A New Type Of Chemical Warfare
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Thursday October 31, 2002 19:10
by cSc
...from znet
ZNet
A New Type Of Chemical Warfare
by Stephen Kerr
October 30, 2002
Russian authorities only wanted to put them to sleep. And the 700 odd hostages did go to sleep, as did their captors. But 116 never woke up.
Most of the survivors are still in the hospital, held hostage to a state military secret that has now slipped out.
This ‘rescue’ of the Moscow hostages may have been accomplished using a powerful new type of chemical weapon, a calmative chemical that instantly sedates its victims, rendering them unconscious. The US Ambassador to Moscow told the Washington Post yesterday that Russian officials informed him that a ‘calmative’ chemical was used. Russian officials are keeping silent on exactly what the chemical was.
It is increasingly likely that the chemical used by the Russian troops was based on new medical research into the transformation of popular sedative drugs into incapacitating chemical weapons. Valium, Buspar, Zoloft and even animal tranquilizers are being studied for their ability to sedate and tranquilize the political enemies of powerful states. Russia has deployed a similar substance, to disastrous effect.
Some of this research is also happening in the United States, in apparent violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, signed into law by the US government in 1997.
That’s what a US NGO has been saying for months, but few have been listening. It has taken one hundred and sixteen dead Russians to wake the world up to the latest issue in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The newest field of combat is medicine itself.
The Sunshine Project accused United States of violating the Chemical Weapons Convention in early October at the Hague meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Ed Hammond, the project’s director has amassed a collection of documents that implicate the US Marines and American academics working with them to develop these sedative drug weapons. The US government considers the work legal.
“We view that our denunciation of the Pentagon work on non-lethal weapons as an important test of the OPCW, and what we are going to test here is if the Chemical Weapons Convention is able to react, and to evenly enforce what the law says when it’s a large and powerful country like the United States that is apparently violating it,” said Ed Hammond in early October.
The US government subsequently kept Hammond and the Sunshine Project out of the OPCW meetings, denying them accreditation. This was unprecedented.
Previously only Taiwanese NGO delegates had been excluded from such meetings – by China. Washington strong-armed the Hague gathering, a fact few would find unusual now. But the new Empire on the Potomac could not control the development of historic events, or put the genie back inside its little pill bottle.
Washington helped free the genie in the first place.
In November 2000, the US Marines’ Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) conducted joint war games exercises with the British Amy in which they agreed that they needed to put civilians to sleep, and that the Chemical Weapons Convention stands in the way. One can read the entire document on the Sunshine Project’s website, along with many other interesting papers. The US Army’s Edgewood chemical facility was researching sedative drug weapons as early as 1994.
The US Marines have now stopped releasing documents to Hammond under the US Freedom of Information Act.
It’s no wonder. The documents that have been released show the programme in the unflattering light of day.
A JNLWD power point presentation describes Serbian children protesting NATO bombing as terrorists. Palestinian children throwing rocks also come in for special mention.
The Commander of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate was quoted in the New Scientist as stating. “I would like a magic dust that would put everyone in a building to sleep, combatants and non-combatants.” That commander, Col. George Fenton was present for the London war gaming exercise where these new chemicals were discussed – and where the Chemical Weapons Convention was described as a challenge to their development.
Another study, conducted by three researchers at the Applied Research Lab at Penn State University, explores the potential of sedative drugs to be transformed into chemical weapons.
“The Advantages and Limitations of Calmatives as a ‘non-lethal technique’ explores the delivery these sedative drugs via novel means including “drinking water, topical administration to the skin, spray inhalation,” and “a drug filled rubber bullet”.
The Penn State scientists described a potential target for these new weapons as a crowd of refugees that was ‘agitated and unwilling to wait’ for the distribution of emergency food.
The three scientists who authored the report chose to allow a public affairs officer for the University of Pennsylvania to answer all questions related to their research. That officer would only say that the report was ‘designed to list possible alternatives to deadly force for crisis situations,’ a purpose that would be familiar to hundreds of Moscow residents who are either awaiting news from their stricken loved ones, or mourning their deaths.
