YELLOW RAIN: THE COST OF CHEMICAL ARMS CONTROL

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STAT
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ARTICLE LFFZARD
ON PAGE-L-5-L,
SAIS REVIEW
Winter-Spring 1985
YELLOW RAIN: THE COST OFD
CHEMICAL ARMS CONTROL
Peter Pringle
THE USE OF MUSTARD GAS, and possibly even a nerve agent, in the
Persian Gulf War, is a sharp reminder of the neglected threat of the
proliferation of chemical weapons. Only three nations-the United
States, the Soviet Union, and France-are commonly known to have a
militarily significant chemical-warfare capability, but recent U.S. intel-.
ligence estimates suggest the chemical club is actually much larger and
probably expanding. According to these estimates, Iraq may be only one
of several countries in the Middle East-including Egypt, Syria, Libya,
and Israel-that already possess a chemical weapons capability, or are in
the process of obtaining one.'
There has never been a more urgent need for the two superpowers to
move swiftly toward concluding a bilateral treaty banning the development,
production, and stockpiling of these weapons..Yet the policy of the Reagan
administration of publicly accusing the Soviets of chemical and biological
treaty violations while proposing that the United States resume production
of a new generation of "binary" nerve-gas weapons seems bent on delaying
instead of hastening the process of working toward a new international
agreement. In particular, the administration's incomplete evidence in sup-
1. Jack Anderson, "The Growing Chemical Club," Washington Post, 26 August 1984, C-7. The
estimates originated in a CIA Special Intelligence Estimate, SNIE 17 November 1983, entitled
"Implication of Soviet Use of Chemical and Toxin Weapons for U.S. Security Interests." The SNIE
was also the primary source for three other articles, two columns by Jack Anderson, Washington Post,
27 August 1984, C-14, and 30 November 1984, E-7, and a third, "The CIA and Europeans," The
Economist Foreign Report (London), 17 October 1984.
Peter Pringle is a Washington correspondent of the Observer (London) and is
writing a book on the history of arms control implications of yellow rain.
iil*iiued
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port of charges that the Soviet Union has introduced a new chemical
weapon known as "yellow rain" to battlefields in Southeast Asia and
Afghanistan has resulted in the lack of a cohesive response from the western
allies to reports of the use of chemical weapons by Soviet-backed forces.
Properly verifiable agreements between the two superpowers may now be
even harder to achieve either because of a poisoning of the negotiating
atmosphere or because the U.S. Senate, most of ?hose members appear to
believe the "yellow rain" charges, Will not ratify a new agreement.
In 1981 the Reagan administration launched its new chemical
weapons policy on two fronts. First, the president suspended the four-
vear-old bilateral discussions on a new chemical weapons treaty with the
Soviets in Geneva. President Reagan and Pentagon officials have implied
that these talks were broken offbecause of.Soviet intransigence over
problems of on-site verification, and because of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. The impression that nothing was to be gained by continu-
ing the discussions is challenged by Charles Flowerree, the U.S. negotia-
tor at Geneva from 1980 to 1981. The talks originated in a 1974
agreement between Nixon and Brezhnev to try and develop a "joint
initiative" draft treaty. There were at least twelve bilateral sessions, the
last two in February (a few weeks after the Soviet invasion of Afghani-
stan) and in July 1980. President Carter decided to continue the talks,
despite the invasion, because of the high level of interest in the forty-
nation Committee on Disarmament. Ambassador Flowerree, who also led
the U.S. delegation in the Committee, concedes that he and his Soviet
counterpart, Viktor L. Israelyan,::did not achieve agreement on the
problem of verification, but stresses that their final report of August 1980
did provide an important basis for discussion in the Committee. Ambas-
sador Flowerree points out:
It is a fact of life, although not always enthusiastically embraced by the
nonaligned nations, that the sine qua non for progress on multilateral treaties in
the field of arms control and disarmament is prior agreement by the United
States and the Soviet Union on its major provisions. While the fact [remains] that
the Committee on Disarmament has entered full- scale negotiations on a [new]
treaty ... the prospects for success of these negotiations are tied to the ability of
the U.S. and the Soviets to work out mutually acceptable verification procedures
regarding the destruction of stockpiles and the non-production of prohibited
chemicals.'
