SPEAKER_02: 0:01

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, veterans. To another episode of the Exposed Vet, Jay Bastard's Exposed Vet Productions. My name is John Stason. They call me Jay Bastard. Have a co-host today. We've got dueling co-host. We've got Mr. Ray Cobb out of Tennessee. How are you doing, Ray?

SPEAKER_00: 0:20

I'm doing great. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02: 0:25

I mean, you know, it's uh been a rough week for us. Uh, and uh, I've got another heavy hitter here. Yeah. We've got another heavy hitter here. We've got Mr. Alex Graham out of the great state of Washington. He is another co-host tonight. We're not gonna make him a guest because he's gonna be able to, you know, he's gonna have to get in there and just co-host the show with us. Uh guys, I want to have to say it's a somber show. Uh, we don't do a lot of these. Um, last Friday, the veterans community lost a very, very repairful force to be reckoned with. This man kind of larger than life in a way, just because of the way he carried himself and what he did, what he did. He was the first veteran to win his agent orange claim based on direct service connection from exposure inside the continental United States at Fort Gordon, Georgia, where he was the game warden in charge of the ponds and poaching and things like that. And he actually sprayed this chemical on the pond areas because well, Fort Gordon probably got alligators and they didn't want to sneak it up, getting the kids trying to go fishing. That's where James was exposed. Um, he had a very long legacy. Uh he helped countless numbers of vets, hundreds upon hundreds of veterans with their agent orange issues and VA claims. Uh, I met James some 25 years ago, back when uh our radio show was just a fledgling. I used to have hair, believe it or not. And uh, you know, I looked a whole lot younger back then. But uh, you know, we met James and after a while, James met Ray Cobb at a hospital, and uh he turned into turned into his mission to help Ray. And uh Ray, how you doing, man? You you hold him up okay, bud?

SPEAKER_00: 2:32

Yeah, yeah, it's uh it's been a lot. I've had a lot of great memories this week of things that he's helped me do, and and uh people I've been able to help because of him. You know, it's the the interesting part, uh, you know, both of you guys was at that conference here in Winchester, Tennessee. We did a couple of years ago now. And you remember when James first stood up at the platform, he said, um, there's a lot of guys that said they'd like to meet the SOB that developed that Agent R. And he stopped and paused and said, You're looking at him. And that's really what happened. Um, when he was at Fort Gordon, uh what he the stories he shared with me is that he was a game warden. He had a little shack out in the middle of the woods close to the lakes and the ponds, like you mentioned. And they do have a lot of water moxins, rattlesnakes, and alligators in there. Um the Department of Defense threw channels back down to him, said we need to figure out what mixture needs to be done in order to kill the vegetation in three days. And says, you know, I think they put a bottle dioxin in there or a 55-gallon barrel, he said, and another barrel of diesel fuel. And it was recommended to do a 25-75, 25% dioxin, 75% diesel fuel. That would actually kill the vegetation in 10 days, and they wanted it down to three because of snipers and what was going on in Vietnam. So James had to start with that mixture and started working backwards, adding 5%, wait four or five days or weeks, see when they died, make notes, continue that till he got it down to a 50-50 ratio. And the 50-50 ratio then killed the vegetation in three days, most of it, some four, but most in three days. And uh he reported that back. And to give you another little step further, he told me that the Department of Defense went to SEDO, who was who made the dioxin, told them what James's findings were, and they said, We're not going to do that because uh mainly it would stay in the ground for a hundred years, but number two, it would probably cause health problems to everybody that came in contact with it. Well, I'm not for sure, and James didn't know where, but they wouldn't do it. But the but the VA found some way or someone that would mix it up on that 50-50 ratio, and they painted orange stripes around the barrels. And that's where the term agent orange came in. Um there's agent blue and agent white, but in all of those, they're not the same mixture. But it was pretty interesting that um they chose a little gang warden down in the middle of the forest in swamp type land. And he felt bad about it because he said he not only had to do around the lakes, they had him spraying up around the campground and the picnic areas. And he said, I think back about it. He said, I remember one time he sprayed around the picnic table that had some vegetation growing under it. He said, about 10 minutes later he looked up and there's three little kids playing on top of that picnic table. He said, I never will know what happened to them, but you know, it was freshly sprayed when they started playing. Um that was another story he told me. And and like you, the the way we met was pretty interesting. Um I had been referred from my diabetic specialist, the Dr. Powers at Vanderbilt, to go and and see a Dr. Dewey Dunn, who was the head of uh exposures over at the VA in Nashville, keeping records and doing research on um Agent Orange and other exposures. Met with him, he looked at my medical records, and he concluded as well that it was my diabetes and things were all the only common denominator was Agent Orange. And uh that was his conclusion as well. So um he said, I know somebody you need to talk with. I'll try to reach out and find him, and uh we'll we'll see if we can't get you two together. Well, James told me just a few minutes later, uh Dr. Dunn was coming down the elevator, the elevator door opened, and James was standing there, and he reached out and grabbed him by the collar and jumped him in and heard hit the closed button side, said come to my office. They went back upstairs and went in there, and he told him about my case and showed him some of the my medical records that we had been discussing in some of my notes. And uh later that night James called me and and that was about um I think that was probably somewhere around 2007, and we've been in contact with each other ever since.

SPEAKER_02: 8:13

Okay. How did you run into James Cripps? I mean, you guys probably crossed paths more than once because you guys were basically in the same business, and you I mean, your agent order's exposed that. I mean, of course it's it's nuts.

SPEAKER_00: 8:31

We most of our conversation was done by phone for a long time.

SPEAKER_03: 8:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 8:36

And then uh finally, I don't remember what was happening, but um we both were had an appointment in Nashville at the VA, and we went down and we met each other then at that time. And then later on, we had several meetings, and he has the group uh that he started called USDA, United States Veterans Alliance, and they do just exactly what he did. They help veterans win their claims or or find those uh individuals like our Alex Graham that need they need special help. And um so that's what this this group that he started has done. And uh I went down and joined, and uh he had me come down a couple of times and speak, and then they take trips from time to time, and uh we went up to Kentucky to that Miss Patty's, I don't remember what it's called, but it's a a playhouse and a dinner.

