Abstract
Germ warfare was used
We feel obliged to respond to John Ellis van Courtland Moon's review of our book The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, which appeared in the May/June 1999 issue of the Bulletin. The review dismisses our analysis of the development of the U.S. biological warfare crash program between 1950 and early 1953, and the allegations that the United States experimented with biological weapons in Korea. The reviewer's cursory dismissal indicates that he came to his conclusions without knowledge of the documents that we used to support our analysis.
Moon argues that we based our conclusion on eight central arguments which, he claims, “can be refuted by archival evidence and reasonable counter-arguments.” We wish to address each one.
▪ Moon rejects our extensive documentation demonstrating that the United States secretly adopted an offensive biological warfare policy during the Korean War. He repeats the error of others before him that NSC 62 of February 1950 set a policy of retaliation only. NSC 62 refers only to chemical weapons. We have documented that by early 1952 the Joint Chiefs had convinced the Defense Department that since there was no policy on biological warfare, the United States should secretly adopt the precedent of atomic warfare policy and allow biological weapons to be considered weapons of opportunity subject to presidential approval.
▪ Moon errs in asserting that the United States had no standardized anti-personnel biological weapons capabilities by the time of the Korean War. Brucella suis, which was delivered by the M33 bomb cluster containing M114 aerosol bomblets, was standardized for anti-personnel use.
He is also mistaken in his assertion that the program had no operational capability. The long-term goal of the crash program at the time of the Korean War was for a standardized system using improved weapons to be in place by July 1954. There was also a plan for immediate emergency use. The official historian of U.S. Air Force participation in the biological warfare program from 1944 to 1954 concluded that in March 1952 the United States declared operational capability for general war with unit assignments and logistical support. This contradicts Moon's assessment of the U.S. program. Though the bells and whistles of a standardized weapons system were not in place, the system could have been used if necessary.
There is no question that the United States was capable of experimenting with bioweapons by the time of the Korean War. Potential agents included not only Brucella suis, but also anthrax and plague, which were being tested and moved toward production and standardization for overt use in war. Available documents also confirm U.S. interest in and extensive development of covert biological weapons, though heavy classification restricts access to the details. There is an indication that the feather bomb, standardized as an anti-crop weapon, also was adapted for covert or tactical use as an anti-personnel weapon against the enemy's “supplies and equipment.” Not to be ignored are the recommendations on the crash program by the Joint Advanced Study Committee to the Joint Chiefs in September 1951, which emphasized the need for “large scale realistic trials under warlike conditions.” In February 1952, the Joint Chiefs accepted the recommendations of its study committee with only minor revisions.
The reviewer downplays the almost $350 million (nearly three billion in 1999 dollars) spent by the United States during the period 1951-53 on research and development in biological weapons. One of the attractions of biological weapons is that they are relatively inexpensive. To put the $350 million amount in perspective, the large World War II biological warfare program, which employed approximately 4,000 people, had research and development costs of $60 million. It cost $2 billion to develop the atomic bomb. Both the World War II and the Korean War-era budgets were complemented by close coordination with the British and Canadian research and development programs.
▪ Moon acknowledges our argument that the United States was convinced that the use of biological weapons in Korea would not be detected. In our book we state, “The capacity for covert and sabotage operations was most readily available within the existing state of research and development, and it was considered the form of bacteriological warfare most difficult for an enemy to distinguish from natural outbreaks of disease.” We have no disagreement with Moon's throw-in argument drawing the obvious conclusion that the military had a responsibility to evaluate biological weapons in relation to all potential weapons systems.
The Zylons had fully intended to come in peace, but fate would play its fickle hand.
▪ Moon asks why, with so many people involved in the program, has no one come forward by now to confirm the allegations if they are true? A good question. We don't know the answer to this one. When we approached Col. Frank Schwable, the highest-ranking flyer to give a statement to the Chinese, he said he didn't wish to reopen old wounds. When we asked retired Gen. Hugh Hester why no one came forward, he said, “They don't dare.” Unless somebody has an overriding moral will and a willingness to face the consequences, there are good reasons not to come forward.
