LETTER AND RESOLUTION FROM THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN THE U.S.A. Hon. CLEMENT ZABLOCKI, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. December 19, 1969. DEAR MR. ZABLOCKI: I have followed with interest the hearings being conducted on the question of chemical and biological weapons by your Subcommittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Developments. The National Council of Churches, on the basis of its policy statement on "Defense and Disarmament: New Requirements for Security", adopted a resolution on December 4 on the subject of chemical and biological weapons. You will note that it commends the President for the initiative he has taken in this area of concern, and calls for the prompt ratification by the Senate of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, but "without crippling reservations and interpretations such as those which would permit continued use of chemical defoilants and of tear gas as an accessory to lethal weapons." It seems that the use of chemical defoilants which deprive segments of the Vietnamese population of the food necessary for life, and the use of tear gas (CS) to flush opponents from cover and into the range of lethal weapons, should both logically fall under the President's rubric of lethal and incapacitating weapons. At least a majority of the present Protocol signatories appear to agree with this interpretation. I would hope that word of this action by the National Council of Churches would be brought to the attention of your Subcommittee as they pursue the CBW question in their hearings. Sincerely, ALLAN M. PARRENT, RESOLUTION ON CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS (Based upon General Board Policy Statement "Defense and Disarmament: New Requirements for Security," September 12, 1968) ADOPTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY DECEMBER 4, 1969 Whereas the NCCCUSA has previously called for "the strengthening of international revulsion against the production and use of chemical and bacteriological weapons and the development of effective control and verification measures to reinforce international restraints," and Whereas the use in warfare of chemical and biological weapons is repugnant to the Christian conscience, particularly because of the indiscriminate nature of such weapons, their horrendous effects, and the threat their use would pose for the whole human race, and Whereas the President of the United States has recently (a) Reaffirmed the U.S. renunciation of first use of lethal and incapacitating chemical weapons, (b) Stated his intention to submit to the Senate for ratification the Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibiting "the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and-the use of bacteriological methods of warfare," (c) Renounced the use of all methods of biological warfare, and (d) Begun steps to dispose of existing stocks of biological weapons, Therefore be it resolved that the Assembly of the NCCCUSA 1. Commends the president for his initiative in taking a major step toward outlawing chemical and biological warfare and weapons and supports him in his renunciation of the use of such weapons; (261) 2. Recognizes this action as a praiseworthy attempt to find that concurrence between legitimate national interests and the general welfare of the international community for which responsible statesmanship is always seeking; 3. Urges the prompt ratification by the U.S. Senate of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, without crippling reservations or interpretations such as those which would permit continued use of chemical defoliants and of tear gas as an accessory to lethal weapons; 4. Records its opposition to the production, maintenance, or use of all chemical and biological weapons; 5. Encourages the President in his stated intention to dispose of existing stockpiles of biological weapons. LETTER AND REPORT FROM THE FRIENDS COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL LEGISLATION Washington, D.C., December 18, 1969. DEAR FRIEND: We are one of the organizations which heartily endorsed President Nixon's initiative on November 25 in renouncing all use of biological warfare and submitting the Geneva Protocol of 1925 to the Senate. Since that time it has appeared that the order may be much more limited than originally thought. Specifically, it now appears that according to the Defense Department interpretation the prohibition does not include biologically produced toxins despite the traditional inclusion of these in the biological warfare field. The enclosed memorandum prepared by the American Friends Service Committee gives further details on this and other aspects of the President's announcement. We note also that on December 16 the U.N. General Assembly voted 80-3, with 36 abstentions, its interpretation that tear gas and chemical defoliants are included in the prohibition in the Geneva Protocol of 1925. The United States is in a tiny minority in arguing that these chemicals, now widely used in Vietnam, are not prohibited by the Geneva Protocol. Sincerely yours, EDWARD F. SNYDER. REPORT BY THE NATIONAL ACTION/RESEARCH ON THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX-A SPECIAL PROJECT OF THE AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE LITTLE OR NO CHANGE INDICATED IN U.S. CBW ACTIVITIES On November 25 President Nixon held a