we move now to a bipartisan bill before Congress.

Right now, the Sergeant Dave Crete Forgotten Veterans Act would require the Department of Defense to recognize the Nevada Test and Training Range as a location where contamination occurred.

Located in the desert northwest of Las Vegas, the federal government conducted hundreds of nuclear weapons tests at the entry from the 1950s through the 1990s.

In 2000, federal law established compensation for eligible civilians who work there under the Department of Energy and were diagnosed with certain illnesses as a result of their exposure to radiation and toxins.

But military veterans who served there have not received the same presumption of exposure.

U.S.

Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada named this updated legislation after local Air Force veteran Dave Crete, founder of the nonprofit The Invisible Enemy.

He joined me in studio to explain how the bill came to bear his name, and what it could mean for veterans and their families.

We had legislation introduced in the end of 24.

Then the new Congress came in.

We introduced another bill.

Senator Rosen being the sponsor in the Senate and we got part of that passed in the National Defense Authorization Act.

So the old bill was kind of out of date because some of the language was already law.

And so then this year, Senator Rosen reworked the bill, added some things to it, and informed me that that was the name of the bill, found out it was a secret amongst some, including my wife and everybody else on the board knew I was.

I think I was the only one that didn't.

What do you think?

Honestly, the first thing I thought was usually, if you get something named after you like that, you're dead.

I was just.

I was blown away.

I don't know what to say.

And it's even awkward still to tell somebody.

What's the name of your bill?

It's me.

You know, it's awkward, but it's a great honor.

What is the ultimate purpose of this bill that you have had to talk so much about?

Is talking something that you like to do?

Yeah.

I have no problem talking.

Okay.

The important thing is, when we all went up range, when we worked at these classified bases, we were never told and we didn't know what we were being exposed to.

And now, you know, 30 years later, it takes a long time for a lot of these diseases and cancers and things to manifest themselves.

And now it's become illnesses for our family members.

And, you know, we've established a memorial list to try to track and honor those that we know that worked up there, that died.

And as we sit here today, this week, we'll probably hit 600 names on that list.

And you're specifically talking about the Nevada Test and training, right?

Correct.

You were there for about four years in the 80s, right?

Correct.

What was happening there that you are able to talk about?

We know there was nuclear testing, so there was nuclear testing.

And my location, there was the stealth fighter.

That's where it was developed.

And the biggest surprise for us, you know, as young guys going up is there was a squadron of Russian fighter jets So our fighter pilots would get first hand experience on what it's like to fly against the enemy's aircraft.

Your particular role was as a security officer, correct.

You were guarding against any potential outside?

Correct?

we were the base cops in the security for up there.

And it was a very, very different environment.

The federal government has acknowledged that people who worked up there during a specific time frame were exposed to toxic chemicals and radioactive material.

Right?

Correct.

But they don't extend that acknowledgment to veterans.

Is that correct?

It's correct.

There's two things.

There's the atomic veterans, which are the folks that they talk about that were there when the testing was taking place back in the 50s.

And 60s, they've recognized them as being there.

The Department of Energy is the contractor on the range that builds everything.

They do the nuclear testing.

But they they built our hangars and our Joe Hall and our roads and everything else through Department of Energy contracts.

And they have been recognized.

The government says, yes, you were there, you were exposed.

And if you have illnesses, we're going to take care of you.

And in our case, the military, they say we were never there, therefore we were never exposed.

And so the government basically says it's not our problem, when in fact it is.

And denying our existence is is really shameful.

And when guys go in and try to get care, they're often denied.

And the benefits that are there for veterans that's promised when we sign up is denied.

And the worst is, like I said, we have a memorial list that means there's a whole bunch of widows.

And since we can't connect ourselves as being there in our illnesses and most common thing, guys die from us cancer, the average age of 63, those family members, widows that are left behind are denied benefits as well.

So the government cuts them off.

But if those were spouses of civilians that worked there, they would they would get benefits and those benefits were established.

Or that acknowledgment was back in 2000.

Correct.

Under President Clinton, it has been a long time.

When did you become aware of this connection between your work there and and your own health?

I started researching in about 2015.

My unit, the Copper Unit, had a reunion, and we started having conversations and discovering at that point that many of us have tumors.

There was miscarriages with our wives, some birth defects with our kids.

And then the conversations went to that, like Dan Traxler, who was my own OJT supervisor and trainer when I went up range, he died at 33.

And those conversations started.

And you knew that doesn't make sense.

The numbers don't add up.

You know, 75% of our guys and the cops that were at this reunion all have tumors.

That's not normal.

And so you I have about 20 I had currently.

I had one on my back that had to get removed because it was about the size of a grapefruit like all of us even, like, on my forehead.

I have a little one that sits up here and, and they're all over, and we all have them.

It's in your arms, your legs, your torso.

