The Mystery of Gulf War Syndrome

Philip Shenon is the Pentagon correspondent for the New York Times and has reported widely on the Persian Gulf War and gulf war syndrome.

Iraqi Army forced out of Kuwait after a ground war that lasted only 100 hours. But the cost of that victory is still being measured among the men and women who fought in the gulf and who returned home as heroes.Thousands of gulf war veterans are suffering from mysterious health problems that range from stomach problems to joint aches to chronic fatigue, and many wonder whether their service in the Gulf War is to blame. Some veterans have been left so disabled that they are unable to support their families.

Increasingly, it is clear that the United States Department of Defense had evidence during the war suggesting that American troops had been exposed to Iraqi nerve gas and other chemical weapons. But the evidence was kept secret for more than five years, even though the information might explain at least some of the health problems reported by Gulf War veterans.

Veterans groups and members of Congress have accused the Pentagon of incompetence, if not a cover-up. But the U.S. military is not the only one under fire for dragging its feet and bungling the issue of what has become known as gulf war syndrome. Growing numbers of veterans from the allied forces, including Great Britain, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, have also complained of mysterious illnesses and have accused their commanders of concealing information.

After years of denials, the Pentagon acknowledged in 1996 that more than 20,000 American troops may have been exposed to a cloud of sarin, a deadly nerve gas, after American soldiers blew up an enormous ammunition depot in southern Iraq a few days after the war, in March 1991. More recently, in March 1997, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released evidence suggesting that the poison gas had spread further than believed, with trace amounts possibly reaching hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

The symptoms have become known collectively as gulf war syndrome: digestive problems and chronic diarrhea, joint pain, fatigue, memory loss, insomnia, and rashes. However, the evidence linking veterans' health problems to chemical or biological weapons—or anything else, for that matter—is inconclusive. While many prominent scientists and physicians agree that an unusual number of gulf war veterans appear to be genuinely ill, it may take years for researchers to determine what is responsible.

Some researchers believe the health problems may be linked not to chemical weapons but instead—ironically—to the experimental drugs that were given to some troops to protect them from the effects of chemical weapons. Some troops received vaccinations for anthrax, botulism, plague, and whooping cough. In addition to vaccinations and antinerve agent tablets, soldiers were exposed to potentially hazardous pesticides that were sprayed to control insects, and after the war to thick, toxic smoke from burning oil wells ignited by retreating Iraqi forces.

In addition, wartime stress may be an important factor in veterans' health problems. Medical historians say it is common after a war for large numbers of veterans to experience serious health problems that are difficult to diagnose. The historical evidence suggests that the stress of war does damage to the human body, possibly through the release of hormones and other chemicals in the brain, weakening the immune system.

Whatever the confusion about the cause, there is little doubt that gulf war veterans are having serious health problems in unusual numbers. Studies by the U.S. Navy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, show that gulf war veterans are more than three times as likely as other veterans to suffer from joint pain, skin rashes, chronic diarrhea, fatigue, depression, and memory loss. They also report far higher rates of headaches, sinus problems, and sleep disturbances.

The problems are not necessarily life threatening, however. Government studies show that gulf war veterans are not dying or being admitted to hospitals at a higher rate than other soldiers.

When the first clusters of American troops began to report health problems only months after the end of the war, they were largely ignored by the government. Military doctors dismissed many of them as malingerers or even as mentally disturbed. Troops from other allied forces also complained of being ignored and dismissed.

Veterans groups wondered early on whether Iraqi chemical or biological weapons might be to blame. The Iraqis were known to have vast stores of the deadly weapons before the war, and the Iraqis had not hesitated to use poison gas against the Iranian army during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Still, the Pentagon insisted that chemical weapons could not be responsible. For years after the Gulf War, the Defense Department said publicly again and again that it had no conclusive evidence that troops had been exposed to chemical or biological weapons.

However, the alarms attached to American chemical-detection equipment sounded thousands of times throughout the war. Military commanders dismissed them as false alarms. Commanders also disregarded chemical detections registered by other allied troops. The American commanders later said that they had felt comfortable in ignoring the chemical detection equipment because their soldiers were not complaining of health problems associated with exposure to small doses of chemical or biological weapons, such as vision or breathing problems.

"They saw nothing that substantiated the alarm evidence,"

said General Colin Powell,

the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during

the war. "No one was falling ill."

