Chemical time-bombs in the U.S.

The stockpiles of chemical weapons in military storage depots in the U.S. pose a far more serious chemical weapons threat to the people of the U.S. than did the pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum that was targeted by U.S. missiles in August.

M.S. VENKATARAMANI

IN August, President Bill Clinton ordered a missile attack to destroy a facility in Sudan which he alleged was producing dangerous ingredients for possible use in chemical warfare. Sudanese authorities asserted that the building in Khartoum, which was demolished in the attack, housed a pharmaceutical factory, and denied that it had anything to do with chemical weapons. Sudan claimed that the missile strike violated its sovereignty and international law, and asked the United Nations to depute an impartial team of experts to inspect the devastated site and make public its findings on what was being produced at the facility. However, Washington reiterated its allegations in an attempt to justify its sneak attack on a nondescript structure in an urban area of a poverty-stricken and strife-torn Third World country.

The self-righteous expositions by U.S. officials on the "danger" to the "international community" arising from the presence of chemical weapons in any hands other than those of Pentagon officials is more than a little ironic. They see no need to explain why, over a period of several years, the U.S. produced and stockpiled a wide range of highly toxic chemical weapons. In fact, the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons today are in the U.S. The most serious chemical weapons threat to the people of the U.S. comes from those that are stored in various locations in the U.S. itself. For many years the Pentagon chose not to alert the people of the U.S. adequately about the dangers lurking in locations that were being used to produce or store chemical weapons.

At a recent press conference, U.S. Secretary of Defence William Cohen acknowledged that until 1971 one of the deadliest chemical warfare "agents" - the nerve gas known as sarin - had been stored in U.S. military storage depots in Okinawa (in Japan) and in Germany. There were probably a few other foreign locations where the Pentagon's chemical weapons had been stored from time to time. It seems unlikely that the "host countries" were adequately briefed on the horrendous consequences of an accidental explosion at the storage depots. There is growing evidence that even in the U.S. the Pentagon did not make meaningful information available to local authorities and communities living adjacent to the installations. Here are a couple of cases.

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN ARSENAL

Shortly after the U.S. directly entered the Second World War, U.S. military chieftains decided to set up a state-of-the-art chemical weapons manufacturing facility on a site near Denver, the capital of the State of Colorado. Citizens and newspapers of Denver, the "Mile-High City" in the Rocky Mountains, saw the move as dramatic evidence of America's determination to meet and overcome any challenge from Germany or Japan. The chemical weapons that the newly-established Rocky Mountain Arsenal produced included mustard gas and nerve gas.

According to a U.S. writer who recently investigated the continuing threat of contamination in and around the Arsenal where the manufacture of chemical weapons continued until 1969, "from 1953 to 1957, the Arsenal was the Free World's largest producer of sarin, a nerve agent developed by Nazi scientists that was so deadly a drop could kill a man in a half a minute." A part of the site was leased by the Shell Oil Company which continued to operate there until 1982. At that time the Army announced that it had begun a comprehensive programme to decontaminate and clean up the site and the surrounding area. Many local residents and environmentalists have since expressed serious doubts about the effectiveness of the Army's efforts and the veracity of its assurances on the success of its actions in cleaning up an area that included, according to one report, "the most contaminated square mile on earth."

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has been squabbling with the Pentagon on the efficacy of the clean-up operation. It has argued that the Arsenal's activities created a "contamination highway right into the groundwater of the area." An appraisal published by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment states:

"The potential exposure pathways include ingestion, skin absorption and/or inhalation from contaminated soils, surface water and groundwater. Residential development, agriculture, use of on-post water as drinking water and consumption of fish and game taken at RMA (Rocky Mountain Arsenal) are prohibited... contamination is widespread over several square miles on site. There is evidence that off site contamination of soils and air may have occurred to the north and northwest. The contaminated groundwater on site has moved north and northwest..."

