1960-1973: Agent Orange Used in Vietnam In Vietnam, the US military uses about 21 million gallons of Agent Orange to defoliate the jungle in order to deny enemy fighters cover. The defoliant—manufactured primarily by Monsanto and Dow Chemical—gets its name from the 55-gallon drums it is shipped in that are marked with an orange stripe. At least 3,181 villages are sprayed with the highly toxic herbicide, which is comprised of a 50:50 mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T and contaminated with dangerous levels of dioxins. Much of the dioxin is TCDD, which is linked to liver and other cancers, diabetes, spina bifida, immune-deficiency diseases, severe diarrhea, persistent malaria, miscarriages, premature births, and severe birth defects. Between 2.1 and 4.8 million Vietnamese are exposed, as are about 20,000 US soldiers. According to Vietnamese estimates, Agent Orange is responsible for the deaths of 400,000 people. Because there is a continued presence of high dioxin levels in the food chain of several sprayed areas, the health effects of Agent Orange persist to the present day. According to studies by Arnold Schecter of the University of Texas School of Public Health in Dallas, some Vietnamese have dioxin levels 135 times higher than people living in unsprayed areas. Schecter has called Vietnam “the largest contamination of dioxin in the world.” The Vietnamese believe the herbicide has contributed to birth defects in 500,000 children, many of them second and third generation. Though the US government has accepted responsibility for the health complications in US soldiers that resulted from exposure to Agent Orange (providing up to $1,989 per month for affected vets and more than $5,000 per month for those severely disabled and homebound), the US has refused to compensate Vietnamese victims. To date, no US agency, including the US Agency for International Development, has conducted any program in Vietnam to address the issue of Agent Orange. When asked by Mother Jones magazine in 1999 if the Vietnam government has raised the issue in private talks with the United States, a State Department official responds: “Ohhhh, yes. They have. But for us there is real concern that if we start down the road of research, what does that portend for liability-type issues further on?” [BBC, 11/19/1999; Mother Jones, 1/2000; BBC, 11/15/2000; BBC, 12/30/2001; Associated Press, 4/17/2003] Entity Tags: Dow Chemical, Monsanto Timeline Tags: US-Vietnam (1947-2001) Category Tags: Chemical Weapons, Key Events, Veterans Affairs

1962: US Sprays Chemical in Oklahoma Town, Apparently Does Not Monitor Effects The US government sprays florescent particles of zinc cadmium sulfide over Stillwater, Oklahoma, but reportedly does not monitor how the application affects the population. Leonard Cole, an expert on the Army’s development of biological weapons, later explains to an Oklahoma TV news program: “Cadmium itself is known to be one of the most highly toxic materials in small amounts that a human can be exposed to If there were concentrations of it enough to make one sick, you could have serious consequences a person over a period of time could have illnesses that could range from cancer to organ failures.” [KFOR 4 (Oklahoma City), 4/25/2003] Category Tags: Chemical Weapons, Key Events

May 1967: US Tests Sarin in Hawaii, Panama The US military tests the “effectiveness of artillery shells using sarin in the jungle.” The tests, code-named “Red Oak, Phase 1,” are conducted in the Upper Waiakae Forest Reserve on Hawaii and near Fort Sherman in the Panama Canal Zone. According to reports released in late October 2002, there was “no indication of harm to troops or civilians.” [Reuters, 11/1/2002] Category Tags: Chemical Weapons, Key Events

