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CounterPunch
October
30, 2002
National Academy
of Sciences Withholds Key Information on Moscow Theater Tragedy
CounterPunch
Wire
The US National Academies of Science holds key
unclassified US military research documents that shed light on
the Moscow theater tragedy; but is refusing to release them despite
repeated, urgent requests. (A selected bibliography of the documents
is included at the end of this release.)
Said the Sunshine Project's Edward Hammond
"The world has an urgent need to better understand what
happened in Moscow and what other countries, including the US,
are doing with these kinds of weapons. The National Academies
ongoing refusal to release the documents is very troubling."
Hammond adds "NAS has critical information for understanding
the chemical agents used in Moscow; but is refusing to release
it because it wants to avoid embarrassing the Pentagon, which
denies that this type of research exists in the United States."
The documents are a series of papers
written in 1994 by US Army chemical warfare experts on so-called
"calmative" chemical weapons. The set of reports includes
a paper on synthetic opiate weapons of the class reported to
have killed more than 100 people in the Moscow theater. In 2001,
these documents were deposited at the National Academies by the
US Marine Corps, which asked NAS to evaluate this kind of weapon.
The documents are deposited in a public archive which, according
to US law, should be available for inspection by journalists
and members of the public.
The US Army documents describe research
and testing of chemical agents at Edgewood Research and Development
Center at Aberdeen Proving Grounds north of Baltimore, Maryland.
In addition, NAS is withholding documents from the US Joint Non-Lethal
Weapons Directorate (JNLWD), a Pentagon agency exploring calmative
chemical weapons. These include the report of a "non-lethal"
weapons policy seminar held in 2001 between US and United Kingdom
officials, in which they discussed military operations with chemical
weapons like those used in the theater.
The Sunshine Project has been seeking
the release of this information since well before the Moscow
tragedy. It began its investigation a year and half ago, and
first asked NAS for the documents in March.
NAS is trying to defuse the situation
by forestalling release until November 5th, US election day,
when it hopes that nobody will notice. NAS must place public
interest and law before its desire to ingratiate itself with
the Pentagon. "Anything less," says Hammond "would
call into question the Academies role as an independent scientific
advisor an chemical and biological weapons issues"
Selected Documents in the NAS Public
Access Records File:
Ferguson, C. Parker. 1994. "Antipersonnel
Chemical Immobilizers: Synthetic Opioids," U.S. Army Edgewood
Research, Development and Engineering Center, Aberdeen Proving
Ground, MD (NSB log #ONR-NLW.087).
Ferguson, C. Parker. 1994. "Demonstration
of Chemical Immobilizers," U.S. Army Edgewood Research,
Development and Engineering Center, Aberdeen Proving Ground,
MD (NSB log #ONRNLW.086).
Ferguson, C. Parker. 1994. "Antipersonnel
Calmative Agents," U.S. Army Edgewood Research, Development
and Engineering Center, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (NSB log
#ONR-NLW.085).
Ferguson, C. Parker. 1994. "Antipersonnel
Chemical Immobilizers: Sedatives," U.S. Army Edgewood Research,
Development and Engineering Center, Aberdeen Proving Ground,
MD (NSB log #ONR-NLW.084).
Report. "US/UK Non-Lethal Weapons
(NLW)/Urban Operations) Policy Seminar," JNLWP, January
19-20, 2001 (NSB log #ONR-NLW.029).
Department of Navy. November 30, 1998.
"Preliminary Legal Review of Proposed Chemical-Based Nonlethal
Weapons," DON (NSB log #ONR-NLW.042).
For More Information
Contact:
Edward Hammond
director of The
Sunshine Project, based in Austin, Texas. He can be reached
at: hammond@sunshine-project.org
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