by Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Retired Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. is still haunted by his decision to spray Vietnam with a poisonous defoliant known as Agent Orange, which is believed to have deformed, diseased or killed countless Vietnamese and Americans, including his own son.
Copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich
Richard S. Ehrlich's Asia news, non-fiction book titled, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" plus hundreds of photographs are available at his website http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent
October 1994
Zumwalt Haunted After Spraying Vietnam With Agent Orange
Hospitals in Vietnam display hundreds of jars, filled with fetuses pickled in yellowish fluid, to support claims that multiple heads, arms sticking out of a neck or stomach, and other birth deformities were caused by Agent Orange.
Zumwalt, 73, says he is trying to heal some of the diseases he spawned by his widespread use of dioxin-laden chemicals.
But he also insists he would issue his same deadly orders again, even if it knew in advance his son would die from defoliant-related cancer.
In the rapidly escalating war years of 1968 to 1970, Zumwalt was commander of US naval forces in Southeast Asia.
He ordered millions of gallons of poisonous dioxin be sprayed like heavy white clouds across vast areas of South Vietnam's countryside.
Sadly, those clouds still hover over much of his current life, and were the reason he recently returned to Vietnam to meet his former enemies and try to put a new spin on his role in the war.
But Zumwalt still has zero tolerance for the US anti-war movement which tried to end the carnage.
"Jane Fonda? Great body but a small brain," Zumwalt said as he recalled the actress who went to Hanoi and sat in an anti-aircraft gun which was aimed skyward to shoot down US warplanes.
"She never apologized for the way our PoWs were treated," he added.
Fonda publicly claimed American Prisoners of War were not being mistreated, but secretly "they were being tortured," Zumwalt said.
"We had the war won in Vietnam, but we lost it back home" because of such anti-war protests coupled with the Watergate scandal, he said.
Today's US military intervention in Haiti also drew little sympathy from a man whose war ended in defeat at the hands of Vietnamese communists in 1975.
Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide is "a terrorist," he said.
"We have a national interest anywhere in the world to see democracy restored, but normally you don't kill Americans to do it."
But it is Agent Orange which has again brought Zumwalt from Arlington, Virginia, halfway around the world, here to Southeast Asia.
The defoliant "made a tremendous difference" reducing US casualties because spraying "moved the enemy back from the banks of rivers and canals and probably forced the Viet Cong to go underground" to fight in the US-held south, he said.
Agent Orange stripped enemy ground cover from riverbanks, allowing Zumwalt's navy vessels to travel hundreds of miles deeper into the countryside.
It also destroyed jungles so enemy soldiers and supplies would be exposed.
Crops which fed communists were also poisoned.
Vietnamese were either caught directly in the spray, or drank water and ate food in herbicide-covered areas.
Agent Orange was an efficient jungle killer, he said.
"The leaves die very rapidly. Within a week you see some benefit. Within a month it is totally gone. Some areas stayed denuded for several years.
"At the time we didn't know it was carcinogenic. The chemical companies that made it knew. But they told the Pentagon it was not."
He identified those companies as Dow Chemical and a handful of others.
Even though his son died from cancer, which Zumwalt believes was caused by Agent Orange, he insisted, "I think we did the right thing" in ordering it to be sprayed.
"In an identical situation, even knowing it was carcinogenic, I would use it again. We took 58,000 dead. My hunch is it would have been double that if we did not" spray, he added, referring to the total US death toll from the Vietnam War.
"The media always wants me to say I am guilty about what I did. But I am not. I don't know why they would rather report that. I suppose it makes a better story."
Zumwalt has meanwhile achieved in retirement what he failed to do during his career -- a victory in Vietnam -- at least in his mind.
"We have achieved victory 20 years later. We won the peace. The Vietnamese people are now being given what we aspired to give them, and the Americans are being welcomed back."
He said Vietnam's recent market reforms, which embrace some aspects of capitalism, ultimately spells the death of their communist system.
Asked in an interview if wooing Vietnamese communists with capitalist rewards could have been successful in the 1950s and 1960s, and should have been tried instead of war, Zumwalt paused and replied, "Yes."
He then claimed he had opposed the war and fought in it with reluctance.
"Those of us who opposed getting involved were right. I didn't consider it (the war) to be a bad moral judgment, I considered it a bad political judgment. But you don't disobey your commander-in-chief over disagreements about political judgments."
Today, he sees his former worst enemy, Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, as a "very impressive guy, very charismatic."
The two old warhorses posed for photographs greeting each other like delighted, long-lost buddies during Zumwalt's September visit to northern Vietnam.
They exchanged books about their military experiences.
"Giap's strategy was to take as many casualties" as necessary to achieve an objective, Zumwalt said.
"His strategy was right. He knew that he could hold out, and we couldn't."
During Zumwalt's visit, he was shown two little girls, aged 8 and 10, who had horribly twisted legs.
Vietnamese doctors said the sisters were born that way after their father, a soldier, was exposed to Agent Orange during the war.
Zumwalt expressed sorrow over their tragedy.
He also visited a rehabilitation site for deformed and retarded children, including many whose agony Vietnamese blame on Agent Orange.
Other Vietnamese who are believed crippled or mentally ill from the poison are shunned by society or kept isolated at home.
Zumwalt is the highest-raking US veteran known to visit Vietnam since America's defeat.
His week-long trip appeared to be an effort to boost his demand for more US tax money to study Agent Orange, expand financial compensation for American veterans who suffered dioxin poisoning, and also rekindle memories of his eldest son, Elmo Zumwalt 3d, who died in 1988 from cancer which may have been caused by the defoliant.
His son was a patrol boat commander in the Mekong River delta, near Saigon, when Agent Orange was being sprayed in the area.
He later gave birth to Zumwalt's grandson who is now 17 and said to have educational problems.
Zumwalt's visit coincided with the US Environmental Protection Agency's 2,000-page study that dioxin probably causes cancer in humans, both by lung cancer and by getting into the food chain and polluting fish, meat and dairy products which people eat.
Today in the United States, dioxin is often released into the air as a by-product when garbage which contains chlorine is incinerated.
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