Pursuing Agent Orange: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Pacific region tour included a stopover in Vietnam, where among other topics, he talked about the possibility of sharing data compiled by the US military about the health effects of Agent Orange. This was the defoliation chemical sprayed by US aircrews during the Vietnam War and that was later found to be a cause for some forms of cancer. (Read our 2000 article for background on Operation Ranch Hand.)
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
