ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 10, 1997 TAG: 9704100067
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
An agency spokesman apologized for not getting information about chemical weapons out to the troops.
The CIA said Wednesday it had numerous reports starting in 1984 that chemical weapons were stored in an Iraqi ammunition depot that U.S. troops blew up after the Persian Gulf War, but said it had failed to adequately alert the military.
The disclosure contradicted three years of CIA accounts of what it knew about poison-gas weapons in Iraq, including a statement made six weeks ago by acting CIA Director George Tenet. He said then that the agency had not specifically identified the Khamisiyah weapons site as a chemical-weapons area prior to its destruction in March 1991.
The description was provided in a 24-page report issued by an agency task force set up by Tenet last month. The head of the group gave what amounted to a rare public apology to Gulf War veterans.
``Intelligence support before, during and after the war should have been better,'' Robert Walpole said. ``If you're looking for an apology that we should have given this information out sooner, I'll give that apology. We should have gotten it out sooner.''
Walpole cited failures by the agency, including ``tunnel vision'' of analysts who failed to research the agency's records during and after the war. He also cited their fixation on the belief that the Iraqis stored chemical weapons only in S-shaped buildings, unlike those at Khamisiyah.
The agency disclosed reports laying out a series of warnings beginning in 1984 and up until days before U.S. troops arrived seven years later. A day before the ground war began, an unidentified U.S. ambassador relayed information that apparently came from an Iranian air force source giving precise geographic coordinates and saying chemical weapons were there.
The CIA passed that information to the U.S. military's Central Command, which is responsible for the Gulf region. But a CIA analyst the next day confused the location with another depot and cabled that the agency couldn't find a chemical threat.
Khamisiyah has become the focus of controversy because it was the only place where the U.S. government says American troops might have been exposed. When U.S. troops blew up the depot there, they did not know the massive underground facility contained hundreds of rockets containing the nerve gas sarin.
Many veterans believe exposure to chemical weapons caused the myriad illnesses, known as Gulf War syndrome. However, there has been no evidence linking low-level exposure to such ailments. Although government doctors do not dispute that the veterans are ill, some researchers have said that stress is the most likely cause.
Wednesday's disclosure is a fresh example in a series of revisions of what the government knew. The Pentagon denied for five years that any American troops had been exposed to chemical weapons, until it made what it called its watershed announcement about Khamisiyah 10 months ago.
Wednesday, Walpole said earlier statements by Tenet, who has been nominated to be CIA director, were based on his best knowledge at the time. Walpole said many of the records on which his report was based had only recently been discovered and declassified.
Some veterans advocates doubted that account.
``Now it seems that prior to, during and after the war they had a great deal of information,'' said James Tuite III, a leading veterans activist. ``This is either evidence of an unraveling cover-up or an unprecedented intelligence failure.''
Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Pentagon inspector general has been asked to investigate the revelations that the military's Central Command and the Army's regional command were informed of the likelihood of chemical weapons prior to their destruction. Apparently, that information was never passed to the troops.
"We're still looking at where the information went and how it was disseminated," Whitman said.
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