Paul Root Wolpe is also a professor at Penn State, and is the Director of bio-ethics for NASA. For Wolpe, the problems posed by the development of this new technology are similar to those brought up by the development of nuclear weapons. A new, medical arms race will now begin, once terrorists or other governments understand that medical knowledge could be used to put their armies to sleep without a shot being fired.
He says, “This question has been debated for thousands of years. The classical philosophy, the Hippocratic corpus and Socrates discuss the question of whether a physician should help the state. The general consensus was that a physician should help the state insofar as the state is promoting public health. They should not be helping the state in any other kinds of activities, especially war making activities if they can be cast in an ethical light.” For Wolpe, research into drug weapons falls into an ethical grey area.
The Penn State researchers and JNLWD both assert that the drug weapons study was only conducted for the personal interest of the researchers, and not for JNLWD or the Department of Defence. They noted that ethical considerations were beyond the scope of their research.
Purely by coincidence, two of the Penn State researchers also work for the Human Effects Laboratory. This lab studies the effect of non-lethal weapons on people – for JNLWD.
Other studies conducted by this lab have included the effects of new blunt trauma weapons on human cadavers and pigs.
Joe Rutigliano, a lawyer for the US Marines’ Judge Advocate’s office states that “The JNLWD receives hundreds of proposals every year for non-lethal capabilities from third party laboratory organizations. What you’re seeing in many of those documents are unsolicited proposals.” He states that JNLWD is not funding research into new sedative drug weapons.
Rutigliano was present at the November 2000 war games in where the US and British military agreed that the US Department of Justice and the Department of Energy were permitted to engage in such research, whereas the DoD was not.
Professor Julian Perry Robinson of the University of Sussex is one of the world’s top experts on chemical weapons. He’s authored over 400 papers on the subject, and advised the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the WHO and the British Government. He’s a chemist and a lawyer. Robinson says that these new substances fall under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and should be banned.
“The Sunshine Project is pointing out a serious problem with the chemical weapons convention. A leading state party has suddenly got hooked on the crazy idea that non-lethal weapons technology, and it sees the CWC has standing in the way of the full development of this idea,” says Robinson, referring to the United States.
The Sunshine Project has taken the position that states should abide by existing international law. “If the United States is going to go around the world pointing its finger at other countries for violating chemical and biological arms control law, it better make sure that it has its own house in order. Our work can demonstrate concretely that the US’s own house is not in order,” says Ed Hammond. In today’s current political climate, the statement almost seems radical.
Hammond is preparing to push for a public inquiry into the development of these new weapons. “The gas used in Moscow is the Russian equivalent of the US programme to produce so-called non-lethal or incapacitating chemical weapons. They can incapacitate to the point of causing mass death,” he says.
He also warns of a deadly new arms race. “If governments do not muster the political will to condemn the use of gas in Moscow, then we are going to be faced with a very dangerous situation; the much broader use of chemical weapons.”
The Sunshine Project’s Website is available at http://www.sunshineproject.org
JNLWD’s website is at http://www.jnlwd.usmc.mil/
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=2562
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Comments (12 of 12)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12the russians attack on the embassy was a huge success... what did you expect them to do???
the only thing they did wrong is not telling the doctors the exact gas they used... this probably would have saved lives...
Success!!!???? How can you call mass murder success!!!
Several human rights organizations have denounced Russia for what they did and what they do on a daily basis in a country where there's no rescpect for human rights at all, whether you're russian, chechenian or whatever country you're from.
If I were held hostage in Russia on a similar case, I'd rather commit suicide instead of waiting for the russian troops to rescue me!
what do you think they should have done???... suggest an alternative.... of course it's not ideal... but it's making the best of a very bad situaition....
I wonder if the russians did really their best to deal with the chechenian rebels.
I have the feeling that they didn't talk too much to them...
if you go back in the newswire you will see I dumped many files relating to the Moscow seige from the moment it began to its conclusion.
I also drew a link with non lethal weaponry and the upcoming NATO conference in Prague.
We in the European protesting community are very worried about the development of chemical weaponry as "crowd-control method of choice".
Police and Security forces have long used water cannon, tear gas and plastic/rubber bullets.
However recently there has been suspicion of more sinister types of gas being used or developed.
