Home > How the Bush Administration’s Biological Weapons Buildup Affects You

How the Bush Administration’s Biological Weapons Buildup Affects You

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 14 April 2005
1 comment

Wars and conflicts Health USA

A U.S. company recently
sent vials of a 1957 pandemic flu strain
to laboratories across the world by accident is only the latest outrage from the billion-dollar boondoggle called the federal biological weapons program.

As you might recall, the Bush administration started its “biodefense” spending spree following the September 2001 deadly anthrax attacks, and one of its

first projects
was to
genetically engineer a super-resistant, even more deadly version of the anthrax virus.

Our leaders are nuts.

Unfortunately, Project Jefferson has good company. A US Army scientist in Maryland is currently trying to
bring back elements of the 1918 Spanish flu
,
a virus which killed 40 million people. And a virologist in St. Louis has been
working on a
more lethal form of mousepox

(related to smallpox) — just to try stopping the virus once it’s been created.

Lack
of oversight and runaway spending are exacerbated by the

Bush administration’s disrespect

for the internationally-recognized Biological Weapons Convention. In short,
reduced pressure on weapons labs to issue declarations and allow inspections
means less accountability - and more opportunities for secrecy and abuse.

Put
bluntly, the increasing number of stateside bioweapons blunders should come
as no surprise. In February 2003, for example, the University of California
at Davis (UCD) took a full ten days to inform nearby communities that a

rhesus monkey had escaped

from its primate-breeding facility. Coincidentally, UCD had been vying for government
funds to set up its own "hot zone" biodefense lab which could use primates for
biological weapons testing. If that monkey had been infected with ebola, or
some other virus, it’s unclear when or if the public would have been informed.

At
roughly the same time that the monkey ditched UCD, the

Pentagon unearthed over 2,000 tons of hazardous
biological waste in Maryland
, much of it undocumented
leftovers of an abandoned germ warfare program. Nearby, the

FBI was draining a pond for clues

into 2001’s anthrax attacks.

Doesn’t
inspire much trust in the transparency of US biological weapons programs. And
things appear only to be getting worse.

In
2004, a whopping $6 billion went up for grabs for federal biodefense programs,
and laboratories across the country went ballistic trying to get their hands
on some of that cash. Predictably, cases of fraud and abuse quickly surfaced.

In
June 2004, for example, the Army was caught
shirking inspections

at a major biodefense lab under its domain. The scandal went back to 1999, when
the Army commissioned a biological and chemical weapons-agent lab at Tennessee’s
Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Oversight regulations obligated the Army to inspect
the lab each year thereafter, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) were
supposed to have inspected the lab on a regular basis too.

Everything
seemed to be running smoothly; in December 2003, the committee in charge of
safety at the Oak Ridge lab announced that it "remains comfortable of the review
and inspections of the Chem/Bio Facility conducted by the CDC and the Army."

Small
problem. In 2004, the Department of Energy’s Inspector General discovered that
the Army actually hadn’t inspected the Oak Ridge biodefense lab for the previous
three years, and that the CDC hadn’t been there for four years. Yet the lab’s
safety committee said it was “comfortable” with the imaginary inspections.

Also
in 2004, a military biodefense contractor called Southern Research landed in
hot water by
accidentally sending live anthrax across the country

from Frederick, Maryland to the Children’s Hospital of Oakland (California).
To make matters worse, it turns out that Southern Research’s lab in Frederick,
Maryland didn’t even maintain the institutional biosafety committee required
by federal research rules. The punishment for these acts of gross incompetence
and irresponsibility? The Bush administration gave Southern Research the task
of safeguarding a new $30 million biological weapons facility being built near
Chicago.

In
September of the same year, three lab workers at the Boston University Medical
Center were accidentally
exposed to a potentially lethal biowarfare agent
called tularaemia bacterium
. The lab didn’t report
the tularemia infections until two months later though — after it had won a
contract to build a new, $178 million biodefense laboratory.

Concerns
about lack of transparency and monetary waste aside, the administration’s bioweapons
buildup raises obvious ethical problems. Why should the U.S. create newer, even
deadlier viruses? Who are these catastrophic weapons going to be tested on?
What populations will they ultimately be used against?

