xcript_hearing

This is the fourth public hearing that the Board has held. In April of this year we met in San Antonio under the chairmanship of General Cisneros, and most recently in June here in Arlington where we held a brief one-day hearing at which the Board hear from Dr. Haley on some of his research.

We're holding today's hearing to hear testimony from the Defense Department, the CIA, and other witnesses prior to issuance of our interim report in August -- that would be next month.

I've asked the Department of Defense Special Assistant Dr. Bernard Rostker to come before us today to address a conceptual phase-out plan for OSAGWI's investigative operations.

After we have heard Dr. Rostker's testimony and discussed the conceptual phase-out plan, the Board will determine after the interim report what recommendations, if any, it will make concerning discontinuation of the OSAGWI investigative activities, and I underline "investigative."

We will study the conceptual phase-out plan and present our recommendations in the final report.

Today we'll also hear from the CIA on their investigations of potential chemical releases as a result of coalition bombing activities during Desert Storm. And from the Office of the Secretary of Defense Health Affairs and the Joint Staff on issues related to pre- and post-deployment health screening.

There is continuing attention to the subject of depleted uranium. This afternoon we will hear from Dr. Naomi Harley, an authority on radiation physics, and also from the Armed Forces Radiological Research Institute about DU. And of course we will hear this morning from individual veterans who have asked to address the Board.

I mentioned our interim report which is due almost nine years to the day following the August 2, 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces. There has been little information uncovered to date by any organization that has been what I would call a smoking gun. That is information that would give us additional insight into the potential causes of these undiagnosed symptoms of our veterans that are collectively known as Gulf War Illness.

By contrast there has been significant medical research conducted, and that research must continue to go forward. The Defense Department's medical research program will continue without dependence on investigation of Gulf War incidents. Hopefully that research will continue to use the Gulf War experience for hypothesis generation and design of future medical research.

The Board supports continuing medical research into the causes of undiagnosed Gulf War illnesses as research always holds the promise of discovery. Our veterans deserve continuing scientific inquiry.

On the other hand, in response to the President's directive to leave no stone unturned in the search for events that may have a relationship to those ill veterans who served in the Gulf, the Defense Department continues to investigate chemical and/or biological events or suspected events during the Gulf War that may be associated with the undiagnosed illnesses that are affecting our veterans.

To date there appears to be little information that suggests causality between Gulf War chemical or biological events and servicemen's or veterans' health outcomes. That is the universally held belief. This observation neither diminishes the investigative efforts of the Department nor suggests that our veterans are not ill. It goes into causality.

Investigative efforts have been diligent and determined, yet have identified no watershed events or circumstances able to offer indisputable evidence that links service in the Gulf or low level chemical/biological exposures in the Gulf, to Gulf War Illness.

While the Defense Department's efforts have been educational and informative, the Board would like to hear if the Defense Department has a plan to shift its efforts from these retrospective investigations to a harmonious integration of the medical aspects of troop health surveillance, monitoring and care with the operational deployment of troops in both training and contingency situations. I look for testimony today that will address this issue.

We are interested in the Department's plans for the future for integration and application of the lessons learned to date from the Gulf War investigative activities into future servicemember medical surveillance, care, screening, and deployment.

Before we begin, we have a very distinguished and very hard working panel, and I want to give each of them an opportunity to make whatever remarks they would like to make before moving to our first witness. I will first call on my Vice Chairman. Jesse, if you'd like to go ahead.

SECRETARY BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I will reserve my remarks until after I've had an opportunity to hear the testimony. Thank you.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman.

Admiral Zumwalt?

ADMIRAL ZUMWALT: I'll follow the same policy.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Dr. Cam?

DR. CAM: I'll do the same thing.

SENATOR RUDMAN: General?

LIEUTENANT GENERAL CISNEROS: I just want to report, Mr. Chairman, that we did have that meeting. As you indicated, I was the chairman of the meeting in San Antonio, and I felt that we had a very good turnout and a very good dialogue. I also reserve any further comments.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Admiral Steinman?

ADMIRAL STEINMAN: I just want to say it's a pleasure to be working with this committee again, and I, too, will reserve comments for the time of questions from our witnesses.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Thank you all.

Board member Command Sergeant Major David Moore had a death in his immediate family on Sunday and is unable to be with us today. Our thoughts and prayers are of course with him.

With that, we are ready to begin our hearing. We'll hear from our first panel if Dr. Rostker and his team would come forward.

I guess I should introduce Ms. Ann McGuire from the White House who is sitting to my far left and who is the designee from the Office of Cabinet Affairs at the White House who, of course, oversee our work along with the DoD.

DR. ROSTKER: Senator Rudman and members of the Presidential Special Oversight Board. It's my pleasure to be here today to talk to you about the future of the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses or OSAGWI.

The Department of Defense remains committed to the three-part mission that has been at the center of OSAGWI since it was established in November of 1996. Our mission is to ensure that veterans of the Gulf War are appropriately cared for; to ensure DoD is doing everything possible to understand and explain Gulf War illnesses; and to put into place all required military doctrine, personnel, and medical policies and procedures to minimize any future problems from exposure to biological and chemical agents or other environmental hazards.

Over the last two and a half years we have progressed from a startup organization, borrowing resources from other organizations within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, to a mature organization included in the President's budget and fully funded through normal budgetary channels.

You, the Board, have requested that I discuss today our out-year budget projections. I am providing separately the five year budget projections we prepared for the OSD Comptroller's office.

This resource plan is based on the following assumptions. We will complete all current investigations. We will meet all previous commitments to the President's Advisory Committee, the General Accounting Office, and the Board. We will republish all interim narratives as revised or final narratives. We will meet all current outreach and town hall commitments. We will maintain the ability to effectively interface with veteran service organizations, individual veterans, and their families. We will refine and monitor lessons learned through the new Lesson Learned Directorate. We will leave in place a caretaker organization to continue to respond to our mission.

As I believe your own experience has already shown, it is difficult to be definitive in making these budget projections. To be effective we both need the flexibility to adjust workload and deadlines based on the unique and evolving demands.

As we sit here today I cannot tell you what issues you might raise as you continue to review our work or how much effort it will take to respond to your suggestions and requests. I can't tell you what issues the VSOs or congressional committees or the ongoing GAO review of depleted uranium might raise. I can only assure you that the Department is committed to spend whatever is necessary to complete our mission and properly serve our veterans.

Putting aside unforeseen demands, I can explain the baseline budget projections submitted to the Department.

As we matured as an organization and reported on the most notorious cases of suspected chemical agent exposure we expanded our focus from reporting on what happened in the Gulf, the so-called mission of leaving no stone unturned, to overseeing implementation of recommended policy revisions.

A significant recent change has been the establishment of the Lessons Learned Directorate. This new group has been staffed primarily by downsizing other parts of the organization, and they will be a substantial part of the long-term core organization.

As we move forward we will continue outreach and communications with veterans and their care providers. The veterans data management group will remain and will be reduced in size in keeping with the anticipated reduced volume of investigative calls, and the assumption that there will be a reduction of incoming calls with a reduction in large-scale public release of information. Available phones and the reprogramming capacity of a central telephone switch will allow us to increase the pool of extensions assigned to the 1-800 number if that is necessary.

The core organization, as we provided in our budget projection, would contain an outreach communications group, an administrative team, and a document management team. The latter to handle the national archive and record administration requirements, and the large number of Freedom of Information Act requests that we receive.

We will maintain an operations and security group to maintain physical and information security.

We anticipate the need for a smaller, more generic investigative group of government personnel supplemented by contractors to provide the expertise required to enable us to respond to inquiries from individual veterans and the media.

The most important change will be in the Investigative and Analysis Directorate, the IAD staff. This organization has been at the heart of OSAGWI. It will be substantially scaled back over the next several years. Here, however, we have a wide range of options and we look to the Board, the VSOs, the Congress, for help in determining which is the best option.

For example, should we complete all 33 ongoing case narratives or only, and I put this in quotes, "significant" cases -- those where we have made a commitment to the PAC to investigate and publish our results? Should we continue to investigate even if our preliminary analysis suggests that chemical agents were not present? The Board's judgment will become even more critical when you hear in a few minutes from Mr. Walpole of the Central Intelligence Agency concerning their continued review of chemical, biological and radiological exposures of Gulf War veterans.

Given the current work of IAD and the CIA, there are a number of ongoing projects that I do recommend we continue through to completion. Our work on pesticides, while not likely to provide the epidemiological data needed to provide a link between application and illness of specific individuals, should help us understand how pesticides were used and possibly misused during the Gulf War -- an important issue for our Lessons Learned Directorate and for the Department of Defense.

In the area of chemical exposures, I believe it is imperative to complete and republish estimates and lists of those allied forces that may have been exposed to chemical agents as a result of the destruction of rockets at Khamisiyah. We are likely to notify some that we previously sent letters to that based upon new information we now judge that they were not exposed. We are likely to notify others that previously did not receive notification letters that they may have been exposed. These new estimates will reflect a better understanding of where our troops were located, the amount and potency of agent release, new weather modeling, and the effects of weather on agent decay.

A complete remodeling of other releases that the CIA will discuss is more problematic. When we changed weather models as a result of the Institute of Defense Analysis Panel's recommendation, the PAC staff insisted that for consistency we reassess all previous analysis done by the CIA. We have been working with the CIA and they have been working with UNSCOM to better refine the dates of specific events, the weather at the time of the events, and the amount and potency of agent release. The CIA will talk to you about these releases later today.

The CIA has also made judgments concerning the likelihood that agent reached friendly forces. However, my office has not independently verified their analysis. I might say that the consensus view of representatives from major VSOs at a recent meeting that we held just yesterday was that we should continue to model these releases. We are, of course, prepared to do that.

The final question I'd like to put before the Board is what should finally become of OSAGWI. This is an issue I've talked to the VSOs about and I am forwarding with the budget projections we provided the Comptroller, I'm forwarding a number of letters I've received from major veterans' service organizations and military service organizations concerning their views of the future of the organization.

The present budget projections, for example, assume that after the last case narrative is published we will maintain a caretaker organization rather than close the doors on OSAGWI. These caretakers could update the narratives wherever new information is uncovered, respond to veterans' inquiries and provide a dedicated focal point for questions concerning Gulf War illnesses from the media.

Alternatively, one could argue that the ultimate lesson to be learned from the Gulf War is that the Department of Defense needs a permanent but more generic version of OSAGWI to deal with issues of deployment. You might come to this view if you believe that the issues facing OSAGWI were not unique to the Gulf War, but were the forerunner of a new focus by American troops on non-traditional outcomes. Also if you believe the Department needs a group that cuts across existing organizational lines reporting directly to its most senior leaders rather than being handled within the Department's traditional structure.

In summary, we have projected a continuation of OSAGWI. This is only one model that we could follow. We look to the Board to determine if this is the right model.

Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to discuss this with you today. I'd be pleased to take any questions and after that I'll be followed by Ms. Dee Morris, the head of our Lessons Learned Directorate, who will report to you on depleted uranium training.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Thank you very much, Dr. Rostker. Let me start out with a few questions.

It seems to me that in order to answer really the second question that you posed to the Board this morning, and it's a very good question, and that is what is the future of OSAGWI, you have to really get back and answer the first question that you asked in your statement which essentially, if I have the order correct, was how much more should, I believe you refer to them are IAD, do.