In other words, negotiations in the Committee cannot make substan-
tive progress without bilateral agreements. The second part of the
Reagan policy was to charge the Soviets with violations of the two existing
2. Charles G. Floweree, "Chemical Weapons: A Study in Verification," Arms Control Today, 13
(April 1983): 1.
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treaties: the Geneva Protocol of 1925 that bans the use of poison gas and
other chemical weapons in war but does not ban production and
stockpiling, and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention that prohibits
the development, production, or stockpiling of biological agents or
toxins.
In September 1981 then Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig
charged the Soviets-albeit indirectly at first-with these violations.
According to the administration's "strong and compelling, but nonethe-
less preliminary evidence," the Soviets had been supplying client states in
Southeast Asia with a new toxin made from the fungus Fusarium. If true,
both treaties had indeed been violated. As identified by the United States,
the new agent is both biological and chemical: it is produced by a fungus,
but the actual toxin made by the fungus is a chemical. Similar charges
were not made against Laos or Kampuchea because neither is a party to
the treaties.
These are terribly grave charges with clear repercussions for nego-
tiations concerning new treaties as well as for creating the political and
military conditions inviting a new chemical arms race. The Soviets
immediately denied the charges, and in their rebuttal accused the United
States of being responsible, through the Agent Orange defoliation
j program in Vietnam, for any increase in mycotoxin poisoning in South-
east Asia. The Soviet countercharge was so farfetched, however, that it
was easily and roundly dismissed by United States scientists. High-
pitched rhetorical exchanges on yellow rain between Washington and
Moscow continued throughout President Reagan's first term. The bi-
lateral talks remain suspended.
For the United States' charges to have been an effective diplomatic
tool and not. simply viewed as propaganda the evidence of treaty
violations had to be good enough to attract outside scientific and political
support. But three years after Secretary Haig's speech it is clear that the
specific charge against the Soviets of using a fungus toxin cannot
withstand independent scientific scrutiny. The government's scientific
evidence remains scanty; only minute and militarily insignificant traces of
1 poison are reported to be in the samples. As the government's investiga-
tion has continued, its original evidence has become scientifically in-
supportable. In the face of the independent evidence challenging the
charges, the administration has had no option but to rest its case on the
claims that significant corroborative intelligence data exist, and that there
is supporting evidence from allied governments. The intelligence data
are classified and the administration is unwilling, or unable for legitimate
security reasons, to make the data public. The second claim is simply not
valid. Although allied governments have said they believe some chemical
warfare occurring, no allied government has stated publicly that it has
need.
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evidence to support the trichothecene charge.
HISTORY WARNS US TO BEWARE of governmental charges concerning the
use of chemical weapons: The Vietnamese accused the French of using
gas in 1947; the Egyptians accused the Israelis in 1948; the North
Koreans charged the United States in 1951; Cuban emigre groups
accused Castro in 1957; in the same year the Algerians accused the
French; in 1958 Peking charged Nationalist Chinese forces-all without
subsequent confirmatory evidence. Indeed, the lesson of history is that
allegations of the use of chemical weapons have been an effective
short-term propaganda tool, but modern Western leaders who are
negotiating arms control treaties in Geneva should regard the use of such
propaganda as a crude and outdated method of diplomacy, unless the
allegations can be proved.
