Dissident Voice News Service
October 10, 2002
______________________________________
US admits germ war
tests in Britain
By Charles Aldinger
Reuters; October 10, 2002
______________________________________
**
Editor's Note: Saddam Hussein isn't exactly alone in using chem/bio weapons
against his own people. Below this article is a compilation of articles on the
subject of America's use of chemical/biological weapons on civilians at home
and abroad that I sent out last June to the Dissident Voice email list. Of
course you'll find none of this stuff in mainstream discussion of Iraq, but it
does sorta color the debate wouldn't you say?
-- Sunil Sharma
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has acknowledged it
carried out a sweeping Cold War-era test programme of chemical and germ warfare
agents in Britain and North America.
An unknown number of civilians were exposed at the time to
"simulants", or what were then thought to be harmless agents meant to
stand in for deadlier ones, the Defense Department said. Some of those were
later discovered to be dangerous.
"We do know that some civilians were exposed in tests
that occurred in Hawaii, possibly in Alaska and possibly in Florida," said
William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.
Also exposed or possibly exposed were civilians in or
around Vieques, Puerto Rico, and an unknown number of U.S. service personnel,
said Michael Kilpatrick of the Pentagon's Deployment Health Support
Directorate.
As many as 5,500 members of the U.S. armed forces were
involved, including 5,000 who took part in previously disclosed ship-board
experiments in the Pacific in the 1960s, the Pentagon said.
So far, more than 50 veterans have filed claims related to
symptoms they associate with exposure to the tests, the Department of Veterans
Affairs said.
The tests of such nerve agents as Sarin, Soman, Tabun and
VX were carried out from 1962 to 1973 both on land and at sea "out of
concern for our ability to protect and defend against these potential threats,"
a Pentagon statement said on Wednesday. The tests were co-ordinated by an
outfit called the Deseret Test Center at Fort Douglas, Utah.
The reports amounted to an acknowledgement of much wider
Cold War testing of toxic arms involving U.S. forces than earlier admitted by
the Pentagon.
"During this period there were serious and legitimate
concerns about the Soviet Union's chemical and biological warfare
programme," Winkenwerder added at a Pentagon news briefing.
But the tests also had applications to the offensive
chemical and biological weapons stocks then maintained by the United States, he
said. President Richard Nixon ordered an end to U.S. offensive chemical and
biological weapons programmes in 1970.
Britain and Canada joined the United States in a series of
tests on their military proving grounds from July 1967 to September 1968, a
document released by the Pentagon said.
These joint exercises, known as Rapid Tan 1, 2 and 3, were
designed to investigate "the extent and duration of hazard" following
a Tabun, Soman or other nerve agent attack, a fact sheet said. These agents,
along with VX, were sprayed in both open grassland and wooded terrain at the
Chemical Defence Establishment in Porton Down, Wiltshire, the document said.
Similar tests took place at the Suffield Defence Research
Establishment in Ralston, Canada, the Pentagon said.
"The weapons systems germane to this test were
explosive munitions (Soman-filled), aircraft spray, rain-type munitions (using
both Tabun and Soman), and massive bombs (Tabun- and Soman-filled), the fact
sheet said.
CANADA, BRITAIN
Both Canada and Britain made public information about these
tests years ago, Kilpatrick said, citing word received from their governments
as part of the process of co-ordinating the U.S. release of information.
But in Ottawa, Canadian Defense Minister John McCallum told
reporters he had just learned of the experiments.
"My understanding is that this was ... for the
purposes of defence against biological or chemical weapons ... My understanding
also is that no human beings were deliberately exposed to any of these
agents." he said.
The department said it had contracted with the Institute of
Medicine, a private group with ties to the National Academy of Sciences, to
carry out a three-year, $3 million (1.92 million pounds) study of potential
long-term health effects of the tests conducted aboard U.S. Navy ships.
The reports on the U.S. land tests in Alaska, Hawaii,
Maryland and Florida did not all involve deadly agents and were used to learn
how climate and a battle environment would affect the use of such arms, the
Pentagon said.
The information was released amid U.S. charges that Iraq
has continued building weapons of mass destruction despite disarmament
requirements at the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraq flatly denies having such weapons programmes.
Within minutes, Sarin can trigger symptoms including
difficult breathing, nausea, jerking, staggering, loss of bladder-bowel control
and death.
Extremely lethal VX is an oily liquid that is tasteless and
odourless and considered one of the most deadly agents ever made by man. With
severe exposure to the skin or lungs, death usually occurs within 10 to 15
minutes.
