United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact

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OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN F. KERRY

Senator KERRY. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. First of all, I want to apologize to you. I had wanted to be here earlier, but unfortunately, the way the Senate works, as you well know, sometimes that's impossible. But I wanted to come here now to thank you for your tremendous leadership on this. I have really been impressed, as a veteran, particularly given my long involvement in the effort to get an Agent Orange presumption and a bill through here finally, I'm particularly sensitized to the stonewalling and reactions people will put in the path of those who put on the uniform.

I was quite surprised to find it and I am personally extraordinarily gratified and impressed by your pursuit of this. You've been passionate on the floor, you've been dogged in the Committee and in private, and a lot of veterans around the country I think are deeply indebted to you for your concern that regrettably has not been as forthcoming as it should have been given the lessons we've learned from other entities that are responsible for behavior toward those who put on the uniform in this country.

There always ought to be a presumption, I believe, and that's something we argued about very bard on the Agent Orange issue, a presumption in favor of the veteran.

You shouldn't have to beat down the doors to get people to level with you and explain to you what may or may not be factual. You have a done a brilliant job of forcing some information out on this that lends a much clearer view about what the possibilities are and what may or may not have happened. So I want to thank you.

I also want to thank those who have suffered because of this exposure, whatever it may be, yet to be fully explained, but I really want to thank them for their pursuit of this and for their willingness to endure.

I always thought that after we won the Agent Orange victory, we had learned a lesson and there would not have to be another generation coming along and enduring. So I'm here expressing personal anger and frustration with the fact that it's been a real tug of war to get at this. I cannot underscore enough my own personal admiration and respect for your efforts to try to get at it, and I think a lot of veterans just feel gratified that this Committee is doing it, and I support you in those efforts.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Kerry. Those words mean something special to me, coming from you, given your history ears ago as a Vietnam War veteran and since that time.

I think we've made some important progress with this work, with our help and the help of others, to get to the bottom of what has happened here and why we have so many sick veterans and increasingly so many sick veteran family members.

Spouses whose reproductive cycle is not working properly or suffering hair loss, a lot of the symptoms that the veterans themselves are experiencing and now increasingly their children. This was an unanticipated finding by us, as we got more deeply into this, but the numbers are growing in this area, and we're now pursuing that aspect of it.

But the question of exposure to chemical agents and to biological agents in this war zone and the implications for veterans and also t of active-duty personnel, there are a lot of active-duty personnel who are afraid now to come forward because there's a downsizing going on and they don't want to be invited to leave because they've been identified as having a medical problem.

Many of the veterans who were already out of the service tell us that if you don't get any real help out of the VA or in terms of a disability rating, and you're too sick to work, you're absolutely uninsurable, the insurance companies don't want to see you because you need the help and you need the coverage.

So there's a diabolical end-game situation facing more and more Desert Storm veterans. And when you think back to the parades, the deserved parades at the time as the war was ending and people were coming back, they don't mean much now if a veteran is sick or his family members are sick, and they need a response, they need a proper diagnosis, and they need proper care.

Even today with respect to the family members, we were able to get from the Defense Department this very day, coincidentally, a statement to all Gulf War veterans, signed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Defense Secretary indicating that they are now being urged to come forward, and they will be given help. That is a constructive statement. Now we've got to see that statement fully implemented, and there are questions as to how it affects Reservists and others.

I've also made the pledge today , just for your own information, that if we don't get the response that is needed here, I'm quite prepared to conduct hearings where we have veterans come in endless numbers. I hate to go through the process of asking people to make that effort, but if it's needed in order to really force this issue to a proper conclusion, we'll do that, and we'll have hearings that go on as long as they need to go on, until the powers that be understand that this is not going to be an issue that's swept under the rug. We're not going to have a 20-year hiatus as we had with Agent Orange. We've had a lot of veterans from Desert Storm already die, who went over in perfect health.

Senator KERRY. Well, it's very curious, I must say. I mentioned a moment ago to the staff that I was in Kuwait about 2 days after the liberation as part of the observer group from the Senate, and apart from biological or chemical, I found that the acridity of the air and the thickness of the air just from the oil fires. I remember turning to one of the soldiers there in Kuwait and asking him whether the air he was breathing bothered him, and how he felt about being outdoors. In fact, several people there who were from Reserve units out of Massachusetts mentioned to me that they were ver concerned about breathing the air.

I’ve got to tell you, for the 24 hours or whatever that I was there, I found a significant impact and discomfort from the air I was breathing, not unlike Bangkok where you can go out and you can't run. In 15 minutes, you feel your lungs searing.

I certainly felt the effect of those fires and within miles around, when it rained buildings were covered, cars were covered. I mean, you had, as far away as in Rihad, you had buildings that turned black by virtue of the rain. You had black rain. So that means you have particles in the air, and if you have particles in the air, you are clearly breathing those particles. I don't know what the air quality was. I don't even know if we measured that air quality, but I remember distinctly feeling it and having concern expressed to me by people.

Now I'm told that that has not yet showed up or there isn't some indication of that, but I would personally be surprised if, for those who were there for some period of time, there isn't some kind of impact or potential for it.

Anyway, I think you're doing very important work here. I apologize to those who wish more of us were here and able to stay, but the Senate doesn't always allow that.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much again, Senator Kerry.

Let me introduce our first witness this afternoon, Dr. Mitchell Wallerstein, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterproliferation Policy, Department of Defense, and we're pleased to have you.

You've come in the trail of an earlier discussion this morning, as you know. Why don't you proceed and give us your statement at this point, and then we'll go from there.
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OPENING STATEMENT OF DR. MITCHELL WALLERSTEIN, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR COUNTERPROLIFERATION POLICY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, WASHINGTON, DC

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

My prepared remarks are really not so much a statement as a comment that is supplementary to the testimony given this morning by Under Secretary Dorn. And so I simply wanted to say that I'm pleased to be here this afternoon to answer any questions that you might have regarding export controls and DOD's counterproliferation policies, particularly in the areas of chemical and biological weapons proliferation. We obviously wish to be fully cooperative with your hearing, your investigation, and are prepared to do so.

As Under Secretary Dorn explained, the Department of Defense was a major contributor, in 1990, to the development of the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative, which expanded DOD's role in the review of export requests, and which promoted greater interagency cooperation through the establishment of interagency subgroups on export controls.

Let me underscore once again, however, the fact that DoD has never been in the business of export control licensing, either for dual-use items or for munitions.

We do, however, continue to be an active participant in the license review process, particularly and increasingly, in areas involving chemical and biological materials. These are coordinated multi-laterally through the Australia group.

We will continue to play a leading role in the U.S. Government's efforts to counter the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons, but we do not license. We are simply a reviewer of licenses.

As you know, in the period immediately prior to the conflict in the Persian Gulf, DOD's role in the review of chemical and biological related dual-use export licenses for non-communist countries, such as Iraq, focused only on the assessment of risk of diversion of these dual-use items to the Soviet Union or to other CoCom proscribed destinations.

We had, at that time, no authority to review licenses destined for Iraq, per se, in terms of their risk of proliferation. Additionally, of the export licenses that we did review for Iraq, we are aware of none that supported Iraq's chemical or biological weapons efforts.

Since the revelations of the Persian Gulf War, law and regulations have been modified to permit us to be more aggressive with regard to the review of dual-use export licenses to proliferant states per se.

As you know, the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative was passed in November 1990, and, of course, Iraq today is subject to a total embargo on such items. We weigh in heavily now with recommendations against approval of cases where the end user is questionable, or where the items appear to have no legitimate defense or peaceful purpose.

As you also know, Mr. Chairman, the Administration's bill for the renewal of the Export Administration Act, which is now before your Committee, would give us the latitude to further review a large number of cases, and we could designate the categories that we wish to review.

In addition to these initiatives, we have now in prospect the multilateral support of 157 states, which have signed the Chemical Weapons Convention. When it is ratified, these states will undertake not to acquire, retain, or transfer chemical weapons or their precursors for the purposes prohibited under the CWC.

Finally, the President has directed that we pursue measures to strengthen the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention in order to enhance transparency and to promote increased verifiability of the use of these biological agents for peaceful and civilian activities.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my comment. I'd be very happy to take your questions.

The CHAIRMAN. How long have you been in your present job?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Since July 1993, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. What did you do before that?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Before that, I was the Deputy Executive Officer of the National Academy of Sciences.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you nave a position at any time in the Defense Department or anything related to it prior to that last assignment?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. So you were not, in a sense, in the Government, you were not in the loop when the request was made for these export licenses on, say, the biological items that were sent over to Iraq?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. That's correct, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You've reviewed all that carefully, however, in terms of what happened on somebody else's watch?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I have, yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, and I want you to think very carefully about this because I'm prepared to challenge your statement, and that doesn't mean your statement might not be right, but did I understand you to say that none of the items that were shipped over to Saddam Hussein ended up being used in his biological or chemical weapons capability, things that were licensed and shipped from the United States?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. No, sir. What I said was that in none of the cases that DoD reviewed are we aware that those items wound up being used in chemical or biological weapons programs.

The CHAIRMAN. OK

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. But again, let me repeat that we had only very limited review authority, because it was only the retransfer issue at that time. It was only the potential for retransfer of items to the Soviet Union or to other communist countries at that time were we authorized to review.

The CHAIRMAN. Then you would not have reviewed the requests that were made directly by the Iraqis that came into the research labs here for some of these very dangerous biological specimens which we, in fact, shipped to them. You would not have reviewed those?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Only if the case was referred to us by the Commerce Department and, again, they would not have been referring those cases unless they anticipated the possibility of retransfer.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, those would not have been within the scope of your review?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Not as a general practice, that's right.

The CHAIRMAN. OK, so you can't assert, one way or the other, as to whether those items ended up in Saddam Hussein's war machine, the stuff that we know we sent him, not for transshipment to somebody else, but the end shipment to him.

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. That's correct.

The CHAIRMAN. OK Because it's clear, when you go back and follow the pattern of what was being done here, that when they were requesting these biological specimens, they were being shipped over to, in some cases, the front operations within the Iraqi government, that were in fact part of their military apparatus. You are aware of that?

Dr. WALLERSTFIN. I have read information to that effect yes sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you happen by chance to see the letter, which had a little bit of a frantic tone to it, from Secretary Baker in the Bush Administration, as the war was getting ready to start, that we suddenly stopped the shipments to Iraq of these kinds of items, things that could be either used in chemical weapons or biological weapons or nuclear weapons. Are you aware of that letter that was sent around?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. No, sir, I am not.

The CHAIRMAN. We ought to give you a copy of it, because it was case of suddenly it dawned on people that we were going to have real problem facing off against weapons that we had inadvertently, one presumes, helped create.

And that's part of our problem here, but your testimony is that you only looked at the things that were going to be transshipped to the so-called rogue regimes that were on the bad guy list at the time. Is that right?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. To the countries that were proscribed by CoCom, which were the Soviet Union, China, and the other communist countries of the Warsaw Treaty Organization.

I might also mention, Mr. Chairman, that of course, these technologies are classically dual use in nature. They have both commercial and military applications. And so, in the period prior to the outbreak of the war, there was a legitimate commercial trade which may have contributed to the problem, but that is beyond the purview of the Department of Defense.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you in a position to tell us whether Iraq's biological warfare program was offensive in nature?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. The indications certainly after the war were that, from the evidence obtained, they were making strong efforts to obtain an offensive capability. Whether they had actually achieved that or not, I do not know, personally.

The CHAIRMAN. Were they capable of incorporating those items into weapons systems?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. In my judgment, they would have been capable of doing that, yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You know, after the war, after even the bombing destroyed a lot of the weapons, we had taken into possession, very large quantities of chemical weapons. You are aware of that?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And in a deliverable form, a variety of deliverable forms.

What initiatives has the United States undertaken now to ensure an effective successor regime to CoCom?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. That process is now fairly well advanced, and I am a major player in that process representing my Department. We are, as you know, negotiating not just with the original 17 CoCom member states, but with a larger group that includes many of the other advanced industrialized countries of Europe, such as Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria.

Agreement has been reached in principle for a regime that will have two pillars; a dual-use pillar similar to the old CoCom, as well as an armaments pillar. We hope very much that the arms pillar will focus particularly on these countries of greatest proliferation concern.

The final details of the regime are still being negotiated, but it is our expectation, and we have preliminary agreement among the participating states, that the new regime will begin operation in the latter part of this year, after October.

