A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Gas and Germ Warfare

CHAPTER ONE: ‘FRIGHTFULNESS’

1 – Papers of Major General C. H. Foulkes. From a ‘Very Secret’ report on gas casualties by Lt. Col. Douglas, RAMC.

2 – Public Record Office, London (PRO), WO 32/5183. ‘An account of German gas cloud attacks on the British Front in France.’

3 – PRO, WO 142/99. Autopsy report by Lt. McNee, RAMC.

4 – PRO, WO 32/5183. ‘An account of German cloud gas attacks on the British Front in France.’

5 – Papers of Joseph Barcroft. Letters to his wife, 8 and 12 May 1915.

6 – Kölnische Zeitung, 26 June 1915. Quoted in Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), The Problems of Chemical and Biological Warfare (Stockholm, 1971), Vol. II, p. 232

7 – Ibid., 232.

8 – PRO, WO 32/5183. ‘Diary of Development of British Respirator.’

9 – PRO, WO 32/5183. ‘An account of German cloud gas attacks on the British Front in France.’

10 – C. H. Foulkes, Gas! The Story of the Special Brigade (London, 1936), p. 17.

11 – Joseph Borkin, The Crime and Punishment of I. G. Farben (London, 1979), p. 5.

12 – Victor Lefebure, The Riddle of the Rhine (London, 1921), p. 31.

13 – Borkin, op. cit., p. 18.

14 – PRO, WO 142/195. ‘Early Gas Attacks Against the Russians. According to W. L. Wicks of the British Embassy in Petrograd, in the course of one attack in May lasting just twenty minutes, 7,800 men wounded by gas were evacuated, and 1,100 left dead on the field.

15 – Robert Graves, Goodbye To All That (London, 1929), Ch. 15.

16 – Foulkes, op. cit., p. 80.

17 – Ibid., p. 72.

18 – Ibid., p. 81.

19 – Ibid., p. 76.

20 – Denis Winter, Death’s Men (London 1978), p. 125.

21 – Foulkes Papers. From Lt. Col. Douglas’s secret report on British gas casualties, written in 1919.

22 – H. Allen, Toward the Flame; quoted in Winter, op. cit., p. 121.

23 – PRO, WO 142/99. An account of the first German phosgene attack.

24 – Ibid.

25 – ORO, WO 142/101. After poisoning by either chlorine or phosgene, patients ‘may wake up at night many months later with a terrifying lack of breath’.

26 – Foulkes, op. cit. p. 113.

27 – Ibid., p. 109.

28 – Ibid., p. 127.

29 – Ibid., p. 135.

30 – Julian Perry Robinson, ‘The Rise of CB Weapons’, SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 34.

31 – Foulkes. op. cit., p. 212.

32 – Ibid., p. 200.

33 – PRO, WO 32/5176. ‘Gas Shell Bombardment of Ypres, 12–13 July 1917’.

34 – Ibid.

35 – PRO. WO 142/99. From a report dated 22 July 1917.

36 – PRO, WO32/5176. Report by Captain Douglas RAMC, Physiological Adviser to the Gas Services, 17 July 1917.

37 – PRO, WO 142/99. Report of a post mortem conducted at No. 47 Field Hospital on 22 July 1917 by Lt. Templeton of the RAMC.

38 – PRO, WO 142/99.

39 – Foulkes Papers. Report on British gas casualties, 1919.

40 – Ibid.

41 – General Fries writing in the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 1920. Quoted in Lefebure, op. cit., p. 176.

42 – Lord Moran, Anatomy of Courage (London, 1966), quoted by Winter, op. cit., p. 126.

43 – PRO, WO 142/225, ‘HS manufacture at Avonmouth.’ Report by Captain H. M. Roberts, Factory Medical Officer.

44 – Foulkes, op. cit., p. 296.

45 – ‘The War Diary of Brigadier Adrian Eliot Hodgkin’, an unpublished, handwritten diary. Imperial War Museum, London.

46 – Foulkes Papers. Report on British gas casualties, 1919.

47 – Described in Mein Kampf. Hitler is said to have ascribed the recovery of his sight after being blinded by mustard gas to divine intervention – a supernatural sign which made him determined to become a politician.

48 – New York Times editorial, 27 January 1920. Quoted by Borkin, op. cit., p. 34.

Haber’s laureate did him no good when Hitler came to power. Despitethe fact that he had converted to Christianity, Haber’s Jewish background led to his being forced to resign his academic posts in Germany when the Nazis came to power. He died – ‘a broken man’ according to Borkin – in Switzerland in January 1934. ‘Germans were not permitted to mourn his passing’ (Borkin, op. cit., p. 57).

49 – A. M. Prentiss, Chemicals in War (New York, 1937); quoted in SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. I, p.128–9.

50 – SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 50.

51 – J. B. S. Haldane, Callinicus: A Defence of Chemical Warfare (London, 1925), p. 10.

52 – Lefebure, op. cit., p. 172.

53 – Ibid., p. 174.

54 – Foulkes Papers. Draft report of the Holland Committee on Chemical Warfare Organisation.

55 – Haldane, op. cit., p. 32.

56 – PRO, WO 188/265. ‘After-effects of gas poisoning.’

57 – Ibid. ‘Disability due to gas poisoning’, a report dated 16 June 1927 by A. Fairley, Acting Superintendent of the Physiology Department at Porton.

58 – Ibid.

59 – Interviewed for BBC Television’s Panorama, 2 June 1980.

60 – Health Aspects of Chemical and Biological weapons: Report of a World Health Organisation Group of Consultants (Geneva, 1970), pp. 33–4.

61 – Ibid., p. 34.

62 – PRO, WO 188/265.

CHAPTER TWO: THE SERPENT AND THE FLOWER

1 – The ‘Barcroft Bottle’, mentioned in a number of ‘Quarterly Reports’ submitted by the Commandant of Porton to the War Office – e.g. July-September 1928 (PRO, WO 188/373).

2 – Quoted in Haldane, op. cit., p. 75.

3 – Barcroft’s Papers. Letter from Lloyd George, 10 July 1919.

4 – Barcroft’s Papers. Letter to his wife describing King George V’s visit to Porton, 3 June 1918.

5 – Foulkes, op. cit., pp. 272–3.

6 – A Brief History of the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment Porton, p. 8 (This was a ‘restricted’ publication, witten in March 1961 and declassified in 1981).

7 – In 1981, reports of experiments at Porton available to historians ran up to 1929. There are 9,000 individual records relating to the First World War alone held at the Public Record Office.

8 – Haldane, op. cit., p. 74

9 – Sir Austin Anderson, ‘Some Recollections of Porton in World War I’, Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps, 116(3), pp. 173–7.

10 – A Brief History of Porton, p. 7.

11 – Foulkes, op. cit., p. 274.

12 – PRO, WO 188/50 ‘…they consisted of men dying after exposure to HS in liquid vapour form from 24 to 15 days, some with severe intoxication, others with pneumonias at different stages.’

13 – Sir Austin Anderson, op. cit., pp. 173–7.

14 – Foulkes Papers. Draft Report on the Holland Committee on Chemical Warfare Organisation 1919.

15 – PRO, WO 188/50. ‘Symptomatology of Action of DA in low concentration on man.’

16 – PRO, WO 188/374.

