MASSIVE CHEMICAL WARFARE PROGRAM UNDER WAY IN U.S. :

A horrible deat

By SEAN GRIFFIN

Eighteen months ago, in June 1980,
the Democratic Representative from
Missouri, Richard Ichord, stood before
the House Armed Services Committee
in Washington, repeating State De-
partment claims that Soviet troops
were using chemical weapons in Af-
ghanistan. In fact, he claimed, the
Soviet Union “thas the best-equipped
chemical arsenal in the world.”” —

Ichord wasn’t just playing to the gal-
leries. As a result of his charges, he
succeeded in winning a $3.15-million
appropriation for a factory in Pine
Bluff, Arkansas to produce shells for a
new generation of sophisticated nerve
gas weapons. Ten weeks later, the ap-
propriation bill passed the full House of
Representatives. And funds have now
been earmarked in the current U.S.
budget for actual production of the
weapons which will contain the deadly
binary nerve gases GB and Sarin.

The ploy is as old as the U.S. military
itself: for months, unsubstantiated
claims — most of them from ‘‘unidenti-
fied intelligence sources’’ — about the
use of chemical weapons in Afghanis-
tan were reported in various news-
papers. After the claims had been made
frequently enough to appear convinc-
ing, the Pentagon and legislators friend-
ly to it moved quickly to seek funds to
revive the chemical weapons program
that was shelved by Nixon more than a
decade earlier in 1969.

Yet none of the reports in the U.S.
media was ever substantiated (unlike
claims by the Afghan Government
which presented as evidence U.S.-
made shells containing chemical agents
used by anti-government ‘“‘rebels’’).

The best the state department could

| muster by way of substantiation came

from an undersecretary of state,
Matthew Nimetz, who told a
Washington-hearing Apr. 24, 1980: **. ..
the chances are about even that lethal
agents have or have not been used by
Soviet forces in trying to suppress the

Afghan resistance.”’
BILLIONS FOR DEATH

Now, once again the chemical
weapons rumor mill has been grinding
and this time the U:S. has much more at
stake. It wants to undertake a further $2
to $4billion upgrading of its chemical
weapons program. And it wants to de-
ploy its newly-developed arsenal in Bri-
sein

On Dec. 29, Amoretta Hoeber, a
member of the Pentagon’s Defence
Science Board, revealed that plans
__ have been made to deploy a major arse-
nal of chemical weapons at U.S. bases
_ in Britain. Although the statement was

followed by a denial from the Pentagon,
a subsequent statement from another
Pentagon official made it clear that the
denial was not intended to suggest that
the information was incorrect, but sim-
ply that it was classified. In short, the

plan had @een given a green light but no’
One was really supposed to know yet.
For months before the Pentagon let -

its intentions leak, press reports both in
North America and Europe had been
full of new claims that the U.S. had
“overwhelming evidence’’ that the
Soviets were using chemical weapons,
this time in Laos and Kampuchea.
Reports of *‘yellow rain’’ — not ac-

cidentally, the same name given by the .

Vietnamese to the fallout from U.S.
spraying of the defoliant Agent Orange
— appeared in scores of newspapers
and provided the basis for a special
television documentary in both Canada

| and the U.S. last year.

All of the reports were based on what
purported to be “conclusive evidence”’

- PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JAN. 29, 1882—Page 4

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presented to a Congressional commit-
tee. That evidence consisted of a leaf
and stem sample taken from Kam-
puchea and two other samples scrape
from rocks in Laos.

THE ‘SMOKING GUN’

According to State Department wit-
ness who presented them, they were as
conclusive as a ‘‘smoking gun’’ in
demonstrating that the Soviet Union
had supplied chemical weapons for use
in the two countries.

But as subsequent analysis showed,
the evidence was as groundless as the
claims that representative Ichord had
made 18 months before.

In the first place, the leaf samples
from Kampuchea were collected by a
writer from the ultra-right mercenary
magazine Soldier of Fortune. More-
over, they were virtually uncontamin-
ated by either dirt or water, leading bio-
chemist Matthew Meselson, who
examined them, to suggest that the
chemical agent on them had been ap-
plied directly and had not fallen on them

“as a result of spraying.

Other scientists noted that the sam-
ples “did not meet the standards for
scientific evidence’’ because there was

~ no way of knowing how they were col-.

lected, stored or transported. But even
as presented, the samples proved no-
thing — except perhaps that Secretary
of State Alexander Haig would stop at
little, including contrived evidence, to
provide a pretext for a U.S. chemical
weapons build-up.