The Army, faced with a public relations problem, has been working during the last three years with a Rocky Mountain Arsenal Restoration Board (RAB) in which various local interests are represented. Some of the representatives are dissatisfied with the decontamination effort. Several people complain that the Army is reluctant to investigate seriously their claims in respect of the presence of some highly toxic items at the site and their fears about the multiplier effects if various toxic chemicals get combined. The Pentagon recognises that "cleaning up" the site is an exceedingly complex problem, spruces its public relations efforts and goes about its task as best as it knows now. But it does not have all the answers.

DANGER IN STORAGE

If the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, where the production of chemical weapons ended in 1969, continues to evoke fears, what is the situation in respect of "depots" where they have remained in storage over the years? They constitute an infinitely greater (and ever-present) threat to the people of the U.S. than do the ingredients for chemical weapons supposedly produced in a primitive facility in Sudan or those suspected by Washington to be buried deep under the desert sands in Iraq.

One of the major storage locations is the U.S. Army's Umatilla Chemical Depot, near the town of Hermiston in the State of Oregon. I decided to look for information on this particular facility because I had lived for four years (1951-55) and travelled extensively in that State on my first visit to the U.S.

Established in 1941 a few weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the Umatilla depot, on an 8,000-hectare site that had easy access to the Pacific coast ports of Portland and Seattle, served during the War years as a storage area for conventional ammunition and bombs. During the Cold War period, the Pentagon needed sites to produce chemical weapons. The U.S. was involved in military operations in Korea and Vietnam. According to reports, consignments for storage were first brought with great secrecy to the Umatilla depot shortly after John F. Kennedy entered the White House in 1961; the activity acquired momentum subsequently. Chemical warfare agents appear to have been transported from Umatilla to the Japanese island of Okinawa which the U.S. had kept under its control. The Umatilla depot was probably one of several facilities from which supplies were sent for the U.S. chemical warfare against the Viet Cong in Vietnam.

JUSTIN LANE / GAMMA-LIAISON
An emergency drill for a chemical attack, at the Pentagon in May. The largest stockpiles of chemical weapons today are in the U.S. and for many years the Pentagon chose not to alert Americans adequately about the dangers from these storage sites.

GETTING TO KNOW ABOUT K-BLOCK

In April 1997, The Seattle Times reported that the Umatilla depot's "collection" constituted "one of the largest chemical-weapon stockpiles in the country, containing enough toxic agents, in terms of sheer volume, to kill tens of millions of people." The report mentioned "220,000 rockets, bombs and projectiles loaded with the most lethal poisons on earth." For many years, communities around the Umatilla depot did not know what materials were stored there and whether they might face problems if "something went wrong".

During my initial four-year stay in Oregon and during two subsequent visits I heard no mention from my friends, several of whom were veterans of the Second World War and the Korean War, about the depot's purpose and functions. It was during my most recent visit to Oregon four years ago that I heard from environmentalists about the "chemical time-bomb" ticking in their State and the horrendous possible consequences of an accidental explosion. Accidents could be caused by, among other things, lightning, earthquakes, earth tremors, the crash of an aircraft on the storage area, auto-ignition caused by leakages from eroding storage vessels and interaction of varied chemicals, and sabotage.

The Seattle Times stated that inside a fortified and guarded area of the depot known as K-Block, the chemical weapons are stored in 80 igloos. It said:

"K-Block houses two kinds of chemical poisons: blistering agents and nerve agents. Blistering agents, such as HD or mustard (gas), cause blistering over the entire body, including the eyes and lungs. Though lethal, mustard is designed to maim rather than kill.

"Nerve agents, such as VX and CB, the latter commonly known as sarin, attack the nervous system, causing the body's muscles and heart to tighten in an unyielding death grip."

K-Block is reported to hold 105,000 M-55 rockets each carrying a payload of 10 pounds of nerve agent. The Seattle Times quotes what a scientist of the National Research Council told an Umatilla citizens group:

"If anything goes wrong, lightning strikes, something goes wrong with the propellant, one of these things ignites in an igloo, we could have rockets shooting all over. I understand there was an igloo that exploded at the depot - conventional weapons - a long time ago. If that would have been chemical weapons, it would have been catastrophic... M-55 rockets are the potential problem. You have them unfortunately."

