TFTPTF has completed the first portion of an in-depth and accurate timeline, complete with official documentation, etc. Previously we have been forced to rely on the Marine Corps for any “official” information on Camp Lejeune. Over the past 11 years Jerry Ensminger and Maj. Tom Townsend have chipped away at this outer shell to get to the truth of the matter. The information I used to compile this time line was painstakingly gathered through countless Freedom of Information Act requests and pressure upon the Marine Corps to provide the original documents rather than their spin on what they claimed to have occurred at Camp Lejeune.
Even though the Marine Corps has released thousands of documents pertaining to Camp Lejeune; we are still missing many key documents. Within days of the release of our time line, a Marine Corps official told me that I will not find any “smoking guns” in the documents. I replied the smoking gun may not be among the documents we have, but I can tell where it was and when it occurred.
Constructing a time line is like assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle with lots of missing pieces. It can be very frustrating and laborious. Once the task is completed, the missing pieces stand out like a sore thumb but you can overlook them and still see what the big picture is suppose to be. This is exactly what happened with our time line project.
The purpose of this time line is to unravel the truth and dispel the deceit perpetrated by the Marine Corps. Each entry contains a reference. CLW stands for Camp Lejeune Water and is the brand given by the Marine Corps and the private contractor they hired to locate documents remaining on the base. CERCLA stands for Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act and is the brand given to the documents from the EPA.
Here is the link to our time line. You will need Adobe reader to view the document. Click on the link listed below.
Please compare it to the “official” USMC Chronologies that you currently find below. No one Marine Corps chronology is correct or complete. As you read through these chronologies you will find omissions, obfuscation of the facts, misdirection and several complete fabrications. There is no doubt that you will find the differences between our time line and the Marine Corps’ quite staggering.
U.S.M.C. Timeline #1- Original timeline written by Elizabeth Betz (never released to the public)
U.S.M.C. Timeline #2- Official USMC timeline released to the public February 2001
U.S.M.C. Timeline #- Latest of USMC timeline using erroneous GAO report (rev. Spring 2008)
One last point to consider. The Marine Corps spent a considerable amount of the tax payer’s money to hire Booze, Allen and Hamilton to gather all the documents pertaining to the water contamination. Some of the documents are still not available to the public. These documents appear on Baker Environmental Camp Lejeune’s website and is accessible by the public. However, it is almost impossible to use this data base unless you know what you are specifically looking for before you begin. There are no indexes, no table of contents or anything to assist the general public in making sense of the thousands of documents. It is like having 15,000 cards from a baseball card collection scattered all over the floor and trying to find one player in particular. Here is the link to their website: http://bakerenv.com/camplejeune_irp/