Even government officials now privately admit that Secretary of State
Haig was ill-advised to charge the Soviets with treaty violations when the
only physical scientific evidence then possessed by the government was a
single leaf and a twig reported by a single laboratory to contain minute
traces of fungal poisons known as trichothecenes. The paucity of the
evidence and the fact that the toxins were produced by a common fungus
raised the possibility, even in the most unscientific of minds, that the fungal
poisons could be of natural origins. Independent scientists wondered why
the government had not been able to obtain confirmation of the findings
from another laboratory, in accordance with the basic rules of scientific
inquiry. But those rules would be broken more than once in the course of
the government's inquiry. Government scientists, either through incompe-
tence or willful omission, ignored evidence at their disposal and persuaded
the administration and an unusually large, fifty-member interagency group
that the toxins could not be of a natural origin because trichothecenes are
not found in Southeast Asia. But their conclusions are incorrect: fungus of
the genus Fusarium and various toxin-producing species are found all over
the world-3
Skeptical independent scientists and chemical-warfare experts began to
explore two central questions posed by Haig's charges. First, why would the
Soviets bother making and using a new agent when they already possessed
several others that could do the job more cheaply and more effectively?4
Second, given that Fusarium does grow all over the world, was it possible
3. The U.S. government's assertion that "these mycotoxins do not occur naturally in Southeast
Asia", appears in a State Deptartment Fact Sheet, 14 September 1981. The statement was repeated
in a State Department press briefing, 29 November 1982. Canadian investigations of yellow rain
identified 13 isolates of Fusarium in 20 plant and soil samples collected in Thailand in 1982. One of
the isolates was a toxin producer; see Lois Ember, Chemical and Engineering News, 25-June 1984, 27.
4. Saul Hormats, " A Chemical Warfare Expert Who Doubts the Soviets Used Yellow Rain,"
Washington Post, 26 February 1984, D-1.
GwAftued
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that the_poison on the sample leaf could have gotten there by natural means
instead of by chemical warfare?
The government reacted strongly to such probing, dismissing questions
with an air of confident authority. Officials maintained that the Soviets
appeared to be using Southeast Asia as a proving ground for new agents;
and that at least one of these had to be trichothecenes because these toxins
produced a distinctive symptom-namely internal hemorrhaging-which a
large number of the refugee victims of the alleged chemical attacks had
described. Moreover, the poison could not have been produced naturally,
officials asserted, because the quantities on therieaf were e the too high for nn at not
Fusarium production and because the comb poisons
found in nature. As for the Soviet connection, there was a well-established
link. At the end of World War II, the Soviets had suffered epidemics of
trichothecene poisoning after people had eaten moldy grains, so Soviet
biologists knew a great deal about the toxins. The assumption was that the
Soviets had the ability and the knowledge to turn these toxins into weapons.
BUT THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE ON TRICHOTHECENES in tropical Southeast
Asia was not necessarily evidence of their absence. In fact, it emerged
that U.S. government scientists had failed to turn up some important
evidence that was in fact there. Professor Matthew Meselson, a well-
known Harvard biochemist and America's leading independent expert
on chemical and biological warfare, quickly discovered that
trichothecenes had been reported in the tropics in quantities not in-
compatible with those found on the alleged yellow rain samples. The
combinations of trichothecenes reported were indeed unusual, but
because, so little work has been.. done on the production of fungal
mycotoxins in the tropics, no one could say for certain that those
combinations could not exist naturally.
Still more unanswered scientific questions concerning the government's
case persuaded Meselson to continue his scientific inquiries. More than a
year after the Haig charges the government announced quite unexpectedly
that many of the environmental samples of yellow rain, reported by the
government to be yellow, sticky, and rainlike, were full of microscopic pollen
grains of the kind that might be collected by bees. One government scientist
said the Soviets had created a "very clever" mixture of pollen and fungus
poison in which the pollen was intended as a carrier-a hypothesis later to
be retracted.5
At the invitation of the U:S. State Department, other nations, including
Britain, Canada, and France, joined the search, and Meselson obtained his
5. State Department press briefing, 30 November 1982; also, WGBH TV, Boston, Nova Series
no. 1111, 30 October 1984.
