Time: Wed Oct 30 07:28:44 1996
To: Jan Farmer <jfarmer@startext.net>
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: HOT! Ex-CIA analysts assert cover-up on chemical risk to troops
Cc:
Bcc:
Jan,
Thanks. My father's next door
neighbor has it, and my father
is a Marine veteran of Iwo Jima.
I have been sending Dad these
stories. This is an abomination,
for sure. Thanks, Jan.
/s/ Paul Mitchell
At 08:02 AM 10/30/96 -0800, you wrote:
>http://www.startext.net/news/doc/1047/1:TOPSTORY/1:TOPSTORY102996.html
> [- StarText.Net Home ][- Community News ][- InterAct ][- Market Place ]
>
>Updated: Tuesday, Oct. 29, 1996 at 23:24 CST
>
>Ex-CIA analysts assert cover-up on chemical risk to troops
>
>By Philip Shenon
>c.1996 N.Y. Times News Service
>
>WASHINGTON -- Two intelligence analysts who resigned earlier this year from
>the CIA say the agency possesses dozens of classified documents showing that
>tens of thousands of Americans may have been exposed to Iraqi chemical
>weapons during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
>
>The husband-and-wife intelligence analysts, Patrick and Robin Eddington, say
>that while investigating the issue at the CIA, they turned up evidence of as
>many as 60 incidents in which nerve gas and other chemical weapons were
>released in the vicinity of American troops.
>
>The Eddingtons assert that the CIA and the Pentagon repeatedly tried to
>hinder their unauthorized investigation. And they say that when they
>insisted on pursuing the inquiry over the protests of senior officials,
>their promising careers were effectively destroyed. Their inquiry attracted
>concern at the highest levels of the agencies, including John M. Deutch, a
>former Pentagon official who is now the director of central intelligence.
>
>"The evidence of chemical exposures among our troops is overwhelming, but
>the government won't deal with it," said Eddington, who resigned this month
>after more than eight years at the agency, most of it spent as an analyst of
>satellite and aerial photographs from the Persian Gulf.
>
>The CIA and the Defense Department have rejected the Eddingtons'
>accusations. Yet despite the public appearance of unanimity among Government
>officials -- namely, that there was no evidence until recently that large
>numbers of American troops were exposed to the Iraqi poisons in the war --
>the Eddingtons' account suggests that there was evidence earlier of many
>possible exposures, and that there was a heated internal debate within the
>government over the meaning of the intelligence reports.
>
>Eddington, who is 33 and is preparing to publish a book outlining his
>allegations against the CIA, said government officials who had overseen
>investigations of gulf war illnesses "have lied, are continuing to lie, are
>continuing to withhold information."
>
>He became so enraged over the government's conduct that in 1994, he wrote a
>letter to the editor of the The Washington Times, without noting his ties to
>the intelligence agency. The letter, which was published, alleged a
>government "cover-up."
>
>Scientists have been unable to find an explanation for the variety of
>ailments reported by gulf war veterans. But increasingly, the medical debate
>has become separate from the issue of whether the government has told the
>truth about the intelligence reports about chemical weapons that it received
>during and after the war.
>
>After the war, Eddington said, he collected 59 classified intelligence
>reports from agency files and computer banks that provided "very, very
>specific" information about the presence of chemical weapons in southern
>Iraq and Kuwait during the war.
>
>Mrs. Eddington, who is 32 and now works for a military contractor, said she
>had seen at least one classified document suggesting that even trace
>exposure to chemical weapons over an extended period could cause illness, an
>assertion at odds with the Pentagon's official position.
>
>The Eddingtons said they were unable to provide details of the documents
>that they have seen because they are still classified.
>
>CIA officials said the Eddingtons were trying to portray an honest
>disagreement among intelligence analysts as something sinister.
>
>"This conspiratorial theory is just not fair or logical," said Dennis Boxx,
>the agency's chief spokesman. Eddington, Boxx said, has "essentially
>vilified everybody who doesn't agree with him."
>
>The Pentagon said in a statement that "the idea that the Defense Department
>has engaged in any conspiracy to cover up any information regarding Persian
>Gulf illnesses is simply not true."
