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Was Gulf War syndrome a factor?
Sniper suspect may have been exposed to chemical weapons

By David Wood
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 — The alleged Washington sniper, John Allen Muhammad, may have been exposed to chemical weapons that have been linked to Gulf War Syndrome, an illness which experts said can result in unexplained bouts of intense violence.

MUHAMMAD, ARRESTED early Thursday as a prime suspect in the Washington area shootings, served with the Army’s 84th Engineer Company during the Persian Gulf War, military officers said.

That unit, attached to the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, helped inspect, catalog and destroy extensive stockpiles of Iraqi chemical weapons at a depot near Khamisiyah, Iraq, in March 1991 following the cease-fire March 3, Pentagon records show.

CHEMICAL AGENTS

According to Defense Department and CIA documents, the 84th Engineers worked handled the Iraqi chemical weapons stored in bunkers at the Tall al Lahm Storage Depot South and Tall al Lahm Ammo Storage Facility near Khamisiyah.

The 84th Engineers also helped demolish Iraqi rockets filled with the deadly nerve agent Sarin during March 10-13, 1991, Pentagon documents show. The process of blowing up the rockets may have vaporized dangerous amounts of the nerve agent, Pentagon investigators later concluded.

According to a final Pentagon report on the issue, “U.S. troops may have been exposed to chemical agents that are a suspected cause of Gulf War Syndrome.”

Gulf War Syndrome is the name now applied to a variety of complaints that can range from mild headaches and dizziness to illnesses such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Out of the roughly 540,000 American troops who served in Desert Storm, some 175,000 are thought to have some form of the neurological and neuro-immune illnesses that have been documented so far.

“Once it came out that he had a military background, I said this must be a Gulf War veteran,” said Dr. William E. Baumzweiger, a Los Angeles neurologist and psychiatrist who specializes in treating Gulf War Syndrome patients.

“There is no doubt that a small but significant number of Gulf War veterans become homicidal” because of Gulf War Syndrome, said Baumzweiger,until recently a staff psychiatrist and neurologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He is a leading expert on Gulf War Syndrome.

He said in such cases “there was always a bizarre strangeness about the violence in that it seemed to come out of nowhere, there were no personal problems or longstanding history” to explain it. The violence, he said, “appears to just come out of thin air.”

Experts on Gulf War Syndrome said Muhammad’s behavior fits precisely the patterns exhibited by some other Gulf War veterans.

“This kind of bizarre story, where he is on the one hand killing people and on the other hand writing notes to the government basically pleading for help, that’s a typical story you see in Gulf War veterans,” Baumzweiger said.

‘PRETTY AVERAGE JOE’

During his active-duty military service as John Allen Williams during 1985-1994, Muhammad, now 42, rose to be a sergeant and qualified as “expert” on the M-16 carbine. He was also expert in the use of hand grenades, according to military officers who reviewed his records Thursday.

Muhammad earned the standard medals and ribbons given to soldiers “if you haven’t gotten in trouble,” said one officer familiar with his records. These include the Army Service Ribbon and the National Defense Service Medal. He qualified as a combat engineer, a metal worker and water transport specialist, and attended the noncommissioned officers professional development course when he was promoted to sergeant.

“There’s nothing unusual, he was a pretty average joe,” said the officer, who asked not to be identified.

But as troops came home from the war in 1991, they began to report unexplained medical symptoms. It can take as long as five years for Gulf War Syndrome symptoms to appear.

For five years after the Gulf War, the Pentagon refused to acknowledge that some troops might have been suffering medical problems as a result of chemical contamination. Since then, teams of investigators have verified that soldiers were in fact exposed, and their treatment at Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers has been authorized. Under increasingly severe pressure from Congress and the public, the Pentagon finally admitted it knew of some chemical contamination and acknowleged the veterans really were sick.

It was not immediately clear Thursday whether Muhammad ever exhibited any symptoms of Gulf War syndrome or sought help from veterans agencies.

VA officials acknowledged that because of budget restrictions and growing demands, veterans who apply for mental health care can wait a year or more to be seen by a primary card doctor.

“Sad to say, but true: There are those who work for the VA who treat veterans like second-class citizens,” said Dick Vargas, a clinical social worker who works with mentally disabled veterans at the VA medical center in Brockton, Mass.

In the first years after the Gulf war, hundreds of veterans came to the VA for help. Most of them were turned away, VA officials have acknowledged.

David Wood can be contacted at David.Wood@Newhouse.com. Reporter Peter Shellem of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this story.

© 2002 Newhouse News Service

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