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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

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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.

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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

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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.