War of Nerves

by Jonathan Tucker

  On July 8, 1969, twenty-three soldiers and one civilian employee from the 267th Chemical Company were conducting a maintenance operation inside one of the igloos, sandblasting paint from Sarin-filled aerial bombs in preparation for repainting them. During this operation, a small leak developed next to the fill plug of a Sarin bomb, resulting in the release of toxic fumes. All those inside the bunker developed mild symptoms of nerve agent exposure and immediately donned their gas masks. As a precaution, the exposed individuals were evacuated to an Army hospital and placed under medical observation for six hours, after which they were released and returned to full duty. Meanwhile, ordnance teams decontaminated the affected igloo, and the Army Technical Escort Team was flown from Edgewood Arsenal to Okinawa to assist with disposal of the leaky bomb. Army officials were relieved that no one had been seriously injured or killed; because no Okinawan nationals had been involved, it was assumed that the incident would remain secret.

  Ten days later, however, on July 18, 1969, The Wall Street Journal published a front-page story about the Sarin leak with the dramatic headline NERVE GAS ACCIDENT: OKINAWA MISHAP BARES OVERSEAS DEPLOYMENT OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS. By revealing that the United States had secretly stationed nerve agents in Okinawa since the early 1960s, the article sparked a political firestorm. The news came as a profound shock to Okinawans of all political persuasions. Chobyo Yara, the chief executive of the government of the Ryukyus, of which Okinawa was the main island, said that he was “flabbergasted. If the report is true, this is a serious problem. The presence of horrible nerve gas weapons jeopardizes our lives and thus it is absolutely unforgivable.” Yara demanded that United States remove the stockpile immediately.

  In Tokyo, the conservative, pro-American government of Premier Eisaku Sato was deeply embarrassed by the Sarin incident. At a news conference, Foreign Minister Kiichi Aichi said that he had asked the United States “not to cause uneasiness” on Okinawa by continuing to store chemical weapons there. In a commentary on the incident published on July 20, 1969, the columnist James Reston observed, “The trouble is not that the Pentagon is wicked but that it seems to be clumsy; it is constantly being caught doing things that embarrass the Government and complicate the conduct of American foreign and even internal policy.”

  Indeed, the controversy threatened to disrupt the delicate negotiations between Washington and Tokyo over the renewal of the U.S.-Japan security treaty and the planned return of Okinawa to Japan in 1972. The Japanese government insisted that Washington would have to ask permission before redeploying chemical weapons to Okinawa in a crisis or war. As a Japanese official told The New York Times, “We used to say, ‘No nukes on Okinawa.’ Now we will have to say, ‘No nukes and no gas.’ It’s going to become a national demand.”

  On July 22, the Okinawan legislature met in special session and adopted a resolution requesting the removal of all U.S. chemical weapons. Hours later, a Pentagon spokesman admitted that such weapons existed on the island and would be withdrawn. Although the United States had planned the removal operation “for some time,” he said, it would now be accelerated. Washington was also forced to admit that it had secretly deployed a stockpile of chemical weapons in West Germany. Opposition parties in Bonn angrily called for a government investigation.

  In addition to creating a foreign policy crisis, the Sarin leak on Okinawa underscored the hazards of storing and testing chemical weapons. Coming on the heels of the Skull Valley incident, Okinawa heightened Congressional concern over the open-air testing of lethal chemical agents. On November 19, 1969, while the Army’s testing moratorium was still in effect, Congress passed the FY 1970 Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 91-121), imposing strict controls on the deployment, storage, and disposal of chemical weapons, both within the United States and outside the country. The new legislation also established an elaborate approval process for open-air releases of lethal chemical agents. A test could take place only if the Secretary of Defense certified that it was essential for national security, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare concurred that it was safe, and Congress was given thirty days’ advance notice. Although the new law did not impose an outright ban on open-air testing, it created so many bureaucratic hurdles as to make such trials effectively impossible.

