Panel Rejects Outside Probe of Gulf Illnesses

A White House advisory panel on Wednesday decided not to call for an independent investigation of possible exposure to chemical weapons by Persian Gulf War veterans, although it concluded that the Pentagon “did not act in good faith” in its inquiry.

Instead, the 12-member panel, known as the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, agreed to a Defense Department plan that would enable the Pentagon to continue investigating such cases on its own but under the “oversight” of an outside authority.

The committee did not specify which outside agency should provide the oversight. Although some members favored asking the National Academy of Sciences or the U.S. Institute of Medicine to take on the job, the panel decided to leave the choice to the White House.

Although the committee’s criticism is another blow to the Pentagon’s credibility on the Gulf War issue, it permits the department to retain control over the investigation.

The advisory panel is scheduled to issue a formal report in late December. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has sharply expanded its investigative team and pledged to look into “dozens” of incidents of possible chemical exposure.

The move represents a major change from the panel’s previous posture. A preliminary report drafted by the committee staff had suggested wresting away the investigation from the Department of Defense and turning it over to an independent body.

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The Pentagon argued that would be impractical. Deputy Defense Secretary John P. White, who addressed the committee Wednesday morning, pledged that the department would adopt as many of the committee’s recommendations on Gulf War illness as it possibly could.

“My personal view is that the standard for acceptance should be that if the committee has suggested a good idea, we will pursue effective ways to implement the recommendations,” he said.

Panel members also made it clear that while they have been sharply critical of the Pentagon’s performance on the Gulf War issue in the past, they were impressed with its more recent efforts to step up the search for possible exposure by U.S. troops.

“I think what we heard this morning was as constructive and forthcoming as we could hope,” said panel member John Baldeschwiler, a chemistry professor at Caltech. Baldeschwiler is one of several scientists and physicians on the committee.

“Their approach strikes me as pretty well on target,” he said.

Nevertheless, some panel members remained skeptical. Arthur L. Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, told the panel that the Pentagon must be forced to keep its investigation public. “Part of this is a trust issue,” he warned.

Spokesmen for veterans groups expressed disappointment with the committee’s decision. “It won’t be OK for us,” said Duane Mowrer, president of the Persian Gulf War Veterans’ Assn., after hearing of the panel’s action.

“The Pentagon, CIA and others involved have lost their credibility,” Mowrer said. “Even now, they’ve only admitted to the things that they’ve been forced to admit to. This issue won’t go away unless there is an independent investigation that can ease people’s minds.”

James J. Tuite III, director of the Gulf War Research Foundation, suggested that one way to help ease the veterans’ distrust might be to assign the oversight responsibilities to the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog agency.

The committee’s decision came after a morning of testimony in which a senior CIA analyst admitted that small Iraqi military units may have had chemical weapons in their possession at the front. But the analyst said that Washington still had no proof that was the case.

CIA officials reiterated that a March 1991 incident in which U.S. soldiers blew up an open pit later found to have contained nerve-gas rockets posed a “greater probability” of exposure for American troops than a nearby Iraqi ammunition bunker the unit destroyed at Khamisiyah.

Pentagon officials expressed similar fears when they disclosed the incident early last month. It was the revelation that U.S. troops had destroyed the chemical weapons at Khamisiyah that prompted the Pentagon to step up its efforts to investigate the chemical incidents.

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Besides the incident at Khamisiyah, the Pentagon has reports--investigated only cursorily before--of dozens of instances in which nerve-gas alarms went off in the vicinity of U.S. troops, including one controversial warning from Czech army nerve-gas experts.

Previously, the Defense Department either insisted that the reports were not credible or dismissed them because it had been unable to find a likely source for chemical exposure. The new investigation is expected to check out those incidents more fully.

Meantime, the New England Journal of Medicine, is scheduled make public today a report showing that hospitalization and death rates of Gulf War veterans have been no higher than those of other soldiers.

The report, based on studies by the Navy and the Department of Veterans Affairs, is expected to bolster the Pentagon’s long-standing assertions that its researchers have been unable to find a single underlying cause for the symptoms suffered by Gulf War veterans.