A: Well first off, I don't trust their data, which makes it difficult for them to convince me, because the documents, the questions they have asked of the soldiers have not been focused on areas where they should be focused on in terms of what kind of exposures they've had.

Q: This is a mortality thing. This is purely in trying to determine whether more people die or not.

A: But my recollection of some of those documents -- a lot of the documentation is the health of soldiers in a VA facility. They haven't been able to compare the health of soldiers in a VA facility, in a DOD facility, and those who go to the private sector. People who aren't going to the VA don't always show up in their radar screen.

They could not tell us, in the beginning when we started our hearings in June of '69[sic] what soldiers actually fought in the Gulf War. They could not even tell us who was there. So how in the world could they tell us who died and who didn't die.

Q: This is an epidemiological sample. If it's a random sample and you compare it with a group of similarly matched people you should be able to tell. It's a standard technique in epidemiology.

A: The issue is, how random was that study? In other words, give me the whole universe, potential of people who fought in the war and ... I know what you're arguing, and I understand the statistical analysis. The bottom line is we don't know who fought there and we don't know who died, and we don't know how random this study was.

Q: So you don't accept that study? Well, there's three studies in New England Journal of Medicine--one is no excess mortality, one is no excess hospitalizations, one is no excess birth defects. Would you question all three of those?

A: The bottom line is I don't accept it because I don't think they took from a random sample.

Q: The other thing that PAC says is, and I have to give their arguments, -- the kind of common symptom, the kind of symptomatology that you're left with, the unexplained symptoms, are common in the general population and they're more common in the post war period when you look at previous wars.

A: Let me just say to you, I make an assumption that if you fight in a way that you've affected your health in a negative way. I think that some of our soldiers die in the battlefield and some come home to bad health and die prematurely, just by the nature of the kind of business they're in. So I accept to some measure that's going to be the case, and I think most soldiers do. The fact is though, that we've had a number of soldiers who described events that took place while they were in the Persian Gulf, the negative health affects while they were there, and then the symptoms that happened immediately after they left. I don't think that just happened as a random result.

Q: The other thing the Presidential Advisory Committe (PAC) said--as indeed all of the panels--is they think stress is likely to be a major contributing factor to this symptomatology.

A: Well, I would have a lot of stress if I was sick and I went to the VA and they ignored me, and I heard the DOD say, 'Well these events never took place.' I would have stress and anger and frustration, and I would assume that would make me even sicker.

Q: Yes. So, why in your view, has stress created such a hostile response?

A: Because stress is a factor and not the primary cause. I believe that stress is a factor in any bad health. And I think most scientists believe that as well. But we have sworn testimony of exposures and we have symptoms that are very accepted. We have symptoms that relate to chemical exposure. The bottom line to this is, there are few doctors who have any expertise in chemical exposure. When I said we had thousands of doctors at the VA, we have thousands of doctors at the VA. We have less than a handful of doctors who have any expertise in chemical exposure. When we brought the doctors to the committee who are experts in chemical exposure, they started to describe the symptoms that take place when you have exposure to chemicals. And those symptoms just paralleled the symptoms that our soldiers shared with us. They were identical.

Q: But they don't include things like myosis do they? Which is the cardinal sign of serin attack for instance?

A: In some cases we had that, but in most cases no, correct.

Q: The PAC have been through the various risk factors in their report, and they report depleted uranium, peritostigmine bromide, biological weapons, chemical weapons, pesticides, insecticides, and they use the term "unlikely," as a risk factor. And that's their conclusion really of these things. Now, are you a scientist, and if not, why do you think you should disagree.

A: First off, I'm not a scientist, and I make no apology for that. I just have some basic common sense that when other scientists come before our committee--experts nationally on chemical exposure--and they describe the effect of these various types of exposures and the interdisciplinary nature of them, Yes, I believe those scientists. I do believe them.

Q: Why do you chose to believe those scientists and not scientists on the PAC?

A: Because the scientists on the PAC don't have expertise on chemical exposure. And they -- it's not traditional medicine. And if it doesn't fit their traditional sense of medicine then we must not believe it.

Q: Phillip Landrigen investigated Agent Orange. Doesn't that give him some credentials?

A: Let me back up a second and say to you, Yes, when you mention Agent Orange I think, Yes, there is a story about Agent Orange, and we knew that it harmed our troops and we knew how long it was to get the medical community to accept that, the military to accept it, the VA to accept it. And yet we know our troops suffered tremendously from Agent Orange.

Q: The criticism is that a committee like the PAC is charged with investigating this subject. They come up with a conclusion and then 90-odd Congressmen write a letter asking them to change it because they don't like it.

A: I don't care if they change it. They're somewhat irrelevant to me because they were willing to believe information from the DOD and the VA that simple wasn't true. They were willing to believe that there was no chemical exposure. They were willing to believe that low level exposure doesn't lead to bad health. And yet we know in the workplace it does, so why shouldn't it in a war place? They were willing to believe too many things that ultimately would blew[sic] up in their faces, and yet they're still sticking to their same story.

That's why I've lost some patience. Why do they give credibility to the DOD when the DOD knew information in 1991, the CIA knew information in 1991. Why haven't they been outspoken that the FDA allowed the DOD to use an experimental drug on hundreds of thousands of our troops and the FDA never required the DOD to keep proper recordkeeping, and allowed them to get away with this. Wouldn't you begin to be a little suspect of the information that's going to them, and wouldn't you begin to think they'd question it?

Q: They've obviously considered a wide range of studies in drawing up their report. Are you saying you really reject that conclusion.

A: Yes. I guess it's kind of like the scientists when Galileo said that maybe the planets went around the sun, but they didn't accept it. And I guess I kind of feel we're in that kind of circumstance.

Q: It's kind of convenient isn't it? Because they don't agree with your view you're rejecting them?

A: I'm rejecting the fact that they're discounting what our soldiers know to be true. I'd like people to listen to our soldiers. They were there. They heard the alarms go off. They tasted the substance in the air. They spit up blood. They had rashes on their bodies. They got sick. And it happened during the war, while it was going on. Wouldn't you begin to wonder when the DOD says, Well, all the record keeping that would document what our soldiers are saying is true is lost?

Wouldn't it concern you when soldiers are willing, under oath, to say that they had records and they were ordered to destroy certain records. Wouldn't you begin to say, Well maybe I should question the DOD. Well, we started to question the DOD expecting them to have answers, and it just got worse. Would you begin to suspect the DOD when, at 12:00 o'clock on a Friday they announce they are going to have an important press conference at 4:00 o'clock on Friday, that acknowledges our troops were exposed to chemicals? Wouldn't you begin to say it's unreasonable that chemicals that we blew up and biological -- only went in the opposite direction and that none of them went toward the troops, and then later on we find that the plumes went toward our troops, and they had to acknowledge it only because we persisted? Wouldn't you begin to question them? So, I don't know if it's convenience, it's just based on the testimony that's come before my committee.

Q: Do we need another scientific panel?

A: I believe we need a scientific panel that's not part of the VA, not part of the DOD. I believe we need to take this away from the DOD. I believe we need to take this from the VA. And I believe we need to have doctors who are experienced and have expertise in chemical exposure.

Q: But the PAC was supposed to be an independent panel. That was the idea wasn't it?

A: It was an independent panel but not of the kind of experts that we need to get at chemical exposure.