this is worth reading . . . It's Francis Boyle--U of Illinois Law
professor, international law expert, radical public intellectual activist
and his communication with NY Times reporter.
PLEASE FORWARD
---------- Forwarded message ----------
"Boyle, Francis" <FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU>:
Dear Friends:
Today's New York Times has a scare-piece entitled Iraq's
Deadliest Arms: Puzzles Breed Fears, co-authored by Judith Miller.
Attached is the correspondence between us in conjunction with the
preparation of this article, where Miller asked my for assistance
beforehand. As you can see for yourself, she had obviously read my
Testimony to the United States Congress in support of the legislation
which I authored, the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, as
well as my comments about how hypocritical and duplicitous the charges
made by the United States government against Iraq were, especially in
light of outstanding US biowarfare programs.
I then proceeded to send her all of my e-mail postings on this subject
that have been generally put on the internet in circulation and in
particular on the Abolition Caucus site. She was aware that I was the
Author of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, and I offered
to go on record about US biological weapons programs, as indicated in my
correspondence to her below. I also offered to go on record as to the
legal and criminal accountability of United States government officials
for providing weapons-specific biological agents to Iraq.
And yet despite this mass of information that I forwarded to her at her
explicit request, there is not one word about the United States biological
weapons program that I analyzed in my Testimony and numerous other posts,
and I am certainly not mentioned at all in this article. That shows you
the way the mainstream news media work in the United States of America,
including and especially the New York Times, which has been mongering for
war against Iraq for quite some time.
By the way, and most critically of all, she deliberately refused to point
out in the article the well-known fact that former UNSCOM inspector
Raymond Zalinskas admitted to National Public Radio that UN inspectors had
already seen all reasonable weapons sites and had destroyed whatever
potential existed. But of course that critical piece of information did
not matter to the New York Times that is so hell-bent upon manipulating
these biowarfare charges into manufacturing public support for more war
against Iraq. I will not bother to review the article and point out all
the serious distortions, half-truths, and omissions.
But again, this article is nothing more than a piece of pure propaganda
mongering for war against Iraq.
All the news that's fit to print?
Well in America, the only news deemed fit to print and make it on the
television sets are those that monger for war. George Orwell had it right:
In America today, war is peace;freedom is slavery;ignorance is strength;
we all love big brother; and Ronald Reagan was President in 1984. Miller
really works for the NEWSPEAK TIMES.
Yours very truly,
Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
Author, Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989
-------------
> From: Boyle, Francis
> Sent: Friday, February 20, 1998 6:22 AM
> To: 'Judy Miller'
> Subject: RE: WMD
> Importance: High
>
> Dear Judy:
> Yes, during the past two weeks the British Press has had several
> reports of these post war shipments.I have been following them on the
> computer. Concerning the US shipments, if they occurred after the
> effective date of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989,
> they were felonies punishable by life in prison. The same is true in
> Britain, where their domestic implementing legislation goes back to
> 1974 and provides for life in prison. Although we were parties to the
> BWC, we did not make its violation a crime until 1989, though of
> course there are statutes on the books that could be used to prosecute
> for the violation of a treaty or other crimes if someone really wanted
> to (e.g., the general federal conspiracy statute), though by now the
> statute of limitations would have probably run.
> Best regards,
> Francis A. Boyle
> Professor of Law
> Author, Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989
>
> ----------
> Sent: Friday, February 20, 1998 6:16 AM
> To: fboyle@law.uiuc.edu
> Subject: WMD
>
> Dear Professor Boyle,
> I found your testimony very interesting. I'm a reporter for the
> New York Times. While the American shipments of anthrax strains to
> Baghdad during the Iran/Iraq war are now well known, do you know of any
> equipment, media, and/or other material shipped to Iraq AFTER the Gulf
> war? If so, from which countries?
> Thanks for your help.
