Introduction

This investigation began as a continuation of earlier research into the intelligence community’s involvement in promoting the Warren Commission’s Oswald “lone nut” narrative. There is much to still be discovered about that. When I subsequently pulled on one thread of that story — the links between Life Magazine reporter Donald Dale Jackson and the military intelligence (MI) community — something else was revealed: the presence of key figures in the assassination story with links to military intelligence, and in particular, the U.S. Army’s Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC). This is a story taken up in part by others,1 but I think most people will find a number of new items in this article.

What kinds of MI presence were there? For instance, the Secret Service cars both immediately in front of and behind John Kennedy’s limo on November 22, 1963 carried former CIC agents, Winston Lawson2 and Clint Hill, respectively. The consul in Moscow who met with Oswald alone on his first visit to the U.S. embassy on October 31, 1959 was former CIA official and military intelligence (G-2) man, Richard Edward Snyder.3

The first federal agent that I was able to determine entered the Texas School Book Depository just after the assassination was James W. Powell, who was “a member of the 112th INTC [Intelligence Corps] Group,” which maintained an office in downtown Dallas, and had been close enough to Dealey Plaza to have heard the assassination gunshots (brackets in original). Powell’s presence opens the door to a long-simmering controversy over the presence or non-presence of local military intelligence officers in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination, a controversy that will be addressed later in this article.

According to a 1997 report by Timothy Wray of the Assassination Records Review Board (AARB), the 112th INTC “was directly subordinate to 4th [U.S. continental] Army, and in fact its headquarters was virtually side-by-side with 4th Army’s headquarters at Fort Sam Houston” in San Antonio. The 112th was initially a unit of the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps, and was “enlarged to a counterintelligence group in 1957. It was renamed the 112th Intelligence Corps Group in 1961, though it went by the cover name ‘4th U.S. Army Operations Group’ until July, 1962. Its official mission was ‘to contribute to the operations of 4th U.S. Army through the detection of treason, sedition, subversive activity, and espionage and sabotage within or directed against the 4th U.S. Army and the area of its jurisdiction” (pg. 3, material in brackets added).

At the time of the assassination of President John Kennedy and the murders of Lee Harvey Oswald and Dallas police officer J.D. Tippet, the 112th INTC Group “had approximately 300 military personnel and 25 civilians assigned to it” (Ibid.). As we shall see, there was notable overlap with Dallas police force personnel. There was also the fact that the army unit was involved in domestic surveillance of civil rights and other political activists.

Returning to examples of military intelligence figures associated with the assassination, there was the mysterious John David Hurt, the man Lee Harvey Oswald tried to reach by phone when he was in custody in the Dallas jail. Hurt, who was disabled and perhaps mentally ill, seemed a strange choice to call, but one thing was clear — he had a background in intelligence as a CIC officer.

The cherry on top of this group was probably Joseph Cody, a Dallas police officer and former CIC agent, who by his own account said he knew Jack Ruby better than anyone else in Dallas (video, see 32:30 time-mark). He also claimed he was the first police official to interview Oswald, even before homicide detectives got a crack at him (26:55). And — what a coincidence is this! — he purchased specifically for Ruby the gun Jack Ruby would later use to shoot Lee Harvey Oswald.

Interestingly, Cody met Ruby approximately ten years before the JFK assassination while Cody was still “on assignment” for CIC, according to his interview with the FBI on December 16, 1963. Cody said he and Ruby bonded over their joint love of ice skating, and that they went ice skating together many times. So far as I can tell, no other source has ever mentioned Ruby’s predilection for ice skating. For some reason, Cody was never interviewed by the Warren Commission. He died in Dallas in 2008.

From Cody’s December 16, 1963 FBI report, which was listed as an exhibit in the Warren Report:

CODY stated he was in the Korean War and was assigned in the Counter Intelligence Corps. He stated that while on that assignment he had been assigned in Dallas part of the time and, during that time, had gone into the Silver Spur, The Carousel, and the Vegas Clubs, on several occasions [all clubs associated with Jack Ruby - JK].

The FBI report also noted, “CODY stated that after World War II was over and he returned to the Police Department in Dallas he saw RUBY occasionally on official business.” It sure sounds as if Ruby was an informant or some kind of asset for Army intelligence. If Ruby had been an intelligence asset for CIC agent Cody, could their skating rendezvous have been a cover for meetings between an agent and his asset?

In addition, it seems worth mentioning that Jack’s older brother, Sam Ruby, told the Warren Commission that he (Sam) had worked for Army Air Force Intelligence while he was stationed at Langley Field in World War II. Sam indicated that his superiors knew Jack by name, and Sam’s reports were to be signed using a code name, “Johnny Newman,” addressed to his “Dear Brother Jack,” and mailed to “a certain box number in Newport News, Va., which was about 20 miles away from Langley Field….” (pg. 503).

A July 11, 2025 podcast at Fourth Reich Archaeology noted the Sam Ruby connection with Army intelligence and commented, “the fact that Jack Ruby was even as a very young man being used as a foil, as basically a straw man, a front for intelligence operations and psychological operations is another one of these pile of facts that are part of the evidence that stack up a mile high and draw extreme suspicion” (00:18:21 — link to transcript).

In fact, if we add up Sam Ruby, Joe Cody, and the many intelligence-linked officers at the Dallas Police Department (as will be discussed further on), not to mention Ruby’s connection to CIA psychiatrist Louis J. West, and the fact that in 1947 Jack also performed “information functions for the staff” of then Congressman Richard Nixon, Ruby seems surrounded by intelligence figures for much of his adult life.

I should also add Richard Case Nagell to the list of military intelligence figures around Oswald. Nagell had been in the CIC from approximately 1954 to 1959, and joined the CIA a few years later. He claimed to have known Lee Oswald while the latter was stationed in Japan. He also said that he had advance knowledge of the assassination and had been ordered by the KGB, for whom he allegedly was a double agent for the CIA, to warn Oswald about the plot.4

I only mention Nagell here because I think the list would be incomplete without him. However, the Nagell case is so convoluted, opaque, and mysterious that I cannot really link him with the other men listed above. It would take an entire article to sort out the different strands making up his story and take the reader too far afield from the main topics I aim to focus upon.

Finally, there was one other person with military intelligence credentials who claimed to have knowledge of the assassination, former Military Intelligence Service (MIS) agent Gary Underhill, who also worked in some capacity for the CIA. Interestingly, given the topic of the essay here, Underhill also worked as a pictorial journalist for Life Magazine from 1938-1942. After that he joined MIS, “working on technical and photgraphic headings for MIS publications, evaluation of intelligence, and enemy uniforms, insignia, weapons, etc.” According to a 1961 article in Der Spiegel, Underhill “had been employed by CIA as an arms expert during the Korean War” and helped supply “arms to various trouble spots.”

As quoted in a document released only last year under the JFK Records Act, an article in Ramparts Magazine in June 1967 told an incredible story about Underhill:

The day after the assassination, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening he showed up at the home of friends in New Jersey. He was very agitated. A small clique within the CIA was responsible for the assassination, he confided, and he was afraid for his life and probably would have to leave the country. Less than six months later Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner ruled it suicide.”

As with Nagell, a full telling of the Underhill story is outside the scope of this article, though that doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant. I’ve included both Underhill and Nagell in this listing of military intelligence figures because both expressed special knowledge of the assassination. If they did know, did their knowledge come from military intelligence contacts? Or from within the CIA itself? Both Nagell and Underhill seemed quite nervous about what they knew about the assassination. Later on in this article, we will meet another military intelligence figure, Stephen Weiss, who also seemed worried about providing investigators information about what he knew about Dallas.

While CIA, CIC, MIS, FBI, etc. were all separate organizations, in practice their personnel would overlap, and they often worked together on assignment. As an example, a 1978 in-house history of the CIA’s Mexico City Station, written or overseen by Anne Goodpasture,5 and released to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, documented close work between the CIA, CIC and FBI. One case in particular called for CIA “to provide surveillance and investigative assets to CIC” (pg. 205 - PDF pg. 72).

As for CIC itself, it was disbanded by the Pentagon in 1961. Its human assets may have been sent here or there, but I assume many or most were sent into the newly created “Army Intelligence and Security Branch” (later renamed U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, or INSCOM).

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“The conceptual centerpiece of the Warren Report”

With so many military intelligence and CIA figures swirling around Oswald and Ruby, it’s not a great surprise to discover that the man who wrote the most early influential biography of Oswald, “The Evolution of An Assassin," published in Life Magazine on February 21, 1964, had only some three to four years earlier been a CIC agent. As can be seen in a National Archives reproduction of the article, its author, Donald Dale Jackson, or perhaps a Life editor, subtitled the work “a clinical study of Lee Harvey Oswald.” The magazine advertised “in full and extraordinary detail, the life of the assassin.”6

The word “clinical” promised a scientific, psychological, or psychiatric expert presentation that the article could not and did not have. In reality, it was a hatchet job that began with one premise: Oswald was “the president’s killer” (Pg. 68A).

But Lee Harvey Oswald had never been tried for the crime of killing John Kennedy, and therefore was obviously never convicted of the crime either. There are plenty of articles, books, and essays that have argued how Oswald did not get a fair shake, how he was framed for the assassination, or at least could not have committed the crime alone. I am not going to review all these arguments here.

This article explores how Donald Jackson, a 29-year-old journalist who had only recently joined Life magazine after returning to reporting with United Press International following approximately three years in the Counter Intelligence Corps, collaborated with Life's editors in portraying Lee Oswald as the perpetrator of a heinous crime. The article, the first to take up the issue of Jackson’s military intelligence links, will of necessity touch upon three other important topics: the lies a psychiatrist told about the evaluation of Oswald as a child, lies Jackson repeated in his article; the question of military intelligence presence in Dallas on November 22; and the issue of how familiar local military intelligence figures were with Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.

Life Magazine had a long history of collaboration with the U.S. government. Its founder, Henry Luce, had approved the use of the magazine’s assets “as operating covers for intelligence agency officers abroad.” In addition, soon after the assassination the magazine bought the famous Zapruder film of the assassination itself and withheld it from public showing for years. The deal was brokered by Life publisher C.D. Jackson, who had a long career working as a top psychological warfare specialist for the U.S. government.

Interestingly, in November 1966, Texas Governor John Connally, who had been shot along with Kennedy in the motorcade, was allowed to view the Zapruder film. Afterward, Connally told the press, “there is my absolute knowledge, and Nellie's too, that one bullet caused the President's first wound, and that an entirely separate shot struck me.” (Nellie Connally, aka Idanell Brill Connally, was John Connally’s wife.)

This powerful refutation of the famed “single bullet” theory, which held that Connally had been hit with one of the two bullets that also struck Kennedy, undermined the authority of the Warren Commission and its single assassin thesis, leading Life Magazine to issue an editorial calling for a new investigation. According to an account in the November 21, 1966 issue of The New York Times, Life’s editors maintained “there was ‘reasonable—and disturbing—doubt’ that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy.” They “called for a new official inquiry.”

How did I know Donald Jackson was connected to CIC? I was researching Jackson’s biography and was tipped off to Jackson’s CIC connection when I came across a March 2017 comment left by Steven Uanna for an April 15, 2010 article at David Lifton’s Substack. Following Uanna’s example,7 I queried the Gale Literature Resource Center for details on Jackson’s life, as seen below. The Dale database described Jackson as working for the “U.S. Army, Counter Intelligence Corps” from 1958 to 1960.8

Before continuing, I should explain how it was I even came to investigate Jackson’s past and his credentials.

I recently researched the backgrounds of psychiatrists consulting with the Warren Commission regarding Lee Harvey Oswald’s ostensible motivations for supposedly shooting John Kennedy. It turned out, much to my own surprise, that three of the four psychiatrists contracted as consultants had connections with the CIA. One of them, Dr. Howard Rome, had even been a consultant for the CIA’s Artichoke and MKULTRA mind control programs. Another, Dr. Winfred Overholser, had headed the government’s top secret research study on “truth drugs” during World War II.

It seemed to me that the CIA’s sudden appearance in the corridors of the Warren Commission, in the discussions that would paint Oswald as a crazed assassin, was no accident. As others have pointed out, the footprints of the intelligence world are all over the JFK assassination story, from Oswald’s Dallas “handler,” CIA informant (if he wasn’t more than that) George de Mohrenschildt, to CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton’s surveillance on Oswald’s “politics, his personal life, his foreign travels, [and] his contacts,” to Jack Ruby’s psychiatric entanglement with CIA MKULTRA doctor Louis Joylan West.

Perhaps because in my pre-retirement career I was a psychologist, I am drawn to the aspect of the JFK assassination mystery that concerns the supposed reconstruction of the Oswald’s life history. I am not alone in thinking this is an important aspect of the overall story surrounding the assassination, particularly in the formative months surrounding the activities of the Warren Commission.

As law professor Jonathan Simon wrote in 1998 for the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities (Vol. 10: 75):

Oswald’s biography is the conceptual centerpiece of the Warren Report, the symbolic axis on which it turns. For the Warren Commission was charged not only with discovering the truth about the assassination, with discovering its meaning, but also with persuading the American people of that truth. The Commission had to do more than simply trace the bullets that killed President Kennedy to a gun in Lee Harvey Oswald’s hands: It had to fill the empty space of that trajectory with a believable explanation; it had to make sense of what happened. And as the Commission began to edge toward its celebrated thesis that Oswald alone was responsible for the death of the President, it became clear that its Report would have to anchor the truth of the crime inside Lee Harvey Oswald himself.9 [page 77, PDF pg. 3; link to download full article]

When looking at the construction of Oswald’s life and motivations, which unfolded over the first weeks and months after the assassination, a number of early articles stand out. While there were early newspaper stories about Oswald’s ostensible Marxist views, his time in the Soviet Union, and his supposed position as “Secretary” of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, I am interested in how the psychiatric angle surrounding Oswald’s biography was exploited. The psychiatric narratives were meant to frame Oswald’s supposed motivation for the crime. It took about a week for the mental illness meme to surface.

“Potentially dangerous”?

On November 30, 1963, the New York Post broke the story about Lee Oswald’s teenage psychiatric history. Apparently the New York Post article did not carry a byline. Frustratingly, I have not been able to find an online copy of the Post story, which was copyrighted and not widely spread beyond the Post itself. But an Associated Press article leaning on the Post’s reporting got wide coverage.

The Post article quoted then “presiding justice of the family court,” Florence M. Kelley, who confirmed there was such a psychiatric history and that the court had provided information about it to the FBI, something Kelley knew was ethically dicey because Oswald had been a juvenile. In April 1953, Oswald had been referred to Youth House in the Bronx for chronic Junior High truancy, and received the standard psychiatric and social worker evaluations for that time.

The Post’s real dirt came from anonymous sources. The paper reported:

“It was learned from other sources that the psychiatric report recommended young Oswald, then only 13, for commitment…. The recommendation was turned down by the court.

“The probation report found schizophrenic tendencies and said that Oswald was potentially dangerous.”

These were all lies. Below is a copy of the report by Oswald’s probation officer, John Carro. The only “dangerousness” was to Oswald, from the possibility that the young boy would remain isolated from “social contacts with other children his age,” according to Carro.

As one can readily see from Carro’s report, there had been some talk of institutionalizing young Lee, but a final decision awaited “the receipt of the psychiatric examination.” That assessment was the job of Dr. Renatus Hartogs, the head psychiatrist at Youth House. Hartogs, who had been a psychiatrist at Sing Sing prison before coming to Youth House, would play a crucial role in the formation of the Oswald legend, portraying the youngster — years later, and only after the assassination — as a volatile, dangerous, mentally deranged teenager. In fact, that is what Hartogs would tell newspaper reporters and the Warren Commission. But the documentary evidence doesn't back up that narrative. And, notably, the Warren Commission wasn’t buying it either.

The press continued to vilify Oswald, building to a major article in the December 8, 1963 New York Times, “Lee Harvey Oswald: The Man and the Mystery.” Written by Donald Janson, in a nod towards fairness the article referred to Lee as “the accused assassin,” but the neutrality ended there. It was, in fact, a hit piece. In addition, it relied on Hartogs’ retrospective report for scientific evidence:

… the life story of the secretive young malcontent has not been completely pieced together, but what is known casts some light on the troubled man and the mystery he created just before his death….

He was absent 47 days from Junior High School 117 from October, 1952, to January, 1953. John Carro became his probation officer. He found that the 13-year-old youngster was staying home and watching television in the Oswald's small furnished apartment much of the day. Neighbors reported that he played alone with toy guns.10 Mr. Carro found him a withdrawn and friendless child who was taunted at school because of his Southern drawl and because he wore blue jeans….

A fourth judge sent him to the Youth House for Boys in the Bronx. He was examined for a month there in 1953. The chief psychiatrist, Dr. Renatus Hartogs, found that the slim 13-year-old had schizophrenic tendencies and was "potentially dangerous." This examination, performed 10 years ago, found Oswald to be full of anger although outwardly calm. It found he had fantasies involving violence. The fatherless boy had a hatred of authority, fixed on a father symbol. His personality was unruffled, seclusive, aggressive.

Why was “potentially dangerous” in quotes, because there is no such quote in Hartogs’ report on Oswald? Was Janson quoting Hartogs directly? Whether or not Hartogs himself was the source for Janson’s article, below is a relevant portion of Hartogs’ testimony before the Warren Commission on April 16, 1964. Recalling that he remembered Oswald years later, after the assassination, because he had given an informal seminar on his case at Youth House, Hartogs said:

We gave a seminar on this boy in which we discussed him, because he came to us on a charge of truancy from school, and yet when I examined him, I found him to have definite traits of dangerousness. In other words, this child had a potential for explosive, aggressive, assaultive acting out which was rather unusual to find in a child who was sent to Youth House on such a mild charge as truancy from school. This is the reason why I remember this particular child, and that is the reason why we discussed him in the seminar. [pg. 217]

As I wrote elsewhere:

According to the WC report, “Contrary to reports that appeared after the assassination, [Hartog’s] psychiatric examination did not indicate that Lee Oswald was a potential assassin, potentially dangerous, that ‘his outlook on life had strongly paranoid overtones’ or that he should be institutionalized.” [See Chapter 7, pg. 379]

Contrary to the documentary record, Dr. Hartogs, who testified before the Warren Commission on April 16, 1964, told his examiners, “If I can recall correctly, I recommended that this youngster should be committed to an institution.” Hartogs did all he could to condemn Oswald to the authorities, once he realized that Oswald was the child he had evaluated eleven years earlier. He told the FBI that the young Oswald had “extremely cold, steely eyes… there was nothing emotional, affective about him.” Oswald’s “suspiciousness towards adults” showed he had a “severe personality disorder.”

When [Warren Commission Assistant Counsel, Wesley] Liebeler showed Hartogs a copy of his original psychiatric report, the report presented a very different picture of Oswald, one that recommended probation and not a “more harmful placement approach,” such as psychiatric commitment. Hartogs could not account for the difference between his report, which said nothing about dangerousness, and his memory. A somewhat blurred copy of Hartogs’ report is available here [and inserted above]; and here is a textual, cleaned-up version of the report. Nothing of Hartogs’ contradictory testimony to Warren Commission examiners ever made it into the [Warren] report. [italics for emphasis and bracketed material is added]

Amazingly, when Liebeler confronted Hartogs with his mischaracterizations about his report to the Warren Commission, Hartogs had little to say about it except to plea that he was relying on memory for events then some ten years in the past. But more amazing is the fact that even after his confrontation with Liebeler, Hartogs returned to his bogus summation of the Oswald report, with claims about Oswald’s “dangerousness,” “schizophrenia,” propensity to violence, etc., for years afterward.

Hartogs: From “Assassins” to “Betrayal”

In 1965, Hartogs authored, along with journalist Lucy Freeman, the book The Two Assassins. I am working on obtaining a copy of Hartogs and Freedman’s book, but I was able to see via Google Books’ entry that the initial chapter is called, “The Twisted World of Lee Harvey Oswald.” Apparently, in the book Hartogs also provided his supposed psychiatric expertise on the “second assassin,” Jack Ruby, killer of Lee Oswald (although, as Paul Abbott has shown, there may even be questions about Ruby as the shooter).11

According to a book review of the Hartogs-Freeman text, the book still repeated the same old slanders and lies about the young Oswald. “This child is explosively dangerous and we can expect him to commit an act of violence during his lifetime if he does not get help in understanding his fury,” Hartogs claimed in the book, indicating this was something he wrote down after evaluating Oswald. Of course, nothing like that was in his 1953 report on young Lee, and has never surfaced in any other report.

The press deserves a huge share of the blame for spreading Hartogs’ lies. The European-born Hartogs comes off as a self-promoter and highly unethical. It is with some irony that his career ended approximately ten years after the publication of The Two Assassins, when a jury found him guilty of coercing sex repeatedly with his patient Julie Roy, a secretary at Esquire Magazine. Ms. Roy later wrote a book about all this with Lucy Freeman — the same journalist who co-wrote Hartogs’ Assassins book! That book was titled Betrayal: The true story of the first woman to successfully sue her psychiatrist for using sex in the guise of therapy.

It’s a sordid tale I will leave the reader to pursue if they wish. In the end, a jury agreed that Hartogs was guilty of malpractice and awarded Roy “$250,000 in compensatory and $100,000 in punitive damages,” which was reduced later upon appeal. Hartogs, who was then 67 years old, gave up his license “to avoid state disciplinary procedures,” according to one newspaper account. I will only remark that, one, the verdict and Hartogs’ actions speak to his lack of professional ethics. Two, Lucy Freeman certainly seemed to get around! Perhaps the latter book was some kind of penance for her initial work with Hartogs.12

It is worth citing here for the record Hartogs’ original summary of his evaluation of the young teen Oswald, which was passed on to Oswald’s probation officer. I think given the pervasiveness of the lies about his report, which have circulated for decades now, the full text of that summary should not be passed over here. In addition, Hartogs’ original summary makes a nice preface for the discussion below on the distortions of the psychiatric record Donald Jackson will retail in his infamous Life Magazine article.

This 13 year old well built boy has superior mental resources and functions only slightly below his capacity level in spite of chronic truancy from school which brought him into Youth House. No finding of neurological impairment or psychotic mental changes could be made. Lee has to be diagnosed as "personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies." Lee has to be seen as an emotionally, quite disturbed youngster who suffers under the impact of really existing emotional isolation and deprivation, lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a selfinvolved and conflicted mother. Although Lee denies that he is in need of any other form of help other than "remedial" one, we gained the definite impression that Lee can be reached through contact with an understanding and very patient psychotherapist and if he could be drawn at the same time into group psychotherapy. We arrive therefore at the recommendation that he should be placed on probation under the condition that he seek help and guidance through contact with a child guidance clinic, where he should be treated preferably by a male psychiatrist who could substitute, to a certain degree at least, for the lack of a father figure. At the same time, his mother should be urged to seek psychotherapeutic guidance through contact with a family agency. If this plan does not work out favorably and Lee cannot cooperate in this treatment plan on an out-patient's basis, removal from the home and placement could be resorted to at a later date, but it is our definite impression that treatment on probation should be tried out before the stricter and therefore possibly more harmful placement approach is applied to the case of this boy. The Big Brother Movement could be undoubtedly of tremendous value in this case and Lee should be urged to join the organized group activities of his community, such as provided by the PAL or YMCA of his neighborhood.

As the above text shows, Hartogs found the 13-year-old Oswald to be intelligent, non-psychotic, lacking neurological impairment, with no personality “disorder.” The statement that one has “features” or “tendencies” of personality disturbance means — and I have written dozens of psychological evaluations for attorneys in my career, and testified on them as an expert witness in court — that some or a few symptoms were present consistent with certain “personality patterns” that had relevance in the case. In Lee’s case the symptoms were shyness and aloofness (“schizoid” traits), and a certain resistance to being treated by adults he did not trust (“passive-aggressive” to “professionals” like Hartogs).

Rather than someone to be committed to a psychiatric hospital or setting, Lee Oswald was at that time understood to be a child who “suffers under the impact of really existing emotional isolation and deprivation, lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a selfinvolved and conflicted mother.” The emphasis on blaming the mother is a common one in psychiatry and psychology and Dr. Hartogs and the people at Youth House had little seeming sympathy for a working-class mother struggling to make a living, bring up children after the death of a spouse, and still have some kind of satisfying life for herself. What Lee needed, Hartogs felt, was a consistent father figure, someone like a Big Brother or the leader of a YMCA group activity. He did not need institutionalization.

Rather than a young monster, Lee was a child who could “be reached through contact with an understanding and very patient psychotherapist.” In other words, he was relatable, and in fact, that is how some of Oswald’s teachers and social worker found him to be.

But that is not how Hartogs described Lee years later to the newspapers, nor how he apparently portrayed him in his book, The Two Assassins.

The Character Assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald

Returning to Jackson’s Life Magazine article, the former CIC man oversold Hartogs’ evaluation of the young adolescent Oswald as “[t]he most penetrating personality analysis ever made on Lee Oswald” (pg. 71). The Warren Commission’s quiet debunking of Hartogs’ assessment wouldn’t be published until their entire report was released to the public on September 27, 1964. Hence, Jackson may not have had access to other critiques of Hartogs’s work. But he didn’t have access to Hartogs’ report either. That didn't apparently stop Jackson, who wrote, “the substance of [Hartog’s report] is as follows” (in part):

It was apparent that Oswald was an emotionally disturbed, mentally constricted youngster who tended to isolate himself from contacts with others, was suspicious and defiant in his attitude toward authority, and overly sensitive and vengeful in his relationships with his peers…. [he] did not seem to have developed the courage to act upon his hostility in an aggressive or destructive fashion. He also appeared to be preoccupied about his sexual identity and his future role as a male.

He was guarded, secluded and suspicious in his dealings with the psychiatrist…. He could not become verbally productive and talk freely about himself and his feelings….

Dr. Hartogs concluded that here was definitely a child who had given up hope of making himself understood by anyone about his needs and expectations. In an environment where affection was withheld, he was unable to relate with anyone because he had not learned the techniques and skills which would have permitted it. A diagnosis of incipient schizophrenia was made, based on the boy’s detachment from the world and pathological changes in his value systems. His outlook on life had strongly paranoid overtones. The immediate and long-range consequence of these features, in addition to his inability to verbalize hostility, led to an additional diagnosis: “potential dangerousness.”

Dr. Hartogs’ report was sent to the Children’s Court with the recommendation that the child be committed to an institution for his own protection and that of the community at large. He felt that the treatment might have led to improvement, and that ultimately the boy would have been rehabilitated. His recommendation was not followed. [Jackson, “The Evolution of an Assassin,” February 21, 1964, Life Magazine, pg. 72]

“Emotionally disturbed, mentally constricted… suspicious and defiant… overly sensitive and vengeful… hostility… preoccupied about his sexual identity… guarded, secluded and suspicious… unable to relate with anyone… incipient schizophrenia… detachment from the world and pathological changes in his value systems… strongly paranoid… ‘potential dangerousness’”!

It is difficult to believe so many negative connotations about a youngster is even possible, especially one whose only great crimes thus far in his life had been truancy and a reluctance to open up freely to state psychiatry and child custody officials, a child they knew had been recently teased and likely bullied in school. But it’s important to remember this was not the characterization of Oswald’s psychiatrist back in 1953. This was Hartogs’ portrayal of Oswald to Donald Jackson of Life Magazine.

Hartogs further told Jackson “he was not surprised when Lee Oswald was arrested for the assassination of President Kennedy. ‘Psychologically,’ [Hartogs] said he had all the qualifications of being a potential assassin…. A person like Oswald resents a lifetime of being pushed to the sidelines. He culminates his career of injustice-collecting by committing a supreme, catastrophic act of violence and power” (pg. 72)

A cursory perusal of the graphic subheads throughout the Life article shows the narrative working on a meta-formatting level. Oswald’s “evolution” into an assassin is revealed here in capsule. From the able young boy to the alienated and “lost” adolescent, to the hermit-like Marine, to the abusive and insensitive husband, to someone who was losing control and seeking violent actions, until he “poked a rifle out that window” on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

And who was there to snap a photo of the building and the sixth floor window within five minutes of the assassination? Sergeant James W. Powell of the 112th Intelligence Corps Group.

Army Intelligence in Dallas on November 22, 1963

On April 12, 1996, James Powell was interviewed for the Assassination Records Review Board by Timothy Wray. The following February, Wray would write a memorandum on the subject of “Army Intelligence in Dallas” for the AARB. In the latter report, Wray recalled the previous testimony of Colonel Robert E. Jones, who identified himself as the Operations Officer for the 112 Military Intelligence Group at the time of the JFK assassination. Col. Jones insisted before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (which operated from September 1976 to December 1978) that the 112th INTC Group “had been involved in presidential security activities on November 22, 1963, and that it had had ‘between eight and twelve’ plainclothes agents in Dealey Plaza….” (pgs. 5-6).

Wray found this to be “a remarkable assertion in light of the fact that no such military presence had previously been noted by the Secret Service, the FBI or the Warren Commission” (Ibid.). On that same note, Wray’s report critically assessed statements made by Colonel (USAF, Ret.) L. Fletcher Prouty, who claimed the 112th INTC and its subordinate units were trained in presidential protection, but were ordered to “stand down” on the day of the assassination.

Wray interviewed Prouty, who does not come off very well in Wray’s ARRB Army-Dallas intelligence narrative, and interested readers should see the discussion in both Wray’s essay (pgs. 9-13) and the Prouty interview, both linked above. For a comprehensive critique of Wray and the ARRB’s criticism of Prouty, see James DiEugenio’s June 2022 essay, “Fletcher Prouty vs. the ARRB,” at the Kennedys and King website.

One thing Wray briefly mentioned was the 112th’s record of participation in domestic surveillance of civil rights activists and those deemed political radicals. Edward Coyle, of the 112th INTC, told Wray that such surveillance was “standard operational procedure for every military unit in the area” (pg. 19). Coyle downplayed any active investigation of such groups or individuals, and Wray, in his Dallas report seemed to accept that. Today, we are stymied from further investigation on that point because the Pentagon destroyed all the relevant records in 1971.

Wray wrote that his investigation had revealed Jones’s testimony to have “many patent inaccuracies and misrepresentations, beginning with what his job in the 112th actually was.” According to Wray, Col. Jones was not the operations officer (S3) for the intelligence group; he was its intelligence officer (S2), a position Wray felt was much less involved in the day-to-day running of the unit than an operations officer, who "would be much more knowledgeable of the 112th’s day-to-day activities than the S2” (pg. 6).13

But why would Jones lie? Wray really couldn’t say. Wray felt fairly certain that there had been no official presence of military intelligence officers in Dealey Plaza the day of the assassination, or any other time in proximity to it. “The 112th’s unit history for 1962-3 says nothing about it providing security for the President in Dallas or anywhere else,” he wrote (pg. 7).

Interestingly, however, Edward Coyle, the warrant officer for the 112th INTC, told Wray that the 112th’s Dallas Regional Office commander, Lieutenant Colonel Roy Pate, “attended monthly meetings with the heads of the various local law enforcement and military intelligence agencies within the Dallas community, and that upon his return from such meetings [he] would commonly assemble the office’s personnel to pass on to them any important information he had picked up” (pg. 8).

When Pate came back from the monthly meeting prior to the assassination, he expressed “some surprise” that “the Secret Service and the Dallas Police Department said that they had everything under control and needed no additional help from other agencies” (pg. 8). If the 112th or the other local military intelligence group, the 316th Intelligence Group, did not have experience protecting the president or assisting the Secret Service, then why was the 112th’s commander surprised when the SS or the Dallas police did not ask for help for the forthcoming Kennedy visit?14

Wray felt the assertion of a military presence at Dealey Plaza was not the only problematic statement made by Colonel Jones. According to Wray, Jones also misstated what James Powell’s rank was.

According to Wray, “Jones asserted that James W. Powell was an officer (a captain) on duty in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. Powell was actually a Sergeant (E-5), a fact confirmed both by Powell himself and by our examination of Powell’s VA and military records. According to Powell, he was not on duty at the time of the assassination, but rather had asked for the day off in order to see the presidential visit” (pg. 7). Hence it was as a kind of presidential motorcade sightseer that Powell found himself only a hundred yards or so away from where the shots were fired that felled JFK, or at least that was the story Powell told, and that Wray seemed to believe.

But what did Powell actually say? In his April 1996 interview with Wray, Powell explained that his primary duties for the 112th INTC consisted of investigations for security clearances for militarily sensitive jobs. In addition, he had special training in “investigative photography.” He explained that this consisted of covert photography during surveillance.

Wray moved on to the core issue of the interview:

WRAY: Do you recall any discussion with other members of the 112th in anticipation of the presidential visit? Other people that were going to try to get time off to go see it, or anything else that anybody was going to be doing in connection with that? With the visit?

POWELL: To be very honest with you, no. That’s surprising when I think about it. I know others were there, they were on duty, or they were working the normal things that they do and did not ask for time off to do this.

WRAY: Do you recall any discussion, or activities the 112th was going to do related to providing security for the President.

POWELL: No. Not at all....

WRAY: Okay, now you mentioned that on the 22d of November that you had asked for time off. I understand. I’m just clarifying something here. Some members of the unit were still — maybe most members of the unit — were working that day. Is that correct? But you had specifically asked for time off?

POWELL: Right. Because if you’re... In my capacity I’m expected to be out — I have leads that are given to me. When I’m given a lead, I’m expected to go out and interview references and look for records and that type of thing during the course of the day, and then file a report on each one of those. That’s what the other agents were doing except for those that, there was always a staff in the building — in this case the Rio Grande Building — and there were probably three or four of those people there at that time when I had my time off. The other agents were just out doing their regular job. (pgs. 4-5, italics added for emphasis)

Powell certainly seemed to say at one point that there were other military intelligence agents from his unit in Dealey Plaza that day. Sure enough, as I shall show, more MI agents will show up in Dealey. Wray asked Powell again about the presence of military intelligence agents in Dealey Plaza. But in setting up Powell’s reply, it’s important to note that Powell explained first that hearing the assassin’s (assassins’?) shots he wandered over to the Texas School Book Depository and the train tracks that ran nearby. Sometime in the first minutes after the shooting, Powell took a photograph of the TSBD, which showed the sixth floor window from which the shots supposedly originated.

Powell then went inside the TSBD to call the 112th INTC office to “tell them what happened” (pg. 9). He subsequently went back outside and began to interview witnesses. As he was interviewing one man, a “fairly high-ranking policeman… like a chief, or whatever” got out of his car and “literally took the guy away” from Powell, despite the latter flashing his credentials.

Prior to that, Powell told Wray he had accompanied a group of police officers and sheriff’s deputies to investigate the parking lot and railroad yard next to the Texas School Book Depository. Powell said he showed his military intelligence credentials to the officers and they accepted his presence. Eyewitnesses told Powell and the others they had “heard someone running through that area” (pg. 7).

Powell’s presence in Dealey Plaza and his claims to have assisted, at least somewhat, in the investigation, is consistent with what Colonel Jones told HSCA investigators back in the 1970s:

In recalling where the military agents might have been during the motorcade itself he thought they would have been in a number of different places.

“Some... may have accompanied the motorcade and some of them may have stayed in Dealey Dealey [sic] Plaza. Some may have been with the Secret Service and the FBI.” [See page 6; ellipses is in original]

A Branch Office of U.S. Army Intelligence Inside the Dallas PD

For some reason, Powell decided to reenter the TSBD, and encountered a hectic scene, with police “detaining everybody who was in the building at that point” (pg. 9). Powell told Wray the police did not believe he was who he said he was, or at least they would not let him leave the building. Powell said he never went above the second floor of the building, and remained trapped inside for some 45 minutes, until he was rescued by a superior officer. He was adamant that he never assisted the police in any way.

WRAY: Now Wilson Pate from your unit came...

POWELL: Page.

WRAY: Page, I’m sorry, got you released. Did you, where did you go then? Did you go home, or did you go back to your office?

POWELL: I’m pretty sure I went back to the office....

WRAY: Do you recall during the time that you were in Dealey Plaza, except for Wilson Page, did you see anyone, do you recall seeing anyone else from the 112th?

POWELL: No. [pg. 10]

According to Wray’s later report on “Army Intelligence in Dallas”, Powell was wrong about how he finally got out of the TSBD. Powell recalled that Master Sergeant Wilson Page had rescued him. But both Edward Coyle, the warrant officer for the 112th, and another fellow military intelligence officer, Coyle’s immediate superior, Lieutenant Stephen Weiss, told Wray they were the ones who got Powell out of his predicament at the TSBD, with “the assistance of Jack Revill, a police official they knew from their liaison activities, who was the head of the Dallas Police intelligence section and who was at the scene outside the TSBD” (pgs. 13-14. (Pate, who Wray himself momentarily misidentified, was Lt. Col. Roy Pate, the commander of the 112th.)

Coyle came to rescue Powell at the TBSD, having only a short time before left a meeting with FBI agent James Hosty and Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent Jack Ellsworth at the latter’s office “just before the assassination” (pg. 14). Hosty has a controversial history in relation to Oswald, having interviewed Lee’s wife, Marina, and been the recipient of an allegedly threatening letter from Oswald, which Hosty destroyed two days after the assassination, supposedly on orders from his superiors. Hosty’s address and contact information were also found in Oswald’s address book.

It was part of Coyle’s job to meet representatives from other agencies. He must have made relationships with some of these other agency personnel. In his essay on “Military Intelligence in Dallas,” Tim Wray described the relationship between Coyle and FBI agent Hosty as “close” (pg. 5); Coyle referred to Hosty as “Jimmy.”

Coyle worked in 112th’s “Security Section.” Besides meeting with other law enforcement and government agencies, Coyle’s section conducted “Special Investigations,” as well. Wray asked Coyle, in an interview on October 26, 1996, “What would be an example of a special investigation?” (pg. 3).

Coyle responded:

Special investigation? We had, we were on very close terms with the Dallas Police Department, particularly their intelligence section. Now their intelligence section was run by an Army reserve colonel. I don’t remember his name right now. But all of the men assigned to his organization were in Army intelligence. [pg. 3]

From this one can construe that the Intelligence section of the Dallas Police Force in 1963 was essentially a branch office of U.S. Army intelligence. Some men on the force also belonged to a dubious project known as the 488th Army Intelligence Detachment, a private spy unit created by former Office of Strategic Services officer, Jack Alston Crichton.

According to an incredible list of missing assassination records compiled by assassination researcher William Kelley, “Records of the Dallas-based 488th Military (Strategic) Intelligence Detachment (Counter-Intelligence) unit histories and rosters 1962-1963” are among the many missing records. This, of course, makes research on the 488th difficult. For more on the 488th, see this discussion at The Education Forum (particularly Chuck Schwartz’s contribution), and Russ Baker’s investigation into Jack Crichton at WhoWhatWhy.

According to a memorial for Captain William Paul “Pat” Gannaway, chief of the Dallas PD’s Special Services Bureau in 1963, Gannaway was a member of the 488th. The article there also claims that approximately “half of the 488th's ~100 members were also DPD CIS detectives.” The CIS was the Criminal Intelligence Section of the Dallas PD’s Special Services Bureau. Captain Gannaway was also “one of the lead Detectives during the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy…. he, along with 2 other CIS & 488th members, Dep. Chief George L. Lumpkin and Det. L.D. Stringfellow pointed to Oswald as the assassin very early on.”

According to the Spartacus Educational website, member of the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment, Dallas Deputy Police Chief George L. Lumpkin, “drove the pilot car of Kennedy's motorcade. Also in the car was Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army Reserve units in East Texas.”

While the 488th cannot be seen as strictly military intelligence, as it was a private and not a government enterprise, it would seem there was a great deal of interpenetration between official military intelligence, private “military intelligence” officers, and the Dallas police, if not also the FBI and CIA.

Returning to Coyle’s account of what he did after leaving his meeting with Hosty and Ellsworth, he told Tim Wray he hung around the corner of Main and Rio Grande streets and witnessed the presidential motorcade drive by. He was so close by, Coyle told Wray, “if I had stuck my hand out, just stretched my arm out, I would have hit President Kennedy right in the head” (pg. 6). Then he walked a half block to the Dallas 112th office, where he and Stephen Weiss heard the news that Kennedy had been shot.

The 112th office then received a call from Powell at the TSBD, some five blocks away. According to Coyle, Powell asked for them to come down to the Depository to identify him, and to bring him a camera. Except Powell told Wray that he already had his camera with him. “I had my camera and so forth” (pg. 8). In fact, he explained to the ARRB interviewer that he had taken the day off to go see the President arrive and take pictures.

WRAY: So you went to Love Field. Were you there for when the President initially arrived?

POWELL: Yes. Yes.

WRAY: And did you take pictures at that time?

POWELL: Yes I did. [Interview with James W. Powell, April 12, 1996, pg. 5]

So why did Warrant Officer Edward Coyle tell Tim Wray that Powell asked him to bring him a camera to the Texas School Book Depository? The simplest answer is that these actors didn’t have their stories straight, or perhaps Coyle misremembered. At least one member of the 112th, Stephen Weiss, who Coyle said went with him to the TSBD, must have decided that the best thing to do was remain silent and not speak to the ARRB. I will elaborate more on that a bit further on.

According to Wray’s essay, “Army Intelligence in Dallas,” it was Coyle who called for the meeting on the morning of November 22 with Hosty and ATF’s Ellsworth. Wray spent approximately a full page describing the hazy story behind the meeting — there had been a blown operation and Coyle wanted to prevent inter-agency screw-ups going forward — but one is left with the impression that it was certainly strange that at the moment of the assassination a military intelligence official was meeting with the FBI agent most associated with Lee Harvey Oswald.

Summing up the story the AARB’s questioning of military intelligence officials has left us with: Col. Jones allegedly lied about who he was and who was in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. Sgt. Powell couldn’t accurately recall who rescued him from the building that was the site of the accused assassin’s lair. Powell remembered that there were other members of the 112th in Dealey Plaza on November 22, “on duty.” But then recanted that and said nobody was there but him. Powell claimed he didn’t involve himself in the investigation into the assassination that afternoon, yet he did interview at least one witness.15 At least four members of the 112th INTC were in Dealey Plaza shortly after the assassination: James Powell, Edward Coyle, Stephen Weiss, and (allegedly) Wilson Page. Shortly after the assassination, in early 1964, both Coyle and Weiss were transferred to Korea, a transfer that Coyle, in retrospect, thought “a little funny” (pg. 16). Much about the story surrounding military intelligence operations in Dallas in and around the assassination doesn’t hold together!

There is an interesting postscript to the mystery about whether the 112th and other military intelligence units in Dallas on the day of the assassination were there to protect the president or not. When Lieutenant Stephen Weiss was approached by ARRB investigators in February 1997, he indicated in a phone call in early March with Doug Horne (Tim Wray’s successor as Chief Analyst for Military Records for the ARRB) that he would not participate in any questioning about the assassination. See this March 12, 1997 email from Tim Wray to various ARRB staff.

ARRB General Counsel T. Jeremy Gunn wrote to Weiss and tried to reassure him, but to no avail. There was no further questioning of Weiss. A March 17, 1997 memo from Tim Wray to Doug Horne listed the many questions they hoped to ask Weiss. Among the various questions, it looks like Wray harbored some suspicions about Coyle’s transfer to Korea (pg. 2). Many years later, it looks as if military authorities wanted to put both Coyle and Weiss far away from potential assassination investigators.

According to a 2022 article by Jim DiEugenio, before he went silent, Weiss had told ARRB investigator Dave Montague that “Colonel Robert Jones had requested [the 112th] get in contact with the Secret Service and offer them supplementary protection for President Kennedy in Dallas. Weiss was surprised that the Secret Service declined. He said the word was that a man, whose name phonetically sounded like [Forrest] Sorrels, declined the offer.” If true, and if the military intelligence units were not then typically involved in presidential protection operations, then why would Jones have offered services in this particular instance on the otherwise non-infamous date of November 22, 1963?

But Weiss stopped talking.

“Everybody” in Intelligence Knew Oswald and Ruby

I can’t make up my mind about the contributions of ARRB Army Colonel Timothy A. Wray. Sometimes he seems keenly diligent. Other times he seems to have missed some key opportunities to follow up an important line of questioning, betraying a possibly a pro-military bias. Wray was an Army officer, and he had standing within the service as one of its intellectuals.

According to his C.V., Wray was a former Fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. From 1990-1993, he had been Special Assistant to the Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1986, he wrote Standing Fast: German Defensive Doctrine on the Russian Front During World War II, a monograph for the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It was later published also as a book.

Consider Wray’s curious failure to follow up an important lead during his July 24, 1996 interview with Colonel Rudolph M. Reich. Retired now, in November 1963 Col. Reich was the commander of the 316th INTC Detachment, attached to the 112th INTC, and operating in and around the Dallas area. Prior to that assignment, Reich had been the S3, or Operations Officer, for the 112th Intelligence Corps Group.

Reich was a very knowledgeable guy, very connected. When he told Wray that he’d never ever seen a Secret Service agent before, except once “by accident” in Orlando, Florida, why then, Wray seemed predisposed to believe him (pg. 3). Reich was a prickly interviewee. He took offense to the idea that any information about military intelligence being involved in security the day JFK was shot could have come from himself or from any officer in the 112th/316th detachments.

Lambasting attorney and assassination researcher Mark Lane, Reich told Wray that Lane “had the information [about security assignments] from one of the privates, because the way the whole thing sounded, that we knew Oswald” (pg. 3). The transcript doesn’t make a lot of sense here. But I think it is probably accurate. Reich was flustered, upset, whether because of the memory of feeling attacked by or falsely blamed by Lane, or maybe from what he felt Wray might think, or something else. It seemed the train of questioning at that point had touched a nerve. For whatever reason, Reich felt he had to tell Wray how things actually were:

Everybody in the intelligence field in this area knew Oswald. And everybody knew Ruby. [pg. 3, bold italics added for emphasis]

You’d think Wray would have immediately jumped on such a startling assertion. But he let it lie awhile. Later he brought it up again.

WRAY: Okay. You mentioned a little bit earlier that people there were familiar with Oswald and they were familiar with Ruby. What was the basis for that knowledge, do you recall?

REICH: Just — I forgot which section... was it CI [counter-intelligence]? One of our sections... you know, they studied the newspaper, they cut out things, and hometown people, if they have [a] rowdy or something like that, they make photographs and just started a dossier on some of these people, you know what I mean?

WRAY: Yes, sir. [pg. 8, ellipses in original, bracketed material added]

Reich’s assertion that “everybody in the intelligence field” knew Oswald and Ruby from newspaper clippings or some dossier started on some “rowdy” is incredibly weak. Weaker still is how Wray snaps to attention when Reich seems to so obviously dissimulate. In any case, Wray let the subject drop at that point.16

Cody in Dealey Plaza

There was one more military intelligence-linked figure outside the TSBD shortly after the assassination that fateful afternoon — Jack Ruby’s old friend, CIC vet, Dallas policeman and gun expert, Joseph Cody.

According to Cody’s 1999 interview for the Oral History Collection at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, he, his partner, and the Chief of the Dallas PD Criminal Investigation Division arrived at the TSBD building “five to ten minutes” after the shooting. While his partner, Charley Dellinger,17 entered the building, Cody strolled over to the area in the street where the murder had taken place. He claims that he saw “a piece of Kennedy’s head bone lying by the curb” (17:50) When he saw “reddish hair” on the bone, he said he knew it was the president’s. Cody said he turned the skull evidence in.

As for Dellinger, Cody claimed that his partner was the first to discover the assassin’s rifle on the sixth floor. In this Sixth Floor Museum interview, Cody said, “My partner went upstairs and found the rifle. Now, he didn’t touch the rifle. He just stayed there and screamed for Lieutenant [J.C.] Carl Day, our crime scene man.”

Let’s make sure we understand that. According to Cody’s version of events, the man who discovered Oswald’s putative murder weapon was the police partner of Jack Ruby’s old friend, an ex-Counter-Intelligence Corps agent, who happened to buy Ruby the murder weapon he would later use on Oswald. Small world.

But it turns out there are a number of claimants for the person who found the 6th floor rifle, or who were at least present when it was discovered. Dellinger was only one of these, and he actually never went on the record saying he had discovered the rifle. That ostensible fact rests solely on the claims of Detective Cody. Altogether, there are some five to six candidates as to who found the rifle. The Warren Report and its supporting volumes themselves provide contradictory accounts. The various claims were collected and examined in a July 2008 article by Ian Griggs, “Who REALLY found the rifle?” in Dealey Plaza Echo, Vol. 12, issue 2, pgs. 1-20.

