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- [00:09]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Kelly Kennedy was just 17 years old when she enlisted in the US military. She was the editor of her high school newspaper, and this was a way to pay for school so she could ultimately live out her dream of becoming a journalist. But she never expected to see any action.
- [00:24]
Kelly Kennedy
When I joined the army, there hadn't really been a war since Vietnam. My parents were like, yeah, this should be great. And then I ended up in two of them.
- [00:34]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The first was the Gulf War in 1991. Kelly was stationed in Germany when her unit was called up to take part in Operation Desert Storm, an aerial and ground assault that drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
- [00:47]
Kelly Kennedy
I deployed on Christmas Eve, and we arrived at Cement City. It was just row after row after row of GP medium tents. It was freezing and the sand was wet.
- [01:02]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Cement City is the nickname for a makeshift encampment in the middle of the vast Saudi Arabian desert. Kelly had been bracing herself for this moment for months. But as she went to sleep that first night, she was still terrified.
- [01:16]
Kelly Kennedy
The headlines were full of, you know, one out of four of us were going to die in a chemical attack. Saddam Hussein was going to fill ditches with oil and sarin gas.
- [01:26]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
As the news swirled with talk of chemical warfare, Kelly slept next to her gas mask and a bulky protective garment called a mop suit. But when she did encounter chemicals in those first days of the war, it was not in the way she had expected.
- [01:41]
Kelly Kennedy
When we first got there, they told us we need to take these pills to protect ourselves from any nerve agent that Saddam Hussein might have. And I remember an officer standing in front of us and telling us we had to take these pills. So everybody took one. And then he sort of laughed and said, I'm not taking that.
- [02:00]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
There were more chemicals, too. Soldiers were given the insecticide permethrin to treat their laundry, which they did by hand deet to fight off the sand fleas. But none of that is what kept soldiers up at night, not when the threat of sarin gas lingered overhead. And one night In March of 1991, that threat seemed to have arrived.
- [02:26]
Kelly Kennedy
I remember being the middle of the night and we were all freezing in a tent, waiting for orders to go somewhere. So the alarm went off and it was dark, and we all got up and put our mop suits on. And then everybody put on their gas masks. But mine didn't fit because on the flight, on the way over, someone had stolen my extra small gas mask.
- [02:51]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The army used this chemical called banana oil to test the masks. If you could smell the oil, that meant the mask wasn't working, and I
- [02:59]
Kelly Kennedy
could always smell the banana oil.
- [03:02]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
So as Kelly crouched in a foxhole, she worried this might be the end. Fortunately, that's not what happened. The military said it was a false alarm and there were no casualties that night. In fact, for Americans at least, the Gulf War was not the deadly conflict Kelly had feared. Fighting was over after just six weeks, with only 148Americans killed.
- [03:26]
Kelly Kennedy
You look back now and it seems like such an easy war. But at the time, we really thought we were going to lose our friends.
- [03:32]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
It wasn't until Kelly returned home and was in school, studying to be a journalist that the real damage from the war started to surface.
- [03:41]
Kelly Kennedy
I started hearing from my friends that they were getting sick, and some of them were so depressed about pain or heavy fatigue that they didn't want to be here anymore, like in this life anymore. So I started to wonder if there was something to it.
- [04:00]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Kelly had been spared, but her friends were experiencing a raft of puzzling ailments. Muscle pain, chronic headaches, trouble breathing, unexplainable rashes. Soon, veterans would give their mystery illness a name, Gulf War Syndrome. The problem was that diagnosing the cause wasn't easy. But when it comes to the Department of Veteran affairs or the va, nothing is easy. The VA is supposed to provide lifelong healthcare for veterans, but it can be a bureaucratic labyrinth. Doctors need diagnostic codes in order to approve a claim. But in this case, there was no known illness, and soldiers have to prove that their condition is service related. So by 1996, the Government Accountability Office found that 95% of the claims of Gulf War vets were being denied.
- [04:52]
Kelly Kennedy
They seemed to think that they were just trying to get benefits or to try to get out of work. And they kept saying over and over again, there's nothing that could have caused this.
- [05:01]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
As a student, Kelly started to report on Gulf War Syndrome. Thanks to a handful of scientific studies, she'd come to learn the likely cause was not only sarin gas, but also the chemical that soldiers were given to protect themselves from it. And by the time soldiers had enough information to pinpoint that cause, another war in Iraq had already begun. And with it, another invisible enemy and another betrayal by the country that sent them to war. From wondry, I'm zach goldbaum, and this is lawless planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crime crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.
