 |
 I did not see, and I believe our
panel did not see, evidence that the Iraqis used chemical weapons.
That's really all we can say. We have not seen any credible evidence
if the use of chemical weapons.
"We have not seen any credible evidence
of the use of chemical weapons." ...
Ware
|
 I, to a large degree, would tend
to agree that we haven't seen evidence that would indicate the
classic use of chemical or toxin weapons in the Gulf. But there
are a number of events that do merit further investigation, like
those at the Port of Jubayl and after some SCUD missile attacks, where
chemical agents were detected using highly credible and reliable
means - means that meet the Department of Defense standard
for confirmation. Given that there were no immediate, severe casualties
associated with use in those areas, I would have a hard time saying
that there is direct credible evidence. On the other hand, given
the inadequacy of our doctrine in the area of low-level exposure
and given that Iraqi doctrine does acknowledge that low-level
exposure can be a problem, that vulnerability could have been
exploited. It's with that in mind that I do think that we need
to keep an open mind that further investigation on a number of
events needs to occur.
Very little. We had all sorts
of detectors deployed out there. Those detectors used at least
six different scientific methods: ionization, ion mobility spectrometry,
chemical reaction, biochemical enzyme reactivity, flame photometry
and wet chemistry. When I have two or three
or four of those scientific methods as idiot proof, if you will,
as they may have been designed, saying the same thing at the same
time and with that phenomenon only starting after the air war
began, I have a very, very difficult time ascribing any credibility
to the statement that there were no credible detections. Now,
there is a second statement that's always made: that is, "in
such a way as to cause physical harm to our soldiers." Now
again you have to understand that our doctrine suggests that the
effects of chemical agents are acute, immediate, and severely
debilitating. So did the generals believe during the war that
the exposures that the soldiers were receiving were irrelevant?
And I would say probably yes. But now in retrospect they are
saying things which, based on the facts as they existed during
the war, could not be true. The headquarters logs are full of
information indicating things that they would have had to have
been informed about.
It is also my impression from
talking to people that served in the Gulf that there were incidents
of alarms going off. There wasn't any accompanying, supporting
evidence from the American monitoring systems, either through
assessment of missiles that landed or through attempts to measure
chemicals. There was never any measurement or detection of chemical.
There are a variety of explanations for the alarms. It could
be that they were very transient trace levels of chemicals that
did that. That's conceivable, but it seems unlikely in the absence
of any evidence from ordnance or from the setting of the combat
that, in fact, chemical weapons were in use.
I think the question was: do
you believe that there were credible and reliable detections of
chemical warfare agents?
Well, the alarms went off, and
this was reported to me. It was reported to me that alarms went
off, but that there were not measurements of ambient chemical
warfare agents.
There were nine
or ten - and I believe the number is ten - Czech
detections that occurred during the first week of the
air war, which air monitors initially picked up biochemical enzyme
reactivity using butyl cholinesterase. And they were taken back
to a mobile laboratory where wet chemistry analysis was done on
the air samples. And in each case chemical warfare agents were
detected - sarin, tabun and mustard - the exact
same agents that were in the facilities being targeted upwind.
In the month of February, seven Fox (chemical detection) vehicles,
(and this information is only two weeks old so
I apologize, but these were mailed anonymously from the Aberdeen
Proving Ground to the Persian Gulf investigative team), detected the presence of chemical warfare agents
as well in the air.
You wouldn't see military delivery
as the more likely route of exposure but rather demolition of
dump sites and factories and so on.
I can't rule out military delivery
at low level, and I cannot rule out the possible use of aflatoxins.
But I can say that I do believe that the predominant mode of exposure
was a result of the destruction of the Iraqis' chemical warfare
infrastructure.
Our general stance to this question
was to try to see whether there was evidence in support of any
of these hypotheses. Again, I think the evidence for that scenario
is fragmentary. There are these incidents like the Czech detections that can't be totally dismissed, but they don't make
a very strong story that there was any appreciable level of chemical
exposure through any route.
I think that part of the controversy
is, what constitutes an appreciable level of chemical agent exposure.
