Pentagon Tries to Battle ‘Gulf War Disease’ : Health: Veterans came home complaining of the mysterious condition and the government’s response. Lawmakers are now demanding answers.

Feeling pressure from Congress and angry veterans, the Pentagon is attempting to deal with mounting alarm over a mysterious “Persian Gulf War disease” that so far has defied medical diagnosis and has the potential of becoming this generation’s Agent Orange scandal.

Military officials on Friday canceled two briefings on the disease, one on Capitol Hill and the other at the Pentagon, so that Defense Secretary Les Aspin can give the issue more consideration. The delay has prompted some lawmakers to accuse the military of attempting a cover-up.

“Official statements seem to be changing daily, and rumors about chemical and biological exposure are running wild,” said Rep. Glen Browder (D-Ala.). “We’ve got some important questions now and we want some answers now.”

But Pentagon officials said the briefings were postponed only until next week. They noted that Aspin was returning Friday from a trip to Japan and Korea and that he wants to review the matter before the briefings take place.

Nevertheless, some Pentagon officials said the issue has the capability of exploding into one similar to the Agent Orange controversy. Thousands of Vietnam War veterans came home sick and ailing but found it difficult to convince the government that they were exposed to the chemical herbicide spray.

“We want to get the straight word out as soon as possible,” said one Pentagon source. “We’re afraid some of these congressmen are going to whip people up. We’re afraid they’re going to get everybody worked into a frenzy.”

The Pentagon maintains that only 250 veterans have been identified as having symptoms of the unexplained condition. Some 10,000 veterans have already signed up on a registry created this summer to help determine how many ultimately may become ill. The Department of Veterans Affairs announced this week that it plans to consider again whether more neurological and other tests are needed for all veterans who sign the registry.

The symptoms include nausea, diarrhea, chronic headaches, loss of breath, soreness and swelling.

Some ailing veterans, like Michael Mixen of Tucson, a lance corporal in the Marine Corps Reserve, are also complaining that their wives or girlfriends are suffering miscarriages and that their children have had birth defects.

“My baby boy had problems with his heart,” Mixen said. “He had a heart murmur. His heart valves were not opening right. Once he stopped breathing and turned blue.”

Other veterans, like Gary Dhillon of Fresno, a Coast Guard reservist, have lost their jobs and their homes because they are unable to work, and VA physicians are still unable to explain their symptoms.

“They sat my wife and I down and said they found nothing wrong with me,” Dhillon said.

Central to the growing controversy is a report from the Czech Republic’s Ministry of Defense that disputes the Pentagon’s position that no troops of the U.N. coalition were exposed to chemical agents during the 1991 Gulf War.

A copy of the report, dated Oct. 1, states that special Czech monitoring teams operating in northern Iraq detected several “airborne dust concentrations of toxic agents” that they said were “probably as a result of allied air strikes against chemical munitions depots in Iraq.”

But U.S. military officials said that while the Czech teams may have detected some toxic agents, amounts were minute and they were found in an area far away from U.S. troops.

According to a Pentagon analysis of the Czech report, “this detection was made during a period in which there were no Scud missile launches, artillery exchanges or other military actions observed by the Czechs in the area.

“Further,” the U.S. summary added, “there were no detections reported by other units in this area.”

On Capitol Hill, Browder and other lawmakers have scheduled a series of hearings and forums to discuss the issue and to press for more answers from the Pentagon and the VA.