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Former CIA agent claims the military poisoned his family at Camp Stanley — and used national security concerns to cover it up

Photo: Courtesy photos, License: N/A

Courtesy photos

The Shipp children outside Camp Stanley.

Photo: N/A, License: N/A

Courtesy photos

Decontamination crew at the Shipp’s house, 2001.

Photo: N/A, License: N/A

Courtesy photos


Lorena still lives in northern Virginia, while ex-husband Kevin has since moved to Georgia. Joel lives with his fiancée and newborn daughter in Florida. Lorena, Kevin, and Joel have all been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder since leaving Camp Stanley, and Joel continues to suffer from immune system deficiencies. “There’s been a lot of depression. It ended up causing my father to drink, and medically, physically and mentally, it took our lives,” Joel said. “It took my father’s pension, it took all our belongings, my family eventually had to file for bankruptcy.”

“My oldest son [Joel] is still suffering, his immune system is still shot. … I’m afraid it ruined his life,” Kevin said. Fed up with years of silence, Kevin recently drafted his own memoir, hoping to tell the story with a litany of unclassified documents he collected throughout the ordeal. Those documents include the medical reports detailing his family’s suffering, photographs and reports from the decontamination company, reports on mold inside the home, and emotional 2001 journal entries by his son Joel. When he submitted it to the CIA for the mandatory review, he says, the agency redacted almost all of it.

“It looked like they took a can of black spray paint to it, just blacked the whole thing out. … Things that are certainly not classified, things related to my family’s illness.” Blocked from taking the case to court and silenced, Kevin had hoped the book would bring some kind of closure. The agency’s response made him all the more angry.

“They injured my family, they basically tried to blackmail us,” he said. Most of all, he claims, “They abused the national security privilege to do it.” •

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