It is difficult to determine how many people actually knew that the weapons were being tested in Korea. It is reasonable to conclude that the number was very limited. For example, CIA director William Colby referred to the extreme “compartmentation” of CIA work with the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, which was responsible for the development of covert biological weapons.
On the other side of the fence, none of the Chinese who attested to the use of biological weapons in China and Korea have come forward to say that it was a hoax, despite the increasing international mobility of the Chinese, particularly among those in the medical profession. In our interviews with Chinese scientists and others who were involved in detecting the biological warfare attacks, they strongly affirmed their continued belief that they had occurred.
Dr. John Burton, the permanent head of the Australian Department of External Affairs at the beginning of the Korean War and a distinguished scholar of international relations, is a credible second-hand witness to U.S. admission of experimental use of biological weapons during the Korean War. Burton resigned when the Australian government failed to follow his recommendation that Australia not get involved in the Korean War. He later went to China to view the evidence that the United States was using biological weapons. He came away convinced that the Chinese were certain biological attacks had occurred. Burton alleges that Alan Watt, his successor as permanent head of External Affairs, told him he had asked the U.S. government if they had used biological weapons. Watt was told that yes, the United States had used biological weapons, but only experimentally.
▪ The reviewer dismisses the testimony of the U.S. airmen who confessed to the Chinese on the grounds that they did so under pressure. He neglects to note that the threat of court-martial was held over the heads of the flyers when they wrote retractions.
We were very careful in our treatment of this element of the story. Based on interviews with the flyers and a post-war evaluation of army and air force POW collaboration, we first established the interrogation techniques used by the Chinese and the response of the flyers who wrote statements. According to the evidence, the flyers broke under extreme duress, not because they were tortured. If properly prepared, they should have resisted. Also, the flyers were required to construct their confessions on their own and were not fed information. Though the Chinese were certainly ready to use the flyers' statements in the public arena, their methods indicate that they were using normal intelligence-gathering techniques in looking for answers. We consequently considered it our responsibility as historians to put together the total picture provided by the flyers' statements without drawing any conclusions about what might be creative fabrication and what might be truth, or about who might have been involved and who not. Our purpose was to see the extent to which these very detailed statements by the flyers converged with research and development and operational possibilities during the Korean War. By themselves the statements are but a piece of the puzzle. We place this piece beside other data and leave it to the reader to decide if they add up to a corroborative case.
▪ Moon attacks the report of the International Scientific Commission headed by Dr. Joseph Needham on the grounds that they did not do their own scientific investigation but took the Chinese, who could have doctored the evidence, at their word. This criticism implies that we are simply passing on the findings of the Needham Report.
There is no mention of the fact that we attempted to reconstruct the Chinese side of the story, which was passed on to the Needham Committee, through our being the first nonChinese to be given archival access to top secret Chinese documents on the biological warfare allegations. These documents include top secret discussions between the Chinese political and military leadership and top party cadre that confirm the use of biological weapons against China. This level of leadership certainly is not going to be propagandizing itself in top secret documents. These documents also include the reports of medical teams in the field attempting to sort out what is going on. It was this work that was passed on to the Needham Committee. We interviewed scientists who were involved in the investigations at the time, and they remain convinced that biological weapons were used. The reviewer is negligent at best in not noting the context of our discussion of the Needham Report.
▪ Moon's seventh criticism is a repeat of the argument that the truth would have emerged by now in an open society like the United States.
▪ The final criticism runs together a number of items. First, Moon refers to 12 Soviet documents originally circulated by a conservative Japanese newspaper, the same documents cited by Milton Leitenberg in his book The Korean War: Biological Warfare Resolved. Moon cites these as proof that the Chinese and North Korean charges were a hoax. These are not archival documents in the normal scholarly sense in that they were not openly provided by archival staff. They do not have references or finding aids and cannot be relocated and checked by other scholars. And they were transcribed by hand–whether in whole, in part, or by way of notes is not clear. The fact that they were passed secretly by an unknown source to a journalist working for a very conservative Japanese newspaper raises further questions.
