Word: agent
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...confidential letter written in 1965, during a time when the Government was purchasing millions of pounds of Agent Orange, Dow's toxicology director wrote to another Dow official that dioxin "is exceptionally toxic; it has tremendous potential for producing chloracne [an ugly skin disease] and systemic injury. . . I trust that you will be very judicious in your use of this information. It could be quite embarrassing if it were misinterpreted or misused." A postscript added, "Under no circumstances may this letter be reproduced, shown or sent to anyone outside...
...Midland, Mich., plant and complaints from consumers, Dow met with other chemical companies to discuss "problems of health" associated with dioxin. Dow says that the get-together was an attempt to police the industry from within and coordinate methods to keep the level of dioxin in Agent Orange below the danger point. In 1970 Dow recommended to then Defense Secretary Melvin Laird that the Government set a safer maximum level of dioxin content in Agent Orange...
...maintains that even before this warning, top U.S. officials already knew the hazards of dioxin in Agent Orange from the Government's own research and that as a Government contractor, the company was simply filling an order. The federal court documents show that in 1967 the Joint Chiefs of Staff reviewed a Rand Corp. warning about the herbicide but discounted it and continued the spraying, believed by the military to be essential to the war effort, for an additional 2½ years. Yet the Pentagon is on record as having ordered Agent Orange from Dow and others specifically...
Besides Dow, which was the Government's main supplier, the defendants in the Agent Orange case include the Monsanto Co. of St. Louis, the Diamond Shamrock Corp. of Dallas, Uniroyal Inc. of Middlebury, Conn., and T.H. Agriculture and Nutrition Co. Inc. of Kansas City. The case, now in pretrial hearings, is not expected to go before a jury until next year. "It's been all cloak and dagger," says ex-Navyman Sutton, "but I think the truth is finally coming out." No doubt, but some truths may continue to prove elusive: while scientific studies have shown that dioxin...
...result of that change in attitude, Costa Rica has become a haven for refugees from the Sandinista regime, a role that has not gone unnoticed in Nicaragua. In recent weeks, Sandinista-inspired agents have been arming and instigating Costa Rican squatters to take over land in the area of Guápiles, 25 miles northeast of San José, the capital. A Sandinista agent two weeks ago tried to plant a bomb in the Costa Rican headquarters of a Nicaraguan dissident group. The device exploded prematurely, killing the agent...