The CHAIRMAN. What kind of controls would you recommend that we have in place to prevent chemical and biological, and for that matter, nuclear materials getting to countries in situations such as we've now seen where Iraq exploited our openness to their advantage and then ultimately as a threat to us and to others? What kind of controls do we need to have in this area to avoid having another one of these situations arise?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Well, we do have in place the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative, which provides us with a safety net. Thus, in situations where an end user is considered to be questionable, where a company knows or has reason to know that an end user may not be intending to use the item in question for civilian application, it should be applying for an export license and the Government has the means to insist that they apply for such a validated license.

In addition, as I said, the new Export Administration Act will provide the necessary framework for the Department of Defense and for other national security-related agencies to request to review all broad categories of licenses related to chemical and biological precursors and other related items.

On the multilateral front, we have the Australia group operating today. As I noted in my comment, we hope very much that perhaps by early 1995, we will have a ratified Chemical Weapons Convention, which will then obligate the 157 signatory countries. This will include most, but I should say not "all" of the countries of concern, to a transparency regime where we and the multilateral authority, more importantly, would have the ability to inspect and to ensure that items were not being turned to military use.

I will add that the biological weapons problem is somewhat more difficult. It is, as I'm sure you know, much easier to conceal and it therefore presents us with a much greater challenge.

President Clinton, as part of his announcements last fall, has called for enhanced transparency measures to be developed in the Biological Weapons Convention. We are pursuing that and hope to be working with the other countries that are signatories to the Biological Weapons convention to promote greater transparency there.

The CHAIRMAN. You know, as we started down the track of trying to determine what was causing the sickness of the Gulf War veterans and their family members, and taking the symptoms and trying to overlay on the symptoms what kinds of exposures could have caused those health effects and health symptoms, that by the process of elimination, we worked our way back to biological exposures.

It was out of that that we continued to work back on an investigative trail to find that the United States had authorized, at the highest levels of our Government, the shipment of these very kinds of biological items to Saddam Hussein going into his war-making machine. And so there’s a very powerful case and logic and sequence of factual activity that would suggest that we had a big hand, presumably unwittingly , in helping him develop his biological warfare capability.

It’s led me to believe that we ought to be very careful about who we’re shipping these biological items to, and the fact that they are easier to conceal also should raise our alarm levels because I think you’ve got more and more of these regimes that are willing to go to any lengths in using these diabolical weapons even against their own people, which Saddam Hussein has a history of doing.

It seems to me we ought to be trying to strengthen the Biological Warfare Convention. I’m just wondering what you think we can do in that area, given the fact that it's in a sense more difficult to do the monitoring. How do we tighten this thing down so we don't end up having another situation like this arise in the future?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I think that the key, Senator, lies in transparency. Where countries are not prepared to be fully transparent in their dealings, which involves intrusive inspections.

I might note that that raises, in turn, the problem of proprietary information, because we have to bear in mind that it's the same technology that's used in pharmaceutical manufacturing, for example. And so just as we would have to prevail upon our pharmaceutical companies to be open to this kind of inspection, so would other countries. But it is only through intrusive inspection, and by countries agreeing to be open, that we can have any kind of confidence that these things are not being hidden.

I might also note, in response to your earlier comment, that the Defense Technology Security Administration, which is a part of the program elements that I am responsible for, has had an on-going program to identify the linkages between the front companies and the cutouts and the third party purchasers that are used, not just by Iraq, but by other proliferant countries, and we are pursuing this very aggressively. And, again, as we now assert the right to review these cases, we will be looking very carefully for these kinds of practices to prevent their recurrence in the future.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you what role, if any, have you played in the Department of Defense's investigation into the Iraqi chemical and biological warfare programs and into the discovery of or use of unconventional weapons during the Persian Gulf War?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. My office, which is newly reorganized as part of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, does play a direct role in support of UNSCOM and the IAEA. Indeed, one of my staff participated as the chief inspector on a recent mission to Iraq, where be directed the emplacement of chemical air samplers at strategic points around the country, to ensure that the Iraqi chemical capability is not reconstructed.

We have also been active in other aspects of ensuring that the thorough-going inspections that have been undertaken since the end of the war are completed. That is, we've been marshalling the capabilities of the laboratories and of other U.S. Government technical agencies to provide UNSCOM with the necessary technology that it needs to monitor on a long-term basis. And the same applies to the IAEA in the nuclear area.

The CHAIRMAN. How much knowledge do you have, as you sit here today, on the chemical and biological capability that Saddam Hussein had crafted for himself prior to the war?

Dr. WALLERSTFIN. Sir, I only know what I have read in the briefing papers. As we discussed earlier, I was not part of the U.S. Government at that time.

The CHAIRMAN. You have access to any and all records of that kind if you seek that access?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I believe I do, yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I think it would probably be a smart thing for you to do. If you're going to figure out a way to make sure that we don't have a problem like this in the future, it's very important to do a careful reconstruction of what happened because I think the evidence now is so powerful, from so many different directions.

I don't know if you were here earlier, but we heard some information presented by the witnesses from the Defense Department, an estimate of some 14,000 sensors, chemical agent sensors put out into the field, that might have been going off on the average 3 times a day, but they were all false alarms.

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Yes, Sir. I unfortunately was not present this morning for the testimony, but I have read that assertion.

I might just add that one of the other responsibilities of my office is to work with the Services and with the acquisition part of the Pentagon to develop new sensor capabilities. We are actively pursuing as a top priority the procurement of new battlefield sensors in both the biological and the chemical area. We very much hope that, when and if we have to put soldiers in harm's way again, we will have more accurate and more rapidly responsive capabilities.

The CHAIRMAN. Does that also include the development of new chemical agent detection alarms?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Yes, Sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Are we still using the ones that we used in the Persian Gulf War? Are those still a standard issue item?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. There has been no new technology introduced in that area to my knowledge, sir, at this point. But, there is substantial research going on.

The CHAIRMAN. You know, the amazing thing about that, I mean, it's so incredible that it's unbelievable but if you put those two arguments together, it would be that the alarms that we had that kept going off when they shouldn't have and therefore were not useful to us, we're still using.

I mean, it just-

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. It takes time to come up with a better technological solution, but as I said, it is one of the top priorities that have been identified. We've had a series of groups that have been working under the Under Secretary for Acquisition. That was formerly Dr. Deutch. Dr. Deutch is still overseeing this process. He is now the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the chemical and biological sensor issue is one of the top priorities that have been identified for further work, and to field as rapidly as possible.

The CHAIRMAN. Do we have biological sensor capabilities that are now able to be deployed and give us real-time readings on biological exposures and biological weapons being used?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. No Sir. There is no fielded biological sensor.

The CHAIRMAN. How close are we to having something in that area?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I believe that we expect that we may have something before the turn of the century. We would be able, to have something fielded by then, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Does North Korea have a chemical weapons capability?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I would defer that question if I may, please, to my colleague from the Central Intelligence Agency, who will be appearing as your next witness.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know one way or the other?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I have seen some information, but I'm not in a position to reach a net judgment on that.

The CHAIRMAN. My understanding is that they apparently have both, chemical and biological. It's a very important question, as you know, because things are tense there and you've just indicated that we do not have a biological weapon sensing capability that we can deploy at the present time.

And we're still using the chemical sensors that the earlier witnesses told us don't work properly.

So it would seem to me that if you put all that together and if, in fact, the North Koreans have that kind of a capability, somebody would have to think an awfully long time before they order American troops into a combat situation where we can't be assured that they're going to have adequate protection against those two kinds of weapons systems. Isn't that right?

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I know that General Luck, the Commander of U.S. Forces Korea, has given substantial attention to this problem. He has indicated that he is satisfied with the readiness of his forces to anticipate any scenario that might involve the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I hope that's right.

When I went back, in an earlier staff review I asked the question of how many of the senior military officers that were directing the war were up in the area where the chemical alarms were going off. I found that very few, if any, were. They were much further back, and it didn't give me a very good feeling.

These folks think there are adequate protections, I kind of like the picture of the Civil War generals that got on the horses and got out in front, and I'd feel a little more comfortable and a little more confident in the judgments if I saw some of the major signal callers in the strategy right up in the front areas breathing the same air, working with the same chemical detectors, relying on heir own advice in terms of putting their own health at risk. I have a bit of bitter feeling about it because I've seen so many sick veterans.

So I would hope that the people who have this level of confidence would, you know, we'd see them right up there, right up in the front when the going is unpleasant, and not back in some protected base area working out of a bunker.

I think that's all I have for you right now. I appreciate your coming. I'd urge you to stay with this. I think it's very important that we catch up to what the events are that are actually taking place in the world. I think we're behind in these areas.

Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Thank you, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Dr. Gordon Oehler, we d like to invite you to come forward. You serve as the Director of the Nonproliferation Center at the Central intelligence Agency.

We're pleased to have you here. I'd like to have you give us your statement at this time, and then we'll go to questions.

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OPENING STATEMENT OF DR. GORDON C. OEHLER, DIRECTOR, NONPROLIFERATION CENTER, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, WASHINGTON, DC

Dr. OEHLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I'm pleased to appear before you this afternoon to address our concerns about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I’m specifically going to address Iraq's efforts to obtain critical technologies for its' weapons program in the years preceding the Persian Gulf War. Finally, I’ll close with some observations regarding the Export Administration Act.

First let me tell you briefly what we knew about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs prior to Desert Storm.

As we reported extensively, Iraq bad aggressive CW and BW programs prior to Desert Storm. The Iraqis used nerve and blister agents during the war with Iran, and as you will recall, they also targeted their own Kurdish population with chemical weapons.

In mid-1990, Iraq had one primary site for chemical weapons production, Al Muthanna, located in Smarra, about 80 kilometers northwest of Baghdad.

By early 1990, we calculated that the Al Muthanna facility was capable of producing more than 2,000 tons annually of the blister agent mustard and the nerve agent Sarin. Iraq also had begun to build a complex of chemical production plants near Al Habbania, as well as additional CW storage sites.

U.N. inspectors have found more than 46,000 filled munitions, including 30 warheads for ballistic missiles, bombs filled with mustard s and nerve gas containers. Additional munitions remain buried today in bunkers attacked and damaged by coalition forces. The U.N. cannot remove them safely. The inspections have also revealed 5,000 tons of stockpiled chemical agents. The U.N. is only now completing the task of dismantling this massive program.

With regard to biological weapons, we estimated, prior to the start of the war, that Iraq had a stockpile of at least 1 metric ton of biological warfare agents, including anthrax and botulinum toxin.

Research reports released by the Iraqis to the first U.N. Biological Weapons Inspection Team showed highly focused research at Salman Pak on anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens. U.N. inspectors believe that there was an advanced military biological research program which concentrated on these agents.

The Department of Defense reports that no chemical or biological warfare munitions were found stored or used in the areas occupied by coalition forces during Desert Storm. We do not have any intelligence information that would lead us to conclude otherwise.

The CHAIRMAN. Now let me just stop you right there.

First of all, everything you’ve said so far has been very helpful to us, and much of this is new information on the record in a declassified form for the first time, and I'm grateful for that. I think it advances the level of knowledge, and in the end, it will help us get to the bottom of some of these sickness problems with our veterans.

In the paragraph you've just read, that no chemical or biological warfare munitions were found stored or used in areas occupied by coalition forces during Desert Storm. Now that's a very carefully worded sentence. As I read that sentence and heard you speak that sentence, that does not cover, as I read it and that's why I want the clarification, a situation where chemical or biological agents might have gotten loose in some way and gotten into these zones.

In other words, you're saying you found no evidence that they were stored or used. Used to me conveys some effort to aim at our people and trigger their use in some fashion, but that sentence, as it's written, would not, unless you specifically tell me otherwise, indicate that there were no occasions on which either chemical agents or biological agents, by one means or another, would have gotten into areas occupied by coalition forces.

Dr. OEHLER. What I'm saying very carefully here is that the Department of Defense reports that no chemical or biological warfare munitions were stored or used in areas occupied by coalition forces. This is a Department of Defense statement, because they had people on the ground and we didn't, for the most part.

The CHAIRMAN. Right.

