Former CIA agent decries treatment of gulf veterans

The postwar health afflictions of Persian Gulf veterans and the lack of care they got after becoming ill was "truly a black, black page for our veterans," a group of administrators charged with caring for veterans was told Wednesday.

Patrick Eddington, a former CIA agent who investigated Gulf War illnesses and what the CIA and Pentagon knew about their possible causes, told the National Association of Veterans Program Administrators, meeting in Las Vegas, that the battlefields of the Middle East are "the most toxic in history."

Eddington, 35, and his wife, Robin, quit the CIA in 1996 after two years of trying to get the agency to admit that it ignored evidence that veterans were poisoned in the 1990 Gulf War and to acknowledge that it had accepted Department of Defense reports it knew were inaccurate.

In 1997, Eddington wrote the book "Gassed in the Gulf," based on information he obtained while working for the CIA and later while assisting the U.S. Senate Banking Committee's investigation into Gulf War illnesses.

"As a society, we have not done right by our veterans by a long shot," Eddington told nearly 200 veterans program administrators from across the country. The five-day conference ends today.

He compared the Gulf War Syndrome to events like the gunning down of World War I veterans by U.S. troops during a 1932 protest in Washington D.C. and the use of the herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and the years of government denials that veterans were ill from it that followed.

"The Gulf War is the latest of (that) legacy," Eddington said.

VA officials say they are addressing the problem.

"There have been 121 federally funded research projects into Persian Gulf issues," said Lisa Howard, spokeswoman for the VA office in Las Vegas. "Seventy-eight of them are ongoing into (a number of) possible ailments."

Howard said that 67,000 of the 1 million Persian Gulf veterans responded to a VA outreach registry, in which 26 percent of them rated their health as poor to very poor.

Of those who responded to the registry, 155 are from Las Vegas, she said, noting that the VA is still accepting names to the registry at (800) PGW-VETS.

Just last month, the General Accounting Office released a report which found that "low-level (chemical) exposure can have medical effects that can not only result in casualties, but also disrupt operations." The report refutes years of Pentagon assertions that there was no chemical exposure in the gulf that can be blamed for the myriad of symptoms Gulf War veterans have reported.

For those who have dealt with veterans matters for a long time, the report and the claims made in Eddington's book came as no surprise.

"What bothered me (in 1990) was that a new generation was going to war, and I knew what they were in for," said Jack Mordente, a Connecticut College professor who had served on Agent Orange commissions and who coordinated the convention.

"Thirty students from my university (National Guard members) were activated. There was a lot of anxiety."

Mordente recalled that a 19-year-old female soldier from a medical unit was killed and that others who served with her were told by military officials not to talk about it when they returned home. But Mordente, a trained counselor, did talk with them.

"They needed to talk," he said. "They came home with illnesses and problems."

Among Eddington's recommendations to prevent such future incidents is abolishing the medical arm of Veterans Affairs. He said the government instead should provide veterans with the same health care package as other federal civilian employees so they can get better treatment in the private sector.

Eddington also says the nation's "fragmented veterans groups" need to get together because they suffer from a "lack of unity that allows these problems to continue."

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