about the agent orange. so my question is, what can be the lao? ms. chagnon: it is going to take both the lao government asking for assistance and the u.s. government responding. lao why hasn't the government asked?

i think because they thought it was gone. it is 40 years ago. they did not have the science to realize that this was an ongoing problem. 1999-2000, my husband and i began a smart effort -- small effort to try to educate a person in the ministry of health, including the vice minister of health, about this issue. and we took them them to a conference in vietnam. then to atook them conference in vietnam. it was sponsored by the u.s. government. it was the first time these young doctors had ever heard about the consequences.

now, these are some of the most highly educated people in laos at that time, but they did not know. . subsequently, there has been no follow-up until this work by the war legacies project, which is why i decided that in my retirement this is what i was going to do. i was going to try to make this an issue. i should tell you that the uxo issue took us over 20 years to bring this to the table, to put it on the table, that not only would the lao not ask for it, but that the u.s. would respond. it as itirst mentioned is in 1979-1980 here in no,ington, it was like --

it was bombed that much, really? we had to show photos and lots of proof before people began to realize that that's of the bombing that went on in laos. that is why i say please do not call it a sideshow. it is the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world per capita. it is not a sideshow. it is sprayed with tremendous amounts of chemicals, some of which we do not even know what they are. teams are finding weapons that they cannot identify. and there are people who, when they go and defuse them, are seriously injured. we visited with one of those young women. there was a young woman, and she had been working for five years on a uxo team, and she does not

receive assistance today, and yet you can still see the burn marks on her entire body. something exploded and burned her very badly. and nobody could explain what it was. to this day. 2000 -- i think it was in the year 2000. to this day, we do not know what kind of weapon it was. fore is a definite need cooperation on this, and that is why i said i am very pleased to see that vietnam, which has a lot of scientists's, a lot of experience, is now able to and coming to understand more of the data behind this and the consequences . what the united states also has goodwillipate as a

gesture. ms. hammond: your point that areas are very remote, the remote areas on the spraying that where the herbicides were sprayed onto which is an trail, are very remote, and the population does not travel out of their home villages. these stories that we are river aftersing delivery to get there, in a four-wheel drive truck, the only way you can get there, you have to go to them to get the stories and information. that information is not coming out. said, are notou very well educated. ethnic minority populations that to lethave the ability entianeeople know in vi

know what their issues are. they do not live on a cash economy. it is a subsistence economy. he did not have the cash to buy the bus ticket. that is another one of the problems, that this information is not getting -- the areas that are heavily sprayed, remote. very few people get out of them. organizations, other organizations that are working in laos, primarily have been focused in the north, in other areas. working in -- but not in the areas that are along the ho chi minh trail. they are not providing programs there. they're not getting their stories out and are not advocating for more funny or support from the u.s. government. -- more funding or support from the less government. ms. chagnon: it is a difficult

problem because the roads have only been constructed in the four, five years. we have to wait for a very specific time when the weather is dry and we can make it into those villages. it is that difficult. otherwise, you are slogging in mud up to hear. it is hard to walk in mud that the. ms. hammond: where you see the rocks and stones that were placed so many years ago. ms. yarr: any other comments or questions? think this has certainly question --ghtening and has given us the kind of in-depth understanding of what the true consequences of a war

would be, a declared war, a secret war, any kind of war has on local populations. essentially a research agenda, i would think. ny of us, students at anyone else who wants get to the base of these issues so more change can happen and the kind of assistance actually targeted and brought to bear on these populations. so please join me in thanking susan and jackie for their outstanding presentations. [applause] ms. yarr: i would also like to thank another individual for assisting in bringing this

session together as well as our friends from c-span. thank you. ms. hammond: could i add one thing? none of this work we are doing could we be doing without the s fromial support in lao green cross international, which is a fun based in switzerland that was started by gorbachev after the chernobyl incident, after he retired, and it addresses toxics around the world. we receive support to help through thanksgiving year of giving generously, which path to -- because -- ivs, because the father -er who died ins laos.

also another foundation is a supporter of our work as well, and without them i would not have been able to afford a plane fare to come down here. so thank you. ms. chagnon: much of our work is based on volunteerism and i have wonk.at susan is not a volunteer. i do not receive a salary. but they help to pay for travel when we are moving around laos. , whos well, my colleague is our country program person, she also works on a volunteer basis. she is very committed to this and receives phone calls from various people of until midnight sometimes.

they are calling to see if their child to be able to go to get examined by a doctor for their problem. and it is a very rewarding piece of our work. but the most important think i think we have to do that but the most important saying -- but the most important thing i think we have to do is see what our government can do, let me also say, if anybody is interested in cambodia, there are three provinces that were also affected by agent orange, stats dioxin, and those still have not been investigated. those would make a good research paper. ms. yarr: thank you all for coming, and with that, we will close this events. thank you. >> thank you.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> if you missed any of this discussion, you can watch it later at the c-span video library. go to www.c-span.org. coming up in about 10 minutes, a program on u.s.-china relations as obama prepares to visit the country later this week. the stinson center will host --

host thisnter will event. now a look at the u.s. economy from this morning's "washington journal." bevins. how would you describe your organization? we are a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank and we make sure the interests of low income families are given their weight. host: paint the picture of where we are as far as the recovery is concerned? guest: we are getting close to a full recovery. it has taken a long time to get there. historically,look seven years plus into recovery you are supposed to be pretty much at something like full employment. we are not there yet and it has taken a long time.

