The Sunshine Project
News Release
10 October 2001
CIA Denies Documents on Southeast Asia Bioweapons Plan
The plan's demise is a victory for safety regulations; but the CIA's use of secrecy
law raises questions about the US role in a dubious biological eradication project.Austin and Hamburg (10 October 2001) - In a September 24th letter invoking US national security law, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has refused to respond to a Sunshine Project Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents related the spy agency's involvement in a project to make biological weapons for use against cannabis (marijuana) fields in the Philippines. The grounds for the CIA's refusal and the curious circumstances surrounding the project suggest possible US involvement in the bioweapons plan. But its demise also points to the positive biological security potential of health, environment, and research regulations.
The cannabis eradication research came to the Sunshine Project's attention in December 2000. On the 22nd of that month, UN Drug Control Program (UNDCP) Director Pino Arlacchi cited the Philippines research in a report to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs.
Controversial projects to develop biological weapons to eradicate drug crops have been dubbed "Agent Green" by the Sunshine Project. US and UNDCP proposals to use fungal weapons against coca in Colombia were stopped in early 2001 following a wave of protests from non-profits and the Ecuadorean, Venezuelan, Peruvian, and Brazilian governments. But a parallel US-financed project in Tashkent, Uzbekistan continues to develop an ecologically-unsound fungal weapon to kill opium poppy. It is primarily intended for use against Afghanistan's Taliban.
The project in the Philippines was touted as something different - not just the US operating through the auspices of UNDCP. Arlacchi's report suggested the research was the Filipinos' idea, implying international backing for the controversial biological eradication approach condemned by non-profits as biological warfare. After Arlacchi's report, the Sunshine Project quickly made a FOIA request to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), because USDA's Agricultural Research Service is the scientific vanguard of the biological eradication efforts in other regions. But USDA promptly and unequivocally responded that it had no knowledge of the Philippine program.
While USDA's answer apparently provided support for Arlacchi's suggestion that the activity was a domestic anti-narcotics effort, research in Manila by a Philippine NGO painted a very different and much more detailed picture.
The Philippine government had actually stopped the project over a year before Arlacchi's report. The proponent and lead scientist of the aborted bioweapons program was not Filipino; but Sri Lankan. The scientist did not work for a Philippines-directed institution; but was a microbiology professor at a university run by a US-based Protestant denomination. The microbiologist's project was endorsed in 1998 by a government anti-narcotics committee; but solely as a greenhouse experiment. Moreover, the anti-narcotics committee's authority was limited to endorsing the work, and it was not empowered to grant requisite government permits. In fact, the project never began research because appropriate government agencies - the Departments of Health (DOH), Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), and Science and Technology (DOST) - did not give their approval.
In late 1999, as international concern over the use of biological weapons on narcotic crops heated up, the Sri Lankan microbiologist decided to leave the Philippines. The professor said he was being sent to another of the denomination's colleges, this one located in the United States. Philippine officials quickly shelved the non-project, over a year before UNDCP Director Arlacchi cited it in his report. A 2001 survey of life sciences departments at US (and Canadian) colleges belonging to the religious denomination yields no persons fitting the Sri Lankan project director's description.
Filipino rebels are alleged to participate in the narcotics trade by funding their operations through cannabis sales. The proposed use of biological eradication agents there parallels the situation in other parts of the world where biological weapons are being thrown into an explosive mix of anti-narcotics and counterinsurgency operations. In South America, impacting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is a goal of biological eradication of coca, while in Afghanistan fungal eradication of opium poppy is intended to work against the Taliban.
After USDA's negative FOIA response, the Sunshine Project immediately petitioned the CIA because of that agency's counterinsurgency and anti-narcotics roles and because it originated and nurtured the biological eradication strategy through research grants dating from the 1970s.
The CIA's use of FOIA national security exemptions as grounds for its refusal to answer indicates possible US intelligence involvement in the aborted Philippines project. Invoking the FOIA exemptions rather than denying involvement (with a "no documents exist" response) raises questions because there is no reason to take this legal step unless a paper trail exists.
Unearthing of the CIA's possible involvement in the Philippines project comes close on the heels of very embarrassing news about CIA biological defense research published by the New York Times on September 4th. According to the Times, CIA researchers working in "Project Clear Vision" constructed and tested mock biological bombs and planned to create genetically engineered anthrax as part of a "defensive" program. Many biological weapons experts consider the CIA work practically indistinguishable from offensive biological weapons research. Clear Vision also ran afoul of the UN's Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the primary international agreement against biological warfare.
The Philippine project's demise and aftermath underscore the important role that health, environment, science, and agriculture officials can play in stopping biological weapons research. Often these agencies have greater understanding of the dangers of misuse of pathogens than law enforcement or even military authorities. Had the project director been able to obtain the permits from the Philippine Departments (the equivalent of ministries), an embarrassing and dangerous project may have proceeded.
Backed by strong laws, such as the African Union's recent Model Law on Biosafety that criminalizes hostile use of genetic engineering, vigilant enforcement of public health, biosafety, and research rules can improve security from development and use of biological weapons.