"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." "♪" "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." "_" "_" "_" "_" "_" "_" "_" "_"