I have one of my lungs.

What's remarkable is that this extends to your children, to family members.

How so?

So when we were at that reunion, that was at my house, one of the guys there was.

We were having a conversation.

The first conversation, there was eight of us that were sitting there and one of the guys says, well, I don't have any, but my son was born with a tumor.

And, and I, I brought up, I said, my son was born with something called neurofibromatosis.

My first born, he has a brain tumor.

And it's a lifelong life altering problem that he's been faced with.

And it's a tumor problem where tumor X can grow on the end of your nerves.

It messes with your your nervous system.

His gave him some challenges in school, and he's done remarkably well.

But he had to take the hard path in life and still does.

And it's now genetic.

So, you know, he has the concerns about his daughter's that they would be born with this.

And so far everything looks okay, which is great.

But, we've since learned that all four of our kids were born with problems.

And we find out it's the same problems and the same story I hear over and over and over from the guys that worked up there.

Because the government has admitted that exposure to radiation alters our genes, it alters our DNA.

And some of these alterations that it does are permanent.

So we pass these genes that have been damaged to our kids.

So it's, it sucks.

Yet you told me ahead of this that you have a grandson in the military, and you encouraged him to enter the military.

I think it's great.

I'm proud of what I did.

All of us are really proud of what we did.

We don't like what's happened since we're patriots.

You know, if you talk to all the guys that worked up brains, all the men and women that worked up brains, you would have troubles finding people that regret it.

We don't, you know, so that's really not the issue.

I'm super proud of them.

The legislation that is in front of Congress right now, it's bipartisan.

It is considered a common sense legislation.

How do you rationalize that it has not yet passed or advanced so veterans benefits right now in Congress are being debated?

And it has to do with money.

At the end of the day, there's going to be money spent.

Our bill was the CBO scored it, which in English means the Congressional Budget Office says it's going to cost money and it was $115 million over ten years, which in DC is nothing for the rest of us.

That's that's a lot of money.

But when you look at a trillion and a half dollar DoD budget as an example, it's nothing.

Representative Susie Lee has brought this issue to the attention of the Secretary of Defense.

She has?

Yes.

Pete Hegseth, and, you know, he's a busy guy right now.

He has a war that he's fighting with Iran.

What would you say to him about the necessity of of confronting this now?

He could sign a piece of paper and the problem is fixed.

We don't have to have a law to fix this.

It can be solved administratively.

His staff could write something up.

It's easy.

It really is a pretty easy fix.

And is there?

It's exposed.

And here's the list of guys that served there.

And the Air Force has the list.

What has been accomplished?

You talked about what Rosen did.

Senator Rosen did get through what has gone so on the NDAA and National Defense Authorization Act, that passed last December, November, December, there was we had two amendments in that bill.

One was to recognize Entr as being an area of contamination that didn't pass, because that's what the CBO says.

Well, that's going to cost money.

The other was something called a Isler individual longitudinal exposure record.

And this is going to help my grandson, because what this does is in in my day in the military, they didn't track what we were exposed to.

They keep a list of it.

They didn't tell the VA about it when we got out.

They didn't even tell us.

There's no record that we can access about it.

This individual record that now is law is the military has to compile a record of exposures.

They have to give it to the VA when the current military member gets out.

It has to be available to the VA doctors.

It has to be available to the veteran.

And it can be shared with their civilian doctors.

So when you go to the doctor and say, I have this problem, you can show them what you've been exposed to so the doctor can see a true history and maybe make some better diagnosis or some easier ones, and they won't allow that to happen with us.

I can't even have my medical records.

You created a nonprofit, The Invisible Enemy, to help address this issue.

That was in 2023, correct?

You also came out with a small documentary that's very powerful.

It's on YouTube, but now is there talk about a Netflix documentary.

So yeah, our goal is to get it on Netflix.

And if you put something on Netflix, you get paid.

The way you increase the value is to go win a film festival.

So our goal is let's maximize our return.

Because making a movies is is not only a lot of work.

A learning experience costs a lot of money.

And we've been very blessed with our crew.

But, we would like to get a return on that investment and maybe provide true future funding for the charity to continue its work to help veterans, Last question.

President Trump last year said that he wants nuclear testing to resume in the United States because other countries are doing it like China and Russia.

That has not yet happened to our knowledge.

But when you hear that, what do you think?

They've done nearly 950 tests.

What could they possibly learn?

And there are simulators that exist now that the government uses to simulate testing, to see how certain components work without actually detonating a nuclear device.

We've done more than all other countries combined.

I understand the purpose of a nuclear weapon.

You can't be held hostage by a company, by a country that does.

But I don't.

I cannot imagine what game we would get out of showing where the big kids on the block, that there would be some technological advantage to doing more nuclear testing.

We have a link to the mini documentary mentioned in that interview on our website, Vegas.

PBS.org.