press conference on chemical and biological warfare (CBW). This speech has been publicized as a major change in U.S. policy and a move on the President's part toward a ban on CBW agents. However, a close analysis of the President's speech reveals that it requires virtually no change in either our current use of chemical weapons in Vietnam, or our research, development and production of these and other CBW munitions. In specific, the President made the following recommendations: As to our chemical warfare program, the U.S.: Reaffirms its oft-repeated renunciation of the first use of lethal This is not a ban on chemical weapons: it is a restriction on first use. However, even this restriction does not cover all chemical weapons; it only covers the ones that the U.S. is not currently using. The range of weapons defined by the U.S. as non-lethal includes all gases (even mustard gas) except the nerve gases (GB and VX). Gases like adamsite (DM), which is being used in Vietnam, are classified as "riot control agents," even though the Army says that DM is not to be used "in any operation where deaths are not acceptable." (1) Even the tear and lung gases, which do not kill their victim directly, are used to drive him into the open where he can be killed by aircraft or gun fire. (2) Yet they are exempted, as "non-lethal" weapons, from the President's restrictions. "First use" of chemical herbicides and defoliants will also continue, despite the fact that they are used to destroy food crops to starve "the enemy," and to destroy the jungle cover to improve kill ratios. The substances used for these purposes include two arsenic compounds, 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T-the latter banned in the U.S. following a study which showed malformations and birth defects in all of the litters of the test mice administered the chemical during pregnancy. The study followed reports in Saigon newspapers of high rates of birth defects in the Vietnamese countryside. (3) The "first use" of such chemical warfare munitions as napalm and white phosphorous, classified as incendiaries, will also continue. (4) Extends this renunciation to the first use of incapacitating The only CW munition classified by the Army as "incapacitating" is BZ, a psycho-chemical similar to LSD. The Pentagon has admitted that BZ is terribly expensive (at $20 a pound, it takes 10 tons to knock out a battalion (5)), and it seems, from trial uses in Vietnam, that the gas has been found to be unreliable. The French newspaper L'Express reported a use of BZ by the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry (Airmobile), March 14, 1966, in the Vietnamese town of Bongson.(6) The problem with BZ is that it affects each person differently. While it makes some people passive, others may act violently irrational. So we are faced with a situation in which the President plans to extend the no-first-use ban to a weapon which we have reportedly used first and found to be ineffective. Consonant with these decisions, the administration will submit to the Senate, for its advice and consent to ratification, the Geneva protocol of 1925 which prohibits the first use in war of "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of bacteriological methods of warfare" (italic added). This treaty, which was never ratified by the Senate largely due to pressure from the chemical industry, the American Legion, and the Army Chemical Corps, provides a ban on first-use-in-war, but does not prohibit research, development, production or stockpiling of CBW munitions. In addition, the Nixon Administration does not consider tear gases and herbicides to be covered by the Protocol, even though two-thirds of the signatory nations (including Britain, France and the USSR) have officially interpreted the ban on "other gases" as inclusive of such weapons. (7) Thus, our ratification of the Protocol, if we impose these limitations, will serve to weaken the ban, while not affecting our current chemical warfare program in Vietnam. Biological weapons have massive unpredictable and potentially uncontrollable consequences. They may produce global epidemics and impair the health of future generations. I have therefore decided that: The U.S. shall renounce the use of lethal biological agents and weapons, and all other methods of biological warfare (italic added). This statement sounds sweeping indeed, at first reading. However, biological weapons constitute less than 10% of the U.S. arsenal of CBW agents (the rest being chemical). Furthermore, at least part of this BW arsenal will not be covered in the ban because of a re-defining of biological toxins which was one result of U Thant's report to the U.N. General Assembly in July, 1969. That report, compiled by chemical warfare experts from all over the world, reclassified the non-reproductive toxins, which are produced by living organisms, as chemical, rather than biological, warfare agents. (8) It was discovered that the first chapter of the U.N. report, which included the changed definition, was written by a team headed by Dr. Ivan Bennett, Director of the New York University Medical Center, Research Contract Director of the Army Chemical Corps and an advisor to the Army on epidemiology and pathology.