August 2, 1974
Page 26601
BINARY NERVE GAS WEAPONS
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the issue of chemical weapons in the American defense arsenal has never been fully aired by the Congress. Although the use of poison gas in warfare has been outlawed by international agreement since World War I, we have built up enormous stocks of all kinds of chemical weapons, from the most lethal nerve agents, to incapacitating ones, to tear gas used in riot control.
Various international agreements have been proposed to limit chemical warfare. Although the executive branch has agreed to sign an international ban on the production, stockpiling, and use of offensive biological, or bacteriological, weapons, it has not yet agreed to sign a similar ban on chemical weapons, even though it has expressed this country's intent not to be the first to use lethal chemical weapons.
Our current offensive chemical stocks are more than adequate to kill potential enemy populations many times over, and there is no need to add to these stocks. It would make much more sense for the United States to concentrate on defensive tactics against such weapons, as the Soviet Union does and as even the biological weapons ban permits, rather than to continue an offensive strategy based upon a threat of futile retaliation.
Mr. President, a unique opportunity for Congress to make a contribution to the beginnings of an international agreement on chemical weapons presents itself in the Department of Defense fiscal year 1975 appropriations bill now before it. Some $5.8 million has been requested for pre-production facilities to procure additional lethal nerve gas weapons, a program which could cost as much as $2 billion.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee has held extensive hearings on the entire chemical warfare issue and produced considerable testimony arguing against a congressional authorization for the Department of Defense to go into a new phase of chemical warfare weaponry at this time.
The House Appropriations Committee is debating the issue today, And at least 55 Representatives have announced their intent to carry the issue on the House floor when the Defense appropriations bill is considered next Tuesday.
Here in the Senate 13 Senators, including myself, recently urged our Appropriations Committee to delete the requested funding for the new lethal nerve gas weapons. We have been particularly encouraged by the facts that: First, the administration has not decided whether it would use such funds this fiscal year; second, Dr. Fred C. Ikle, Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, has stated that such congressional funding at this time would undermine current efforts in Geneva to negotiate an international chemical weapons treaty; third, the United States has just proposed a draft agreement in Geneva whereby a ban on lethal chemical weapons – which is what the Congress is now being asked to consider – would be the first phase of an eventual more comprehensive international chemical weapons agreement.
Mr. President, I urgently hope that our Appropriations Committee, and the entire Congress, will postpone funding of the new family of lethal nerve gas weapons.
The fact that the new family of lethal nerve gas weapons will be packaged in a "binary" mode should not distract us from the primary strategic and moral considerations inherent in any decision to continue, and now increase, our national stockpile of such weapons.
The United States should be taking the lead in world arms control agreements, not encouraging a dangerous proliferation of indiscriminate weapons, as it would be doing in this case if Congress appropriated the funds for additional lethal nerve gas weapons now.
Perhaps the most disturbing element of all is the potential proliferation of this cheap but deadly chemical weapon. The Washington Post aptly warned that binary chemical weapons "possess an all too scary potential for getting into the hands of terrorists or of countries looking for a hot weapon on the cheap."
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the RECORD a letter to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and an editorial in this morning's Washington Post.
There being no objection, the letter and editorial were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
U.S. SENATE,
Washington, D.C.,
June 21, 1974.
Hon. JOHN L. MCCLELLAN,
Chairman,
Appropriations Committee,
Washington, D.C.
DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: We are deeply concerned over the implications of the Department of Defense's appropriations request for production of binary nerve gas weapons. The House of Representatives and the Senate both have passed legislation reinforcing the Armed Services Committees' decision to cut $1.9 million from advanced research for the binary program. Also, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs recently completed extensive hearings which raised a number of serious concerns about the binary program. Therefore, appropriating funds to begin actual production of binary munitions deserves all the more scrutiny.
It is our belief that such appropriations should not be approved for the following basic reasons: First, this country already has enormous quantities of nerve gas. The U.S. Army stockpiles now contain an estimated 400 million pounds of nerve gas, amounting to 25 trillion doses – enough to kill the entire world population 300 times over, according to expert testimony. Second, nerve gas weapons are of doubtful value as a deterrent to attack.
The primary argument supporting the use of lethal chemical weapons is that other nations will be deterred from initiating a nerve gas attack against the U.S. because of our ability to retaliate.
However, this argument was developed and nerve gas stockpiles begun, before this nation and other nations had developed the enormous nuclear capability which now exists in the world.
Furthermore, serious questions were raised in recent House hearings as to whether the threat of retaliation with nerve gas weapons constitutes a valid deterrent.
During those public hearings, the representatives of the Department of Defense stated that the Soviet Union is believed to have a nerve gas defensive capability superior to that of the United States. It appears doubtful that the United States has the defensive capability to fight and operate in a nerve gas environment. Therefore, it appears that we essentially rely on our nuclear capability as a response to a massive nerve gas surprise attack and as a deterrent against such an attack.
We make this point not because we desire to support a policy of immediate escalation to nuclear warfare but because these facts reveal an inherent fallacy in national security policy which procurement of binary nerve gas weapons will not alleviate. If the Congress grants the funds to build binary munitions, it would be advancing nerve gas weapons which have already cost this nation several hundreds of millions of dollars without any evidence that they contribute anything to the security of the United States. Authorizing their transference into a "binary" mode would likely delay the destruction of nerve gas stocks.
