WASHINGTON — Comedian Jon Stewart and troops sickened by uranium ended a meeting Friday at the Department of Veterans Affairs angry that once again they have been told they will have to wait to see whether the VA will connect their illnesses to the toxic base where they were deployed shortly after 9/11.
The denied claims were supposed to have been fixed by the PACT Act, a major veterans aid package bill that President Joe Biden signed in 2022 and said is one of his proudest accomplishments in office. For many veterans it has made access to care much easier.
But the bill left out the the uranium exposure that’s still hurting some of the very first troops deployed in response to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Just weeks after the attacks, special operations forces were sent to Karshi-Khanabad, Uzbekistan, or K2, a badly contaminated former Soviet base that was a strategic location for launching operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But K2 was a former chemical weapons site and was littered with yellow powdered uranium that was kicked up in the dust and moved throughout the base when the military pushed up a protective earth berm. The radiation levels were as much as 40,000 times higher than what would have been found naturally, according to a nuclear fusion expert who has reviewed the data.
Two decades later, troops who served there are still fighting to get radiation-exposure illnesses recognized by the VA. Many have died young.
That the VA continues to tell the K2 veterans it has not decided yet whether to cover their illnesses has infuriated Stewart, who is a vocal advocate for all of the 9/11 first responders.
Stewart and the veterans were at the VA this spring to press their case, and were told the VA was working with the Pentagon to identify what radiation was at the base. Friday’s meeting was with VA Secretary Denis McDonough, which had raised hopes for a resolution. But they heard something else.
“The secretary today said he has the authority statutorily to make the change, to make sure the K2 veterans are covered presumptively,” Stewart said. But McDonough instead told them they were still waiting for additional information. “I believe punting is the correct term for what happened.”
In a statement VA spokesman Terrence Hayes said there are more than 300 conditions covered already by the PACT Act and that the agency is working on the specific K2 illnesses and radiation exposure.
“We continue to urgently consider every option to further assist these veterans and survivors, and we will keep them apprised every step of the way,” Hayes said.
“It felt like groundhog day,” said Kim Brooks, whose late husband was one of the first troops who served at K2 to die.
Lt. Col. Tim Brooks was one of the first soldiers to deploy to K2 in 2001 and served with the 10th Mountain Division during Operation Anaconda against the Taliban in early 2002.
When his unit returned to Fort Drum, New York, in the spring of 2002, Brooks wasn’t himself. He was suffering debilitating headaches and became unexpectedly irritable, his wife said. Then his unit was called into a briefing, to sign paperwork about the toxins they were exposed to, she said.
“He came home from that briefing and told me about it in our kitchen,” said Kim Brooks, who joined Stewart at the VA meeting. “He was incredibly upset and worried and then became more and more exhausted and did not feel or look well leading up to his collapse.”
Kim Brooks has tried to obtain the form her husband signed from his military records, but has not been successful and thinks it might have been removed. Other K2 veterans who were in the special operations forces have also struggled to get documents from their medical records because their missions and roles were classified.
In 2003 Tim Brooks collapsed during a Fort Drum ceremony as his unit was preparing to go to Iraq. Doctors diagnosed brain cancer, and he died a year later at age 36.
Having still to fight to get the Pentagon and VA to recognize uranium exposure at the base has left Kim Brooks “angry and dismayed and sad,” she said. “Denial in 2003 and denial in 2024. When will they own it and take care of these men and women?”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was serving as the commanding general of Fort Drum’s 10th Mountain Division in 2004 when Brooks died there.
Sabrina Singh, deputy Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement Friday that the Defense Department is “aware of the health issues and associated claims of veterans” who served at K2 and is “working with the Department of Veterans Affairs on a way forward.”
The presence of uranium on the base has been known since November 2001 — just a month after troops arrived there — and is documented on multiple Army maps, in memos and VA briefings. But it was labeled in different ways — as enriched, low-level processed or depleted uranium. The base and the radiation and other contaminants there was the subject of congressional hearings in 2020.
The confusion about what kind of uranium was there has been one of the holdups to veterans getting care.
But radiation levels documented at K2 in November 2001 were so elevated — as much as 40,000 times what would have registered if the uranium was just naturally occurring — that the specific type does not matter because exposure would have been harmful, said Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear fusion specialist and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, who reviewed the K2 radiation data.
Radiation exposure from uranium can damage kidneys, create a risk for bone cancer and also affect pregnancies because it crosses the placenta, among other harmful effects, said Makhijani, who previously worked with “atomic veterans” who were sickened by radiation after working at the Bikini Atoll during nuclear weapons tests in the 1940s.
More than 15,000 troops were deployed at K2 from 2001 to 2005. While the VA does not have statistics on how many are sick, the veterans’ grassroots organization has contacted about 5,000 of them and more than 1,500 are reporting serious medical conditions, including cancers, kidney and bone problems, reproductive issues and birth defects.
Getting the VA to recognize their radiation-related illnesses is about more than medical coverage, said former Army Staff Sgt. Mark Jackson, a K2 veteran who has sought treatment for severe osteoporosis, had to have a testicle removed and had his entire thyroid removed — none of which has been covered by the VA.
“It’s the recognition of the exposure,” Jackson said.
Austin was the Combined Joint Task Force commander for Afghanistan when Jackson was deployed to K2. His unit would use K2 to go in and out of Afghanistan on missions. It’s not lost on either Jackson or Kim Brooks that Austin now leads the agency they need finally to recognize the radiation exposure at K2.
“He was there when I was there,” Jackson said. “Hell, Austin signed my Bronze Star. I look at his signature almost everyday.”