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News Release
12 August 2002
US Special Forces Seek Genetically Engineered
Bioweapons
(Austin and Hamburg, 12 August 2002) - The US Special Forces have issued a brief but explicit request for US scientists to make proposals to create genetically engineered offensive biological weapons. This is the fourth US government proposal for anti-material biological weapons uncovered by the Sunshine Project this year. All biological weapons are prohibited by the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), which the United States is legally obliged to obey.
Despite last year's anthrax attacks and US pledges of robust retaliation against bioweapons violators, in 2002, the US Special Forces asked US scientists to create bioweapons for use in covert military operations. Like all bioweapons these violate the BTWC, and because the Special Forces are requesting US scientists to make them, the elite military group is flirting dangerously with the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act, a US law that makes solicitation of bioweaponeering a criminal act.
The Special Forces Request
The US Special Forces' solicitation came in January 2002 as part of "Scientists Helping America", a cooperative effort between the Special Forces, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Playing heavily on the US reaction to the September 11th attacks, "Scientists Helping America" asked researchers to show their patriotism by turning their talents to weapons, including bioweapons, specifically, genetically engineered bugs that eat materials and stealthy modified organisms (called "taggants") that can be used to invisibly "paint" a target so that it can be destroyed with other weapons later.
The Special Forces desire was initially identified in a short May 1999 document by its Future Technology Working Group. The document identifies the military appeal of "a bio-engineered organism [that] can become a weapon by acting as a corrosive agent after a certain period of time or by a remote command". The same document sets out the uses of a "bio-organism that can be placed on a building and then grow across that building to act as an illuminator for target identification, or precision attacks" (taggants). The document indicates that these bioweapons would be used covertly, stipulating that they "should be innocuous in appearance so that they can be carried and placed by Special Operations Forces without detection."
Following the May 1999 paper, the March 2001 report Special Operations Technology Objectives provided an overview of the wide range of military technologies required by the Special Forces. This report includes descriptions of many military technologies and reiterates the request for genetically modified anti-material bioweapons and taggant bioweapons. In January 2002, as part of "Scientists Helping America", the Special Forces posted the March 2001 report on the internet and requested US scientists to forward proposals to DARPA. In early 2002 DARPA vetted the ideas and invited the authors of promising proposals to come to Washington and present them to military officials. On 25 January 2002, the Sunshine Project requested these proposals from DARPA under the Freedom of Information Act. DARPA has not responded to the request.
Undermining Biosafety
Preventing genetically engineered disasters is a common concern of arms control and biosafety. The Special Forces propose to covertly introduce difficult to detect genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into third countries. The nascent international safety system for transboundary movement of GMOs (the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol) creates the fundamental requirement of consent. That is, deliberate introduction of GMOs into the environment must have the advanced informed agreement of a competent government agency in the receiving country which reviews the safety and desirability each new introduction on its soil. The Special Forces obviously will not seek permission from a country they are attacking. Moreover, the Special Forces have virtually no knowledge or ability to predict the ecological impacts of use of such environment modifying weapons. As such, the proposed weapons not only pose arms control problems; but are a direct affront to international biosafety efforts.
More US Bioweapons Proposals
The Special Forces are not the only US government agency playing with biological fire - several US Department of Defense agencies are failing to obey the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC). The Special Forces join the Naval Research Laboratory (Washington, DC), Brooks Air Force Base (San Antonio, TX), and the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering Laboratory as proponents of US bioweapons production. In addition, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD), run by the US Marine Corps, has requested the US National Academies of Science to assess proposals for anti-material biological weapons. Other JNLWD documents describe "calmative" drug weapons for crowd control that would also violate biological and chemical weapons law. The Sunshine Project has submitted these documents to the US Department of Justice and requested an investigation. To date, there has been no response. (See the Sunshine Project website, www.sunshine-project.org, for more information on the other cases.)
About Anti-Material Bioweapons
Anti-material bioweapons are those that degrade or destroy military materials or infrastructure, such as plastics, rubber, or petroleum products. Generally, they are microorganisms genetically modified to enhance digestion of targeted materials. For more information on anti-material bioweapons, please refer to reports on the Sunshine Project website.
About Taggant Bioweapons
Taggant bioweapons have been discussed as a theoretical possibility for a number of years; but (to the Sunshine Project's knowledge) never actually developed. The concept is simple, although there are many possible variations. In essence, a microorganism modified to exhibit an unusual behavior (for example, "glowing" genes, although in practice the trait would be far less detectable). A building, vehicle, or other object to be tracked and/or identified is then (secretly) inoculated with the bioweapon. The organism, which may or may not be deliberately destructive, is allowed to grow undetected. Because the organism exhibits an unusual trait, it can (theoretically) be detected by remote means, even if the object moves or is small and/or difficult to identify from a distance. The object's precise location can thereby be secretly tracked, facilitating surveillance and/or the targeting of a weapon to destroy it. In the Special Forces conception, these taggant weapons might also be engineered to be destructive upon command, for example, by triggering an inducible promoter system (popularly known as "terminator technology") that stimulates production of a corrosive agent.