So in the early days of the air war against Iraq, American bombers and fighter jets targeted the Iraqi factories and depots where chemical and biological weapons were believed to be stored. The commanders knew that the attacks might release poison gas into the atmosphere and that it might travel downwind toward Saudi Arabia, where hundreds of thousands of American ground troops were stationed. But it was thought a risk worth taking, given the possibility that Iraq might try to attack the allied troops with missiles tipped with chemical or biological weapons.

The air war began before dawn on January 17, with American bombers screaming across the border into Iraq. Within hours, chemical alarms sounded across Saudi Arabia.

Soldiers from Czechoslovakia who were serving alongside the Americans had been given specific responsibility for detecting chemical weapons, and they reported low levels of nerve gas and mustard gas in northern Saudi Arabia shortly after the bombing of Iraq began. American military commanders in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, decided to ignore the warnings from the Czechs. French troops also reported detections of chemical weapons.

"We were immediately pulling on our suits and gas masks, while the Americans were walking around without their masks—without any of the equipment," said Vaclav Hlavac, a retired chief warrant officer in the Czech Army.

The Americans also confirmed the presence of the chemicals but did not believe that such low levels would harm American soldiers, Hlavac said. "The Americans didn't want to sound an alarm because there were only low levels of the chemicals and it would cause panic among the soldiers," he said.

The United States decided to ignore the Czech alarms after American chemical specialists were unable to confirm the Czech detections, according to a chemical-detection log maintained for General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the American commander in the Gulf, and his senior officers. "Disregard any reports coming from Czechs," the commander's log reported.

On January 19, the second day of the war, a group of American troops in Saudi Arabia recorded what they believed to be a direct chemical attack. Navy reservists serving near the Saudi port city of al-Jubail say that something exploded in the air over their camps early that morning.

In minutes, they say, their skin began to burn, their lips turned numb, and their throats tightened. Several remembered that chemical alarms began to sound as a dense cloud of gas floated over their camps. A chemical specialist who served with the Navy unit said that he pulled out his detection kits shortly after the explosion and that they registered positive for mustard gas. "I put my gas mask on right away, but by the time I got to the bunker, my hands and face were burning, and I couldn't breathe," said Roy Butler, a 53-year-old retired petty officer from Columbus, Georgia. Butler now suffers from chronic fatigue, joint aches, memory loss, and digestive problems. Many of the other reservists say they are ill with similar health problems.

The air war against Iraq went on for five weeks, and throughout the air campaign, chemical alarms sounded so often that many American soldiers say they eventually ignored the alarms and did not bother to put on their gas masks and rubber chemical suits.

On February 24, with the Iraqi army severely weakened after weeks of bombing, the United States launched the ground war. American and other allied troops and tanks poured across the border from Saudi Arabia into Kuwait. Once again, chemical alarms sounded across the battlefield and, once again, American commanders told their soldiers to disregard them. That evening, General Schwarzkopf told a news conference in Saudi Arabia that the reports of chemical weapon detection were "bogus."

The war was over quickly. Allied troops overran Kuwait and large stretches of southern Iraq. The Iraqi military was crippled. As allied tanks rumbled across the Iraqi desert, American troops were ordered to destroy any Iraqi equipment and ammunition depots that they encountered.

Orders to destroy the Kamisiyah ammunition depot were given to demolition experts assigned to the 37th Engineer Battalion from Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. Soldiers from the battalion who served on the mission say there was no time for a thorough inspection of each of the bunkers—the complex was just too big. And even if the inspected bunkers had contained chemical weapons, the soldiers said, they would not necessarily have known. "We are obviously not chemical weapons experts," said James R. Riggins, a retired major who was the executive officer of the battalion.

The first set of explosions on March 4 rocked the desert floor and destroyed 33 of the bunkers. Almost immediately, soldiers say, chemical alarms began to sound.

A chemical specialist assigned to the 37th, Daniel Topolski, recalled that his chemical-detection equipment registered positive for nerve gas. "We went to the guys and said, 'Hey, we're not playing, this is for real,'" Topolski said, recalling how he had urged other soldiers to pull on their chemical suits.

Despite his report, American commanders once again dismissed the chemical alarms as false alarms, and there were no reports at the time of serious illnesses among the soldiers who had participated in the demolition. Within months, the soldiers of the 37th Engineer Battalion had returned home to the United States, most assuming that they had no reason to worry about their health.