Chutzpah and Hypocrisy: The US and Chem/Bio Warfare
Articles Compiled by Dissident Voice News Service
June 1, 2002
______________________________________________________________________
Contents:
1) Sailors Sprayed With Nerve Gas in Cold War Test, Pentagon
Say
2) Military Used Nerve Gas in '60s Tests
3) Preparing for Germ Warfare: US Performing Secret
Experiments in Case of Attack
4) Documents Reveal Plan to Develop Offensive BioWeapons
5) Last Minute Sabotage: US Wrecks Bioweapons Treaty
Conference
6) US Report Mum on Cuban "Bio-Threat"
7) Fidel Castro, Bioterrorism and the Elusive Quote
8) Inside Iraq: In Basra, effects of Gulf War linger, and US
is blamed
9) Agent Orange All Over Again: EPA Stalled Resolution on
Spraying in Colombia
10) Colombia: Studies Show Coca Spraying Harms Health and
Environment
11) Test Tube Republic: US Chemical Warfare Testing in Panama
12) Why Has the FBI Investigation into the Anthrax Attacks
Stalled?
13) US "Non-Lethal" Weapons Research: Genetically
Engineered Anti-Material Weapons
**
Editor's Note: We hear constantly that the US must invade Iraq and take down
Saddam Hussein because he's a murderous villain who's even committed the
ultimate horror: gassing his own people. What these reports bend over backwards
to ignore is that the US supported Saddam Hussein in the 1980s when he was
committing his worst crimes, and even escalated that support after the Halabja
massacre in 1988, when Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurdish village in Mosul
Province, killing over 5,000. The US supplied Iraq with a veritable witch's
brew of the very chemical and biological agents we're now citing as proof of
Saddam's perfidiousness . Yet history reveals that the moral outrage and
saber-rattling of the politicos and their press stenographers is nothing less
than high-horse hypocrisy.
As
this compilation shows, the US has an unsavory history of chem/bio warfare use
against others and in experiments against its own people. Not touched on in
this digest are the now forgotten revelations of a few years ago regarding US
Cold War medical experiments involving the injection of plutonium in
unsuspecting patients in hospitals across the US, including tests on retarded
children. For a detailed history, see The Plutonium Files: America's Secret
Medical Experiments in the Cold War by Eileen Welsome (The Dial Press,
1999). Nor do I include discussion of US Army medical experiments on prisoners
at Holmesburg Prison in Pennsylvania in the 1960s and early 70s, which included
the use of radioactive isotopes and dioxin. See Allen M. Hornblum's Acres of
Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison (Routledge, 1998). Nor do I
include the ongoing, horrifying legacy of America's saturation of South Vietnam
with 19 million gallons of the dioxin-based Agent Orange from 1962-71. The US
is now using chemical and biological agents in the so-called Drug War in
Colombia, and it's become clear that the use of these agents are exacting a
destructive human and environmental toll there (see items 9 and 10). Nor does
this compilation touch on the shameful history of how the US shielded from prosecution
leading Japanese war criminals who conducted hideous medical experiments on
Chinese prisoners and biological warfare tests on Chinese cities, in order to
gain access to the fruits of their grim research. See Stephen Endicott and
Edward Hagerman's The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the
Early Cold War and Korea (Univ. of Indiana Press, 1998).
Meanwhile,
the US is TODAY developing its offensive biological warfare program (in
contravention of international law) and designing a new generation of nukes
(having scrapped earlier treaties with the Russians), yet there are no calls
for international inspectors to visit US facilities. Such is the privilege of
being the world's leading rogue state: "Do as I say, not as I do, or else."
-- Sunil Sharma
________________________________________________________________________
1) Sailors Sprayed
With Nerve Gas in Cold War Test, Pentagon Says
By THOM
SHANKER with WILLIAM J. BROAD
New
York Times; May 24, 2002
WASHINGTON, May 23 — The Defense Department sprayed live
nerve and biological agents on ships and sailors in cold war-era experiments to
test the Navy's vulnerability to toxic warfare, the Pentagon revealed today.
The Pentagon documents made public today showed that six
tests were carried out in the Pacific Ocean from 1964 to 1968. In the
experiments, nerve or chemical agents were sprayed on a variety of ships and
their crews to gauge how quickly the poisons could be detected and how rapidly
they would disperse, as well as to test the effectiveness of protective gear
and decontamination procedures in use at the time.
