Running head: THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS The Pentagon Biological Weapons 1 THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPON 2 Part One Known to millions globally, biological weapons for warfare or, by any country, are utterly forbidden. So crucial is the issue that a convention was formed by the United Nations, the Biological Weapons Convention. The convention, which was formed in 1972 and had its start of operations in March 1975, comprehensively prohibits the acquisition, manufacture, production, distribution, stockpiling, or testing of biological weapons and toxic weapons ("Biological Weapons Convention – UNODA," 2021). Put merely, the convention prohibits the entire biological weapon category of weapons of mass destruction. Why restricts its use? One might ask. The primary reason why the production and use of biological weapons are strongly prohibited is the out-of-this-world adverse effects on the human population. Unlike nuclear bombs that have one significant impact at the time of the explosion, biological weapons eat up the entire population by causing a pandemic, which cannot be contained in most cases. Biological weapons are used to severely damage humans, livestock, or plants by disseminating disease-causing pathogens or toxins. They're lethal and very infectious. Infectious diseases rapidly spread across national boundaries and could quickly spread across the globe if such weapons trigger them. The effects of state actors deliberately releasing biological weapons or toxins may be devastating. Aside from the tragic loss of life, such events may result in food insecurity, environmental disasters, catastrophic economic loss, widespread sickness, terror, and mistrust among the general public. As a Russian administrator, and most importantly, a global citizen of the world without any form of malice, the paper will present horrifying facts of the US Pentagon's involvement in the laboratory production and testing of biological weapons, not anywhere else but within the US borders using open-source intelligence (ONIT). From multiple sources, the US pentagon has been overseeing the production and testing of biological weapons on human beings from the first THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPON 3 biological test using harmless bacteria in the Pentagon's atmosphere in 1949 till today in America for the war effort. Part Two Using Open-Source Intelligence from cases that are well known and within the public, and with others that may have been hidden from the public knowledge, the paper will explore the incidences where the Pentagon's non-involvement in biological weapons production has been questioned with secret operations being revealed by whistleblowers. The purpose of the article is not to evoke fear in public but to let the people in on the truth concerning this dangerous and widely opposed operation. The information environment for the paper cuts across the three significant categories. It will take the physical, cognitive, and informational environments. Physical information includes the location of laboratories and testing places, while information encompasses reports and findings that may or may not be in the public domain. The cognitive environment will leave the discerning of the below results to the reader and give them the option of gauging the authenticity and truth of the report. Part Three As briefly stated above, the US army has long been experimenting with deadly viruses with minimal knowledge from the public, particularly Americans. The stealth activity plus Americanism that is deeply rooted in Americans from the Civil War period in history makes most Americans oblivious to the wrongs happening within their territorial borders. The violation of the UN convention on the prohibition of biological weapons is not new. Millions of people unwittingly are exposed to the dangers of incurable and pandemic starting diseases. I am representing the global community in this report and targeting its citizens worldwide. More specifically, the target audience for this are innocent Americans and other citizens of the world where the US has testing laboratories that, without their knowledge, are THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPON 4 exposed to life-threatening viruses, bacteria, and toxins. By shedding light on the harmful practice, I aim to bring people to light so that together, they might call against biological weapon manufacture and testing because of the adverse effects highlighted above. According to Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, a Bulgarian journalist, the US has biological weapon production on testing multiple labs within the Us, East Asia, Middle East, and Africa. Through research, Dilyana explains that the US has a total of 25 laboratories spread put worldwide, with the base location being in former Soviet Union states such as Ukraine and Georgia (Gaytandzhieva, 2018). The Pentagon's bioresearch lab in Georgia is known as the Lugar Center. It's just 17 kilometers from Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, and the US Vaziani army military base. Researchers from the US Army Medical Research Unit-Georgia (USAMRU-G) and subcontractors are in charge of the military program. Only US people with top-secret clearance have entry to the Bio-safety Level three Facility. Under the 2002 US-Georgia Security Cooperation Agreement, they are granted sovereign immunity. Therefore, it is factual to claim that the Pentagon does not have its hands directly in the operation but hires subcontractors who, with military security clearance, work under the complete protection of the Pentagon. The Agency (DTRA) has subcontracted most of the defense program's activities to private firms that are not subject to congressional oversight and can function more openly and circumvent the rule of law. Although they are not diplomats, US civilians working at The Lugar Center have been