Uncle Sam’s
Guinea Pigs


 

Sightings from The Catbird Seat

~ o ~

“By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique. As a former chief weapons inspector of the U.N. has said, ‘The fundamental problem with Iraq remains the nature of the regime, itself. Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.’…

“We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. Saddam Hussein also has experience in using chemical weapons. He has ordered chemical attacks on Iran, and on more than forty villages in his own country. These actions killed or injured at least 20,000 people, more than six times the number of people who died in the attacks of September the 11th….

“Iraq is a land rich in culture, resources, and talent. Freed from the weight of oppression, Iraq’s people will be able to share in the progress and prosperity of our time. If military action is necessary, the United States and our allies will help the Iraqi people rebuild their economy, and create the institutions of liberty in a unified Iraq at peace with its neighbors.”…

– George W. Bush, October 7, 2000

* * * * *

GREED AND GUINEA PIGS

RISKING THE HEALTH OF THE U.S. MILITARY

by: MAJ Glenn MacDonald, USAR (Ret)

militarycorruption.com

Al Capone would have been proud.

Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. was part of the crew that sold Saddam Hussein the deadly means to wage war with anthrax germs.

That’s when the United States wanted the “Butcher of Baghdad” to use anthrax on Iran.

Now the admiral, who shocked political observers by endorsing Bill “I loathe the military” Clinton in 1992 and was rewarded the following year with the post of ambassador to Great Britain, gets a “sweetheart deal” from the Pentagon to produce a questionable “vaccine” that is supposed to “protect” the nation’s military from the deadly organisms.

Not only does Crowe and his mysterious pal Faud El-Hibri get an exclusive multi-million dollar contract to produce anthrax vaccine, but the Government agrees to pay triple the original cost in the contract, from $3.50 a dose, to over ten dollars!

This, after the company Crowe and El-Hibri partly own – Bioport of Lansing, Mich. – was temporarily shut down by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after it failed an inspection in November.

Nothing too good for our troops! So what if some of them may get sick and die? Remember “Agent Orange” (Dioxin) from Vietnam? We were told: “Not to worry. This stuff only kills the foliage, not people.” Of course, we know better now. Especially the families of Vietnam vets whose wives gave birth to deformed babies.

How about Gulf War Syndrome? When the first GI’s returned to the United States and came down sick, they were given the run-around by the VA. The doctors said they were “imagining” their rashes, diarrhea, coughing spells and rapid weight-loss. “It’s all in your head,” they were told as they were shuffled off to the psycho ward. Now we know better.

Once again the Government and the Pentagon are playing that old tune: “Trust Us.”

Only this time, the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been before. This time, the inoculations are mandatory.

At first, the brass hats tried to intimidate the military into silence. “You will take them, on pain of court martial and dishonorable discharge.”

And hundreds – if you believe the Pentagon “spinmeisters” – or several thousand officers and service members, have voted with their feet.

Many have been punished severely and seen hopes and dreams dashed because of a genuine fear that their Government once again is lying.

And at stake is the health of the entire U.S. military force….

 


 

PROPHET, PATRIOT, PLAYER, OR PHONY?

By Virginia McCullough, The Baycities Observer

=====

QUOTE (Michael Riconosciuto): “I ran various operations which developed extremely sensitive military applications from highly advanced technology, e.g.

ii. Biotechnological weapons, including, but not limited to, lethal monoclonal antibodies which are gene specific, e.g., able to distinguish between specific racial characteristics and cause painful, disastrous, lethal effects for only those individuals exposed to such antibodies whose cell structure contains the target genes.”

CIA Operative Michael J. Riconosciuto’s Declaration in case No. 92 C 6217, filed April 1990, US District Court, Cook County, Illinois. Case: Riconosciuto, et al. v. Nicholas Bua in the Special Grand Jury investigation of the Inslaw matter.

=====

In November of 1990, I received a call from Bill Hamilton, the owner of the Inslaw Corporation. Inslaw was, at that time, involved in a nasty legal fight with the Department of Justice over allegations that the Department of Justice had stolen Inslaw’s proprietary software called “Promis[e]”

One of the chief witnesses in the case was a mysterious genius named Michael J. Riconosciuto. Riconosciuto was preparing a declaration to submit in the Inslaw case; he was receiving threats from Department of Justice officials if he filed his statement with the court. Hamilton was aware that I had researched the Riconosciuto family connections in the State of California. He wanted background information on his star witness.

In January of 1991, Riconosciuto filed his declaration and he was immediately arrested and jailed on drug charges in the State of Washington. The prosecutor in this drug case was Michael T. Hurley whose name also surfaces in the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December of 1988. Hamilton wanted to know if I would accept collect calls from Riconosciuto while he remained in jail in Washington. I told him I would and so began, what Riconosciuto calls, “the great adventure”

Riconosciuto asked me if I had a fax machine; I replied in the affirmative and he requested that I keep it fully loaded with paper. The first fax I received simply stated, “Welcome to the adventure”.

The second fax was signed by “Ray Lavas” and contained a fax number to respond to if I had questions. Over the next four months my fax machine spat out over 2500 pages of documents independently confirming what Riconosciuto told me in many tape recorded conversations….

Suddenly I was receiving a fast track education on satanic cults, small arms trafficking, the covert use of Indian reservations nationwide, bio-mass burning plants, “Trojan horses” installed in computers, the Nixon/Reagan/Bush mafia, money laundering through the national HUD agency, the CIA/mafia bust out of savings and loans, sexual slaves used to compromise power mongers, Vietnam drug money laundered to CIA banks, fuel explosives, [and] chemical and biological warfare weapons.

When Riconosciuto made allegations that the United States had developed a gene specific biological warfare weapon that could be used to eliminate specific races, he was laughed at by the few reporters still contacting him. By this time few journalists could afford his collect calls from jail; fewer still considered the story important. Most correspondents considered him crazy or a pathological liar. They had bought the government line. No one thought his story about biological weapons was true.

Then my fax machine spat out a two page letter dated January 20, 1983 addressed to Dr. Harry Fair of Tactical Technology in Arlington, Virginia. The letter was signed by CIA operative John P. Nichols and was on the letterhead of Cabazon Arms, a joint venture between the small Cabazon Band of Mission Indians and the giant Wackenhut Security firm of Coral Gables, Florida often called the CIA’s CIA. In page one, paragraph two, the following statement:

“On February 15, 1983, I will be forwarding to you a unique list of agents and production techniques related to biological warfare. The Stormont Laboratories, Inc. business plan I mailed you was to prepare you for what we are sending you in this area. Their products could be utilized in small countries bordering Albania or large countries bordering the Soviet Union. You will be amazed at the scope.”

Once again Riconosciuto had proven himself to be a “mystery wrapped in an enigma.” His gene specific biological warfare weapons story was confirmed eight years after he made his allegations.

Riconosciuto made so many strange declarations that the majority of media employees eventually gave up trying to prove or disprove his stories. As the months passed and 1991 began to fade away so too did the interest in this jailed genius. The only reporter who remained intensely interested in the Riconosciuto story was the first reporter on the case, Jos. “Danny” Casolaro.

Casolaro was a handsome man in his thirties who had tracked Riconosciuto all over California, Oregon and Washington as he investigated the Inslaw case….

The Great Adventure ended for my friend and fellow journalist, Danny Casolaro, in August of 1991. The ever-expanding story he titled The Octopushad killed him.

 Casolaro was executed in a classic CIA “wet operation”; his arms were sliced to the bone many times, he was stripped naked, placed in a bathtub of warm water to facilitate rapid bleeding, drugged and allowed to bleed to death. This style of eliminating enemies of the CIA was also used in the attempted assassination of Ron Rewald, figure head of the failed CIA bank, “Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong”. …

Simultaneously with Danny’s death, I received a lengthy essay obviously composed and typed by Riconosciuto during his imprisonment.

In light of the recent stories about the suicide of Dr. Larry C. Ford in Orange County, California, the attempted murder of his business associate, James Patrick Riley, and Ford’s alleged involvement with biotechnology warfare weaponry in South Africa, it is timely to post this essay in its entirety….

Read the entire story and Riconosciuto’s essay at:

www.newsmakingnews.com/vmriconpatriotphoney.htm

Virginia McCullough © 2000


 

13:23 2002-10-10

U.S. Used Chemical Weapons
Against Own Troops

The Pentagon has admitted that during the Cold War, it tested chemical and biological weapons on its own troops in the U.S., United Kingdom and Canada.

James Turner, spokesperson for the Defense Department, declared on Thursday that around 500 people were involved in these tests which were conducted “under strict control”.

The 27 tests were carried out between 1962 and 1971 in Maryland, Florida, Alaska and Hawaii, according to Turner. These revelations can be added to others which became public in May which indicated that U.S. warships had been fumigated with chemical and biological weapons….

Other tests, involving VX nerve gas were deployed in Canada. In the UK the agent used was Sarin, the same gas that was used by terrorists in the Tokyo metro in 1995. In Alaska, artillery shells loaded with VX nerve gas were fired along with bacterial agents.

Military sources, however, point towards 5,500 as the number of personnel involved in these tests….

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

* * * * *

Centre for Research on Globalisation

Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation

www.globalresearch.ca

The Pentagon released a document which confirms that the US government tested biological weapons on its own citizens.

This report was released to the media on October the 8th, one day after President Bush outlined the Administration’s main justification for waging war against Iraq, namely Saddam Hussein’s alleged programme of weapons of mass destruction including biological weapons.

No public outcry, and very little media coverage. The US government used biological weapons against its own citizens, but this was justified, it was for a good cause.

The US government is a threat to the security of civilians, not Saddam Hussein….

* * * * *

Excerpts from:

The Grace of the Heart

A Survivors Testimony

By Wendella K.

Copyright Pending, All Rights Reserved

Preface

October 1, 1998

“It will be for my glory that you will write the book.”

I am here, now with me myself and I. I am alone in my world trying to guide myself through this existence called Man. I hope to achieve my goal to survive this experience. I am human – no I am not. In me there is more life than knowledge, and maybe through this experience I can accomplish that which my Heavenly Father has sent me here to do.

All I know is that I am.

Me.

Not someone else or their experience, but mine, alone, real, not contrived or hoped for.