6:25 pm October 4, 1992: Plane Crash in Holland Shows Chemicals for Sarin Were Being Transported El Al Flight LY1862, en route from New York to Tel Aviv, crashes into a block of apartment buildings shortly after take-off from Schiphol Airport, located south-east of Amsterdam. At least 43 people on the ground are killed (The exact number of deaths is unknown, since many of the incinerated victims were undocumented immigrants). Information about the plane’s cargo and the crash is suppressed: El Al withholds information about the plane’s several tons of “military cargo;” 12 hours of videotape made during the rescue and clean-up operation (42 cassettes in all), along with police audiotapes, are erased and shredded; and El Al documents and the plane’s cockpit voice recorder (CVR) mysteriously disappear. It is later learned that the plane, a Boeing 747, was carrying several tons of chemicals, including hydrofluoric acid, isopro-panol and dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP)—three of the four chemicals used in the production of sarin nerve gas. The shipment of chemicals—approved by the US commerce department—reportedly came from Solkatronic Chemicals Inc. of Morrisville, Pennsylvania and its final destination was the Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) in Ness Ziona near Tel Aviv, Israel, which is reported to be the “Israeli military and intelligence community’s front organization for the development, testing and production of chemical and biological weapons.” A former IIBR biologist later tells the London Sunday Times in October of 1998, “There is hardly a single known or unknown form of chemical or biological weapon… which is not manufactured at the institute.” In fact, it was IIBR that provided the poison and the antidote used in the attempted assassination of a Hamas leader in Jordan in 1998. The IIBR does not appear on any maps and is off-limits even to members of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset. Israel denies that the chemicals were to be used in the production of chemical weapons and instead claims that they were needed to test gas masks. But as an article in Earth Island Journal notes: “[T]his explanation is puzzling since it only takes a few grams to conduct such tests. Once combined, the chemicals aboard Flight 1862 could have produced 270 kilos of sarin—sufficient to kill the entire population of a major world city.” During hearings on the crash in 1999, it is learned that since 1973, El Al planes are never inspected by customs or the Dutch Flight Safety Board and that El Al security at Schiphol is a branch of the Israeli Mossad. Furthermore, it is discovered that every Sunday evening a mysterious El Al cargo flight arrives at Schiphol en route from New York to Tel Aviv. The flights are never displayed on the airport arrival monitors and the flights’ documents are processed in a special, unmarked room. [BBC, 10/2/1998; Earth Island Journal, 1999; Covert Action Quarterly, 10/20/2004] Over a thousand residents living near the crash site later become sick with respiratory, neurological and mobility ailments and a rise in cancer and birth defects is later detected among the population. [ZNet, 10/12/2002] Entity Tags: El Al, Institute for Biological Research (IIBR), Solkatronic Chemicals Inc Category Tags: Chemical Weapons, Key Events

July 1997: Author Details Growing Disparity between US Civilian, Military Cultures Author and military expert Thomas Ricks writes a detailed examination of what he calls the widening gap between members of the US military and the rest of American society. Ricks portrays a platoon of Marine recruits who, after returning home from boot camp, were largely alienated from their old lives. “They were repulsed by the physical unfitness of civilians, by the uncouth behavior they witnessed, and by what they saw as pervasive selfishness and consumerism,” he writes. “Many found themselves avoiding old friends, and some experienced difficulty even in communicating with their families.” Many recruits were offended by the overt racism and class segregation they experienced in their old neighborhoods, in sharp contrast to what Ricks calls “the relative racial harmony of Parris Island.” Several commented on how aimless and nihilistic their former friends seemed. Ricks writes that the Marines “were experiencing in a very personal way the widening gap between today’s military and civilian America.” Retired Sergeant Major James Moore tells Ricks: “It is difficult to go back into a society of ‘What’s in it for me?’ when a Marine has been taught the opposite for so long. When I look at society today, I see a group of young people without direction because of the lack of teaching of moral values at home and in school. We see that when we get them in recruit training. The recruits are smarter today—they run rings around what we were able to do, on average. Their problems are moral problems: lying, cheating, and stealing, and the very fact of being committed. We find that to get young people to dedicate themselves to a cause is difficult sometimes.” Retired Admiral Stanley Arthur adds: “Today, the armed forces are no longer representative of the people they serve. More and more, enlisted [men and women] as well as officers are beginning to feel that they are special, better than the society they serve. This is not healthy in an armed force serving a democracy.”

Voluntary Segregation - Ricks notes that after over twenty years without a draft, the US military has become a more professional and disparate societal group. Many military personnel live their lives in and among the military, taking their children to military doctors and sending them to military or base schools, living on or around military bases, socializing with other military families. Former Air Force historian Richard Kohn says, “I sense an ethos that is different. They talk about themselves as ‘we,’ separate from society. They see themselves as different, morally and culturally. It isn’t the military of the fifties and sixties, which was a large, semi-mobilized citizen military establishment, with a lot of younger officers who were there temporarily, and a base of draftees.” The closing of many military bases has contributed to what Ricks calls “the geographical and political isolation of the military…,” as has the privatization of many of the military’s logistical and supply functions. “[M]ilitary personnel today are less likely to be serving in occupations that have civilian equivalents, and are more likely to specialize in military skills that are neither transferable to the civilian sector nor well understood by civilians,” he writes.