Hundreds of sailors exposed to the poisons in tests
conducted in the 1960's could be eligible for health care benefits, and the
Department of Veterans Affairs has already begun contacting those who
participated in some of the experiments, known as Project Shipboard Hazard and
Defense, or SHAD.
"We are committed to helping every veteran who took
part in these tests," said Anthony J. Principi, the secretary of veterans
affairs. "If we find any medical problems or disabilities we can attribute
to Project SHAD, we'll ensure these veterans receive the benefits they
deserve."
Of the six tests, three used sarin, a nerve agent, or VX, a
nerve gas; one used staphylococcal enterotoxin B, known as SEB, a biological
toxin; one used a simulant believed to be harmless but subsequently found to be
dangerous; and one used a nonpoisonous simulant.
Michael Kilpatrick, a medical official in the office of the
assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said it was unclear whether
sailors had been intentionally exposed to the germ and chemical agents without
the benefit of protective masks and gear. Also uncertain, he said, was whether
any had given their permission to become human guinea pigs in medical
experiments with the deadly substances.
"When you read the overarching plans for the testing,
people were to be protected," he said in an interview. "But when we
get to individual reports, we do not see things like informed consent or
individual protection. We don't have the records for what, if any, protection
was given to people."
The implication, he said, is that in some cases sailors may
have been exposed to the chemical and germ dangers.
"To me," Dr. Kilpatrick added, "the
important thing now is that the Defense Department and veterans affairs are
cooperating for the benefit of the veteran."
The Department of Veterans Affairs has notified 622 of
about 4,300 military personnel, mostly from the Navy, identified as
participants in Project SHAD. The process of identifying the veterans who
participated in the program began in September 2000 under pressure from
Representative Mike Thompson, Democrat of California, who was responding to
claims by veterans that they had suffered health damage from the tests.
"This information is significant since we now know
that our military personnel were exposed to sarin gas and VX nerve agent, which
are both highly lethal, and other agents that are known carcinogens," Mr.
Thompson said.
While noting that the documents made public today by the
Pentagon were the third installment of fact sheets on Project SHAD, bringing to
12 the number of tests that had been declassified, he demanded that the Defense
Department release additional information on the 113 secret SHAD tests believed
to have been planned.
"It is only fair to inform service members, some of
whom may not even know of their exposure, of the specific harmful agents used
in SHAD tests," Mr. Thompson said.
Leonard A. Cole, an expert on biological weapons at Rutgers
University who wrote "Clouds of Secrecy," a book on the government's
germ testing program, said the new disclosures were troubling but grimly
logical.
"They're important because they add to a whole pool of
knowledge about what the military was doing," he said. "But they
don't shock me. We've known that the Army had exposed human subjects to
biological agents," though always with permission.
"If there was no informed consent," Dr. Cole
added, "that would be a big deal. I know of no large-scale testing on
human subjects with chemical or biological weapons that was performed without
some level of informed consent."
A number of the SHAD tests used harmless simulants that
were meant to mimic and trace the dissemination of real agents. But others used
deadly chemicals and germs.
One test, named "Fearless Johnny," was carried
out southwest of Honolulu during August and September of 1965. The George
Eastman, a Navy cargo ship, was sprayed with VX nerve agent and a simulant to
"evaluate the magnitude of exterior and interior contamination
levels" under various conditions of readiness, as well as study "the
shipboard wash-down system," according to the new documents.
VX gas, like all nerve agents, penetrates the skin or lungs
to disrupt the body's nervous system and stop breathing. In small quantities,
exposure causes death.
A 1964 test named Flower Drum Phase I, conducted off the
coast of Hawaii, sprayed sarin and a chemical simulant onto the same ship and
into its ventilation system while the crew wore various levels of protective
gear. In phase 2 of the test, VX gas was sprayed onto a barge to examine the
ship's water wash-down system and other decontamination measures, according to
the documents.
Another experiment, Deseret Test Center Test 68-50, was
intended to determine the casualty levels from an F-4 Phantom jet spraying SEB,
a crippling germ toxin. The test was done in the Marshall Islands in September
and October of 1968. The jet sprayed the deadly mist over part of Eniwetok
Atoll and five Army light tugs, the documents said.
SEB, a report added, "is not generally thought of as a
lethal agent" but instead as an incapacitating agent that can knock out
people for one or two weeks with fever, chills, headache and coughing. The SEB
came from a bacteria that causes a common type of food poisoning.