The only justification for this proposal is that the binary munition will be safer to manufacture and handle in storage and transportation. In the absence of any real evidence of the value of any nerve gas weapon to the security of this nation and our historic abhorrence of such weapons, this argument for safety in handling seems to us to be a poor justification for production.
Third, we are concerned about the possible effect of such weapons on treaty negotiations in Geneva and the risk of international proliferation of nerve gas warfare capabilities.
The relatively great reduction in the hazard of manufacturing a nerve agent munition provided by the binary concept may be the very incentive to encourage smaller nations to add this weapon to their arsenal. We would seek instead to take every measure to prevent the proliferation of nerve gas weapons and not encourage such developments by our example.
We do not believe that the Department of Defense has examined thoroughly the total impact on current international negotiations of the proposed production of the binary nerve gas weapon. Moreover, the public record suggests that a serious disagreement exists between the Department of Defense and the Department of State with regard to the binary nerve gas weapon proposal.
Indeed, the Administration has not decided to use the production funds this year, so there is no sense in authorizing those funds until that decision has been thoroughly reviewed.
Certainly, we are convinced this nation needs to maintain and improve its chemical warfare defensive capability. A strong and effective defense has more immediate and obvious advantages than developing an ability to respond in kind to a surprise nerve gas attack. However, the vast stockpiles of lethal nerve gas weapons we now possess, their doubtful military effectiveness, the possibility of encouraging proliferation, and the threat to international arms control agreements are sufficient reasons, we believe, to withhold the production of new binary nerve gas weapons.
Accordingly, we recommend strongly against the approval of the $5.8 million requested by the Department of the Army for the initiation of procurement of the binary nerve gas weapon, as well as disapproval of any other funding which may have been requested for the support of this production.
Sincerely,
Edward M. Kennedy, Adlai E. Stevenson, III, Edmund S. Muskie, Walter F. Mondale, Hubert H. Humphrey, William Proxmire, Gaylord Nelson, James Abourezk, Thomas F. Eagleton, Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., Mike Mansfield, Floyd K. Haskell, Lee Metcalf.
[From the Washington Post, Aug. 1, 1974]
MUST WE WAGE CHEMICAL WAR?
In votes today and next Tuesday, the House must decide whether to plunge ahead with a program that may keep the United States ready to wage chemical warfare for years to come, or whether to pause and study this especially dread form of warfare more thoroughly and explore new opportunities to limit or even ban it on an international basis. Specifically, the program at issue involves $5.8 million this year (and as much as $2 billion later) to start producing a "binary" chemical weapon, a new safer-to-handle method for delivering nerve gas. Generally, the program poses to Congress perhaps its first good opportunity – and if missed, its last opportunity for a long time – to break the monopoly which special interests in the Pentagon have maintained for a full generation over the nation's policies on CW.
The key facts on binaries were brought out last spring in hearings of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The United States has huge stockpiles of deadly nerve gas so, as Rep. Donald Fraser (D-Minn.) recently put it, "we are not examining this problem from a position of weakness." The small CW lobby within the Pentagon professes to see a looming offensive CW threat. But, in fact, American military commanders apparently disagreeeing with this estimate have chosen not to prepare to defend against it. And administration officials, while asking for funds to start procuring binaries, concede that full preliminary open-air testing has not been conducted. That is, the United States has on hand enough nerve gas to kill every person in the world several times over. Its military posture reflects a judgment that the Soviet Union does not intend a CW attack. And it has not completed tests on the new binaries it wishes now to procure.
If the military reasons for delay on binaries are strong, the diplomatic reasons are more so. Discussions on controlling chemical weapons – production, stockpiling, use – have been chugging along at Geneva for years. They were given a healthy push at the Moscow summit just a month ago when Mr. Nixon and Mr. Brezhnev agreed to seek "early progress" on an agreement "dealing with the most dangerous, lethal means of chemical warfare." This means nerve gas if it means anything. The administration's arms control director Fred C. Ikle has repeatedly warned Congress that production of binaries would undermine efforts to negotiate international CW controls. Indeed, to launch a massive new CW program now is to make a mockery of Mr. Nixon's summit pledge, itself specifically reaffirmed since then by his ambassador at Geneva.
That binary funds should be sought at all, after that summit pledge, is a perverse tribute to the way bureaucratic momentum can substitute for policy at the Pentagon. Careful students of arms control make the further point that binaries, being relatively inexpensive and simple to make, possess an all too scary potential for getting into the hands of terrorists or of countries looking for a hot weapon on the cheap.
The House Appropriations Committee is to vote today on the binary money. Since Rep. George H. Mahon (D-Tex.), the committee chairman, also chairs its defense subcommittee, which has already approved the money, perhaps the best that can be hoped for in the committee is for it to add language somehow hinging the appropriation to CW negotiations at Geneva. Certainly there is no justification for spoiling those negotiations, even before the promised Nixon-Brezhnev initiative is taken, by charging ahead on binaries. At any rate, the full House is due to address the question next Tuesday. Some 50 or more legislators have already approved a useful resolution by Rep. Wayne Owens (D-Utah) urging movement on both the biological warfare and chemical warfare fronts. So there is a better chance to gain control of binaries on the House floor. It is a fight well worth making.