the one thing that is noncontroversial about this report is that recovery has taken a long time. host: compare that to cycles we have had in the past, how long does it take to get there from their? look at employment growth since the recovery began, after the recession and starting from the month of recovery it took about 51 months just to get the jobs lost during the recession. and we have to do better than that and create 120,000 jobs .ach month that is the longest on record and that is a function of, we lost so many jobs because the great recession was so long, but also the pace of employment growth was quite slow and that was the slowest longest on record. host: what was different this time around than the previous cycles? back, to take one step

another thing that is uncontroversial is that the recession was caused and the recovery was hampered by insufficient aggregate command. households and governments were not spending enough money to get everyone fully employed and get all of the factories and stores and hotels at full capacity. that is a problem we have been struggling with. you look at the sources of command, consumption spending, government spending. the thing that stands out like a sore thumb is the incredible slow pace of public spending. if you compare public spending and this recovery compared to every other postwar recovery, it is an outlier and that has put a drag on recovery and that has why -- that is why it has taken so long. host: in this case, spending by the federal government? guest: in the report i look at federal, state, and local

spending. the mechanical source of weakness has been the state and local sector. local policymakers have real constraints about increasing spending during a recession and they really have to balance budgets often bite state constitutions that require they do so. they cannot borrow on anywhere near the scale the federal government, federal government has a large scope of action to maintain spending during a recovery and i would say even though the largest mechanical weakness is state and local spending, the fed has the ability to do more and chose not to. host: how does the guest: am talking about austerity on the spending austerity basically means very slow growth in spending.

i am talking about austerity on the spending side. you can raise taxes a lot and snuff purchasing power that way, we have not done that. it has been on the spending side. one thing that puzzles people is people have this idea in their head about the early days of the obama administration when one of the first acts was the american recovery and reinvestment act which was meant to fight recession. that was the single largest legislative stimulus we have ever done in the american economy. i think it was appropriate to do, and if you looked over the course of the recession, in the first year of recovery and say to the middle of 2010, public spending was rising faster than historical average. what people tend to miss, in

the debt ceiling showdown in 2011, in the summer there was a political drama about congress refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless they got spending cuts and we got those at the budget control act, and since then the pace of public spending has been incredibly slow. also in 2010 we got a lot of state legislators flipping to republicans and lots of them, famously sam brownback instituted austere spending paths. host: the money does not go into the economy because the money is not there to generate a more robust economy. guest: that is about it. where you can see it tangibly is employment. over the course of the recovery if you look at public-sector employees, that growth has been far below growth in normal times.

public-sector employment is supposed to grow over time. take the case of teachers. as we get more and more students, you should want more teachers. we have actually -- we shed a bunch and hiring has been slow. once public sector employees lose their jobs, they decrease their spending. host: the first call is on the republican line from michigan. caller: good morning. mr. bevins, i really think there is a lot of politics involved in our slow recovery. our roads and bridges and things of that nature are deplorable and i believe that the republicans did not want to give

president obama credit for increasing the employment. also, another thing i have observed, the privatization of anything they can do. some of our prisons, food service was privatized. atrocious results. maggots and things in the food is so bad that possibly we may even eliminate the privatization. those are two things i have noticed prevalent. thank you c-span. you do a wonderful job. guest: i certainly agree with the first statement that you

want to explain why the recovery has been so slow and the political choice we have made to really undertake the economics of fiscal austerity. i think the second part is true as well. there is a lot of stuff we could profitably spend money on, infrastructure investment. both candidates have said kind words about increasing infrastructure spending and candidate clinton has a concrete plan to do that. i totally agree and i think we have a slow recovery because we made a bad political choice mostly driven by the republicans in congress and state houses and i think it is obvious where you could productively spend more public money in the united states and do big infrastructure investments. host: west virginia on independent line, richard, go ahead. caller: hi. a lot of forms we have to wrestle with, increasing spending is how do we bring down our deficit. go out and google national republican recovery act. one of the things that

eisenhower developed the federal highway system was to facilitate emergency transport of military. so it would seem to me that is one idea for infrastructure, is to tap in a portion of the military budget. just wanted your thoughts on that. guest: two things there, one is the issue of how to pay for the increase in spending. over the course of the recovery when demand has been so weak, it is probably best if it is a deficit financed. basically, stimulus works best when you do not pay for it. if we did infrastructure --progressive taxes on high -- >> it is my pleasure to introduce the professor who will

talk about a pair of very important subjects. u.s.-prce relationship, in which he is talking about pessimism, and how thisquestion about impacts on taiwan, whether taiwan can take advantage of disruptions or relations. both of these elements, in my view, are quite important, important not only to the mainland and taiwan but to the united states. sorry, i have an alarm going off. as you know, it has been a difficult time in u.s. and prc relations, but we are about to have a summit meeting