Man has not seen nor heard all that can be; will be; is; or was. Only He knows it all.

Signed Me.

Wendella K.

~ ~ ~

Chapter One: The First Forty Years

May 23, 2000

Hi. My name for now will be Susan….

I am going to be 44 years old this June. I am single, raising 7 of my own children who all live with me. The oldest is 20 years, a son, and the youngest is 5 years, a girl. I have had a very complicated and sad life, yet in my belief in Jesus Christ and his mercy, He has led me to be able to find the true source of my troubles and has led me to learn to not be afraid to love and raise my children.

I was asked to write a narrative. It will be contrite, from my heart, but may seem cold as it will have to include so much the average individual may not be able to accept it.

Everything I include here is true to the best of my knowledge. In the area of recovery that I am in, many would say I have false memories; yet I would challenge them that no counselor, therapist, friend, and especially family member, has ever in anyway influenced what I believe are my memories….

In my current healing I receive feelings and then pictures and as yet have not put them all together. I have read books on people who are healing from what I am, and it takes years to undo what is harmful to you as a child.

I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. I never remembered any childhood. It was always just a blackness in my mind. Yes, there were pieces here and there, but they seemed not to be a part of me….

We left Anchorage when I was in the 5th grade …

As a teenager I became involved with a cult. They showed what I thought was caring for me. I was involved with it for 6 years. They only wanted money….

~ ~ ~

Well, let’s skip ahead.

I have left all my ex-husbands and moved to a place for a new start. I had been here one year and started working again after 20 years of isolation and abuse. I did well. I recover well. My kids were all in school and getting medical attention. I was trying to rebuild my life. I knew my father had sexually abused me, as it was confirmed in a very private way. I knew being the daughter of an alcoholic made me feel guilty for being alive as that is a part of their disease you inherit even if you don’t drink…. I have my own home, my own car, and my own money and started to find out who I am and not just husbands’ shadow….

So, now I am ready to rejoin my local church. And….surprise!

I decided to pray for forgiveness and ask Heavenly Father to reveal to me what I needed to repent of. I did, and He did. No one in my church understood except my Pastor. He accepted me completely and never looks down on me even though I can’t live up to my church’s requirements for re-entry. He doesn’t understand how much Christ-like love he has given me. It saved my life in a way.

What I write next is abhorrent to most. In the next 20 years, more and more like myself will remember. With the Internet and free communication not guarded by big whatevers… We will tell the stories of our lives… We will heal from that which is unspeakable... We will be free!

All my compulsions to protect my children from being taken from me, from dying under the hands of strangers; all my fears of men and at the same time compulsions to be with them come from my real childhood. Much research has been done. One third of all trauma victims remember nothing, one third remember some, and one third remember all. Each is unique. All is stored within the mind for the individual to take as they can and will for their own personal journey.

Mine is as follows:

(Note to those of you who are survivors: much of this will TRIGGER YOU. Read it at your own discretion please. Thank you.)

I received 24 hours of Satanic Ritual Abuse Memories as an answer to my prayer. These came instantaneously. It took me a whole year to come out of shock. Knowledge has been my friend so I started to research things in my local library and by talking to possibly knowledgeable individuals. I learned nothing so I went to the Internet. Every memory I received was unique to myself. Sometimes after a memory came I would find a similar kind of act being talked about from others, but I knew mine were mine.

I knew they were real because of two things:

When body memories came some of my physical handicaps got better or disappeared.

I found in my memory reasons for many of my fears and could re-evaluate my choices in my current life.

As an old saying is: “The Truth Will Always Set You Free….”

In learning about sra (satanic ritual abuse) I discovered most don’t believe it. It’s too scary and means man is really evil if they choose to be. It’s hard to look at society that way. It hurts too much. Its commonly called Denial….

I also discovered that most who encountered SRA memories were a cover up for intentional government-controlled, sponsored (and your tax dollars paid for, sorry!) research into all areas of your human body. Telekinesis, psychic phenomena, hypnosis, intentional creation of multiple personalities, testing to see how much a human can withstand of tortures and pain prior to death, the list is endless….

I feel to not go into detail. I can say I was forced to kill my best friend, I witnessed murder, death, mutilations, ceremonies to combine spirits (dark) and humans. I saw children be born and then immediately sacrificed along with their mother’s for use of the cult. Nothing you might believe in is cared for by them.

I didn’t think I had any government connection. I was wrong and still am trying to piece together the puzzle.

I was used in experiments with water, drugs, electroshock, and animals. I was trained to obey my handler. I was trained to know that disobedience meant death….

Until these memories came I always feared my death and that of my children. I never believed in any future. It’s still far away from me. Time was always my enemy. I had no knowledge that anyone I loved would be there the next day.

When my journey of healing is done, the future will be my best friend for in it is hope of a New World for me and my children.

Thank You.

Wendella K.

~ ~ ~

For more memories of W.A.R., GO TO…

The Kissinger of Death; Of Vampires & Daisies

~ ~ ~


 

 

You can download Wendella’s book,

The Grace of the Heart

for free, courtesy of the author, at…

www.the-catbird-seat.net/Grace-of-the-Heart.htm

 

 


 

For more regarding Mind Control, see

North American Freedom Foundation


 

 

Shame of Shad

Words about Shipboard Hazard And Defense
Will not be minced!
Veterans were had by Project SHAD!

Starting in fiscal year ‘63
Our government went on a poisoning spree!
Test Eager Belle started the healthcare hell.
When it really ended, no one will tell!

Were there more after year ‘74?
Chemical and biological warfare tests
Were done on many of America’s best!

Now this part of Project One Twelve,
No one wants to delve!
Veterans of Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines –
Many have real questions and needs!

With tests like Copper Head and Shady Grove –
Why have not SHAD veterans been fully told?
The Coward of Crawford and his chicken hawks,
About this, they do not talk.

They receive the best of care.
While the worst, SHAD and other veterans bear!

© Mark H. Wilson
November 2002

~ ~ ~

Dedicated to J.B. Stone and the thousands of deceived veterans
of Project SHAD and Project 112

~ ~ ~

From the International War Veterans Poetry Archives

www.iwvpa.net/aaadmin/home.htm

* * * * *

From: JCJJONES@aol.com

Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 17:10:14 EST

Subject: Government Guinea Pig update

To: thecatbird@the-catbird-seat.net

Please help us get this message out.

Government Guinea Pig:
When Uncle Sam Wants You…

(Ghosts, UFOs, Mind Control & the Government)

Government Guinea Pig… update

“… 74 percent of Americans believe the government is involved with conspiracies and cover-ups that most people will never know about.” (CNN – The American Edge – “Conspiracy Nation”)

“Let’s face it. Our government has done a lot of bad things, and a lot of them have come out on the record. You start from there, and then you think well, what are they hiding from us?” — Jonathan Vankin Author, The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

> Official website: www.governmentguineapig.com <

* * * * *

ALLENBRAVEHEART@aol.com wrote:

Betreff: GERM WARFARE? TRY THE USA GOVERNMENT
Datum: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 12:45:39 +0100
Von: “World-Action” <michaeli@globalnet.co.uk>

Please NETWORK this wide across the INTERNET. And DO what YOU can to avert WORLD WAR III….

BIOLOGICAL WARFARE?

TRY THE USA GOVERNMENT

The United States has a long history of experimentation, on unwitting human subjects, which goes back to the beginning of this century. Both private firms and the military have used unknowing human populations to test various theories. However, the extent to which human experimentation has been a part of the U.S. Biological Weapons programs will probably never be known.

The following examples are taken from information declassified in 1977, and from other private source accounts. Several involve incidents which are still of unknown origins and which cannot be fully explained:

2001:

‘CHEMTRAILS’. Search the Internet on the word, ‘CHEMTRAIL’, and at dozens of websites, find out what is being sprayed in most parts of North America TODAY. Chemtrails are also being sprayed in most NATO countries. Barium, aluminium, and biological ingredients are included in the spray. Chemtrail spraying has been going on for several years. Many people, animals, pets, etc. are becoming very sick with a variety of symptoms, especially respiratory conditions….

1997:

Eighty-eight members of Congress sign a letter demanding an investigation into bioweapons use & Gulf War Syndrome.

1996:

Under pressure from Congress and the public, after a 60 Minutes segment, the U.S. Department of Defense finally admits that at least 20,000 U.S. servicemen “may” have been exposed to chemical weapons during operation ‘Desert Storm’. This exposure came as a result of the destruction of a weapons bunker. Causes of the similar illnesses of other troops, who were not in this area, have not yet been explained, other than as post traumatic stress syndromes. Veterans groups have released information that many of the problems may be a result of experimental vaccines and inoculations which were provided troops during the military build-up. [Reportedly, the Bush family have or had shares in the vaccine company]

1987:

As the result of a lawsuit by a public interest group, the Department of Defense was forced to reveal the fact that it still operated Chemical and Biological Warfare (CBW) research programs at 127 sites around the United States.

1985:

In ruling on a case in which a former U.S. Army sergeant attempted to bring a lawsuit against the Army for using experimental drugs on him, without his knowledge, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that allowing such an action against the military would disrupt the chain of command. Thus, nearly all potential actions against the military for past, or future, misdeeds have been barred as have actions aimed at the release of classified documents on the subject.

1985:

An outbreak of Dengue fever strikes Managua Nicaragua shortly after an increase of U.S. aerial reconnaissance missions. Nearly half of the capital city’s population was stricken with the disease, and several deaths have been attributed to the outbreak. It was the first such epidemic in the country and the outbreak was nearly identical to that which struck Cuba a few years earlier (1981). Dengue fever variations were the focus of much experimentation at the Army’s Biological Warfare test facility at Ft. Dietrick, Maryland prior to the ‘ban’ on such research in 1972.

1982:

El Salvadoran trade unionists claimed that epidemics of many previously unknown diseases had cropped up in areas immediately after U.S. directed aerial bombings. There is no hard evidence to support these charges. However, the pattern and types of outbreaks are consistent with the claims.

1981:
More than 300,000 Cubans were stricken with dengue hemorrhagic fever. An investigation by the magazine ‘Covert Action Information Bulletin’, which tracks the workings of various intelligence agencies around the world, suggested that this outbreak was the result of a release of mosquitoes by Cuban counter revolutionaries. The magazine tracked the activities of one CIA operative from a facility in Panama to the alleged Cuban connections. During the last 30 years, Cuba has been subjected to an enormous number of outbreaks of human and crop diseases which are difficult to attribute purely natural causes.