SPEAKER_02: 9:32

Patty's restaurant in Grand Rivers, Grand Rivers, Kentucky.

SPEAKER_00: 9:37

Yeah, Kentucky Lake. And uh we went up there with that group and enjoyed it. And and the neat thing was after the show that night, you know, 10 30, 11 o'clock, there was a bunch of nothing but veterans, all of us members of the US VA, sitting around in this uh conference room uh at the motel where we all stayed, and we were all talking about VA claims and VA stuff. And finally, I think it was our wives that told us we had to go to bed. And and I think it was about two o'clock in the morning when we all kind of headed back to our rooms to settle down for the night. But those type of things and the things he did up at Pitchet Forge, he had the same type of an outing up there uh that he had put together. The information that was shared during those outings led me to have the conference that you two attended down here in Manchester. I mean in Winchester. So it was uh it was kind of like a a springboard effect. I thought, wow, that's good. What would it be like to have one all day and have all these great speakers in to talk to everybody and share direct information? And so far I've had uh three of them, and all of them have been very successful, great attendants. And uh, you know, you always say, well, if one is helps gets help, then uh others it's worthwhile. Well, I know of uh three people that are now a hundred percent from that last conference with which you guys attended. So um you know that that connects back to channel.

SPEAKER_02: 11:17

I think our buddy Alex had a big hand in it too, though. Alex, uh give some of your experience with how you came across James and the being the same business this guy was in, really, as far as you know.

SPEAKER_01: 11:29

Well, it had to have something to do with me talking about Agent Orange, because uh it in addition to what Ray was saying, he's he's just mentioned orange, white, and and and blue, but there was also pink, green, and uh purple uh that were used in they were I would say that hold on a second. My job never ends. He uh they they brought that stuff in oh uh 68 was probably last time any of it was on the ground anywhere, but green, they they started monkeying around with green at 63, and purple and uh pink made it to uh Laos, I know for a fact, and but it was so toxic. You talk about three days at a one-to-one mixture, what you refer to as a 50-50 mixture. But the mechanics, the chemists called that a one-to-one. Um but there was another version which we called super orange, and if you had an emergent situation, shall we call it, where you needed a rapid uh deforestation project, uh you could go with what we called super orange, and that is a two-to-one mixture of agent orange to diesel, any kind of fusel, diesel, brake fluid, anything you had, AV gas, uh JP4, anything that'd be contaminated with some water where they didn't want to put it in an aircraft, go down to the motor pool every time they did an oil change, they'd save the oil, and they'd use that to mix it up with the orange. Or what they didn't use it so much with white, because that was cacedelic acid, uh, if I remember correctly. Uh well it's still sold, it's called Tordon 101. It's it's uh it's pretty nasty, but mostly it's picleram. Uh, the blue, I think, was the one that I'm thinking of is cacadelic acid. And again, uh you get it to adhere to things by putting the diesel in there, it causes it to move to the foliage. But man, when we uh I saw a couple of applications of uh on the Ho Chi Men Trail as it passed through uh eastern Laos, they're right up against North Vietnam, South Vietnam. And they we flew over that area pretty regularly uh when the weather permitted, if it was not monsoon and raining, cats and dogs. But I I do remember seeing a super orange, and they even said it, they even have what they call a noTAN notice to airmen, stay out of this zone. We've got some C-123s coming out of uh Cameron, not Cameron, Benoit. They're gonna be spraying this whole part of the trail. And we flew over about three, four days later, and you could still smell the diesel smell at 150,300 feet where we were flying. It was pretty rank. But more appropriately, it was a swath of brown where you could see all the way down to the ground. It ate the top canopy, the middle canopy, and the bottom canopy. I don't know if they sprayed one, waited for it to die, came back and hit it again. But they totally denuded that part of the trail. And you know, the NVA just skirted about a kilometer to the west of that and came down so they keep the foliage over the top of them and disguise their uh travels, or they go through that section at night when we ostensibly couldn't see them. But we developed turned night into day with 105 millimeter flares and things like that. That's where the spooky gunships came in, uh, C-130 uh gunships and uh C-47s. But we also had uh C-119, the old dollar 19 boxcars, outfitted those things painted them black. They were flying out of NKP, which is right on the border with Laos of Thailand. I guess right on the river, right on the Mekong. I mean, you could throw a rock and hit the river from the airport.

SPEAKER_02: 16:16

If you're ever in a battlefield and you're looking up to see a C-130 flying, and he turns you see it pop up on one wing, starts going around circles, run.

SPEAKER_01: 16:27

Well, the C-130s were still active Air Force. Most of the places we were flying out of everything he saw had an O on the tail. It stood for obsolete. That meant that it had been relinquished to Burden Sons Air, also called Air America, Southern Air Transport. It just keeps metamorphosing ever after every war. But Continental Air, Burden Sons Air and Air America technically were three different companies, but they're all owned by the what we used to call the uh Continental International Airlines or the CIA, Consolidated International Airlines. But nobody said that out in the public. We everybody knew what was going on. But James came to me, I think, when I uh went on to uh what was that, haddock.com. I think that's where he found me originally. Right 2008. Right when I first won uh my claims for 100% in 2008, I was still litigating to go back in '94. He and I started talking about what I knew about Agent Orange at that point. And I started telling him I said, well, hell, there's a lot more than Agent Orange, man. It's like Basket of Robins. It comes in a bunch of different flavors. I can't tell you which one's nastier than the other, but that super orange, that was absolutely stupefied me to see how fast that could burn through stuff. And talk about three days, I'm talking five hours.

SPEAKER_02: 18:16

Yeah, the second fastest burning agent next to Napalm.

