ABLEnews Extra

                   Do What Is Right
          
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Washington--Hillary Clinton, acting on her husband's request, visited
extensively Wednesday with ailing Persian Gulf War veterans at the
huge Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
   
She heard lots of personal health horror stories.
   
The session was significant for the public candor allowed on the part
of active duty personnel: Many have previously expressed misgivings
about hurting military careers with any talk of their symptoms.
   
The first lady said the White House wants to trigger a "new
thinking"--more openness, concern and diagnostic action in finding the
causes of the mysterious Persian Gulf Syndrome symptoms that have
afflicted about 55,000 veterans of the 1991 war with Iraq.
   
"This new thinking may not be immediately reassuring because we can't
find causes right away," she told the military personnel. "But it is
not going to be just the same cookie-cutter response like, `Oh, you've
got post-traumatic stress disorder.' I've heard that a lot from
veterans I've talked to."
   
Meanwhile, at the Oval Office, President Clinton gave ailing veteran
Michael Sills of Villa Park, Ill., his first monthly check of $742.
Sills is one of the first recipients to benefit from a new program
that allows compensation for gulf veterans suffering from undiagnosed
illnesses.
   
"When they are sick, we must do what is right," Clinton said.
   
White House sources said while no decision is imminent, the Clinton
administration is considering setting up its own task force to
investigate the Persian Gulf mystery illnesses, and to review the
government's own sluggish early response to ailing veterans.
   
The Desert Storm vets had harrowing medical tales to tell the first
lady.
   
Sgt. Bryan Hall, 29, now on "medical hold" at his home in Baltimore,
was part of a cavalry squadron of the 101st Airborne out of Fort
Campbell, Ky.
   
Assigned to one of the very first units to engage retreating Iraqis,
Hall's convoy advanced so fast toward the Euphrates River that orders
to stop taking the controversial pyridostigmine tablet never caught up
with him. The Pentagon originally thought pyridostigmine would protect
against Iraqi biochemical warfare attacks, but so many severe
reactions slowed American troops that its usage was cut back.
   
Hall was the NBC officer for his regiment--the Nuclear, Biological,
Chemical weapons expert. He suspects American troops were subject to
biochemical attacks. At one point, his convoy came across 117 dead
goats and sheep, all facing the same direction, saliva and mucus
dripping from noses and mouths, with very few flies buzzing about
them. The chemical alarms went off.
   
"We detected mild nerve agents," he told Mrs. Clinton. Their unit was
stalled and decontaminated before moving forward.
   
Now he has severe chest pains, headaches, hard bumps all over his
skin, aching joints, fatigue, a tendency to gain weight without
eating, and his lungs are slowly collapsing from the bottom up. His
officers want him to muster out as unfit. He and his wife have decided
not to have anymore children because their 11-year-old son is now
getting skin bumps: "We are really scared."
   
Mrs. Clinton recognized one afflicted veteran. Michelle Wright, a
native of Rochester, N.Y., had met her at Monroe Community College
during a 1992 campaign event.
   
Wright, 26, who served in an Army Reserve hospital evacuation unit in
Oman, said she blames her upper respiratory ailments on
pesticides--which the desert natives sprayed near her base daily,
heavily and without warning. But Wright--now working as a reservist in
the Walter Reed pharmacy--also has headaches and chronic fatigue, and
trouble passing physical training exams.
   
"I used to be active in martial arts," she recalled wistfully.
   
Nancy Kapplan of New Britain, Conn., told Mrs. Clinton her whole
family got sick after handling the laundry her husband mailed home.
When he returned from Desert Storm, his bags were stored in the
nursery. The baby fell ill and almost died.
   
Army Spc. James Taylor, 24, now at nearby Ft. Meade, was stationed 20
miles from the Kuwait-Iraq border with the 2nd Military Intelligence
Battalion. He suspects his unit was subjected to biochemical weapons
attacks, also. He has skin nodules, fatigue, nausea, headaches,
dizziness, bowel problems.
   
"I was diagnosed with three different things three different times,"
he told Gannett News Service. "The last was depression. It was a
crock. I've seen this whitewashed before. She (Hillary Clinton) can do
a lot of good as long as the concern is genuine."
   
President Clinton specifically asked his wife to get to the bottom of
all the controversy, which Pentagon officials have only recently and
somewhat reluctantly begun to probe with any zeal.
   
Democratic senators and representatives who carried the issue to
public hearings on Capitol Hill in the past couple of years have found
little interest among Republicans who moved into control following
last fall's elections.
   
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Veterans
Affairs Committee, has long been a political ally of the first lady,
and reportedly urged her to get the administration more heavily
involved. Mrs. Clinton has recently hired Dianna Zuckermann, who had
lost her job as Rockefeller's chief investigator on the issue once
Republicans took power.

[First Lady Explores Gulf Syndrome, John Hanchette and Norm Brewer,
Gannett News Service, February 22, 1995]

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