Vietnam vet accuses Agent Orange report authors of lying

By KEVIN TAYLOR, Political Reporter

A former Army officer who served two tours in Vietnam claims the authors of a Government-commissioned report into the health of Vietnam veterans' children may have lied.

John Masters, a retired lieutenant-colonel, told a parliamentary inquiry into Agent Orange yesterday that a report by Deborah McLeod of Otago University's Wellington School of Medicine was "offensive" and that the Government should reject it.

Co-authored by Donna Cormack and Tai Kake and released last November, the report concluded there was no evidence exposure to chemicals in Vietnam had affected the health of veterans' children.

The report also said the information it had was that Anzac forces generally served in the Vietnamese province of Phuoc Tuy, where no aerial defoliant spraying occurred.

The conclusions angered veterans so much that Dr McLeod said yesterday that she would never do such a study again after getting offensive letters from veterans and being sent dead soldiers' obituaries.

Mr Masters, commander of 161 Artillery Battery in 1968 and 1970-71, sparked the health select committee inquiry after finding an old war map showing spray zones in the region where New Zealanders served.

The committee has heard evidence this week from veterans about the health effects on themselves and their children.

Mr Masters told the committee the McLeod report had used discredited and incorrect research and contained no original research.

"Deborah McLeod's work shows that she must have been aware of that. I ask how many lies must be told before one is a liar?" he said.

The findings were based on factual errors, misrepresentation of other studies and failure to disclose important information.

"This may be explained as lazy or incompetent research," Mr Masters said. "An alternative explanation however, is that the authors of the McLeod report deliberately set out to deceive and mislead the New Zealand Government, as well as Vietnam veterans and their families."

But Dr McLeod said the report was a review of existing academic literature, mainly Australian and American, on the health outcomes on children of Vietnam and nuclear-testing veterans. She stood by it.

The aim of the report had not been to look at whether veterans were sprayed, she said.

"Whether or not New Zealand troops were exposed was reasonably irrelevant to us. We never had access to the sort of information that would be required to do that."

As well as wanting the McLeod report rejected, Mr Masters said the Government should also reject an earlier National Government-commissioned report of a ministerial advisory committee headed by Sir Paul Reeves in 1999.

National MP and committee member Judith Collins called on Prime Minister Helen Clark to immediately reject both reports and apologise for them.

Mr Masters told the committee discarding both the McLeod and Reeves reports would take the heat out of the issue immediately.

Kiwi soldiers were sprayed as regularly as any troops in Vietnam.

"New Zealand servicemen and women fought alongside their Australian comrades. We went where they went, we ate what they ate, we drank what they drank, and today we are both dying at the same horrific rate."

Dr McLeod said she would not do such research again.

"There's absolutely no way I'd be involved in anything like this again and I don't think there are any academics in New Zealand who would touch it ... now - which means the ability to get good informed information on the topic is going downhill fast."

The inquiry's report will not be finished until April or May.

Agent Orange

* Death rates Of the 3368 servicemen and women who served in Vietnam, 511 or 15 per cent, are known to have died.

* Of the 814 members of 161 Battery, a Kiwi artillery unit, 134 or 16.5 per cent, are known to have died. The average lifespan of the dead was 51 years and 9 months.

The McLeod report

* "The information available to the authors was that Anzac forces generally served in Phuoc Tuy province where there was no serial spraying."

* " ... given the small increased risk found in studies of very exposed populations, the conclusion reached by this appraisal of the literature is that there is no evidence that exposure to chemicals in Vietnam has affected the health of the children of New Zealand."

The veterans

* Former Army officer John Masters: "I ask how many lies must be told before one is a liar?"