If authentic, the documents do not prove that the United States did not use biological warfare in the Korean War. What they reveal is a power struggle between the heads of the competing Soviet state police ministries under Lavrenti Beria and S. D. Ignatiev. Beria used the revelation of these documents after Stalin's death to purge his rival for concealing knowledge of this threat to Soviet credibility. In his defense, Ignatiev said that he did not believe the documents and showed them to Stalin, who dismissed them. The leadership accepted Beria's case, sacked Ignatiev, and then expelled him from the Communist Party; they subsequently turned on Beria and executed him.
Both Beria and Ignatiev had their agents in Korea. Beria used the report of his agent that the biological warfare charge was fabricated, while Ignatiev believed his agent, who was N. N. Zhukov-Verezhnikov, a professor of bacteriology and vice president of the Soviet Academy of Medical Science.
If the incident that the documents report is verified, it means that a peculiar local incident can be explained and issues surrounding the internal logic of the documents clarified. But this local incident doesn't affect Chinese charges about what happened elsewhere, where the primary record remains the Chinese and U.S. documentation.
Included in Moon's final criticism is his assertion that we suggested that the United States would have used biological weapons in World War II if the war had not come to an end in August 1945. He claims there is no evidence to support this conclusion. The evidence we document is Truman's much-cited post-war reflections. And contrary to Moon's contention, by the end of World War II the United States had a biological warfare capability on short notice.
Edward Hagerman and Stephen Endicott
York University
Toronto, Canada
John Ellis van Courtland Moon replies: I disagree with Stephen Endicott's and Edward Hagerman's conclusions regarding U.S. biological weapons policy and preparedness during the Korean War.
Top military leaders were no doubt eager to explore the potentialities of bioweapons, which they saw as possessing a unique advantage over other weapons systems–they destroyed the enemy while preserving his real estate. Documents from the Joint Chiefs, however, reveal a continuing tension at that time between the need to achieve a bioweapons capability and the failure to do so. The authors stress the first theme and largely ignore the second.
Endicott and Hagerman correctly state that by the time of the Korean War, the United States had standardized Brucella suis. In my review of their book, I wrote that the United States had no “standardized or mass-produced anti-personnel bioweapons.” I should have written that it had no “standardized or mass-produced lethal anti-personnel bioweapons.” Brucella suis is an incapacitating agent. China's allegations largely centered on lethal agents.
The authors and I disagree on what constitutes “operational capability.” In my view, such capability goes far beyond the ability to dump a limited number of agents surreptitiously on a target.
The authors' letter in response to my review has three errors. First, they state that “by early 1952 the Joint Chiefs had convinced the Defense Department that since there was no policy on biological warfare” the United States should secretly adopt a policy that would allow the use of biological weapons as “weapons of opportunity subject to presidential approval.” Presumably, the authors are referring to planning papers in the series JCS 1837. But these documents, as their book reveals, are contingency planning papers that stress the importance of developing bioweapons capability in light of a potential Soviet threat. The Joint Chiefs endorsed the recommendations of its planning committee on February 26, 1952. But the communist campaign alleging the use of bioweapons by the United States erupted two days earlier on February 24. The United States was accused of having carried out seven attacks with lethal agents between January 28 and February 17. Earlier there had been short-lived accusations that the United States used biological weapons in 1951. To believe the allegations is to accept an absurdity: that biological weapons operations preceded biological weapons capability.
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Second, I disagree with the authors' assertion that “NSC 62 refers only to chemical weapons.” The concluding paragraph of NSC 62 states:
“In the event of war, the United States will undertake gas warfare only in retaliation against its use by an enemy and on the decision of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. … This policy is to be considered as an interim measure and will be subject to review after detailed operational evaluations of chemical warfare, biological warfare, and radiological warfare have been made.”
That NSC 62 covered biological warfare as well as chemical warfare was made explicit in NSC 147, dated April 2, 1953. It states, “Chemical, biological, and radiological weapons will not be used by the United States except in retaliation (NSC 62, approved February 17, 1950).”
