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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (50490)	10/9/2002 11:14:40 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

The United States also tested nerve agents in Canada and Britain in conjunction with those two countries. Bioweapons Tested in U.S. in 1960s Wed Oct 9, 8:03 AM ET By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer story.news.yahoo.com WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States secretly tested chemical and biological weapons on American soil during the 1960s, newly declassified Pentagon (news - web sites) reports show. The tests included releasing deadly nerve agents in Alaska and spraying bacteria over Hawaii, according to the documents obtained Tuesday. The United States also tested nerve agents in Canada and Britain in conjunction with those two countries. The summaries of more than two dozen tests show that biological and chemical tests were much more widespread than the military has acknowledged previously. The Pentagon released records earlier this year showing that chemical and biological agents had been sprayed on ships at sea. The military reimbursed ranchers and agreed to stop open-air nerve agent testing at its main chemical weapons center in the Utah desert after about 6,400 sheep died when nerve gas drifted away from the test range. But the Pentagon never before has provided details of the Alaskan, Hawaiian, Canadian and British tests. The Defense Department planned to formally release summaries of 28 biological and chemical weapons tests at a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee hearing Wednesday. The documents did not say whether any civilians had been exposed to the poisons. Military personnel exposed to weapons agents would have worn protective gear, the Pentagon says, although the gas masks and suits used at the time were far less sophisticated than those in use today. The head of the House Veterans Affairs panel called for further investigation of the tests. "Our focus must be on quickly identifying those veterans who were involved, assessing whether they suffered any negative health consequences and, if warranted, providing them with adequate health care and compensation for their service," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. The tests were part of Project 112, a military program in the 1960s and 1970s to test chemical and biological weapons and defenses against them. Parts of the testing program done on Navy ships were called Project SHAD, or Shipboard Hazard and Defense. The United States scrapped its biological weapons program in the late 1960s and agreed in a 1997 treaty to destroy all of its chemical weapons. Some of those involved in the tests say they now suffer health problems linked to their exposure to dangerous chemicals and germs. They are pressing the Veterans Affairs Department to compensate them. Earlier this year, the Defense Department acknowledged for the first time that some of the 1960s tests used real chemical and biological weapons, not just benign stand-ins. The Defense Department has identified nearly 3,000 soldiers involved in tests disclosed earlier, but the VA has sent letters to fewer than half of them. VA and Pentagon officials acknowledged at a July hearing that finding the soldiers has been difficult. The tests described in the latest Pentagon documents include: _ Devil Hole I, designed to test how sarin gas would disperse after being released in artillery shells and rockets in aspen and spruce forests. The tests occurred in the summer of 1965 at the Gerstle River test site near Fort Greeley, Alaska. Sarin is a powerful nerve gas that causes a choking, thrashing death. The Bush administration says it is part of Iraq's chemical arsenal. _ Devil Hole II, which tested how the nerve agent VX behaved when dispersed with artillery shells. The test at the Gerstle River site in Alaska also included mannequins in military uniforms and military trucks. VX is one of the deadliest nerve agents known and is persistent in the environment because it is a sticky liquid that evaporates slowly. Iraq has acknowledged making tons of VX. _ Big Tom, a 1965 test that included spraying bacteria over the Hawaiian island of Oahu to simulate a biological attack on an island compound, and to develop tactics for such an attack. The test used Bacillus globigii, a bacterium believed at the time to be harmless. Researchers later discovered the bacterium, a relative of the one that causes anthrax, could cause infections in people with weakened immune systems. _ Rapid Tan I, II, and III, a series of tests in 1967 and 1968 in England and Canada. The tests used sarin and VX, as well as the nerve agents tabun and soman, at the British chemical weapons facility in Porton Down, England. Tests at the Suffield Defence Research Establishment in Ralston, Canada, included tabun and soman, the records show. Tabun and soman are chemically related to sarin and produce similar effects.

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (50490)	10/9/2002 11:18:01 AM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Putin Has His Own Candidate for Pre-emption nytimes.com On that topic, there was this background article in the Sunday paper. While working to slow down the Bush administration's campaign against Saddam Hussein, Russia has for weeks waged a campaign of accusation and intimidation against neighboring Georgia, where some Chechen fighters have taken refuge. It's not the first such outburst by Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, against his Georgian counterpart, Eduard A. Shevardnadze. But Russia's pitch-perfect parody of American antiterrorism policy has commanded Washington's attention and could even derail Russian-American cooperation. On the eve of President Bush's Sept. 12 speech to the United Nations on Iraq, Mr. Putin wrote Secretary General Kofi Annan charging that Georgia's passivity toward Chechen fighters on its territory violated Security Council resolutions. Russia might therefore have to act unilaterally. The chief of Russia's general staff insisted that Mr. Shevardnadze was "in no way" different from Mullah Omar of the Taliban. Well, what the heck. Since the official "nuanced" local line seems to be that essentially the whole Arab/Muslim world is "in no way different" from bin Laden and the Taliban, may as well throw Georgia in there too, there must be a few Muslims in there someplace. Whack 'em good, that'll show 'em who's boss. Oops, important edit on the author of that article: Stephen Sestanovich is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor of international diplomacy at Columbia. Our official sponsor should be credited: Foreign Affairs - foreignaffairs.org Journal of global current events, foreign policy, and international relations published by the Council on Foreign Relations. Although looking up that official blurb on google turned up this ad: Sponsored Links Foreign Affairs Magazine 1 year for only 21.99! Read our review. Affiliate/Magmall www.conservativebookstore.com Dang. Objectivity cast into doubt, and all that.