- [05:53]
Maria Baca
PTSD does not cause asthma. PTSD does not cause lesions in your brain.
- [06:11]
Jesse Baca
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- [07:02]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
It's no secret that war isn't great for the environment. In the first Gulf War, after retreating Iraqi forces set hundreds of oil wells on fire, the region was showered with black rain. In Vietnam, the defoliant Agent Orange decimated entire forest systems. Even when no one is firing a weapon, its day to day operations make the US Military the single biggest institutional greenhouse gas emitter on the planet. What is so maddening about this issue is that the first victims are often the very people the military professes to care about the most. Its own troops. Long before the VA denied the claims of soldiers suffering from Gulf War Syndrome, they refused to acknowledge the damage caused to soldiers by Agent Orange. The same was true for soldiers who were poisoned by mustard gas experiments in World War II. And there's a pattern to this. When enough pressure mounts, the government finally relents and agrees to study the problem. But by then, for a lot of soldiers, it's often too late. Because here's the thing about America. We have no problem paying for endless wars, but we get a little bit of sticker shock when we get the bill for the endless consequences. Today's episode is about the families, journalists and even celebrities who set out to break the cycle and who, after the US Went back to Iraq, were determined to force the government to pay what it owed. Before he set his sights on the US military, Jesse Baca had his eyes on a girl with long, straight dark hair named Maria.
- [08:39]
Jesse Baca
We met in high school, the end
- [08:41]
Maria Baca
of my freshman year, May 27, 1976.
- [08:46]
Jesse Baca
I can't give you a date, I just know it was a long time ago.
- [08:52]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Jesse was born and raised in Los Lunas, New Mexico, a small desert town outside of Albuquerque. He's got a stoic military bearing, which makes sense because while he was still in high school, Jesse joined the Navy. After he and Maria got married and then graduated, he was deployed overseas.
- [09:10]
Jesse Baca
I went to the Arabian Gulf before it was popular.
- [09:14]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
To be clear, he was out there because of the Iranian Hostage crisis during the Carter years, not the Iran Iraq war, or the Gulf War or the second Gulf War. Anyway, after he and Maria had two daughters and Jesse took a civilian position with the New Mexico Air National Guard so he could be closer to his new family in Albuquerque. What that means is that he was still a part time member of the military, but he worked a normal job as an avionics technician at the local base. But when his unit was activated, his civilian job was put on hold and Jesse would get deployed. And when that happened, it wasn't easy for the family.
- [09:49]
Maria Baca
When we would take him, to drop him off, to go, to leave, we didn't cry, you know, because I always told the girls that, you know, by us crying that it was harder for him to be leaving than for us to be here. So we had to always show strength.
- [10:06]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
And that's exactly how it went in 2004, when Jesse Baca was deployed once again, this time to Iraq.
- [10:18]
Jesse Baca
Last night, a square mile in central Baghdad seemed like hell on Earth.
- [10:27]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
In 2004, at the height of the second Iraq war, Jesse Baca was called up to active duty. Now in his mid-40s, he boarded a C130 aircraft with a bunch of younger recruits and took off for his new temporary home in the desert. Jesse expected this to be like all the deployments that came before, the goodbyes, the stiff upper lip, a few months away from home, and a warm welcome when he returned. But right out of the gate, this time was different.
- [10:55]
Jesse Baca
We had been flying for about a day and a half just to get there. And when we finally came into country, I remember the airplane really doing a lot of maneuvers, a lot of maneuvers, and people are holding onto their stuff. And I said, what the heck's going on? And I remember looking out the window and I could see balls of white fire passing by us. And the commanding officer of the airplane came on the loudspeaker. He says, everybody hunker down because we're taking fire. But as soon as we got over the base, it got quiet. And then we started to corkscrew. And when we landed, they opened the doors, kicked us out. Grab your junk and run for it. That was my introduction to Iraq.
- [11:43]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
It was also Jesse's introduction to Balad, a giant, ever evolving air base in the middle of the desert. At the time, Balad was home to nearly 20,000 troops.
- [11:55]
Jesse Baca
It was a huge air support facility. Very, very desert climate, very hot. It was well over 120 when we landed there.
- [12:06]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Adding to the suffocating heat was an enormous round the clock plume of black smoke that was visible from just about everywhere on the 16 square mile base. The plume was so big that pilots would use it to orient themselves when coming in for landing. And it was emanating from a massive hole in the ground known simply as a burn pit.