(9) His staff included three Pentagon officials, and the first draft of Bennett's chapter was written by the Army's CBW experts, according to Representative Richard McCarthy, Democrat of New York. (10) In a telephone conversation with Dr. Bennett, he reported that his staff, even while in Geneva working on negotiations of the final draft, were in telephone contact with the Pentagon "every day." However, he stressed that his participation in the report was that of a private scientist, and thus he could not speak for the Pentagon as to whether they accepted the new definition. (11) Dr. Benjamin L. Harris, Deputy Assistant Director of Chemical Technology of the Office of Defense Research and Engineering, was then asked about the new definition. He acknowledged that until quite recently the military definition of biological warfare was the "employment of living organisms, toxic biological products, and plant growth regulators to produce death or casualties in man, animals or plants; or defense against such actions." (12) However, he said, now that the U.N. committee of "international experts" had decided on this new, clear definition, “we certainly subscribe to it" (emphasis added). He was then asked specifically whether the stockpile of 20,000 Botulinum bullets at Pine Bluff Arsenal (revealed in recent press reports) (13) would be destroyed. Dr. Harris answered: "What we have and where we have it is still classified." (14) Botulinum is the deadly toxin given off by Botulism bacteria. Such dead toxins, unlike live germs, would not set off epidemics that might spread beyond the "hostile territory," nor would they produce the "massive, unpredictable and potentially uncontrollable consequences" which the President cited as the drawbacks to the employment of germ warfare weapons. Thus, far from being banned, as the President implied, the use of germs in warfare has merely been refined. We now produce a "chemical" agent extracted from live germs to induce the disease directly. This allows us to apply the disease to selected targets rather than to rely on random infection. Botulinum bullets, then, could be effective assassination of counterinsurgency weapons which would need only to nick their victims to produce death by Botulism, the disease indused by the powerful toxin. The President has renounced the militarily unreliable part of the U.S. biological arsenal, and has reclassified the useful part as "chemical substances." The U.S. will confine its biological research to defensive measures such as immunization and safety measures (italic added) This statement provides a wide-open loophole for biological research and development (R&D). It practically negates the President's biological warfare renunciation, at least in respect to its impact on our current activities, since it has been traditional to define biological research and development as "defensive." For example, the day of the President's speech, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird told Senator Charles Mathias, Jr. (R-Md.) that "there will be no major impact on the basic research in defense systems and safety" being conducted at Fort Detrick, Md., the nation's biological warfare research and development center. (Among the diseases involved in the work at Detrick are pneumonic plague, tularemia, brucellosis, anthrax, encephalitis, glanders, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, undulant fever, psittacosis, cholera, botulism and coccidioidomycosis.) (15) In fact, the Deputy Commanding Officer at Fort Detrick, Colonel Lucien Winegar, "said it would be 'fair to assume' that Detrick will continue to produce dangerous organisms that could be used offensively, since any defense against biological weapons involves the production of harmful agents that are potentially available to an enemy." (16) As "defense" involves producing "offensive" diseases, so "offense" involves "defensive" inoculation of one's own troops. Thus the lines between defense and offense are blurred to the degree that the distinction becomes meaningless. It would seem that Rep. Richard McCarthy's statement made at Tufts University on September 15, 1969, would still hold true even after the Presidents' speech, McCarthy said: there is very little of a defensive nature in our biological warfare program. We do not have any defense for our civilian population against a germ attack. We do not even have an effective warning system against attack with biological agents. . . . Even our armed forces have no effective means of protection against biological warfare. . . . We can conclude from the lack of a defense that our germ warfare policy is one that would defend against biological warfare by the threat of a biological attack in relation. (17) Finally, we come to a point in the President's speech which suggests a small change in our actual activities, rather than merely a change in our rhetoric. The DOD has been asked to make recommendations as to the disposal of existing stocks of bacteriological weapons. Here the President, while not ordering any specific action has asked the Department of Defense to make recommendations about possible actions. It is hard to tell how this will affect our biological warfare facilities. Fort Detrick (the largest BW center, which had a 1969 budget of $421.5 million (18) claims that it does not stockpile weapons, (19) but maintains only "limited components for biological testing." Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas (which has 273 refrigerated "igloos" for storage, and biological production facilities to mass-produce its |