Deepening Politicization of the Military - Ricks writes that many military personnel, especially officers, are becoming more politicized, and particularly more conservative. “Of course, military culture has always had a conservative streak,” he writes. “I suspect, however, that today’s officers are both more conservative and more politically active than their predecessors.” He continues, “The military appears to be becoming politically less representative of society, with a long-term downward trend in the number of officers willing to identify themselves as liberals. Open identification with the Republican Party is becoming the norm. And the few remaining liberals in uniform tend to be colonels and generals, perhaps because they began their careers in the draft-era military. The junior officer corps, apart from its female and minority members, appears to be overwhelmingly hard-right Republican and largely comfortable with the views of Rush Limbaugh.” He quotes Air Force Colonel Charles Dunlap as writing, “Many officers privately expressed delight that” as a result of the controversy over gays in the military, the Reserve Officers Training Corps program is producing “fewer officers from the more liberal campuses to challenge [the Air Force officers’] increasingly right-wing philosophy.” Surveys conducted of midshipmen at Annapolis and cadets at West Point support this conclusion. Retired Army Major Dana Isaacoff, a former West Point instructor, says that West Point cadets generally believe that being a Republican is becoming part of the definition of being a military officer. “Students overwhelmingly identified themselves as conservatives,” she says. And, she notes, the cadets tend to favor more radical conservatism as opposed to what Ricks calls “the compromising, solution-oriented politics of, say, Bob Dole.” Isaacoff says, “There is a tendency among the cadets to adopt the mainstream conservative attitudes and push them to extremes. The Democratic-controlled Congress was Public Enemy Number One. Number Two was the liberal media.” Studies of Marine officers at Quantico, Virginia produced similar results.

Changes in Society - American society has become more fragmented, Ricks writes, and steadily less emphasis is being put on what he calls “the classic military values of sacrifice, unity, self-discipline, and considering the interests of the group before those of the individual.” Ricks writes that while the military has largely come to grips with two of the most intractable problems American society faces—drug abuse and racism—society as a whole has not. And young military personnel display a competence and level of education that many non-military youth do not, Ricks asserts. And military personnel are increasingly better educated than their civilian counterparts: some military recruiters say that they have more trouble than ever before in finding recruits who can pass the military entrance exams.

Lack of a Focused Threat - The end of the Cold War and the loss of the Soviet Union as a hard-and-fast enemy has made many Americans wonder why the nation needs such a large standing army any longer. “For the first time in its history (with the possible exception of the two decades preceding the Spanish-American War) the US Army must justify its existence to the American people,” Ricks writes. Military budgets are continually under attack in Congress and from the White House, and many predict huge, potentially crippling funding cuts in the near future. Low-intensity, localized problems such as the fighting in Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti do not capture the public imagination—or create fear among the citizenry—in the same way that the daily threat of nuclear annihilation and Soviet hegemony kept the support for the military high among American priorities.

Enemies Within - Ricks is troubled by the increasing use of military forces against US citizens. It wasn’t long ago that Marines descended into the streets of Los Angeles to impose order among rioters, and the Marines used similar strategies to contain the fractious populace as they used in Somalia. One Marine, Captain Guy Miner, wrote in 1992 of the initial concerns among Marine intelligence units over orders to collect intelligence on US citizens, but their concerns over legality and morality quickly evaporated once, Miner wrote, “intelligence personnel sought any way possible to support the operation with which the regiment had been tasked.” Many military officers are calling for the military to be granted wide-ranging powers to be used against civilians, including the right to detain, search, and arrest civilians, and to seize property. In 1994, influential military analyst William Lind blamed what he called “cultural radicals [and] people who hate our Judeo-Christian culture” for what he saw as the accelerating breakdown of society, and went on to discuss the predominant “agenda of moral relativism, militant secularism, and sexual and social ‘liberation.’” Ricks notes that Lind’s words are fairly standard complaints which are often echoed daily on conservative talk radio and television broadcasts. However, he writes, Lind’s words take on a new significance in light of his conclusion: “The next real war we fight is likely to be on American soil.”