This is supported by articles in the US mainstream press and oddly enough the result of "humanitarian" liberal lobbying in Washington, and other elements.
the drug used in Moscow was:
"FENTANYL[2] ~50-100 X MORPHINE
Source: '-'
1 Department of Chemistry, University of Belgrade, Studentskitrg 16.
P.O Box 550, Yu-550 11001,
Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia
2 Institute for Chemistry, Technology and Metalurgy, Center for
Chemistry, Studentski trg 16, 11001, Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia
3 Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Clinical Pharmacology,
Medical Faculty, P.O. Box 662, Dr Subotica 1, Belgrade, FR
Yugoslavia"
its sinister.
I first learnt of this drug about seven years ago when it was catalogued with Ketamin as a anaesthetic inhibitor. Its availabilty in Gasous form is worrying.
Our advice to protesters who are fired upon by police using gas is to collect cartridge shells afterwards for anaylsis.
Very interesting information, thank you!
From euronews.net
Post-siege media curbs in Russia
The freedom of the media in Russia is under the spotlight after deputies in Moscow approved tough new curbs on reporting. The restrictions will apply to coverage of so-called "anti-terrorist" operations and it has not gone unnoticed that they could well have complicated efforts to report last week's theatre siege. Under the new bill, the media may well have been unable to report key aspects of the Kremlin's controversial operation to free hundreds of theatre-goers held captive by Chechen militants.
This may have included the mention of a powerful knock-out gas which sent the hostage-takers to sleep but which also killed 117 of those being held. More than 200 ex-hostages remain in hospital. The bill, which must now go before the Federation Council upper house of parliament, again focuses attention on President Vladimir Putin's patchy record on media freedoms.
http://www.euronews.net/create_html.php?page=detail_info&lng=1&option=1,info
From euronews.net
Post-siege media curbs in Russia
The freedom of the media in Russia is under the spotlight after deputies in Moscow approved tough new curbs on reporting. The restrictions will apply to coverage of so-called "anti-terrorist" operations and it has not gone unnoticed that they could well have complicated efforts to report last week's theatre siege. Under the new bill, the media may well have been unable to report key aspects of the Kremlin's controversial operation to free hundreds of theatre-goers held captive by Chechen militants.
This may have included the mention of a powerful knock-out gas which sent the hostage-takers to sleep but which also killed 117 of those being held. More than 200 ex-hostages remain in hospital. The bill, which must now go before the Federation Council upper house of parliament, again focuses attention on President Vladimir Putin's patchy record on media freedoms.
http://www.euronews.net/create_html.php?page=detail_info&lng=1&option=1,info
this is the latest "recollection" article I´ve found in Hawaii!
sunny place to test SARIN no?
Isn't Indymedia all about giving news on issues even when they disappear (or don't appear at all)from the front pages of the mainstream press ;)?
America's Bioterror
If President Bush is serious about waging war against weapons of mass destruction, he should start at home.
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 19th March 2002
Dear President Bush,
In commemorating the victims of the attacks on New York and Washington last week, you called for disputes to be "settled within the bounds of reason." You insisted that "every nation in our coalition must take seriously the growing threat" of biological and chemical weapons. You assured us that on this issue "there is no margin for error, and no chance to learn from mistakes ... inaction is not an option." These are sentiments with which most of the world's people would agree. While many of us believe that attacking Iraq would enhance rather than reduce the possibility that weapons of mass destruction will be used, few would dispute that chemical and biological agents present a grave danger to the world.
So those of us in other nations who have followed this issue are puzzled. Why should you, who claim to want to build "a peaceful world beyond the war on terror", have done all you can to undermine efforts to control these deadly weapons? Why should the congressmen in your party have repeatedly sabotaged attempts to ensure that biological and chemical agents are eliminated?
In December, your negotiators tore the Biological Weapons Convention to shreds. The 1972 convention, as you know, was impossible to implement. While the treaty banned the development and production of bio-weapons, it contained no mechanism for ensuring that its rules were enforced. So for six years, the 144 signatories had been developing a "verification protocol", which would permit the United Nations to examine suspected bio-weapons facilities. In July, your government refused to sign the protocol. In December, you deliberately scuttled the negotiations by insisting, at the last minute, that the resolution be re-written. One European delegate, referring to the commitments your delegation had made before the meeting, observed, "They are liars. In decades of multilateral negotiations, we've never experienced this kind of insulting behavior." Your actions have rendered the convention useless, leaving the world unprotected from the very weapons you say you want to eliminate.