Cody also said that Oswald had almost been arrested when found on the second floor, mainly because he had been, allegedly, at that time the only person in the building above the first floor. But George L. "Lonnie" Lumpkin, Deputy Chief for the Dallas Police Department, let Oswald go “because Oswald worked there…. I would not have let him go,” Cody said.

One thing Cody didn’t mention (or wasn’t asked about). He didn’t say anything about James Powell’s presence, the intelligence agent from the 112th being kept inside the building by the police. Nor did he mention that other MI officers showed up at the Book Depository. Not that he should have mentioned these things, but I felt it was worth noting.

Cody’s interview is really quite remarkable and deserves a fuller examination, which I hope to do in the near future. As noted earlier in this article, Cody had also said that he had first interviewed Lee Oswald alone in his office. In fact, Cody declared that he had sat with Oswald for 10 or 15 minutes before he notified homicide detectives that he had Oswald in custody (26:55). (Cody indicated that he informed Homicide division that he had Oswald after the latter told him he worked at the Texas School Book Depository. Cody said he realized that this was the guy the homicide detectives were looking for. It’s an explanation I just don’t personally buy.)

This means that at key moments in the Oswald story — his October 31, 1959 interview with the U.S. consul in Moscow, Richard Snyder, and Oswald’s first interrogation by Joe Cody after his arrest in Dallas — Oswald was alone with military intelligence and/or CIA figures who could have given him instructions, or received a debriefing from them. There is no evidence that ever happened, of course. But all the linkages must be kept in mind, should more evidence arise in coming months or years.

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Cody’s partner on November 22, Charles Dellinger, also happened to be one of the police officers who helped investigate the General Walker shooting in April 1963.

“Apart from the survivors, very few people remember the air raid of April 13-14, 1945. It is hardly mentioned in books on the bombing of Japan.” — “Perdition: A Forgotten Tokyo Firebombing Raid,” Richard Sams, 2016.

“During the early days of the BW [biological warfare] investigation, it was learned that all experimental records of the Army Medical College in Tokyo had been burned. Further search revealed that a duplicate set of records had been sent to the subsidiary unit at Niigata.” — Lt. Col. Murray Sanders, Chemical Warfare Service [CWS] to General Douglas MacArthur, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Army Forces, Pacific, November 9, 1945, Memorandum, “Supplementary Biological Warfare Information” (PDF pg. 21)

“TOKYO ARMY MEDICAL COLLEGE
Biologic Manufacturing Division…
Due to destruction of the buildings, this section has moved its plants to Niigata and Kyoto.”
— Target Report: References from the Committee for the Technical and Scientific Survey of Japanese Activities in Medical Sciences (pg. 19), U.S. Naval Technical Mission to Japan, December 1946

“The Army Medical School’s Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory, originally located in Toyama Town, Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, evacuated to the Former Niigata Racecourse in Sekiya, Niigata City, to escape the intensifying U.S. air raids on Tokyo, and became the Army Medical School Niigata Branch Office in April 1944, one year before the end of the war….

“Shortly after the war, the U.S. military conducted an investigation to clarify the full scope of the Army Medical School Niigata Branch Office, but the details of that investigation have still not been disclosed. Furthermore, those who held key positions there have steadfastly maintained their silence and have not revealed the facts.” — Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, published by the “Unit 731 Exhibition” Niigata Prefecture Executive Committee and the “Niigata Prefecture and Unit 731 Footprint Research Committee.” October 28, 1994, Niigata, Japan1

“Before the war was over, and prior to their encounter with U.S. investigators, in early 1945 [Unit 731 leaders, Ryoichi] Naito and [Junichi} Kaneko had supervised the construction of a facility to produce plague bacteria in mass amounts in a plant in a suburb of Niigata, Japan.

“According to the [August 1987] Niigata Nippo article, Kaneko, who had helped set up a branch office of the Army Medical College in Niigata, ‘had studied the aerial dissemination of bacteria in Unit 731 [while] stationed in mainland China.’ He ‘was at the core of the organization in Niigata as well.’” — Fu-Go Reconsidered: Japan’s WW2 Balloon Offensive, Unit 731, and the Manhattan Project

Introduction

It’s been 80 years since the end of World War II, and nearing 50 years since the exposure of U.S. government collaboration with Japan’s biological warfare (BW) criminals in Unit 731. Despite this passage of time, this is the first article written in the West to concentrate on the U.S. capture of experimental BW data seized from the site of the Japanese Army Medical College’s Epidemic Prevention Laboratory branch office in Niigata, Japan. The interdiction of Japan’s BW research archive occurred less than three months after Japan’s unconditional surrender.

Unfortunately, it is currently impossible to know exactly what was contained in the Niigata files. But a November 1945 report from a senior officer of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) stated the captured archive “should supply the final data for the investigation of Japanese activities in BW” (PDF, pg. 21).

There was a certain amount of luck in the preservation of the Niigata archive, because as late as July 25, 1945 — a mere 12 days before the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima — Niigata was on the short list of atomic bomb targets: Hiroshima, Kokura with its massive arsenal, and Nagasaki were the other three targets, according to the order to drop the atom bomb issued by General Thomas Handy. Only days later (it’s not clear when exactly, maybe on August 1), Niigata was removed from the fateful list.

CWS was the military agency in charge of both chemical and biological warfare research in the United States during World War II and the immediate postwar period. It changed its name to the Chemical Corps in September 1946. It was headquartered in Camp Detrick, Maryland (renamed Fort Detrick in 1956). Today, according to one Pentagon description, “Fort Detrick is a U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command installation supporting a multi-governmental community that conducts biomedical research and development, medical material management, and worldwide communications.”

In 2019, author Stephen Kinzer wrote, “Detrick is today one of the world’s cutting-edge laboratories for research into toxins and antitoxins, the place where defenses are developed against every plague, from crop fungus to Ebola.” If Detrick is still involved in research into offensive use of biological weapons — renounced as a potential weapon by the U.S. in November 1969 — that secret would be very deeply buried.

Since the end of World War II, China, Cuba, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea have all accused the U.S. of using biological weapons against them. Cuba even made a referral for UN consultations consistent with Article V of the 1972 Biological Warfare Convention. “Cuba accused the US of releasing the crop pest Thrips palmi over Cuban territory, an allegation the US dismissed as “outrageous.” There were three meetings on the topic, and a final report concluded that “due inter alia to the technical complexity of the subject and to the passage of time, it has not proved possible to reach a definitive conclusion regarding the concerns raised by the Government of Cuba” (pg. 31).2

Cuba’s accusation, so important to consider given the U.S. criminal blockade currently being conducted against the island nation, was not so outlandish when you consider that a 1962 declassified document from the U.S. CIA-military’s Operation Mongoose, shows the U.S. had considered at high operational levels the use of biological weapons against Cuba, “producing crop failures… which would appear to be of natural origin.”

My work on the Unit 731-Niigata link began last year. In September 2025, I was the first researcher in English to reference a 1987 investigation by the Japanese newspaper Niigata Nippo about how Japan’s World War II biological warfare enterprise had set up business in the western port city of Niigata in the last years of the war.

Why choose Niigata? For one thing, it had not been bombed by the U.S. There also may have been personal connections in the region that facilitated the decision to base BW operations there. But Niigata also appears to have been an embarkation point for Unit 731 personnel going to and from Japan and Ishii’s headquarters in the Harbin area inside Japanese-occupied China. I found two different eyewitnesses involved in the BW work who testified to transiting Niigata as the “embarkation point” for their travel between Tokyo and Harbin.3 Hence Niigata would have been a convenient site, halfway between Ishii’s lab at the Army Medical College in Tokyo and his primary BW headquarters in Pingfan, just outside Harbin in Manchuria.

Niigata Nippo described how a branch office of Japan’s wartime BW research and pathogen production, which had centered around the Army Medical School’s Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory, was opened inside a former racetrack in Niigata. The Medical School’s “epidemic research” lab had been founded by Shiro Ishii in Tokyo in the early 1930s.

The Niigata Nippo article further determined that at the conclusion of the war, biological bomb warheads and other biological warfare materials in the Niigata area, including rat cages, were dumped in the ocean adjacent to Niigata. (For further details, see the article, “Fu-Go Reconsidered: Japan’s WW2 Balloon Offensive, Unit 731, and the Manhattan Project.”)

A 1994 investigation by a citizens group in Niigata, the “Niigata Prefecture and Unit 731 Footprint Research Committee”4 (731FRC), was able to establish that the Niigata branch office opened in April 1944, and that the rationale for its existence was to move BW operations in Tokyo out of danger of U.S. air raids. While very few raids had occurred on Japan’s main islands before 1944, Japan’s high command must have been aware that beginning in 1943, the U.S. had begun producing “the B-29 Superfortress, a super-bomber that had longer range than previous aircraft.” It was only a matter of time before they would come within operational range of Japan’s home islands.5

At least some of the work in Niigata involved the production of biological agents meant for use in Japan’s secret Fu-Go balloons sent over the U.S. and Canada in the late fall, winter, and early spring of 1944-45. This was consistent with my own finding in declassified FBI files that some of the Fu-Go balloons had carried anthrax, and possibly plague pathogens. Until I uncovered evidence otherwise, it was largely believed the Fu-Go balloons only carried incendiary or small explosive bombs.

In my September 2025 article on Fu-Go, I concluded that rather than an odd, stand-alone, quixotic attempt to respond to the U.S. bombing of Japan’s homeland in the early years of World War II, the Imperial Army’s Fu-Go high-altitude balloon attacks of 1944-45 on North America were an integral part of Japan’s biological warfare program.

In the current article, I will address how, worried about the devastation threatened by ongoing U.S. bombing of Japan’s home islands, the Army Medical School and its BW “epidemic prevention laboratory” sent a copy of its biological warfare research data to be secured in Niigata. Moreover, the U.S. discovered this hitherto secret BW archive as early as November 1945 and proceeded to obtain the experimental results from this research for its own biological warfare program. I will then proceed to undertake a deeper examination of Unit 731 activities in Niigata.

“Survey team from the U.S. mainland”

According to a statement appended to a November 9, 1945 memorandum from Lt. Colonel Murray Sanders, a duplicate set of records of Japan’s BW work held at the Army Medical School in Tokyo was found in Niigata (see PDF pgs. 5 and 21). Sanders was a bacteriologist at the U.S. Army’s Chemical Warfare Service headquarters at Camp Detrick and the CWS’s first lead investigator on biological weapons research sent to Japan after the war.

The 1987 Niigata Nippo series on Unit 731 and the Army Medical School’s branch office in Niigata portrayed Sanders’ interrogation of Unit 731 personnel in Niigata in a more dramatic fashion than Sanders’ own bland account. In fact, the Japanese newspaper all but accused the Army interrogators of torture.

One day in early autumn, a little more than a month after the end of the war, several U.S. Army jeeps passed through the main gate of the Niigata Branch of the Army Medical College (formerly Niigata Race Track)….

The jeep was not carrying GHQ soldiers stationed in Niigata, but a survey team from the U.S. mainland, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Sanders, who had been dispatched to investigate the balloon-bomb project. The U.S. military was aware that Niigata was the base for the operation to install a bacteriological weapon in the balloon bombs.

The severe interrogations were repeated day after day. Among them, Lieutenant Colonel Ryoichi Naito and Major Junichi Kaneko were repeatedly called to the interrogation room. They were asked, “What were you trying to do in Niigata?” “Did they dump evidence into the sea?” The questions were relentlessly repeated. It was a critical point in the war criminalization process, but neither Naito nor Kaneko ever gave the necessary answers. [Niigata Nippo, August 13, 1987, “The Black Warhead: Secrets of the Niigata Branch Office of the Army’s Quarantine Research Laboratory,” pg. 20, parentheses in original.]

The discovery of the Niigata records contradicted what American interrogators had first been told, which was that the Army Medical School’s BW records had been destroyed in the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo. Yes, the Tokyo records had been destroyed in the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo that took place on April 13/14, 1945. But copies had been stashed in Niigata months before. This was the conclusion of an extraordinary document, Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, a booklet published in 1994 by an ad hoc citizens group in Niigata in the wake of newspaper revelations that the city had become a center for Unit 731 activities in the final years of the war. This booklet, which has never been published in English, will be examined in greater detail below.

Modern histories about Unit 731 emphasize that the U.S. government made a deal to swap amnesty for war crimes conducted by Japan’s biological warfare criminals for access to their records and research on BW weapons. But the fact remains that at least some of this material — perhaps even the bulk of it — had already been captured by the U.S. military scientific establishment before offers of amnesty were ever made.

One question immediately arises regarding the Niigata BW archive: How did it survive the document destruction ordered by the Japanese government at the time of its surrender? Regarding the Imperial Army’s destruction of its BW documentation, CIA historian Stephen Mercado wrote in 2002:

On 15 August [1945, the same day Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan], Army Affairs Section ordered the destruction of all materials pertaining to the military’s ‘special research.’ First on the list was the Noborito Research Institute and its balloon bomb program. Also listed was the Kwantung Army’s Unit 731, which had conducted lethal experiments on captives to develop biological weapons. (Stephen C. Mercado, The Shadow Warriors of Nagano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army’s Elite Intelligence School, Potomac Books, 2002, p. 176. Kindle Edition, material in brackets added.)

In addition, according to the website on Military Archives that are held by the National Institute for Defense Studies, a “think tank” at Japan’s Ministry of Defense, the bulk of Japan’s military documents “were destroyed by the military at the surrender of Japan in World War II, and the rest were scattered.”

The leader of Unit 731, Shiro Ishii, also issued his own order to destroy documentary evidence. How did the Niigata archive escape that fate?6

The Niigata materials were not captured by the U.S. until early November 1945, or late October at the very earliest. This was over two months after Japan’s surrender and the Imperial Army’s order to destroy all documentation.

My own hypothesis is that Ishii and his collaborators had rescued or retained certain documents in case 1) Japan would ever be able to regain its sovereignty and reassemble its BW program, and/or 2) Ishii and others may have believed that retention of certain documentation might be of potential bartering value should the question of an amnesty-for-documents trade be proffered.7 I suppose it is possible that the Niigata archive had simply been overlooked during the period of document destruction, but I find that highly unlikely.

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“The Final Data”

Below is a screenshot of the first page of Murray’s November 9, 1945 memo to General MacArthur on “Supplementary Biological Warfare Information,” followed by Murray’s addendum on the Niigata BW archive. These documents were released to me by the U.S. National Archives along with transcripts of Murray’s interrogations of Lt. General Tadakazu Wakamatsu, former Vice War Minister for Japan; Lt. General Torashiro Kawabe, Assistant Chief of the Japanese General Staff; General Yoshijiro Umezu, Chief of Staff for the Imperial Army’s General Staff; and General Sadamu Shimomura, Japan’s then-current War Minister, but who had been Commanding General of the Japanese Army in Northern China from November 1944 to August 1945. All of these are available for download at the following link: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28098515-supplementary-bw-information-incl-niigata/

As you read the documents below, consider that while they were declassified over two decades ago, no U.S. or Western historian (that I know of) has ever noted the presence of the Niigata tranche of BW documents. Moreover, once they passed over into the hands of U.S. Army authorities, it is impossible to know exactly what happened to them. Subsequent reports by U.S. Chemical Corps officials on Japan’s BW operation never mention Niigata. (See, for example, Lt. Col. Arvo Thompson’s May 31, 1946 “Report on Japanese Biological Warfare (BW) Activities.”)

What we do know is what Sanders intended to happen. The records were to be transferred to “the Committee for Surveying Medical Activities in Japan and thence through channels to the War Department, Washington.” Once there (or perhaps while they were transiting the medical surveying committee in Japan), they would “be translated and,” Sanders wrote optimistically, “should supply the final data for the investigation of Japanese activities in BW.”

In the end, the Niigata records must not have been considered complete, as Detrick sent at least three more investigating teams to Japan to interview Japan’s BW scientists and military enablers. In early 1946, as mentioned above, they sent Veterinary Corps Officer, Lt. Colonel Arvo Thompson, an expert in bacteriological warfare. He was followed by the visit of the head of CWS’s Plant Biology Division, Norbert Fell, Ph.D. in Spring 1947, and Detrick scientists Dr. Edwin V. Hill & Dr. Joseph Victor later that autumn.

According to the history of these events written by Peter Williams and David Wallace, and published in their 1989 book, Unit 731: The Japanese Army’s Secret of Secrets ,8 it was Sanders who came up with the idea of offering amnesty to Japan’s BW scientists and their staff as payment for obtaining the records of their research. Sanders told Williams and Wallace that he had been concerned that Japan’s BW work would be obtained by the Soviets. He brought the amnesty idea to MacArthur in Tokyo and the general approved it. The full tale of that deal stretched out over many months, and I highly recommend reading John W. Powell’s seminal 1980 article, which exposed many of the details surrounding the U.S. deal with Unit 731, Japan's germ warfare: The U.S. cover-up of a war crime in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 12 (4).

“A high-security establishment”

Under interrogation by Sanders and his assistant, Lt. Harry Youngs, Japanese officials portrayed Japan’s BW research as only defensive, a reaction to alleged Soviet biological warfare activities. Sanders, in November 1945, was dubious about such claims, but felt they needed to be followed up. In any case, no one has ever substantiated the claims of Japan’s BW officials that “anthrax, cholera, and dysentery were deliberately spread in northern Manchuria by Soviet agents” (“Supplementary Biological Warfare Information,” PDF pg. 22).

In the version of events described by Williams and Wallace, frustrated with the failure of Japanese scientists to tell the full truth, by early September 1945 Sanders threatened to turn them over to the Soviets unless they were straight with U.S. authorities. Murray Sanders related these events to Williams and Wallace:

[Unit 731 leader, Lt. Colonel Ryoichi] Naito came in one afternoon and I was sitting there, very dejected. “I’ve lost face,” I said. “I am a total failure as an inquirer. I am being sent home and a much tougher man is begin sent to take over the investigation. I’ve been too kind to you.” I’d given him rations and helped his family. Now, I told him I was going to call in the Russians, our Allies. It was time the Soviets were involved, I said. He went home early that day. [Willams & Wallace, 1989, pg. 132, Hodder & Sloughton]

Sanders’ subterfuge worked. “Next morning,” Williams and Wallace wrote, “Naito… produced a handwritten document… laying out the organization of the Boeki Kyusuibu (Water Purification Unit) and admitting that it had been engaged in biological warfare. Naito denied, however, that any prisoners had been used as ‘experimental guinea pigs’” (Ibid., pgs. 132-133.) As is well-known today, Naito was lying about the human experiments.

Naito played a major role in Unit 731’s activities, and as I showed in my article on the Fu-Go balloon attacks, he was also involved in the project to deliver biological agents via free balloons to North America in the period November 1944-April 1945. In any case, Naito’s document and the discovered records in Niigata were deemed inadequate or incomplete to the scientists back at Detrick, who sent more investigators to Japan.

Williams and Wallace did briefly mention the Niigata tranche of documents, and the production of germ war pathogens in Niigata, in their book on Unit 731. But Sanders must not have told them that he had secured that material, and certainly said nothing about what was in the archive. Here is the entire relevant section from their book:

During the latter part of the war, mass germ production and other records and facilities are believed to have been transferred from the Bōeki kenkiyū-shitsu to military medical establishments in Akita Prefecture9 and to Niigata. American B29 bombers had already done much of the destruction work that April when they razed the Army Medical College to the ground. [Willams & Wallace, 1989, pg. 87, Hodder & Sloughton]

Bōeki kenkiyū-shitsu was the official name of the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory founded by Shiro Ishii back in 1933. The lab was attached to the Department of Epidemic Prevention at what was then “the newly built Army Medical College in Wakamatsu-chō, Tokyo (Ibid., pg. 9). By 1942, according to Williams and Wallace, the Epidemic Prevention Lab “had by then become a high-security establishment surrounded by two separate guard fences” (pg. 71). Its budget was a state secret, and kept separate from that of other departments at the Medical College.

Whether it was a wartime measure or related more to its clandestine nature, reportedly there was a “large underground BW factory… built into the cellars of the Bōeki kenkiyū-shitsu…. [where] a sophisticated mass bacteria production conveyor line” produced pathogens, presumably for BW experiments and germ weapons (Ibid., pg. 71). Ultimately, the bacteria production was moved to Unit 731’s headquarters in Pingfan, Manchuria, according to Williams and Wallace’s account.

According to the 1987 investigation by Niigata Nippo at least some of the plague production was moved to Niigata, or at least the facilities for that were being constructed in the period prior to the end of the war.

Williams and Wallace’s book portrayed the lab unit as an intellectual gathering place for biological warfare researchers. There were lectures and seminars, often led by Ishii himself, in addition to social events, such as film showings and banquets. One group of lectures aimed at training “the Kenpeitai10 on how to assist Army medical officers in their BW duties” (Ibid., pg. 71).

One reason the lab was such an intellectual center was that in its dual role it was also an important site of vaccine research. Williams and Wallace noted that it was via such vaccine research that Ishii was introduced to “the new process of lyophilization or freeze-dry preservation… vastly increasing [BW’s] potential.” Among other things, lyophilization made “possible the shipment of disease toxins” (Ibid., pg. 72). In addition, according to Unit 731 researcher, Surgeon Major Motoharu Sakuyama, lyophilization helped enable certain BW techniques:

Infection via the nostrils by means of a drug powder was successful.

The success of the dry preservation of disease toxins made possible the contamination by a pulverized spray applied to the nose, eyes and wound. [Williams & Wallace, pg. 72]

It’s worth noting in passing that Japan was not alone in exploring the benefits of freeze-drying infectious pathogens. The scientists at Detrick were working on the same thing around the same time. See Volume II of Rexmond C. Cochrane’s History of the Chemical Warfare Service in World War II, particularly PDF pages 328-329, 337 and 588.

It is still unknown today how much Shiro Ishii, the chief of Unit 731, and his associates had been able to hide from U.S. investigators. Importantly, it also unknown how much that was obtained by U.S. agencies has been withheld from the public. The main import of my investigation into the Fu-Go balloon attack has to do precisely with how much U.S. military and intelligence agencies have been able to keep out the full Japanese BW story from history books, presenting us instead with an alternate, partial or misleading narrative of events.

“Teachers for the future”

The above brief review of the activities of the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory at the Army Medical College in Tokyo demonstrates the importance of the work done there, and therefor of the records of this institution, which were copied and sent to the new Niigata branch of the epidemic lab in April 1944.

The Niigata Nippo investigation into the presence of a biological warfare unit in Niigata caused a big stir locally. It coincided with an upsurge in public interest in accountability related to Unit 731’s crimes which was making headway in Japan at that time. In 1994, a ‘731 Unit Exhibition’ was “organized by Japanese individuals.” According to 731FRC’s booklet, historian “Keiichi Tsuneki [Tsuneishi] of Kanagawa University and Miyoko Matsutani, the fairy tale author of 'Ryū no Ko Tarō [Taro the Dragon Boy],' served as catalysts, bringing together the efforts of many collaborators” (Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, pgs. 1 and 17, material in brackets added).

In 1994, ‘Unit 731 Exhibitions” were held “nationwide in locations such as Tokyo, Kanagawa, and Osaka, drawing significant public attention.” According to the authors of the booklet, Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, the touring exhibit was “powerful and impactful… featuring an extensive array of panels with photographs, charts, and maps; authentic artifacts such as bacterial bombs (ceramic), rat breeding cages, flea culture boxes, human bones discovered at the site of the Army Medical School; numerous film records; as well as lectures and symposia” (Ibid., pg. 17).

A Unit 731 exhibition was held in Niigata “from June 17 to 22, 1994, in the third-floor exhibition hall of the Niigata Prefectural Civic Center” (Ibid., pg. 1).

Some 3,000 people attended the Niigata Unit 731 showing. But the success was tempered by the realization by members of the community that attendance by teens and young adults had been poor. The problem was taken up by the Niigata Prefecture and Unit 731 Footprint Investigation Committee, an ad hoc committee with 19 members made up of teachers, a journalist11, and others local figures, backed by an Executive Committee drawn from distinguished members of the community. The formal name for their working committee was the “Investigation Committee on the Historical Traces of Niigata Prefecture and Unit 731.”

The Executive Committee for the Footprint Investigation Committee was chaired by Usuda Shigeru from the Niigata Prefecture Peace, Environment, and Labor Union Council. There were 18 people on the committee, including a number of physicians, labor unionists, and women’s rights advocates. The group included other political activists, including Kenichi Endo, Chairperson of the Niigata Prefecture Atomic Bomb Survivors Association, and Takamichi Nagai, Chairperson for the Prefectural Executive Committee for the Demand to Enact the Basic Law for Buraku Liberation.

“[C]oncerned by the low attendance of young people who will bear the responsibility of the coming era,” the Investigation Committee “planned the publication of a booklet for middle and high school students focusing on this Niigata exhibition, and entrusted the editorial work to the ‘Niigata Prefecture and Unit 731 Footprint Investigation Committee.’ Thus, within a short period, an accessible booklet titled ‘Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story,’ centered on the relationship between Niigata Prefecture and Unit 731, was completed” (Ibid., pg. 1).

The members of the “Footprint” committee took their assignments very seriously. As they wrote in their report:

Many aspects of the full scope of Unit 731 in Niigata Prefecture remain to be clarified. Nationwide, the full extent of Unit 731 is gradually being uncovered through successive testimonies from former Unit 731 members.

As evidenced by the complete removal of the description of Unit 731 in the third lawsuit of the Saburo Ienaga textbook trial,12 it appears that many historical facts remain deliberately concealed.

However, as the saying ‘Those who do not forget the past are teachers for the future’ suggests, we cannot fulfill our responsibility to prevent the recurrence of historical mistakes without each individual knowing the facts of history. [Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, pgs. 2-3]

The 1987 series at Niigata Nippo had “confirmed that shortly before the defeat [of Japan], quarantine research facilities intended for biological warfare were established on the Shinano River sandbank in the former Ōsato Village (present-day Shirone City) and at the former racetrack in Niigata City” (material in brackets added; material in parentheses are in original — Ibid., page 1).

The “Footprint” Committee’s attempt to investigate the evidence still extant, including eyewitness testimonies, was frustrated in many ways. The old government secrecy, the censorship of the documentary record, and the reluctance — through fear or loyalty — of relevant actors to speak about their BW activities or knowledge meant that “many aspects” of the BW story in Niigata “remained unresolved” (Ibid, pg. 4).

The relocation of the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory to Niigata is an undeniable historical fact; however, related municipal histories, with the exception of the ‘Ōsato Village History,’ make no mention of it. Even the Niigata Prefectural History and Niigata City History, both compiled with numerous professional historians as contributors, do not record this historical fact. This can only be described as unnatural; however, it may precisely indicate how secretive the relocation of the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory to Niigata was.” [Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, pg. 5]

For the many schoolteachers who made up the bulk of the “Footprint” Committee, the attempts to bury the history of Unit 731 in their community inspired resistance. “Those who do not forget the past are teachers for the future,” they believed.

“[W]e cannot fulfill our responsibility to prevent the recurrence of historical mistakes without each individual knowing the facts of history,” wrote Akio Kimura in the final committee report (pg. 2). Kimura was a teacher at Niigata East Technical High School and served as Director of the Committee’s Secretariat. “The reason we earnestly wish to urgently uncover even a small portion of the concealed historical facts lies precisely therein,” Kimura added (Ibid.).

Noble sentiments, to be sure! But Kimura and the others on the Footprint Research Committee discovered that the past would not easily give up its secrets.

Our investigation revealed that the gag orders imposed during wartime deployment to the Ishii Unit, and those reinstated upon Japan’s defeat and disbandment, continue to function effectively even after half a century.

Furthermore, there exists, naturally, a fear of personal accountability, alongside a psychological desire to forget unpleasant memories and an unwillingness to discuss them. Naturally, since they were employed, those involved were quite reluctant to speak openly. (Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, pg. 39)

It was not simple either to get more clarity on U.S. activities in Niigata after the war.

Shortly after the war, the U.S. military conducted an investigation to clarify the full scope of the Army Medical School Niigata Branch Office, but the details of that investigation have still not been disclosed. Furthermore, those who held key positions there have steadfastly maintained their silence and have not revealed the facts. [Ibid., pg. 29]

Despite all the setbacks, the Niigata investigating committee was able to obtain some new testimonies.

There was, for instance, “Kenji Kikuguchi, a resident of Yoitamachi” in Niigata Prefecture, who worked for six months in 1945 “as an employee at the Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department Headquarters—specifically, Unit 731 located in [Pingfan] on the outskirts of Harbin.”

Mr. Kikuguchi had nothing to say about Unit 731 activities in Niigata, but he had plenty to say about what he witnessed when working for Unit 731 in Manchuria. The kinds of stories he told will sound familiar to those who are conversant with the crimes of the Ishii Unit, but will sound horrific to those encountering such things here for the first time.

At first Mr. Kikuguchi worked only on “military-related epidemic prevention, primarily focused on fundamental research (laboratory duties)…. I was responsible for the manufacture of culture vessels, bacterial cultivation, reporting research findings on topics assigned by the military medical officer, providing materials to the Army hospital, receiving research specimens, and, in the event of an infectious disease outbreak, conducting bacterial examinations at the unit’s gasu (company)” (Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, pg. 27, parentheses in original).

But things changed in March 1945, as the workload at the Unit 731 headquarters in PingFan increased. Kenji volunteered for an assignment at Pingfan and “was assigned to the testing laboratory and was provided with official quarters” (Ibid.).

“I was assigned to Section 5 of the newly established Second Department whose section chief was Lieutenant Colonel Ikari, a military medical officer,” Mr. Kikuguchi said. “My duties involved bacteriological examinations and pathological testing. I also performed blood collection from the ‘Log’” — “Logs” being the term Ishii had given for the command’s experiment test subjects. Some of the experiments involved vivisection (Ibid.).

As Mr. Kikuguchi described it:

I was dispatched to the Adachi Special Experimental Facility, where I observed vivisection experiments.

What I witnessed was logs tied to pillars, with approximately five individuals present; nearby, experiments were conducted involving the detonation of objects containing bacteria to induce infection. We did not understand what bacteria were. [(Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, pg. 27]

The former Unit 731 worker described another incident. There had been a “riot involving the Caucasian known as ‘Log.’” He apparently tried to escape from a laboratory, “but when he rushed out, both entrances to the corridor had already been sealed. Although the ‘Log’ attempted to flee, he was shot dead with a rifle” (Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, pg. 28). From the context of the full interview, this “Caucasian” was likely a Russian prisoner.

Mr. Kikuguchi also described how, as the Soviet Red Army advanced through Manchuria in August 1945, Unit 731 staff rushed to get rid of the “logs.” Despite being dosed “with drugs or poison gas, cremation could not be completed in time, so they were cremated indiscriminately, and the bones and ashes were reportedly discarded into the Songhua River.” Kenji “personally witnessed that soldiers or juvenile members were involved in this” (Ibid.).

Another witness interviewed was 79-year-old Mr. T., “a former civilian military employee residing in Niigata City, who served for eight months as a staff member at the Niigata Branch Office.”

Mr. T. worked in the vaccine division, and apparently helped in procuring the raw eggs for use in vaccine production. The vaccines produced at the former Niigata Racetrack included those for cholera, typhus, and tetanus, “intended for use on the battlefield. But Mr. T told his interviewers that he was unaware that this work was connected to Unit 731” (Ibid.).

A third witness was another Mr. T (I’ll call him Mr. T2), a 63 year old agricultural worker, and from the context of the narrative apparently a member of the Buraku community, “an outcaste group in Japan, residing at the bottom of the traditional Japanese social hierarchy.”

Back in 1945, Mr. T2 had seen the military constructing facilities on the high section of a sandbank in the Shinano River. Given the difficulties getting people to speak about what they knew, and given the frustration that by 1994 so many witnesses had died, the Committee was excited to have found someone who could corroborate some of the reporting from the Niigata Nippo article.

Mr. T2 described what he had seen. He related what certainly sounded like the construction of a clandestine facility.

On the right half, separated by that blue fence, there were approximately ten small huts lined up. They were arranged along that fence towards the north. About four to five of the buildings had roofs, while the remainder consisted only of pillars….

“I had heard that the military was producing serum, and the people in the district said the same. However, that was the explanation given.

The military was intimidating, so I did not approach closely. However, I never observed any work being done during the daytime. It seems that neither soldiers nor civilians were seen during the daytime. Perhaps the work was conducted at night. I do not even know how the materials were transported; perhaps they were moved during the night. At that time, I saw five or six horses that were pitifully thin. Could it be that they were not producing serum with that? Moreover, the people in this area were not involved at all in the construction of that shed. [Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, pp. 31-32]

While their investigation did not uncover as much as they had hoped, the members of the Footprint Investigation Committee felt they had helped contribute to the overall Unit 731 story.

“The Army Medical School Niigata Branch Office, which relocated to the Former Niigata Racecourse, still has many unresolved aspects concerning the nature of the organization and the research it conducted,” they wrote. “However, it is indisputable that, within the framework of the nation-wide aggressive war, the Niigata Branch Office was one of the principal pillars supporting Unit 731, which was at the core of the Imperial Japanese Army.”

Post-war Niigata

After the war, according to the report put out by 731FRC, Unit 731’s Niigata facilities were not totally destroyed.

Through the efforts of Director Ryoichi Naito, the Army Medical School Niigata Branch Office (effectively the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory) was reorganized as the Niigata Branch of the Toshiba Biological and Physical Chemistry Research Institute, with 180 of the approximately 600 personnel from the former military period transferring directly. Ryoichi Naito was appointed branch manager, and Junichi Kaneko assumed the position of chief engineer. [Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story, pg. 21, parentheses in original]

The Toshiba facility “was responsible for the company’s vaccine manufacturing division, and amid the postwar deterioration of food and sanitary conditions, with the widespread prevalence of typhoid fever, paratyphoid fever, and diphtheria, it expanded its operations owing to the advantage of facilities, equipment, and staff that had not suffered war damage” (Ibid.).

By 1950, the vaccine unit had left Toshiba, and apparently existed as an independent entity until, in 1979 (Showa 54) it “became part of the Denka Chemical Industry Group. In 1982 (Showa 57), the company name was changed to Denka Seiken,” which still operates in Japan today (Ibid.).

The question certainly occurred to me whether Toshiba’s Niigata vaccine unit, later part of Denka Seiken, had been involved in the biological warfare activities of the Americans during the Korean War. Were biological toxins or organisms manufactured there for U.S. use in germ war weapons in Korea? At least one captured U.S. pilot, 1st Lt. Paul Kniss, told investigators from the International Scientific Commission in August 1952 that some U.S. facilities in Japan had been involved in the germ war. Kniss said that Tachikawa Air Base was where U.S. war planes were outfitted for spray apparatus for bacteriological aerosols.13 He also indicated the base could have been involved in assembling the germ bombs themselves.

I have not, as yet, completed my investigation to see if by 1950-53 any of the vaccine facility’s management had connections to Japan’s biological warfare project. Naito and Kaneko were involved in the immediate postwar years, but it’s not clear to me that their presence at the Niigata facility continued into the Korean War period. In 1950, Naito helped found the Green Cross blood bank, which was later implicated in a giant scandal for trafficking in HIV-tainted blood. (Another founder of Green Cross was Major General Masaji Kitano, commander of Unit 731.)

For the moment, the existence of Niigata’s postwar vaccine facility is a tantalizing topic, but one that is not (for now, anyway) connected to the later use of biological weapons by the United States.

Appendix: Sources for Niigata Prefecture and the Unit 731 Story

The authors of 731FRC’s booklet provided a list of references on “materials related to Unit 731.” The list, reproduced below, appears on page 15 of the book. While the list is dated — no reference is later than 1994 — I am including it as a handy reference for Unit 731 materials that existed in Japan during the period in question.

• Keiichi Tsuneki [Tsuneishi], The Disappeared Bacteriological Warfare Unit, Narumi Publishing, 1981 (Expanded Revised Edition, Chikuma Shobo, 1993)

• Seiichi Morimura, The Devil’s Gluttony, Kobunsha, 1981

• Seiichi Morimura, The Devil’s Gluttony Continued, Kobunsha, 1982

• Seiichi Morimura, Notes on The Devil’s Gluttony, Banseisha, 1982

• Seiichi Morimura, The Devil’s Gluttony, Part Three, Kadokawa Shoten, 1983

• Sadao Koshi, The Rising Sun Flag is Red Tears, Educational Historical Materials Publishing Association, 1983

• Seiichi Morimura, No More The Devil’s Gluttony, Banseisha, 1984

• Shingo Takasugi, Pursuing Japan’s Auschwitz, Educational Historical Materials Publishing Association, 1984

• Jiro Takiya, The Slaughter Factory: Unit 731, Shin Mori Publishing, 1989

• Edited by Seiichi Morimura, The Judged Unit 731, Banseisha, 1990

• Ryuichi Hirokawa, Accusation from AIDS, Tokuma Shoten, 1992

• Han Xiao, translated by Yukiko Yamabe, Crimes of Unit 731, Sanichi Publishing, 1993

• Edited by Takao Matsumura, Controversy over Unit 731, Banseisha, 1994

• Keiichi Tsunetoshi, Organized Crime by Medical Practitioners, Asahi Shimbun Publishing, 1994

• Association for Engraving War Victims in Our Hearts (ed.), Unit 731, Tōhō Shoten, 1994

• Rumiko Nishino, Stories of Unit 731, Akashi Shoten, 1994

• Kanagawa University Editorial Committee (ed.), Medicine and War, Ochanomizu Shobō, 1994

• Quarterly Journal of War Responsibility Studies, No. 2 (Winter 1993), Japan War Responsibility Materials Center, 1993

• Edited by the Preparatory Committee for the People’s Tribunal on Japan’s War Responsibility toward Asia, War Responsibility, No. 2, Jukasha, 199[?]

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Introduction

Almost 200 years ago, the Romantic English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote, “War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.” Assassination was a topic I always hoped I could put aside. It is such a dark subject. But the use of political murder as state policy haunts the world even today. Among its chief proponents are Israel and the United States

As Michael Rubner wrote in a 2018 review of Ronen Bergman’s book, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, “Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has carried out more targeted assassinations — the killing of identified individuals, mostly civilians, in order to attain specific political objectives — than any other country in the Western world.”

The U.S. must be number two when it comes to political murder, and if you factor in the Vietnamese and Indonesian experiences, as discussed below, arguably the Americans should hold the macabre laurel wreath of first in assassinations. In any case, this essay will concentrate on U.S. assassination history, and I will leave aside for a future article an examination of Israel’s extreme embrace of political murder, as important as that subject obviously is.

On February 28, 2026, relying on intelligence provided by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Israel assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader. He died in a bombing that also killed a number of top Iranian military officers, “including Mohammad Pakpour, the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps; Aziz Nasirzadeh, the minister of defense; Adm. Ali Shamkhani, the head of the Military Council; Seyyed Majid Mousavi, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force; Mohammad Shirazi, the deputy intelligence minister; and others.”

This attempt to decapitate the leadership of Iran was meant to bring about the political collapse of Iran’s Islamic Republic. Subsequent events have proven how mistaken that strategy turned out to be. Even so, the emphasis on assassination of the leaders of countries the U.S. considers enemies is also seen in the ongoing practice of conducting “decapitation drills” against Democratic People’s Republic of Korea leader Kim Jong Un and other top DPRK officials.

As recently as January 2024, the Republic of Korea’s (ROK) Defense Minister told the U.S.-funded Middle East Broadcasting Networks that U.S. and ROK special forces have trained together as a “decapitation unit” to infiltrate the DPRK and assassinate DPRK leaders.

The history of U.S. use of assassination of foreign leaders or political opponents goes back many decades now, and was a major subject of the 1970s U.S. Congressional investigations into CIA and military crimes. Much of this history has been minimized over the years, but the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and the assassination of Khamenei argue that this history needs to be brought to the fore of public attention again.

I recently wrote about Operation Ohio, the early Cold War program where U.S. military intelligence agencies participated in assassinations committed by the Bandera wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The killings took place in the displaced persons camps of post-World War II Germany. Ultimately, the program was brought under the bureaucratic control of the CIA and can be considered part of the latter’s larger Operation Bloodstone campaign to recruit Soviet emigrés as spies or penetration agents against the Soviet Union. Bloodstone activities included “recruiting defectors, smuggling refugees out from behind the Iron Curtain, and assassinations.”

There is also the fact that the U.S. CIA, or elements of the same, were involved in or masterminded the assassination of U.S. president John Kennedy. Not too long ago I took up the issue of how the CIA penetrated the Warren Commission’s secret meetings that sought to establish a motive for putative JFK assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. This was a blatant example of how the CIA gamed the Warren Commission process, with the obvious purpose of narrative control over the post-assassination cover-up. I consider my work on that story a modest but real contribution to the case against the CIA in the matter of JFK’s assassination.

The story of the JFK assassination is also linked to the CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, part of the CIA’s Operation Mongoose program to overthrow the Castro regime and restore capitalism to Cuba. The program ran during the first years of the Kennedy administration. While Mongoose was phased out by January 1963, CIA-led attempts to infiltrate Cuba considered up to and beyond JFK’s death. Lately, Donald Trump has taken up the U.S. ruling class’s dream of destroying the Cuban socialist regime.

The topic of assassinations came up at a secret meeting between journalist Tad Szulc and John Kennedy in November 1961, some six months after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. According to the notes from Szulc’s version of the meeting, Kennedy was opposed to a state policy of assassinations. He didn’t tell Szulc that the CIA had been trying to kill Castro. What Kennedy did tell the journalist was that he was getting “terrific pressure” from “intelligence people” to “okay a Castro murder.”

Leaving aside the issue of assassinations between the end of World War II and the murder of JFK, not to mention Obama and Trump’s use of such “targeted killings,” today I turn to the subject of foreign assassinations as it arose during the Nixon and Ford presidencies, specifically charges that the U.S. allegedly sought out and profiled potential assassins, trained them, and placed them in U.S. embassies in foreign countries, “ready to kill in those countries should the need arise.”

This is a story that is rarely referenced today, yet it couldn’t be more timely.

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“Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders”

It was a bit over fifteen years ago, when I was still a young man in my fifties, that I first wrote about the Thomas Narut scandal. Before launching into the details about that story, it’s important to briefly understand the context of the time period of the Narut revelations.

In November 1975, the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee released a 285-page interim report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. The report stated, “The evidence establishes that the United States was implicated in several assassination plots. The Committee believes that, short of war, assassination is incompatible with American principles, international order, and morality. It should be rejected as a tool of foreign policy” (pg. 1).

The National Security Archive recently described the aftermath of the report’s release:

The impact of the Alleged Assassination Plots report was immediate and consequential. Public outrage forced the CIA and the White House to retreat on the use of assassination as a tool of covert operations. In response to the report, on February 18, 1976, President Ford signed Executive Order 11905, which stated: “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.” Successive presidents have issued similar executive orders.

The report on “Alleged Assassination Plots” was not the end of Congressional investigations into U.S. covert use of assassination. The Church Committee, aka the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, wouldn’t issue its final report until April 1976.

Three months earlier, in January, the Committee interviewed CIA officers Boris Pash, E. Howard Hunt and Aristides “Artie” Lazarus about allegations the U.S. had run assassinations out of a unit inside CIA known as PB/7. Pash had been counterintelligence chief for the Manhattan Project (as portrayed in the recent film, Oppenheimer), as well as the leader of the ALSOS Project, the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps’ WWII search for Nazi and Japanese weapons of mass destruction in the final year of the war.. He had also been the supposed chief of CIA’s PB/7. (Pash died in May 1995, aged 94.)

I’m not going to go fully into the PB/7 story; I want to save that for a future article, where it can get a full airing. But below are some telling excerpts from the Congressional testimonies of Hunt and Pash. Their interrogator is Church Committee staffer, Frederick Baron. While the revelations represent a limited hangout of U.S. assassination practices, they are still an admission that the CIA ran its own assassination bureau. (It is likely that it still does.)

It goes without saying that today the U.S. has abandoned its policy of eschewing the assassination of world leaders. The policy of abstention from use of assassinations was put into place after the 1970s revelations about CIA-run assassinations, of which the Church Committee revelations played a key role. (Interested readers should check out the latest article at Substack’s The Memory Hole, “Chasing a CIA Ghost,” which is a long, fascinating essay about the CIA and the 1960 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.)

However, not all the stories about CIA assassinations came via Congressional investigations. Journalists did their bit, too. One amazing revelation appeared in the July 6, 1975 Sunday Times (London) in the guise of an article by journalist Peter Watson,“The strange tale of Commander Narut.”

The Narut story appeared only one month after the release of the Rockefeller Commission Report on CIA Activities Within the United States. While the Rockefeller Report was, as the Assassination Archives & Research Center has stated, “seen by many as a ‘whitewash,’ and was certainly superseded by the Church Committee's work in scope and depth,” its revelations about CIA mail opening programs and surveillance of U.S. protest groups primed the pump for further revelations. For the U.S. Navy, it was a perfect storm.

How to Create an Assassin

In 1976, journalist Peter Watson was at a NATO-sponsored conference of psychological researchers held in Oslo when a U.S. Navy psychologist, Dr. Thomas Narut from the U.S. Naval Hospital in Naples, told Watson and New Jersey psychologist Dr. Alfred Zitani, that the Navy had been recruiting men to train as assassins in overseas embassies.1

I have not been able to find a copy of the London Sunday Times article online. Instead, I will refer to other contemporary articles that adhered to Watson’s reporting, such as a July 12, 1975 article by the Australian newspaper, The Age, written by an anonymous “special correspondent.” Comparison of the text in this article with Watson’s own published account in his 1978 book, War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology (Basic Books), proves that The Age’s “special correspondent” was Watson himself! His book is out of print now, but can be read at the Internet Archive.

Dr. Narut’s presentation at the NATO-sponsored conference was titled, “The Use of a Symbolic Model and Verbal Intervention in Inducing and Reducing Stress.”2 According to to an account in Walter Bowart’s 1978 book, Operation Mind Control (Dell Publishing), Narut began his talk with effusive praise of the Navy as a site for research, not least because of its plentiful access to human subject material.

In the navy, Narut bragged, there were plenty of captive personnel who could be used as guinea pigs. In the navy there was a computerized record of each man’s background and psychological profile, so that a quick selection of men with suitable psychological inclinations for experiments could be made. Navy psychologists not only had access to computerized records, but also to psychological tests and background data on a large number of people. In the navy, Narut said, funds were plentiful, and there were no problems with transporting subjects for study to nearly any place in the world. Narut stated proudly that the U.S. Navy provided scientists with the most advanced research facilities in the world. [Bowart, pg. 82]

In the article from The Age, Dr. Narut’s naval work was said to involve “establishing how to induce servicemen who may not be naturally inclined to kill, to do so under certain conditions.”

Both the article in The Age and Watson’s own subsequent book massaged the story somewhat. Unfortunately, I don’t have the original Sunday Times article for reference, but the highly respected, now shuttered, Long Island newspaper Newsday quoted the Times as saying Narut specifically used the term “hit men” when describing the U.S. servicemen trained for killing. This was left out of various accounts.

Newsday reported in its July 7, 1975 Nassau edition:

In his talk, Narut said he taught “combat readiness units” to cope with the stress of killing, the [London Sunday Times] newspaper said.... “he explained this included men for commando-type operations and for insertion into U.S. embassies under cover, ready to kill in those countries should the need arise,” the newspaper said. “Dr. Narut used the words ‘hit men’ and ‘assassin’ of those men.”

According to the account in The Age, Narut’s doctoral thesis described showing “certain films [that] could provoke anxiety and whether forcing a man to do tasks irrelevant to the film while watching it might help him cope with such anxiety (a technique described in Clockwork Orange)” (material in parenthesis inside quotes is from the original text, while the text in brackets is added).

The anxiety desensitization sessions, undertaken via exposure to various disturbing films, as described below, were quite specific in intent.

The method, according to Dr. Narut, was to show films specially designed to show people being killed and injured in violent ways, by being acclimatised through these films, the men eventually became able to dissociate any feelings from such a situation. Dr. Narut also added that U.S. naval psychologists specially selected men for these commando tasks, from submarine crews, paratroops, and some were convicted murderers from military prisons.

Asked whether he was suggesting that murderers were being released from prisons to become assassins, he replied: “It’s happened more than once.”