Wnued
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own samples of the little yellow spots from the Canadians. With three
colleagues-Joan Nowicke, a pollen expert at the Smithsonian Institution,
Thomas Seeley, a professor of entymology at Yale University, and Peter
Ashton, a specialist in the flora of Southeast Asia at Harvard University-
Meselson discovered that the pollen grains in the samples were indeed of a
type collected by bees, but more important, several of the pollen grains
could be traced to plants and trees common to Southeast Asia. This was
positive evidence for a "natural origins" hypothesis. But how did foraging
bees make spots of pollen on leaves?
Professor Seeley observed that bees often make these little spots; that
they are, in fact, bee feces. Being scrupulously clean creatures, bees
frequently go on "cleansing flights" during which tens of thousands of them
defecate together at a healthy distance from the hive. If one happens to be
standing underneath such a bombardment, it feels like a light shower of
rain, as Meselson and Seeley discovered while on a field trip in Thailand. A
group of Hmong refugees from Laos identified the bee feces as "chemie'=
their word for chemical warfare. Putting together all their evidence, the
professors concluded that the deposits of the yellowish substance handed in
by the refugees and known as yellow rain are not the aftereffects of chemical
warfare, but the feces of wild honey bees.
Yellowish substances were only part of the government's case,
however. - A university analyst working for the government had also
reported finding trichothecenes in samples of blood, urine, and body
tissue from alleged victims of yellow rain. Meselson acknowledged that
people do not eat bee feces. But people do eat moldy food. So was it
possible that the alleged victims of yellow rain who had trichothecenes in
their blood and urine had. eaten moldy grains or rice contaminated with
Fusarium fungus and trichothecenes? Not enough data exist to answer
this question. However, the value of this biomedical evidence is in serious
doubt. The concentrations of the poison found in the victims' blood
suggested the victims had been contaminated more recently than the
attacks were said to have occurred. The trichothecenes had been taken
from the alleged victims often several days, even weeks, after the attack.
Yet the bulk of scientific studies on trichothecene poisoning indicates that
trichothecenes break down rapidly in the body, disappearing completely
within forty-eight hours.
Altogether, the evidence in favor of the government's charges is not
only strikingly insufficient, but, as subsequent inquiries have shown, inter-
nally inconsistent. In the government's investigation, only five of more than
a hundred environmental samples of varying shapes, sizes, and hues said to
be yellow rain have been reported to be contaminated with trichothecenes.
These positive results were reported by an independent analyst working for
the government; the government's own laboratories found no positive
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results. Out of about sixty samples of blood and urine, only twenty were
reported to be positive by the independent laboratory. The government
analyst found no trichothecenes in these samples.
It is also extraordinary that during more than five years of searching
for an answer to the riddle of yellow rain the .government has been
unable to produce a single munition or shell fragment contaminated with
trichothecenes. Moreover, according to the published evidence, no
Western doctor has examined even one of the bodies of the more than
10,000 people who were reported to have died from chemical attacks.
The administration has also accused the Soviets of using
trichothecenes directly against the mujaheddin in Afghanistan, and the
most promising evidence from any battlefield presented by the govern-
ment was a trichothecene-contaminated Soviet gas mask from Afghani-
stan.. (The positive test was reported by three laboratories.) Government
officials at first implied that the mask had been used by a Soviet soldier in
battle, but they said later that the mask had, in fact, been bought in
Kabul, and that no trichothecenes had been found in the mask's filter,
where poisons would have lodged had the mask been used in a chemical
attack. What had seemed to be definite, incriminating evidence turned
out to be much less significant. (Tests on a second gas mask, said to have
been removed from a dead Soviet soldier, were reported to be "indicative
of the presence of trichothecenes," but this result was later discarded as
important evidence by government analysts.) From a strictly scientific
viewpoint, no one could draw any conclusions about the use of yellow
rain from a single contaminated gas mask. Yet by introducing scientific
proof as an element in their charges against the Soviets, the administra-
tion had invited people to judge this meager evidence by scientific
standards.
By the end of 1984 the administration began to rely increasingly on
what officials called the totality of the evidence: refugee reports, samples,
human intelligence, satellite intelligence, and radio intercepts. If the
skeptics could only see how the intelligence corroborated the sample
results, officials claimed, they would agree with the charges. But, of
course, the intelligence information was classified and could not be
released without compromising the methods and sources of collecting it.
