Agent Orange related materials are concentrated in the Burch and Pike Collections. Many of these items are currently being added to our online Virtual Vietnam Archive.

The Burch Collection is comprised of the records of the National Vietnam Veterans Coalition (NVVC). A bulk of this collection is organizational correspondence in addition to materials related to the major issues facing Vietnam Veterans. The NVVC was very active during much of the Agent Orange liability litigation and the collection reveals the breadth of their contacts and interests. This portion of the collection contains NVVC records, court documents, congressional testimony and copies of the Congressional Record, newsletters, newspaper and magazine articles, scientific journal articles, and governmental and private corporate studies concerning the effects of Agent Orange.

The NVVC collection also contains some of the organizational records of the Agent Orange Coordinating Council headed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. In addition, a number of state level Agent Orange organizations in New Jersey, Oklahoma, and elsewhere sent to the NVVC copies of their records and newsletters.

Court documents within the collection relate to the Agent Orange class action suit and to the establishment of the Agent Orange Class Assistance Program. The collection also contains court documents from litigation brought against the government and Agent Orange manufacturers beyond the scope of the class action suit. Of particular interest in this regard are documents related to the Supreme Court case and decision in the Shirley Ivy v. Diamond Shamrock, et. al. and the Cate Jenkins "whistleblower" case against the Environmental Protection Agency. Other interesting court documents include Dow Chemical records from the early 1960s that identify dioxin, the contaminant in Agent Orange, as a highly poisonous chemical and probable carcinogen.

Political Tone of the Burch Collection: A significant number of newspaper and magazine articles and newsletters refer to the use of chemical weapons in Vietnam, the effects of dioxin and herbicide exposure, the class action suit, the class assistance program, and the failures of the US Government and Veterans Administration. Many such articles were provided to the NVVC by other Agent Orange organizations and individuals and much of this material is particularly biased against Agent Orange manufacturers and the US government.

The Douglas Pike Collection provides a significant amount of military and government documentation regarding the Vietnam War use of herbicide. The records in this collection are more balanced than the Burch collection in that they include government reports and justifications for herbicide use as well as the postwar studies by the National Academy of Sciences and others that challenged the wisdom of such use. In addition, the Pike collection is replete with newswire, newspaper, and magazine articles concerning American use of biological and chemical weapons in Vietnam.

The Vietnam Archive possesses a number of periodicals which are either specific to the Agent Orange issue or devote significant space to it. These periodicals include Agent Orange, Agent Orange Review, and US Veterans: News and Report. Periodicals can be search in the Virtual Vietnam Archive.

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