17 – Foulkes Papers. Letter to the War Office, 12 August 1919. ‘In this country,’ the letter continues, ‘the heat of the sun distinctly favours its use, as evaporation from the ground will be much more rapid, and more toxic atmospheres will be created. As a consequence inflammations will be more severe and they will appear sooner; while profuse perspiration will encourage blistering, and skin lesions will have a tendency to become septic.’

18 – Foulkes Papers. Letter to the War Office, 5 November 1919. ‘Reviewing the whole circumstances there appears to be little or no justification for refusing to employ gas on sentimental grounds: there is little sentiment in war and our men have the first claim on it.’

19 – PRO, WO 188/58. Letter from Salt to Major Wingate in London, 25 February 1920.

20 – For a detailed account of the adoption and signing of the Geneva Protocol, see SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. IV, CB Disarmament Negotiations 1920–1970.

21 – Julian Perry Robinson – SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 247.

22 – SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 283.

23 – British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (BIOS) reports on Japanese Chemical Warfare. Vol. II and Vol. V Part A.

24 – Ibid., Vol. VI.

25 – Quoted in SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 147.

26 – Quoted in SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 144.

27 – From an intelligence summary, ‘Notes on CW Preparedness of Enemy and Potential Enemy Countries’ (20/32), contained in the papers of Lord Weir, Director General of Explosives (DGX) at the Ministry of Supply, 1939–41. The papers are held at Churchill College, Cambridge.

28 – SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. IV, pp. 180–81.

29 – Ibid., p. 182.

30 – The Times, 20 April 1936. Quoted in SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 259.

31 – PRO, WO 32/3665.

32 – Weir Papers, 20/32. ‘Technical Report on Visit to French Powder and Chemical Warfare Factories’ (September 1939).

33 – Weir Papers, 20/32. ‘Notes on CW Preparedness of Enemy and Potential Enemy Countries’.

34 – PRO, WO 193/740. ‘Anglo-French Conversations on Chemical Warfare.’

35 – Ibid.

36 – Ibid.

37 – Weir Papers, 20/32. ‘Notes on CW Preparedness of Enemy and Potential Enemy Countries.’

CHAPTER THREE: HITLER’S SECRET WEAPONS

1 – BIOS Report No. 714. ‘The Development of New Insecticides and Chemical Warfare Agents’, p. 24.

2 – Ibid., p. 28.

3 – Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (CIOS) Report No. 30. ‘Chemical Warfare – I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G., Frankfurt/Main’.

4 – Ibid. The testimony Dr Wilhelm Kleinhans.

5 – BIOS Report No. 41. ‘Interrogation of German CW Personnel at Heidelburg and Frankfurt.’

6 – CIOS Report No. 30.

7 – CIOS Report No. 31. ‘Chemical Warfare Installations in the Munster-lager Area.’

8 – Ibid.

9 – Ibid.

10 – Ibid.

11 – Ibid.

12 – BIOS Report No. 9. ‘Interrogation of German Air Ministry Technical Personnel Luftwaffe Lager, near Kiel.’

13. – Ibid.

14 – Quoted in the ‘Hitler’s Deadly Secrets,’ the Sunday Times, 22 February 1981.

15 – CIOS Report No. 31.

16 – Ibid.

17 – Ibid.

18 – Ibid.

19 – Ibid.

20 – American evidence presented to the Nuremburg Trials. Document L-103.

21 – BIOS Report No. 782. ‘Interrogation of Professor Ferdinand Flury and Dr Wolfgang Wirth on the toxicology of chemical warfare agents.’

22 – Hearings before a US Senate Sub-Committee, 1945. Quoted in Borkin, op., cit., p. 132n.

23 – BIOS Report No. 138. ‘Interrogation of German CW Medical Personnel.’

24 – BIOS Report No. 9.

25 – David Irving, Hitler’s War (London, 1977), p. 633.

26 – See Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (London, 1970). During his trial at Nuremburg, Speer also claimed that he considered assassinating Hitler in 1945 by introducing nerve gas into the ventilating system of the Führerbunker.

27 – BIOS Report No. 542. ‘Interrogation of Certain German Personalities connected with Chemical Warfare’, p. 25.

28 – According to Winston Churchill in a memorandum to the Chiefs of Staff dated 21 May 1944 (PRO, CAB 122/1323). Churchill suggested that he and President Roosevelt should issue a warning that if the Germans used gas ‘we shall immediately use the full delivery power of our Strategic Air Forces to drench the German cities and towns where any war industry exists.’ The Chiefs of Staff turned the idea down, on the grounds that giving a warning might help compromise the date for which the Normandy landings were set.

29 – Omar Bradley, A Soldier’s Story (New York, 1970); quoted in SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 297.

30 – Borkin, op. cit., pp. 131–2.

31 – CIOS Report No. 30.

32 – PRO, AVIA 24/18. ‘Chemical Warfare – General.’

33 – ORO, WO 193/723. ‘Chemical Warfare Intelligence 30 Sept 1939–30 June 1944.’

34 – A Brief History of Porton, p. 29.

CHAPTER FOUR: A PLAGUE ON YOUR CHILDREN

1 – Interviewed on BBC Newsnight programme, 1 May 1981.

2 – Quoted in The Gathering Storm (London, 1948), p. 34.

3 – Authors’ interview with Dr Rex Watson, Director of Porton Down, 21 July 1981.

4 – Authors’ interview, March 1981.

5 – Sunday Times, 15 February 1981

6 – Authors’ interview, March 1981.

7 – Interviewed on BBC Television’s Newsnight, 1 May 1981.

8 – Authors’ interview with Dr Rex Watson, 21 July 1981.

9 – Top secret report submitted to the Secretary of Defence’s Ad Hoc Committee on CEBAR by Colonel William M. Creasy, 24 February 1950, p. 1.

10 – BIOS Report on Scientific Intelligence Survey in Japan, Vol. V: Biological Warfare (September and October 1945).

11 – Ibid.

12 – Ibid.

13 – Ibid.

14 – Ibid.

15 – Ibid.

16 – PRO, PREM 3/65. ‘Japanese Attempts at Bacteriological Warfare in China’. One of a series of allegations passed on to Winston Churchill by the Chinese Ambassador ‘on the instructions of Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek’, July 1942.

17 – Ibid.

18 – Ibid.

19 – Ibid.

20 – PRO, CAB 53/4. Minutes of the COS Committee.

21 – Recollection of Lawrence Burgis, Hankey’s private secretary for many years. Quoted in Stephen Roskill Hankey: Man of Secrets (London, 1974), Vol. III, p. 22.

22 – Burgis, op. cit.

23 – Roskill, op. cit., p. 93.

24 – PRO, CAB 4/26. CID meeting, 17 March 1937.

25 – PRO, CAB 120/782.

26 – PRO, CAB 79/1.

27 – PRO, CAB 120/782. Memo from Lord Hankey to Winston Churchill, 6 December 1941.

28 – Obituary of Sir Paul Fildes in The Times, 12 October 1971.

29 – Ibid.

30 – Authors’ interview, 13 March 1981.

31 – R. V. Jones, Most Secret War (London, 1978), pp. 102–3.

32 – Weir Papers, 20/32. ‘Notes on CW Preparedness of Enemy and Potential Enemy Countries’.

33 – Roskill, op. cit., p. 471.