Washington correspondent Harold
Jackson wrote in the Manchester
Guardian weekly Dec. 6, 1981 that a

Baruch College (New York) professor,

Douglas Lackey had rejected the
claims made about the samples. ‘‘No
scientist independent of the govern-
ment would consider such a specimen
to constitute scientific evidence for-the
Haig hypothesis,’’ Lackey said.
Jackson’s article noted that the to-
xins alleged to have been used in Laos
and Kampuchea were from a group of
mycotoxins known as trichothecenes
which can be extracted by fermentation
from fungi.
The state department had initially
claimed that three of the.toxins found in
the samples were ‘‘not native to warm
climates such as Southeast Asia’’ but
was forced to withdraw the claim after
expert evidence was presented to show

that the fungi are, in fact, found all over ’

the world.

*‘More to the point,’’ Jackson stated,
*‘their toxins can be generated natural-
lye
He added that a recent University of
Maryland study had shown that far
higher concentrations of the toxins than
those in the samples have been found in
natural conditions, on Brazilian foliage.

‘*The smoking gun has not been pre- .
sented,’ Arthur Westing, dean of
natural science and ecology at
Amerherst College in New Hampshire,
told the annual meeting of the Ameri-
can Association for the Advancement
of Science in December, further
undermining the state department’s
case. © :

Westing added, pointedly: ‘‘The
U.S. has a particular interest in expand-
ing its chemical warfare capability and
this is one way to make it more palat-
able to Congress and the public.”’

THE REAL REASON ~—

The U.S. may have another purpose
as well. In the case of Afghanistan, the
American ‘media perpetuated the
rumors of Soviet chemical weapons use
in direct response to the revelations
about Afghan rebels using U.S.-made
chemical weapons. And ‘so the per-
sistent stories about “‘yellow rain’’ may
be providing a cover for the U.S. to
supply various chemical or even bac-
teriological weapons to Pol Pot’s troops
or to anti-communist forces in Laos.

But for the British, the problem is
closer to home. They will be under in-
creasing pressure from the Pentagon to
accept the expanded arsenal — espe-
cially since West Germany has made it
clear that it will not accept deployment
of the nerve gas weapons.

The Germans’ objections are entire-
ly understandable when the nature of
the weapons is considered. Binary
nerve gases are made up of two com-
ponents (hence the term, binary) which

bi

[HAD THIS WONDERFUL DREAM “~~~

h in 15 minutes

are not combined until the shell strikes.
Then, the two separate substances,
neither of which is toxic by itself, unite
to form a lethally toxic gas.
According to a report in The Nation,
quoted in the November, 1980 issue of
Counterspy magazine, the GB nerve
gas proposed for deployment in Britain
is ‘‘odorless’’, invisible and
devastatingly lethal. A microscopic
drop landing on a person’s body will,
within 15 minutes, cause concentration

of the pupils, headaches, vomiting, un- ~

controlled defecation and - urination,
muscular convulsions, coma and,
shortly afterwards, death.”’

‘ Tothat list of horrors, the Counterspy
article’s authors added: ‘‘A quart of GB
at its maximum effect could kill one
million persons.”’

STIFF OPPOSITION’

Dismissing the opposition, the Pen-
tagon blandly asserts that a NATO
nerve gas arsenal “‘would deter Soviet
use of the gas’’, confirming once again
that the contrived evidence about
Soviet chemical weapons use has been
aimed at providing a pretext for a U.S.
build-up.

But like the neutron bomb and the
proposed deployment in Britain of the
Trident and Cruise missiles, however,

nerve gas deployment will inevitably.

spark massive opposition.

In fact, that opposition is already
mounting. A forthcoming pamphlet
published by the recently-formed Rus-

sell Committee Against Chemical —

Weapons gives a glimpse at the wider
reaction that the Tory government —
and the Pentagon — can expect:

“*The binary program‘ now in pro- _

gress in the U.S. may have emerged as
a result of pressure from the U.S.
Chemical Corps, and may be a boon-

doggie for Americans but there is no-

thing in it for us in Europe except in-
creased hazard. We are no safer for
having U.S. chemical arms stored in

Britain, or for that matter in West Ger- ’

many. But the pressures of a yet further
enhanced arms race, part of the deadly
logic of the military-industrial complex,

are increased. American chemical war- -

fare is not a deterrent to Soviet chemi-
cal warfare — if this is seen as a real
threat — merely an additional incentive
to Soviet rearmament.”’

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