Deseret Test Center Test 69-32, done southwest of Hawaii
from April to June 1969, used two germs that were thought to be harmless,
Serratia marcescens and Escherichia coli, the germ of the human gut. But
Serratia marcescens in time turned out to be dangerous.
"It is an opportunistic pathogen," the report
said today, "causing infections of the endocardium, blood, wounds, and
urinary and respiratory tracts."
The documents said the Pacific test of the two germs, which
were meant to simulate dangerous biological agents, was meant to see how
sunlight influenced their survival. A military aircraft sprayed the germs on
five tugs, "each converted to serve as an oceangoing sampling platform and
laboratory," the documents said.
2) Military Used
Nerve Gas in '60s Tests
By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press; May 23, 2002
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. military used two kinds of nerve
gas and a biological toxin in tests on Navy ships in the 1960s, the Pentagon
(news - web sites) acknowledged for the first time Thursday. Officials said
veterans harmed by exposure to the agents could be eligible for health
benefits.
The four tests in the Pacific from 1964 to 1968 used either
the deadly nerve agent sarin, the nerve gas known as VX, or a biological toxin
that causes flu-like symptoms, Defense Department statements said.
The tests, conducted on barges, tugs, destroyers and other
ships, were to test the weapons themselves, protective gear and decontamination
procedures.
Sketchy records of the tests and ships' logs do not
indicate any of those involved in the tests suffered serious health problems at
the time, said Dr. Michael E. Kilpatrick, a Defense Department health official.
"It may not be the best, but we believe if anything
catastrophic happened or if there were large numbers of ill people, it would be
in the log," said Kilpatrick, who was involved in reviewing the records.
"There's no indication on any of these tests that that had occurred."
The Department of Veterans Affairs (news - web sites) has
mailed letters to about 600 veterans who may have taken part in the tests, VA
Secretary Anthony Principi said Thursday. Any who were harmed by the chemicals
could be eligible for VA benefits.
"There's always been a question whether veterans and
active-duty service members became ill as a result of that testing,"
Principi said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's been
controversial, so we were sending out letters to veterans to ask them to take a
physical and to see if they are entitled to any benefits."
The Pentagon released details about six tests from a 1960s
program to evaluate chemical and biological weapons and defenses against them.
The Defense Department had agreed two years ago to begin releasing details about
the tests and contacting participants after pressure from Rep. Mike Thompson
(news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., and veterans who participated.
"I'm somewhat alarmed by it," Thompson said.
"It seems to me enough time has passed that someone over there should have
known who was involved and what was going on."
The tests also used chemicals and bacteria meant to
simulate weapons, as well as fluorescent or radioactive chemicals used as
tracers, the Defense Department said. One type of bacteria used to simulate
germ weapons was later found to cause infections, and a separate test where
that germ was sprayed on San Francisco is believed to have caused an infection
that killed a man.
The tests were among 113 conducted as part of a project
called SHAD, or Shipboard Hazard and Defense. The Pentagon has acknowledged
using chemical and biological simulants before, but has not admitted using the
actual weapons agents themselves.
Sarin, the deadly nerve gas used by a cult to kill a dozen
people in a Tokyo subway in 1995, was used in a 1964 test code-named Flower
Drum Phase I off the coast of Hawaii. Both sarin and a chemical simulant were
sprayed onto the USS George Eastman from a turbine on the ship's bow and
injected into the ship's ventilation system, the Pentagon statement said.
Crew members wore gas masks during the tests, and those who
worked most directly with the sarin wore chemical protection suits, the
statement said.
Monkeys were used as test subjects during the exercises
using nerve gas and were later "sacrificed" to determine whether they
were exposed to the weapons, Kilpatrick said. Although records do not say how
potent the sarin was, the fact that participants used protective gear indicates
it was in a harmful or deadly form, Kilpatrick said.
Tests in 1964 and 1965 used VX, another deadly nerve gas.
For the "Fearless Johnny" tests in 1965, the George Eastman was
sprayed with VX and a simulant to test decontamination procedures. In the
Flower Drum Phase II tests, VX gas tagged with radioactive phosphorus was
sprayed on a barge to test decontamination procedures.
That second test used a compound that was 90 percent VX —
"the most lethal nerve agent" and one that can linger for weeks,
Kilpatrick said. But there is no evidence any people were on the barge sprayed
with VX, which was towed nearly a half-mile behind a tugboat, he said.
A 1968 test used staphylococcal enterotoxin Type B — a
poison produced by bacteria that causes flu-like symptoms such as fever, muscle
aches, cough, vomiting and diarrhea.
