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BIOWARFARE and TERRORISM
by Francis A. Boyle
Foreword by Jonathan King, M.I.T.

ISBN: 0-932863-46-9 * $12.95     2005







see below for
SUMMARY  AUTHOR  CONTENTS  ORDER
Tackling America's Toughest Questions
Destroying World Order
Breaking All the Rules
Palestine, Palestinians and International Law
The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence
     
    REVIEWS

    "Boyle's analysis shows how the U.S. has avoided, circumvented and violated
    various treaty provisions with semantic legerdemain...This is an important
    small book. It is a worthwhile addition to any course on terrorism."
    — Edward J. Shaughnessy, Professor Emeritus,
    The Graduate School and University, and John Jay College of Criminal
    Justice, C.U.N.Y

    Review by Meryl Nass, M.D. for GeneWatch (below)

    So often you read or hear about government policies that don’t seem to make
    sense.  I‘ve been assuming that the vast increase in biowarfare defense
    spending since 2001 had little to do with the risk of bioterrorism against the
    US.  After all, the White House admitted shortly after the anthrax letters were
    sent that the anthrax came from a government lab.  And GAO said the number
    of countries researching biowarfare did not increase between 1990 and 2000.  
    I know how questionable the efficacy and safety are, of the anthrax and
    smallpox vaccines now being stockpiled for civilian use.  Surely government
    scientists must know these products could not be relied upon, were we to face
    an actual attack?

    So I thought the biological research, development and production programs
    were designed simply to scare the public, and to transfer considerable sums
    of money to Bush-friendly contractors.

    But maybe not­Boyle’s arguments force the reader into a profound shift in
    perspective­and then so many curious actions and policies fall into place.  
    Strap your seatbelt tight for a wild ride, as Boyle reviews US government
    actions bearing on the control of weapons of mass destruction over the past 37
    years.  Law professor Boyle builds his case with precision and clarity.  No
    words are wasted: the book is only about 100 pages long.  

    Your trip speeds through Nixon’s eschewing of biological and toxin warfare; the
    Reagan embrace of WMD; and Bush Senior’s return to a moderate Republican
    model, under which the CRG’s implementing legislation for the Biological
    Weapons Convention, authored by Boyle, was passed.  (Under Bush I, the US,
    UK and Russia were even allowed to inspect each other’s biodefense
    facilities.)  Then Clinton back-pedaled regarding strengthening the Biological
    Weapons Convention, while Bush Junior simply pretended it didn’t exist,
    transgressing and repudiating treaties right and left.  

    Repeatedly, you will say to yourself, “I missed that,” as Boyle deconstructs the
    underpinnings of various government policies and doctrines.  For example, I
    thought the anthrax letters were designed to increase anti-Arab hysteria; bring
    back the anthrax vaccine program, which a high level military review had
    recommended ending in August 2001; and push a scared Congress into
    jumping on the biodefense bandwagon.  But Boyle saw that the letters also
    shut down the workings of Congress at a critical moment, ushering through the
    passage of the Patriot Act and related legislation in the absence of normal
    Congressional oversight.  Was this a coup d’etat, the author poses?

    Why ask the nuclear weapons labs to develop a biodefense proficiency?  As
    Boyle points out, will foreign states trust that Lawrence Livermore and Los
    Alamos will refrain from becoming involved in the research, development,
    testing and offensive use of biological weapons, when those are precisely the
    actions they have taken with respect to nuclear weapons since the Manhattan
    Project?

    How much can an author fit into 100 pages?  This small book was also
    designed as a handbook for legal challenges to the current Administration’s
    behavior vis a vis the Biological Weapons Convention.  The appendices and
    text contain a lot of treaty language and discussion, but in easily
    understandable, lay terminology.  Most readers will become better informed
    about our various treaty obligations, as well as how the US government is
    failing to fulfill them.

    SYNOPSIS

    This book outlines how and why the United States government initiated,
    sustained and then dramatically expanded an illegal biological arms buildup.

