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 ===For the sake of its own credibility, the U.S. Army should accept responsibility for the
sheep kill in Skull Valley in 1968 that was caused by a nerve-agent test gone awry.
===Yet, despite its own reports, which found nerve agent in samples taken from the area
where the 6,000 sheep died, the Army refuses to fess up. It continues to split hairs over
cause and effect, admitting only that a nerve-agent test at nearby Dugway Proving Ground
the day before the sheep died may have contributed to the deaths.
===The Army's refusal to accept responsibility for the sheep kill poisons its relationship
with Utahns to this day. Because of it, some people never will trust the Army's claims
that the incineration of chemical weapons at Tooele Army Depot is safe, for example.
===The case against the Army in the sheep deaths is circumstantial but overwhelming. The
latest piece in the evidence chain came to light last week when The Tribune unearthed a
report the Army completed in 1970 showing that nerve agent was found at the site of the
sheep deaths. The report was declassified in 1978, but apparently never has circulated
outside the military.
===Other Army investigations provided the probable explanation for how the nerve agent
ended up in the area outside the boundaries of Dugway Proving Ground where sheep came in
contact with it. A low-flying jet sprayed the oily nerve agent on a test range the day
before the sheep died. One of the tanks on the jet malfunctioned and some of the agent
continued to be sprayed as the pilot finished his run and began climbing to a higher
altitude. Winds then carried the stuff off the base and over the sheep. A chemical related
to the nerve agent was found in the dead animals.
===The Army's own tests refuted an alternative explanation that commercial insecticides
may have killed the sheep.
===Though the Army compensated ranchers for the loss of the animals, it never has admitted
responsibility.
===The Army may have dodged legal liability by refusing to accept blame for the sheep
kill. But the lasting public mistrust it has engendered is beyond calculation.
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