Air Force veterans who served at Area 52, a top-secret nuclear testing site in Nevada, claim they suffered tumors and other ailments during their time at the base and were denied medical care.
Mark Ely, 63, said he has suffered numerous health problems since his assignment 40 years ago to secretly obtain and test Soviet fighter jets stored in hidden hangars at the Tonopah Proving Grounds, also known as Area 52. CBS News reported..
“I was left with scarred lungs, cysts on my liver. I developed lipomas and tumors in my body that had to be removed. The lining of my bladder fell off,” he told CBS.
Ellie said he cannot get health insurance because his time working at Area 52 – spent under a non-disclosure agreement – is not on his official employment record, even though a 1975 federal environmental assessment confirmed the presence of toxic radioactive material at the site.
In a 1975 report, the government argued that halting work at Area 52 would be “against the national interest” and that the ultimate “costs would be small and reasonable in relation to the benefits to be gained.”
“People have this slogan, ‘Stay in denial until you die,’ and that’s exactly what’s happening here,” Ellie said.
“Protecting the national interest was more important than my own life.”
Dave Crete served in the Air Force Security Police unit at Area 52. He told CBS that he now suffers from respiratory problems, including chronic bronchitis and a tumor in his back.
He told CBS that he’s spent eight years searching for other veterans who served in the field and have encountered “all kinds of cancer.”
“The government says they’ve made the area safe to prevent further contamination,” he said of the Area 52 contamination.
“They protected it with a barbed wire fence. I don’t have a PhD in physics, but you couldn’t do it with a barbed wire fence,” he suggested.
While other government employees stationed in the area, mostly Department of Energy employees, have received $25.7 billion in federal aid, Air Force veterans like Eli and Clete are ineligible because they don’t have a record of time serving on base and can’t prove they were there.
Last fall, Clete and another Area 52 veteran, Pomp Braswell, filed a lawsuit against the federal government in hopes of recovering benefits for health issues. CBS 5 reported at the time:.
“The important thing is that we were all handpicked and given permission to be there,” Braswell said.
“That being said, we were always performing at our best.”
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
