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Mr. KUCINICH. Here's the letter, here's the response, and it's very clear the answer was no.

Mr. SHAYS. For the record, since this is so technical, find where the no is on that letter.

Mr. KUCINICH. The text of this does not answer the question as far as certification.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. KUCINICH. She asked for certification. If the Secretary of Defense will not certify that these suits are OK, the American people have a right to know that. The answer was no.

Mr. SHAYS. I got the same letter, and my interpretation of it was that he was certifying that they would have well, I first have to make sure I have the same letter. I'll look at it and then

Dr. WINKENWERDER. I want to attempt to answer your question, even though I want to be clear that the issues you're talking about are not within my area of responsibility, but I don't want to avoid trying to answer the issue that is in front of us.

Mr. SHAYS. I realize we have a 5-minute rule, but I will extend a little more time if a Member, you know, is nervous that the answer is a little long. But I don't want to have the answer not be thorough enough to respond.

Dr. WINKENWERDER. The issue with respect to chemical protective suits, I believe you're referring to, is the number of them, and each service member has been issued at least two, and I'm told— the information I have is that each will have three within a matter of less than a week.

Now, obviously that's to reach 100 percent. So they've been moving toward that target obviously for the last several weeks. And then I think there was another issue with some defective suits, and, again, I'm going to relate to you my best understanding of that, but my understanding is that those have been removed from the inventory, and there was a very deliberate, scrupulous effort to remove all of those suits, and they are not being used in this situation today.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, we'll be here for a bit, so we can nail this one down.

Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. Dr. Winkenwerder, I just recently met with representatives from the Ohio National Guard, and they were talking to me about the issue of National Guard Reservists that do not have continuous health care coverage. They have indicated numbers between 20 and 40 percent of the Reservists do not have continuous health care coverage for insurance.

To what extent do you have a concern that might have an impact on the medical condition of those deployed?

Dr. WINKENWERDER. If I might just ask you, the 20 to 40 percent, is this without health insurance coverage, and they're sort of private

Mr. TURNER. Correct. Correct.

Dr. WINKENWERDER. My hope is that it would not impact upon their health status. We do have a check on that, however, and that is that we require a certain level of medical readiness before people come on to Active Duty, and so we would hope to screen for and identify individuals who are not medically ready to serve.

Obviously the issue of health insurance or the lack thereof among certain members of the population is an ongoing problem. I will say that with respect to caring for National Guard and Reservists and their families, when they come on Active Duty, they are eligible for the military health system benefit program, TRICARE. We've made-in a change that we had just 2 weeks ago, made it easier for them to gain coverage for their families. There had been a glitch in the system where if a person was living, for example, in one part of the country and got deployed from another, that because they weren't residing with their family-or their family wasn't residing with them, they would not be eligible. We changed that. They're now eligible right then and there. There was also a hurdle that one had to be activated for 180 days. We changed that and said they only need to be active for 30 days. So all those benefits are commensurate between reservists and Guard and our ongoing Active Duty.

And we gladly did that. Our Reservists and Guard are playing a very important role in this conflict, and particularly so in the medical area. So it's important that we take care of them.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I think we will go to Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. A few, Mr. Chairman, and I want to be associated with your comments and those of the panel in appreciation of our men and women who are serving in the armed services.

I would like to ask some questions that were raised in this book, Saddam's Bomb Maker. It was written by Khidir Hamza, who says that he was in charge of Saddam's efforts to secure materials from foreign governments to build nuclear bombs, and he also talks about their chemical and biological weapon program. And I would like permission to place in the record page 244 and page 263. [The information referred to follows:]

KHIDHIR HAMZA

The helter-skelter looting was rank evidence that Iraq expected to
be evicted. What Saddam still worried about, however, was the cap-
ture of Baghdad and his personal vulnerability. For him, there was
no escape. Where could he go?

Accordingly, he ordered General al-Saadi to organize a two-
pronged defense. The first was to load chemical and biological war-
heads onto Iraqi missiles, in the event Allied troops stormed through
to the gates of Baghdad. But the second, and ultimately more relevant
Ta prong was to bury thousands of chemical and biological weapons in
Tal southern Iraq, at Basra, Nasiriyah, Simawa, Diwaniyah, and Hilla,
PP
the likely routes of the Allied invasion. His thinking was that the
Allies, following U.S. tactical doctrine, would blow up the bunkers
as they advanced, releasing plumes of invisible gas into the prevail-
ing winds and ultimately onto themselves. Any depots the Allies
missed could be blown up by retreating Republican Guard units.
The invaders literally wouldn't know what hit them, until it was too
late-maybe weeks or months after the conflict ended. The pattern
of contamination would be so disparate, the symptoms so amor-
phous, the sources of illness couldn't be easily confirmed.

"Iraq would be hell to the invaders, win or lose, Saddam gambled.
A corollary benefit was that the chemical shower would decimate
the despised Shia in the south, whom he concluded were of little
concern to the Allies, given their potential role as troops for Iran. In
any event, if chemical residues were eventually detected, the Amer-
icans would have only themselves to blame. And the West would tie
itself in knots over an appropriate retaliation. Washington, Saddam
reasoned, had no stomach for carrying out retaliation in kind.

