Discussion at the May 31st roundtable meeting included two Gulf War-related reports released later in the afternoon.

The first report presented dates back to February 1998, when investigators from our office interviewed doctors, nurses and administrators who had been stationed at Fleet Hospital 15 in Al Jubayl, Saudi Arabia, during the Gulf War. During these interviews, two nurses and the assistant chief of the hospital's Casualty Receiving Area reported seeing doctors treat 15 to 20 Marines of the 2d Reconnaissance Battalion for mustard agent exposure in early March 1991. The information from these interviews was significant; they described a chemical warfare agent exposure that occurred at the end of the war, and in the intervening seven years, no one ever had mentioned this incident.

Analysts were able to locate six Marines who sought treatment at several medical aid stations in mid-February 1991 for symptoms described as blisters, bumps, or sores on their hands, ears and necks. They were assigned to different teams at different locations when the blisters appeared and medical personnel in the field were unable to diagnose causes for the blisters with any degree of certainty. The symptoms weren't severe and all were returned to duty. After a thorough investigation, we assess it is unlikely that exposure to chemical warfare agents caused these skin lesions. The assessment is based on the opinion of a medical expert who specialized in identifying chemical warfare casualties; information provided by medical, chemical and command personnel; and interviews with Marines, corpsmen, doctors, and nurses directly involved.

This is an interim report and we are interested in hearing from anyone who may have additional information related to this investigation. We ask that veterans contact us by phone at (800) 497-6261, e-mail at special-assistant@gwillness.osd.mil, or by writing to our Falls Church address.

The second Gulf War-related report we released was the final version of a case narrative that addresses two questions: was chemical warfare agent present in the immediate vicinity of the 11th Marines during possible chemical warfare agent incident during the Gulf War and why did the 11th Marines record so many chemical events?

Our extensive research on 11th Marines chemical warfare agent incidents produced no clear evidence to refute United Nations inspectors' and others' belief that Iraq chose not to move chemical warfare munitions into Kuwait before or during the Gulf War. New information obtained from unit logs and chronologies, along with interviews with witnesses and other subject-matter experts provided investigators with a clearer picture of what occurred. Investigators looked at 17 incidents. In each of these incidents, no chemical warfare agent exposures were reported and no one in the 11th Marines sought medical treatment for chemical warfare agent exposure. Investigators found that for two of the 17 events, very little documentation could be found or witnesses could recall little. Insufficient evidence led investigators to assess the possibility of chemical warfare agent presence as "indeterminate." For 13 other incidents, there was substantial information that allowed investigators to determine the presence of chemical warfare agent as "unlikely" in each case. For the two remaining incidents, there was sufficient evidence to determine there definitely was no presence of chemical warfare agent. Both reports are available on our website, GulfLINK.

In the open discussion with service officers, participants suggested we coordinate the presentation of two subjects at future meetings. The first was a request for an update on DoD's chemical warfare agent detection capability, in particular, detection at low-levels. The second area for discussion is an update on the Services' efforts to support separating and retiring service- members, in particular linking servicemembers to services provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. We will coordinate these presentations for sometime in the early fall.