PITTS & ASSOCIATES
Attorneys at Law

8866 Gulf Freeway, Suite 117
Houston, TX 77017-6528
(713) 910-0555
(713) 910-0594 (Fax)
April 25, 2003


Dear Gulf War veteran client:

The regime, whose chemical warfare agents harmed you, is dead. Thank God and the courage and dedication of the U.S. military and our allies.

There is good news about holding the companies accountable that built and supplied Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons arsenal. Regarding getting compensation for your injuries there is good news, bad news, and mediocre news.

The bad news, regarding compensation for veterans, is that the frozen Iraqi assets will go to rebuilding Iraq. The President signed the implementing Executive Order on March 20, 2003. You my view it at “www.whitehouse.gov,” by clicking on “Executive Orders” on the left column of the homepage and going to March 20, 2003.

The good news, regarding compensation and holding the supplier companies accountable, is that we now have the evidence of which companies were involved and what they did. Seven months before Saddam Hussein’s regime fell, it turned over a copy of the report that it had given to the U.N. inspectors to us. This official government report gives the details of the procurement network regarding the Iraqi chemical warfare program. Saddam Hussein had to make the final decision to turn this over to us. He did it as part of his vain attempts to deflect the growing American and international determination to oust his regime. By “turning over his suppliers” he wanted to show that companies in the West were involved, and thus try to deflect attention from himself. Similar behavior is seen in many criminal cases where a defendant, under pressure, will start pointing the finger at co-conspirators in order to try to deflect some of the blame and responsibility.

We needed this Iraqi report to UNSCOM to prove our case. As you can imagine, the defendant companies have generally refused to reveal or turn over any documentation regarding their dealings with Iraq. Over the years, we have repeatedly requested that the U.N. let us have a copy of the Iraqi chemical warfare complex supplier information. I argued that it was important for nonproliferation purposes to allow the public exposure of the involved companies and to allow them to possibly be held accountable by a Court for their actions. The U.N. consistently refused to help us however. On June 20, 2002, I received a letter from Hans Blix, the Executive Chairman for UNMOVIC (the successor to UNSCOM), the U.N. inspectors’ program, again declining to let us have access to the information.

Since we understood from insiders that our State Department had a copy of the Iraqi declaration to UNSCOM, four years ago I sent a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request to the State Dept. requesting the information about the supplier companies to Iraq. I was joined in the FOIA request by our country’s largest daily newspaper, USA Today. After incredible State Dept. bureaucratic delay and excuses yielded nothing, I wrote to Secretary of State Colin Powell on August 14, 2002 letting him know that I was representing former soldiers that had served under him, and that the litigation had important nonproliferation purposes. I asked him, as a favor to you, if he would intervene with the bureaucracy so we could get the information that was needed for your case. On August 27, 2002, I got a letter back from the head of the State Dept. FOIA program saying that Secretary Powell had asked her to reply to my letter, and that they had found “a number of documents that appear responsive to my request,” and that they would be getting back to me after they had been reviewed. On November 6, 2002, I got a letter from the Defense Intelligence Agency saying that they had been forwarded the documents in question from the State Dept., and reviewed them. The Defense Intelligence Agency said that all of the documents were classified, and we could not have them. By this date, the request for the documents was moot, since we had them. If we had not, we would have appealed the Defense Intelligence Agency decision to the Administration. Ultimately, if that was not successful, we would have appealed to American public opinion, and attempted to make it a significant political issue. Thankfully, those delays were not necessary.

