The US Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 44

terrence led to the relatively low priority of CBW. The unparalleled use of
force in strategic bombing during World War II and the dropping of the
atomic bomb were the climax of a movement that equated more force
with more power. Subsequently there was a gradual movement away
from the utilization of maximum force. The use of BW always carried the
danger of escalation to nuclear weapons no matter how hard military of-
ficials might try to separate them. Was it worth the risk to keep such an
option?
Despite the 1956 change of policy, repugnance against these weapons
persisted. Also there was a certain degree of confusion. Some of the chief
architects seem to have occasionally forgotten that the agreed policy had
changed. Others moved away from lethal to nonlethal BW. However, the
moral concerns regarding the use of any CBW agents (lethal or non-
lethal) were reinforced by their use in Vietnam. Overoptimism regarding
the potentialities of BW in the 1940s and 1950s turned to disillusion in
the late 1960s. Experience tested the promise dreamed of in 1945; these
weapons were not worth the fiscal, moral, and public relations costs en-
tailed in developing them.
The Intelligence Dilemma
It was virtually impossible to give an accurate reading of who had what or
how much they had. The pronouncements of the intelligence community
remained as ambiguous as those of the Delphic Oracle. That ambiguity
tended to promote misreadings. The effect of this intelligence blindness
was that the US judged the intentions of its enemies by the character of
the regime: evil governments will do evil things; therefore, the US must
be prepared to retaliate in kind because it must be ready to meet every
possible contingency so as to punish the evildoers with their own poison.
How detectable were US BW tests to the USSR? How detectable would
tests by either the US or the USSR be to one another today? During the
late 1940s and most of the 1950s, the intelligence community lacked the
reconnaissance means the US commands today: U-2s and reconnaissance
satellites. But even with those means, the US has found that accurate
intelligence is difficult to collect and assess, especially regarding BW ca-
pabilities. The controversy over Iraqi WMD emphasizes the intelligence
problem. Intelligence tends to gather around belief, which in turn attracts