Third, the authors mention “Truman's much-cited post-war reflections” to prove that the United States was prepared to use bioweapons if World War II had not ended in August 1945. The authors are referring to Truman's letter of February 19, 1953 to Thomas E. Murray, in which he discusses the comparative horror of atomic, chemical, and biological weapons. Truman writes that “the use of the atomic bomb … is far worse than gas and biological weapons because it affects the civilian population and murders them wholesale.” Truman was reflecting on the morality of weapons systems. He was not stating that the United States was prepared to use chemical and biological weapons. The authors take this statement totally out of context and ignore Truman's public statement of May 28, 1952 in which he explicitly denied the Chinese allegations.
The authors fail to counter my argument that if the United States had used bioweapons during the Korean War, it would have been exposed by now. In their book, they argue that secrecy was maintained because biowar efforts were highly compartmentalized, and they devote several chapters to the numerous organizations they identify as having been involved in the biowar program. It is hard to believe that all the members of such an extensive network would remain silent for so many years. Even those not directly involved in the alleged operations would almost certainly have gained knowledge of the bioweapons attacks through internal sources. Endicott and Hagerman do not even question the basic picture presented by communist propagandists that numerous bioweapons attacks were staged by U.S. aircraft. Such an extensive campaign would almost certainly have been exposed by its participants. As I mentioned in my review, in an open society that kind of enterprise is virtually impossible to hide in the long run.
The publication of their book could have a salutary effect if it encourages a review of the Korean War charges and a release of the remaining U.S. documents. In the past, the United States has paid a high price for practices of protracted secrecy. As the authors point out in their book, the United States was wrong to protect Japanese bioweapons criminals, a wrong which it then compounded by covering up Japan's crimes in return for information that country could provide on the efficacy of biological weapons against human targets.
Further work is also necessary to determine the North Korean, Chinese, and Soviet roles in manufacturing the allegations against the United States.
It is wrong, however, to argue that the United States used bioweapons in Korea on the basis of unproved allegations that are only supported with hearsay testimony of second-hand witnesses and hypothetical arguments. The use of biological weapons by any nation is a crime against humanity. False charges regarding their use must be addressed. Otherwise, history will remain hostage to politically motivated allegations festering in the dark.
The article in your May/June 1999 issue titled “A Very Convenient Scandal” is one of the most disturbing pieces of journalism to surface in recent years.
“Did you know that light was out?”
While I applaud author Stephen Schwartz's desire to put the growing scandal regarding the management of the nuclear labs and allegations of Chinese spying activities in some sort of perspective, the message he conveys is that politics and racism lie at the heart of the scandal.
In contrast, I believe that the spying charges are the culmination of a variety of maladies that have afflicted our national labs from the top down. For one thing, the labs have faced a difficult transition to the post-Cold War period. What is their mission? How can they maintain the tens of thousands of workers they employ? How can the Energy Department justify employing 260 contractors for every civil servant on its payroll?
Energy has responded by propagating all manner of international cooperation programs with the former Soviet Union and China. Whether they bear the title of “Nuclear Cities,” “Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention,” “Materials Protection and Accounting,” or “Highly Enriched Uranium,” they all transfer U.S. lab-developed nuclear technology or cash taken from the taxpayer's pocket to elements of the Russian and Chinese nuclear weapons design, testing, and stewardship organizations. In many cases, these transfers help facilitate what they are purportedly intended to forestall, namely, the advancement of weapons development. These noble-sounding programs are little more than new rice bowls for U.S. scientists trying to maintain their jobs in the post-Cold War era.
Many U.S. lab employees live off the overhead of “engagement programs,” which they zealously seek to perpetuate through scare tactics, such as dire warnings of hordes of Russian scientists moving to Iraq, Libya, or North Korea. But as recent events are beginning to confirm, we may have as much to fear from activities at our own labs as we do from those in Russia or China.
