Speaker Feeds Fear Of Cover-Up Ex-Air Force Nurse Offers Explanation Of Gulf Syndrome

Former Army sergeant Eric Johnson of Bonners Ferry isn’t sure about all the possible implications of gulf war syndrome. But he remembers when the chemical sensors went off one night while his unit was near the “neutral zone” between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Johnson, 36, has had a few of the symptoms - night sweats, aching joints and memory loss - and little help from the Veterans Administration.

“I haven’t had some of the severe symptoms,” said Johnson after listening Tuesday to a presentation by former Air Force flight nurse Joyce Riley.

Riley linked service in the Persian Gulf War to everything from multiple sclerosis and birth defects to death.

But he has a buddy, another gulf war veteran, who is in really bad shape. “I was hoping he’d make it here tonight,” Johnson said as he scanned the crowd at the Panida Theater. “I picked up these tapes for him.”

Riley may be a combination of Joan of Arc and Paul Revere for those who believe that gulf war syndrome is real and traceable to substances that gulf war veterans either breathed in, took as pills or had injected into their bodies.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is time we embarrass the government and the Department of Defense,” Riley told the crowd of about 350 people. “This is a communicable disease. It is being transferred by blood transfusions, sexual contact and perspiration.”

The federal government has repeatedly denied that there is a single source for the wide variety of medical symptoms that have come to be known as gulf war syndrome. It has acknowledged in recent months that an increasing number of troops were exposed to chemical warfare agents when Iraqi stockpiles were destroyed.

But Johnson and other veterans who attended Riley’s speech said they recall other warning signs of chemical exposure.

“Our chemical sensors went off, and they said it was a malfunction,” said Tony, a former Marine from Coeur d’Alene who would give only his first name. He served in the Middle East for 13 months, and was later discharged with a spinal disease.

Riley suggested a major conspiracy involving the highest levels of government.

“What you’re going to see tonight is documentation,” the Texan said before flashing a series of slides on the theater’s screen.

She showed the crowd pages from government documents - in one case, a congressional report more than 25 years old - and suggested conclusions.

In 1970, the Pentagon received money to do research on “an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired,” said page 129 of a House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee report. It would compromise a person’s ability to fight off disease. That could be the origin of the AIDS virus, she suggested.

“Do I have proof that this is the AIDS virus? No, I don’t,” she added.

Government officials who are covering up information about gulf war syndrome are guilty of treason, Riley charged.

Riley and her husband, Dave Riddell, travel around the country talking about the problems of gulf war veterans. She said she knew nothing about the sponsor of her Sandpoint speeches, America’s Promise Ministries, other than it paid her way, booked the theater and took out advertising.

“I’m not interested in what their ideals are,” she said.

, DataTimes