Clinton Orders Probe of ’91 Iraq Blast

Pledging to act on any information uncovered, President Clinton ordered an investigation Wednesday into whether the Army knew of nerve gas at an Iraqi weapons site blown up by U.S. troops shortly after the Persian Gulf War.

The Pentagon acknowledged in a report Tuesday that the CIA had warned senior Army officers of possible chemical weapons at an Iraqi weapons storage site at Khamisiyah in February 1991. Army engineers blew up the site the following month, apparently unaware of any exposure risk.

Speaking at a news conference with Chilean President Eduardo Frei, Clinton said he wrote a letter to Joyce Lashof, chair of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, asking that the panel review the Pentagon documents in order to understand “the full significance” of its contents.

“As soon as we get any new information, we share it with our veterans and the American people, and we will act appropriately on any information we uncover,” Clinton said.

The president cautioned the public against thinking there was a cover-up. “It is important not to prejudge the actions or the developments that occurred in the previous administration,” Clinton said. “We simply have to get to the bottom of it.”

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said Wednesday that he wants to know whether military officials put troops at risk unnecessarily.

“Our first obligation is to treat the veterans” with illnesses some blame on exposure to chemical weapons, Specter said at a subcommittee hearing on the Veterans Affairs budget. “And the second is to find out why the Department of Defense did so little.”

Clinton extended the advisory committee on Gulf War illnesses earlier this year after it issued a report concluding that no single cause could be found for such postwar ailments as memory loss, fatigue, diarrhea and insomnia.

The commission also said the Pentagon was too slow to study the effects of chemical weapons exposure, and it criticized the investigation into the veterans’ illnesses as inadequate.