That prisoners were used in government programs that utilized intense behavioral modification techniques was not science fiction, nor the fevered dream of Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess or director Stanley Kubrick, who turned Burgess’s book into an award-winning film. In February 1977, Synapse, the student newspaper at the University of California, San Francisco — a major medical and research institution — decried “‘innovative’ behavioral modification programs instituted in many prisons which include the use of electro-shock or drugs with unpleasant effects such as aversive conditioning, reinforcement techniques, etc.”3

Narut’s discussions with Watson were quite detailed. He discussed how the men were selected. “[T[he best killers are men with ‘passive-aggressive’ personalities,” Narut said. Among the psychological tests used to select the Navy’s assassins were the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, or MMPI, a highly-regarded and much used “objective” psychological testing instrument. Also utilized was the famous Rorschach Ink Blot test, a “subjective” test that examines a subject’s response to vague but suggestive visual stimuli.

After the initial selection process, the prospective government assassins, according to The Age account, were “brought to either the navy’s neuropsychiatric laboratory in San Diego, California (which also trains spies in techniques to counter interrogation) or to the laboratory, where Narut works in the U.S. naval medical centre in Naples.”

They are first taught to shoot, and then the ‘Clockwork Orange’ training begins in earnest, to rid them of any qualms they may have about killing....4

The films are gruesome and as the training proceeds they get progressively more horrific. Even so the trainee is forced to watch. His head is bolted into a clamp so that he cannot turn away and a special mechanism also ensures that he cannot close his eyelids.

In the film, “A Clockwork Orange,” Stanley Kubrick was able to capture the moral horror of such psychological “interventions,” as the photo at the head of this essay shows.

The Navy films included scenes of an “African youth being crudely circumcised” without anesthesia, and a saw mill worker getting a finger sliced off. In War on the Mind, Watson reported that Narut explained that “physiological measures” were recorded during exposure to the film “to ensure that the men really do learn to remain calm while watching” (pg. 250).

The final phase of the killers’ training involved “Dehumanization of the enemy.” This training took “a few weeks,” and consisted of “lectures and films which portray personalities and customs in foreign countries whose interests may go against the USA. The films are biased to present the enemy as less than human….” (Ibid.).

As it turned out, many of the assassin candidates could not adjust to the desensitization training, and flunked out of the program. I guess they had an unfortunate surfeit of humanity within them. Still, an unspecified amount of subjects did graduate from the Navy’s assassination desensitization program.

Blowback

According to The Age article, Narut wouldn’t tell Watson where the men who graduated from the Navy’s program were sent, “arguing that he did not have the necessary security clearance.” Watson continued (text in brackets added):

However, at one point in our conversation [Narut] used the Athens Embassy as an example [of where such men had been sent] and he also said that his busiest time, when the largest batch of men went through this training, was towards the end of 1973, at the time of the Yom Kippur War.5

Was the Navy program as described by Narut connected with contemporary accusations of CIA involvement in an assassination attempt against Greece’s then leader? Let’s examine that possibility for a moment.

Although there was nothing in Watson’s article that connected the Navy program to the CIA, it is worth pointing out that the CIA, which was heavily involved in use of assassination, had a long history of hiding its programs under military auspices. At other times, the CIA and Navy worked together on similar research programs.

Along those lines, Chapter Three of John Marks’ 1979 book, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control (Times Books), describes a joint CIA/Artichoke series of experiments with the Navy’s own mind control program, Project Chatter. The subject makes sobering reading, as both CIA and Navy medical officers plied unwitting prisoners with cocktails of depressant and stimulant drugs, laced with THC or other mind-altering substances, sometimes mixed with hypnosis and periods of deep drug-induced sleep.

I recently discussed the CIA-Navy link in my article on the CIA’s MK-DECOY program, which involved creating a device to produce concussions at a distance. The aim was to produce amnesias in agents, assets and double agents, as necessary. The program began in the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research, but was absorbed, if not initially sponsored, by the CIA.

One possible application of the Navy (or CIA’s) training that fits Narut’s timeline and alleged use of the Athens embassy was the October 1973 assassination attempt on the life of Cyprus President Archbishop Makarios. The assassination attempt was made at the time of the Yom Kippur War. According to an essay in the October 2021 edition of the journal Religions (Vol. 12, No. 11), Makarios “was a close friend and a trustworthy regional partner of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser (Kıralp 2019) and a symbol of resistance against oppression in the eyes of Palestinian Arabs (Assos 2018).” That would have made Makarios an unfortunate political actor in the region from the standpoint of the Zionists and their U.S. allies, and a possible target for elimination one way or another.

Makarios was also an obstacle to U.S. plans for a settlement on Cyprus, which was then a source of Greek-Turkish competition, one that threatened the legitimacy of the U.S.-backed Greek military junta then in power, not to mention the very existence of NATO in the alliance’s southern rim. A suspect was arrested for the crime, but given what Narut revealed, one wonders if U.S.-trained assassins didn’t have a hand in either planning or implementing the failed assassination. Later, in February 1977, charges that the CIA had tried to assassinate Makarios surfaced at The Washington Post.

U.S. military officials were quick to deny the Narut revelations. A July 6, 1975 Reuters report published in The New York Times stated, “A United States Navy spokesman categorically denied today a London newspaper report of a program in which the Navy allegedly prepared convicted murderers to carry out assassinations.”

The denial was strangely specific. The Navy spokesman “checked with the Naples and San Diego facilities and had ‘talked to 40 people,’” after which he announced “that he could make a categorical denial that men had ever been trained as assassins at either center.”

He never said such training had never taken place. But a stronger denial of Narut’s statements came out a day later, as quoted here in Victoria, British Columbia’s paper, the Times Colonist (pg. 23). A US Navy spokesman clarified:

*The navy categorically denies that it is or has been engaged in psychological or any other type of training of personnel as assassins. No such training has taken place.”

By July 9, Narut himself had issued a retraction.

“The assertion attributed to me that convicted murderers have been assigned to embassies as assassins is totally and blatantly false and absurd,” Narut said, according to an Associated Press account.

The AP story indicated that Narut had been immediately summoned to London to discuss the London Sunday Times report with Admiral Thomas Engen, U.S. Navy Chief of Staff in Europe. The retraction followed.

In the flurry of controversy, Watson stuck by his story. “I stand by every word.... It’s true we carried on talking while he got ready for dinner, but we talked nonstop for 1-1/2 hours,” he told the press.

According to the July 10 AP report, Watson also said there were “three or four other conference participants [who] had heard Narut discuss the recruitment of convicted murderers from military prisons for training as assassins, and their insertion into foreign embassies under cover.” We know Dr. Zitani was one of those doctors, but I don’t know who the other witnesses were.

A few years after he met Dr. Narut and published the latter’s astonishing tale, Watson said in a footnote to War on the Mind that he was of “two minds as to what credence to attach to Dr Narut’s tale.”

He continued, in what seemed like a corroboration of the original report:

A few weeks after the episode I received a letter from a psychologist working in the area near San Diego where the Neuropsychiatric Center is located. In it the psychologist said that he had seen the syndicated article and the US Navy’s denial and he thought I might be interested to know that, six months previously, psychologists at the San Diego outfit had borrowed from him one of the films — that on circumcision — which Dr Narut had mentioned to me. [Watson, pg. 250]

Neither the Sunday Times or Watson ever retracted the Narut story.6

While the Pentagon denied the assassin accusations, it also wouldn’t allow Watson access to interview personnel at the U.S. Navy Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit in San Diego, where the training supposedly took place. ( The facility was opened in June 1959. By 1974, the name of the center had changed to the Naval Health Research Center.)

U.S. Mass Murder Programs

The whole tale might seem fantastic, unless one remembers that only a few years earlier the U.S.-sponsored Phoenix Program in Vietnam, overseen by the CIA, was responsible for the assassination of thousands of Viet Cong sympathizers, and tens of thousands more civilians who may have had nothing to do with the Viet Cong.

According to the most important book documenting Phoenix, Douglas Valentine’s The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam (Open Road Media, originally published by William Morrow and Co. in 1990), “Developed in 1967 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Phoenix combined existing counterinsurgency programs in a concerted effort to ‘neutralize’ the Vietcong infrastructure (VCI). The euphemism ‘neutralize’ means to kill, capture, or make to defect…. Central to Phoenix is the fact that it targeted civilians, not soldiers’ (Valentine, pg. 25, Kindle edition).

The U.S. had also supplied assassination lists to the Indonesian government during the bloody 1965 coup that slaughtered half a million people.

Journalist Kathy Kadane broke the latter story back in 1990:

For the first time, U.S. officials acknowledge that in 1965 they systematically compiled comprehensive lists of Communist operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres. As many as 5,000 names were furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured, according to the U.S. officials. [Kathy Kadane, South Carolina’s Herald-Journal, May 19, 1990]

The Indonesian mass murder program was based in part on experiences gleaned earlier by the CIA in the Philippines. “US military advisers of the Joint US Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) and the CIA station in Manila designed and led the bloody suppression of the nationalist Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan,” wrote Roland G. Simbulan in Covert Operations and the CIA’s Hidden History in the Philippines.

In his 2020 book on the Indonesian murders, The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World (PublicAffairs/Perseus Books), Vincent Bevins includes a map marking 22 different “Anticommunist Extermination Programs” around the world since the end of World War II (see Appendix 5). Truly the use of assassinations and extrajudicial killings, in combination with genocides, such as in Gaza today, mark our period as one of the bloodiest in human history. Only against the massive bloodletting of World War II does the contemporary world look even remotely peaceful.

“Unreviewable authority”

Lt. Commander Narut died on April 19, 1994, and was buried in Orlando, Florida. He was 59 years old. An obituary for the longtime psychologist — he had been “past president of Central Florida Chapter of Florida Psychological Association” — stated he died “of injuries sustained in an automobile accident.” (See here for alternate link.) I have been unable to dig out any further information about his death, which came one year to the day after the FBI’s fiery siege of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas.

In 1976, in the wake of the many revelations about U.S. government crimes, including assassinations, President Gerald Ford issued a presidential directive (EO 11905) banning assassinations, a directive whose basic premises lies in shreds after twenty-five years of Bush/Obama/Trump rule. Many see Barack Obama as a key player in the overturn of U.S. post-Ford assassination policy. It was the position of the Obama administration in the case of the “targeted killing” of U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Awlaqi that the President has “unreviewable authority to kill Americans.” (See this link for the legal documents in this case, as posted by ACLU.)

(As a personal aside, it is aggravating how the discussion about the legal consequences of using assassination as state policy is now subsumed under the euphemism of “targeted killings.” This Orwellian turn of phrase is not unique to the term “assassination,” but is perhaps most egregious in this context, bested only, perhaps, by the substitution of the phrase “enhanced interrogation” for torture.)

In case you didn’t already know it, the Obama Administration won its case on the Awlaqi murder in federal court. But that case was about the assassination of a U.S. citizen by U.S. authorities. There is no U.S. statute that forbids assassination of foreign leaders, though presumably Ford’s EO and a later one by President Ronald Reagan (EO 12333) remain in effect. Still, that didn’t stop Donald Trump from ordering in January 2020 the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

Such assassinations do, however, violate international law (although some have questioned this conclusion).7 In July 2020, the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings ruled that Trump’s murder of Soleimani was unlawful, and that “the US had not provided sufficient evidence of an imminent threat to life to justify the attack.” As Trump’s later murder of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows, the UN’s condemnation had little practical effect on the U.S. or its allies when it comes to use of assassination as state policy.

It is worth mentioning as well how the U.S. has also wriggled out of other war crimes accusations, particularly those concerning torture. Torture and assassination are intimately connected, and many political killings have occurred in the context of state torture. Examples include the torture-murder of Gul Rahman at the CIA’s Salt Pit prison in Afghanistan; the torture death of Muammar Gaddafi; the death by torture of numerous prisoners held in U.S. ally Israel’s prisons, etc.

Revelations in the Iraq logs Wikileaks cache of documents, released over 15 years ago, suggests that the U.S. helped form torture squads, and perhaps death squads in Iraq. In any case, U.S. military units certainly turned thousands of prisoners over to Iraqi forces they knew from hundreds of observations were torturing prisoners, often to death. This deliberate war crime, a direct violation of the Convention Against Torture treaty, was conducted under both the Bush and Obama administrations. But where in our society was the outrage? U.S. society cannot seem to pick itself up out of the muck of celebrity trivia and standard party politics and cable TV scandal-mongering to effectively deal with state crimes.

Most Americans have been ignoring news about torture and assassinations on behalf of the ruling elite for decades now. I don’t know what it will take to turn such a historical situation around, short of social revolution. Young people could do worse than take up the banner that was once Percy Shelley’s: free love, communism, hatred of tyrannies, including — if not especially — the tyranny of one’s own state, and equality of all sexes and peoples, freedom of religious practice (including atheism), and add to it the wisdom of the long-time struggle through the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries for economic justice and against the exploiters of mankind.8

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The crimes that go unreported, unnoticed, undertaken in the dark crevices of night, are among the most awful of all. The chaos of the displaced persons (DP) camps after World War II was the backdrop for significant violence and state-sanctioned murder, as the politics that had driven the war did not end on VE Day.

Some of the worst atrocities happened in DP camps holding refugees from Ukraine, and in particular involved rival members of different factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The Ukrainian groups were known or suspected to be riddled with Soviet double agents, and paranoia about this was very strong.

Inside the camps, there was a secret war between the OUN members who followed Stepan Bandera and the Soviets; between different factions of the Ukrainian emigré community; and between corrupt members of these groups and non-political Ukrainian refugees caught up in the battle over repatriation of former Soviet citizens to the USSR. All of this was, apparently, overseen or monitored by U.S. intelligence agents.

It wasn’t until 1975 that the first major account of what happened in the Ukrainian DP camps surfaced in the U.S. press. Among the more shocking revelations was that Ukrainian refugees had been murdered and their bodies burned in bread ovens in at least one of the larger DP camps. The story was written by two radical authors and published in WIN Magazine, published in Rifton, New York.

“One of our informants who was a witness to these events,” the authors wrote, “insisted that American soldiers —probably intelligence officers under the cover of ordinary soldiers — held the keys to the Mittenwald bread/body ovens.” The killers were members of an ultranationalist wing of the OUN led by Stepan Bandera.1

The OUN snuff squad had to apply to the Americans each time it wanted to make use of the ovens….

The evidence of the OUN complicity in mass murder is extensive. No one investigating the period could be ignorant of it. Certainly the spooks of CIC [Counter-Intelligence Corps], Air Force Intelligence, Naval Intelligence and the CIA knew who they were getting involved with. [WIN Magazine, 1975, pg. 5, PDF pg. 3; and pg. 17, PDF pg. 9 — text in brackets is added]

No one disputes that over the last 80 years the United States government has strongly backed Ukrainian nationalists in their political battle with Russia, and before that, the Soviet Union. But what is less known is the origin of that alliance. The 1975 article cited above, by pacifist Maris Cakars and Barton Osborn, a former participant in the CIA’s Operation Phoenix program turned whistleblower, described how the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) formed an alliance amid the chaotic turmoil of the displaced persons camps in postwar Germany.

The full title of the article, as published in the September 1975 issue of WIN Magazine (Vol. XI, No. 30) was, “Operation Ohio: A Special WIN Report Detailing American Sponsored Political Assassination and Torture in Post-War Germany, Demonstrating That the Phoenix Program Was Standard Operating Procedure.” WIN Magazine was a biweekly (and at times weekly) pacifist magazine published by the War Resisters League.2

According to Cakars and Osborn, the U.S./OUN-B alliance was sealed in blood, as U.S. intelligence “financed, supervised and tolerated the murders of numerous innocent men and women” who were perceived to be Soviet sympathizers or double agents. Certainly some of the victims were likely double agents, but an untold number were simply opponents of the Bandera faction of the OUN in the DP camps in Germany and Austria in the late 1940s and early 1950s (WIN Magazine, pg. 5, PDF pg. 3). In some cases, those targeted for elimination seem to have been people merely resisting OUN-B financial shakedowns, or were the unfortunate victims of personal grudges.

The main elements of this story are lurid, bizarre even. But they appear to be true, and a good deal of the text that follows is an attempt to corroborate the WIN authors’ charges of U.S. complicity in the OUN assassinations. Hence, this examination of Operation Ohio will look both at and beyond Cakars and Osborn’s version of the story.

One important thing that Cakars and Osborn’s article did was to establish the parameters for subsequent discussions of Operation Ohio’s history, particularly with its central emphasis on the role of the secretive U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC).3

“A long history of committing murders”

The CIC operation was codenamed “Ohio.” The WIN article goes into a fair amount of detail on Ohio operations at the “Mittenwald DP camp located in the Bavarian Alps and the scene of a number of the murders uncovered by the WIN investigation.” Cakars and Osborn believed “possibly over 100 men and women were killed” in the Ohio operation (WIN Magazine, pg. 5, PDF pg. 3).

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Mittenwald is “a health and vacation resort center (2019 pop 7,327) in Germany on the Isar River near the Austrian border in Bavaria. After the Second World War many Ukrainian displaced persons were housed at two displaced persons camps in Mittenwald: 2,900 in Jäger-Kaserne (1946–51) and 1,200 in Pionier-Kaserne (1947–50).” The camp was in the American zone of occupation. For those unfamiliar with the post-WWII history of Germany, there were four German occupation zones after the war, administered separately by the Americans, the British, the French, and the Soviets. DP camps holding Ukrainians also existed in the British and French zones of occupation, as well as in Austria, which also had been divided into its own four occupation zones of the victorious powers.

Nearly all the evidence and testimony on Operation Ohio agrees that the killers of numerous DPs at Mittenwald and elsewhere were members of the Stepan Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). As Cakars and Osborn explained, “Specifically it was the SB (Stuzhba Bezpeky), the secret political police of the OUN that carried out the killings. Patterned after the notorious Nazi SD (Sicherheitsdienst), our informant,4 referred to it as the OUN’s ‘combat organization’ and seemed pleased to report that, as far as he knew, it had been phased out after 1959 with the assassination of the OUN’s leader, Stepan Bandera.”

The SB was effectively the law enforcement in the approximately 80 [DP] camps where Ukrainians were the only, or the most numerous, national group. There was no check on its excesses other than by the OUN’s American sponsors. [WIN, pg. 9, PDF pg. 5]

Horrifically, with the alleged connivance of the CIC or other American intelligence agencies, the OUN killers, using “techniques borrowed from the Nazis,” burned the bodies of those they killed “in large bread baking ovens…. the very same ovens used to bake the bread for the hungry residents of the camp” (WIN, pg. 7, PDF pg. 4).

As already mentioned above, an eyewitness to the events at Mittenwald told Cakars and Osborn “that American soldiers — probably intelligence officers under the cover of ordinary soldiers — held the keys to the Mittenwald bread/body ovens (WIN, pg. 9, PDF pg. 5). The OUN-B killers had to coordinate somehow with U.S. intelligence in order to get rid of the bodies of their victims.

Accordingly, Cakars and Osborn felt “the responsibility for the assassinations must rest ultimately with American intelligence, first the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps, then Naval and Air Force Intelligence and finally, by 1954, the CIA” (Ibid.).

In their article, Cakars and Osborn described the OUN as having “a long history of committing murders, beginning with the German occupation of Ukrainia during World War II… when the OUN played a significant role in the extermination of Jews and other ‘undesirables.’ Its murderous role continued after the war under American sponsorship” (Ibid.).

One Cakars and Osborn informant, an ex-CIA agent, believed that the U.S. intelligence-OUN linkage continued to operate to “the present day,” i.e., to 1975, the year the WIN article was written. The “Operation Ohio” authors dedicated an entire section of their report, “The OUN’s War Record,” to documenting some of the OUN-B’s Nazi-linked atrocities, including the murder of two leaders of a rival OUN faction (see WIN, pgs. 15-17, PDF pgs. 8-9).5

According to Cakars and Osborn, under Operation Ohio, “The primary reason for the OUN murders was cold-bloodedly ideological,” targeting members of less militant nationalist factions of the OUN, as well as members of a rival group, the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (ZP/UHVR), led by former Bandera allies who had turned against Bandera (WIN, pg. 7, PDF pg. 4).6

As part of their research, Cakars and Oborn had interviewed the then-foremost English-speaking authority on Ukrainian nationalist movements, the author of the 1955 book, Ukrainian Nationalism (Columbia University Press, updated and revised in 1963).

“l have no doubt that these people killed their rivals,” admitted John Armstrong, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin who has done numerous classified studies of Soviet refugees for the Air Force. ln our interview with him, Professor Armstrong added that “the motivation was strictly to eliminate the political opposition.” [Ibid.]

The total number of those murdered in the displaced persons camps is not known. One informant told Cakars and Osborn, “Some undesirable Ukrainians received threatening letters with death sentences from the SB. Only a few of the liquidated Ukrainians were known. Many murders and liquidations remain in the dark” (WIN, pg. 9, PDF pg. 5).

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Soviet Double Agents and the OUN

The head of the SB at the time of Operation Ohio’s heyday in the late 1940s was Mykola Matwiyeko (aka Myron Matvieyko). According to an October 1948 top secret CIA report, the Agency saw Matvieyko as “an intellectually dishonest and incompetent person.”7 In 1951, he was sent on a secret mission to Ukraine by “one of the Allies’ intelligence services” and supposedly disappeared. Cakars and Osborn commented, “rumor has it that in fact the purpose of the mission was to get Matwiyeko out of the way because he knew too much” (WIN, PDF pg. 5).

But Matwiyeko/Matvieyko apparently did not disappear, according to a fascinating and informative blog posting by Moss Robeson at the Bandera Lobby Blog. Back in 1975, many documents from the postwar period had still not been declassified. Robeson has looked at the record on Matwiyeko as we now have it, and it appears the former head of the SB was a Soviet double agent. He did seem to disappear after his ill-fated parachute drop into western Ukraine, which was orchestrated by the British. But not too long later, he was operating as an OUN official inside Ukraine, supposedly connecting the OUN’s partisan war against the Soviets with the emigre OUN-B diaspora in Western Europe, including inside the DP camps.

According to Robeson, who relied on declassified documents, as well as Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe’s biography of Stepan Bandera, Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist, Matwiyeko/Matvieyko was captured and “turned” by the Russians, if in fact he hadn’t been recruited by the Soviets even earlier. In the early 1950s, he operated in Soviet Ukraine as a presumably Bandera-committed nationalist leader. But he was helping the Russians defeat the OUN-led insurgency in Ukraine after the war. In his article, Robeson also makes a case for Matwiyeko’s involvement in the assassination of Bandera in 1959.

According to a 1950 CIA document Robeson obtained, it was double agents like Matvieyko that made U.S. intelligence agencies leery of the Bandera wing of the OUN:

[Matvieyko] “masterminded” all courier missions mounted by the OUN/Bandera, all debriefings and liquidations of suspected Soviet agents, counterfeiting of documents, contacts by SB members with American intelligence agencies including CIC [Counter-Intelligence Corps], MIS [Military Intelligence Service], ODEUM [Gehlen Organization], G-2 EUCOM [U.S. European Command intelligence], ONI [Office of Naval Intelligence], and ourselves, and OUN/B attempts to penetrate other Ukrainian emigrant organizations. Along with Yaroslav STETZKO, subject [Matvieyko] exerted tremendous influence on the policy and thinking of Stefan BANDERA. . . . Every courier he managed from 1946 on misfired: either the couriers never arrived in the Ukraine, or in the case of Yaroslav MOROZ (SLAVKO) . . . the courier ran right into the hands of the RIS [Russian Intelligence Service] and was sent back doubled to Germany. {Text in brackets above is asd in the original Robeson article.]

Robeson has done tremendous work over the years in documenting the activities, both historical and contemporary, of the followers of Stepan Bandera, and interested readers should study his blog essays.

There is no doubt that considerations over the degree to which the OUN had been penetrated by Soviet intelligence played a role in the interactions of U.S. intelligence with OUN members in the displaced persons camps. But whatever the problems of utilizing the OUN were, U.S. intelligence was reluctant to break all ties, as the value of the Banderites was precisely their potential use for what was then an expected war between the U.S. and the USSR.

An example of the CIA’s thinking on this is quoted by Robeson: “An assistant director of the CIA wrote to the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1951, and acknowledged the existence of ‘the Liquidation Squad of the SB of OUN/Bandera’”:

Since the SB kept elaborate files and conducted investigations on Ukrainians and suspected Soviet agents of other nationalities, no serious attempt has been made by American officials in Germany to disband the SB…. Operating independently, the SB has upon occasion been more of a headache to American intelligence than a boon. Nevertheless in war-time a highly nationalistic Ukrainian political group with its own security service could conceivably be a great asset to the United States.

Cakars and Osborn’s article provides the names of a number of Ukrainian OUN members involved in the Operation Ohio assassinations. There are too many names to list here, but one of them was a former OUN leader from their partisan days in the latter years of World War II, when the Bandera faction fought Red Army troops entering eastern Ukraine in the weeks and months after the German defeat at Stalingrad. The former OUN partisan was Roman Petrenko (not to be confused with any modern day individuals with the same name), who later ended up settling in Buffalo, New York.

It was Petrenko who, directed by the leadership of the OUN, first established contact with the Army Counter-intelligence Corps (CIC) in 1946. Instrumental in the contact was also Rev. Ivan Grinyokh who had served as the chaplain of the Nazi-OUN “Nachtigalle” battalion during World War ll, and had been awarded the German Iron Cross. Grinyokh also had worked for the Gestapo and had used the names Orlov and Herasimowskyj. Earlier he had been an advisor to Nicholas [aka Mykola] Lebed, the first chief of the SB. [WIN, pg. 9, PDF pg. 5.]

The OUN-US Intelligence Alliance & the CIC

According to Cakars and Osborn, “a key element” of OUNs “arrangement with the CIC” was that “it offered to eliminate Communist agents in the West.” Unfortunately for the CIC, OUN seemed less interested in this than in identifying political opponents and others who had crossed the OUN in various ways, either by “failure to pay ‘protection’ money or. . . the result of personal squabbles” (Ibid.) (Some have seen the OUN actions in the camps differently, and disagree with Cakars and Osborn in terms of who the primary victims of Operation Ohio were, as will be discussed further below.)

When CIC investigated the lists of “Soviet agents” that OUN provided them, very few of the cases “turned out to warrant further investigation” (1 percent in one example Cakars and Osborn mention) (WIN, pg. 10, PDF pg. 6).

According to the 1989 book, America’s Secret Army: The Untold Story of the Counter Intelligence Corps, by Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting (Fontana Paperbacks, London), after the end of World War II “the OUN stressed the inevitability of war between the Western powers and the USSR and saw this as the perfect opportunity to continue the fight for the liberation of their Ukrainian homeland.”

Sayer and Botting, who seem to have had extraordinary access to CIC records, claimed that a CIC report from Berlin in the summer of 1946 stated “that the OUN was using funds allegedly collected from Ukrainian DPs for the purchase of weapons, ammunition and other items necessary to equip and maintain an army” (pg. 349).

The funds “collected” were often coercively obtained. A 2020 article by Jan-Hinnerk Antons in Harvard Ukrainian Studies described the situation:

Due to the concentration of intellectuals in the U.S. zone, the OUN-B, with its working class and peasant followers, was especially strong in the British zone of occupation. Besides holding official positions, they ruled the community by their established strategies of clandestine intimidation and violence. Donation requests in support of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) serve as a good example. The UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] director of the Lysenko camp in Hannover described the proceedings: “Persons, names of whom we do not know, who are supposed to belong to an underground Ukrainian Movement called the ‘Bandura Army’ [sic], are from time to time circulating the a/n camp [Lysenko],8 soliciting for money among the camp population. This happened four times in the last eighteen months, last time a few weeks ago. When people are contributing money, they are issued with obligations or bonds….Of those who refuse to pay, names are taken by collectors. Through such action the people are scared and in our opinion this illegal action should be stopped at once. [Bracketed material on UNRRA is added — JK]

Sayer and Botting’s narration of the Ohio episode at Mittenwald is similar to that of Cakars and Osborn, and even draws on some of their research. Nevertheless, they are of the opinion that CIC was not involved in Operation Ohio. They believe that the assassinations were coordinated with Americans from the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), a covert action arm of the U.S. government set up after World War II and, though associated with the CIA organizationally, was led by Frank Wisner and nominally under the jurisdiction of the Department of State and the Department of Defense.

Sayer and Botting cite CIC’s hostility to the OUN. They note that “CIC official records contain no reference to Operation Ohio or the horrors of Mittenwald — possibly because sensitive records of activities subsequently taken over by the CIA have usually ended up in the closed archives of the CIA itself. Nor have any former CIC agents spoken up about CIC participation in this black episode” (pg. 352).

As an example of CIC’s disillusionment with the OUN, the authors of America’s Secret Army described how the CIC obtained “eleven volumes of the secret internal files of the OUN, which clearly showed that its members had made a significant contribution to the Nazi war effort by working as policemen, executioners, partisan hunters and officials for the Gestapo and SS and raising several divisions of Ukrainian volunteers for the Waffen-SS” (Ibid.).

While Sayer and Botting present an intriguing hypothesis, Cakars and Osborn’s “Operation Ohio” article provides ample evidence regarding CIC’s role, evidence Sayer and Botting failed to mention in their version of events. The WIN authors dedicated an entire section of their article to “the context” surrounding Ohio.

As Cakars and Osborn explained it, after World War II CIC’s “job was to establish absolute authority for security in occupied Europe.” CIC’s first actions were to form “informant nets within the German and Austrian civilian community and the labyrinth of displaced person camps in order to finger those opposed to American policy, while at the same time conducting a campaign to enforce authority over the German and Austrian population. At first the CIC’s target was deNazification, but almost immediately the emphasis switched to the battle against Communism” (WIN, pg. 13, PDF pg. 7).

Even a cursory look at the documentary record shows that after the war the U.S. and allies saw Nazi influence in the DP camps as a special problem. The issue surfaced in various newspaper reports, such as the Associated Press article, dated January 1, 1946, “Many Pro-Nazis Discovered Among Baltic Nationals Who Pose as Displaced Persons”:

The American G-2 [intelligence] investigation pointed the finger of suspicion, too, at Nazi elements who enjoy an Allied haven by day but engage in depredations at night and who are responsible for the main source of disorder and crime in Germany....

The report on the two camps said:

“In two camps containing Baltic nationals at Mainfranken a majority of those investigated were found to consist of voluntary pro-Nazi exiles.” [Material in brackets is added]

The presence of fascists in the Ukrainian DP camps was a central topic during the January 1946 convention of the left-wing Ukrainian Canadian Association. (The group changed its name to the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians [AUUC] at this same convention.)

According to a January 16, 1946 article in The Brantford Expositor in Ontario, the convention formally requested that the Canadian government explain “why Dr. W. [Wasyl] Kushnir, Chairman of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee, ‘was permitted to go to Europe when his purpose was to establish connection with the Ukrainian Fascist element known as the Ukrainian displaced persons in the British and American occupation….’” (The Ukrainian Canadian Committee [UCC] was a right-wing, conservative rival Canadian Ukrainian group which had been formed with the assistance of the Canadian Federal Government in 1940.)

The Ukrainian Canadian Association/AUUC was not mistaken about Kushnir, who was also a notorious antisemite.9 A 2016 article by Richard Sanders in Press for Conversion told how Kuhnir visited “interned Galician SS veterans in Europe,” part of a UCC campaign to “bring these veterans to Canada.”

The main point here is that the identification of fascistic elements among the DP population of Ukrainian, Baltic and other refugees was clearly seen as a problem by a number of state and other actors in the year following the end of the war in Europe. The CIC was integral in tracking them down.

As a consequence, CIC operations in Germany and Austria were huge. There were at least 18 CIC detachments in the U.S. occupation zone. The largest was “the 970th CIC Detachment, headquartered at first at Wiesbaden, Germany, and later in the immense I.G. Farben Building in Frankfurt-am-Main.” These detachments were further divided into teams that “roamed in a designated area and established informant nets in the population, especially the DP camps, which were sometimes located in former Nazi concentration camps” (WIN Magzazine, pg. 14, PDF pg. 8).

The 430th CIC Detachment in Salzburg had a “special section known as the Displaced Persons Screening Project or DP-48....” Its facilities included “Accomodations for the secret solitary confinement of up to 100 arrestees at one time... Ten cells equipped for secret monitoring and recording of conversations” and “Ten private, soundproof interrogation rooms” (Ibid.).

Like the later historians of CIC’s role, Sayers and Botting, Cakars and Osborn also had some access to former CIC eyewitness personnel.

Once the CIC gained control in these areas, it was easy for its operations to get out of hand. In the words of a retired Colonel who had been with the 430th CIC and who later went on to play a key role in the Vietnam Phoenix Program, “ln those early days we had some wild ass times in Europe. Now-and-again a suspected Communist agent would get killed. Things were so tense in those days that it didn’t take much, you know.” [WIN, PDF pg. 8]

By June 1954, the responsibility for interrogations was shifted from CIC to the CIA. It is around this time that CIA also took over responsibility for the Ohio program in the Ukrainian DP camps.

Operations Rollback and Snatch/Counter-Snatch

Operation Ohio was not the only violent covert program run by U.S. intelligence forces in Europe at the time. The late 1940s and early 1950s was the period of the little known Operation Rollback, run by OPC, the primary U.S. covert action arm at the time. Rollback was modeled after partisan operations in WWII behind fascist lines, organized and run by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and British Special Operations Executive (SOE). Unlike the WWII OSS and SOE partisan war, things did not go so well for the Western-backed agents sent behind the “Iron Curtain.”

As author Peter Grose wrote in 2000:

When the Americans, sometimes alone, sometimes with the British, began trying to insert small teams of agents into Yugoslavia, Albania, Ukraine, Soviet Moldavia, or other places to foment resistance and ultimately rebellion, the results were almost uniformly disastrous. Agents offloaded on the Albanian coast were quickly confronted by guards, who killed or arrested most of them.

In another example of Cold War brazenness, the U.S. also ran a kidnapping program known as Snatch/Counter-snatch. Cakars and Osborn referenced it in their WIN article:

An example of an operation that crossed the line into illegality was one named “Snatch/Counter-Snatch” that ran for a number of years in the late 1940's and early 1950's. This official, if ludicrous, codename referred to a series of American and Soviet kidnappings. The official CIC history concentrates on Soviet kidnappings as they were thwarted by one of the “most extensive investigations ever conducted by the 430th CIC Detachment.” Nevertheless a participant in the operation has revealed to us that kidnappings were carried out by Americans as well. [Win Magazine, pg. 15, PDF pg. 8]

Snatch/Counter-Snatch does seem almost too bizarre to be true. Would the U.S. intelligence services really run an operation with such a crazy, yet obvious codename? Turns out, yes, they would, and the files for this program — four volumes of them — are listed in the U.S. National Archives catalog. (Unfortunately, these files are not currently online, and I bet they never will be!)

One of the CIA’s kidnappings concerned the case of Peter Moroz, an employee at the CIA's Institute for the Study of the USSR, who "was seized by CIA operatives posing as German police," and taken to a "safe house" near Munich. Moroz was held in isolation without charges for three months and subjected to sensory overload. He was “forced to sleep in a basement room without furniture while bright lights were left turned on. He was fed highly salted food. Constantly Indonesian music was piped in over loudspeakers. The CIA’s objective was to make Moroz denounce his son, thereby blunting the propaganda effect of his [son’s supposed] defection” (Ibid. — text in brackets added).

According to Cakars and Osborn, Moroz’s kidnap team was led by “a man named Muller, a CIA agent posing as the Legal Counsel of the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism” (Ibid.). Ultimately Moroz was released, but his attempts to have his abduction investigated went nowhere, demonstrating the impunity by which these U.S. covert programs were conducted.

Whatever the culpability of CIC in the Ohio assassinations (and I tend to believe much of Cakars and Osborn’s reporting) both Sayer and Botting and Cakars and Osborn agree that the CIC (or OPC) intelligence agents supervising the OUN murderers in the DP camps later turned sour on the OUN-B, and supervision of the Ohio assassinations fell to Navy and Air Force intelligence units, and later to the CIA.

The WIN article has little to say about what happened after CIC (or OPC) exited, except that the assassinations continued. These Navy and Air Force intelligence units certainly were involved in the Cold War anti-Soviet paranoia that was gripping the U.S. political establishment. Like the CIC and the CIA, they likely found Bandera’s OUN, like its political opponents in the ZPUHVR, useful for anti-Soviet purposes.

Both the Sayer/Bottling and Cakars/Osborn narratives on Ohio agree that the OUN-B “reign of terror” in the DP camps came to an end, or was at least seriously ameliorated, by “early 1952” when “an OUN member unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate General Diomid Gulai, the head of the Ukrainian Liberation Movement.10 This was too much. The CIA tightened control and OUN assassinations were on their way out although support of the OUN was to continue” (WIN, pg. 13, PDF pg. 7).

Cakers and Osborn’s timeline here is a bit wobbly, at least as regards when the CIA really assumed control. In their discussion of the Gulai episode, they appear to say that the CIA was tightening control over OUN in 1952, while elsewhere they describe CIA coming into control of Ohio later, in 1954. While this could be narrative sloppiness, I think the uncertain timeline regarding what U.S. sponsors were in charge when is most likely due to the secret and classified nature of the program and its operations, as well as the vagaries of relying on oral testimonies vs. documentary evidence. It is important to remember that we are only peeking through a tiny opaque window into a vast world of top secret operations and covert wars.

One example of the confusions introduced into the history of this period is that fact that, unbeknownst to the OUN-B leaders at the time, the CIA was backing multiple sides in the world of Ukrainian nationalism, always hedging their bets, and maneuvering and manipulating its assets for its own benefit. The Ukrainian Liberation Movement, to which General Gulai belonged, and another Ukrainian outfit, the Union of Ukrainian Federalist Democrats, were two other CIA-sponsored organizations in the DP camps. One has the impression that the situation in the DP camps, if not the entire nationalist milieu, was one of intense turmoil, intrigue, backstabbing, and complex, interlocking hatreds.

Cakars and Osborn: An Activist and a Whistleblower

Given the incendiary nature of many of the charges made by the WIN article, it’s worth examining the credentials of its authors, and the credibility of their charges. The record shows that both Cakars and Osborn were taken very seriously by the political establishment of their day. A 2006 article in Yale University’s “News” described Cakars as “a renowned anti-war activist and pacifist who was editor of Win magazine.”

By the mid-1970s, Cakars was a well-known pacifist and, according to a March 1992 obituary in The New York Times, also “a leader in the movement against the Vietnam War.” He was born in Riga, Latvia in 1942. Towards the end of World War II his apparently anti-communist family fled Lativa and Maris spent a few years living with them in a displaced persons camp. He was 49 years old when he died in Brooklyn, New York of “internal hemorrhaging.” The circumstances surrounding his early death are otherwise unknown.

The New York Times obituary described Cakars’ career. “For 12 years he worked for Win, a small but influential magazine that opposed the Vietnam War and expanded to other social issues. It encouraged radical change but nonviolent tactics. He was the editor for about six years. Among those associated with Win were Abbie Hoffman, A.J. Muste and Hendrik Hertzberg,” the Times wrote.

Cakars and WIN were also well-known for exposing government crimes. In 1972, WIN Magazine gained attention for posting the first complete collection of the FBI COINTELPRO documents, which were stolen from an FBI bureau office in Media, Pennsylvania in 1971. The burglary of the FBI offices, and the incredible discovery of documentary evidence of the FBI’s “secret counterintelligence program” and covert black operations was the subject of Betty Medsger’s 2014 book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI.

Maris was a pacifist, a tax dissident, and someone who wasn’t afraid to put himself on the line. As early as 1965 he was arrested for blocking the entrance to an Army induction center. He also, according to his obituary in the Kingston Daily Freeman, “was arrested by the KGB for passing out anti-war leaflets in Moscow.” (I tried but could not find more information on the Moscow arrest.)

Kenneth Barton Osborn was by 1975 also well-known, respected by many, though vilified by supporters of the Vietnam War. From 1967 to 1968, at age 23, he had been an “agent for the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security in Vietnam.” He had also been assigned to the Phoenix Program, and outraged by what he saw, had turned whistleblower. His whistleblowing concerned not just CIA-supervised torture and assassinations, but similar, even more brutal torture and murder by U.S. Marine Corps interrogators.11

After his testimony helped blow open the CIA Phoenix scandal, Osborn became a “co-founder of the Fifth Estate, Inc. … an independent publically-supported research group on the government intelligence community” (WIN, pg. 5, PDF pg. 3).

In his later years, Osborn apparently lived in some obscurity. He died in September 2007, age 62. There were no obituaries I could find to mark his passing.

The Phoenix Program

Osborn was an eyewitness to the CIA’s Phoenix Program and his assertions about the similarities and personnel links between Operation Ohio and the Phoenix project some twenty years later carry much weight. Cakars and Osborn made the linkage between the two programs explicit in their article.

According to the most important book documenting Phoenix, Douglas Valentine’s The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam (Open Road Media, originally published by William Morrow and Co. in 1990), “Developed in 1967 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Phoenix combined existing counterinsurgency programs in a concerted effort to ‘neutralize’ the Vietcong infrastructure (VCI). The euphemism ‘neutralize’ means to kill, capture, or make to defect…. Central to Phoenix is the fact that it targeted civilians, not soldiers’ (Valentine, pg. 25, Kindle edition).

Under Phoenix, or Phung Hoang, as it was called by the Vietnamese, due process was totally nonexistent. South Vietnamese civilians whose names appeared on blacklists could be kidnapped, tortured, detained for two years without trial, or even murdered, simply on the word of an anonymous informer. At its height Phoenix managers imposed quotas of eighteen hundred neutralizations per month on the people running the program in the field, opening up the program to abuses by corrupt security officers, policemen, politicians, and racketeers, all of whom extorted innocent civilians as well as VCI. [Valentine, pg. 26, Kindle edition]

The world first heard about Phoenix in February 1970 at hearings before the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, which revealed details on the CIA’s Vietnam counter-terror capture, torture and assassination program. The Phoenix program evolved from earlier CIA “Counter Terror” and pacification programs in the mid-1960s.

But the Senate hearings, despite some revelations, were largely a “limited hangout.” A February 18, 1970 article in The New York Times provided the typical liberal gloss:“Designed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to weed out an estimated 75,000 Vietcong political leaders and agents from the civilian population, the program is not the sinister, cloak‐and‐dagger, terror operation that some critics, including the Vietcong, have portrayed it to be, [U.S.] officials insist” (text in brackets is added).

Osborn’s own whistleblowing testimony helped sink that fairy tale. In December 1970, Osborn testified before the National Veterans Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam, held in Washington, D.C. Osborn’s testimony at the event was entered into the March 1, 1971 Congressional Record by Representative Ron Dellums, who that same day was introducing “a joint resolution proposing a full-scale congressional inquiry of American war crimes and war crime responsibility” in Vietnam. Osborn’s testimony (see pages 4241-4245), and that of other vets, were meant to bolster the case for the vote on the congressional war crimes investigation.

Osborn told the National Veterans Inquiry that when he arrived in Vietnam, after intelligence training at Fort Holabird, his job entailed “spotting, analyzing, recruiting, training and running and terminating agents.” He stated that his agent nets did covert work that was “denied by our government.” They were involved in “the overt, active, aggressive collection of intelligence.” The government’s frank approach to breaching the laws of war was the beginning of Osborn’s education.

As Osborn remembered it:

Of course, the starting point with the orientation at [the U.S. Army Intelligence School at Fort] Holabird was that, all this that we were going to be trained to do was against the Geneva Accords, and if we had moral compunctions about it, we could opt out of the program if we wanted to. If we had none, you just go ahead and play along with the program — be trained this way, and then they would return to us as a result the privilege of autonomy from the military…. In other words, we would be more or less free agents. [pgs. 4241-4242, text in brackets added]

Some months later, in August 1971, Osborn testified before the House of Representatives Foreign Operations and Government Information subcommittee about Phoenix’s atrocities. Osborn explained that he had been assigned to the Phoenix Program, and outraged by what he saw, had turned against the program.

The House subcommittee hearings were where the CIA’s William Colby (who later went on to head the CIA) claimed that the Phoenix Program had killed “20,587 members of the ‘Vietcong infrastructure’… from 1968 through May 1971.” Colby had claimed the U.S. role had been “primarily an ‘advisory’ one,” according to reporting at the time by the National Guardian.

But the House report which followed the hearings (a report that was leaked and not formally released) belied that story. According to the National Guardian’s reporting, “many of the so-called ‘Vietcong’ killed under the Phoenix ‘pacification’ program were innocent civilians.... [the program] allegedly included torture, murder and inhumane treatment of Vietnamese civilians…. The program had access to secret CIA funds.... Assassination teams of mercenaries and U.S. agents who compiled lists of persons to be assassinated were secretly funded.”

Osborn, who had “supervised agent networks for 15 months beginning in 1967.” played a central role in the House revelations. His testimony refuted Colby’s “limited hangout.”12

From the National Guardian article:

Osborn contradicted Colby’s disclaimers of direct U.S. responsiblity for the Phoenix program and made it clear that U.S. personnel particpated in murders and tortures. He said U.S. ‘advisors’ were really directing the program.

Osborn also described atrocities he witnessed, including seeing Vietnamese pushed from helicopters, a practice known as ‘airborne interrogations.”13

The Phoenix link was crucial to the relevance of the Operation Ohio story when it came out. As Cakars and Osborn noted, “At least three of the American intelligence agents who ‘graduated’ from this [Ohio] program went on to work with the notorious ‘Phoenix’ program in which over 40,000 Vietnamese lost their lives. Among these Americans was Richard Helms, later Director of the CIA and now [1975] ambassador to Iran” (WIN, PDF pg. 5, PDF pg. 3, text in brackets added).

In a 2001 monograph, The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944–1948, historian Jeffrey Burds described his attempt to corroborate Cakars and Osborn’s “highly controversial article” on Operation Ohio. In a footnote pertaining to Mykola Lebed (called “Nicholas Lebed” in the WIN article), the SB’s first intelligence chief and himself at one point later targeted for assassination by the Bandera OUN faction, Burds wrote:

Though I have been able to verify from CIC documents that there was an Operation Ohio where suspected Soviet moles were investigated, I have not succeeded in gaining release of specific documents to substantiate directly any other aspect of the Win article. It is significant, however, that one of Lebed’s first joint operations with the CIC following his formal recruitment in 1947 was Operation Bingo, the American government’s use of Ukrainian nationalist agents in the refugee camps to find and liquidate suspected Soviet moles, 1949–1950. [Page 58].14

I was interested in the seeming similarities between Operations Bingo and Ohio. But there was extremely little on Operation Bingo that I have been able to find. However, there was one relevant US Army Intelligence and Security Command/Central Security Facility (INSCOM/CSF) document, dated February 21, 1950, released as part of the JFK Assassinations records review.

The INSCOM/CSF document referenced “Bingo” files, and how a “Bingo swooping operation” captured one Soviet agent, Ilya Jakushow, who was subsequently imprisoned for interrogation (see report pgs 1-2, PDF pgs. 2-3). The Americans’ plan for this individual was to either convict him for espionage, or get him expelled from Germany. There was no discussion of assassination in this document, although I suspect such plans are not typically written down. I don’t know the ultimate fate of this individual, though there is a 1962 CIA document that references Jakushow and some of his associates, citing the earlier February 1950 INSCOM/CSF report.

A British Historian Documents “Ohio”

In 2001, Fourth Estate/HarperCollins published British academic Stephen Dorril’s book, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations. Dorrill corroborated much of Cakars and Osborn’s reporting. In a footnote, he related how “Maris Cakars personally informed [British socialist] Peter E. Newell (letter, 6.9.88) that, following the WIN report, he received documentation from the Soviets much in line with his own findings” (pg. 825, bracketed material added, but parentheses were in the original).

Dorril’s book is also interesting for the intricate description of internal OUN politics in the post-World War II period. The British author explained how the American CIC, in an operation code-named ANYFACE, had protected Bandera from Soviet capture and/or assassination. Even so, it was Britain’s MI6 that initially supported Bandera, while U.S. intelligence and OUN-B eyed each other with suspicion.