34 – Seymour Hersh, Chemical and Biological Warfare: America’s Secret Arsenal (London, 1968), p. 12.

35 – Ibid.

36 – Record of the Nuremburg Trials. Vol. XXI, p. 550.

37 – The records listed in the main index of the Public Record Office in London relating to chemical and biological warfare which are closed to public inspection are: the minutes of the Inter-Service Committee on Chemical Warfare (CAB 81/15, 16, 17 and 18); a file entitled ‘The Employment of Chemical Warfare in the War Against Japan’ (CAB 81/19); the minutes of the Bacteriological Warfare Committee (CAB 81/53); a file entitled ‘Porton Experiments’ (CAB 81/54); and the minutes of the Inter-Service Sub-Committee on Chemical Warfare (CAB 81/58).

38 – ‘Compliance with obligations concerning the prohibition of bacteriological (biological) weapons’, BWC/CONF. 1/4, Ch. 2.

39 – PRO, CAB 120/782.

40 – Ibid.

41 – Authors’ interview with Dr Rex Watson, 21 July 1981.

42 – Health Aspects of Chemical and Biological Weapons: Report of a World Health Organisation Group of Consultants (Geneva, 1970), p. 41.

43 – Creasy Report, p. 1.

44 – Irving, Hitler’s War, op. cit., p. 463.

45 – Ibid.

46 – US National Archives, CCS.381. Poland (6630–43) Sec. I. Report on The Polish Secret Army for the period 1942 to April 1943, submitted to the CCS on 7 September 1943.

According to the minutes: ‘SIR JOHN DILL said that he had read the paper with great interest. The British and Polish Governments and General Staffs had been in close touch throughout… ADMIRAL LEAHY, on behalf of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, expressed his appreciation for the valuable paper and discussion put forward by the Polish representatives.’

47 – Frantisek Moravec, Master of Spies (London, 1981), p. 192.

48 – Jan Wiener, The Assassination of Heydrich (New York, 1969), pp. 82–90.

49 – Quoted in Miroslav Ivanov, The Assassination of Heydrich (London, 1973), pp. 175–8.

50 – WHO Report, op. cit., pp. 42–3.

51 – Ivanov, op. cit.

52 – Anthony Cave Brown, Bodyguard of Lies (New York), 1974), p. 226.

53 – Moravec, op. cit., p. 205.

54 – Irving, op. cit., p. 396.

55 – Authors’ interview with Dr Rex Watson, 21 July 1981.

56 – Author’s conversation with Dr Alvin Pappenheimer, March 1981.

57 – Quoted in the judgement in the case of Mabel Nevin et al. versus The United States of America, 20 May 1981.

58 – PRO AVIA 42/18. Anglo-American exchange of information, 1941.

59 – Julian Perry Robinson, SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 121.

60 – Ibid.

61 – PRO, DEFE 2/1252. Report to the Chiefs of Staff Joint Technical Warfare Committee, November 1945.

62 – Ibid.

63 – PRO, PREM 3/89. ‘Crop Destruction’: a memo from Sir John Anderson to Winston Churchill, 9 March 1944.

64 – Ibid.

65 – PRO, DEFE 2/1252. Report to the Technical Warfare Committee on Crop Destruction.

66 – Ibid.

67 – Ibid.

68 – PRO, PREM 3/65.

69 – Ibid.

70 – PRO, PREM 3.65. ‘Most Secret’ memo, 8 March 1944.

71 – PRO, PREM 3/65. Memo from Brown to Churchill, 9 May 1944.

72 – Ibid.

73 – Ibid.

74 – According to Creasy, Vigo could produce 500,000 4-lb anthrax bombs per month; according to Brown’s minute of 9 May, capacity was 625,000 bombs per month.

75 – Creasy, op. cit., p. 8.

76 – PRO, DEFE 2/1252. Report to the Joint Technical Warfare Committee on ‘Potentialities of Weapons of Biological Warfare During the Next Ten Years’, November 1945.

77 – Ibid.

78 – PRO, DEFE 2/1252. Paul Fildes in conversation with the members of the Joint Technical Warfare Committee.

79 – PRO, DEFE 2/1252. Report on ‘Future Development of Biological Warfare’ submitted to the Joint Technical Warfare Committee, 6 December 1945.

80 – PRO, DEFE 2/1252.

81 – Interview on BBC Television’s Newsnight, 1 May 1981.

82 – WHO Report, op. cit., p. 76.

83 – PRO, DEFE 2/1252.

84 – Press Association report, 1 May 1981.

85 – PRO, DEFE 2/1252.

86 – F.J. Brown, Chemical Warfare: a study in restraints (Princetown, 1968).

CHAPTER FIVE: THE WAR THAT NEVER WAS

1 – PRO, PREM 3/89.

2 – Weir papers, 20/16. ‘Memorandum on the Position in the Event of an Early Gas Blitz’ (10 February 1941) and extract from the Minutes of the Chemical Warfare Board (28 January 1941).

3 – PRO, CAB 79/7. Minutes of the Chiefs of Staff Meeting, 7 October 1941.

4 – PRO, WO 193/740. ‘Scale of Gas Attack to which the Field Force in France may be Subjected.’

5 – Contained in War Office file WO 193/732 at the Public Record Office, London.

6 – Ibid.

7 – Ibid.

8 – Quoted in Peter Fleming, Operation Sea Lion (London, 1975), p. 293.

9 – PRO, WO 193–732. Memo dated 30 June 1940.

10 – PRO, WO 193/732. The RAF squadrons armed with chemical weapons were stationed at Grangemouth, Linton (Yorks), Hatfield, West Malling, Old Sarum, Lossiemouth, Walton, Wyton, Horsham St Faith, Oakington, Benbrook and Newton.

11 – PRO, WO 193/732. ‘Memorandum on the use of gas in the defence of the United Kingdom.’

12 – Ibid.

13 – Ibid.

14 – PRO, WO 193/732. Information sent by Dill to Churchill via Ismay on 2 July.

15 – PRO, PREM 3/88–3.

16 – Ibid.

17 – Ibid.

18 – Ibid.

19 – Ibid.

20 – PRO, WO 193/711. Memo from Beaverbrook to Churchill, 20 November 1941.

21 – A Brief History of Porton Down, p. 24.

22 – PRO, WO 193–711. Meeting of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, 28 December 1941.

23 – PRO, WO 193/732. Memorandum from Sir John Dill, 25 April 1941.

24 – PRO, WO 193/711. File entitled ‘Offensive Chemical Warfare Policy’. COS Committee meeting, 19 March 1942.

25 – PRO, WO 193/711. Memorandum by CIGS, October 1941.

26 – Weir Papers, 20/32. Barley’s report is quoted by Weir in a memo to the Minister of Supply, 11 October 1940.

27 – These are taken from a recently declassified US Pentagon document giving the history of each main US chemical warfare installation.

28 – Quoted in Julian Perry Robinson, SIPRI op. cit., Vol. I, p. 316.

29 – Ibid.

30 – PRO, PREM 3/88–3. ‘Japanese Gas Warfare in China.’

31 – Quoted in SIPRI op. cit., Vol. I, p. 321.

32 – Contained in PRO, WO 193/712. Statement made on 6 June 1942.

33 – Ibid. Statement of 9 June 1943.