It seems to me that that's something that this Board needs a lot of help on from your organization and from anyone else who would like to contribute, and let me explain what I mean by that.

We are investigating physically events that took place now almost ten years ago. From my own life's experience dealing with evidence, I can tell you unequivocally that when you get to the tenth year you're getting pretty stale. No matter how good your models are, you start to get into real reliability problems in terms of recollection, memory. And what normally happens is that subsequent events shape recollection over the years. So what somebody thinks is their present recollection is really a present recollection, not a recollection of what took place ten years ago and there's a great of difference in those two things. The kinds of things that lawyers are arguing about in court all the time.

I am very concerned that it's not the amount of resources that we expend on this issue because as the Vice Chairman said to me just before we started, these are all costs of war, and if we have to do whatever we have to do for the veterans -- that's not even the issue. The issue is to spend whatever resources we have wisely.

So one of the things that we want from you over the next several months is a detailed analysis of the probable cause that exists to proceed on each of the 33 remaining cases.

It seems at least to me, and I'd like to know how the rest of the panel feels, that we ought to take the best minds that we have in this organization and the CIA, look at these 33, do a probable cause analysis on each, and then come back to this Board and say here is our analysis. We believe that these 11 should be completed, but the others really, even if they're completed, the benefit you might get from that is fairly slim. So that, to some extent, would shape the future. I'd like your response to that.

DR. ROSTKER: I think you have to put it in a broad context, and I will get to very specifically what you've asked.

The assumptions that we provided in our budget projections to the Defense Department were really built around two imperatives for the organization. The first is meeting our commitments.

We made commitments largely to your predecessor organization, the President's Advisory Committee, to carry on a range of analysis. Those commitments were made at a time when that Board was very questioning of the Defense Department, very critical of the handling of information, very demanding that, for example, every report of a positive 256 kit detection, regardless of supporting information, had to be documented. Every one.

So when we made our budget projections it was on the basis of continuing that level of commitment. There are many of those commitments that I do not believe will be fruitful, either on the basis of previous research and investigations or on the basis of our preliminary analysis. And I would ask you to weigh those, again, in reference to what you hear from the CIA later today.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Let me just interrupt you at that point before you continue your answer and tell you that I happen to believe, and I have not polled this panel, but I believe that this panel two years later is charged with the responsibility of saying to you what the PAC thought at the time based on the information available at the time might have been reasonable. We think today it is not.

I don't think that we're bound to accept everything the PAC said. We know more today because time has passed.

DR. ROSTKER: That's the guidance I'm looking for.

SENATOR RUDMAN: We have to help to reach that conclusion with you.

DR. ROSTKER: There is a corollary to that issue of commitment, and that is from the eyes of the veteran.

Veterans are asking of the Department, have been asking of the Department, really two questions. First of all, do you care? And the flip of that is no one's taking me seriously.

So as we explored this very issue with the veterans service organizations yesterday, it was also very clear that still veterans in the rooms, those would be the people who would be the most informed, were bringing up, well, I was at so and so and my buddies think this and you haven't investigated it yet. That view has to be taken seriously. We're not about to, I don't want to pull the plug on serious veterans' concerns, even if our best judgment is that this would not be related to Gulf War illnesses.

In the regard, there was an explicit discussion about the bombing campaign and our commitment to the PAC to use the quite advanced meteorological models that have been developed. It was the consensus of the veterans groups in the room that in that area, even though the CIA will tell you they do not believe agent reached -- and we would concur -- that agent reached friendly forces, their assessment and recommendation was to continue those levels of analysis. We're pretty well finished with that so it's not something that will impact the long term of the organization, but I think it represents a mindset.

The second issue that I think comes into the future work is republishing existing work. Here the Board is very helpful.

Every one of our case narratives and information papers and environmental exposure reports have been issued as interim documents because we strongly wanted feedback and corrections and dialogue. I must be candid with you, one of the disappointments is that we've had very little of that. Your predecessor organization did not comment at all. The General Accounting Office, and you will be hearing from their representatives later, did an absolutely outstanding job in reviewing our documents, as has your staff.

We need to take those corrections and suggestions and republish. I do not want to see this organization leave for the public record material that we know is incorrect.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Let me interrupt you again there, Dr. Rostker, and please excuse the interruptions, but I think it's more orderly that we do it this way.

DR. ROSTKER: Please.

SENATOR RUDMAN: I think it's important for the public, and this is a public hearing, to understand the process. Our staff has very vigorously contested some of the things that we have found written, and your staff has very vigorously come back and said no, we think we're right and here's why, and it's been a very good give and take done in the spirit of finding out the truth as the truth can be found. And so when those are finally published in their final form, they will have the imprimatur of your organization and this organization.

DR. ROSTKER: Yes, sir.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Which is, I believe, what the President meant when he gave us our charge.

So I think it's important for people to know there is an ongoing interchange. Sometimes it gets a bit tense, but we're all working to the same goal, and that's to try to produce the most accurate report that we can, knowing what we have, and I think it's important the public understand that.

DR. ROSTKER: Exactly.

We focused initially on the most important events. I used the word in my prepared statement "notorious events" because they had really reached that point. They had taken on myths of their own. I think we made very substantial contributions. I'm often amused at some of the criticisms of DoD, for example, the Fox vehicle being prone to false alarms.

When we started, the Fox vehicle was a magnificent vehicle that could never have a false alarm, and now we understand its true operating characteristics, and that's an important piece of information both for understanding the Gulf War but also for managing the future.

So we have made, I think, a very substantial contribution as has the reviews of our work.

But as we go over the next year or two, the issue of republishing I think is extremely important and we need to do justice to your comments and we need to leave in the public domain the most accurate accounting of what happened in the Gulf.

That leads me to the third issue, and ultimately do we fade away completely as an organization? Or is there a need for a caretaker organization? In discussing this issue with the VSOs there was a lot of sentiment, and you'll see this in the letters --

SENATOR RUDMAN: I want to talk about those letters at the end of your testimony.

DR. ROSTKER: A lot of sentiment and appreciation for the communications that have occurred between individual veterans and my office.

Is that a function that should stay? It is, let me tell you, a very expensive function because those people are as good as the systems that back them up in terms of retrieving information. And in this day and age maintaining a computer system is a heavy expense.

When we set up the organization, if you'll allow me a moment, I was shocked at the cost because in the old days, which are not too many years ago, you hired a person, you got a desk, you had a telephone and maybe a typewriter. Today you need a fiberoptic network and a network administrator and a help desk and computers and an Oracle database to retrieve the, my Deputy told me this morning that we have received over eight million pieces of information. Almost half the cost of the organization today is the administrative systems that back up our analysts, but also back up our veterans contact managers and their ability to serve veterans.

So I pose the final and last question, and that is do we stay? Do we go? Do we stay in a diminished role to serve the veterans? Or do we become transformed into a broader organization to worry about these types of issues as we move forward with more and more deployments, more and more activities?

I think this is a consensus outcome that I'm seeking with the Board, with the VSOs, and within the Department of Defense.

SENATOR RUDMAN: It seems to me that on that last point there is going to be a great interest in the Congress, and I'm sure in the Administration and subsequent Administrations, as to what ought to be done. There are many who would say that we already have organizations within the Department of Defense that could assume the responsibility by creating, if you will, another unit within them.

I know Dr. Cam has written a letter to us talking about the future and what OSAGWI might become.

I think it's early for us to really reach any conclusion, but there is no question that some of the functions are going to have to remain at DoD. The question is where can they remain in the most efficacious way? I'm not sure what the answer to that is, but I'm sure the Secretary of Defense has got some views on that as well.

DR. ROSTKER: Yes, I'm sure he has.

SENATOR RUDMAN: So we will obviously talk to him.

DR. ROSTKER: One of the nice factors in having this discussion is that no matter what happens, I won't be here in the sense that the Administration will change in about 20 months, and I think the question of the long term is something that we leave to our successors and not something that any of us have a personal stake in from a bureaucratic sense.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Let me just ask you two more questions and then turn to the panel.

How much time do you need to give us a probability, a probable cause analysis on the 33 remaining cases and your recommendations?

DR. ROSTKER: I think we can do that very quickly?

SENATOR RUDMAN: In a couple of months?

DR. ROSTKER: Very much so. In fact I said to the Board at your first meeting that I knew of nothing in our files that would contradict UNSCOM's conclusion that no agent was sent south of Khamisiyah. The CIA will say today they believe not only that, but that there were no measurable releases in terms of exposure of friendly forces even from the bombing campaign.

If we reassess that with the new weather models which are almost completed and are in the work agenda for this year, I think at that point I would not hesitate on the chemical and biological front to be quite definitive of all of the remaining work.

There are issues of other potential causes, for example CARC paint and others, which are well developed, and I would have to sit down with the staff and go over those additional things.

I did indicate in my statement that we should very much complete the work on pesticides. That survey of several thousands randomly selected Gulf War veterans is ongoing and the analysis will go into the fall and winter, and I think that will make a substantial contribution.

SENATOR RUDMAN: I want to just say to the panel because, as you know, we cannot meet as a panel without opening to the public, so I will now address this to the panel more than anyone else.

It's my sense that it might be a very good thing to do. We have a report due in about a month, and I expect, Mike, that we're going to have that probably ready to send over to DoD and the White House mid August?

MR. MICHAEL E. NAYLON: Yes, sir. The 21st.

SENATOR RUDMAN: There is nothing that says that we can't do a supplement to that, a small supplement to that. Even though it doesn't call for it, we're free to do whatever we want to do as long as we meet the statutory deadlines, and in this case the Executive Order deadline.

I'm going to suggest to the panel what we do is we have Dr. Rostker get what I've asked him to submit to us at the earliest moment. We get that, we absorb it, we meet, we talk about it, and then we do a supplementary report to the Secretary of Defense and to the White House essentially saying here's what we recommend in terms of these 33, which should be completed for analysis.

My concern is that if we continue to do analysis on things that really aren't going to produce very much that we're going to detract from some of the more important missions that are referred to in these letters from the VSOs. So I just want to submit that to the panel for your thought, your consideration, and we can make a decision on it, but it's something that I think would be helpful.

Finally, and then I'm going to turn it over to the Vice Chairman. I think the responses from the VSOs are very interesting, and I just want to talk about them for one moment.

The VFW says, and I'm just going to excerpt what I think are important things here and paraphrase some. "We believe that two of your missions, investigate possible chemical exposures and evaluate environmental hazards, are essentially completed. It seems to us that there are no more issues to be studied in these two areas with the culmination of all the identified requested case studies undertaken by your office over the past three years. We have no further suggestions for DoD involvement as related to chemical/environmental hazard exposure. The focus as we see it has shifted in the last year to the need for scientific and medical research, particularly in support for the possible establishment of presumptions for disability service connection correlated to duty in the Persian Gulf War."

That's the VFW. That's a major VSO. That's a pretty conclusive statement signed by their Executive Director, Mr. Steadman.

Then you get to the Disabled American Veterans and they say that your office must "continue to hold face to face meetings with the various veterans organizations on a regular basis." They talk about the history, the fact that there are a number of veterans who are seriously ill. Then they say, "You have two main missions. First, it must focus on finding answers to the cause or causes of these illnesses; and second, to provide recommendations as to how our government/military can avoid these or similar problems in future deployments." That's their view. A major organization.

