In the mid-1980s, Air Force technician Mark Ely's job was to inspect secretly obtained Soviet fighter jets.
The work, carried out in hidden hangers known as silence houses, was part of a classified mission in the Nevada desert 140 miles outside Las Vegas at the Tonopah Test Range, sometimes known as Area 52. The mission was so secret that Ely said he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
“Defending the national interest was more important than my own life,” Ely told CBS News, and that's not just talk.
Ely was 20 years old and fit when he worked at the secret base. Now 63 and living in Naperville, Illinois, he is dealing with the life-threatening consequences of the radiation he says he was exposed to.
For decades, the US government conducted nuclear bomb tests near Area 52. According to a 1975 federal environmental assessment, these tests dispersed toxic radioactivity. material near.
“It scarred my lungs. I had cysts on my liver…I started getting lipomas, tumors inside my body that I had to have removed. My bladder lining spilled out,” she said .
All these years later, his service records include many assignments, but not the mission inside the Tonopah Proving Ground, meaning he can't prove he was ever there.
“There's a slogan that people say, 'Refuse to deny until you die.' It's true here,” Ely told CBS News.
Dave Crete says he also worked as a military police officer at the same location. He now has breathing problems, including chronic bronchitis, and had to have a tumor removed from his back.
He spent the past eight years tracking down hundreds of other veterans who worked at Area 52 and said he's seen “all kinds of cancer.”
Although the 1975 government assessment acknowledged toxic chemicals in the area, it said stopping work was “against the national interest” and the “costs … are small and reasonable for the benefits receipts”.
Other government employees who were stationed in the same area, primarily from the Energy Department, have received $25.7 billion in federal aid, according to publicly available Labor Department statistics. But those benefits don't apply to Air Force veterans like Ely and Crete.
“It makes me incredibly mad and it also hurts because they're supposed to have my back,” Ely said. “I had theirs and I want them to have mine.”
When contacted for comment, the Defense Department confirmed that Ely and Crete were serving, but did not say where.
Dave Savini