Realizing that we might not get any eventual results from the U.N. or our State Dept., about two and a half year ago, I traveled with my co-counsel, Michael Maloney and Ken McCallion, to upstate New York and met with former UNSCOM inspector and Marine officer, Scott Ritter, and hired him on your behalf to lobby the Iraqi regime to release the information about the supplier companies. Our argument to Saddam’s regime was that giving up the information about their suppliers would be consistent with their public position that they had destroyed their weapons of mass destruction and were not interested in them anymore. There was no positive response for a long while. In the wake of 9/11/01, you may recall that the Administration started putting growing pressure on Saddam’s regime in the first quarter of last year. In March 2002, we finally heard from the Iraqis that they were willing to turn over the documents, but they wanted to do it at a press conference in Baghdad. Mr. Maloney and I began making travel plans to go to Baghdad to accept the surrender of the documents. The wave of suicide-terrorist bombings began in Israel however, and primary world attention turned from Iraq to Israel and Palestine. With the pressure apparently diverted from them, we heard nothing else from the Iraqis about turning over the documents. Attention then quieted down about Israel and Palestine, or adjusted to the inflammation, and pressure began obviously building on Saddam again. In September 2002, Mr. Ritter traveled to Baghdad and addressed the ostensible Iraqi parliament. After that, and before he returned to the U.S., Saddam’s regime, through its Foreign Minister (now former Foreign Minister), Tariq Aziz, handed over the documents in question to Mr. Ritter. Mr. Ritter called me as soon as he returned to New York. We both flew the next day to meet in Atlanta. Thousands of pages of documents are on three CD-Rom disks. He gave me the originals in Atlanta and purposefully did not keep a copy. I flew back to Houston and notified the FBI that I had them. We coordinated security issues with them since March 2002, letting them know that the Iraqi government might turn the documents over to us. An FBI agent came and got a copy of the CDs, to compare with what the State Dept. has, and we coordinated with the FBI in setting up the physical security of the CDs, because of the sensitive nature of information that is on them regarding various weapon systems. The FBI and Administration have not hindered our use of the documents in any way regarding the procurement network for Iraq’s chemical weapons complex. The list of chemical precursors is not classified, in any case, since they are a published part of the Chemical Weapons Convention that was signed by most of the nations of the world since the First Gulf War.

We did not immediately make public that we had the relevant documents, because we did not want Saddam’s release of them to be used for propaganda purposes in his “charm offensive.” We did use the time to study them and identify which of the supplier companies were still in business. Only as matters with Saddam were moving to a climax, did we release the information to the press right before last Christmas. I contacted Philip Shenon at the New York Times. You may recall that we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Shenon for his good work back in 1996 for investigating and initially publicizing the facts of exposure of over 100,000 troops to nerve gas from Khamisiyah. It was this breakthrough in establishing the fact of exposure of Gulf War veterans to nerve gas that led to the government funding of medical research regarding the effects of exposure to nerve gas, below the level of immediate symptoms. Mr. Shenon broke the story about the new documents in the New York Times on 12/21/02. CNN did a story on it on 1/17/03, which is also on their CNN.com website. The New York Times also did a subsequent story on it on 3/16/03. The following is what the Iraqi documents reveal about the supplier companies for Saddam’s chemical weapons complex:

I. SUPPLIERS OF SADDAM HUSSEIN’S CHEMICAL WEAPONS ARSENAL, IDENTIFIED IN THE IRAQI DECLARATION TO UNSCOM, ARE STILL IN BUSINESS:

A.) Built chemical warfare agent production facilities in whole or part:

· Herberger Bau - Germany
· Karl Kolb - Germany
· Ludwig Hammer - Germany

B.) Supplied chemical warfare agent production equipment or related material:

· Ceilcote - Germany
· De Dietrich - France
· Euromac - Netherlands
· Georg Fischer - Switzerland
· Gig - Austria
· Horseley Bridge - U.K.
· Karl Kolb (see A above)
· Klockner Industrie - Germany
· Lenhardt - Germany (now owned by a Swiss co., Tegula AG)
· Schott Glass - Germany
· Sulzer - Switzerland

C.) Supplied chemical warfare agent precursors:

· Abu Zaabel - Egypt (for nerve gas and mustard gas)
· Alcolac - U.S. (for mustard gas)
· Exomet Plastics - India (for nerve gas and mustard gas)
· Fluka Chemie - Switzerland
· Hoechst - Germany (now owned by a French co., Aventis) (for nerve gas)
· KBS - Netherlands (for nerve gas and mustard gas)
· Kim Al-Khalleej - Singapore/Dubai (for nerve gas and mustard gas)
· Melchemie - Netherlands (for nerve gas and mustard gas)
· Preussag - Germany (for nerve gas)
· Reininghaus Chemie - Germany (for nerve gas and mustard gas)
· Tafisa - Germany (now owned by Sonae Industries, of Portugal) (for mustard gas)
· Weco - Germany (for nerve gas)

D.) Suppliers of lab equipment, pumps, or teflon pipes, etc.:

· BDH - U.K.
· Gallenkamp - U.K.
· Hauke - Austria
· Lewa Hebert - Germany		     . Martin Merkel - Germany
    . Oxoid - U.K.
    . Pullen Pumps - U.K.
    . Weir - U.K.