During that test, the toxin was sprayed from tanks on
airplanes over five tugboats, the USS Granville S. Hall and some parts of the
Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific. The test was to evaluate how the toxin — meant
to incapacitate soldiers for up to two weeks without killing them — could be
spread from the air.
The Granville S. Hall also acted as a support vessel for
the tests using nerve gas.
U.S. Performing Secret Experiments in Case of Attack
By John McWethy
ABC News; May 28, 2002
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/WorldNewsTonight/germwarfare010904.html
Editor's
Note: Shouldn't we Submit to International Inspections? Would we take Saddam
seriously if he said suspected facilities were simply part of a "defensive
effort" as the US is claiming about ours? And don't give me that
"moral equivalency" bullshit!
CAMP 12, NEVADA TEST SITE, Nev., Sept. 4 — In a remote
corner of the Nevada desert, a highly restricted area once used to test nuclear
bombs, the U.S. government has been running a secret experiment called Project
Bachus.
It is a small germ warfare factory, set up inside an
abandoned government building. U.S. officials say they built it to better
understand how to detect similar operations in places like Iraq or Afghanistan
or even by terrorists here at home.
The factory, built by the Pentagon's Defense Threat
Reduction Agency, has been brought to full production for several weeks on two
occasions — in 1999 and again in 2000. Technicians grew several pounds of a
harmless bacterium with characteristics similar to deadly anthrax.
"A terrorist could easily grow anthrax in a facility
like this," Jay Davis, who was DTRA director at the time the factory was
built, said in an interview at the one-time classified facility, "and
produce enough quantity in a covert delivery to kill, say, 10,000 people in a
large city."
The DTRA team bought all materials for the small-scale
laboratory from local hardware stores and the Internet. Included in their
shopping list was a 50-liter fermenter purchased "used" from
overseas. "Commercial item. Off the shelf," Davis said. "Easy to
find."
At no time did any of the purchases cause law enforcement
to be suspicious, Davis added.
'Fairly Concealable'
Asked if this was how a terrorist group might put together
such a laboratory, Davis said: "A terrorist group would choose to do this,
yes … This is the size of thing you would be afraid a non-state group would do,
either people in our country or people in some other country. This is fairly
concealable."
The primary reason for conducting the experiment was to
place sensors outside of the building to create what the intelligence community
calls a "signature," according to intelligence sources. Once in
operation, technicians measured heat changes, emissions that could be sampled
in the air and soil as well as patterns of energy consumption.
"The ultimate product is knowledge," Davis said.
Other officials say the primary customers for the knowledge were the CIA and
Defense Intelligence Agency, both agencies responsible for detecting an
operation like this in other countries. Officials say the FBI also was given
data from the project.
And according to officials who supervised the project but
asked not to be identified, what is so frightening about this top-secret
project is that it shows that with the right technical knowledge, it is
surprisingly easy to build and operate a small germ warfare factory. And worse,
even with the most sophisticated sensors, it is extremely difficult to detect.
Proving Preparedness
The project was conducted in such extreme secrecy that some
worry it might be misunderstood and seen as a violation of the international
treaty that bans making germ weapons.
"I think there is a very delicate line that has to be
drawn between the need to keep some kinds of information secret and the need to
allay suspicions about what the country is up to," said Judith Miller, a
reporter for the New York Times and co-author of a new book on biological
warfare called Germs.
"People overseas will think that the United States may
be secretly conducting an offensive weapons program, that we may be secretly
trying to develop biological weapons," she said.
As for the Bush administration, Miller said: "I think
that this administration wants to not only expand these projects, but intends
to keep most of them secret."
Miller and other experts on biological weapons have been
concerned that the supersecret U.S. projects would be misunderstood by other
governments and might lead those governments to develop offensive biological
weapons.
But the Pentagon agreed to show ABCNEWS this once-secret
project. Sources say it's part of an effort to anticipate a threat that has the
potential to kill on a scale only nuclear weapons could match.
4) Documents
Reveal Plan to Develop Offensive BioWeapons
Pentagon Violates Bioweapons Act
by Edward Hammond
Counterpunch; May
24, 2002
Three Pentagon documents proposing development of offensive
biological weapons have been turned over to the US Department of Justice, the
US government law enforcement agency.
