Under growing pressure to tell what it knows about possible exposure of U.S. troops to poison gas, the CIA said yesterday it has no evidence that Iraq used chemical weapons during the Persian Gulf War. ``Nobody is hiding anything,'' said CIA Executive Director Nora Slatkin.
At an unusual news conference at CIA headquarters, Slatkin read a statement insisting that the agency is committed to disclosing as much as possible about the issue.
``We know how important this issue is to Gulf War veterans,'' she said.
In the five years since a U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, many U.S. personnel who served in the 1991 conflict have complained of a variety of unexplained illnesses.
Until June, the Defense Department maintained there was no evidence that U.S. troops were exposed to chemical or biological weapons during the war. But now the Pentagon says up to 15,000 could have been exposed when U.S. Army troops destroyed an Iraqi ammunition depot at Kamisiyah in southern Iraq.
A presidential advisory committee is examining reports and hearing testimony from veterans who complain of symptoms that include memory problems, fatigue, diarrhea and insomnia.
Slatkin said the CIA has given the committee all the material it collected on possible exposure to chemicals.
``On the basis of a comprehensive review of intelligence, we continue to conclude that Iraq did not use chemical or biological weapons during the Gulf War,'' said Slatkin.
She also said CIA Director John Deutch has asked the agency's inspector general to look into allegations by Patrick Eddington, a CIA analyst who resigned from the agency last year, that the CIA and Pentagon were withholding evidence that Iraq used chemical weapons.
Slatkin said the inspector also would investigate Eddington's contention that the CIA retaliated against officials who agreed with him.
``Every document we have was made available to the presidential advisory committee,'' she said. ``Nothing was held back.''
Eddington has said the material was turned over to the committee only after he threatened to go public.
Slatkin, asked whether the CIA had turned over the 58 documents grudgingly, at Eddington's insistence, said, ``I don't believe that's true.''
At a presidential committee hearing in Tampa, Fla., in October, Jeffrey Ford, an Army combat engineer from Kansas City, Mo., said he was with the 82nd Airborne Division unit that destroyed three large caches of bunker bombs at Kamisiyah on March 4, 1991. The soldiers climbed atop their trucks to watch the explosions.
Rockets shot overhead and falling shrapnel sent troops - none of whom had chemical protective gear - scrambling for cover. At no time was his unit warned of chemicals, he said.
Pentagon officials have said they later learned that up to 2 tons of sarin nerve gas was stored in the complex.
Slatkin said that, contrary to allegations the CIA withheld information, it was an agency analyst who first raised questions that focused attention on Kamisiyah.
In response to a flood of inquiries about Gulf War illnesses, the Pentagon established a site on the Internet in 1995 called Gulflink as a repository for information.
The World Wide Web site included intelligence reports that the CIA asked the Pentagon to remove from the site in February so they could be reviewed for classified information.
Bruce Kletz, who is publishing Eddington's version of the controversy, put the documents back on the Internet Thursday. Slatkin told the news conference that the CIA also had put the documents back on the Internet the same day.
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