    Most significantly, U.S. expert Francis A. Boyle reveals how the new billion-
    dollar U.S. Chemical and Biological Defense Program has been reorientated
    to accord with the Neo-Conservative pre-emptive strike agenda—this time by
    biological and chemical warfare.

    Linking U.S. biowarfare development to the October 2001 anthrax attack on
    Congress—the most significant political attack on the constitutional
    functioning of democracy in the United States in recent history—Boyle sheds
    new light on the motives for the attack, the media black hole of silence into
    which it has fallen, and why the FBI may never apprehend the perpetrators of
    this seminal political crime of the 21st century.

    Biowarfare and Terrorism should raise public concern at what the vastly
    expanded US biowarfare research and purported civilian preparedness
    programs hold in store for America—and the extent to which the Bush
    administration is prepared to pursue them, irrespective of their incitement to
    a global biowarfare arms race, and likely exposure of the American people to
    future accidents and reprisals.
BIOWARFARE BULLETINS

"At the National institutes of Health, research
on bioweapons agents has increased 3,000
percent, from $53 million in 2001 to more than
$1.6 billion in 2008."
New York Times, Aug. 12, 2008.
_____________________________________

United States Army has developed and
patented (US Patent #6,523,4) a new grenade
that it says can be used to wage biowarfare.

_____________________________________

"Texas A&M University did not report to Federal
authorities until April 10, 2007 (after prodding
by the Sunshine Project) that an aerosol
chamber mishap caused a biology student to
be stricken with the bioweapons agent brucella  
in its laboratory for bioweapons agent research
on February 9, 2006."
The Sunshine Project, April 12, 2007

_____________________________________

"NBACC says its work is defensive in character,
but by secretly exploring potential offensive
applications... NBACC will have helped to
create the very threat it professes to counter"
New Scientist,
November 28, 2006

_____________________________________

"[Project BIoshield is] a torturous labyrinth of
federal fiefdoms into which billions disappear,
but few antidotes have yet to emerge.”
Representative
Christopher Shays,
NYTimes, Sept. 18, 2006.

_____________________________________

"Only hours after sensors in a U.S. Senate
office building detected a nerve agent, key
Senators suddenly reversed direction and
announced a capitulation to the White House's
demands on the renewal and expansion of the
Patriot Act."
George Washington's Blog, February 10, 2006.

____________________________________

"The United States has remained the most
vocal critic of reopening negotiations on a
verification mechanism for the convention.
Negotiations on such a protocol have been
stymied since the United States abruptly
withdrew its support on the last day of the treaty
review conference in 2001." in "Europeans
Seeknig to Strengthen BiWC"
Michael Nguyen,
Arms Control Today,
April, 2006
____________________________________

"The rapidity of elaboration of American
biodefense programs, their ambition and
administrative aggressiveness, and the degree
to which they push against the prohibitions of
the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) are
startling." "Biodefense crossing the line"
Ambassador James Leonard, Head of the US
Delegation to the
BWC Negotiations,
1972, et al, FAS.

____________________________________

"Two nuclear watchdog groups made an
emergency request of a federal appeals court
Wednesday to block operation of a new
biodefense lab at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, arguing that large earthquakes
could release biowarfare agents from the
facility."
Oakland Tribune,
February 17th, 2006.

___________________________________

"In a proposed law on the Senate floor, a giant
new biodefense "sensitive but unclassified"
(SBU) hole would be torn in the Freedom of
Information Act, creating new secrecy at labs
across the country..."
"BARDA's Biggest Secret"
The Sunshine Project,
Feb. 2, 2006.

