ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 11, 1996 TAG: 9612110027
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Backed by testimony from Gulf War veterans who said they had been exposed to Iraqi chemical weapons, lawmakers accused the Pentagon Tuesday of suppressing information on contamination.
But the head of U.S. operations in the 1991 war, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, repeated in an interview the Pentagon stance that there is no evidence the Iraqis used chemical weapons and emphasized that ``there was no cover-up on the part of the military.''
That stance was strongly disputed at a House Government Reform and Oversight subcommittee hearing. ``Routinely,'' said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., head of the human resources subcommittee, reports of chemical exposures during the war ``have been dismissed, discounted, discredited or denied.''
Rep. Stephen Buyer, R-Ind., a Gulf War veteran, said he hoped Defense Secretary-designate Sen. William Cohen ``will clean house with some of the people who have been stonewalling.''
Gulf War veterans have spoken often of chemical alarms going off and chemical agents being detected during the war, but the Pentagon, pointing out that there is no record of a soldier sickened on the field, has consistently said those alarms were false.
That position was altered in May when the Defense Department announced that there was evidence that chemical toxins were stored at a weapons depot in southern Iraq blown up by American troops after the war, and that up to 20,000 service members could have been exposed to low levels of contaminants.
The panel heard testimony from an Army chemical detections expert who said he discovered a vat of blister agents and other chemicals at a Kuwaiti girls' school in October 1991.
The panel also heard from a Marine operator of a Fox chemical detection vehicle who spoke of monitoring liquid and vapor chemicals during the fighting and a Marine major who believes the Lou Gehrig's disease that has crippled him is a result of chemical exposure.
The Fox operator, Sgt. George Grass, also said he had detected mustard gas at a weapons depot near the airport outside Kuwait City that contained ammunition boxes with markings from the United States and Holland.
A Nobel Prize-winning geneticist said in a New York Times interview published Tuesday that he might have to revise the findings of a 1994 study he headed on possible links between chemicals and Gulf War illnesses as a result of the latest Pentagon revelations.
Dr. Joshua Lederberg of Rockefeller University said his study group was unaware of the chemicals at the ammunition dump destroyed by Americans or the seriousness of other chemical detection reports in finding no conclusive evidence of a link between chemicals and illnesses.
At the Pentagon, spokesman Kenneth Bacon stressed that defense officials were unaware of the chemicals at the Kamisiyah weapons dump at the time of the 1994 report. ``Had we known it, we would have shared that information with Dr. Lederberg. There was no effort to withhold information.''
Bacon also announced that the Army has begun soliciting proposals on research studies that would ``focus on the impact of low-level exposure'' of chemical weapons. It was announced in September that the Pentagon and Congress had designated $15 million for such research.
Schwarzkopf, speaking on NBC's ``Today'' show, said the chemical agent most used by the Iraqis, sarin, ``is the type that causes immediate casualties. It's not the type of thing that causes very, very long-term things.''
He said that based on available information, ``it's hard for me to believe'' that health problems afflicting veterans are due to chemical weapons.
But Marine Maj. Randy Hebert, whose words had to be translated by his wife and father because he is suffering from the nerve disorder known as Lou Gehrig's disease, said chemical alarms went off as soon as the attack on Iraqi positions began and he is sure chemicals caused his health problems.
Pentagon officials, he said, ``don't want to be held responsible for all the people who are now sick and for the ones who have died.''
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Marine Maj. Randy Hebert, a Gulf War vet diagnosedby CNBwith Lou Gehrig's disease, testifies Tuesday on Capitol Hill that he
believes he was exposed to chemical weapons. color.