Radioactive Man

Frank Vera III served in the Air Force. Frank Vera III has health problems. Frank Vera III claims that those health problems trace directly from his time at George Air Force Base, that the U.S. military refuses to take responsibility for any of it, and that the tribe of similarly afflicted veterans he has gathered constitutes proof. Maddy Crowell doesn’t know what to think. The ensuing feature is part investigation, part profile, and part a tour of the demoralizing quagmire that is weaponized bureaucracy. The end result is eminently unsatisfying—which is exactly the point.

It was impossible for me not to see Frank’s Facebook group as part of a larger trend toward conspiratorial thinking—including on the part of some who now occupy the highest positions of power in the federal government. And yet the ubiquity of the terms “conspiracy” and “misinformation” obscures the fact that not all conspiratorial thinking is mistaken. Which is why separating the facts of Frank’s story from various fictions he’d picked up online presented such a challenge. Was I myself falling for a conspiracy theory? Or had I just landed on a major cover-up?