Allegations of Biological Weapons Use - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 254

tions relied upon confessions (later retracted) from US airmen. Early con-
fessions described limited clandestine BW missions; 16 later ones por-
trayed a widespread BW campaign ordered by the US Joint Chiefs of
Staff. 17
It is clear that the extensive BW campaign alleged in the later confes-
sions could not have occurred. The US BW program did not have suf-
ficient production capacity to mount such a massive campaign, and the
agents and munitions in its standardized arsenal did not correspond to
those described in the allegations. 18 Such a large campaign would have
required the direct participation of many hundreds of US military person-
nel, and the direct knowledge of thousands more. Such a campaign could
not have been concealed for 50 years.
Furthermore, transcripts of Soviet documents indicate that some data
originating in North Korea had been fabricated with Soviet aid, and that
after May 1953 the USSR considered the allegations to have been fabri-
cated. 19 However, these documents are fragmentary, and they do not jus-
tify the conclusion that all the evidence was fabricated, although they
raise that possibility.
The Chinese Threat Analysis
The allegations were triggered by reports of suspicious events from North
Korea, but it is clear that these events were considered significant largely
because intelligence in Chinese hands was interpreted as showing that
the US had for some time pursued progressively more threatening prepa-
rations to mount a BW attack. 20
It was clear to the Chinese that the US had acquired Japanese BW data
in the late 1940s, and in 1949 the US confirmed that its World War II BW
program was continuing. 21 In the May 1951 allegations General Douglas
MacArthur was charged with using the Japanese government as a front
for BW preparations. 22 Later allegations maintained that the US brought
Japanese BW war criminals to Korea as consultants on BW. 23
The LCI1091 Navy epidemic control ship was alleged to have been used
to kidnap North Korean and Chinese soldiers for BW tests. The ship was
then said to have traveled to the POW camps at Koje Island to test BW. 24
A BW production facility in Japan was alleged—almost certainly the US
Army's 406th General Medical Laboratory (GML), which because of the