The Defense Department has consistently taken the stand that,
when these detections occurred, the wind was blowing the wrong
way, and therefore, the Czech detections could not possibly be
the result of fall-out. Now, the Czechs said that the detections occurred
as a result of fall-out. The Czechs, by the way, have a much
higher rate of illness among their soldiers than we do right now.
And the French have said that it was a result of fall-out. I
"...the winds would have been going from
the areas where the facilities were
bombed down to the area where the
chemical agents were detected." ...
Tuite
|
did some analysis, and I will provide this, but it shows that
the national weather service maps indicate
that the weather or the winds would have been going from the areas
where the facilities were bombed down to the area where the chemical
agents were detected. The satellite photographs, the infrared
satellite images, show thermal plumes originating in one case
right over Muthanna, the largest Iraqi chemical research production
and storage facility, going down to the area where the chemical
agents were detected. So, to answer the question,
what I think we should be talking about is at what levels they
were exposed.
I believe that that there were
a few instances in which Czech instruments, Czech scientists,
Czech chemists, field chemists believed that they detected really
a trace of concentrations of the chemicals you named. That's
my understanding.
Quite frankly, the logs indicate
that after seven days of the Czechs continually detecting chemical
agents, CENTCOM (Central Command) made a policy decision to disregard
reports coming from the Czechs. It's in the log. Second, there
is no pattern of exposure in terms of these flu-like symptoms.
Well, in fact, you can talk to virtually any Gulf War veteran
and ask him if he knows what the Saudi flu or the Saudi crud is
and when did he first start to experience it. If they are going
to be discounted out of hand before an epidemiology is done to
determine whether or not they had these flu-like symptoms in the
Gulf, symptoms that were dismissed as nuisance illnesses, then
we'll never know the answer. That's unscientific. If the veterans
are reporting flu-like symptoms and rashes, and those symptoms
are consistent with organophosphate intoxication, which they are;
and we ignore those reports, then we are not very good scientists.
The next issue is dead animals. We don't know why the animals
died. The Pentagon says that they die all the time, but this was
a phenomenon that startled not only the soldiers but veterinarians
who were there, some of whom were assigned to count these animals.
They talked about birds dropping out of the sky during the air
war. They talked about all sorts of phenomena occurring that
they had never seen nor had they heard of. A connection between
the acute symptoms and chronic effects. We don't know what causes
these phenomena, but we know they occur.
You put forward the explanation
that there were significant numbers of soldiers exposed to chemical
warfare agents or chemicals at levels sufficient to cause in some
cases transient symptoms, like rash and flu-like symptoms, and
at levels sufficient to then persist in a complex of signs and
symptoms that would be consistent with what people report when
they have the Gulf War Syndrome.
Yes, given what we saw after
World War One. And, by the way, there were not just exposures
to nerve agents but also to airborne blister agents. But going
back to what was reported after World War One, where we know chemical
agents were used, and we know these soldiers were on the battlefields,
and they didn't develop these serious and acute injuries, is that
they are describing the exact same phenomena. There is an initial
acute phase. Then the illness goes away. Then they start to develop
this chronic illness.
But let me push you a little harder
on this. In the first place, I say again that I think that there
is not good evidence. There is not evidence, period, that troops
were exposed to chemical warfare agents. There are some hints
that sensitive instruments set off alarms. There is no description
of a pattern of an exposure or, to me, evidence. I want to phrase
"I want to emphasize that there is
no story about a substantial
number of soldiers being
exposed to chemical agents." ...
Ware
|
this carefully. I want to emphasize that there is no story about
a substantial number of soldiers being exposed to chemical agents.