granted diplomatic immunity (Gaytandzhieva, 2018). As a result, corporate companies will work for the US state under diplomatic protection while remaining independent of the hosting state – in this case, the Nation of Georgia. The CIA often employs this technique to protect its officers. THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPON Figure 1 Lugar Centre, Georgia source https://southfront.org/pentagon-bio-weapons/ Figure 2 Vaziani Military Base, 17km from Lugar Centre source https://southfront.org/pentagon-bio-weapons/ 5 THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPON 6 Dilyana is not the first person to whistleblow this kind of operation. The US has had a long history of entomological warfare, a type of biological warfare where insects spread the disease. Reports present findings that entomological studies have been conducted by the Pentagon in Russia and Georgia using the Lugar center. The Lugar Center was outfitted with an insect research wing in the facility in 2014, and a program to investigate barcoding sand flies in Georgia and Caucasus got initiated. Beyond Georgia, the project is based on the Caucasus region. Phlebotomine sand fly species were collected, and all (female) sandflies got examined as part of another project. Consequently, since 2015, Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, has been tainted with biting flies in homes at bathrooms, indoors, kitchens all year long. These flying insects spend the entire year indoors in lavatories, which was not typically the case in Georgia (Gaytandzhieva, 2018). Typically, the Phlebotomine season in Georgia is abridged, starting in June and ending in September. People in the area claim to have been bitten by these recently appearing flies while bathing. The Pentagon has long used insects as infectious agents. American biowarfare researchers conduct a variety of studies on insects, according to a partially publicly released 1981 US Army article (Gaytandzhieva, 2018). These activities were part of the US Entomological Warfare Program, which was part of the US Program for Biological Weapons. History shows that the US has been accused of using biological weapons for thousands of years. The republic of China and North Korea said in 1951 and 1952 that the US distributed pathogen-carrying bugs, rodents, and spiders over their borders to spread an epidemic, infections, cholera, anthrax, and meningitis (Gamberini & Moodie, 2020). As a consequence of the war, these ailments were prevalent in the area, and sickness was widespread both between civilians and troops. This was is not the first time the US has used bugs to transmit pathogens to populations in China. THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPON 7 The Soviets brought these allegations to the International Community, and the claims received a portion of Soviet media attention at the time. The US promptly and vehemently denied the allegations; in a statement to Rep. Robert Kastenmeier, President Harry S. Truman explained that he "did not reform any Executive Order in force about biological weapons, nor did he grant any permission to use (Gamberini & Moodie, 2020). In 1981, a US Army study compared two instances: A. 16 concurrent strikes on a city by Aegypti mosquitoes with yellow fever and B. 16 Tularemia aerosol strike, and evaluate their efficacy in terms of cost and fatalities. Land experiments were conducted as part of one exercise called "Operation Big Itch" to assess the distribution trends and resilience of the tropical rat flea Xenopsylla cheopis to be used as a disease carrier. THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPON Figure 3 Operations Big Itch and Big Buzz. Source https://southfront.org/pentagon-bioweapons/ At a completely different allegation, the House of Representatives ordered the Pentagon to reveal if it employed ticks to plague the General populace with Lyme disease from 1950 to 1975(Amendment to Rules Committee Print 116-19, 2021). Chris Smith, a 8 THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPON 9 Republican delegate from New Jersey, made the accusation. Smith, a long-time advocate for Lyme disease, says the allegations base on a new article concerning the illness and the person who discovered it – a biowarfare scientist called Willy Burgdorfer (Bentley, 2019). As one would expect, the pentagon denied the allegations. In another instance, With the Cold War lingering after WWII, the US government struck a backroom agreement with Japanese war criminals, granting them clemency for atrocities. The aim was to monopolize scientific proof obtained through inhumane human experiments to further the US biological warfare program (Nie, 2021). Although the USSR attempted to publish the Khabarovsk trial's overwhelming facts globally in the 1940s, the general populace in the West remained unaware of Japan's BW violations till the late 1980s or 1990s, owing to the United States' dismissal of the prosecution as "communist propaganda (Nie, 2021)." This clearly shows the interest of the Pentagon in leading the race of biological warfare creation. US government is trampling on human rights in the name of state security and the nation's interests. No one can ever know the reality concerning the question of biological weapons in the Korean War. Historians are still discussing the topic vehemently. On one side of the argument, Canadian academics have provided clear evidence favoring the claims by analyzing previously classified US, Canadian, and British records and material from the Chinese Central Archives. And from the other hand, the analysis focused on recently collected Chinese personnel's memoirs and declassified Soviet Union records has led to the conclusion that the charges were fake, a great example of propaganda. These instances prove that the Pentagon has not abided by the UN convention of nonproduction, testing, and distribution of biological warfare. At this point, I ask. Is the quest to be