- [12:30]
Jesse Baca
Picture 10 acres of property with a big old hole in it and a huge fire that never went away. Always smoking, always, always on fire. But the biggest thing I remember was the smell. It smelled really bad. I mean, something that's very hard to describe, like an acid cloud.
- [12:54]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Wearing nothing but a bandana over their nose and mouth, troops would throw everything in the hole. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Food waste, batteries, human excrement, car parts, entire humvees, Styrofoam, bloody clothes from the wounded, even amputated body parts. Then they doused the hole with jet fuel and light it up.
- [13:16]
Jesse Baca
Most of the time when I noticed it was at night because when the air would cool off, it would like rain and snow, ashes. So everything was covered with ashes. Every time you went to go eat, your hands, your face, your uniform was black. And I kept thinking to myself, this can't be healthy for us. But that was kind of like the least of our worries. We were always getting mortared, we were always getting rockets, we're always getting hostile action against us.
- [13:48]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The burn pits were never meant to be permanent, just a temporary fix to deal with the endless waste generated by the Iraq war. But they were cheaper than incinerators and they were a real cash cow for a company called Kellogg Brown and Root, or kbr, who operated them. KBR had been awarded a contract worth $35 billion over 10 years for logistical support in Afghanistan and Iraq, part of which was for waste disposal.
- [14:14]
Jesse Baca
When I first got there, the first meetings I had, within the first 48 hours that I was there, they said everybody gets the Iraqi crud. They nicknamed it that. Sure enough, 95% of my shop got sick. Some not so bad, some real bad.
- [14:32]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The burn pits were an inescapable part of Jesse's day to day life. On base. He inhaled the smoke while he repaired airplanes, while he ate at the mess hall, even while he slept. Soldiers described putting a white towel over the air conditioner at night and by morning it had turned black. Within days, Jesse's guys were experiencing flu like symptoms. Some so bad that they ended up in the hospital.
- [14:57]
Jesse Baca
And sure enough, I got sick. Probably within the first week I was there. It hit me, but it never left. I had it the whole time I was there. Your Eyes were burning, your nose was running, your throat was raw. The smell, you could never get it out of your. Out of your sinuses.
- [15:15]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Jesse never got back to 100%, but he adjusted, and after six months, he went home.
- [15:25]
Maria Baca
We just knew that something was not right, you know, we just knew something wasn't right.
- [15:33]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
For Maria. Jesse's symptoms were alarming. He had fevers, chills, and he was even coughing up blood. But about a year later, he was deployed to Korea. And there his condition deteriorated.
- [15:46]
Maria Baca
He was in Korea, and he told me I touched my face above my nose area, he said, and I got blood on, was like. Like a blackish red, you know, like a dark red. I go, did you have a nosebleed? And he said, no. He goes, I don't really know. And I thought, oh, that's strange. By the time he got home, I already had him an appointment with the dermatologist.
- [16:16]
Jesse Baca
Come to find out it was skin cancer.
- [16:20]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Jesse went in for surgery soon after. And while the cancer was removed, his other symptoms didn't subside, which was a problem, because in order to redeploy, he needed to be able to pass a physical. And if he couldn't redeploy, he risked getting dismissed from the National Guard and losing out on retirement benefits.
- [16:38]
Jesse Baca
I used to be a runner. I could run 10, 12 miles easily. That's just what I did. I enjoyed doing that. When I came back, I had to do my PT to stay in. I could barely pass.
- [16:52]
Maria Baca
It's very heartbreaking to see someone that has always been very strong to see him like that, you know.
- [16:59]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
But eventually, Jesse was able to pass his physical. He was approved for deployment and sent back to Balad Air Base.
- [17:06]
Jesse Baca
When I went back to Iraq in late 2007, got sick again. But this time the sickness was a big. A lot worse. It really got me this time.
- [17:18]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Jesse's symptoms now included chronic headaches, hearing loss, and difficulty breathing. But Jesse wasn't alone. Others on the base were getting sick too, and people were talking. Someone even posted signs on the base with an image of a World War I soldier in a gas mask with the words, if the enemy doesn't get you, the burn pits will. Then Jesse got his hands on an environmental assessment. It was clearly intended as an internal report, but was now being shared widely around the base. It was written by a bio environmental engineer with the Air Force, and the subject line read simply, burn pit health hazards. And it confirmed what Jesse and his friends were thinking.
