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» THE PENTAGON'S TOXIC oe Fair Article . Page 6 of 10 a) In June 1996, after denying for years that Iraq had ever forward-deployed chemical weapons during Desert Storm, the Defense Department admitted that the U.S. had destroyed a large cache of chemical munitions at the Khamisiyah depot in Iraq in March 1991. Using only limited data on weather and detonation patterns, in 1997 the D.O.D. and C.LA. released. computer models of a toxic plume emanating from Khamisiyah, wafting downwind and possibly contaminating 100,000 troops—by remarkable coincidence the approximate number of veterans who at the time were believed to be sick. (In September 1998, after conducting its own study, the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs would censure both the D.O.D. and C.LA. for faulty analysis and for sending letters to Gulf War vets suggesting—without sufficient evidence that Gulf War syndrome may have been due to fallout from Khamisiyah.) The Khamisiyah computer models were suspect, but the spin was effective. The C.I.A.-produced animations were played and replayed on television news shows. Almost overnight, chemical-weapons contamination became the conventional wisdom on the cause of Gulf War syndrome. Saddam did it, sort of. So did the ~nd. And maybe army engineers should have taken more ‘precautions. As shots in the dark go, this seemed to make sense. The appearance that the Pentagon and C.LA. had disclosed a possible cover-up lent the idea credibility. But even if a toxic plume had actually existed and moved in the direction the Pentagon said it did, enveloping 100,000 troops with minute doses of nerve agent, the theory collapses on several points with regard to autoimmune disease. First, the symptoms don't match: the effects of chemical weapons—acute headache, nausea, shrinkage of the pupils to pinpoints, and muscle paralysis-are well documented. In more than 50 years of data on nerve gases, published since the Nazis invented the chemical weapons sarin and soman, there isn't a single recorded instance of a nerve agent causing autoimmune symptoms or diseases. Second, veterans suffering from the symptoms of Gulf War syndrome who never deployed to the Gulf could not have been exposed to chemical-weapons fallout, or any other toxic agent in the region. Some of the veterans never left the United States; some went to other countries, such as Egypt. These veterans did not take PB. pills. Moreover, had chemical weapons caused Gulf War syndrome, one would expect to see it among those who are native to the region. Yet according to U.S. defense intelligence documents, there are no reports of Gulf War syndrome among the Kuwaitis or Israelis. The Egyptians, who contributed some 40,000 troops to the coalition force, don't have it; neither do the French or the Belgians. All of them sent troops. Another cohort of people who do not significantly report cases are the journalists who covered the war, myself included. These groups all have at least one thing in common: they did not receive shots for biological-warfare agents. Retired air force master sergeant Jeffrey Swan, 40, says he got his shots at Fort Belvoir in Virginia sometime around March 1991. Only one of the vaccines he received was identified (smallpox), so he doesn't know which other shots he was actually given. Because Swan speaks Arabic, French, and Greek, the air force sent him to Egypt in April 1991 to serve as a liaison with the Egyptian military. About four months later the tremors started, which made him look as though he were suffering from an alcoholic's D.T's. He developed joint and muscle pain and experienced seizures similar to Smiths. In 1996, back home in Tamworth, New Hampshire, he felt his car accelerating out of contro! and he slammed on the brakes. But it wasn't moving; he was parked at a shopping center. Swan's symptoms were the same as those of veterans who had Gulf War syndrome, but a VA. physician refused to put him on the government registry for it. "He told me that I had Gulf War illness, but he couldn't write that in the records, because I hadn't been deployed there, I wasn't in the right place. So he wrote ‘undiagnosed illness." Air Force physicians have listed Swan's problem as "Major Depression with psychotic features. " For almost 20 years I held a top-secret security clearance," Swan says. "On my medical chart there was a big red-and-white sticker that said, INSENSITIVE DUTIES: I never had a doctor or dentist once note anything suspicious about my behavior. Any hint of instability had to be reported immediately... Anything that might affect my performance had to be reported, even a teaspoonful of codeine. Suddenly I'm psychotic?" Swan thinks he knows why he and other veterans have encountered this penchant to call their problems psychosomatic, if not psychotic. "Anything I said could be dismissed. It got to a point where I didn't even believe I was having these symptoms ... that I was imagining everything. If we were registered for Gulf War syndrome, then everybody would know that the sickness couldn't be due to chemical weapons. We're the proof.” According to Asa's reading of Swan's lab tests, Swan has lupus. He says a V.A. rheumatologist also told him that he may have atypical lupus, but that it would take more time to confirm the diagnosis. Asa has tested Swan +2 positive for squalene on a scale of 4. http://www. idir.net/~krogers/vantyfair.html 11/8/2005