In recent years, concerned scientists and environmental activists had sought to draw attention to the threat posed to lives and property by aged, deteriorating, and leak-prone chemical weapons in various locations in the U.S. Their efforts have been reinforced by large numbers of U.S. veterans of the Vietnam war. These former soldiers claimed that they had developed a variety of illnesses because they had been required to handle certain toxic chemicals in the line of duty in Vietnam. The evasive reactions of the Pentagon infuriated the ailing veterans and their families.

AMERICAN VICTIMS OF "AGENT ORANGE"

A veteran U.S. journalist once said that in his country "news comes out because it is in someone's interest for it to come out." That interest may, in several cases, be triggered by a desire to promote one's own purposes and frustrate those of one's adversaries. There are also cases in which harmful acts of omission or commission by agencies of the government, high public officials, or corporate barons lead victims to organise themselves and bring issues into the open with the help of public-spirited or even special interest groups. The latter process had forced the Pentagon to acknowledge after initial hesitation that it did engage in certain types of chemical warfare in Vietnam during the 1961-1971 period. It admitted that it had carried out what it euphemistically described as a "herbicide programme", codenamed Operation Trail Dust.

Further investigations revealed that U.S. militant forces had "disseminated" 19.4 million gallons of "herbicides" in a "defoliation" campaign in Vietnam. "Agent Orange" accounted for over 60 per cent of the total quantity and its "dissemination" was codenamed Operation Ranch Hand. According to a recent study by H. Lindsey Arison, that toxic chemical "contained relatively high levels of an exceedingly poisonous contaminant known as 'dioxin'..." "Agent Orange" could not distinguish between the Vietnamese (on whom it was indiscriminately sprayed) and U.S. soldiers (who handled it). Arison's account indicates how hundreds of U.S. soldiers came to be exposed to malevolent "agents":

"Herbicides were used extensively in Vietnam by the U.S. Air Force's Operation Ranch Hand to defoliate inland hardwood forests, coastal mangrove forests, and cultivated land by aerial spraying from C-123 cargo/transport aircraft and helicopters. Soldiers also sprayed herbicides on the ground to defoliate the perimeters of base camps; this spraying was executed from the rear of trucks and from spray units mounted on the backs of soldiers on foot. Navy riverboats also sprayed herbicides along riverbanks. The purpose of spraying herbicides was to improve the ability to detect (and bomb) enemy base camps and enemy forces along lines of communication and infiltration routes. Spraying was also used to destroy the crops of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese."

When an increasing number of veterans who had come into contact with "Agent Orange" in Vietnam complained of various ailments subsequently, the Pentagon was content to cite a 1974 study undertaken by the National Institute of Sciences on a Defence Department contract. The study reported that no evidence had been found of direct damage to human health nor any conclusive evidence linking defoliants with human birth defects. Some reputable scientists, including at least two specialists who had held high official or advisory positions in the Department of Defence, were unwilling to accept the validity of the conclusions of the study. Continued stonewalling by the Pentagon, and its reluctance to accept responsibility for what the veterans regarded as service-related disabilities, gave rise to considerable resentment among them. Their campaign attracted public sympathy and created doubts among many people about the accuracy and fairness of the Pentagon's claims. The sentiment gathered momentum among groups of scientists, environmentalists, and citizens that the Pentagon might also be fudging the facts concerning the safety of stockpiled chemical weapons and the adequacy of its efforts to clean up sites where the weapons had been manufactured or were stored.

ANXIETIES over the Frankenstein monster of stockpiled chemical weapons were heightened when hundreds of U.S. soldiers who had taken part in the Gulf war in 1991 began complaining of health problems, including chronic fatigue, headache, nausea, diarrhoea, depression, joint and muscle pain, rashes, memory loss and insomnia. While many of them complained that they had been exposed to toxic chemical emissions during operations, questions were raised about injections of an experimental drug that had been administered to thousands of soldiers without any explanation. To the ranks of the victims of "Agent Orange" were added those afflicted by the "Gulf War Syndrome". A few months ago, after seven years of waffling, the Pentagon admitted that the experimental drug injections should not have been given to U.S. soldiers on the basis of an assumption that Iraq might use sarin. No nerve gas attacks were launched by Iraq during the Gulf war.