34 – Intelligence Report on Japanese Chemical Warfare. BIOS, Vol. III.

35 – PRO, WO 193/711. Telegram sent to GOC Malaya, 11 February 1942.

36 – Glenn B. Infield, Disaster at Bari (New York, 1971), p. 46.

37 – PRO, WO 193/712. Most Secret report: ‘Toxic Gas Burns Sustained in the Bari Harbor Catastrophe’ by Stewart F. Alexander, Lt. Col., US Medical Corps and Consultant, Chemical Warfare Medicine.

38 – PRO, PREM 3/88–3.

39 – PRO, WO 193/712. ‘Most Secret and Most Immediate’ telegram, 2 January 1944.

40 – PRO, WO 193/712. ‘Important and Most Secret’ telegram from General Wilson, 11 January 1944.

41 – PRO, WO 193/712. Telegram from General Eisenhower, 2 January 1944.

42 – An idea of the amount of time Intelligence spent worrying about gas warfare, and revelations of the role of Enigma decrypts in alerting the Allies to German intentions can be found in F. A. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War (London, 1981), Vol. II, pp. 116–22, 674–6.

43 – Quoted in SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 297.

44 – PRO, WO 193/713. A brief résumé of the dispute is given in a letter from Sir Archibald Nye to Sir Bernard Paget (C-in-C Middle East) on 15 July 1944. ‘We have decided,’ he concludes, ‘to let sleeping dogs lie.’

45 – PRO, DEFE 2/1252. ‘Matters of Fact Relating to Atomic Energy’, a report by the Atomic Weapons Sub-Committee to the Joint Technical Warfare Committee, January 1946.

46 – PRO, PREM 3/65.

47 – Ibid.

48 – Ibid.

49 – Ibid. Memo to the Prime Minister from Ismay, 19 May 1944.

50 – Quoted in Roger Parkinson, A Day’s March Nearer Home (London, 1974), p. 327.

51 – PRO, PREM 3/89.

52 – Ibid.

53 – PRO, WO 193/711. Churchill radio broadcast, 10 May 1942. The broadcast was made in response to a pledge Churchill had made to Stalin. The Russians were worried that the Nazis were about to use poison gas on the Eastern Front. Churchill’s ‘open-ended’ pledge – like that of Roosevelt to the Chinese – appears to have worried the Chiefs of Staff. The relevant section of Churchill’s broadcast ran:

The Soviet Government have expressed to us the view that the Germans in the desperation of their assault may make use of poison gas against the Armies and people of Russia. We are ourselves firmly resolved not to use this odious weapon unless it is first used by the Germans. Knowing our Hun, however, we have not neglected to make preparations on a formidable scale. I wish now to make it plain that we shall treat the unprovoked use of poison gas against our Russian ally exactly as if it were used against ourselves, and if we are satisfied that this new outrage had been committed by Hitler, we will use our great and growing Air superiority in the West to carry gas warfare on the largest possible scale far and wide upon the towns and cities of Germany… Of one thing I am sure – that the British people, who have entered into the full comradeship of war with our Russian Ally, will not shrink from any sacrifice or trial which that comradeship may require.

54 – Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (London, 1954), p. 39.

55 – PRO, PREM 3/89.

56 – PRO, CAB 79/77. Meeting of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, 8 July 1944.

57 – PRO, CAB 84/64. Instructions to the Joint Planning Staff, 16 July 1944.

58 – PRO, PREM 3/89.

59 – PRO, PREM 3/89. ‘Military Considerations Affecting the Initiation of Chemical and Other Special Forms of Warfare’.

60 – The German cities were: Aachen, Bochum, Cologne, Damstadt, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Krefeld, Mainz, Mülheim, München/Gladbach, Münster, Oberhausen, Remscheid, Solingen, Wiesbaden, Wuppertal, Bielefeld, Bremen, Brunswick, Hamburg, Hanover, Kiel, Lübeck, Osnabrück, Rostock/Warnemunde, Wilhelmshaven, Berlin, Chemnitz, Dessau, Dresden, Erfurt, Halle, Kassel, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Plauen, Potsdam, Stettin, Wurzburg, Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Mannheim/Ludwigshafen, Sarbrücken, Stuffgart, Beuthen, Breslau, Danzig, Gleiwitz, Görlitz, Hindenburg, Konigsberg, Augsburg, Munich, Nuremburg.

61 – PRO, PREM 3/89.

62 – Ibid.

63 – Max Hastings, Bomber Command (London, 1979), pp. 343–4.

64 – PRO , WO 193/712.

65 – SIRI op. cit., Vol. I, p. 298.

66 – PRO, WO 193/712. P 398 – A. 19 February 1945.

67 – PRO, PREM 3/88–3. 27 March 1942.

68 – PRO, WO 193/712. Minute from the Secretary of the COS Committee to the Foreign Secretary, 3 September 1943:

At QUADRANT code-name for Allied summit meeting in Quebec in August the Prime Minister asked the Chiefs of Staff to consider a reported threat by Ribbentrop that the Germans would use gas against the Italians, if they turned against the Germans, as an example to the remainder of the satellites. The Chiefs of Staff advised the Prime Minister against making any declaration of our intention to retaliate, because at that time it would have compromised the source of our information (i.e. General Castellano)…

69 – Stanley P. Lovell, Of Spies and Stratagems (New York, 1963), p. 78.

CHAPTER SIX: NEW ENEMIES

1 – The fullest summary of the disposal of chemical weapons after the Second World War is to be found in ‘The Rise of CB Weapons’, Julian Perry Robinson, SIPRI, op. cit., pp. 153 n. and 305 n.

2 – PRO, 193/712. ‘Disposal of German Chemical Warfare Stocks’, report to Chiefs of Staff, 19 June 1945.

3 – Note by the Secretaries of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Annex B, 27 January 1949.

4 – ‘Interrogation of Certain German Personalities Connected with Chemical Warfare’, BIOS Final Report No. 542, Item No. 8.

5 – Note by the Secretaries of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Annex B, 27 January 1949.

6 – Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons (Moscow, 1950). An account is also given in Hersh, op. cit., pp. 13–18.

7 – Ibid.

8 – Undated Pentagon/German intelligence report.

9 – Note by the Secretaries of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Annex B, 27 January 1949.

10 – Eight pages of Pentagon document, op. cit.

11 – PRO, DEFE 2/1252. Joint Technical Warfare Committee memo, 22 December 1945, TWC (45) 47; Joint Technical Warfare Committee, 5 January 1946, TWC (45) 44 (revised); Joint Technical Warfare Committee, 1 July 1946, TWC (46) 15 (revised).

12 – San Francisco Examiner, 2 June 1952.

13 – Testimony to a sub-committee of the Committee on Appropriations, US House of Representatives, March 1962.

14 – New York Times, 23 February 1938.

15 – Colonel V. Pozdnyakov, ‘The Chemical Arm’, in B. H. Liddell Hart (ed.), The Soviet Army (London, 1956).

16 – Quoted in R. L. Garthoff, Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age (London, 1958), p. 104.

17 – Lt. Gen. Arthur G. Trudeau: testimony during Department of Defence Appropriations hearing for 1961, Washington, March 1960.

18 – Seymour Hersh, ‘Pentagon Gas Plans Spring a Leak’, 15 July 1969. Reprinted in Congressional Record.

