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GovernmentAttic Publishes Declassified Survey of Worldwide Bio-War Research

Posted by timothy on from the stuff-of-nightmares dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The GovernmentAttic website has just published a dossier of reports produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency describing biological weapons development in nations throughout the world. The 16 reports were released by the Department of Defense in response to declassification request submitted five years ago. Although the sensitive bits were removed, the remaining portions of the reports demonstrate the prevalence of research, development and deployment of bio weapons worldwide, despite an international treaty prohibiting such activity. The same website has also published a Thesaurus of Biological Warfare terminology (PDF) and a listing of pre-1946 reports on biological and chemical warfare (PDF) from the Army."

9 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. List the 16 countries by shaitand · · Score: 3, Funny

    Bet you'll get a plus 5 informative.

  2. No Russia? by the_povinator · · Score: 2

    They have a section on "European Communist Countries" but it does not include Russia. I guess that part of the report was not released? That was the only thing I was interested in as there are some scary rumors out there about what they have (ebola/smallpox hybrids, etc.)

    --
    The .sig is dead, and I believe I had a hand in killing it.
  3. Do they know about my weaponized vial of Anthrax? by arcite · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's for duck hunting.

  4. Can we stick to nukes please? by wjcofkc · · Score: 2

    Or ar least vaccinate me against small pox... As it stands, only a few countries have the capability of all out world wide nuclear war, and I would like to believe those nations are smart enough to not start pressing big red buttons. An un-winnable end of all life as a deterrent scenario and all that. But any idiot country could potentially develop bio-weapons of mass destruction, and any idiot country is potentially short-sighted enough to unleash something they might not even fully understand. With nukes you can stop pressing buttons, but the right bio-weapons could potentially yield an unstoppable runaway process of slow, agonizing, world wide death.

    --
    Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
    1. Re:Can we stick to nukes please? by jmd · · Score: 2

      Or ar least vaccinate me against small pox... As it stands, only a few countries have the capability of all out world wide nuclear war, and I would like to believe those nations are smart enough to not start pressing big red buttons. An un-winnable end of all life as a deterrent scenario and all that. But any idiot country could potentially develop bio-weapons of mass destruction, and any idiot country is potentially short-sighted enough to unleash something they might not even fully understand. With nukes you can stop pressing buttons, but the right bio-weapons could potentially yield an unstoppable runaway process of slow, agonizing, world wide death.

      The US has already detonated nukes. The US has loads of chemical weapons. The US appears to be the loose cannon (idiot country) on the world stage today.... invading another country(s) without provocation.

      just my $.02

    2. Re:Can we stick to nukes please? by WindBourne · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yup. Our invasion of Iraq was just so wrong. The fact that they invaded kuwait and the UN troops (with USA) stopped it has nothing to do with anything.
      Likewise, when Afghanistan launched an attack on USA, we should have turned the other cheek and allowed Afghanistan/AQ to continue attacking us.
      And we should just pull out of the Mid-east and allowed all of those dictators to continue wiping out their citizens.

      Its funny. France and italy pushed America to help with Libya to stop the slaughter, but we are the bad guys.
      Likewise, Syria has Iran and Hezbellah helping a dictator that is committing genocide, but America is to blame on this.
      North Korea continues to threaten South Korea and we have helped South Korea not only build up after the korean war, but also help protect them. Every time we want to withdraw from there, the SK gov. throws a fit and wants us to stay. And NK comes on strong with all sorts of threats and attacks against SK.
      Then there is Taiwan, phillipines, vietnam, and India who absolutely want us to stay in the region because they have been invaded numerous times by China. Heck, China took over tibet, who was a free nation, and yet, it is America that is the bad guy that encourages North Korea, Iran, China, Pakistan (even though they are/were an alley), etc. to build nukes, chemical weapons, etc. And obviously, it is America that encouraged Iran, Syria, Libya, and Iraq to build nukes/chemical weapons due to the threat of USA. It was never about Iran/Syria, Libya wanting to attack Israel, and then Iraq wanting to defend itself against iran.

      Nope, you sideliners have it right. America is 100% to blame for it all.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    3. Re:Can we stick to nukes please? by ceoyoyo · · Score: 2

      I don't think very many people quibbled with the first US invasion of Iraq. You know, the one done under the auspices of the UN, with the purpose of liberating Kuwait, where the US withdrew afterwards. The second one - the one done unilaterally for made up reasons - that one concerned people.

      Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Libya, maybe not that worrying. The sabre rattling against Iran and North Korea, well, if I were a citizen of either I'd be a little worried about being invaded by the world's sole superpower. And if you want to talk about leaving "dictators to continue wiping out their citizens," the US has a rather bad track record involving destabilizing democratic (or mostly so) governments and installing dictators in their place. Iran is an excellent example, along with half of South America. They even made a movie recently about the former. Then there are the cases like Somalia, where the US rode in on a white horse to stop the slaughter... except the US had been funding Somalian warlords.

      Syria? You mean the country where a military dictatorship seized power in 1949... after conferring extensively with the CIA? Then approved a pipeline right afterward so the US could get Saudi oil more easily?

      Then there's Guatemala, a Slashdot favourite "third world hellhole" because of the exploits of McAfee, where the (somewhat) democratic government was overthrown in the fifties by the CIA because the US was afraid they might turn commie. Oh, and the United Fruit Company had acquired quite a bit of land there.

      Brazil. Possibly Ghana. Chile. Afghanistan, where you gave all those weapons and training to what would be come the Taliban wasn't clear cut badness, but it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. Turkey. Nicaragua.

      The US unquestionably does quite a lot of good. The problem is, you guys do some evil mixed in there. Do you just hope it all evens out? Or maybe that everybody else won't notice? Judging by your post, many US citizens aren't really able to differentiate between the good and the bad. Invading Iraq... well, they invaded Kuwait right? We were just liberating Kuwait! Besides, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction! Iran? They took over our embassy in the 70's, didn't they? Never mind that the embassy was taken over by citizens angry at the US for overthrowing their government.

  5. University of California was involved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    When I attended University of California, in the early '90s, the UC system received a full third of their funding through the military.

    There were research programs into mutated pathogens with the stated goal of vaccine research, but the pathogens were not naturally occurring, and were cataloged, preserved, etc. A thin veil of legitimacy to hide a very large bio-weapon research program behind.

    A physics professor at UC Berkeley was so bothered by the weaponization of research from the UC system, that he began publicly speaking about the suspicious programs. It is from him that I learned the 1/3 of funding from the DoD figure. Of course, UC managed the nuclear weapons national laboratories too.

  6. Bioweapons are ironic... by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: 2

    http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
    "... Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere?
        These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. ..."

    --
    A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.