CIA Knew of Chemical Weapons in Iraq Bunker (Khamisiyah)
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Transcript of CIA Knew of Chemical Weapons in Iraq Bunker (Khamisiyah)
7/27/2019 CIA Knew of Chemical Weapons in Iraq Bunker (Khamisiyah)
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CIA Knew of Chemical Weapons inIraq Bunker Military: Report amounts to admission that agency failed
to alert Gulf War commanders who ordered target
destroyed. Attack may have exposed U.S. soldiers.
April 10, 1997| ART PINE | TIMES STAFF WRITER
WASHINGTON — The CIA learned in the mid-1980s that
Iraq had stored chemical weapons in a bunker targeted for
destruction by U.S. forces at the end of the Persian Gulf War,
the agency admitted Wednesday, but failed to warn military
commanders clearly enough to avert possible exposure of U.S. troops.
The CIA report amounts to the most sweeping admission so
far that the agency effectively bungled the job of alerting U.S.
commanders before the Iraqi bunker was blown up in March
1991.
Robert D. Walpole, who headed a special intelligence
community task force assigned to look into the exposure
issue, conceded at a press conference that the agency "should
have done better." He apologized to Gulf War veterans who
may have been exposed to chemical weapons as a result.
"Intelligence support before, during and after the war should
have been better," said Walpole. "If you're looking for anapology that we should have given this information out
sooner, I'll give that apology. We should have gotten it out
sooner."
Although Iraq did not use chemical weapons in its attacks
7/27/2019 CIA Knew of Chemical Weapons in Iraq Bunker (Khamisiyah)
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against U.S. and other allied forces during the two-month
war, many veterans have said that they have suffered from a
variety of nagging ailments as a result of exposure to
ammunition dumps and other environmental hazards in the
Persian Gulf.
The Pentagon disclosed last June that several hundred--
possibly even thousands--of soldiers may have been exposed
to sarin and other toxic agents because Iraqi weapons caches
were blown up in a bunker at Khamisiyah that held chemical
weapons.
While the disclosure sparked a major political controversy,
no one has been able to prove conclusively that any U.S.
troops actually were exposed.
The agency's admission Wednesday directly contradicted its
earlier portrayal of its role in the Khamisiyah incident. Until
now, CIA officials had maintained that the agency received
only cursory reports.
Just last month, acting CIA Director George J. Tenet said
that the agency had not specifically identified the weapons
site as a chemical-weapons area before its destruction. The
Senate Intelligence Committee is slated to start hearings next
week on Tenet's nomination to become CIA director.
On Wednesday, Walpole conceded that the agency had
obtained several reports in 1984 and 1986 on the existence of
chemical weapons at the Khamisiyah depot. But he said that,
in a string of snafus, CIA officials failed to make U.S.
commanders aware of the situation and accompanying
dangers.
7/27/2019 CIA Knew of Chemical Weapons in Iraq Bunker (Khamisiyah)
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He cited a variety of reasons for this failure--bungled
handling of information, "tunnel vision" by CIA analysts who
failed to research fully the agency's own records and
reluctance to share its information with U.S. military
commanders openly enough for them to be able to act upon
it.
The 24-page report that the agency distributed Wednesday
was the result of a 35-day investigation that the CIA
undertook only after prodding from the Presidential
Advisory Committee on Persian Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses,
which spent last year examining the issue.
Veterans' groups expressed chagrin about the CIA's latest
revelations. James J. Tuite III, a leading veterans'
spokesman, called the disclosures "either evidence of an
unraveling cover-up or an unprecedented intelligence
failure."
The Pentagon, which has taken the brunt of the heat in the
controversy following its disclosure last June that U.S. troops
had blown up the Khamisiyah bunker, declined to comment
on the CIA report, which by implication relieves military
commanders of some blame.
The Pentagon itself had denied for five years that any U.S.
troops had been exposed to toxic weapons during the Gulf
War before finally conceding that the Khamisiyah bunkercontained chemical weapons. Pentagon officials contended
later that the information had been lost.
Gulf War veterans have complained of a wide range of
symptoms--from joint aches to memory loss--that have been
7/27/2019 CIA Knew of Chemical Weapons in Iraq Bunker (Khamisiyah)
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loosely referred to as "Gulf War illness," but Pentagon and
Veterans Affairs studies over the years have failed to link
them to any specific cause.
The CIA report disclosed a series of cables and reports that itprovided--beginning in 1984--about the presence of chemical
weapons at Khamisiyah, including a warning from an Iranian
Air Force commander giving the precise coordinates of the
bunker.
But the report said that, while the agency passed on theinformation to the U.S. Central Command, which was
charged with running the Persian Gulf War, a CIA analystconfused the Khamisiyah site and cabled the military thenext day that no chemical weapons were found there.