Four years ago, Republican members of Congress, working alongside the Clinton government, voted to inflict similar damage to the Chemical Weapons Convention. This treaty already possessed the means to force nations to open their laboratories to inspection, which is the key determinant of effective weapons control. But in 1998, your party decided that the United States should not be subject to these provisions. By passing legislation banning the removal of chemical samples from the US by international weapons inspectors; limiting the number of laboratories which the US needs to declare and permitting the United States president to refuse "challenge inspections" of its chemical plants, Republican congressmen effectively hobbled the convention worldwide. Under your presidency, even routine verification has been vitiated, as government officials have told the inspectors which parts of a site they can and cannot visit, just as Saddam Hussein has done in Iraq. Other countries have used your intransigence as an excuse for undermining the convention themselves.
The United States has also withheld both the money required by the chemicals weapons inspectorate, and the funds needed to remove and disable the vast arsenal of warheads loaded with nerve agents in western Siberia, some of which are lying in warehouses secured only by bicycle padlocks on the doors. It was your own senator Pat Roberts who argued that the promised funding should not be issued, on the grounds that these weapons "pose more of an environmental threat to Russia than a security threat to the United States." Yet security at the dumps is so lax that no one even knows how many warheads they contain.
You should not be surprised to learn that many of us have been wondering why your professed intentions and your policies diverge so widely. Nor should you be surprised to discover that some of us suspect that the US might have some deadly secrets of its own, which your government hopes to shield from public view.
In September last year, the New York Times reported that "the Pentagon has built a germ factory that could make enough lethal microbes to wipe out entire cities." The factory's purpose was defensive: your employees wanted to see how easy it would be for terrorists to do the same thing. But it was constructed without either Congressional oversight or a declaration to the Biological Weapons Convention, in direct contravention of international law. We could, perhaps, agree that if the US had discovered a similar undisclosed plant in a poor nation, then that country's government, if it survived your initial response, would have a good deal of explaining to do.
But of still more concern is the recent discovery that your government has been planning to test warheads containing live microbes in large aerosol chambers at the US Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland. Experts in this field say that the scale of the experiments suggests that they are not defensive, but designed to help develop new biological weapons.
It is also clear that some elements of your existing defence programme contravene both of the treaties your government and your party have sabotaged. The genetically engineered fungus you have developed for aerial spraying in Colombia plainly qualifies as a non-lethal biological weapon. And, because your strategic aims in that country extend beyond the simple eradication of drugs to the elimination of the leftwing rebel forces, the chemical sprays you have been using in the regions they control have also clearly been deployed as weapons, much as Agent Orange was in Vietnam. Your military laboratories have been developing a new range of genetically engineered "materials-eating bacteria", designed to destroy runways, engines and the radar-blocking coatings of warplanes. Though they do not directly affect humans, you would be hard-put to deny that these are biological weapons.
Your government has also refused to destroy its stocks of smallpox, and has insisted on developing new and more lethal varieties of anthrax. You say that this is purely for defensive purposes: to study how they might be used by enemy forces, or to develop new kinds of vaccine. But the Federation of American Scientists warns that some of the new research you are funding could be categorised as "dual use": it could lead just as easily to attack as to defence. Even if we were to accept your government's assurances that these programmes are solely defensive in nature, it is surely plain that they are generating the very hazards they claim to be confronting. The anthrax attacks in October appear to have been launched by a scientist from within your own biological warfare laboratories, making use of a strain developed by the US Army's Medical Research Institute.
Mr President, you say you want to save the world from biological and chemical weapons. With or without the help of our own leaders, you seem prepared to go to war in pursuit of that aim. But surely the first step towards dealing with weapons of mass destruction is the mass destruction of weapons? And surely your campaign for world peace would be more convincing if you respected the conventions designed to destroy them?
Yours Sincerely, George Monbiot
http://www.monbiot.com/