US \'planned to test nerve gas on diggers\'

Tag : Used Chemical Equipment
Top secret US military plans to test deadly nerve gas by droppingit on soldiers in a remote Queensland rainforest during the ColdWar have been uncovered in Australian Government archives.

Newly declassified Australian Defence Department and PrimeMinister?s office files show that the United States was stronglypushing the Government for tests on Australian soil of two of themost deadly chemical weapons ever developed, VX and GB ? betterknown as Sarin ? nerve gas.

The plan, which is disclosed for the first time on tomorrow?sSUNDAY program on Nine, called for 200 mainly Australian combattroops to be aerially bombed and sprayed with the chemical weapons? with all but a handful of the soldiers to be kept in the darkabout the "full details" of the tests.

A former senior official with then Prime Minister Harold Holt, MrPeter Bailey, tells the program that as far as he knows the testsnever went ahead but the planning was very advanced.

He admitted the whole operation was to be kept secret because useof such weapons was almost certainly illegal under internationallaw at the time.

"The idea that we could actually? that the Australians couldcountenance such an activity is ?unacceptable," University of NSWtoxicologist Professor Chris Winder said.

He says even a fraction of a drop of either chemical on exposedskin could have been fatal and Cold War fears that communistChinese or Russian attackers might have used such weapons in athird world war "doesn?t justify it now and I don?t think itjustified it then".

The files show that in July 1962 the then-US defence secretaryRobert McNamara wrote in secret to the Australian DefenceDepartment suggesting joint testing of chemical weapons "on aclassified basis without a public release by either country".

In early 1963 a survey team of Australian and US scientistsreviewed sites in Australia for chemical warfare tests, suggestingthe remote Iron Range rainforest near Lockhart River in far northQueensland as one such location.

The request caused consternation in Canberra, with senior Defencebureaucrats clearly opposed to the use of nerve gas, but, as formersenior Prime Ministerial policy advisor Peter Bailey recalls: "Iheard that many times in Cabinet meetings that if they weren?tpretty good and pretty faithful to the Americans we would bedumped.

"We had already been dumped with the British east of Suez pulloutso ministers were pretty aware this was our one main support andthe red peril thing was still in people?s minds."

In October 1964 the Americans pushed the request again, this timeinsisting that the public should be fed a "cover story" to concealthe real nature of the tests: the documents show the public was tobe told the tests were to test equipment or land reclamation in ajungle environment.

Low-flying military aircraft and spraying was to be explained awaywith the false claim that low-risk herbicides and insecticides wereto be used in the testing but the cover stories were clearly untrue? he real chemicals to be used were two of the most deadly man-madesubstances, VX and GB nerve gas.

Former Democrat Senator Lyn Allison, who became aware of theexistence of references to secret chemical weapons tests inAustralia during her support of sick former veterans of theMaralinga nuclear bomb tests, told SUNDAY that her own attempts toget the full story on what went on with proposed testing wererebuffed several years ago.

She said Government files on the issue were still classified evennow and the revelations in the new documents obtained by SUNDAYunderlined the need for the Defence Department to finally discloseall that went on during the Cold War.

"To understand that Australia was still prepared to consider thisproposal because of its relationship with the US I think needsproper examination," Senator Allison told the program.

"So all those documents should be released, there shouldn?t be anypussy footing around ? t?s time for us to know what went on."