DATE: Saturday, November 1, 1997            TAG: 9711010704

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   47 lines

POISON GAS SIGNS IGNORED BY PENTAGON, PANEL SAYS

The final report of a White House panel says the Pentagon has dismissed credible evidence that thousands of Marines may have been exposed to poison gas when they crossed Iraqi minefields as they invaded Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The panel, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, said the Department of Defense's failure to fully investigate the incident involving the Marines is ``highly damaging to DOD's credibility.''

The finding is one of several harsh criticisms of the Pentagon contained in the final report, which was presented to President Clinton on Friday.

The report by the 11-member White House panel, like a congressional report earlier this week, recommends that the Defense Department be stripped of oversight in the government's investigation of whether U.S. troops were poisoned by Iraqi chemical weapons.

``The committee perceives that public mistrust about the government's handling of Gulf War veterans' illnesses has not only endured, it has expanded,'' the panel said. ``This persistent atmosphere of distrust ill serves the nation.''

Kenneth Bacon, the Defense Department's chief spokesman, said many of the attacks on the Pentagon were unfair because they failed to account for the dramatic expansion of the Pentagon's investigation into the health problems reported by thousands of veterans.

``There's a lot to criticize in the way the Pentagon has handled this in the past,'' he said. ``But I think we have been doing a much better job.''

The Pentagon has acknowledged only one incident in which large numbers of U.S. troops may have been exposed to Iraqi poison gas: the March 1991 demolition of a sprawling ammunition depot in southern Iraq. The Defense Department has estimated that as many as 100,000 troops were exposed to nerve gas as a result of the demolition.

But the report by the presidential committee reports that there is credible evidence that troops were exposed to chemical weapons in a second incident, when thousands of Marines from the 1st and 2nd Divisions crossed the Iraqi front lines on Feb. 24, 1991, the first day of the ground war. Chemical-weapons specialists in both divisions said they detected poison gas.

The White House panel's report said the Pentagon had ``failed to pursue, acknowledge or even account for'' the chemical detections by the Marines. KEYWORDS: PERSIAN GULF WAR GULF WAR SYNDROME

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