Chemical-Biological Warfare

Archive Report

Disclosures About C-B Activity

Miltary Alarm About Soviet Gas Buildup

The Idea of waging war with deadly gases and other exotic weapons concocted in the laboratory is repulsive to most Americans. Yet such chemical weapons have been an integral part of the U.S. defense program since World War II. However in 1969, following world criticism of this country's use of chemical herbicides and tear gas in Vietnam, the United States said it would henceforth use lethal and incapacitating chemical agents only if the enemy did first, and it renounced all methods of biological—germ—warfare. President Nixon ordered all existing biological warfare agents destroyed and biological research confined to defensive measures such as immunization. After the presidential edict,1 the military began scaling down its chemical warfare program.

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