Then the American Legion. They say it's their judgment that OSAGWI should "evolve into an organization that remains independent of the Joint Chiefs and the services; conducts outreach to current and former service members; oversees that appropriate changes are made to joint service doctrine in light of lessons" and so forth.

Then at the bottom they say, under investigation, "Your mission was to leave no stone unturned in the search for the cause or causes of Gulf War illnesses. The investigative effort did provide Gulf War veterans, their families and the public with an abundance of information regarding a number of not well understood environmental agents present in the Persian Gulf. However, in spite of a vigorous effort the OSAGWI succeeded only in eliminating possible causes of these illnesses. More critically, this effort has not helped sick veterans get well."

They talk about the cost, they talk about outreach and lessons learned. But it's interesting, they also are focusing now on the health and what do we do for the veterans issue.

Then there's one from the Non-Commissioned Officers Association, and that one is not quite as clear as to what they believe, but they do say "specifically and perhaps most importantly is to continue the needed research effort to conclusively resolve the issue of undiagnosed illnesses."

Well the research effort is only tangentially connected to those remaining 33. They're talking about the medical research effort.

The next one we have here is from the National Military Family Association, and they believe "Since the long term effects of service in the Gulf War are still unknown, and there are still countless veterans who are not aware of the programs available to them, we encourage you to continue your outreach efforts."

Finally, there's one here, I think it's the last one. There are two more. There's one from the National Guard. "The increasing pace of your outreach visits to Army, Marine and Air Force installations and to civilian communities provide important contact. I recommend future visits include sites used by the Guard during their annual training."

They do not specifically give the kind of a recommendation the others have. They do talk about "The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recently authorized VA hospital care, medical services, and nursing home care for veterans exposed to a toxic substance, radiation or other conditions resulting from the combat operations in Serbia and Kosovo," et cetera. That is the extent of theirs.

I believe there might be one other. The Gulf War Resource Center has challenged your credibility, has called for your resignation on several occasions, and doesn't think that you really have done a very good job. They're pretty concerned about, they think you have a lack of candor on depleted uranium.

I certainly don't share that. I think there were things that you can do and do better, but that's not a question of candor, that's a question of how you do your job.

They end up by saying, "Thus the recommendation of their group is to keep OSAGWI open and complete ongoing investigations especially in the depleted uranium and chemical warfare agents incident to overhaul the failed and tarnished leadership," et cetera.

And certainly I would agree that we need to do more research on the DU and some of the chemical warfare agents.

So it's interesting, there is a common thread through most of these, certainly the major VSOs, which essentially says we think you ought to be turning more now to health and research and a little less into case reconstruction.

DR. ROSTKER: I would --

SENATOR RUDMAN: Do I state those accurately, Dr. Rostker?

DR. ROSTKER: Absolutely. The set of comments closest to my personal view are those of the American Legion, and I would reiterate what you read, if you'll indulge me.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Please.

DR. ROSTKER: That is their judgment that OSAGWI should evolve into an organization that remains independent of the existing structure in DoD. They cite the Joint Chiefs and the services, but I think what they're trying to say is the existing being a catalyst that cuts across. Conducts outreach to current and former servicemen after deployments so that the orientation would be deployments. Then oversees the appropriate change are made to joint and service doctrine in light of lessons learned from past, current, and future deployments. That's why it's important to be independent.

So I think the American Legion has captured very much my own thinking in those three bullets.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Mr. Vice Chairman?

SECRETARY BROWN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Doctor, I thank you so very much for sharing your observations with us this morning. I found them very helpful.

I have basically one question I'd like to ask you at this point. Do you think that it is fair to just fade away, to use a cliche, I think you used it, when veterans are still sick? When active duty personnel are still being deployed to environments similar to the Persian Gulf?

DR. ROSTKER: We started as an organization designed to investigate the specific incidents of chemicals on the Gulf War battlefield, but we evolved into a broader organization that provided substantial access to the Department, to veteran service organizations, that has been, as you will hear from Ms. Morris, a catalyst for change. I think that is an important function, and I think that talks to an evolving of the organization into a more generic charter that can serve veterans now and into the future.

SECRETARY BROWN: You mentioned that you thought the American Legion's letter kind of reflected your overall philosophy here. Using that as kind of a backdrop or maybe as a precedent, I'm going to say that I liked the letter from the Disabled American Veterans. Not because I spent 27 years with them.

But I liked the second paragraph from the bottom of the first page. It says, "As I see it, your office has two main missions. First, it must focus on finding answers to the cause or causes of these illnesses. And second, it must provide recommendations as to how our government/military can avoid these or similar problems in future overseas deployments/wars."

Now that's important to me as a former national service officer. I spent all of my life, all of my professional life trying to prove that an illness or an injury was related to an individual's active military service.

Here a person goes into the military, he is in great health, by policy, by regulation, he's presumed to be in good health in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Then he or she comes out. Then the quality of life just diminishes. It continues to erode.

So as I see it, it's our overall job to see if there's a relationship between the drastic differences -- quality of life before he went in, or her life before she went in, and the quality when they came out. That is why this question on whether there is a relationship between their present problem and whether something happened to them in the military is very, very important, because it has to do with the quality of people's lives once they have answered the nation's call. That's why that's very, very important to me.

Obviously the second part to that is important because we don't want to put our sons and daughters in future circumstances if we can avoid that.

So given that kind of backdrop, it just seems like to me that we need to think about whether we have answered those two questions before we start talking about whether it is just time to fade away.

DR. ROSTKER: We are, as you know, not the entire effort of either the federal government or even the Department of Defense to try to answer these questions. To the extent that the answers to these questions lie in medical research, my office has never been engaged in original medical research.

Yesterday at our meeting with the VSOs someone made that point -- how could you consider going out of existence when there are still sick questions and unanswered questions. And my answer was I have to be able to tell you that I could continue and spend the government's money wisely as compared to other ways of answering the question.

If the answer is we are in existence to continue to look for chemical exposures that I do not believe occurred based upon the overwhelming material that we bring forward, I don't think that's a wise use of resources. I think we better serve the veterans by looking to other areas, by better financing our medical research programs.

So whether we continue or not continue does not reflect the commitment of this Administration or this Department to the well-being of veterans. It just talks about the unique charter of OSAGWI and its ability to, at this point, provide input and answers to that first question.

We have clearly evolved to be more focused, increased focus on the second question. The ultimate answer is after we bring the investigations down, are we the right place for interfaces with the veterans community on the war? On the war and a focal point for future deployments? Or should those tasks be absorbed into the existing bureaucracy of the Department? That's something we will search out in the Department.

But as the Chairman said, I'm sure he and the Secretary will have personal views as to how best to accomplish that.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Let me just follow up to the Vice Chairman's question.

I always thought, looking at your budgets and your time spent, that the great majority of what you folks did over the last few years, and you did it very well, was to try to investigate the incidents and the scenarios and recreate them.

Now my view is, and you tell me if you agree or disagree, and I don't know how the Vice Chairman feels. He used to run the VA, so he knows more about it than I do. My sense would be if we were starting at square one today and we said okay, we've done all the investigating we can, there's nothing else to investigate, we've reached these conclusions, we just don't know how to do any more. What we now want to do is try to find out what we can about these illnesses, and here's a billion dollars to spend to find out, I'd sure rather give it to the VA and the NIH than the DoD to do that kind of research. Could you respond?

DR. ROSTKER: I agree. I would, again, since we've been citing the comments from the veterans organizations, associate myself with the comment of the VFW. It says we believe that two of your missions -- investigating possible chemical exposures and evaluating environmental hazards -- are essentially completed. I think that is right.

We have a commitment, and we've been working very well with your staff, to redo the depleted uranium paper.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Pesticides.

DR. ROSTKER: And the depleted uranium. I don't believe it will change our conclusions. We will use more judicious language that appear on page 44, but you've pointed the way, and comments on page 10. We can build a stronger paper by building in the work done by the Rand Corporation. But I believe that the VFW also has this right, that investigating possible chemical exposures and evaluating environmental hazards are essentially complete.

SECRETARY BROWN: Thank you.

SENATOR RUDMAN: General Cisneros, do you have any questions at this time?

LIEUTENANT GENERAL CISNEROS: Yes, sir. I do.

Dr. Rostker, in preparing for this session coming down here, I was reflecting on our very first meeting with you and then the recent articles that have come out. The issue that I want to bring out here is that thinking back when we first met with you, I thought it was a very important comment that you said, our mission is to leave no stone unturned.

But since that time to now there seems to be even more polarization on this whole issue. I'm not going to comment one side or the other because I'm trying to see through all of that, but it seems that the polarization is even greater now, and I'm leading up to a question.

We're now talking about the main emphasis here, about what's the future? Do your organization and our report and so forth.

My question to you is in view of this polarization, if you would like to comment on it, but is there a possibility or is there any effort at all to try to find a credible element, acceptable to both sides of the equation, both the DoD side and the groups who have been very critical to this whole process, in your view is there a possibility --

We're looking into where are we going to put our future resourcing, to try to come up to a determination of some of these issues.

You just made a comment that you didn't think your opinion would change on DU. That's probably going to itself cause a lot of controversy, just the remark you just made. And I'm not saying you're right or wrong, I'm just trying to get through all of that.

Is there a possibility as we look forward where do we go, it seems to me that one of the biggest challenges for this group is going to be to report to the President about how do we proceed forward to make sure that we have the trust and confidence of the American public.

There was a CNN report this morning about the continued erosion of the vast distrust of government. You have Hollywood movies coming out. We're all part of a conspiracy. I'm sure at some point we're going to be depicted as part of that conspiracy to hide something. It's obviously an insult to many of us, probably including you, when our integrity is impugned like that.

But getting beyond the emotion of it, what do you feel regarding an element or a group that could be accepted perhaps to go through all these aspects of DU and these other issues?

DR. ROSTKER: I think your comments are strictly on DU. I find a high degree of support and a consensus on many of the issues that we have reported on. As you know, your staff has assessed the DU paper and we will be making changes to that. They're basically issues of clarity.

We have brought forth independent work. You will hear several of those additional pieces of information on your schedule today.

So if there has been a polarization it's in the issue of depleted uranium. I don't think it extends to other parts of our work.

And let me be very candid. We have bent over backwards to bring in the most objective findings we can. We have followed through on leads that have been suggested. For example, we have contracted with CHPPM to do the issues of resuspension that have been raised. In response to the claims that we had polluted battlefields we've sent CHPPM, the Environmental Health Office, and the Army out to take soil samples throughout Kuwait.

Regardless of any information we bring forward. Regardless of the scientific papers brought forward, we're attacked.

The scientific literature is, I would say, largely misrepresented, and I believe for political ends. Now if that's a polarization I'm not going to shrink from that. I'm not going to be bullied into saying something I don't believe. I'm not going to be bullied into discrediting a munition that saved thousands of American lives because of its superior performance on the battlefield because of the pacifist view of a few people. I will stand by that. Now if that creates polarization, then so be it.

But I would be hard pressed to note any other areas where there is widespread disagreement, and I don't even think there's widespread disagreement on depleted uranium. I think there is a small and vocal group that makes that presentation.

