Anticrop Biological Weapons Programs - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 221

remains sketchy. However, according to the External Relations Unit of
UNSCOM, “Iraq declared that it intended to use the smut as an economic
weapon—their plan was to cause food shortages as part of a potential at-
trition war with Iran.” 34
Midspectrum Anticrop Agents in Vietnam
From collaborative arrangements between the UK and the US in the early
1940s emerged a devastating capability to wage warfare against plant
life using midspectrum agents. The widespread use in Southeast Asia
throughout the 1960s of biologically active chemical plant growth regula-
tors has of course received more attention than other national anticrop
BW programs. Great controversy persists about the environmental im-
pact of spraying with plant growth regulators, and debate continues
about the health implications of the dissemination of huge quantities of
2,4,5-T, a chemical plant growth regulator that contained significant lev-
els of highly teratogenic dioxin.
Plant growth regulators are natural or synthetic organic compounds
that modify or control specific physiological processes within plants. As
part of the US Project Agile and under the auspices of the DOD Advanced
Research Projects Agency, chemical defoliation and chemical anticrop
plant growth regulators were developed in 1961 for counterinsurgency in
Southeast Asia. 35 Under a directive issued by President Kennedy in De-
cember 1961, a joint US and Republic of Vietnam (RVN) program of
chemical spray tests was conducted in Vietnam with commercially avail-
able plant growth regulators, utilizing RVN aircraft fitted with experi-
mental spray devices. The tests confirmed the British experience of suc-
cess with the deployment of such agents in Malaya and later US success
in defoliation using plant growth regulators at Camp Drum, New York, in
1958, 36 demonstrating that the chemicals were effective both in the defo-
liation of tropical forests and in the destruction of food crops.
The first supplies of chemical plant growth regulators for dissemination
from MC-1 Hourglass spray systems fitted to C-123 US Air Force aircraft
arrived in Vietnam in January 1962. Subsequently, operations were con-
ducted utilizing 1,000-gallon A/A45y-1 spray systems capable of produc-
ing a spray swathe 15 kilometers long and 85 meters wide. 37 Full-scale
defoliation operations were accompanied by an expansion of the R&D ef-