Allegations of Biological Weapons Use - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 271

grain, to be 20 milligrams or more. 100 Trichothecenes can be absorbed

through the skin, inhaled, or ingested.
Alleged delivery devices were equally varied: aerial spraying, bombing,
and air-to-surface rockets in all three countries; mines and shells addi-
tionally in Kampuchea and Afghanistan; and mortars and rocket-pro-
pelled grenades as well in Kampuchea.
The agents were also described variously: green, yellow, red, black, or
white smoke; powder or gas; or, most commonly, a rain of sticky yellow
droplets. This last description gave rise to the term “yellow rain,” by
which the allegations came to be known.
In total, in Laos, Kampuchea, and Afghanistan combined, nearly 500
separate attacks were alleged through 1982, with about 11,000 people
said to have been killed. 101 Continuing attacks, at much reduced fre-
quency, were alleged into the 1990s in Laos.

The Evidence

The evidence was voluminous and varied. It included testimony from
dozens of alleged victims and other eyewitnesses, testimony from defec-
tors who claimed to have participated in chemical attacks, and reports of
trichothecenes in environmental samples from attack sites in all three
countries, and in biomedical samples taken from alleged victims.
Independent experts, however, expressed serious reservations, and
their critique of the evidence has established substantial grounds to doubt
its reliability. Nevertheless, the US government has never retracted the
allegations, and in US governmental and military circles they are still
widely believed. 102

VICTIM ACCOUNTS A large number of firsthand accounts from al-
leged victims and from other eyewitnesses were accumulated between
1976 and 1983 by interviewers from the US embassy in Bangkok, a team
from the State Department, and a team from the US Army. The sheer vol-
ume of this testimony has convinced some that chemical attacks of some
kind took place in Southeast Asia.
However, this testimony is now considered highly unreliable. It was
gathered by interviewers untrained in social science methods, through
interpreters, interviewing subjects preselected for having claimed to have