a superpower, leading the pack with nuclear and biological weapons worth more than human life? By testing biological weapons, the human population has gotten exposed to THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPON 10 pathogens that have dire consequences on human health. The National Research Council announced in 1997 that in the 50s, the US employed the use of chemicals to assess the capacity of biological weapons. Planes spread zinc cadmium sulfide across various regions, namely St Louis, Missouri, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The above cities were preferred because they were close to USSR targets like Moscow regarding terrain, geography, population, and weather. The committee claimed nobody got harmed and that the toxicity level used wasn't hazardous. However, in 2012, a professor of sociology called Lisa Martino-Taylor alleged that a rise in cancer rates in these regions might be linked to the pollutants, which she claims were reactive. Nothing has come to light since then to substantiate her claims. In 1966, one of the most contentious experiments occurred in the Subway of New York. Scientists shattered light bulbs on the rails after filling them with Bacillus globigii bacteria. The bacteria spread for miles across the subway system, infecting thousands of people and contaminating their clothing. The US Government admitted in 2008 that Project 112, as it was called, together with other experiments, may have subjected thousands of civilians to bioweapons. According to the same article, the US defense department has been attempting to locate and notify civilians exposed during Project 112 since 2003. The military claims that there was no harm done as a result of this exposure. The army disputes that the contact resulted in any illness, but many who have gotten confirmed claim to have a broad range of medical problems due to it. Apart from the apparent health effects of using a biological weapon, a more under looked but highly eruptive result comes to life—the disconnect between the Republicans and the Democrats. Since time immemorial, the American people are divided based on their political affiliation. The democrats and republicans rarely seem to agree on topics involving Americanism. Like other factors, the use of biological weapons increases the disconnect THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPON 11 between the two parties, creates a system of Americans who don't trust Americans. Like the use of Nuclear weapons, the use of biological weapons has caused nothing but controversial debates. On one side of the political spectrum are the republicans, who, together with the former president of the US, Donald J Trump, believe that America should discard arms control arrangements that favor America's adversaries without strengthening their state security. They think that the US ought to support, build, and deploy a multi-layered arsenal of missiles as a country (Mercer, 2016). Moreover, they feel that the government should modernize weapons and their delivery systems. On the opposite end of the debate are the succinct democrats who believe America would be safer in a world with fewer chemical and biological weapons (Mercer, 2016). Donald Trump promoted the proliferation of nuclear weapons across Asia and the Middle East, weakening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Democrats want to see less nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare globally, as claimed by the Pandora Report. In conclusion, the shreds of evidence provided in the sections show how even after the United Nations prohibits using biological weapons, the US Pentagon has over the years defied this rule. The fact that the country is a policy dictator in NATO, it should abide by regulations set by the international community. Not only does biological warfare cause diseases and death, but it also put the entire world at risk of food shortages in case of a pandemic, economic turmoil, and poverty. Lastly, it causes a political drift between the democrats and republicans, a disconnect that history indicates is long-lasting. The paper is a call for action. As a global community, we need to say no to biological weapons since their adaptation does not only sow dissent on Americans but also the world. THE PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WEAPON 12 References Amendment to Rules Committee Print 116-19. (2021). Retrieved from https://chrissmith.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_lyme_ig_amendment.pdf Bentley, M. (2019). The US has a history of testing biological weapons on the public – were infected ticks used too?. Retrieved 26 April 2021, from https://theconversation.com/the-us-has-a-history-of-testing-biological-weapons-onthe-public-were-infected-ticks-used-too-120638 Biological Weapons Convention – UNODA. (2021). Retrieved 26 April 2021, from https://www.un.org/disarmament/biological-weapons/ Gamberini, S., & Moodie, A. (2020). The Virus of Disinformation: Echoes of Past Bioweapons Accusations in Today's COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories - War on the Rocks. Retrieved from https://warontherocks.com/2020/04/the-virus-ofdisinformation-echoes-of-past-bioweapons-accusations-in-todays-covid-19conspiracy-theories/ Gaytandzhieva, D. (2018). The Pentagon Bio-Weapons. Retrieved from https://southfront.org/pentagon-bio-weapons/ Mercer, G. (2016). The 2016 Democratic and Republican Platforms Have Things to Say About Nuclear Weapons. Retrieved from https://pandorareport.org/2016/07/22/the2016-democratic-and-republican-platforms-have-things-to-say-about-nuclearweapons/ Nie, J. (2021). In the Shadow of Biological Warfare: Conspiracy Theories on the Origins of COVID-19 and Enhancing Global Governance of Biosafety as a Matter of Urgency. Nature Public Health Emergency Collection, 1-8. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2Fs11673-020-10025-8 
Purchase answer to see full attachment