SPEAKER_01: 18:22

If you ask me, I have a strong suspicion, and I'll explain this to you in a second, that James got that shit all over him. I don't care, he might have been wearing gloves, but there's just no way you could not get it on you directly. And if it got on him in a non uh non-diluted, it wouldn't really make any difference whether it was diluted one-to-one or if it was he just dug his hand right into the barrel. That stuff's lethal under any kind in any dosage of anything. Once you get around that stuff, you've condemned yourself to cancer.

SPEAKER_02: 19:00

Uh and I did say we told him, we talked to him one time, we talked about it, he's talking about his issues. And right, and I think he knows this conversation too. We're talking about uh specific pinpoint agent orange proof that you've been exposed to agent orange. And he got up and he said, Well, I have chloracne, which is the the uh acne form, you know, if you've been exposed to this agent orange or to the agent itself, the dioxin, then it is a direct exposure, and that's probably one that's probably one of the only things that can give you chloractine. So that's what he was explaining.

SPEAKER_01: 19:39

Chloroacne for years afterwards, and people would look at the underside of my arm and they see the little blackheads where I'd rub it up against the aircraft, stuff like that. And they says, Oh, that's a weird place to have a zit. And I said, It sure is, ain't it? And I've got some monsters behind my ears, and they keep getting infected, and I have to go to the Doctor, I didn't know it was chloracne. I honestly didn't. I just thought I wasn't taking scrubbing myself good enough with a washcloth when I got in the shower. And uh I didn't get that diagnosed until about 92. I was almost completely over it when they found out I had the porphyria. And those are the two were originally discovered to be associated with uh region orange. When they started manufacturing this stuff in 1958 down in Tennessee, everybody's coming down with porphyria and chloragne at the factory there. And they says, Oh, well, we got to buy you some new gloves. They got to come up higher than the the, they were giving them those uh the ones the women use to wash the dishes with the play tex gloves or whatever came up to about the middle of their forearm here. So they bought them some that came all the way up to their armpits, and of course it chafed at their t-shirts, it was hot and sweaty and everything. And then you'd get it onto the gloves, and then you get it onto your t-shirt and up in here, and they're complaining about having chloracne clean up into their armpit. And they said, Okay, now we're gonna put masks on you, too. All those guys have got to be dead by now. That was 58. They knew how nasty this stuff was way back then. They probably hadn't tested it enough to know that dioxin was the byproduct that they couldn't even foresee that combining 2,4D and 245D, it's got to create a third one, which is the TCDD tetrahydrocanap, or whatever the hell that stands for. And that was just an incidental byproduct, but that was the toxicity associated with it, not the actual chemical uh in in isolation between the two of them. It's just that when you put the two of them together, that's when the problem developed. But uh up in Laos, where we were, the kids would come over to the barrels. There wasn't any rhyme or reason. There was various times there was orange there, or white, or blue. And they'd open up the lids and mix all the stuff up. The kids would come over with bleach scoops with the bottoms cut off. That was the first time I ever thought about that. I thought that would work pretty good in a boat if you're trying to bail a rowboat out or something after a rainstorm, or if it's leaking, and they were scooping those things up and running out there on the PSP metal uh graded uh ground cover in the taxiways and uh where we had the reventments where we had our 01s and the uh PC sixes parked, and some of the bigger ones, the gunships. They just allows the the kids had one in each thing and they'd sprinkle it, and now it's pure. I don't think it was mixed. I don't know for a fact, but I used to watch them do it uh in the morning, they were already up doing it early, and then they'd all run down to the creek that was the flowed through the southeast corner of the valley there, and that was everybody's water supply, not ours. We had a well drilled, but everybody just scooped their water in buckets out of that river. Here's all the kids upstream rinsing off all the agent orange after the morning spray, and that water went downstream, and all the ladies are out there washing their clothes and uh scooping the water for drinking up above all the soap suds that were going down the creek. And you know that they were scooping up a lot of agent orange out of there. You can even see you know how when you spill gasoline on water, you get gasoline appearance on the surface. You could see that that's why we wouldn't drink out of it. God no, I wouldn't eat a fish out of there if if one could survive. But uh, I talk about go ahead. Has our government ever paid one dime to these poor people? Hell no, men. They all had to run for their lives. They're probably in uh prisoner war camps down in Thailand. That's the Hmong tribesmen of a big there's a big cohort of them in Fresno and another one up in uh Minnesota.

SPEAKER_02: 24:35

Uh the Hmong, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 24:37

Yeah, we called them Mayo back then. I don't remember. I guess I do remember the term Hmong, but it was uh they used what I just called them Mayo tribesmen, and there were Mayo tribesmen in northern Thailand. I know that we uh had a couple of airstrips right on the border with Laos, and they were on both sides of it, the northwest corner over there, and they all dressed the same, all black pajamas, and all the women had just tons of silver hanging off of marital weld, so to speak, they carried it with them. Didn't have any lock boxes to guard it with, so they just carried it. But I talked to Jim, uh James about that extensively, and then when he finally reached a point where he'd hit the wall, he said, wanted to know who I trusted or suggested, and that's when I turned him on to Chisholm, Chisholm, and Kirkpatrick, and said, if you're gonna have anybody do it, I trust these guys to do it. He was very successful, or I should say they were very successful. If you ever want to read about that, you just go to that CAVC site and uh type in James' name, his last name, and there James and Cripp's comment James, and it'll pop up his whole case and show it to you. I I think he you know he cut a pretty good swath. He he made it easier for a lot of people that were gonna follow him. That's my belief, anyway. It's all been busted open now, uh for Thailand. Uh I can't understand Laos. They opened up a little window of Laos from September 71 to June of 72 or something, but we were dumping some nasty crap on Laos starting about 1965. So that window should be a lot larger on paper, but of course, that's one of those anomalies. Together, we never served in Laos. We weren't there, so I don't know how we could have gotten Agent Orange on ourselves. I'm lucky, yeah. I've got the early Parkinson's symptoms, Parkinsonism, I guess, hypothyroidism, porphyria, but I didn't come down with diabetes. I haven't come down with the well, I take that back. I just got diagnosed last month with ischemic heart disease, but it they said it isn't gonna kill me, and I got one of these Duma Flachies here in my chest, my fire extinguisher in case something does happen. So I'm gonna get the new heart. I could still write a legal blog more appropriately. I hilt I hit that elk in 206 yards last week. Uh one shot right through the heart. That made me feel good. I haven't lost my vision yet either.