These
questions take on urgent meaning given the Bush administration’s military adventurism
coupled with the US media’s poor coverage regarding war victims. For example,
eyewitnesses to the late-2004 attack on Fallujah claimed that

US forces used poisonous gases, and “weird” bombs

that exploded into fires that burned the skin despite water being thrown on
the burns — a telltale sign of napalm or phosphorus bombs

UK
reaction to the revelation was swift and strong, with demands that Prime Minister
Blair remove British troops from Iraq until the US ceased from using such savage
weaponry. Labor MP Alice Mahon demanded that Blair make "an emergency statement
to the Commons to explain why this is happening. It begs the question: ’Did
we know about this hideous weapon’s use in Iraq?’"

No
similar outrage in Congress. In fact, no comment at all. The US mainstream media
didn’t cover the “weird bomb” allegations.

But
it doesn’t take a genius to put two-and-two together: if we permit our government
to ignore international weapons-control conventions and then say nothing while
fresh billions are invested in barbaric new weaponry, we lose the right to act
surprised when our own military uses that weaponry on innocent civilians abroad.

Or
even on us.

You
may be surprised to learn that in 2003, the
Pentagon quietly admitted to having used biological/chemical
agents on 5,842 service members
in secret tests conducted
over a ten-year period (1962-73).

In
operations called Project 112 and Project SHAD, the Defense Department tested
its own weapons on service members aboard Navy ships, and in all sorts of other
nasty ways - such as spraying a Hawaiian rainforest and parts of Oahu. All in
all, tests were conducted in six states (Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland,
Utah) as well as in Canada and Britain.

Many
military personnel were not informed when the toxic agents were being tested
on them. Only decades later, as crucial documents slowly become declassified,
have the veterans’ health complaints been acknowledged.

You
might think such barbarism could never happen again: too many legal protections
for citizens in place. Think again.

There’s
a tricky clause in Chapter 32/Title 50 of the

United States Code
(the
aggregation of US general and permanent laws) which states that the Secretary
of Defense can conduct a chemical or biological agent test or experiment on
humans in certain cases “if informed consent has been obtained.”

So
far so good. But check out a different part of

Chapter 32, Section 1515
,
entitled “Suspension; Presidential authorization”:

After
November 19, 1969, the operation of this chapter, or any thereof, may be suspended
by the President during the any war declared by Congress and during the period
of any national emergency declared by Congress or by the President.

You
got it. If the President or Congress decides we’re at war then the Secretary
of Defense doesn’t need anybody’s consent to test chemical or biological agents
on human beings. Gives one pause during these days of a perpetual “War on Terror.”

In
January 2005, US Senate majority leader
Bill Frist called for a new Manhattan Project

(referring to the WWII-era nuclear weapons bonanza) for biological weapons. 
Frist told an audience at the World Economic Forum, “The greatest existential
threat we have in the world today is biological," and he went on to predict
a biowarfare attack "at some time in the next 10 years."

How
ironic that while Frist cited the 2001 US anthrax attacks as proof more biological
weapons research was necessary, he failed to mention that those incidents involved

anthrax produced right in the good ‘ole USA

— or that the
primary suspect in the attacks was a US Army scientist
.
Frist also didn’t clarify how developing even more biological warfare agents
will make the world safer.

The
original Manhattan Project ultimately led to US forces dropping atom bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the resulting slaughter of hundreds of thousands
of people. It’s terrifying to consider the potential repercussions, both domestic
and foreign, of the Bush administration’s biological weapons Manhattan Project.



Heather Wokusch

is a free-lance writer with a background in clinical psychology. Her work as
been featured in publications and websites internationally. Her forthcoming
book,
The Progressive Woman’s Primer:
100 Easy Ways to Make a Difference Now
, is due out in the summer of 2005.

Heather can be contacted via her website:
www.heatherwokusch.com
.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Apr05...

Forum posts

  • The state of the mind of the military is obviously out of mind. Here in the middle of the Pacific close to the Hawaiian Island there is still this pile of BC-weapons which will take another 50 years to be disposed.
    We now have evidence that the U.S. army used mustard gas in Fallujah. Americans wake up! Your country acts like a terrorist. Congress already agreed on the right of a nuclear first strike.

    I ask you Americans who is the terrorist and who starts to act like a terrorist nation. Is the history how
    Nazi Germany could develop itself until it was so obvios that the world community had to act, already
    forgotten.

    Wake up!