1980-1981:

Within months of their incarceration in detention centers in Miami and Puerto Rico, many male Haitian refugees developed an unusual condition called “gynecomasia”. This is a condition in which males develop full female breasts. A number of the internees at Ft. Allen in Puerto Rico claimed that they were forced to undergo a series of injections which they believed to be hormones.

1977:

Ray Ravenhott, director of the population program of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), publicly announced the agency’s goal to sterilize one quarter of the world’s women. In reports by the St Louis Post-Dispatch, Ravenhott in essence cited the reasoning for this being U.S. corporate interests in avoiding the threat of revolutions which might be spawned by chronic unemployment.

1972:

President Nixon announced a ban on the production and use of biological (but not chemical) warfare agents. However, as the Army’s own experts reveal, this ban is meaningless because the studies required to protect against biological warfare weapons are generally indistinguishable from those for chemical weapons.

1969:

On June 9, 1969, Dr. D.M. McArtor, then Deputy Director of Research and Technology for the Department of Defense, appeared before the House Subcommittee on Appropriations to request funding for a project to produce a synthetic biological agent for which humans have not yet acquired a natural immunity. Dr. McArtor asked for $10 million dollars to produce this agent over the next 5-10 years. The Congressional Record reveals that according to the plan for the development of this germ agent, the most important characteristic of the new disease would be “that it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease”. AIDS first appeared as a public health risk ten years later.

1968 – 1969:

The CIA experimented with the possibility of poisoning drinking water by injecting a chemical substance into the water supply of the Food And Drug Administration in Washington, D.C.. There were no harmful effects noted from this experiment. However, none of the human subjects in the building were ever asked for their permission, nor was anyone provided with information on the nature or effects of the chemical used.

1966:

The U.S. Army dispensed a bacillus throughout the New York City subway system. Materials available on the incident noted the Army’s justification for the experiment was the fact that there are many subways in the (former) Soviet Union, Europe, and South America. Although there are no harmful effects known for this release, details of the experiment are still classified.

1965:

In a three year study, 70 volunteer prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia were subjected to tests of dioxin, the highly toxic chemical contaminant in Agent Orange. Lesions which the men developed were not treated and remained for up to seven months. None of the subjects was informed that they would later be studied for the development of cancer. This was the second such experiment which Dow Chemical undertook on “volunteers” who did not receive the information which the world proclaimed was necessary for “informed consent” at Nuremberg.

1956 – 1958:

In Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida, the Army carried out field tests in which mosquitoes were released into residential neighborhoods from both ground level and from aircraft. Many people were swarmed by Mosquitoes, and fell ill, some even died. After each test, U.S. Army personnel posing as public health officials photographed and tested the victims. It is theorized that the mosquitoes were infected with a strain of Yellow Fever. However, details of the testing remain classified.

1955:

The Tampa Bay area of Florida experienced a sharp rise in Whooping Cough cases, including 12 deaths, after a CIA test where a bacteria withdrawn from the Army’s Chemical and Biological Warfare arsenal was released into the environment. Details of the test are still classified.

1952 – 1953:

In another series of experiments, the U.S. military released clouds of “harmless” gases over six (6) U.S. and Canadian cities to observe the potential for similar releases under chemical and germ warfare scenarios. A follow-up report by the military noted the occurrence of respiratory problems in the unwitting civilian populations.

1950 – 1953:

An array of germ warfare weapons were allegedly used against North Korea. Accounts claim that there were releases of feathers infected with anthrax, fleas and mosquitoes dosed with Plague and Yellow Fever, and rodents infected with a variety of diseases. These were precisely the same techniques used in immunity from prosecution in exchange for the results of that research. The Eisenhower administration later pressed Sedition Charges against three Americans who published charges of these activities. However, none of those charged were convicted.

1950:

The U.S. Navy sprayed a cloud of bacteria over San Francisco. The Navy claimed that the bacteria was harmless, and used only to track a simulated attack, but many San Francisco residents became ill with pneumonia-like symptoms, and one is known to have died.

1940’s:

In a crash program to develop new drugs to fight Malaria during World War II, doctors in the Chicago area infected nearly 400 prisoners with the disease. Although the Chicago inmates were given general information that they were helping with the war effort, they were not provided adequate information in accordance with the later standards set by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Nazi doctors on trial at Nuremberg cited the Chicago studies as precedents to defend their own behavior in aiding the German war effort.

1932:
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study began. Two hundred poor black men with syphilis began a long term experiment in which those men were to be studied. They were never told of their illness, and treatment was denied them. As many as 100 of the original 200 died as a direct or indirect result of the illness. The wives and children of the subjects also suffered as a result of the disease. (The government office supervising the study was the predecessor to today’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC)).

1931:

The Puerto Rican Cancer Experiment was undertaken by Dr. Cornelius Rhoads. Under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, Rhoads purposely infected his subjects with cancer cells. Thirteen of the subjects died. When the experiment was uncovered, and in spite of Rhoads’ written opinions that the Puerto Rican population should be eradicated, Rhoads went on to establish U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama. He later was named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and was at the heart of the recently revealed radiation experiments on prisoners, hospital patients, and soldiers.

1915:

A doctor in Mississippi produced Pellagra in twelve white Mississippi inmates in an attempt to discover a cure for the disease.

http://home.earthlink.net/~bkonop/GermIncidents2.html

http://www.world-action.co.uk/biological.html

* * * * *

COWBOYS IN GAS MASKS

From Canaries on the Rim, by Chip Ward:

At the end of a long hot day underground, the uranium miners would walk along the ore car tracks and emerge from their dank tunnels into the open light. At the mine opening there was a Geiger counter that was swung over the surfacing ore cars to get a reading of how powerful their radioactive loads were.

I once listened to a former miner from Marysvale, Utah, tell how he and his friends would turn the Geiger counter on at the end of a work day and blow on it to see who could get the highest reading from his lungs. The instrument would crackle with static as each worker exhaled hard his radioactive breath. This was done for amusement.

As the only survivor of the group, he shook his head in amazement and got that thousand yard stare as he struggled to understand his own ignorance, the sad fate of his coworkers who died young of lung cancer, and his government’s complicity in hiding the danger it surely knew was there.

In the 1950s and 60s, he and thousands of other uranium miners, many of them poor Navajos, were expendable. The Cold War was on and we were in an arms race that required uranium quickly, too quickly for safeguards or caution.

Today, among the 45,000 radioactive sites in the US that must be cleaned up, there are over 1,140 uranium mining sites in Utah.

There is no count for dead miners….

~ ~ ~

The uranium ended up in bombs like those tested over the Nevada desert. Those that ran the tests waited until the wind blew towards Utah. After all, Arizona had a senator, Barry Goldwater, who was powerful and tough. You wouldn’t want to piss him off by poisoning his constituents. Utah was sparsely populated with Mormons who, in the fifties, were still a small and unpopular minority, often regarded as odd outsiders within their own nation….

My friend Abel was a small boy then on his grandfather’s sheep ranch. His memories of that era are few but vivid. While children in the rest of the nation were being taught to “duck ‘n’ cover” to guard against exposure to an atomic blast, government officials and scientists actually encouraged the Utah locals who were immediately downwind from the one hundred plus nuclear blasts they conducted to go outside and watch. They could “witness a moment in history.”

He remembers sitting on the roof of his family’s house with his brothers and sisters. Being up on the roof was not a normal activity and they waited with the kind of anticipation children feel when sitting on a curb and waiting for a Fourth of July parade to begin. …

They were waiting for the blinding flash of a distant atomic detonation followed minutes later by a wall of hot air. It would flatten their shirts against their chests, sweep their hair back, bend the trees in the backyard, and send clouds of dust swirling. Sometimes a blizzard of hot ashes would fall later and the children would run, shout, and twirl in the summer storm of atomic debris. The ranch was remote and entertainment was where you found it.

As my friend and his siblings yelled and leaped through the radioactive dust and ashes, soldiers who had just crouched in trenches near the blast climbed from their hiding places and marched slowly towards the bruise-colored mushroom cloud in front of them. With their naked eyes, they had just studied the x-rayed bones in their hands at the moment of destruction. It was the whitest light they had ever seen. For several moments they had unwittingly become transparent glowing angels in the nuclear hell of America’s Cold War jihad.

Those who had defecated in their pants quickly tried to cover their shame. Soon, the soles of their boots would melt under the crunching surface of hot sand that was melted into globs of glass by the inferno. They marched right into “ground zero.”

Later, some vomited uncontrollably and bled from every orifice of their bodies. Days after, their hair came out when they combed it. They were young, most of them, and their lives would be short. Years later, their records were shredded and their sacrifices unacknowledged.

Abel also remembers when the family car was stopped on the way into town by government scientists who were covered from head to toe in protective suits, like spacemen. He could not see their expressions because their faces and eyes were covered with gas masks. They waved their instruments over the car tires and took notes. His father leaned out his car window and asked if all was well. No problem, the scientists told him while keeping their gas masks tight, drive on.

Then there was the “lambing shed from Hell.” Rural Mormons like my friend do not use the “H word” lightly. They say “HE double toothpicks” rather than pronounce the word out loud…. In this case, however, the word HELL is said openly because it is appropriate.

That spring most of the sheep that were gathered into the shed had raw patches between their wool or odd-looking bleached spots. Some had blisters around their mouths. Many aborted their fetuses and the fetuses looked like exhibits in a carnival freak show – two heads, no heads, two tails, extra legs, misshapen and hideous forms that resembled no earthly creature.

Lambs that were almost as freakish followed. Some had hearts that beat outside of their chests. The normal-looking ones often sickened and died shortly after they were born.

Abel’s grandfather went crazy. The sheep were his livelihood, his means of supporting his family in a desert landscape where ranching was hrd and marginal. He was supposed to be the patriarch of his clan and take care of others.

To a deeply religious and simple man who did not know the ways radiation could scramble the cellular chemistry of fetal development, the events that transpired in his lambing shed that spring must have seemed a curse, some awful almighty retribution for an unknown violation.