The doubts raised over the years about the veracity and validity of the Pentagon's assurances about its commitment to safety and to timely sharing of information with the public were intensified by the clamour over "Agent Orange" and the "Gulf War Syndrome". It directed public attention to the menace represented by the huge stockpiles of chemical weapons in different locations within the U.S. Congress has now mandated that the Pentagon eliminate all stockpiles of chemical weapons by A.D. 2005.

THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
Nerve gas rockets at a chemical weapons storage facility of the U.S. Army on Johnston Island in November 1990.

INCINERATION

Making the chemical weapon monster disappear may be enormously more difficult than its creation was. The solution that the Pentagon came up with was to incinerate the stockpiles over a period at eight locations and to complete the task by 2005.

The Umatilla depot is one of eight sites designated by the Pentagon as incineration centres. Early last year work began on the construction of the incinerator complex of "several factory-sized buildings". The Pentagon assured communities nearby that although the process was complex, it would have no adverse effect on the environment. Military sources are reported to have described the process thus:

"The munitions will be removed one at a time from pellets and hand-loaded into conveyors. The conveyors will take them to an explosion-resistant room where robots will drain them of lethal chemicals, dismantle them and then, in the case of the rockets, clean them up.

"The various components will be burned in separate rooms as hot as 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit and afterburners will cook them again to be sure they are detoxified. The resulting brines, ash, and metal fragments will be considered low-level and be buried in a hazardous-waste landfill... 44 miles west of the depot."

Pentagon officials have assured local communities that the process "will burn 99.999 per cent of poison gas constituents, resulting in cleaner emissions than what comes out of a typical diesel truck."

Some scientists believe that the Pentagon is doing its best to deal with an extremely difficult problem. However, the Pentagon has a credibility problem because of earlier episodes in which its assurances in respect of safety had not turned out to be well-founded. Some scientists, environmentalists and residents of communities adjacent to the incineration centres voice misgivings that emissions released into the atmosphere during several months of incineration of highly toxic chemicals may pose unforeseeable long-term hazards to human beings and to plant and animal life.

No one has, however, come up with an alternative solution that would guarantee a risk-free elimination of the stockpiles. Given the danger of an accidental explosion, speed is of the essence; to supporters of the Pentagon's effort, it seems unlikely that another, more efficacious, process can be developed in the near future. In all fairness, the Pentagon has, despite past lapses, exerted itself to identify the least-disadvantageous method of tackling the problem. It has also initiated comprehensive measures to deal with the danger of any accident that may occur while the process is under way and to protect to the maximum extent possible communities around the incineration centres.

These stockpiles represent the real chemical weapon threat to the U.S. and its people. Looking for threats from a ramshackle facility in Sudan may be a diversionary expedient adopted by the Clinton administration; the American people should insist that their Government focus its attention on dealing with the real threat at home.

A ROLE FOR THE U.N.

The United Nations has designated October 14 as World Disaster Reduction Day. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said: "There is no reason why we should wait patiently for the next natural disaster to strike." Natural disasters like floods, typhoons and earthquakes take a heavy toll of lives year after year. The consequences of a disaster in the vast U.S. stockpiles of chemical weapons brought on either by "natural" causes or other factors such as human errors and accidents would be immeasurably greater. They pose a continuing threat to the peoples of the Western hemisphere and to global environment. It is an issue that should be of concern to the international community and, therefore, to the U.N.

Unfortunately the international community, and even the American public, have not been adequately alerted to the danger posed by the stockpiles of chemical weapons (and nuclear waste) in the U.S. The U.N. has a responsibility to draw attention to the "clear and present danger" and to monitor the progress made in eliminating it.

Dr. M.S. Venkataramani is former Dean and Professor of American Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Table of Contents

Home | The Hindu | Business Line | Sportstar