Finally, the government sought to bolster its case by calling on the
supposed support of the allies. If only those allied governments who had
positive results would release them, U.S. officials said, the world would
readily acknowledge the overwhelming weight of the evidence against
the Soviets. According to the administration, several European allies,
including Britain and France, were among those nations that had found
evidence supporting the trichothecene charge. But none of these countri-
eshas ever produced such scientific evidence, and several Western
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chemical-warfare experts have said privately that they do not believe the
United States' trichothecene theory.6
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS REPORTED that trichothecene attacks eased
during 1983. In a submission to the United Nations, the government said
that although toxic-weapon attacks, deaths, and incapacitations continue
to be reported, "there appears to have been a diminution of attacks in
Afghanistan and a decrease in the lethality of attacks in Laos and
Kampuchea." The government's conclusion is that pressing the charges
was a success: the Soviets took notice and cut back the use of lethal
chemicals. But given the evidence, this is a hollow victory. The United
States has identified the lethal chemicals used by the Soviets as
trichothecenes. (The government has always reported that nonlethal
riot-control agents, which are accepted by the United States under the
1925 Protocol, have been used.) But there is not enough evidence to
confirm the government's identification. Claiming to have stopped some-
thing that no one can prove ever started is not effective diplomacy. A
resumption of meaningful bilateral negotiations with a reelected Reagan
administration may prove extremely difficult. The force of the
government's charges has left little room for political or diplomatic
maneuvering. The level at which the charges were made-first by the
secretary of state and then by the president-has made it politically
impossible for the administration even to acknowledge that the yellow
substance offered by the refugees as chemical warfare is, in fact, bee
feces. Congress, by and large, has accepted the government's judgment.
In February 1984 the U.S. Senate passed a resolution, without a single
dissenter, condemning the Soviet Union for waging chemical warfare in
Southeast Asia and Afghanistan. Instead of laying groundwork for
negotiations to begin in Reagan's second term, the yellow rain adventure
has prepared domestic opinion in the United States for an upgrading of
the Pentagon's chemical-warfare capability. This could entail much more
than. the administration's continued effort to obtain funds for the
production of new binary nerve-gas weapons. The alleged use of toxins
raises all kinds of legitimate concerns in the Pentagon, such as the extent
of a greater threat from Warsaw Pact forces which could include new
weapons, the ability of NATO forces to detect and identify the new
weapons, and the potential need for new protection and decontamina-
tion equipment. Add to this the cIA's forecast of a steady increase in
chemical-weapons proliferation, and the result is that an administration
favoring a stronger retaliatory capability is in a position to present
6. Author's interviews with chemical warfare experts at the First World Congress on New
Compounds in Biological and Chemical Warfare: Toxicological Evaluation, Ghent Belgium. 21-23
May 1984; see also, Lois Ember, Chemical and Engineering News, 25 June 1984, 25-28.
Continued
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compelling arguments to Congress and to the American people.
What do the NATO allies think of all this? At a time when alliance
members need to be working together to solve the mystery of yellow rain
and to conclude a new chemical weapons treaty, the administration,
through its unproven yellow rain charges, has risked serious divisions in
NATO. The governments of some European countries have simply not
been prepared to accept the low standards of scientific evidence em-
braced by the Reagan administration. Administration hard-liners say this
is because Europeans do not want to make a political issue over chemical
weapons; that European governments have had enough trouble coping
with the introduction of U.S. cruise and Pershing II missiles; and that
resulting domestic political considerations cause Europeans to demand
too high a standard of evidence of Soviet violations while giving too low
a priority to chemical weapons, such that they have little or no strategic
importance. In the end, say the hard-liners, this attitude means that the
Europeans feel that chemical weapons are not worth making a fuss over
unless the evidence against the Soviets is overwhelming enough to
convict. The hard-liners warn that Europe's failure to respond to even
apparent treaty violations may be giving the Soviets time to arm them-
selves, thus permitting the strategic balance to become unstable.
