Telling incredible stories somehow makes you a credible witness. Mr. Roberts has repeatedly been called before congressional panels to testify. Articles by the AP , USA Today and other outlets even a cover story in Esquire portrayed him as a prototypical victim of Gulf War Syndrome. Mr. Roberts claims to have begun experiencing symptoms of lymphoma within weeks of what he says was a nerve gas attack. No reporter citing his claim has ever relayed to his readers that this is a medical impossibility.
Lymphomas take years, even decades to develop.
Mr. Roberts isn't the only one to claim to have violated the laws of medicine. Michael Adcock, the first Gulf vet whose death was widely attributed to Gulf War Syndrome, said he came down with lymphoma within days of arriving in the Gulf. A few years earlier, Mr. Roberts also told Congress, and the media faithfully reported, that 10 of 33 men in his unit had developed lymphomas shortly after the war which, if true, would be the most incredible cancer cluster in history. Yet five months after Mr. Roberts made that statement, the Veterans Affairs Department's Persian Gulf Registry recorded only eight cases of lymphoma among all U.S. Gulf War veterans, and there was no cluster of cases. I interviewed Robert Newman, the Shays staffer who invited both Mr. Martin and Mr. Roberts to testify.