SHANE SMITH: This week on "Vice,"
the lingering and lethal effects of the BP oil spill...
_
SMITH: and then a very rare look at the radical Islamists
in Yemen that are at war with Al Qaeda.
_
Move that camera, eh?
[Shouts]
♪
[Cheering]
BEN ANDERSON: Is it any wonder that when you drop weapons
like this on people with "Made in the U.S." on the side,
they become radicalized?
You have fresh oil coming up.
A lot of that oil has been corrupted by Corexit.
Sync and corrections by explosiveskull www.addic7ed.com
♪
When BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded
in April of 2010, it caused the worst environmental disaster
in the history of the United States.
The well gushed for 87 days straight,
spilling over 200 million gallons of crude oil
directly into the gulf.
BP and the Coast Guard handled the cleanup
using a combination of mechanical removal,
burning off the oil,
and the use of chemical dispersants
that were sprayed from airplanes.
Today reports have emerged that many locals
involved in cleaning up the spill
are now becoming seriously ill.
So I went down to Louisiana to see for myself
what's really going on in the Gulf of Mexico.
♪
_
For many of the locals of Louisiana,
not just their economy, but their whole way of life
is based on the gulf.
So when the BP oil spill occurred,
displacing thousands of people from their jobs
in fishing or tourism, the community sprang into action
and was on the front lines of the massive cleanup effort
paid for by BP.
These same local people and their families
were the first to report mysterious medical issues
that suddenly appeared during the cleanup effort
that still affect them to this day.
To find out more about these medical issues,
we traveled to Buras, Louisiana, to speak to a community activist
who has found many locals, especially young children,
who are exhibiting a variety of symptoms
often attributed to chemical illness.
I just want to show you this...
SMITH: Sure.
So you can see it.
This is some of the blisters
that people pop up with in their eyes.
This is a 5-year-old's face where he got
splashed by the water.
This is a 8-year-old that...
you see the bald spots all over his head?...
he's got a towel on him because every time
he sleeps by my house, I wake up,
and he's in a puddle of blood,
and this is a child that we're gonna go see.
She's scarred from head to toe.
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Both of 10-year-old
La'lee's grandparents were spill cleanup workers,
and now, 4 years later, they suffer
from skin and lung ailments they say
they had never experienced before the spill.
WOMAN: Since the oil spill,
I'm on 3 inhalers,
and this one right here, she started out
with just a little sore here,
and literally overnight, it overtook her face,
and she woke up, looked like
she had been set on fire.
LA'LEE:
_
SMITH: And are there other kids in your school
that have rashes, as well?
Yeah?
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Now, BP told us that numerous controls
were put in place to limit worker and public exposure.
So we asked another cleanup worker,
William Maurer, exactly what measures were taken
to protect him during the spill cleanup.
SMITH: Did they issue you with protective clothing?
Did they tell you about any of the...
No. How you see how I'm dressed right now
is how I was every day.
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: And now not only is William suffering
from rashes and respiratory issues,
but his whole family continues to experience the same symptoms.
These are all of our medicines.
And none of them are working.
Nothing works.
WOMAN: None of this happened before the oil spill.
Now, all of a sudden, we're all sick around the clock.
We have boils popping up out the ying-yang.
She had 23 all up on the front of her stomach.
SMITH: And did your children get boils
before the spill?
My kids didn't even know what a boil was.
I'll show you a picture of my knee.
SMITH: Oh, my goodness.
I could've put my thumb in it.
♪
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Sadly, though,
these are not isolated incidents
because, as local doctor Michael Robichaux has found,
they are widespread throughout the region.
He has seen over 100 cases just like these
and has an interesting theory as to their source.
Let me tell you, I saw people from Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Everybody had identical symptoms,
everyone, and I abstracted
all the symptoms that there were
in that 113 people that I saw.
It's either the dispersant
or a combination of dispersant
plus the oil that causes the problems.
Now, a lot of the symptoms
have gotten worse with time.
Some of the people we've treated have died,
and others are gonna die.