U.S. reluctance to embrace the Bandera wing of Ukrainian nationalists had only increased, Dorril wrote, when “a CIC agent… managed to photograph ‘eleven volumes of their secret internal files’ which contained proof that the majority of its members ‘had worked for the Gestapo and the SS as policemen, executioners, partisan hunters and municipal officials’” (Dorril, pg. 234).

In March 1946, a OUN “unity” conference declared that the organization would condemn “all ‘totalitarian mono-party’ trends and [condemn] all acts of terrorism” (Dorril, pg. 233). This was seen as a political feint against Bandera. Accordingly, Bandera and his followers split from the OUN and “created an overarching organisation for all the former pro-fascist nationalist exile movements, reconstituting the Nazi-sponsored 1943 Anti-Bolshevist Front, as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN)” (Ibid.).

Dorrill described OUN-B’s violent power grab among the Ukrainian exiles. “The OUN-B gained dominance over its rivals by control of the DP camps in Germany, Austria and Italy,” Dorril wrote (pg. 234), where some quarter million Ukrainian refugees then lived.15 As described later in this article, refugees from eastern Ukraine held a precarious position inside the camp. These refugees lived, as Dorill put it, “in fear of being repatriated to the Soviet Union, and the prospect of internment in a labour camp, or death.” The situation meant that eastern Ukrainians in the DP camps were open to blackmail, and could “only be ‘helped to escape the repatriation if they would accept the Bandera-Stetsko leadership’” (Ibid.)

(For a more detailed discussion of the conflicts that divided East and West Ukrainian refugees, see the appendix “In the DP Camps” at the end of this article.)

With OUN-B now acting on its own as an anti-communist organization in the DP camps, they reached out to the Americans, who despite their initial cavils, decided to help out the Banderists, at least for awhile. Dorril had this to say on the Ohio episode:

During the summer of 1946, following the establishment of liaison with the US CIC by Roman Petrenko — a senior member of OUN-B’s secret police, the Sluzhba Bezpeky (SB) — the OUN-B embarked on a reign of terror in the camps. Father Hrynioch had acted as the go-between when the CIC office in Rome made an approach to [Mykola] Lebed, after which Petrenko offered the SB’s services in eliminating communist agents. On 22 July, the SB handed the CIC a list of alleged communist refugees, mostly, but not exclusively, in the Frankfurt am Main area. In response, the Americans arrested several hundred people who were questioned and in many instances tortured by OUN-B members dressed in US military uniforms. The torturers included Lebed. Yet out of all those arrested, only 1 per cent of the cases turned out to warrant further investigation; all were set free within a few months ‘for lack of evidence’. This made the Americans more cautious and, as time went by, the OUN-B’s secret police largely took over what was known as Operation OHIO. [Page 234]]

The victims of the OUN-B’s U.S.-assisted assassination campaign weren’t only alleged Communist double agents or sympathizers. There were also a number of murders of OUN-B’s political opponents from other OUN factions. For instance, the Banderites accused Andriy Melnyk’s faction of the OUN (OUN-M) of including “both Gestapo and NKVD collaborators” (Ibid.). As Dorril explained it, OUN-B launched “a killing spree” against OUN-M members in the DP camps “in which more than one hundred Ukrainians were murdered” (pg. 234).

A few were undoubtedly Soviet agents but most appear to have been DPs who, for various reasons, opposed the OUN-B, objected to black market activities, or were members of more moderate, but still anticommunist, Ukrainian groups. Another reason why some were eliminated was that they knew too much about the Ukrainians’ pro-Nazi past and participation by OUN supporters in the mass murder of Jews, Poles and ‘Red’ Russians. Personally directing Ohio were Lebed, Stetsko, Stefan Lenkovsky, Father Hrynioch and Stefan Bandera. In Kornberg, Mittenwald, Munich and other camps in Germany and Austria, many DPs were questioned, tortured and killed. Mittenwald had an underground torture chamber which was used by the SB until the summer of 1948. A private flat in a camp near Kornberg served for interrogations during 1946 and 1947, while, in 1949, another interrogation chamber was set up at Regensberg. In the two years to 1951, a bunker in the basement of the DPs’ hostel at Furnchstafe, in Munich, was the scene of SB torture. [Dorril, age 234-35]

Plausible Deniability

One other important piece of evidence concerning Operation Ohio comes from Miles Copeland Jr.’s 1974 book, Without Cloak or Dagger (New York: Simon & Schuster, pg. 241). I found the reference to Copeland in Christopher Simpson’s extraordinary 1988 book, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Destructive Impact on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy.16

An August 1974 review of Copeland’s book in The New York Times Book Review described Copeland as a “senior CIA officer” and a member of “‘the old boy net’… in good standing” at the time Without Cloak or Dagger was published. Simpson doesn’t mention it, but other sources state that prior to his CIA career, Copeland worked for CIC prior to his transfer to CIA’s WWII predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services.

In his book, Copeland detailed the advantages of using organized groups of refugees over individual recruits. One example he provided of such a refugee group was the “Nightingale” organization, “a near-fanatical secret organization” formed of “aging emigrés from Czarist Russia, joined by a smaller number of disillusioned Soviet Communists” (p. 239).

Copeland elaborated:

For all its headaches, the “Nightingale” program became a model for the management of fanatical emigré groups — an especially apt model for the OPC, the CIA’s clandestine-activities branch, in the days before the PPPM [CIA’s Psychological Political and Para-military Division] was taken over by the SPD [CIA’s Special Projects Division]. The OPC saw there were obvious advantages — in morale, security, and general motivation — in allowing the emigrés to work as groups rather than individuals. For one thing, their disciplines and no-nonsense handling of the occasional traitors who turned up in their midst could not have been allowed in the OPC itself. (pg. 241, material in brackets added)

Simpson felt that Copeland was, among other things, referring to the OUN and the assassinations conducted as part of Operation Ohio. Simpson’s discussion of Ohio takes place in the context of an examination of the use of assassinations more generally during the early Cold War period. The confrontation between the Soviets, fresh from a powerfully successful but still devastating conflict with the Nazis, and the U.S. and its allies, in the first five to ten years after World War II was intense and the battleground involved nearly every East and Central European country, as well as France and Italy.

Simpson described the role of the CIA in the various rebellions against Soviet rule in East Europe.

The rebellions against Soviet rule were not initiated by the agency; they exploded inside the country out of discontents that were bound to give rise to violent resistance. Still, it is clear that CIA aid sustained such rebellions longer and made them more deadly to all concerned than they might otherwise have been. Moreover, these widespread shotgun-style slayings served as cover for a smaller number of specific individual assassinations that appear to have been directly ordered by U.S. intelligence officers. [Simpson, Blowback, pg. 223, Kindle Edition]

Simpson added, “Former Nazi collaborators made excellent executioners in such instances, because of both their wartime training and the fact that the U.S. government could plausibly deny any knowledge of their activities” (Ibid.)

The killings did not begin or end with the Ohio operation. Simpson explained:

“Several such killings did take place during the late 1940s under Operations Hagberry and Lithia, both of which were approved at senior levels of the Pentagon. These two instances, furthermore, must be considered only the documented examples of a more widespread practice” (Simpson, Blowback, pg. 224, Kindle Edition).

Simpson appears to have felt most of those killed in Operation Ohio were double agents. He doesn’t mention Cakars and Osborn’s discussion about how political assassinations of suspected agents became a cover for the liquidation of political rivals, or of otherwise innocent DPs caught up in the illegal shakedowns or grudges so common at the DP camps.

Simpson wrote:

Ohio employed a squad of Ukrainian ex-Nazis to carry out at least twenty murders in a displaced persons camp at Mittenwald, south of Munich. The Army CIC and later the CIA are reported to have financed this squad for strong-arm work against double agents, Soviet spies, and similar undesirables. The fragmentary evidence still available suggests that most of the squad’s victims were double agents whose deaths—when they became public at all—were attributed to factional violence among rival right-wing Ukrainian émigré groups. [Simpson, Blowback, pg. 225, Kindle Edition]

Operation Bloodstone

One of the most amazing, and least discussed, episodes in U.S. history concerns how U.S. intelligence agencies worked with fascists after World War II as part of an alliance forged to destroy the Soviet Union. This program, known as Operation Bloodstone, was something much bigger than the otherwise well-known Operation Paperclip, which recruited Nazi scientists to work in the United States.

Bloodstone was an early Cold War, State Department and National Security Council covert program that utilized the CIA-linked Office of Policy Coordination in an operation to recruit Soviet emigrés, who could be used as spies or penetration agents against the Soviet Union. Its activities included “recruiting defectors, smuggling refugees out from behind the Iron Curtain, and assassinations.”

Bloodstone and other similar operations were summarized in a book review by Earlean M. McCarrick of Christopher Simpson’s book Blowback:

[Simpson] explores in depth the conversion of the CIC’s role from investigating Nazis to combating communism and using Nazis to do so; the CIA’s use of Nazis in its attempted coup d’etat in Romania in 1947 and in its interventions in the 1947 Greek and 1948 Italian elections; the Operation Bloodstone recruitment of Soviet emigrés from 1948 to 1950, including Nazi collaborators, for ‘political warfare’ in Eastern Europe, the Ukraine, and the Baltic states, which eventually led to sabotage and assassination operations abroad and the entrance of the CIA into [U.S.] domestic politics in the 1950s through support of ‘liberation’ groups; and the recruitment and role of [former German Army “intelligence chief for the Eastern Front during World War II,” General] Reinhard Gehlen, whose ‘organization ... left the most substantial imprint on the United States’ because its analysis of the USSR ‘became widely accepted in U.S. intelligence circles and remains so to this day’ (McCarrick, p. 52 — bracketed material and link added].

In the months and years after World War II, U.S. and UK recruitment of right-wing Ukrainian assets — themselves frustrated by the failure to construct a fascist, capitalist Ukrainian state in alliance with Nazi Germany — was the origin of an alliance that many decades later would culminate in a U.S. organized coup in 2014 in Ukraine and ultimately the current Ukraine war with the Russians.

That current Russia-Ukraine war carries the seeds of a Europe-wide war, if not a nuclear world war threatening the very existence of humanity! This is admitted even by President Donald Trump, who publicly chided Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, “You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War Three. You're gambling with World War Three….”

There is a more distal, though crucial, reason for today’s U.S.-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, which goes back decades. I am speaking here of the fact that any total overhaul of U.S. policy in Ukraine would mean the abandonment of a policy of supporting fascist and other right-wing elements within Ukrainian nationalism for the past 80 years!

Very few people, even among those who back Russia, know that an alliance between the U.S. and elements of the OUN, specifically (and temporarily) the grouping around Stepan Bandera, was forged in the chaotic aftermath of World War II in Europe.

As journalist Kit Klarenberg reminds us in an extraordinary exposé on the links between Bandera and British intelligence, “As the mainstream media has acknowledged, Bandera’s legacy endures in modern Ukraine, in the form of Neo-Nazi military units such as Azov Regiment. He also remains a venerated figure in certain quarters of the country, much to the chagrin of Kiev’s Eastern European neighbours” (bold emphasis in original).

It’s time that the full history of the ties between the U.S. and Ukrainian nationalists becomes widely known, and even more, discussed. The fate of our species may depend on obscure murders conducted by Ukrainian exiles in the displaced persons camps of World War II, murders and assassinations undertaken with the foreknowledge, and apparently the cooperation or assistance of U.S. intelligence agents lurking in the shadows, a story that has been mostly, but not entirely, suppressed in the intervening decades.

Appendix — In the DP Camps

A revealing 2020 article by Jan-Hinnerk Antons in Harvard Ukrainian Studies, the journal of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, states there were “more than one hundred Ukrainian Displaced Persons camps in the western zones of occupied Germany.”

Antons describes the chaotic postwar situation. Ukrainians who had collaborated with the Nazis, including members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), as well as other criminal Holocaust perpetrators, tried to escape the Allied policy of “forced repatriation” of nationalities at the end of the war. In fact, the vast majority of Ukrainians returned to the Soviet Union by choice after the war, many of them having been slave laborers for the German Reich, or prisoners of war. But not all wished to return.

According to Antons:

When the tide of war finally turned against Germany, many Ukrainian military men, administrative officials, and other collaborators fled with the retreating Wehrmacht, together with nationalist activists, some clergymen, and others who feared Soviet reprisals.^[8]

After the liberation of Germany, these refugees found themselves among two million Ukrainians in the western zones of occupation. About 90 percent of them went back to their homeland, many voluntarily and often for the simple reason of homesickness and in order to reunite with their families, while others were forced to do so by the Western powers following the Yalta Agreement.^[9] Of the 200,000 Ukrainian DPs who remained in the western zones of Germany beyond 1945, 30 to 40 percent were refugees who had actively left their homeland in fear of Soviet rule; and the remainder were former slave laborers who had been imported by the Germans. [Footnotes are in original article]

The displaced Ukrainians did not consist only of fascist collaborators. By far the largest amount had been either prisoners of war or slave laborers sent into Germany. Wsevolod W. Isajiw and Michael Palij described the situation in “Refugees and the DP Problem in Postwar Europe,” part of a larger volume, The Refugee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons after World War II (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1992).

Ukrainians were not the only people who fled the Red Army to the West, although, as in the case of Ukraine, the majority of refugees from other East European countries and Russia did return to their home socialist republics in the Soviet Union. Isajiw and Palin described those who refused to return:

In Western Europe (including Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland, Italy, and northern European countries), there were roughly 58,700 Estonians, 153,300 Latvians, 78,800 Lithuanians, 250,000 Ukrainians, 200,000 Poles, and 125,000 Yugoslavs (mainly Serbs and Croats). (pg. xvi)

The majority of the Ukrainian DPs were not that political. They were mostly interested in survival. Inside the camps themselves, there was a jockeying for influence and power among those who were political, and the most influential and gangster-like clique was the Bandera faction of the OUN (OUN-B).

This finding isn’t just my opinion, or taken from one source, but a robust finding across multiple researchers, as referenced throughout this essay. It’s worth documenting, as it is a history that is otherwise little mentioned today.

In the second edition (1963) of his oft-quoted book, Ukrainian Nationalism (Columbia University Press), historian John A. Armstrong briefly discussed the role of OUN-B in the DP camps. He concentrated on the split between East and West Ukrainians in the post-WWII refugee diaspora.

West Ukrainians were “the numerically dominant element” in the camps. Many East Ukrainians, that is, those remaining in the West who hadn’t joined the vast majority of Ukrainians who returned to the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic, had, according to Armstrong, lied and told occupation authorities they were from West Ukraine. This was because a number of East Ukrainians wished to avoid the forced repatriation policy agreed upon among the Allies.

According to the agreed Allied policy of forced repatriation, there was a “loophole” for West Ukrainians: “persons who had been resident in the areas annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939 or later were allowed to remain in Western zones.” This put “West Ukrainians (or those who could pass themselves off as such)… beyond Soviet power” (Armstrong, pp. 311-312, parentheses in original).

This is relevant because East Ukrainian fugitives in the displaced person camps, who passed as being from West Ukraine, were vulnerable to blackmail or extortion by certain politically ruthless West Ukrainians. The latter used their eastern compatriots’ vulnerability to “compel East Ukrainians to adhere to the nationalist cause. In some cases, it is said,” Armstrong wrote, “nationalists also resorted to violence to control the camp administrations and maintain a monopoly of propaganda” (pg. 312).

And which nationalists were involved in the resort to violence? Armstrong wrote, “Much the most active nationalist group in this regard, according to many reports, was the OUN-B….” (pg. 312, italics added for emphasis).

“Forced Repatriation”

In the aftermath of the disaster that was World War II, tens of millions of refugees crisscrossed borders to find safety and in some cases reclaim their homes. Many of these wartime displaced persons (DP) had been forcibly moved from their lands; many had been forced into slave labor in Nazi Germany. Others had been liberated from concentration camps. Some were war criminals trying to escape justice, or the vengeance of their victims.

In countries that had been occupied by the Germans, or that had been ruled by Nazi puppet regimes, many military officers, soldiers, camp guards, police, and Einsatzgruppen killers fled West to escape the wrath of the Red Army and Soviet war crimes prosecutions.

As Antons’ article at Harvard Ukrainian Studies described it:

When the tide of war finally turned against Germany, many Ukrainian military men, administrative officials, and other collaborators fled with the retreating Wehrmacht, together with nationalist activists, some clergymen, and others who feared Soviet reprisals.

After the liberation of Germany, these refugees found themselves among two million Ukrainians in the western zones of occupation.

Ultimately, according to this article, some ninety percent of the Ukrainian refugees returned to Soviet Ukraine. But approximately 200,000 remained in Germany, and they were gathered, like other ethnic or national refugees, into the majority of displaced persons camps, which dotted the German landscape across all the different zones of occupation (U.S., British, French, and Soviet), as well as a smaller number of such camps in Austria and Italy.

Antons’ estimated that 30 to 40 percent of the Ukrainian refugees that did not repatriate “had actively left their homeland in fear of Soviet rule; and the remainder were former slave laborers who had been imported by the Germans.”

In the February 1945 Yalta Agreement between the victorious great powers, it was agreed that “All Soviet citizens liberated by the forces operating under United States command and all United States citizens liberated by the forces operating under Soviet command will, without delay after their liberation, be separated from enemy prisoners of war and will be maintained separately from them in camps or points of concentration until they have been handed over to the Soviet or United States authorities, as the case may be, at places agreed upon between those authorities.”

This forcible repatriation of both U.S. and Soviet citizens — “forcible” because the policy was enforced by force if necessary by the military police of the occupying powers — became a sore point at the very beginning of the Cold War. While the repatriation of captured U.S. personnel was non-controversial, there were anti-communists among those who had been imprisoned by the fascists, or had resided in lands occupied by the fascists. Not least among these were the Ukrainian, Polish, Baltic, or members of other nationalities that had sided with the Nazis or their puppet governments.

The Yalta Agreement had also provided that military authorities from both the U.S. and the Soviet Union would “without delay inform the competent authorities of the other party regarding citizens of the other contracting party found by them.” Both sides were to take all “necessary steps to implement” the agreement on repatriation of citizens. Moreover, each side was to allow the other’s representatives “the right of immediate access into the camps and points of concentration where their citizens are located” in order to facilitate their repatriation.

To summarize, while they were a minority of all displaced persons after the war, there were former citizens of the Soviet Union who did not want to be sent back home. This included those who had fought with the Nazis in their armies, and hard-core anti-communists, and members of political parties that opposed Soviet rule.

Americans know very little about the titanic struggles and upheavals that engulfed Europe, especially Russia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, after the Russian Revolution. The Second World War, and its aftermath both continued and accelerated these battles. Events in that part of the world, including in Russia and Ukraine, still echo the conflicts of that time.

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As described below, the list of declassified biological warfare (BW) agents in this update roughly doubles the amount of BW agents as compared with the initial publication of this article. The amount of new material is so large that I felt it merited republication. If you have saved or bookmarked the original version of this article, you may wish to replace it with this post.

The amount of pathogens studied as possible biological weapons, such as we understand it today, is daunting to contemplate. The U.S. Army did not stint in investigating the most horrible and deadly or incapacitating bacteria, viruses, fungi, or other biological agents.

During the years of the U.S. military program to research new methods to conduct biological warfare, essentially from 1942 to 1969, the various viruses and bacteria experimented upon or tested were often referred to by top secret code names. Only those “read in” to the BW program — mainly scientists and military officers at the Chemical Warfare Service (later known as the Army Chemical Corps), the Air Force, and the CIA — knew what the obscure code letters referenced.

Today, most of these code names have been declassified, but it’s difficult to find a list of all these code names and their referents in one single place. I thought it would be apropos to collect these now declassified descriptors.

The initial form of the list below was once posted as an appendix to an earlier article I wrote. It seemed a shame to bury such important reference material that way, so I am publishing it, with a major new update since original publication, as a stand-alone post. Feel free to bookmark it, print it, share it, or even repost it yourselves (with a link back to this article, please).

One caveat: this list cannot, unfortunately, be considered definitive. This is due to the still classified nature of much of what was the U.S. BW research and weapons programs. As I come across more code names or cryptonyms, I will add them to this article, so it may be useful to check back in from time to time to see if I’ve added anything new. Readers who have further information or relevant links, please leave them in the comments section of the online version of this article.

Update (March 6, 2026)

This update adds many new code names, substantially increasing the number of BW agents identified by once classified code names. The 30 or so added items include disease agents for Smallpox, African Swine Fever, Hog Cholera, and Yellow Fever., among others. I found the codenames in a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) report, “Archives Search Report (ASR): Operational History for Potential Environmental Releases: Fort Detrick,” dated June 16, 2014. See pages 33-38.1

The Army COE report originated with a tasking from U.S. Army Environmental Command and the U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Detrick in August 2010. The request followed significant public concern about the kinds of biological and chemical agents that may have been released at Fort Detrick in the process of research, development, testing and evaluation of such agents during and since World War II. (Until 1956, Fort Detrick was known as Camp Detrick.)

According to the COE report, BW testing was limited at Detrick itself.

BW testing using agents and simulants that mimicked an agent included small scale laboratory tests and tests within enclosed chambers located inside buildings. Larger-scale open-air field tests conducted at Detrick were limited to use of BW simulants or a limited amount of anti-crops agents. Army installations located elsewhere provided large-scale production facilities or field locations for pathogen tests. Investigators Tests conducted with the pathogenic agents included bacteria, rickettsia, viruses, fungi, or toxins derived from living organisms.

Following WWII, the mission remained essentially the same even as the Army renamed the organization the Biological Warfare Laboratories (BWL), U.S. Army Biological Laboratories and variations thereof and upgraded the post designation to Fort Detrick in 1956. In the 1940s-1950s, the Army increased the size of the installation, which currently covers 1,153.13 acres on four non-contiguous parcels: the built-up main post (Area A), a field test grid (Area B) and separate water and sewage treatment plants on the Monocacy River (Area C). [Pages ES-1 to ES-2]

Other Areas of Biological Testing and Development

“Large-scale production facilities or field locations for pathogen tests” and production outside Detrick included the Vigo Ordnance Plant in Indiana (World War II only); the Horn Island Testing Station in Mississippi; and the Granite Peak Installation, some 250 square miles of remote desert, part of the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.

Usually ignored in histories of U.S. biological weapons testing was the fact that both the U.S. and Great Britain used the Canadian military’s Suffield Experimental Station facilities in Alberta to test biological agents and munitions. Opened in 1941, the Suffield complex extended over 2,600 square kilometers (1000 square miles).

Joint use of Suffield’s testing grounds was part of a tripartite agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Great Britain on BW testing during World War II. The agreement was renewed during the early Cold War and testing continued on agents developed at Detrick for many years, as I described in a June 2024 article.

Besides the sites listed above, some BW testing took place at U.S. Air Force sites. In June 2000, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory released a “Report of Investigation: The Presence of Biological and Chemical Warfare Materiel at AFMC Bases Within the United States.” Like the COE report, this very interesting investigation also followed an environmental review of BW activities at a number of existing and former military sites. In this case, the targeted sites for examination belonged to U.S. Air Force Materiel Command. Two bases were identified that had or may have had BW testing on their grounds: Wright Air Development Center in Ohio, and Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

Code Names for Biological Agents

The various biological agent code names are presented below in alphabetic order, as found in Rexmond Cochrane’s, November 1947 monograph, “Biological Warfare Research in the United States,” Volume 2, pp. 518-519, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers June 2014 report, “Archives Search Report (ASR): Operational History for Potential Environmental Releases: Fort Detrick,” pages 33-38.

Items marked with an asterisk reference additional BW agents as discussed in Weapons System Evaluation Group [WSEG] Report No. 8, “An Evaluation of Offensive Warfare Weapons Systems Employing Manned Aircraft, Enclosure ‘E’, Characteristics of Anticrop Agents, Munitions, and Weapons Systems”, pg. E-32. Also, I have included a few code names for chemical agents that are often seen in scattered documents that discuss biological weapons and agents.

The March 2026 updated or added BW agent codes are integrated into the article’s original list below, and are marked by a double dagger marker: ‡

African Swine Fever — Code “FW”‡
Agents injurious to rice — Code “II”
Anthrax — Code “N”
Aspergillus fumigatus — Code “AF”‡
Bacillus atrophaeus aka B. globigii — Code “BG” [“Its original and still most prominent use is as a surrogate organism for pathogenic B. anthracis [anthrax], beginning in the U.S. bio-weapons program….” (link)]
Blastomyces brasiliensis, aka Paracoccidioides brasiliensis — Code “LB”‡ (causes Paracoccidioidomycosis, which presents with lung, mouth, and throat lesions
Botulism — Code “X”
Bovine Diarrhea — Code “BV”‡
Brown Spot of Rice — Code “E”
Brucellosis — Code “US”
Chikungunya Virus — Code “KG”‡ (incapacitating mosquito-transmitted disease)
Cholera — Code “HO”
Coccidioides, aka San Joaquin Valley fever — Code “OC” [Note that the fungus that causes the infection known as San Joaquin Valley fever is known as Coccidioides immitis, which Detrick gave its own agent code: “CI”‡]
Colorado Tick Fever — Code “UA”‡
Corynebacterium diphtheriae — Code “DX”,‡ this is the bacterium that causes diphtheria
Dysentery aka Shigella dysenteriae — Code “Y”
Eastern Equine Encephalitis — Code “ZX”‡
Experimental Agent, generic — Code “EA” [The acronym may also have stood for “Edgwood Arsenal,” and usually described chemical compounds. Examples include EA 1729 and EA 3528 for LSD; EA 1701 for VX nerve gas; and EA 2277 for the incapacitating agent BZ (link).]
Feathers as Agent Carrier* — Code “M1”
Foot and Mouth Disease — Code “OO”
Fowl Plague & Newcastle Disease — Code “CE” (alternate code for fowl plague was Code “OE”‡, and for Newcastle Disease, Code “NI” and sometimes “NC”‡)
Glanders — Code “LA”
Hog Cholera — Code “OH”‡
Influenza — Code “DE”‡
Japanese Type B Encephalitis — Code “AN”
Late Blight of Potato — Code “LO”
Mass Culture of Spores — Code “AU”
Melioidosis, aka Whitmore’s Disease — Code “Hi”
Monkey Virus — Code “MB”‡
Mussel Poisoning — Code “SS”
Neurotropic encephalitises — Code “NT”
O’nyong-nyong virus (ONNV) — Code “ON”‡ (a sometimes fatal mosquito-borne disease)
Plague — Code “LE”
Plant Growth Regulating Substance — Code “LN” [There were a number of subtypes of these; for example, 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) was codenamed “LN8”]
Poliomyelitis (Polio) — Code “RO”‡
Psittacosis, aka “Parrot Fever” — Code “Si”
Q Fever — Code “OU”‡
Rabies — Code “KS”
Rice Blast — Code “IR”, also “LX”‡
Ricen Toxin — Code “RT”‡
Rickettsiae — Code “RI”
Rift Valley Fever — Code “FA”‡
Rinderpest — Code “R” or “GIR 1”
Rye Rust — Code “SX”‡
Salmonella aka Salmonella typhosa — Code “ZO”‡
Sclerotium Rot, aka Southern Blight — Code “C” or “Co”
Scrub Typhus — Code “MH”‡ [Caused by Rickettsia tsutsugamushi, aka Orientia tsutsugamushi, transmitted via mite or chigger bite, can have serious complications]
Shellfish Poison — Code “TZ”
Smallpox — Code “ZL”‡
Sporotrichum schneckii aka Sporothrix schenckii — Code “OY”‡ (causes the skin infection, Sporotrichosis)
Staphylococcal Enterotoxin B — Code “PG”‡ (causes food poisoning)
Stem Rust*, aka cereal rust, specifically Puccinia graminis tritici (causes disease in cereal crops, wheat, barley, triticale) — Code “TX”
Tularemia — Code “UL” [Note: “Pasteurella tularensis (Strain 425)” had its own code: “JT”‡; another code for it appears to have been “TT”‡]
Typhus — Code “YE”
Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis — Code “LS”, also “NU”‡
Vesicular exanthema of swine virus (VESV)2 — Code “EK”‡
Vesicular Stomatitis — Code “ET”‡ [Affect primarily horses and cattle, usually non-fatal
Western Equine Encephalitis — Code “EV”‡
Yellow Fever — Code “OJ”, or “OI”‡ if referring to the pathogen with mosquito vector
Zinc Cadmium Sulfide — Code “FP”‡ (a florescent particle used “to provide a visual count of aerosol particles” suspended in a BW aerosol cloud)

Portions of this article were adapted and updated from an earlier article originally published as “Secret Report: US Military Approved Offensive Use of Biological Warfare on Enemy Agriculture in World War 2,” published at Medium.com on May 14, 2018. An updated version was published at Hidden Histories on April 11, 2025.

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Before my research was published last year, neither American nor Japanese historians recognized that the Hanford Engineering Works (HEW) in southern Washington was the target of a persistent, intentional Japanese attack during the final year of World War II. This operation involved "Fu-Go" high-altitude balloons, a secret weapon developed by the Japanese Imperial Army’s Noborito Research Institute. Supporting the effort were several senior members of Japan’s infamous biological warfare department, Unit 731.

Established in 1942, the Hanford project consisted of some 600 square miles bordering the Columbia River northwest of Richland and Pasco, Washington. Previous studies of Japan’s Fu-Go attack either ignored the balloon assault on Hanford, or claimed that only a few balloons had flown by or into the Hanford complex. As documented below, there were many dozens of such balloons, which carried incendiary bombs and in some cases possibly biological agents, flying over or landing in Hanford. The assault was a matter of much concern for defense and HEW officials.

The Hanford Engineering Works was the site where the world’s first large-scale nuclear reactors were constructed. As part of the U.S. Manhattan Project’s urgent effort to develop atomic weapons, HEW extracted plutonium—the fissile material used in the Trinity test, the first atomic bomb detonation on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico. The same facility also supplied the plutonium that powered “Fat Man,” the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945.1

All told, the U.S. spent over $2 billion (in 1945 dollars) to, among other things, build three secret cities to house the scientists and workers for the atom bomb project: Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford Camp, Washington, otherwise known at the time by their code names, Site Y, Site X, and Site W, respectively.

The Manhattan Project was top secret. Even the thousands of workers and technicians who were recruited to work at Manhattan Project sites did not know the ultimate aim of their work. Military police patrolled all areas. Access to the sites was regulated and carefully watched. The U.S. press was recruited to voluntarily participate in newspaper censorship surrounding the facilities. The same kind of voluntary censorship by the press was also used to stifle contemporary reports of the Fu-Go balloon attacks.

Japanese Intelligence Use of Open Source Materials

In this article, I will consider how Japanese intelligence agents, utilizing open source materials — primarily U.S. newspapers — could have quite easily determined that something very big and very special was being organized at Hanford. They could have done this by steady perusal of the major newspapers in the Pacific Northwest.

Ken Kotati’s 2009 study, Japanese Intelligence in World War II, is one of the few authoritative books to have been published in English on Imperial Japan’s intelligence efforts. According to Kotani, Japan’s intelligence services had few human intelligence sources in the United States.

“The information sources of these [U.S.] activities were mainly analysis of newspapers and journals — except for SIGINT [Signals Intelligence], most of the information collected against the United States was based on such open sources” (Kotati, Japanese Intelligence, pg. 56, material in brackets added).

As a summary of some of the information in his book, in 2009 Kotani wrote an essay for Japan’s Ministry of Defense (MOD) “think tank,” the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS). The essay, “Japanese Intelligence in WWII: Successes and Failures,” also described the “information gathering” activities used by Imperial Japan’s Army and Navy, each of which had their own intelligence apparatus.

According to Kotani, besides open source perusal of newspapers and journals, Japanese intelligence also utilized agent “observation, interviews with important people, purchasing of information, human source intelligence and spy photos.” When they could, they also relied on “radio interception and [radio] signals theft.”

Even so, a chart titled “Number of Items of Intelligence and Data Gathered Between 1 October 1944 and 10 July 1945,” broken down by intelligence source, clearly demonstrates the overwhelming predominance of open-source intelligence (OSINT) in Japanese wartime collection efforts during this period. [The chart is available at Kotani, “Successes and Failures,” pg. 5.]

Out of a total of 1,484 intelligence items gathered by the 1st Operations Department of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 879 items, or nearly 60% of all items came from “open source” intelligence, primarily “magazines, newspapers and broadcasts.” Kotani elaborated: “During the war, the information section of Domei News Agency gathered the news on every country around the world daily, translated it, consolidated it and reported it to the military as hostile intelligence.” [Kotani, “Successes and Failures,” pg. 8.] It is not clear how many news sources were utilized, but they included at least the primary national newspapers, magazines and wire services.2

A full list of OSINT materials used is precluded partly by the significant fact that at the close of the Second World War, according to the website on Military Archives held by NIDS/MOD, the bulk of Japan’s military documents “were destroyed by the military at the surrender of Japan in World War II, and the rest were scattered.”

The document destruction included materials related to the Imperial Army’s Fu-Go campaign.

On 15 August [the same day Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan], Army Affairs Section ordered the destruction of all materials pertaining to the military’s ‘special research.’ First on the list was the Noborito Research Institute and its balloon bomb program. Also listed was the Kwantung Army’s Unit 731, which had conducted lethal experiments on captives to develop biological weapons. (Stephen C. Mercado, The Shadow Warriors of Nagano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army’s Elite Intelligence School, Potomac Books, 2002, p. 176. Kindle Edition, material in brackets added.)

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A Forbidden City

The Manhattan Project, the United States’ $2.2 billion crash program3 to develop the atomic bomb, was shrouded in extreme secrecy, with extraordinary measures taken to protect its classified nature. Yet, as historian Alex Wellerstein notes on his blog Restricted Data: A Nuclear History Blog, “Even during the Manhattan Project, there were copious leaks. Some small, some huge.”

Wellerstein, a professor of science and technology studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology and a leading scholar on nuclear weapons history, has written how despite the project’s intense security apparatus, significant disclosures occurred throughout the war.

Wellerstein described one of the most egregious security breaches in a 2013 article:

During World War II, the United States had a program of voluntary press censorship, coordinated by the Office of Censorship. It was, as stated, voluntary: there were no fines or threats attached to it, just stern official rebuke. It lacked “teeth”….

The worst violation came in March 1944. John Raper, a reporter for the Cleveland Press, while on vacation in New Mexico, somehow stumbled upon one of the biggest, most secret stories of the day. [Bold emphases in original]

Raper’s article was entitled, “Forbidden City: Uncle Sam’s Mystery Town Directed by ‘2nd Einstein.’” Wellerstein reproduces the entire article at his website. The entire Cleveland Press article can be read in its original form at a clipping I made at Newspapers.com.

The then-74 year old Raper had been working for the Cleveland Press since 1899. It’s not clear that his article was ever reproduced at any other newspaper, but its notoriety merited mention in the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. The article doesn’t appear to have been picked up by the wire services either, which, in any case, were adhering to government censorship policies at the time.

Imagine, however, what a Japanese intelligence agent would have thought when he read Raper’s description of Los Alamos, “a mystery city, one with an area from eight to 20 square miles…. [with] a population of between 5000 and 6000 persons, not more than probably half a dozen of whom can step outside of the city except by special permission of the city boss.”

Raper clearly stated, “the owner of this strange city is Uncle Sam….” A “Col. Somebody” was said to command the soldiers in the area, as well as being in charge of keeping the services of the city working. But “the Mr. Big of the city is a college professor, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, called ‘the Second Einstein’ by the newspapers of the west coast.” Elsewhere in the article, Oppenheimer was described as an “eminent physicist.”

According to Raper, “It is the work of Prof. Oppenheimer and the hundreds of men and women in his laboratories and shops that makes Los Alamos such a carefully guarded city.” Residents were obliged “to remain there for the duration,” and “many of them don’t know much more about what is being done than you do.”

In fact, many people worked at Manhattan Project sites for only a few months. For that matter, Hanford had trouble obtaining and keeping enough workers. One Florida newspaper even issued an October 1944 editorial complaining that HEW was stealing necessary workers from elsewhere in the country.

According to Raper, some people speculated that the secret work at Los Alamos concerned chemical weapons. Others believed that the work centered on “ordnance and explosives.” Raper said that those who believed the latter “argue that it accounts for the number of mechanics working on the production of a single device and there are others who will tell you tremendous explosions have been heard.”

Japan certainly was aware of the theoretical potential of making an atom bomb, and even had their own underfunded atomic program for a while during the war. (For more on Japan’s nuclear bomb project, see this article published at a Hiroshima news site.) It’s not clear to me that Japanese intelligence agencies were told to be on the lookout for an allied project that was also working on an atomic bomb, but it makes sense that they would have been.

As Wellerstein concluded, “if I were a spy thinking about nuclear weapons, I would find [the material in Raper’s article] a pretty interesting combination of things, and worth following up on” (bold text in original).

I think, when readers complete this article, they can say the same thing about Hanford Engineering Works.

Did the Raper article have anything to do with Fu-Go balloons that flew over or near Los Alamos sometime in early 1945? This is a hypothesis I explored in an article in September 2025.

In any case, my earlier reporting, based on a declassified “Confidential” 1950 FBI Memo from Director J. Edgar Hoover to the Assistant Chief of Staff, Military Intelligence, at the Pentagon, demonstrates that the landing of Fu-Go balloons in New Mexico during the war remains censored, or otherwise unreported, in all other histories on the subject. One high-level government consultant thought some of these balloons had carried bubonic plague.

140 Megawatts

Raper’s Los Alamos article was not the only security leak in relation to the Manhattan Project. I found some fairly egregious leaks in the nation’s press surrounding the existence of the Hanford Engineering Works. Not only were there exposé articles on Hanford similar to the one Raper wrote on Los Alamos, but from the very beginning of the establishment of the Hanford site there were a plethora of articles that pointed to the secret nature of the work done there that would have raised an intelligence agent’s eyebrow.

As early as April 23, 1943, an article in the Spokane Chronicle quoted Bonneville power plant administrator Paul Raver to the effect that a contract for 800 kilowatts of power had been signed with a “new industrial plant,” Hanford Engineering Works, forerunner of an eventual agreement to supply 140,000 kilowatts (140 MW or megawatts) for the Hanford plant. Raver refused to give any more details.

140 MW was no ordinary industrial power draw. It was a strategic-level demand, typical only of select wartime operations like aluminum smelting, large-scale chemical production, or—most tellingly—uranium enrichment and plutonium production, both of which remained completely hidden from public knowledge.

Suspicious, a spy might think. Something to monitor at the very least. The Chronicle article was openly all about meeting “war industry needs.” Then, a little over a week later, on May 2, 1943, a small article put out by the Associated Press (AP) wire service described a “government project in north Benton country in central Washington.” It was a “purely military project…. known as the Hanford engineering project,” AP reported. Moreover, AP disclosed that the project was “under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel F. T. Matthias.”

Not only did this small article help connect the dots with the Bonneville power article the month before, it revealed that Hanford Engineering Works was a “military project,” and provided the name of the military official in charge! So much for secrecy. Yet this would not be the worst of the revelations.

Two Segregated Towns in Washington State

The Hanford project was birthed in controversy. The day after the May 2 AP article, the United Press (UP) wire service reported that existing towns nearby were being evacuated by the military, and that two new towns were being built “on the army’s 400,000-acre Hanford engineering project”— “one for negroes and another for white residents.” Altogether, the two segregated towns would house some “15,000 workers needed for the huge project.”

The issue of race segregation in Hanford housing would cause a big protest. While there was plenty of racial discrimination in Washington State in the 1940s, it was not a “Jim Crow” state.

In addition, the UP article explained that new housing was also being “acquired” in the nearby town of Pasco, where “engineers, construction foremen and skilled workers” would be housed. It seems that the workforce was segregated by both race and by class, or level of employee skill, education and authority.

The issue of racial segregation, not only in housing, but at mess halls, bus transportation, etc., was addressed at a meeting of the northwest chapter of the NAACP on February 13, 1944. The next day, an article in the Spokane Chronicle (pg. 13) reported that the meeting had approved a resolution condemning the “alleged” segregation practices. Seattle attorney John Prim “was named chairman of the committee to file protests.” Prim “was the first African American to serve as deputy prosecuting attorney for King County and the first African American judge in the state.”

According to an article by Dr. Robert Bauman, “Jim Crow in the Tri-Cities, 1943–1950,”4 published in an abridged format online, the NAACP elevated the struggle against racial segregation and discrimination at the Hanford Engineering Works to a matter of national significance.

HEW was run jointly by the Army and federal contractor E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Thurgood Marshall, then “special counsel at NAACP headquarters in New York… wrote state and federal officials demanding an end to segregated buses,” Bauman wrote. “Four months later, DuPont stopped the practice.”

U.S. Army Major R.F. Ebbs, identified as HEW’s “project executive officer,” sent a letter to the meeting’s attendees. Ebbs — who we shall come across later on in this article — alibied the segregation policy. The Spokane Chronicle reported Ebbs’ argument that “separate busses [sic] and other facilities had been provided for Negroes at the request of the Negro leaders at the project.” As the controversy dragged on, no “Negro leaders” at HEW requesting the separation of races were ever identified by name. No doubt there was a lot of mistrust between blacks and the Army in southern Washington.

Evacuees

Meanwhile, an article in the May 3, 1943 issue of The Coeur d’Alene Press explained that those individuals “who formerly lived on the acres taken over by the army, some 1200 people” were “being evacuated” from their homes in the HEW area. [Warning: The following sentence includes a racist term often used during this period]. Referencing the recent incarceration of Japanese living in the United States, particularly the West Coast, the news article said many evacuees “protested they were being treated ‘worse than the Japs who were given train fare, food and living quarters.’”

In the months to come, there were many, many articles about the legal wrangling and tribulations of the Hanford site evacuees, as numerous lawsuits over the government land takeovers wound their way through the courts. In one example, a May 22, 1943 article in the Spokane Chronicle stated that the federal district court for eastern Washington would be litigating the “land condemnation suits involving the Richmond section of the Hanford engineering project” for at least another year.

Nearly four months later, on November 4, 1943, the Courier-Herald, a newspaper in Kennewick, Washington, claimed the “final chapter in the evacuation of residents from the area occupied by the Hanford Engineering Works….”

The article quoted G.R. Gochnour, who had been handling the sale of Frank Wilson’s cattle ranch “northeast of Prosser,” who “estimated that during the year he will have disposed of about $1,000,000 worth of property, much of it from the dispossessed farmers along the Hanford project.”

Issues surrounding racial segregation, including protests against it, labor problems and the animus and legal battles of those displaced by the construction of HEW would continued to surface in the press for the duration of the war. In the process, despite censorship over exactly what was being constructed or manufactured at Hanford, much “open source” information that could inform an “enemy” intelligence agency leaked out. If the Imperial Japanese Army was looking for targets for their balloon attacks on the United States, the mysterious Hanford project would have seemed a promising target.

If the articles mentioned above were the sum total of the revelations concerning HEW, then perhaps my thesis about targeting would seem somewhat tenuous. But there were a lot more examples over the months to come.

Consolidating “Restricted Area #3”

Newspaper readers could not escape the fact that the HEW project was big, really big. A May 6, 1943 article in the Spokane Chronicle (page 3) quoted the head of the mining division of the local branch of the War Production Board (WPB): “When the Hanford Engineering Works project in Benton County gets fully under way, we’re going to need every scrap of construction machinery we can dig up in this area.”

A huge project like HEW meant increasing demand for electrical power, as has been already noted. A front page article in the May 8, 1943 edition of the Spokesman Review noted that the Bonneville Power Administration planned to massively expand water storage and increase energy output by a factor of six.

The importance of the HEW project in all this was explained at the very end of the article. The Hanford project already was expected to use up “nearly half as much power as Grand Coulee [Dam] is now sending over its newly finished circuits.” The paper admitted HEW’s power needs were “an important factor in the greatly increased demand.”

The Hanford expansion also put a stress on local infrastructure, such as roads and schools. All of this made its way into the newspapers, often as small local stories. For instance, one May 1943 article in Sunnyside, Washington’s paper, the Daily Sun-News (page 1), described plans for road improvements and a new bus service to operate between the town and HEW.

The roads inside the Hanford site itself — some 600 square miles or more — were to be transferred from the relevant counties with title going to the War Department. An attorney testified in court that the government road takeover was necessary “to prevent unauthorized persons from gaining knowledge of ‘a very secret military mission,’” while also relieving the country from expanded maintenance for “the roads which are going to pieces under heavy truck travel.”

Travel on the roads was getting dangerous. A truck accident on June 22, 1943 revealed the cargo of one truck consisted of “Heavy drums of wire, bundles of iron pipe, and other parcels addressed to the Hanford engineering project….”

Other situations involved food shortages. The article screenshot below, from page 6 of the June 18, 1943 edition of the Spokane Daily Chronicle, describes a milk shortage due to the population increases from HEW and other “military installations.”

With the influx of workers came also their families, at least in some cases. More children meant more pressure upon existing schools. A June 10, 1943 article in the Spokane Chronicle (page 15) reported plans to consolidate a number of school districts in the new town of Hanford, and other nearby towns, “all within the area recently taken over by the government for the Hanford Engineering Project.”

By the fall semester of 1943, the new consolidated school district had to implement double shifts to accommodate all students (from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm, and 1:00 pm to 5:30pm). This was needed, according to a press report on September 7, “because of the influx of population due to the Hanford engineering project.”

The influx of new workers also caused a housing shortage. Workers took to placing classified ads for housing situations, as this linked example shows. Meanwhile, the government control over the area increased. A July 28, 1943 article in the Spokane Chronicle (page 5) reported that the Army had taken over the “lines and properties of the Columbia River Telephone company in the Hanford Engineering Works area.” The Army offered the company $45,525 in compensation.

Only two weeks earlier, the area around Hanford had been sealed off. On July 14, Lieutenant General J.L. DeWitt, of Western Defense Command, headquartered in San Francisco’s Presidio, proclaimed a “total exclusion area” in Hanford. As reported by the Spokane Chronicle on July 29 (page 13):

“No person,” says the order, “shall have the right or shall be permitted to enter, remain in or leave” except with permission of the district army engineer.

Any person violating the restrictions will be subject to criminal penalties....

The new restricted zone is known as No. 3.

A map of “Restricted Area # 3” was published by the same paper on August 13, 1943 (page 6), as reproduced below, and showed exactly where the the restricted zone and the new town of Hanford was located:

The “Hush Hush” Plant

Seventeen months after the order to establish “Restricted Area #3,” Hanford’s Officer-in-Charge, Colonel Franklin Matthias (the same Col. Matthias who was identified in the May 2, 1943 AP article mentioned earlier) was writing in his diary. In the diary entry for January 12, 1945, Matthias described how his local counter-intelligence chief was looking into sources “independent” of normal intelligence channels to learn more about the “balloons which had been landing in this area.” This was two months earlier than all the histories describing the Fu-Go attacks claim any balloons alighted at or near Hanford!

Besides the balloons, there were also reports about unidentified planes heard flying over the military reservation at Hanford Engineering Works. The sudden and mysterious appearance of planes and balloons meant to Hanford top officials that the site was getting a lot of unwanted attention from someone, and attention was something they did not want.

The balloons, as we know now, came from Japan, and I’ve written elsewhere about how the number of balloons that flew directly over or came down inside HEW meant that the government project had been specifically targeted by the Japanese. (We still don’t know where the planes came from, but one could speculate that they, too, represented a foreign intelligence-gathering operation.)

Years later, Walter O. Simon, Hanford’s first operations manager, told historian S.L. Sanger in a 1986 interview what he remembered about the Japanese balloon attack.

“I want to mention something else, the Japanese balloon bombs.... They were a real worry. Everybody at the plant was always looking up because of the statistical chance of one falling. I remember seeing 40 at one time going over. The Navy planes at Pasco chased them regularly but they had poor luck. Matthias and I went over to prod them about getting better protection. They never managed to shoot one down, although a number came down on the project, but away from the buildings. [p. 155]5

Why would the Japanese military target Hanford? Perhaps because newspaper reports kept touting its military importance and the need for secrecy. Sometimes the nature of the complex leaked out in the most unlikely fashion.

One example was a small article on page 8 of Salt Lake City’s Deseret News, dated December 2, 1943. The article was about a “farewell dance” planned for workers from the Utah Ordnance Plant, which was shutting down. The article mentioned that some of the workers were being “transferred” to Hanford Engineering Works, “a DuPont plant near Pasco, Wash. Future activities of this plant, now under construction, are such a secret that it has been nicknamed the ‘hush hush plant,’” Deseret News reported.

