How your support is helping veterans affected by toxic exposures

Dan Clare was only weeks into his enlistment with the Air National Guard when his life changed completely. When the United States was attacked on 9/11, he was called to duty to assist first responders.
“I flew with the FEMA teams to New York that night. It was something that I was proud to be a part of,” said Clare. “After that, I was spending as much time as I could in the military.”
This experience eventually led him to a new mission through DAV. In 2007, Clare was called to active duty, where he made a discovery that would have a lasting impact on America’s heroes and the benefits they have earned for generations to come.
“The smell of burn pits was the first thing to greet us at Balad, Iraq,” he said. "They were burning everything that you could think of—body parts from the hospital, jet fuels and all kinds of carcinogenic trash. It was all going out in that burn pit.”
When Clare learned of a sensitive internal military memo that showed how dangerous the exposures were, he sent it to DAV and America found out about the next Agent Orange.
Listen as Dan Clare shares how his courageous decision to leak the memo changed the narrative for DAV’s advocacy and for veterans affected by toxic exposures.