New revelations about the 1991 Gulf War -- detailed in a report kept from public view for nearly seven years -- suggest that U.S. soldiers were exposed to dangerous radioactivity at levels known to cause physiological damage. The substance involved was not from enemy action, but "Depleted Uranium" used in U.S. shells. PNS correspondent Dennis Bernstein is a producer for Pacifica Radio and an award winning investigative reporter.

"An oversight." So Col. Bob Cherry, U.S. Army director of radiation safety, described the army's failure to alert Gulf War personnel to the dangers of Depleted Uranium (DU).

Cherry certainly has a knack for understatement. This oversight allowed tens of thousands of troops to be exposed to potentially dangerous levels of the highly toxic substance. Many who served in the Gulf now believe they have suffered permanent damage from such exposures.

DU-tipped shells and missiles are ideal for penetrating tanks and hardened bunkers, and are an important tool in America's forward fighting machine. Over a million rounds of DU missiles, 600,000 punds, were fired at the Iraqis by U.S. and British forces. DU weaponry was also deployed in Somalia and Bosnia and is ready for use against hard targets in Iraq if the U.S. decides to launch another bomb attack.

Exposure to the radioactive metal may result in nausea, weakness, vomiting and diarrhea, kidney damage, lung and bone cancer, rare forms of leukemia, degenerative diseases and birth defects.

A recently declassified "Vehicle Assessment Report" on "Depleted Uranium Contamination," dated May, 14, 1991, shows that soldiers were working in the most contaminated areas without protection. A close reading of the document suggests that personnel with specialized training did arrive on the scene, measure the radiation and observed the unwitting soldiers' activity. But they evidently took no action, except to report readings of 47,000 units of radiation -- 230 times the allowable level of exposure for skin or clothing.

In one incident, involving a tank crew exposed to that level of radiation, "Several crew members' hands were found contaminated," and one had "radiological contamination in an open wound." The report found that a number of "Bradley" fighting vehicles hit by friendly fire were so contaminated they "should be buried" on the battlefield.

Exposures of such intensity make it almost certain that many inhaled or ingested dangerous levels of DU. And despite authoritative Army reports about the need for special procedures and clothing when dealing with DU, soldiers were sent into harm's way untrained and unprotected.

In fact, a report commissioned by the U.S. Army Armament, Munitions and Chemical Compound (AMCCOM) in July of 1990, six months prior to the war, states that "under combat conditions, the MEI's (most exposed individuals) are probably the ground troops that re-enter a battlefield following the exchange of armor-piercing munitions." The report goes on to note potential radiological and toxicological effects of these exposures.

Another AMCCOM memorandum dated March 1991 stated that as much as 70% percent of fired DU shells will be aerosolized into easily breathable particles and that "respiratory protection is needed for clean-up/recovery operations of battle damaged armored vehicles."

In the Gulf War, while many soldiers were exposed through friendly fire incidents and battlefield clean-up assignments, many more were exposed when they went souvenir hunting. "One of the places we went was the 'Highway of Death'," said Cassandra Garner of the Military Police. "We took pictures and climbed in a lot of vehicles. We gathered souvenirs. We were like little children out on a playground -- we had no knowledge of depleted uranium or that there might be contamination."

Vern Troop, who served in a medical detachment, recalled "Our commander sent us up into Kuwait to get a truckload of souvenirs. People were climbing all over destroyed tanks." He said he stuck his fingers "in the neat round holes" where the DU shells hit and "collected a truck full of helmets, gas masks, shell casings and other souvenirs" which he shipped to home base in Germany. "At no time did I ever receive any instruction about DU or other hazards that may be lying around the battlefield."

A March 1991 letter from Lt. Col. Gregory Lyle of the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) clearly anticipates post-war problems associated with DU -- and the potential for bad press. Lyle observed that "Explosive Ordnance Disposal and conventional ammunition communities (are being informed about) our concerns, before DU use manifests itself in the press as a health problem, or lack of a common Department of Defense position on DU clean up becomes significant."

In January, after years of stonewalling, the Pentagon finally admitted that thousands of gulf war personnel were exposed to DU unnecessarily because the military failed to inform "troops at all levels" about the need for special handling and special equipment.

Yet the minutes of a meeting of the Department of Veterans Gulf War Expert Scientific Advisory Committee last November strongly suggest that the Pentagon and the Defense Department are continuing to withhold crucial information about the numbers of soldiers exposed and the extent of such exposures. They also indicate that soldiers have yet to receive training on the dangers and handling of DU and no training program is yet in place.