[graphic]

On the night of January 16, 1991, Iraq's top nuclear officials met
for a candle-lit dinner at Le Soufotel, a French restaurant in down-
town Baghdad. The dinner was to celebrate my new good fortune
at being assigned away from AE.

The gathering was official self-delusion at its worst. The Allied
air campaign was scheduled to kick off in four hours, yet many
Iraqi officials were still in denial, despite weeks of repeated warn-
ings from Washington.

"It's all a bluff," a colleague uttered, drawing agreeable guffaws around the table. "These guys have no stomach for a land war.

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SADDAM'S BOMBMAKER

in other cancer rates. The pediatric wards, meanwhile, were becoming a nightmare, as a growing number of mothers just walked out after giving birth to deformed babies. Most of them were Shiites. from the contaminated zones.

Gulf War Syndrome was well known to everybody in Iraq, but Saddam remained silent. In this he had a secret ally-the U.S. Pentagon, which continued to deny that there was proof of a war-based disease despite growing evidence to the contrary. But evidence soon leaked of Allied forces blowing up chemical dumps during the war, and of the U.S. government's efforts to suppress repeated reports of contamination by units during the conflict.

The conspiracy of silence has remained to this day. Saddam has no interest in confessing his use of chemical-and-biological weapons, nor does Washington, which would be confronted by an outraged people to do something about it—and Saddam-if the deliberate contamination became known. Both sides have suppressed the real causes of Gulf War Syndrome because it has been convenient for both. Saddam blames the sickness on malnutrition and drug shortages caused by the embargo, and Washington blames it on... nothing.

After the war, officials like me were prohibited from visiting Baghdad hotels or other public places frequented by UNSCOM inspectors. The regime figured, rightly, that we'd be tempted to contact a foreigner and run.

My friend Ahmed Numan had a chilling experience with one of the inspectors. U.S.-educated and fluent in English, Ahmed was assigned to the Iraqi team that dealt with UNSCOM. His attitude was friendly but careful, especially with the Americans, who often quizzed him on why he didn't return to the United States. One day one of them pressed a scrap of paper into his hand with his name and telephone number on it. Numan tucked it discreetly into his pocket and went home. At midnight, a security officer knocked on his door.

"Where is the paper?" he asked. Numan didn't even consider bluffing. He turned around, walked back into his house, retrieved the scrap of paper, and handed it over to the security man. It was a warning, he knew. A lot of questions and trouble would follow. Many others had run. Jaffar's cook had disappeared with his

Mrs. MALONEY. And he raises really an alarming statement, and I would like to just quote from his statement here. He says, "the Gulf war syndrome was well known to everyone in Iraq, but Saddam remained silent. In this he had a secret ally, the U.S. Pentagon, which continued to deny that there was proof of a war-based disaster-war-based disease despite growing evidence to the contrary. But evidence soon leaked of allied forces blowing up chemical dumps during the war and of the U.S. Government efforts to suppress repeated efforts of reports of the contamination of our troops."

He also on page 244 talks about Saddam's effort to put biological-or that he did put, according to him, biological and chemical weapons into missiles that he was going to fire on the U.S. military if they went into Baghdad, but that he had a more sinister plan in that he buried chemical and biological weapons in southern Iraq, knowing that the tactics of the U.S. military would be to blow up the bunkers; therefore, they would release the contaminated material, they would not even know that they were affected, and that they would then be laden with chemical and biological disease from these terrible weapons.

I'd like to ask you if you, No. 1, have read the book; No. 2, your comments on what Saddam's bomb maker, Mr. Hamza, who has defected to the West and I understand is working with our military and has been very outspoken against Saddam in hearings, publicly and so forth.

Dr. WINKENWERDER. I have not read the book, Congressman. I have heard of the book. And by all accounts, it is a-from what I understand, is a reliable piece of information.

Mrs. MALONEY. Are you aware that our troops were exposed to these biological weapons? The allegation that he makes that our Pentagon knows, that Saddam knows, that people in Iraq know that our troops were exposed to these terrible chemicals in the Gulf war?

Dr. WINKENWERDER. Well, from all the information that I've been presented during my tenure, no one has ever indicated to me that there is any knowledge of an acute exposure or the exhibiting of symptoms that would suggest an acute exposure to chemical or nerve agents during that conflict.

Mr. SHAYS. Would the gentlelady yield? I'll make sure she gets additional time.

Mrs. MALONEY. Sure.

Dr. WINKENWERDER. That is a separate question, an acute exposure, someone who is acutely ill, than the issue of whether there were low levels of exposure

Mrs. MALONEY. Were there low levels of exposure?

Dr. WINKENWERDER. Well, that is what the whole Khamisiyah incident is about.

Mr. SHAYS. This is very important, and I don't want-since this is testimony under oath, I do want to make sure. There are really two issues, but one issue is sites. The only one that the Department of Defense has acknowledged is Khamisiyah. So I would love it if you would ask the question of whether there were other sites, and then get into this other shoe. But I want to make

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