- [18:01]
Jesse Baca
It was just a letter. It was just a simple one page letter. It got Kicked down through the Internet, through the base. And the hazards were well, well beyond people getting sick.
- [18:17]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The letter outlined a grave situation, including health hazards associated with burning plastics, styrofoam, rubber paints. And it laid out possible contaminants like arsenic, benzene, formaldehyde and phosgene. The conclusion was that there are acute health hazards and the possibility for chronic health hazards. But soon after the memo was wiped from the Internet, Jesse began to suspect a cover up. So he attached the leak memo to an email and fired it off to Maria.
- [18:50]
Jesse Baca
That's when I started sending her messages. Save this paperwork. I'm going to need it someday.
- [19:02]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The VA in Albuquerque is a big, unremarkable beige building near the airport. Inside, vets face a maze of paperwork and wait lists so long that according to one doctor turned whistleblower, patients have died waiting to receive care. By 2008, Jesse and Maria knew it well. Week after week, he was back in for another test, another mri, another CT scan. But none of the doctors could definitively diagnose him with anything. Eventually, doctors waved the conditions away, saying Jesse had ptsd. And that enraged Maria.
- [19:40]
Maria Baca
PTSD does not cause lesions in your brain, does not cause severe coughing, does not cause ibs. PTSD does not cause chemically induced asthma. It doesn't cause tumors.
- [19:55]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Other patients documented similar stories of being wrongly diagnosed with ptsd, which had become a catch all for any problems doctors couldn't quickly solve. They were given antipsychotic medications and sent to therapy, but their physical ailments persisted. For Jesse and Maria, it was the same shit different day. At the va, Maria rejected the PTSD diagnosis and continued to demand answers, to the point that one day a doctor accused Maria of actively interfering with Jesse's recovery.
- [20:26]
Maria Baca
The doctor said, it's wives like you that cause veterans like this to commit suicide. I said. I laughed. Really? I said, well, let me tell you something. I said, you or anybody here does not determine when my husband dies. There's only one person that determines that, and that's God. Not you, not anybody around here. God does.
- [20:56]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
At that point, Jesse and Maria gave up on the VA on their own dime. They sought help elsewhere.
- [21:04]
Jesse Baca
We ended up leaving Albuquerque and we went to National Jewish in Colorado and their pulmonology specialists, because over here, I couldn't find nothing.
- [21:17]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
On the first day at National Jewish Hospital in Colorado, the doctors diagnosed him with chemically induced asthma. The next day, one doctor suggested another specialist they should see.
- [21:29]
Jesse Baca
She told us about Dr. Robert Miller. He's the one that figured this problem out.
- [21:39]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Dr. Robert Miller is a lung specialist at Vanderbilt Medical center in Nashville. In 2004, the military started sending him sick patients who had returned from Iraq with breathing problems. Here's Dr. Miller in an interview with PBS's NewsHour.
- [21:54]
Jesse Baca
When we started seeing service members with unexplained shortness of breath, they had already had a number of non invasive studies. Chest X rays, CT scans, pulmonary function tests, exercise tests. None of these tests seem to explain their exercise limitation.
- [22:13]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The soldiers returning from Iraq were all experiencing similar mysterious respiratory symptoms. To study the ailments, he ordered lung biopsies, including one for Jesse.
- [22:25]
Jesse Baca
That was really the only way to get an absolute 100% diagnosis. And I went through it. Almost didn't come out of it.
- [22:34]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Unlike the tests that Jesse had undergone thus far, lung biopsies are invasive and can lead to complications. And after the surgery, he was having difficulty breathing. That's when he noticed something strange happening with his respirator.
- [22:49]
Jesse Baca
It was bubbling. It was like. It looked like an old science project making a lot of noise and a lot of bubbles. I go, wow. So I hit the button. The nurse came in. I said, I don't know, but is it supposed to be doing that? He goes, and he looked at me. His eyes got all big. And before I knew it, I look up, and there was a whole surgical team around my bed.
- [23:13]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
It turned out Jesse's lungs were collapsing.
- [23:16]
Jesse Baca
I was smothering under my own liquid in my chest. I was dying at that moment. And I came to the realization, holy shit, what's going to happen?
- [23:27]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
There was no time for full anesthesia, only local numbing. To save Jesse, they needed to operate immediately. To his horror, he watched the nurse pull out a scalpel to prepare to cut into his lungs.
