US Military Charged with Operating a Secret Chemical Weapons Program
"Sunshine Project" Provides Evidence for US Violation of International
Law
(Austin and Hamburg, 24 September 2002) -- The Sunshine Project
today accuses the US military of conducting a chemical weapons
research and development program in violation of international arms control law.
The charges follow an 18 month investigation of the Department of
Defense's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD). The
investigation made extensive use of the US Freedom of Information
Act to obtain Pentagon records that form the primary basis of the
allegations. An array of documents, many of which have been
posted on the Sunshine Project website, demonstrate beyond a reasonable
doubt that JNLWD is operating an illegal and classified chemical weapons
program.Specifically, the Sunshine Project accuses the JNLWD of:
1. Conducting a research and development program on toxic
chemical agents for use as weapons, including anesthetics and psychoactive
substances, in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention;
2. Developing long-range military delivery devices for these
chemicals, including an 81mm chemical mortar round, that violate the
Chemical Weapons Convention.
3. Pursuing a chemical weapons program while fully cognizant that it
violates the Chemical Weapons Convention and US Department of Defense
regulations;
4. Attempting to cover up the illicit program by classifying as
secret even its own legal interpretations of the Chemical Weapons
Convention and attempting to block access to documents requested under
US information freedom law.
These charges are detailed in the attached Annex to this news
release, in the accompanying map and fact sheet, and the Sunshine
Project's JNLWD documents web page, which has full text of more than
two dozen documents. Specific citations are in footnotes below.
The Weapons: JNLWD's secret program is not focusing on highly lethal
agents such as VX or sarin. Rather, the emphasis is on "non-lethal"
chemical weapons that incapacitate. JNLWD's science advisors define
"non-lethal" as resulting in death or permanent injury in 1 in 100
victims.(1) JNLWD's Research Director told a US military magazine "We
need something besides tear gas, like calmatives, anesthetic agents,
that would put people to sleep or in a good mood." (2) These weapons
are intended for use against "potentially hostile civilians", in
anti-terrorism operations, counterinsurgency, and other military
operations.
The major focus of JNLWD's operation is on the use of drugs as
weapons, particularly so-called "calmatives", a military term for
mind-altering or sleep inducing chemical weapons. Other agents
mentioned as militarily useful in the documents are convulsants, which
are dangerous cramp-inducing drugs, and pharmaceuticals that failed
development trials due to harmful side-effects. (3) This interest in
so-called "calmatives" has been discussed in previous Project
publications. (4)
New documents prove the existence of an advanced development program
for long range delivery devices for the chemicals, in particular a
"non-lethal" 81mm mortar round with a range of 2.5 kilometers and
which is designed to work in standard issue US military weapons (the
M252 mortar) (5). Photos of testing of this round and a gas generating
payload canister are posted on the Sunshine Project's website. (6)
JNLWD has recently asked the company building the gas canister,
General Dynamics, to develop methodologies to characterize the
aerosols it generates, and to calculate the ground area coverage of
gas clouds created by an airburst at different altitudes. (7) A
chemical mortar round with a 2.5 kilometer range has solely military
applications, and cannot possibly be justified for a US military
domestic riot control purpose.
The Solutions:
1) UN Inspectors into the US: The Sunshine Project, while urging the
United States to immediately halt this chemical weapons program, also
announces its intention to take its allegations and evidence to the
7th Session of the Conference of the States Parties of the Chemical
Weapons Convention, scheduled to start in The Hague on October 7th.
There, the Sunshine Project will present its case to governments and
request tthe Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons send
a UN weapons inspection team to the US to investigate.
2) US Oversight: The Sunshine Project calls upon the US Congress to
investigate JNLWD's arms control violations, to conduct public
hearings, to hold JNLWD and its superiors responsible for their
actions, to freeze all JNLWD funding, and to immediately declassify
all JNLWD documents.
Says Edward Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project US, "We can
present hard evidence for an illicit and shameful chemical weapons
program in the US. If the US invades Iraq and uses these weapons, we
may witness the depravity of the US waging chemical warfare against
Iraq to prevent it from developing chemical weapons."
Jan van Aken, Director of the Sunshine Project in Germany says "The US
administration 'names names' of alleged violators at arms control
meetings. We have written documentation that the British government
told JNLWD that its program violates the CWC in private talks. (8)
However, Europe must publicly denounce American chemical weapons
violations in The Hague. Those who remain silent will bear part of the
guilt."
Escalation danger: JNLWD's chemical weapons program not only violates
international law, it presents an escalation threat. Any use of
chemical weapons in a military situation -- even if the agents are
purported to be "non-lethal" -- carries the inherent danger of
escalation into an all out chemical war and heightened violence. If
attacked with a chemical of unknown nature with a fast incapacitating
effect, victims may assume that lethal chemicals, leading to
heightened violence or even retaliation in kind. This rapid escalation
danger is one of the key reasons why the Chemical Weapons Convention
prohibits the use of even tear gas or pepper spray as a method of
warfare.
The Road to a Chemical Arms Race: In addition, JNLWD's program might
easily be used to disguise lethal chemical weapons development. Deadly
chemicals are the former specialty of JNLWD's partner in the program,
the US Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground. Long range delivery devices may
easily be converted to use biological agents or other chemicals,
including lethal nerve gas. Design and development of new delivery
devices, production facilities or delivery experiments -- all key parts
of a lethal chemical weapons program -- might easily be performed by
the US or other countries if the buzz-word "non-lethal" is used as a
cover. If non-lethal chemical warfare programs are not banned, the
basic principles of the CWC could fall apart, resulting in new full
blown chemical arms race even before Cold War stocks are destroyed.
