© Provided by Washington Examiner Former Trump administration Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie grew up at Fort Bragg surrounded by Vietnam veterans affected by the toxic chemical Agent Orange. His father, too, was grievously wounded in Vietnam. Still, when given the chance to change policies at the Department of Veterans Affairs to help post-9/11 service members suffering from diseases related to toxic chemical exposure, critics say he chose not to.
In an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner, Wilkie said he did not know if he had the authority to make such changes, and he "would have to go back and look."
For two decades following the American invasion of Afghanistan, service members stationed across the Middle East and Asia have developed rare cancers and ailments that veterans groups say are linked to their exposure to burn pits and toxic chemicals.
Wilkie said he worked on the issue, encouraging more scientific studies, helping to create a registry, and treating all sick veterans who came to the VA.
"I knew all about Agent Orange, so I didn't want us to have to go through that," said Wilkie, now a Heritage Foundation visiting fellow. "We didn't turn away a veteran who was ill."
EXCLUSIVE: 'TOXIC WOUNDS ARE WOUNDS,' JON STEWART SAYS OF MILITARY VETERANS AND BURN PITS
But lawmakers and sick veterans say the VA must grant preventive screenings and tests before the onset of disease in order to save lives, and the burden of proof should not be on the veteran. More than a dozen bills before Congress would force the VA to respond.
Mark Jackson, a veteran who served at a contaminated Afghanistan War staging base in Uzbekistan known as "K2," said it's not about treating veterans who are already ill. The need is to test veterans exposed to toxins so that preventable cancers can be addressed early.
"Mr. Wilkie is right when he says an acutely sick veteran can go in for care. That's not what I'm fighting for," said Jackson, who works with the Stronghold Freedom Foundation, which is working to help pass the pending legislation.
"We're fighting for the presumption by the VA that if someone was exposed to radiation at K2 or breathed toxins and jet fuel out of a burn pit, then the default position of the Department of Veterans Affairs is that the illnesses that they are now experiencing are automatically presumed to have occurred due to those exposures," he said.
'Go back and look'
More than a dozen bills before Congress are related to military toxic exposures, including one introduced in April by New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and promoted by comedian Jon Stewart, who helped pass similar legislation to help 9/11 first responders.
Several of the bills before Congress would grant a presumption of exposure.
Since Wilkie's three years in office ended Jan. 20, Jackson said he knows of veterans exposed to toxins in the line of duty who have died without the long-term care the VA could have provided.
Jackson added that Wilkie had the power to make that change, and he chose not to. Wilkie says he's not sure if he could have helped those veterans or not.
"I would have to go back and look," said Wilkie. "All I did was make sure that anyone presenting himself had the physical, made sure that anyone coming to us who was ill was taken care of. But most of the legislation, going back to Agent Orange, was a VA mandate."
Stewart recently told the Washington Examiner the so-called VA mandate means the department has the power to help veterans.
"The secretary of VA has a lot of leeway as far as mandates," Stewart said in a recent phone interview.
"They could deem constrictive bronchiolitis and these cancers and these respiratory illnesses as service-related," he explained. "What we do in our bill is, we basically list all the countries that the U.S. was active in and . a list of illnesses based on the science of toxic exposure and the types of illnesses that exposure causes."
Wilkie said he hasn't read the bill, and he dismissed Stewart's claim, saying the science isn't there yet.
"I have not seen it, and nor have I had time to look at it," said Wilkie. "I'm not a scientist, never have been, and I'm not a doctor, and I've never played one on television, so I would have to look to science to tell me that."
'Free for all'
Wilkie said he depended on research by the National Institutes of Health and the National Academy of Medicine to prove a connection between exposure to toxic burn pits and certain illnesses.
The DOD claims such studies have not "met the criteria for 'sufficient evidence for an association' (relationship) with burn pit exposure."
"If you don't have that, you could have the possibility for a free for all," said Wilkie.
"I think the crux of many of the pieces of legislation on the Hill regarding burn pits had to do with the payment of benefits," Wilkie said. "You get certain kinds of disability benefits based on your medical condition, and I think that they wanted to expand that and make it a presumption that burn pits did these things."
To be sure, Jackson admits that making the presumption clause law will be "insanely expensive."
"That gets to the root of what that bureaucracy has become," he said of the VA. "It is now designed to essentially be a giant screening process to make sure as few people as possible get coverage because it's expensive."
In a written statement to the Washington Examiner, the VA did not respond to questions regarding Secretary Denis McDonough's ability to make the described policy changes himself without an act of Congress.
"Secretary McDonough is fully committed to this immediate and deliberate forward-leaning approach that tackles the questions of environmental exposure," a spokesperson said. "VA is seeking every avenue possible to develop a process with the utmost rigor where presumptives can be determined in a more expedient and holistic manner for Veterans. This process includes gathering science from all available sources."
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Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee chairman, a Montana Democrat, is working on omnibus legislation that would take the best of the 15 bills currently before Congress.
"I'm done waiting for VA to take action," he said in a statement Friday. "Providing health care and benefits to veterans suffering from the effects of toxic exposure is a cost of war that has to be paid."
Tags: News, National Security, Department of Defense, Pentagon, Denis McDonough, Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans, Heritage Foundation, Jon Tester, Marco Rubio, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jon Stewart
Original Author: Abraham Mahshie
Original Location: Trump's VA Secretary missed chance to save sick veterans, critics say