U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that he feared Spanish public opinion might turn against the U.S. once results of the nuclear contamination study were revealed. In August 2010, a Spanish government source revealed that the U.S. had stopped the annual payments it has made to Spain, as the bilateral agreement in force since the accident had expired the previous year. On 19 October 2015, Spain and the United States signed an agreement to further discuss the cleanup and removal of contaminated land. Under a statement of intent signed by Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the two countries were to negotiate a binding agreement to further restore and clear up the Palomares site and arrange for the disposal of the contaminated soil at an appropriate site in the U.S. Aftermath While serving on the salvage ship during recovery operations, Navy diver Carl Brashear had his leg crushed in a deck accident and lost the lower part of his left leg. His story was the inspiration for the 2000 film Men of Honor. In March 2009, Time magazine identified the Palomares accident as one of the world's "worst nuclear disasters". Marked long-term occurrences of cancer and other health defects occurred among the surviving USAF personnel directed to the accident site in the days following the crash to clean up the contamination. Most of the afflicted personnel have had difficulty securing any type of compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs due to the secretive nature of the cleanup operation and the Air Force's refusal to acknowledge that adequate safety measures to protect first responders may not have been taken. In June 2016, The New York Times published an article on the 50th anniversary lingering legacy of the Palomares accident. In December 2017, one of the airmen involved in the clean-up, Victor Skaar, sued the Department of Veterans Affairs in the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Skaar was appealing the Department's refusal of medical treatment for leukopenia that Skaar believes was caused by his exposure at Palomares. He also petitioned for the Court to certify a class of veterans "who were present at the 1966 cleanup of plutonium dust at Palomares, Spain[,] and whose application for service-connected disability comp based on exposure to ionizing radiation [VA] has denied or will deny." The certification of this class was granted by the Court in December