Talk:Dugway sheep incident

Takings clause?
Did somebody reimburse the farmers eventually? Thousands of sheep are worth a lot and the constitution says clearly that private property cannot be taken without just compensation. The article speaks nothing about, even though it is said that "money talks". 91.83.27.181 (talk) 21:48, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
 * After searching far and wide for confirmation of a statement concerning the Army reimbursing the ranchers for the sheep I think I have found a source that states a payment of around $375,000 was authorized with the Army admitting culpability in the incident following lengthy investigations by the Army, the state of Utah and the U.S. Congress. The author of this book, Al Mauroni, also presents an alternative explanation, he calls a "simple academic exercise". It is intriguing and it starts on page 42 of the above linked book. I will add the information about payment soon.--IvoShandor (talk) 17:21, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Sources for improvement and expansion
The way I see it there needs to be a section on the various investigations, as well as some expansion of the causes section. Perhaps that section will need to be subdivided to include Mauroni's take about the incident being exaggerated and pushed by the media. I will list sources below with any notes.


 * Mauroni's book: America's Struggle with Chemical . . ., book includes Mauroni's alternative take as well as great detail about the investigation and army admissions during said investigations.
 * True Warnings and False Alarms, by Allan Mazur, discusses the effect of the incident on the activism of the Colorado Committee for Environmental Information
 * Another Boffey article from Science

In addition there are several articles that should be developed out of this.
 * Albert J. Mauroni:
 * Colorado Committee for Environmental Information
 * 1969 Rocky Flats Plant fire

More to come. --IvoShandor (talk) 18:16, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Wiki entry on Mauroni added --Amauroni (talk) 10:00, 20 August 2009 (EDT)

Tribune Article and "First Admission"

 * The article states that the report, released to the public 30 years after the fact, was the first admission of use of Nerve agents at Dugway. However, the Tribune article, towards the end, states there was a Press Release in 1968.  My Grandfather, Jesse Stay, wrote that Press Release, and I believe that was the first admission - way back in 1968.  The wording is a bit confusing.  Also, is there any documentation on the Press Release that could be added? Jesse Stay (talk) 08:56, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, if this helps, here is an interview my cousin did with my Grandfather about the incident (please cite him if re-used): Jesse Stay (talk) 09:02, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Live Interview with Colonel Jesse E. Stay (retired)

December 23, 2005

Place: Orem, Utah

Interviewers:

Zach Stay

Greg Romrell

Tucker Smith

Q. What is your name?

Jesse Stay

Q. What was your position in 1968?

I was the Assistant Director of the Department of Public Affairs working for the Assistant Secretary of Defense. I was the Acting Director of the Department of Public Affairs for the Defense Department.

Q. What do you know happened at Dugway Proving Ground in the spring of 1968?

We got word from Dugway that there were some sheep dying on the fields near Dugway and the newspapers were coming to Dugway and asking questions like, "Are you guilty of this? Is this your doing?" And Dugway started an investigation about the day the sheep started to die and they found that they were doing some aerial sprays. They had an airplane loaded with this nerve agent. Normally if a drop gets on your skin, you are going to die in a very short time. And they had a field all laid out and planes would come down at low levels and spray this area in the field and they would have cards every few feet in this area where they were going to spray it and they would try to see where the spray went. In this one instance, the plane came down and sprayed and he didn't empty all of his agent out over the area and he started to pull up into a cloud and was still spraying and the cloud was moving from west to east and the spray may have been caught up into that cloud in an updraft in the cloud. The cloud was blown over the next little valley where sheep were grazing off the range at Dugway. But the sheep were not dying like they had been exposed to a nerve agent. Usually they die just like that. But the sheep were just laying there for days, twitching, not able to control their muscles. It was strange because there were other cattle and sheepherders all in that same area and none of them were affected except the sheep and they couldn't figure out what was happening to the sheep. There wasn't any symptom that the sheep showed that was anything that had ever happened by exposure to this nerve agent. So, the Army said, "We couldn't have done it, because that is not the way people die or things die if they have been exposed to nerve agent. They just die, they don't just lay there for a week or so and starve to death." So the press got on it and they were making a very big thing about it and the Assistant Secretary of Defense sent me out to Dugway to handle the press and that is what I was doing there.

