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INTRO:
While ECOTECTURE mostly reports on topics to
do with improving the environment by designing better human systems,
leaving environmental conservation to others, we occasionally come
across a conservation topic that is under reported and far too significant
to be ignored. We felt compelled to present this radio interview
on the use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions in Iraq and elsewhere
to our readers. After all, it is hard to create a sustainable environment
in a radioactive waste zone.
The interview with DU expert US Army Major
Doug Rokke was conducted by Dennis Bernstein, the producer of the
program Flash Points on KPFA (Pacifica) radio in Berkeley, California,
and broadcast on April 17, 2003. I heard it while driving my car,
and was so upset that I had to pull over. I had heard of DU munitions,
of course, but I thought they were used occasionally to attack tanks
and had no idea of how widespread, deadly and permanent their damage
was. ECOTECTURE obtained the tapes of the interview and republishes
it with Mr. Bernstein's permission.
In a follow up interview to be published soon
in ECOTECTURE, Major Rokke told Bernstein, "I do believe you're
the first station to break this extremely world-critical story."
ECOTECTURE is the first Journal to publish it, but we hope it will
not be the last. We encourage our readers to copy and disseminate
this material for any non-commercial use that will help expose the
health effects of DU before any more people are exposed to it.
PHILIP S WENZ
INTERVIEW:
BERNSTEIN: Depleted uranium is now a
key aspect of the US military’s forward fighting capacity.
It’s currently being used in bunker-buster bombs and anti-tank
penetrator missiles. The Pentagon swears by its effectiveness and
is again using it widely in the current deadly attack on Iraq. While
the US military sings its praises on the battlefield, it says little
about the short- and long-term dangers of DU both to the troops
that use it, and to the civilian populations who are subjected to
it. While the Pentagon is busy covering up the danger of DU, Army
Reserve Major Doug Rokke is blowing the whistle on its dangers.
Major Rokke in fact considers it his patriotic duty to tell the
world about the dangers this radioactive material poses to his fellow
soldiers and to the public at large. Flashpoints spoke with Doug
Rokke about the toxic nature of DU and the military’s ongoing
coverup regarding the thousands of vets who may now be sick due
to exposure to it. We began by asking Rokke to talk a little bit
about his own military background and his expertise on DU.
ROKKE: I enlisted in the military in 1967 and spent my first few years
in Vietnam as a bomb nab hardhat, especially with avionics and also
involved with nuclear weapons and regular conventional munitions
during combat missions over Vietnam. In 1980, I went back into the
army as a combat medic and spent three years as a combat medic in
a line infantry unit, and went on from there to become a medical
instructor and also with expertise in nuclear and biological and
chemical warfare as one of their instructors. In 1986 I received
a direct mission as a nuclear medical sciences officer, some 19
years after I had initially enlisted in the military. At the time
most people are retiring, I started all over at the bottom of the
ladder as an officer again.
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...my tasking was to identify what are the true health and
environmental effects of uranium munitions on the battlefield...
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In 1990 I went to the Gulf War as a theater health physicist and
was assigned the Bowers Raiders as an additional duty. Bowers Raiders
was the third US army medical command’s nuclear, biological
and chemical warfare special operations and teaching team. With
the completion of the ground war, I was reassigned by direct order
from central command, that’s General Norman G. Schwarzkopf,
to clean up the depleted uranium mess that was caused by the deliberate
use of uranium munitions by US and British forces during Gulf War
I. After we finished that job–it took us 3 months to clean
up 24 vehicles–we went back to the United States in June of
1991 and continued to write reports and trying to get everything
done.
In 1992, while I was working for the US Army at their construction,
engineering and research lab, trying to ensure that they did come
under compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act which
they were in violation of, I got involved in the preparation of
the US Army Environmental Policy Institute’s report on depleted
uranium. In 1994-95 I was recalled to active duty as the depleted
uranium project director for the US Army and the Department of Defense,
which then blossomed into a NATO project. As part of that responsibility,
my tasking was to identify what are the true health and environmental
effects of uranium munitions on the battlefield, how do you clean
it up on the battlefield. Another phase of this was to develop all
the training and education materials that all soldiers and military
personnel would receive to make it safe or to respond to the use
of uranium munitions in combat.
BERNSTEIN: Well, that gives us a sense of how much you know about
depleted uranium. Are you still in the military?
ROKKE: Absolutely. I’m still an Army Medical Services Corps officer
and now, I guess it’s the year 2003 — I can’t even
add and subtract anymore, that’s well over 30 years since I
initially enlisted in the military.
BERNSTEIN: First of all, Doug Rokke,
remind people what depleted uranium is used for by the US military.
ROKKE: The United States military uses depleted uranium munitions
to kill and destroy everything in its path. The uranium munitions
are a high velocity, kinetic energy penetrator. Each individual
tank round that’s fired by the Abrams tank is over 10 lbs.
of solid uranium-238. We know from the US Department of Energy reports
and also from the US Army Environmental Policy Institute report
that it’s also contaminated with plutonium, neptunium and americium
and submitted cases. The uranium munition that’s fired by the
A10 warthog aircraft is approximately 3/4 of a pound for each individual
round, and the A10 can fire it at a rate of up to 4,000 rounds a
minute. That’s a ton and a half of solid uranium fired into
a target per minute. The uranium munitions were also contained in
a lot of the bunker-buster bombs and also sub-munitions, land mines
such as the Atum and the Pedum (?). We also have it in a 25 mm round
that is fired by the Bradley fighting vehicle and also by the US
Marine Corps’ lab. In addition to that we have a 20 mm round
that’s fired by the Navy and that’s the Phalanx Naval
system. Because uranium munitions are absolutely effective in combat,
they are an absolute killer and destroyer, the military has put
them into almost every munition they can find and think of. It’s
extremely effective. It kills and destroys everything that it hits.
