The Sunshine Project
News Release
8 September 2003

Pentagon Initiates New Research into Prohibited Chemical Weapons

Austin and Hamburg (9 September 2003) - Recently unearthed US government documents reveal new information on illicit US chemical weapons research. The US Marine Corps program on so-called "non-lethal" chemicals has inked new deals for prohibited weapons. The contracts include development of a new kind of rocket propelled grenade that began at the end of 2002, only weeks after the Moscow Theater disaster. Also last year, a senior US Army toxicologist investigated tacrine, a close cousin of several nerve gases, as a candidate "non-lethal" chemical weapons payload.

The Marine Corps contracts were granted by the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) in November and December 2002. Both are with AgentAI, a small company based in Victorville, California. One contract is for development of a new kind of rocket propelled grenade (RPG) to be fired from the US Army's standard M-203 grenade launcher. The chemical grenade is being designed for a 500 meter range. The RPG is designed to strike a person (or perhaps near a person) and then to disperse "chemical agents that can further incapacitate or maintain the incapacitation of the targeted individual". The company plans testing on a "simulated human target" under the current contract. The second JNLWD contract with AgentAI calls for development of "non-lethal" bullets that release a chemical payload upon striking a target. (Summaries of these contracts are available here.)

Another document (available here) reveals the interest of a senior US Army toxicologist in tacrine, a drug used to treat Alzheimer's Disease. The Army is not interested in the drug, however, for helping disease victims. Rather, it is assessing use of tacrine as a weapon. In February 2002, at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, the toxicologist ordered a literature review on its potential for weaponization. Chemically, tacrine is a acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, a first cousin of the nerve gases sarin, tabun, and VX (among others).

The discovery that the Army is investigating close relatives of extremely lethal nerve gases as "non-lethal" weapons heightens concerns previously raised that the Army's "non-lethal" chemical weapons program is practically indistinguishable from one with a fully lethal intent. The Army's interest in tacrine should draw particular scrutiny from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and governments who are members of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

In September 2002, the Sunshine Project presented extensive documentation proving the illicit US chemical warfare program (US Operates Secret Chemical Weapons Program). Since then, a variety of additional details about the program have been unravelled, most recently a US patent on a grenade designed to deliver biological weapons (US Army Patents Biological Weapons Delivery System) and a 1997 research paper from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Livermore, CA) on the use of chemical incapacitants, including use of opiates in scenarios similar to that which resulted in the Moscow Theater tragedy (See the Sunshine Project's JNLWD Document Clearinghouse).

The Sunshine Project's Freedom of Information Fund is filing a series of requests with the Pentagon to bring further information about this research into public view.