Consider also who is responsible for the management of both the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories–the University of California, an academic institution desperately scrambling to maintain a public relations firewall between its willingness to receive hundreds of millions of dollars each year for designing, testing, and customizing nuclear weapons and its emphasis on the importance of the labs in advancing fundamental science. With such a schizophrenic approach, is it any wonder that the labs are riddled with nationals from potentially hostile countries?
We may all benefit from a close examination of the dangers posed by an increasingly entrepreneurial staff at the national labs. A frenzy of self-enrichment through CRADAs, ill-conceived giveaways of our most closely held technologies and techniques, has become the order of the day. The Chinese spy scandal is indeed a long-running phenomenon, but while it spanned three administrations and two political parties, it has had only one manager, the University of California. Perhaps it is time to abrogate the bizarre relationship that bestows on that university a noncompetitive lock on the management of the labs. Energy has abetted the deep-seated problems at these labs by looking the other way when problems surface. Congress needs to investigate the “phantom fine” practice in which Energy assesses fines for violations but never attempts to collect payment from the university. The only way to put an end to the culture of irresponsibility and unaccountability that is the legacy of California's stewardship is to sever the relationship once and for all and open the management contract to competitive bid.
Schwartz implies that excluding certain foreign nationals from our nuclear labs is a form of racism. But isn't there any area of the national security establishment that should be off limits? If not the nuclear weapons labs, then where? Would Schwartz argue that the Constitution, which stipulates that a foreign-born person, even one who becomes a full citizen, may not serve as president of the United States, is racist?
At the labs, the deck is stacked against national security. Why is it that a lab, or a corporation for that matter, can freely hire a Chinese citizen or other foreign national to work in extremely sensitive areas? A foreign national has only to apply for and receive a “green card,” which awards the bearer the right to work in this country. It does not convey citizenship, only permanent resident status, nor does it ask for or require a loyalty oath.
Spying is spying. It has always gone on and, it is safe to say, always will. The unique factor here is the aggressive, disproportionate, and utterly reckless disregard for U.S. security needs that has become one of the infamous hallmarks of the Clinton administration, particularly where China is involved.
The lip-service security culture of the University of California was compounded by the actions of Hazel O'Leary's Energy Department, which embarked upon an outrageous program of declassifying highly sensitive nuclear-weapons-related documents. To this day the declassification office in Germantown, Maryland, rewards its employees based upon the number of documents they declassify. As Energy Department officials seek to reassure us that drastic measures are being taken to stanch the flow of secrets to potential enemies, Energy's employees are still declassifying thousands of pages and placing them on the department's public web site, making them instantly available worldwide.
“Okay, now watch what happens when I move over here.”
Schwartz assumes that because some of suspected spy Wen Ho Lee's written work had been “cleared” by agency officials before he presented it at a meeting in China, its dissemination posed no threat to the United States. But the politicized process within which such reviews take place is at times made right only though the heroic efforts of isolated individuals such as Energy's counterintelligence officer, Notra Trulock. These heroes enjoy only a Pyrrhic victory as they rapidly experience retribution from speaking truth to power.
Schwartz is himself an unfortunate victim of timing. His argument was written before the revelation that actual “legacy codes” from the hundreds of nuclear tests previously conducted by the United States had also been compromised. The codes would enable a proliferant to greatly advance an acknowledged or clandestine nuclear weapons program and avoid many years and billions of dollars of effort. Administration and corporate efforts to further liberalize export controls on the supercomputers that are required to run and analyze these “legacy codes” would further compound the nuclear threat facing the United States.
Once again, the greatest victim in this scandal is the American taxpayer whose tax dollars are being churned by the Energy Department, the national labs, the Russians, and the Chinese in much the same way that an unscrupulous stockbroker milks his clients' accounts through unnecessary commissions for transactions they neither needed nor requested.
