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By Kate Plummer
Senior US News Reporter
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A veterans group has called on President Donald Trump's administration to declassify documents related to the first Gulf War, Newsweek can exclusively reveal.
In a letter sent to the Department of Defense on February 18, 2025, and seen by Newsweek, Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) urged the DOD to make public all documents related to the 1990-1991 conflict in case they hold evidence that could assist researchers in treating veterans who remain ill because of exposure to toxic substances.
They raised particular concerns about information about the demolition of an Iraqi ammunition storage site at Khamisiyah in March 1991, which led to the release of chemicals into the atmosphere.
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The DOD replied to the letter, advising the group to contact the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
A DOD official told Newsweek: "The health of Department of Defense (DOD) personnel and veterans remains a high priority to the DOD. Representatives from the DOD Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs have been in correspondence with, and recently met with, representatives from the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) to discuss topics associated with findings on demolitions involving Iraqi chemical weapons at Khamisiyah, Iraq in 1991."
"The DOD is committed to providing up-to-date health risk communications to DoD personnel and veterans," the official said.
"Similarly, the DOD works closely with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to coordinate and collaborate, as needed, to help facilitate veterans' access to all appropriate care and benefits available to them. As such, the DOD supports efforts by veterans to take full advantage of VA health care and benefits, including any new or updated provisions of the Sergeant First Class (SFC) Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act."
Newsweek reached out to NARA via email for comment.
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Gulf War Illness (GWI), also known as Gulf War Syndrome, is a disease that affects up to one in three veterans who served in the Gulf War, a conflict sparked in response to Iraq's annexation of Kuwait. During the war, military personnel were exposed to chemical and biological warfare, which led to unexplained symptoms including rashes, diarrhea, muscle pain, cognitive issues, reduced coordination and fatigue. The DOD concluded that about 100,000 Gulf War veterans could have been exposed to low levels of nerve agents from Khamisiyah, specifically.
Over the years, GWI has perplexed scientists worldwide, who have conducted numerous studies in an effort to treat it. In 2024, scientists from Griffith University in Australia identified a faulty cell function that could be linked to the illness.
While this was considered a research breakthrough, veterans are still facing barriers in receiving adequate treatment and advocacy groups say more research is needed to understand the condition fully.
In its letter, VVA said it was "writing to formally request the declassification of all records, documents, and materials" concerning the Gulf War.
"The significance of this matter cannot be overstated, as it directly impacts veterans, their families, researchers, and the public's right to understand the events and potential exposures that occurred," the letter said. "The release of these records would serve the interests of transparency, accountability, and public trust, providing crucial information for ongoing health studies and care for those affected."
The group also asked the DOD to issue a letter to veterans warning them that they may have been exposed to toxic substances.
In response, Tracie Lattimore, the acting deputy assistant secretary at the DOD's Health Readiness Policy and Oversight team, said in a May 2025 letter seen by Newsweek that in 2019, the department had submitted all classified materials from 1940 to 2021 to NARA and advised the group to contact the agency.
"My team and I are eager to continue discussions" about deployment-related exposure, said Lattimore. She added that the DOD is continuing "to investigate potential deployment-related exposures."
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The DOD official also told Newsweek: "Based on continued concerns voiced about the potential negative long-term health effects of exposures at Khamisiyah, the DOD is currently in the process of investigating whether any updates to the original letters are warranted based on newly incorporated data, recent research findings, and any other new considerations that could impact the original findings or recommendations to those who were possibly affected."
The VVA told Newsweek that it hoped that the release of documents regarding the assassinations of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy, which Trump ordered upon his return to the White House, would persuade the administration to declassify other documents.
"We have no idea of what's inside these documents as they have never been seen outside of the DOD community," Ronald Brown, a toxic wounds consultant at VVA, told Newsweek.
"Could they hold evidence that could assist researchers in finding treatment for these sick veterans? It's possible, but they could also offer nothing. However, we feel in the order of transparency that these documents should be released and added to the site the DOD established on the Gulf War back in 1997, so it can act as a permanent repository for everything related to the first Gulf War for future generations to have access to," Brown said.
Meanwhile, as advocacy groups wrangle to get answers, GWI continues to plague veterans. Alan Sigmon, a 53-year-old veteran who served from August 2, 1989, to August 2, 1993, and suffers from GWI, decided to serve in the U.S. Army because he saw it as "a very patriotic thing to do."
"My great-grandfathers served in nearly every American war," Sigmon told Newsweek. "Some paid the ultimate price. My father was military. I joined the Army and deployed to the Gulf because I believed in duty, in service, and in the promise that this country would stand by us."