Military's Impact on Civilian Society Likely to Increase - Ricks does not believe a military coup is likely at any point in the foreseeable future. While the equilibrium between civilians and the military is shifting, he writes, it is unlikely to shift that far. What is likely is a new awareness among members of the military culture of their impact and influence on civilian society, and their willingness to use that influence to shape the social and political fabric of their country. [Atlantic Monthly, 7/1997] Entity Tags: Dana Isaacoff, Guy Miner, James Moore, US Department of the Army, Charles Dunlap, Stanley Arthur, Thomas Ricks, US Department of the Marines, William Lind, Richard Kohn Category Tags: Other, Veterans Affairs

April 1998: US Space Command Issues Plan Saying US Must Maintain Space Superiority US Space Command issues its Long Range Plan, arguing that the US must maintain its superiority in space and prevent it from becoming a level playing field where “national military forces, paramilitary units, terrorists, and any other potential adversaries” might share the “high ground” with the US. If adversaries establish a presence in space, it would be “devastating to the United States,” the report says. Chapter 2 of the report summarizes the Space Program’s vision for 2020. It emphasizes the need to (1) “ensure un-interrupted access to space for US forces and our allies, freedom of operations within the space medium and an ability to deny others the use of space;” (2) achieve “global surveillance of the Earth (see anything, anytime), worldwide missile defense, and the potential ability to apply force from space;” (3) seamlessly join “space-derived information and space forces with information and forces from the land, sea, and air;” and (4) “augment the military’s space capabilities by leveraging civil, commercial, and international space systems.[/dq] [US Space Command, 4/1998; Foreign Service Journal, 4/2001] Category Tags: Weaponization of Space, Key Events

1999 and After: New Video Manipulation Technologies Raise Fears of Mass Deception Press reports warn that newly-developed digital data manipulation software which automate the creation of fake pictures, videos, or audio recordings could be used for political deception or military advantage. Moviegoers are used to elaborate special effects, but until recently that required expensive and time-consuming, frame-by-frame, post-production work. Now, however, software developed since the mid-1990s permit much faster, even real-time, special effects. Real-time video manipulation allows the deletion of people or objects from a live broadcast or the insertion of pre-recorded images. The technology has commercial applications: it is used in sports broadcasting to generate a virtual “first-down” line or virtual billboards. It is also used, more controversially, in some news programming (see January 13, 2000). A related technology called “digital morphing” is now available to create virtual characters who can convincingly imitate real-life persons, as in the film “Forrest Gump”. Voice morphing, a technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, allows the creation of computer speech based on a short recording of someone’s voice. The virtual voice can be surprisingly life-like: the robotic intonations are a thing of the past. For intelligence agencies and PSYOPS (psychological operations) personnel the new techniques are potential weapons of the future. While the public at large is familiar with edited or “photoshopped” images, it is not yet aware of the possibilities for audio or real-time video deception. [Washington Post, 2/1/1999; Technology Review, 7/2000] Category Tags: Other