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Now, the dispersant Dr. Robichaux
is referring to is called Corexit,
and it was one of the dispersants that were used
during the cleanup of the infamous Exxon Valdez
oil spill in 1989,
and marine toxicologist Dr. Riki Ott
was one of the first people on the scene in the Valdez spill
and saw its effects firsthand.
Corexit is definitely a poison by itself.
The trouble is, so is oil,
and when oil and Corexit combine,
it's actually way worse than either alone
because the Corexit pulls it
into the body, into cells.
During Exxon Valdez oil spill,
workers were peeing black.
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Dr. Ott obtained Exxon's own
court-sealed internal data showing
that in a 5-month cleanup period,
there were no fewer that 6,722 reports
of upper respiratory infections amongst workers,
and over a decade later, she followed up
and tracked down 345 cleanup workers
to survey their health.
What I found was that out of 300-plus people,
all of them said that this was a debilitating illness.
Workers had a whole range of symptoms,
from respiratory problems, central nervous system problems.
At the other end of the spectrum, people died.
These chemicals get swept up
into the water cycle.
So they're pulled up into the air.
They come down as rain.
The question needs to be asked, what's gonna happen
not only to the workers, but to the children,
to the families, to the coastal population
that breathe this toxic, contaminated air?
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Now, despite the health issues experienced
by the Exxon Valdez cleanup workers,
and warnings by the EPA
to use less toxic dispersants,
nearly two million gallons
of Corexit were dumped directly into the gulf.
So we talked to journalist Mark Hertsgaard,
who was covering the story at the time
and authored the "Newsweek" piece
"What BP Doesn't Want You to Know About the 2010 Gulf Spill,"
to get his thoughts on what happened.
Well, Corexit actually was very good
at what BP was really using it for...
to basically hide the amount of oil that BP
had really released in the Gulf of Mexico,
but from a public health standpoint
and a workers' health standpoint,
Corexit was horrible.
This was very clear, by the way, from the technical manual
that Corexit's manufacturer gave to BP
and that BP then buried.
They make it very plain
that this is extremely toxic material.
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: And while the same technical manual
explains that the potential human hazard
is... quote, unquote... "high," a report that workers
who asked to wear their own protective gear
were being denied or, in some cases, outright fired
led to internal federal questions
detailed in e-mails uncovered
by the Government Accountability Project
that say, quote...
_
End quote.
You cannot get it on your skin. You cannot inhale it.
You cannot touch it.
In fact, when Corexit is combined with oil,
it makes the oil 52 times more toxic.
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Now, even though BP maintains that Corexit
is not toxic and was not responsible
for causing the injuries we've seen,
"Vice" has found multiple peer-reviewed studies
to the contrary, with one confirming that Corexit
and oil mixture is indeed 52 times more toxic
to marine life than oil alone
and another finding that exposure kills cells
in the human airway, and because of the way
Corexit sinks the oil below the surface,
there are still millions of pounds of oily material
washing ashore today.
We attended a Coastal Protection
and Restoration Authority
meeting where this very topic
was being discussed.
We've got 2.9 million more pounds of oily material
in the last few months in 2013
than in this same time period in 2012.
That is a 2,400% increase in oily material collected
between 2012 and 2013.
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Now, these huge numbers are something
that's very alarming to many of the locals.
_
[Laughter]
_
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Dean told us that he was once
the largest shrimp buyer in America
with approximately 6,000 fishermen
bringing him their catch.
He also told us that the spill
and the subsequent spraying of dispersant by the Coast Guard
have badly affected his business.
_
Right.
_
Yeah.
_
They're spraying Corexit. Yeah.
_
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Now, because we weren't there at the time
with our cameras, we can't prove these specific occurrences.
However, "Vice" did manage to uncover
a never-before-published incident report
showing another occurrence of illegal spraying.
On May 5, 2010, Coast Guard planes
sprayed closer to vessels and platforms
than they were allowed.
In one such incident, an oil production foreman
describes a Coast Guard plane
spraying dispersant over his platform.
