Welcome to the Empire Files podcast. This is Abby Martin. This is the audio version of each episode of the Empire Files hosted on Telesore English. You can watch every episode at the Empire Files. TV.

There's no phrase U.S. politicians love to repeat more than support the troops. This pledge is hammered into the American psyche at

every turn, commemorated by several national holidays where those same politicians give big

ceremonial speeches declaring their love for veterans. But a dark hidden history shows that they're

no friend of service members, but rather their greatest enemy. An easy way to prove this is to look at how quickly they betray and abandon their

soldiers after ruining their lives, and even after using them as literal lab rats.

The Army was conducting experiments on enlisted soldiers after the use of chemical weapons

in the first major clash of empires, World War I.

They were hoping to prove the bizarre idea that black soldiers' skin would be more resistant

to chemical weapons so they could put them on the front lines.

Declassified Pentagon documents show these race-based chemical tests occurred between 1942 and

1944, during which around 60,000 people were experimented on with

skin and lung-burning chemicals like mustard gas, nerve gas, and leucite, a chemical agent

that causes severe chemical burns upon skin contact in the form of giant fluid-filled blisters.

Testing on African Americans didn't prove their magical skin theory, so they took a group of Puerto Rican U.S. soldiers on a training exercise in Panama,

where they were made to sit in a jungle while they were sprayed with chemical weapons, with no protection, all to see if their magical Puerto Rican skin would be resilient to it.

The Pentagon Brass were only concerned with documenting the immediate effects.

They completely ignored the long-term impact of these weapons,

a litany of life-threatening illnesses, including leukemia, skin cancer, and emphysema.

The tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers subjected to these racist tests

started experiencing chronic symptoms immediately afterwards.

One problem. They couldn't get medical treatment because they were sworn to secrecy.

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