Patrick Sloyan, Pulitzer-winning journalist who exposed deaths in Gulf War, dies at 82

Patrick J. Sloyan, a Newsday journalist whose skepticism toward official Pentagon statements led to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on the first Gulf War, in which he revealed that many U.S. troops died by friendly fire and that Iraqi soldiers were buried alive in the desert, died Monday at his home in Paeonian Springs, Va. He was 82.

The cause was colon cancer, said a son, also named Patrick Sloyan.

Sloyan, who became a reporter while serving in the Army in the 1950s, spent much of his career in Washington, first with United Press International and later at the D.C. bureau of the Long Island, N.Y.-based Newsday.

He covered many of the most memorable stories of the 1960s and 1970s, including the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and Watergate. He was among the first reporters to highlight automobile-safety concerns raised by consumer advocate Ralph Nader.

“He had an eye for newsworthy subjects that most reporters would gloss over,” Nader said Thursday in an interview. “He couldn’t stand cowardly journalists who wouldn’t ask the impertinent question.”

In 1991, Sloyan was dispatched by Newsday to cover Desert Storm, the short-lived conflict with Iraq now called the first Gulf War. President George H.W. Bush declared a cease-fire after four days of hostilities, in what was initially seen as an overwhelming U.S. triumph.

Pentagon policies established under then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney did not allow journalists to roam freely among the troops, and their reports were subject to censorship. After returning to the United States, Sloyan continued his search for answers.

He scoured military documents and interviewed hundreds of troops and their families before publishing a series of articles demonstrating that the U.S. involvement in the war was far more problematic than Pentagon had let on.

He showed that U.S. casualties from friendly fire were, in the words of military officers, “staggering” and “a disaster.”

“More than half the U.S. Army deaths and injuries during the four-day Desert Storm ground war were the result of friendly fire,” Sloyan wrote. At least 24 of the 46 U.S. troops killed during the four-day conflict, he found, died from friendly fire.

He also revealed that more than 30 U.S. tanks, armored personnel carriers and other military vehicles were destroyed by U.S. weaponry - including by uranium-tipped, armor-piercing shells not used by any other country.