  The Chemical Corps suffered another major blow in late 1969. In May of that year, four months after the inauguration of President Richard M. Nixon, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger had requested an in-depth policy review of issues related to chemical and biological weapons, with a reporting deadline in the fall. On November 25, 1969, this review culminated in the issuance of National Security Decision Memorandum 35, in which the United States officially renounced its offensive biological warfare program and pledged to destroy all existing stocks of biological weapons and to limit future research and development to strictly defensive measures, such as vaccines and antibiotics. In announcing these decisions, President Nixon declared, “Mankind already carries in its own hands too many of the seeds of its own destruction. By the examples we set today, we hope to contribute to an atmosphere of peace and understanding between nations and among men.”

  With respect to chemical warfare, Nixon restored the “retaliation-only” policy and said that there would be no more production of unitary chemical weapons; any future modernization of the U.S. chemical arsenal would be considered only after binary munitions had been developed. In the meantime, the United States would maintain the existing stockpile of unitary weapons as a deterrent, while striving to negotiate an international treaty to ban chemical arms. Nixon also declared that he would resubmit the 1925 Geneva Protocol to the U.S. Senate for its consent to ratification.

  MEANWHILE, the disposal of obsolete chemical weapons remained in limbo. In 1968, Operations CHASE 11 and 12 had dumped bulk nerve agent and thousands of leaky M55 rockets off the U.S. East Coast, but since then no further sea-dumping operations had been carried out. Now the Army wanted to conduct CHASE 10, which was out of numerical sequence because it had been scheduled earlier and then put on hold. This plan called for the long-distance transport by rail and disposal at sea of some 27,000 tons of obsolete chemical weapons. Most were stored at Rocky Mountain Arsenal, including 12,000 tons of M34 cluster bombs containing Sarin-filled bomblets and 9,000 tons of mustard agent in one-ton containers. In addition, 2,600 tons of leaking M55 rockets, encased in steel-and-concrete coffins, were held at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama and Bluegrass Army Depot in Kentucky.

  According to the Army proposal, the weapons would be transported by rail from the three storage sites, passing through major cities such as Indianapolis and Dayton and terminating at Elizabeth, New Jersey, where they would be loaded onto old Liberty ships and scuttled off Long Island. When the Army’s plan was made known, it provoked public protests and concern in Congress. Representative McCarthy organized a series of hearings on the risks to local communities along the proposed train route and the harmful effects of chemical weapons dumping on the marine environment.

  Representative Cornelius Gallagher, through whose New Jersey district the trains would pass, chaired one of the hearings and invited Pentagon officials to testify. Assistant Secretary of the Army Charles L. Poor stated that after studying several alternatives, he had concluded that train transport was “the preferred method in terms of safety, contamination of the environment, time, and cost.” But an academic expert, Professor Matthew Meselson of Harvard, countered that if one of the poison gas trains derailed and exploded, and the wind was blowing at ten to twenty miles an hour, thousands of people might be killed in a densely populated area such as Indianapolis. Indeed, not long after the hearing, an ammunition train carrying tear gas and explosives for Vietnam blew up accidentally in Nevada.

  In view of these risks, Congress asked the National Research Council (NRC), the policy analysis branch of the National Academy of Sciences, to set up an expert committee to evaluate the Army plan. Chaired by George B. Kistiakowsky, a professor of physical chemistry at Harv
ard and former science adviser to President Eisenhower, the panel inspected the proposed train route, the stockpiled weapons, and the Liberty ships that were to be loaded with them. The committee also heard testimony from two experts from Edgewood Arsenal: Colonel Sam Bass, the chief of development, and Sigmund Eckhaus, a chemical engineer. They warned that the leaking M55 rockets embedded in coffins were becoming unstable and that it was just a matter of time before Sarin seeped into the rocket propellant and triggered an explosion that could fracture the blocks and release a cloud of lethal vapor. But other witnesses countered that sea-dumping posed a serious and potentially catastrophic risk to civilians. According to one frightening scenario, an explosion on board one of the chemical weapons ships could release a massive cloud of nerve gas that would be blown over densely populated areas of the East Coast.

  After weighing the various options, the NRC panel issued a final report in which it recommended the on-site destruction of the obsolete weapons stored at Rocky Mountain Arsenal: the M34 Sarin bomblets by means of disassembly and chemical neutralization, and the bulk mustard agent by incineration. The Army accepted this recommendation and in October 1969 launched Project Eagle, which over the next seven years disposed of thousands of tons of mustard and then Sarin. Because of the special hazards associated with the M55 coffins, however, the NRC advised that they should be disposed of in a final sea-dumping operation, which was designated CHASE 10.