II. IRAQI CHEMICAL ARSENAL SUPPLIERS ARE OUT OF BUSINESS OR WHOSE PRESENT LOCATION IS NOT YET CONFIRMED:

· Al Haddad (precursors for nerve gas) - U.S.
· Exposel (tech equipment) - U.K.
· FCA (chemical agent production equipment) - Switzerland
· Ganssen (chemical materials) - Belgium
· HIP (precursors for sarin nerve gas) - Germany
· I.T.E. (chemical agent production equipment) - Spain
· Lab Consult (chemical agent production equipment) - Germany
· Lavasson (lab materials) - U.K.
· Lummus (lab equipment) - U.S.
· Neuburger Kunstoff Industrie (chemical agent production equipment) - Austria
· Oriac Int. (precursor for mustard gas) - Luxemburg
· Pey Unicom (equipment) - U.K.
· Philips Export (chemical agent production equipment) - Netherlands
· Protic (chemical agent production equipment) - France
· Schwender K.G. (Chemical agent production equipment) - Germany
· Sigma (lab materials) - U.K.
· Q.T.L. (chemical agent equipment) - unknown
· Wormald Eng. - unknown

Defendants being added in a new lawsuit being filed in New York

Besides the litigation in Texas, we will shortly be filing an additional class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York for you. This lawsuit will add the supplier companies that have been newly revealed by the Iraqi UNSCOM documents, and that we can get jurisdiction over in the United States. It will not rename the Defendants that we already have jurisdiction over in the Texas State Court lawsuit, or that we have already sued and can probably get jurisdiction over in Texas. Other than the new Defendants named in New York, the lawsuits are essentially the same on the merits of the matter, and an extension of each other.

The New York law firm that we will be working with is McCallion and Associates (Ken McCallion, Esq. and Curtis Trinko, Esq.). Among many other prominent cases, they have previously represented plaintiffs in the Exxon Valdez case and the Holocaust survivors’ lawsuit against European banks that stole their families’ money during the Nazi regime. Mr. McCallion was also an Assistant United States Attorney serving in the U.S. Eastern District of New York.

Lawsuit filing in Germany

My co-counsel, Mike Maloney and Mike Martin, and I, traveled overseas in January and met with German attorneys. We are planning to file direct lawsuits in Germany against supplier companies that are culpable and solvent, that we have evidence on now, that we cannot reach in the United States jurisdictionally, and that are not willing to negotiate with us. Because there is no class action procedure in Germany; because the loser of a lawsuit must pay the other side’s attorney’s fees and costs; and because we are not licensed to practice law in Germany, without being associated with German counsel, we will have to sign a new attorney-client employment agreement, in conjunction with German legal counsel, for any veteran that we file a lawsuit for in Germany. Our present attorney-client employment agreement would not cover litigation in Germany. It will only be practical to file a lawsuit in Germany, especially the initial ones, for the most seriously affected of the American Gulf War veterans. However, the Defendants who are unwilling to seriously talk with us about resolving the claims against them are facing the possibility of a chronic wave of lawsuits against them in Germany. Be advised that the statute of limitations in Germany is three years, which begins, broadly speaking, from when the Plaintiff (i.e., you) gets knowledge of the wrongdoer and the facts on which he can base his claim.

Possible lawsuit filing in England

In January, Mr. Maloney, Mr. Martin and I also met with the British attorneys (known as solicitors there) who represent the British Gulf War veterans that were also exposed to chemical warfare agents in 1991. The British veterans have had the same Gulf War Illness symptoms since 1991, and in the same general proportion as American veterans, relative to their respective number of forces that were deployed in the First Gulf War. Based on the evidence that we gave them, the British veterans’ legal representatives are considering filing a lawsuit in England against the supplier companies also. If they do so, and they are able to get jurisdiction over companies that we cannot get in the U.S., we will consider intervening with some American veterans in that case. Because, just as in Germany, they do not have class actions in England either, because the loser of a lawsuit must pay the other side’s attorneys’ fees and costs, and because we are not licensed to practice law in England, without being associated with British counsel, we will have to sign a new attorney-client employment agreement, in conjunction with British legal counsel, for anyone that we filed a lawsuit for in England. Our present attorney-client employment agreement will not cover litigation in England. If there is a lawsuit in England that we can, and do, intervene in, it will, as in Germany, only be practical to file an intervention lawsuit for the most seriously affected of the American Gulf War veterans. The statute of limitations is three years in England as in Germany.

Settlement negotiations and a possible class action settlement in the U.S.