I am not implying that some soldiers might have been exposed
or they might have been exposed at low levels. I am saying -
at the time I reviewed the evidence, coming up to this summer
- I didn't find evidence that persuaded me that exposure
to chemical warfare agents was an important issue for the Gulf
War troops. Now, secondly, you mentioned that there was this
pattern of symptoms, flu-like symptoms and rashes. There has
never been any organized epidemiologic description of that. There
may have been some soldiers. Some individuals may have reported
to the Banking Committee that they experienced that. But there
is not any systematic information. In general, with no disrespect
intended to the individuals, scientists don't tend to give a lot
of weight in terms of ... It can provide an important lead to
hear the stories of individuals. But in terms of putting together
a story about a phenomenon in a population, the stories of a few
individuals may be clues, but they are not proof. Now that's the
second piece. The third piece is that the weight of scientific
opinion, as I understand it, is that, if exposures did occur at
levels insufficient to cause acute symptoms in individuals, it
is not believed that those exposures, even if they occurred at
extremely low levels, could be associated with persistent chronic
effects, because of the biology of retention and release of the
agents. Finally, there is no coherent connection of the exposure
to the acute symptoms to the chronic symptoms. I mean, what a
scientist would want to see is at least associations along the
way and a trail and a pattern of evidence. I'm not saying this
is not worth pursuing. I'm saying that the evidence isn't there
right now to support that explanation of what happened to the
Gulf War cohort.
Boy, am I glad I get the last
word on this one. First of all, this is not a set of dumb instruments
that have detected these chemicals. The Czechs had a laboratory
present. This laboratory had chemists in it. Chemists ran laboratory
analysis on the air samples. They detected sarin, tabun, and
mustard in the air. That is a fact; that is not speculation.
Many of these specialists went to universities where they studied
chemical defense. They had degrees in chemical defense. That
was their specialty. Much more highly trained than US. soldiers,
and they detected the chemicals. I've got original footage from
the war in which they are briefing the Saudis on the fact that
they detected these chemical agents.
I believe it's true. I mean, I
believe that that's correct, that there were a few instances in
which Czech instruments, Czech scientists, Czech field chemists
believed that they detected, really, trace concentrations of the
chemicals you named. That's my understanding.
And I have a concern with the
fact that a scientist on site doing empirical research is criticized
as believing that he detected something when, in fact, he is a
highly trained scientist in that particular field. This is a simple
scientific experiment for him, and he is an expert in that area.
Neither you nor I are experts in that area.
Yes, in that I guess we have
learned, as a result of examining the (US troop) roster of Kamisiyah
and examining the Comprehensive Clinical Evaluation Program registry
and the Department of Veterans Affairs registry, that there is
a 20 percent match between the people who were in that vicinity
and who are sick. No, because we also know that during the air
war they were also in the same areas as chemical agents were repeatedly
detected by the Czech and US forces. So it makes it very difficult
to isolate it to Kamisiyah. What we can say about Kamisiyah is
that, while we've confirmed the presence of agents in the bunker,
we don't know of any detections of the high degree of reliability
that we have, for example, in the areas around King Khalid military
city and Hafir Al Batin during the air war, where in fact we
have highly reliable qualitative tests indicating the presence
of agent in the air.
It's an interesting development
because it raises a lot of issues. I think it's unlikely to be
the explanation for the Gulf War Syndrome phenomenon. In order
for it to be the explanation, we would have to discover that the
entire problem of the Gulf War Syndrome was localized in the soldiers
(at Kamisiyah) - whatever that group ultimately proves
to be - some 20,000, it's now said. Then you'd have the
smoking gun. I don't think it's going to be the smoking gun.
I doubt that anyone is seriously putting that idea forward.
Whether it is a contributor, whether those 20,000 soldiers who
were in the vicinity of that dump when it was destroyed have an
increased frequency of the kinds of problems we're talking about,
is a very interesting question. And one that deserves investigation.
Of course, one thing is that we
really didn't have an opportunity to seriously consider this most
recent evidence because our report had already gone to press when
that information was first made public. So my comments about
the dump site have to be taken as an addendum to our report.
We concluded, and I think I've made this point before, that we,
looking at the body of evidence, were not persuaded. This panel
was not persuaded that there was evidence presently available
to support a conclusion that exposure to chemicals was an explanation
for increased illness among the Gulf War troops.
The one issue that I would argue
with is, in part, the conclusions that were drawn by the Institute
of Medicine had to be based on incomplete information from the
Department of Defense. There was a reluctance or failure to go
outside the Department of Defense for evidence of exposures, particularly
in interviewing people who were involved in the congressional
investigation that interviewed literally thousands of soldiers
and many of the chemical specialists who detected these agents.