Two of the documents are from the US Naval Research
Laboratory and the US Air Force's Armstrong Laboratory. These two documents
propose anti-materiel biological weapons and were described in the Sunshine
Project's news release of May 8. On May 10th, in response to a Sunshine Project
request, the National Academies of Science (NAS) released another US government
proposal for offensive anti-material biological weapons. The third proposal is
from the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL). The three documents have
been turned over to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) accompanied by letters
from the Sunshine Project requesting United States Attorney action pursuant to
the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
The Third Biological Weapons Proposal: On May 10th, the
National Academies released "Biofouling and Biocorrosion", a 1994
document from the National Security Programs Office of the Idaho National
Engineering Laboratory (INEL), a facility of the US Department of Energy. In
the paper, INEL proposes US development of offensive biological weapons that
destroy materials. Like the Air Force and Navy proposals discussed on May 8th,
the INEL document has recently been distributed to government officials by the
Marine Corps-directed Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) and in 2001 was
submitted for consideration by the National Academy of Sciences Panel "An
Assessment of Non-lethal Weapons Science and Technology" (NAS Study
NSBX-L-00-05-A).
In "Biofouling and Biocorrosion", INEL
specifically proposes "selection of particularly active [microbe]
strains" and "consideration of genetic techniques for further
optimization and control". INEL also proposes "investigation of
probable scenarios for [microbe] employment" and development of
"organisms with faster rates of degradation and production of fouling
agents, as well as novel methods for introducing the organisms to their
targets." This proposal is available on the Sunshine Project website for
independent analysis.
US Attorney Contacted: In two letters, one on 16 May and
another on 23 May, the Sunshine Project has provided copies of three documents
to Mr. Johnny Sutton, the United States Attorney for the Western District of
Texas. They are: "Biofouling and Biocorrosion" (INEL, Idaho Falls,
ID), "Enhanced Degradation of Military Materiel" (US Naval Research
Laboratory, Washington, DC), and "Anti-Materiel Biocatalysts and
Sensors" (Armstrong Laboratory, Brooks Air Force Base, San Antonio, TX).
Letters accompany the documents requesting Department of Justice action
pursuant to the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
The Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 is the US
law that implements the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), to
which the United States is a contracting party. The Act was passed unanimously
by both houses of the US Congress and signed into law by President George Bush,
Sr. It creates a general prohibition punishable by imprisonment and/or civil
penalties on the development, production, stockpiling, transfer, acquisition,
or possession of biological weapons (Section 175), and permits the United
States Attorney to seek injunctions against preparation, solicitation, attempt,
or conspiracy to engage in prohibited conduct (Section 177). The Act defines
biological agents to include anti-material agents, specifically including those
that cause deterioration of food, water, equipment, supplies, or material of
any kind (Section 178).
Edward Hammond is director of The Sunshine Project, based in Austin, Texas. He can be reached at: hammond@sunshine-project.org
5) Intent to Kill: Last Minute Sabotage:
U.S. Sabotage Wrecks Bioweapons Treaty
Conference
The Sunshine Project
News Release; December 2001
http://www.sunshine-project.org/
"They treated us like dirt.", says Europe of the
US, "They are liars… In decades of multilateral negotiations, we've never
experienced this kind of insulting behavior."
(Geneva and Austin - 7 December 2001) - Deliberate last
minute sabotage by the United States has wrecked the 5th Review Conference of
the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, provoking intense anger from
developing countries and harsh criticism from Europe, which accused the United
States delegation of being "liars". The collapse was triggered late
this afternoon in Geneva when, on the final day of three weeks of negotiations,
the US reversed a commitment made on Thursday, December 6th, by insisting on
new resolution language. The language was intended to scuttle the negotiations
because the US knew no other country could agree to it.
The US delegation, headed by Under Secretary of State John
Bolton, yesterday said it would agree to continuing the mandate of the BTWC
"Ad Hoc Group", which is charged with negotiating mandatory
verification mechanisms for the Convention, including international inspections
of suspected biological weapons research and production facilities. But only an
hour before Review Conference negotiations were scheduled to end, the United
States reversed course and tabled what it said was a non-negotiable proposal
that terminated the Ad Hoc Group mandate, ending prospects for new
legally-binding measures to prevent development of biological weapons. No US
allies were notified, much less consulted, on the proposal. Non-Aligned countries,
most of whom strongly support the Ad Hoc Group, were shocked.
Criticism of the US came fast and furious. "They
treated us like dirt." said one EU delegate. A delegate from a non-aligned
country in Latin America told the Sunshine Project "It's not only the
proposal; but the procedure. It is completely impossible to negotiate with a
delegation behaving like the US." Europe was even harsher. "They are
liars" said one angry EU delegate, "In decades of multilateral
negotiations, we've never experienced this kind of insulting behavior."