He was not alone. The curse was widespread. As he and his neighbors traded stories, they grew suspicious, angry, and fearful. Most, however, remained silent. Like all Americans, they had experienced the collective trauma of global war, witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and lived in fear of the Communist menace. What if Russia acquired stronger atomic weapons that we owned? They might do to us what we did to Japan.

They were convinced America needed atomic weapons to defend itself and took a certain pride that the development of such weapons was happening in their own backyard….

But some did question. Phone calls were made and letters written. No one wanted to hear it. Scientists were sent in to reassure the doubters. Women who complained they were losing their hair were diagnosed as “neurotic” or suffering from “housewife syndrome.” Even the prominent scientist who led America’s effort to develop the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, was described by President Truman as a “crybaby scientist” when he tried to warn of the health risks atmospheric nuclear testing.

Many of the ranchers went out of business. Some moved on to jobs in uranium mines and felt fortunate they could keep their heads above water. Years later, most are gone. Cancer ran rampant in those small towns that were downwind. There were respiratory, neurological, and heart diseases, too, and chronic illnesses that had no diagnosis. Economic ruin preceded the years of biopsies and tumors.

My friend lost his parents and a brother in his thirties to cancer. His wife had thyroid cancer in her thirties. He has been lucky, he says, but sometimes his body feels like it is a time bomb ticking away. He reads about the genetic mutations that radiation can cause and worries that his children or grandchildren will also suffer someday.

Those that are baffled by the passivity of Utahns and their political leaders to the onslaught of military experimentation and abuse in years to come, must start with the trauma of atomic testing, the betrayal and cover-up.

Denial is one way of dealing with psychic damage. Dr Robert Jay Lifton coined the phrase “nuclear numbing” to describe such behavior. Poor plus obedient plus numb plus eager to belong was a formula the military learned to use over and over to their advantage.

The story of my friend and his family and neighbors has been told. It is a story that with different circumstances but the same elements of fear, arrogance, trust, ignorance, and betrayal can be told in Hanford, Rocky Flats, Kazakhstan, or at the Nevada Test Site where more than 200 even bigger underground nuclear blasts were conducted in the years after above ground testing was banned. And lately the circle of exposure has been broadened as the secret documents continue to be discovered, released, or leaked.

It wasn’t just in Southern Utah that unsuspecting innocents were dosed. Clouds of radiation drifted in the wind and fell hundreds of miles away. Every community east of the prevailing winds was a player in an atmospheric game of radioactive roulette. We now know there were lots of hot spots in northern Utah, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, and South Dakota. A hard radioactive rain fell on Chicago after one test. Other fallout storms dowsed communities as far away as Troy and Rochester, New York.

Nuclear fallout reached farm-belt pastures and was passed on through milk. Children were especially vulnerable because they drink more milk and have smaller thyroids than adults….

Across the nation, for example, one hundred thousand cases of thyroid cancer may have been caused by the distribution of Iodine 131 from testing. That is far more than the “worst case scenario” just a few years ago, because each year we learn more about the extent of Iodine 131 distribution.

But they ignore the impact on public health from exposure to Strontium 90, Celisium 137, Zirconium and other dangerous byproducts of atomic testing that were also released into the wind. There could be hundreds of thousands of uncalculated cancers, to say nothing of the heart disease, neurological disorders, chronic illnesses, birth defects and sterility that were certainly fueled by radiation….

~ ~ ~

Further north, at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, the sons of poor farmers ran to their places on a grid that was laid out along the sagebrush flat by military scientists. They were shirtless under the hot desert sun but that was necessary. Then the scientists released the mosquitoes, the men were told to stand still and wait to be bitten. The bites would be recorded and then injections given.

The mosquitoes were carrying encephalitis.

Memories of the Great Depression were powerful and the men were thankful they had secure employment with the government. “It’s good work if you can get it,” they told each other. Hazard pay was an extra 6 cents an hour or 48 cents a day. They were sure the shots the docs gave them would work and were proud to be part of something so much bigger than they were. It appealed to their homegrown patriotism. They were defending the free world.

When they were mindful of the risk they were taking, they justified it by thinking of the soldier in some future battle whose life they might be saving. The carnage and trauma of World War Two was still fresh in their minds.

Dugway was busy. Other workers were setting out cages of rabbits in the salt flats. When the animals were set, shells containing nerve agent were fired into the grid where they burst and set loose clouds of nerve gas around the startled animals. Cameras whirred as the rabbits’ eyes watered. Seconds later they would twitch violently and then go rigid as the nerve agent paralyzed their muscles so they could not take a breath. They suffocated and died.

Take out a quarter, a former Dugway worker told me, and look at George Washington’s eye. “If you covered his eye with nerve agent,” he said, “you’d have yourself a lethal dose.”

Rabbits died weekly from 1959 to 1969 to impress soldiers attending chemical warfare orientation sessions conducted at Dugway then. The soldiers would watch over closed-circuit television to understand the power of chemical warfare agents. Eventually, the show became more varied as guinea pigs, dogs, horses, cows, monkeys, and even antelope were added to the mix of demonstration targets.

After each show, civilian employees walked into the target areas, still contaminated with sas, and collected the bodies and transported them to the base lab. The wore no protective clothing. A few had gas masks because they broke into a locked supply room and stole them. Those who were too afraid to steal went into the site with bare lungs….

The biggest challenge in using chemical weapons is controlling the kill zone. Chemical munitions were originally designed as strategic weapons. Say your enemy is racing your troops towards an important junction or strategic position and they get ahead of you. You fire your chemical munitions into the junction to make your enemy wait for the gas to disperse so you can catch up.

Of course, that’s not the way it worked in World War One. Fired at close range to kill troops, mustard gas sometimes blew back on the army using it or drifted out of the target area, killing adjacent allied soldiers.

Nerve agent, the army realized, would be even harder to control and every kind of ammunition they had packed with it would disperse it differently. Between 1961 and 1969 there were 1,635 field trials. More than 55,000 chemical rockets, artillery shells, bombs, and land mines were blown up to understand how they could be used. Airplanes flew over test grids and sprayed nerve agent to see how it was dispersed in various weather conditions and at various heights.

All totaled, a half million pounds of nerve agent was released into the open wind.

That’s the equivalent of 3.5 trillion lethal doses.

Of course, targets were often missed and sometimes the ammunition didn’t explode. When it could be found, Dugway workers dug it up. Imagine, one of them told me, digging in the mud for an unexploded rocket filled with nerve gas. It’s very quiet, he said, because everyone is listening for the sound of that first shovel hitting metal.

They couldn’t find it all. Unexploded ordinance covers thousands of acres of the base. Now referred to as “non-stockpile chemical munitions,” these deadly misfires must be cleaned up and destroyed. It will cost taxpayers billions.

The army didn’t even contain its tests and training to its own ground. A Department of the Interior study shows about 1,400 square miles of public land in Utah is covered with unexploded ordinance, some of it containing nerve agent and germs. When walking or riding on BLM land adjacent to military property, it is wise to stick to the road in front of you.

You may never know where the chemical ghosts of the Cold War may be lurking.

Despite all the testing and practice, they never had much success putting the nerve gas on the target. On 13 September 1962, for example, they test dropped 2,800 pounds of VX agent but only 4 percent reached the target grid. The other 96 percent of that load was sown into the wind….

No one knew where all that nerve gas went that missed the grids, but then no one was looking for it either.

The weather was far from optimal on 13 March 1968. There were ominous thunderheads building and shifting winds. It was not the best day to play with nerve gas, but a bunch of VIP’s were visiting and they wanted to see some action. The Dugway crew was eager to show off.

The test was named “Operation Combat Kid.”

A Phantom fighter jet loaded with more than a ton of nerve agent in a spray tank closed in on its target and expelled its load. And then some. Apparently a valve didn’t close and about twenty pounds of the VX agent the plane was carrying was inadvertently sprayed well beyond the target zone. It may have been sucked into a storm cell then rained out downward.

One way or the other it ended up in Skull Valley, almost thirty miles away. At first, birds and rabbits died. Sheep followed. Over the next two days, 6,400 would perish. One by one, they sickened, dropped, shuddered, and expired.

The army quarantined the crew of the Phantom for several weeks to keep them from talking and scoffed at the notion that the sheep died from nerve agent. Only minuscule traces were found on the grass. Sheep, of course, can eat a lot of grass….

Eventually, the soldiers collected the carcasses and buried them. Today they can’t remember where. An archaeologist has been hired to locate the mass graves. The government eventually paid out a million dollars in compensation while denying responsibility.

The sheep kill got national attention. Soon after, Nixon banned open-air testing of nerve gas. Even so, some agent testing continued. Mostly, however, the army switched to various chemical simulants and kept at it until the 1980s. Although safer than nerve gas, the health hazards of the simulants has also been questioned. At least some are carcinogenic.

The army never admitted they killed the sheep. They certainly never took responsibility for Ray Peck.

Peck and his family were living and working on a rented ranch in Skull Valley then. During Operation Combat Kid, Ray was clearing a ditch with a tractor between two sheep herds that died. Ray remembers the following morbing as being crisp and clear. There was nothing atypical about it except for some dead birds on the ground and a rabbit dying in the distance he noticed on his way to do his chores.

The helicopter that later landed in his backyard, however, was unusual. It carried army officials who wanted to collect the dead wildlife and conduct blood tests on him and his frightened family. The other Skull Valley ranch families, sheepherders, and Goshute Indians who could be located were also rounded up and tested.

The tests measured levels of cholenesterase, an enzyme needed for nerves to send messages. The army scientists assured the Peck family and the others that they showed normal results, though the results were inconclusive. They had no cholenesterase baseline for the family or its community and no follow up was done.

In fact, the army did less testing on the human beings in that valley than on the sheep – but their liability for the sheep might be contested and they were eager for any data on sheep they could work into their case for denial.

The local people, as they had been learning, would believe experts, would not challenge army brass, and were reluctant to bite the hand that fed them. Everyone in the valley had a neighbor or relative who was employed at Dugway. Even independent ranchers might work part time there. It could be safely assumed the locals would give up and fade away.

And they did.