SPEAKER_02: 27:51

What you lost a T43 either?

SPEAKER_01: 27:58

It's it's I can't even begin to tell you that thing is monstrous. 306 booming crockets. My son shot at 316. This place looked like it was a land. Time forgot. There was more elk than I don't think I've seen that many elk in one place. Probably about 120 of them before two days was up. Too bad it is in Tennessee, man. They have a 12-bull limit or something. But uh Kentucky, buddy, a bunch of James Cut, uh, to me, he he really uh he was he was the forerunner of uh proven for a lot of other people that they could do it. You know, and there's another out uh another base up in New York that's in the same predicament in terms of uh contamination with ancient orange. It's pretty easy to figure out if you go in there and get an oil uh a soil sample. Is it for drum? Yeah, and there's a couple of others. It it turns out now that this is showing that they were spraying um ancient orange on poison oak down at Camp Pendleton in the as late as 6869. Uh uh we know that in California, folks. Fort Mac, I know that I've got one client there on that, but they swear up and down, of course. Well, um, the actual age of arms wasn't used, it was just a pre-cruiser to it. One of them is crossbone at uh 2-4D. I use that out here in my pasture. I mix that stuff down to about 20% and use it on uh Tansy ragwork because it poisons my horses, and my next door neighbor won't get rid of it, and he won't let me come on his land and spray his. So I keep treating my pastures with it. But that's a that's a 24-hour product. You spray that, and you come back 24 hours later. That thing isn't green anymore, it's brown. It looks like World War III. It looks like somebody took a torch and heated it up. Uh, I'm surprised that if it can do that all by itself, god imagine. Uh, maybe I'm not mixing it at 20, maybe I'm mixing it at 50-50, but it's pretty lethal, shit. I've got a flamethrower, not a good, not a not a military version, but the kind you use to put torch down on a rook. And uh it works real good on blackberries. But I found out that 2-4 deal, I just spray it on the leaves and come back there within two weeks, the whole plant's dead. Yeah. Well, if you got a general go down to track farm tractor supply, one of a place like that, ask for uh crossbow. Uh they got it. Uh I can't think.

SPEAKER_02: 31:03

Yeah, they settled here in southern states and tractor supply companies got it.

SPEAKER_01: 31:08

A gallon for 56 bucks, but I'll tell you what, that's rural king. They got a rural king in Tennessee. You want to spring some of that in honor, James Cribbs and be impressed with what it can do.

SPEAKER_02: 31:23

I don't know, man. I mean, it's uh a lot of inky vets right now. There's a lot of folks that he's been helping, things like that are probably at a loss. Um it's gonna take somebody very, very, very skilled in what they know how to do, what they do to just pick up a torch, just to pick it up off the ground, not to carry it. Because you lose a guy like him with all the knowledge and everything he's had, it's a big major loss. And just hopefully Sandra, his daughter, can actually pick up the torch too, because this man is pretty, you know, cussed off and raised, she's real real well versed in the whole process. And uh help help people out. Don't give up to you know, don't stop what he's doing, help him carry on his legacy, you know. I mean, it's just it's James Cripps. Come on, guys.

SPEAKER_01: 32:13

Well, I don't think we found all the ballots that were exposed to Agent Arns that served in the United States. I'm sure. Oh, you got a drop in the button.

SPEAKER_02: 32:24

I'm sure people haven't even heard about it. You guys realize, folks, listeners, James Cripps is the first one. The man on your left over here looked on the screen and those suspenders on, which is pretty cool. I like suspenders. Mr. Ray Cobb is number two. And there's been a few more, but how many how many have there been now, Radium? Do you know?

SPEAKER_00: 32:48

Oh, I have no idea. I know there's been a few more. I I know a couple of others from down in Louisiana. Um, then uh I think there was um there's been a few more from Fort McCallum, Alabama. Matter of fact, there's uh a Fort McCallum webpage now that talks about toxic exposure there. And uh I'm a member of it, look at it from time to time, and they post things where people have won their cases that were that were there in the uh 70s and 80s um because you know that was a chemical training center, and that's where they used it, and they trained with it there, and uh uh there was a gentleman by the name of Donnie Charbonneau, and he was a a sergeant. Uh he actually taught the classes, he he was drafted and he made sergeant with special um uh situation within six months. And the reason he was a chemist for Gulf Oil Company. And when they found out he was a chemist, then and all of his knowledge about different chemicals, then um they actually sent him to Fort McKellum. That's where I met him. He was actually uh a next door neighbor of mine uh in our apartment complex. And um he taught the classes, and one of the things he did was he would go out and bring in every Monday morning a new little uh three different types of tropical plants uh from from the nursery, and he would spray them all with the different chemicals, and then they would keep notes and talk about them all week and would watch them by the time the class was over Friday afternoon. There might be leaves left on any of them. But they made a point of the different chemicals and what they did. So unfortunately, the next thing I knew, uh probably 10 years after I got out of the service, which would have been somewhere around the mid-70s, um uh he maybe early eighties, he actually had a child born with a birth defect. His wife, who washed washed his clothes, um and himself came down with some nerve problems and could not lost use of hands, feet, uh twitch all the time. And they both passed away in their late 30s. And um even though the last time I talked with him, he still he said he was sure it was from the chemicals that he would mix up and uh would teach in the class, and of course he brought it home to his wife, and they both uh he was stationed there using that stuff when she became pregnant. And uh so he contributes all of that to his uh military connection, but to the best of my knowledge, uh he didn't get any claims or anything before his death. When he got out after two years and went back to Gulf Oil Company, he was still fine. It wasn't until after he'd been out about five or six years that he started having problems. That's what happened. Nice guy.