Dr. OEHLER. What I'm trying to say is that we do not have any intelligence information that would lead us to conclude otherwise.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. I understand the marriage of the two sentences and that we're working off a predicate of a Defense Department report. But I want to come back now to the chemical alarms that kept going off in various areas of the war zone, where we have all these firsthand accounts and we also have these descriptive accounts of people who were there who described symptoms, physical symptoms, blistering and other things that would correlate to an exposure to a chemical agent, say, at the very time the alarm was going off saying there was a chemical agent in the area.

The CIA is not saying here that there were not exposures of American service personnel. You're not making a categorical statement that there were not exposures of American service personnel to either chemical agents or biological agents? I take it you have no way of knowing on a firsthand fashion?

Dr. OEHLER. That's correct. The intelligence information we have does not suggest that they were exposed to chemical or biological agents.

The CHAIRMAN. But didn't I just hear you say that, for the most part, you didn't have your own people there?

Dr. OEHLER. That's right.

The CHAIRMAN. So you're relying on the Defense Department?

Dr. OEHLER. In terms of on-the-ground surveys.

We, of course, have intelligence sources that talked to people before and after the Gulf War about what they knew was happening, and we're basing our intelligence judgment on that plus technical, national technical means, et cetera.

The CHAIRMAN. Would the CIA have a theory on why these chemical alarms kept going off?

Dr. OEHLER. I'm certainly not an expert in these systems.

The CHAIRMAN. But don't you find it a little, I mean, we're all logical people and if these attacks were coming and explosions were taking place and the alarms were going off and people were told to put on their gear and so forth, and yet, after the fact, we say, well there were never any chemical agents in the area, how does one mesh these two things?

I understand you're saying you’re relying essentially on Defense Department reports, but I'm looking for something different here. I'm looking for a categorical denial that American forces were exposed to chemical agents or biological agents. As nearly as I read this, the CIA is not able to come in here and give that categorical denial as you sit here at this moment. Now am I wrong in that?

Dr. OEHLER. What we're saying is that we have no evidence that they were, and it cannot be any stronger than that.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a theory as to what was going on then?

Dr. OEHLER. I don't know if my theory counts much. As a scientist, I know that trying to design sensors to detect specific chemicals and not others is a rather difficult job and false alarms are a way of business.

I’ll also note that the battlefield is a pretty messy place with incoming rockets, which when they impact have unexpended rocket fuel that vaporizes, you have explosives that go off, you have solid fuel missiles going with pollutants in the air. There’s an awful lot of what would be hard-to-identify chemicals in the atmosphere at any time.

The CHAIRMAN. So much of the Department of Defense reports now rest on the fact that the chemical alarms that they put out there that kept going off did not work right. Maybe they are right that they did not work, and they bought a lot of equipment that did not work right. But I do not find your answer satisfactory, quite frankly, and let me just be blunt about it. If you have got some information, classified or other, that will bear out what you are saying, I would like to see it. I would like to see it all.

Dr. OEHLER. I have no information to suggest, that leads us to the conclusion that any BW or CW agents were used against coalition forces.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, you see, again, that is a very—that is what we call in the business the use of a very carefully structured phrase. Let me give you an example. Suppose a bombing run hits a munitions facility and blows up into the air some of these agents, either gas agents or biological agents, and they are carried by the windstream down over our troops, and they are impacted by it. Is that a use?

Dr. OEHLER. Let me address those two specifically.

The CHAIRMAN. First of all, I would like a yes or a no—in terms of the way you are using the word "use." Is that a use or not a use?

Dr. OEHLER. I would call that exposure, certainly.

The CHAIRMAN. But is that a use within the way you are using it here?

Dr. OEHLER. No, but I would not sit here and try to use some legal definition to get around problem like that. I do not have any intelligence information to suggest that coalition forces were exposed whether it be by intentional use or by accidental discharge to BW/CW agents.

Let me address these two separately, because I think this is significant. The coalition forces did not find any CW agents stored in the Kuwaiti theater of operations, with the exception of some the U.N. found near An Nasiriyah.

The CHAIRMAN. Right, We talked about that earlier.

Dr. OEHLER. And, if in fact a munition blows up a chemical warhead storage site and chemical agents are released into the atmosphere, the modeling that has been done on this suggests that nothing is going to go further than maybe 10 miles. So if your American troops, if the coalition troops are much farther than that, they are not going to be exposed to chemical warfare.

Biological is a very different situation, because particularly if it is dispersed at a high altitude the biological agents can go very long distances. But there is no evidence that any of that was ever released.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just read you one item here, because there are obviously some strong differences of opinion on this.

U.S. military doctrine warns that, according to its calculations, the use of a nerve agent against a target area of no more than a dozen hectares can, under certain weather conditions, create a hazard zone downwind of up to 100 kilometers in length. Within this downwind area, friendly military units would have to take protective measures.

That is from the United States Department of the Army Field Manual, 100-5.

Dr. OEHLER. Yes. The difference here is, I was speaking of a munitions storage facility on the ground, and what that refers to is a chemical attack where the release is at an optimal height to burst.

The CHAIRMAN. We were asking about An Nasiriyah earlier today and how close these were. The description we were finally given was that it was the width of a narrow river. Does that ring a bell with you?

Dr. OEHLER. The distance between?

The CHAIRMAN. The distance between where our troops were and where these items were stored was the distance of a narrow river.

Dr. OEHLER. The troops came into the Tahji Airfield area, which is, to my recollection, 10 to 15 kilometers from An Nasiriyah. The storage site that was declared to the U.N., where the U.N. found chemical weapons stored, is just slightly south of the 31st Parallel, which is a little bit south of An Nasiriyah and a little bit north of Tahji Airfield.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, you have just given us a different description than we got this morning, in terms of what the proximity was here.

I guess then what you are saying here is—I want to understand this right, because you know, the CIA has a little bit of a credibility problem itself these days related to other matters. So I want to make sure that I understand precisely what it is you are saying and not saying.

According to Central Intelligence information, the detections these chemical monitors that kept going off, were not going off for reasons of the fact that they were detecting gas agents, chemical agents, during the war. It was something else.

Dr. OEHLER. I am not making any such statement. What I am saying is-

The CHAIRMAN. You are not saying that?

Dr. OEHLER. No. What I am saying is-

The CHAIRMAN. So it could have been? It could have been?

Dr. OEHLER. We were not on the ground. We are taking the Department of Defense's word for that. We have no reason not to.

The CHAIRMAN. So we are back to the Department of Defense.

Dr. OEHLER. On the operation of the ground sensors, absolutely. The only thing I am competent to talk about-

The CHAIRMAN. I think you have just given me my answer. You are not in a position to give us an independent answer one way or the other.

Dr. OEHLER. The only part I can give you an answer on is, what is there in intelligence information that might suggest an exposure to these agents by coalition forces? I am telling you, in our intelligence holdings, we do not see anything.

There is some evidence that some chemical weapons were moved into the Kuwaiti theater of operations, but then withdrawn prior to the beginning of the air attacks, with the exception of the ones that were found still in An Nasiriyah.

The CHAIRMAN. They were moved in and taken out?

Dr. OEHLER. That is what some intelligence suggests.

The CHAIRMAN. Just one instance? Several instances?

Dr. OEHLER. No. There were a couple of instances in intelligence that suggest that. We do not know moved where or what.

The CHAIRMAN. What would be the caliber of the intelligence source that would give you that information?

Dr. OEHLER. That was a generally reliable source.

The CHAIRMAN. More reliable than these sensors?

[Laughter.]

Dr. OEHLER. But according to this fragmentary reporting, these were withdrawn prior to the start of the air attack.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you a little different question. In terms of the qualitative ability of the CIA to do its own independent assessments, to really be cheek to jowl with this problem, on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of a CIA presence in the area to really be able to monitor this and not have much of anything slip through, if a 10 were the complete ability to have that kind of a capability, and a 1 was the least that you could have, where would you say the CIA's capability was across this war theater at that time?

Dr. OEHLER. We were not in a position on the ground, nor tasked, to provide monitoring for BW/CW, because that was the responsibility of the Department of Defense. We had other things that we were trying to do at the time.

The CHAIRMAN. So it would have been where, at the level of maybe a 2?

Dr. OEHLER. We were not there basically at all. That was not our mission.

The CHAIRMAN. It was less than 2?

Dr. OEHLER. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. Maybe 1 or between 0 and 1?

Dr. OEHLER. Now, I do not want to imply that the intelligence community does not have the capability to detect CW/BW agents.

The CHAIRMAN. But you were not tasked to do that in this situation?

Dr. OEHLER. That is correct. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. But that is what is so important, and it has taken us awhile to get to that, because in a sense you did not have your own ability to do that, you are relying in a sense on the Defense Department who did have that task of doing it.

Also, you are saying that, by the absence of any contradictory information to what they are saying, even though you had a very minor way of doing your own independent measurement, you are not in a position to, in effect, challenge their finding. That is what I hear you saying.

Dr. OEHLER. That is right. We have a lot of intelligence on the build-up of the chemical warfare capabilities, pipes, munitions, and so forth.

The CHAIRMAN. I can see that. I am impressed by what you have said up here in that area.

Dr. OEHLER. I am not trying to say that there was no information that the intelligence community was collecting at all. What I am trying to say is, out of all this stuff that we have gotten, there is not anything to suggest that coalition forces were exposed.

The CHAIRMAN. But, the big "but" that has to go with it was, the CIA was not in there doing the monitoring job on the ground.

Dr. OEHLER. Absolutely. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. If we were to try to measure that on a scale of 1to 10, it was less than a 1. So, I mean, that is an honest answer.

Dr. OEHLER. Yes. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. But what it does is, it cuts the guts right out of that paragraph that you just read.

Dr. OEHLER. Oh, I think it is-

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I know. It is a matter of opinion. You have an opinion you are bringing. I am just telling you what my opinion is after getting to that bottom line in laying that fact against that paragraph.

Dr. OEHLER. Fine.

The CHAIRMAN. Let us agree to disagree on that, and go on to the next paragraph.

Dr. OEHLER. OK.

At the same time Iraq was developing CW and BW agents, it was also developing the missile delivery capabilities. By the time of the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam could field up to 450 SCUD type surface-to-surface missiles. The Soviet-origin SCUD's originally had a range of 300 kilometers, but Iraq reconfigured them into a series of other missiles with ranges of up to 750 kilometers. Prior to the war, Saddam claimed to have developed and tested a missile with a range of 950 kilometers, which he called the Al-Abbas, but discontinued the system because of in-flight stability problems. With regard to Iraq's nuclear program, the bombing of those Iraq nuclear research reactors-

The CHAIRMAN. May I stop you one more time because you are going to go to another subject and it is almost better to take these as we go.

Dr. OEHLER. Sure. OK.

The CHAIRMAN. If you take the fact that he was lengthening the delivery capability of these SCUD's and had them apparently with some accuracy up to a range of 750 kilometers, I do not know if you have had a chance to review some of the first-person accounts that we have had of people, veterans out there who feel that they were in an area where a SCUD exploded where there were chemical agents in their opinion, as part of that SCUD attack. I do not know if you have had a chance to read those.

Dr. OEHLER. I saw the press reports of that, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Jim, I am just wondering if you can tell us where those locations were. Whether the SCUD's would have come, could have come, and likely did come from a launching site that would have been within that distance of 950 kilometers. I assume it would have.

Mr. TUITE. My understanding is that there were SCUD sites up in the area near the Euphrates north of Kuwait.

Dr. OEHLER. There were SCUD sites all the way into Baghdad.

Mr. TUITE. OK. But there were southerly deployed-

Dr. OEHLER. Southern launches as well, and western.

Mr. TUITE. -And those with 750-kilometers range would have reached well down into the Saudi peninsula, correct?

Dr. OEHLER. That is right. They had to launch them from fairly far south to reach down to coalition forces in Saudi Arabia. They had to launch them from pretty far west to reach Tel Aviv.

Mr. TUITE. To reach the border area where the disputed territories were, they could have actually been launched from quite a bit north?

Dr. OEHLER. From Baghdad.

Mr. TUITE. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, Jim, let me just ask here, with respect to the first-person accounts that we were discussing with Senator Bennett earlier today, with the belief on the part of some of the people in the area where the explosion happened, that a SCUD came in with this kind of a warhead, do you recall from memory where that location was where that SCUD attack occurred?

Mr. TUITE. There were a number of SCUD attacks in the report. But each and every attack, each and every event that is listed in the report is within SCUD range.

The CHAIRMAN. It is within the 750 in terms of the extended range.