Peter M. Leitner
George Mason University
Stephen Schwartz responds:
Leitner's characterization of the Energy Department's Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) with private industry is incorrect and out of date. First authorized by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, CRADAs grew slowly with funding peaking in 1994 at $218 million for 185 agreements. In 1997, their numbers plunged to just 22 new agreements totalling $59 million. Far from being a “frenzy,” CRADAs are all but dead today, the victim of Energy's byzantine bureaucracy, a critical 1995 report on the future of the laboratories, the closed culture of the three weapons laboratories, and skepticism by many in Congress who viewed the program both as a diversion from the principle mission of the laboratories and akin to corporate welfare. Contrary to the assertion that CRADAs led to “giveaways of our most closely held technologies and techniques,” it was the labs' inability to find viable commercial applications for their largely weapons-related expertise that helped doom the program.
Leitner's remark that it should be acceptable to bar foreign nationals (and perhaps even foreign-born U.S. citizens) from working at the nuclear weapons laboratories, apparently on the grounds that even if naturalized they cannot be trusted, is similarly faulty. Had the United States adopted this exclusionary attitude during World War II, scientists such as Hans Bethe, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, John von Neumann, George Kistiakowsky, Emilio Segré, and others would never have worked on the Manhattan Project, and the outcome of that effort–and all that followed–might have been quite different.
One can argue that naturalized U.S. citizens are even more loyal to their adopted country than those born here. Nevertheless, suggesting that only native-born citizens should work at the weapons labs is not only profoundly prejudicial, but also scientifically counterproductive. Nor will it prevent espionage in the future. Nearly all of the most damaging spies unmasked in the past two decades or so–Christopher Boyce, Andrew Daulton Lee, William Kampiles, Ronald Pelton, Edward Lee Howard, the Walkers (John, Arthur, and Michael), Jerry Whitworth, Jonathan Pollard, and Aldrich Ames–were Americans through and through.
Michael Flynn's article, “Political Minefield” (March/April Bulletin), reviewed the various estimates of the number of mines that have been made in the course of efforts to ban anti-personnel landmines. However, the suggestion that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) continues to use inflated numbers of landmines is incorrect.
The ICRC does not estimate the number of landmines. Since we began addressing the landmines issue in the early 1990s, the ICRC has focused on the numbers of victims. When we published estimates of the number of mines, those estimates came from the United Nations or individual governments. We always specified the source of those numbers. We also stressed that the actual figures could not be known until after the mines were cleared.
Because the media often cited the ICRC as the author of U.N. or government estimates, in July 1997 the organization adopted a new policy. Since then, the ICRC has excluded all estimates of the number of mines in the ground from its publications.
What is of greater importance is the number of victims and the amount of land that cannot be used because of the presence or perceived threat of mines. The 1995 ICRC estimate–that 2,000 individuals are killed or wounded by mines each month–is based on medical data from ICRC operations and similar information from other agencies. It was this human tragedy that drove the campaign to ban anti-personnel mines. And it is the reduction of these numbers, which represent lives lost and shattered, by which the success of efforts to end the scourge of mines will be measured.
Peter Herby, Coordinator, Mines-Arms Unit Legal Division International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva
I want to congratulate the Bulletin for its March/April 1999 issue, which contained informative and provocative articles on many important topics. I also would like to comment on two of those articles, which dealt with issues with which I have had some personal involvement.
“Political Minefield” described the “rift” between advocates of a global ban on the production, use, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines, and the deminers who do the dangerous and time-consuming work of removing mines from the ground. It is true that some pro-ban advocates failed to give enough attention to the imperative of humanitarian demining. Conversely, some deminers have overreacted, calling the ban an “empty gesture” that will not reduce the casualties from mines “by a single leg.” In fact, the treaty has already been ratified by dozens of countries that formerly produced, used, and exported mines, which have now begun to destroy their stockpiles. The pro-ban movement also resulted in a surge in public concern about mine victims and more funds for demining.
Since 1989 I have worked to get more funds for mine victims and demining, including the development of improved demining technology. I have also been a strong advocate of a ban, since demining is no solution if new mines are laid. Rather than waste time criticizing each other's motives or methods, we need to solve each aspect of the landmine problem together.
