Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 23, 1994 TAG: 9412230154
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT BURNS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
At the outset of the Cold War, the U.S. government pursued the development of radiation weapons not only for the stated purpose of defense but also for offensive use on a vast scale, newly declassified records show.
Although use against enemy troops was considered, the weapons' biggest promise, according to the documents, was their ability to terrorize and paralyze industrial cities, including residential sections, by contaminating them.
Although still incomplete, the picture provided by the records is the fullest so far of a ``radiological warfare'' program set up in the late 1940s and early '50s. The documents were declassified by the National Archives at the request of The Associated Press.
In the late 1940s, as the United States was beginning to expand its new atomic bomb-building capability, the military saw potential in a related class of weaponry: radioactive poisons that could silently spread deadly contamination.
The idea, which dates at least to 1941, was to release highly radioactive substances by dropping them in bombs. Upon impact, the radiation, in the form of pellets, aerosol or dust, would escape and spread.
No radiation weapon is known to have been used in war, and the United States apparently never put radiation weapons into its active arsenal. Some were tested in the United States, but the records aren't clear how many were built for that purpose.
The government had maintained publicly that its interest in radiation weapons was defensive - that it needed to understand their potential to prepare for the possibility that an enemy would use such weapons on America. There were fears that Germany, in World War II, and later the Soviet Union might be capable of such attacks.
Some of the U.S. work on radiation weapons was indeed defense-oriented. But the records clearly demonstrate that the main thrust of the program was offensive.
They also reveal the vast destructive potential of the weapons; the goal, risking no more than five U.S. bombers per mission, was to contaminate 10 to 25 square miles to a level of 3 million curies of radiation per square mile. That level was deemed powerful enough to prevent human habitation for at least four months.
Some of the contemplated offensive uses included:
Killing or forcing the evacuation of workers living in or near large industrial cities in the Soviet Union. A secret report by a government panel noted on Nov. 20, 1950, that unlike the atomic bomb, a radiation weapon could not physically destroy key targets such as industrial plants. It could, however, deny the enemy use of such plants ``by the destruction of its skilled workers.''
``The main target ... will therefore be the working population in the city,'' it said, adding that casualties could be limited ``if evacuation were prompt.''
Contaminating areas in Soviet-controlled ``satellite countries'' in Eastern Europe, where for political or economic reasons the United States did not want to use atomic weapons. Similarly, radiation weapons could be used to paralyze industries in Western Europe in the event of a Soviet occupation.
Making germ warfare more deadly. A Nov. 13, 1947, memo from an Army research and development office described a ``possible large-scale sabotage use'' in which radioactive gases or aerosols would be injected with germ sprays into natural-gas mains. The radioactivity would lower the resistance of people breathing the air in buildings using natural gas, ``thus making the individual more susceptible'' to infection from the germs.
Combining radioactive materials, such as byproducts of plutonium production, with chemical weapons. The 1947 memo said a radioactive material used in combination with existing Army Chemical Corps chemical agents ``could be of overwhelming effectiveness against the enemy.''
Terrorizing the enemy. The mere threat of using radiation weapons against an unprepared enemy civilian population might have ``telling effect,'' the 1950 memo said. It said this use alone was not important enough to justify a full-scale program to build radiation weapons.
The program even estimated the costs of contaminating enemy territory: $2.2 million to $3.3 million per square mile.
The documents are in the files of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, established in 1947 as the military successor organization to the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bombs.
Most of the project's records still are classified. These include many records of a special panel, created jointly by the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Department in March 1948, to study the feasibility of radiological warfare and to steer development work.
The panel disbanded in November 1950 after issuing a final, 31-page report. Its central conclusion was that while it couldn't confidently judge the value of radiation as a weapon until such a device was used in war, the potential was great enough to justify ``preparations directed toward enabling its use.''
by CNB