Angry crowd accuses Canadian government of covering up Agent Orange use

• An angry crowd accused military officials of a coverup during a hearing into the spraying of Agent Orange and other defoliants at a New Brunswick military base in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Officials from the Department of National Defence, Veterans Affairs Canada and Canadian Forces Base Gagetown tried to downplay health hazards on Thursday, at the first public briefing on the issue in more than 30 years.
• The reassurances did little to calm the audience of more than 100 people, which included civilians and veterans who believe their health was damaged by the spraying.
• John Chisholm said he knew that claim was false because he worked as a member of the ground crew on the spray program.
• He and other veterans and civilians who worked on the base described being exposed to the spraying and blamed it for illnesses they later developed.
• "[The] first few times that we were out there, we came in, we were coloured orange, we were coloured yellow from the spray that came down on top of us," Chisholm said.
• Chisholm, who is being treated for cancer and other health problems, said his wife died of cancer in 1996 and virtually all of his friends who worked with him in the spray program are also dead.
• "It's time that you stood up and admitted that there is a problem, that there wasn't only two or three barrels of this stuff sprayed at Base Gagetown," said Glen Stewart, the executive director of the provincial branch of the Royal Canadian Legion.
• Karen Ellis, a Defence spokeswoman, said Agent Orange was sprayed over seven days on a "small scale" under strict controls that prevented the spray from drifting more than about 15 metres.
• She said it was very unlikely that civilians living near Gagetown were exposed to Agent Orange, which contains the carcinogen dioxin.