- [23:41]
Jesse Baca
And I remember the cold of the blade. And the nurse saw that I was seeing it. I must have been turning white and green and every other color in the blade. I thought he got half of his arm and stuck it inside my body. And I heard a pop. I'll never forget that sound. And literally a pop broke my ribs. And my breath came back, and my chest sunk because I was literally drowning in my own fluids. He says, if it had been another minute or so, your heart would have stopped. And that's it. You're done. They saved my life right there and then.
- [24:22]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Jesse survived, barely. But soon after, Dr. Miller came back with a diagnosis. He had a rare lung disease called constrictive bronchiolitis. It's often fatal, and there's no cure. With whatever time he had left Jesse set out to prove what had caused his it. In 2007, journalist and Gulf War veteran Kelly Kennedy was writing for Military Times, a small newsroom dedicated to covering America's armed forces.
- [25:05]
Kelly Kennedy
We really saw ourselves as sort of the guardians of the guys, you know, beyond just telling the general stories. We really, really wanted to make sure everybody was okay.
- [25:15]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
She had just released a bombshell article about Walter Reed Medical center, detailing the inadequate care and bureaucratic delays veterans faced at the military's flagship hospital. That piece caught the eye of a public affairs person for the Air Force who was stationed at Balad in Iraq. He had information about what the military knew about burn pits, and he wanted to share it with the media. So he called Kelly.
- [25:41]
Kelly Kennedy
He sent me a memo from an environmental engineer who'd raised concerns like, people are having respiratory issues and environmentally, this seems like a bad idea. And I remember reading that memo and just being like, this is horrifying.
- [25:59]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
It turned out to be the same memo that Jesse Baca had gotten his hands on. Kelly took the memoir and started to investigate immediately. She connected it back to Gulf War Syndrome. It was a new illness, but the same pattern of neglect. Kelly started to dig into years of military medical reports. She kept a spreadsheet, entering data by hand.
- [26:21]
Kelly Kennedy
You could just see, like, asthma was going up exponentially and respiratory infections and even brain cancer. And brain cancer is such a small, small percentage, but it was doubling. I was looking at these numbers and just being like, can this be real? And, you know, and I'd be at work until 9, 10 o' clock at night and just feel like crawling under my desk and just, like, bawling just because I could see what was going to come from this. And we put out the story with my heart and my stomach, hoping it was all right.
- [26:59]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The article went live on November 3, 2008, with the headline, Harmless or Hazardous Troops say Chemical and Medical Waste Burned at Balad are Making Them sick. But Officials Deny Risk. And as soon as it was published, Kelly started to understand the scale of the problem.
- [27:17]
Kelly Kennedy
I was getting hundreds of phone calls and emails. It was so overwhelming. Just, I'm sick. This sounds like me. My friend's sick.
- [27:28]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The military response when this information came to light was to just deny it and stick with the same flimsy assurances that they'd been giving to troops for years, that there were no health risks or elevated cancer risks associated with the
- [27:40]
Kelly Kennedy
pits from the top. I was getting pushback, like, there's no problem, and we've done testing and everything's fine. But then I was getting notes from unit commanders who were like, keep after it. This is, this is important. Keep going.
- [27:55]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Kelly flew around the country, meeting with the people who were suffering and trying to paint a fuller picture of the crisis. And soon after, she stumbled onto a report by none other than Dr. Robert Miller from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, who was also starting to connect the dots. By the time Jesse Baca recovered from almost dying during his lung biopsy, he and Maria were regularly shuttling to and from Nashville to see Dr. Miller. It was both exhausting and expensive because all of these doctor visits were out of pocket.
- [28:32]
Maria Baca
We couldn't afford to just stay at any hotel or nothing like that. We were going broke fast and we were going on peanuts.
- [28:40]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Let me tell you, getting diagnosed with constrictive bronchiolitis was a big first step, but that was all it was. Step one. Now Jesse needed to qualify for disability compensation. Depending on how severe your ailment is, they'll assign you a benefit rating which determines how much money you get for your disability. Jesse got 80%, which seemed good. But there was one major hurdle, and
- [29:04]
Jesse Baca
the fight there was, did it happen on active duty or did it not happen on active duty? If it happened, that they could prove I got sick because of something I did on the outside. No retirement.