SPEAKER_02: 36:18

It takes him a while, but it takes some things a while to manifest, you know. I mean, of course the VA's got presumptive conditions and presumptive limitations. I think there's a presumption that actually there's a presumptive on uh I think Clarkney isn't it, Alex.

SPEAKER_01: 36:33

Uh the one thing that upsets me dramatically is that VA and the government, I guess I should say, not the VA specifically, has created this situation of these are the only diseases we'll recognize, but they're not basing it on a broad enough basis of experience over all veterans. They're just the ones that come down with it. There's a bunch of them come down with problems with Vietnam veterans or I suppose by extension, people like James Cripps exposed in the continental United States, but never ever hear anything about agent orange, don't ever uh apply for any benefits, are totally unaware, but they come down with diseases other than what's on the list of 14. Now, look at me, I came down with uh the Crohn's disease. My son came down with ulcerative colitis, which is basically the same thing in the large intestine, run in the small one. He's being treated with Remicata. I never got that opportunity because they didn't, well, they couldn't understand what I had. It didn't act like Crohn's disease. It didn't hit me all at once. I've had five operations and they've whacked down about 39 inches, about 95 centimeters, whatever that is. There's other diseases. I've I've had to go out and get medical opinions that uh brain glioblastoma or glioblastoma, I'm not sure, was caused by uh sinus infections from breathing it. And uh one of my bets, his name was Livingstone, he is out there in an I Corps and they're flying over him and spraying it, getting it on him. You can feel it. I've felt it before. It's like a real light oily mist that comes down. If it gets below the tree line, it still gets down on you. But he said he was exposed numerous times out in the field and kept coming down with sinus infections, and finally, uh back in 2014, he came down with uh uh brain cancer uh directly. And of course, if they fought him tooth and nail, wouldn't give it to them. I had to go out and get an independent medical opinion to win it. But it was considered like there's only three ways you can get this crap into you on your skin, through your nose, or eat it and get it into your stomach somehow.

SPEAKER_02: 39:08

Ingested, inhaling, say it again ingestion, inhalation, and um dermatol. Right. Well they call it um convection.

SPEAKER_01: 39:25

All three methods are probably all viable, and I would say that it here's what I know. When I was up there, every time the choppers came into land, they had these big uh HH 53s, call them big, ugly, friendly fellows. They were search and rescue, and they'd bring them up to Long Tien every morning and park land. They got eight rotors and they'd stir up all that red dust. And if you were down there even waiting to take off or anything, it was just a cloud of red haze that went everywhere, and you couldn't help but get it in you and you land that. Evening, and you take a canteen and you kind of get some water up your nose and blow it back out into your handkerchief, it came out pink. So I knew I was getting a lot of that dust, and that was where all the little kids with the beach bottles were dumping it on the ground with the red clay. And uh I came down with Crohn's, but I know that it from a respiratory standpoint, that's why you get lung cancer from it. It gets you breathing in your lungs. Uh I think liver cancer is viable because if you ate it like I did, or get it in your respiratory tract or something, it you got a bad chance of coming down with it wherever you ingest it. Now, as far as the skin goes, that's the chloracty. That's the poor, at least I I think that's the pathway you get that. But see a lot of guys that never had dermatitis, uh eczema, things like that. It came back.

SPEAKER_02: 41:02

If you had a cut on whole scale, if you had a cut on, you know, a cut on your body, it gets in there, it gets inside your body too, just like you swallowed in your vascular problems.

SPEAKER_01: 41:12

Well, I there's just so many different ways you could I can think of getting it in there. Now, I've gotten a guy with multiple sclerosis, I've got him uh service connected for it due to HN Orange. I just did that last fall. Uh he'd been fighting them since 1988 when he came down with it. Finally found me because I got some gal uh uh service connected for it back in 14 or 15. He heard about that. Uh you know, to me, James James Cripp's journey uh and what he did for us. I'm not ever gonna wave a flag say I'm um I could hold a candle to him. But I just I got that method, or not the method, I guess I got the mantra of win or die. If you're gonna be dying of a disease, you might as well try to fight for your win, even if you're gonna die at the end. I I just never give up. I I can't put the white flag up and wave it with any of my veterans. I fight and fight and fight until I can't see any other avenue, but uh usually they die before I can exhaust every possibility that I can exert in their behavior for on their behalf. Uh James Trips is a hell of an uh influence to me as well as anybody, as much as anybody. I was I was impressed with his winner die menu. He was he's a bad phone.

SPEAKER_00: 42:50

I think I never James was always moving forward. Uh matter of fact, he called me on on Friday while he was in dialysis before he had the surgery on a Monday, which was a week before he passed away, and he was telling me about a vehicle that um uh a handicapped van area company here in in Middleton City uh was bringing in for. And he had already on Thursday, the day before, had gone to Vanderbilt's uh driving uh test center and had passed the first half of that driving test. That um now down here, if you get any adaptive equipment paid for it, you have to go through that test at Vanderbilt. That two weeks, it's two days, two days broken down two different things. And the first half he had passed it. He was all excited that he had passed it and uh was looking forward to getting the van. He was telling me about it, it was gonna have a uh a lift that came out from underneath it like mine, and and the the back was gonna go down and make a bed and they would be able to sleep in it and everything. But um, you know, it it's uh he was always moving forward, even up to the end. You know, he just never he never slowed down, he never looked back, and he and he always had a a I'm gonna get over this, I'm gonna beat this, and uh I'm not ready to go yet, so don't don't bother me. Uh he had that type of an attitude. I think, well, you and I, John, have talked on several occasions. We know several times he was really on the edge, or even a couple of times stepped over the edge.

