(Picture of DoD form 250, detailing Lot 10H03A)
On the morning of 28th January, 1991, a group of RAF personnel was
ushered into a stifling room at an air base in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia,
and invited to take part in a shabbly, risky and highly questionable
enterprise. Even as they gathered, the Gulf War was entering its third
week and Saddam Hussain was busy promising the mother of all battles.
The desert heat was oppressive. Nerves were shaky, tempers short.
As the door shut tight behind them, a sergeant read out a chilling
warning from a single piece of paper. The base, he said, was facing
imminent biological attack from Iraq and
there was little or no protection. Around the room, stunned faces stared
ahead in silence. This was the nightmare scenario they had all dreaded.
And yet, the sergeant held out one last chance. The RAF, he said, was
pinning its hopes on a new biological warfare vaccine which would
greatly increase the chance of survival. The men were strongly urged to
take it. Refusal could mean death. As they reflected, they were given an
unequivocal order; don't breathe a word about the vaccine to the British
Aerospace personnel on the base. There isn't enough of it to go round.
Up until last month the servicemen did as they were told and kept
silent. But over the past five years several of them have fallen sick
from Gulf War illness and the Government has refused to answer their
questions.
On 9 February, RAF Corporal Dave Austin-a Dhahran veteran-called on his
MP, John Major, in Downing Street and asked point blank for information
about the vaccine. Mr Major told him it was classified.
In desperation veterans' organisations launched their own inquiry and
began lifting the blanket of official silence. A big boost came last
week with the Pentagon's announcement that up to 5,000 US troops may
have been exposed to chemical warfare agents, a fact consistently denied
by London and Washington. But the veterans claim both governments are
still withholding vital information.
Their research into events in Dhahran fully supports that view,
revealing a scandalous pattern of cover-up as well as flagrant breaches
of medical ethics and practice. On that
January day in 1991, the Dhahran servicemen went ahead and accepted the
vaccine, knowing nothing about its properties or origin. Their
inoculation cards later revealed a batch No. 10H03A, but all attempts to
discover the vaccine's identity were blocked.
Faced with such remarkable reticence, they approached the Pentagon with
a freedom of information request, expecting a similar brick wall. But
they were in for a shock.
The Defense Logistics Agency in Philadelphia promptly acknowledged the
batch number as one of its own. Moreover, its records showed nearly 6000
bottles of the vaccine had been bought from the Miles Drug Company in
October 1990 and stored at the Mechanicsburg military depot in
Pennsylvania, pending shipment to the Gulf. But they found no trace of
any transfer to non-American nationals during the Gulf War. In a letter
dated 16 August 1995, the agency wrote "The plague vaccine was not
procured for either the United Kingdom or any other foreign
government...(we are) not aware of any request from or shipment to the
authorities of the United Kingdom."
The key question, therefore, is how did it come to be administered to UK
service personnel stationed in Dhahran?
The issue is doubly important because the plague vaccine was not
licensed in the United Kingdom. Indeed, no such licence had ever been
requested. Ralph Rousell, safety director for Miles Pharmaceuticals,
confirmed that the vaccine was available to the UK only on a `named
patient' basis. That meant each users name would need to be forwarded to
the manufacturer to comply with its safety procedures.
In the case of the Dhahran supplies, there is no evidence that the
British authorities ever met this requirement. Miles confirmed that
small quantities of the vaccine had been shipped to their British
affiliate, Bayer UK, in 1990 and 1991, but insisted that batch number
10H03A had not been included.
Bayer itself wrote in March last year. `We used to hold small quantities
of plague vaccine largely for named patient use at the request of
British Airways and batch samples have been sent to CBDE (Chemical and
Biological Defence Establishment) at Porton Down at intervals. I have
made a careful search of our files and confirm that batch number 10H03A
was never imported at Bayer's request, or with our knowledge, into the
UK.'
It therefore seems clear that in vaccinating British servicemen in
Dhahran the company's rules were directly and wilfully contravened, and
that no allowance was made for individual allergies, side-effects or
contra-indications.
As for the US, the vaccine had already received a licence from the
Department of Health in Washington, but for prescription use only.
There, too, doubts have been expressed about the wisdom of injecting
servicemen with a cocktail of powerful vaccines in quick succession,
vaccines for which no adequate safety data existed.
The speed and panic surrounding the British vaccinations in Dhahran owes
much to an event similarly shrouded in official fog. A week earlier, on
the night of 20 January at around 8:30pm, the base at Dhahran had been
rocked by four huge explosions. Servicemen at the Al-Bustain hotel three
miles away had heard the blasts and rushed down to the basement, with
their gas masks firmly in place.
Twenty minutes later they were given the all-clear and went back to bed.
But the sequence of events that followed is curious.
An hour later the men were woken again, ordered into their protective
suits and told to keep wearing them till dawn. Corporal Richard
Turnbull, who was on the base that night, said the blasts had set off
every chemical alarm they possessed. `The chemical agent monitors showed
Sarin,' he says, `No doubt about it.'
To date, however, the official version insists no British personnel were
exposed to chemical and biological weapons. But it is hard to imagine
more convincing confirmation than the simultaneous triggering of more
than 20 chemical alarms and monitors, described by government officials
as `the finest equipment money can buy.'
Either the government is lying about the quality of that equipment or
about the evidence it has provided. As it is, their versions of the
events of 20-21 January are worryingly inconsistent. On 26 October,
1994, the director of CBDE, Graham Pearson, told the Countess of Mar in
a written response: "The event to which you refer is entirely consistent
with the occasional transient false alarms that arose during the Gulf
War."
But Lord Henly, for the Ministry of Defence, could find no report of
anything at all. `My department,' he told the House of Lords in December
that same year, `has no record of an incident taking place on the night
of 20-21 January 1991.'
Lord Henly might have made better use of his time consulting his
American colleagues rather than providing their Lordships with
inaccurate information.
US Centcom (Central Command) logs for the night of 20-21 January, again
acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, reveal a night full of
warnings and scud missile attacks. Of particular interest is an entry
timed at 21:47 which reads: `Scud alert. 2 missiles launched from
southern Iraq, headed Jubayl-Dhahran direction. Initial results: 4
Patriots fired, 2 scuds killed in the air (unconfirmed).'
There followed reports of a further five launches that night, of which
the Ministry of Defence can apparently find no trace.
The government still insists there is so far no evidence of any illness
linked with Gulf service, but says it retains an open mind. While its
files remain closed, that is small comfort to the British veterans
fighting for the truth.
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