Q. Where you briefed on the investigation that Dugway did? Did Dugway tell you the scientific findings?

Yes.

Q. Did they say it was possible that the sheep could have died from illegal insecticides?

If that had happened then probably then the horses and the cows and everything else would have been involved too. So they had to find something that the sheep did that they didn't do.

Q. So do you have some kind of documentation that you sent back to the Pentagon?

I have no documentation. We had a telex set up between the office of the Secretary of Defense and Dugway and I could sit down and type and it would come out the other end and they could read it. So we were in constant touch with the Pentagon, the office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon, but I kept no records of it and I don't know that they did. Certainly there must be records independent of that maybe in storage or something.

Q. You held a press release …

We held a press conference and I had the scientists come in and explain all that I just explained to you, "This isn't the way that sheep die, that animals die, and all the other animals are still alive." We don't know what happened to the sheep, we don't know why they are dieing, but it isn't typical of the problems we see with nerve gas. People called it a nerve gas, but it wasn't a nerve gas, it was an oily agent that was sprayed out of a spray gun.

Q. What else might it have been besides nerve agent, if they didn't think it was nerve agent, what did they think it was?

They didn't know. They just could not…They had never seen these symptoms before. They didn't know what would cause it and still leave the horses and cows and men alive out there up and standing. The scientist didn't know. This isn't the way people die or sheep die from nerve agent. It was not typical of the way they die, but they didn't know what caused their death exactly. Later they found some nerve agent there.

Q. Tell us about the nerve agent snow.

They couldn't find any nerve agent. They only thing that the sheep would do that the other animals wouldn't do was that they would eat the snow for water, the moisture. So the horses and the cows wouldn't do that. An there was such a minute amount that way that it wouldn't kill them, it would just affect their nervous system so they couldn't control themselves, they couldn't walk, they couldn't do anything, they would just die after a week, a week and a half, two weeks of just laying there kicking and jerking. They had no nerve control, no control of their muscles.

Q. What do you think happened? Do you think it was the nerve agent?

Yes. Later, the next summer when the snow was all gone, they went out with trucks and they loaded truck loads of brush and grass and stuff that was out there and brought them in and concentrated them down and they found some nerve agent in that. Ok, now why does this affect the sheep and nobody else? Because sheep ate snow for water so they think that the pilot when up into the cloud and that the spray was carried by that cloud over into the next valley and snowed out. They had a snow storm that afternoon. And actually it went over into the next valley also. So there was some dead sheep in the second valley over on the other side. Not nearly as many, but there were some sheep over there that were affected.

Q. Did you have a chance to interview any of the farmers that had their sheep affected?

No, I didn't talk to any of the farmers. But I was trying to advise the Pentagon that we had 3,000 dead sheep out here and we know that this happened, we don't know how it happened or what happened. They hadn't come down on the evidence yet that there was agent in the area. But there, we needed to get it behind us. So I recommended that we pay the farmers for their dead sheep, even without…even if you don't want to admit the guilt, just pay the farmers for their sheep and they will stop going to the press for help.

Q. So eventually the Pentagon did pay them for their sheep?

Yes. Yes. They still had not found any evidence of nerve agent in the area. The snow was gone and they didn't find any evidence yet, but they paid them. Obviously, we did something to cause them to lose their sheep.

Q. So after you paid them, did you have any complaints from the farmers.

I retired in the summer of 1968 from the Air Force. Let's see what month was this? March? I retired in July and they had just found some evidence, some very small traces of nerve agent in the brush there. Truckloads of brush and grass that they brought in to examine.

Q. How many letters did you send on the telex?

Two or three every day for about a week and a half or two weeks while I was there.

Q. Why was the Army so defensive? Why did the Army not want to pay?

I believe the Army felt that if the accident was caused by nerve agent, that the program of making nerve agent and testing it agent would be shut down. They wouldn't be able to protect ourselves from a nerve agent attack from another country if we weren't up to speed with what was available and what caused what and how to protect ourselves from it. So they thought the whole program would be shut down if they were the cause of it and they had no real evidence that it was. They were reluctant on the fact that the sheep died from their test without any direct evidence that there was nerve agent out there on the field. They put forth the idea that it could have been an insecticide or something like that was sprayed by the farmers. But there was no evidence of that either. Or the other sheep and the cows and the horses would have been affected, but they weren't.

