CBW: Policy by Default

...And one of the senior members of the U.S...

...This was seen at the time as one of the most destructive threats...

...The morning after the NBC show, I found myself still deeply concerned about what I had seen...

...The Arms Control and Disarmament Asency of our State Department found that it could only obtain the information it needed on CBW by borrowing military officers with a background in the subject...

...Minor changes in CBW policy and practice do not receive White House attention because, as former Presidential Press Secretary George Reedy so cogently put it, that kind of thing isn’t decided at the White House level...

...I later heard, from individuals in a position to know, that President Nixon and Secretary of State Rogers did not know that we had nerve-gas munitions abroad...

...The briefing officer, Brigadier General James A. Hebbeler, would not even admit that the nerve gas had killed the sheep in Utah...

...One of the major fears during World War I1 was that cities would be attacked by bombers with gas...

...The change in our CBW policy has come from default by our top military and civilian pplicy makers and by Congress...

...After discussing the matter with Wendell Pigman of my staff, I telephoned the two Democrats from my state on the House Armed Services Committee, Otis G. Pike and Samuel S. Stratton...

...A third reason for erosion of our policy against asing gas or germs has been the acquiescence of top policy makers in a series of small changes...

...Like hundreds of thousands of other couples across the land, my wife, Gail, and I were sitting in our living room watching television...

...Oka quoted a source close to the Premier as saying: “It’s a nasty problem and the Government is agoning over the possibility that it will be used to fan anti-base feeling, anti-American feeling...

...Most military men don’t like gas because it makes war so cumbersome...

...When my wife fully realized what was being shown, she shooed away our five children and dispatched them to bed...

...The army, I stressed, should be able to answer pertinent questions of public policythe kind of questions which, in the nuclear field, our government makes a point to answer...

...This is not true of CBW...

...To say that I was disappointed with the briefing would put it mildly...

...It was held on March 4th, exactly one month after the NBC documentary on CBW...

...Facing the task of winning a civil war with military means, they gradually were willing to use almost whatever might be necessary to succeed...

...whose days in Congress go back to the New Deal, came out of the briefing to say that this was the first time he ever heard any of the details of our CBW effort...

...No matter how conscientious these officers may be, they know that they will return to their service and that their performance will be judged according to the goals of the CBW establishment, not of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency...

...It has occurred because of the slow but constant pressures of the technicians: the unnecessary secrecy that covers even the most pedestrian aspects of CBW...

...Premier Sat0 had succeeded in reducing domestic concern over the renewal of the United States-Japan security treaty by focusing on Okinawa...

...relations with its allies...

...Information about CBW has been kept hidden...

...A former top Pentagon official told me this summer that information about CBW often is released only on a “need to know” basis...

...I was equally insistent that at least part of the briefing be unclassified...

...It has meant that CBW technicians must be called in to help prepare almost any policy statement or report on the subject, with a resulting influence on policy...

...The approval authority moved to the U.S...

...The use of defoliants in Vietnam was initiated as a result of Project Agile, a program initiated in the early 1960’s to apply the results of research and technology to guerrilla wars...

...Only a handful of members of the 435-member House of Representatives and the 100-member Senate, perhaps five per cent, are thoroughly familiar with what is going on in the CBW area...

...Embassy in Saigon...

...Keatley indicated that this conclusion could be drawn from an “accidental release of deadly VX nerve gas at the U.S...

...The policy of secrecy has also kept CBW from effective congressional scrutiny...

...Or did the clamor of American public opinion push policy makers into a greater reliance on this part of our arsenal...

...And when United Nations Secretary General U Thant appointed a panel to prepare a report on gas and germs in 1969, seven of the panel’s 14 members were from their country’s CBW establishment...

...It failed to provide adequate answers to my questions...

...It then led to the use of tear gas...

...Japan, of course, is regarded by the United States as a vital link in a workable post-Vietnam Asia, and the matter caused grave concern in Washington...