SMITH: And are you seeing shrimps
that are deformed or have tumors?
_
Really? Half?
And what kind of deformities?
_
SMITH: The shrimp that they catch around this area,
up to 50% of them will be deformed,
and when we're saying,
"Well, why are so many of them deformed?"
They showed us this over here,
and this they got just out from the channel,
solid oil, and then you come here.
BLANCHARD:
SMITH: Yeah.
So that's oil in it's gills.
_
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Now, the FDA declared gulf seafood safe
mere months after the spill.
However, 4 years later, Dean Blanchard is still worried.
_
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: To see the effects on the gulf itself,
we met with P.J. Hahn, coastal zone director
of Plaquemine's Parish, who at the time of the spill
dove in the oil and saw what was happening firsthand.
SMITH: Did you have any personal interaction
or sightings of the oil or the dispersant?
I dove in it.
From horizon to horizon,
we saw oil,
these huge underwater clouds
and plumes 25 to 30 feet,
even 40 feet.
We watched it drifting down.
So if it was 40 or 50 feet
below the blue water, that means that you
were swimming in oil and Corexit, then.
Corexit and oil, and when we
finally got back to shore,
I brought all of my diving gear,
put it in my tub, and let it soak overnight,
and it literally the next day
was falling apart.
I thought there was a very cozy relationship
between BP and Coast Guard.
They thought public relationswise,
it would be best to sink the oil.
Out of sight, out of mind.
There's no story if you don't see the oil.
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Now, BP says that dispersants helped reduce
the amount of oil that actually reached the beaches and marshes.
However, because there was so much sunken oil
that can't be cleaned up from the surface,
it continually washes up on both the coast and the marshes,
which are the starting points for the life cycle
of the whole gulf.
HAHN: This is all oil from the BP spill
because we have so much that's down that you
don't see that's under the surface here.
So, just to be clear, the Deepwater Horizon spill
happened 4 years ago, but today, 4 years later,
you have fresh oil coming up,
killing off the marsh, and a lot of that oil
has been corrupted by Corexit.
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Now, we were surprised that this story,
while well-known in Louisiana,
has barely made it out to the rest of the country,
but, as we found out, it's not for lack of trying.
Senator A.G. Crowe has been trying to get attention
from Congress and even the president
about this exact issue.
The chemical industry and the oil industry
in Louisiana, we appreciate what they do
and the jobs they bring to us,
but, my goodness, what good is a job
to a dead person or a sick person?
Sure.
SMITH: You wrote a letter to the president.
Can you read just part of it
that has your message?
CROWE:
_
No.
We're actually flying over the company
that makes Corexit right now.
They have a huge production facility.
CROWE:
_
It seems like a very sane,
common-sense solution.
Why hasn't it been adopted?
_
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: BP declined to be interviewed
on camera for this piece,
but they did tell us that their, quote...
_
End quote.
In other words, they are going to continue to use Corexit
as long as the government allows it.
So we went to Washington, DC, to find out exactly why,
after discovering how toxic Corexit really is,
that the government continues to allow it.
We spoke to Representative Frank Pallone,
a congressman well-versed on the subject.
In the aftermath of the BP spill,
there was a commission,
a bipartisan commission, that was set up
to basically look into the lessons of the spill,
and the commission made a number of recommendations
to ban things like Corexit that are very toxic dispersants.
The problem now is, the Republican majority
in the House refuses to bring up legislation
that would ban these dispersants.
The BP spill is several years old now,
but there are still spills all the time,
and these toxic dispersants are still used.
The likelihood is that since we're going further
into deeper water, there's gonna be another major spill.
Nothing has occurred that would make it safer
to drill in deep water
or to make it any better to clean it up, nothing.
All the recommendations that were made
by the bipartisan congressional commission
after the BP spill, none were adopted.
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Now, we understand that BP
is just a company and will continue to use
whatever tools are available to it that are legal
and economically viable.
However, what's most dismaying about this story to me
is that the American government, the very people who we elect
and pay to protect us, seemingly, in this case,
refuse to.