Such accusations are disingenuous. To be sure, European govern-
ments have their own special political problems as they play host to U.S.
bases containing a new generation of intermediate-range missiles, and, in
Germany's case, as they continue to hold old stocks of chemical weapons.
But allied wariness also stems from an unstated assessment on the part of
European governments that the administration overplayed its hand on
yellow rain.; And this wariness has recently been compounded with the
administration's apparent support for a new, related allegation about
Soviet biological warfare activity.
In a series of articles last year the Wall Street Journal suggested that
the Soviets could be diverting some of their expertise in bioengineering
to produce a new range of biological weapons.8 The eight-part series,
entitled "Beyond `Yellow Rain,' the Threat of Soviet Genetic Engineer-
ing," purported to show that the Soviets were actually developing
previously undreamed-of biological weapons. The evidence was based on
interviews with Soviet emigre scientists who admitted only to secondhand
information about such a program, plus open scientific literature
authored by Soviet biologists who were studying the chemical compo-
nents of highly toxic venoms from cobras, scorpions, and other natural
7. Ibid.
8. The eight-part series ran in the Wall Street Journal from 23 April to 10 May 1983. The
Journal editorial writers have maintained an uncritical faith in the yellow rain charges. An update to
this series was printed in the Journal on 28 December 1984.
CA76(tued
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sources. The articles said these studies were the exposed tip of a new
Soviet germ-warfare program.' (In a letter to the Wall Street Journal,
Harvard University Professor Elkan Blout pointed out that Soviet jour-
nalists could have implied a similar U.S. program from the amount of
ongoing toxin research in the United States.) Apparently setting some
store by such speculative reports, Defense Secretary Caspar W.
Weinberger in his 1984 report on Soviet military power voiced his own
suspicions about Soviet activity in this area. He said there is an "apparent"
effort by the Soviets to transfer some genetic-engineering research to
biological warfare centers; the connection "may" be there.
THE FRAGILITY YET DURABILITY OF THESE CHARGES against the Soviet
Union makes one wonder how they can possibly maintain such bureau-
cratic momentum, aside from the fact that the administration contains
some top policymakers who are clearly against new arms control pacts
with Moscow. The CIA's.intelligence estimates provides an important
clue.9 One estimate mentions that gathering intelligence on Soviet
chemical and biological warfare activities has been receiving an increas-
ingly higher priority since 1973, when Soviet armored personnel carriers
captured by the Israelis were found to be well-equipped for fighting in a
battle environment saturated with chemical weapons. Intelligence pri-
orities are assigned by the National-Security Council, with "Priority One"
being the most important. The priority of Soviet chemical and biological
warfare was raised to "Three" in 1975, "Two" in 1977, and to an
unprecedented "Priority One" under Reagan.10
The increased surveillance has resulted in a heightened awareness of
the possibility of treaty violation and a tendency on the part of the
intelligence community to be more suspicious-at times even oversuspi-
cious-of reports of unlawful Soviet activity. One such example is the
controversial Sverdlovsk incident, when the Soviets admitted an epidemic
of disease caused by anthrax bacteria. Between 20 and 1,000 people,
depending on whose intelligence estimate one uses, are believed to have
died. It is unclear, however, whether the accident was related to military
production or testing of anthrax, or whether it arose out of "natural"'
causes. The Soviets say the epidemic was caused by tainted meat, and
refused independent inquiries. United States intelligence concluded that
the epidemic was related to outlawed germ warfare. No one is certain,
but the incident, like yellow rain, is freely used by Reagan officials as
another example of Soviet perfidy.
9. Ibid.
10. A note on the increasing priority given to Soviet chemical and biological warfare is
contained in the CIA's SNIE, ibid. The note was first published in a Jack Anderson column
"Upgrading Chemical Warfare Intelligence," Washington Post, 30 November 1984, E-7.