Mr. TUITE. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Would it be within the 300 range which was the original range?

Dr. OEHLER. No. No, it would not.

The CHAIRMAN. OK. So the extended range that he was working on would have put him in a position, if somebody fired one of these, to at least get it to that site?

Dr. OEHLER. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Why don't you go ahead then with the next part here?

Dr. OEHLER. OK.

With regard to Iraq's nuclear program, the bombing of this Iraq nuclear research reactor by the Israelis in 1981 drove Saddam to extreme lengths to cover diversity, and disperse his nuclear activities. IAEA inspection of declared nuclear materials continued on a regular basis, but the IAEA did not inspect any of the undeclared facilities associated with a weapons program.

We reported extensively on the existence of the nuclear weapons program, but post-war inspections added quite a number of details to our knowledge on that program.

I would like to now give you a sense of Iraq's procurement efforts and patterns. The Iraqi program was developed gradually over the course of the 1980's. By the time of the invasion it had become deeply entrenched, flexible, and well orchestrated.

Project managers for the weapons of mass destruction programs went directly to vended European suppliers for the majority of their needs.

Throughout the 1980's, German companies headed the list of preferred suppliers for machinery, technology, and chemical precursors.

German construction companies usually won the contracts to build the CW facilities in Iraq, and Iraqi procurement agents were sophisticated in exploiting inconsistencies in local export laws by targeting countries for substances and technologies that were not locally controlled.

In the pre-war years, the dual-use nature of many of these facilities made it easier for Iraq to claim that the chemical precursors, for example, were intended for agricultural industries. European firms, arguing that the facilities in Iraq were for production of pesticides, built a Sumara chemical plant, including six separate chemical weapons manufacturing lines between 1983 and 1986.

European middlemen brokered-

The CHAIRMAN. Now, may I ask just a question here?

Dr. OEHLER. Sure.

The CHAIRMAN. This is all extraordinarily important and valuable information. Am I to understand that the CIA would have had the knowledge of this going on contemporaneous when it was actually happening? In other words, this was not learned later, and this is not a retrospective construction? We were tracking this, or we had knowledge of this, and knowledge of this would have been at the other high levels of Government at the time it was occurring?

Dr. OEHLER. That is right. What I am running through here is what we knew at the time, and what we had reported to our customers at the time. We bad been quite aware of Iraq's chemical weapons development program from its very early inception.

The CHAIRMAN. I take it the CIA must have had a concern about it to have kind of zeroed in on it to that degree?

Dr. OEHLER. Very much so. And that was reported to our customers, and our customers attempted to take actions.

The CHAIRMAN. It would have been reported also to the President, to the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, I assume, as a matter of course?

Dr. OEHLER. Yes, sir. Those are our customers, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Dr. OEHLER. Continuing on that: European middlemen brokered chemical precursor deals for Iraq under the pretext that the materials were intended for pesticide plants. A Dutch firm purchased supplies from major chemical firms around the world, supplying the Chemical Importation and Distribution State Enterprise in Baghdad in the 1970's, and in the 1980's supplying the Iraqi State Establishment for Pesticide Production, both cover names for the CW program.

The middlemen supplied dual-use chemical precursors including monochlorobenzine, ethyl alcohol, and thiodiclocol. When the Iraqis requested phosphorous oxychloride, a nerve agent precursor banned for export under Dutch law without explicit permission, the supplier balked, and drew this request to the attention of Dutch authorities. Subsequent Dutch investigations found that two other Dutch firms were involved in brokering purchases of chemical precursors.

Iraq exploited businessmen and consortia willing to violate the export laws of their own countries. As has been indicated in the press and television reports, the Consen Group, a consortium of European missile designers, engineers, and businessmen, established a network of front companies to cover its role as project director of an Argentine, Egyptian, Iraqi sponsored Condor II ballistic missile program.

Iraqi procurement officers, knowing full well the licensing thresholds, requested items that fell just under the denial thresholds, but nevertheless would suffice. Prior to Desert Storm, U.S. regulations on the export of these technologies were drafted to meet U.S. technical specifications and standards. Technologies of a lower standard worked just as well, and permitted Iraq to obtain the goods and technology consistent with Commerce Department regulations.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just stop you again. This is again very valuable, and I appreciate your presenting it for us so we can have it on the record. Before we get too far past it, you made a reference to phosphorous oxychloride. What agent is this a precursor for?

Dr. OEHLER. Sarin [GF].

The CHAIRMAN. Also, well I have interrupted you here. This backs up even further, but when you acknowledged that Saddam Hussein had SCUD chemical warheads, where did he get those?

Dr. OEHLER. They made them themselves.

The CHAIRMAN. They made their own.

Dr. OEHLER. They had quite a missile refurbishment extension plant where they took the SCUD's and added in extra lengths and the fuel tanks, changed the warheads, and had a capability to make their own warheads.

The CHAIRMAN. Were the Russians helping them with this?

Dr. OEHLER. No. There is no evidence of any Russian involvement at all in this.

The CHAIRMAN. You see, part of the picture that emerges here— this is really an extraordinary story that you are sharing with us, because, according to your testimony, the CIA was tracking this in real time as it was happening, and had a great concern about it, and had figured out that this robust program on chemical weapons and these other areas was going forward.

Yet, as we get down further in time, we are going to find out that, as Saddam Hussein needed other items to go into his war machine, that he actually came and got some from us, particularly in the biological warfare area, that required licensing.

So you wonder how anybody in the licensing regime who was reading the CIA reports at the time and who could see this buildup of this kind of weapons potential, you would think that people would have been very, very reluctant to approve anything that could go into a weapons production system of this kind. You would think that this would have had everybody on full alert to be extremely careful about what is or is not licensed for shipment into this kind of a regime. Is not that the logic of learning this?

Dr. OEHLER. Well, what I would like to point out in the next section of this is that there really was not much involvement of U.S. firms, as we have seen. If I could go through that a little bit, and then we can stop and talk about the whole thing.

The CHAIRMAN. Right, right, right.

Dr. OEHLER. Continuing on: Regarding the involvement of United States firms, we were watching Iraq's programs very carefully, and it was clear that the major players assisting Saddam were not American firms. They were principally Europeans. We saw little involvement of U.S. firms in Saddam's weapons of mass destruction program.

In discussing this issue, we should remember that by law the CIA as a foreign intelligence agency, does not focus on U.S. persons, to include U.S. companies. By this definition, companies founded by foreign nationals and incorporated in the United States are treated as U.S. companies.

This is not to say that we did not occasionally come across information on a U.S. person that was collected incidentally to our foreign intelligence target overseas; we did. But when we did, and when there was a possibility of a violation of U.S. law, we were obligated to turn our information over to the Justice Department,

The CHAIRMAN. Now, does that mean then, going back to the prior paragraph, that there would have been companies founded by foreign nationals incorporated in the U.S. supplying some of these materials, but they would be outside the scope of what you could properly zero in on?

Dr. OEHLER. We are not permitted by law to target the domestic activities of those companies or individuals in those companies.

The CHAIRMAN. Right. So if you stumbled upon it some other way, that did not mean you were not entitled to know that fact, but you could not as a matter of investigative focus go after these foreign firms incorporated in the United States to really find out the degree to which they might be doing business with Saddam Hussein?

Dr. OEHLER. That is right to the extent that we cannot engage in law enforcement or target their activities in the United States.

The CHAIRMAN. Do we have any reason to believe or know that there were such firms founded by foreign nationals incorporated in the United States that, in fact, did ship items like this to Saddam Hussein?

Dr. OEHLER. As I say here, we did provide what we call alert memos to Commerce, Justice, Treasury, and the FBI on a number of possible questionable instances. It is not up to us to make the legal judgment, but to point out that there is information that they need to look at.

The CHAIRMAN. I see.

Dr. OEHLER. These memos resulted whenever this incidentally collected information indicated that U.S. firms had been targeted by foreign governments of concern, or were involved in possible violations of U.S. law.

Between 1984 and 1990, CIA’s Office of Scientific and Weapons Research provided 5 memos covering Iraqis' dealings with United States firms on purchases, discussions, or visits that appear to be related to weapons of mass destruction programs.

The CHAIRMAN. Are those classified documents?

Dr. OEHLER, Yes, they are.

Can we go on to export controls?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, please.

Dr. OEHLER. Continuing: Turning to export controls, the intelligence community was asked by the Department of Commerce during the 1980's to review export license applications primarily when the licenses had significance to intelligence collection equities.

Here the concern was not so much Iraq, but whether there was a possibility the equipment would be diverted to the Soviet Union or other communist countries, as you heard from Dr. Wallerstein a little earlier.

Prior to 1991, there were four instances in which the Department of Commerce sought information on Iraqi export license applications, all dated in 1986. These applications involved computer technologies and image processors.

For some of these, we reported no derogatory information on the end user. In one case, we referred the Department of Commerce to a classified intelligence report.

After evidence mounted in the mid-1980's about the use of chemical warfare in the Iran-Iraq war, the United States began to put into effect unilateral controls on exports of chemical precursors to Iraq and other countries suspected of having chemical warfare programs.

The United States and several other industrialized nations joined what is called the Australia Group to establish more uniform licensing controls for the export of several chemical weapons precursors. Since then, more nations have been brought into the Australia Group, and recently controls have been added for chemical equipment, certain pathogens, and biological equipment.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me again just stop you here because you are about to go to the next paragraph. You go "since the war," and you go on with some observations there.

My sense for it at this point is that the CIA had a pretty good fix on the biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons capability of Saddam Hussein. You were tracking it. You were watching these international firms. You had seen Saddam Hussein in a sense go underground with some of his activities after the Israelis came over and bombed some of his facilities in the early 1980's. And you were paying serious attention to it. You obviously saw it as a real problem, and you were on top of it.

Would it be fair for me to say that, before the outbreak of the war, the CIA was convinced, and had well-documented the fact, that Saddam Hussein had an advanced and dangerous chemical warfare, biological warfare capability underway?

Dr. OEHLER. Yes, sir. I do not think anyone will doubt that.

The CHAIRMAN. I think the record is clear on that, I think it is to the credit of the CIA that it saw that and knew that and was reporting that in real time.

It is my understand-and you may or may not know the answer to this, but if you do, I would like you to give it—that the Defense Intelligence Agency did not have either that assessment or the same assessment in terms of the capabilities of the Iraqis in that area?

Dr. OEHLER. No. The Defense Intelligence Agency was part of the intelligence community. I, at the time of the beginning of the Gulf War, was the National Intelligence Officer for Science, Technology, and Proliferation. So my job there was to pull together common community positions on these matters. The Defense Intelligence Agency did not have any alternative views on this. Their estimate was that these programs were dangerous as well.

The CHAIRMAN. So from your knowledge, you are saying the DIA also felt this was a real threat. Was their level of knowledge up to yours, the CIA’s?

Dr. OEHLER. Yes, sir. We do not hold any information from each other.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, in terms of war planning, if somebody is anticipating going in and shutting down Iraq, moving them out of Kuwait after they had moved into Kuwait, and then backing them up and shutting down most of their military capability in Iraq, would the Defense planning of that come off this combined assessment, your assessment, the CIA's, and the DIA's assessment?

Where would the Defense planners go to get the picture of what the troops might face to the extent we had to go in and liberate first Kuwait and then go into Iraq, in the way of biological and chemical weapons risk?

Dr. OEHLER. Of course, the planning is done by the Military Operations Forces. What information do they have? They have all of this information. Now, whether they are obligated to weigh the Defense Intelligence Agency's estimates over someone else's, I do not know. You will have to ask them. But I did not see any significance difference it would have made, any kind of a difference in the campaign.

The CHAIRMAN, So I guess you are saying to us then that the Defense planners that would have had to put together a war strategy had quite complete knowledge as to the biological and chemical weapons capability that he had been working on over a period of time and refining?

Dr. OEHLER. I do not think any Defense planner or any policymaker will say they have complete enough knowledge.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand.

Dr. OEHLER. There are certainly pieces of our knowledge that were missing. What was clear was the existence of the program and the extent.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you this. Did the CIA for its part know ahead of the war that there were going to be the volume of these particular kinds of weapons systems that were found after the war that you cite in the early part of your testimony?

Was there a CIA estimate that would have said that, "Our expectation is that there would be at least 40,000 field munitions, including 30 warheads for ballistic missiles, bombs?" How discreet would your assessment of his capability have been before the war? Is there that kind of a document?