Consider also this February 12, 1944 article in The Spokesman-Review (page 9), “Hanford Secrecy of Major Import.”

Major R.F. Ebbs, army engineer, told school directors of Benton and Franklin counties today that every individual some day will be proud of his contribution to the war effort when the nature of the Hanford engineering works can be revealed.

“This is a very classified project, and this area has the highest classification restriction of any area in the United States”….

Secrecy “from all citizens” was necessary “to keep knowledge from the enemy,” the paper reported, summarizing Ebbs’ discussion.

The same article also revealed that the Army had taken over “thousands of acres of orchard lands” in the area, and had arranged for prison labor to be trucked in to “cultivate and harvest crops.” Ebbs allowed that there had been some difficulties. “The project has worked a hardship on the residents of Richland and the neighboring towns, with the relocation of families and higher taxes….”

It wasn’t only families that had been displaced. Even the dead could not escape the upheaval over the consolidation of the secret work at Hanford. A May 1944 article in Spokane Chronicle (page 15) described the necessity of relocating 177 graves from the old town of White Bluffs, “at government expense,” to make way for work at HEW.

The revelations concerning Hanford continued. On September 25, 1944, around the time I suspect target lists for Japan’s Fu-Go attacks were being finalized, a Minnesota paper, The Winona Daily News, published an astonishing exposé on the Hanford plant.

Headlined, “Workers Sought Here for ‘Secret’ Project on Coast,” the news article emphasized the “revolutionary” nature of the work taking place at Hanford. The source was Stanley S. Hammer, the “Winona area director of the War Manpower commission [WMC].”

The Winona paper said that Hammer had emphasized that “serious labor shortages” were “delaying the manufacture of certain materials of war urgently needed by our fighting forces both in Europe and the Pacific….”

“Notably among these,” said Mr. Hammer, “is the gigantic project at Pasco, Wash., being constructed by the Hanford Engineering Works for the E.I. duPont Company, the product of which is so ‘hush hush’ that not more than three persons in the entire United States know the whole story. It is said the product of this plant is so revolutionary that its use by our armed forces will help to shorten the war by months.

“Hundreds of laborers, sheet metal workers, steamfitters, plumbers, steamfitter combination welders and other construction men are needed to rush the job through to completion,” added Mr. Hammer. “The WMC has been charged with the responsiblity of supplying the necessary labor for this project, which carries a high national priority on manpower. All offices of the U.S. Employment service have been assigned definite quotas to fill and we must see that our area meets its quota.”

While Hammer had flipped the relationship between DuPont and HEW — it was DuPont who worked for the government’s HEW, not the other way around — the extraordinary secrecy about a “revolutionary” “product” to shorten the war was sure, if intercepted as part of an OSINT review, to pique the interest of Japanese military planners considering a balloon air assault on the United States.

The idea that such a balloon attack could reasonably reach the Hanford area, and hope, with multiple balloon attacks, to cause some damage (as indeed it did), is fully described in my earlier article, “Fu-Go Reconsidered: Japan’s WW2 Balloon Offensive, Unit 731, and the Manhattan Project.”

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The following article — a critical analysis of a 2009 Department of Defense Inspector General (IG) report on accusations of military use of drugs on “war on terror” detainees — is over 13 years old, but is as timely as when it was first written. The article was originally posted at Truthout in September 2012 as “New Revelations Suggest DoD Cover-Up Over Detainee Drugging Charges.”

The 2009 IG report was released via FOIA request from journalist Jason Leopold in June 2012. I’m reposting the story now because it is both an important but forgotten episode in the country’s history, and because the drugging issue was never really settled.

The article, which serves as a companion piece to a July 2012 write-up on the topic I co-wrote with Jason Leopold, is still available at Truthout. Unfortunately many of the links from the original posting have since been broken and are unusable. I have gone to some considerable effort to track down all original documents and other references to provide comprehensive working links for the benefit of readers. The links to a story like this are crucial to a full understanding of the article and all of its ramifications.

Since I wrote this piece, so far as I can tell, with only one exception, not one journalist has seen fit to follow up on the matter of DoD’s drugging of detainees. This is despite the fact that, as the article below documents, the current U.S. Army instructions on interrogations of prisoners states that drugs CAN be used in interrogations, as long as they do not “induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage” in the drugged prisoner. That’s a very liberal allowance, which could include use of drugs as diverse as morphine and LSD.

The reporting exception was an article by Jason Leopold published at Al Jazeera that described Guantanamo’s use of the anti-emetic drug Reglan (Metoclopramide) on hunger-striking prisoners at Guantanamo, who were subjected to force feeding. Not only does Reglan have serious side effects, such as depression, suicidal thoughts and tardive dyskinesia, but the FDA had given it a “black box label”, “the agency’s strongest warning.”

The work Jason and I did on the drugging issue was not entirely without effect, however. Back in 2012, the IG report and the Truthout analysis was highlighted in a number of articles after the IG’s initial FOIA release. (See here and here for examples.)

In July 2012, Physicians for Human Rights, citing the Truthout story co-written with Leopold, stated in a press release, “Declassification of the DoD report still leaves many questions about detainees’ treatment unanswered. The Inspector General for the CIA has not declassified the congressionally-mandated report regarding its own black sites, for example, where most of the worst interrogation abuses occurred. Much greater transparency is needed….”

That “greater transparency,” including from the CIA, never came. More on that below.

In 2015, an article in the journal Voices in Bioethics called out DoD’s practice of drugging detainees. The author, Joshua P. Preston, even cited my 2009 article, “By Yoo’s Own Analysis, Army Field Manual Allows Torture with Drugs,” which described how the Army created a loophole for the use of drugs in interrogation. (The link referencing my article in Preston’s essay is broken, like so many older links on the Internet. I have fixed that here.)

Whether and to what degree the U.S. military uses or has used drugs on its prisoners, particularly for the use of interrogation, I leave ultimately to the reader’s judgment. I think I have made the case very clearly.

There are a few other subsequent articles I wrote that examined aspects of the drugging controversy. In addition to the 2009 article cited above, in May 2015 I published an article examining documents the CIA released in relation to the charges of drugging prisoners in the “war on terror,” at black sites, etc. The CIA, of course, denied such charges. In addition, they never seem to have undertaken an Inspector General investigation into the charges, as they were instructed by Congressional request. Hence, their response to the drugging charges was dubious from the start.

However, as the story on the CIA showed, drugs used in combination with CIA interrogations were not always psychoactive in nature. For instance, as I wrote in the May 2015 article, there is concrete evidence that the CIA used blood thinners on a black site detainee, Abu Ja’far al-Iraqi. The purpose? To prolong torture as long as possible.

According to the 2014 Senate Select Committee Report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, al-Iraqi “was shackled in the standing position for 54 hours as part of sleep deprivation, and experienced swelling in his lower legs requiring blood thinner and spiral ace bandages…. After the swelling subsided, he was provided with more blood thinner and was returned to the standing position” (p. 149, bold emphasis added).

If blood thinner had not been used, CIA doctors working for its Office of Medical Services, who were monitoring the CIA “enhanced interrogations,” might have stopped the sleep deprivation torture after two-and-a-quarter days (!) for fear that permanent damage or even death might result from untreated swelling in the man’s legs. The blood thinner allowed the “sleep deprivation” to continue.

I’m putting sleep deprivation in quotes, because the CIA’s use of sleep deprivation was no simple denial of sleep. It was an omnibus technique that merged together a grotesque assembly of torture techniques. As I wrote in 2009, in the CIA’s “‘enhanced interrogation’ version of sleep deprivation, forced sleep deficit was combined… with shackling, forced positions and forced standing, humiliation, manipulation of diet, sensory overload, and possibly other torture procedures.”

Every day the U.S. introduces new atrocities and crimes into the world. Whether it’s the kidnapping of a foreign leader, the arming of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the starvation blockade imposed on socialist Cuba, the fascistic attacks of ICE in American cities, or daily threats to attack Iran, it is difficult to keep up with it all. As a result, it’s easy for past crimes and atrocities to be forgotten in the slip-slide of passing history. This reposting is an effort to stanch such societal amnesia.

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Two new revelations, and a critical analysis of the recent Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General (IG) report on the drugging of DoD-held detainees, reveals a cover-up of such drugging by the Pentagon and possibly other government agencies. [Here is an alternate DocumentCloud PDF link to the report.]

A recent attorney's affidavit charges that at least one Guantanamo detainee was involuntarily drugged before his plea hearing at the military commissions. In addition, a declassified Guantanamo medical standard operating procedure (SOP) describes how scopolamine was administered to all detainees rendered to the US Cuban-based prison. Scopolamine has a long history as a supposed “truth drug.”

The IG report held that it could not find evidence that detainees were administered “mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogation of detainees.” However, as reported in a July 2012 article at Truthout, which obtained the report by the Freedom of Information Act, the IG held that some detainees had been drugged with powerful antipsychotics and other medications that “could impair an individual's ability to provide accurate information.”

Some of these detainees were interrogated even though they were “diagnosed as having serious mental health conditions, and being treated with psychoactive medications on an ongoing basis,” the IG said.

The IG also concluded that some detainees had been involuntarily administered drugs as “chemical restraints ... used to control behavior or restrict the patient's freedom of movement.” In addition, at least one prisoner, supposed “dirty bomber” José Padilla, held in isolation at a Navy brig in South Carolina, was tricked into believing he had been given a “truth drug.”

But while the IG report was spurred by a June 2008 Washington Post article reporting a number of former detainees' complaints of drugging and a subsequent letter to the IG from three US senators, the IG report never interviewed any of the detainees mentioned in the Post story.

The IG interviewed only three detainees, all of whom were still held at Guantanamo. “We did not attempt to interview detainees who had been repatriated,” the IG stated, which would include any of the detainees who had previously made public statements to the press that they had been forcibly drugged.

Drugs Placed in Detainees' Food

One of the detainees making such accusations was former Australian detainee David Hicks. Hicks detailed those charges in a book published last year [2011], Guantanamo: My Journey. The book is not for sale in the United States and the Australian government went to court to seize any profits Hicks could make from book sales in Australia.

In July 2012, the Australian government dropped its case against Hicks. Possibly this was because of revelations that could have come out in court over Hicks' torture in US custody.

One such document that had been prepared for by Hicks' defense team has been released. According to an affidavit by New York attorney Josh Dratel, who represented Hicks with military commission authorities, DoD “periodically sedated [Hicks] for non-therapeutic reasons.”

A military prosecutor in Hicks' case confirmed one example of such drugging to Dratel in July 2007.

“David says the guards forced him to eat a meal which contained a sedative before you read him the charges,” Dratel said he told the government prosecutor. To which the latter replied, “That was done to protect the officers reading the charges from any of the detainees' reactions."

Dratel's affidavit was first reported by Natalie O'Brien at the Sydney Morning Herald. Truthout has obtained a copy of Dratel's affidavit, which can be downloaded.

Human rights attorney and contributing editor to Harper's Magazine, Scott Horton, told Truthout, “The administration of drugs for non-medical purposes on prisoners held in wartime raises very serious issues under the Geneva Conventions — which establish a presumption that such use of drugs is generally unlawful and may rise to the level of a grave breach, or war crime — as well as other international agreements."1

“The disclosure surrounding Hicks appears at first blush to be a criminal violation by US authorities,” Horton said, “but it would be important to ascertain the reasons the US had for doing this before making any final judgment.”

An Australian senator from South Australia has said that the new revelations backing Hicks' claims of forced drugging mean the government “can no longer put off” a formal inquiry into Australia's role in Hicks' incarceration and treatment by US authorities.

Scopolamine Patches for Rendition

While it has been assumed that some sort of medication was given to detainees who were subjected to the Bush-era program of extraordinary rendition, an October 2003 nursing SOP declassified a few years ago documented the use of scopolamine patches on all detainees rendered to Guantanamo.

The SOP describes the sequential steps of medical in-processing on all detainees. Only at step ten are nurses instructed to “remove the scopolamine behind each ear (used to prevent airsickness during transit)” [see PDF pg. 141 at link].

The stated rationale for the use of scopolamine — that is, for airsickness — is not repeated for other medical instructions in the SOP, including the administration of two other drugs during in-processing, mefloquine and Albendazole, raising questions as to why nurses had to be informed of the use of the scopolamine patches.

A separate SOP for “Out-processing Procedures” for detainees being flown out of Guantanamo Bay prison camp (revised July 2005) states, “A scopolamine patch will be placed on each detainee 4 hours before the flight” out of Cuba. [See PDF pg. 42 at link.] There is no indication that any medical reasons might contravene this procedure.

The IG report on drugging of detainees never mentioned the use of scopolamine.

While DoD has studied scopolamine patches for motion sickness in military personnel, they are not the first-line medication used by DoD for this purpose. As far back as 1956, a military study complained that scopolamine “gave the most distressing side effects of all the prophylactics used. For continued use, meclizine was the most satisfactory.”

US Army psychiatrist, Brigadier General Stephen Xenakis (retired), confirmed military policy as regards medications for motion sickness.

“Military doctors recommended meclizine for motion sickness during my career & not scopolamine because of the side effects,” Xenakis told Truthout. “I have seen psychotic reactions to the drug," he said.

At times, the military has noted the effectiveness of scopolamine for some people in treating motion sickness. One NATO study described scopolamine's “high variability between subjects in both effectiveness and incidence of side effects” [pg. 8-10]. The side effects included lowered heart rate, blurred vision, impaired attention and alertness, and memory problems.

According to US Coast Guard instructions on "Antimotion Sickness Medications," the scopolamine patch is contraindicated in patients due to variability of effectiveness and associated medical precautions for some users. Scopolamine patches "should be used only after other methods of motion sickness control have proven unsatisfactory," the Coast Guard directive states [pg. 4].

The Coast Guard instruction, still in effect today, further states, "Uncommon but potentially severe side-effects [of scopolamine] include disorientation, hallucinations, and urinary retention."

Scopolamine has a very long history of consideration as a potential truth drug, going back over 80 years. Readers of 1960s military thrillers may remember discussion of the drug for interrogations in old Alistair MacLean novels. [Other dangers associated with scopolamine, including its use in rendering crime victims insensate — and there are tens of thousands of these cases worldwide, where the drug is often labeled “Devil’s breath” — is covered in this article at Drugs.com. — JK]

According to a CIA account, the drug was ultimately rejected for use as a "truth drug." The reasons given for such rejection are interesting given the later use of the drug on "war on terror" detainees.

"Because of a number of undesirable side effects, scopolamine was shortly disqualified as a 'truth' drug," the 1961 CIA document states. "Among the most disabling of the side effects are hallucinations, disturbed perception, somnolence, and physiological phenomena such as headache, rapid heart, and blurred vision, which distract the subject from the central purpose of the interview. Furthermore, the physical action is long, far outlasting the psychological effects" [pg. A-3].

According to government documents, scopolamine was one of a number of drugs, including mescaline and LSD, which were investigated as part of a US Navy research program called Project Chatter. Chatter ran from 1947 until 1953 and "focused on the identification and testing of such drugs for use in interrogations and in the recruitment of agents." [See also this website for information on “Chatter.”]

Mefloquine as “Pharmacological Waterboarding”

The nursing SOP that mentioned scopolamine was first noted by Army public health physician Remington Nevin in an August 2012 article in a peer-reviewed medical journal examining DoD's purported medical rationale for another use of another drug, mefloquine.

The “empiric” use of mefloquine — an antimalarial drug that has long been controversial for its serious neurological and psychological side effects — on all incoming detainees at Guantanamo was the subject of a series of Truthout articles by Jason Leopold and this author.

Mefloquine has been connected to a number of serious side effects, including damage to the vestibular system, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, hallucinations, bizarre dreams, nausea, vomiting, sores, and homicidal and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The drug was previously sold under the brand name Lariam.

Nevin told Truthout in December 2010 that the high dosage of mefloquine Guantanamo detainees were forced to take upon arriving at the prison facility was akin to “pharmacologic waterboarding.”

In Nevin's article for the August 2012 edition of Tropical Medicine and International Health, he wrote, “the troubling possibility that the use of mefloquine at Guantánamo may have been motivated in part by knowledge of the drug's adverse effects ... points to a critical need for further investigation to resolve unanswered questions regarding the drug's potentially inappropriate use.”

As in the case of scopolamine, the IG report never mentioned the use of mefloquine.

Limiting the Investigation

One reason scopolamine, mefloquine or even the drugs put in David Hicks' food were never mentioned by the DoD inspector general was that the investigation was carefully limited to the purported use of "mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogations."

The IG report states that its report was a response to “a tasking to the Inspector Generals of DoD and the Central Intelligence Agency from Senators Biden, Hagel and Levin.” DoD's IG does not reproduce the April 24, 2008, letter from the senators, though an online version of the letter still extant at TPM Muckraker [archived site] clearly describes the tasking precisely.

"We are deeply concerned about the allegations reported in the April 23rd Washington Post article entitled “Detainees Allege Being Drugged, Questioned regarding the alleged use of drugs on detainees to facilitate interrogations,” the senators wrote. “They are the most recent in a series of allegations relating to the abuse and mistreatment of detainees in United States custody.”

Pointing out as well that John Yoo, working for the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), had apparently approved of the legality of "the forced administration of mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogation," Sens. Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel and Carl Levin wrote, “The allegations reported in the Washington Post article warrant a thorough investigation by the Inspectors General of the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency.”

The letter twice mentions the use of drugs “to facilitate interrogations,” but the 2008 Washington Post article, written by Joby Warrick, did not limit itself to the use of drugs during interrogations. Warrick explained, “Other detainees, in interviews or in statements provided by their attorneys, described pills and injections being forcibly administered for reasons that were not always clear to them.”

But an analysis of government documents shows that the dichotomy between using drugs to facilitate interrogations and using drugs to shape the detention environment are not counterpoised.

In a “Background Paper on the CIA's Combined Use of Interrogation Techniques,” sent to the OLC in December 2004, the CIA explained that detention conditions “may be a factor in interrogation.”

The CIA document noted, ‘Detention conditions are not interrogation techniques, but they have an impact on the detainee undergoing interrogation” [pg. 4, PDF pg. 5].

The DoD's own 2003 Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures describe the detention environment to which incoming prisoners are to be exposed. New prisoners are to adhere to a “Behavioral Management Plan” for at least the first six weeks, whose purpose is to “enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process. It concentrates on isolating the detainee and fostering dependence of the detainee on his interrogator.”

While the 2003 SOP never mentions the use of drugs to “enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization” of detainees, certainly the use of drugs such as scopolamine and mefloquine, among others, could help accomplish this purpose, and do so without technically being used to “facilitate interrogation.” This would be one purpose, for instance, of Yoo's argument for the use of mind-altering drugs.

The DoD IG never mentions Yoo or his recommendation in their report. Nor do they mention that the current Army Field Manual (AFM) on interrogation2 allows for the use of drugs for interrogation-related purposes.

The AFM, revised in 2006, states that the only drugs forbidden for use are those "that may induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage." The earlier version of the AFM had prohibited drugs that caused "chemically induced psychosis" [pg. 1-8], but this language was dropped in the new manual.

Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale told Truthout that no further changes have been made to the AFM since its last rewrite in 2006, meaning the changes in drugging prohibitions still stands.

CIA and the Drugging of Detainees

The DoD IG report was clear it was not addressing charges of CIA drugging, which was to be investigated by the CIA Inspector General. Truthout has filed a FOIA request for the CIA IG report. [The CIA ultimately did release some documentation on this, and I wrote up an analysis in May 2015. — JK]

Claims of the CIA's use of drugs on detainees rendered to its secret black site prison and “enhanced interrogation” torture program have been the subject of foreign investigations, even as in the United States, the DOJ has closed the book, it claims, on prosecuting CIA crimes.

But the truth about what was done under the CIA's program has leaked out over the years. In terms of its use of drugs, at Harper's Horton reported in November 2010 that German prosecutors told him that torture victim Khaled El-Masri, himself a German citizen who was kidnapped and rendered to a CIA prison in Afghanistan, had been given drugs by CIA jailers.

”By studying El-Masri's hair and skin samples,” Horton wrote, German prosecutors “were able to confirm allegations that he was drugged and subjected to a bizarre starvation regimen.”

The investigation into the illegal CIA kidnapping was shut down after a deputy US ambassador intervened with German Foreign and Justice ministry officials to register Washington's disapproval of any prosecution of its CIA torturers, according to cables released by WikiLeaks.

“I expect this would have figured in the prosecution that the German prosecutors were preparing before the United States shut down the case through threats and political manipulation,” Horton told Truthout.

Historically, the CIA had approved the use of drugs in interrogations and to influence detention conditions that bear upon interrogation. In a declassified interrogation manual from the early 1960s, the CIA explained that the function of using drugs, “is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation” [pg. 100].

”Once this shift has been accomplished,” the manual reads, “coercive techniques should be abandoned both for moral reasons and because they are unnecessary and even counter-productive” for interrogation purposes.

Special Operations Command and the IG Report

In an interesting aside to the IG report, a letter to the DoD Inspector General from Col. William Melendez, deputy director for intelligence, US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) noted that USSOCOM “cannot agree or disagree with the report findings” because its forces involved in any interrogations in Iraq and Guantanamo were under authority of Central or Southern military commands (CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM, respectively). The letter was included in an appendix to the IG report itself.

According to Colonel Melendez, SOCOM “did not contribute to the completion” of the IG report, raising questions as to what degree Special Operations forces' interrogation practices were investigated by DoD's inspector general.

Speaking of the recent reports concerning the drugging of detainees, Horton told Truthout: “The new evidence points to the use of drugs for nonmedical purposes as a far broader practice, which is troubling. It is hard to imagine this practice being undertaken without high-level authorization, particularly because it is at least arguably illegal, and the medical personnel involved would not likely have risked their professional licenses without getting some formal assurances that they would be protected.”

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During the years of the U.S. military program to research new methods to conduct biological warfare (BW), essentially from 1942 to 1969, the various viruses and bacteria experimented upon or tested were often referred to by top secret code names. Only those “read in” to the BW program — mainly scientists and military officers at the Chemical Warfare Service (later known as the Army Chemical Corps), the Air Force, and the CIA — knew what the obscure code letters referenced.

Today, most of these code names have been declassified, but it’s difficult to find a list of all these code names and their referents in one single place. I thought it would be apropos to collect these now declassified descriptors.

The material below was once posted as an appendix to an earlier article I wrote. It seemed a shame to bury such important reference material that way, so I am publishing it, with a few updates since original publication, as a stand-alone post. Feel free to bookmark it, print it, share it, or even repost it yourselves (with a link back to this article, please).

One caveat: this list cannot, unfortunately, be considered definitive. This is due to the still classified nature of much of what was the U.S. BW research and weapons programs. As I come across more code names or cryptonyms, I will add them to this article, so it may be useful to check back in from time to time to see if I’ve added anything new. Readers who have further information or relevant links, please leave them in the comments section of the online version of this article.

Code Names for Biological Agents

The various biological agent names are presented below in alphabetic order, as found in Rexmond Cochrane’s, November 1947 monograph, “Biological Warfare Research in the United States,” Volume 2, pp. 518-519.

Items marked with an asterisk reference additional BW agents as discussed in Weapons System Evaluation Group [WSEG] Report No. 8, “An Evaluation of Offensive Warfare Weapons Systems Employing Manned Aircraft, Enclosure ‘E’, Characteristics of Anticrop Agents, Munitions, and Weapons Systems”, pg. E-32. Also, I have included a few code names for chemical agents that are often seen in scattered documents that discuss biological weapons and agents.

Agents injurious to rice — Code “II”
Anthrax — Code “N”
Bacillus atrophaeus aka B. globigii — Code “BG” [“Its original and still most prominent use is as a surrogate organism for pathogenic B. anthracis [anthrax], beginning in the U.S. bio-weapons program….” (link)]
Botulism — Code “X”
Brown Spot of Rice — Code “E”
Brucellosis — Code “US”
Cholera — Code “HO”
Coccidioides, aka San Joaquin Valley fever — Code “OC”
Dysentery — Code “Y”
Experimental Agent, generic — Code “EA” [The acronym may also have stood for “Edgwood Arsenal,” and usually described chemical compounds. Examples include EA 1729 and EA 3528 for LSD; EA 1701 for VX nerve gas; and EA 2277 for the incapacitating agent BZ (link).]
Feathers as Agent Carrier* — Code “M1”
Foot and Mouth Disease — Code “OO”
Fowl Plague & Newcastle Disease — Code “CE”
Glanders — Code “LA”
Japanese Type B Encephalitis — Code “AN”
Late Blight of Potato — Code “LO”
Mass Culture of Spores — Code “AU”
Melioidosis, aka Whitmore’s Disease — Code “Hi”
Mussel Poisoning — Code “SS”
Neurotropic encephalitises — Code “NT”
Plague — Code “LE”
Plant Growth Regulating Substance — Code “LN” [There were a number of subtypes of these; for example, 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) was codenamed “LN8”]
Psittacosis, aka “Parrot Fever” — Code “Si”
Rice Blast — Code “IR”
Rickettsiae — Code “RI”
Rinderpest — Code “R” or “GIR 1”
Sclerotium Rot, aka Southern Blight — Code “C” or “Co”
Stem Rust*, aka cereal rust, specifically Puccinia graminis tritici (causes disease in cereal crops, wheat, barley, triticale) — Code “TX”
Tularemia — Code “UL”
Typhus — Code “YE”

This article was adapted and updated from an earlier article originally published as “Secret Report: US Military Approved Offensive Use of Biological Warfare on Enemy Agriculture in World War 2,” published at Medium.com on May 14, 2018. An updated version was published at Hidden Histories on April 11, 2025.

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Recently it occurred to me that I should have made a Freedom of Information Act request for the declassification of certain communications intelligence (COMINT) intercepts by the Armed Forces Intelligence Agency (AFSA). I have now corrected that oversight, and am filing a FOIA to obtain certain old decrypted radio intercepts.

The documents in question consist of communications that the U.S. Army’s surveillance spooks overheard as North Korean and Chinese military units discussed the effects of being attacked by U.S. biological weapons (BW) during the Korean War. AFSA was renamed the National Security Agency (NSA) in November 1952. North Korea goes by the official name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Excerpts from AFSA and NSA radio intercepts were decrypted and analyzed in a series of top secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports during the war. These were later released into the public domain in 2010. These COMINT excerpts, along with the accompanying CIA analysts’ commentaries, were the source of my 2020 article, “‘A real flood of bacteria and germs’ — Communications Intelligence and Charges of U.S. Germ Warfare during the Korean War,” which was reposted with some editorial emendations at Hidden Histories last December.

When I drafted my FOIA request to the NSA, I revisited the original CIA documents that became the centerpiece of my investigation into the 1950s biological warfare charges. I expected to make a request for 28 raw intercept transcriptions, but as I carefully matched the CIA COMINT reports with each AFSA or NSA file that it was linked to, I saw that there were not just 28 such intercept documents, which would have matched the 28 CIA reports I had found referencing biological warfare. There were thirty-nine!

That’s because approximately one-third of the CIA reports drew upon multiple AFSA/NSA raw intercepts. As a result, the amount of COMINT (or signals intelligence) evidence potentially available to back up the China and the DPRK’s charges of U.S. germ warfare just grew by about 33%.

Yeah…. how could I have originally overlooked that? I can only say that being a researcher is sometimes a humbling experience. My oversight is a good example of why old documents must be read numerous times to ferret out all the information they offer.

“The enemy dropped bacteria”

In the screenshot of one of the top secret CIA COMINT reports pictured above, section 9 of the report, dated 29 February 1952, is labelled, “KOREA. North Koreans order precautions against alleged bacteriological warfare.” (Italics are printed as underlined text in the original.)

The CIA’s summary of the report related how a “North Korean battalion commander” had received orders to “take special precautions to avoid contamination of his unit’s food and water because ‘the enemy dropped bacteria’ in central Korea.” In this section I will examine more closely the kind of information in this COMINT report that stimulated my FOIA to the NSA.

The words quoted by the CIA — “the enemy dropped bacteria” — come verbatim from the intercept transcript provided by AFSA to its military and intelligence customers. The same for the other quoted material, e.g. “spies are putting poison into the drinking water.”

The date of the AFSA intercept that stated “the enemy dropped bacteria” was apparently 27 February 1952, as is stated in the report’s text. But, in a parenthetical tag to the section, the CIA detailed the AFSA report date as 28 February. The added day between the intercepted communication and the write up by AFSA can probably be attributed to the need to translate the intercepted communication. It seems logical, then, that the dates for all of the 28 reports I had gathered were for AFSA/NSA’s English translations of the COMINT material.

All the 28 CIA COMINT documents, as well as 11 other contemporary CIA intelligence reports from the Korean War that reference the issue of China and DPRK’s biological warfare charges, are available at this link.

As regards the meaning of the AFSA intercepts quoted in the 29 February CIA report reproduced in part above, the intercepts show that, presumably, the North Korean battalion commander’s military superiors had found it important to notify officers in affected areas that they should be aware of the BW attacks and take appropriate defensive measures.

This is not the time and place to comprehensively analyze the truth value of the intercept material, but it does seem highly unlikely, given the immense strain of a life-and-death battle against the U.S., Republic of Korea, and allied troops, including a massive bombing campaign by the U.S. Air Force, that a battalion commander would be told to waste his time taking “special precautions” for a non-existent BW threat.

Nor is it likely that such communications were performative propaganda displays meant to mislead some ill-defined audience in the West, or convince U.S. and allied troops. For one thing, the Communist military unit or units involved could not even know their communications were intercepted. It is worth noting as well that both Chinese and DPRK military commands put some effort into frustrating U.S. attempts to intercept their communications. Why would they do that if they wanted to be heard, as some sort of means of spreading false BW propaganda? For more reasons pertaining to the authenticity of the COMINT material, I direct readers to the “The Enemy Dropped Bacteria” article mentioned earlier.

The CIA analysts propose in their 29 February report referenced above that the BW precautionary measures were likely “inspired by a message” that AFSA intercepted on 16 February. This earlier intercept described unidentified North Korean or Chinese military personnel notifying unspecified units or officers that “spies” were poisoning “drinking water.” These “spies,” or undercover agents, were also described as “distributing paper which caused death to ‘anyone using these papers for the nose.’”

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Agent “X”

It sounds like tissue papers or napkins or other forms of paper had been contaminated with some kind of poison. Given its supposed lethality, I hypothesize it was botulinum, a poison that the U.S. and its ally, Canada, had been experimenting with. The severe disease it produces is well-known as botulism.

Use of botulinum bacteria as a biological weapon was an early project of the U.S. biological warfare program in World War II. I have previously shown that “By 1945, anthrax and botulinus produced at secret facilities in Vigo, Indiana and the Army biological and chemical weapons complex at Camp Detrick, Maryland could ‘fill 500,000 bombs per month.’” Botulinus, the deadly neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, was codenamed agent “X.”

Additionally, in December 1947, top Canadian biological warfare scientist, Dr. Guilford Reed, who research unit worked closely with the Americans, wrote a paper for Canada’s Defence Research Board’s Biological Warfare Research Panel. Entitled “The present position of Bacteriological Warfare - a Brief Review,” Reed bragged that botulinum toxin worked better than any chemical gas.

He further revealed:

“Methods have been developed, through pilot plant stage, for the productions of types A and B toxin in semi-purified form… it has a long storage life… Satisfactory air-borne clouds of [botulinum] toxin have been produced in the laboratory and fairly extensive field trials have been carried out with the toxin dispersed from small aircraft bombs.”1

The 29 February CIA report is an example of a COMINT report that drew upon two AFSA intercepts. One was identified as originating from “501st Comm Recon Group [Communications Reconnaissance Group] Korea, 15RSM/6456” on 16 February 1952. This must be the intercept about the spies poisoning water and paper. The other intercept was dated 28 February 1952, and has the identifier “SUEDE AFSA-251, 1547Z.” — “SUEDE” was a top secret, compartmentalized secrecy code. “AFSA-251, I speculate, may have been the name of the AFSA unit involved in the intercept. I don’t know what “1547Z” refers to. In any case, we have here one report, and two intercepts.

A Retrospective Search for Truth

Interestingly, in the 29 February 1952 CIA report I have been examining in detail, the CIA analysts do not deny the Communist BW charges. They only make the observation that, supposedly, there was “no evidence a serious health problem exists in North Korea.” Of course, these analysts cannot really know the health status across all of North Korea during the war. My guess is that this is what the analysts were told or briefed.

Yet only months before, on 30 March 1951, an anonymous military source told Associated Press that ‘soldiers and civilians in Red Korea are dying by the thousands of smallpox, typhus and typhoid.... putting far more Red soldiers out of action than United Nations shells and bombs.’”

The latter charge sounded like absurd propaganda when I first read it, and it likely was. My point is that with U.S. information swinging wildly when it came to the documentation of disease in North Korea during the period of alleged biological warfare, it is very difficult to parse out exactly what the effect of the BW campaign was. Analysis of that would likely have taken months, and the results kept closely guarded by select units of the Air Force and the U.S. Army Chemical Corps. Hence, a retrospective search for the truth of what was going on can only be enhanced by getting copies of the relevant raw intelligence data, now 74 years old.

As I explained in my FOIA request letter to the NSA, there is a precedent for releasing such raw intelligence intercepts. In 1994, historian Richard Breitman, in an effort to more fully document Germany’s extermination campaign against European Jewry, and other victims, made a FOIA request for “all German records decrypted [decoded] by the Allies and still held by NSA.” Ultimately, as a result of this request, “some 1.3 million pages of material stored in 1,440 large archive boxes” were declassified and released to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, including the formerly classified radio decodes.

The newly declassified material was very helpful in understanding how the Holocaust unfolded, and the role of the German Order Police (Ordnungspolizei) in the massive killing campaign. It also demonstrated that United Kingdom and U.S. officials had a good idea of what the Germans were doing as regards the Jews from quite early on. See Richard Breitman, Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew, Hill and Wang, New York, 1998, pgs. 236-237.2

Given the glacial response to government FOIA requests from spy agencies these days, I wish I had made my request on the AFSA/NSA intercepts back when I started the Korean War BW research project. Who knows if I will even still be around this world when the request gets fulfilled — if it gets fulfilled. But I am fairly sure that there is still much to be found in unreleased and still classified material from the Korean War period.

When Breitman began his own FOIA request in the late 1990s, the still classified Nazi World War II documents he sought were themselves already over 50 years old! My FOIA request is for documents now 74 years old. It is difficult to know why any of it should be classified at all.

I have never made a FOIA request to the NSA before. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised. I have had some good luck with FOIA requests over the years, and some not-so-good luck. Part of the fun (and sometimes, frustration) of doing this usually oh-so-serious research is seeing how such interactions with government agencies unfold.

Evidentiary Significance

Astute critics of my work have pointed out to me that the CIA COMINT documents, and possibly the intercepts they are based upon, are not conclusive evidence of U.S. use of biological weapons in the Korean War. But these critics never address this evidence in the context of a welter of corroborating evidence accrued over the years, for which the COMINT documents, and hopefully the originating intercepts upon which they are based, are really the cherry on top of the evidence sundae.

The corroborating evidence for U.S. use of biological weaponry during the Korean War includes: the March 1952 “Report of the Commission of the Medical Headquarters of the Korean People’s Army on the Use of Bacteriological Weapons”; the information and witnesses examined by a group sent by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers in March 1952; an extensive examination of evidence and witnesses undertaken by the International Scientific Commission, led by British scientist Joseph Needham, which visited DPRK and China in summer 1952; statements by FBI officials; statements by UK BW officials; the 5 April 1952 report from the headquarters of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, “Concerning the Comprehensive Situation of the Enemy’s Bacterial War and Use of Poisonous Gas, 28 January to 31 March 1952,” portions of which were reproduced in Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman’s 1998 book, The U.S. and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea (and in an article I posted awhile back); statements by U.S. flyers published by the People’s Republic of China; and much, much more.

On the other hand, what is the evidence against use of BW by UN forces? There are many official U.S. denials. In addition, there are both alleged Soviet and Chinese documents that claim to have uncovered a conspiracy to falsify biological weapons attack. These documents were examined by two U.S. Cold War scholars, Milton Leitenberg and Kathryn Weathersby, and the rather incurious media and small-time academics have acted as an echo chamber for these scholars’ claims.

I recently published a three-part series that analyzed the alleged Soviet and Chinese documents (Part One, Part Two, Part Three). While I can never know if Leitenberg and Weathersby and their followers published their BW “debunking” essays because they believed in their own biased opinions, or because they were purposely disingenuous, or some other reason, the fact remains that the documentary record they propound was gravely flawed.

For one thing, their documents lacked provenance. In fact, only one person has ever seen the original Soviet documents that claim a conspiracy to falsify BW attack. But even if authentic, the documents’ claims are self-contradictory, often preposterous, lack internal and external validity, and are at odds with other available evidence from contemporary sources, such as newspapers of the time, or now declassified government documents.

To this day, neither Leitenberg nor Weathersby, nor any historian or journalist citing their work positively, has ever addressed the evidence I (and, separately, author Nicholson Baker) have put forward in relation to the COMINT reports. That’s not just an oversight — it’s deliberate obfuscation.

The fact that there appear to be 39 AFSA/NSA intercepts — at a minimum — adducing U.S. use of biological weapons against China and North Korea stimulated an amusing association for me. The number “39” recalled for me the great Hitchcock spy film, “The 39 Steps.” As a treat for my readers, below is a link to watch the final minutes of the film, when “Mr. Memory” answers the fatal question, “What are the 39 Steps?”

My question for the NSA is: “What’s in the 39 intercepts?”

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“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” — The Guardian, January 11, 2026

Dorothy: How was he hit, Petra?
Petra: Someone shot him from a window, they say. I don’t know. That’s what they told me.
Dorothy: Who’d shoot him from a window?
Petra: Oh, they always shoot from windows at night during a bombardment. The fifth column people. The people who fight us from inside the city.
Dorothy: But why would they shoot him? He was only a poor little work man.
Petra: They could see he was a working man from his clothes.
Dorothy: Of course, Petra.
Petra: That’s why they shot him. They are our enemies. — “The Fifth Column,” Ernest Hemingway, 19381

Like many people, I have been shocked and shaken by the vehemence of Donald Trump and Kristi Noem’s anti-immigrant campaign, the latest example of which is the carnage unleashed by ICE and other government forces in and around the city of Minneapolis. The worst example was the shooting of 37-year-old mother, Renee Nicole Macklin Good, on January 7 by ICE officer Jonathan Ross. The non-profit newsroom, ProPublica, recently documented “over 40 cases of [ICE] agents using chokeholds and other moves that can block breathing.” There are tons of videos of vicious ICE and other federal agent attacks on unarmed civilians.

At the same time as all this, we have been witness to a storm of intense U.S. aggression abroad. While Trump threatens to send troops to invade Minnesota, Venezuela, and Greenland, he is already bombing or bombed Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. In addition, Trump vaguely threatens some kind of economic or military attack on Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, Panama, and Colombia, all while supporting Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. (Trump’s “ceasefire” agreement in Gaza is a total sham.)

Meanwhile, at the same time as all this was unfolding, and seeking some kind of diversion from Trump’s expanding dystopia, I happened across a work of Ernest Hemingway’s written about the Spanish Civil War. The work, a 1938 play entitled The Fifth Column, was new to me, which is saying something as I am now 71 years old.

The play dramatizes the work of Communist and other loyalists fighting against fascists in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. The work was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in a 1938 anthology by Hemingway, “The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories.” The play itself was not performed professionally on stage until The Mint Theater gave it a run in Spring 2008.2

The play is usually portrayed as an obscure, if lesser predecessor to the better-known Hemingway novel on the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls. But I think the work, which moves the civil war action from FWBT’s Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range to the urban environs of Madrid, deserves to be considered on its own merits. I think the play offers some real and sobering potential lessons for U.S. leftists facing an escalation of rightwing government oppression and terror, should our worst nightmares and fears come true. Or is that time already here?

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What we learn in the play: the fascist forces are not small. They may not be the majority but they are significant in size. They have motivated actors, some of whom can exhibit bravery in what they see from their side as an existential struggle. Fighting them is not easy. The fascists’ tactics are brutal and deadly. A struggle against an opponent like this is relentless and calls upon all the resources a free people can muster, and still take a huge physical and psychological toll.

As an example, consider the selection from the play excerpted at the head of this article, or the following brief passage:

Antonio: There are plenty of fascists left in a town of 1 million people, and they work inside. Those who have the courage to. We must have 20,000 active here.
Philip: More. Double that. But when you catch them, they won’t talk. Except the politicians....
Antonio:... I have seen many die, and I have never seen a politician die well. [pg. 45]

Philip Rawlings the play’s main character, a counter-intelligence agent for the Spanish Loyalist government, who is working closely with the Communist Party (CP). He has arrived in Spain after fighting for some unspecified time earlier in the revolutionary struggles that occupied Cuba in the mid-1930s. He is evidently a committed revolutionist.

The Spanish CP itself was allied with the Loyalists in the struggle against Franco’s fascist forces, called the Falange, while the latter were themselves allied with the Nazis and Mussolini’s fascist Italian government. Opposing the fascists were the Soviet-backed Loyalists and a collection of various leftists and progressives gathered from around the world, fighting a vicious war against the fascists, and sometimes an interfactional war among themselves.3

During this period the U.S. government, led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, declared a policy of nonintervention in Spain’s civil war, and placed an arms embargo on both sides of the conflict. As Andreu Espasa wrote for The Volunteer, a blog associated with the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, “No matter how you look at it, the Roosevelt administration made a crucial contribution to the victory of Spanish fascism.”

Moreover, Espasa wrote, “Some of the later US-sponsored interventions in Latin America would prove to be disturbingly similar to Hitler and Mussolini’s ‘Spanish model’: support for local reactionary militaries in overthrowing a democratic government by invoking the ghost of communism and social revolution.”

The “Donroe Doctrine”4

The U.S. has never, under any president, given up its claims to control Latin America. Trump’s brazen attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, and his equally outrageous seizure of Venezuelan oil, and his consequent threats against Cuba, are only the most recent escalation of a U.S. policy that uses assassinations, coups, black ops, sanctions, and outright military attack to subdue Latin American sovereignty and deliver the entire hemisphere into U.S. control.

The struggle against imperialist attack has not left a single Latin American regime untouched. At various times the U.S. has attacked or intervened in Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Guayanas, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay. It’s an amazing and mind-boggling record of subversion, utilizing everything from torture and death squads to military coups and crushing economic sanctions.

As regards sanctions, the U.S. government’s criminality is off the charts. As Mark Weisbrot wrote in the Los Angeles Times in July 2025:

Venezuela experienced the worst depression, without a war, in world history. This was from 2012 to 2020, with the economy contracting by 71% — more than three times the severity of the Great Depression in the U.S. in the 1930s. Most of this was found to be the result of the sanctions.

Right now the struggle in most countries against U.S. escalatory dominance has found Venezuela and Cuba with few effective allies. Gone are the days when the Soviet Union could act as a counter-balance to U.S. or other Western aggression. Nor has China shown that it has the appetite to take on the United States by funneling military arms and advisers to the countries suffering under constant and increasing U.S. attack.

But back in the 1930s, the Soviet Union provided financial, military and specialist help to the fledgling Spanish democratic government when it was attacked by Francisco Franco. This wasn’t just a coup or attack from the outside. Franco had mobilized a right-wing fascistic reaction inside Spain itself that opposed the Loyalists progressive government, and the agrarian revolts and labor unrest and social reforms it supported, albeit sometimes only half-heartedly.

Spain was experiencing a social revolution, and the fascists had mobilized traditional society, including colonialist troops from abroad, to crush it.

The Spanish Civil War was the great leftist cause of the late 1930s. It seemed as if the struggles over communism, socialism, capitalism, fascism, economic depression and reactionary nationalism all had come to a head in Spain. The struggle drew men and women like Hemingway, George Orwell, Pablo Neruda, Martha Gellhorn, W.H. Auden, Andre Malraux, and llya Ehrenburg to directly fight or otherwise assist in its cause.

To Fight or Escape

The tension in Hemingway’s play comes from the psychological toll the war against fascist operatives and sympathizers takes on those leading and organizing the fight, as well as those who must carry out the orders necessary to defeat the determined fascists.

At one point in the play, Philip gives voice to a powerful inner fatigue from the constant struggle. A comrade then reminds him what the fight is all about:

Antonio: You’re a good boy. You work well. Everybody trust you very much.
Philip: Too bloody much. And I’m tired too, and I’m worried right now. You know what I’d like? I’d like to never kill another son-of-a-bitch, I don’t care who or for what, as long as I live. I’d like to never have to lie. I’d like to know who I’m with when I wake up. I’d like to wake up in the same place every morning for a week straight. [pg. 44]

The theme resonates throughout the work, as Philip struggles to keep up the fight.

Philip: I’ve been doing this so long I’m bloody well fed up with it. With all of it.
Max: You do it so every one will have a good breakfast like that. You do it so no one will ever be hungry. You do it so men will not have to fear ill health or old age; so they can live and work in dignity and not as slaves.
Philip: Yes. Sure. I know.
Max: You know why you do it....

[There is the incoming scream of a shell and the sound of its burst in the street. You hear a child scream; first high, then in short, sharp, thin cries. You hear people running in the street. Another shell comes in. Philip has opened the windows wide. After the burst you hear the sound of people running again.]

Max: You do it to stop that forever.
Philip: The swine! They timed it for the minute the cinemas are out.

[Another shell comes in and bursts, and you hear a dog go yelping down the street]

Max: You hear? You do it for all men. You do it for the children, and sometimes you even do it for dogs. (pg. 79, italics and bracketed material in the original)

I certainly don’t need to tell the people of Minneapolis what they are up against. The bitter experience of military occupation and police oppression are providing them lessons that can never be forgotten. But like naifs unwilling or unable to see what the lessons of history tell us about modern civil conflict, the American people in the large have their heads like ostriches in the ground. It may very well be Trump’s lasting legacy to violently rip their necks away from their comfortable hiding spots and teach them the sanguine lessons of class warfare.

Hemingway is not unaware, in times of intense social struggle, of the enticements of escapism, in particular escapes which draw upon the privilege available to sections of the middle class and intelligentsia, of people like Hemingway himself. In “The Fifth Column,” he places the voice of escapist, apolitical romanticism in the person of the play’s main female character, Dorothy Bridges, Philip’s main love interest. (The character is said to have been drawn upon that of Hemingway’s then-lover, war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, but I wonder about that as Gellhorn was a brave and committed writer.)

Dorothy is responding to Philip’s war fatigue, but her proffered fantasy has a political point.

Dorothy: Philip, don’t you want to have a long, happy, quiet life at someplace like Saint Tropez or, you know, someplace like Saint Tropez was and have long walks, and go swimming and have children and be happy and everything? I mean really. Don’t you want all this to end? I mean, you know, war and revolution? [pg. 26]… We’ll just live somewhere where it’s lovely and you’ll write.... Novels and articles in a book on this war perhaps.

Philip: Be a pretty book. Might make it with - with — you know — illustrations.

Dorothy: Or you could study and write a book on politics. Books on politics sell forever, someone told me.... You could study and write a book on dialectics. There’s always a market for a new book on dialectics. [pg. 27, italics in original]

Not every one who fights in a civil war, much less a smaller sort of civil conflict, has the PTSD symptoms Philip appears to have. His situation is made more intolerable because of the toll taken by his counter-intelligence assignment and dirty work, which Hemingway hints could include some pretty vigorous interrogations in response to the torture meted out to the Loyalists or Communists captured by the Fascist Falange.

“I can’t ever talk to any one,” Philip states, as he complains to Dorothy about the impact of his work. Her reply is redolent of the kinds of interventions mainstream psychology have been giving partisans of liberty and rebellion in capitalist society for generations. “But darling,” she says, “that’s just an inhibition. You could go to an analyst and have that fixed in no time.”

But there was no fixing the terrible price demanded by major battles and torture and deaths in the struggle in Spain over fascism vs “democracy,” over the rule of a minority elite vs the rule of the workers and peasants. People were shot in such battles. They lost their minds in such battles. They lost limbs. Relationships were torn asunder. Reality itself, and one’s very sanity, was tested to the extreme.

A Mirror Into the Future

Trump is not the first authoritarian in U.S. history. His colonial adventures and crimes are not the first either. But they are the ones that present themselves today. Their dangers are specific to this time and place. The ruling elites backing Trump are taking a real chance that his constant aggressions will not trigger civil war.