April 22, 1999: CNN Executive Defends Network Practice of Only Hiring Retired Military Officers as Military Analysts Radio news host Amy Goodman interviews CNN vice president Frank Sesno, and asks about CNN’s practice of putting retired generals on CNN without balancing its coverage with peace activists. Sesno tells Goodman that he believes it is perfectly appropriate to have retired military officers as paid analysts to comment on foreign affairs and military issues, “as long as we identify them as what they are, as long as we believe in our editorial judgment that their judgment is straight and honest—and we judge that—and it’s not a series of talking points, yes, I think it’s appropriate.” He adds, “I think it would become inappropriate if they were our only source of information or our only source of analysis or our only source of whatever the opinion is that we’re assessing, if there were no opposing viewpoints, if you will.” Goodman asks, “If you support the practice of putting ex-military men, generals, on the payroll to share their opinion during a time of war, would you also support putting peace activists on the payroll to give a different opinion in times of war, to be sitting there with the military generals, talking about why they feel that war is not appropriate?” Senso replies: “We bring the generals in because of their expertise in a particular area. We call them analysts. We don’t bring them in as advocates. In fact, we actually talk to them about that. They are not there as advocates.” So “why not put peace activists on the payroll?” Goodman asks. Sesno retorts, “We do,” and Goodman asks, “Who?” Sesno backs off: “On payroll? No, we don’t put peace activists—we don’t—we do not choose to put a lot of people on the payroll. And we will put people on the payroll whom we choose and whom we feel is necessary to put on the payroll.” Sesno cannot recall the last peace activist that he interviewed. Given all of this, Goodman asks how, aside from “screaming in the streets and getting a picture taken,” does an antiwar voice get heard on CNN? Sesno retorts: “Well, that’s up to you. But, you know, there are a lot of ways people have of registering their opinions: through op-eds, through phone-in shows, through protest, if that’s what people are doing.” [Democracy Now!, 4/22/2008] Entity Tags: Amy Goodman, CNN, Frank Sesno Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda Category Tags: Military Propaganda

September 23, 1999: In Campaign Speech, Bush Warns against Terrorism, Calls for Military ‘Transformation’ In a landmark campaign speech delivered to the cadets of The Citadel, a South Carolina military college, presidential candidate George W. Bush warns of new threats, including terrorism and missile proliferation, and calls for sweeping military reforms. [CNN, 9/23/1999; New York Times, 9/24/1999] Says Bush: “We see the contagious spread of missile technology and weapons of mass destruction.… Add to this [missile threat] the threat of biological, chemical, and nuclear terrorism—barbarism emboldened by technology. These weapons can be delivered, not just by ballistic missiles, but by everything from airplanes to cruise missiles, from shipping containers to suitcases.… Our first line of defense is a simple message: Every group or nation must know, if they sponsor such attacks, our response will be devastating.… And there is more to be done preparing here at home. I will put a high priority on detecting and responding to terrorism on our soil.” Bush also calls for military change in terms reminiscent of the “revolution in military affairs” (RMA) movement. RMA advocates say that future wars will require a more mobile, agile, and technologically advanced military (see October 29, 2001). “This opportunity [to project America’s influence] is created by a revolution in the technology of war. Power is increasingly defined, not by mass or size, but by mobility and swiftness. Influence is measured in information, safety is gained in stealth, and force is projected on the long arc of precision-guided weapons. This revolution perfectly matches the strengths of our country—the skill of our people and the superiority of our technology. The best way to keep the peace is to redefine war on our terms.” [Citadel, 9/23/1999] Bush’s speech is praised by the neoconservative think tank, the Project for the New American Century, which says: “[T]he passages on innovation, or the revolution in military affairs, provided the most thoroughly developed ideas in the speech.… Bush lends impetus to the stalled effort to transform the US military to meet future challenges.” [Project for the New American Centry, 9/24/2004] General Richard Myers, the current vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will later recall, “Reading a newspaper account of The Citadel speech, I saw that Bush had done his homework and was passionate about making our military more relevant in the 21st century.” [Myers, 2009, pp. 119] On December 11, 2001, Bush will return to The Citadel as the president of a nation at war and say: “In September 1999, I said here at The Citadel that America was entering a period of consequences that would be defined by the threat of terror and that we faced a challenge of military transformation. That threat has now revealed itself, and that challenge is now the military and moral necessity of our time.” [The Citadel, 12/11/2001] Entity Tags: George W. Bush Category Tags: Other