...The United States quickly assured Japan that U.S...

...State Department Assistant Secretaries, for example, have been unaware of the agreements-signed by U.S...

...This change illustrates the point that the National Security Council or the White House can’t administer a program...

...We have also couched our strat...

...It pointedly refused to comment on an allegation by Neil Sheehan in The New York Times of July 19, 1969, that nerve gas munitions had secretly been issued to U.S...

...Did Congress recommend an increased emphasis on CBW, as some military advocates claim...

...says flatly that the military has kept nerve-gas production hidden from Congress...

...told several Congressmen, including me, that even Majority Leader Carl Albert does not know the identities of these five men...

...Alluding to “evidence” recently produced that “tremendous stockpiles of various deadly compounds are on hand at centers throughout the country,” he declared: “Most of this work has been done without the knowledge of Congress...

...Instead, he used the briefing, as Congressman John Brademas (D-Ind...

...use of Okinawa as the main American strategic base in Asia...

...As a result, the number of ICBM’s, the number of Polaris submarines, the amount of money that we spend on our nuclear deterrents, the number of men that we have in Western Europe and the number of men that we have in Korea and Vietnam are a matter of public record...

...forces on Japan proper do not have chemical weapons “at present” but it waited four days before commenting directly on The Wall Street Journal report...

...New York Times correspondent Takashi Oka cabled a report that Sato’s government “has been severely embarrassed by the incident...

...The nuclear bomb was used so late in the war that there was little time to assess the meaning of the new weapon for gas before massive demobilization began...

...But this close top-level supervision soon stopped...

...they can set guidelines for others, but there are too many activities to permit continuous administration...

...In sheer numbers, the CBW establishment that we inherited from World War I1 was bound to increase its influence unless there were clear policy guidelines that would enable their superiors to regulate this growth...

...The Dugway sheep kill incident was pictured, along with CBW experiments with animals and the anthraxridden British island of Gruinard...

...the failure to subject CBW to rigorous policy analysis following World War 11...

...Chemical and Biological Warfare programs...

...This argument doesn’t make much sense when we have more powerful and more reliable weapons in our arsenal...

...Other White House aides didn’t pay attention to CBW policy because at the time it didn’t seem very important in comparison with other items...

...It offers the possibility to reverse che trend of a CBW policy that I regard as being against the best interests of the United States, a policy that has been more by default than by choice...

...It means that our State Department policy makers with the responsibility to develop a foreign policy that will most effectively draw on our military power have been denied access to CBW information...

...Their sensitivity was understandable...

...It has meant that our Arms Control and Disarmament policy makers have been denied access to information necessary to an intelligent pursuit of arms limitations...

...CBW budget which he oversees “is comparatively small and should be expanded to include the development of counter-agents and antidotes as well as promotion of public education and the distribution of gas masks .” Congressman Claude Pepper (D-Fla...

...germ and gas warfare projects, Gail peered at me and pointedly asked: “You’re a Congressman...

...Then Secretary McNamara said that field commanders could defoliate where needed...

...The result has been that we have designed ICBM warheads to carry gas and germ weaponswarheads that are either less effective than nuclear warheads or too dangerous to use, as is the case with germs...

...The result was a willingness to employ gas with the threat of escalation from tear gas to the more deadly varieties...

...Unfortunately CBW was not important enough to receive much attention...

...Did the White House and the National Security Council direct the Pentagon to increase its capabilities iii this area...

...We do not say how often our ammunition must be replaced...

...After all, I asked, how can you say a weapons system is a deterrent if you don’t publicly tell a potential adversary that you’ve got it...

...forces deployed at other overseas bases...

...a major general in the Army’s Chemical Reserve...

...During the 1950’s and the early 1960’s our most brilliant strategists, both civilian and military, concentrated on restructuring our armed forces to fight the wars of a nuclear era...

...Senate, Allen J. Ellender (DLa...