BERNSTEIN: You’re saying that for instance, these 5,000-lb.
bunker-buster bombs that we’re seeing dropped on the people
of Iraq in civilian areas may very well be full of depleted uranium.
The thing called
depleted uranium is
kind of a confusing
term. There’s nothing
really depleted about it.
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ROKKE: Yeah, they more than likely contain
uranium. The thing called depleted uranium is kind of a confusing
term. There’s nothing really depleted about it. If you take
for every 100 lbs. Of solid uranium that you have which is put into
the enrichment process you’re able to retrieve .6 lb. of fissionable
component. The other over 99.4 lbs. is what we call uranium-238,
and that’s what they deem depleted uranium. So there’s
nothing really depleted about it other than the fissionable component’s
been removed. Now, Dye Williams, who’s an independent researcher
over in England, has done extensive research looking at the patent
office applications the US Patent Office reports to verify and to
identify that a lot of these bunker-busters now contain uranium
munitions. Independent researchers that have done onsite investigations
to measure the contamination following these detonations have also
verified that uranium was contained in these bombs. And then the
other thing, too, is when you watch them go off on TV. Uranium munitions,
if they are contained, leave a very distinctive signature. You’ll
see it in this conventional explosion, the fire, the blast and the
concussion and everything going. In the uranium munition, you’ll
see sparklers and heavy metal uranium, which is pyroforic, will
continue to burn for an extensive period of time after all of the
other detonation, the initial fireball and the explosion with the
smoke and everything, is over. It’s very distinctive.
BERNSTEIN: Talk a little bit about the dangers of depleted uranium,
the way it’s being used now, and how it will impact civilian
populations and the troops that are using them.
ROKKE: Well, when you use uranium munitions
what happens is each individual round, once it leaves the barrel
of the gun that fired it, catches fire because uranium is pyroforic.
So it’s already on fire, it’s a round, races downrange
to hit any target. It can be a building, it can be a light-weight
vehicle, a car or a truck, it can be a tank or it can be an armored
personnel carrier. It’s effective on everything. When I did
the research in Nevada for the US Army in ’94 and ’95,
I actually shot up wood and it worked just as great hitting the
wood target as it did anything else. Now when it impacts, you have
a 10-lb. rod of solid uranium, okay, that’s fired by the Abrams
tank. When that impacts, about 40% or about 4 lbs. turns into what
we call uranium spalling and oxides. That stuff is on fire, moving
at extremely high velocity across the confined space and causes
secondary detonations, either due to concussion or due to ignition,
burning. Then what you have is a whole bunch of oxides form[ing]
on all contamination in and around the vehicle. My actual measurements
go out to 400 meters in and around a single vehicle for a single
incident. What we’ve found and what the Army has also agreed
on is that within 25-50 meters the contamination is so extensive
that the US soldiers must wear respiratory and skin protection to
be in that region. So it’s real simple. You end up with massive
contamination.
... the A10 warthog
aircraft ... can fire ...
at a rate of up to 4,000
rounds a minute.
That’s a ton and a half
of solid uranium fired
into a target per minute.
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Now, the health effects, what we saw immediately, were documented
as early as I can verify in what’s called the Grove’s
Memorandum that was issued on October 30, 1943. There it stated
the respiratory problems and rashes and everything would start within
hours and permanent damage within days. That’s exactly what
happened to me and the others that were tasked to clean it up. I
mean not even a question. So with the overall health effects of
uranium and heavy metals, so you’ve got a heavy metal radiological
toxin that once it’s ingested into the body, absorbed into
the body or shrapnel is deliberately left on the body, as the military
directed to be done for the friendly fire casualties, you end up
with cancers, neurological problems, fibromyalgia, cataracts, respiratory
problems, rashes, and the whole host of things associated with heavy
metal toxicity and radiological exposures.
BERNSTEIN: Now what can you tell us
in terms of its use in recent wars, in the first Gulf War, in the
former Yugoslavia? How can we determine what impact it had and how
it did or didn’t make people in the region or those who are
using it ill?
ROKKE: Well, one thing that we know for sure is that during Gulf War
I that we fired close to a million rounds, if not over a million
rounds from the A10. So each individual round was 3/4 lb. of solid
uranium. So that’s about 750,000 lbs. Okay. So that’s
an unbelievable amount of solid uranium left all over in the desert.
Then we fired probably close to 15,000 tank rounds and we left them
there. And much less any of the other large missiles such that the
Cruise Missile, which does have uranium in it, again verified by
the Patent Office and also verified by direct onsite measurements
of impact holes.
What we saw was all of us getting sick right away. We initially,
originally, I mean immediately directed medical care that should
be provided. I did that as a theater health physicist. The theater
medical commander sent a written order for medical care in June
of 1991 for medical care for all DU exposures. What happened is
even though we were getting sick and everything, medical care was
denied, deliberately denied. The reports that were put out there,
again, were supposed to be covered up. The famous Los Alamos memorandum
that I received in March of 1991 was very clear. If we don’t
put out a case to use this stuff and cover up the health and environmental
effects of uranium munitions, we will lose it. A defense nuclear
agency report that I received in March of 1991 was very clear. It
said that uranium munitions and everything are not only a health
threat, they are a serious health threat. And that’s what every
document that I’ve been able to find from the military completely
states over and over. And then my own health effects, the team members
and my own health effects, the friendly fire casualties that are
sick, the individuals that have died where the autopsies have verified
it, the individuals that work in the areas where they mine and produce
uranium munitions, are all sick. It’s not even a question.
The book Discounted Casualties that was published a couple
of months ago, totally explains and clarifies and reveals the extent
of the health effects all over the world.
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