19 – The Penkovsky Papers, (London, 1965), p. 153.

20 – Ibid. Greville Wynne himself believes that penkovsky was not executed but survived several years in Soviet gaols before finally committing suicide.

21 – Information to the authors from intelligence sources. But for a fuller, sceptical analysis of Soviet weaponry see ‘CB Weapons Today’, SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 173–84.

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE SEARCH FOR THE PATRIOTIC GERM

1 – PRO, COS (45) 402(0). ‘Future Developments in weapons and methods of war’. A report by Sir Henry Tizard’s Ad Hoc Committee to the Chiefs of Staff, June 1945.

2 – PRO, TWC (45)–45. Brig. O. H. Wansburgh-Jones, 3 December 1945.

3 – PRO, TWC (46) 15 (Revise). ‘Future Developments in weapons and methods of war’. Joint Technical Warfare Committee, July 1946.

4 – The Merck Report: a report by George W. Merck, the Director of the War Research Service (1945).

5 – Col. William F. Creasy, ‘Presentation to Secretary of Defense’s Ad Hoc Committee on CEBAR’, 24 February 1950, p. 15.

6 – PRO, DEFE 4–3. Sir John Cunningham at Chiefs of Staff meeting, 26 March 1947.

7 – PRO, DEFE 4–24. Chiefs of Staff Committee meeting, 22 February 1950.

8 – US Army activity in the US Biological Warfare Program (24 February 1977), pp. 1–4.

9 – Creasy op. cit., p. 17.

10 – Correspondence with Brigadier-General Niles J. Fulwyler, 9 February 1981. Information on Operation Harness comes from Royal Navy source and Porton Down (authors’ interview with Dr Rex Watson, 21 July 1981).

11 – Documents quoted in Washington Post 18 September 1979. But, according to the family of one of the 800,000 victims of this attack, the supposedly harmless bacteria used had caused a fatal casualty. Edward Nevin, a retired pipe fitter, had been admitted to hospital suffering from a hernia for what should have been a relatively simple operation. On 1 November 1950 he died of pneumonia. Blood and urine samples showed clear evidence of serratia. At the time his family accepted his death as the result of an infection striking a vulnerable old man. But the doctors who treated Nevin were puzzled. There had been eleven cases of serratia pneumonia in the weeks following the spraying. It was such a rare outbreak that they wrote an article for the Archives of Internal Medicine the following year. When details of the San Francisco tests began to leak out in 1976, the Nevin family suspected that their grandfather’s death had been a direct result of the biological warfare tests.

12 – ‘Behaviour of aerosol clouds within cities’, US Army Chemical Corps Joint Quarterly Report, No. 5, July-September 1953.

13 – Ministry of Defence Press Release issued in 1954, quoted in correspondence December 1979.

14 – Information to the authors from local sources, confirmed by Ministry of Defence and Porton Down.

15 – Documents quoted in Washington Post, 23 April 1980.

16 – Ibid.

17 – US Army Information Sheet, 12 January 1977.

18 – Creasey, op. cit., p. 33.

19 – US Army Activity (Note 2) pp. 3–1. For some of the details of Pine Bluff Arsenal we are indebted to Seymour Hersh, op. cit., pp. 132–7.

20 – Creasey, op. cit. Table One.

21 – Ibid., pp. 22–3.

22 – Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China (Peking, 1952).

23 – Authors’ interview with Dr Needham, 25 February 1981.

24 – Sworn statement made January 1952, quoted in Hersh, op. cit., p. 20.

25 – SIPRI The problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Vol. I, p. 230.

26 – see Chapter Five.

27 – Quoted in Walter Schneir, ‘The Campaign to Make Chemical Warfare Respectable’, The Reporter (October 1959), p. 27.

28 – Law of Land Warfare. Field Manual 27–10.

29 – Armed Forces Doctrine for Chemical and Biological Weapons Employment and Defense. Field Manual 101–40.

30 – J. H. Rothschild Tomorrow’s Weapons (New York, 1964), pp. 82–4.

31 – Summary of Major Events and Problems, United States Chemical Corps, Fiscal Year 1959 (Army Chemical Center, Maryland, January 1960.)

32 – This was code-named ‘Project Screw worm’.

33 – Sawyer, Dengerfield, Hogge and Crozier ‘Antibiotic Prophylaxis and Therapy of Airborne Tularemia’, Bacteriological Reviews (September 1966), pp. 542–8.

34 – Quoted in Hersh, op. cit., p. 124.

35 – Webb, Wetherley-Mein, Gordon Smith and McMahon ‘Leukaemia and Neoplastic Process treated with Langat and Kyasanur Forest Disease Viruses: a clinical and laboratory study of 28 patients’, British Medical Journal (29 January 1966), pp. 258–66.

36 – Ibid.

37 – Figures given in parliamentary answer by Geoffrey Johnson Smith MP, 12 July 1971.

38 – Hersh, op. cit., pp. 119–20.

39 – The observation was first made by Robin Clarke and Julian Perry Robinson in ‘United Kingdom Research Policy’, in Steven Rose (ed.), Chemical and Biological Warfare (London, 1968), p. 109.

40 – This scenario was painted for the authors by Dr Rex Watson, Director of Porton Down, during an interview in November 1980.

41 – US Army Activity in the US Biological Warfare Programs (note 6), pp. 5–4–6–3.

42 – Desert Test Center, Utah.

43 – Comment to the authors by former Chemical Corps officer.

44 – ‘No single inspection procedure or combination of procedures were available that would offer a high level of assurance against militarily significant violation of BW limitation’ (US Army Activity in the US Biological Warfare Programs, pp. 5–2, 5–3).

45 – Presidential Statement, 25 November 1969.

46 – SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 128–9.

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE RISE AND RISE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS

1 – PRO, Cos (45) 402 (o). ‘Further Developments in Weapons and Methods of War’, a report of Sir Henry Tizard’s Ad Hoc Committee to Chiefs of Staff, June 1945.

2 – Undated interview with Maj. Gen. Marshall Stubbs by American Citizens for Honesty in Government. Interview notes made available to authors.

3 – D. J. A. Goodspeed, A History of the Defence Science Board of Canada (Ottawa, 1958).

4 – Statement to the Australian Senate by the Minister of Supply, Senator Anderson, 28 November 1968.

5 – Authors’ interview with Dr Rex Watson in November 1980. It is also known that Australian scientists carried out experimental research into toxins extracted from jellyfish and sea-wasps in 1968–9.

6 – ‘The Lethality to rats of GB and GE from HE/Chemical weapons in the field’, Porton Technical Paper No. 239 (1951). And ‘The production of casualties in monkeys with GB vapour’, Porton Technical paper No. 424 (1954).

7 – Letter from John Morris MP, Junior Defence Minister to James Dickens MP, 31 July 1968. Our account also draws upon correspondence with Cockayne and examination of medical reports.

8 – The Nigerian tests were confirmed by the present Director and Staff of Porton Down in meetings and correspondence with the authors.

9 – Quoted in Tribune, 30 January 1959.

10 – Ministry of Defence press release, 29 October 1970.

11 – Joint Logistics Plans Committee memo, 7 April 1953.

12 – Authors’ interview with Tom Griffiths in April 1980. An account of the Griffiths case is also to be found in Elizabeth Sigmund, Rage Against the Dying (London, 1980), pp. 28–42.