March 24, 2000: CNN Executive Admits Allowing Military Psyops Personnel to Intern at CNN Was Mistake After the San Jose Mercury News reports on a February symposium where the commander of an Army psyops (psychological operations) unit discussed how Army psyops personnel have worked closely with the US news network CNN (see Early February, 2000), journalist Amy Goodman discusses the issue with three guests: Dutch journalist Abe De Vries, who first broke the story; liberal columnist Alexander Cockburn, who wrote about it in the Mercury News and in his own publication, Counterpunch; and CNN senior executive Eason Jordan. De Vries says he originally read of the symposium in a newsletter published by a French intelligence organization, and confirmed it with Army spokespersons. Cockburn says that after he wrote about it in his publication, he was contacted by an “indignant” Jordan, who called the story “a terrible slur on the good name of CNN and on the quality of its news gathering.” Cockburn says that he, too, confirmed that Army psyops personnel—“interns,” Jordan told Cockburn—worked for several weeks at CNN, but the network “maintains stoutly, of course, that these interns, you know, they just were there making coffee or looking around, and they had no role in actually making news.” Goodman asks Jordan about the story, and he insists that the Army personnel were nothing more than unpaid interns who “functioned as observers” and were “always under CNN supervision. They did not decide what we would report, how we would report it, when we would report something.…[T]hey had no role whatsoever in our Kosovo coverage and, in fact, had no role whatsoever in any of our coverage.” Jordan says that allowing them into CNN was a mistake that the network will not repeat. Jordan says that the psyops personnel merely wanted “to see how CNN functioned, as a lot of people from around the world do. We have observers here from all over the world.” He insists that no one in his division—news gathering—knew about the psyops personnel serving as interns until the program was well underway, and that once they found out about it, they brought it to a halt “within a matter of days.” Cockburn points out that from De Vries’s reporting, the Army was “obviously pleased” by their ability to insert personnel inside one of the nation’s largest news organizations. Cockburn says that it isn’t a matter of the Army personnel conducting some sort of “spy novel” operation inside CNN, but a matter of building relationships: “[T]he question is really, you know, the way these things work. If people come to an office, and they make friends at the office, then the next time they want to know something, they know someone they can call up. A relationship is a much more subtle thing than someone suddenly running in and writing [CNN correspondent Christiane] Amanpour’s copy for her.” Jordan says the entire idea of the US military influencing news coverage is “nonsense” (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond). Goodman counters with a quote from an Army psyops training manual: “Capture their minds, and their hearts and souls will follow.… Psychological operations, or PSYOP, are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning and ultimately the behavior of organizations, groups and individuals. Used in all aspects of war, it’s a weapon whose effectiveness is limited only by the ingenuity of the commander using it. A proven winner in combat and peacetime, PSYOP is one of the oldest weapons in the arsenal of man. It’s an important force, protector, combat multiplier and a non-lethal weapons system.” [Democracy Now!, 3/24/2000] Entity Tags: US Department of the Army, Abe De Vries, Amy Goodman, Eason Jordan, CNN, Alexander Cockburn Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda Category Tags: Military Propaganda

March 24, 2000: CNN Executive Denies Bias in Using Retired Military Generals as Network Analysts of Balkan Conflict During an interview about CNN allowing Army psyops personnel to serve as interns inside the network (see March 24, 2000), reporter Amy Goodman asks CNN executive Eason Jordan about the network’s practice of using retired military generals and other high-ranking officers to serve as military analysts in times of war, without balancing the generals’ perspective with commentary from peace activists and antiwar leaders. Jordan says he is not aware of any such policy at CNN; however: “In wartime, we want people who understand how wars are orchestrated. We want experts who can address those issues. And if we have not put enough peace activists on the air, that’s not because we have some policy against that.” Jordan denies that the military analysts are there to discuss policy, but merely to explicate technical issues for the audience. Liberal columnist and editor Alexander Cockburn asks a hypothetical question: if indeed the Army, for example, had mounted “an incredibly successful military penetration of CNN,” and that everything Jordan is saying is complete disinformation: “[H]ow would you disprove that? Because, after all, everything that you see on CNN would buttress that conclusion. CNN was an ardent advocate of the war [in Kosovo, and] did not give a balanced point of view. They fueled at all points the Pentagon, State Department, White House approach to the war. I think you could demonstrate that far beyond the confines of your program, and it’s been done by a number of people. I’m just saying that if you looked at it objectively from afar, actually what you could see is evidence of an enormously successful PSYOPS operation. So, in a way, the burden is far more on CNN to disprove what you could conclude was a successful operation.… CNN, as an outlet, both in Iraq and now, is, to my view of thinking, devotes about 95 percent of its time in times of war to putting the US government point of view.” Jordan calls Cockburn’s hypothesizing “ridiculous.” [Democracy Now!, 3/24/2000] Entity Tags: Alexander Cockburn, Amy Goodman, Eason Jordan, CNN Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda Category Tags: Military Propaganda