Given the Pentagon's doctrine
at the time, yes. Given what we know about low-level exposures,
no. Well, first of all, there actually were four, that I'm aware
of, acute immediate injuries. One is Pfc. (David) Fisher, which
occurred in a bunker up in the 3rd Armored Division area of operations,
which the Pentagon has now admitted was a mustard injury. The
second was the blistering of two Marine Corps enlisted men going
through "Breach Lane Red One" during a period of time
in which both chemical, mustard and blister agents were being detected
by two separate Fox vehicles. The third was a British soldier
who received an injury during a mop-up operation, if you will,
in August of 1991, in a container that is believed to have contained,
if you believe the people who were there, mustard and phosgene
oxime; and if you believe the Pentagon, fuming nitric acid. So
there were those injuries. But again - knowing what we
know about organophosphate intoxication, and the acute symptoms
associated with that, and the reports that we have received, and
the fact that the Pentagon would have dismissed these or the medical
practitioners who were looking at chemical injuries would have
dismissed these as nuisance illnesses during the war -
I think it's very difficult for them to say, definitively, that
there were no confirmed acute exposure illnesses or injuries.
We didn't see any evidence of
a pattern of acute illnesses. There may have been. I can't speak
to these four instances of, really, occupational injury almost.
That is, those are important, but those would not be an explanation
for the Gulf War Syndrome, those four incidents that were mentioned.
So as to an experience among the troops of acute symptoms, we
have not seen any evidence of such a phenomenon.
Just one more thing in passing:
the experience of the seabees (Navy engineers) at at the Port
of Jubayl. Certainly, they did describe an acute set of symptoms
as a result of their exposures. And we do know that blister agent
was detected in five locations by three different kinds of instruments,
including two M-256 kit tests, which is what the Pentagon considers
a confirmed detection, on January 19th, after an otherwise unexplained
explosion that was explained to the soldiers as a sonic boom.
We are aware of that as well. That's one of the events that
I was talking about that I believe needs further investigation.
That editorial reflects the prevalent
view - not consensus, maybe that's too strong -
but the prevalent view among scientists. And I'm not expert in
that area. So I rely on the judgment of those more expert than
I. But that is my understanding of the evidence, of the current
scientific thinking.
And, to respond to that, there
are credible, mainstream scientists who do research, including
doctors at your own institution, who do believe that these brief
exposures could result in these kinds of effects. So it is not
a resolved issue. It is a contentious issue, and I would agree
that probably the majority of researchers agree with the position
that Dr. Ware has taken. But it is by no means an area in which
there is consensus or anything near consensus among the research
community.
You know, the consensus has been
wrong plenty of times. I felt all along that we have to be prepared
to access new evidence as it comes forward. So I try to emphasize
in my comments that, based upon what I know now, this is my opinion.
I think as new information becomes available we have to try to
interpolate that.
My stance is, I don't believe
that there is evidence to support that explanation. There's not
evidence of the scale and magnitude of exposure to chemical warfare
agents at a level and to a number of troops that could explain
the numbers of reported illnesses and affected individuals. There's
not evidence of acute illnesses among individuals that potentially
would have been exposed. And there's no chain of association or
potential causality that would point to make a story like that
come together. One can make that story, but there's no evidence
to support it, essentially.
I would counter with: the sounding
of the alarms throughout the theater, coinciding with the bombing
of the Iraqi chemical weapons infrastructure; the confirmation
of these detections using wet chemistry analysis and gas chromatograph
mass spectrometry or scientific instruments that are used in laboratories,
although not as precise as those same scientific instruments,
confirming the presence of these agents in the air; the reports
from the soldiers, again, of these rashes and flu-like symptoms
consistent with organophosphate intoxication; and an illness which
very closely follows the illness of organophosphate-induced delayed
neuropathies, to me, would suggest that we have to assume that
most or all of these soldiers may have been exposed. And, therefore,
we have to start looking at this issue from the perspective that
this could very well be a principal cause of Gulf War Syndrome. |