In terms of organizations to adjudicate or look at the issue, you have your own staff. That's why there is an oversight board. I lay my material before you, others will lay their material. You have to make a judgment.

Similarly, there is an ongoing General Accounting Office review, and I'm sure they will do a credible scientific job.

So as far as depleted uranium, it has been very unfortunate, and I have been attacked and vilified over the issue. I stand by the record of the organization.

When we were criticized for being too global in our final statement on 44 and the Board suggested a more appropriate statement on page 10, I immediately agreed because I think it is a more appropriate statement. But that statement on page 10 is not acceptable to those who believe that DU is a fundamental cause of illnesses, pollution, all kinds of stuff that is, in my judgment, not supported by the scientific literature.

But let me ask you, this afternoon you're going to have Dr. Naomi Haley here. Pose the question to her, is DU the cause of unexplained Gulf War illnesses.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL CISNEROS: Thank you.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Admiral Zumwalt?

ADMIRAL ZUMWALT: Mr. Secretary, as you know, at the most recent public hearing we heard the latest summary from Dr. Haley of the results of his research. All the members of this panel have now at one time or another heard that, and I know you have as well.

I want to read a page and a half long letter that I just received this morning, and I apologize therefore, that it hasn't gotten out to the members of this panel or to you, and I will take care of that right after the meeting. But I want to read the letter from Dr. Jonathan Samet who was invited along with two of his associates from the School of Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins, to listen to that research briefing, and who was asked then to submit their combined comments and this I take it is representative of all three views, but signed by the head of the department, Dr. Samet.

"Dear Admiral Zumwalt, Thank you for the invitation to participate in the recent meeting of the Presidential Oversight Board. I was fascinated by Dr. Haley's presentation and work. The Board is grappling with complex issues at the interface of science and policy. In this letter I will summarize the remarks I made in person to the Board. I will not directly address specific potential limitations of Dr. Haley's work as this ground has been well covered in comments in the peer reviewed literature.

"In reading and interpreting these comments, however, I would offer the reminder that observational data is always subject to potential biases, leaving every study subject to reasonably held criticism.

"To recapitulate the story of Dr. Haley's research as told by him on Tuesday and as gleaned from a reading of his papers, he has moved rapidly from a descriptive study to a search for exposures causing various Gulf War syndromes, and even to the potential genetic basis of these syndromes. He also mentioned clinical trials of therapeutic agents. The pace of this work is breathtaking and perhaps warranted by the needs of the Gulf War veterans. On the other hand, needed confirmatory work by others has not yet taken place.

"Consequently, above all I recommend that the Board actively encourage independent replication of Dr. Haley's work. To date his publications are based on a selected sample of a single unit, leaving open the possibility that unexplained biases may underlie some aspects of his findings. Studies already carried out might be used at least in part for this purpose.

"For example, data from the Iowa study might be used to replicate Dr. Haley's syndrome classifications. In fact sharing of his data for analysis by others might enhance the credibility of his findings.

"In spite of Dr. Haley's enthusiasm, I do have concern about some of the findings. As I pointed out earlier this week in my remarks to the Board, Dr. Haley has been using poorly specific outcome measures, symptoms and syndromes, and exposure variables that represent surrogates for unknown agents. There must be misclassification (error) affecting both exposures and outcomes, and consequently the finding of extremely strong association between the outcome measures and the punitive exposures is surprising.

"For example, the use of flea collars is likely to be an inaccurate indicator of exposure to the insecticides in the collar.

"One explanation for the findings that cannot yet be discarded is the possibility of information bias. That is persons who report symptoms are also more likely to report exposures.

"Dr. Haley has outlined an ambitious program of research. Assuming that his research agenda moves forward, I suggest that a coordinated program of research be developed that will assure replication by others at each stage. Lacking such coordination there is every potential for further contentious debate that cannot be appropriately resolved with evidence.

"Additionally, appropriate oversight should be developed for Dr. Haley's program to assure that proper peer review and guidance is maintained throughout. Like many projects on controversial topics with substantial public policy implications, independent oversight enhances the credibility of the research and the researcher.

"Finally, I want to reiterate my suggestion that the Board take any steps possible to assure the development of an appropriate, coordinated research agenda on the health of the Gulf War veterans. I am certain that such efforts have been made but they often fail. Dr. Haley's work shows the need for coordination among investigators with the opportunity for replication.

"As I mentioned, the work of the National Research Council committee that I chair on particulate matters represents one useful model.

"Once again, thank you for the opportunity," et cetera.

As you know, there's been a great deal of interest in his research on the part of the veterans community. I would appreciate your comments on what I consider a very good non-partisan view from an undoubtedly highly credible group of experts, and what actions you think might follow with regard to the future.

DR. ROSTKER: I think as you know, I was instrumental in securing funding from the Department of Defense for Dr. Haley. I took a team down to Dallas to meet with Dr. Haley and to review his work. Let me reiterate, I'm not a physician, but I am a social scientist. The basic tenets of experimental design are common to both disciplines.

At our meeting I encouraged Dr. Haley to expand his sample, to build a reference frame that would be more appropriate to answer the questions concerning Gulf War illnesses, and not just focus on those in his initial sample.

So those are, my own views are exactly comparable to the views of John Hopkins.

I would add one additional point.

Dr. Haley consistently cites the presence of Soman on the battlefield, and at least in private meetings here in Washington, as reported to me on at least one occasion, cited my work and the work of my organization as proof that Soman was on the battlefield affecting the SEABEES at Al Jubayl. That is not correct.

We do not see even low levels from the Khamisiyah release going that far south. Moreover, the demographics, times in theater and the like have not been correlated with that release. On various occasions Dr. Haley has also cited that since he's found damage there must have been Sarin on the battlefield and therefore there was Sarin on the battlefield. That circular logic escapes me.

So I don't know the source of the contamination that Dr. Haley relates to.

His correlations in his original published work were on self-reported impressions about exposures. There was a lot of myth going on. We published case narratives concerning that. One of the case narratives in fact was reviewed by the General Accounting Office.

So we neither they nor we at this point, and I think I can speak for them, you'll have a representative here, in terms of the possibilities of Sarin at Al Jubayl, we would say is unlikely. We can never be sure.

So that is another troublesome aspect of Dr. Haley's work. We just can't find with any degree of certainty the source of the contamination that he cites as being present.

ADMIRAL ZUMWALT: Mr. Chairman, I have one other comment I'd like to make, unrelated. I thank Dr. Rostker for that answer.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, I worked very diligently on the Agent Orange issue, and I believe that part of the problem we have with the polarization that exists on this issue is a residue of the, after-effects of the battle that took place with regard to Agent Orange. A battle which led to the discovery that the government had in writing in the early '80s, at the level of the Bureau of the Budget, specifically requested government agencies not to find a correlation between Agent Orange and disease. That's been documented, a published document is available by Congress. That investigation and that conclusion, which was shocking to many of us, led many veterans, including me for a long time, to be suspicious just in general of the processes of government with regard to veterans.

Mr. Chairman, I had the opportunity before I ever became a member of this Special Oversight Board, to conduct my own personal investigation as to what was going on because I wanted to be sure that there was no process set up like the previous process. I had at least three meetings with Dr. Rostker before I became a member of this panel. I talked to a wide number of people in the Pentagon. I have not been able to find a single instance that I believe in any sense represents the kind of cover-up effort that was a deliberate policy in the early '80s with regard to Agent Orange.

I can understand why the holdover and the residue of that earlier battle makes some people suspicious, but I for one believe that although like you, Mr. Chairman, I don't always find myself in total agreement with the papers that have come out of OSAGWI, I believe that Dr. Rostker and his staff are doing their very best to try to come up with sound conclusions and to react to the insights of others.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Thank you, Admiral Zumwalt.

In my view in this country, nobody speaks with more authority on these issues than Admiral Zumwalt who is a retired Chief of Naval Operations. He probably did more to get to the bottom of that issue back in the '80s than anyone else. I share the Admiral's expressed views.

I'll turn to Dr. Cam.

DR. CAM: Secretary, I have two questions for you.

Could you tell us what has helped and what has not helped OSAGWI in carrying [out] its mission. Please also mention the issues of implementation.

My second question is, do you have statistics on mortality and on how many veterans reported specific symptoms under different categories? I know that figure of 100,000 have been affected, but I think that's more the result of the mapping studies. We really need to have a firmer grip on the magnitude of the problem.

Another point is do you have a sense of how many are sick but still on active duty and not reporting about their situation?

DR. ROSTKER: First the issue of what has helped or not helped.

I would say that the commitment of the Defense Department to get at the bottom of particularly the issues of chemicals and biologicals, was very helpful. John White, the then Deputy Secretary of Defense, asked me to take on this assignment. He provided everything I needed -- resources, a charter. I have never been constrained either by innuendo or policy or resources from following every reasonable lead over any issue.

That does not mean that we have always produced papers that people have agreed with 100 percent. But they have been honest and we have sought and continued to seek constructive criticism so that we can turn out the best possible job.

What has been most disappointing has been, I think two things. One is the suspicion that General Cisneros talks about in terms of many of our citizens. And that extends even into the Congress.

The case of the famous missing logs I think is instructive. I think it hurt all of us in the Defense Department to see General Schwarzkopf and General Powell, let me use the word, "dragged" before the Congress to account for their personal logs. When the congressional staff went through their personal logs and found no smoking guns, it was an embarrassing moment, I think, for all of us. I think that is part of the legacy, as Admiral Zumwalt talked about, of Vietnam.

I think what is also very disturbing is a small group of people that prey on the fears of veterans. You can see it on the Internet particularly. Charges of 80,000 child birth defects; massive numbers of people dead. This is just pure fantasy. I don't know why people do that. It hurts us, but most importantly it hurts the veterans. It scares them. And that is not fact.

The Department has not republished in the last several years the accounts, this gets to your second question, from the health registries. That is not in my purview. As a matter of research, those tabulations were not very helpful.

Mortality information is maintained through the VA with the support of the Social Security Administration, and I think someone here has -- Diane, what's the approximate figure?

LTC LAWHON: 5,773.

DR. ROSTKER: 5,773. As of December, the most prevalent cause is automobile accidents. That information is available.

In terms of people on active duty who are sick. That is one of the things we have focused on in our base visits and town hall meetings, and I know you have been there.

I got the Army Chief of Staff to issue an all-hands emphasizing the importance for service members to seek appropriate medical care. There is no question in my mind that there are still veterans and non-veterans of the Gulf War on active duty who do not seek appropriate medical care for fear that they will be separated.

The experience with the health registries suggests that the vast majority of those who go in for health evaluations, if there is something wrong, have a diagnosis, and there are treatments connected or not connected with the Gulf War. But it is also true that under the system we run, if you are incapacitated and it becomes a knowledgeable, physicians become aware of it, you can be separated. There is no confidentiality between the military doctor and the military patient. That has a chilling effect on service personnel who may be ill and they don't come forward. That's unfortunate. We give them every opportunity to come forward, but I have no idea how many would just be -- I wouldn't even know where to start a guess.

DR. CAM: You really didn't respond to the last part of my first question which is give us some comments on the issues of implementation. What are some of the success stories and some of the difficulties. Like the questionnaire. Do people really fill out those questionnaires before deployment? And when they come back do they have a follow-up?