> Judith Miller
>
>
{At this point I proceed to send her all of my e-mail files on
the subject of US biowarfare activities in general and also with respect
to Iraq, many of which have been posted generally on the internet.}
> Dear Judy:
> well, that about ends it for now. I used to have a lot more
> on my e-mail files here. But last spring our computer expert
> inadvertently destroyed all of our e-mail files at the Law School. Oh
> well. I first accused Bush et al of perpetrating a Nuremberg Crime on
> our own troops for the experimental vaccines during the court-martial
> Proceedings of Captain Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughan for "desertion" for
> refusing to serve in the Gulf War in part because she refused to give
> the vaccines in violation of her Hippocratic Oath. It was an issue in
> the court-martial. She was convicted anyway, spent eight months in
> Leavenworth before we could get her out, but was adopted a Prisoner of
> Conscience by Amnesty International. We do have our Sakharovs and
> Havels in this country. By the way, the critical point is that the
> French troops resisted the vaccines and so do not have Gulf War
> Syndrome. The British and American troops were forcibly inoculated and
> so have come down with it. The Independent Television Station TV4 in
> Britain did an extensive documentary on this in the Fall of 1993 in
> which I was interviewed. It made headlines in Britain, but has not
> been shown here. It is called The Dirty War. Tessa Shaw can give you a
> copy. Some of the more explosive charges had to be removed because of
> British libel laws--with my agreement--because they do not have a
> First Amendment over there, as you well know. Hence the documentary
> was watered down. But it was still explosive. Eventually, a person
> working for the British Ministry of Defense publicly admitted that
> there was such a thing as the Gulf War Syndrome--I read it in the
> Financial Times. But here, under the corrupt influence of the
> Lederberg Report.... the Pentagon is still denying it. I am willing
> to go on the record with some of these things if you want.
> Best regards,
> Francis A. Boyle
> Professor of International Law
> Author, Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989
>
> ----------
http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+iib-site+
11+0+wAAA+nuclear
The New York Times
February 26, 1998
How Iraq's Biological Weapons Program Came to Light
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
and JUDITH MILLER
In a January day in 1995, Dr. Rod Barton, a United Nations weapons
inspector with a gambler's instinct, decided to try bluffing the Iraqis.
Ever since their defeat in the Persian Gulf war, they had steadfastly
denied ever making any kind of germ weapons, despite much evidence to
the contrary.
Barton, a 46-year-old Australian biologist, did not have much in his
hand -- just two pieces of paper. The documents proved nothing but were
provocative: They showed that in the 1980s, Iraq had bought about 10
tons of nutrients for growing germs, far more than needed for civilian
work, from a British company.
"That was all I had," Barton recalled in an interview. "Not a full
house, just two deuces. So I played them both."
Sitting across from four Iraqi generals and scientists in a windowless
room near the University of Baghdad, Barton laid the documents on the
table. Did these, he asked, help refresh the Iraqis' memories?
"They went ashen," he recalled.
That meeting marked a turning point. In the months that followed, Iraq
dropped its denials and grudgingly admitted that it had run an elaborate
program to produce germ weapons, eventually confessing that it had made
enough deadly microbes to kill all the people on earth several times
over. . . .
Among the disclosures were these:
-- Just before the gulf war in 1991, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's
son-in-law began a crash military program intended to give Iraq the
ability to wipe out Israel's population with germ weapons, an Iraqi
general told inspectors. MiG fighters, each carrying 250 gallons of
microbes, were to be flown by remote control to release anthrax over
Israel. One pilotless plane was flight-tested with simulated germs just
before the war began, but the attack was never attempted.
-- The locations of more than 150 bombs and warheads built by the Iraqis
to dispense germs are a mystery, as are the whereabouts of a dozen
special nozzles that Iraq fashioned in the 1980s to spray germs from
helicopters and aircraft.
-- On nearly all recent missions, inspectors have found undeclared "dual
use" items like germ nutrients, growth tanks and concentrators, all of
which have legitimate uses but can also make deadly pathogens for
biological warfare.
Today, despite progress in penetrating Iraqi secrecy, inspectors say
they remain uncertain about most of Saddam's facilities to wage
biological warfare.
The inspectors have found traces of military germs and their seed stocks
but none of the thousands of gallons of biological agents that the
Iraqis made before the 1991 gulf war. Baghdad says it destroyed the
older material but offers no proof.
And the inspectors are unsure of the extent to which Iraq has solved the
technical challenges of delivering germs to targets -- a problem that
bedeviled other states experimenting with biological arms.
Finally, the U.N. inspectors have suspicions -- but no proof -- that
Baghdad is hiding germs and delivery systems. Their worries are based,
in part, on a chilling calculus of missing weapons: The United Nations
can account for only 25 of the 157 germ bombs that Iraq has acknowledged
making for its air force.
And inspectors have no idea of the whereabouts of some 25 germ warheads
made for missiles with a range of 400 miles; Baghdad says it destroyed
them but, again, offers no proof.
Richard Butler, chairman of the U.N. Special Commission charged with
eliminating such weapons, said in report after report that the
uncertainties are disturbing and legion. He recently told the Security
Council that the 639-page document that comprises Iraq's latest "full,
final and complete" declaration, its fifth to date, "fails to give a
remotely credible account" of Baghdad's long effort to make biological
arms. . . . [This report is quite extensive and provides more
information than found in ordinary news stories.]
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, Ill. 61820
Phone: 217-333-7954
Fax: 217-244-1478
fboyle@law.uiuc.edu