Offutt in Thick of Anthrax Dispute

by Mike Sherry

Omaha World Herald

Not even mice, roaches and termites can make Colby Bickley miss the Air Force.

The former airman 1st class is back home in Piedmont, Okla., doing pest-control work and moving on from a 23-month military career that ended with a court-martial at Offutt Air Force Base.

Bickley, 23, pleaded guilty last April to disobeying an order to start the six-shot anthrax series - becoming the first service member at Offutt to be so severely disciplined for refusing an inoculation that many in the military think is hazardous to their health.

The subsequent prosecution of Senior Airman Shawn E. Banks earned Offutt an Air Force distinction: the base with the most courts-martial stemming from refusals to take the anthrax shots.

The only other Air Force prosecution for refusing the anthrax vaccination occurred in December at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas.

The Air Force also has issued more than 120 nonjudicial punishments to members who have refused the anthrax vaccination, which continues to cause controversy throughout the armed forces.

The military has had a difficult time convincing all of its troops that the vaccination is safe. Some observers suggest that the distrust stems from the mysterious illnesses suffered by Persian Gulf War veterans and the diseases caused by the Vietnam-era defoliant, Agent Orange.

The new Offutt commander, Col. Gregory H. Power, said the size and mission of the base's host unit, the 55th Wing, are the main reasons it has held two of the three courts-martial relating to anthrax shots.

There were other legitimate grounds to prosecute Bickley and Banks, including indications that they refused the shots to get out of assignments, said Col. Jeffrey Curtis, Offutt's top legal officer.

Bickley, who was a mechanic on flight-line vehicles, said his health concerns were valid reasons to refuse the shots. "You felt like a guinea pig," he said. Like Bickley, Banks was discharged after his court-martial. He could not be located for comment.

The Pentagon thinks Iraq and other U.S. enemies have converted anthrax, a deadly, naturally occurring bacteria, into a biological weapon. In 1998, it began a program to vaccinate all 2.4 million active-duty and reserve members. More than 400,000 troops have received about 1.5 million shots. There have been 620 reported adverse reactions, the Defense Department said last month. Six people required hospitalization.

Critics have said the Pentagon efforts to track the vaccine's effects are severely lacking in record-keeping, follow-up and disclosure. About 350 people have refused the vaccine and received various punishments.

Some guardsmen and reservists in various states have quit rather than take the anthrax shot, but that is not the case in Nebraska.A Nebraska Guard spokesman, Air Force 2nd Lt. Kevin Hynes, said 71 guardsmen, all Air Guard members, are taking the vaccination. No one has refused and no serious side effects have been reported, Hynes said.

One of the highest-profile cases now playing out is at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Maj. Sonnie Bates declined the shots after he talked with colleagues who were experiencing "unusual or disabling illnesses that did not exist prior to the anthrax vaccination," he told a congressional subcommittee last October.

Bates, a C-5 cargo plane pilot, was believed to be the highest-ranking Air Force officer on track for a court-martial over the anthrax issue. But the Air Force announced Feb. 17 that Bates would have an administrative hearing instead.

On the same day as that announcement, the congressional panel that heard Bates' testimony called for a halt to the vaccination program, saying the Defense Department was relying on an "excess of faith but a paucity of science."

The Pentagon rejected the call by the House Government Reform Committee's national security subcommittee, reiterating its belief that the vaccination is safe.

Offutt has had no hospitalizations due to the vaccine, said Col. Carey Capell, a physician who is commander of the 55th Wing's aerospace medicine squadron.

The base has given the shot to 1,700 service members since October 1998, he said, and the most serious side effects have been two cases in which the upper and lower arm temporarily swelled.

Bickley said he was worried about much worse outcomes, such as damage to his immune and reproductive systems.

Information that his wife, Amber, gathered from the Internet, he said, convinced him that the vaccine was unsafe. Some of her research was on the gulf war illnesses.

Some reports, including a 1999 article in Vanity Fair magazine that Bickley said summed up his concerns, have suggested that gulf war syndrome is linked to an experimental additive the Pentagon included in the anthrax vaccination during the war.

The Pentagon has denied accusations that troop vaccinations included squalene, which animal testing has tied to problems such as arthritis.

Bickley wasn't convinced. "It was like, 'Hey, I will not be taking this shot,' " he said.

Curtis, staff judge advocate for the 55th Wing, was skeptical of material on the Internet, blaming it for some of the "hysteria" over the anthrax vaccine. Senior Offutt officials, including Power, are taking the shots.

"Anthrax kills people, and we don't want people dying," Power said. "That's a deadly weapon out there that, in the wrong hands, can be devastating to our war fighters, and that's, doggone it, the only reason we're doing it."

To him, the anthrax vaccine is "right in line with our thinking" on shots for typhoid, yellow fever and the flu.

"It's just a new one," he said, "and it unfortunately got some emotional hype thrown into the facts."

Power said it's no surprise that Offutt has conducted two of the three Air Force courts-martial, because the 55th Wing, with roughly 6,000 members, is the largest wing in the Air Combat Command.

He said its worldwide reconnaissance mission means frequent duty in overseas areas deemed to be high-risk for an anthrax attack.

Though Bickley argued that he was the victim of an overzealous officer corps at Offutt, Curtis rejected the idea that the 55th Wing was making an example out of him.

He said there was a "strong smell" that the airman was refusing the shots to get out of serving in Kuwait.

Curtis' deputy, Maj. Jim Byrne, said Bickley's commander and other superior officers thought he was trying to avoid duty because his refusal came about the time he found out about the assignment.

Bickley said he was willing to serve in Kuwait without the vaccination, even offering to sign a waiver releasing the Air Force of any liability should he be exposed to anthrax.

Saying the allegations against Bickley were serious enough to warrant a court-martial, Curtis acknowledged that it was also time to forcefully demonstrate that Offutt leaders took anthrax refusals seriously.

There had been four instances before the Bickley and Banks cases, all of which had been handled by administrative punishments such as letters of reprimand.

Those people were eventually discharged from the Air Force, Curtis said, but it was evident that the base was not making its point about the shots.

"Any time you court-martial anyone . . . it sends a message out to the rest of the folks that if you choose to disobey an order, this could happen to you," Curtis said.

The message seems to have gotten across, he said, because there have been no refusals since the Banks court-martial in May.

The whole affair has left Bickley with mixed emotions.He's happy with civilian life. He's back in his hometown. He's renovating a house with his wife, and he's making more money killing pests than he was fixing vehicles in the Air Force.

But when he considers that he's one of only three Air Force members to be prosecuted for refusing the anthrax shot, he can't help feeling resentful.

"You try not to be bitter," he said, "but, you know, how do you not?"