- [29:19]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Dr. Miller felt strongly that Jesse's illness was related to his time overseas and that he deserved compensation. By then, he'd seen over 100 patients just like Jesse Baca, and every single time they came back with the same diagnosis. He started presenting his findings to the Department of Defense, and then he met with journalist Kelly Kennedy, who interviewed him for a follow up story about burn pits. Over the course of their conversations, Kelly learned that military physicians had actually recruited Dr. Miller to analyze 56 soldiers who had returned from Iraq with shortness of breath. Kelly's piece culminates with Dr. Miller's conclusion that these ailments were tied to inhalational exposure, AKA to the burn pits. The story was released in July of 2009.
- [30:09]
Kelly Kennedy
The next thing I knew, the army stopped sending Dr. Miller their soldiers, and he wasn't able to help people anymore. They didn't give a reason. But it was immediately after the story came out, and my reaction was, they're trying to shut us down. They're trying to shut down the store. They don't want this out there.
- [30:29]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
But Kelly didn't stop reporting. And at the same time, more people were starting to take their stories to the press, too.
- [30:37]
Maria Baca
We were in Nashville, Tennessee, waiting to see Dr. Miller, and I always have my laptop with me.
- [30:43]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Maria Baca came across a Facebook page from a woman named Jill Wilkins, whose husband had served at Balad and died from a brain tumor.
- [30:51]
Maria Baca
And I messaged her, and I had told her that. Just wanted to get to know her and see what her husband had gone through, because we were going through a lot. And so at that time, I thought, you know what? I'm going to see what other families are going through. So that's when I created the page Burn Pitt Families.
- [31:08]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Through Facebook, Maria connected with more families, all suffering from invisible wounds, all trying to navigate the VA's draconian benefits system.
- [31:17]
Maria Baca
No one was listening to us. No one was listening to Jesse. So I started reaching out to the media.
- [31:23]
Jesse Baca
The media served as protection because I brought it out in the Open then.
- [31:27]
Kelly Kennedy
30,000 New Mexicans have served in Iraq or Afghanistan since 9 11. Now, some are seriously sick, and they
- [31:34]
Jesse Baca
believe it's because of smoke from burn pits.
- [31:38]
Kelly Kennedy
Master Sergeant Jesse Baca says the burn pits in Iraq are killing him.
- [31:43]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
By 2010, the burn pit issue had made national news, not only through Kelly's reporting and Jesse and Maria's story, but through the stories of hundreds of veterans. Suddenly, Jesse and Maria had the attention they'd been deprived of for years. And powerful people started to take notice, too, including New Mexico Senator Tom Udall.
- [32:05]
Maria Baca
I started researching Senator Udall, and he was doing all these things in D.C. about burn pits, and he didn't know that this was happening in his backyard. So I reached out to him, and he has a cauliflower ear to this day because of me, you know. Cause I chewed his ear so hard.
- [32:28]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
For the next two years, Jesse and Maria traveled to the state Capitol day after day to meet with Senator Udall. And they started pushing for an official way to track health effects from burn pit exposure. They spoke publicly, connected with other afflicted veterans, and. And pushed lawmakers to take action. And that's how the two high school sweethearts from New Mexico found themselves in Washington, D.C. having helped craft landmark legislation for injured veterans.
- [32:57]
Jesse Baca
Sitting in the audience today is Master Sergeant Jesse Baca, a member of the New Mexico Air National Guard, and his wife Maria. Just give everybody a wave here, you two.
- [33:08]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
In June of 2012, Senator Udall testified before the Veterans affairs committee in Washington, D.C. in support of a bill to create a registry for burn pit victims. The bill was born directly out of his conversations with Jesse and Maria.
- [33:23]
Jesse Baca
Master Sergeant Baca was stationed in Balad, Iraq, and exposed to burn pits. Maria has traveled that difficult road with him. They know firsthand the suffering caused by burn pits. And they need to know the answers. It is because of them and so many others like them that we are here today.
- [33:44]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Jesse and Maria spent time in Senator Udall's office in the Hart Building, ironing out the final details of the bill, but still unsure of whether it would pass.
- [33:54]
Jesse Baca
We were in that office, real prestigious office where all the senators hang out. And Senator Udall says, I'll be right back.
- [34:02]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Working with senators from across the aisle, Udall drummed up support for the bill.
- [34:07]
Jesse Baca
He went to the Senate chambers. I believe by the end of the day or the end of the next day, everybody signed off on it. The burn pit registry at the time was little, but what it meant was anybody coming from the war zone through all these back years sign up on the registry. The VA was actually opening a door where everybody could flow in.