And if they do trigger civil war, I fear the dangers and bloodshed will be something unimagined since the 1860s U.S. Civil War, or at least since socialist author Jack London conjured up the savagery of such a conflict initiated by the U.S. capitalist class in his 1908 novel, The Iron Heel.

What would a real civil war in the United States look like? Hemingway’s portrait of Madrid in the midst of the Spanish Civil War of the late-1930s just might be a mirror into our future.

Hemingway’s hero, befitting his place as a middle-class radical thrown into a revolutionary life-and-death struggle, is portrayed as an isolated figure, cut off from the anodyne aspects of his pre-revolutionary life. This becomes clear by the end of the play, when Philip ends his romance with Dorothy. They revisit one last time the fantasy of escape.

Philip: And have you ever been out to the Sans Souci in Havana on a Saturday night to dance in the Patio under the royal palms? They’re gray and they rise like columns and you stay up all night there and play dice, or the wheel, and drive into Jaimanitas for breakfast in the daylight. And everybody knows everyone else and it’s very pleasant and gay.
Dorothy: Can we go there?
Philip: No.
Dorothy: Why not, Philip?
Philip: We won’t go anywhere.
Dorothy: Why not, darling?
Philip: You can go if you like. I’ll draw you up an itinerary.
Dorothy: But why can’t we go together?
Philip: You can go, but I’ve been to all those places and I’ve left them all behind. And where I go now I go alone, or with others who go there for the same reason I go.
Dorothy: And I can’t go there?
Philip: No.

Jack London’s vision is even darker, it seems to me. In his dystopian novel, the struggle against the forces of political darkness seems almost hopeless.

London wrote his book as an inspired, and frightening, warning to the working class. Unfortunately, less than ten years later, he turned social-patriot and supported the Allied side in the incredibly bloody world war of 1914-1918. Even so, his portrayal of the ascendance of the fascistic “Iron Heel” is chilling.

And through it all moved the Iron Heel, impassive and deliberate, shaking up the whole fabric of the social structure in its search for the comrades, combing out the Mercenaries, the labor castes, and all its secret services, punishing without mercy and without malice, suffering in silence all retaliations that were made upon it, and filling the gaps in its fighting line as fast as they appeared. And hand in hand with this, Ernest and the other leaders were hard at work reorganizing the forces of the Revolution. The magnitude of the task may be understood when it is taken into — [Jack London, The Iron Heel, Chapter XXV]

The fictional Everhard Manuscript, which forms the bulk of the novel, breaks off abruptly in the middle of its final sentence. There is some irony in the fact that the main character of the novel, who fights the “Iron Heel” fascist dictatorship, is named, like Hemingway, Ernest. Ernest Everhard. His last name telegraphs just how difficult our future struggles will be.

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“Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” — Article 14(1), Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 1948

Reporter Libby Dee with News Nation: How long does your administration plan to pause asylum into the US?

President Trump: I think a long time.

Dee: Can you, can you give any kind of time? What’s a long time?

Trump: We don’t want those people. We have enough problems. We don’t want those people.

Dee: Is that a year or two years?

Trump: No time limit. But it could be a long time. We don’t want those people. Do you understand that?…. Let me just tell you something. We don’t want those people. Does that make sense? You know why we don’t want them? Because many of them are no good and they shouldn’t be in our country.

— White House YouTube account, November 30, 2025 (Begins at 6:05)

At the very beginning of the 21st century I began working part-time with a torture treatment center in San Francisco, California, which provided services to refugees seeking political asylum. As a psychologist, I provided both psychotherapy and psychological evaluations for attorneys working in the immigration courts for asylum applicants. This was low-fee, pro bono type of work.

The evaluations were conducted in order to substantiate the asylum seekers’ claims of persecution and the existence of a “well-grounded fear” of further torture and/or persecution if they were returned to their country of origin. I provided testimony regarding my findings, subsequent to a “voir dire” process that authenticated I was an “expert witness” in immigration court.

In the process of doing this work, I met men and women from many countries, and had the opportunity and privilege to hear their stories, usually in harrowing detail. As I recall, I worked with immigrant, asylum-seeking clients from (as a partial list) all of Central America, except Costa Rica, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt, Jordan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Krygyzstan, China, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Myanmar, India, Iraq, Bosnia, the Philippines, Fiji, etc.

There were also clients who were essentially stateless, having grown up in various refugee camps in different parts of the world (e.g. Tibetan camps in India, Palestinian camps in Jordan).

Lest one thinks that the countries listed above were uniquely involved in political persecution and torture, from my experience there very few countries I know of that have totally eliminated torture either as a means of interrogation or social control, or both. That is true even as the majority of countries in the world are signatories to the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture (CAN) treaty.

As an aside, I want to point out that only a few years ago the UN agency that enforces the CAN treaty found that the United States was in violation of the UN torture ban. The U.S. had been in violation of the treaty since George W. Bush implemented his rendition to torture program, sending detainees to CIA black site prisons and to Guantanamo. Under the terms of the U.S. Army Field Manual for interrogation, the U.S. remained in violation of portions of the CAN treaty under the Obama, Biden and Trump administrations. I believe it remains so today in the second administration of Donald J. Trump. (You can read the full UN Committee Against Torture report here; it makes sobering reading.)

Meanwhile, political persecution is escalating in the West, where, for instance, those who protest against Israel’s acts of genocide in Gaza are themselves pursued, arrested and their protests suppressed. (See, for instance, this December 23, 2025 CNN story on the arrest of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was accused of violating Britain’s Terrorism Act “for holding a sign that said ‘I support the Palestine Action prisoners. I oppose genocide.’”)

A Dire Situation

A number of people I saw in my work with the torture treatment center were referred for psychological evaluations by attorneys because their asylum clients had failed to fulfill a one-year deadline for applying for asylum. This deadline, an add-on to asylum law in the late 1990s, meant that a person had exactly one year from their last entry into the United States to file for asylum, or authorities would not process their application. In many cases, the applicant had not been informed of the one year timeline.

One year may sound like a long time to most people, but for many refugees fleeing government oppression, and/or dealing with the psychological consequences of torture, the idea of approaching government officials in the United States, or even being in contact with police or uniformed guard personnel, was overwhelming.

The depression, anxiety and trauma symptoms endured by those fleeing their countries often led to social withdrawal and practical immobility. Such severe psychological states did not necessarily abate in one year. My job was to assess whether the circumstances of their persecution or torture was consistent with a behavioral reluctance or inability to address the one-year deadline.

While news stories relate the legal and political aspects of the controversies over immigration and asylum, very rarely do we get to hear the voices of the asylum applicants themselves. Instead the media is dominated by the voices of government authorities and billionaire oligarchs, who demagogically accuse migrants and asylum seekers of destroying Western nations’ racial identities.

Towards the close of this article, I will attempt to give voice to some of the experiences my clients described to me.

The situation for asylum seekers around the world is dire. In Europe, there is an even stronger reaction against asylum applicants than there is in the U.S. Even though the U.S. has had a very imperfect system, it still allowed asylum for many people fleeing persecution for their political or religious beliefs, or their mere existence in one or another oppressed group, or from chaos and gang violence that their own country was unable or unwilling to ameliorate, from sexual slavery and trafficking, from gender violence, from political oppression for their union activism, from torture and death threats and home invasions and bombings.

Technically, of course, the U.S. still accepts asylum applications and awards asylum to migrants deemed to meet U.S. requirements. But the path to the grant of political asylum becomes harder and longer with each passing year. And now, for who knows how long, Donald Trump has slowed down asylum grants to a trickle.

Over the years millions have fled to the United States, which promised refuge when other states closed their borders to them. The irony that many of the countries applicants had fled from had governments that were allies of the United States, and even had police and military forces trained by U.S. Special Operations, the CIA, and/or USAID, was not lost on me.

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“A sense of hopelessness”

When I began my work with asylum seekers, I could see the system was already near broken. A May 2001 story in Migration News, a mainstream outlet funded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the University of California-Berkeley Center for German and European Studies, highlighted the capriciousness of the system:

The Los Angeles Times on April 15, 2001 profiled an asylum application filed by Tialhei Zathang, a math teacher from Chin state in Myanmar, near the border with India. In an echo of an earlier series in the San Jose Mercury News, the story emphasized that a foreigner's chances of winning asylum depend greatly on which of the 219 immigration judges considers the application: 20 judges granted asylum in more than 30 percent of their cases, and 69 approved fewer than 10 percent of the asylum applications.1

A few years later, in 2008, Michele Benedetto wrote in the Brooklyn Law Review:

Legal scholars, appellate judges, practitioners, and even the former United States Attorney General have expressed growing concern regarding the status of the immigration court system. As Judge Richard Posner noted in 2005, the adjudication of cases by immigration judges has “fallen below the minimum standards of legal justice.” Later that year, the New York Times reported that federal appeals courts “repeatedly excoriated” immigration judges for a “pattern of biased and incoherent decisions” (pg 468-469)….

Increasing reports of biased or incompetent conduct on the immigration bench raise particular concerns about the ability of the immigration court system to properly adjudicate cases. But these pervasive ethical problems also present an unparalleled opportunity for reform. (pg. 523)

But that reform did not come. Instead things have gotten even worse, until now we are faced with the near collapse of the asylum system itself, under special attack by the Trump Administration.

Just a few weeks ago, on December 7, the San Jose Mercury News reported, “Under the Trump administration, the Bay Area’s two immigration courts are rejecting asylum claims at double the rate as under the previous administration, as federal officials fire immigration judges, push to clear case backlogs and vow deeper vetting of asylum seekers.”

As an example, denial of asylum cases in the San Francisco and Concord, California immigration courts have more than doubled since the demise of the Biden Administration.

Mercury News reporter Ethan Varian explained:

Immigration experts attribute the sharp rise to new restrictions on asylum eligibility imposed by the Trump administration as part of its sweeping immigration crackdown. They also cite administration pressure on courts to process more asylum cases to reduce a massive backlog, even as federal officials summarily fired dozens of immigration judges nationwide.

The changes have created “a sense of hopelessness” among applicants, said Milli Atkinson, director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the San Francisco Bar Association. “But more than that, there’s a sense of fear.”

Today, after attacks by the Obama, Biden and Trump administrations, applicants still wait years for their cases to be settled. Trump’s attack on the machinery of political asylum did not appear out of nowhere. The acts of earlier administrations are documented.

In every case, the Obama administration has argued that it can deport asylum-seekers without any oversight or review from the federal courts. This practice deprives asylum-seekers of their constitutional right to challenge their deportation orders in federal court. — ACLU Staff Attorney Terry Ding, June 2015

“The Biden administration continues to prioritize optics and political expediency at the expense of thousands of people who are attempting to exercise their legal right to seek asylum.” — Avril Benoît, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) USA Chief Executive Officer, June 2024

Nevertheless, the political battles over the right to political asylum have not all been lost. As an October 23, 2024 press release by The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) explained, a federal appeals court recently ruled in favor of the right of asylum seekers to come to the U.S. border and ask authorities for political asylum. A so-called “metering” program had been initiated during the Democratic Party administration of Barack Obama. This “metering” was meant to curtail what was claimed to be a crush of asylum applicants at the U.S. border. The policy was challenged by “Al Otro Lado, a nonprofit legal services organization assisting migrants on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and numerous individual asylum seekers harmed by the policy.”

CCR described the rare victory:

Today, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals largely affirmed a lower court decision that held unlawful the government’s systematic turnbacks — or “metering” — of people seeking asylum at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border. Since at least 2016, the government has prevented individuals at the border from accessing the U.S. asylum process through metering, as well as intimidation, coercion, physical abuse, and other tactics. Vulnerable families, children, and adults have been pushed back and left stranded in precarious conditions in Mexico, where migrants routinely fall prey to violence and exploitation.

The Mathematics of Asylum

There are definite benefits to being provided asylum. First and foremost is the sense of safety it provides to those who receive it. But there are material benefits, too.

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), when a person is granted asylum they are legally allowed to work in the United States. They can “immediately apply for an unrestricted Social Security card.” They can “request derivative asylum status” for their spouses and children. After a year, they can apply for permanent U.S. residency (a Green Card).

How many are actually granted asylum? According to the KFF website, in 2023, 54,350 people were granted political asylum. The site had other statistics worth noting:

About a quarter (26%) of those receiving affirmative asylum were children ages 17 years and younger while the remaining nearly three in four were adults ages 18 and older, who were primarily under age 35. Over four in ten (44%) were female while 55% were male.¹ The leading countries of nationality for asylees included Afghanistan (27%), China (9%), Venezuela (7%), El Salvador (6%), India (5%), and Guatemala (5%). However, these data are incomplete because, as of October 2024, over 90% of asylum cases filed in FY 2023 were still pending with only 2% being granted approval due to immigration backlogs. [Footnote and link in original]

What about the hundreds of thousands, even millions now, who are waiting for their cases to be decided? Those still waiting for adjudication of their asylum cases are not necessarily granted the right to work in the U.S. While the majority of such asylum seekers have usually, until recently, been granted temporary right to work permits, according to a December 4, 2025 article in The New York Times, “As of June, about 434,000 asylum seekers and about 24,000 people granted asylum [still] had pending applications for work permits, according to the latest government data.”

Without the ability to get work, and without government benefits, how do these hundreds of thousands of individuals survive? Many live the most miserable of marginal lives, residing in church basements, relatives’ garages, or homeless shelters, existing on handouts and food bank distributions.

As recently December 31, 2024, “there were 1,446,908 affirmative asylum applications pending with USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services],” according to the American Immigration Council (AIC) (see table below).

The incoming Trump administration made this intolerable situation even worse, as it fired immigration judges and in general attacked the entire asylum system, culminating in Trump’s recent “pause” of all asylum decision-making, demagogically connecting his decision to the tragic shootings of two National Guard soldiers in Washington D.C.

After eight months of the Trump Administration, the situation for asylum seekers has become increasingly untenable. According to the TracImmigration website, as of “the end of August 2025, out of the total backlog of 3,432,519 cases in Immigration Court, 2,271,857 immigrants have already filed formal asylum applications and are now waiting for asylum hearings or decisions in Immigration Court.”

I don't know what the statistics were in the early part of this century when I was working with asylum applicants, but I knew many people who were waiting years for a final determination to their case. In some cases, it was due to government delays, or issues with an applicant’s attorney, or to the lengthy appeals process for an unfavorable decision.

I will always remember one case, a man who had been waiting for a hearing before an immigration judge for two years. One day I went to the courtroom (in San Francisco) where I was to testify and be cross-examined by a government attorney about a psychological report I had written substantiating the claims of torture and abuse suffered by this man in his home country.

Unfortunately, that day the government attorney was sick and could not appear in court. The judge, citing a very full docket, rescheduled his hearing for another two years in the future! In the meantime, this man had no right to work in the U.S., very little resources, and lived by the charity of some friends from his old country. I don’t know what subsequently happened to him, as I was never again called to testify in his case.

The point is that this was not an extraordinary occurrence, but a common feature of the asylum system. Nor were government attorneys always those at fault. I also recall how one time a client’s immigration attorney simply did not show up for his client’s court date. Once again, the asylum applicant’s day in court was shifted months out into the future by an immigration judge who, because there were nowhere near enough judges hired by USCIS, was swamped with pending asylum cases.

Nor are there enough immigration attorneys, for that matter. The Trump Administration appears to be deliberately manipulating the attorney shortages. According to a December 18, 2025 story for Hawaii Public Radio (HPR), immigrants seized in immigration raids are being shipped off the U.S. mainland to Hawaii from as far away as Florida. Hawaii has nowhere near enough immigration lawyers to handle the sudden influx.

HPR described the situation:

ICE has been transferring detained immigrants from the continental U.S. to the Honolulu Federal Detention Center since this summer. Local immigration attorneys are facing unprecedented case loads and told HPR they are concerned that people may be falling through the cracks without adequate legal representation.

ACLU Hawaiʻi Immigration Rights Attorney Leilani Stacy has been working with other immigration attorneys, clients and community groups on the ground to try to understand why people are being transferred from the continental U.S. to the Honolulu Federal Detention Center….

“It’s not exactly clear to us or to anyone, really, as to the rhyme or reason why someone from California or Florida would be transferred here, particularly when they have no connection here.”

Can this situation be any less clear? The Trump Administration and ICE are sending immigration detainees to Hawaii precisely to increase the number of immigrants and asylum applicants who fall “between the cracks.” Such transfers also cruelly increase the amount of physical separation between detainees and their family or other supporters.

According to the American Immigration Council, today it can take on average over 3-1/2 years for a decision to be made on an asylum applicant’s case.

Individuals with an immigration court case who were ultimately granted relief, such as asylum, in fiscal year 2024 waited more than 1,283 days on average for that outcome. The Omaha Immigration Court in Nebraska had the longest wait times, averaging 2,119 days until relief was granted — That’s nearly six years!

The wait can be excruciating. According to the Trac-Immigration website:

People seeking asylum, and any family members waiting to join them, are left in limbo while their cases are pending.

It’s an onerous and impersonal system, and it’s difficult to believe that anyone would voluntarily put themselves into such a position if they were not in fact desperate!

I used to be asked in court about whether I had ever seen a case of fraud in relation to an asylum case. Indeed I had, though only in one case. This man confabulated an episode of torture, although I believed even then that he did so out of desperation, as the nature of his politics and the track record of the country he came from likely gave him good reason to fear persecution or torture should he be returned.

If my own personal statistics are representative, asylum “fraud” constitutes maybe 1 percent of asylum cases, probably even less.2 To shut down an entire system based on such a small percentage is not only absurd, it is a criminal abandonment of a population that is among the most vulnerable in the world. It is also an abrogation of treaty obligations and U.S. law.

Working with this amazing, though tremendously stressed group of people, I was impressed by the personal strength asylum applicants had to persevere and win their cases and live their lives.

But my impressions are biased by the nature of the sample of individuals with whom I came in contact. What about those who did not or could not persevere? Many and uncounted were the individuals who succumbed to depression and post-traumatic stress, who died by their own hand; or who never found their way to have an attorney represent them in court; or those sent to lock-up in federal or local and county prisons around the country; or who were denied entry upon initial evaluation by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and sent back to Mexico or to their own countries, sometimes to disappear altogether.

It was like a huge sea of human suffering, whose massive waves tossed upon the hard rock of U.S. immigration and asylum policy. Millions had fled economic, social and political persecution and hardships in their homelands. The lucky ones found their way to the U.S., and into the capricious and often onerous machinations of the asylum system. The very lucky were granted asylum upon initial interview. The others? Too many fell back into a gray ocean of bleak anonymity and hopelessness.

Statements of Asylum Applicants

I wish I could repost the reports I wrote that described in excruciating detail the persecution and abuse asylum applicants endured, either in their own countries, or in third countries through which they passed in an effort to escape their tormenters. But it is necessary to protect (even years later) their confidentiality.

I believe, however, I can provide a few snippets of what they told me, unconnected to any identifying details.

Talking about his government persecutors, one man told me, “I have seen what they could do to people. I am scared of them. They will kill you, or put you in prison where no one will ever hear you again. I know of people who were told everything is okay, but when they returned they disappeared.”

One woman was haunted in her dreams by the violence she both witnessed and endured .“In my dream, I am in prison. I see prisoners, see myself in my cell. I see soldiers wandering around me. I see prison guards shooting at me, until I wake up. I thought they’d hurt me, beat me. I shout, scream a lot. I don’t want to remember, but it comes back to me all the time.”

Another woman described the total control the police authorities had over her. “The police controlled the town. They told me, ‘We could disappear you.’”

I recall a young man who had travelled thousands of miles to escape government authorities. “I was helpless. I couldn’t do anything to prevent it [the authorities’ attack on his family members]. This was only one day but my life is going crazy from this. I felt worthless and guilty because these things are happening.”

An elderly woman who had been bouncing around the asylum system for years, who lived at the fringes of society, recalled an incident from her adolescence that she had never related to anyone. She had fled a massacre of demonstrators during a street demonstration in her home country. “I saw dead bodies loaded on trucks. I decided then I would never grow up, never become an adult…. Adults killed people.”

I never believed these people were “no good,” or exploiters of U.S. largesse. They were all, like the bulk of the other asylum applicants I worked with, desperate people, people who had no other place on this planet other than where circumstances and their own will to survive had carried them.

Their stories are part of our history, perhaps the most hidden history of them all, of the oppressed and their unrecognized struggle against all odds to obtain safety and the rudiments of hope.

For those who wish to help asylum seekers, there are a number of organizations that offer such assistance. Most of them may be very good, some maybe not. I’m going to recommend two of which I have personal experience.

East Bay Sanctuary Covenant was “founded in 1982 in response to civil wars in Central America.” It “was an early participant in the Sanctuary Movement in the U.S.” and is now “one of the largest affirmative-asylum programs in the U.S.” They accept donations, which are tax-deductible.

Center for Constitutional Rights “works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications.” They have been very much involved in litigating the rights of asylum seekers. Donations to CCR are also tax-deductible.

Donations to either or both organizations will be money very well-spent!

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This article was originally published on September 16, 2020. It was the first and still most comprehensive article describing what I discovered in CIA files on the controversy over U.S. use of biological weapons [BW] during the Korean War.

Since writing this article, corroborating information about the U.S. germ war has surfaced, particularly in declassified FBI documents and foreign government archives. See “FBI Smoking Gun on U.S. Use of Biological Warfare in the Korean War” and “The Lights Were Blinking Red.”

Additions and emendations to this article over the years are now seamlessly incorporated into the current version of the article. Readers should be aware that this is a very long essay, really a monograph on the subject. I am reposting it here because I wish to make it available to my Substack readership, and also to the public at large, while eschewing the firewall which previously hampered its viewership at Medium.com, where it was first published. A separate reposting at Counterpunch.com in September 2021 has unfortunately accumulated a number of broken links which I am not able to update at that site. The Substack publication of this article fixes all that.

A downloadable link to the full set of CIA documents on intercepted communications from the Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, as captured by the National Security Agency and its military predecessor, the Armed Forces Security Agency, is included at the end of the article, as is a table summarizing all the claims of BW attack in the CIA documents I have studied. Additionally, I have made a few very small, quite minor editorial changes for this article, such as in formatting of subheads, etc. In a few cases I have sharpened my language and provided further explanatory material I felt was lacking in the original article.

Introduction

In February 2013, the CIA posted over 1,300 items online as part of their earlier “Baptism by Fire” document release commemorating the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. The bulk of their accompanying narrative material concerned long-time controversies as to whether the CIA had failed to anticipate both the North Korean invasion of the Republic of Korea in June 1950, and China’s entry into the war later that year.

In order to provide a documentary backdrop to a history of the war from an intelligence point-of-view, the CIA also released hundreds of declassified top-secret communications intelligence (COMINT) reports, as well as assorted formerly secret intelligence analyses, and open-source reports from the Agency’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).

The CIA likely did not set out to document, at least in part, the COMINT history of the North Korean and Chinese response to what appeared to be U.S. and/or UN attacks by biological, bacteriological, or ”germ” weapons, but that is in effect what happened.

While the released documents do not represent a full opening of all archives related to Korean War communications intelligence, the sampling is unprecedented, and the contention of this essay is that the released files provide an indispensable addition to our understanding of the events surrounding the alleged U.S. biological or germ warfare attack against North Korea and China from 1950–1953.

This essay draws upon 28 COMINT documents, produced by communications intelligence units and labeled top secret, in addition to 11 other CIA analyst reports previously marked “secret,” one report marked “top secret,” two reports marked “confidential,” and one marked “restricted.”

The COMINT documents were all labeled “Top Secret,” with additional compartmented code words, such as SUEDE or CANOE, for more restricted intelligence circulation. Among COMINT producers and customers, these documents were considered “Special Intelligence,” so secret and restricted even their code words were classified.1 Most of these items were not declassified until about 60 years after the end of the Korean War.

A table listing all biological weapons attacks documented in the SUEDE and CANOE COMINT documents is included prior to the Notes section below. In addition, a full set of the 28 COMINT documents, along with relevant sections from other CIA reports, is available for download in PDF format at the end of this article.

No full analysis of these documents released by the CIA has ever been published. So far as I can determine, only one historian of the period has even referenced them.2 It is important that they receive attention, as the question of the guilt or innocence of the U.S. when it comes to charges of the use of biological weapons of mass destruction during the Korean War has never been fully settled.

If a massive war crime such as the use of germ or bacteriological weapons can be hidden and covered up for decades, then any war crime can be disappeared, and any or all state crimes sealed off from public discourse forever.

These documents provide strong corroborating evidence that the germ warfare charged by the Communists, and by a number of outside observers, journalists and investigators, did in fact occur. The consilience of evidence includes the testimony of U.S. Air Force and Marine personnel captured by North Korea and China, though that evidence will only be examined here in the context of how it arises in the relevant CIA documents. Conversely, the evidence pertaining to other theories about the germ warfare charges, e.g., that it was a “hoax,” lack such convergent evidence.

This essay sets out a history of the germ warfare campaign as experienced and reported by North Korean and Chinese military units, filtered primarily through daily COMINT reports of Communist communications contemporaneously gathered by U.S. military intelligence. Contemporary CIA-based open source information will also briefly be examined.

This essay will first briefly look at the U.S. communications intelligence situation at the start of the Korean War. Then it will examine closely the COMINT and other recently released CIA declassified documents, concluding with some examples of their historical relevance in the light of the Korean War scholarship of Milton Leitenberg. Leitenberg has publicized documents that he purports show the charges of biological warfare (BW) made by the Soviets, North Koreans, and Chinese, were false, and that evidence was manufactured to perpetuate the supposed fraud.3

For the purposes of this essay, most references to Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) include references to COMINT, as the latter is a subset of SIGINT. Practically speaking, COMINT refers to the interception of communications, often encrypted, between two individuals or organizations. SIGINT is usually understood to reference the interception of electronic signals, such as telemetry, from the enemy, or, as with communications intelligence, radio signals.

COMINT at the Start of the Korean War

When the CIA posted the Baptism by Fire documents in 2013, they included historical articles they felt were relevant concerning the history of communications intelligence as it pertained to the CIA during the Korean War. The summary in this section draws upon those accounts, as well as other publicly available material, as noted in the endnotes.4

By all accounts, along with a general drawdown of forces in Korea in the period 1948–1950, after the end of the U.S. occupation of South Korea and the beginning of the Korean War, communications intelligence resources in Korea were minimal. In addition, there was a good deal of bureaucratic infighting between the different branches of the military and between the military and the new CIA over who had access to the limited amount of material available.

Once the war started, even after the initial problems appeared to be addressed, the problems of ill-coordination and poor infrastructure continued. For instance, Marine Corps units on the ground apparently never had access to signals intelligence (including COMINT) during the war. In addition, there was an ongoing dearth of linguists available to translate the materials obtained, necessitating a rather long delay for intelligence and military consumers.

According to an NSA-published history, at the beginning of the Korean War the Armed Forces Security Agency [AFSA] (the predecessor to the National Security Agency), only “had the equivalent of two persons working North Korean analysis, two half-time cryptanalysts and one linguist.” There were 83 analysts working on data from the People’s Republic of China. Months later, in early 1951, AFSA had 49 personnel working on North Korean communications, and 156 on China.

The same historical account states, “COMINT production was hampered by supply shortages, outmoded gear, a lack of linguists, difficulties in determining good intercept sites, and equipment ill-suited to frequent movement over rough terrain.” Most radio equipment used was of World War II vintage.

In a retrospective essay, Thomas J. Patton recalled his days working for CIA’s General Division, which was the analyst unit within CIA that was to provide intelligence from raw COMINT intercepts: “We never had a clear concept of what proportion or what level of clandestine information we were given access to.”

This compartmentalization of intelligence helps us understand why, as explained further on, the CIA analysts listening in and commenting on the raw COMINT intercepts were incredulous about the charges in real time by Communist military units of BW attack. The analysts were not privy to the fact that biological weapons were in use, even when evidence of the same was literally placed before them!

“We may have had access to some State Department traffic, but we could never be sure of receiving it, and we could not have used it directly in any event,” Patton wrote. “And our access to information from military sources was always uncertain….”

“Physical handling of information was of necessity fairly primitive in those days. There were no copying machines. Most items that we received came in single copies, which we had to pass on and could not retain for our files.”5

A different picture regarding the availability of AFSA product, at least as it pertained to intelligence surveillance of China, emerges from a formerly “Top Secret Umbra” September 1991 article in the NSA’s house journal, Cryptologic Quarterly.

According to this history (pg. 10), which centered on COMINT intelligence on China’s entry into the Korean War, the AFSA COMINT reports from China and Korea were said to have been “transmitted… electrically to customers in Washington as well as overseas. The standard recipients of Chinese Communist product were the State Department’s Special Projects Staff, CIA, Navy, the Army G-2, Air Force, GCHQ, the British Liaison Office, and ASA Pacific HQ, located in Tokyo. The latter and the Army’s G-2 distributed the reports to MacArthur’s staff. The intelligence agencies republished the COMINT in their own summaries, and two groups responsible for assessing international events — the Watch Committee chaired by CIA and the Joint lntelligence Indications Committee chaired by the Army’s G-2 — gisted the COMINT product as well. Agencies relied on COMINT and credited it with statements such as ‘communications intelligence reported’ this or ‘a message stated that….’ They frequently referred to collateral as ‘unconfirmed information.’ The agencies distributed both COMINT and non-COMINT versions of their summaries and estimates.”

It would appear, then, that COMINT reports had wide distribution, though end-use customers had to have the proper high-level top secret clearances.

Whatever the difficulties AFSA had in the early days of the war, by mid-July 1950, AFSA had achieved some success in intercepting and decrypting North Korean messages. The new information was so good that, according to Thomas R. Johnson’s 2001 article, “American Cryptology During the Korean War,” during the famous summer 1950 defense of the Pusan perimeter, with U.S. and UN troops backed into a corner by a successful North Korean offensive, “General Walker…. was able to hold the line largely due to knowing where the North Koreans were going to attack, information coming primarily from SIGINT reports.”6

Despite the early successes, the signals and communication intelligence aspect of the war played out in a cat-and-mouse fashion. American successes were foiled by changes in Chinese and North Korean communications. The U.S. forces would catch up, and then lose their ear into enemy communications again, thanks to Chinese and KPA adaptation to the latest U.S. techniques.

There were multiple communications intelligence efforts by different agencies during the war, and they weren’t always well coordinated. The Air Force Security Service ran its own separate operation for some time. The signals and communication intelligence assets in the Naval Security Group remained focused on the Soviet naval presence in East Asia, and not on North Korean or Chinese targets.

The general dissatisfaction with the U.S. SIGINT and COMINT work was captured in a communication from General James Van Fleet, commander of the U.S. Eighth Army:

It has become apparent, that during the between-wars interim we have lost, through neglect, disinterest and possibly jealousy, much of the effectiveness in intelligence work that we acquired so painfully in World War II. Today, our intelligence operations in Korea have not yet approached the standards that we reached in the final year of the last war.

Much of this dissatisfaction centered on AFSA. At the same time, the senior officials of the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency also felt AFSA was less responsive to their needs than it should have been.7

As CIA historian Johnson concluded, “What tactical successes there were, were gained only after long delay and prodigious effort. Unready for Korea, American cryptologists rose unsteadily to the challenge and were knocked down several times by enemy haymakers. Resources were inadequate. Organization was sometimes chaotic, and expertise had to be acquired laboriously. Still, SIGINT did make a difference on a number of occasions. It was not quite what had been achieved in World War II, but it did establish the outlines of a successful tactical SIGINT support system.”

The problems with SIGINT and COMINT led to a significant effort by the Truman administration to reorganize resources and administrative authorities. By November 1952, this led to the establishment of the National Security Agency.

It is against this history of both success and failure that we turn now to the extant COMINT cables released to the CIA, and the intelligence commentary that was subsequently produced by CIA analysts. The material in these cables and reports can then be compared to other existing histories with their own accompanying evidential foundations.

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The BW Timeline

1949 Khabarovsk

The following material is described in a mostly chronological fashion, the better to understand the unfolding portrayal of both the Communist charges of BW and the CIA’s own characterization of them. By adhering to this approach, contemporaneous observations and conclusions regarding the purported germ warfare campaign are not contaminated by later retrospective findings or changes in agency or governmental policy.

As a whole, the examination of the CIA material will be long and somewhat detailed, as one important aim of this article is to provide researchers with a comprehensive dataset for reference purposes. Since the CIA released very little in their Baptism by Fire declassifications that covered the first 18 months of the Korean War, the examination of the first period will be brief, and is mostly, though not entirely, limited to the new material released. It is not a comprehensive examination of that period, and presumes some knowledge of the history of the Korean War.

One important historical incident of relevance predates the Korean War. The appropriate starting point for this history is the December 1949 Soviet war crimes trial of doctors, researchers and military personnel associated with Japan’s biological warfare program. The results of the trial, including lengthy portions of the transcripts, were published in English,8 although it appears, according to one scholar, “few people in the West, including journalists and professional historians, paid any serious attention to the trial and its published proceedings until the 1980s.”9

The trial established that Japan’s Unit 731 and other assorted bacteriological units, experimented upon plants and animals for the purpose of biological warfare, in addition to engaging in criminal human experimentation, including vivisection. At least 3,000 prisoners died in this fashion. Many thousands more died in BW campaigns waged by Japan’s Kwantung Army in China during World War II.

The United States made an agreement with the leadership of Unit 731 not to prosecute their personnel at war crimes trials. In return, the U.S. would receive the technical reports and testimony from Japanese BW personnel of the results of Japan’s BW campaigns. U.S. scientists from Ft. Detrick interviewed Unit 731 leader Shiro Ishii and others, and the information gathered was closely held in “intelligence channels.”10

Publicly, the U.S. derided the Khabarovsk trials as Soviet propaganda. Japan’s use of BW during the war was considered “a ‘dead issue’ by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.”11 Much later, scholars determined the Khabarovsk trials had involved real war crimes associated with the Japan’s use of biological warfare. For their part, the Soviets and Chinese were well aware of Japan’s use of BW at the time, since they were the targets of the attacks.

The Soviets in particular were incensed at the lack of cooperation from the U.S. over the issue of trying Ishii and others, including the Emperor of Japan, for war crimes concerning use of bacterial weapons. They knew, for instance that the U.S. had hidden from them the location of Shiro Ishii after the war. Hence, in subsequent years they were quite suspicious about what the U.S. was doing with their contacts with the former Japanese BW program leaders.

1950–1951

The documentary material CIA released for the first 18 months of the war is sparse, at least as it concerns information about the biological warfare charges. Still, what was released is intriguing and worth investigating, especially since this period of the war has been overlooked or minimized by most investigators of the Communist BW charges.

A 1951 retrospective CIA report by the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, “Communist Propaganda Charging United States with the Use of BW in Korea,”12 stated that prior to the start of the Korean War, the chief of the Epidemic Prevention Bureau in the North Korean Ministry of Public Health had warned about the possibility of epidemics in summer 1950 originating from South Korea, “where no preventive measures had been undertaken to combat them.” The CIA report said that it was only after the war began that the United Nations started a vigorous immunization campaign in the South against smallpox, typhus, typhoid, and cholera.

According to this CIA report, sometime in July 195013 North Korean forces occupying Seoul claimed to have discovered “in the intelligence offices of the General Staff of the South Korean Army documents written in rather technical detail and designated ‘Plan A’ and ‘Plan B.’ One of the chapters was labeled “Bacteriological Dissemination.” This chapter “supposedly mapped out reconnaissance work for 1950 and described how rivers and reservoirs of North Korea were to be infected with bacteria.” The sourcing of the “capsules of bacilli,” i.e., “from American Camp Detrick or from Japanese stocks,” was not settled.14

Contaminating wells and water sources with bacteria was a favored method of Japan’s Unit 731. This is noteworthy, as it was believed, as described above, that personnel from Japan’s BW command were aiding the US war effort. Indeed, an early January 1951 report by Pravda, picked up by Associated Press on January 7, claimed the U.S. had “established a bacteriological warfare center in Japan under the direction of former Japanese Lt. Gen. Shiro Ishii.” AP also quoted Pravda as saying Ishii’s work for the Americans was being sent from Japan “to an American bacteriological warfare research center at Camp Dietrich [sic], Md.”15

One notorious incident early in the war comes from Peter Williams and David Wallace’s book, Unit 731: The Japanese Army’s Secret of Secrets.16 Williams and Wallace recount the testimony of a British platoon sergeant with the Middlesex Regiment, who along with all UN troops were in headlong retreat from a major Chinese offensive into North Korea in November 1950.

The sergeant related seeing American military police in unidentified vehicles, wearing white helmets, parkas, gloves and masks, entering houses in a village “twenty to thirty miles south of Kunari.” The MPs were spreading feathers among the houses in the village, out of containers “with snapfasteners reminding me of our ‘Dixie’ containers, which were used to keep food warm for twenty-four hours.”

According to the British sergeant, “They were holding the feathers at a distance from their bodies, not in the normal way….. they had no identifying insignia…. It was all very fishy. They were very surprised and unhappy to see us. It was obvious that something suspicious was going on, and that it was a clandestine affair.’”17

Williams and Wallace comment that the use of infected feathers as a special BW tactic during an armed forces retreat was a standard method used by Unit 731 during World War II. “Furthermore,” they wrote, “it is known from declassified documents that the Biological Department of the US Chemical Corps was at this time experimenting with feathers as carriers of biological agents.”18

Smallpox

On December 5, 1950, the U.S. Department of Defense Committee on Biological Warfare issued a directive urging a search for “evidence of immunity against diseases of BW importance in enemy deserters and prisoners of war.”19

Later that month, during the U.S./ROK/UN chaotic retreat from North Korea after the entry of China into the war, the North Korean Ministry of Public Health claimed the Americans had “infected four cities with smallpox — another disease previously unknown in Korea.”20

According to reporter Wilfred Burchett, then in Korea, “Epidemics broke out in Pyongyang, Chongjin, Kuwon and Yongdok, in each case six or seven days after American troops withdrew. The incubation period for smallpox is ten days and the bacteria must have been spread a few days before withdrawal. The bacteria were found to be of artificial culture — and in this case less virulent than the natural variety. The four cities are widely separated, but the epidemics broke out simultaneously and no other centres were affected. The cities were not connected by the retreat route, that is to say troops withdrawing from Chongjin, did not pass through Pyongyang, Yongdok or Kuwon and vice-versa, so the epidemic — even if started naturally — could not have been transmitted by the troops. And in any case there were no outbreaks in intermediate towns or villages.” Altogether, some 3,500 people were reportedly infected with smallpox, and 358 died, mostly babies.21

According to the CIA, earlier in the year, reports “disseminated by Communist sources” said “that plague carrying fleas have been employed by American forces to spread plague in Korea. The Communists claimed in 1946 MacArthur sent eighteen Japanese bacteriologists to War Department laboratories to continue the culture of BW agents.”

The CIA also described Chinese claims that “Chinese Communist prisoners were subjected to bacteriological experiments on a small island outside Wonsan…. the Chinese Red Cross has revealed the Americans are testing bacteriological weapons on captured Chinese volunteers and gruesome experiments are being conducted under the guise of epidemic control.”22

These experiments are likely a reference to the Sams incident in March 1951, wherein a Navy epidemic control vessel, commanded by MacArthur’s Chief of Public Health and Welfare Section, U.S. Brigadier General Crawford Sams, made raids upon North Korean territory, with plans to kidnap North Korean personnel and take them back to the U.S. ship, reportedly to be tested for bubonic plague, smallpox and other diseases. This act of covert medical surveillance was later admitted, though the U.S. denied any experiments were conducted, and said no prisoners were actually kidnapped.23

In the end, Brig. Gen. Sams said that no bubonic plague was found, only hemorrhagic smallpox.

A late March 1951 CIA report noted that in the last week of March, Radio Pyongyang had “twice reported with credit lines to Tass and NCNA [New China News Agency] that MacArthur is preparing for bacteriological warfare in Korea.”24

The accusations continued into the spring. According to A.M. Halpern in a 1952 Project Rand report, “Bacteriological Warfare Accusations in Two Asian Communist Propaganda Campaigns,” a Chinese April 30, 1951 broadcast claimed “American forces are using People’s Volunteers as guinea pigs for their bacteriological experiments.” Japan’s government was described as producing bacteriological weapons in Minami-Kuwata-gun near Kyoto, in association or collaboration with “Camp Detrick” in the U.S.

On May 8, a North Korean radio broadcast accused “US and ROK forces of employing biological warfare” against civilians in the North. According to a CIA report that same month, the broadcast referred to “documents concerning plans for the use of BW, allegedly captured from the ROK.”

The CIA report quoted the broadcast as saying, “American Armed Forces had contaminated with smallpox the inhabitants in the areas of North Korea temporarily occupied by them.” The broadcast also stated that while no smallpox had occurred in North Korea for at least the past four years, there had been a widespread outbreak “7 to 8 days after liberation of [North Korean] areas from American Occupation.”25

But the CIA report commented, “these claims may be an attempt to conceal the failure of North Korean public health authorities to prevent the outbreak of communicable diseases. While the incidence of smallpox to date in North Korea is unknown, [about 4–6 words redacted] reported the outbreak of smallpox earlier this year.”26

“Deliberate atrocities”

During this period, one CIA report, dated May 24, 1951, speaks to the intensity of the civil war conflict in Korea.

“On May 22,” the CIA report states, “ROK Ministry of Health released stats on 400,000 men held in ‘training camps.’ 13,000 died in April, while 200,000 suffered from hunger and malnutrition.” The CIA commented, “Prior to the 2nd Communist capture of Seoul in January, the ROK government rounded up all men of military age and sent them south under guard to prevent their conscription by the Communists. The men were held in virtual concentration camps in the south and no ROK Government agency would accept full responsibility for their maintenance. Some 250,000 of the 400,000 were recently released.“27

Meanwhile, a May 24, 1951 open source report by CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service cited a May 8 dispatch from DPRK Foreign Minister Pak Hon Yong [alternatively, Pak Heon-yeong] “protesting American use of bacteriological weapons,” and claiming the U.S. was emulating “Japanese Bacteriological Criminals.”

Pak returned to allegations of a “Plan A and Plan B” discovered in “ROK headquarters in Seoul,” consisting of “sabotage plans, based on use of bacteria, against vital North Korean installations, towns, and army units.”

The CIA report continued: “Pyongyang alleges that the U.S. is following Japanese bacteriological techniques used in the war against China, and asserts that MacArthur used Japan as an intermediary in the mass production of bacteria. Other comment imputes responsibility for the incidence of smallpox in North Korea to the spread of the germ by the Americans during their temporary occupation. Pyongyang comments that the ‘bestial attacks of the American invading troops against the Korean people have done nothing but enhance the fighting spirit of the Korean People’s Army units.’”28

Some three months later, an August 11 North Korean radio broadcast described a government complaint to the UN about U.S. use of “poison gas.” According to an August 14 CIA report, “The broadcast cites the 6 August dropping of two ‘bombs’ on the city of Yonan (southwest of Kaesong) and the 7 August bombing of a North Korean troop installation as evidence of… ‘deliberate atrocities.’”

The CIA analysts commented: “North Korea has previously accused the US of employing chemical and biological warfare. These accusations are probably for Soviet Orbit internal consumption in order to strengthen the ‘hate America’ feeling.”29

An August 20, 1951 secret report, “Communist Propaganda Charging United States With the Use of BW in Korea” looked back at the charges of the previous month and concluded they were lies and “distortions of facts” directed from Moscow. “Charges of inhuman methods of warfare by bacteriological means would have a definite emotional and psychological effect upon those nations considered ‘on the edge’ in political affiliation,” the CIA analysts wrote.30

According to the CIA, Communist-held areas suffered from outbreaks of typhus and smallpox. (ROK-held areas were battling a typhus epidemic as well.) “All civilian doctors have been mobilized,” the report stated, “penicillin and other drugs have been confiscated for Communist Army needs.”

According to the report, Soviet sources alleged, “MacArthur’s headquarters in Japan was purported to have been producing bacteria with the aid and assistance of unpunished Japanese war criminals. For this activity the Yoshida government had appropriated 1.5 million yen…. Reports have also been disseminated by Communist sources that plague-carrying fleas have been employed by American forces to spread plague in Korea.”31

The charges of BW use by the Americans continued sporadically. According to an October 1951 CIA report, a pamphlet from the World Federation of Democratic Women, entitled “An Eyewitness Account of the Modern War of Destruction,” appeared in Austrian Communist bookstores, and included a description of the alleged BW campaign.32

CIA’s “Baptism by Fire” Release of Top Secret COMINT

1952

The CIA “Baptism by Fire” collection concentrated its release of COMINT documents on the year 1952, which also was the year of the most intense allegations of U.S. use of BW in the war. The following is a chronological timeline of North Korean and Chinese contemporaneous reports of US-led biological warfare during the Korean War during the presumed height of the latter campaign in 1952 and 1953.

The first of the 1952 CIA documents released is dated February 19. The documents do not include an earlier reference to “flies, fleas & spiders found & examined from Peng Kang Goon, Kang Won Province” on January 28, 1952, as mentioned in the “Report on U.S. Crimes in Korea” by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.33

By mid-to-late February, intercepted communications indicated that North Korean military units had begun to be negatively affected by UN BW operations. A North Korean coastal security unit in eastern Korea reported on March 3, “UN bacteriological warfare agents” in the area surrounding “Pupyong (just southwest of Hamhung)” had prevented the movement of transportation since February 21.

As a result, no one could pass through the area, and crucial supplies were bottled up. “If you do not act quickly,” the unit said, “the 12th and 13th guard stations will have fallen into starvation conditions.”34

Another Top Secret “SUEDE” intercept from this period noted insects were “again dropped at Paekyang, Sinpung, and Innam,” on February 28, “but ‘no one has been infected yet.’”35

A Top Secret SUEDE report, dated February 19, quoted a February 16 North Korean intercept from a battalion of the 7th Railroad Security Regiment in the Wonson-Hamhung area to the effect that “spies are putting poison into the drinking water.” Some kind of “paper which causes death to ‘anyone using… [it] for the nose,’” was also mentioned.

The same report also documented a February 27 message to a North Korean battalion commander, informing him to “take special precautions to avoid contamination of his unit’s food and water because ‘the enemy dropped bacteria’ in central Korea. Covering wells and disinfecting United Nations leaflets were additional recommendations.”36

Meanwhile, just a day earlier, according to yet another SUEDE intercept, an unidentified Chinese Communist unit reported, “yesterday [February 26] it was discovered that in our bivouac area there was a real flood of bacteria and germs from a plane by the enemy. Please supply us immediately with an issue of DDT that we may combat this menace, stop the spread of this plague, and eliminate all bacteria.’”37

To the CIA, such reports were made to “provide the Communists with the ‘proof’ which they apparently require to support a propaganda campaign.” The analyst working on the February 26 intercept believed this report to be only “the second instance during the current BW scare that a Communist field unit has actually reported the discovery of ‘UN bacteriological agents.’”38

By the end of February, it was obvious to the CIA that a large-scale immunization campaign was underway among Chinese and North Korean troops. On February 27, a message from a Chinese Communist artillery regiment reported, “we have now fully obtained the vaccine required for smallpox in the spring time, malaria, and bubonic plague.” The regiment’s message explained that the smallpox and malaria shots had been given, but asked, “How shall we administer the bubonic plague shots?”39

On February 29, Chinese military authorities informed an artillery unit (perhaps the same artillery unit referenced in the February 28 message) that “all personnel will be reinoculated at once” with bubonic plague vaccine. Healthy individuals, however, were to only receive “a half-strength shot or may ‘temporarily not be inoculated.’”40

During the same period, a series of North Korean messages from a coastal defense unit were intercepted on February 28 and 29, though the CIA document doesn’t say to whom or from whom the messages originated. The message described instructions to cover any BW “contaminated area … with snow and spray… Do not go near the actual place,” the message’s author(s) warn. Meanwhile, “injections” with an unidentified vaccine were to be made to deal with the contamination. Another message also stated, “the surgical institute members left here to investigate the bacteria bombs dropped on the 29th.”41

To the CIA analysts reading these reports arriving from the Armed Forces Security Agency in early March 1952, it appeared that bacteriological warfare in Korea was now a “major Communist propaganda theme.” The COMINT reports themselves were marked Top Secret, labeled with the code word SUEDE, so that no one who was not approved for SUEDE reports could read them, even if they had other top secret clearances.42

One such report, dated March 1, described how “protest meetings,” in the form of lectures, were being held among North Korean troops to supposedly intensify “hostile feelings” regarding the UN forces’ bacteriological attacks. Somewhat humorously, one North Korean east coast defense unit was admonished to “make sure they (the troops) are awake at the lecture.”43

On March 1, there was a query from Pyongyang authorities to a North Korean air unit at Sariwon, in an area supposedly contaminated from bacteriological attack. “Have you not had any victims as a result of certain bacteria weapons?” the air unit was asked.