>
>Although CIA officials acknowledged that intelligence reports suggesting the
>release of Iraqi chemical weapons were still classified, they said the
>documents had been made available to a White House panel that is
>investigating gulf war illnesses. The CIA said the documents could not be
>made public because they contained information about its
>intelligence-gathering methods.
>
>At the same time, the agency acknowledged that the Eddingtons had been
>highly valued employees, and said that their honesty, competence and
>emotional stability had not been questioned.
>
>"I think Pat had a lot to offer this organization," a senior agency official
>said of Eddington. Boxx said of Eddington: "Do we have any reason to believe
>that he's not an honest or truthful person? The answer is no, we don't."
>
>The Pentagon has acknowledged only one incident in which a large number of
>soldiers may have been exposed to chemical weapons. In that incident, in
>March 1991, the month after the gulf war ended, American combat engineers
>blew up an Iraqi ammunition depot that contained nerve gas.
>
>The Eddingtons said the CIA and Pentagon were hiding evidence of scores of
>other potential chemical exposures. Mrs. Eddington said the intelligence
>agency's attitude in studying the possibility of chemical exposures was one
>of "cowardice and conformity."
>
>"There is a complete lack of enthusiasm for trying to find answers," she
>said.
>
>The Eddingtons said their investigation raised concern at the highest levels
>of the Pentagon and the CIA. Eddington said he was told twice by a
>supervisor last year that Deutch, who was then deputy secretary of defense
>and the official responsible for the investigation of gulf war illnesses,
>called to express his alarm over the couple's inquiry.
>
>Boxx, the CIA spokesman, confirmed that Deutch had been aware of the
>Eddingtons' analysis and had expressed concern over it -- but only because
>their findings had been described to him incorrectly as a new, official
>analysis by the agency.
>
>Deutch, he said, had never tried to block the Eddingtons' investigation.
>When Deutch "learned that this was not a CIA study, that it was an
>individual analyst's assessment," he raised no further concerns about the
>inquiry, Boxx said.
>
>The CIA said the intelligence reports identified by Eddington had already
>been turned over to the White House panel, the President's Advisory
>Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses -- proof, officials said, that the
>information was not being hidden.
>
>But Eddington said that some of his superiors had wanted to withhold the
>documents and that they were turned over to the panel only because "it was
>my absolute insistence that they be turned over." Veterans may never find
>out what is in the gulf war documents, he said, since the White House panel
>is barred from releasing classified material in its final report.
>
>The Beginning: A Honeymoon On the Eve of War
>
>Patrick Eddington and Robin Katzman joined the CIA within a week of each
>other in February 1988. Miss Katzman had just graduated from Brandeis
>University. A veteran of the Army Reserves, Eddington had graduated from
>Southwest Missouri State University in 1985 and had worked in a variety of
>jobs before joining the intelligence agency.
>
>The couple met when they were both studying at the agency's photo-analysis
>school. They were married in October 1990, three months before the gulf war
>began. "We spent our honeymoon watching CNN," Mrs. Eddington said.
>
>During the war, Eddington was responsible for the analysis of satellite
>photographs from southern Iraq. It was clear before the war began, he said,
>that the Iraqis had moved chemical weapons onto the battlefield. "It was
>very clear that the Iraqis intended to use them," he said.
>
>Eddington said his office received reports from various intelligence sources
>that the Iraqis had begun to use chemical weapons against the United States.
>
>"In several specific circumstances," he said, "there was a statement that a
>particular chemical attack was taking place at a particular time. You'd ask
>management: `Hey, what's the story? Is this for real?' And I remember being
>told at the time: `No, Centcom says it didn't happen, false alarm.' "
>
>Centcom refers to the U.S. Central Command, which directed the American-led
>alliance in the gulf war. Eddington said, he was in no position at the time
>to question the reports from the Central Command.
>
>The Evidence: Rising Careers, Rising Suspicions
>
>Immediately after the war, the Eddingtons prospered in their careers. In
>1993, Mrs. Eddington was placed in a fellowship program that singles out
>fast-rising women employees and offers experience in other agencies of the
>government.