- [34:36]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The registry was framed as a way to catalog harm. Veterans could add their name to the ledger, and in return, the VA would be required to keep them informed about new research and treatment options. And in January 2013, when President Obama signed the veterans benefits Improvement act, the open burn pit registry was included. For Jesse and Maria, it was monumental. They had played a direct role in helping not only themselves, but thousands of other soldiers as well. But as many veterans would come to learn, this was not the end. In the months and years that followed the burn pit registry's launch, tens of thousands of soldiers would add their names. The law provided researchers with data, and conditions once brushed aside by the VA as psychosomatic were now real. The military was no longer denying that there was a problem. But the registry was far from perfect, and for a lot of people, it fell woefully short. Veterans could self report exposure and symptoms, but it didn't ensure automatic health care access. Even if the VA was finally acknowledging that these men and women were sick, they still needed to prove that their military service was the cause. People would still be denied benefits. Until that diagnosis became presumptive. Claims continued to be denied, Bills skyrocketed, and the fight went on. Veterans would soon find an ally in an unlikely place.
- [36:20]
Jon Stewart
As I sit here today, I can't help but think what an incredible metaphor this room is for the entire process that getting health care and benefits for 911 first responders has come to.
- [36:37]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
That's comedian Jon Stewart. It's June of 2019, and he's on Capitol Hill where he's supposed to be speaking to the House judiciary subcommittee in an effort to fully fund and reauthorize the 911 victims. Compensation fund. It's a bill that gave health care to first responders who, like veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan, experienced diseases linked to toxic exposure. But instead of talking to the people who could help pass the bill, he's talking to a bunch of empty seats
- [37:07]
Jon Stewart
behind me, a filled room of 911 first responders. And in front of me, a nearly empty Congress. Sick and dying, they brought themselves down here to speak to no one. It's shameful. It's an embarrassment to the country, and it is a stain on this institution.
- [37:39]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Watching at home that day was a woman named Rosie Torres, who Maria Baca had met when she started the Burn Pit family's Facebook group. Rosie's husband Leroy had come back from Balad with the same conditions as Jessie Baca. By the time Maria and Rosie connected, Leroy had lost his dream job as a Texas state trooper because he was too ill to work. As Jon Stewart described the breathing problems and denials of care that the 911 first responders had experienced, Rosie felt like she was watching a hearing about her husband. It turned out that the dust, smoke, and burning jet fuel the 911 first responders inhaled were similar to the poisons inhaled by the troops near Burn Pits. Thanks in part to Jon Stewart, Congress would eventually fully fund health and compensation programs for the first responders in a bill called the Zadroga Act. And Rosie wanted the same for her husband. So she set out to find jon Stewart. By February 2019, Rosie Leroy and Stewart were meeting on Capitol Hill with lawmakers. Here's Rosie Torres Speaking to the Air Health, our health podcast.
- [38:47]
Maria Baca
We took the 911 blueprint and we applied it to our our cause and our mission. And I think it wasn't until we had some volunteer begin to separate our data by congressional district, that's when things started to change because legislators got nervous. Right when you start calling them out and pointing numbers and saying, hey, you have 500 people in your district that are actually impacted. Prior to that, I don't think they really cared.
- [39:23]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
By June 2021, a bill was introduced called the PACT act, which stands for Promise to Address Comprehensive toxics. The goal, to expand presumptive health care and benefits to veterans suffering from toxic exposure, meaning veterans no longer had to prove why they were dying. The following year, the bill went to a final vote. It passed both the House and Senate, but it needed to be voted on again to fix a technical legislative issue. When it went back to the Senate for a second time, a group of Republican senators blocked it. They claimed that although they supported veterans, they were simply against the way the bill laid out spending. Republican Senator Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania convinced 25 other Republicans to vote against the PACT act, arguing that because the bill made spending mandatory, Democrats would use it to spend $400 billion on other things. Democrats argued that the bill's funding was mandatory to ensure that future sessions of Congress couldn't cut off money for veterans and that the bill was written to ensure that it couldn't be used for anything else. It was a true moment of Washington bureaucratic bs and the only way around it was to shame the folks responsible for it.
- [40:37]
Jon Stewart
Ain't this a bitch? America's heroes who fought in our wars outside sweating their asses off with oxygen, battling all kinds of ailments, while these motherfuckers sit in the air conditioning walled off from any of it.