  During Operation CHASE, bulk containers of mustard agent and steel-and-concrete “coffins” containing defective Sarin-filled M55 rockets were loaded onto a rusting Liberty ship in preparation for disposal at sea (top). The ship was then towed of the East Coast and scuttled in deep water (bottom).

  During Operation CHASE, bulk containers of mustard agent and steel-and-concrete “coffins” containing defective Sarin-filled M55 rockets were loaded onto a rusting Liberty ship in preparation for disposal at sea (top). The ship was then towed off the East Coast and scuttled in deep water (bottom).

  Beginning on August 10, 1970, 418 steel-and-concrete coffins containing 12,500 M55 rockets and weighing 2,675 tons were loaded onto trains at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama and Bluegrass Army Depot in Kentucky. The coffins filled a total of thirty-nine railroad boxcars. For security reasons, the Army did not release the exact route the trains would follow. Each train was restricted to a speed of thirty-five miles per hour and preceded by a “pilot” train to make sure the tracks were clear. Accompanied by military police, medical personnel, and chemical ordnance specialists, the trains took more than a day and a half to travel 1,400 miles, passing through twenty-one small towns in seven states while avoiding major cities such as Atlanta. Hospitals along the route were told to stock up on atropine in case of an accident, and the train crews carried their own antidote injectors.

  When the trains finally reached Sunny Point Military Ocean Terminal near Cape Fear, North Carolina, cranes loaded the massive steel coffins onto a rusting Liberty ship, the S.S. LeBaron Russell Briggs. Accompanied by a destroyer escort and a Coast Guard cutter, a tugboat towed the 442-foot hulk for two and a half days to a location 283 miles east of the Florida coast, beyond the edge of the U.S. continental shelf. The depth of the water at the dump site was 16,000 feet, more than twice that of the previous location off the New Jersey coast.

  Lieutenant A. A. Schiavone led an eight-man team of Army ordnance specialists who boarded the Briggs and checked on the ship’s only passengers: six white rabbits. The animals appeared in good health, indicating that no Sarin had leaked from the coffins during the voyage. After removing the rabbits and all salvageable equipment, the team rigged the ship with hydrophones and depth gauges to monitor its sinking rate. At 11:45 a.m., the crew opened seven flood valves deep inside the hold. Over the next four hours, the freighter sank slowly until it was a little more than half submerged. Then the holds suddenly flooded and the stern went down, followed by the rest of the ship. At precisely 3:53 p.m., the rusty bow of the Briggs slipped beneath the waves, followed by a geyser of white foam.

  THE PENTAGON ALSO faced the challenge of what to do with the 13,000 agent-ton stockpile of chemical munitions it had promised to remove from Okinawa, including 2,865 tons of mustard, 8,322 tons of Sarin, and 2,057 tons of VX. One proposal was to transfer the weapons to Umatilla Army Depot in Hermiston, Oregon, but this idea elicited strong protests from the citizens and governors of Oregon and Washington State. Alaska was also briefly discussed as a possible storage site until Congress passed a law prohibiting the transfer of chemical weapons from Okinawa to any location on the U.S. mainland.

  After considering several alternatives, the Pentagon announced on December 4, 1970, that it would transfer the Okinawan stockpile to Johnston Island, a tiny American-owned atoll in the middle of the South Pacific, about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii. A half-mile wide, two miles long, and surrounded by a coral reef, Johnston Island had no indigenous population and was inhabited only by U.S. military personnel and civilian laborers. The atoll had been unclaimed until 1858, when the United States set it aside as a bird refuge. In the 1930s, the War Department had converted the island into a military base, and in 1941 the Navy had constructed an airfield that took up nearly its entire length. Viewed from the air, Johnston Island resembled a giant aircraft carrier.

