The US Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 35

tages of a clear “no first use” policy against the ambiguities inherent in
making distinctions among agents.
On 25 November 1969 President Richard Nixon startled both the BW
community and the world by announcing that the US was unilaterally
renouncing its biological warfare program:
Biological weapons have massive, unpredictable and potentially uncon-
trollable consequences. They may produce global epidemics and im-
pair the health of future generations. I have therefore decided that: The
United States shall renounce the use of lethal biological agents and
weapons, and all other methods of biological warfare. The United States
will confine its biological research to defensive measures such as immu-
nization and safety measures.
Nixon presented his renunciation of BW “as an initiative toward peace.
Mankind already carries in its own hands too many of the seeds of its
own destruction. By the examples we set today, we hope to contribute to
an atmosphere of peace and understanding between nations and among
men.”
The president also announced that he would submit the 1925 Geneva
Protocol prohibiting the use in war of CBW to the US Senate for its advice
and consent. He asserted that the US had “long supported the princi-
ples and objectives of this Protocol. We take this step toward formal rati-
fication to reinforce our continuing advocacy of international control of
these weapons.” 133
What was most startling about the assertion above was that it totally ig-
nored the 1956 agreed change of policy regarding CBW. It was as though
the US had never abandoned its “no first use” commitment. On 22 Janu-
ary 1975, in signing the instrument of ratification, President Gerald Ford
reasserted the Nixon claim. 134
Why, at this moment, after the US had successfully tested these weap-
ons in the Pacific and other ocean areas, did it suddenly renounce them?
How important was the banning of BW to the administration? Was it
merely a convenient and popular thing to do? 135 What influenced this de-
cision? Was it the “Skull Valley” incident (13 March 1968) in Utah, in
which an accidental release of VX at Dugway may have caused the death
of 3,000 sheep off the base? Was it the mounting unpopularity of the war
in Vietnam, in which “nonlethal weapons” were used? Was it the ques-