DR. ROSTKER: We have been selective in some of the issues we have taken on, and we have not directly delved into some of the force health protection issues like the pre-screening and the post-screening. We've raised that as an issue, but we have not in our current capacity, because our capacity today is still largely as the historians looking at the Gulf War.

I think the issue you raise is very much what a redirected OSAGWI or deployment organization could do.

We have been, and you'll hear in just a few minutes about depleted uranium training. We have been at the forefront of pressing this upon the Department.

We shouldn't have to. The directives have been clear, and they've been clear for a number of years. But the reality is that without us pressing and without, frankly, the further prestige of also being the Under Secretary of the Army, we would be less accomplished than we are today in moving forward universal depleted uranium training.

Last month I gave a speech at the Worldwide Chemical Conference pressing the chemical core leadership for changes in chemical doctrine in two areas. One is recordkeeping and false alarms, and the other is low level chemicals. That's another area that we have pressed forward and taken the lead in the Department to look for change.

DR. CAM: Is the fact that you are more of an advisory group kind of an impediment on the implementation issues?

DR. ROSTKER: We do not have a specific charter at this time to monitor ongoing implementation. We have where we've seen problems communicated those problems to the responsible officers within the Department. We've chosen a number of areas to be particularly proactive in, namely areas where there is not ongoing organizations. Those have particularly been in depleted uranium training and in chemical warfare doctrine, but have not been in the health delivery areas.

DR. CAM: Thank you.

ADMIRAL STEINMAN: Dr. Rostker, I have a comment and two brief questions.

DR. ROSTKER: Yes, sir.

ADMIRAL STEINMAN: There are those who have criticized you personally and those who have attacked the Office of the Special Assistant for failure to aggressively investigate Gulf War illnesses. Indeed, some have even called for your resignation or removal. I want to state that I do not agree with that opinion. On the year that I have served as a member of this Presidential Oversight Board, I've found you and your staff to be motivated and diligent and responsive to our Board's oversight responsibilities. And while there have been instances where I or other members of the Board have found occasional fault with OSAGWI, they do not alter the overall positive contributions I feel you and your staff have made towards the problem at hand in addressing our veterans' illnesses.

The questions I have. Two questions. A brief one, would you comment on whether your status as Under Secretary interferes with your ability to manage OSAGWI or vice versa?

DR. ROSTKER: I think it's been a tremendous advantage, particularly in that the Department of the Army is the executive agent for a number of the issues that we deal with, specifically, again, depleted uranium training and chemical doctrine, chemical equipment. These are all things that the Army has been given the executive agency of.

It has served me extremely well to be able to deal with those issues from the added vantage point of the Under Secretary.

Moreover, it has given the Under Secretary, if you will, the advantage of intimate knowledge of these issues, one that one would not normally have sitting on the top of a multi-million person organization.

I sometimes feel like the character in the Mikado who at once is the chancellor of the exchequer, but then is the attorney general and is advising himself about fiscal matters and the propriety of fiscal matters. But it actually has been extremely valuable.

I know there have been a few times when I have been unable to make town hall meetings, but the staff that I've trained is fully capable of handling that. I think out of 23 town hall meetings I've made 21. I have no lack of confidence in General Vesser and the other members of my staff to carry forward in those situations. In fact, I should be faulted if I created an organization in which my deputy or even people below that were not fully capable of representing the views of the organization and answering questions. I take pride in that.

So I think it is unambiguously clear, certainly to me, that putting these two organizations together -- In fact I would add that in internal discussions about the Department, about the future of the organization, I've also suggested that if we were to take on a deployment role that consideration be given to make that a double-hatted to the Under Secretary of the Army for exactly the reasons that I've talked about here today.

ADMIRAL STEINMAN: The last question concerns chemical warfare agents. We're aware that the French government recently declared, formally declared in a letter to DoD that after thorough analysis of their chemical alarms, they've declared all of their chemical alarms are false alarms.

What's the status of the Czech alarms?

DR. ROSTKER: This will be out in a new version, but a further and more complete reading of the technical evaluations of the Czech equipment suggests that in certain modes, in fact the modes that were reported to be used during the Gulf War, the equipment also can false a lot. That doesn't mean these were false alarms, although we have never been able to suggest a source. But this additional information will be incorporated in the revised Czech/French detection paper.

I think we've said it was credible and didn't use our five point scheme. The Board has asked us to revise that and use that scheme. I think we will call it indeterminate at best at this point.

ADMIRAL STEINMAN: Okay.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Any other questions? Mr. Vice Chairman?

SECRETARY BROWN: No.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Admiral?

ADMIRAL ZUMWALT: No.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Doctor?

DR. CAM: No.

SENATOR RUDMAN: General?

LIEUTENANT GENERAL CISNEROS: No.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Admiral?

ADMIRAL STEINMAN: No.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Let me just conclude your part of this by saying we will take about a ten minute break before Mr. Walpole appears.

DR. ROSTKER: Sir, we still have a presentation by Ms. Morris on depleted uranium.

SENATOR RUDMAN: You have another presentation? I didn't know that.

DR. ROSTKER: Yes.

SENATOR RUDMAN: How long will that take?

MS. MORRIS: About 15 minutes.

SENATOR RUDMAN: All right. That's fine. We will probably still take a break.

But before you testify, and that will be the end of your presentation?

DR. ROSTKER: Yes, sir.

SENATOR RUDMAN: I want to say to you, Dr. Rostker, speaking for myself, and I've had probably more contact with you than any other member of this panel, I want to just add an exclamation point to Admiral Steinman's comment.

I have found occasions that I've disagreed with methodology. I have found you occasionally a bit testy, but I am known to accuse anyone of being testy. But I have found you and your organization to be forthright, hard working, and trying to find the truth.

I want to comment about some of these organizations that tend to make ad hominem attacks on you on a regular basis. They're free to do that, but they do not enhance themselves with this Chairman of this Board. I have seen too much in my political life of personal attacks on people for beliefs they have.

I think it is irrelevant, it is inappropriate, it's not helpful, and to those veterans who think they're being served by those groups, in my view they are being disserved by those groups. That is my opinion, and I express it as my opinion.

Go ahead.

MS. MORRIS: Good morning Senator Rudman and members of the Presidential Special Oversight Board.

The purpose of my briefing this morning is to provide you with an update to my November testimony of where the services stand on implementing their depleted uranium training programs. This follows our report to Congress which was in accordance with the Defense Authorization Act of FY99.

The Department's overriding intent has always been to prepare our service members to operate safely and effectively in a DU contaminated environment. Service initiatives and programs together with Joint Staff actions in the doctrine arena have clearly met this requirement.

Next slide.

These are the topics that I'll be going over during the briefing.

Next slide.

Military training has to respond to two critical requirements. The first is the need for source force protection, and the second, the need to carry out the mission. Some would reverse those.

That's what we mean by operating safely and effectively. It means that you have to reconcile two very distinctive priorities -- battlefield effectiveness on the one hand, and preventing or minimizing health and safety risks to the troops on the other. Getting it right in both of these areas has been a real challenge, but we feel confident that the training we're putting into the field answers both of these areas.

Next slide.

OSAGWI's investigation of DU use in the Gulf, as I reported in November, and subsequent DoD follow-up actions indicated that DU awareness training and guidance was inconsistent in terms of information and emphasis among the services. This resulted in mixed messages that detracted from the Department's intent of providing clear, consistent and accurate information and guidance.

To make a long story short, the appropriate staff representatives from the Joint Staff and each service's medical, safety, training and operational communities came together at the same place and time to form the Tri-Service DU Awareness Working Group sponsored by the Office of the Special Assistant.

While recognizing that each service has specific DU training requirements based on their operating environments, the working group agreed that their DU training would feature agreed-on essential elements of information, specifically those three listed on the slide.

Basically what we're saying here is that depleted uranium's primary hazard comes from its heavy metal toxicity, that troops can and must continue to operate and carry out the mission despite the presence of DU, and that MOPP IV is not required for protection from brief exposures to depleted uranium. However, it does offer good, on-hand protection.

Next slide.

A big question that many people ask us is okay, so why not MOPP IV? Most of the Gulf War era guidance did in fact tell people to wear MOPP IV. However, MOPP IV and even use of the protective or gas mask does provide some limitations. It also is associated with acute NBC hazards which tends to confuse the actual hazard associated with depleted uranium.

If you wear MOPP IV when it is not exactly necessary, it does in fact create some significant safety and performance concerns, and it does degrade situational awareness.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Is that last bullet, degraded situational awareness, speaking as an infantry officer, is that bureaucratic for you can't see what's around you?

MS. MORRIS: Pretty much, sir.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Why don't you just say that.

MS. MORRIS: Yes, sir.

Next slide, please.

Therefore in responding, the current guidance reflects the observations of the Gulf War as well as better knowledge of risk factors associated with depleted uranium from both a medical and an operational standpoint.

Specifically, the guidance which we are now promulgating in training materials and which we have sent to both our forces and the allied forces in Kosovo is that brief, life-saving or other mission-essential entries into DU-struck combat vehicles will not expose unprotected personnel to unsafe intakes of depleted uranium; that when everything calms down and people are decontaminating their vehicles that use of an approved respirator and covering exposed skin is appropriate protection; and that for those people whose jobs require them to go in and out of vehicles frequently that have been contaminated by depleted uranium, that special protective equipment is appropriate. Generally, this is just to make them more comfortable as they're operating.

Next slide, please.

This graphic shows a recent chronology of the significant events relating to DU training. While efforts to improve DU training have been underway since the early 1990s, the latest Hamre memo in December of 1998 which was the guidance that allowed us to form the Tri-Service DU Working Group, has in many ways been the catalyst for jump starting a comprehensive improvement in our training plan.

Next slide.

As Dr. Roster indicated, the Army is the executive agent for a number of things, and because they essentially have about half the problem here, they are the executive agent for DU training. They have played an instrumental role in developing and fielding improved DU training.

The Army is at the forefront of developing new doctrine and policies to respond to depleted uranium and similar battlefield toxicant issues. In addition, the Army is in the process of fielding a range of institutional -- which are schoolhouse -- and field training materials that reflect our best current knowledge of depleted uranium and ways to operate safely and effectively despite the use of DU weapons or the presence of DU contamination.

This slide depicts the schedule under which we're operating.

You'll note the first bullet there is that new tier one training support packages are due this month. They are on track. There is a film that's been produced and it's being expedited through command channels for release.

Next slide.

The Air Force, like the Army, has undertaken a comprehensive program to ensure that all of its personnel who could be exposed to depleted uranium receive appropriate DU training. Obviously their operational environment is different from that of the ground forces.

Air Force personnel are less likely than their Army or Marine counterparts to come into contact with DU contamination since most of their operating bases are in typically secure rear areas and because their main operating bases in forward operating locations would be flushed of personnel and equipment well before hostile ground units could come into contact with them. Therefore, they're not likely to be attacked by weapon systems with depleted uranium rounds.

We also don't believe there are any threat aircraft which currently are armed with depleted uranium rounds.

Next slide, please.

The sea services -- the Navy and the Marines

-- have, like the Army and the Air Force, also undertaken a thoughtful look at their DU training requirements and developed a comprehensive training approach that reflects their own operating environments.