Turning to “Turkey's War on the Kurds” by Kevin McKiernan, that article described the fighting between Turkish soldiers and PKK rebels that has claimed thousands of lives and forced millions of Kurds from their homes. I requested the 1995 report in which the State Department acknowledged that U.S. aircraft were misused by Turkish forces against Kurdish civilians. I also wrote the law that bars U.S. aid to units of foreign security forces that violate human rights. This law was used recently to deny U.S. government financing for a sale of armored vehicles to the Turkish National Police, who have a long history of torturing people in custody. We have a strong interest in improving our relations with Turkey, a key NATO ally. While the PKK's terrorist acts are abhorrent, the Turkish government has used those acts to justify its own excesses. As long as we give aid to Turkey we must do everything possible to ensure that it is not misused and that those who commit violations are punished.
Patrick Leahy
United States Senator
Writing in “Explosive Secrets” (March/April 1999 Bulletin), Linda Rothstein finds it “ironic that for more than 50 years the nuclear weapons community has failed to mention to the public that … the neptunium and americium found in nuclear waste streams … can be used to make nuclear weapons.” She credits David Albright and Lauren Barbour of the Institute for Science and International Security for breaking the news in their new book, Challenges of Fissile Material Control.
Really? These “secrets” first imploded in the January 5, 1992, Washington Post's “Outlook” section, where Tom Clancy and I noted that, even after reprocessing, “Some spent fuel residue … is still pregnant with elements like neptunium that, despite having never been used in deployed nuclear weapons, are every bit as fissionable as … uranium and plutonium.”
Our Post article was based on “Five Minutes Past Midnight,” published in National Interest (Winter 1991-92). My more detailed account, “Interesting Times,” was published in January 1993 (Working Paper No. 2, Harvard University's John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies' Project on the Changing Security Environment and American National Interests). As the primary public source on the neptunium problem, my paper cites the 1966 republication of C. F. von Weiszäcker's July 17, 1940 report, “Eine Moglichkeit der Energiegewinnung aus U-238.”
“The vegetable kingdom?”
The risk of neptunium weaponization grows as the radioactivity of rad-waste decays, but rousing the International Atomic Energy Agency to exercise its imagination of disaster can evidently take decades. Albright and Bar-bour deserve bipartisan thanks for their perseverence.
Russell Seitz
John M. Olin Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Michael Krepon's perspective piece (“Not Such a Bad Idea,” May/June Bulletin) favoring the development of a ballistic missile defense system is notable for its final remark: “Arms control and defense advocates … remain wedded to arguments rooted in the 1970s.” That diagnosis is long overdue. Yet Krepon seems to suffer from a similar disease.
▪ Krepon believes a limited national missile defense (NMD) system would be useful against a possible unauthorized launch from Russia. But a single hydrogen bomb, equivalent to at least 20 Hiroshimas, could obliterate New York. Even a defense with a 90 percent probability of destroying such a missile when it is high in the atmosphere is essentially useless. At least 99.9 percent accuracy is needed, and no one claims that such a high degree accuracy can be achieved.
Some readers may be aware that at every launch of a new missile or a space satellite, a “range safety officer” is in attendance, destruct button in hand, capable of destroying an errant missile after launch. Few are aware that, after the disastrous Challenger explosion, a safety officer destroyed the shuttle's boosters, which were veering off course. Amazingly, no such post-launch control exists for any Russian or U.S. nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. That lapse is perhaps the key irrationality of the nuclear age.
To control errant intercontinental ballistic missiles what is needed is a satellite that houses the relays to forward the destruct code. Such satellites, jointly launched by Russia and the United States, would represent another space program collaboration. There would be no problem whatsoever with security, and neither side would be able to destroy the opponents' weapons.
I described such a plan in great detail in 1990, in articles in Science and Global Security and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and in op-eds and letters to the editor over a decade ago (see www.physics.upenn.edu/facultyinfo/frankel.html).
What is even more surprising is that the arms control community, and most State Department professionals, seem to be unaware of the Accidents Agreement, signed by the Soviet Union and the United States in 1971. That agreement specifies that “in the event of such an incident the party whose nuclear weapon is involved will immediately make every effort … to render harmless or destroy such weapon without causing damage.”