SPEAKER_03: 44:32

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 44:32

I remember he used to laugh and tell me that uh he was declaring some property for for Mandy, his daughter, to build a house. And he said the next thing he knew, he woke up and he was laying in front of his bulldozer. He said he didn't think two things about it, but he just couldn't remember what was going on. The bulldozer was still running. He said he just got up, climbed back on, and finished working that day. And he goes in, there's all these phone calls, blinking lights, about 10 or 12 of them, and he listens to them and it's all van, but would you call us? Would you please call us, Mr. Cripps? He called him and he said, uh, well, what's what's going on? They said, Well, how are you? How do you feel? And he told him, I feel fine. Why? They said, Mr. Cripps, you died on us. You you were were gone, and we had to shock you three times to get you to come back. And uh he said, Well, I feel fine now. They said, Come in tomorrow morning. So he said, I got ready and went on in, you know. But that was that was the way he was. He was not going to stop, you know. And and he taught me that. And you just don't quit and you don't give up. And you don't give up on veterans. If you're working and helping a veteran and you run into a roadblock, you figure out he would use to he would use to code me. He said, you know, you do the same thing I do, but you just kind of sugarcoated, and you kind of slip around the corner without them watching. And I laughed. I said, Well, yeah, that's kind of the way I was taught that that you get, you know, you get more flies with honey than you do any other way. And and um we got the same accomplishments over the years. And uh he he would tell me what to do and what he had done and and how it worked, and I would do the same thing. I just may not get as aggravated as to be a and tell him off like he would. He had he didn't hold back any punches, man. He he let him know what he thought of where he was where he was coming from and where he was going, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 46:34

And don't ever tell that man not to poke, yeah. Never tell that man knocking poke the bear.

SPEAKER_00: 46:40

Don't tell you you can't knock that wall down because I'll say, you how many times don't mean to hit it, you know?

SPEAKER_01: 46:46

I mean, yeah, I don't know how many don't poke the bear crap. But if I hadn't poke the bear and if James hadn't, we'd all be in a world of you know what we all four all three of us have been in trouble.

SPEAKER_02: 46:59

Yeah, we all three have been in trouble, you know. I'd still be stuck at uh probably 70 percent.

SPEAKER_01: 47:07

I heard that in 1989.

SPEAKER_00: 47:09

Oh well, I would I would have zero I would be at zero if it wasn't.

SPEAKER_01: 47:12

I think zero percent for that tinnitus. Now let's not rock the boat for five or ten years and we'll come back and get 10%.

SPEAKER_02: 47:22

Yeah, right. But James also was a stickler because I mean he would interview you and he would talk to you about your claim. And what he was doing actually was a car salesman, he was qualifying your backside to see if you're on the up and up. Because James wanted to make sure that the people he help are um legitimate, and if he felt that you were dishonest or illegitimate either way, with your VA stuff, you know, like he had little clues and things like that. I don't think he would get involved too much with you because he knows that uh, you know, reputation is a big thing. But if you made it past that and he helped you, he wanted to help you with everything that you deserve to get. Make sense? It don't matter if it's a zero percent, or he wanted to help make sure you got it.

SPEAKER_00: 48:20

I remember very clearly before I even won my first case. I could remember him talking about, well, we're gonna get the diabetes, and you're gonna have stenic heart disease, and you're gonna have this, and then this is gonna happen. I mean, he was going on and on and on, and and sure enough, you know, 15 years later, everything he told me that day was true. Every every problem that I developed, everything that came down that the doctors had to do, he was correct about every bit of it. And um, just so much that he led me all the way through, and and then when I was working for caregiver level two, which he and I both had to fight for for that, um he turned me into Alex. He said, uh, you know, when I got denied, uh, he said, Well, you could appeal it, but it wouldn't do yet. I said, Well, what do you think? He said, Go to Alex.

SPEAKER_02: 49:18

Oh, Alex.

SPEAKER_00: 49:19

I called Alex and Alex got it for me in about eight or nine months. It was wasn't that long. But I think a lot of that had to do with the groundwork that James had had me do on my first original claim that Alex could see everything that I had, and it was he knew I remember he knew just a few, seemed like a few minutes, the way he was going to approach it on my pill, and it worked.

SPEAKER_01: 49:49

Well, it's a recipe just like baking cookies. It's just every person is a different flavor of cookies. You got sugar cookies, you got peanut butter cookies, you got pecan, you know, this and that, oatmeal. It's pies right now. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that they're different kinds of cookies. It's the everything you're starting out with a cookie. That's what the basic unit is. And I I I James and I talked about this more than once about uh credibility and and uh veterans who they didn't have enough supportive um evidence in their favor that you could trust them enough. And I I got I got burned by a few of them. One of them, my congressman handed him to me, and and I got into his file in uh the old-fashioned way, and then about six months after I took him on, I got VBMS, and boom, I'm in there and I'm looking at his file and I see uh DD214. I went, wow, that's weird. I already have that. And I took a look at it and it was a different one, and this one was newer than the one he handed me, and it said OTH, DD258 on it, and that that confused me, of course, because he showed me one that said honorable, and uh I discovered that different person from whom he was trying to put himself out as. And I was this far away from taking him up to the court or the board, and I if once you do that, you're stuck with him, you have to defend him at the board all the way through the conclusion of that. I don't have any objection to it, but uh, I didn't want to be saddled with a a a Gomer, a guy that would lie to me. And now we have a jungle drum, so to speak. You've met Wesley Macaulay, I think Jennifer Lonas has been on the show, some of the others. We have a consortium of about 20 or 30 of us, all of whom have gone through this SMC school. And we tend to find somebody comes to us and it's just too good to be true. How could this happen? You're only in the service for 18 days and you managed to come down with all these diseases and injuries that have plagued you for life, and TBI and PTSD. So uh some Wesley will call me and he'll say, Hey, danger, danger. If Joe Edwards calls you, you know, be on the lookout. I I I I vetted this guy and he's got more problems. I I actually pulled his POA and you don't want it. And we all communicate that back and forth to protect ourselves so we don't invest a bunch of time or energy in one of these jobs and then find out we're holding a can of worms. Uh, and it happens. It's really sad that guys claim they've got purple hearts and everything, and then you get into their file and discover they never left Fort Watucha in Arizona or one of these places that never ever had any service in Vietnam or overseas at all.