Following the US move, the Conference quickly broke up for regional
consultations to try to salvage the meeting. The European Union took the
unprecedented step of boycotting the meeting of the Western Group.
At 7:12 PM Geneva time today, the Review Conference failed
and was formally adjourned until November 11th, 2002 without any decisions
being approved.
6) Report mum on
bio-threat: U.S. omits reference to Cuba
BY TIM JOHNSON
Miami Herald; May. 22, 2002
WASHINGTON - In a surprising announcement in early May, the
Bush administration charged that Cuba maintains a ''limited offensive''
biological warfare capability. By Tuesday, the administration seemed to have
forgotten about the matter.
A sweeping, 177-page State Department report on trends in
global terrorism summed up Cuba in 47 lines, omitting any reference to its
reported biological warfare research.
Officials seemed flustered when asked about the omission.
''It doesn't mean that it's something we're not concerned
with,'' State Department counterterrorism coordinator Francis X. Taylor said.
REICH QUESTIONED
On Capitol Hill, Otto Reich, the department's top diplomat
to Latin America, appeared initially confused when asked why the report made no
mention of Cuba's bio-weapons research.
''Is it an oversight?'' asked Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North
Dakota Democrat.
''I do not know who publishes that particular document,''
Reich said moments later when asked about the report, which Dorgan held in his
hand.
''It's your department that publishes it,'' Dorgan said.
``This is a State Department publication, and we just received it on Capitol
Hill.''
Reich countered: ``It must be incomplete.''
FOCUS OF PAPER
The U.S. government considers Cuba and six other countries
state sponsors of terrorism, and they were the focus of much of the new report,
Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001.
The document said Cuban leader Fidel Castro ''has
vacillated over the war on terrorism,'' and has criticized U.S.
counterterrorism actions as ``worse than the original attacks, militaristic and
fascist.''
Castro allows 20 Basque separatists to reside in Cuba ''as
privileged guests,'' and offers ''some degree of safe haven and support'' to
Colombian rebels who engage in terrorism, it said. It noted that Cuba hosted an
Irish Republican Army explosives expert, later arrested in Colombia, and helped
protect fugitives of a Chilean extremist group, the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic
Front.
Also, numerous U.S. fugitives continue to live on the
island, the report says.
FEW DETAILS
In a headline-grabbing speech May 6, John Bolton, the
undersecretary of state for arms control, charged that Cuba is researching
biological warfare means and has shared such technology with ``rogue states.''
He offered few details, however.
Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell clarified that
the Bush administration doesn't believe Havana has such armaments: ``We didn't
say it actually had some weapons, but it has the capacity and capability to
conduct such research.''
President Bush made no mention of the bio-weapons threat
Monday, a day focused almost exclusively on his administration's Cuba policy.
Bush offered a policy speech at the White House in the morning, reaffirming the
U.S. embargo of Cuba, then cheered on Cuban Americans at a rally in Miami in
the afternoon.
In Cuba, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón
ridiculed Bush for meeting with ''terrorists'' in Miami and said the U.S.
president shouldn't talk about transparent elections.
''To go to Miami to talk about clean and honest elections
and speak against what [Bush] calls electoral fraud, one has to be very
brave,'' Alarcón said during a round table Monday night, referring to the 2000
election, which Bush won by a slight margin.
FORMER SENATORS
In a new sign that the White House faces significant
domestic opposition outside of Florida to its Cuba policy, a bipartisan group
of 48 former U.S. senators sent a letter to the White House calling for
normalization of relations with Cuba.
''We are the only nation in the world to have an economic
embargo and boycott of Cuba,'' the letter read, ``and the clear lesson of
recent history is that if economic sanctions are to be successful, they must
have strong international support.''
Among the signers were several former senators considered
hawks on foreign policy matters, including Republicans Malcolm Wallop and Alan
Simpson, both of Wyoming, and Jake Garn of Utah. Democrats included Sam Nunn of
Georgia and Lloyd Bentsen of Texas.
email: tjohnson@krwashington.com
7) The Problems of
an Under Secretary of State
Fidel Castro,
Bioterrorism and the Elusive Quote
by Nelson P. Valdes
Counterpunch; May 28, 2002
Last May 6, John R. Bolton, Under Secretary for Arms
Control and International Security, gave a presentation at the conservative
Heritage Foundation entitled "Beyond the Axis of Evil: Additional Threats
from Weapons of Mass Destruction." Bolton's thesis was based on two basic
points: First, that Cuba had the capacity to produce bio-products that could be
used for terrorist against the U.S. And secondly, that the Cuban government had
announced its commitment to do precisely so. The scientific community
throughout the world, as well as newspapers and former President Jimmy Carter
from Cuba, had challenged the Bush administration to show the evidence. The
Secretary of State, Colin Powell, even had to downplay Bolton' s charges.