I'd like to point out here that the Marine Corps is actually coming very close to the Army, whereas the Navy and the Air Force are somewhat selective in the people that they believe need to be trained. The Marine Corps, like the Army, believes this is a universal training requirement.

Where appropriate, the Navy and the Marines have adopted Army-developed training materials to suit their own requirements.

Next slide.

In addition, we have fielded specific training materials for use by medical personnel. One of the things you may have noticed in the Army's training plan was that there are three tiers. The first of those tiers was for general use; the second tier was battle damage, assessment, and repair personnel; the third tier was for chemical personnel, largely because they would be in an advisory capacity. However, those tiers didn't reflect medical training. This was recognized during the process and the medical community, which has been instrumental in helping us develop these materials, has been very proactive in coming out with their own materials and in fact requiring and documenting that their people have received it.

Next slide, please.

However, you can train all you want, but you have to make sure that it's effective. Training assessment provides a means of monitoring and evaluating this to ensure that the right people are getting the right information. That measures of effectiveness are established. That recurring DU training and awareness deficiencies are identified and addressed. And that any fixes are validated and the program adjusted.

We will be using the normal existing training management systems that the services use to assess and evaluate DU training, and we are therefore making leaders responsible for the training of their own personnel, just like every other thing that's out there.

Next slide, please.

We will therefore be assessing the command support for meeting these objectives. The services are responsible for ensuring that they do have measurements of effectiveness and success. And that they have a validation system.

For example, the Army has in fact added depleted uranium awareness training as a mandatory, tested, common task for FY99, and there's all indication that they continue to do so in the future.

Next slide, please.

To summarize, we have focused on making sure that we train our forces to respond safely and effectively. That we are basing our joint doctrine and the services' training on the essential elements of information, and that these essential elements of information are consistent and we eliminate the mixed messages problem.

As I said earlier, we are on track to finish the tier one training support package this month, and this is serving as the basis for all of our guidance. This was done with the help of the other service members, even though it was an Army product. Medical guidance and training initiatives are also in force. And we are assessing and validating the training as we go out.

One of the things that we're doing is when we go to installations we go out and ask about depleted uranium training. I have personally assessed training in progress at Fort Hood, and we're looking to also do that at Fort Knox.

Subject to your questions, that concludes my presentation.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Thank you very much.

Just one quick one from me, and I'll see if anyone else has one. I understand, Dr. Rostker, that there's a Freedom of Information request that's pending before you for furnishing to one of the VSOs I believe the training data on this, the materials themselves. Are you aware of that? Is that true?

MS. MORRIS: I believe that's the National Gulf War Resource Center has it.

SENATOR RUDMAN: I believe that's correct. Have they made a FOIA request?

MS. MORRIS: They have made a request for materials, and as soon as those materials are releasable to them, we intend to comply with that.

SENATOR RUDMAN: What determines whether or not they're releasable?

MS. MORRIS: They've got to be materials that are in fact in use as opposed to drafts.

SENATOR RUDMAN: You do have materials that you're using, correct? Are they classified?

MS. MORRIS: No, they're not classified.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Then shouldn't they be released?

MS. MORRIS: They will be when we can do that.

SENATOR RUDMAN: What does that mean, when we can do that?

MS. MORRIS: As I've said, I believe that the only one that's actually out there as an official product is the medical program. We are expecting the video for tier one to be available through the approval process relatively soon. And we're in the process of assembling the materials to comply with the request.

SENATOR RUDMAN: The soldiers and marines who are getting this training are given material or they see material. That's there now, correct? They're getting this training as we speak. Correct? There is training going on of Marines and Army, according to your charts, correct?

MS. MORRIS: There is training going on using old materials at this time.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Then shouldn't those materials be forthrightly turned over to these people?

MS. MORRIS: They're available to them already.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Well, they've asked them to be produced and evidently they claim they haven't been.

DR. ROSTKER: Let me look into it.

SENATOR RUDMAN: I just want to say something, Dr. Rostker. The problem is, it's really to some extent what some of these panel members have said, it's what the General said. You do a terrific job, but sometimes -- and they may be legitimate reasons. I'm not being critical. I'm just telling you hypothetically that if somebody makes a request like this and it's not forthrightly produced and it can be produced, all you do is buy yourself criticism, mistrust, and accusations which are wild and inaccurate, but some people listen to them. I just make that observation.

DR. ROSTKER: I agree. We certainly can make available materials. I think that has been in the public domain. New materials that have not yet been produced, it's hard to make available. As soon as the materials are ready for distribution to the troops, they're not classified, they effectively are in the public domain, but we will accommodate all of those requests.

SENATOR RUDMAN: I appreciate that.

Any other questions?

(No response)

SENATOR RUDMAN: We're going to take a quick break. I know Mr. Walpole's on a schedule, but we're still going to take about ten and come back.

I want to thank you both very much for appearing here this morning.

DR. ROSTKER: Our pleasure.

(Recess taken)

SENATOR RUDMAN: Robert Walpole from the Central Intelligence Agency has a presentation for us. If you'd like to proceed, then we'll have questions.

MR. WALPOLE: Thank you.

We're happy to be here, myself and Larry Fox, to have an opportunity to provide you an update of the intelligence community studies on the issue of potential chemical, biological and radiological exposure to Gulf War veterans. The result of our lengthy efforts will be published soon, hopefully by year's end, in three separate reports covering all three topics. We believe these assessments will be useful to those charged with determining what role exposure to chemical, biological and radiological agents could have had related to the veterans' illnesses. By carefully examining Iraq's extensive programs or weapons of mass destruction to uncover releases and to evaluate potential troop exposure, our work supports and complements that of Dr. Rostker and his group.

Using information from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and all other sources, we're near completion of a comprehensive analysis that provides important new details on exposure issues.

Of note, our analysis on this issue would not have been possible without the cooperation of UNSCOM whose understanding of Iraq's programs is substantial because of its long access and information to Iraq's programs.

Let me first turn to our latest assessments in each of the three exposure areas and provide you with our plans for the future.

Our research continues to indicate that Iraq did not use chemical agents against coalition troops. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Iraq used chemical agents against Shiite rebels in areas near coalition troops immediately following Desert Storm. We still assess that troop exposure to chemical agent occurred only as a result of the inadvertent destruction of nerve agent filled rockets in the Khamisiyah pit. That event resulted in low level exposure, specifically at or above general population limit dosage.

On the basis of new UNSCOM information and a subsequent reevaluation of the pit release, we now assess that the amount of agent released from the pit was less than that modeled in 1997.

Some might recall that during that modeling activity we had stated that in any area that we had uncertainty we would use the worst case assumption in order to provide the epidemiologists with the most useful information for their studies.

This is an overhead of that pit area. If you recall, I don't remember now, 13 stacks of rockets there.

Of note, however, last year UNSCOM performed a very thorough search and excavation of a one kilometer area around the pit, locating only one-fourth of the nearly 500 rockets we had estimated were damaged there in 1997.

In addition to the scarcity of rockets found, a revised assessment is supported by several other factors. Discussions with the 60th Explosive Ordnance Demolition Unit executive officer who oversaw the operations of the pit indicate that many of the explosive charges were placed less optimally than previously assumed.

If you recall at Dugway we did some testing of how the rockets would have been destroyed, and we had soldiers helping us place the charges there. But with all the public scrutiny, I'm not surprised they would have wanted to place the charges very well.

You would also remember that the soldiers discovered these rockets on the way out of Khamisiyah. They thought they were pretty well done with the demolition. They were pretty well out of destructive charges. In fact they had to use Czech detonation cord to perform this operation, so it certainly would have been less than optimum.

UNSCOM accounting and photography has indicated that a much smaller number of rockets were destroyed, and photographs by soldiers show a smaller percentage of damaged rockets. This smaller release, especially when coupled with environmental degradation that we had not been able to calculate before the 1997 modeling, would probably result in far fewer troops exposed compared to 1997 estimates.

But again, I ask that you remember that we provided that model under an extremely tight deadline and with the purpose of providing epidemiologists with an area for closer examination. Recall that we used the union, not the intersection, of five different modeling efforts. The intersection would have clearly been a smaller one. We wanted to provide the epidemiologists that area for research to see if they could find any increased incidents of illnesses reported.

Our new information would be of particular value if the epidemiologists found any correlation within the larger plume.

Let me turn now to Bunker 73. We visited previously assessed releases at other sites, often aided by UNSCOM information, to revise our estimates. We now estimate in most cases that less agent was released primarily because more precise data is now available. That is, instead of using worst case assumptions when confronted with uncertainties, we have been able to input more accurate information.

For example, we believe that the amount of agent released from Bunker 73 was less than half what we had estimated in 1996. That's based on subsequent UNSCOM confirmation that fewer damaged rockets were present in the bunker. Furthermore, we had previously assessed that the agent was 100 percent pure. We now know that it was only about 50 percent pure at the time of the destruction.

The smaller release leaves unchanged our assessment that the troops were not exposed from the release of nerve agent from Bunker 73.

Let me underscore that I'm talking about two separate things here. I'm talking about release and I'm talking about exposure.

We have evidence of a few releases, but the only place where we have evidence of exposure, not evidence, but where we judge exposure occurred, is in the Khamisiyah pit.

Now, reassessment of some other possible sites. We've also reassessed releases at Al Muthanna Bunker 2, Muhammadiyat, and Ukhaydir.

The Al Muthanna Bunker 2 release is much lower than previously assessed because UNSCOM indicates fewer nerve agent filled rockets were in the bunker and the agent was impure because they were from the Iran/Iraq war period.

Two releases have occurred at the Muhammadiyat depot, a nerve agent release from DB2 bombs that we now assess as smaller, and a mustard release from bombs whose analysis is incomplete, but involves more bombs than previously assessed. At this time we do not expect the release from mustard at Muhammadiyat to have been large enough to cause contamination to reach coalition troops.

For Ukhaydir, on the basis of a thorough UNSCOM inspection of the site last year, we now assess that there was not a release from the 155mm mustard shells. You might recall, and we have a paper on this, that the Ukhaydir site, we were concerned that a bomb had actually hit a stack of shells and had caused a release of mustard agent. We had modeled that it didn't reach coalition troops, but we thought we should publish that at that point.

UNSCOM was able to go back and look at it, and we don't think the mustard release occurred. So in this case we changed our judgment of a possible release, but it didn't change any judgment of exposure because we didn't think it occurred anyway.

Thus we assess that troops were not exposed to even lower levels of chemical agent contamination from these three locations.

We've also continued to look for additional possible releases from coalition bombing, and have found two additional potential release events -- one likely and one uncertain, at Al Muthanna and Al Walid respectively. In both cases the exposures were unlikely.

The Al Muthanna, we conducted a thorough review of the facility to test our previous assessment that there were no bombing-induced releases other than previously mentioned. We concentrated on the possibility of agent releases from the production and fill-in areas. After discussions with UNSCOM we have determined that there was likely a slow release of mustard agent from its production facility. We believe no troop exposure was involved due to the small size of the release and the fact that troops were over 400 kilometers away.

UNSCOM and other information does not support a release from the nerve agent production facilities, the fill-in area, or the bulk agent storage area.