Twenty-five years later, however, Deseret News reporter Lee Davidson located Ray Peck. Peck told Davidson that in the days after the ‘68 sheep kill the entire family came down with diarrhea and had earaches and trouble breathing. Army docs told them they had the flu, an unfortunate coincidence.

From 1968 on, the Peck family suffered violent and debilitating headaches. They had not suffered headaches before then. Ray had strange numbness and burning sensations in his leg. Worse, he had bouts of paranoia and became so terrified of making a mistake at work that he would become immobilized. He lost two jobs that way. Although there was no family history of reproductive problems before that spring day, afterwards Mrs. Peck had two stillbirths and the Peck daughters had several miscarriages.

The story of the Peck family suggests that even minuscule exposure to nerve agent can be damaging, but it is what army lawyers, their contractors, and state regulators call “anecdotal” evidence. It doesn’t count.

Because the authorities did not follow up, there is no data. No data, no deal. Ray Peck and company are on their own. As Ray discovered, if you are going to be a victim of military testing, your chances of getting justice are best if there are lots of other victims you can contact and organize.

If you are alone or in small numbers, of if a lot of time has passed and your fellow victims have moved away, the responsible powers will roll right over you.

~ ~ ~

When they weren’t busy setting out live animals and monitors for nerve gas testing, and then collecting dead animals and data afterwards, the Dugway workers also helped conduct biological warfare testing.

Same problem as nerve gas. How do you control it?

Probably the first recorded instance of germ warfare took place in 2346 when Tartar warriors catapulted plague-ridden corpses over the walls of the besieged city of Kaffa to infect their enemies within it. But what if you used a jet plane with an aerosol mixture of germs? What about explosive munitions? Would the germs survive the blast? What if the wind was blowing?

At least 328 open air experiments were conducted to find out. Anthrax, Q fever, parrot fever, rabbit fever, undulant fever, valley fever and other pathogens were used.

During some of those tests the wind was blowing hard – 30 to 60 miles per hour. In such cases, it was hard to land the germs on the test grid. Sometimes, no germs at all could be found on the test grids and it was assumed the germs had missed the target. But it was hard to know….

Landing germs on the targets was also problematic when height and speed were factors. Although the army assured Congress that strict meteorological controls were always in place, in one test, bombs filled with undulant fever and other pathogens the army will not disclose were dropped out of a plane at 25,000 feet and detonated at 10,000 feet….

In another test in 1958, 40 gallons of a Q fever slurry was sprayed from an F-100A jet traveling just under the speed of sound. A single organism of Q fever can initiate a deadly infection and billions of organisms can be present in a mere drop of slurry.

The army told the public there was no evidence that significant amounts of the germs they used ever migrated off base. But one report shows that although no Q fever was detected in local wildlife before it was introduced through Dugway, it had reached epidemic proportions in wildlife by 1960. It was decided to continue testing with Q fever because by that time further testing would do no harm….

The disregard for the health and wellbeing of citizens was not limited to the Utah locals. Pathogens were also released in San Francisco, Washington DC, and other cities to track their dissemination in unwitting hosts.

Gerald Vowles, who supervised testing at Dugway, also conducted pathogen testing using the New York City subway system. The germs they distributed there were supposedly benign but they did make people sick. That was the point. And they could be fatal to the elderly and babies.

Former Dugway employee Michael Outzen claims he participated in secret testing done in Hawaii and Panama. Both men believed at the time that what they were doing was right and safe….

Vowles is now in a wheelchair when he can make it out of bed. Outzen had a heart attack at age thirty-one and arthritis at thirty-seven. They see it differently now.

Most of the testing, however, was done with consent, though it would be hard to say “informed” consent. Most of the human guinea pigs probably did not understand the experimental nature of the shots they were given to guard them or the cumulative impact of injections on their immune systems. The had complete faith in the army and the miracle of medicine.

A record of a test in which a cloud generator pushed Q fever towards sixty-four monitoring stations also lists seventy-five rhesus monkeys and thirty soldiers as participants. The soldiers were then flown to Fort Detrick, Maryland, for observation. There were no immediate fatalities, but the health history of the test subjects after they were discharged is not known….

Simulants were used for years after the Skull Valley sheep kill and widely accepted as safe by the guardians of official science…. With safety endorsements in hand, the military used “harmless” bacteria and simulants on targets in Hawaii, Alaska, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Key West, and many other cities.

The history of simulant use at Dugway over forty-five years, however, shows that time and time again they have stopped using simulants because they discovered they could be deadly. Their discoveries were always belated, long after evidence had surfaced in the medical literature. For example, zinc cadmium sulfide was used for years after it was listed as a carcinogen.

By the 1980s, Dugway wanted a “BL-4 lab” for experimenting with anthrax, bubonic plague, botulism, and deadly new strains of viruses that had their DNA tweaked for maximum lethality and resistance to known cures. They proclaimed their need for aerosol testing, too.

To their surprise and chagrin, the people of Utah did not roll over as expected. By then, Preston Truman, the tenacious survivor of atomic testing from Hurricane, Utah, who had founded Downwinders Inc., had a hard earned distrust of military assurance. Truman grew up with kids who were dying of leukemia and he had buried his mother when she died of cancer.

Truman and his right-hand man and consummate activist, Steve Erickson, were organizing other survivors to get compensation from the US government. When Dugway’s plans for a death lab surfaced, they turned their attention hard on the new threat to public health and safety. The Utah Medical Association, local ranchers, and college students were enlisted to oppose the lab….

The lab was stalled again and again. Every time it was beaten back, military planners would rally, readjust the lab’s mission, and march their disguised death lab down the corridors of power yet again.

Along the way, questions were raised about untested vaccines given to Gulf War troops and whether they were being used as unwitting guinea pigs in a dry run at chemical/biological warfare defense, and about the sale of biological materials by the US to the Iraq’s Atomic Energy Commission before the war.

By 1998, the Pentagon finally found a costume that could get its little monster through the door and a new lab was finally built, though well below the Apocalyptic expectations of Dugway’s fevered crew. The drumbeat for increased testing at Dugway has become louder as we are warned of the dangers of biological weapons in the hands of terrorists or Saddam Hussein.

There is a proposal to build a full-scale town at Dugway that could be used for chemical and germ warfare training. The military wants better protective gear, detectors, and vaccines. This would all be “defensive” of course. But you cannot design an effective defense without imagining and simulating the offense you are defending against…. It is a two-sided coin.

So far, the only American casualties of biological and chemical warfare have been citizens harmed by the very military sworn to defend them and Gulf War troops who put each other in harm’s way when they blew up Saddam’s stash….

For more, GO TO > > > The Nuclear Nests; Down the Rabbit Hole

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April 3, 2003

TEAR GAS

BUSH HAS APPROVED USE, CAUSING
SOME CONTROVERSY

The New York Times

President Bush has authorized American troops to use tear gas in Iraq, the Pentagon says, a development that some weapons experts said could set up a conflict between American and International law.

The Defense Department said tear gas, which has been issued to American troops but has not been used by them, would be used only to save civilian lives and in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention, ratified by the United States in 1997.

Critics say any battlefield use of tear gas would violate the convention, offend crucial allies including Britain, and hand Saddam Hussein a legal basis for using chemical weapons against the United States.

“Riot-control agents, such as C.S., better known as tear gas, are non-lethal and may be used by U.S. forces only when authorized by the president and only under specific, well-defined circumstances, to protect noncombatants,” a Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, said in response to questions Friday. Use of the agents for defensive purposes to save lives “would be consistent with the Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare,” he said.

Some experts disagreed. Elisa D. Harris, of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, said a violation could arise if riot control agents were used against Iraqi soldiers using civilians as a screen. This battlefield use would contravene the Chemical Weapons Convention, she said, but is explicitly permitted by an executive order of 1975.

The Pentagon cited the language of this executive order in saying the president had authorized use of riot control agents in Iraq, she said.

Riot-control agents may be used to quell riots or control prisoners, but the chemical weapons convention says they may not be used as a “method of warfare.”

Signatories feared that their use might escalate to the use of lethal chemicals.

* * *

October 10, 2002

Bioweapons Expert Proves Pentagon Papers Release a Political Fraud

by Tetrahedron

NEWS RELEASE

Sandpoint, ID —— A Harvard trained bioweapons expert has documented a political fraud with this week’s allegedly “new” release of Pentagon papers showing the testing of germ weapons and nerve gases on American civilians and military personnel during the 1960s.

According to Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz, author of a national bestselling book in which the military documents were reprinted, these and other tests were extensively detailed as early as 1975 during a congressional investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) illegal storage and testing of such weapons of mass destruction.

As detailed in Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola——Nature, Accident or Intentional? (Tetrahedron Press; 1-888-508-4787) documentation showing the CIA, directing project MK:NAOMI—— America’s top secret biological weapons program——had stockpiled deadly nerve gases and biologicals, and maintained intelligence on military experiments from the 1950s through, at least, the early 1970s.

The illegal weapons cache included biologicals for anthrax, smallpox, tuberculosis, brucellosis, encephalitis ( a relative of the West Nile virus), salmonella food poisoning, and toxins that caused botulism and nerve paralysis.

Contrary to widely disseminated news reports this week, the documents show far more than four states disclosed by the Pentagon papers—— Alaska, Florida, Utah and Hawaii ——were exposed to weapons tests during the 1960s. Biological weapons test sites included the Food and Drug Administration Building, the National Airport, and the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Washington, DC.

Some of these experiments deployed E.coli, strains of which currently threaten meat supplies. New York, NY was sprayed with Bacillus globigii——a bacteria that might have caused the elderly and immune compromised people to become ill.

In addition, the Congressional Record from 1977 cited numerous contracts administered by several universities and private laboratories engaged in the military’s “Biological Testing Involving Human Subjects by the Department of Defense, 1977.”

According to the Hearings before the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research investigating the Army’s secret experiments on American civilians and military personnel, two of these contracts were managed by a private company implicated in the earliest studies of the Ebola virus.

Litton Bionetics Research Laboratories, which oversaw all of the cancer research and weapons testing programs at Fort Detrick in Maryland during a largely funded, little known, “Special Virus Cancer Program,” also developed other biological weapons including ones that combined simple flu viruses with leukemia viruses, apparently to test airborne leukemia.