SPEAKER_02: 53:23

And tell them you had a disclaimer, Alex. Have a disclaimer, says, be be on the open up with me, because if you're lying to me, I'm going to find out.

SPEAKER_01: 53:34

Yeah, it's too easy. Uh it's sort of like shooting fish in a barrel to find out some guy's lying to you. With V BMF, you when you guys get a claims file, and I know this because I've gotten quite a few claims files uh back on a CD uh for my clients. Uh it's a little bit more tenuous when you do it that way because stuff from 1968's right here, right next to it's 2011 and then 1980, and then 2019, it's all he bechibi jumbled together. Unlike that, the VBMS is a beautiful chronological uh assembly of everything in your file. And you can just scroll through, it's all labeled. If you see DD214 and some kind of subwriter associated with it, and then 150 documents later you see a claim, uh, another DD214, you're going, What? Why would there be two in here? And and that's when you find this kind of thing. DBMS is not very duplicative, but going back to the the real subject of this this blog or video, uh, James Cripps taught me quite a bit. I I might have taught him a lot of stuff and given him a lot of advice, but he gave me a uh an education and compassion, I think. Uh he the guy was uh you know, he could have been a priest. He he had that countenance where everybody's okay. I don't care what you've done. Come to me, I'll fix it for you. But of course, uh it hinged on honesty. I've I've been lucky I've only one.

SPEAKER_00: 55:28

Beg pardon? Reminded me of one case that I had of a gentleman in in Michigan who kept calling me and trying to figure out he was he had I I'd helped him get his first 60 percent with his with his knees, uh was because he's diabetic. And then he was trying to get his foot and he was trying to get his back, and and he, you know, he had the 60% for one knee, and I think 40% for the other. And he calls me and he's trying to figure out, he said, now how does this affect my back? And all asking me all these questions. I said, What does your doctor say? Well, my doctor says this and says that. Well, is he putting it right? No, he hasn't put that in right yet. He just tells me. And this is a VA doctor, and so I said, Well, just ask him to put that in your notes. Well, we keep talking along the following. He says, What time is it? I said, Well, it's 11:30 here, it's 12:30 your time there in Michigan. He says, Oh, I gotta go. I got a two o'clock tea time. So I realized he did not have very bad knee problems or back problems if he's gonna go out and play golf. I called James, I said, James, what should I do? You know, I said, This guy is trying to rip, rip everybody off, and and we'll end up giving, you know, a bad reputation to other veterans. And he said, right, forget it. He said, just they'll get they'll catch it. He either won't get it or he'll mess up and they'll catch it. And he says, Uh, you know what I do in those cases? I said, No, he said, when they call, I just don't answer the phone. And that's what I did. And for all six months after that, he called once a week or every other week, and he didn't answer the phone, and finally he quit calling.

SPEAKER_01: 57:15

Well, I've I've had a a guy looking at a C and P exam three or four days after he had it for aid and attendance. He said he arrived all by himself. He drove himself to the exam. And I went, Well, how in Sam Hill could you be needing aid in attendance if you could still drive? He says, Well, I only drive you know short distances in the community, no more than five or ten miles. I said, You should get behind the wheel claiming what you're trying to claim, and you're behind the wheel of a car. I can't represent you. I had another guy who was uh doing uh VRE, doing Chinese dialect in college, you know, like on a BRE claim. And I said, Well, how could you be trying to learn Chinese dialect if you're needing SMCT? He said, Well, I don't know, it's why I keep myself occupied. I said, How do you get to the college in the evening? He said, Well, my wife drives me. I said, Thank God for that. Drop the class, I'll never be able to win the claim for you. I honestly believe that he needs it. He's got all the psychologists and the psychiatrists say he needs it. Yeah, but he said he doesn't want to park the car, he doesn't want to give up his life, but he he can't remember what he's doing. So what's the purpose of it? It's just a entertainment, but it's depriving him of the ability to win.

SPEAKER_02: 58:56

I know people don't need it to get it. But you know, it's just it's hard to get.

SPEAKER_01: 59:18

In the absence of his wife, I'm not gonna fight for. I'm just not. I I I I have morals on that. And I can tell if a guy's still driving a car. I honestly don't believe he deserves to have a tenants. It's not that I'm anti-veteran. Boy, you'll never find a guy that's more for veterans than me. Um, probably James Chris to boot or Ray or you. I mean, we want him to win, but we're not gonna cheat, steal, and lie for them to get them there. I'm not gonna do it. I'm sure you guys have at least my morals in that subject.