It is unclear whether coalition bombing at Al Walid air base could have caused a CW agent release. Iraq had told UNSCOM that over 400 bombs filled with a binary nerve agent component -- alcohol in this case -- had been destroyed at Al Walid by a fire caused by coalition bombing. Alcohols are not considered highly toxic.

However, last year UNSCOM uncovered information indicating that some R-400 bombs could have been filled with another binary component needed to form their nerve agents. UNSCOM informed us that photos taken on a 1992 inspection showed several R-400 bombs that apparently burst from internal pressure, something UNSCOM considered unlikely if the bombs were only filled with alcohol.

In addition, UNSCOM had information indicating that 12 of the R-400 bombs were filled with GBGF agent at an unidentified deployment site. We have examined available photos and find them inconclusive. We will be unable to determine whether a release occurred at Al Walid unless new information becomes available.

Our previous modeling indicates exposure to coalition troops is unlikely, nevertheless, due to Al Walid's great distance from the troops.

SENATOR RUDMAN: How far was that distance roughly?

MR. WALPOLE: How far is Al Walid?

MR. FOX: It's about 400 kilometers.

MR. WALPOLE: About the same distance as the other ones.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Go ahead.

MR. WALPOLE: Combined with the low amount of agent that could have escaped from only a dozen burning bombs.

Iraq also destroyed chemical weapons after the end of the war, but we have insufficient data on these events to determine whether releases occurred. Again, all destruction areas were very distant from coalition troops, so troop exposure would have been unlikely.

Finally, we assess that inadvertent releases from leaking munitions or Iraqi accidents did not expose coalition troops to CW agent. Post-war UNSCOM inspections detected contamination from leaking of damaged munitions at six facilities ranging from a barely detectable release from [a] 155mm mustard round at Khamisiyah, to 100 155mm mustard rounds burning at an unknown location.

Our study of chemical weapons has also resulted in several other conclusions on chemical agent exposure. Additional large releases of chemical agents from coalition actions are unlikely. This is based on UNSCOM accounting of Iraq's chemical weapons, especially chemical artillery, and the assessed low likelihood that Iraq would try to hide damaged weapons.

Furthermore, we have been unable to identify any chemical agent releases that would account for reports by coalition troops through alarms or ground observations of chemical agent detection.

Let me turn briefly to biological agents and radiological contamination.

We can now say with high confidence that veterans were not exposed to Iraqi biological agents or radiological contamination as a result of either Iraqi weapons used or coalition military action. According to UNSCOM, Iraqi biological production facilities were not damaged by aerial bombing, and Iraq protected its biological munitions by burying them in the open or hiding them in a tunnel.

Of note, we cannot exclude the possibility that biological agent filled bombs were among the binary R-400 bombs destroyed at Al Walid. UNSCOM has established that the R-400 bomb was used for chemical and biological agent fill. However, we assess that UNSCOM information on the R-400 bombs declared destroyed by the coalition is insufficient to justify a release because there is no clear evidence of a black strike signifying a biological agent fill on these bombs.

On radiological weapons, we have uncovered no source of radioactive material or mechanism for spreading radiological contaminants to friendly troops. This is not surprising based on our understanding of Iraq's nuclear program. The location of the Iraqi nuclear facility is far from coalition ground forces, and the apparent localization of any contamination.

A comprehensive review of intelligence reporting and other information indicates Iraq did not use nuclear or radiological disbursal devices or deploy these weapons during the Gulf War.

In summary, we assess that the exposure of U.S. troops to chemical, biological or radiological agents is probably limited to the low level chemical agent exposure from the Khamisiyah pit release. As already stated, any future modeling of the contamination from the pit explosion is likely to indicate fewer potential troop exposures than in 1997 due to the smaller release and natural environmental decay.

The intelligence community will continue to refine its assessments by seeking and examining new information if it becomes available.

Our reports on exposures summarizing our years of research will be published as soon as they are completed, as I said earlier, hopefully by year's end.

OSAGWI will use this information to support its own efforts and conduct any modeling it deems necessary.

I appreciate your attention, and I'm sorry I ran a little over the ten minutes I promised.

SENATOR RUDMAN: I don't know if you were here earlier during our discussions with Dr. Rostker, but a fundamental issue that we are addressing is the future of this whole effort and how it will evolve and how emphasis will shift.

I get a strong sense from your briefing this morning and from our discussions going back over several years that you're now in a situation where unless there is new information that is brought to your attention, there's not a great deal left for you to do in your analysis either to exposure or to existence.

MR. WALPOLE: That's correct. In fact, two of these three papers I mentioned will be published I had drafts of over a year ago. The reason that we have been waiting until about now to get the things done is we were waiting to see if UNSCOM had any other information that could shed light on it. In both cases, the biological paper and the radiological paper, we had no indication of exposure. We could either have published a year and a half ago saying that, although we had said that in testimony, and then if UNSCOM uncovered something we'd have to change it. Or wait until we had that. So we are pretty close to closing the books.

SENATOR RUDMAN: And from a chain of evidence point of view, since the UNSCOM personnel have been in and out of Iraq and they are now out, if I'm not mistaken, you cannot present anything with any amount of precision because you don't know if anything was found. Let's assume they went back in there next month and they found something at Point X. You really don't know where that's been since 1990 or whatever. You have no idea because you have not had control of the evidence, correct?

MR. WALPOLE: That's correct, although in some cases if that were to happen we would be able to take that information and cross-check it with other sources of information we have that existed back then to see if we could track those things.

SENATOR RUDMAN: That's true, but let's do a hypothetical. Let's assume there was a cache of 100 bombs or rockets at a location that was unknown to U.S. intelligence, it was at Point A. In the last 60 days it's been moved to Point B. It's reported to you that they found these chemical weapons or biological weapons at Point B. There is no way for you to know as to where they were.

So the whole investigative process has been, to a large extent at this point in my view, invalidated by the fact that UNSCOM is no longer on the ground.

MR. WALPOLE: If it was supposedly at a location unknown to us by definition we wouldn't be able to tell you anything else about it.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Exactly. And I think no matter what you find today, there's no assurance of where it was a year ago or certainly nine years ago.

MR. WALPOLE: I would make one other point, and that's that UNSCOM's accounting of the biological, the chemical, we've been able to cross-check charts where it all seems to add up. So I would be more than a little mildly surprised if we found something else.

SENATOR RUDMAN: So you're pretty confident that what you've got now is pretty complete and your analysis is complete, and since there aren't any people on the ground doing any more gathering, any more collection, if you will, then it's pretty hard to do any analysis if you don't have new collection.

MR. WALPOLE: If you don't have new information, we've looked over all the old information multiple times.

SENATOR RUDMAN: So what you're telling us is that the CIA right now is kind of done with its work but will keep an eye open for anything new that comes along. But we shouldn't be expecting anything particularly different from what we've got today.

MR. WALPOLE: I think once we publish the three papers that would pretty well be it. We'll certainly, if people have questions, want us to look at things, we'll do that. But as far as actively generating work to produce, I don't see that we have anything else.

SENATOR RUDMAN: How soon can you get those papers published?

MR. WALPOLE: As I said, by year's end. In addition to modifying how we're approaching this, I now have another job on top of this one where I'm right in the middle of a missile report on --

SENATOR RUDMAN: I'm aware of that.

MR. WALPOLE: I expect that sometime in the September/October timeframe we would be able to --

SENATOR RUDMAN: That would be good. It would fit into some things that we're doing.

We're going to issue a report next month as required, but we're probably, if I get the concurrence of the panel, going to get something from Dr. Rostker which will give us kind of a probable cause analysis of the 33 remaining cases to see how many of those they really ought to go to completion on. He's going to try to get that to us.

In other words, we're not sure that it's a good use of resources to follow these all to the kind of studies that have been put out in terms of resources, in terms of probability of anything new.

If your information was in that timeframe then maybe in the fall we might be able to issue a supplemental report to the Secretary of Defense and to the President which might buttress what we're doing.

I'm not giving any promises here, we're not binding anything, but to the extent you get it to us this fall, early, that would be helpful.

MR. WALPOLE: That's what we'll shoot for. That is doable.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Mr. Vice chairman?

SECRETARY BROWN: Thank you very much for your remarks.

I just have one basic question. Can you describe the process by which you coordinated your research and your findings with DoD?

MR. WALPOLE: You're talking about with these three papers or through the whole process?

SECRETARY BROWN: Let's start off with the whole process, and then narrow it down with these three papers.

MR. WALPOLE: Okay. I'll start with the whole process then.

Once I got engaged I think Bernie and I were almost joined at the hip for over a year there, coordinating both of our efforts. I don't think you could have seen any more cooperation between the two for such a length period of time.

Since we went into what I would call a virtual task force, where I didn't have a full task force in place, people went back to their regular jobs, we communicated by e-mail, had periodic meetings, then the coordination has mostly been on substantive issues, specific issues, and Larry's been focusing that.

MR. FOX: It really depends on which topic you're talking about. With Khamisiyah where it was where our troops were, we had a lot more cooperation because we had to get the information on what the troops saw on the ground.

If you're talking about some of these other areas that are further north where the aerial bombing took place, it really comes into a lot of intelligence and a lot of working with the UN to try to get down to the bottom of these things. On these different trips that we've taken up to talk to the people in the UN, the DoD personnel from OSAGWI have always been on those trips to talk to and ask their questions to.

SECRETARY BROWN: Would you summarize your overall relationship and particularly the conclusions as being totally independent from those of OSAGWI?

MR. WALPOLE: I wouldn't call the relationship independent. I would call the relationship excellent. But the conclusions, our conclusions have been independent. Independent in terms of making our judgments.

In many cases we have had to get U.S. bombing information, U.S. troop location information. So it's not independent in that sense. We had to have the information. But every judgment the intelligence community has made has been an intelligence community judgment, and every judgment that DoD has made has been their judgment.

Now in most cases, probably all cases, we've ended up agreeing.

SECRETARY BROWN: Let me ask the question maybe in a little bit different way. When you reached a conclusion let's say on one of the three papers. While it was in its draft stage, early draft stage, and I recognize they have not been finalized at this point. But in their early draft stage did you run that by OSAGWI to get their reaction to it?

MR. WALPOLE: We have had OSAGWI people on our staff and intelligence people on their staff, so that would have happened as a matter of course.

In any intelligence product I work, and the Senator knows this, I follow the guideline that intelligence is intelligence, separate from policy. Policy can make judgments it wants after the intelligence is done.

So when we did, for example, our Khamisiyah paper, which was done two years ago, Defense came in with some things that they would like to see changed within the paper that from my perspective were policy issues and would have to be handled outside of the intelligence paper, so we didn't accept those. And Bernie remembers those. And he respected that particular approach.

I have always kept a thick wall between an intelligence judgment and a policy judgment so we don't end up tainting either.

MR. FOX: Let me just add something.

From the analytical standpoint, we've had analytical differences. We try to work those out. I can't point to any specifics of times where we've just chosen to disagree, and there are still some analytical differences I know in some of the things I say in the CW paper that we've got in draft so far. So it is a process where we try to work together to come to a consensus, but if we have analytical differences, and I've told the OSAGWI people in meetings, if you have something that you disagree with, you bring it up, please. That's the scientific method. That's how you get down to the bottom of things. You don't try to squelch any analytical disagreement.