According to these documents, reprinted in Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola, this subsidiary of Litton Industries, routinely engaged in advanced biological weapons experiments using genetically modified viruses that produced profound immune system failure and the unique cancer complex, more than a decade later, named AIDS.

“There’s no doubt that human subjects in New York and central Africa were being used by these military medical industrialists to even test cancer and AIDS-like viruses during the late 1960s and early 1970s,” Dr. Horowitz said.

“This recent Pentagon release and broad news coverage of it, smacks of a royal ruse. This information is not ‘news’ at all. It appears to be some form of propaganda and political agenda aimed at superficially exposing America’s culpability, along with Saddam Hussein’s, in exposing human populations to genocidal weapons.” . . .

Tetrahedron Publishing Group Health Science Communications for People Around the World 206 North 4th Avenue, Suite 147 &#1776; Sandpoint, ID 83864 &#1776; 208-265-2575 &#1776; FAX: 208-265-2775 Copyright Tetrahedron 2002. For fair use only/ pour usage équitable seulement .Release: No. EV-3O9 Date Mailed: Oct. 10, 2002 For Immediate Release Contact: Elaine Zacky——208/265-2575; 800/336-9266

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October 9, 2002

USA WEAPONS EXPERIMENTS BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL WEAPONS COVERTLY
TESTED ON AMERICANS BODY

PETER JENNINGS, ABC NEWS

(Off Camera) Now, to John McWethy at the Pentagon today, because the US has been somewhat embarrassed today by a report released at the Pentagon about a legacy of the US military buildup during the Cold War. It’s a report that may well be used by enemies of the United States today. The military admits that during the 1960s and ’70s, it tested deadly chemical and biological weapons, including nerve gas, on military personnel without their consent. Here’s ABC’s John McWethy…

(Voice Over) Forty years ago, the US secretly sprayed American sailors and soldiers with nerve gas and biological toxins. The fear was the Soviet Union had these weapons in massive quantities, and the experiments were meant to test America’s protective gear and how the poisonous agents reacted in the open air.

DOCTOR WILLIAM WINKENWERDER, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR HEALTH AFFAIRS

The tests were not conducted to evaluate the effects of dangerous agents on people. As such, they were not medical tests, but were operational tests of war-fighting capability. Nonetheless, people were involved.

JOHN MCWETHY

(Voice Over) More than 5,000 sailors and 500 soldiers participated in these experiments. They often were not told what poisons they were working with, and used gas masks and protective clothing far below what would be considered safe today. The Pentagon today, for the first time, admitted it conducted some of these tests, not only on US ships, but also in the open air on American soil, in Hawaii, Alaska, Maryland, and Florida during the 1960s and early ’70s.

JOHN MCWETHY

(Voice Over) Also in Canada and Great Britain. An unknown number of civilians were exposed, without their knowledge, to what the today Pentagon claimed were nonlethal agents.

REPRESENTATIVE MIKE THOMPSON, DEMOCRAT, ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

The tests happened some 40 years ago, the ones that we know about. And the Department of Defense buried this information.

JOHN MCWETHY

(Voice Over) Jack Alderson, who now has cancer, participated as a tugboat captain in an experiment called “Project Shad,” in which his boat was sprayed with deadly chemicals.

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER JACK ALDERSON, RETIRED, US NAVY

I believe they’re still withholding information. I’m very upset with the way the officers and men of “Project Shad” were treated, and actually, the information concerning them hidden.

JOHN MCWETHY

(Off Camera) The government has now contacted more than a thousand of those who participated in these experiments. But they are still looking for another 4,000. They are trying, Peter, to find out if what they may have been exposed to four decades ago is causing them health problems today.

PETER JENNINGS

(Off Camera) Thank you, John. John McWethy at the Pentagon.

Copyright 2002 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. ABC News Transcripts. For fair use only

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October 31, 2002

Lethal Sarin Tested on Big Island

The Pentagon says sarin
nerve gas was tested in 1967
in the Waiakea Forest

By Gregg K. Kakesako, Honolulu Star-Bulletin

Lethal sarin nerve gas was secretly tested in the Big Island’s Upper Waiakea Forest Reserve in 1967, according to disclosures by the Pentagon today.

The purpose of the 1967 sarin test, called Red Oak, Phase I, was to determine how effective 155mm cannon projectiles and 115mm rocket warheads could disperse the gas when fired in a jungle environment, the Pentagon said. Sarin is a volatile and lethal nerve agent.

Besides Hawaii, the 115mm rocket heads and 155mm projectiles were tested in Panama between April and May 1967. However, sarin gas was only released in the Big Island forest southwest of Hilo.

The Pentagon did not say what Army units were involved in the Big Island tests or the number of soldiers involved.

The Aum Shinrikyo Cult was reported to have used the nerve agent sarin in a Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 12 and sending 5,000 to hospitals.

In 1966, the Big Island’s Olaa region also was used as part of project “Yellow Leaf,” where the biological aerosol Bacillius globigii was tested.

Initially, Bacillus globigii was believed to be harmless bacterium. Researchers later discovered the bacteria could cause infections in people with weak immune systems. The purpose of the tests was to determine its diffusion characteristics under a jungle canopy.

The Pentagon also disclosed today that the riot control agent CS tear gas also was secretly tested that same year in “a tropical jungle environment.” However, no test site was identified.

Soldiers and volunteers, who were not wearing protective gas masks, were exposed to CS tear gas which was dropped from an aircraft and fired from a handheld launcher.

None of the participants or units were identified.

Earlier this month the Pentagon said another test, “Big Tom”, involved spraying Bacillus globigii over Oahu in May and June 1965. Two other tests on the Big Island, in April through June 1966, used small bombs to test a compound with benzilic acid in the upper Waiakea Forest Preserve, southwest of Hilo.

The substance can cause stupor, hallucinations and confusion.

On Oct. 9, the Pentagon said that at least seven secret chemical and biological weapons tests were held at sea near Hawaii beginning in January 1963 and continued until 1969. Some used the military’s deadliest nerve agent, VX.

To date, the Pentagon has acknowledged and released 45 fact sheets on the 46 secret Cold War-era chemical and biological warfare tests conducted more than 40 years ago involving U.S. soldiers and sailors. The tests were conducted by the Deseret Test Center, established at Fort Douglas, Utah, between 1962-73. The test center was closed in 1973.

The chemical and biological warfare test was known as Project 112. The test center planned 134 tests with 46 confirmed to be conducted and 62 canceled.

* * * * *

Message from the Special Assistant

On October 31st, the Department of Defense released five more detailed fact sheets on Cold War-era chemical and biological warfare tests identified as Deseret Test Center Project 112. Project 112 was a comprehensive program initiated in 1962 out of concern for our nation’s ability to protect and defend against these potential threats. These fact sheets are in addition to the 40 fact sheets previously released since September 2001.

Release of the information is part of an on-going effort to provide information needed by the Department of Veterans Affairs to respond to some veterans’ claims that tests conducted in the 1960s and early 1970s may have affected their health. The new fact sheets cover tests performed on land, in Hawaii and what was then the Panama Canal Zone.

A DoD investigative team found that actual chemical warfare agents, as well as simulants for biological and chemical agents, were used in some of these tests….

* * * * *

< < < FLASHBACK < < <

From Britannica Book of the Year –1947

March 5, 1946 – Atomic bombing of Japan was strongly condemned in report issued by special commission of Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America.

April 16, 1946 – Statement that atomic bomb tests on Bikini atoll were intended for “defensive” rather than for aggressive purposes, was made by Vice-Adm. W.H.P. Blandy.

July 1, 1946 – Superfortress dropped Nagasaki-type atomic bomb from height of 30,000 ft. over 73 vessels anchored in target area off Bikini atoll; five ships were sunk, nine craft were heavily damaged and at least 45 other ships suffered varying degrees of damage.

For the purpose of the experiment, 4,800 animals were placed on the ships. A task force of 1,000 vessels and 42,500 men participated. On July 1, a United States army bomber took off from Eniwetok and dropped an atomic bomb set to explode close to the surface of the water.

A second test in which an atomic bomb was exploded under water took place on July 25.

The 161 natives, of mixed Melanesian-Polynesian stock, were removed to Rongerik Atoll 130 mi. to the east in February.

Though Rongerik, previously uninhabited, appeared to have all the advantages of Bikini, the exiled natives expressed a desire to return to their home island in Oct. 1946.

The report was released because of the presence of radioactivity on Bikini….

* * * * *

July 1, 1946

A-Bomb Sinks 2 Ships and Damages 17; Capital Vessels Escape Extensive Harm; Destroyer Capsizes; Experiment `Success’

By Gerald G. Gross, The Washington Post

Aboard the USS Appalachian, Bikini (Monday), July 1 — An unearthly brilliance that petrified observers flashed from Bikini Lagoon as the world’s fourth atomic bomb was loosed at 5:00:00 p.m.(Washington time) Sunday.

Twenty seconds later, that fearsome blaze of light was followed by a giant rumble which reached this command ship 18 miles from the Bikini target area, where 73 guinea pig ships were testing the force of the man-made atomic monster. . . .

A creamy canopy of cloud, tinged with pink writhed and twisted 5 miles high, temporarily blotting out the result of history’s greatest experiment.

Three hours later, when that beautiful but deadly radioactive cloud was swept away by northwest winds, we steamed close to Bikini Lagoon to receive reports of the holocaust: two ships sunk, one capsized and 17 damaged.

Tally of Damage . . .

There were no known casualties. There was no tidal wave, no earthquake. First reports indicated no extensive damage to capital ships.

Many observers seemed disappointed by the reports after the terrific anticipation and suspense which had been built up within us. Some had expected terrific destruction: perhaps they expected too much.

“Very Good Accuracy”

Soon after the bomb was dropped from the Superfortress “Dave’s Dream,” Vice Admiral W.H.P. Blandy, commander of “Operation Crossroads,” had announced in a broadcast from his flagship:

“The bomb was dropped with very good accuracy. I must say here that I am very well pleased indeed with the excellent performance of our task force in the operation. It could not have been better. …

As the flash of light careened crazily across the southwestern sky and disappeared into nothing, a steward’s mate, standing behind me as I sat at the starboard rial of the Appalachian, muttered, half to himself.

“Hosanna, Lord, I’m still alive.”