...A container of the gas, or a weapon carrying it, broke open there, and 24 persons were hospitalized after exposure to it...

...Then the Pentagon admitted that GB nerve-gas weapons were stockpiled in Okinawa and announced that they would be removed from the island...

...said later, to campaign for more funds from the Congress...

...Did the Secretary of Defense single out this area for special attention and order the services to give it a high priority...

...base on Okinawa last week...

...Word of the incident has just gotten back to Washington...

...Shocked by what she saw about U.S...

...Secretary of State William P. Rogers to discuss the continued U.S...

...The chief defender of the CBW program and the Congressman most knowledgeable about it is Robert L. F. Sikes (D-Fla...

...It is admittedly difficult to devote a lifetime of effort to a project and not come to believe in it...

...This article is adapted from his book,The Ultimate Folly,rvhich will be published this month by Alfred A. Knopf foreign policy and the climate of world opinion now make it necessary, and even acceptable, to use gas and germ weapons...

...This has meant that only a handful of members of Congress have been familiar with any of the details of the program...

...Defensive measures are very inconvenient...

...Con-gressman Sikes, whom General Hebbeler had invited to the briefing, emerged early to tell the press that the Soviet Union has a CBW capability “seven to eight” times that of the U.S...

...His congressional district is also the home of the major Air Force CBW research laboratory and test station, Eglin Air Force Base...

...Secrecy surrounding a minor Defense program had caused a major storm in U.S...

...What was once a program defensive in nature is gradually converted into one that is employed offensively...

...Similarly, on one of the rare occasions when a congressional committee reviewed CBW (the Committee on Science and Astronautics hearings in 1959) the report of the committee was written by a CBW officer...

...We do not say what our tactical, as opposed to our strategic, plans may be...

...President Nixon ordered a thorough and comprehensive Executive Branch review of our chemical and biological warfare policies and practices early this summer...

...This was the first such review ordered in more than a decade...

...It has meant that even top policy makers in the Pentagon have been denied access to CBW information because they don’t have “a need to know...

...The unnecessary secrecy was revealed in its most startling aspect on Friday, July 18, 1969, when The Wall Street Journal, in an article by Robert Keatley, reported that the United States had “apparently deployed operational weapons armed with lethal chemical agents as part of its deterrent force overseas...

...The answer, in my opinion, is something entirely different...

...The shift from a humanitarian use of gas in Vietnam to the widescale deployment by 1969 is indicative of the same point...

...And as I pointed out earlier, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency found that it was able to get necessary information about the Pentagon’s gas and germ programs only after it had added military officers to its staff on a loan basis...

...egy in terms of a direct deterrent-that is, if the enemy uses germs, our only effective defense is the threat that we will use them, too...

...And it has meant that even the President has been uninformed of CBW activities that are fraught with significance for our nation...

...Why should these materials be stored abroad unless there is a clear and present danger of the outbreak of a war that might place our national survival at stake...

...Alluding to anti-nuclear weapons feeling in twice atomic-bombed Japan, a high official told Oka: “We used to say, ‘No nukes on Okinawa.’ Now we will have to say, ‘No nukes and no gas.’ It’s going to become a national demand...

...high Defense and other Administration officials were debating what to say about the matter or whether to say anything...

...But perhaps more than anything else, it is the heavy curtain of secrecy surrounding CBW that has created (or permitted) the change in policy...

...But the inability to bring the Vietnamese conflict to a successful conclusion first led to the use of defoliants...

...One of the questions that came to bother me more and more, however, was how the United States had gradually drifted away from our traditional policy of no-first-use of chemical and biological weapons...

...They must believe that we can and will do what we say we will do...

...I realized that I had undoubtedly and UIIwittingly supported this kind of activity by voting for appropriation bills in which funds for this purpose were buried...

...A second reason for the shift away from our traditional CBW policy has been the failure to subject it to a continuous and rigorous analysis of strategy...