September 14, 2000: US Ambassador Says Efforts to Prevent Space Arms Race ‘Unwise’ In Geneva, at the Conference on Disarmament, US Ambassador Robert T. Grey, Jr. says that US interest in weaponizing space will not spark an arms race and therefore efforts to establish the proposed Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) treaty would be “unwise,” “unrealistic,” and a waste of time. “The United States agrees that it is appropriate to keep this topic [PAROS] under review,” he says. “On the other hand, we have repeatedly pointed out that there is no arms race in outer space—nor any prospect of an arms race in outer space, for as far down the road as anyone can see.” The US and Israel are the only countries that oppose efforts to outlaw the weaponization of space. Members of the conference express concern that US intentions in space reflect its desire to achieve world hegemony. Grey adamantly denies that the US is motivated by such goals. “We reject allegations that actions or plans of the United States attest to a desire for hegemony, or any intent to carry out nuclear blackmail, or any supposed quest for absolute freedom to use force or threaten to use force in international relations.” He further asserts that this view has “no basis in reality,” because a limited National Missile Defense (NMD) would does “not give anyone ‘hegemony.’” He claims also that hegemony “is unattainable in any case” since the world is so diverse and complex. [US Department of State, 9/15/2000; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1/2001] Entity Tags: Robert T. Grey Category Tags: Weaponization of Space, Key Events

Early 2001: US Practices for War in Space against Country Resembling China A Group of Air Force officers gather at Schriever Air Force Base for five days to conduct war games. The games are centered on a scenario where the US is at war with a country resembling China and the battlefield is in space. Describing the games, MSNBC reports: “[T]he United States and its adversary deployed microsatellites—small, highly maneuverable spacecraft that shadowed the other side’s satellites, then neutralized them by either blocking their view, jamming their signals or melting their circuitry with lasers. Also prowling the extraterrestrial battlefield were infrared early-warning satellites and space-based radar, offering tempting targets to ground stations and aircraft that harassed them with lasers and jamming signals.” [MSNBC, 4/27/2001] Category Tags: Weaponization of Space, War Net

March 20, 2001: Rumsfeld Begins Transformation of Defense Department Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld begins his vaunted transformation of the functions of the Defense Department by issuing the first in the “Anchor Chain” series of “snowflakes,” or unsigned memos from Rumsfeld. The memos are written by Rumsfeld and annotated and edited by, among others, Rumsfeld’s personal assistant Stephen Cambone, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. The first memo is a sprawling, overarching combination of mission statement, fix-it lists, and complaints, reflective both of Rumsfeld’s sincere ambitions to cut through the bloated and unresponsive military bureaucracy, and his more personal desire to run the US military from his office. Rumsfeld fells that congressional oversight cripples the ability of the military to spend what it needs to on getting buildings built and weapons systems constructed. He complains that talented officers skip from one assignment to another every two years or so, too fast to “learn from their own mistakes.” He complains that the military “mindlessly use[s] the failed Soviet model: centralized government systems for housing, commissaries, healthcare and education, rather than using the private sector competitive models that are the envy of the world.” This apparently is the origin of the “privitization” of the military’s logistical systems that will come to fruition with Halliburton, Bechtel, and other private corporations providing everything from meals to housing for military personnel both in Iraq and in the US. Forgetting, or ignoring, the fact that the Defense Department has repeatedly demonstrated that it will squander billions if left to its own devices, he complains that Congressional oversight so hampers the department’s functions that the Defense Department “no longer has the authority to conduct the business of the Department. The maze of constraints on the Department force it to operate in a manner that is so slow, so ponderous, and so inefficient that whatever it ultimately does will inevitably be a decade or so late.” Without transforming the relationship between the Defense Department and Congress, he writes, “the transformation of our armed forces is not possible.”[O]ur job, therefore, is to work together to sharpen the sword that the next president will wield. [Woodward, 2006, pp. 26-27] Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Bechtel, Halliburton, Inc., Paul Wolfowitz, US Department of Defense, Stephen A. Cambone Category Tags: Pentagon's Power, US Military Dominance