>
>She found work on Capitol Hill in the offices of the Senate Banking
>Committee, which was then led by Senator Donald W. Riegle Jr., a Michigan
>Democrat who was interested in the question of why so many gulf war veterans
>were falling ill.
>
>Although the panel would normally not deal with military issues, he asked
>the committee staff to investigate the possibility that troops had been
>exposed to chemical weapons in the war, and the inquiry was directed by
>James J. Tuite 3rd, a retired Secret Service agent who is now widely
>credited with having conducted the first extensive investigation into gulf
>war illnesses.
>
>"I had never heard of this issue before I went to work for Jim," Mrs.
>Eddington said.
>
>She was assigned to interview the gulf war veterans who were calling the
>committee.
>
>"Almost immediately, I started talking to the veterans," she said. "And
>their stories were absolutely consistent -- the symptoms, the stories about
>alarms going off."
>
>She took home one of Tuite's early reports. She handed it to her husband,
>with the announcement, "Hey, we got gassed." Eddington read the report --
>"it was powerful," he recalled -- and decided to start his own unauthorized
>investigation on the issue, gathering information from within the CIA.
>
>Eddington said he had prevailed upon friends working in other parts of the
>agency to search through computers banks.
>
>"We just plugged in key words dealing with chemical and munitions storage,"
>he said, "and we just began to pull up all this cable traffic."
>
>The cables, he said, confirmed that the Iraqis had indeed moved chemical
>weapons into southern Iraq just before the war and that American military
>commanders had received warnings during the war that chemical weapons had
>been released near their troops.
>
>Eddington said that in July 1994 he took his evidence to his superior.
>
>"I told him that I strongly suggested that the agency needed to go back and
>re-examine its conclusions," he said.
>
>Instead of reviewing the evidence, he said, agency officials set out to
>disprove it. Mrs. Eddington said that by accident she had met another agency
>analyst who told her that he had been given a copy of the Banking Committee
>report by his superiors and that he was trying to "debunk" it.
>
>"We were both extremely angry about that," Eddington said, "and I really
>began to feel, at least tentatively, that we were not going to be taken
>seriously. I decided to do something about it."
>
>The Fallout: Poor Reception For Accusations
>
>In his letter to The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper widely read
>at the CIA, Eddington suggested that the government had orchestrated a
>"cover-up" of evidence of chemical exposures in the gulf war. The letter was
>published on Dec. 7, 1994.
>
>Pentagon officials, he wrote, may have been "criminally negligent and
>obstructionist where the issue of ongoing medical problems of gulf war
>veterans is concerned." Eddington did not identify himself in the letter as
>a CIA employee. It was signed simply: "Patrick G. Eddington. Fairfax, Va."
>
>The letter had the intended effect. Eddington said he and his wife were
>quickly asked to brief several agency officials about their evidence.
>
>But Eddington said the meetings were often hostile, leading him to conclude
>that the CIA had no intention of reviewing the evidence honestly -- that
>agency officials planned to "stonewall" and insist that there had been no
>widespread chemical exposures during the gulf war.
>
>The Eddingtons say that by this point, their careers within the agency were
>largely over.
>
>Eddington said that in reviewing his personnel file earlier this year, he
>discovered that he had been the target of a criminal investigation last year
>to determine whether he had leaked classified information. (An agency
>official said that the investigation had been a "routine" response to the
>letter to The Washington Times and was not meant as retaliation.)
>
>Mrs. Eddington said that over a few months last year, she was turned down
>four times for a promotion that should have been routine.
>
>"People were looking at us like we're some kind of conspiracy nuts," she
>said. "The agency promotes people who don't rock the boat, and that's why
>you have this pervasive mediocrity ingrained in most levels of management."
>
>In his final months at the agency, Eddington said, he completed his book,
>"Gassed in the Gulf," which is to be published largely at his own expense by
>a small, independent publishing house. He said he had never considered
>submitting the manuscript to large publishing houses.
>
>"I didn't want anybody to be able to say that I was acting for profit," he
>said. "The reason for writing this book is to let the vets know that they
>are not alone."
>
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