We are in negotiation with some of the supplier companies about the possibility of a settlement. If there is a settlement of the class, it would have to be in the context of an agreed class action settlement. The Texas case has never been certified or decertified as a class action by the Court. Due to several appellate court decisions in the last years, it is generally difficult to get class action certification in a personal injury case tried on the merits. Class action status appears to be more easily accomplished if there is an agreed class action settlement, where there is no substantial objection to the class action status for settlement purposes. A class action resolution of the case seems most appropriate since there are more than 100,000 ill veterans of the First Gulf War on the U.S. government registries. To try even a significant percentage of that number in individual lawsuits would take well over all of the life spans of everyone that is living today. A class action settlement is also the only way a Defendant company can buy its peace. Settling or trying one plaintiff, leaves more than 99,999 potential individual plaintiffs left. Thus, rather than face unending litigation in Texas, New York, Germany and/or England, and the chronic bad publicity about what these companies did in the past, it is possible that the Defendants will choose to pay into a settlement fund for the ill Gulf War veterans and their birth-defected children. A Defendant that can only be sued in Germany may voluntarily submit to the jurisdiction of Texas in order to enter an agreed class action settlement, rather than face continued litigation by veterans filing in Germany. An agreed class action settlement in Texas would give them peace in all jurisdictions.

Any class action settlement would have to be approved by the Court, and it would be after a fairness hearing. The Court would also set any attorney’s fees and reimbursement of litigation expenses in a class action settlement.

There are two primary kinds of Defendants for settlement purposes, those involved with nerve gas and those involved with mustard gas. The medical research links the symptoms of Gulf War Illness and ALS with nerve gas exposure. The medical research links the symptoms of birth-defected children and cancer with mustard gas exposure. There is evidence of theater-wide exposures to both chemicals agents from the fallout from the air war and demolition of Iraqi ammo dumps by ground forces.

Without knowing for sure how the Court would fashion a distribution of the settlement proceeds, we believe that concerning money from the “nerve gas Defendants,” settlement proceeds will probably be divided by the Court based on a veteran’s disability rating percentage set by the United States Veterans’ Administration, if the percentage is in regard to one or more of the 13 categories of symptoms correlated with Gulf War Illness. These categories track the medical research regarding Gulf War Illness. They are set out at 38 Code of Federal Regulations, Section 3.317 (effective July 1, 2001), and are as follows:

“The undiagnosed illness compensation program for Gulf War veterans now include those who have suffered six months or more of disabilities, who are disabled 10% or more, and suffer from signs or symptoms including:

1.) Fatigue
2.) Signs or symptoms involving skin
3.) Headache
4.) Muscle pain
5.) Joint pain
6.) Neurologic signs or symptoms
7.) Neuropsychological signs or symptoms    		     8.) Signs or symptoms involving the respiratory system (upper or lower)
    9.) Sleep disturbances
    10.) Gastrointestinal signs or symptoms
    11.) Cardiovascular signs or symptoms
    12.) Abnormal weight loss
    13.) Menstrual disorders”

If you do not have a percentage disability rating from the V.A., you should apply for one, if you feel that you may qualify for one. If so, and you applied in the past but were unsuccessful, you should reapply, since the applicable law, quoted above, changed significantly on July 1, 2001.

Materials to Send to Us Now

Please send us a copy of: 1.) your V.A. disability rating (if you have one already, or if you get one, or if your rating changes); 2.) your Social Security Administration earning history statement (you can request one for free from Social Security), so that we can determine lost income; 3.) the letter that you got from the DoD about being exposed to nerve gas from Khamisiyah (if you got one); 4.) your DD-214; and in all case, and most importantly: 5.) An updated name, address and telephone number of someone who does not live with you that will always know how to contact you. Please let us know of any changes in your own address.

National Gulf War Resource Center Annual Conference This Coming Weekend

The 7th Annual National Gulf War Resource Center Annual Conference will be held this coming Friday, May 2, and Saturday, May 3, 2003, in Kansas City, MO., at the Radisson Hotel, 11828 N.W. Plaza Dr. Mr. Ross Perot will be speaking on the evening of May 2. I will be giving a briefing and answering questions on the morning of May 3. More information can be obtained at “www.ngwrc.org,” or by calling 1-800-882-1316.

If you have a close relative that was in Gulf War II

If you have a close relative that is serving, or served, in the Second Gulf War, one of our expert witnesses’ consultants, journalist Kenneth Timmerman, would like you to ask him or her to contact him. He is writing a book and would like to interview them. Mr. Timmerman is not only a journalist. He is also an expert on the Middle East. He previously wrote “The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Saddam Hussein,” about the suppliers to Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction programs. Mr. Timmerman may be reached at: “ktimmer@bellatlantic.net” or “krt@timmerman2000.com.”