...military leaders and military leaders in seven or eight other nationsconcerning the stockpiling and use of CBW arms...

...To make our nuclear capability credible, we must let potential opponents know what we have...

...In Washington’s world of security classifications, there are many more categories than just “confidential,” “secret,” and “top secret...

...I followed this advice, took to the floor at noon to announce the plan, but soon discovered that the Pentagon insisted that it be conducted in a totally secret context...

...When decisions about the use of chemicals or germs have come up at the White House level during the Vietnamese conflict, they have been on small but, in my opinion, important changes...

...The news shook the pro-American government of Japanese Premier Sat0 to its very foundations on the eve of a visit by U.S...

...Who or which group had been responsible for the change...

...And Congress,with rare exceptions, paid little attention to our gas and germ warfare activities...

...What do you know about this?’ “Nothing,” I answered...

...It even led to consideration of the use of soil sterilants when the infiltration barrier along the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Vietnam was first discussed...

...The Army finally consented to the two-part briefing...

...At nine o’clock NBC-TV presented its “First Tuesday” show...

...A member of defense appropriations subcommittees for 20 years, Ellender told his Louisiana constituents in a taped broadcast on July 26, 1969, that in all those two decades he “never came across any line item [in appropriations bills] for the production of nerve gas...

...The agreements were never sent to the State Department for approval...

...But my indignation climbed as I continued to watch the story unfold...

...Only five House Appropriations Committee members are cleared for “Top Secret...

...and the frustrations of our professional military officers in attempting to win the war in Vietnam...

...But the uproar over whether Washington consulted Tokyo before storing nerve gas on Okinawa threatened the prospects for treaty renewal and did little to further United States-Japanese relations...

...But we do make known the broad outlines of our strategy and our capability...

...Each told me he knew little about CBW but suggested I request a briefing from the Army on the various aspects of the program...

...The principal segment documented aspects of British Canadian and U.S...

...Did the Department of State conclude that our Richard D. McCarthy is a Democratic member of Congrcss from Buffalo, New York...

...One afternoon, in 1968, as we stood at the lunch counter near the House floor, Congressman Daniel Flood (D-Pa...

...the acquiescence of top-level policy makers in a series of small policy changes that amount in total to a new policy: the small size of the CBW program in proportion to our other defense programs...

...Because aspects of CBW have been kept hidden, other departments of the Executive Branch, the Congress, and even the United Nations have been forced to employ CBW experts when they deal with the subject...

...The source of constant pressure for the use of CBW weapons has come from the technicians, those civilian employees and those military officers who work with the development of this technology throughout their lives...

...What little CBW strategy there is comes from the First and Second World Wars...

...Another reason for the adoption of a CBW policy contrary to our best interests has been the frustration of our military officers with the war in Vietnam...

...We do not release precise performance specifications of our ICBM’s to the press...

...There are legitimate grounds for secrecy about certain aspects of our military...

...Why,” he asked, “should so much of these deadly compounds of all varieties be stockpiled that it’s now proving difficult to dispose of them without endangering many of our people...

...CBW: Policy by Default by Congressman Richard D. McCarthy My concern about America’s gas and germ warfare policies and practices developed during the evening of February 4,1969...

...I was informed by a Pentagon official familiar with the history of this project that the first defoliation test was conducted by the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Project Agency as a part of Project Agile...

...As chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, he has been instrumental in funding the germ and gas warfare operations...

...As a result, some policy makers who really did have a need to know were excluded from the decision-making process...

...They are the ones familiar with funding for the CIA, the Green Berets, CBW, and other secret projects and organizations...

...He told the Washington Post that the current U.S...

...Each use of defoliants had to be approved “way up,” even perhaps at the White House level, in the early days of the program...

...The sum of these small changes, when coupled with the relatively small size of the CBW program in our Defense establishment, amount to one major change...

...In spy terminology, such penetration cannot help but have an influence on the policies that are adopted...