Pentagon develops ethnicity-specific crowd control weapons

  **  Pentagon Tests Ethnically-Targeted **
  **           Crowd Control Weapons          **


US Army documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
reveal disturbing efforts to design crowd control weapons that target
people on an ethnic basis. The weapons, a group of foul-smelling
chemicals called malodorants, are being developed for US soldiers to
use overseas.

According to the Sunshine Project, the US has crossed a dangerous
line. Successful or not, development of any ethnic weapon is
intrinsically racist, and the international community should consider
their development, stockpiling, or use by any country a violation of
international law.

  The Research

The Sunshine Project has obtained US Army Soldier and Biological
Chemical Command contracts that detail testing of malodorant chemicals
on human subjects. Malodorant weapons are used to provoke vomiting and
psychological effects including fear and panic.

Almost sixty years ago, the US developed a nauseating 'bathroom odor'
chemical for use as a weapon. But according to the Army, the old
malodorant will not work outside of the US and Western Europe, because
"it was found that people in many areas of the world do not find
'fecal odor' to be offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis."
Therefore, according to the Army, new agents are needed for overseas
missions. These new malodorants are to be specifically adapted for
their victims. According to a 1998 document: "The objective of this
work is the development of a comprehensive set of [malodorants] that
can be applied against any population set around the world to
influence their behavior."

The documents describe the Army research procedure. A group of
subjects selected "based on a diversity of geographic origins and
cultural heritage" is systematically exposed to candidate malodorants
to develop "culture-response data" based on ethnic categories. That
data is aggregated into "odor response profiles" that suggest the
types and quantities of malodorants necessary to "elicit a favorable
behavioral response" (i.e. incapacitation, panic, or flight) when used
for crowd control on a particular ethnic group.

Malodorants themselves generally do not cause serious injury or death;
but their physical and psychological effects can be very
powerful. They can be loaded in shells, grenades, mortar rounds, and
other devices. Malodorants can be used to control civil unrest (e.g.
to halt protests), and in combination with lethal weapons as a 'force
multiplier' in counterinsurgency and close combat in urban and
enclosed areas.

The documents generally do not include details about research subjects
and how researchers categorize them. Some experiments have been
conducted outside the United States, or on immigrants. A February 2000
draft report refers to testing on "a group of South Africans". Another
Army document contains unexplained images of indigenous women and
girls from Panama or Colombia and southern Africa. Additional pictures
appear to be from Africa and Asia, and one shows a boy dressed as a
typical US high school student.

Not Since Apartheid

Past research on ethnic weapons has been rare. The last known attempt
to create ethnic weapons was a widely condemned program conducted in
the 1980s by the apartheid regime of South Africa, which tried to
develop an agent to selectively sterilize black women.

The new US malodorant program began in 1998 and is the first known US
work on population-specific weapons since "Project Agile" in 1966. In
Agile, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
commissioned the Battelle Institute to assess the possibility of
making malodorants to specifically target Vietnamese people. Agile was
short-lived and did not reach a laboratory phase.

The Army's Partners

The US Army Soldier Chemical and Biological Command (Aberdeen Proving
Ground, Maryland) has important partners in the malodorant research.
The US Marine Corps-managed Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP,
Quantico, Virginia) is funding the research. Contracts signed with the
Monell Chemical Senses Center of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, include
DAAD13-99-M-0071 ("Behavioral Odor Study") and DAAD13-98-M-004
("Establish Odor Response Profiles").

By Pentagon standards, the research is a small program, with five
scientists. Contracts between SBCCOM and Monell total US $195,000.
The overall budget is unclear because the Marine Corps and Army also
conduct work internally, whose details have not been released. JNLWP
is, however, very active developing new delivery technology for
malodorants including chemical mortar rounds and payload systems for
unmanned aerial vehicles.

Ethnic Weapons: Prima facie Evidence

Whether the malodorants work or fail, research on any ethnic weapon
raises serious legal questions and could set a very dangerous
precedent. If the Pentagon saw any major legal barriers to ethnic
weapons it would not have approved the malodorant research. The
Pentagon's conclusion that ethnic weapons are permissible must be
challenged. All such weapons should be universally considered
intrinsically racist and to repudiate international law. To do this,
governments should establish that the development, stockpiling, or use
of ethnic weapons is prima facie evidence of intent to violate
international law prohibiting racism, including prohibitions on
genocide.

Inside the US, the malodorants research program must be cancelled, and
the secretive Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program opened to public
scrutiny and transparency. Among the questions that the Joint
Non-Lethal Weapons Program must publicly discuss is how its focus on
building weapons systems that primarily target civilians is legally
and ethically justified.

About the Sunshine Project's Research on Malodorants

Early last year, the Sunshine Project began investigating US military
work on malodorants and calmatives (another type of crowd control
agent). The Project's underlying concern is that some of these weapons
may violate treaties prohibiting chemical and biological warfare.

In July 2001, the Project published "Non-Lethal Weapons Research in
the US: Calmatives and Malodorants". In the course of preparing that
paper, cryptic language in Army documents caused the Project to become
concerned that some crowd control research was designed to develop
population-specific weapons. Some Army documents indicated it was
pursuing a single 'one-size-fits-all' malodorant that would affect
people equally, regardless of ethnic background. But other Army papers
showed a disturbing preoccupation with ethnicity. After publishing the
first paper, the Sunshine Project filed additional FOIA requests, the
results of which are first reported here.

The information (and all double " " quotes) in this news release is
from the Army response to a FOIA request from October 2001, which was
not answered (and then only partially) until February 2002.
Additional FOIA requests on this topic are pending, the results of
which will be presented in Sunshine Project publications.

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