As a result of its humiliating defeat in the war, the Iraqi government agreed to allow United Nations (UN) weapons inspectors to travel to Iraq to search for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that might have survived the war, and to oversee their destruction.

In October 1991, eight months after the war, a team of UN inspectors arrived at the ruins of Kamisiyah, where they made an alarming discovery. Strewn across the site were hundreds of damaged and destroyed rockets of the sort that were used by the Iraqis to carry chemical warheads. Also nearby was an empty crate stamped "M-48"; an M-48 is an explosive used by the U.S. military. The inspectors suspected American soldiers had blown up the depot, exposing themselves to the chemicals.

At first, Defense Department officials insisted that they had known nothing of the possibility of chemical exposure at Kamisiyah until the UN inspectors brought it to their attention in 1996. But that story has changed dramatically. In early 1997, the Pentagon acknowledged that the CIA had warned the army in February 1991, even before the demolition, that chemical weapons might be stored at Kamisiyah or nearby. The Pentagon acknowledged that the information had never been passed on to the soldiers who later blew up the depot.

Other documents showed that in November 1991, several months after the demolition, the CIA had issued a far more specific warning to the army. The CIA urged the army to investigate evidence showing that chemical weapons had been stored at the depot and that American soldiers had carried out the demolition. The army reportedly did not follow up properly, and the intelligence reports were filed away and forgotten.

The Pentagon's delay in acknowledging the possibility of chemical exposure cost it more than credibility. The delay meant that government research into the health problems of gulf war veterans was held up for nearly five years, most importantly the research into the health effects of exposure to very low doses of chemical weapons.

New research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, seems to suggest that gulf war veterans are falling ill from the effects of a combination of chemicals on the battlefield. That chemical soup included nerve gas and the experimental drugs that were given to troops to protect them from nerve gas. In addition, the army carried out research in the 1970s showing that very low doses of nerve gas can cause long-term changes in human brain waves, which might feasibly cause physical symptoms like those seen among gulf war veterans.

But other scientists say the research is inconclusive. A special panel of experts created by the White House concluded that chemical weapons are probably not the explanation for the illnesses of gulf war veterans. More likely, it said, is wartime stress.

Still, the panel, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, called for more research on the health effects of exposure to low doses of chemical weapons. It also labeled the Pentagon's investigation of chemical exposures during the war as "superficial" and "lacking in credibility."

The British, Slovak, and Czech governments are also beginning to investigate the chronic illnesses of their gulf war veterans. The British Defense Ministry, acknowledging it had provided "flawed" information about gulf war syndrome in the past, announced in December 1996 that it would begin investigating veterans' health complaints. The studies will examine 12,000 soldiers, both gulf war veterans and those who did not serve in the war, to compare their health records. Both the Czech and the Slovak military are providing medical examinations for their gulf war veterans, many of whom have complained of the same kind of disabling health problems reported by U.S. veterans.

As a result of the White House panel's findings, the Pentagon ordered a sweeping expansion of its investigation of gulf war illnesses, increasing its staff from 12 to 100 investigators. The Pentagon also announced plans to spend millions of dollars on new research into the question of whether the health problems of gulf war veterans might be linked to low levels of chemical weapons or to some of the experimental drugs that the troops received during the war.

Ironically, the Pentagon's new campaign to demonstrate its openness with veterans is only making clear how little information it had shared with veterans in the past. The Pentagon faces a credibility crisis, with many gulf war veterans convinced that the Defense Department is hiding other evidence of chemical exposures.

Allegations of a cover-up have only grown stronger in recent months, especially after the disclosure that the Pentagon logs that recorded detection of chemical weapons during the war had vanished. The Pentagon announced that its investigators could track down only 36 of the estimated 200 pages of the logs, even though full copies of the logs had been stored on paper and on computer disks after the war. Those copies were stored in safes at two separate locations in the United States.

The American Legion, the nation's largest veterans group, has called for a criminal investigation of the missing logs. The few pages of the logs that have been made public show that American military commanders received lots of warnings about chemical weapons during the war, especially from the Czechs, and disregarded them.

Several congressional committees are now investigating the health issues of gulf war illnesses. Congressional committees are also investigating the question of whether officials at the Pentagon, the CIA, and other government agencies intentionally withheld information and lied to Congress. The answers to those questions could result in criminal charges before the scandal of the mysterious gulf war syndrome finally winds to an end.