13 – Authors’ interview with Trevor Martin in February 1981. See also ‘Nerve gas man reveals how he was crippled’, Sunday Times, 7 December 1969.

14 – Fort Clayton, Canal Zone; Fort Greely, Alaska; Camp Tuto, Greenland.

15 – The plant was known as the Muscle Shoals Development works, and was operating by 1953.

16 – There are conflicting accounts of how much was produced. The cost of GB manufacture is given in SIPRI, op. cit. Vol. II, p. 53.

17 – The warheads included Honest John, Little John, and Sergeant missiles.

18 – The American M 34 ‘cluster bomb’ had been fitted with extra handles so that it could be carried by British bombers.

19 – A Brief History of Porton, p. 37.

20 – see Chapter Two.

21 – Summary of Major Events and Problems, US Army Chemical Corps, Fiscal Year 1959 (January 1960).

22 – Information to the authors.

23 – Part of this description of the Newport Chemical Plant is indebted to Seymour Hersh, op. cit.

24 – Missiles included Honest John and Sergeant.

25 – US Army Chemical Corps (January 1960) Summary of Major Events and Problems.

26 – Harpers, June 1959.

27 – This Week, 17 May 1959. Quoted in Walter Scheir ‘The Campaign to Make Chemical Warfare Respectable’, The Reporter, October 1959.

28 – ‘U.S. Seeks to develop chemicals that will disable the enemy temporarily’, Wall Street Journal, 16 August 1963.

29 – Extract from sworn statement given by former US serviceman Dan Bowen to American Citizens for Honesty in Government, 9 July 1979. Bowen had participated in tests at Edgewood Arsenal between 28 February 1961 and 3 April 1961.

30 – Department of Defense statement 26 July 1975, and correspondence with Ministry of Defence 29 April 1980.

31 – A fuller account of the discovery of LSD appears in John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (New York, 1979).

32 – Inspector-General US Army Use of Volunteers in Chemical Agent Research, (March 1976).

33 – Psychochemical Agents, Chemical Warfare Laboratories Report No. 2071, 14 September 1956.

34 – Prices given by Dr Neville Gadsby to Daily Telegraph, 3 June 1969. According to our information the British continued, however, to investigate other ‘humane’ drugs, including powerful animal sedatives designed originally to knock out elephants and other large animals.

35 – Information to the authors from Detective-Inspector Richard Lee, who discovered the transaction during investigations for Operation Julie, the world’s largest anti-LSD operation. Lee believed the ‘China connection’ drugs could only have been intended for chemical warfare, but maintained silence on details of the discovery.

36 – Medical report quoted in Bowart, op. cit., p. 90.

37 – Testimony to army investigators, Marks, op. cit., p. 67.

38 – Department of Defence statement, 26 July 1975.

39 – Pharmacologia, 1972.

40 – There were numerous other tests, notably to discover the value of LSD in the interrogation of prisoners. In 1960 an interrogation team was sent to Europe to use LSD in the questioning of ten suspects believed to have lied during previous military police investigations. Codenamed Project Third Chance, the interrogation team concluded that LSD was safe, humane, and secure. In 1962, a second team used LSD during interrogations in the Far East, where seven ‘foreign nationals’ were given the drug. Despite the enthusiasm of its advocates, use of LSD on military prisoners was suspended in 1963.

41 – US Army Bio-engineering R & D Laboratory, Technical Report 7710, (Fort Detrick, August 1977); and SIPRI, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 47.

42 – Vietnam might have provided the perfect ‘field laboratory’ for BZ. There is one account of BZ being used in combat in Vietnam. L’Express described an attack by the First Airmobile Division during Operation White Wing in March 1966. The US troops were said to have dropped 3,000 BZ filled grenades on suspected Viet Cong positions. The report was denied by the US government. Some support for their denial can be gleaned from the fact that BZ is said never to have been loaded into grenades. There were at least three other allegations of BZ use in Vietnam, but none was satisfactorily proved.

43 – The Dugway experiment, to ‘test the effective dosage of BZ when disseminated in the open’, began in late 1964, and was codenamed Project Dork. The Hawaii tests took place in 1966 and 1967.

44 – Ministry of Defence spokesman, 3 August 1979.

45 – The American government maintained at the time that US forces in Vietnam did not use chemical weapons which were subject to international controls. They stated that anti-plant agents and ‘harassing agents’ did not constitute chemical warfare. Since the end of the Second World War chemical warfare had been alleged in a succession of countries, including China (1946), Vietnam (1947), Egypt (1948), Greece (1949), Korea (1952), Cuba (1957), Algeria (1957), Spanish Sahara (1958), and China (1958). The majority of these charges were dismissed as propaganda. The most authenticated use of gas took place during the Yemen Civil War, between 1963 and 1967. It was claimed that Soviet-manufactured gas, notably mustard, had been employed by Egyptian forces which had intervened on the Republican side. There were also allegations that the Egyptians were using gas, including phosgene, which had been left in the country by British troops during the Second World War. Altogether some 1,400 Royalist tribesmen were said to have been killed, and a further 900 seriously wounded. Independent investigation by the Red Cross confirmed the claim that gas had been used. Although Saudi Arabia attempted to persuade the United Nations to mount an investigation and condemn the use of gas, the UN took no action.

46 –2, 4 dichlorphenoxyacetic acid, coded LN8; 2, 4, 5 trichlorophenoxyacetic acid, coded LN14, and better known as 245T; and iso-Propyl N-phenol carbamate, code LN33. (PRO DEFE 2/1252 ‘Crop Destruction’, a memorandum for the Joint Technical Warfare Committee (1945), p. 2.)

47 – Ibid. p. I. Strategists calculated that an attack would destroy about 30 per cent of the rice crop.

48 – Flying, November 1966.

49 – SIPRI, op. cit. Vol. I, p. 166.

50 – Letter from Dixon Donelly, Assistant Secretary, Department of Defense, September 1966.

51 – SIPRI, op. cit., pp. 178–9.

52 – Dioxin: a potential chemical warfare agent, SIPRI Yearbook (Stockholm, 1977), p. 92.

53 – Ibid., pp. 97–8.

54 – Information to the authors from Vietnam veterans. See also Marta Tarben, The Agent Orange Time Bomb, Mike Goldwater and Anthony Barnet, Wouldn’t Hurt a Mouse, New Statesman.

55 – So called after the two American scientists, Carson and Staughton, who first discovered the compound in 1928.

56 – Summary of Major Events and Problems, US Chemical Corps, Fiscal Year 1959 (January 1960), p. 96.

57 – Attack in Bin dinh province, February 1966.

58 – Quoted in Hersh, op. cit., pp. 178–9.

59 – Le Monde, 4 January 1966.

60 – Hersh, op. cit., p. 170.

61 – The link was discovered by University of Pennsylvania students in 1965. The ICR had been involved in CBW research since the Korean War. In 1965, its two major projects were Summit and Spicerack. Summit involved research into new chemical weapons for the Chemical Corps. Spicerack was the cover for work for the US Air Force.

62 – Experiments, for example, into weapons combining gas and fuel/air devices, which would detonate and punch a cloud of chemical towards the enemy.

63 – Testimony to Armed Services Committee, US House of Representatives, Hearings on Military Posture, 1970.