♪
One of the biggest strongholds for Al Qaeda
in the world today is Yemen.
[Siren]
In fact, the Yemeni government has lost so much control
of its territory to Al Qaeda that many U.S. officials
see Yemen as one of the major threats facing America today.
Some have even gone so far as to call it the next Afghanistan.
JOE LIEBERMAN: Iraq was yesterday's war.
Afghanistan is today's war.
If we don't act preemptively,
Yemen will be tomorrow's war.
Now, one of the only groups that has been able
to keep Al Qaeda in check in the region is a militia
that had fought off not only the Yemeni army to the south,
but also Saudi Arabia to the north.
This militia is known as the Houthis.
Now, what's remarkable is that the Houthis
are not only taking on all of these groups simultaneously,
but have actually been beating them all back.
MEN: Oh!
_
SMITH, VOICE-OVER: Now, we were wondering exactly what it takes
to beat Al Qaeda on its own turf.
So we sent Ben Anderson for a rare look
inside the Houthi territory in Yemen to find out more
about this elusive fighting force.
♪
_
[Car horn honks]
_
ANDERSON: This is the place where we came
to change the money, a little bank,
10, 15 guys selling machine guns, hand grenades,
and not just to Houthi fighters, but to anyone.
ANDERSON, VOICE-OVER: Yemen is a war-ravaged country,
much of which the government has no control over.
In many places, security is provided
by competing tribes and militias,
and all kinds of weapons are sold openly on the street,
as ubiquitous as hot dog sellers in New York.
_
ANDERSON, VOICE-OVER: The good news about the Houthis
is that they kicked Al Qaeda out of the areas they control.
The bad news is that they're virulently anti-American.
The gun stands in town are nothing.
Just outside the city, there is one huge
and infamous weapons bazaar
where you can buy almost anything.
So we're in Souk al-Talh,
which is one of the biggest gun markets in the Middle East,
which, I believe, they don't just sell guns,
but behind the counter, they sell pretty much everything.
This is the place where Al Qaeda
bought the Semtex explosives they used
when they attacked the USS Cole.
Someone else came and told us there's a guy
with antitank shells for sale, but as soon as he saw us,
he closed his doors and locked them quickly.
No, no, no, no.
ANDERSON: Someone just bought an RPG,
which, I think, is Russian, as well.
_
And do you have anything bigger than this?
So it wasn't very difficult
to just quickly find someone who'll open up
one of the back stores,
and for $30,000, you could buy this.
_
What's this for?
Is this powerful enough to take down a helicopter?
_
And if I had $30,000 now, I could buy this and walk away?
_
♪
ANDERSON, VOICE-OVER: These weapons markets
help maintain the power of the Houthis,
a movement that began in 2004 when its founder
Hussein al-Houthi started making
increasingly radical antigovernment speeches.
[Speaks Arabic]
ANDERSON, VOICE-OVER: Yemen's then-president
Ali Abdullah Saleh aligned himself unconditionally
with the U.S. war on terror, angering much of his population.
In 2004, the tensions eventually turned into war
with the government assault on a Houthi stronghold.
After 3 months of fighting and as many as 1,000 deaths,
Hussein al-Houthi was surrounded and under siege in a cave.
♪
Under the protection of the Houthis,
we traveled up the mountains to see the actual location
of this last stand.
So we're driving through this beautiful mountain range
where the Houthis managed to resist wave
after wave of attack.
We've got the Houthi revolutionary music playing.
ANDERSON, VOICE-OVER: When we arrived,
we were given a tour of the battle site,
which was turned into a shrine
that only helped strengthen the movement.
_
ANDERSON: Is everyone here a fighter?
_
[Continues speaking Arabic]
_
ANDERSON: So after 3 months being under siege here...
he had been bombed;
they had poured petrol through the water pipe
and set it on fire;
several of his family had been killed;
several of his supporters in there had been killed...
he came out to negotiate,
and they're saying he was just shot in the chest
and died a couple of minutes later,
but rather than killing the movement,
it seems to have ignited the movement.
