The Sunshine Project Rebuts USMC Censorship / New Video Available.......The documents, titled Anti-Personnel Calmative Agents, Anti-Personnel Chemical Immobilizers: Synthetic Opiods, and Demonstration of Chemical Immobilizers, describe US military research on chemical weapons
The Sunshine Project Rebuts USMC Censorship / New Video Available
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 11:37:29 -0500
The Sunshine Project
News Release - 5 August 2004
http://www.sunshine-project.org
Sunshine Project Rebuts US Marine Corps Censorship
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New Video of US "Non-Lethal" UAV (drone) Tests Available
(Austin and Hamburg - 5 August 2004) - In a letter sent today, the
Sunshine Project has informed the US Marine Corps that it has
returned three US Army documents, describing "non-lethal" chemical
weapons research, to its website.
The documents, titled Anti-Personnel Calmative Agents, Anti-Personnel
Chemical Immobilizers: Synthetic Opiods, and Demonstration of
Chemical Immobilizers, describe US military research on chemical
weapons similar to those used to devastating effect by Russian
Special Forces in the Moscow theater in 2002. More than 120 innocent
hostages died from the effects of these "non-lethal" chemical weapons.
The Marines had insisted, on July 14th, that the Project cease to
distribute the papers, which the Sunshine Project obtained after
requesting them under the Freedom of Information Act. The Sunshine
Project temporarily agreed to the Marines' request, pending receipt
of further explanations of the Marines' claim that distributing the
papers posed a threat to Department of Defense weapons programs and
personnel.
But the Marines did not reply to the requests for a more adequate
explanation and, after three weeks, the Sunshine Project has placed
the papers online again.
"We were willing to comply with the Marines' request because they
suggested that the people identified in the papers could be hurt,"
says Sunshine Project US Director Edward Hammond. "Our investigation
of this issue, " says Hammond, "reveals nothing that suggests that
any person would be harmed by public release of these documents, and
the Marines' have refused to elaborate on their claims."
The Marines' other assertion is that the papers reveal information
about weapons research programs that could compromise them. The
Sunshine Project replied by writing:
"Here, the Sunshine Project and the Marine Corps will simply have to
disagree ... We believe that maintaining and strengthening the global
bans on chemical and biological weapons is a profound public
interest... [We] have no sympathy for your request that we assist you
in shielding these chemical weapons programs from public view, we
believe that it is our obligation to expose them."
The complete correspondence with the Marine Corps is available at:
http://www.sunshine-project.org/incapacitants/usmccensor.html
The documents are available in the Sunshine Project's online
clearinghouse of US government documents on "non-lethal" chemical and
biological weapons research:
http://www.sunshine-project.org/incapacitants/jnlwdpdf/
New Video of US "Non-Lethal" UAV (drone) Tests Available
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The Project has also posted a newly-released videotape of 1997 US
tests of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, or "drone") equipped to
disperse chemicals. The tests involved a smoke payload and were
conducted at Fort Huachuca, Arizona and sponsored by the Joint
Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD).
The tape is one of two videos requested by the Sunshine Project under
the Freedom of Information Act in January 2003. After extensive
correspondence, the first tape was finally released on July 23rd by
the US Army's Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.
A second tape has, since early February 2004, been held up by the
Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, which has led Marine Corps efforts to
develop UAVs to carry "non-lethal" chemical payloads.
The tape represents one of the first public glimpses inside JNLWD's
"non-lethal" UAV program. The Sunshine Project is pressing the
Department of Defense to make available complete documentation of its
"non-lethal" chemical UAV research, among other chemical and
biological programs that raise questions about US treaty compliance.
A web version of the video may be viewed at:
http://www.sunshine-project.org/incapacitants/jnlwdpdf/hunter.html
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(See: http://www.sunshine-project.org)
Original: IMPORTANT CROWD CONTROL INFORMATION