Reply #88: SAIC covered up this too

[grasswire]

...troop exposure to chemicals in Gulf War!

The snip below is from a Hartford Courant story of June 2003. I found it on a google cache. Lots more at the link; it is probably available from the Courant's archives too.

Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego, Calif. - the company
that helped predict that U.S. airstrikes in Iraq in 1991 would not result
in dangerous chemical fallout on U.S. and allied troops - was asked by the
CIA in 1996 to assess whether its findings were wrong. After months of
study, the company, assisted by CIA and Defense Department officials,
asserted its earlier findings were correct in spite of numerous federal
inquiries that suggested otherwise.

During the war, John M. Deutch was one of the company's directors. He
resigned as a director in 1993 before becoming a high-ranking Defense
Department official. Deutch later became director of the CIA and was in
charge when the CIA retained SAIC to re-evaluate its earlier findings on
bomb fallout from chemical bunkers.

Deutch and former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, who also had been
an SAIC director, had been consistently outspoken in maintaining that the
troops did not become ill from chemical or biological warfare.

(snip regarding stock holdings of Deutsch and Perry)

Critics charged that SAIC could not conduct an impartial review for the CIA
of its own past findings for the Defense Department. If the company decided
that it was originally wrong, and that dangerous fallout did drop on the
troops, it might lose credibility or expose itself to lawsuits, critics
said.

A SAIC spokesman, Jason McIntosh, said he tried for two days without
success to find a company official who would comment on the GAO report. The
CIA declined comment on the studies.

Defense Department spokesman James Turner said: "The Department of Defense
is confident that the conclusions reached in its analysis of the Khamisiyah
demolition of chemical munitions represents the best possible assessment of
the projected hazard area created when explosives placed by U.S. troops
destroyed those munitions."

http://www.boardreader.com/scripts/texis.exe/viewpost?query=SAIC&postid=3ee86baf9ac