Thus, the responsibility for preventing accidental nuclear damage is on the launching party, not the target of the disaster, so it would appear that the debate about unauthorized launches has focused on the wrong solution. In contrast, the Nunn-Lugar approach shows the way. It would be much cheaper and faster to give Russia the funds to install post-launch controls on their weapons than it will be to build an NMD.
▪ Krepon argues that one cannot be sure that a terrorist nation will not use a missile to launch a nuclear attack on the United States. He is right, of course. But a Saddam may be crazy enough to want to land a nuclear weapon on U.S. soil, yet not crazy enough to commit suicide. It would be madness to deliver a weapon with a ballistic missile, because its origin would be clearly seen in satellite images. The president would quickly respond with a hail of weapons and the terrorist nation would cease to exist. Deterrence worked with a Soviet Union armed with thousands of missiles. It would be infinitely more useful against a terrorist nation with only a few.
What would be a terrorist's preferred method of delivery? If I were Saddam I would buy a small freighter from some country far from my own, fly a bomb by helicopter to its deck, hide it, and set off for the United States. Off Long Island, the helicopter could fly the bomb over New York. Or it could be detonated outside the harbor. CNN would not be able to interview the Kamikaze sailors.
▪ But why would an adversary bother with nuclear weapons, which take considerable expertise and a supply of uranium? The technology to produce biological weapons is well known, dating well before World War I. A terrorist nation could just as easily deploy bioweapons carried in cannisters on those same off-shore freighters.
The technology needed to interdict such offshore attacks has little overlap with ballistic missile defense technology. And it is only now beginning to be taken seriously inside the Pentagon (as yet nothing is seen in the press or on TV). What is needed is a coastal defense, which would require coupling together a new set of lower frequency radios and radars and navy ships equipped to interdict vessels on the high seas. This program would be very costly, and it would be best to divert all the money promised to NMD to this long-term project. If threats were ordered properly, national coastal defense would be the new first priority. The current discussion is yet another example of old thinking.
If you have five dogs, three will be asleep.
▪ We have heard for decades how easy it would be to defeat missile defense with countermeasures. Two methods–the use of “chaff” to overpower defense radars and balloons that encase warheads along with empty balloons acting as decoys are ideas that were proposed decades ago by physicists Richard L. Garwin and Hans Bethe.
The Pentagon has undoubtedly studied the chaff problem in the 15 years since Star Wars. But the subject is classified, so officials can claim that critics do not have the latest information, leaving the public confused. But it is more important to abandon the debate about old methods and take a look at countermeasures made possible by modern electronics.
So far, both sides of the debate have acted as if microchips were not invented–or that small cellular phones or the global position indicators that provide precision-bombing capabilities for cruise missiles do not exist.
The latest in electronic decoys have been described in a navy magazine, Surface Warfare (vol. 21, no. 4), and in Science and Global Security (vol. 6, pp. 333-55). (The Ballistic Missile Defense Office approved the publication in Surface Warfare without public comment.) These decoys, to my knowledge, cannot be defeated by a defender. Furthermore, electronic decoys work just as well in the atmosphere as out, unlike chaff or balloons.
When it comes to defenses, it's time to stop living in the past.
Sherman Frankel
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
David Wright's article (“Cut North Korea Some Slack,” March/April Bulletin) is timely. Wright's appraisal of the North Korean point of view is realistic as well as sympathetic. Similarly, his assessment that lack of trust between North Korea and the United States is not one-sided but correlative shows a balanced approach.
In suggesting a policy of engagement to foster cooperation, the article offers a way forward. However, there is a long way to go in terms of policy refinements before the United States can achieve its objectives.
Reciprocity between equals or near equals is legitimate and acceptable. Bargaining between competitors talking business is understandable. But to expect a country like North Korea, which is struggling for survival, to reciprocate for each “carrot” seems incongruous. It brings to mind a rich potentate offering food and riches to a poor famished man in return for his unquestioning obedience for the rest of his life.
One wonders when the American nation will wake up and stop following all its carrots with sticks.
Savita Datt
Faridabad, Haryana, India