Grave Mistakes

Our queries for the VA included questions about testing protocols, known dumping areas being ignored, why were Phase I’s recommendations to test both arroyos and Brentwood School being ignored and why wasn’t the public informed of the testing.

“I received your questions and I am sorry to inform you that I cannot provide an answer for each one,” Gutierrez responded. “As you are no doubt aware we are a large healthcare organization and we deal with a myriad of issues on a daily basis. Please re-submit your questions of most importance and I will do my best to provide you with our responses.”

We subsequently submitted two questions. “Regarding the tombstones: What happened to them and does VA have a statement regarding their existence and removal? Regarding the Phase II testing: Can VA share where the Phase Two testing is taking place and the actual testing plans including the scientific protocols that we assume would guide those plans?”

Gutierrez then sent us a statement from VA director Donna Beiter explaining that the headstones were buried in the 1970s along with debris from an old building. “During our investigation, we found that these grave markers were removed, and disposed of (including the breaking up of the stones) according to VA regulation and came from replacements discarded from the VA cemetery during the same time period.”

However, VA regulations read “Marble and granite headstones or markers that are permanently removed from a grave must be destroyed, ensuring that the inscription is no longer legible.” As Atomic Tombstone galleries on EnviroReporter.com show, the tombstones are legible and many are intact.

Two follow-up questions for Beiter were never answered: “Some of these grave markers were intact and legible. This does not seem to conform to VA regulations as stated above. Could Ms. Beiter explain what she meant by her statement that the ‘grave markers were removed, and disposed of… according to VA regulation’? Did the regulations change since the 1970s and, if so, how?”

Veterans are particularly sensitive about how the remains and graves of their comrades are treated.

“There is a long history of both disregard and disrespect for the honorable men and women who sacrifice for their fellow Citizens dating back to the Bonus Army protest in 1932 to the initial lack of recognition for the Vietnam Veterans in the late 60s and early 70s to the recent exposé of inhumane conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center” commented Charlie Baker on the LA Weekly article.

“The disrespect shown in this article for the grave markers and the lack of concern just continues the tradition of disrespect for the best and bravest of our society,” Baker continued. “I do appreciate the reporter(s) that shined a light on this subject. The freedom of the press is one of the rights that Veterans fight for and now that right has been used to expose an injustice.”

Not surprisingly, the VA opted not to excavate the area where the tombstones were laying exposed even though a 1971 VA report’s photograph of the dumping suggests there may be many more grave markers under the dirt that will eventually come to the surface.

Beiter’s statement said that the VA is “currently conducting a surface and subsurface Environmental study of the ‘arroyo’ area located to the east of the Barrington Park Recreation center to put to rest any concerns that our property is unsafe.”

This predetermined conclusion, already criticized in the Weekly article, ignores that the concerns over the property’s safety have to do with what’s under the Barrington Recreational Center and Brentwood School’s athletic fields, not in the eastern arroyo where the VA’s own reports says is filled with thousands of truckloads of inert dirt.

“How is the public supposed to rely on the conclusions of the Phase Two study when the VA appears to have prejudged the outcome?” said Dr. Bennett Ramberg in the article. “We’re in the more definitive phase and yet, once again, the questionable zones at the site appear to be ignored by the testers. If you’re going to spend $1 million in these tight times, you have got to get it right.”

Over the six days that LA Weekly observed this $1 million Phase II subsurface testing, the VA contractors managed to core for dirt in areas either filled with inert dirt or hundreds of yards away from the dump’s known areas.

By confining the testing to the arroyo, Brentwood School’s lower soccer field, which tested high in radiation in Phase I, won’t be tested nor will the heart of the dump that runs underneath part of Barrington Dog Park.

Since this investigation began in 2001 and broke five years later, the VA has excavated no more than the atomic tombstones from the dump. Even with EnviroReporter.com’s extensive analysis based on the department’s own documents, maps and eyewitness testimony, VA honcho Ralph Tillman continues to insist that ‘there is no there there’ despite mounds of evidence to the contrary.

“Why doesn’t the VA dig up that mound of crap they excavated from Brentwood School where it’s sitting in plain sight like the article says?” commented a self-described Vietnam veteran on LA Weekly. “Because they don’t want to get sued by the school, that’s why. The VA went and leased contaminated land to Brentwood School which gladly took it, ignoring all the environmental reports that Collins has analyzed on Enviroreporter.com, and then acts like they tested the toxins away after Collins first breaks the story. I don’t think [that] passes the stink test.”

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