Five days later, the North Korean 23rd Brigade sent a “long detailed… message to one of its subordinate battalions” suggesting preventive measures be taken against “bacteria” dropped by UN aircraft, apparently in the area around Sariwon. The report stated that “three persons. . . became suddenly feverish,” presumably in their unit. Their nervous systems were said to have become “benumbed.”44 Despite treatment, one of the three had died. The report concluded, “the government will soon take pictures of specific appearance of the germs collectively and correct photographic data will be provided.”

That same day, March 6, a “Chinese Communist message” stated that a soldier of the 345th Regiment had picked up a UN propaganda leaflet and had been “immediately poisoned.” The message said that the soldier, who had come down with a fever, did recover. Meanwhile, the CIA analyst reading this intercept noted in his report that this was the second time in which sickness had been related to “UN leaflets.” The Chinese message warned other military units “not to handle leaflets.”45

On March 11, two coastal security stations in northeastern Korea reported on 11 March that a “bacteria bomb” had dispersed mosquitoes, flies, and fleas. A second report noted, “an enemy plane dropped ants, fleas, mosquitos, flies and crickets.”46

The next day, US forces intercepted North Korean naval messages to units in Songjin and Chongjin, which are cities in coastal northeastern Korea. The messages ordered these units to cooperate with city officials, who had “a counterplan” against the bacteriological attacks via insect vectors. The plan called for “injections, vaccinations and rat poison,” noting, “to prevent an epidemic the rats… must be hunted.”47 The type of disease is not described, but the emphasis on rats would implicate plague.

Meanwhile, around this same time, a Chinese intercept described a “Communist unit commander in western Korea” instructing his subordinate unit, who had captured some UN soldiers. The subordinate unit was told to ask the prisoners what “type of immunization shots were administered recently… in preparation for defense against what disease,” and “what type of common literature (was) made available regarding disease immunization and prevention.”48 It would seem that Chinese authorities were still trying in early to mid March 1952 to determine what kinds of biological weapons were being aimed at them.49

If this was a “hoax,” then why conduct interrogations about “immunization shots” or disease prevention literature?

It’s clear that the region was under severe stress from the destruction wrought by war, and that included outbreaks of disease. The COMINT reports sometimes comment on various epidemics and health statistics, many of which were not attributed to biological attack, even if in public propaganda authorities denied epidemic conditions. As an example, one Top Secret SUEDE document noted a “Russian administrative message” from a “military net in northwestern Korea” reporting ”an epidemic of typhus” in local villages. “Please urgently send. . . assistance,” the message says.50

But plague was always associated with BW attack. On March 15, another “Chinese Communist message” announced, “a certain unit discovered a large concentration of plague germs. Many people have been afflicted with this undiagnosed disease and already several persons have succumbed with the illness.” The very next day, a Chinese Communist unit’s communication described four preventive measures for carrying out an “anti-smallpox campaign,” as well as an “anti-plague program.”51 The unit was not otherwise identified.

A March 17 COMINT daily report states, “Approximately 60 percent of all North Korean government office workers and party organizers are infected with tuberculosis.”52 No connection was suggested regarding any BW vectors.

Meanwhile, a March 18 North Korean message (source not indicated) concerned a “public opinion project” concerning “the appearance of bacteria weapons.” The project’s progress was “slow” at the battalion unit level. The message reminded its recipient of a “regulation” that required him or her to “report public opinion concerning the appearance of bacteria weapons in a wide sphere.”53

A CIA analyst interpreted this intercept to mean that the then-current BW propaganda campaign was “intended to increase both civilian and military feeling in North Korea against the UN.” It’s hard to believe that by March 1952, there weren’t already antagonistic feelings by North Korean soldiers against the UN. It’s just as likely that the sudden increase in germ warfare attack was met with some denial or a failure among the troops to take seriously the bacteriological dangers they faced (something those of us living through the Covid-19 pandemic can likely appreciate).

Another North Korean message, the next day, most likely from the 23rd Brigade in western Korea, reported a bacteria drop in an area occupied by the 18th Regiment, 4th Division.54

On March 24, a Chinese Communist unit reported a failure to make the required vaccinations. As a result, a “grave situation” had developed because “friendly troops” (most likely North Koreans) had come down with some unspecified disease.55

“The policeman’s report was false”

The next incident described how a North Korean military unit ruled out BW as a cause for the sudden appearance of a group of insects. The cable involved represents a rare instance where the documentary record confirms North Korean efforts to scientifically assess the germ warfare evidence. As such, it constitutes a powerful argument against the hypothesis that North Korea and its allies tried to defraud investigators and construct bogus germ warfare evidence.

On March 25, the 501st Communication Reconnaissance Group intercepted two messages from a North Korean battalion in the Hamhung area. The reports concerned “a civilian police officer [who] discovered an American bacteria bomb.” The report seems to have derived from the coincidence of a UN bombing attack with the sudden appearance of “flies” in the area. A North Korean military sanitation officer was sent to confirm the attack. But the officer reported back that “the policeman’s report was false and that the flies ‘were not caused from the bacterial weapon but from the fertilizers on the place.’”

The CIA analyst describing the COMINT report told his own superiors, “This is the first observed instance in which a Communist unit has investigated and entered a negative report on an alleged American use of BW agents.”56

Meanwhile North Korean units on the ground felt inundated by BW attack. On March 30, an “unidentified North Korean regiment” informed its battalions, “the enemy is actively dropping bacterial weapons in general now.” The regiment authorities emphasized, “All units were to report promptly UN biological warfare attacks.”57

A day later, on March 31, Radio Pyongyang broadcast an interim report on the germ warfare attacks. North Korea charged that in the nearly 10 weeks between January 20 and March 25, “the US had dropped germ-laden insects on more than 400 occasions.” The broadcast also included “a summary of the detailed preventive measures taken in Pyongyang.”58

China had also begun a large-scale health effort called the Patriotic Hygiene Campaign. A “large-scale exhibit on the ‘American war crime of germ warfare’ toured major cities throughout China in the spring of 1952.” Historian Ruth Rogaski stated the exhibit arrived in the city of Tianjin on March 12, and was seen there by nearly 200,000 visitors.

Rogaski wrote, “The Chinese media clearly linked the biological vectors that appeared in 1952 to germ warfare techniques developed by Unit 731.”59

At this point in time, the U.S. government was responding in a calculated fashion to Communist charges of biological warfare. The CIA’s Baptism release included a report, dated April 1, 1952, referencing comments from the US embassy in London. The embassy felt “the impact of the Communist BW propaganda campaign in Britain has been negligible to slight,” and “that heavy counterpropaganda from Washington would be unnecessary, but not harmful in effect, as far as the United Kingdom is concerned.”

The UK Foreign Office told Embassy officials, “sources indicate the Communist campaign has had a more substantial effect in the Far East and other areas” than in the West. As a result, the Embassy recommended continuing with the “countercampaign” against the Communist BW charges, “with primary responsibility remaining with Washington.”60

The day immediately following the message about the “countercampaign,” a “Top Secret SUEDE” report announced, “Enemy units still reporting BW agents in Korea.” According to this message, a Chinese Communist artillery division had created a five man “health program” committee “in an attempt to check the spread of bacteria.” Additionally, BW “preventive measures were still being pushed actively in North Korea as indicated by continuing reports of unit inoculations.”61

There may have been a small gap in U.S. BW attacks during late-April and early May, as a CIA analyst indicated in a May 9 report, or at least Communist public references to such attacks. “During the past few weeks, Communist propaganda has made little reference to specific BW incidents,” the analyst wrote, “although some enemy units reported such attacks as late as mid-April.”

In any case, by May 2 an unspecified North Korean military unit in the Wonsan-Hamhung area reported a nighttime drop of “bacteria weapons at Chongpyong.” A few days later, on May 6 a North Korean coastal security station in northeastern Korea reported “dropped spiders and ants over Songjin city… today.” The intercepted message added that the alleged “drop area” had been isolated and the attack was being investigated by “’the plague prevention work committee.”62

The Chinese were also reporting U.S. BW “drops.” A Chinese rocket launcher artillery unit reported on May 6 that “an enemy plane (was observed) dropping propaganda leaflets and germicidal bombs.” The message continued, “the germs were spread over an area 150 meters wide and 600 meters long.” The “42nd Army (in combat in west central Korea) was dispatching personnel to take some specimens.”63

The CIA analysts processing the SUEDE intercepts for their intelligence value seemed obsessed with the theme of BW reports as primarily propaganda material. “It is entirely possible that these messages may be used to continue the momentum of the Communist BW propaganda campaign,” one such analyst wrote. “It is entirely possible…” But then again, perhaps it was entirely possible the reports were simply accurate representations of what was occurring in Korea and China at the time.

One U.S. prisoner of war “confession” caught the CIA’s attention in May 1952. The Pyongyang correspondent of a Moscow paper, probably Pravda, reported the capture of an American flyer, Lt. Robert Gilarol. According to a FBIS report dated May 22, Gilarol “admitted his participation in BW following an extensive period of training. Gilarol also admitted, according to Moscow, that he had previously engaged in the campaign to destroy East German crops by disseminating Colorado beetles.”64

CIA analysts saw this as “a rare attempt to link up the present BW campaign with the charges [of BW used in East Germany] that were given heavy play in 1950. Neither Pyongyang nor Peking has yet reported this new confession.” Gilarol’s confession was never released, and no one answering the description of Robert Gilarol was ever discovered in records or released from confinement. Searches of public records in the United States do not retrieve even one individual with the surname Gilarol. (A 2005 Ohio State University dissertation [p. 213] by Mark R. Jacobson speculated that the Gilarol reference was really to Marine Captain Robert Gilardi, who was shot down over North Korea in January 1952.)

A June 6, 1952 report summary read, “Communists remain concerned with BW in Korea.” The report described “an unidentified Chinese Communist artillery regiment” telling its “subordinate elements that ‘an investigating committee… is coming to Korea to investigate the releasing of germs and insects by enemy planes and artillery[.] Request that men be found who can verify the releasing of germs…’“65

The “investigating committee” was most likely the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China (ISC), organized under the auspices of the World Peace Council, and headed by renowned British scientist Joseph Needham. According to purported Soviet and Chinese documents published by scholars Milton Leitenberg and Kathryn Weathersby, the ISC investigation was to be met by the falsification of contaminated sites and concocted evidence.66

It would seem the June 1952 Chinese request to find individuals who could corroborate the germ warfare charges is inconsistent with the charges of Leitenberg and Weathersby. One would think if the CIA had COMINT evidence of the falsification of BW sites, it would have published it with the Baptism release, or otherwise made such evidence public. In the concluding section of this essay, a number of issues regarding conflicting evidence raised by the CIA’s Baptism COMINT documents and Leitenberg and Weathersby’s own purported documentary evidence will be discussed.

On June 13, 1952, the 501st Communication Reconnaissance Group, Korea, intercepted a message from a Chinese artillery regimental commander. The message stated, “Army called my regiment tonight and ordered all chairmen and assistant chairmen of the anti-plague commission to attend the meeting…. the topic of the meeting will be anti-plague project and establishment of anti-plague program for the summer and autumn seasons.” Three days later, the Soviet ambassador to the UN requested a Security Council meeting to discuss the BW charges. He was turned down.67

Biological weapons were not the only weapons of mass destruction the Chinese and North Koreans feared. On June 13, a “badly garbled message from an unidentified Chinese Communist unit in Korea” reported that “construction of atom bomb defenses” had begun that very day. Indeed, back on March 30, a Chinese radio broadcast had indicated use of atomic weapons was a “logical step” for the Americans, given their use of biological weapons. On April 4, as well, a Chinese message “indicated that literature about the atom bomb was to be distributed.”68

One surprising intercept concerned the capture of Colonel Walter M. Mahurin, who was shot down over North Korea. According to the COMINT report, classified Top Secret CANOE, the capture of this “ranking US airman interests [the] Soviet Ambassador in Korea.

A Soviet ground control intercept on May 16 had “passed a message over its administrative link which stated that ‘Makhurin’ had been captured and that an interrogation had been conducted. The message suggested that ‘Razuvaev’ was present.”

The CIA analyst wrote, “’Makhurin’ is probably US Air Force Colonel Walter M. Mahurin, whose aircraft was shot down by ground fire on 13 May.”

This is the only document in the Baptism release to reference contemporaneously the capture of an officer who would later “confess” to use of biological weapons. It implies Mahrurin was of special interest to the CIA.

“The suggested presence of Soviet Lieutenant General of Aviation, Vladimir Razuvaev, at the interrogation of Colonel Mahurin is another indication of the Soviet Union’s intense interest in the military aspects of the Korean war,” the report explained. “General Razuvaev is the Soviet Ambassador to North Korea and may be the over-all commander of Soviet aircraft participating in the Korean air war.”69

A World War II flying ace, Colonel Walker “Bud” Mahurin had been working in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force at the start of the Korean War. According to his “deposition” to Chinese interrogators, he had visited Ft. Detrick in November 1950, to become better acquainted with the biological warfare research being conducted there. In his autobiography, Honest John, written after the Korean War, Mahurin never denied the visit to Ft. Detrick, though he did deny U.S. use of germ weapons. The book details his friendships with a number of high-ranking military officers and CIA officials.70

The appearance of General Razuvaev in this intercept is also interesting, as according to the Leitenberg/Weathersby (L/W) Soviet memos, in April 1953 Gen. Razuvaev told Soviet authorities that Russian, Chinese and North Korean officials helped concoct phony evidence of BW attacks for visiting investigators. Some of the facts the L/W memos propose are falsified by evidence in the COMINT intercepts, including in the letter reportedly written by Razuvaev. Again, this will be examined in the concluding section of this essay.

“Creatures for experiment”

On July 20, according to a Top Secret CANOE intercept, a North Korean artillery battalion commander, “possibly subordinate to the 8th North Korean Division,” informed his superior officers that arsenic had been “put into the well” in the troop area. Apparently, no one had been hurt by this attempted poisoning, but a search was underway for the “culprits.” Meanwhile, other communications intelligence alleged that elsewhere “ten North Korean soldiers died from poisoned food obtained from civilians.”71

In mid-August 1952, the Soviet newspaper Pravda republished Chou En-lai’s March 8 statement that “members of American armed forces who fly over Chinese air space using bacteriological weapons will be treated as criminals if captured.” A CIA analyst commented, “Chinese Communist propaganda has given some play to such a threat as: ‘The criminals and their accomplices will be pilloried and severely punished.’”72

In his autobiography, Mahurin wrote that Chinese interrogators threatened him with prosecution as a war criminal. Mahurin took this to be an interrogator’s threat, not a governmental policy. In the end, no flyers captured by the North Korean or Chinese seem to have ever been prosecuted as war criminals.

On August 17, the North Korean 21st Brigade notified one of its battalion commanders about a disturbing Chinese Communist intelligence report. The Chinese report, dated August 13, said that the U.S. Army “shipped ‘creatures for experiment’ from a Seoul suburb to Taegu.” That same day “another American Army unit transported five tons of ‘experimental material,’ probably dead rats, from Taegu to an unspecified air base.” The Chinese message cautioned, “all units should be on the watch for the ‘anticipated’ enemy use of bacteriological warfare.”73

The CIA analyst’s comment on this intercept was cynical: “the Communist device of passing this type of intelligence to subordinate units has been a sufficient cue for return reports which are then used as ‘proof’ of Communist propaganda charges.”

Of course, it could also be taken at face value. Why would one’s superior officers notify subordinates of an anticipated BW attack if they knew there was no such attack, especially given the importance of allocating military resources in the middle of an all-out war?

One wonders as well, if the North Korean and Chinese BW charges were all about propaganda and untrue in their particulars, why phony BW “proof” had to be solicited in such indirect fashion.

Not one of the CIA’s Baptism release documents complained about the lack of BW reports or evidence. There were also solicitations for witnesses to BW attack. Meanwhile, false BW evidence was turned away, as shown by the March 25 intercept from a North Korean battalion in the Hamhung area, detailed above.

The propaganda and charges surrounding the allegations of U.S. bacterial warfare heated up again in September 1952. First, there was a mini-scandal after a September 3 Tokyo broadcast by Major General William K. Harrison, U.S. Chief Negotiator at the Panmunjom peace talks. Harrison was quoted by “Peiping” radio as “threatening an extension of bacterial warfare against North Korea.” Alan Winnington, a communist correspondent at London’s Daily Worker, reported the quote.

The CIA’s September 5 Daily Korean Bulletin from the CIA’s Office of Current Intelligence admitted the emphasis in Winnington’s article, but said, “the propaganda point was hinged on a five-word quote, ‘disease and dislocation of homes,’ which Harrison may have employed in connection with the devastation created by bombing.”74

Contemporary news reports also carried the report of Harrison’s threats to extend “bacterial warfare”, but gave different versions of what Harrison supposedly said.75

The ISC Report

On September 13, “Radio Peiping” proclaimed “the US Air Force from 26 August to 11 September flew a total of 740 sorties over Northeast China.” Chinese citizens were said to be “extremely indignant.”76

Then, the next day, Radio Peiping announced the International Scientific Commission, investigating charges of bacterial warfare, had completed its work. The report’s release took the CIA by surprise. A September 15 CIA report blandly stated, “The Commission ‘confirmed’ that American armed forces have waged bacteriological warfare against Korea and China. Committee members included scientists from Sweden, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Brazil, as well as from the USSR.”77

The September 23 CIA Daily Korean Bulletin (part of CIA’s FBIS reporting) described yet another Chinese radio broadcast, which presented the ISC report as presenting “incontrovertible evidence” that the UN had engaged in bacteriological warfare. The broadcast said, “the US ‘had the nerve’ to repeat its call for an impartial investigation even after the findings of this unbiased group.”

Meanwhile, the CIA took solace in reports that the presentation of ISC evidence at a press conference held in Stockholm (attended by ISC investigator Dr. Andrea Andree) “was a complete flop.”78

A CIA intelligence report dated September 19 declared the “Communist bacteriological warfare campaign [was] being revived.” CIA analysts noted that “Soviet propaganda media” had begun to publicize the ISC’s work. Meanwhile, “Peiping” radio started “to broadcast ‘confessions’ of recently captured American officers and contents of the commission’s report.” The ISC report itself was described as containing “19 chapters and 46 appendices containing 300,000 words, and has been published in English, French, Russian and Chinese.”

The CIA found the ISC report — which I published a few years ago online — to be “among the most serious efforts to date to substantiate the familiar BW charges. The release of this material seems timed to coincide with the Asian Peace Conference….”79

One important aspect of the ISC report the CIA did not comment upon was the contention by the commission that the U.S. appeared to have collaborated with the former members of Japan’s BW research and operational command in Unit 731. The CIA may have kept mum because the agreement to give amnesty to Shiro Ishii and his collaborators was secret, and likely only known to those with a “need to know.” The ISC’s insistence on this point may also have been one reason it was met with such hostility by the United States — it threatened to expose the secret U.S. intelligence operation surrounding Shiro Ishii and the other Japanese BW war criminals.

The ISC dedicated one section of its report to the “relevance” of possible Unit 731 connections. In fact, one member of the commission, Dr. N. N. Zhukov-Verezhnikov of the USSR, had been a member of the Khabarovsk war crimes prosecution. Joseph Needham himself had been in China during the war, working with the Sino-British Science Cooperation Office, helping the allies stay in touch with Chinese scientists. He was well aware of Japan’s biological warfare campaigns in Manchuria.

The ISC report, reportedly written by Needham, remarked:

It should not be forgotten that before the allegations of bacterial warfare in Korea and NE China (Manchuria) began to be made in the early months of 1952, newspaper items had reported two successive visits of Ishii Shiro to South Korea, and he was there again in March. Whether the occupation authorities in Japan had fostered his activities, and whether the American Far Eastern Command was engaged in making use of methods essentially Japanese, were questions which could hardly have been absent from the minds of members of the Commission.80

A gap in reports appears at this point in the CIA’s Baptism by Fire release. This could be due to editorial decisions made by CIA, or also to the fact that in the cat-and-mouse game of signals intelligence, the CIA did not have as much information from COMINT during this period. Only a full opening of CIA archives could determine this.

The documentary record picks up again in late November 1952. On November 29, a North Korean military intercept, coded Top Secret CANOE, indicated that “insects” discovered nine days earlier had “been positively identified as unusual.” Even so, there were “no cases of illness” and “prevention measures were being taken.”81

Another North Korean military message, dated December 6, described “quantities of insects that carry bacteria” in the North Korean front lines “and attributed their spread to the ‘barbarous United States empire.’” Again, according to the CIA, the North Koreans emphasized the use of public health measures, particularly “against smallpox and typhus, both [according to the CIA] endemic in North Korea.”82

By mid-December, the CIA, while describing the distribution of “several publications summarizing ‘evidence’ on the American use of biological warfare… at a BW exhibition currently being held in Vienna,” found “no evidence” of any large-scale revival of BW propaganda as had occurred earlier in the year.83

1953

The U.S. biological warfare attacks did not cease in 1953, although the CIA’s Baptism by Fire release did not include any actual COMINT documents pertaining to BW for that year.

Proceeding in a chronological fashion, we find newspaper reports from January 5 detailing Chinese Premier Chou En-lai’s accusation of ongoing U.S. “bacteriological warfare” in Korea and China. Chou also emphasized the actions of “an intensified ‘patriotic health campaign’ on the home front.”84

On January 19, the U.S. State Department sent a “circular airgram” to all U.S. embassies in countries that had individuals represented on the ISC investigating committee.85 As explained in a July 1953 Memorandum of Conversation from a representative of the Psychological Strategy Board, “The effort was to get a refutation of the [ISC] report from a multi-national group of scientists.”86

The State Department argued for a “strong counter-offensive” to expose the “big lie” of the Communist BW charges, “and thus undermine Communist credibility on a broad front.” State officials approached the U.K. Foreign Office and asked them to take the lead on this project. The memo described the reaction from British: “They were pleasant but did nothing.” Perhaps this was because, while the CIA found (at least officially) the ISC report to be “a complete fabrication,” “very few of its particular items of scientific ‘evidence’ could be demolished as such.” The U.S. was to have some difficulty finding scientific authorities to back up the campaign against the ISC report.87

On February 22, another Communist bombshell revelation took place when the Chinese government released transcripts of “depositions” by “two field-grade American Marine officers attesting to their direction of various phases of the [BW] campaign.” The officers were Col. Frank Schwable and Major Roy Bley, both of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Schwable, as Chief of Staff of the First Marine Air Wing, was the highest-ranking prisoner of war to confess in detail about the U.S. biological warfare campaign in North Korea and China during the Korean War. He described in three “confessions” or depositions how that campaign evolved, what the men undertaking it felt about the campaign, the “effectiveness” of the use of bioweapons, and the security surrounding the covert use of bacteriological weapons. It was a stunning blow.88

Of special note is the CIA Far East Survey report, “BW and the Korean War,” dated February 27, 1953, only four days after the Schwable/Bley “confessions.” CIA analysts wrote, “New life has been infused into the quiescent bacteriological warfare campaign…. the new confessions go into considerable detail concerning names, places, dates and policy implementation…. ”

The report argued that there was very little “major new evidence” in the charges of U.S. biological warfare. Instead, Chinese propaganda contained a “rash of peripheral allusions to BW.” As an example, the CIA noted China’s contention that “American support operations in Japan for the BW campaign are an open secret in Tokyo, where corpses of infected persons are used to develop more virulent strains.”89

Oddly, the report included a summary of differences between the Schwable and Bley confessions and those of lower-ranking officers Lt. F. B. O’Neal and Lt. Paul Kniss, which were reproduced in the ISC report.90

According to the CIA, “Some of the difference may be laid to the basic dissimilarities between actions at the working level and at levels concerned primarily with giving and interpreting orders. Since Schwable and Bley were allegedly concerned with the implementation of directives from higher authority but not with the actual operations of dissemination, the extent to which they could discuss operations in precise detail is probably limited; conversely, since Kniss and O’Neal were not privy to the high-policy decisions which put the operations into effect, their confessions might necessarily be limited to the recital of minute details concerning the actual operation.”

This was an argument for the authenticity of the flyers’ depositions. CIA seems to have realized this and concluded this was part of the Communists’ construction of an “illusion of truth.” CIA also felt that the Schwable and Bley documents lacked “other elements that would have logically appeared at the command level.”91 No examples of such “other elements” were given.

The entire February 27, 1953 report is worth further analysis for an example of how the CIA was spinning the news out of Peking and Pyongyang in real time regarding the flyers’ “confessions” and other revelations from the ISC report. There remains one other important aspect to this report.

Leitenberg and Weathersby “Soviet” Documents

In a section sub-headed “North Korea,” the CIA stated, “Pyongyang’s own contribution to the upsurge in atrocity charges appears in the form of a ‘Fifth Communique on Atrocities Committed by the American Aggressors and the Syngman Rhee Gang.’ The “Communique” was rebroadcast by Moscow and Peking and included charges regarding “U.S. atrocities,” including “destruction of urban and rural areas through bombing; use of weapons for wholesale massacre; i.e., poison gas and BW; and the destruction of cultural and social installations, again, through wanton bombing.”

The CIA report said, “a long compilation of alleged incidents is used to document each charge.” North Korea is described as calling for a “people’s trial” for the “criminals” involved.92

A few weeks prior to this, in mid-February, a CIA “open source” report noted a North Korean announcement of a new anti-epidemic campaign. The North Korean government specifically referenced “the threat raised by enemy use of BW….”93

What makes these February CIA reports noteworthy is that documents accepted as authentic in the West allege that North Korea had soured on the attempt to falsely label the U.S. as using BW by January 1953, and stopped issuing propaganda on the issue.

The scholarly work of Milton Leitenberg and Kathryn Weathersby, published by the Wilson Center, refers to a purported April 18, 1953 letter from the Soviet Ambassador to North Korea, Vladimir N. Razuvaev, to then-Soviet security chief L.P. Beria.

“From January 1953 on,” the letter from Razuvaev states, “the publication of materials about the Americans’ use of bacteriological weapons ceased in the DPRK. In February 1953 the Chinese again appealed to the Koreans regarding the question of unmasking the Americans in bacteriological war. The Koreans did not accept this proposal.”94

This entire story is false, but it’s unlikely anyone in the West knew that until the publication of the links and documents in this article.

We must assume that Razuvaev either lied for some reason in his letter to Beria, or that he never wrote the letter involved, since it is difficult to believe that a Soviet ambassador and advisor so close to the North Korean regime — we already have seen that he likely was involved in the interrogation of downed flyer Walker Mahurin in North Korea — wouldn’t know what stance North Korea was taking in regards to charges of U.S. germ warfare. The contradiction between what some of Leitenberg/Weathersby documents state and what has been revealed in declassified U.S. intelligence documents requires further examination.

There is nothing in the COMINT Daily Report files from January 1953 on, as released, that concerns charges or details of the reported bacterial warfare attacks from the United States. There were ongoing press reports, however. For instance, a United Press story on March 25, 1953, reported China’s charge that “American planes made 60 germ warfare missions over North Korea between January and mid-March [1953].”95

The issue also continued to be discussed in CIA FBIS intelligence reports throughout 1953. These reports were based on “open source” material rather than top secret radio or telephone intercepts. This material makes clear that Soviet, North Korean and Chinese charges of U.S. use of germ or bacteriological weapons continued even after the armistice of July 1953.

They also continued after documents released by Milton Leitenberg claimed they stopped. Besides the purported Soviet documents mentioned above, in March 2016, Leitenberg released an English language translation of a supposed memoir by Dr. Wu Zhili, “Director of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army Health Division during the Korean War.”96

In Wu’s memoir, the Chinese government is taken aback when a May 2, 1953 cable arrives from the Soviet Union explaining that the BW propaganda campaign was not credible and that a retraction was in order. Wu claims that Premier Chou En-lai promptly ordered a retraction of the germ warfare charges, and subsequently “China did not raise the matter again.”

Leitenberg has stated that the latter statement was not true, and cited a 1988 Chinese history of the Korean War as an example of ongoing Chinese reference to the Korean War U.S. BW campaign. But actually, not only was there never was a retraction by China, but continued complaints of U.S. use of BW continued throughout 1953, for many months after the Wu document claimed they ended.

An entire critique of the various Leitenberg documents awaits a full evaluation, though some critics have already thrown them into doubt.97 Nevertheless, the selections in this essay from the Baptism CIA release are also very telling, as they falsify some of the claims made in the Leitenberg documents.

One additional Baptism document in this regard is the November 19, 1953 CIA FBIS report from its Far East Survey bureau. The section on Korea begins, “Peking Opens New BW Barrage.” The new campaign began on November 11, when China released depositions by 19 additional U.S. servicemen implicated in the germ warfare campaign.

“Widespread broadcasting of the new confessions is being accompanied by vehement support propaganda which largely reviews past evidence, reiterates old accusations about the plans and purposes of the U.S. action, and asserts that these new revelations represent further irrefutable proof against current American denials,” the report stated. “Pyongyang also gave heavy play to the new confessions,” the CIA document said.

How is it possible that Wu Zhili, who stated China’s propaganda about US germ warfare ended in May 1953, and who even mentions the statements of captured U.S. flyers in his “memoir,” did not know of the November 1953 publicity campaign surrounding the release of the 19 flyers’ BW depositions?

One imagines it would be to the benefit of the U.S. government that historical memory pertaining to the flyers’ statements be forgotten. Indeed, the flyers’ statements are extremely difficult to find in any U.S. library. However, recently, some of these “confessions” have been released online.98 I have also examined in detail some of the more important POW statements in a series of article (for example, see here and here).

These excerpts from the documentary record — and they can be corroborated by contemporary press accounts99 — show the celebrated Leitenberg documents meant to debunk Communist claims of U.S. use of biological weapons during the Korean War have serious inconsistencies when placed in comparison with the historical record, as that record is slowly being revealed with the release of previously classified material.

Summary

The COMINT cables and other intelligence reports released by the CIA in 2013 under the heading “Baptism by Fire” provide a real contribution to our understanding of the North Korean and Chinese experience of the war, as well as U.S. communications intelligence efforts. In particular, they provide a rare window into North Korean and Chinese military reactions and responses to what they said was a biological warfare attack, whose air component began in January 1952 and continued almost up to the armistice in July 1953.

U.S. Cold War scholars and many journalists have decided that the case is closed and that the Communist side in the Korean War faked evidence of germ warfare, and fooled international investigators, including a world-renowned British scientist. The scholars have provided documents from China and the Soviet Union that, though they are of dubious provenance, the scholars maintain are authentic and conclusive about the germ warfare “hoax.”

In this matter, scholars such as Milton Leitenberg, Kathryn Weathersby, and others are in agreement with the U.S. government’s position, which is that the United States did not undertake biological warfare during the Korean War. It is important to point out that many of the contemporaneous U.S. responses to the BW charges at the time of the Korean War cannot be upheld as trustworthy. For instance, U.S. claims that the Japanese did not conduct germ warfare against China were simply not true, as were claims that no agreement was ever made with Shiro Ishii and the scientists of Unit 731, or that the Soviet war crimes trials against Unit 731 personnel at Khabarovsk in late 1949 were mere show trials. Indeed, the U.S. government consciously lied.100

Historian Ruth Rogaski, who wrote on China’s massive public health response during the Korean War, took a more nuanced approach in a 2002 article. She concluded that “rather than seeing local germ warfare reports as products of dissembling officials or a deceitful central government policy, it is more instructive to read them as testaments to the fears, uncertainties, and convictions of a nation that had been in a state of war for decades.”101

In 2020, a new book by Nicholson Baker concluded the germ warfare campaign against North Korea and China was indeed a covert operation, but that after perhaps some initial bacteriological attack, the bulk of the insect and animal drops were uninfected, and were undertaken as a form of psychological warfare, terrorizing the population with the false belief that they were under bacterial assault.102

The problem with all these other hypotheses is that they must ignore the evidence of actual biological attack rendered in the ISC report, which included the reproduction of medical evidence and interviews with many eyewitnesses, as well as other evidence, including other eyewitnesses (not interviewed by the ISC) and the testimonies of the U.S. captured airmen.

Importantly, as this article amply describes, a selection of COMINT cables and other previously secret and “confidential” intelligence reports from the Korean War now are available to serve as historical evidence. The information from the COMINT data corroborates charges that North Korea and China were under bacteriological attack in 1952, and disconfirms some of the evidence offered suggesting the attacks were really a “hoax” or an exaggerated response to presumed, but more innocent attack.

This essay is only a preliminary examination of a subset of the COMINT reports that dealt with BW subject matter. It is not a full history of the Korean War BW controversy. Even so, other scholars will have much to consider when examining this new evidence.

Because the CIA itself curated the selection of documents, one cannot say with assurance how much evidence would be derived from a full release of all records. Many of the documents are still, decades after they were first generated, redacted significantly. Scholars and the public must call for a full release of all records, the better to understand a vital episode in U.S. and world history.

It might also be possible, years after the fact, and in a world still rent by the divisions of the Korean War, to settle once and for all the charges of germ warfare, and render some justice to those who suffered so cruelly the effects of all-out war on the Korean peninsula and northeastern China in the early 1950s.

Table 1 — Attacks documented in CIA Release of 1952 Top Secret SUEDE/CANOE COMINT documents

It is worth noting that the amount of injuries or deaths is barely reported here. As the General Sams episode related in the main body of this paper suggests, identifying the BW casualties was a highly classified matter. The ISC report also refused to discuss casualty numbers, which would tipped off U.S. intelligence on the effects of their germ war, as the report’s authors saw it. Even so, the ISC report does report some deaths from cases of plague and cholera that were investigated.

COMINT and Intelligence Files Pertaining to Allegations of U.S. Germ Warfare Attack, 1951–1953 (from CIA’s Baptism by Fire collection)

BW COMINT "Baptism by Fire" Files

15.8MB ∙ PDF file

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These PDFs are drawn from a much larger database of CIA files. The collection here contains most files that I could find that reference the germ warfare allegations, as drawn from U.S. intercepts of communications from the North Korean and Chinese military forces. The collection begins with three CIA intelligence reports from 1951. The rest of the documents are brief communication intelligence reports, beginning with a Top Secret "Suede" report from February 29, 1952.

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Prelude

“The organizations and activists who spout revolution and unlawfully challenge society to obtain their demands must not only be contained but must be neutralized.” — J. Edgar Hoover, Director, FBI, May 14, 19681

“It would be much easier for people, including people within the CIA, to accept the domestic operations if they thought they were aimed primarily at stopping terrorism rather than at stopping dissent.” — Betty Medsger, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI (as quoted here)

“Use deceptive measures. Subscribe to one or more left-wing periodicals or get on the mailing list of some ‘peace movement’…. While doing this our members can be of great assistance in searching this left-wing literature for names and addresses of fellow travelers and forwarding this information for our Central Intelligence files. We desperately need people to assist in this work…. Avoid telephone calls to known members of the organization as much as possible.” — from Secret Army Organization “Practical Security Measures” memo, undated, Declassified SAO FBI files, PDF pg. 134

“An agent-provocateur is a police agent who is introduced into any political organization with instructions to foment discontent… or to fake a case in order to give his employers the right to act against the organization in question.” — Colonel Victor Kaledin, Imperial Russian Military Intelligence, from epigraph to The Glass House Tapes, Avon Books, 1973, pg. 5

Introduction

In February 2013, while I was still writing for the website Firedoglake, I reported that a website “run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) out of the University of Maryland” had described how “the Secret Army Organization [SAO], a right-wing terrorist group in the early 1970s… was ‘possibly funded by the FBI.’” Since I wrote the story, DHS or one of its subordinate agencies has removed the webpage from its relevant servers.

I was not by any means the first person to write about the SAO, though this bizarre story is mostly forgotten today. It is vital to remember the history of U.S. police and intelligence abuses, especially in a period, like today, of expanded government calls for surveillance and political prosecutions.

A September 1999 article by Noam Chomsky recalled “how the FBI managed to convert a disbanded right-wing paramilitary organization (Minutemen) into the Secret Army Organization (SAO), placing an FBI informant, Howard Godfrey, in a leadership position. Godfrey was paid $250 a month plus expenses. ‘Between 1967 and 1972, Godfrey, using F.B.I. resources, furnished firearms, explosives, other equipment and funds to the Minutemen and SAO,’ supplying at least 75% of the SAO’s operating expenses,” Chomsky wrote, quoting an ACLU investigatory report submitted in 1975 to the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee. (The expenses mentioned here are in 1972 dollars. Today, the FBI payments to Godfrey would be equivalent to approximately $2000 a month.)

Godfrey was, as a 1973 article by Richard Popkin, “The San Diego Coup,” put it, “a one-man plumbers’ operation within the SAO. He knew how to pick locks, burglarize, bomb and handle guns.” A 1975 New York Times article explained that Godfrey had been “a former San Diego fireman, elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints and, for three years, an F.B.I. informer in the Minutemen.”

The SAO became known for harassing and threatening anti-Vietnam War protesters, and engaging in bombings and attempted assassinations. Its most prominent leader, FBI informant Godfrey, escaped any legal consequences for leading the SAO’s campaign of violence and political intimidation. FBI agent Steven Christiansen, who acted as Godfrey’s supervisor, was centrally involved in hiding evidence of the attempted SAO assassination of a San Francisco State University professor, Peter Bohmer.

In a 1991 essay by Ward Churchill, “Death Squads in the United States: Confessions of a Government Terrorist,” former FBI provocateur Louis Tackwood and “other Bureau-sponsored infiltrators of dissident organizations” were said to have asserted “often and categorically, [that] assassination of ‘key activists’ is a standard part of the tactical methodology utilized by America’s political police.”

Churchill believed the Secret Army Organization, “developed under aegis of the FBI in southern California during the early-70s,” was essentially a unit of the nation’s “political police.” The SAO’s “express purpose, among other things, was to liquidate ‘radical leaders,’” Churchill wrote (pg. 96).

As the SAO-FBI scandal unravelled in the early-to-mid 1970s, it came out that there were serious links between the SAO story and both the Watergate scandal and other governmental agencies as well.

The full story is long and complex. It helps to think of this article as combining two separate but related stories. One story involves how the Department of Homeland Security went about suppressing its own publication about the SAO and its FBI ties. The second part of this article is the story of the SAO itself, a story that deserves to be remembered and recalled now as the U.S. government under Donald Trump is greatly expanding its police powers.

As one follows this story, it’s good to keep in mind that as egregious as the Trump administration’s actions have been, this blatantly illegal use of police and military forces to undermine and destroy lawful political conduct is not merely due to the actions of one or another bad leader, but a function of the current system. This is empirically true, whether or not one accepts the Marxist view of the state as armed groups of men and women organized to protect capitalist property and the institutions most invested in the capitalist system. As this article will show, the use of government informers and illegal surveillance reaches across different historical periods, and different political parties.

The Trump administration claims to have discovered a left-wing conspiracy. Centered around the unfounded accusation that antifascist activists (“Antifa”), in league with other Marxists and leftists, have coalesced as an organization aiming to overthrow the U.S. government, on September 22, 2025, Donald Trump issued the executive order, “Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization.”

Based on a supposed “pattern of political violence designed to suppress lawful political activity and obstruct the rule of law,” Trump held that “Antifa” (a term for an anti-fascist) constituted “a domestic terrorist organization.” While “Antifa” as an organization doesn’t exist — what is its organizational structure? who is its leader? — Trump nevertheless hyperbolically maintained it was “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.”

Trump made it clear he was unleashing his police agencies to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle” Antifa, that is, antifascist operations. He wrapped this act of political oppression in the raiments of anti-terrorism, which is an old, if not hoary, government ploy whenever it wants to go after the left. Anyone offering “material support” to an antifascist action was to be subject to possible investigation and prosecution. This may be the most pro-fascist U.S. government proclamation ever issued!

As this article was about to go to press, Reuters reported that the Trump administration has expanded its attack on “Antifa” groups. The U.S. government singled out “four entities in Germany, Italy and Greece as global terrorists, accusing them of being ‘violent Antifa groups’ as President Donald Trump takes aim at left-wing groups.”

Trump followed his “Antifa” executive order with the even more ominous National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) “on Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.”

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy institute affiliated with the New York University School of Law, NSPM-7 builds upon “the antifa executive order [“Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization”], which already targets a broad range of political speech….”

The Brennan Center report continued: “NSPM-7 directs federal agencies to prioritize investigations of a swath of identities and ideologies that it depicts as falling under ‘the umbrella of self-described ‘anti-fascism.’ These include ‘anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.’”

And who decides what are these “traditional American views”? What is “anti-Americanism?” What is “anti-Christianity”? This kind of tendentious language is red meat for police agencies, who must justify their budgets with ever new “dangers.” But the real danger is to both the left and even liberal opposition to Trump’s policies, as the government expands its powerful instruments of surveillance, disruption, and prosecution of political opponents.

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START, the FBI and the SAO

This all carries, for someone of my advanced age, a strong whiff of déjà vu. In fact, in the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. government whipped up fear of left-wing “terrorism,” as the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and even the U.S. Army ran surveillance and counterintelligence operations to disrupt and destroy the antiwar, Native American, and civil rights movements.

In June 2024, the CIA’s own in-house organ, Studies in Intelligence, published an essay by CIA Chief Historian David Robarge which described the CIA’s covert domestic surveillance and disruption programs of the 1960s and 1970s (MHCHAOS and HTLINGUAL), while also summarizing parallel programs of government repression originating in the FBI (COINTELPRO), the NSA (Shamrock and Minaret), and the U.S. Army. Roberge’s report may downplay the full impact of the government repression, but I’m linking to it here so that readers who mistrust more leftwing, or even certain mainstream news sources can appreciate this important, if too often ignored, history.

While the machinations of the Nixon Administration will get most of the attention in this article, Roberge’s essay is of value also for the way it puts the accelerated surveillance on the left as something that began before the Nixon Administration.

Roberge wrote:

Seeing the growing intensity of domestic opposition to the war in Vietnam, especially from American youth in urban areas and on college campuses, President Lyndon Johnson became convinced that such dissent was not possible without foreign (and likely Communist) backing. In August 1967, Johnson tasked the CIA, NSA, and FBI with tracking down the links he presumed to exist between the protesters and foreign governments—the Soviet Union and the PRC, but possibly also North Korea, North Vietnam, Algeria, and others—and what the secret funding and other support was being used for. DCI Richard Helms remembers Johnson saying, “Can’t [the CIA] find out what’s going on here? Look at these people in the streets; we can’t imagine that good Americans do things like this.” [page 2, bracketed material in text was in original — “PRC” refers to the People’s Republic of China]

The material that follows below concentrates mostly, though not exclusively, on the actions of the FBI.2 Back in February 2013, I stumbled upon a brief history of one of these Vietnam War-era U.S. government covert domestic operations, namely the FBI’s sponsorship of the Secret Army Organization, which was described, believe it or not, at a Department of Homeland Security’s START webpage. START stands for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses for Terrorism. Today, START is a Department of Homeland Security Emeritus Center of Excellence headquartered at the University of Maryland.

According to the current version of their website, “START is a part of the collection of Centers of Excellence supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate and also receives funding and support from a variety of Federal agencies, private foundations, and universities. All of START’s research is conducted using non-classified materials and its findings are those of individual researchers and do not reflect the official position of any START funders.”

From my standpoint, given the funding and the attachment of “Department of Homeland Security” to their name, START is basically an appendage of DHS.

The original webpage about the Secret Army Organization is now scrubbed from START’s website. The link for the page in the previous sentence is from an archive of the START site at the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (see illustrative screenshots reproduced below). The START webpage presented a so-called “Terrorist Organization Profile” for the SAO. The DHS/START website indicated that the group, involved in bombings and assassinations, was “possibly funded by the FBI.” That certainly caught my attention!

According to Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine, their archive of the webpage begins with a URL capture on October 13, 2010. (Readers not interested in the minutiae of the evolution of START’s webpage on SAO can skip to the next section, “A federally funded antipoverty program for the right wing.”)

The last “capture” of the SAO webpage, which elicited a “Not Found” response, was on December 5, 2022. The START entry on the Secret Army Organization was apparently removed from the START database sometime between December 2013 and August 2019. There were no Wayback Machine archival saves for that URL in the intervening period.

The August 2019 Wayback Machine capture of the original URL brought up the message, “Got an http 301 response at crawl time,” indicating the original webpage had been moved permanently. The page then redirected me to “https://www.start.umd.edu/TOPS”, which page doesn’t exist anymore. (TOPS apparently stands for “Terrorist Organization Profile.”) The Wayback Machine then redirected my request to another START page, a “terrorist” database of “updated, vetted and sourced narratives, and relationship information and social network data on 50 of the most notorious terrorist organizations in the world since 1998.” SAO was not listed among these, but then SAO was out of business by 1973.

A year later, the Wayback Machine archival URL capture for June 30, 2020 of the old START-SAO webpage only indicated “Page Not Found.” A box above this message explained, “The page you requested does not exist.” Evidently, the final purge of the SAO information from START was completed by at least summer 2020.

In February 2013, I published an article on the DHS/START entry on SAO at the old Firedoglake/MyFDL website, which was reposted at The Dissenter, a legacy site of Firedoglake that is also now defunct. The article, “DHS Says FBI ‘Possibly Funded’ Terrorist Group,” only exists in archived format now, and can be accessed here.

Today, a search for the “Secret Army Organization” at the START website yields “no results” (see screenshot reproduced above). Did my 2013 article alert someone at either DHS or FBI (or both) about the politically embarrassing START SAO entry? Did they then move to delete the file and in essence bury that history? I can’t say for sure what motivated the SAO page’s removal, but the timing of the webpage’s purge seems highly suspicious.

“A federally funded antipoverty program for the right wing”

According to START’s original SAO webpage, “The Secret Army Organization (SAO), a right-wing militant group based in San Diego, was active from 1969 to 1972. They targeted individuals and groups who spoke out against the Vietnam War, especially those who organized public demonstrations and distributed anti-war literature.”

The SAO saw itself as a successor to the Minutemen, but less susceptible to government subversion because it was less centralized or reliant on a few select leaders. In a “History of the Secret Army Organization” provided to potential members, and reproduced in declassified FBI files, SAO told prospective members that they should “fully expect that some of us will have to make the ultimate sacrifice before victory is achieved…. There is no place in this organization for bunglers, playboys or lukewarm conservatives” (pg. 169).

Membership dues were $3.00 per month (comparative to about $25.00 a month in current dollars).

The full 2013 START/DHS narrative about the SAO is worth quoting at length. Its terse summary of key events in SAO’s existence elicits more than one shocking revelation. This is what DHS apparently wanted scrubbed:

In 1975, the ACLU submitted a report to the Senate Intelligence Committee alleging that the SAO was directed and funded by the FBI in order to suppress anti-war sentiment and curb criticisms of the Nixon White House. The report also stated that the SAO planned to kidnap and murder protestors of the 1972 Republican National Convention, which was to be held in San Diego before being relocated to Miami Beach. An assassination attempt of Dr. Peter Bohmer, professor at San Diego State University, and Paula Tharp, reporter for the San Diego Street Journal, brought about the arrests of several SAO members who later acknowledge an FBI connection. During the investigation, the gun used in the assassination attempt was found in the home of FBI agent Steven Christiansen, who was subsequently identified as a SAO contact. In 1973, Godfrey, testifying as an FBI informant, claimed he received up to $20,000 in weapons and a $250 per month income from the FBI to recruit new SAO members and provide information to agents. He also testified to the criminal acts of several SAO operatives, including fellow leader Jerry Lynn Davis. Official statements from the FBI claimed no involvement with the SAO, and no agents were prosecuted….

The SAO became inactive after the assassination case drew much public attention to the group’s operations. The testimony of Godfrey against SAO members resulted in prison terms for a significant portion of the San Diego group. Of course, if the SAO was actually FBI-run, the notoriety drawn to the case would have been the impetus to dissolve the group.