When the Houthis buried their leader,
it was one of the largest public gatherings
in Yemen's history, and his death
showed how much of a following
and how much of a force they could be.
[All shouting]
The Houthis numbers grew by the tens of thousands.
They are now strong enough to fight off Al Qaeda
and government forces and maintain order
over a vast area of northern Yemen...
♪
But the price they paid for this war was evident
in the destruction seen almost everywhere we looked.
_
ANDERSON: So can you describe
- what happened here? - Sure.
_
ANDERSON, VOICE-OVER: Hussein Ali Amir was there
throughout the government assault.
He agreed to show me around.
_
ANDERSON: And were there fighters here or civilians?
_
[Explosions]
ANDERSON, VOICE-OVER: No one knows the exact numbers,
but thousands were killed and tens of thousands
were forced to flee their homes.
ANDERSON: So another mosque here was destroyed,
another 15, 20 houses.
You think you've seen all the destruction,
you turn a corner, and you see a load more.
ANDERSON, VOICE-OVER: Although these battles were waged
by the Yemeni government, it's a widely held belief here
that the blame can be traced back to the West
and, in particular, the U.S.
Much of this stems from our allegiance
with not only the Saleh regime,
but also with Saudi Arabia to the north,
who soon joined the assault
on the growing Houthi movement themselves.
The conflict wasn't sectarian to begin with,
although the Houthis are technically Shiites
and the Saudis and Saleh are Sunni,
but it was painted as sectarian by the Saleh government,
and rumors grew about support for the Houthis by Shiite Iran.
Suddenly, Saudi Arabia had a hostile Shiite enemy
on their southern border, too.
♪
The Houthi movement was now considered
a serious threat to the Saudis.
In 2009, the Yemen government
and Saudi Arabia adopted a scorched-earth policy
in an attempt to finally crush the Houthis.
The scale of the destruction is just unbelievable,
and yet this is a war that pretty much nobody
even knows exists.
Oh, wow.
If you look beyond there,
this is row after row of houses completely destroyed,
not one, I don't think, untouched.
Even though the attacks came from the Yemeni government
and the Saudis, many here, again,
put most of the blame on the West.
ANDERSON: So every time you were attacked,
do you think it was Western policy to attack you?
_
♪
ANDERSON, VOICE-OVER: When we came across piles
of spent munitions and bomb casings,
we began to understand why
there is so much anti-American sentiment,
even though these weapons were dropped by the Saudis.
There's a sticker on this one.
"U.S. Air Force," it says. "U.S.,"
and while I'm lifting this up, God, what looks like
an unexploded artillery shell right under my feet,
and it looks like the cap is still on.
So I don't know if that's unexploded.
These are cluster bombs.
The shell is dropped from a plane.
Before it hits the ground, it splits in two,
and it contains dozens, sometimes hundreds,
of small bomblets that are spread across a vast area,
an area the size of a football field.
The problem is, a lot of those bomblets don't explode.
As many as a third don't explode.
So they're left for years.
Most of the people that are killed by them
years later are civilians.
These aren't supplied to the Yemen Air Force,
but they are supplied to the Saudi Air Force,
and, yeah, these bombs have been made illegal by 110 countries
because they kill so many civilians.
The U.S. didn't sign that treaty.
Saudi Arabia didn't sign that treaty,
and it's no wonder that when you drop weapons like this on people
with "Made in the U.S." on the side,
they become radicalized.
Although the Houthi movement may be best known in the West
for fighting and beating back Al Qaeda
from the territory they control,
it's clear that... for the U.S., at least...
their enemy's enemy is not, in fact, its friend.
I think this is what scares so many people
in Washington about Yemen, is that although these guys
are enemies of Al Qaeda,
they're still raising their kids to chant, "Death to America,"
"Death to Israel," "Damn the Jews,"
and, "Victory for Islam."
You can see why lots of people think Yemen
will be the next failed state, which could be
a launching ground for attacks against the West.
_
Sync and corrections by explosiveskull www.addic7ed.com