Dr. OEHLER. Our assessments were based primarily on the production capability, and on how much—as I mentioned, they could be producing 2,000 tons a year. And then, what would you do with that? We did not have it broken down by so many artillery shells and so forth.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know if anybody would have had a mockup, if you will, of this kind of a deliverable weapons system capability that was found after the war, before the war?

Dr. OEHLER. A mockup?

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, some very smart person like yourself had been tracking this for a decade and looking at all the stuff that they were buying from the European suppliers, and with aerial photographs, surveillance, and onsite sources or whatever else we had, would have said, "They have been cranking out this kind of a warhead now over a period of time, and we think they do 3 a week, or 3 a month, and we now think they have in their stockpile the following."

So when a Defense planner turns to you and says, "Wait a minute. We are going to send all these troops in here. What are we likely to face in terms of their stockpile of chemical weapons and biological weapons?" How refined would the internal estimate have been based on all this other work, that would have said, "This is what we think be has got."

Dr. OEHLER. It was pretty good in terms of the capability. The reason was we watched Iraq use CW in its war with Iran. In the latter part of that war, in the Majnoon Islands at the very end of the campaign, they used a tremendous amount of agent. We could track that and we could see then how they could use that against coalition forces if they chose to do so.

The CHAIRMAN. Did they use biological weapons?

Dr. OEHLER. No, they did not. Let me put my same caveat on here. We have no evidence that they did. We have a lot of evidence on what they used, and we did not see any use of BW.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there any information to indicate that Iraq was coordinating research on genetically altered microorganisms? There is a concern because of the U.S. export of E-coli and other genetic materials.

Dr. OEHLER. We have not seen that as part of their BW research program. At least if they looked at it, it did not get very far along to our knowledge. They did those three agents that we talked about, and most of the production was—all the production we know of was in botulinum toxin and anthrax, which is bad enough, by the way.

The CHAIRMAN. No, I understand.

We are trying to push this envelope out as far as we can in terms of what was going on here, recognizing that our own Government is compartmentalized. You know a certain amount and you go up to a certain point. Then somebody else, in a sense, has a responsibility that bridges on from that point and goes on into another direction. For example, the CIA did not design the chemical sensors that did not work. Hopefully, the CIA, if it was designing a chemical sensor, would have designed one that, when it went off it was not a false alarm, but it was a real alarm.

Dr. OEHLER. I would just mention that we in the intelligence community have needs for CW and BW sensors as well, and have been a bit frustrated by our—I will include ourselves here—inability to develop the technology rapidly enough to satisfy our needs. That is the same as the Department of Defense has.

The CHAIRMAN. I think generally offensive weapons capability can move faster than defensive weapons capability, and especially if you have somebody that is diabolically minded enough, like Saddam Hussein, and who is organizing this very well-developed weapons development system.

You have described here already, in what you have said, a very sophisticated operation, where they knew what they were doing. They were working through these European suppliers. They were staying under the thresholds. They were figuring out how to put together what they wanted. They certainly were field-testing the weapons. They field-tested them on the Kurds, and apparently on some Iranians as well. They were lengthening their missile range.

This is a very sophisticated operation in this area. They had gone underground to do a certain amount of it through these front operations because they had gotten punished by the Israelis.

So if you again just apply the logic, you would imagine that any operation as sophisticated as this, doing this many things, probably mixing chemical and biological cocktails as well—this is my own theory—was probably out on the forefront of what they could develop with respect to their offensive capability.

I mean, I cannot imagine somebody this creative suddenly loses the creative spark when it comes to figuring out, how do we get more bang for the buck? Or how do we find a more powerful weapon, or a less expensive weapon, or one that is easier to deliver, or one that we can somehow disseminate in a way that maybe they will not even find out?

Dr. OEHLER. No. These are centrally-directed programs with the highest authority behind them.

The CHAIRMAN. But they seem to be very cleverly designed as well. I am not saying that they are as sophisticated as we might be, but I am struck by the sophistication of the system.

Dr. OEHLER. They learned this over a period of years in the 1980's, but they became masters at the procurement networks. Of course, there are companies that try to help them with that, too, because the profits were pretty large.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, you know I really get a bad case of heartburn when I find out that these export licenses, not long before we actually find ourselves in a war with these people, were being approved by our own Commerce Department.

We had a situation—I do not know if you are aware of this or not—but we had a hearing in the late fall of 1992. We were at that time looking at the shipment of devices that were incorporated into Iraq's nuclear weapons capability. We found that some licenses had been granted by our own Commerce Department to ship certain dual-use items over there. In fact, some of them had been shipped directly to Iraqi military installations, which should have been a warning sign that they were not designed for peaceful use by somebody who is a professor in agriculture over in a university somewhere.

When that document, because it is a written document, was sought by the Congress—the Senate, and the House—that particular document was altered. The exact text of the words on the document, which indicated that it was to be shipped to an Iraqi military unit, those words were deleted, and something else was put in its place to create a false picture. That document was sent up to the Congress as a deliberately misleading document.

Now, the person who was in charge of that area in the Commerce Department—this was late in 1992, there was a Presidential race going on, so that heightened the sensitivity of all of this—was conveniently out of the country.

We tried to get hold of this person to bring them in as a witness to explain how this document bad gotten altered to give a false appearance and impression. We could never get this person because the person was outside the country and hiding out somewhere. So the election came and went, and the Bush people departed town, so we never did talk to that particular witness.

I only cite that because we have had experiences, direct experiences, where official Government records were doctored and given to us to mislead us on shipments that were going into the center structure of Saddam Hussein's military operation.

I am not talking about distant history. I am talking about something that happened directly within the scope of what we are here talking about.

This was a pretty sophisticated operation. It seems to me that, if the CIA knew as much as it did, and everybody else did, it is bard for me to understand why we were aiding and abetting this guy and authorizing these shipments. Doesn't that seem a little strange?

Dr. OEHLER. Well, the only thing I can say is that, since the Gulf War there have been a lot of enhancements in the licensing process and in the export controls. I think everyone realizes the significance of the problem.

The CHAIRMAN. Why don't you go ahead? We are getting down near the end of your statement. Why don't I let you finish it?

Dr. OEHLER. All right. As I was saying: Since the Gulf War, U.S export controls on CW/BW have been considerably strengthened. Enforcement mechanisms involving several Federal agencies have been put into place. The scope of the regulations have been broadened considerably.

In 1991, export controls were tightened to require validated licenses for all dual-use equipment being exported to end users of proliferation concern. Intelligence information is often the basis for this determination. This catch-all provision has served as a model for other countries interested in joining the U.S. Government's nonproliferation efforts.

The intelligence community has an expanded role in this strength and export control regime. We work with the Department of State-led interagency forums to control sensitive technologies and equipment.

Our analysis of international trade mechanisms used to transfer technologies from suppliers to consumers is provided to the U.S. policy, enforcement, and intelligence communities.

The Department of Commerce now brings the intelligence community into a large percentage of its license reviews.

Let me say a brief word about the control of missile and nuclear technologies. The Missile Technology Control Regime, the MTCR, went into effect in April 1987, with the participation of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, France, Japan, and West Germany, all the leading suppliers of missile-related technologies.

Initially the MTCR controlled ballistic missiles and their components that are capable of delivering a 500-kilogram warhead to a range of 300 or more kilometers. In recent years, the scope of the MTCR has been expanded to include any unmanned system, with any range or payload, if it is believed to be intended for use with weapons of mass destruction.

As you know, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, most often known by its initials, the NPT, provides the global framework to control the spread of nuclear weapons. Nations that have joined the NPT pledge not to transfer, seek access to, or assist the spread of nuclear weapons. The transfer of nuclear materials is covered by safeguards enforced by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Over the years, members of the NPT have developed lists of restricted items and technologies.

The United States adheres to these controls, and has introduced its own restrictions on the spread of fissile materials necessary for nuclear weapons: plutonium and enriched uranium.

The final issue I would like to address is the legislation affecting the export controls and other nonproliferation measures, specifically the provisions the intelligence community needs in such legislation.

The first thing I would say, Mr. Chairman, is that the bill you introduced at the request of the Administration incorporates provisions which address the intelligence community's concerns in the area of chemical, biological, and missile nonproliferation measures. We worked closely with the other agencies that developed this bill, and have endorsed the final result.

Accordingly, I would strongly urge that these provisions be retained in the final bill passed by the Senate. To aid the Committee's deliberations, I would like to outline the community's equities in this area.

In disseminating our intelligence, one of our primary responsibilities and duties is to protect the sources of the intelligence, whether human or technical, and the methods by which it was collected. Sources and methods are most at risk when intelligence information is directly or indirectly made public. The compromise of sources and methods inevitably results in a diminished capacity to collect intelligence for the future.

The most dramatic consequences of a compromise of intelligence information is the threat of the life of an asset, but there are other significant consequences. For example, if we have intelligence indicating that a particular overseas company is actually, say a Libyan front company, we can often watch that company to learn more about Libya's programs and its acquisition network.

The U.S. Government action that publicly identifies the company will often result in the company shutting down and reopening elsewhere under a different name. Identifying this new company can be difficult. But meanwhile, we have lost a window into the broader proliferation activity.

This is not to say that intelligence should never form the basis for overt U.S. Government action. To the contrary, it quite often does, and I feel strongly that providing this actionable intelligence is of the highest priority for the intelligence community.

What is needed, however, is the flexibility to take the action that will best achieve our nonproliferation objectives, which in some cases may mean holding off on overt U.S. Government actions to protect the nonproliferation sources and methods.

The first goal is to ensure the sanctions, regimes established to punish proliferators, permit the President sufficient discretion in the imposition of sanctions to protect intelligence sources and methods. The second goal is to ensure that the Executive Branch not be statutorily limited or required to publish lists of end users to whom exports of technologies and commodities are controlled. The third goal is to ensure that the Government maintains export control sufficient to ensure that exports of critical technologies are compatible with U.S. interests.

The Administration's proposals achieve the first goal by explicitly permitting the President to delay the imposition of sanctions where it is necessary to protect intelligence sources and methods. Let me emphasize that the intelligence community views this as an exceptional remedy that would have limited but critical application, and is necessary for further nonproliferation goals in the long run.

The second goal is met by not requiring the intelligence community to create lists or databases of end users to which exports of goods or technologies are controlled, but still ensuring that intelligence is appropriately made available to other agencies for the purpose of analyzing export license applications.

Finally, the Administration's bill would not relax or eliminate controls on key technologies, particularly encryption devices, which could be damaging to U.S. intelligence interests.

This is the basic outline of the issues we face. I would offer my center, the Nonproliferation Center, any assistance to you if they are helpful in your deliberations on these important issues.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

I want to say, as we have gone back and forth here, I trust it has been constructive. I have meant for it to be, and I appreciate the professionalism and the work.

I want to say to you and through you to the CIA that I appreciate the detail in this testimony today. You have declassified a lot of information today at our request, and made it a matter of public record. It is very helpful to us to do that, in terms of both reconstructing what happened and laying the right predicate for getting the Export Control Act reauthorization through here.

Your recommendation on this one item that you mentioned at the end was not lost on me in terms of what we may be able to do between now and the time we act on it in the Senate as a whole.

We have just, as you know, reported that bill out of the Committee by unanimous vote of 19 to 0. We have achieved a good strong bipartisan consensus, a regime that we think deals with some of these problems. So I appreciate the fact that you have validated these concerns and given us very important historical reconstruction here today that is useful.

I will say at the same time that I think that there is this problem of where is the health difficulty coming from and how do we track it to its source so we have got a better way of knowing how to treat the veterans and try to heal them and protect their families—that I still see in the various Executive Branch participants, a problem where information leaves off at 1 point, and then it picks up at the next point. Things do not ever quite fully tie together.

I do not just put that on you when I say that. I am just saying I see that problem. It is not the first time I have seen it. I have seen it other times in my 28 years here on other problems and I am seeing it again here on this problem.

I would give you this message to take back if you would. That we have got to do some more work to find out why these veterans are sick. If we had half of the top tier of the CIA professionals sick today themselves from the same problem, we would have a much more ambitious effort underway to get to the answer, just as we would if we had the high command of the military sick today from these problems. It is just the nature of what gets the priority and what does not.