- [40:55]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
In a 10 minute speech on the lawn in front of the Capitol building, Jon Stewart took aim at the senators delaying health care for veterans just like he done with the Zadroga Act.
- [41:05]
Jon Stewart
I'm used to the lies. I'm used to the hypocrisy Senates where accountability goes to die. These people don't care. They're never losing their jobs, they're never losing their health care. I'm used to all of it, but I am not used to the cruelty.
- [41:22]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Facing mounting public pressure, the Senate brings the bill back up. And on August 2, 2020, it passes 86 to 11, clearing it for the President's signature. In the chamber that day were Jesse and Maria Baca, who had traveled from Albuquerque to witness the culmination of a movement they had helped start years earlier.
- [41:43]
Jesse Baca
I was just a little guy that was a very small wheel in this big machine. I mean, it's amazing. It's absolutely amazing.
- [41:56]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The following week, on August 10, 2022, Joe Biden signed the PACT act into law.
- [42:03]
Jesse Baca
When they came home, many of the fittest and best warriors that we sent to war were not the same. Headaches, numbness, dizziness, cancer. My son Beau was one of them.
- [42:17]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Joe Biden's son Beau, who had died from brain cancer in 2015, served at Balad in 2008. And President Biden believed his cancer was related to the burn pits.
- [42:29]
Jesse Baca
As a nation, we have many obligations. I've been saying this for a long, long time. We have many obligations, but only one truly sacred obligation to equip those we send into harm's way and to care for them and their families when they come home.
- [42:45]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
For journalist Kelly Kennedy, who was watching the events unfold, it was a moment of mixed emotions.
- [42:51]
Kelly Kennedy
I just remember Feeling relief, but also anger. Just really mad that had taken so long. Like glad that there was recognition, but just really angry that it had to be done again. And I suspect for the next time, it'll have to be done again.
- [43:18]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
For the time being at least. The PACT act had brought some long overdue help and recognition to military veterans at home. But abroad, where our wars are fought, many other people, civilians in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, are still living with the consequences of burn pits and their long term effects.
- [43:38]
Kelly Kennedy
We need to take care of these places we go to. It's not thoughtful to the health of the planet or to the locals or to the troops. It makes no sense.
- [43:49]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
Today, Jesse Baca is still living with constrictive bronchiolitis and Maria's full time job is being his caretaker. Recently, Jesse was diagnosed with colon cancer, which after surgery is currently in remission. They're living day by day, but the point is they're living.
- [44:09]
Maria Baca
Okay, let's check the red chili. Ooh, look at how pretty that is.
- [44:14]
Jesse Baca
This is a chili seed that I got from my father. I believe it's Sandia, but it could be something else.
- [44:19]
Maria Baca
But it's, it's fire.
- [44:21]
Jesse Baca
It's got some kick to it.
- [44:23]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
They grow chilies in their garden, they cook together, they spend time with their kids and their grandkids. In other words, they're trying to live the life they fought for years to win back.
- [44:35]
Jesse Baca
We didn't fight for a good thing. We fought for a necessary thing. Everybody got damaged in a certain way. Some people got damaged emotionally, some people got damaged physically. Some people got damaged both ways. A lot of people lost their themselves, they lost their families. Could have been avoided, maybe. But in the big picture, we were able to save a whole bunch more than we lost. But it took a sacrifice of a lot of people and I believe today it was worth it.
- [45:29]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
The next episode of Lawless Planet. A respected member of Missouri's farming community starts to unravel when it's revealed that he's behind the largest organic food fraud in US history.
- [45:40]
Jesse Baca
I look at it as a very cautionary tale. You take somebody that's well intentioned that allow themselves to be that corrupted.
- [45:52]
Narrator (Zach Goldbaum)
For today's episode, we relied heavily on Kelly Kennedy's reporting for the Military Times and the War Horse, as well as reporting by the New Republic, the New York Times and pbs. Lawless Planet is written, produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum. Our senior producer and senior story editor is Derek John. Senior producer for Wondry is Andy Herman, our senior managing producer. Is Lata Pandya. Our managing producer is Jake Kleinberg. Our associate producer is Lexi Peary. Sound design by Kyle Randall. Music by Kenny Kusiak. Field producing by Matthew Betley. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frisson Sync fact checking by Brian Poignant. Our legal counsel is Shepard Mullen. Executive producers are Marshall Louie and Jenny Lauer. Beckman for wondering. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.