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Did the US use bioweapons in
Korea?
By David Isenberg
Current events have brought a controversial 1998
book,The United States and Biological Warfare:
Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea by Stephen
Endicott and Edward Hagerman, which alleges that the
United States used biological weapons against North
Korea, back into the news.
On January 27, Asia Times Online
wrote in the Letters
section: "The
Endicott/Hagerman book was also reviewed by Stephen E
Ambrose, one of America's most respected military
historians, thus: 'This book is disturbing to an extreme
degree. As prosecutors, Hagerman and Endicott present a
strong case. They cannot be said to be dispassionate,
but they are careful, even judicious. At a minimum their
research and revelations raise questions about the
possible use of biological warfare by the United States
in the Korean War that must be answered before we
indulge in further moral condemnation of Iraq's research
and development of a germ-warfare capability.'"
At a time when the United States is threatening
to lead a war against Iraq purportedly, in part, to rid
that country of its biological weapons, the possibility
that the US itself used biological weapons against North
Korea brings into question the holier-than-thou stance
of the George W Bush administration. However, numerous
commentators have remarked that the Endicott/Hagerman
book is not supported by the facts. These analysts cite
evidence suggesting that some of the primary sources
used by the authors were in fact deliberate lies made up
by the Soviet Union as part of a propaganda campaign.
Consider this excerpt from a May 3, 1999,
article in The Nation by Peter Pringle, a correspondent
for the London Independent, who was sympathetic to the
book:
"Endicott and Hagerman have not only
raised the level of debate over the charges but also,
apparently coincidentally, run headlong into the first
'official' documentary evidence from Communist sources
strongly suggesting that the charges may have been
Communist propaganda after all: In a total surprise last
year, a dozen documents said to have been found in the
Soviet presidential archives suddenly appeared in a
Japanese newspaper [Yasuro Naito, 'The use of
bacteriological weapons by US forces during the Korean
war was fabrication by China and Korea: Uncovered by
classified documents of the Former Soviet Union', Sankei
Shimbun, January 8, 1998]. They suggest that in 1952,
Moscow was behind a plot to blame the United States for
using biological weapons in Korea when the Soviet
leadership was perfectly aware that the American forces
were doing no such thing."
Milton Leitenberg, a
senior research fellow at the University of Maryland's
Center for International Security Studies, published a
1998 study "The Korean War: Biological Warfare Resolved"
that contained a number of Soviet archival documents
from the Stalin era demonstrating that the Soviet
leadership was aware that the Chinese and North Korean
charges were a hoax. This knowledge, however, did not
keep the Soviets from using the charges to pressure the
United States.
A detailed analysis, "New Russian
Evidence on the Korean War Biological Warfare
Allegations" by Leitenberg, analyzing these archival
documents was also published in the Bulletin of the Cold
War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson
Center in Washington, DC. Similarly, a book review in
May/June 1999 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, a pro-arms-control publication, noted:
"There is, however, considerable evidence in the
archives that the United States did not use such weapons
during the war. The authors base their conclusion on
eight central arguments, each of which can be refuted by
archival evidence and reasonable counter-arguments."
And a June 27, 1999, New York Times review of
the Endicott and Hagerman book by Ed Regis, the author
of an acclaimed book on the past US biological-weapons
program, noted:
"The authors acknowledge that
after 20 years of research they have failed to turn up a
single document in American archives that provides
direct evidence for their claim. They therefore build a
circumstantial case that relies heavily on documents
provided by the North Koreans and the Chinese. In fact,
the authors reproduce some of the nine Chinese
photographs and captions, but they make no mention of
the article in The Times, even though their bibliography
cites a standard reference work by Milton Leitenberg
that discusses the forgeries, mentions the experts by
name and summarizes their conclusions. This is
appalling.
"Carl Sagan used to say that
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The
evidence Endicott and Hagerman present for their
extraordinarily dubious claim is notable only for its
weakness. The Chinese and North Koreans themselves had
the means, motive and opportunity to fabricate evidence,
and were known to rewrite history for propaganda
purposes. Any plausible defense of the claim that the
Americans were guilty of biological warfare in the
Korean conflict must address the question of fabricated
evidence. Endicott and Hagerman do not even raise it. If
theirs is the best case that can be made for American
germ warfare activities in China and Korea, it amounts
to a dismissal of the charges and an exoneration of the
accused."
And most recently an article "No
Practical Capabilities: American Biological and Chemical
Warfare Programs During the Korean War" by Conrad C
Crane, published last year in Perspectives in Biology
and Medicine, concluded: "Though the American military
services did try to increase their abilities in the
fields of chemical and biological warfare during the
Korean conflict, the American military forces possessed
neither the ability, nor the will, to utilize offensive
chemical and biological warfare in the manner described
in Communist accusations."
Still, while the
findings of Endicott and Hagerman may be in doubt, there
is reason to question whether the United States has
entirely clean hands when it comes to biological
weapons. "Back to Bioweapons", an article published in
the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, has kicked up a storm. It asserts that the
reason the United States rejected the verification
protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention in 2001
was that it was committed to continuing and expanding
secret, offensively oriented "biodefense" programs. The
authors conclude that the "United States appears to have
embarked on a largely classified study, across several
agencies, of biotech applications for the development of
new bioweapons. The clandestine US programs indicate a
willingness to ignore treaty law in favor of maintaining
technological superiority in response to the emerging
bioweapons threat."
A similar paper, "Defending
Against Biodefence: The Need for Limits" by Barbara H
Rosenberg, released in January by the Acronym Institute,
wonders whether there are more secret US biodefense
projects beyond the three revealed in a New York Times
article on September 4, 2001. She claims that "all three
projects had predecessors that have not yet come to
light, most notably a DoD [Department of Defense]
bomblet project run in the late 1990s at the army's
Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland".
And last month in
the Letters section, AToL contributor Sreeram Chaulia
defended his article Press
the patriotism button, baby, Jan 22, in part by
noting that Endicott and Hagerman "draw on official US
sources and extensive interviews with Chinese scientists
who were involved in the Korean War. Their findings and
my own strongly point to the conclusion that US planes
dropped infected fleas, ticks and spiders in the
Chorwan, Kumhwa and Pyongyang areas of North Korea
during February, March and April of 1952, leading to
mass outbreaks of plague and anthrax." Chaulia added
that doubters "would do well to consult the
Washington-based National Security Archive for more
gruesome facts".
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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