That had been the immediate reaction of all of us, the almost 40,000 men watching the never-to-be-forgotten spectacle which already has cost the United States about 70 million dollars, not counting the cost of the bomb.

Observers who had been in eyewitness range of the bomb “drop” stretched out on the deck of ships with their feet pointed toward the blast — peering through special glasses — generally agreed that the bomb had “missed” its primary target, the red-painted Nevada.

The blast, of course, was an air burst — at an undisclosed altitude — and the debate over the bombardier’s accuracy undoubtedly will continue for some time.

Cloud Drifts as Planned

“We cannot accurately determine extent of the damage until boarding crews enter the lagoon and go aboard the target ships to make detailed surveys,” Admiral Blandy said afterward in a broadcast.

“There has been no tidal waves, no earthquakes or any other unnatural phenomena. The radioactive cloud is drifting as we had estimated. It will no endanger personnel, ships or other Pacific Islands.

“I might say here that as a precautionary measure, we had already embarked the original natives of Bikini, who are now living at Rongerik atoll on board two LSTs (landing, ships, tank) ready to evacuate on an hour’s notice should an unfortunate shift of wind require it.

“It is not required. Those natives are now being put back on shore.

“In short, nothing has occurred here today which has been contrary to our original plans and estimates. Within 12 hours I will make another report summarizing the results of the test as we know them.

“I think it is safe to say at this time that this `Able-Day’ detonation has been highly successful from the point of view of an operation and a test.

“We expect to learn facts of great value. As a final word, I hope that the public will adopt the same attitude as we do in Joint Task Force One and not to be too hasty in judging results. There is much more to learn.

At Kwajalein, 240 miles away, observers reported they could see that atomic cloud which hung over us, but could not hear the explosions.

From the Appalachian, our view of the blast scene was blocked just after the explosion by a white cloud that drifted between us and the lagoon. When it passed away, we saw a giant column rising into the substratosphere like a genie out of a diabolic thousand and one nights, creamy white inside and surrounded by a crimson glow.

Within 10 minutes it had risen to 20,000 feet and it continued soaring skyward to an estimated 50,000 feet. The fire which followed the blast, however was not nearly as great as we anticipated. . . .

Before the bomb drop, over ship’s loudspeakers came a continuous droning voice, giving the location of the bombing plane piloted by Maj. Woodrow P. Swancutt of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis. Radio reports were made from the plane itself until the bomb was actually dropped.

With the cry, “Bomb away and falling” followed by the exclamation, “Look at that! What ho!” the plane’s radio cut out. The bomb, “Gilda,” named after the motion picture in which Rita Hayworth starred, was on its way. . . .

After the blast, as we cruised within eye-range of Bikini, we were startled to see palm fronds still dancing in the tropical breeze. The steel towers erected on the island, on which were placed instruments to record the damage, were still standing, apparently not damaged.

There was virtually no sign of smoke in the area.

The scene of comparative serenity seemed to delight some of the Navy officers, jubilant in the belief that the test had not demonstrated that modern navies are obsolete in this atomic era.

Admiral Blandy has announced that no human beings will be permitted to enter Bikini Lagoon until tests made from radio-controlled boats and planes reveal that the area is absolutely safe.

The first to return were crewmen checking radioactivity of the possibly lethal waters, ships and islands, to establish safety before permitting the bulk of the working fleet to reenter.

“Radiological activity was about as expected,” a brief announcement said.

Yesterday, our press ship, the Appalachian, had been one of the last nontarget ships to desert the sitting-duck array. It was 4 p.m. when we got under way, passing slowly in review before warcraft whose names will shine forever in American naval lore.

The twice-torpedoed Saratoga, a heroine from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima; the Nevada, fearsome avenger of Normandy, Attu and Okinawa. Also there were the Nagato, the Prinz Eugen and American subs and tin cans that earned presidential citations the hard way.

As we sailed to our respective vantage points outside Bikini lagoon in company with transports, landing craft and other auxiliaries, it was remindful of a colony of appeasers, who to save their own hides have placed sacrifices on the altar of some predatory beast are now feeling his wrath. . . .

Bearing southward to get into the open sea we rounded Bikini and moved into the northeasterly course which took us to our present vantage point. A number of men were still on the island making final adjustments to instruments and transporting salvageable material.

Yesterday, Sunday, a few hours before leaving the lagoon, the Appalachian press was host to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Evaluation Board and President Truman’s personal Crossroads Appraisal Committee . . .

* * *

Operation Crossroads

US Atomic Veterans

Rod Van Ausdall

From: rodvan@adelphia.net
To: “Keith” pdxavets@aracnet.com
Subject: OPERATION CROSSROADS
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2000

Like thousands of other 1940s teenagers in WW II, I served my country in the Pacific Theatre, and, after participating in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, returned to the States (San Diego) on my ship, the LST 944.

I went home on a wonderful thirty day leave and upon my return to San Diego, I had a little time to serve before discharge to civilian life and school, so I volunteered for Joint Task Force One and Operation CROSSROADS.

I returned to Pearl Harbor and was assigned to the cruiser SALT LAKE CITY, bound for Bikini as a target ship….

When we arrived off Bikini, we anchored the Salt Lake City in Bikini lagoon, and the crew transferred. I drew assignment to the LST 861. The LST 861 was then tasked to take aboard Bikini natives and transport them to the island of Rongerik.

The preparation for the trip to Rongerik included the construction of primitive toilet facilities on the main deck and little else. I don`t recall how or what the natives were fed but remember they were only aboard one day and night. I`m not sure what was furnished for bedding, if any, but I remember the natives were restricted to topside, forward of the bridge deck area, for the trip to Rongerik.

It was not a pleasant experience for the crew, and, as the natives had suffered abuse by the Japanese during the war, this resettlement by the American Navy must have frightened and bewildered them….

My memories of the lagoon and target fleet have faded but I remember the USS NEVADA had been painted red and was the ground zero target. We all thought this was a shameful way to treat the NEVADA. I recall admiring the German cruiser PRINZ EUGEN. With her long raked bow she was a beautiful ship….

We were about 12-15 miles away during both tests and weren’t in any blast danger. We were underway at the time of each shot. We returned to the lagoon after the shots. I thought it was strange some vessels escaped damage and others close by were sunk or heavily damaged. Scientists with Gieger counters came aboard and we were clicking “hot” but didn’t do anything about it.

The Salt Lake City remained afloat during both tests. I have since learned she was later sunk by the Navy during a terrific air/sea bombardment off San Diego. It is sad to think so many ships with glorious records were sunk without ceremony.

I recall , one night, after the tests, during the voyage back to Pearl Harbor, I went into the galley and when I returned to the darkness of the deck , my hand, which had flour on it, was glowing with light.

After washing my hand the glow disappeared. I don`t know if this was due to radiation but the glow appeared remarkably similar to the phosphorous glow one sees streaming from porpoises when they play around the bow of a ship underway.

When we arrived in Pearl Harbor we were again declared “hot” and all hands transferred off the ship. I went aboard the USS Shangri-La for travel to the US and return to civilian life. I later served in the Korean War and am now 74 and feel great.

In 1984 I recieved a questionaire from the Navy inquiring about my health. I answered I was okay. Later I recieved a computer printout stating I received a “calculated” exposure of Gamma (REM) 0.380, during CROSSROADS, and this was not harmful. “The calculated dosage method was necessary to reconstruct the dosage recieved as only 15% of participants were badged. “

I personally believe there were too many variables and unreliable data sources to properly evaluate and accurately determine individual doses.

Rod Van Ausdall

–Keith Whittle, January 4, 2000

 


 

For much more about the U.S. nuclear tests in the Pacific,
GO TO
> > >
www.antenna.nl/wise/454/4498.html


 

From Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, (1995) by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell:

NATIONAL SELF-BETRAYAL

The atomic transgression enveloped America and Americans.

By the mid-1990s, our country found itself in the midst of what Newsweek called a “nuclear-waste crisis” which one official saw as “the single largest environmental and health risk to the nation.” This vast and lethal “pulsating landscape of atomic waste dumps” stems directly from the manufacture of bombs to use on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, followed by America’s cold-war nuclear weapons buildup.

From the beginning American bomb-makers, in the rush to produce their product, were erratic and careless in the handling, storing, and disposal of the radioactive waste they were bringing into the world. Over the years matters became worse as secrecy and deception – inherited from the Manhattan Project – came to dominate official attitudes.

By late 1989 the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado, where plutonium was purified to weapons-grade quality, had to be closed down and raided by the FBI for “environmental crimes,” so that today Rocky Flats, according to one expert, “is a de facto plutonium dump.”

Radioactive plutonium is not the only waste problem, but it is the most lethal. Plutonium was developed by the Manhattan Project for the sole purpose of making bombs and was produced by the bombardment of uranium with neutrons. So poisonous that the tiniest amounts can kill, there is no more deadly substance known to humankind.

Kai Erikson has pointed out that the most dangerous of these wastes have half-lives of 100,000 years or more, “and they pose a hazard for a good deal longer than that.” For perspective one may ponder that Stonehenge goes back only 4,500 years, the earliest pyramids 5,000 years.

The plant at Hanford, Washington, that produced the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb – and then for the atomic trigger-mechanism of subsequent hydrogen bombs – has been described as “the single most polluted place in the Western world.”

Although Hanford has served primarily as a plutonium-manufacturing facility, the radioactive wastes are so varied, extensive, and badly controlled that no one knows exactly what kind of witches’ brew is in them. According to a knowledgeable engineer who worked at Hanford for many years, the radioactive wastes released there over the years come close to Chernobyl proportions, and 60 percent of that whole amount was released during 1944 and 1945, the period when the Nagasaki bomb was being constructed.

The Hanford area was chosen for the site of an atomic-bomb facility largely because it was so sparsely populated, but overnight it became a thriving boomtown area with workers in the tens of thousands and posters everywhere enthusiastically announcing: There’s a job for you at Hanford.”

At all levels, people were imbued with the special significance of the project for the war effort and performed their work with pride. There was a sense of urgency, a “can-do spirit” . . . . Macho attitudes on the part of supervisors and workers led to circumventing precautions against contamination. People were reluctant to object lest they be seen as “not on the team.”