However, no one has questioned Bolton's accusation that the
Cuban government actually wants to bring harm to the United States. The Under
Secretary for Arms Control and International Security said that last year,
Fidel Castro visited Iran, Syria and Libya and that "at Tehran University,
these were his words: 'Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring
America to its knees. The U.S. regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this
weakness from close up.'"
One would assume that the United States government with all
of its monitoring capabilities would be able to produce those words. Well, Fidel
Castro never said those words either in Teheran or anywhere else. I have
secured all the transcripts of all the public statments made by the Cuban
leader while visiting Iran, and there is nothing that midly resembles the
alleged quote. Mr. Bolton, nonetheless, has recycled an invented and false
quote that has been used by rightwing Cuban exiles in the last 12 months.
I have been particularly interested in that quote because I
have studied Cuba in general and Fidel Castro in particular since 1969. The so-called
quote simply did not fit with his political style nor his syntax. Moreover, I
am the director at the University of New Mexico of the Program of Academic
research on Cuba, and I also preside over the non-profit organization Cuba
research & Analysis Group. Both institutions produce a daily service that
monitors information on Cuba. Thus, when Fidel Castro went to the Middle East
we monitored the media from there as well as from Cuba.
Neither the Iranian news service (IRNA), nor the Cuban
media carried the alleged Castro statement. Nor could it be found in files of
the BBC Monitoring Service or the U.S. government's Foreign Broadcasts
Information Service.
The Nuevo Herald in Miami published the AFP version
(attributing it to AP) with the title "CASTRO PRONOSTICA EN IRAN LA CAIDA
DE EU" (Castro Forecasts the Downfall of the US). It then made the
rightwing press circuit. And by October 10, 2001 Nancy San Martin in the Miami
herald cited the quote. I wrote to her at the time to secure a source. She
replied, "You may be interested in the UM paper, which also was included
in the article and can easily be obtained from the Institute for Cuban &
Cuban American Studies." Thus, I contacted the University of Miami and the
above mentioned "Institute" (which just received one million dollars
from the Bush administration). From the Institute I received the paper Castro
and Terrorism - A Chronology written by by Eugene Pons with a foreword by Jaime
Suchlicki (director of the Institute). On the front page the famous quote
appeared. The source provided was Agence France Presse, May 10, 2001.
Actually AFP had two different cables with the quote one
sent on May 9th and another on the 10th. When I asked the Institute to provide
me with an original Spanish version, I received a note that stated that
"As you are probably aware, many news sources from Cuba have modified
their original publications to meet current anti-terrorism/violence issues,
therefore making it much harder to track down" - which is, to say the least
a very odd explanation. After all, print materials do not disappear from
libraries and the Google in the Internet has a nifty procedure called
"cache" that allows you to see pages that have been deleted.
Obviously the story was getting ever more interesting.
With the exception of the two cables from AFP, none of the
wire services represented in Iran at the time carried such a statement from
Fidel Castro. Although I have contacted AFP they have not provided evidence
that the quote was accurate, nor do we know yet the identity of the person who
wrote the story. Did he/she understand Spanish while stationed in Teheran?
On May 10, 2002 from Havana President Fidel Castro, went on
record to deny that he ever made the statement attributed to him. Who is
historically accurate? John Bolton or Fidel Castro? Tne answer is clear: Fidel
castro is accurate. But the question then is, how come the Under Secretary of
State used a quote that obviously the intelliegnce service knew Fidel castro
did not make?
Jimmy Carter asked the Under Secretary to offer evidence of
the charge that Cuba was involved in bio-terrorism, perhaps we could add our
humble request that he also provide us with the original recording that shows
Fidel Castro stating that he wants to bring the United States to its knees. The
evidence does not exist.
Nelson P Valdes is a professor of Sociology University of
New Mexico. He can be reached at: nvaldes@unm.edu
8) Inside Iraq: In Basra, effects of Gulf War linger, and
U.S. is blamed
By Jon Sawyer