WASHINGTON, Oct. 8, 2007
U.S. Pursued Secret Assassination Weapon
Cold War Program Explored Using Radiological Poisons To Covertly Kill Enemies, Docs Show
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Approved at the highest levels of the Army in 1948, the effort was a well-hidden part of the military's pursuit of a "new concept of warfare" using radioactive materials from atomic bombmaking to contaminate swaths of enemy land or to target military bases, factories or troop formations.
Military historians who have researched the broader radiological warfare program said in interviews that they had never before seen evidence that it included pursuit of an assassination weapon. Targeting public figures in such attacks is not unheard of; just last year an unknown assailant used a tiny amount of radioactive polonium-210 to kill Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London.
No targeted individuals are mentioned in references to the assassination weapon in the government documents declassified in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the AP in 1995.
The decades-old records were released recently to the AP, heavily censored by the government to remove specifics about radiological warfare agents and other details. The censorship reflects concern that the potential for using radioactive poisons as a weapon is more than a historic footnote; it is believed to be sought by present-day terrorists bent on attacking U.S. targets.
The documents give no indication whether a radiological weapon for targeting high-ranking individuals was ever used or even developed by the United States. They leave unclear how far the Army project went. One memo from December 1948 outlined the project and another memo that month indicated it was under way. The main sections of several subsequent progress reports in 1949 were removed by censors before release to the AP.
The broader effort on offensive uses of radiological warfare apparently died by about 1954, at least in part because of the Defense Department's conviction that nuclear weapons were a better bet.
Whether the work migrated to another agency such as the CIA is unclear. The project was given final approval in November 1948 and began the following month, just one year after the CIA's creation in 1947.
It was a turbulent time on the international scene. In August 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb, and two months later Mao Zedong's communists triumphed in China's civil war.
As U.S. scientists developed the atomic bomb during World War II, it was recognized that radioactive agents used or created in the manufacturing process had lethal potential. The government's first public report on the bomb project, published in 1945, noted that radioactive fission products from a uranium-fueled reactor could be extracted and used "like a particularly vicious form of poison gas."
Among the documents released to the AP - an Army memo dated Dec. 16, 1948, and labeled secret - described a crash program to develop a variety of military uses for radioactive materials. Work on a "subversive weapon for attack of individuals or small groups" was listed as a secondary priority, to be confined to feasibility studies and experiments.
The top priorities listed were:
The stated goal was to produce a prototype for the No. 1 and No. 2 priority weapons by Dec. 31, 1950.
The 4th ranked priority was "munitions for attack on individuals" using radioactive agents for which there is "no means of therapy."
"This class of munitions is proposed for use by secret agents or subversive units for lethal attacks against small groups of important individuals, e.g., during meetings of civilian or military leaders," it said.
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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This is GOING ON RIGHT NOW IN IRAQ and Afghanistan! The US army is using bullets made from "depleted uranium". They have contaminated the land, and the Iraqi children are being born with terrible birth defects. Our soldiers are not immune, either! Many of their children are being born with similar defects.
"Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration."
We are destroying the world, and ourselves, because we live, eat, breathe, and multiply in FEAR. This fear is manufactured and sold by the GOP, so Cheney''s masters can make money from the war.
This is unspeakably EVIL!
Why tell the whole world, someone asks? Because WE NEED TO KNOW so we can put a stop to it! Write your Senators and Congressmen and DEMAND that they end this evil practice NOW!
Funny that the US had oked the same type of weapon back in 48.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMM, ANY OF YOU OLE FARTS, FEEL SICK?
COUGH-COUGH, HACK-HACK.
STAY THE COURSE..........
This is GOING ON RIGHT NOW IN IRAQ and Afghanistan! The US army is using bullets made from "depleted uranium". They have contaminated the land, and the Iraqi children are being born with terrible birth defects. Our soldiers are not immune, either! Many of their children are being born with similar defects.
"Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration."
We are destroying the world, and ourselves, because we live, eat, breathe, and multiply in FEAR. This fear is manufactured and sold by the GOP, so Cheney''''s masters can make money from the war.
This is unspeakably EVIL!
Why tell the whole world, someone asks? Because WE NEED TO KNOW so we can put a stop to it! Write your Senators and Congressmen and DEMAND that they end this evil practice NOW!
Posted by MyIDonCBS at 03:39 PM : Oct 08, 2007
-Yep, but don''t worry! SickRick will ask Jesus to rescue us, the US constituents, he died for all of us 2000 years ago. So we''re redeemed! we can now pollute, kill, destroy, and enslave other nations and vote GOPs.