  The transfer of chemical weapons from Okinawa, code-named Operation Red Hat, began in the summer of 1971 and lasted two and a half months. Five ships loaded with chemical munitions made the eleven-day voyage, the last arriving at Johnston Island on September 21, 1971. The weapons filled with Sarin and VX were stored in igloo-style bunkers until a safe method could be devised to destroy them. Because the Weteye (Sarin) bombs, M55 rockets, and M34 cluster bombs had not been designed to be dismantled, the Army faced a major disposal problem.

  Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean; an airfield runs down the center of the island. Originally a wildlife sanctuary, the island was heavily utilized by the U.S. military during World War II and the Cold War.

  During Operation Red Hat in 1971, U.S. chemical weapons that had been based in Okinawa were shipped to Johnston Island for storage and eventual destruction.

  Storage conditions on Johnston Island were far from ideal: shells and bomb casings corroded in the humid, salty air of the atoll, worsening their tendency to leak, and occasional hurricanes tore the roofs off the storage facilities. The hundred or so U.S. troops guarding the chemical weapon stockpile lived on the upwind side of the island and deployed caged rabbits near the storage bunkers to provide early warning of a leak. In 1972, Congress passed the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act (Public Law 92-532), which banned any further sea dumping of chemical weapons. Until an alternative disposal technology became available, the leaking M55 rockets were sealed inside steel tubes for long-term storage.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  NEW FEARS

  DURING THE EARLY 1970S, as the U.S. war in Vietnam wound down and military spending declined, the Army Chemical Corps faced multiple challenges to its organizational survival. The incident at Skull Valley and the rise of the environmental movement had ended the open-air testing of lethal agents; President Nixon’s decision to halt the production of unitary chemical weapons had led to the closing of the VX plant in Newport, Indiana; and Congress had voted to slash funding for the Chemical Corps. The United States also faced strong international criticism for its employment of toxic chemicals in Vietnam, including the use of tear gas to flush enemy soldiers out of caves and tunnels, and the spraying of the herbicide Agent Orange to defoliate large expanses of jungle and deprive the Viet Cong guerrillas of cover. Agent Orange contained only trace amounts of the highly toxic substance dioxin as a synthetic by-product, but because vast quantities of the herbicide were sprayed over Vietnam, both U.S. troops and Vietnamese civilians were exposed to concentrations of dioxin high enough to cause chronic illnesses and birth defects. The legacy of Agent Orange would haunt Vietnam for generations.

  Although the United States did not consid
er tear gas and herbicides to be true chemical weapons, their use provoked international and domestic protests and created an enduring stigma that made any plan to modernize the U.S. chemical arsenal highly unpopular. In addition, inspired by President Nixon’s unilateral renunciation of the U.S. offensive biological weapons program in November 1969, the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (CCD), a multilateral arms control forum based at the United Nations Office in Geneva, negotiated a treaty banning the development, production, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons that was opened for signature in 1972. Diplomats participating in the talks expressed the clear intent to follow up the Biological Weapons Convention with a similar treaty to outlaw chemical arms.

  In January 1973, the Department of the Army announced plans to downsize the Chemical Corps and eventually eliminate it as a separate branch of the service. As a first step, the Army Chemical School at Fort McClellan, Alabama, was mothballed and its library sold off. For a time, serious consideration was given to establishing a “Chemical Regiment.” Instead, the Army decided to merge the Chemical Corps into the Ordnance Corps. Because the missions and cultures of the two organizations proved to be incompatible, however, the Chemical Corps was able to survive as a separate entity.

  In response to these multiple challenges, the Chemical Corps staked its future on accelerating the development of binary chemical weapons, while keeping this effort shrouded in secrecy to avoid political controversy. Although President Nixon’s 1969 executive order had ruled out further production of unitary chemical weapons, it had left the door open to the possible procurement of binary munitions after their development was complete. By making chemical weapons safer to handle, transport, and deploy, binary technology promised to enhance their value as a deterrent and make them more acceptable politically. The production of binary weapons, if it occurred, would assure the Chemical Corps a multibilliondollar acquisition pipeline extending over several years. Accordingly, the share of the Corps’s research-and-development budget devoted to binary weapons increased from a few percent in 1969 to roughly a quarter in 1970, half in 1971, and two-thirds in 1973.