
DATE: Sunday, June 15, 1997                 TAG: 9706150043

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PHILIP SHENON, THE NEW YORK TIMES 

                                            LENGTH:  139 lines

STUDY LINKS CHEMICALS, SICK GULF VETS GAO CRITICIZES WHITE HOUSE AND PENTAGON FOR DISCOUNTING KEY INFORMATION

A new government report has harshly criticized the Pentagon and a special White House panel over their investigation of the illnesses reported by veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and has found that there is ``substantial evidence'' linking nerve gas and other chemical weapons to the sorts of health problems seen among the veterans.

The report, by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, says that the Defense Department should also not rule out the possibility that Iraqi biological weapons may be responsible for some ailments reported by the estimated 80,000 Persian Gulf War veterans who have sought special medical checkups from the government.

It also criticized the Pentagon for trying to discount another potential risk, a tropical disease spread by parasites that produces symptoms that may not surface for years, and questioned whether pesticides had contributed to the health problems.

The report is scheduled for release this month and is certain to alarm gulf war veterans who have worried that they were made ill by exposure to Iraqi chemical or biological weapons during the war.

A draft of the report, which is being prepared for the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House National Security Committee, was provided to The New York Times by an official who has been critical of the Pentagon's response to the illnesses of the veterans.

The Pentagon and the White House panel, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, had both concluded that Iraqi chemical and biological weapons were probably not responsible for the veterans' health problems, a view shared by a number of prominent scientists.

Both the Pentagon and the White House panel suggested that the physical aftereffects of wartime stress were a more likely cause of the ailments.

But those findings were challenged in the GAO report, which said, ``The link between stress and these veterans' physical symptoms is not well-established, and the reported prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among gulf war veterans may be overestimated.''

It said Pentagon officials and the White House panel also were wrong to rule out the nerve gas sarin and other chemical weapons as a cause of the health problems, because ``there is substantial evidence that such compounds are associated with delayed or long-term health effects similar to those experienced by gulf war veterans.''

Last year the Pentagon announced that more than 20,000 U.S. troops may have been exposed to sarin as a result of the March 1991 demolition of an Iraqi ammunition depot where tons of the nerve gas had been stored.

Spokesmen for the Pentagon and the presidential committee said Friday that they would not comment on the GAO report until it was formally released. The White House panel was set up by President Clinton in 1995, and its members include several scientists and doctors.

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who has been a leading critic of the Pentagon's handling of the issue, said he welcomed the report. ``It supports the idea that we should take the gulf war research program away from the Pentagon and give it to someone who really wants to find some answers,'' Shays said.

Kwai Chan, director of special studies and evaluation for the GAO and the principal author of the report, said he could not discuss details of the findings until the report was made public by Congress, but he said he was ``very confident'' of its conclusions.

His team of investigators included several researchers with doctorates in science, he said, and they reviewed all major studies on the health problems associated with gulf war veterans and interviewed researchers at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the government.

The GAO report also raised the possibility that clouds of chemical weapons may have reached U.S. troops as a result of the aerial bombing of Iraqi chemical plants and storage depots early in the war.

Because U.N. inspectors have not seen all the damaged Iraqi sites since the war, the report said, ``the magnitude of exposures to chemical-warfare agents has not been fully resolved.''

The report said that because the United States had no effective method for detecting biological weapons during the war, ``one cannot be certain that such weapons were not used'' against U.S. troops.

It cited evidence that before the war, Iraq had developed stocks of aflatoxin, biological poisons produced with molds that do not immediately incapacitate victims.

``This agent's effects may not be observed until decades after low-level exposure via ingestion, and the effects of aerosolized aflatoxin are poorly understood,'' the report said, raising the question of whether some veterans may be suffering from delayed effects of aflatoxin.

The GAO said Pentagon officials and the White House panel were also wrong to try to rule out a tropical disease known as leishmaniasis, an infectious illness endemic to the Persian Gulf and spread by parasites, as a cause of large numbers of ailments among veterans.

``Because the infection may remain dormant for up to 20 years and most clinicians would not recognize classic forms of leishmaniasis, we believe that it should be retained as a possible risk factor,'' the report said.

For more than five years after the war, the Pentagon adamantly denied that there was any evidence that U.S. troops had been exposed to chemical or biological weapons.

Last year, however, the Pentagon reversed itself and acknowledged that the demolition of the Kamisiyah ammunition depot in southern Iraq in March 1991, just after the war ended, had resulted in the release of sarin and other chemical weapons in the vicinity of U.S. soldiers.

The announcement brought accusations of a coverup from veterans' groups and members of Congress, and within months the Pentagon had announced millions of dollars in new research on the health problems of gulf war veterans and on the possibility that many of them had been made ill by exposure to low levels of chemical weapons.

But the GAO report found that the program announced by the Pentagon ``lacks a coherent approach'' and, because of flaws in methodology and focus, ``is not likely to identify the potential causes of the illnesses.''

The report said that valuable research on the health effects of low-level chemical exposure had been delayed for years because of the Pentagon's insistence that it had no evidence of exposure during the gulf war. ``A few researchers told us that as a result of DOD's strong position, they believed it would be fruitless to request funding for such research,'' the report said.

``The vast majority of research was not initiated until 1994 or later,'' the report said. ``Because of the late start, four-fifths of the funded studies are not complete, and certain studies will not be available until after 2000.''

Without accurate information, it said, ``the investment of millions of dollars in further epidemiological research on the risk factors of veterans' illnesses may result in little return.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

A U.S. soldier trains in Saudi Arabia in November 1990.

Graphic

WHY THE HEALTH PROBLEMS? REPORT CITES THREE POSSIBILITIES

Chemical weapons: They produce delayed or long-term health

effects similar to those seen in Persian Gulf War veterans. Also,

bombing of Iraqi chemical plants could have released clouds of

chemicals that might have reached U.S. troops.

Biological weapons: Iraq had stocks of aflatoxin, biological

poisons produced with molds that do not immediately incapacitate

victims. Effects may not be seen for decades.

Parasites: The tropical disease leishmaniasis, an infectious

illness endemic to the Persian Gulf and spread by parasites, may