During his deployment, Sigmon said he was "very scared" and often "couldn't sleep."
"I was very close to the front lines, I could see the shelling, smell the smoke. It was like a sight out of hell," Sigmon told Newsweek.
Because of frequent explosions, "our tent would glow orange at night," he said.
Nevertheless, Sigmon said he wanted to support his country. But his service has been repaid with unexplained skin rashes and burning headaches, which he began experiencing in 2005.
"My head would become hot to the touch, and the pain made me physically ill," he said.
"After that came the dizziness, crushing fatigue, GI dysfunction, nerve pain, numb extremities, muscle spasms, insomnia, and memory loss. I was falling apart, and no one could tell me why."
In December 2023, Sigmon applied for a clinical trial led by the University of Alabama at Birmingham and funded primarily by the Department of Defense's Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). While UAB initially told him that he was eligible for the study, he was ultimately disqualified in February 2024 due to a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis.
A spokesperson for UAB told Newsweek veterans with PTSD had been excluded from the trial because they are separate conditions with overlapping symptoms, and that including them could cause the study to "fail." They added that it was important to "ensure that study results are scientifically relevant and ultimately help veterans."
"Involving participants with ongoing, severe PTSD can damage the proper interpretation of study data and invalidate findings regarding GWI," they said.
Sigmon and other veterans now feel left behind because of a lack of adequate research into the condition. In 2006, Congress began redirecting GWI research funding into the CDMRP, a process that continued until 2022, when it was integrated into the broader Toxic Exposure Research Program (TERP) within the CDMRP.
The FY25 defense appropriations bill slashed overall CDMRP funding by 57 percent, and TERP funding was halved.
"I gave everything and laid my life on the line when my country asked me. Now I am struggling to survive and the very people and Government institutions have coldly turned their backs on me like I am the problem," Sigmon told Newsweek.
"I feel like the government has forgotten about us."
Donald Overton, the executive director for the Blinded Veterans Association, told Newsweek he still has "flare-ups" of chronic fatigue after being exposed to toxins in the region while serving from 1988 to 1993. He believes that GWI sufferers are a "group that has really been lost in the shuffle" and that more research should be done to support them.
"We just don't want to be forgotten," Overton said.
Beatrice Golomb, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, who has researched GWI, said veterans will "continue to suffer." Releasing and developing "more information" would help support veterans, she told Newsweek.
"A sizable fraction of Gulf War veterans (GWV) (~1/4 to ~1/3) developed chronic multisymptom health problems attributed to Gulf-related exposures, and these problems have not diminished with time," Golomb said. "Moreover, GWV and especially those with GWI have shown elevated rates of a very large number of additional health problems."
"Veterans continue to suffer and more information would benefit not only the veterans but—our data and others data suggest—individuals who experience other toxic and mixed toxic chemical exposures and indeed the population overall is increasingly exposed to chemical mixtures, albeit serially across the lifetime, so what we learn to help GWV may be of help to us all," she said.
In an effort to ensure veterans are not forgotten, the group Veterans for Common Sense has called on Congress to restore a dedicated medical research program for GWI and expand outreach to ill Gulf War veterans to inform them about research and treatment opportunities.
Anthony Hardie, the director of Veterans for Common Sense, told Newsweek: "As many as one-third of the veterans of the 1990-91 Gulf War continue to suffer from GWI, and potentially other veterans and future veterans with similar military toxic exposures. Restoring Gulf War Illness research funding is critical, with a clear research pipeline aimed at treatments and prevention. No one should be cutting that funding before finishing the job developing effective GWI treatments. We should not be abandoning these veterans who are still suffering, mostly in silence."
A spokesperson for the Department of Veterans Affairs told Newsweek that the VA has been conducting research on the health of Gulf War veterans for nearly 30 years and has offered access to multiple care streams to manage symptoms related to GWI.
A CDMRP spokesperson told Newsweek that the agency was continuing its research into GWI.
"All CDMRP programs, including the TERP, utilize CDMRP's two-tiered review process to fund research of high merit that addresses program goals and aligns with congressional intent," the spokesperson said.
"During the second tier of review, the TERP's programmatic panel uses multiple criteria to make funding recommendations, and 'program portfolio composition and balance' is one of these criteria. During the FY24 application review cycle Gulf War Illness and Its Treatment had the highest percentage of applications recommended for funding (22.7 percent) among the FY24 TERP topic areas."
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