A troubling report from the House Government Operations Committee charging that the Reagan administration obstructed a federal study on Agent Orange gives credence to the idea that some Vietnam veterans never will find justice in Washington.

Agent Orange, a dioxin-contaminated jungle defoliant, was used during the Vietnam War to eliminate enemy cover, has been blamed by veterans groups for causing 19 types of cancer. The study by the Centers for Disease Control, canceled in 1987 after scientists concluded that they had insufficient information to determine the affect of Agent Orange on humans, was to be an vindication for those veterans’ groups, which had spent years lobbying for support for veterans who suffer from a disproportionately high incidence of cancer.

Tampering charges by the House panel should not be taken lightly. The American Legion and the Vietnam Veterans of America already have filed suit against the government for failing to complete the study. The panel’s conclusions rightfully give the veterans’ groups reason to distrust any results from earlier studies and call for new research.

The veterans are not alone in their suspicions that Agent Orange was more damaging than what the White House has been willing to admit. Last March, the Department of Veterans Affairs agreed to compensate about 1,600 veterans with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer or the lymph glands, and in 1984 seven manufacturers of Agent Orange agreed to pay $180 million to veterans who were exposed to the chemical, although the companies would not acknowledge that it caused injuries.

Veterans have a right to ask whether the government can be trusted to produce honest data on a subject as politically sensitive as Agent Orange. If the House panel charges prove accurate, the former administration should be made to account for actions that increased the suffering of thousands of Vietnam veterans.