CHAPTER NINE: THE TOOLS OF SPIES

1 – Quoted in BBC Television’s Panorama, ‘Who Killed Georgi Markov?’, 9 September 1979.

2 – Information on these attacks is drawn from a number of sources. The most readable account of the activities of Khokhlov appears in John Barron, KGB (New York, 1974). A fuller version can be found in Murder International Inc, Murder and Kidnapping as an instrument of Soviet Policy, 1965 Hearings before the subcommittee to investigate the administration of the International Security Act and other Internal Security Laws, Judiciary Committee, US Senate, 1965.

3 – PRO, Cabinet Paper 120/783.

4 – PRO, CAB 79/56. Chiefs of Staff Committee, 20 July 1942.

5 – Ibid. Comment by ACIGS

6 – Ibid.

7 – Lovell, op. cit., p. 17.

8 – Ibid., p. 22.

9 – Ibid. Inscription on fly leaf of copy given by author to Lord Stamp.

10 – Ibid.

11 – This was the title of a book by John Marks (The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, op. cit.).

12 – See Josef Mindszenty, Memoirs (New York, 1974).

13 – Use of Volunteers in Chemical Agent Research, Report of the Inspector-General, Department of the Army, 1975, p. 19.

14 – ‘Disposal of Maximum Custody Type Defectors of All Categories’. Memo dated 7 March 1951.

15 – ‘Sensitive Research Programs’. Memo for Director of Central Intelligence, June 1964.

16 – Quarterly Report, 1 July–30 September 1953. Section on Addicting Drugs, Laboratory of Pharmacology, Addiction Research Center, Lexington, Kentucky.

17 – ‘No One Told Them’, Newsweek, 21 July 1975.

18 – Alan W. Scheflin and Edward M. Opton Jr., The Mind Manipulators (London and New York, 1978), pp. 134–5.

19 – ‘Senate Panel to Focus on Abuses Linked to CIA Drug Testing’, New York Times, 20 September 1977.

20 – ‘New Details of “House in SF”’, San Francisco Chronicle, 28 August 1977.

21 – ‘CIA Sought to Spray Drug on Partygoers’ New York Times, 29 September 1977.

22 – Quoted in Marks, op. cit., p. 101.

23 – ‘Testing of Psychochemicals and related materials’. Memo from Richard Helms to Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, 17 December 1963.

24 – Statement to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Senate Committee on Human Resources, Admiral Stansfield Turner, 13 August 1977.

25 – Annual Reports of Human Ecology Fund, filed with New York State Department of Social Welfare, 1961 and 1962.

26 – Summary of Project OFTEN, 29 May 1973.

27 – William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men – My Life in the CIA (New York, 1978), p. 442. In an interview with one of the authors in May 1978, Colby claimed that all the allegations of CIA assassination plots ‘really involve only one case – Fidel Castro’, and there he admitted that the CIA did plan a murder.

28 – ‘Unauthorised Storage of Toxic Agents’, hearings before US Senate Intelligence Committee (16, 17, 18 September 1975) p. 10. Chaired by Senator Frank Church, it was known as the Church Committee.

29 – Ibid., p. 161.

30 – Memorandum for the Record. Discussions with [deleted] on MKNAOMI (September 1975), pp. 3–4.

31 – Memo from unidentified CIA officer to unidentified Chief of Division, 7 February 1962.

32 – Report to US House of Representatives, quoted in Robin Clarke, We All Fall Down (London, 1968).

33 – Dr Edward Schantz, who worked at Fort Detrick for twenty-eight years, in testimony to the Church Committee, Church, op. cit., p. 153.

34 – Although there is nothing necessarily sinister in the connection between an animal health laboratory and a biological warfare establishment, suspicion could only increase when, asked about the nature of the Shellfish Toxin research at Babraham, the Minister responsible would say only that ‘the work has been of value in demonstrating the correlation between certain physiological activities’ (Neil McFarland, Hansard, 14 January 1980).

35 – Charles A. Senseny, testimony to Church Committee, Church, op. cit., p. 162. Senseny had begun work in the Fort Detrick Special Operations Division in 1953, where he had carried out many experiments with Shellfish poison, refined dart guns, and devised methods of forcing biological agents into public water supplies.

36 – According to a report in Newsday in January 1977, not all CIA anti-Cuba biological operations failed. The paper quoted an unidentified intelligence source as saying that in early 1971 he had been given a container of virus for shipment to Cuba. Six weeks later the island reported the only outbreak of African Swine Fever in the Western hemisophere. Over 500,000 pigs, considered vital to the national economy, were slaughtered. The CIA had no comment to make on the allegation. Newsday, 9 January 1977.

37 – ‘Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders’, Interim Report of the Church Committee, pp. 20–1. Gottlieb gave evidence under the pseudonym ‘Victor Scheider’. Further information from authors’ interview with former CIA officer John Stockwell in May 1978.

38 – Philip Agee, Inside the Company – CIA Diary (New York, 1975), p. 85.

39 – Information from Fort Detrick employee.

40 – Unauthorised Storage of Toxic Agents – Church, op. cit., pp. 103–104.

CHAPTER TEN: FROM DISARMAMENT TO REARMAMENT

1 – Quoted in First Tuesday, NBC News, 1 May 1973.

2 – Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, signed in Washington, London and Moscow, 10 April 1971.

3 – Boston Globe, 28 September 1975.

4 – Jack Anderson’s syndicated column, 27 December 1975, Nicholas Wade, who investigated these two allegations for Science, concluded that there was ‘little evidence to suppose that the Sovier Union is in legal violation of the Biological Weapons Convention’ (Science, 2 April 1976). The slighted Soviet diplomat told Science that ‘Anderson can say what he likes, this is a free country.’

5 – Reuters dispatch, Brussels, 30 January 1978. Tass later described the story as a product of the ‘British misinformation department’.

6 – New York Times, 5 June 1978.

7 – San Francisco Examiner, 22 October 1979. The Polish army captain was said to have told American diplomats that he had heard of the plan while imprisoned in the Gulag Archipelago in 1976. A counter-allegation was made by Fidel Castro in July 1981, when he claimed that an outbreak of dengue which had killed 113 Cubans and infected a further 270,000 was the work of the CIA (speech at Victoria de las Tunas, Cuba, 27 July 1981).

8 – Now!, 26 October 1979.

9 – This connection was first noted by Zhores Medvedev in New Scientist, 31 July 1980.

10 – Daily Telegraph, 11 February 1980.

11 – Bild Zeitung, 13 February 1980.

12 – For example, Washington Star, 19 March 1980; ‘US Believes Soviet Anthrax Killed 200–300’.

13 – For example, Zhotes Medvedev, New Scientist, 31 July 1980; Vivian Wyatt, New Scientist, 4 September 1980.

14 – Quoted in New Scientist, 10 July 1980.

15 – Pentagon spokesman to the authors, December 1980.

16 – Authors’ correspondence with Porton Down, March 1981.

17 – The laboratory had been used by the Department of Health for the manufacture of anthrax vaccine.

18 – Authors’ interview with Dr Rex Watson, 21 July 1981.

19 – Authors’ interview with Professor Adolf Henning Frucht, Berlin, April 1980.

20 – ‘Chemische Waffen in Warschauer Pakt’, Soldat und Technik (1970).