Pretty damning! I can see why the U.S. intelligence community would want the public’s memory of these events to be erased. As it is, the existing documentary record backs and expands the DHS/START narrative.

On June 23, 1973, The New York Times published an article by Steven V. Roberts, “F.B.I. Informer Is Linked to Right-wing Violence.” At the time, it seemed as if this was yet another Watergate-related scandal. The article outed FBI informant Howard Barry Godfrey, a former member of the Minutemen, a fascistic paramilitary group. Godfrey subsequently became the head of the San Diego branch of the SAO.

According to the SAO’s “former Southern California coordinator,” Jerry Lynn Davis, and corroborated by “[l]aw enforcement officers and others familiar with the situation,” Godfrey “participated in a shooting, as well as several fire‐bombings and burglaries, while receiving regular payments from the F.B.I. for his services.”

The Times article zeroed in on a “money quote” from former Godfrey associate, Davis.

Given Godfrey’s contributions to the Secret Army Organization in time and money, Davis said, “you might say that the S.A.O. was a federally funded antipoverty program for the right wing.”

As bad as all this sounded, even more astounding was the assertion by two SAO members that they had seen Watergate figure and White House operative Donald Segretti in discussions with SAO leaders, including Godfrey. Segretti had worked for Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), and was convicted of “distributing illegal campaign literature,” for which he ultimately spent four months in prison. The SAO members knew him as “Donald Simms,” a pseudonym very close to one of Segretti’s known assumed names, “Donald Simmons.”

Roberts’ article claimed that Segretti and the SAO had “discussed the idea of abducting radicals who might disrupt the [upcoming 1972 GOP] convention” (bracketed material added for context - JK). At the same time, Roberts maintained that “so far, there has been no firm evidence linking Mr. Segretti to the” SAO.

A few years later, a possible SAO link to the CIA also surfaced when an article in the Ann Arbor Sun reported that Jerry Lynn Davis had “once participated in the CIA’s Bay of Pigs invasion.”

The Sun article also expanded upon the Segretti story. According to the Sun, which was drawing upon an ACLU investigation, the SAO was “an interagency apparatus organized ‘at the direction of Richard M. Nixon.’”

Reportedly the link to Nixon went through White House “plumbers” operative Donald Segretti, whom affidavits claimed had given funds and military hardware to SAO to disrupt the 1972 GOP convention in San Diego. (See also footnote 6 below.) The convention was subsequently moved to Miami Beach. Was the move to Miami because Dick Nixon got wind of rightwing assassination plots against him, as described further on in this article? Was there a “false flag” operation in the works, on that was ultimately called off? Whatever was going on with Segretti, it was the FBI who seems to have been operationally in charge.

From the Sun: “SAO operative Jerry Lynn Davis… revealed that [admitted FBI informant Howard Barry] Godfrey had regularly supplied the SAO with money and weapons on behalf of the FBI” (bracket material added).

But the FBI was not alone in their manipulation and use of the SAO group. “Segretti furnished the SAO with funds and military hardware to be used against leftist demonstrators at the [San Diego GOP] convention,” the Sun reported.

More on the Segretti aspect of the SAO story was reported in a March 18, 1976 article by Milton Viorst in The New York Review of Books. The allegations got wilder and wilder.

Viorst related how former SAO member, Jerry Busch, turned on his previous comrades and revealed to both a local radical newspaper, and also under oath to the San Diego County Superior Court, what he could recall about the SAO’s plans, and the role of FBI informant (or more properly, provocateur) Howard Godfrey.3

Anyone with a passing acquaintance with the two assassination attempts made on Donald Trump in the summer of 2024 will find the next revelation quite interesting.

“The same man [Busch] who reported Godfrey’s meeting with Segretti has stated under oath that he heard Godfrey suggest plans for killing not only left-wing demonstrators at the Republican National Convention but Richard Nixon himself,” Viorst wrote.

An attempted assassination of Nixon would have likely supercharged Nixon’s own apparatus of governmental repression. It’s difficult to know, however, just who was plotting what, or how far the FBI’s tentacles spread (or the CIA’s, for that matter). Was Godfrey strictly stage-managed, or was he oftentimes acting as a free agent, albeit one protected by the FBI? Perhaps the answer is a bit of both, but it’s not out of the question that the entire scheme came from FBI headquarters, or the offices of Nixon’s “plumbers” operation.

On July 5, 1973, Jerry Busch wrote a letter to the editor of the left-wing San Diego paper, The Door. The idea of assassinating President Nixon surfaced here, too. (See pages 24-34 at this National Archives PDF link.)

Busch detailed a number of Godfrey’s wild schemes, some of which were definitely carried out, as for example the June 19, 1963 bombing of the Guild Theater in San Diego, and the attempted assassination of San Diego antiwar activist Dr. Peter Bohmer some six months earlier. It’s obvious that no aircraft with C-4 was ever flown into Air Force One. Nor were “massive doses of LSD, cyanide, or strychnine” ever used to spike punchbowls at “antiwar group meetings,” so far as we know. If anything, this latter scheme sounds more like a CIA MKULTRA plot than anything the FBI was doing.

Ultimately, Godfrey would testify in court against two SAO members, George “Mickey” Hoover, who fired the shot into Peter Bohmer’s house that wounded Paula Tharp — as Godfrey sat next to him in the car! — and William Francis Yakopec, who admitted to bombing the Guild Theater. In the matter of the Tharp shooting, Godfrey took Hoover’s gun and turned it over to FBI Special Agent Steven L. Christiansen, who hid it at his residence for some months, until its existence was revealed when the July arrests of Hoover and Yakopec occurred.

Christiansen, who was Godfrey’s control agent, was ultimately forced to resign from the FBI after this scandal, but he was not prosecuted for hiding evidence in an attempted murder. For his part, Christiansen claimed that his FBI supervisors had approved of his actions.

Viorst’s NYRB article quoted Godfrey’s attorney, who placed the blame for all the violence on the FBI.

Godfrey now insists that he was exploited and then betrayed by the FBI. His lawyer, Richard K. Turner of Sacramento, told me, “The FBI loved what Godfrey was doing. They blessed it and told him it was great. He was taking orders like any FBI agent, like a civil servant. They thought what he was doing was fantastic. Then they dumped him and now they want him to take the rap for them.”

No official action was ever taken against the FBI in the San Diego Minutemen-SAO terror spree. The local San Diego prosecutor, quoted in the Viorst article, said they had a choice to go after the SAO or the FBI. “We didn’t cover up for the FBI,” he told Viorst. “We just took on the problem that was most immediate to us.” But it’s clear the prosecutors saw the difficulties in even attempting to press charges against the FBI or its agents.

On June 27, 1975, The New York Times published an article by Everett R. Holles, “A.C.L.U. Says F.B.I. Funded ‘Army’ to Terrorize Antiwar Protesters” (alternate link).

According to the Times, the ACLU compiled a 5,000 page report on the SAO, a group of former Minutemen and other right-wingers and violent home-grown fascists, for the benefit of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “alleging the Federal Bureau of Intelligence recruited a band of right-wing terrorists and supplied them with money and weapons to attack young antiwar demonstrators.”4

Operation “Inlet”

The 1975 New York Times article said the FBI denied helping create the SAO, “nor did we have anything to do with the direction of its activities,” an FBI spokesperson said. The Times report continued:

According to the A.C.L.U. report, the Secret Army Organization was setup “on instructions of F.B.I. officials” to serve as agents provocateurs, inciting disorders as a means of exposing “domestic radicals,” particularly campus leaders of the New Left protesting the war in Southeast Asia.

The paramilitary extremist organization, consisting of about a dozen members locally with others scattered throughout southern California, was described by the A.C.L.U. as an outgrowth of an elaborate interagency espionage apparatus organized “at the direction of Richard M. Nixon” early in his Administration to intimidate and silence domestic critics.

The Times reported that the “interagency espionage apparatus” carried the code name “Inlet.” On April 2, 1973, Congressman Les Aspin wrote to President Nixon, referencing a January 21, 1971 memo from the FBI’s Portland, Oregon office to “All Agents.” Congressman Aspin was clearly upset. Aspin described the memo5:

It concerns an FBI operation called “Inlet,” under which agents are ordered to report specified “intelligence data” to the President and Attorney General [John Mitchell]. Among the data specifically requested are, “Items of an unusual twist or concerning prominent personalities which may be of special interest to the President or the Attorney General.” I am sure that you will agree that this is not a proper function for the FBI. Operation Inlet should be halted immediately and there should be a thorough investigation to determine how such a program could ever have been instituted.

On April 3, 1973, Sen. Bob Packwood sent a telex to the White House, the majority of which is reproduced below.

The White House replied that the program was “purely administrative” in nature. Moreover, the Nixon administration explained, “The term ‘Inlet’ stands for Intelligence Letter…. an administrative attempt to improve the procedures for processing such intelligence information, in order that it could be made available to the Attorney General and/ or the President on a more timely basis….” (See pg. 17 of National Archives document collection.)

One thing that belied the Nixon Administration’s claim that Inlet was “purely administrative” was the fact that items with an “unusual twist or concerning prominent personalities” could “be obtained through investigations not wholly related to the security field.”

Below I have reproduced from the National Archives collection linked above the full January 21, 1971 FBI memo on Inlet for reference purposes. It was apparently written by or originated from the office of the Special Agent in Charge at the FBI’s Portland, Oregon, field office. The words are a bit blurry in the original, but most of the memo is readable. Of special interest is item 5, which calls for reports on “‘Inside’ information concerning demonstrations, disorders or other civil disruptions which is of more than local significance.” This was a blatant attempt at surveillance of national and regional segments of the antiwar community, and the left more generally.

The memo described the code-named “Inlet” operation as one that expeditiously supplied a “steady flow of quality intelligence data” on “subversive organizations, new left groups, racial matters, hate groups, and espionage and counterintelligence matters [that] should be reviewed daily.”

The memo’s instructions maintained, “communications concerning subject items should be submitted by the most expeditious means warranted and should be flagged with the code name ‘Inlet.’” The memo said it was “essential that a steady flow of quality intelligence data be received from all Field Offices.”

This stovepiping of raw intelligence reports to Nixon and Attorney General Mitchell cannot have been something these two individuals could really keep up with on a daily basis. Instead, I believe, it was an attempt by the FBI and other intelligence officials to overwhelm the Nixon Administration with “evidence” of out-of-control leftist extremism, in order to produce a sense of emergency and allow for the activation of ever greater police, intelligence, and military interventions.

According to a December 26, 1972 Bureau memo to the FBI’s then-Acting Director, Mark Felt (who was later outed as the Watergate figure “Deep Throat”), the Inlet program began on November 26, 1969. That memo stated that Inlet memos were to be sent to “all field offices to furnish the Bureau high-level intelligence data in the security field which was to be furnished to the President and the Attorney General on a continuing basis….”

As a June 27, 1975 article at The New York Times further explained, “Under ‘Inlet,’ the F.B.I. allegedly made daily intelligence reports involving ‘demonstrators and domestic radicals’ to John N. Mitchell, then the Attorney General, and to Mr. Nixon by way of H. R. Haldeman, the former White House Chief of Staff, and John D. Ehrlichman, the former Chief Adviser on Domestic Affairs in the Nixon White House.”

By late December 1972, however, Inlet was supposedly discontinued. The memo to Mark Felt announced that when it came to the “intelligence letters,” “an evolution in policies and practices has occurred.” Field offices were instructed to continue to gather the types of intelligence that occurred under Inlet, with teletypes now sent from each field office directly to the President and Vice President. I’m not sure how this really changed anything.

The “interagency espionage apparatus” which the ACLU described to the Senate Intelligence Committee involved FBI informants placed in the right-wing “shadowy militia group” known as the Minutemen, and subsequently in its later incarnation, the Secret Army Organization. The Minutemen and SAO’s “stated purpose was to use guerrilla warfare to repel the Communist invasion they always believed was at hand.” A 1965 FBI publication, “Minutemen: Extremist Guerrilla Warfare Group,” described the activities of the Minutemen, including the caching of arms and ammunition. It doesn’t mention that the FBI had high-level informants in the group.

The ACLU revelations about the Secret Army Organization came only two days after the FBI had been forced to acknowledge the existence of their COINTELPRO operation, which at the time was said to consist of harassment of and discrediting operations aimed at left wing groups from May 1968 to April 1971.

The FBI’s COINTELPRO operations were ultimately shown to embrace much more than just leftwing groups, and its time frame went back to the 1950s, and consisted of operations to sabotage and defeat not just the Communist Party and its rival Socialist Workers Party, and their respective youth groups, but civil rights and Native American organizations, as well as non-Marxist “peace” groups.

The story of the SAO is a forgotten piece of contemporary history that is directly relevant to a number of current issues, including the prosecution of the bogus “war on terror,” and the FBI’s role in it; Trump’s executive order targeting anti-fascist groups or others who oppose mainstream “Americanism”; and government surveillance of and attacks upon dissent in this country.

The lack of discussion about the U.S. history of government provocateurs among left groups, like the SAO, also could be considered a prime example of the historical amnesia that plagues our times, an amnesia hastened by disinterest by most of the major media, cheered on by government agencies none too interested in accountability for government overreach or even criminality.

But the lack of discussion or referents related to groups like the SAO is also due to a deliberate attempt by the government to bury historical knowledge of such groups. That’s certainly what seems to have occurred when DHS or START (with or without the input of the FBI) aimed at disappearing the government webpage on the SAO.

A Botched Assassination

The SAO’s use of terror and political repression had real world effects. A newspaper office was attacked. A car was firebombed. A theater, where unfortunately for the FBI two San Diego police officials were present, was bombed. Informants infiltrated leftist groups, while meetings were monitored. Bulletins were published on “how to make booby traps, how to use ammonium nitrate in high explosives,” with techniques derived from “Army technical manuals on ‘Unconventional Warfare Devices and Techniques.’” Other bulletins identified “local liberals, radicals and antiwar activists, all of whom were lumped together as communists.”

And then, there was the assassination plot, or rather plots, as the SAO bungled one assassination attempt after another in an attempt to kill left-wing professor and antiwar activist Peter Bohmer, who taught at San Diego State University (SDSU).

A 1973 article by Richard Popkin at Ramparts Magazine described the threats and the attack, when an SAO hitman, accompanied by FBI-paid driver, Godfrey, tried to kill an American college professor on January 6, 1972, solely because of his political views and activism.

But first, I should note this was not the first of the assassination plans. An Associated Press article at the time described a different failed plot that had yet another FBI informant, Gilbert Romero, and a San Diego undercover cop kidnapping Peter Bohmer and taking him to Tijuana, setting him up to be killed by Mexican Federal police. The New York Times wrote that the ACLU report mentioned earlier included testimony from a FBI informant, John Raspberry, who said in the winter of 1971-72, the FBI approached him to kill Bohmer. For some reason, that attack never took place.

According to Popkin, Godfrey “was assigned to [FBI] agent Steve Christiansen, to whom he reported verbally every day. Godfrey was to work on the militant right wing, and was paid two hundred fifty dollars per month by the FBI.”

Popkin continued, “Apparently, Godfrey himself was among the more dangerous elements in the SAO, and [FBI] agent Christiansen among the more dangerous eminences grises of the operation.... Godfrey admitted that he had driven the car from which another SAO member, George Hoover, had fired into Bohmer’s house, wounding Paula Tharp. Subsequently, he had taken the weapon to Christiansen, who had hidden it for six months. (This was evidently insufficient grounds for the FBI to take disciplinary action against agent Christiansen. He continued as Godfrey’s contact until the bombing of the Guild Theatre, at which point he was removed by L. Patrick Gray himself...)”

The shots fired into Bohmer’s residence were the culmination of a campaign by SAO targeting the San Diego State professor. According to a brief on COINTELPRO crimes submitted to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights by members of the Congressional Black Congress on September 1, 2001, the harassment of Bohmer went back to early 1971.

In April [1971], tear gas crystals were dumped in a car parked in front of his home. On May 4, a muffled voice warned over the phone “the cross hairs are on you.”

In the summer of 1971, San Diego was chosen as the site for the 1972 Republican convention. Harassment against Bohmer increased, punctuated by assaults targeting the antiwar and Chicano movements.6 Among these acts were destruction of newspaper offices and book stores, firebombing of cars, and the distribution of leaflets giving the address of the collective where anti-war activist Peter Bohmer lived “for any of our readers who may care to look up this Red Scum, and say hello.”

On January 6, 1972 the SAO dramatically upped the ante. Earlier that day SAO cross-hair stickers were plastered on the door of Bohmer’s office; that evening a caller threatened, “This time we left a sticker, next time we may leave a grenade. This is the SAO!”

A few hours later, in a car parked outside Bohmer’s home, SAO soldier George Mitchell Hoover fiddled with a gun. Sitting next to him was Godfrey, the FBI’s informant. Aiming a 9mm Polish Radom pistol, Hoover fired two shots into the house; he would have fired a third but the weapon jammed. The first bullet struck San Diego Street Journal reporter Paula Tharp, shattering her elbow. The second shot narrowly missed Shari Whitehead and lodged in a window frame above her head. Two shell-casings matching the slug removed from Tharp’s arm were retrieved from the street.

The next day Godfrey turned over the gun to his FBI control agent, Steve Christiansen, a devout Mormon and dedicated anti-communist himself. The Special Agent hid the weapon under his couch for more than six months while the San Diego police conducted a half-hearted investigation. Though guilty of covering-up a criminal act, Christiansen insisted that Bureau superiors knew he was hiding the gun and fully approved of his actions to protect “confidential sources.” [PDF, pg. 34]

The START page on SAO commented dryly on the aftermath of the botched assassination: “The SAO became inactive after the assassination case drew much public attention to the group’s operations,” DHS’s Center for Excellence reported. “The testimony of Godfrey against SAO members resulted in prison terms for a significant portion of the San Diego group. Of course, if the SAO was actually FBI-run, the notoriety drawn to the case would have been the impetus to dissolve the group.”

In fact, that’s exactly what happened. By 1974, the group was moribund, and a number of its members were in jail.

Bohmer’s Story

I think it’s appropriate to allow Peter Bohmer to, in a sense, speak for himself. He survived the SAO’s vendetta and assassination attempts. While he lost his job as an assistant professor in economics at San Diego State, the victim of a witch-hunt, he went on to join the faculty at Evergreen State College in Washington. In a 2010 talk, he described the tactics the government used to go after antiwar activists, including the infiltration of radical groups, use of psychological warfare, harassment via the legal system, and state sponsored violence.

A few words about COINTELPRO before I come back to my story. It is short for counterintelligence program. COINTELPRO was/is a program coordinated by the FBI to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize” individuals and groups.... Although COINTELPRO officially ended in 1971, it has continued although in a somewhat less extreme form without the name up to September 11th 2001. Since then we are going backwards towards more police powers, infiltration and framing of activists....

Although no group I worked in San Diego planned or carried out any violent actions, and many groups were purely educational; 20 people I knew in these groups turned out to be police or FBI agents or informers, many worked for both. They worked hard to cause divisions among individuals and groups. Some but not all were provocateurs.... the FBI visited my employer, SDSU to get me fired, they visited landlords where I lived to get us evicted. They opened my mail, and monitored my checking accounts. We got anonymous phone calls about people being agents who I am sure weren’t....

FBI sponsored groups did firebombings, slashed tires of my cars, continual death threats, put out a wanted poster on me distributed in San Diego in 1971. The Secret Army Organization or (SAO) a group financed from FBI funds and led by an FBI informant, shot into a collective I lived in with the bullet permanently injuring a member of the collective, Paula Tharp in January 1972.

Howard Barry Godfrey, a well-paid FBI informant and head of the Secret Army Organization (SAO) admitted almost a year later in court to driving the car the night of the shooting but claimed another SAO member did the actual shooting. After the shooting into my house, other FBI agents in San Diego covered up the crime and hid the evidence such as the gun used in the shooting. The head of the FBI in LA, working with SD [San Diego] FBI, at this time was Richard W. Held who has been involved in the cases against many activists and political prisoners such as Judi Bari, Leonard Peltier and Geronimo Pratt.

After the shooting, threats and harassment continued. After the Secret Army Organization began threatening liberals as well as radicals and bombed a pornography theater where some police were present, the San Diego police demanded that the FBI reveal their informants in the SAO and the SAO were arrested in the summer of 1972 on numerous charges. Government lawyers hired by the FBI claimed various privileges such as not having to reveal much of the behavior because of security concerns. The full FBI involvement in this attempted murder didn’t come out although one FBI agent was forced to resign. Godfrey, the FBI informant and provocateur in the Secret Army Organization (SAO) didn’t go to prison although two other members of the SAO did.

Today, Peter Bohmer’s Facebook page shows he remains politically active and involved. He identifies himself on FB as “Faculty emeritus in political economy at The Evergreen State College, anti-imperialist and Socialist.”

Epilogue: Mark Felt and the Church Committee

During the period when the SAO functioned, as well as the FBI’s Operation Inlet, Mark Felt was Assistant Director of the FBI. He is most famous for being revealed twenty years ago to have been Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s source on Watergate, “Deep Throat.” But he was also heavily involved in COINTELPRO operations.

According to a 2005 article by Dan Berger at The Nation, Felt was one of only two people who were ultimately convicted for FBI crimes committed under COINTELPRO.

Along with Edward Miller, the FBI’s assistant director of the domestic intelligence division, Felt was convicted in December 1980 for supervising or ordering the warrantless break-ins of “friends and acquaintances” of the Weather Underground in 1972 and 1973. As the Public Research Associates website reports, Felt also admitted approving a “black-bag job” against the Arab Information Center in Dallas in 1972. The prosecutor said Felt was responsible for “violation of the rights of all people of this country, violations that cannot and will not be tolerated as long as we have a Bill of Rights.”

Felt and Miller were both pardoned by President Ronald Reagan in what Berger wrote was Reagan’s “first act in office.” A couple years after that, “a judge ordered [Felt and Miller’s] criminal records swept clean, and just like that the government’s widespread, illegal counterinsurgency efforts disappeared from legal consideration,” Berger added.

Over the years there has been speculation as to why Felt turned Watergate whistleblower. Given the Segretti/CREEP/FBI connection to the SAO and its terror campaign, it seems to me that Felt wanted a central perch for the FBI in the Washington Post’s Watergate investigation, the better to steer reporters away from anything that might compromise the Bureau, or himself. If anything were turned up on the FBI, he could either nudge the reporters away from it, or get the Bureau out in front of any embarrassing revelations, the better to manage any public outcry. It seems difficult to believe that neither Woodward or Bernstein would be ignorant of Felt’s likely motivations.

To this day, the FBI maintains it did exemplary work on its own Watergate investigation. “It was clear from the beginning that this was no ordinary burglary, and the FBI immediately found itself involved in the most politically sensitive investigation in its history,” says a FBI webpage on Watergate. “In the end, despite some issues in its own ranks, the Bureau’s exhaustive efforts were invaluable to unraveling the Watergate saga.”

From everything discussed in this article, the FBI’s statement on Watergate seems more than dubious.

In April 1976, the Church Committee issued its final report on “Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans.” Citing the example of FBI informant Howard Godfrey, “who actually rose to a position of leadership in the SAO and became an innovator of various harassment actions” (pg. 11), such as firebombings and attempted assassination, among other instances of unsavory FBI informant crimes, the Committee produced its final conclusion and recommendation. Whether it was taken seriously or implemented by the FBI and other intelligence agencies is highly doubtful. The careful reader will see that the Congressional panel’s recommendation was also, as a matter of enforcement, entirely toothless.

The Committee finds that where informants are paid and directed by a government agency, the government has a responsibility to impose clear restrictions on their conduct. Unwritten practice or general provisions aimed at persons other than the informants themselves are not sufficient. In the investigation of violence or illegal activity, it is essential that the government not be implicated in such activity.
[pg. 12]

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Nation states are famously capable of the most cynical and contradictory behaviors one can imagine. One that stands out from the past, but with massive impact on current events today is U.S. policy on Ukraine in the post-World War II period.

At the outset of the Cold War, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) financed and engaged with anti-Communist Ukrainian nationalist fighters and ideologues in an effort to wrest Ukraine from the Soviet Union. Many U.S. resources were spent trying to understand the intense rivalries between different groups and personalities, determining which Ukrainian nationalist factions to back, as well as organizing covert intelligence and sabotage missions, which sent some of these people, then in exile, behind Soviet lines.

As an example of the kind of operations the CIA ran at that time, see the October 1948 report, “Project Icon: Postwar Ukrainian Exile Organizations in Western Europe.” The formerly top secret report, which I obtained in 2014 via Mandatory Declassification Request from the CIA, was written by the Chief of Station at the CIA’s Karlsruhe Operations Base in the western portion of the U.S. Occupation Zone in Germany. (West Germany as a state entity, was not established until May 23, 1949.) An embedded link for download of this document is at the close of this article.

Reading the Icon report, one can see the CIA assessing the various Ukrainian nationalist formations, including their operations abroad and inside Ukraine, with an aim to figure out how best to covertly support and manipulate these new assets. The CIA concluded that U.S. aid and support for Ukrainian assets should keep in mind how such assets would be used in the case of war with the Soviet Union. It must be recalled that in the late 1940s and early 1950s, war with the USSR seemed to be nearly imminent.

Although the type of support for eastern emigrant groups envisaged under Project ICON is necessarily neither as extensive nor of the same type as would be offered these groups in the event of an armed conflict between the United States and the USSR, nevertheless, and particularly in the case of the Ukrainians, any support presently granted should be consistent with whatever political and military use we might intend to make of the Ukrainian emigration and of the partisan movement in the Ukraine under war time conditions. [page 16]

It is strange but true that at the same time the CIA was evaluating how best to coordinate with anti-Communist Ukrainian nationalists in Soviet Ukraine (and their representatives abroad), the CIA was also assisting the Pentagon in its top secret plans to use both nuclear weapons and biological weapons (BW) against the Soviet Union. The region of Soviet Ukraine was in fact a primary target.

The U.S. military’s BW plans targeted nearly the entire country of Ukraine, as well as a large portion of Russia. A key component of those plans involved the use of various forms of plant rust, a fungal plant pathogen, to destroy the primary crops in those areas (wheat, barley, rye, oats) and induce large-scale starvation in the population, which would powerfully impact the Soviet Red Army. As the CIA well knew, crop failures in this region in the past had caused famines and killed millions of people.

Did the various Ukrainian nationalist leaders working with the United States at various times during the 1950s, when these schemes were at their height, know about the plans for the BW destruction of Ukraine’s food grain crops? It is extremely doubtful any of them knew anything about top secret U.S. BW plans (though they must have known their country was a nuclear target for the U.S.). They were, whether they knew it or not, pawns in the greater project to destroy the Soviet Union, and even more, all communist forces and their supporters on the planet.

If biological weapons, or in another possible scenario, nuclear weapons, or both, had devastated Ukraine’s cities and countryside, how would U.S. authorities have rationalized the concomitant destruction of the U.S.-backed anti-communist cause —and its activists — in Ukraine? I think, borrowing an analogy from the U.S. war in Vietnam, Ukraine’s U.S. intelligence sponsors might have thought, well, we had to destroy the country to save it! “Better dead than Red” was a slogan of many U.S. Cold Warriors.

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Project Steelyard

It is a matter of historical fact, but little mentioned today,1 that in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. had military plans to create a famine in the Soviet Union, and particularly in the areas that today are considered southern Russia and Ukraine. Such a famine, which could have killed millions, was to be accomplished by use of anti-crop biological weapons.

This may seem a bizarre charge to make, but I shall document it all below.

I don’t believe anyone has ever pointed out that while U.S. intelligence organizations were backing right-wing Ukrainian nationalist politicians and organizations in a struggle against the Soviet Union,2 the U.S. military, with the assistance of the CIA, was planning to drop anti-crop biological weapons across portions of the Soviet Union, including a broad area of Ukraine and Southern Russia.3

I have previously documented some of the activities of Project Steelyard, which included the forward positioning of hundreds of biological bombs at U.S. and UK airbases in England and Libya, with plans for other bombs to be available at bases in Morocco and Cairo, Egypt. I am not going to repeat the entire story of Steelyard here, and readers are encouraged to peruse that article for the full details of the U.S. biowarfare plans.

Anti-crop biological warfare is an often overlooked weapon of mass destruction. Its aim was diabolically revealed in the Nazi’s Hungerplan, “a scheme to systematically starve 30 million Ukrainians, Russians and Slavs. The resulting food ‘surpluses’” were then to “be redirected to the Nazi armed forces and German civilians.” While the Nazi plan to eliminate “30 million ‘surplus eaters’” in the Soviet Union ultimately failed, the initial stages aimed at Soviet prisoners of war killed over 3 million POWs, mostly by starvation.

Am I exaggerating U.S. intentions? Hardly. Consider this excerpt from a June 1962 report, Analysis of Strategic Anti-Crops Weapons Systems (alternate link), prepared by Dunlap and Associates for the U.S. Army Chemical Corps Biological Laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the center for research into U.S. biowarfare:

The advent of modern biological and chemical agents which can effectively attack and destroy a variety of crops now makes it possible to consider the delivery of such agents on a strategic scale to wipe out entire crops of a region or country, thus leaving the target nation in a state of famine and subsequent starvation. [report pg. 1, PDF pg. 13]

According to the report, the countries targeted for biological anti-crop attack included “Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Roumania [sic], Czechoslovakia, Poland, Iraq, Syria, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Afghanistan, Thailand, Malaya, Sumatra, Borneo, Korea, Egypt, and Algeria, as well as China and the U.S.S.R.” report pg. 6, PDF pg. 18 ].

The Dunlap consultants to Ft. Detrick felt that the People’s Republic of China — circa 1962 — represented a country ripe for anti-crop biowarfare (BW) attack. The following screenshot provides their rationale:

On the other hand, use of anti-crop BW against the Soviet Union was considered by the time of the report as “difficult in the extreme” due to the fact “any attack would be detected and interpreted as an act of war and we would thus run the risk of starting a major conflict.”

It must not have escaped the notice of the Pentagon’s hired consultants that the USSR had by 1962 a large nuclear retaliatory capacity. Because of the Soviet Union’s size and ability to import goods, the report noted, “Any large-scale destruction of her own crops, although doubtless capable of causing considerable concern to the Soviet regime, would in all likelihood not bring that people to their knees” (Report pg. 6,PDF pg. 18).

But the Pentagon’s reluctance to use BW on the Soviet Union was not as pronounced a decade earlier, during the period of Project Steelyard. In February 1952, the CIA’s Office of Research and Reports (ORR) and the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) produced a “provisional intelligence report” on grain surplus areas in the USSR which could be selected as prime biological warfare targets.

A Statistical Approach to Biological Warfare

A February 18, 1953 CIA report, The Pattern of Land Use in Relation to Target Grains in the USSR and the Probable Spread of Stem Rust on Cereal Grains, identified the primary targets as an area “in the southern part of European USSR and in a narrow belt of Asiatic USSR extending eastward from the Ural Mountains to the Altai Mountains.” The targets consisted of areas with large amounts of surplus grain. The USSR depended upon such regions to feed its entire people, as well as provide important national income from the export of some grains.

The CIA divided the grain surplus areas into first, Region I, where the target grains were winter wheat and barley. This region included the Kiev and Odessa oblasts of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, as well as Crimea4 and Moldavian SSR. The area basically included “all of South Ukraine,” as well as other parts of West and North Ukraine, and the “North Caucasus Economic Region,” which comprised Krasnodar and Stavropol krays, Groznyy Oblast and Dagestan ASSR. (See pgs. 8-9 in “Patterns of Land Use,” linked above.)

Region II was where the target grain was spring wheat. Region III-A comprised areas where winter rye and oats were prominently grown. Region III-B encompassed wide areas of the north of the Soviet Union, mostly Russian, which were covered with “vast forests… marshes, pastures and wooded areas” and had a grain deficit. The CIA considered this region held “relatively poor targets (less than 28-percent chance) for successful feather bomb drops”(Patterns of Land Use, pg. 13, PDF pg. 19, parentheses in original). The Asiatic belt with a grain surplus was designated Region IV, and the target crops there were spring wheat and oats.

How did the CIA conceptualize a bioattack on these areas? They basically relied upon a statistical approach, based on the percentage of land cultivated with a certain crop, and the probability that a biological bomb filled with one or another type of plant rust, or infectious anti-plant organism would take hold and infect an area’s crop. They looked intensively into the particulars of these factors. Their dispassionate language obscured the impact of the discussion, which was how best to produce starvation in the Soviet Union.

Here’s an example of how they analyzed the subject straight from the CIA report:

In that part of the Ukraine which is included in Region I the statistical approach to the pattern of land use indicates that, for example, 58 percent of the total area of Nikolayev Oblast was seeded to the four cereal target grains…. The distribution of acreages in Nikolayev Oblast is fairly uniform. If it is assumed that the grain rust spores disseminated from a single E-73 feather-bomb drop have an initial spread of 10 square miles, it may be construed that some spores from a single feather-bomb drop in Nikolayev Oblast would have more than a 58-percent chance of hitting one or another of the four cereal target grains. [Patterns of Land Use, pg. 9, PDF pg. 15]

The territory of Nikolayev Oblast is today known by its Ukrainian name, Mykolaiv Oblast. Its primary city is Mykolaiv. It is the center of a very important wheat producing center. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations:

Most of Ukraine’s wheat originates in Kyiv and the Mykolaiv region. Ukraine’s main grain ports, also on the Black Sea, are in Odessa and Mykolaiv. In 2021, Ukraine represented 9 percent of the global market share of exports. Ukraine’s maize export share over the same period was even more significant, averaging 15 percent and conferring it the spot of the world’s fourth largest maize exporter. Kyiv, in the Mykolaiv region, along with the Chernihiv region, are Ukraine’s leading maize producing areas.

The goal of seeding Ukraine’s prime agricultural areas with anti-crop pathogens, in order to destroy their prime agricultural product, is genocidal in nature. There is no question about that. The Pentagon consultants at Dunlap and Associates, who were looking at anticrop warfare, were clear about that.

In their report, Analysis of Strategic Anti-Crops Weapons Systems, they wrote, “given … an effective attack has been delivered, how does one impress the enemy with the seriousness of his situation… to accept surrender or armistice or control: in short, how does one negotiate with an enemy country which is faced with starvation?” (pg. 7, PDF pg. 20).

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization singled out the Kyiv, Mykolaiv [Nikolayev], and Odessa areas as central agricultural regions in Ukraine. How did the CIA analyze their importance back in 1953? I want to look at each of these regions in some detail. Each illustration below is taken from the same map pictured at the start of this article, and is taken from page 18 (PDF pg. 25) of the CIA report, The Pattern of Land Use in Relation to Target Grains in the USSR and the Probable Spread of Stem Rust on Cereal Grains. Each area discussed below belongs to Region I, as defined in that report.

What do all the figures mean here? The top figure, “27.8” refers to the percentage of the area in the Kiev oblast planted (or seeded) with wheat, winter rye, barley, and oats. (Oblasts are the primary administrative divisions of the country). So, we can see that a bit more than a quarter of the oblast is planted with these food grains.

Below that we have on the left hand side the abbreviations for winter wheat (WW); winter rye, hereafter just “rye” (R); barley (B); oats (O); and spring wheat (SW). The middle column of figures refers to the percentage of area in the oblast seeded with that grain. Hence, in Kiev, 9.3% of the entire oblast is planted with winter wheat. 8.2% of the oblast is planted with rye, 5.1% with barley, and another 5.1% with oats.

In the far right column the figures represent the percentage of these grains grown in that oblast as a percentage of the total amount of that grain grown in the USSR at that time (1953). No doubt these figures have changed somewhat in the intervening years, but probably not that much.

Hence, according to the CIA account, the Kiev region accounted for 3.4% of the entire winter wheat crop of the USSR, 2% of the Soviets’ rye crop, and 2.6% of both the barley and oat crops.

In the Mykolaiv-Nikolayev region, a whopping 57.5% of the oblast was planted with the primary grain crops. Of those crops, winter wheat represented a huge amount. Over 40% of the area in the oblast was seeded with winter wheat. Barley was a distant, though important secondary crops, with over 10% of the oblast planted in that grain. Rye and oats were a much lesser crop, as was spring wheat. The winter wheat crop planted in the oblast constituted nearly 3% of the entire wheat plantings in the entire Soviet Union.

Odessa oblast also was heavily agricultural, and winter wheat was its most important crop. (I’m going to assume that you can read these charts efficiently at this point, and without my help.) Just the three oblasts I have chosen here represented 9.6% of the entire winter wheat crop of the Soviet Union. In Russian SSR, the primary agricultural oblasts appeared to be that of Krasnodar and Stavropol, which grew 9% and 4.6% of the winter wheat crop of the Soviet Union, respectively.

Stem-rust and the 1932-33 Ukraine Famine

The figures for each singular oblast may seem minor upon first look. In order to assess the impact of crop loss in various regions of the USSR, the CIA looked at the 1932-33 famine that overwhelmed Ukraine and parts of southern Russia. This portion of the report should be of high interest to many readers. The CIA was most concerned, in this instance, with the role of “heavy [plant] rust damage” associated with the famine in the area from the North Caucasus to the region west of the Dniepr River, including West Ukraine.

A stem-rust epidemic in this period did indeed take place, and helped facilitate the famine. The CIA included the rust epidemic when discussing the Ukraine famine, along with other dynamic, interlocking factors such as the chaos caused by resistance to agricultural collectivization, apparent poor management in some of the new collectivized farms, an outbreak of mice in the area “destroying much grain in stacks and storage sheds,” the preexisting crop failure of 1931-32, excessive government demands for delivery of grains in some areas, and more, as causal factors for the famine.5

The bottom line, as the CIA saw it, was that extensive destruction of the Soviet grain crop was necessary for success of a BW attack with stem-rust infected feathers, their preferred mode of spreading the pathogen.

The mode of delivery was by use of a biological feather bomb, either by delivery via cluster bomb dropped from an aircraft or via a munition specially designed to be dropped by a high-altitude balloon. For a discussion about these methods of waging biological warfare, see my articles, Biological Balloon Bomb Was “High Priority” in U.S. Germ War Program, and Fu-Go Reconsidered: Japan’s WW2 Balloon Offensive, Unit 731, and the Manhattan Project.

Historian Simon Whitby tied the development of a feather disseminating bomb — what ultimately became the E77 anti-plant bomb — to Japan’s World War II BW program, particularly its Fu-Go or balloon program that sent thousands of balloons over North America in late 1944 and early 1945.

Work on the E77 anticrop balloon bomb was inspired by, and based upon, a Japanese design tied to the deployment of a free-floating unmanned balloon with a biological anticrop warfare payload…. Adopting the feather dissemination method devised for the E73 cluster munition, according to a US Operations Research Study Group report, the 80-pound E77 anti plant bomb was capable of carrying sufficient quantities of agent and carrier to “cause high levels of plant infection when impact [was] on target crops.” The weapon was designated as a strategic munition, with a group assigned for its deployment to the theater air command. [Whitby,6 pg. 218]

But the U.S. version of the Fu-Go bomb was never used, and the balloon bomb was supposedly “never deployed,” according to Whitby.

How to Make an Epidemic

It is important to point out that spreading stem-rust is a more complicated task than one might suppose. The life cycle of the organism requires a stage where it lives in a host plant other than wheat or barley. That plant is the common barberry bush.7 The entire second part of the CIA report on “Land Use in the USSR” is a historical look at how the barberry bush facilitated stem-rust spread during known epidemics in the United States. The CIA extrapolated their examination of these naturalistic case studies to the problem of artificially inducing a stem-rust epidemic by means of biological weapons attack.

Determining what would make for a successful plant BW attack on Soviet grain crops, the CIA believed even a 20 percent destruction of overall Soviet food crops would not be a sufficiently powerful result. The CIA analysts concluded:

It must be borne in mind that the success of a BW attack on Soviet grain with feather-bomb drops will depend very largely on the extent of the stem-rust spread grids and the intensity of the destruction, within these grids, of the wheat, rye, barley, and oats growing in the three grain surplus regions of European USSR at the time of the attack. [Page 18]

The Ukraine experience of famine in 1932-33 helped solidify the CIA in its ultimate conclusion, which bore upon the entire BW anti-crop project as it related to the Soviet Union.

It is possible for a stem-rust epidemic to spread over parts of the southern grain surplus Regions I, II, and III-A of European USSR. (Ibid.)

The CIA’s report, The Pattern of Land Use in Relation to Target Grains in the USSR and the Probable Spread of Stem Rust on Cereal Grains, was not the only CIA report to touch upon the project of biological war against the Soviet Union. The report itself references an earlier study, dated June 10, 1952 and titled “A Preliminary Appraisal of the Effects of a Biological Attack on Grains in the USSR.” This latter report does not appear in any search result at the CIA’s FOIA Reading Room, nor anywhere online that I can see. If I ever wish to see it, I will have to FOIA it, and then wait.

These two reports do not complete an entire opus of the work CIA’s Office of Research and Reports undertook on the BW efforts aimed at the USSR. An August 12, 1952 memo, “ORR Research Program — Summary and Conclusions,” describes a number of other study projects for the Agency. These studies included a number addressed to Soviet economic vulnerabilities.

One project that referenced the effects of biological weapons attack was “Vulnerability of the Soviet and Satellite Food Supply to Biological Warfare.” A sampling of other ORR reports showed how carefully the CIA studied the effects of waging both “Cold” and “Hot” wars. The following two titles are examples of that: “Vulnerability of the Soviet and Satellite Economies, Including China’s, to Strategic Bombing with Particular Reference to Their Vulnerability to A-bomb Attack,” and “Vulnerability of the Soviet Bloc as a Whole to a Western Program of Economic Warfare. Relative Vulnerability to Various Measures — Overt and Covert.”

“Immense quantities of inoculum”

For the “Land Use” report, the CIA examined “some 1,528 case histories of stem-rust spread from infected barberry bushes.” The vast majority of these cases had little to offer by way of assistance to U.S. BW plans, as they represented “very limited spreads from small local foci of infection, obviously limiting their usefulness for the purpose of this survey.” Overall, the CIA found a “failure of significant spread in over 90 percent of the case histories” they reviewed regarding “stem-rust spread from barberry bushes.” (pg. 22)

But there were many cases still worth evaluating. Of the remaining 132 cases where a stem-rust outbreak spread over an area of more than one mile, 28 cases “were dramatic,” with crop infections ranging in area “from 50 up to 2,260 square miles,” with “heavy damage” in areas from 5 to 250 square miles (pg. 20).

The CIA also found that “Land-use pattern — that is, proportion of land in total farms, cropland, pasture, and woodland, where this last does not exceed 25 percent scattered through cropland — does not seem to limit the spread of stem rust” (p. 20.). This was good news, in that land-use patterns per se did not have to be overtly considered when planning a BW attack.

The CIA considered case no. 11 (in the report’s Appendix A) to most closely parallel a hypothetical overt BW attack. Case no. 11 was a 1946 stem-rust outbreak in Adams, Cumberland, and York Counties, in south-central Pennsylvania. This was an area of “moderately rolling terrain” with “a number of streams,” where 76 percent of the land was farmed. Grains made up one-third of this area. The barberry bushes grew close to the wheat fields, within a mile. The stem-rust epidemic spread “irregularly with a rough conformity to drainage patterns in all directions.”

Overall, “an area approximating 600 square miles was generally infected. In some 250 square miles the damage was heavy.” (pg. 30) The infections caused a 20-45 percent reduction in grain yields. With these kinds of results, extrapolating a BW attack over a large area would mean one could certainly cause a wished-for famine in “enemy” lands.

The CIA’s examination of the case studies showed that “heavy damage over an area of not less than 100 square miles can be expected from each succesfully established focus of infection resulting form BW attack with stem rust early in the growing season….” (pg. 19)

There were two necessary qualifiers. There must be a “susceptible variety of grain” for the pathogen used, and there must be “at least reasonably favorable ensuing weather conditions” (ibid.).

In summary, stem-rust sread from barberry bushes took place “under a wide variety of conditions as to terrain, geographical location, and season.... “ What was especially needed was to establish a “central source of inoculum” (pg. 22).

In the context of biological warfare, an “inoculum” is the dose or quantity of a biological agent, such as a bacteria or virus, delivered to a target population.

According to the CIA’s analysis, “Immense quantities of inoculum” were “required for major epidemic spread.” A U.S. biological warfare attack would need a hell of a lot of feathers and feather bombs! It was still necessary to determine the “number of drops necessary to give reasonable assurance of an adequate initial infection.” (pp 22-23) While land-use patterns were not for the most part determinative, “the pattern of munition drop must take into account the unsymmetrical nature of the hoped-for spread in relation to wind and topographical features” (e.g., open plain, rolling hills, valley, etc.) (pg. 23).

Conclusion

As I was finishing this article, I read in the news that in the next few weeks President Donald Trump is planning to meet with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, prior to then meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This latest round of diplomacy is supposedly aimed at finding a diplomatic solution to the awful Ukraine war. Who knows if this latest round of negotiations will amount to anything, as meanwhile Russia advances slowly but surely on the battlefield, and Ukraine tries to find ways to strike more deeply into Russia.

One wonders if any of the participants in these negotiations know very much about any of the history I have outlined above. I’d like to think that maybe at least Putin does, but I have my doubts. This history is never really brought up in Russian propaganda, even when they are discussing supposedly current U.S. biowarfare capabilities or intentions. As for Trump or Zelinskyy, they likely have no clue. That seems to amount to a dangerous lack of knowledge. The issue is not so much that there will be an outbreak of biological war, but the ways in which the U.S. has used Ukraine as a proxy in its primary war against Russia (and once the Soviet Union) has lessons that have gone unlearned because the facts of that history are so little known.

As for biological weapons, the U.S. ostensibly foreswore use of such weapons, and destroyed BW stockpiles between 1971 and 1973. (In recent years, there have been controversies about a possible ongoing BW program, including possible collaboration between the U.S. and Ukrainian governments. See my article, “The Destroyed Ukraine Bioagents: Dangerous or Benign?”) What happened to make the U.S. generally abandon its large-scale BW program, including its plans to destroy enemy crops?

A 2009 analysis published by the National Defense University Press recalled how in March 1968 “an open-air test of the nerve agent VX at Dugway Proving Ground had gone awry, causing the toxic cloud to drift off the test range and kill or injure more than 6,000 sheep in an adjacent grazing area” (pg. 1).

While VX nerve gas is not a biological weapon, the controversy, joining those around U.S. use of herbicides and defoliants in the Vietnam War, led to a Pentagon reevaluation of the use of Chemical, Biological and Radiological weapons in general. There had always been competition among different factions at the Pentagon regarding the usefulness of biological weapons, especially as the nuclear arsenal grew.

The 2009 report, “President Nixon’s Decision to Renounce the U.S. Offensive Biological Weapons Program” (by Jonathan B. Tucker and Erin R. Mahan) stated the issue: “With respect to BW, the main question was whether the U.S. BW stockpile added significantly to the Nation’s nuclear arsenal for deterring and retaliating against enemy BW attacks” (pg. 3). The answer appeared to doom the BW project.

In August 1969, “scientific experts” working on a National Security Council Review Group, “concluded that biological weapons had serious drawbacks from a military standpoint.”

Although lethal BW agents were more potent and cheaper to manufacture than lethal CW agents such as sarin and VX, biological pathogens were slower acting, less reliable in the field, and unpredictable in their effects, and had a shorter shelf life in storage. Because biological weapons caused acute symptoms only after an incubation period of several days, they had little utility on the battlefield and were best suited for attacks against population centers. Yet the effectiveness of BW for strategic deterrence and retaliation was limited because retaliatory use would entail lengthy delays to detect an enemy attack and deliver a counterattack to sicken the target population. Moreover, biological weapons would presumably be redundant in a nuclear exchange. [Page 4]

On November 25, 1969, President Richard Nixon announced the U.S. would abandon its BW program. Shortly afterwards, he clarified that also meant abandoning the use of toxins, such as botulism as a weapon. “Biological weapons have massive, unpredictable, and potentially uncontrollable consequences,” Nixon said. “They may produce global epidemics and impair the health of future generations” (page 10).

Very little in the 2009 National Defense University analysis was said about the U.S. BW program as it related to anticrop warfare. Nevertheless, at least formally, by 1973, the program to initiate a new Hungerplan seemed to have come to an end.

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Note: The quote at the head of this article is from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (Penguin Books, 2000, Richard Pevar and Larissa Volokhonsky, trans., pg. 757).