April 2001: Experts Say Weaponizing Space Could Lead to Arms Race MSNBC interviews Paul Stares, an expert on space at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, for an article it is preparing on US plans to weaponize space. Stares is very critical of these plans, arguing that it will spark a new arms race and ultimately increase the vulnerability of US military and commercial assets in space. “It is currently not in the US interest to develop an anti-satellite system,” he says. “We have more to lose than gain from developing such a system. So you really have to wonder at the end of the day whether this is a path we really want to encourage others to go down.” Other experts interviewed by MSNBC have similar opinions. Michael Krepon, president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, also says that by weaponizing space, it would encourage others to do the same. [MSNBC, 4/27/2001] Entity Tags: Paul Stares, Michael Krepon Category Tags: Weaponization of Space, War Net

August 25, 2001: Automated Landing Technology Developed for US Military Tested on Civilian Plane The US Air Force successfully tests the use of a military technology component that will land planes entirely by autopilot. The component is installed on a commercial airliner. The test takes place at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico and uses a Boeing 727. The component for automated landing used by the military is called the Joint Precision Approach and Landing System, or JPALS. The JPALS is a differential GPS ground station developed by Raytheon. It was designed to become interoperable with civilian systems utilizing the same GPS-based technology. The civilian counterpart to the JPALS is known as the Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS). Both the JPALS and the LAAS use GPS data sufficiently accurate to allow a plane’s autopilot to land safely without human intervention. The test demonstrates that “the JPALS and LAAS will provide an interoperable landing capability for military and civil applications,” according to a Raytheon announcement (see also August 2000). [SpaceDaily, 10/1/2001] Entity Tags: Raytheon Category Tags: Other, US Military Dominance

6:42 p.m. September 11, 2001: Democrats Must Now Support Increased Defense Spending, Rumsfeld Says At a press briefing, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld takes Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) to task for the Democrats’ opposition to increased defense spending. After answering questions about the terrorist attacks and assuring the nation that “the Pentagon is functioning,” Rumsfeld suddenly turns to Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and says: “Senator Levin, you and other Democrats in Congress have voiced fear that you simply don’t have enough money for the large increase in defense that the Pentagon is seeking, especially for missile defense, and you fear that you’ll have to dip into the Social Security funds to pay for it. Does this sort of thing convince you that an emergency exists in this country to increase defense spending, to dip into Social Security, if necessary, to pay for defense spending—increase defense spending?” Levin replies: “One thing where the committee was unanimous on, among many, many other things, was that the—we authorized the full request of the president, including the $18 billion. So I would say that Democrats and Republicans have seen the need for the request.” [US Department of Defense, 9/11/2001] Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Carl Levin, US Department of Defense Category Tags: Arms Proliferation

September 30, 2001: Pentagon Completes Quadrennial Defense Review for Transformation of Military The Defense Department completes its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The 71-page report, mostly written before the September 11 attacks, attempts to layout a strategy for transforming the military from a cold war era model to one that can respond quickly and efficiently to a variety of symmetrical and asymmetrical threats from both state and non-state adversaries. According to the document, the US military must maintain its status as the most powerful military in the world in order to ensure global stability. “America’s political, diplomatic, and economic leadership contributes directly to global peace, freedom, and prosperity,” it states, asserting that “US military strength is essential to achieving these goals.” As part of the transformation process, the military must focus “more on how an adversary might fight rather than specifically whom the adversary might be or where a war might occur.” The military should drop its focus, the report says, on being able to win simultaneous wars in two separate theaters, in favor of a strategy that allows the US to decisively win one major war—in which it might have to topple a government and occupy the country—while retaining the capability to defend the US against multiple, overlapping threats in other regions. The report puts special emphasis on homeland security and the need to adopt “transformational” technologies in information warfare and intelligence. It also speaks of the need to further militarize space in order to “ensure the freedom of action in space for the United States and its allies and… [the capability] to deny such freedom of action to adversaries.” [US Department of Defense, 9/30/2001 ; Baltimore Sun, 10/2/2001; Washington Post, 10/5/2001; Space (.com) website, 10/8/2001] Category Tags: Weaponization of Space, Key Events