Pinocchio syndrome.

Thousands of men and women who served in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq in the course of the Gulf War have reported falling ill. Their symptoms - among them, chronic fatigue, joint pain, memory loss, headaches, digestive problems, and insomnia - are elusive and so far unexplained. Many suspect they were exposed to Iraqi chemical or biological agents. The Pentagon said no, and offered other explanations: the veterans were suffering from postwar stress, psychiatric disorders, hypochondria, or perhaps the effects of an experimental vaccine given to protect them against chemical and biological weapons. Pentagon officials persistently denied there was any evidence either at the time of the war in 1991 or after the fact that exposure to chemical or biological weapons had occurred. In May 1994 the secretaries of defense, veterans affairs, and health and human services told Congress in a joint letter that "there is no classified information that would indicate any exposures to or detections of chemical or biological agents."

Sound familiar? Defoliation strategies in Vietnam exposed tens of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese to Agent Orange, a highly toxic pesticide whose health effects were also dismissed by the Pentagon. For years after the war in Vietnam ended, officials misled, misrepresented, spoke with a certitude they did not possess, and outright lied about the effects of exposure to Agent Orange.

The Gulf War "syndrome" is as troubling if not as devastating - at least so far. Once again, government officials joined in dismissing the fears of veterans, in this case denying that there was any evidence that chemical weapons had been detected at all, much less that exposure to them had caused the veterans' unexplained symptoms. Once again, there seems to be plenty of evidence contradicting these denials. From the first hours of the war in January 1991, when American equipment detected chemical weapons, to postwar reports in October 1991 by United Nations weapons inspectors, evidence exists that chemical weapons were either used by the Iraqis or that Iraqi arsenals were set off by the American military (see, New York Times, January 2, 1997).

Last June, the Pentagon finally admitted that 300-400 soldiers may have been exposed to chemical weapons; as of October the number had been adjusted upward to 20,000. An independent commission along with congressional prodding and testimony has finally pried loose this information from a reluctant and dissembling bureaucracy.

The connection between exposure to chemical weapons and the Gulf War syndrome remains needlessly elusive. Research on the Gulf War syndrome is long overdue; these veterans deserve to know the source of their illnesses, and where possible they deserve appropriate treatment. Evidently Pentagon and military officials are more interested in protecting the image of a "famous" victory than in the health and well-being of the soldiers who secured it.