[Peace-discuss] Francis Boyle on Bio-terror

[Barbara kessel]

"So says" our own Francis Boyle...
Perhaps we should have him speak again on this topic.
Barbara Kessel

Bush "Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons" for Offensive Use
    By Sherwood Ross
    t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

    Wednesday 20 December 2006

    In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush
administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars)
to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent
in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb.

    So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who
drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by
Congress. He states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win'
biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives
adopted "without public knowledge and review" in 2002.

    The Pentagon's Chemical and Biological Defense Program was revised
in 2003 to implement those directives, endorsing "first-use" strike of
chemical and biological weapons (CBW) in war, says Boyle, who teaches
at the University of Illinois, Champaign.

    Terming the action "the proverbial smoking gun," Boyle said the
mission of the controversial CBW program "has been altered to permit
development of offensive capability in chemical and biological
weapons!" [Original italics.]

    The same directives, Boyle charges in his book Biowarfare and
Terrorism (Clarity Press), "unconstitutionally usurp and nullify the
right and the power of the United States Congress to declare war, in
gross and blatant violation of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the
United States Constitution."

    For fiscal years 2001-2004, the federal government funded $14.5
billion "for ostensibly 'civilian' biowarfare-related work alone," a
"truly staggering" sum, Boyle wrote.

    Another $5.6 billion was voted for "the deceptively-named 'Project
BioShield,'" under which Homeland Security is stockpiling vaccines and
drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox and other bioterror agents, wrote
Boyle. Protection of the civilian population is, he said, "one of the
fundamental requirements for effectively waging biowarfare."

    The Washington Post reported December 12 that both houses of
Congress this month passed legislation "considered by many to be an
effort to salvage the two-year-old Project BioShield, which has been
marked by delays and operational problems." When President Bush signs
it into law, it will allocate $1 billion more over three years for
additional research "to pump more money into the private sector
sooner."

    "The enormous amounts of money" purportedly dedicated to "civilian
defense" that are now "dramatically and increasingly" being spent,"
Boyle writes, "betray this administration's effort to be able to
embark on offensive campaigns using biowarfare."

    By pouring huge sums into university and private-sector
laboratories, Boyle charged, federal spending has diverted the US
biotech industry to biowarfare.

    According to Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard
Ebright, over 300 scientific institutions and 12,000 individuals have
access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare and terrorism. Ebright
found that the number of National Institute of Health grants to
research infectious diseases with biowarfare potential has shot up
from 33 in 1995-2000 to 497.

    Academic biowarfare participation involving the abuse of DNA
genetic engineering since the late 1980s has become "patently
obvious," Boyle said. "American universities have a long history of
willingly permitting their research agendas, researchers, institutes,
and laboratories to be co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the
Pentagon and the CIA."

    "These despicable death-scientists were arming the Pentagon with
the component units necessary to produce a massive array of ...
genetically-engineered biological weapons," Boyle said.

    In a forward to Boyle's book, Jonathan King, a professor of
molecular biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote that
"the growing bioterror programs represent a significant emerging
danger to our own population" and "threaten international relations
among nations."

    While such programs "are always called defensive," King said,
"with biological weapons, defensive and offensive programs overlap
almost completely."

    Boyle contends the US is "in breach" of both the Biological
Weapons and Chemical Weapons conventions and US domestic criminal law.
In February 2003, for example, the US granted itself a patent on an
illegal long-range biological-weapons grenade.

    Boyle said other countries grasp the military implications of US
germ-warfare actions and will respond in kind. "The world will soon
witness a de facto biological arms race among the major biotech states
under the guise of 'defense,' and despite the requirements of the
Biological Warfare Convention."

    "The massive proliferation of biowarfare technology and
facilities, as well as trained scientists and technicians all over the
United States, courtesy of the Neo-Con Bush Jr. administration will
render a catastrophic biowarfare or bioterrorist incident or accident
a statistical certainty," Boyle warned.

    As far back as September 2001, according to a report in the New
York Times titled "US Pushes Germ Warfare Limits," critics were
concerned that "the research comes close to violating a global 1972
treaty that bans such weapons." But US officials responded at the time
that they were more worried about understanding the threat of germ
warfare and devising possible defenses.

    The 1972 treaty, which the US signed, forbids developing weapons
that spread disease, such as anthrax, regarded as "ideal" for germ
warfare.

    According to an article in the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel of
last September 28, Milton Leitenberg, a veteran arms-control advocate
at the University of Maryland, said the government was spending
billions on germ warfare with almost no analysis of threat. He said
claims terrorists will use the weapons have been "deliberately
exaggerated."

    In March of the previous year, 750 US biologists signed a letter
protesting what they saw as the excessive study of bioterror threats.

    The Pentagon has not responded to the charges made by Boyle in this article.