Co, tnt%d
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Increased surveillance of chemical and biological warfare has also
resulted in a reassessment of the potential proliferation of chemical
weapons. United States intelligence estimates claim that both Iraq and
Syria have been receiving major Soviet chemical-warfare training, with
the Syrians actually receiving agents and delivery systems from the Soviet
Union and Czechoslovakia. The United Nations' confirmation of Iraq's
use of mustard gas and a nerve agent in the Persian Gulf War suggests
that Iraq may now have its own indigenous chemical-warfare capability.
Libya is said to have received lethal chemical-warfare agents from
Eastern bloc countries and to have made efforts to contact West German
and Swiss firms for plant construction. And, according to U.S. intel-
ligence, Israel has acquired various kinds of chemical-weapons capability,
including nerve agents, a mustard agent, and several riot agents with
delivery systems. Elsewhere, Ethiopia, assisted by the Cubans, is reported
to have used incapacitating agents; Thailand is said to be upgrading its
chemical capability as a result of the reports of yellow rain in neighboring
Laos and Kampuchea; and Burma is thought to be trying to start a
domestic mustard-gas production program. China, Taiwan, and North
Korea are also reported to have a minimal chemical-weapons capability."
Whether these intelligence estimates have pinpoint accuracy or are
the product of an overzealous staff energized by new intelligence pri-
orities, it does seem that a dangerous trend is emerging. Two actions are
required immediately. First, the United States should initiate without
delay a resumption of bilateral negotiations on chemical weapons be-
tween Washington and Moscow. Second, the United Nations must swiftly
conclude the setting up of a special permanent unit to monitor and
investigate allegations of treaty violations; the Iraq-Iran allegations were
quickly and positively dealt with by a competent U.N. inquiry.12 The
United States, unlike the Soviet Union, has strongly supported this action
and should reinforce its efforts.
As the focus at Geneva returns to nuclear arms control, how is all this
to happen? First, the president should begin to detoxify the chemical
disarmament negotiating atmosphere by suspending any new call for
reopening U.S. chemical-weapons production lines. For three years
Congress has rejected Mr. Reagan's call for "modernization" of the
arsenal, and new chemical weapons are not needed to deter Soviet use of
these weapons against Western Europe; current nerve-gas stocks, in
11. These estimates appear in the CIA's SNIE, ibid.
12. A U.N. inquiry-against Soviet opposition-was made regarding yellow rain in Southeast
Asia. but because of the explosive political atmosphere surrounding the charges, and because the
U.N. team was not permitted to visit the battle areas, the report was of minor significance. The U.N.'s
evidence suggested the possible use of some sort of toxic chemical substance in some instances, but
was unequivocal enough to be hailed as supportive by both the Soviets and the United States.
Q*4ued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605240001-7
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605240001-7
C
place and serviceable
shouldcontinue
residentGermany,
put an end to unslubstandtiated
president
rent. Second, the
allegations by administration officials of Soviet treaty violations, unless a
more effective case can. be made. At the same time the president should
increase the involvement of the administration's top-ranking officials in
chemical weapons disarmament so that imaginative confidence-building
gestures can be made, however modest they may seem. Vice-President
Bush has appeared twice at the Committee on Disarmament and should
be encouraged to do so again. The president must be involved person-
ally. For example, in a recent effort to emphasize the ongoing, voluntary
U.S. program of destroying old and unusable stocks of nerve and
mustard gas, the administration invited the forty members of the
Committee on Disarmament to tour a chemical munitions destruction
facility in Utah. Representatives of twenty nations watched some old,
unusable munitions being destroyed. Unfortunately, Eastern bloc nations
declined the invitation, and, because the visit was pitched at a politically
low level-with only the U.S. ambassador to the committee and a
second-string official from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
attending-the event attracted little publicity. The president's advisors
should consider further visits of this kind that involve Mr. Reagan
himself. "Photo opportunities for arms control" sounds gimmicky, and it
is, but the president has a chance in the next four years to surprise us all
with the level of his personal commitment to the destruction of chemical
weapons whose use in war was outlawed sixty years ago.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605240001-7