21 – Professor John Erickson, ‘Soviet Chemical Warfare Capabilities’ (Department of Defence Studies Edinburgh University, 1978), p. 17.

22 – Correspondence from Ministry of Defence to the authors, April 1980.

23 – The service personnel are said to be all volunteers. In the early 1970s they were recruited through approaches from Porton Down to regimental officers, and through advertisements in service magazines. By way of inducement the volunteers were offered extra pay – some opted for the work at Porton to earn money for holidays and Christmas presents. A volunteer in similar experiments at Edgewood Arsenal in 1969 said ‘My folks think I’m insane, but they tell us there’s no real danger.’

24 – All soldiers are expected to carry an ‘autoject’ mechanical syringe to inject themselves, should they be exposed to nerve gas. The unpopularity of CBW training can perhaps be guessed at – soldiers are expected to enter a room filled with CS gas, remove their gas mask, and repeat their name, rank and number to the satisfaction of the NCO in command. But full-scale training exercises, among the most thorough in NATO, can be rendered unrealistic by the instruction to return ‘noddy’ suits in ‘good as new’ condition: soldiers wishing to eat or relieve themselves must expose themselves to an atmosphere theoretically filled with nerve gas.

25 – Testimony to NATO subcommittee of House Armed Services Committee, 18 and 19 December 1979.

26 – Correspondence from Pentagon to authors, November 1980.

27 – The United States wanted the convention to include ‘incapacitants and dangerous irritants, but not safe irritants or anti-plant chemicals’. For a fuller account of the negotiations see ‘Negotiations On Chemical Warfare Control’, Arms Control Vol. 1. No. 1 (May 1980).

28 – Charles H. Bay, ‘The Other Gas Crisis – Chemical Weapons’, Parameters, Journal of the Army War College, September 1979. Colonel Bay was Commander of Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, at the time he wrote the article.

29 – ‘Auch Kampstoff – Rustung der Sowjets’, Soldat und Technik (1968).

30 – United States Military Posture for FY 1976.

31 – Conversation with the authors, April 1980.

32 – Matthew Messelson and Julian Perry Robinson, ‘Chemical Warfare and Chemical Disarmament’, Scientific American, April 1980.

33 – Richard H. Ichord, ‘The Deadly Threat of Soviet Chemical Warfare’, Readers’ Digest, September, 1979.

34 – Bay, op. cit.

35 – Charles H. Bay, ‘The Other Gas Crisis, Part Two’, Parameters, December 1979.

36 – Evidence to House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, 18 July 1968.

37 – Information to the authors.

38 – Los Angeles Times, 23 September 1978.

39 – General Bernard Rogers in Now!, 21 March 1980.

40 – Binary Munitions Advantages: Edgewood Arsenal internal briefing document.

41 – Binary Modernization, Pentagon Information Paper, 21 May 1980, and ‘Old Fears, New Weapons: Brewing a Chemical Arms Race’, The Defence Monitor (1980) Vol. IX, No. 10, 1980.

42 – Alexander Haig, speech Berlin, 13 September 1981.

43 – Authors’ interview with Cheu Lee, January 1982.

44 – Despite persistent denials, it was abundantly clear that the Soviet-armed and Egyptian-supported republican forces had been using gas against royalists. The source of the gas (believed to be mustard) was less than clear, but the then British Prime Minister Harold Wilson had felt sufficiently confident of the claims to inform the House of Commons that gas had been used on 31 January 1967.

45 – Tricothecenes are naturally occurring toxins produced from fungus. The Soviets are believed to have devised methods of mass-producing the toxins artificially. The initial American analysis was conducted by Dr Chester J Mirocha at the University of Minnesota; he was unaware of the source of the sample sent for analysis.

46 – Chemical Warfare in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan, United States Dept. of State, 22 March 1982.

47 – Ibid., p. 6.

48 – Ibid., p. 6.

49 – Richard Burt, Director, State Dept. Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs. Authors’ interview, January 1982.

50 – Presidential letter, 9 February 1982. The letter also reaffirmed the American ‘no first use’ policy.

51 – Saul Hormats, letter to Representatives, June 1982.

52 – ‘I never dreamed that I’d be sitting here in 1980 after we started this back in 1969 and we’d have reports of 25 Warsaw Pact divisions able to use it. That’s what we were trying to stop. Apparently it has not succeeded.’ Richard Nixon, BBC Panorama, 2 June 1980.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: FULL CIRCLE

1 – Quoted in Christian Science Monitor, 13 December 1988.

2 – See BBC TV Panorama, The Secrets of Samarra, presented by one of the authors, October 1986.

3 – Richard Butler, The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Crisis of Global Security (New York, 2000), p. 41.

4 – Panorama, The Secrets of Samarra.

5 – Press statement, US Department of State, 16 March 1988.

6 – Dr Christine Godsen, Professor of Medical Genetics, Liverpool University, testimony before the US Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcomittee on terrorism, 22 April 1998.

7 – Quoted in Avigdor Haselkorn, The Continuing Storm: Iraq, Poisonous Weapons, and Deterrence (Yale, 1999), p. 97.

8 – James Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace 1989–92 (New York 1996), p. 359.

9 – US Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress (Washington, 1992), p. 15; see also Haselkorn, op. cit., p. 249.

10 – Quoted in Haselkorn, op. cit., p. 176.

11 – Butler, op. cit., p. 5.

12 – Butler, op. cit., p. xvii.

13 – Ken Alibek, Biohazard (New York, 2000) tells the full story. See also The Washington Post, ‘Soviet-era work on bioweapons still worrisome’, 12 September 2000; New Yorker, ‘The Bioweaponeers’, 15 January 2001.

14 – New Yorker, op. cit.

15 – Haselkorn, op. cit., pp. 187–91.

16 – International Herald Tribune, ‘US Anthrax Inquiry Turns to Military’, 4 December 2001.

17 – Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism (London, 1999) p. 214 and 216.

18 – Financial Times, ‘Deadly concerns’, 27 August 1999.

The authors would like to thank the following for permission to quote from copyright material: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd (Gas! The Story of the Special Brigade by Major-General C. H. Foulkes); Granada Publishing Ltd. and the Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc. (The Assassination of Heydrich by Miroslav Ivanov, translated by Patrick O’Brien. Published in the United States as Target Heydrich); Dr J. E. Hodgkin and the Imperial War Museum (the Unpublished Diaries of Brigadier A. E. Hodgkin); Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd (Callinicus by J. B. S. Haldane); Weidenfeld & Nicolson and The Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc. (Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer: The Estate of Wilfred Owen, Chatto & Windus Ltd, and New Directions Publishing Corporation (‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ from The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen edited by C. Day Lewis).

The following have very kindly given permission for the use of illustrations: The Public Records Office (1), Imperial war Museum (2, 3, 4, 5, 6), General Allan Younger (7), Royal Society (8), Porton Down (9, 10), Keystone Press Agency (11, 12, 13), Porton Down (14), Yivo Institute for Jewish Research (15, 16), Ministry of Defence (17, 18), Wellcome Museum of Medical Science (19), Center for Disease Control, Atlanta (20, 21, 22), US Department of Defense (23), Porton Down (24), Associated Press (25), Ministry of Defence (26), United Press International (27), US Department of Defense (28), United Press International (29), Press Association (30).