BREAKING: McCaskill’s Arla Harrell Act Included in Annual Defense Bill
Senator successfully includes legislation for servicemen exposed to mustard agents in secret experiments— Bipartisan provision now supported by VA Secretary, nation’s leading Veterans Service Organizations
WASHINGTON – In another step forward for what has become a central cause for U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, a key Senate panel today approved her bipartisan legislation to help reverse seven decades of mistreatment and bureaucratic indifference by the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs toward servicemen who were intentionally exposed to chemical weapons during World War II. The Arla Harrell Act has been approved by the Armed Services Committee, as part of the annual national defense bill.
Click HERE for more photos from McCaskill’s recent testimony before the Senate Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, on behalf of the Arla Harrell Act. Watch this 5-MINUTE VIDEO on Arla Harrell and the secret mustard gas experiments.
“This is a another step forward we’re taking on behalf of Arla, and for his family—who’ve spent decades watching a loyal Soldier for our country become sick from experiments that his government has refused to even acknowledge,” said McCaskill, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Seeing this injustice up-close makes me think of my own dad, who also served in World War II, and how furious I’d be if he was treated this way. So I’m really proud we’ve taken a step forward for a bill that’ll help right such a unjust wrong for patriotic men like Arla, and I won’t stop fighting until it’s across the finish line.”
The inclusion of the Arla Harrell Act in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act marks a historic step forward for the bill, which will now be considered by the full Senate later this year.
The legislation, which recently gained a bipartisan companion bill in the U.S. House, is supported the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, who recently announced his support, and by leading Veterans Service Organizations, including Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, Vietnam Veterans of America, and Military Officers Association of America, who recently joined McCaskill to urge Senate passage of the bill
An investigative report by McCaskill last year demonstrated that during World War II, thousands of U.S. servicemen were exposed to mustard agents through secret U.S. military experiments. By the end of the war, 60,000 servicemen had been human subjects in the U.S. military’s chemical defense research program, with an estimated 4,000 of them receiving high levels of exposure to mustard agents. For decades, these servicemen were under explicit orders not to discuss their toxic exposure with their doctors or even their families.
The U.S. military did not fully acknowledge its role in the mustard agent testing program until the last of the experiments was declassified in 1975. The military did not lift the oath of secrecy for the servicemen until the early 1990s. The VA has denied more than 90 percent of mustard gas claims in the last ten years and only 40 veterans are currently receiving any benefit due to their exposure.
The annual defense bill also includes a number of McCaskill priorities, including new resources for Missouri’s military installations, as well as the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency in St. Louis, childcare services for the National Guard, Department of Agriculture job training for separating servicemembers, and resources for new F/A-18 Super Hornets for the U.S. Navy.
Further background is available at mccaskill.senate.gov/mustard-gas.
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