Our Litigation Website and Future Status Reports

We now have an internet website that deals with this litigation on your behalf. It is: “www.gulfwarvetlawsuit.com.” From now on all future status reports will be posted there. Please check it every 3-4 months for updates. The website will also list news and medical research of interest. If particular information is needed from you in regards to your specific case, we will contact you. If you do not have a computer with access to the internet, or a friend that does, please take note that your local public library, or veterans’ center, will probably have this available for your use.

Dr. Khidhir Hamza

Dr. Khidhir Hamza is a nuclear physicist that was in charge of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. He successfully defected to the U.S. a few years after the First Gulf War. He wrote a book that was published since my last status report to you. It is entitled: Saddam’s Bombmaker (Scribner, N.Y. 2002). Dr. Hamza was very much an insider in Saddam’s regime before he defected. On pages 243-44, 254, and 262-63 of his book, he states something that is very interesting. He says that Saddam ordered thousands of chemical weapons to be buried in ammunition bunkers in the likely routes of Allied invasion. “His thinking was that the Allies, following U.S. tactical doctrine, would blow up the bunkers as they advanced, releasing plumes of invisible gas into the prevailing winds and ultimately onto themselves ... The pattern of contamination would be so disparate, the symptoms so amorphous, the sources of contamination couldn’t be easily confirmed ... In any event, if chemical residues were eventually detected, the Americans would only have themselves to blame. And the West would tie itself in knots over an appropriate retaliation. Washington, Saddam reasoned, had no stomach for carrying out retaliation in kind.” Dr. Hamza went on to speak about the resulting widespread adverse health effects and birth defects among the Shia in southern Iraq, which Saddam despised, and where Khamisiyah and the other ammo bunkers where chemical weapons were placed that were detonated were located.

The Administration expressly relied on the information from Iraqi defectors, especially its scientists, including Dr. Hamza, in going to war with Saddam’s regime in the last few weeks. Though the Administration has not publicly stated that what Dr. Hamza said above had anything to do with the decision to go to war, I believe history will eventually show that it and Gulf War Illness research were very important factors. Dr. Hamza’s research demonstrated Saddam’s willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against Americans, and the consensus of advancing medical science is showing that more than 100,000 American troops were casualties from Saddam’s chemical attack (even though indirect and through subterfuge), and our necessary destruction of his stockpiles during the Gulf War I air war. It is becoming clear, through the advance of medical research, that Gulf War Illness came from Saddam’s nerve gas. The Administration has undoubtedly been briefed on the progress of this research, if from no one else, Mr. Ross Perot, who has closely followed the research, and endorsed Mr. Bush in the close 2000 campaign, and whom they will certainly listen to on veterans’ issues. Likewise, most of the relevant medical research which shows the connection with sarin nerve gas has now been funded by the V.A. or the DoD. In short, the Administration is very aware of the trend of the research. Given this, Saddam Hussein’s regime could not continue to exist. In other words, he cannot appear to have “gotten away with” poisoning more than 100,000 American soldiers with chemical weapons and continue to exist as a growing threat to America and the rest of the civilized world.

Medical research of interest

You may want to download the medical research articles and medical causation briefs listed on our internet site, and provide them to your doctors if they are unfamiliar with Gulf War Illness, since many of them are not familiar with it. New medical research will be posted on the site, and the medical causation briefs will be updated as there are additional medical publications.

The behavior therapy and exercise therapy regimens that were funded by the V.A. in trials for treating Gulf War Illness showed only modest benefit but no pain relief (Houston Chronicle, A.P., 3/20/03). Stem cell research to repair damaged nerve cells continues to make some progress. The most interesting development seemed to be from USDA researchers. Their research indicated that the humble blueberry may be of benefit to cognitive functioning. The equivalent of one cup of blueberries a day for two months led lab animals to make only half as many mistakes as their counterparts in going through mazes. The researchers reported that the fruit appears to have triggered the birth of new neurons.”Blueberries seem to have the most powerful effect on cognitive behavior, which is processed in the hippocampus,” said the USDA’s Gemma Casadesus, who led the study (Newsday, 11/6/02). Since the research indicates that the nerve gas exposure damaged neurons in the deep portions of Gulf War veterans’ brains, it appears, without my being a brain surgeon, that it might be of benefit to eat blueberries. It can’t hurt to have a cup a day. They are also rich in antioxidants which are also known to help protect from cancer. The frozen ones are not as expensive. Most people think they taste very good too. So that is my good news that I close with for this status report.

With best regards, I remain
Very truly yours,

Gary B. Pitts