We have got to find out what happened here. We have got to find out because we have got a lot of sick veterans, many of whom are getting sicker, and their family members are getting sick in increasing numbers. We were not prepared for that finding. That finding presented itself to us as we were tracking back through this problem.

I have talked to enough wives of returning male Gulf War veterans, who are now quite sick, that I am deeply concerned about what is going on here. Something happened out there, or some combination of things happened. The degree to which it comes out of this military or biological weapons capability, hopefully time will give us all those answers if we are aggressive about pursuing it.

What is beyond dispute is the fact that we have got a lot of sick people who put on the uniform of this country, and on the basis of our best intelligence assessments and the belief that somebody in the command position was making wise decisions with their safety and well-being in mind, that they could go into a battle situation with the confidence that they were not going to be subjected to something that we did not anticipate, were not protecting them adequately against, or were not prepared to get to the bottom of if they came back with a health problem.

Many of them are deeply discouraged right now, because they really feel like the Government has walked away from them, and despite all the talk, which is cheap and by itself does not mean anything, that not enough has been done to really ratchet their problems up on the priority scale and get at them.

I agree with them. I think they are exactly night. I think it is shameful the fact that we are in that situation. There is no excuse for it . I think every operational officer in the area of the Government that relates to these things, from the Director of the CIA to the Secretary of Defense, to the head of the DIA, to the President himself, to the head of the Veterans' Administration have an urgent task here to marshal the resources, marshal the knowledge, the professional focused effort, and figure out what happened here, and to try to get as much medical help to these veterans and their families as we can do, and not hold anything back.

And by the same token, learn from that before we suddenly find we have got a situation where the same thing happens again in some other theater of war. We have a terrible problem in this country—and I have seen it before—where, once somebody leaves active military service and becomes a veteran, they are in a different importance status as it relates to the Defense Department.

The Defense Department is looking ahead to the next war. The Veterans' Affairs Department is looking back at the veterans of the past wars, in effect. There is this dividing line.

Some of that may be necessary, but I think in this situation, the precautions taken were not adequate. I think there were some serious strategic errors made in putting people in harm's way. I think people are having a very hard time now who may have been part of that decision structure, facing it, acknowledging it, and dealing with it.

The body of information that we have, the number of veterans who keep coming forward, many still on active duty, many holding officer rank, who give us more and more information, tell me that we have got a problem here that the rest of the Government at the top is still reluctant, or unable, to fully see and deal with. That has got to change.

You have helped us today with respect to the report that you have given us from the CIA. We will give you some questions for the record and we will look forward to having you respond to those fully.

Thank you.

Dr. OEHLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. The Committee stands in recess.

[Whereupon, at 4:32 p.m., the hearing was adjourned, subject to the call of the Chair.]

[Prepared statements, response to written questions, and additional material supplied for the record follow:]

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR ALFONSE M. D'AMATO

Mr. Chairman, let me begin today by expressing my gratitude and appreciation for your commitment to addressing the serious issue before us — that of whether exposure to chemical and biological agents during the Gulf War with Iraq are causes of what has come to be known as the Gulf War Syndrome.

Saddam Hussein has once again been talking about Kuwait "as the 19th province of Iraq." Thus, this hearing and our inquiries are not limited to just a historical focus and it is not limited to only the ailments of veterans of the Gulf War and their families. Pursuing necessary questions and getting good answers may prove vital to the safety and success of future U.S. military operations.

Today, thousands of Gulf War veterans across this country are experiencing ill- nesses that began after they returned from the Gulf War. Alarmingly, there appears to be growing evidence that the illness is spreading to the spouses and children of the affected veterans.

I believe, as you do, that it is the responsibility of all Government agencies, institutions, and the U.S. Congress to follow every available lead which might assist medical researchers in finding the answers to the causes of illnesses faced by our veterans.

Mr. Chairman, I know that you have been tireless in your efforts to get the Department of Defense and other Federal Government agencies to be forthcoming on this issue. Most, if not all, of the responses have been inadequate and sometimes even contradictory.

It is my understanding that the Department of Defense contends that it has no evidence that U.S. forces were exposed to chemical and biological agents while serving in the Persian Gulf. But, according to the Pentagon's official report to Congress on the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, written in 1992: "By the time of the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq had developed biological weapons. Its advanced and aggressive biological warfare program was the most advanced in the Arab world. Large scale production of these agents began in 1989 in four facilities near Baghdad. Delivery means for biological agents ranged from simple aerial bombs and artillery rockets to surface to surface missiles."

With this report in hand, an acknowledgement that Saddam Hussein had the means to use such weapons, it is inconceivable that the Defense Department has no other information on the actual use or impact of such weapons on our veterans. Such information could prove vital to assisting medical research efforts necessary to define and treat Gulf War illnesses. The work of the Chairman alone on this issue, as indicated in the report released today, shows a growing link between the symptoms of the syndrome and the exposure of Gulf War veterans to chemical and biological warfare agents, pre-treatment drugs and other hazardous materials and substances.

It is outrageous and unjustifiable that this Nation's own Defense Department not cooperate. I believe it is their duty and responsibility to provide information that could help treat the illnesses being suffered by the very individuals who served their country bravely. These individuals survived the horrors of the battlefield only to return home and face the horrors of war on another front.

There is a critical need for immediate advanced medical research. A thorough and systematic review of all information and data from all sources, including our own Defense Department, could be critical to identifying the causes and treating the illnesses. I hope that the representatives of the Department here today are going to provide us with worthy information and not just more stonewalling.

Mr. Chairman, thank you again for your complete commitment to this critical issue. I join you in continuing the fight against what is probably considered the second war by many of our veterans.

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CHRISTOPHER S. BOND
MISSOURI
APPROPRIATIONS
BANKING, HOUSING AND URBAN AFFAIRS
SMALL BUSINESS
BUDGET

UNITED STATES SENATE
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20510-2603

May 25, 1994

Hearing on the Impact on the Health of Gulf War Veterans Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

SD 106 Dirksen

Opening remarks:

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for calling this important hearing to investigate further the causes of the Persian Gulf War Syndrome from which so many U.S. veterans and their families are currently suffering. We owe it to our veterans to do everything we can to determine the causes of the Gulf War Syndrome, to develop and research cures for those veterans now affected, and to do whatever we can to prepare and protect our service personnel from illnesses associated with this syndrome in any future conflicts.

Thousands of American servicemen and women are reportedly suffering from symptoms and undiagnosable disorders consistent with exposure to biological or chemical toxins. Allied bombings of Iraqi nuclear, chemical, and biological facilities were reported to trigger daily chemical "false alarms" on the front lines. Reports were made by U.S. service personnel of direct biological or chemical weapons attack on the 17th and 20th of January, 1991 and that as many as five gas attack alerts in one day were issued. Iraq not only had a vast biological weapons capability, including artillery shells loaded with mustard gas, rockets loaded with nerve agent, nerve agent aerial bombs, and SCUD warheads loaded with Sarin, but Iraqi official radio addresses on the 17th and 20th of January, 1991, indicated that Iraqi forces had and would use all means at their disposal to fight the U.S. and that they would soon unleash a secret weapon that would release "an unusual force." Lastly, the report of a Czech chemical decontamination unit detected the chemical nerve agent Sarin in the air during the opening days of the war and some of its members are believed to be suffering illnesses similar to those of our veterans.

Collectively, these facts make it, at least, possible that Gulf War Veterans were exposed to chemical and/or biological toxins. I, therefore, fully support Public Law 103-210 which provides additional authority for the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide priority health care to veterans of the Persian Gulf War who may have been exposed to toxic substances "or environmental hazards during the Gulf War. However, in light of the above evidence, it is apparent that we must investigate fully whether or not biological or chemical weapons were used on our troops.

In the staff report to this committee on September 9, 1993 on the Gulf War Syndrome, it is stated that only the use of highly sophisticated, computer-enhanced electroencephalograms (EEGs) would be able to detect neurological disorders resulting from direct chemical or biological warfare, or chronic exposure to low levels of hazardous nerve agents. I believe it is imperative that we make such technology available to those veterans suffering from the Gulf War Syndrome to determine without a doubt whether biological and chemical toxins played a role in the health conditions of our veterans.

The top priority of this committee, I believe, must be to ensure that the veterans who, have been affected are treated, not just adequately or minimally, but to the highest extent possible, and to support research for cures of the Gulf War Syndrome.

I do, however, have several other concerns that I feel must be addressed. First of all, I find it very disturbing that the Department of Defense has not been as forthcoming en this issue as I feel they must. It has been almost two and a half years since the Gulf War, and the Department of Defense has still not made it a priority to get to the bottom of the causes of the Gulf War Syndrome. While the Gulf War Syndrome may not be the result of chemical or biological warfare, the odds of this syndrome affecting future units in combat is grave enough to warrant full and speedy investigation.

Second, by not investigating the effects that possible biological attacks have had on our troops, the security of U.S. forces against such future attacks would be compromised. Data suggests that the M8A1 chemical agent detection alarm deployed during the war might not have been sensitive enough to detect consistent low levels of chemical agents. It would appear that a reevaluation of our defenses against biological and chemical warfare would be in order, especially as relations with North Korea continue to sour.

Lastly, I am concerned about the adverse side effects that veterans have suffered from the administration of nerve agent pre-treatment drugs and inoculations distributed to our armed forces. Patricia Axelrod, a research specialist whose study of the drug pyridostigmine, which our troops were ordered to take prior to the commencement of the ground war, stated that the drug was "unproven." I think more research on the side effects of this drug and the advisability of administering it to our troops in the future is warranted.

I thank the Chairman for this opportunity to address my concerns and look forward to reviewing the testimony of witnesses.

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR CAROL MOSELEY-BRAUN

I am pleased to submit this testimony for the record regarding those who have been afflicted with the Persian Gulf War Syndrome. While stories of mysterious ailments connected to service in the Persian Gulf have been around for the last several years it is only recently that the symptoms plaguing some of our Gulf War veterans and their families have been taken seriously.

Those who were forced to fight another battle with their health upon their return from the Gulf have been vindicated by an NIH technical panel held in April, that validated the service related claims of many of the victims. The panel found that the Desert Storm environment — biological, chemical, physical, and psychological — produced a range of illnesses for Desert Storm vets.

Today I met with a twenty-four year old Illinois constituent who came to my office with his story. I would like to share it with you, because it is representative of the experience of many of our Gulf veterans. My constituent, Tim Striley, left the Persian Gulf even before the war began due to unexplained symptoms including a rash, nausea, and fevers. Upon his return he completed his service commitment and began a private sector job. As his symptoms continued and worsened he received care from his local VA hospital. As is the custom of the VA, his bills were forwarded to his private insurer for payment. With no diagnosis, no treatments, and no cure, his medical bills soared and he missed time from work. He lost his job and was told by his insurer that they did not insure Gulf War vets.

To add to Tim's problems, not only is he the victim of this amorphous syndrome, but as we are hearing more often, his wife and young daughter appear to also be affected.

His illness has advanced to the point that he is now disabled and unable to work. Though he continues to receive care through the VA, he has been unable to access Social Security Disability Income because there is no diagnosis for his illness. His wife's employment provides the sole income for the family.

My understanding is that the story of Tim's family is far from uncommon. It is very clear that we must do more to aid those who fought in the Gulf War and are experiencing severe health problems because of it.

I support the NIH's recommendations to study the issue further, conduct a survey of Gulf War veterans, and to create a uniform protocol for evaluating Gulf War veterans in different treatment settings. In the meantime, however, we must assure that veterans suffering from Gulf related illnesses receive proper treatment and care not only for themselves but for their families.

It is important that we move forward to determine a cause for this illness because it is real and very much a public health problem. We are now hearing about mysterious bacterias and high incidence of cancer among Gulf War vets in their twenties.

These claims and other claims that families of vets are also somehow experiencing related health problems must be thoroughly examined as expeditiously as possible. We must ensure that these families receive adequate care and we must ensure that we take additional measures to protect the public health.

I plan to contact the Secretary of Health and Human Services to determine if there is a role for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding investigation of the syndrome or measures to protect the public health. I also plan to work with Senator Riegle to continue to bring attention to the plight of our vets who served their country heroically in the Gulf.

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your work and your persistence in trying to answer questions about the Persian Gulf Syndrome.

Like most people, I don't have the answers about why so many veterans of the Gulf War face chronic and often disabling illnesses, many of them from my home State of Colorado.

