Allegations of Biological Weapons Use - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 280

dismissed as mere propaganda, seem understandable: China knew that
the US had debriefed Japanese BW war criminals but denied this to the
international community, Chinese intelligence had identified all the ele-
ments of a Japanese-style BW program at forward locations, the US was
publicly hinting that it was going to use BW in Korea, and evidence sug-
gestive of such attacks started to accumulate. In hindsight the allegations
were incorrect, but in context they were understandable.
Cuba as well, whose allegations have little evidence to support them,
may well be convinced, from a long history of US-sponsored illegal at-
tacks, that BW use has been among the dirty tricks employed. This belief
is especially plausible for the earlier allegations, stimulated by US con-
gressional hearings that revealed US efforts to assassinate Castro, and CIA
retention of BW agents in violation of executive orders. However, it is
possible that more recent allegations reflect more habit than conviction.
While the accusing states appear to have been convinced that their ac-
cusations were correct, none of them did an adequate job of assembling
evidence. There are two natural groups of accusers in this regard: Cuba,
and the US in the Sverdlovsk case, presented little or no evidence; the
Chinese, and the US in the yellow rain case, presented flawed evidence.
Cuba has claimed to have evidence of US BW attacks, but has published
none of it except for evidence in support of accusations of the introduc-
tion of the insect pest Thrips palmi, which was highly circumstantial and
unconvincing. For the most plausible accusations—those of 1962 and
1971 attacks on domestic animals—no effort has been made to produce
solid evidence. The US, in the Sverdlovsk case, claimed to have classified
evidence to support its case, but did not publish it. With the later declassi-
fication of much of it, the evidence appears to have been startlingly scant
and ambiguous. In failing to produce scrupulously collected, rigorously
analyzed evidence to support their serious charges, these two countries
acted irresponsibly.
The Chinese, and the US in the yellow rain case, presented volumi-
nous eyewitness testimony, confessions from participants, and isolation
of agent from environmental and biomedical samples. Both accused
countries had serious, large-scale BW and CW programs. Both accusing
countries assembled hundreds of pages of detailed scientific documenta-
tion of their cases. However, in both cases the evidence appears to have
been misleading, with natural phenomena misattributed to deliberate