Head of Gulf War Illness panel had ties to chemical supplier

Head of Gulf War illness panel had ties to chemical supplier

by Patrick J. Sloyan Newsday

WASHINGTON - A Nobel laureate who headed a 1994 Pentagon study that dismissed links between chemical and biological weapons and Persian Gulf War illnesses was a director of a U.S. company that had exported anthrax and other lethal materials to Iraq before the 1991 conflict, according to federal records.

Renowned geneticist Joshua Lederberg of New York served as chairman of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Persian Gulf War Health Effects. At the time of the 1994 study, Lederberg was also on the board of directors of American Type Culture Collection, or ATCC.

The nonprofit Rockville, Md., company made 70 government-approved shipments of anthrax and other disease-causing pathogens to Iraqi scientists between 1985 and 1989, according to congressional records. Lederberg became a director, an unpaid position, in 1990, a year after the shipments were halted by the Bush administration. Lederberg resigned from ATCC last year. During and after the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. intelligence became convinced that the ATCC shipments, along with supplies from other countries, had been used by Iraqi scientists for an expanded biological weapons program.

"They (ATCC) were not the only source, but they made a contribution" to the Iraqi weapons program, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.N. Special Commission investigators in Iraq have found no evidence that Baghdad used biological weapons. But laywers for veterans groups argue that some biological weapons may have been included in nerve gas and other poisons encountered on the Gulf War battlefield.

Anthrax spores can produce high fever, breathing difficulty and eventually blood poisoning and death.

In 1993, after a growing number of Gulf War veterans complained offatigue, sore joints, sleep problems, diarrhea, memory loss and other problems, President Clinton ordered the Pentagon study to determine whether U.S. troops had been exposed to chemical or biological weapons during the war. Most of the ailing veterans share the array of symptoms called Gulf War syndrome, according to Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs health officials.

Lederberg, who shared the 1958 Nobel for medicine or physiology, was a director of ATCC when he was picked to head the study, which was overseen by Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch, now CIA director.

As chairman of the Pentagon investigation, Lederberg was specific in his summary of the 1994 report.

"There is no scientific or medical evidence that either chemical or biological warfare was deployed at any level against us, or that there were any exposures of U.S. service members to chemical or biological warfare agents in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia," Lederbergwrote in the report.

Lederberg declined to be interviewed. Deutch, through a spokesman, said he was unaware of Lederberg's connection to ATCC.

Some members of the 1994 Pentagon panel who served with Lederberg were unaware of his ties to ATCC. But they defended Lederberg's performance as chairman.

John Baldeschweiler of California Institute of Technology was unaware of Lederberg's connection with ATCC. "But I do not view it as a conflict of interest," said Baldeschweiler.

But critics of that Pentagon report such as James Tuite III, head of the Gulf War Veterans Foundation, said Lederberg should have recused himself from the Pentagon task force. Houston attorney Gary Pitts said Lederberg should have disclosed his tie to ATCC. "It doesn't pass the smell test," said Pitts. Pitts is representing Gulf veterans in a class-action suit in Texas seeking damages from ATCC and other companies that exported products that could have been used in Iraq's chemical and biological warfare program.