My office has helped many Persian Gulf War veterans, but I want to tell you about one young man whose family lives close to my ranch in Colorado. I remember him as a strapping young high school student. He also served honorably in the Gulf War.

Since returning from the Gulf, he has lost 40 pounds, he has trouble remembering things, and he has to fight bouts of dizziness and depression. The situation got so bad that he couldn't even make line-up. Yet the doctors at his base couldn't find anything wrong with him. He needed medical treatment, but they told him that his problem was mental, and refused to treat him. When will the United States Government believe them? At the funeral?

Only after I called the commander of Ft. Carson Army Base was he admitted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center for treatment. It shouldn't take a phone call from a Senator to help a veteran in need.

Currently, the Federal Government is engaged in at least 20 Persian Gulf related studies. They are investigating every possible cause or causes: multiple chemical exposures, leishmaniasis, oil well fires, microwave exposures, chemical and biological agents, vaccines and medications, and depleted uranium.

Last month the National Institutes of Health (NEH), along with the DoD, VA, HHS, and EPA, held the "NLH Technology Assessment Workshop on the Persian Gulf Experience and Health." After 2 days of presentations, the NIH adopted a written report which determined, among other things, that:

• There is "no single disease or syndrome apparent, but rather multiple illnesses with overlapping symptoms and causes."

• A "collaborative Government sponsored program has not been established" to evaluate undiagnosed illnesses.

Of course, we don't need to wait for studies to know that these veterans are sick. The question shouldn't be: "Are these veterans sick?" It should be: "How can we take care of these veterans quickly and equitably?"

Last year Congress passed authority for the VA to provide health care for all Persian Gulf veterans on a priority basis. I thought this would mean veterans would be taken care of, but today we find out that care is meted out stingily, with suspicion and reservation.

Without question, eligibility for benefits, access to health care and compensation have to be provided sooner, with less red tape. I will be working with Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairmen Rockefeller and Montgomery to provide a presumption of service-connection for sick Persian Gulf War veterans.

I hope that after these hearings, nobody argues with the need to carefully control potentially dangerous exports. Frankly, I m a little tired of hearing U.S. companies complain about export controls in the name of profits, and then not wanting to take responsibility for the uses of these products.

This weekend, 50-75,000 veterans will visit the Wall — I would like to tell them that we are doing something, and that the U.S. is not dragging its feet.

As a Member of both this Committee and the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, I look forward to working with you and Chairman Rockefeller on these issues.

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF HONORABLE EDWIN DORN

Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, U.S. Department of Defense

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I am pleased to provide information to support the Committee's review of how materials contributing to Iraq's chemical and biological warfare program were exported to Iraq from the United States. These are significant issues as you consider measures to strengthen the Export Administration Act.

Secretary Perry has asked me to be the focal point within DoD for issues related to service in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I am here today in that capacity.

Senator, I know that you and your colleagues are very concerned about Persian Gulf veterans who have developed health problems. So are we in the Department of Defense. In recent weeks we nave testified before the Armed Services Committees and the Veterans' Affairs Committees in both Houses, and I will be pleased to share with you the same information we have shared with them. Indeed, before we move on to discuss matters related to the Export Administration Act, I would like to offer a few points about our efforts on behalf of Persian Gulf veterans.

We take the position that the veterans who say they are sick should receive the best care we can provide. Three years ago, we trusted these men and women to make life-and-death decisions in the heat of battle. Today, we should believe them if they're sick. We are committed to treating the symptoms, to fashioning appropriate compensation for those who are disabled, and to identifying the causes of their illnesses. An interagency coordinating board ensures that the Defense Department's treatment and research programs complement related efforts by the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Department of Health and Human Services. I should note here that Congress aided our ability to respond by authorizing VA to provide priority care to Persian Gulf veterans for conditions that might possibly be related to their Gulf service.

We are especially concerned about those Desert Shield/Desert Storm veterans who, since the war, have developed symptoms whose causes we cannot identify. These veterans represent a small proportion of the nearly 700,000 U.S. military personnel who served in the Persian Gulf region during the conflict, and indeed they represent a small proportion of those who have been treated for illnesses or injuries suffered during the war. DoD and VA doctors have treated thousands of Persian Gulf veterans for readily identifiable illnesses and injuries; but we know of about 2,000 people for whom a clear diagnosis continues to elude physicians.

We are working very hard on this. There are lots of theories about causes. We have heard from people who are convinced that we will find the answer if we focus solely on parasitic diseases, or Kuwaiti oil fire smoke, or industrial pollutants, or the effects of inoculations, or stress, or multiple chemical sensitivity. We are trying to maintain a program that explores all the possibilities. In the course of our work, some possibilities nave begun to appear less plausible than others.

One theory involves Iraq's chemical and biological warfare capability. That theory provides a connection between the health problems of Gulf War veterans and the Senate Banking Committee's review of the Export Administration Act.

At the time of its invasion of Kuwait in August of 1990, Iraq clearly represented a case in which past efforts to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction had not been effective. Many American policymakers and military commanders were greatly concerned, going into the war, that Iraq would use chemical and/or biological weapons. We knew they had used chemical weapons in the past and we had evidence that they had acquired a biological warfare capability as well.

Our concerns led us to take measures to protect our personnel against such weapons, through immunizations, special training, equipment, and detection. The tension surrounding the possible use of chemical or biological weapons was evident to every American who watched on television as journalists scrambled to put on protective masks in response to the SCUD-attack warning sirens in downtown Riyadh and other areas. There were many alarms, witnessed by U.S. and other coalition military personnel and by the civilian populations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Israel.

Following the war, we confirmed through the inspections conducted by the United Nations Special Commission that Iraq did have significant stocks of chemical agents and the weapons systems to deliver them, as well as equipment and materials suited for chemical agent production. All of these chemical agents and related equipment were found stored at locations a great distance from the Kuwait Theater of Operations. These materials have been undergoing destruction at a centralized location in Iraq under the supervision of the United Nations Special Commission since late 1992. U.S. military personnel have been present, on site in Iraq, and involved in each of the teams overseeing these destruction operations.

We have concluded that Iraq did not use chemical or biological weapons during the war. This conclusion is based on analysis of large amounts of detailed data gathered in the theater and reviewed after the war. First, throughout the operation, there was only one instance of a soldier who was treated for chemical bums that were initially attributed to mustard agent; but subsequent tests on the soldier and his clothing did not definitively support the initial finding. We know of no other reports of any U.S. military, coalition military, or civilians in the region having symptoms caused by exposure to chemical or biological warfare agents. The effects of chemical and biological weapons are acute and readily identifiable, and our personnel had been trained to look for the symptoms.

Second, our detectors were strategically located, and although many detectors alarmed, there were no confirmed detections of any chemical or biological agents at any time during the entire conflict. Third, no chemical or biological weapons were found in the Kuwait Theater of Operations — those portions of Southern Iraq and Kuwait that constituted the battlefield — among the tons of live and spent munitions recovered following the war. The international community agrees with these conclusions.

This is a complicated and contentious issue, however. To ensure that we have not overlooked or misinterpreted important information, we have asked an independent panel of experts, chaired by Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg, to review all the available evidence. We expect to receive the panel's report in June. We also remain eager to hear from Gulf War veterans who feel that they can shed light on the sources of the undiagnosed illnesses.

I understand the fear and the frustration many Persian Gulf veterans are experiencing: They are sick and their doctors can't offer definitive answers. To them, let me say: This Administration is committed to treating you fairly. You stood up for the Nation; the Nation will now stand up for you.

Now, let me turn to the Defense Department's role in the export licensing process. First, it should be noted that DoD is not a licensing agency. That responsibility falls on the Department of Commerce for dual-use items. The Department of Defense reviews and provides recommendations on export license applications when they are referred to Defense or to interagency groups in which Defense participates. Records on the ultimate disposition of dual-use, biological, chemical, nuclear, or missile technology-related licenses reside in the Commerce Department.

DoD is a member of the interagency Subgroup on Nuclear Export Controls which was in operation throughout the 1980's. This group reviews export requests for nuclear-related dual-use technology. In the missile area, Defense played a significant role in the establishment of the Missile Technology Control Regime in 1987, and subsequently helped set up an interagency license review group in 1990. In the chemical and biological area. Defense also plays an important role, as part of an interagency team, in reviewing export license requests for items controlled by the Australia Group.

The Department has taken and will continue to take its responsibility here very seriously. For example, DoD made an important contribution in halting export of the Argentine Condor Program that was aiding Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Program and we spearheaded the effort to prevent Iraq from acquiring a more capable missile than the SCUD. Defense also played a leading role in developing the President's Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative and most recently the comprehensive DoD Counterproliferation initiative. The Department of Defense continues to consider proliferation as a significant military threat.

The growing ability to produce and use chemical weapons is a great concern to DoD. We fully support any measures that will prevent or control this proliferation, which include strengthening the Export Administration Act. It is important to remember that all exports made to Iraq in the 1980's were completely consistent with the laws in effect at the time, and Iraq was not considered a hostile country. Defense's role in reviewing exports was greatly expanded in 1991 — and would be further expanded through measures you are considering in this Committee.

I would now like to introduce the other members of the panel. Dr. Theodore Prociv is the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Chemical and Biological Matters. In that role, he oversees the Department's Chemical and Biological Defense Program; the Army program to destroy the U.S. stockpile of chemical weapons; and the implementation of bilateral and multilateral chemical weapons treaties, including the Chemical Weapons Convention which is being considered currently by the Senate for ratification. Additionally, his office has assisted the Defense Science Board Task Force examining the issue of Gulf War health, and has assisted my staff with technical support in the area of chemical and biological warfare defense. Dr. John T. Kriese is the Chief of the Office for Ground Forces at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He is responsible for the production of intelligence on foreign ground forces and associated weapons systems worldwide; and all aspects of foreign nuclear and chemical programs. Dr. Prociv and Dr. Kriese are with me here this morning. Dr. Mitchell Wallerstein, who will testify this afternoon, is an expert m Counterproliferation and Export Control for the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in International Security Policy. He is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counterproliferation Policy.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening statement. Before we turn to questions, I ask the Committee's indulgence while Dr. Prociv and Dr. Kriese describe their areas of expertise.

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. GORDON C. OEHLER

Director, Nonproliferation Center, Central Intelligence Agency

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, I am pleased to appear before you this afternoon to address your concerns about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I am specifically going to address three aspects of Iraq's efforts to obtain critical technologies for its weapons programs in the years preceding the Persian Gulf War.

• First, I will present a brief overview of the Intelligence Community's assessments of Iraqi chemical and biological warfare (that is CW and BW) capabilities prior to Desert Storm and subsequent discoveries based on post-war inspections. I will also touch lightly on our assessments of Iraq's missile and nuclear weapons programs.

• Second, my remarks will detail the means by which Iraq sought to procure items for its weapons of mass destruction programs.

• Third, I will address the role that U.S. intelligence agencies played in support of efforts to restrict transfers to Iraq that would have been of use in its CW and BW programs.

Finally, I will close with some observations regarding the Export Administration Act. I will be as candid as possible in this open testimony. I'm sure you understand that further details could be addressed in closed session.

First, what did we know about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. As we reported extensively, Iraq had aggressive CW and BW programs prior to Desert Storm, as well as programs for ballistic missile delivery systems. The Iraqis used nerve and blister agents during the war with Iran and, in 1988, increased their usage of nerve agent dramatically during their final offensive campaign. As you will recall, they also targeted their own Kurdish population with chemical weapons.

In mid-1990, Iraq's primary site for the production of chemical weapons was the Al Muthanna State Establishment located in Samarra, about 80 km northwest of Baghdad. In addition to that complex, the Iraqis had begun to build a complex of precursor production plants near Al Habbaniygih, as well as additional chemical weapon storage sites. By early 1990, we calculated that the Al Muthanna facility was capable of producing more than 2,000 tons annually of blister agents and nerve agents.

Although the Iraqis claimed after the war that their chemical weapons production was inept and poorly organized, U.N. inspections showed otherwise. Iraq originally declared only about 10,000 CW munitions and less than 1,000 tons of chemical agents. U.N. inspectors have found and destroyed more than 46,000 filled munitions including 30 warheads for ballistic missiles, bombs filled with mustard gas, and nerve gas containers. Additional munitions remain buried in bunkers attacked and damaged by coalition forces — the U.N. cannot remove them safely. The inspections have also revealed 5,000 tons of stockpiled chemical agents. The U.N. is only now completing the task of dismantling this massive program.