SPEAKER_02: 59:56

All right. Well, guys, we're about out of time, so let me go ahead and finish. Finish the show off. I'm gonna go ahead and uh, if you guys don't mind, I'm gonna go ahead and read his obituary, get the details out. Uh Chris James's name, his full name is James Melvin Cripps. He was born January 40, or January 19th, 1949. And he died October 10th, 2025, Action City, Tennessee. Uh James Melvin Cripps of Axon City, Tennessee passed away peacefully on the morning of October 10th, 2025, surrounded by the love of his family. Born on January 19, 1949, in Nashville, James lived a life of purpose, grit, and faith. And in 1967, he made two lifelong commitments. He volunteered to serve in the United States Army, and he married the love of his life, Sandra Lee Fiffinger, Chris. Together built an amazing life that has uh strongly enduring. During his Army service, James actually drove for the commanding general at Fort Gordon, Georgia. Then he served as a game warden with the military and a military policeman. And it was during that time that he was exposed to Agent Orange, and it was a toxin that would challenge his health for the rest of his life, but didn't challenge his spirit. After leaving the military, James worked as a mechanic and retired from Exxon in 1985. He founded Custom Wood Products Incorporated, where he designed and built one of a kind handcrafted custom furniture for Nashville's finest homes and families, including those of Stephen Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman, Vince Gill, Billy Ray Cyrus, Jeannie C. Riley, and many others. So he was the furniture maker to the stars. His work was as sturdy and beautiful as his character of the man who built it. He made some good furniture. Really good, and he was good at what he did. In 1977, James DeSander bought a 35-acre plot in Nashville City, Tennessee, where they raised their children and built quite literally their family home. James built his house with his own two hands. The first thing he ever built there was a doghouse, and the second was a family home that still stands to this day. He never said the word can't unless it was followed by the word yet. Jim was the devoted husband, father, and papa. He taught his children to hunt, fish, prey, and play. Life on Petway was full of life, twice a day fishing in the summer, twice a day hunting in the winter, laughter around every corner, and faith at the center of it all. In 1997, on his 48th birthday, James suffered a massive heart attack. His brother John's quick axes saved his life, beginning a new chapter of resilience that would define the decades that followed. When doctors told him he might have 10 years left, he proved them wrong because he lived an additional 28 more years. Never want to accept injustice, James spent years researching his own medical conditions, uncovered undeniable proof that agent orange had been used inside the continental United States. The military nationally designed it, but James Cripps became the man who proved it. His courage and persistence changed history, leading the government to acknowledge the truth and paving the way for countless veterans to receive the benefits they deserve. Through the mission, he discovered his purpose, helping other veterans win their battles with the VA. He founded the U.S. VA, United States Veterans Alliance with a handful of friends who shared his determination. Today, more than 40 of their members are recognized as 100% disabled veterans and test attest to James's advocacy, relentless advocacy. Beyond his mission, James was a craftsman, car lover, hunter, storyteller, and the very definition of a family man. He was a friend to all who needed help and a champion for those who couldn't fight for themselves. Even as illness took its toll, he never complained. He simply found new missions, new people to help, and a new ways, new ways to smile. Pitts survived by his devoted wife 58 years, Sandra Lee Cripps, his son Jim Cripps, his wife Emily, grandson Castle Cripps, his daughter Mandy Plemons, husband Nathan, and granddaughters Alex and Adrian McCormick, Samantha Plemens and chief and grandson Chris Plemens, his daughter Lawrence Pence, and grandchildren Allie, Nikki, and Toey, Toby, his brother and lifelong best friend John Cripps, and sisters Ann, Ooh, and Way and Susie Stafford. So John's still alive. He is in preceding death by his good friends Floyd Barnes, Henry Barnes, Harry Horner, and Jim Lee, a group he loved like brothers. I guess they were all pretty good little, good little boys there. So James lived 28,023 days, each one filled with purpose, laughter, and love. At the copper he was, he built not only furniture but a legacy that will stand the test of time. As his family and friends bow their heads, we know God has blessed the man who built the beds. The family according invites relatives and friends to visit on Wednesday, October 22nd, this coming Wednesday, from 3 o'clock in the afternoon until 7 o'clock in the evening in the West Hall at Harper Funeral Home in Crematory 6962 Charlotte Pike in Nashville. That's Central Time, guys. The funeral service will be held on Thursday, October 23rd at 11:30 in the morning with visiting prior to the service starting at 10 o'clock in the morning. The committed service will immediately follow at 2 o'clock in the afternoon by an escorted quartage at Middle Tennessee Veterans Cemetery, 7931 Macrory Lane in Nashville. In lieu of customary remembrances, uh basically flowers and things like that, the family requests donations to be made to the United States Veterans Alliance, USVA. This can be done by contacting Mr. Bobby Phillips at area code 615-476-1796. Again, that's Bobby Phillips at 615-476-1796. Long obituary, guys, but I mean it's uh that's hard to say goodbye to somebody, that statute. I mean, you know, you get used to talking to James. It's like, well, what's gonna happen there? It's kind of like uh my previous co-host, you know, he's still with us, but uh he's had uh pretty serious uh injuries, and uh his communication skills are not the best. Well, you miss people like that. So, but uh Alex, thanks for coming on and uh helping us uh say goodbye to James and uh Ray, I will uh thank you for co-hosting and uh I'll see you next week, buddy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:47

Sounds good. Good thing John Younger and me because y'all can make this one for me too after I'm gone. I'm 75 here comes shortly.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:58

So we'll do one for you, buddy. I mean you're part of the crew, you know, you're part of the group, buddy. We can't we can't do it without you. You know, we got you back, so uh uh we got you. You're part of you're part of the old crew. I mean, you know, we our friendship is uh, you know, probably a lot a lot stronger than uh than a lot of other folks, but uh you know, we've been that way for a while.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:21

I've never been a parade kind of guy. I don't wear one of those Vietnam hats. I don't want people to come running up to me and spray the life on my face and say thank you for your service.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:34

Oh, I've had a lot of issues with that. I mean, I've I've actually chewed some folks out for that stuff. I'm like, you look at this group, this group, and this group, look at you. This is a big meeting, okay? They all three have different agendas. I said, Can you imagine the power of positivity you would have if your agenda, your agenda, and your agenda were based on the same and you're on the same page, you get a whole lot more done, but you just run around in circles. Look like a circle drunk trying to find a pivot, man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:06

Well, my mission in life is very simple. I have one, you know, my North Star is veterans, and it always will be. I you know, like I get pestered to do all kinds of little extras, like, hey, would you celebrate and do this for us or that for them? And I went, no, it's veterans. I'm not gonna go out and do a clothing drive or something. Uh I'd litigate, that's my job. You guys, somebody else can go out and wave the flags on veterans dead for me.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:36

Well, we'll see. I gotta mean Mr. Wesley. Wesley can't do it, but Mr. Benger, we're gonna we're heading to we're heading to the Federal Circuit, buddy. All right, listen, I gotta get off. Uh again, guys, thanks for coming on. We'll do this again next week. Uh, we might have a pinch hitter because Thursday's Jangus funeral. We might have to have somebody step in on the show, but uh, I'll be in contact with some folks. But with that, this is John on behalf of Alex and Ray, Mr. Cobb and Mr. Graham. We'll be shutting her down for now. See you guys later. Thank you very much. Bye bye, and good night.