____________________________________

"The US used chemical weapons in Iraq - and
then lied about it. Now we know napalm and
phosphorus bombs have been dropped on
Iraqis, why have the hawks failed to speak out?"
George Monbiot,
The Guardian
November 15, 2005

____________________________________

"In addition to creating the [1918 Spanish flu]
virus, the scientists said they would place the
gene-sequencing information from the new
research in GenBank, a public database...
GenBank will allow some research groups to
build their own[dreaded 1918 virus that killed
millions...] rather than seek samples of what the
CDC had created."
"CDC May Distribute
1918 Killer Flu"
Mike Stobbe, AP

____________________________________

"Despite the eradication of smallpox... [r]
esearch is being done to develop even more
deadly versions of the smallpox virus. The
Department of Homeland Security claims they
are experimenting with the virus in order to
facilitate the development of vaccines to
combat the possible use of smallpox in a
terrorist attack. "
Project Censored,
November 9th, 2005.

_____________________________________

The US used white phosphorous, a chemical
weapon, in the rebel stronghold of Fallujah, not
only against enemy combatants and guerrillas,
but against innocent civilians. "Fallujah, The
Concealed Massacre"
Italian RAI News 24 November 8th, 2005

_____________________________________

"In February 2001 the DOE's own Office of
Inspector General cited research scientists and
administrators at labs across the country for
systematic carelessness in handling the highly
toxic organisms [anthrax, bubonic plague and
botulism]."
"BioWarfare and the Department of Energy" by
Tim King Council for Responsible Genetics
GeneWatch Volume 14 Number 6 November -
December 2001

____________________________________

A British Court has recognized for the first time
that a former soldier was suffering from Gulf
War Syndrome and should receive an invalid
pension. The U.S. army has rejected this term
for 14 years.
"British Tribunal Recognizes Gulf War
Syndrome"
Agence France Presse,
November 1, 2005

____________________________________

“[W]e have determined that the reconstructed
replication competent forms of the 1918
pandemic influenza virus containing any
portion of the coding regions of all eight gene
segments have the potential to pose a severe
threat to public health and safety.”
Centers for Disease
Control, Atlanta
42 CFR Part 73,
Oct. 20, 2005.

____________________________________

Scientists at the Armed Forces Institute
of Pathology and at Mount Sinai led some of
the expeditions to dig up
the 1918 victims of Spanish flu and genetically
reconstitute the virus.
Scientists at the University of Washington are
now injecting this virus which killed millions in
1918
into monkeys. What can be the value of
resurrecting and "learning more" about
this long-dormant threat -- compared to the
threat that the research and
recuperation process itself poses?

_____________________________________

The Red Cross warns that government
biological weapons programs pose a bigger
threat to the world than bioterrorism.
m. Sept. 20th, '05.

__________________________________

"THE US military wants to buy large quantities
of anthrax, in a controversial move that is likely
to raise questions over its commitment to
treaties designed to limit the spread of
biological weapons."
David Hambling,
New Science, September 24, '05.

_________________________________

"Deadly Bacteria [Tularemia] Detected in US
Capital During Anti-War March"
Agence France Presse Sunday, October 2,
2005

____________________________________

British Medical Association advises terrifying
"ethnic cleansing" bio-weapons possible within
ten years. Calls for International action to curb
bioweaponry

____________________________________

    AUTHOR

    Francis A. Boyle is a leading American professor, practitioner and advocate
    of international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons
    Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the
    1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He served as Legal Advisor to the
    Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations from 1991 to
    1993, served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-
    1992), and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court. Professor
    Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign and
    is author of, inter alia, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, The
    Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Defending Civil Resistance Under
    International Law, The Future of International Law and American Foreign
    Policy, Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International
    Relations 1898-1921, and The Bosnian People Charge Genocide.

    Francis A. Boyle holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.
    D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University.