Q. Whose idea was it for the Pentagon to compensate the farmers?

I think all along that the Office of the Secretary of Defense thought all along that it was our responsibility and my recommendation was "We don't know it wasn't us. Dead sheep are dying out there, we did have a test the day before they started to die and the plane went up into the cloud and was still dispensing agent as he did.  Let's get it behind us and go ahead and pay the farmers and we can still do the research and we can get the press off our backs.  Because that was what the Army was really concerned with public affairs.  The public media was raising such a fuss about it that they were concerned that the program would be shut down.

Q. Do you know any of the newspapers that were there at the press conference?

Of course there was the Deseret News there, the Tribune, and as I remember, the Denver Post.

Q. In the Deseret News a few years ago, they published a statement by John Como, current commander of Dugway, said that the Army still doesn't accept responsibility for this accident. Do you have any reason why?

Well, they still want to protect their program. They don't want it shut down. He indicated in that same statement that as a result of the Surgeon General of the United States in reviewing the tests and procedures at Dugway, that the Army had adopted new controls over open air testing. He also said that they accept no responsibility, but that the Army's own investigation revealed that open air test of lethal chemical agents on Dugway in March of 1968 may have contributed to the death of the sheep. So we had the same question that we had. It may have, it probably did.

Q. So would you still consider his comments as saying, "We don't accept responsibility, but it is still possible that we did it?"

That is right.

Q. So why would the US Government want to be testing a nerve agent like this? So lethal?

Well as a matter of self-protection. The Cold War was in full swing at the time and Russia were threatening to expand their communist beliefs throughout the world and the United States was the only one able to stop them. We knew the Soviets had a very extensive program of nerve agents and if they attacked us, they would know that we attack them, mutual retaliation. The same thing was true of the nuclear and hydrogen bomb. We had them and they had them. But we were stronger than they were at that time.

Q. Who opposed you in your recommendation to pay the farmers?

The Base Commander for one and anyone in the Army that was involved in the nerve agent program on up the highest levels of the Army in the Pentagon, were all opposed to admitting that they had any responsibility for the incident.

Q. In your opinion, because they did not pay the farmers right away, did that make the story worse? Do you think it made the public more aware of it?

Yes. This was a national press story for a month or two months until it was finally settled.

Q. Were there any arguments or discussions between the Army and the Pentagon about compensating the farmers?

I don't know what was happening in Headquarters. I was telling them what was happening in the field, telling them, "This is what I think you ought to do also." My feeling was that we ought to pay the farmers and I told them so and they did.

Q. Many Utahns had come to distrust the Government, as a result of things like the lies regarding the open air nuclear testing programs in Nevada and now this incident. Did you feel that it was important to be honest and regain their trust? If so, why?

I have never lied knowingly to the press and I was never asked by my superiors to lie, in this case nor in any other. Lying only makes public relations worse.

Q. Right after the accident, the Army at first lied, saying that they hadn't done any nerve agent testing for a year or so. The information about the spray malfunction was later leaked to the press, making it an even bigger story. Why did the Pentagon send you to deal with the press? What was your objective as part of the Public Affairs department of the Pentagon?

I don't remember that the army lied at first in this case. You may have information that they did. This whole program was highly classified and I can understand the Army reluctance to talk about our progress, which could be useful information for the Russians.

I was sent to Dugway because my superiors felt that the problem was important and sensitive enough that they should have someone at Dugway who was in direct contact with the office of the Secretary of Defense and responsible to speak for that office.

Q. How do you go about making people trust the government again after they have been lied to?

You just have to tell the truth. It never does pay off. You never get away with it. It just makes it worse.

Q. Did you make the recommendation to pay the farmers just so you could get the story out of the news, or also because you felt that it was the right thing to do?

I recommended that we pay the farmers because I was convinced that we were responsible for the death of their sheep even if we couldn't explain how it happened, and it was the right thing to do.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Movie link
There is no link back to the film Rage (1972 film).174.100.209.41 (talk) 02:46, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

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