The attitude extended to engineers in their arrangements for handling materials. One spoke of “using sand filters to get rid of radiation – we had to make things up as we went along.”

This nuclear macho was known as becoming “Hanfordized,” and as one commentator put it, “Hanfordization was the dark side of the can-do spirit that made Hanford work during World War II.”

The attitude continued even after safety rules became more standardized: one engineer, when asked why he did not have the required calculations to support a design for pipes and materials, replied: “We don’t have time for that shit.”

In recent years it has become painfully clear that the surrounding population has paid the price in the form of high incidence of various forms of cancer, thyroid disease, and infant mortality. Because official statements constantly spoke of safety and denied danger, residents felt deceived. One woman who experienced miscarriages and hair loss declared, “I find it impossible to contain my anger at the government’s abuse of my trust.”

Here she articulates an exact psychological definition of a sense of betrayal – a perception of being harmed by a person or entity one had depended upon for support, nurturing, or protection. The anger and bitterness toward those considered responsible for the betrayal – plant officials, the military, the government – gives rise to more general feelings of alienation and distrust.

That has been the sequence with many living near nuclear facilities. “Our government wouldn’t let us work there if it was harmful,” is the way one woman remembered feeling.

But when her husband was near death from bone cancer, she angrily asked, “How can they do that to their own people? They figure they’re all dispensable, why not use them…”

And indeed, the Atomic Energy Commission had mounted an extensive public-relations campaign that Stewart Udall has called “the most long-lived program of public deception in U.S. history.”

One prominent pamphlet had a cowboy mounted comfortably on his horse against a landscape surrounded by a mushroom cloud, with the comment:

 “FALLOUT DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A SERIOUS HAZARD TO ANY LIVING THING OUTSIDE THE TEST SITE.”

When evidence mounted that radiation did indeed constitute a serious hazard, the AEC countered not with an admission of mistakes or with added safety measures but with denial backed by further public-relations techniques and manipulated calculations that bordered on complete fraud – all of which led to still-greater bitterness when discovered.

To make matters even worse, the radioactive waste at Hanford seems to be intractable; efforts at cleanup have failed and appear doomed always to fail. After the government had spent 7.5 billion dollars over a five-year period beginning in 1989, an official from the Environmental Protection Agency could declare: “There hasn’t been any real cleanup. We don’t have any place to put it.”

Victims of radioactivity often connected their plight with American weapons policies. “Go ahead and tell the world,” one of them near Hanford said, “America has created nuclear weapons. At the same time, it’s also created thousands of victims.”

More than that, they experienced compassion for Japanese victims:

“Forty-four years after the end of the war, I can finally understand what the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be going through.”…

* * *

Nature & Politics

When We Bombed the World

By Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn

The Cold War may be over but its legacy remains hot and deadly.

A new report estimates that fallout from open-air nuclear testing will eventually kill more than 15,000 Americans and cause at least 80,000 cancers, and that nuclear testing has exposed to radiation nearly everyone who resided in the United States from 1951 to 2000.

The August 2001 report, prepared by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), is remarkable for several reasons, not least because it’s the first time the US government has released an assessment of the spread and consequences of fallout from global nuclear testing.

It’s also the first time that the government has admitted that cancer deaths nationwide have been caused by the testing. Previously, the government had only admitted adverse consequences to “downwinders” in states adjacent to the Nevada Test Site.

The report was commissioned by Congress in 1998 following public uproar over a 1997 study by the NCI that investigated the fallout of only one radionuclide, iodine-131, and its link to thyroid cancers.

Iodine-131 was dropped as fallout across dairy country, where it was consumed by cows and goats, and concentrated in their milk.

This examination of global fallout is much broader, tracking, among other things, exposure to cesium-137. In addition to that from the Nevada Test Site, the NCI/CDC study also looked at fallout from US tests in the Marshall Islands and Johnson Atoll, British explosions at the Christmas Islands and Soviet testing at Semipalatinsk and Novaya Zemlya.

The irradiation of the global environment has been a uniquely cooperative endeavor, with all the nuclear superpowers contributing.

In total, the US has carried out 1,030 nuclear weapons tests; the former Soviet Union, 715; France, 210; Britain, 45; China, 47.

The US body count is hidden in the accumulation of cancers such as thyroid (2,500 deaths), leukemia (550 deaths), and radiogenic cancers from external exposure (11,000 deaths) and internal exposure (3,000 deaths).

“Hot spots occurred thousands of miles away from the test sites,” said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, which analyzed the data.

“Hot spots due to testing in Nevada occurred as far away as New York and Maine. Hot spots from US Pacific-area testing and Soviet testing were scattered across the US from California, Oregon, and Washington to New Hampshire, Vermont and North Carolina.”

The NCI/CDC study only looked at results of tests conducted from 1951 through 1962. That excluded Chinese tests, some Soviet tests, most French atmospheric testing in the Pacific, pre-1951 US testing in the Marshall Islands, the 1945 New Mexico tests, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and ventings from US and Soviet underground tests.

The fallout statistics don’t account for other deaths and illnesses, including those of uranium miners, nuclear plant workers, and neighbors of such production facilities as Hanford and Rocky Flats.

The National Cancer Institute/Centers for Disease Control study gathered dust for at least six months, as the Bush administration and Congress tussled over how to control the import of its grim conclusions.

Even in the 1950s, the Pentagon and the old Atomic Energy Commission knew that Nevada Test Site fallout was spreading across the country and into Canada and Mexico. Yet they concealed this until February 2002. Although the United States has been grievously tardy in owning up to inflicting this horror on its own people, it is ahead of other nuclear nations, which remain morbidly quiet on the subject.

The tally of the dead and dying from the 11 years of testing doesn’t seem to have given the nuclear hawks the slightest pause. Indeed, the Bush administration’s new Nuclear Posture Review calls for the development and testing of new nuclear “bunker-busters.” This would abridge the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and put another generation at risk.

“Today’s nuclear arsenal continues to reflect its Cold War origin, characterized by moderate delivery accuracy, limited earth penetrator capability, high yield warheads, silo and sea-based ballistic missiles with multiple independent reentry vehicles, and limited retargeting capability,” said the Pentagon review to Congress in January 2002. . . .

Before Bush signs off on new nuclear weapons testing, he should scrutinize the fallout maps that accompany the NCI/CDC study. They are eerily similar to the famous electoral map of 2000.

The cancers have fallen most heavily on the American heartland that, with the Supreme Court, handed Bush the White House.

It would be too much to expect that the next time Bush barks about Saddam Hussein killing his own people he would refer to those maps —— and to their frightful record of atomic victims.

Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn co-edit the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch (www.counterpunch.org) and co-wrote Five Days That Shook the World: The Battle for Seattle and Beyond (Verso), available from their website or from 1-800-840-3683.

* * * * *

May 18, 2000

Honolulu Star-Bulletin Editorial

Claims against U.S. for
nuclear testing

The issue: A tribunal has awarded natives of Enewetak Atoll $341 million as compensation for damages suffered as a result of nuclear weapons tests.

Our view: The United States has made efforts to deal with the effects of the tests but further payments may be justified.

AFTER World War II the United States conducted a series of nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands. Several hundred atoll residents were evacuated to other islands but permitted to return years later after the government conducted cleanup operations to reduce radiation left by the tests.

In 1947 the government moved about 150 people from Enewetak to Ujelang Atoll. They were permitted to return to Enewetak in 1980.

Similarly, the residents of Bikini were evacuated to Kili in 1946. Some were permitted to return to Bikini in 1969, only to be removed again in 1978 when it was found that their bodies had absorbed higher-than-normal amounts of radioactive substances.

The Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal recently awarded $341 million to compensate the natives of Enewetak for damages suffered as a result of the tests. A delegation from Enewetak will meet with federal officials in Washington, D.C., seeking payment of the award through Congress or the U.S. claims court.

There is no question that the islanders whose homelands were devastated by the tests suffered as a result of the tests.

However, it should be noted that the U.S. government has already gone to some lengths to deal with the problems created by the nuclear tests.

As a University of Hawaii scholar points out, from 1977 to 1980 the United States conducted a cleanup and rehabilitation of Enewetak at a cost of $218 million.

In addition, $48 million from an overall settlement in the 1983 U.S. compact with the Republic of the Marshall Islands was earmarked for the benefit of the Enewetak people.

This is not a history of callous neglect. Much effort has already been devoted to making amends for the initial mistakes that resulted from an inadequate knowledge of the results of nuclear radiation.

Nevertheless, the claims tribunal’s award may well be justified as a means of closing the book on this unfortunate situation.

* * * * *

From : APFN <apfn@apfn.org>

To : tphwebsite@thepowerhour.com

Subject : LAB RATS – VFW MAGAZINE 12/2002

Date : Tue, 10 Dec 2002 00:08:47 -0700

Project SHAD: American Servicemen Used As Guinea Pigs

Loads slow – very large web page – very important.

Please forward to all active military and all vet orig.

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/shad.htm

* * * * *

October 21, 2002

Human guinea pigs
By Lisa Stein, U.S. News & World Report

The Army has acknowledged that between 1949 and 1969, 239 populated areas from coast to coast were blanketed with various organisms during tests designed to measure patterns of dissemination in the air, weather effects, dosages, optimum placement of the source and other factors.

Testing over such areas was supposedly suspended after 1969, but there is no way to be certain of this. In any event, open air spraying continued at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.

FULL STORY HERE: http://disc.server.com/Indices/149495.html

# # #

 


 

HARD QUESTIONS

WHO AMONG OUR PATRIOTIC POLITICIANS KNEW ABOUT
THE U.S. TESTING OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
ON ITS OWN CITIZENS -AND DIDN’T TELL US?

(And why are my feathers beginning to glow?)

* * * * *

IF YOU HAVE THE ANSWERS, PLEASE SHARE YOUR LIGHT IN

THE CATBIRD’S FORUM

~ o ~


 

 

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CONDOLEEZZA AND THE CHICKEN HAWKS

THE INDONESIAN CONNECTION

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WHO’S GUARDING THE HEN HOUSE?

THE EAGLE HOODED

NESTS IN THE PENTAGON

THE KISSINGER OF DEATH

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THE NESTS OF OSAMA BIN LADEN

 


 

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Last Update July 21, 2006 by The Catbird

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