SECRETARY BROWN: You mentioned, and I guess it's in part what I was getting at. You mentioned that you have some analytical disagreements.

I have two remaining questions. One is, can you tell us overall, from a big picture perspective, what areas you disagreed with OSAGWI on. Then I would like for you to follow up to tell us specifically what you were referring to when you said that you had some disagreement on some specific analytical issues.

MR. FOX: Let me give you an example. The pit. And I could put up a picture there. There are 13 stacks there. They have, meaning OSAGWI, has interviewed some of the troops that were in that pit, and I've been there at the times of the interviews. These interviews contradict each other. It gets very difficult to see, it looks like there's two sets of people that were there but don't remember seeing each other in the pit and exactly what happened there. From that standpoint, our conclusions on exactly who blew up what stack and who was actually in charge there have differed. Again, we have not come to closure on some of those things, and I hope to come to closure before the publishing of this paper.

They don't really impact on our overall conclusions as far as the number of rockets in the pit. They're on some of the sub-points of what supports what happened in that pit.

Right now I don't think we have any big analytical differences that would impact on whether troops were exposed from any of these other sites or anything like that. We're still trying to iron out Muhammadiyat and how much was released there and some of these things, but in the process we've --

SENATOR RUDMAN: Let me follow up. I think the reason the Vice Chairman is boring in on this is I don't think you're stating it correctly. I don't think you're using the word analytical the way I understand this has been done, and I have spent a lot of time, as Mr. Walpole knows, at the Agency.

Let me just make a statement and tell me if it's true or false. OSAGWI has had nothing to do with the analysis that leads to your conclusions, but has a great deal to do with aiding you in collection.

MR. WALPOLE: That's a better way to explain it.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Is that true?

MR. WALPOLE: Yes. DoD information has been used and it's been essential to get that DoD information.

The soldiers' descriptions of what may or may not have happened in the pit is DoD information. We might disagree on which soldiers we're going to end up agreeing with in the end, but that doesn't affect the overall conclusions that we make.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Secretary Brown's question is a very valid question. What he's really boring in on here, and I didn't think we heard clear answers here. I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you. Your intelligence conclusions are community-based conclusions vetted in the community. And you have disagreements within the intelligence community. Then you finally decide what they're going to be and that's what you present to policymakers. But the OSAGWI has no role in that. Am I correct?

MR. WALPOLE: That's correct. That's what I'm trying to say in terms of this --

SENATOR RUDMAN: That's important.

MR. WALPOLE: -- wall between policy --

I view OSAGWI as part of the policy community, part of the Defense community. The intelligence community is separate from that. They don't have a part in forming intelligence community judgments.

SENATOR RUDMAN: As a matter of fact they don't have the capacity for analysis. That's not their job.

MR. WALPOLE: Well, there are some pretty smart people there --

SENATOR RUDMAN: That's beside the point. Could they do it? Probably.

MR. WALPOLE: Yes.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Do they do it? That's not what they do.

MR. WALPOLE: It's not their role.

SENATOR RUDMAN: It's not their role. That ought to be very clear here, or else you get a headline that says that the CIA was influenced by OSAGWI in reaching its intelligence conclusions, and that's totally false. I've been over there. I've seen what you've done.

MR. WALPOLE: That's correct.

SENATOR RUDMAN: But the Secretary asked a very valid question and I think you ought to try to give a much clearer answer lest we get the wrong answer.

Do you want to restate it?

MR. WALPOLE: That's what I tried to say with the wall. We have intelligence community judgments and OSAGWI doesn't make those judgments. We make those judgments. They help with getting information to feed into those judgments, but they're not part of the intelligence community.

SENATOR RUDMAN: All right. I think that's the answer, the accurate answer.

General?

LIEUTENANT GENERAL CISNEROS: The opposite of that, Mr. Walpole.

In reading your paper about the influence, and you indicated that you based your assessments on intelligence not on politics, and so forth. Yet in your paper here you start off saying, "We now assess that the amount of agent was less than modeled in 1997."

Were you joined at the hip in '97 when you made that first initial assessment?

MR. WALPOLE: Oh, yeah.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL CISNEROS: Then you say some, "some might recall that during the modeling activity we had stated that for any area of uncertainty we used the worst case scenario."

So your paper seems, now you're trying to put the genie back in the bottle. You let a genie out that was bigger than what you thought it was because you worst-cased it. Now that you have more adequate information, you now know that as much was not released, and it's also 50 percent less pure than before.

My question is that in the information you're getting from OSAGWI that was giving you that, did that, were you more comfortable in going to worst case than the intelligence you had available? In other words, did you have intelligence that caused you to worst case?

MR. WALPOLE: We were not comfortable doing the modeling when we did it. Anybody that remembers that period of time, we were basically told by the Presidential Advisory Committee either you model this by X date or you draw a circle around Khamisiyah.

Now as far as I was concerned a circle would have been completely useless. Anybody could have drawn a circle around Khamisiyah, but that wouldn't have done anything for the epidemiologists, it wouldn't have done anything for anybody.

You can go back over the transcripts, we had some rather stiff debates with the PAC, with the Presidential Advisory Committee over that. They were pushing us to get a model done, and to get a model done by X date.

We were able to get them to allow us to do the testing at Dugway that would give us some feel. We had already got information on the purity, so we didn't use 100 percent purity in the '97 model, it was used in the '96 model at Bunker 73. But we still didn't have all the information that we could have got from UNSCOM if UNSCOM had been able to go back in, which they did, and sort some of these other issues out.

We were forced to do a model at that particular time. When Dr. Rostker and I sat down and talked about it, we decided a circle is useless. Let's put together what we've got with the information we have. We'll still have to use worst case assumption where there's uncertainty, but at least we'll give a vectored area that epidemiologists can focus their attention.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL CISNEROS: But taking your own words, "We were forced to do a model and we were not comfortable with it." Is that not the same as saying we were forced to accept OSAGWI's input or we were forced to do this?

MR. WALPOLE: No. No. It wasn't OSAGWI that was forcing us at all.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL CISNEROS: No, I understand, I understand. I'm talking about the issue of pressure and the issue of intelligence to do a model.

What happens now is that this was not as bad as we modeled it. The problem is that when your model came out it was accepted as fact by all the communities. All the conspiracy theorists were out there, and the essence of that revelation was to completely debunk the DoD. Great distrust came out after you announced this, that what DoD was saying was not correct because this modeling covered a larger area.

Now your paper says well, it wasn't as bad. So in essence we're feeding the conspiracy theories, that you're here today after being forced politically to accept the lesser view, is what you're not publicizing. And to the conspiracy theory, it even adds more fuel to the fire is the point I'm trying to make here.

MR. WALPOLE: And we debated that at the time, sir. We debated, do we just --

One option was to draw the circle, or let PAC draw the circle and be done with it. We were trying to do something that was going to be helpful to the research. In 1997 Dr. Rostker's and my approach was let's do something that's helpful to the research.

We may not, we didn't know for sure if UNSCOM was going to be able to go back in. We may not get more information. This may be the best that we've got. And to tell the veterans they have to wait on the hope that we might get more information didn't seem like something that would fly well. So we did it. I might have used too strong a word in saying forced, but I do remember at the time we were not happy with how fast we had to move with that, but we moved with it anyway.

The way we convinced ourselves that it was the right way to go was that the people doing the research, the epidemiologists, needed more information than a circle, and we felt a circle was going to be disruptive to the whole process.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL CISNEROS: When this thing came out with that uncomfort that you had, was there a public statement by you all saying this is a worst case scenario, be cautious about using it? Or when you use the word some may recall, the word some concerns me. What is the some may recall?

MR. WALPOLE: I meant some of you that had been involved at the time.

If you go back over the modeling paper, you go back over the briefings, we published all this and you should have copies of it. The briefing slides that we used as we modeled the paper, we pointed out where we were still using uncertain judgments, where we still had to use worst case. We pointed out that we don't have to use 100 percent purity because we have a better handle on that. We're still not certain of the number of rockets that were destroyed. We did some testing at Dugway, but we didn't test large stacks, we tested small stacks. So we took the worst case end of that type of effort to sort this out.

We pointed all those things out of where we were, and we said this plume is not indicative of where the actual agent went. It's a plume that gives the epidemiologists an area to look in to try to see if there's any causality between what happened here and the illnesses.

We pointed out by choosing the union we had done that. An intersection would have done a smaller area. It would have been common where all five modeling plans showed us to have been. We decided that, given uncertainties in modeling, that could miss it completely. Even though it's an intersection, there's five involved. We chose the union, knowing that it was bigger than the real area, but laying it out so the epidemiologists had an area to focus in. That was all laid out clearly in the paper. It was all laid out in the briefing, the presentation to the press.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL CISNEROS: Thank you.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Admiral?

ADMIRAL STEINMAN: Just a comment on your last comment. I understand what you did in your techniques, and the difference between the union and the intersection.

What happened politically though was rather than the public and the veterans understanding the point of maximum worst case exposure, this was presented as anybody under this plume was exposed, and that's not the way it was intended, but in statements I've heard discussed, people assume if they were under that plume they were exposed rather than you might have been exposed to very low levels of agent if you were in this area because of the worst case assumptions.

SENATOR RUDMAN: Do you want to comment on the letter, Bernie?

They sent a letter out to all the troops and I think it's important to get what phrase was used in that letter.

DR. ROSTKER: I understand the perception, and you're exactly right. In fact, at testimony before Senator Specter's group I made the definitive statement and he reacted and I corrected.

What is in the letter says that you may have been exposed to low levels of Sarin.

Let me clarify one thing. In the division of labor in doing the Khamisiyah analysis there were certain things that we had primacy over, there were certain things that the CIA had primacy over, and there were things that we worked together.

The "source term," the number of rockets, the purity of the rockets, those that were all derived from intelligence information were solely the purview of the CIA. My people may have an opinion, but I work off of the CIA's published information. They have both the expertise, and more importantly, the source of the information.

When it came to location of troops, the Department of Defense, my office initiated efforts by calling in the S-3s and G-3s from all of the units in the Gulf to create a database that never existed which was a definitive statement of where units were located down to the company level. We have the primacy in that regard.

We shared opinions as it pertained to the modeling of the weather and dispersion. We built off of some early work of the CIA that was done for them by SAIC. We substantially changed those models under direction from the Institute for Defense Analysis Senior Review Group, and we agreed on this.

Mr. Walpole referred to a disagreement, if its the one I'm thinking of, it was the issue of whether or not we needed to go back and reassess the CIA's modeling of the bombing releases. That modeling had indicated that no agent would have reached friendly forces. I alluded to it in my testimony by saying I could not independently make that determination. I couldn't do it then, I can't do it now.

The veterans have asked us to apply the new sets of models to that. We have agreed to do that. I doubt that it will show anything different than what the CIA has concluded and did, but I cannot tell you that until we do the analysis, and we've agreed to do the analysis.

SENATOR RUDMAN: I'm going to move this along. I know that you are roughly 15 minutes late.

MR. WALPOLE: I have five more minutes.

SENATOR RUDMAN: We're going to see if there are any other questions.

Admiral?

ADMIRAL ZUMWALT: One loose end with regard to Dr. Haley's work. As you may know, he finds that some of the neurological symptoms of people he's studied are consistent with Sarin gas