CHEMICAL ARMS TALKS NEARING WITH U.S. FAR BEHIND SOVIETS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706130011-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: February 4, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706130011-6
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE I-19 -
WASHINGTON TIMES
4 February 1986
Chemical arms talks nearing
with U.S. far behind Soviets
By Martin Sieff
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The United States is approaching
its latest round of chemical weapons
control talks - approved by Pres-
ident Reagan and Soviet leader Mi-
khail Gorbachev at their Geneva
summit - with the knowledge that
the Russians are so far ahead in this
field the Americans may never catch
up.
Since President Richard Nixon
ended the U.S. chemical weapons
program in November 1969, the So-
viets have had the field to them-
selves. They have made the most of
this advantage.
Congress has approved a restart
of U.S. chemical weapons produc-
tion after Oct. 1, 1986, but only bi-
nary systems, which consist of two
separated non-lethal substances that
do not become lethal until mixed.
Production would be contingent
on the president certifying to Con-
gress that a plan exists to deploy the
weapons in Europe in an emergency,
that a verifiable chemical weapons
agreement with the Soviet Union
doesn't exist and that production is
necessary for national security. Pro-
duction could begin 60 days after
such certification is provided.
The binary system is consider-
ably safer to handle than the Soviet
nerve gases. Nevertheless, every
time deployment of chemical agents
has been raised with America's
NATO allies, particularly West Ger-
many, the reaction has been neg-
ative.
Tbday, at least 100,000 elite Soviet
chemical corps troops are believed
deployed among Warsaw Pact
forces. In August 1984, a National
Academy of Sciences study for the
U.S. Army estimated that 35 percent
of all conventional - non-nuclear -
munitions in the Soviet Army were
chemical or biological toxin.
Every regular Soviet soldier is is-
sued a respirator and chemical pro-
tection suit; all modern Soviet
armored force vehicles are designed
to operate in a chemically contami-
nated environment.
The Soviet lead in production of
chemical weapons may never be
erased. A full 14 Soviet chemical,
biological and toxin agent factories
turn out 10,000 tons of lethal sub-
stances a year, according to conser-
vative estimates. By contrast, the
United States has manufactured no
chemical weapons since 1969 and
has destroyed all its biological toxin
weapons.
For at least a decade, the Soviets
have been developing so-called
"third generation" germ warfare
weapons based on recombinant
DNA techniques. Said the au-
thoritative British volume, "Russian
Military Power," "It must be as-
sumed that in any major conflict the
Soviet ground forces will use
chemical weapons as a matter of
course:'
Military analysts believe the Sovi-
ets have developed a "no-warning
blitzkrieg" strategy that would give
the Third Shock Army in East Ger-
many the option of launching a sud-
den strike against the West without
a giveaway major mobilization.
A surprise attack deep into West
Germany would place Soviet forces
in urban centers and inhibit NATO
from counterattacking with nuclear
weapons. Central to this strategy is
the massive employment of
chemical and bacteriological weap-
ons to terrify and paralyze the NATO
armies.
The architect of this strategy is
Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, the con-
troversial, brilliant former chief of
staff, who Mr. Gorbachev reinstated
as commander of the Soviet Union's
largest troop concentration in the
Western theater.
Marshal Ogarkov's "can win" con-
cepts emphasize high-speed offen-
sives through battlefields contami-
nated with nuclear, biological and
chemical agents. The key weapon in
such an onslaught would be the leg-
endary and still overwhelming
BM-21 Multiple Rocket Launcher,
the Stalin Organ. Twenty launchers
in a battery can fire 480 rockets in
30 seconds to blanket at least 20
square kilometers. The Stalin Organ
was used with devastating effect at
Stalingrad in 1942.
In addition, the Soviets have at
least 2,000 tactical missiles deployed
in the Western theater, including
FROGS and SCUDs capable of car-
rying chemical or biological pay-
loads.
The key chemical weapon in the
Soviet arsenal remains soman, a
"sticky" nerve gas. It is the most le-
thal agent developed by the Nazis
during World War II. In the 1973 Yom
Kippur War, Soviet tanks the Israelis
captured from Egypt carried
detoxifying systems for soman con-
tamination.
The United States has never de-
ployed soman. Its post-World War II
chemical arsenal, long since
scrapped, was built on sarin nerve
gas. Some think this indicates the
Soviets plan to use soman on an
unrestricted scale in combat.
The Soviets have also developed
lethal biological mycotoxins which
they have "field tested" in Laos,
Cambodia and Afghanistan during
the past decade.
The State Department reported
that, up to May 1979, some 800 to
1,000 Hmong tribesmen had been
killed by "Yellow Rain" in chemical,
biological warfare operations by the
Communists in Laos. This was a
clerical error. The actual figure -
indicated by the research of Col.
Charles W. Lewis, chief of dermatol-
ogy at the Brooke Army Medical
Center in San Antonio, Texas,
pointed to 15,000 to 20,000 gas
deaths.
After treating Iranian victims of
Iraqi mustard and mycotoxin gas in
the Gulf War, Dr. Gernot Pauser of
the University of Vienna Hospital
concluded: "If there were this kind
of attack in Europe, we would have
no chance at all to survive."
The gases used by the Iraqis were
supplied by the Soviet Union.
In World War II, Hitler was de-
terred from using his nerve gas on
the D-Day bridgeheads only because
he wrongly believed that the Allies
had equally devastating stocks with
which to retaliate. It is unlikely the
Soviets are equally uninformed.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706130011-6