NGO provides details to the UN on the US’s offensive biological weapons program
By Janet Phelan
NGO provides details to the UN on the US’s offensive biological weapons program
On November 9, 2016, the attached statement was made orally on the floor of the Biological Weapons Convention at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Multiple issues concerning the US’s non compliance with the international treaty were highlighted in the presentation, including 1) changes in the US’s bioweapons legislation, giving the US government immunity from violating its own bw laws, 2) failure to report said changes to the BWC and deliberate attempts to mislead the treaty organization concerning the nature of the changes, 3) the documented existence of biological weapons stockpiles on military bases and—compellingly– 4) the existence of a domestic delivery system.
ITHACA
“Protecting Human Rights”
PO Box 50 PMB 2017
Lake Arrowhead, California
Mr. President, Distinguished Representatives, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for the opportunity to address the Convention.
Five years ago, at the 7th review conference of the Biological Weapons Convention and during a side event hosted by the US, a representative of the US Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Daniel Gerstein, gave a power point demonstration, putting up on a screen the US’s bioweapons legislation. The problem is, Dr. Gerstein showed you a law which had been superseded and changed beyond recognition. The actual current bw legislation, codified Section 817 of the USA Patriot Act, gives the US immunity from violating its own bioweapons laws. Specifically, the current bw law states that “the prohibitions contained in this section shall NOT apply to any duly authorized US governmental activity.” Plainly put, the US government does not have to obey the prohibitions codified in its own bw law.
Widget not in any sidebars
At the time of the 7th Review Conference of the BWC, ten years after this game changing legislation was passed into law, this alteration still had not been reported to the Convention at large.
Certainly, the failure of the US State Department to inform the Convention is a violation of a politically binding mandate. One could also assert that the US de facto left the Convention through this piece of legislation.
The US’s violations of the BWC go much deeper, however. In the intervening five years between the last review conference and now, the US has been publicly caught sending live anthrax to 194 labs, worldwide, as reported in the national press. The determination by the Pentagon that the problem was the de- activating equipment at a military base in Utah is actually nonsensical. The very same military facility, Dugway Proving Grounds, had been reported to have sent out live anthrax eight years ago and nothing was ever done to address the problem.
In fact, the US Government Accountability Office has reported that the US government has only come clean concerning approximately one half of the number of events in which live agents were sent through the mail to other labs.
Five years ago, this Convention was informed that the public water systems in the US had been reconfigured to provide a delivery system for a selective bw attack. This reconfiguration apparently began right at the time that former President Nixon declared to the world that the US had unilaterally shut down its bioweapons program. The fact that so many people in Flint, Michigan were poisoned through the Flint water system should have raised substantial concerns about the vulnerability of water systems in the US.
The disaster in Flint was reportedly accidental. The reconfiguration of water systems in the US, however, is not. It is deliberate and its intent can only be considered sinister.
We sit in this room today perched on the edge of a WMD catastrophe of simply unimaginable dimensions. We have a state party—a powerful state party whose violations of the Convention are in evidence from every possible angle you might want to look–changes in legislation, failure to report the damning legislation to the international community, international transmission of live agents through the mail, stockpiles reported on a number of military bases, and a nearly undetectable and covert delivery system.
The proof of non compliance by the US has now been reported to you, as well as the efforts to obscure the noncompliance from international oversight. It is up to you now to take appropriate action.
Should delegates or others in attendance desire substantiation of these allegations, I will be available through the end of this week.
Blueprint of water system in Spokane, Washington, obtained with some difficulty, showing the double line water system, in which the contents of the second line are restrained at tee joints by remote controlled valves. As this blueprint reveals, the water system picture here is vulnerable to insertion of unknown substances via the second line.
Submitted this eighth day of November, 2016
Janet Phelan, ITHACA co-chair
Top image: Natural Blaze
This press release (NGO provides details to the UN on the US’s offensive biological weapons program) appears here at Natural Blaze with permission and can be republished with attribution.