Posted by grazinggoat at 04:25 PM : Oct 08, 2007
Trueman was President in 1948 and he was a Democrat, he is the only person to have nuked someone.
has a military that carries on constant research
and a military-industrial complex that profits
from it immensely. whoa dude. incredible.
and instead of killing just a few individuals
they concentrated on annhilating a billion people
at a time, instead, with nuclear weapons. amazing.
i never knew that before. the wonders of military
science and the infallible wisdom of our leaders.
thank god we''re safe.
Do you trust our military?
Do you trust our president?
Who are the real terrorists?
Who REALLY did 9/11?
"Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration."
We are destroying the world, and ourselves, because we live, eat, breathe, and multiply in FEAR. MyIDonCBS
You''re kinda scary right now.
The DU is relatively harmless when inert, but fire it in munitions and it burns and atomizes so that when our troops or the men, women and children of Iraq breath it in or ingest it, it travels to various areas of the body and begins to cause harm...this unpredictability of where it might concentrate accounts in part for the wide range of symptoms exhibited in our veterans.
Major Dr. Doug Rokke was the Pentagon''s point man on DU--but siince he came back with what they didn''t want to hear, he''s been disowned and ignored by officialdom. He has been sickened, as have members of his unit, by this radiological poison. See the Gulf War Veteran''s web site, the POWER HOUR website and Major Rokke''s for more information.
"Paranoia runs deep...Into you mind it will creep... It starts when you''re always afraid..."
You guys are still living the dream. It''s okay. Stay there in the ''sixties. It''s safe there in your little fantasy cocoon. You don''t have to deal with reality, like OBL and the real monsters the rest of us have to cope with to keep you safe so you can "dream...."
Bush knows this. That''s why he keeps you pumped up with fear. The Boogeyman''s coming! The sky is falling! Musroom Clouds! Al Qaeda. NONE of it has anything even remotely related to reality. But you fall for it, again and again.
Wake up, you fools! You are becoming animals right before our very eyes. Bush is the master of this fear. He uses it to control you, to make you give him power he has not earned, and to channel money to his friends in the oil and war industries.
Wake up soon, before his hubris leads him to start throwing around nukes. If that happens, we will NOT have a world worth occupying anymore.
Well said, MyIDonCBS.
The only thing I would add is that US foreign policy has been hijacked so often by the pro-Israel crowd, the military crowd and the nutty Christo-fascists that I''ve come the realization that it would be better for the US to just stay at home, and not intervene anywhere. It''ll be safer for the rest of the world and will save us trillions in wasted resources, long-term.
It''s FUNNTY THAT you refer to "having to face realities like OBL"! GW Bush, the putative "leader of the free world" says he doesn''t even THINK about OBL! How''s THAT for hiding your head in the sand!
Bush doesn''t think about OBL because he''s too busy playing "war president" by destroying a country that had ABSOLUTELY NO CONNECTION TO OBL before we attacked them.
What kind of sick, twisted, little fantasy world do you repugnant neocon conmen lovers live in, anyway?
OUR OWN GOVERNMENT says that the war in Iraq has made us LESS SAFE, not safer! That''s not just us "liberals" talking!
Even PRESIDENT BUSH said that there was NO CONNECTION between Saddam and OBL. But he''s said a lot of things that turn out to be lies, so I can understand why you don''t believe him!
I really hope you repugs start to wake up soon, or it will be too late for all of us. Since I don''t believe that will happen, let me just say this: "*** you all to h3ll for eternity." That''s your fate, regardless of what I say, anyway.
Just finished reading Assassin''s Gate. Great book. Occasionally it buys into the invective you clowns so freely dispense. But it stays on message about concern for the Iraqis before and after the invasion. It is about reality. Try reading it and come back when you are sane enough for a reasoned conversation. Until then, your paranoid messages of hate--for Bush, for Jews, for anyone that disagrees with you, ultimately for America--pretty much mark you as part of the problem, not part of the solution.
That was a supprise.
The name is spelled Truman, moron.
Guess that puts the lie to your neocon spew about how Dems are all cowards and *******, no?
Like I''d just LOVE to shove a rusty bayonet up your a$$.
So stuff a sock in it, neoconscum!
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by drrc1
October 9, 2007 10:17 AM PDT
- Why is this surprising? We dropped many uranium enriched bombs on Serbia not so long ago. Radioactivity on the ground is still detectable there.
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