Thread by @johnismay

On the night of Dec. 2, 2005, three HH-60G Pave Hawks lifted off from Balad for a routine CSAR training op at Camp Taji. They touched down on the north side of Taji, with the birds "light on the wheels" at full military power -- causing a massive brown-out nytimes.com/2019/06/26/mag…

The powerful rotor wash blew sand, grit, and topsoil everywhere. The port and starboard side doors on all three birds were open, per SOP. Airmen breathed in the mess and were covered by it. The team quickly inserted a 9-man PJ team and shot back into the air, orbiting overhead

This is Tech. Sgt. Ronnie Walker. He watched the PJ team moving on foot through the green light of his night-vision goggles. He saw the lead figure double over, vomit, and fall to one knee. It was then that he noticed all of his exposed skin felt like it was on fire

Ronnie's training kicked in. He keyed his mic and said to the pilot: "Sir, we're Code Four" -- meaning "we've taken a chem hit." The pilot flashed his landing lights to signal the team and pushed his bird into a steep dive back to the LZ. Full-power landing; another brown-out

In one of the other Pave Hawks, Staff Sgt. Annette "Netty" Nellis was already coughing. Her eyes teared up and started burning. Her airway felt constricted. Hours after landing back at Balad, she noticed the blisters starting to form on her face and chest

Staff Sgt. Brian Ornstein was in the third Pave Hawk. He was feeling ill too. In time, he became the most chronically ill of the four airmen. After being medically retired, he spent nearly two years bed-ridden. Every day brought non-stop migraine headaches

Tech. Sgt. Steve May was in excellent physical condition when he collapsed on the ground at Taji. He remembers little from the three days he spent hospitalized after the op

Their squadron treated Walker and May for their injuries. Soon, all four airmen were told not to talk about what happened. As a direct result of that gag order, Ornstein and Nellis did not seek medical treatment though they were quite ill

Walker and May's uniforms were bagged up and sealed, then handed off to a civil engineer chemical team for tests. None of the four airmen or their flight doc were ever informed of the test results

Like so many of the chem exposure stories that @cjchivers @MacWBishop and I have reported since 2014, this all went into a black hole of reflexive and nonsensical classification that ultimately served no one and prevented any accountability

Today, the maintenance logs that would've shown the Pave Hawks being decontaminated on Dec. 3 are likely destroyed, as are the records from flight control at Balad that would've logged three birds declaring Alpha Code Four on approach to the pad

What we do have are medical records. Lots of them. Walker and May's records from Dec. 3 make it clear that they were exposed to something -- the flight doc at the time didn't know what it was yet, but it was clear that the CSAR team took some kind of chemical hit

Then, we have years of medical records for all four airmen. Again and again, chemical exposure is recorded in official documents. For some reason, this still was not enough evidence for a doctor at the US Army Public Health Center at Aberdeen, Md.

This doctor -- who never once examined, nor even talked to the four -- wrote three of them a letter in 2018 saying that their chronic medical problems couldn't have been caused by a real chemical warfare agent

The four airmen received letters from a **USAF Medical Corps colonel** who was their old squadron flight doc and reviewed all their records. It stated, in part, this:

"If you have any questions at all, please contact me." She gave her office landline, personal cellphone number, official .mil email address, and personal gmail. Did anyone from the Army or Air Force ever reach out to learn more or ask questions about what her letter said? No

Let's turn back to the CSAR op itself for a moment. Let's go back to Taji

This is Taji (L) and this is Taji's proximity to the airbase at Balad, and to the Al Muthanna State Establishment (R). Al Muthanna was the main chemical warfare agent production facility in pre-1991 Iraq

We're going to focus on the north side of Camp Taji. Take note of all the warehouses there, many identical in shape and size and evenly laid out

There was some bad, bad stuff in those warehouses. And U.S. military leaders and intelligence officers *knew it*

The three Pave Hawks landed somewhere in and amongst the warehouses shown in the shaded area here to the left side of the frame. The pin dropped towards the right side is where Dennis Marcello and other soldiers of Second Platoon, 811th Ordnance Company were in 2003

Chris Chivers told Dennis' story, and the story of the soldiers of the 811th in May 2015 nytimes.com/2015/05/15/wor…

Look at the warehouses in the background of this photo. Now go back to the overhead imagery from earlier in this thread. Look familiar? Yeah, Taji

In Dec. 2005, the aircrews of the 64th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron had no idea what went down with Marcello's crew in 2003 -- or what the area had been used for pre-1991. They'd called the US Army garrison at Taji to get clearance for the op; no one waved them off

There was nothing on their aeronautical charts to give them pause, either. Produced by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, or NGA, their maps and charts gave no indication of hazard -- no prohibitions about using any part of Taji as an LZ

I called NGA and asked for their charts for Taji and Al Muthanna at all available scales. Because if Al Muthanna wasn't marked with skulls and crossbones, then nowhere else in Iraq would be marked. Al Muthanna should be considered a no-go zone for anyone not wearing MOPP-4

NGA refused to release the charts, citing "limited distribution" caveats though the maps and charts are themselves UNCLASSIFIED

So what did Uncle Sam do for our four airmen? Once they'd called the Chemical Warfare Agent Exposure Hotline, officials -- at *best* -- did the bare minimum they were required to do by instruction. And even then, officials managed to do that badly and often failed completely

The USAF mailed the required instruction packets on Purple Heart eligibility to the addresses on the four airmen's DD-214's. All were returned as undeliverable because in the years since, all four had moved. Did the USAF then try to find them, and complete their required task? No

To their credit, in response to our reporting and repeated queries, the USAF has said that they are willing to examine all of the documents these four airmen have. And if the evidence supports it, the Air Force is prepared to make a formal request to re-open these cases

Our four airmen -- and I say 'our' because they're *yours* too, they were sent to Iraq in your name and with your tax dollars -- tell me that the first tentative phone calls have come in. But the Army and Air Force are moving incredibly slowly here

If you believe that you may have been exposed to a chemical agent in Iraq, or are suffering from unexplained medical problems following your tour there, you can start by calling the DoD Chemical Exposure Hotline at 1.800.497.6261

Please RT: If you are one of the hundreds of Iraq vets who has already received a medical examination at Bethesda for your reported chem exposure, but are not satisfied with the results, please call the Army Public Health Center at 1.800.222.9698 nytimes.com/2019/06/26/mag…

Mon.-Fri. 8am to 4pm Eastern, you will get a live human answering the phone. They can and will direct your call to the right people who can help you. Outside of those hours, your call should be forwarded to the Duty Officer's cellphone