    From January 8-12 Francis A.  Boyle served as the 18th Bertrand Russell
    Peace Lecturer at McMaster University in Canada. Previous Russell
    Lecturers have been E.P. Thompson, Elena Bonner, Edward Said, Ramsey
    Clark, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Joseph Rotblat, Johan Galtung, and Noam
    Chomsky. http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~peace/francis.html

    JONATHAN KING is Professor of Molecular Biology at MIT, and an authority
    on the genes and proteins of micro-organisms. Prof. King was a founder of
    the Council for Responsible Genetics and Co-Chair of its Committee on the
    Military Use of Biological Research. He has long been concerned with the
    social, economic and public health consequences of biomedical research.
    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    FOREWORD by Jonathan King

    CALL FOR A BAN ON THE GENETIC ALTERATION
    OF PATHOGENS FOR DESTRUCTIVE PURPOSES

    INTRODUCTION

    CHAPTER ONE:
    THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION
    Origins of the BWC Convention
    The BWC Loophole
    The Reaganite Neo-Cons

    CHAPTER TWO:
    MAKING BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
    Stages of the Biological Weapons-Making Process

    CHAPTER THREE:
    U.S. GOVERNMENT BIOWARFARE CONTRACTS
    American Universities Line Up at the BDRP Trough
    Shaky Scientific Ethics a Biowarfare Problelm?
    The Need for Appropriate Biowarfare Contract Review

    CHAPTER FOUR:
    THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS ANTI-TERRORISM ACT OF 1989
    The Biotechnology Industry Changes Course
    Governmental Resistance to Regulating Biowarfare Research
    The Neo-Cons under Reagan Violate the Biological Weapons Convention
    The Bush Sr. Administration Acts Responsibly on Biowarfare
    Primary Features of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act
    Closing the Door on Biowarfare Research Loopholes

    CHAPTER FIVE:
    U.S. BIOWARFARE-RELATED VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
    Iraq: The Nuremberg Code on Medical Experimentation
    The Clinton Administration Violates the Biological Weapons Convention
    The George W. Bush Administration Repudiates the Verification Protocol of
    the BWC

    CHAPTER SIX:
    DOMESTIC TERRORISM: THE ANTHRAX ATTACKS ON THE U.S.
    CONGRESS
    The FBI Cover-Up: Motivating Factors
    Resounding Silence
    Linkage Between the Anthrax Attacks and 9/11?

    CHAPTER SEVEN:
    GEARING UP TO FIGHT AND “WIN” BIOWARFARE
    WMD Partnering: Nuclear and Bioweaponry
    PNAC Bombshell a Harbinger?
    The Bush Jr. Administrations Plans for Bio-WMD
    Wars of Aggression
    Bush Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Gung Ho for Bios
    To Fight and “Win” by Biowarfare: The Prerequisites
    The Smoking Gun: The Pentagon’s Chemical and Biological Defense
    Program
    The Offensive Nature of “Civilian Defense”
    More Criminal Exposure for the CBDP
    Can World War III Be Far Behind?
    Bush Jr.’s Banana Republic

    CHAPTER EIGHT:
    REINING IN BIOWARFARE RESEARCH: HOW IT CAN BE DONE / WHY WE
    MUST DO IT
    No Escape for U.S. in Misinterpreting BWC Obligations
    Activating the Biological Weapons Convention’s Complaint Procedure
    Filing a BWC Complaint for Investigation by the U.N. Secretary-General
    Hoisting the Bush Jr. Administration With Its Own Petard
    Further Recourse Through the U.N. General Assembly
    A Warning to Scientists
    Campaign for the Peaceful Development of the Biological Sciences Demand
    Letter

    APPENDIX I
    CRITIQUE OF THE PENTAGON’S BIOLOGICAL
    DEFENSE RESEARCH PROGRAM (1988)

    APPENDIX II
    BIOWARFARE RESEARCH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF
    VETERINARY MEDICINE

    APPENDIX III
    PROTOCOL FOR THE PROHIBITION OF THE USE IN WAR OF
    ASPHYXIATING, POISONOUS OR OTHER GASES, AND OF
    BACTERIOLOGICAL METHODS OF WARFARE

    APPENDIX IV
    CONVENTION ON THE PROHIBITION OF THE DEVELOPMENT,
    PRODUCTION AND STOCKPILING OF BACTERIOLOGICAL (BIOLOGICAL)
    AND TOXIN WEAPONS AND ON THEIR DESTRUCTION

    ENDNOTES

    INDEX
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