With regard to biological weapons, we estimated, prior to the start of the war, that Iraq had a stockpile of at least one metric ton of biological warfare agents, including anthrax and botulinum toxin. We reported that Salman Pak was the primary biological weapons facility. U.N. inspectors did not find any evidence of large-scale production or weaponization during post-war inspections, suggesting that the materials and equipment were removed and hidden prior to inspections. Research reports released by the Iraqis to the first U.N. biological weapons inspection team showed highly focused research at Salman Pak on anthrax, Botulinum toxin, and Clostridium perfringens. The Iraqis insisted, however, that their program did not proceed beyond basic research. U.N. inspectors believed that, contrary to Iraqi claims, there was an advanced military biological research program which concentrated on these agents.

The Department of Defense reports that no chemical or biological warfare munitions were found stored — or used — in areas occupied by Coalition forces during Desert Storm. We do not have any intelligence information that would lead us to conclude otherwise.

At the same time it was developing CW and BW agents, Iraq was also developing missile delivery capabilities. By the time of the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam could field up to 450 Scud-type surface-to-surface missiles. These Soviet-origin Scuds originally had a range of 300 kilometers, but Iraq reconfigured them into a series of other missiles with ranges up to 750 kilometers. Prior to the war, Saddam claimed to have developed and tested a missile with a range of 950 kilometers — which he called the Al-Aobas — but discontinued the system because of in-flight stability problems.

With regard to Iraq's nuclear program, the bombing of the Osirak nuclear research reactor by the Israelis in 1981 drove Saddam to extreme lengths to cover, diversify, and disperse his nuclear activities. IAEA inspections of declared nuclear materials continued on a regular basis, but the IAEA did not inspect any of the undeclared facilities associated with the weapons program. We reported extensively on the existence of the nuclear weapons program. Post-war inspections added a number of details.

I would like to give you a sense of Iraq's procurement efforts and patterns. The Iraqi program was developed gradually over the course of the 1980's. By the time of the invasion of Kuwait, it had become deeply entrenched, flexible, and well-orchestrated. Project managers for the weapons of mass destruction programs went directly to vetted European suppliers for the majority of their needs. Throughout the 1980's, German companies headed the list of preferred suppliers for machinery, technology, and chemical precursors. German construction companies usually won the contracts to build the CW facilities in Iraq. And Iraqi procurement agents were sophisticated in exploiting inconsistencies in local export control laws by targeting countries for substances and technologies that were not locally controlled.

In the pre-war years, the dual-use nature of many of these facilities made it easier for Iraq to claim that chemical precursors, for example, were intended for agricultural industries. European firms, arguing that the facilities in Iraq were for the production of insecticides, built the Samarra chemical plant, including six separate chemical weapons manufacturing lines, between 1983-86.

European middlemen broke red chemical precursor deals for Iraq under the pretext that the materials were intended for pesticide plants. A Dutch firm purchased supplies from major chemical firms around the world, supplying the Chemical Importation and Distribution State Enterprise in Baghdad in the late 1970's, and in the 1980's supplying the Iraqi State Establishment for Pesticide Production — cover names for the CW program. The middleman supplied dual-use chemical precursors including monochlorobenzene, ethyl alcohol, and thiodiglycol. When the Iraqis requested phosphorus oxychloride — a nerve agent precursor banned for export under Dutch law without explicit permission — the supplier balked and drew this request to the attention of Dutch authorities. Subsequent Dutch investigations found that two other Dutch firms were involved in brokering purchases of chemical precursors.

Iraq exploited businessmen and consortia willing to violate the export laws of their own countries. As has been indicated in press and television reports. The Consen Group — a consortium of European missile engineers and businessmen established a network of front companies to cover its role as project director of an Argentine-Egyptian-Iraqi sponsored Condor II ballistic missile program.

Iraqi procurement officers, knowing full well the licensing thresholds, requested items that fell just under the denial thresholds — but nonetheless would suffice. Prior to Desert Storm, U.S. regulations on the export of these technologies were drafted to meet U.S. technical specifications and standards. Technologies of a lower standard worked just as well, and permitted Iraq to obtain the goods and technology consistent with Commerce Department regulations.

Let me turn to the question of the involvement of U.S. firms in Iraq's proliferation programs. We were watching these programs very carefully, and it was clear that the major players assisting Saddam's effort were not American firms — they were principally European. We saw little involvement of U.S. firms in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

In discussing this issue, we should remember that, by law, the CIA, as a foreign intelligence agency, does not focus on U.S. persons, to include U.S. companies. By this definition, companies founded by foreign nationals and incorporated in the U.S. are treated as U.S. companies.

This is not to say that we did not occasionally come across information on a U.S. person that was collected incidentally to our foreign intelligence target overseas — we did. But, when we did, and when there was a possibility of a violation of U.S. law, we were obligated to turn our information over to the Justice Department.

We provided what we called "alert memos" to the Departments of Commerce, Justice, Treasury, and to the FBI. These memos resulted whenever this incidentally collected information indicated that U.S. firms had been targeted by foreign governments of concern, or were involved in possible violations of U.S. law. Between 1984 and 1990, CIA's Office of Scientific and Weapons Research provided five memos covering Iraqi dealings with U.S. firms on purchases, discussions, or visits that appeared to be related to weapons of mass destruction programs.

Turning now to export controls, the Intelligence Community was asked by the Department of Commerce during the 1980's to review export license applications primarily when the licenses had significance to Intelligence Collection equities. And here the concern was not so much Iraq, but whether there was a possibility the equipment would be diverted to the Soviet Union or other Communist countries.

Prior to 1991, there were four instances in which the Department of Commerce sought information on Iraqi export license applications — all dated in 1986. These applications involved computer technologies and image processors. For some of these, we reported no derogatory information on the end user. In one case, we referred Commerce to a classified intelligence report.

After evidence mounted in the mid-1980's about the use of chemical warfare in the Iran-Iraq war, the United States began to put into effect unilateral controls on exports of chemical precursors to Iraq and other countries suspected of having chemical warfare programs. The U.S. and several other industrialized nations joined what is called the Australia Group to establish more uniform licensing controls for the export of several chemical weapons precursors. Since then, more nations have been brought into the Australia Group, and recently, controls have been added for chemical equipment, certain pathogens, and biological equipment.

Since the Gulf War, U.S. export controls on CW/BW have been considerably strengthened. Enforcement mechanisms involving several Federal agencies have been put into place. The scope of the regulations has also been broadened considerably. In 1991, export controls were tightened to require validated licenses for all dual-use equipment being exported to end users of proliferation concern. Intelligence information is often the basis for this determination. This catch-all provision has served as a model for other countries interested in joining the U.S. Government's non-proliferation efforts.

The Intelligence Community has an expanded role in this strengthened export control regime. We work with Department of State-led interagency forums to control sensitive technologies and equipment. Our analysis of international trade mechanisms used to transfer technologies from suppliers to consumers is provided to the U.S. policy, enforcement, and intelligence communities. And the Department of Commerce now brings the Intelligence Community into a large percentage of its license reviews.

Let me say a brief word about the control of missile and nuclear technologies. The Missile Technology Control Regime (the MTCR) went into effect in April 1987, with the participation of the U.S., the UK, Canada, Italy, France, Japan, and West Germany, the leading suppliers of, missile-related technologies. Initially, the MTCR controlled ballistic missiles and their components that are capable of delivering a 500-kilogram warhead to a range of 300 or more kilometers. In recent years, the scope of the MTCR has been expanded to include any unmanned system, with any range or payload, if it is believed to be intended for use with weapons of mass destruction.

As you know, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — most often known by its initials — NPT — provides the global framework to control the spread of nuclear weapons. Nations that have joined the NPT pledge not to transfer, seek access to, or assist the spread of nuclear weapons. The transfer of nuclear materials is covered by safeguards enforced by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Over the years, members of the NPT have developed lists of restricted items and technologies. The U.S. adheres to all these controls and has introduced its own restrictions on the spread of the fissile materials necessary for weapons production — plutonium and uranium.

The final issue I would like to address is legislation affecting export controls and other nonproliferation measures, specifically the provisions the Intelligence Community needs in such legislation.

The first thing I would say, Mr. Chairman, is that the bill you introduced at the request of the Administration incorporates provisions which address the Intelligence Community's concerns in the area of chemical, biological, and missile nonproliferation measures. We worked closely with the other agencies that developed this bill, and have endorsed the final result. Accordingly, I would strongly urge that these provisions be retained in the final bill passed by the Senate.

To aid the Committee's deliberations, I would like to outline the Community's equities in this area. In disseminating our intelligence, one of our primary responsibilities and duties is to protect the sources of the intelligence, whether human or technical, and the methods by which it was collected. Sources and methods are most at risk when Intelligence information is, directly or indirectly, made public. The compromise of sources and methods inevitably results in a diminished capacity to collect intelligence in the future.

The most dramatic consequence of a compromise of intelligence information is the threat of the life of an asset. But there are other significant consequences. For example, if we have intelligence indicating a particular overseas company is actually a Libyan front company, we can often watch that company to learn more about Libya s program and its acquisition network. U.S. Government action that publicly identifies the company will often result in the company shutting down and reopening elsewhere under a different name. Identifying this new company can be very difficult, and meanwhile we have lost our window into the broader proliferation activity. This is not to say intelligence should never form the basis for overt U.S. Government action. On the contrary, it quite often does and I feel strongly that providing "actionable intelligence" is of the highest priority. What is needed, however, is the flexibility to take the action that will best achieve our nonproliferation objectives — which in some cases may mean holding off on overt U.S. Government actions to protect nonproliferation sources and methods.

The first is to ensure that sanctions regimes established to punish proliferators permit the President sufficient discretion in the imposition of sanctions to protect intelligence sources and methods. The second goal is to ensure that the Executive Branch not be statutorily required to publish lists of all end-users to whom exports of technologies or commodities are controlled. The third goal is to ensure that the Government maintains export controls sufficient to ensure that exports of critical technologies are compatible with U.S. interests.

The Administration proposals achieve the first goal by explicitly permitting the President to delay the imposition of sanctions where it is necessary to protect intelligence sources and methods. Let me emphasize that the Intelligence Community views this as an exceptional remedy that would have limited but critical application and is necessary to further non proliferation goals in the long term. The second goal is met by not requiring the Intelligence Community to create lists or databases of end-users to which exports of goods or technologies are controlled, but still ensuring that intelligence is appropriately made available to other agencies for purposes of analyzing export license applications. Finally, the Administration's bill would not relax or eliminate controls on key technologies, particularly encryption devices, which could be damaging to U.S. interests.

This is the basic outline of the issues we face. I would offer any Nonproliferation Center assistance or resources which you or your staff would find helpful as you proceed in your deliberations on these important issues.

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THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
WASHINGTON, THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
25 MAY 1994

MEMORANDUM FOR PERSIAN GULF WAR VETERANS

SUBJECT: Persian Gulf War Health Issues

As you may know, there have been reports that some Persian Gulf War veterans are experiencing health problems that may be related to their service in the Gulf. We want to assure each of you that your health and well-being are top priorities for the Department of Defense.

There are many hazards of war, ranging from intense combat to environmental exposures. Anyone who has health problems resulting from those hazards is entitled to health care. If you are experiencing problems, please come in for a medical evaluation. Active duty personnel and their eligible family members should report to any military hospital and ask to be included in the Department's Persian Gulf War Veterans Health Surveillance System. You will receive a full medical evaluation and any medical care that you need. Reserve personnel may contact either a military hospital or their nearest Veterans Affairs Medical Center and ask to be included in the DoD Surveillance System or the VA's Persian Gulf War Health Registry. You will receive a full medical examination. Depending on the results of the evaluation and eligibility status, reserve personnel will receive medical care either from military facilities or from VA facilities.

There have been reports in the press of the possibility that some of you were exposed to chemical or biological weapons agents. There is no information, classified or unclassified, that indicates that chemical or biological weapons were used in the Persian Gulf. There have also been reports that some veterans believe there are restrictions on what they can say about potential exposures. Please be assured that you should not feel constrained in any way from discussing these issues.

We are indebted to each one of you for your service to your country during the Persian Gulf War and throughout your military careers. We also want to be sure that you receive any medical care you need.

Thank you for your service.

John M. Shalikashvili
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

William J. Perry
Secretary of Defense