I realize that every quack out there has some sort of bird brained conspiracy theory. None the less, this particular conspiracy seems to fly. Did the government actually test biowarfare on its citizens or am I just being a goose?
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BIOWARFARE TESTS ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
But the recently revised U.S. Code Title 50, Section 1520 states that the Secretary of Defense may conduct tests or experiments “involving the use of a chemical agent or biological agent on a civilian population” - if they are related to research activity.
The law also stipulates that biowarfare tests can be carried out on Americans only if Congress is notified 30 days in advance, and “only if informed consent to the testing was obtained from each human subject in advance of the testing on that subject.”
There is plenty of pattern and precedent to suggest that clandestine biowarfare experiments were routinely practiced on the American public without their informed consent. Two congressional investigations in 1977 and 1994 - and recently declassified British defense documents - detail 50 years of “open air” testing that used ships and spray-equipped aircraft to spread biological warfare simulants on hundreds of cities across the U.S., Canada and the U.K.
As recently as 1997, 61 secret tests sprayed the residents of Minneapolis with germ warfare simulants over a period of several months. Respiratory illness increased sharply in the sprayed areas.
Even as aerial atomic detonations were being conducted upwind of cities, American airborne biowarfare tests began in earnest in 1957 and 1958, when a cargo plane criss-crossed the country, spraying highly toxic zinc cadmium sulfide chemicals. A U.S. Army report states that “virtually, the whole country of the United States was covered with this material.”
Prof. Leonard Cole testified at the first congressional investigation into large area biowarfare experiments. The author of Clouds of Secrecy described how “The plane would take off from the Canadian border, and fly slowly down to the Gulf of Mexico. These materials would be spread, and were found to be landing as far away as New York State. So, you know that, as the air would push the zinc cadmium particles around, most of the people who were residents of the United States during that time were inhaling at least some of the zinc
cadmium sulfide. And the cadmium in that compound was clearly known then to be toxic, even in small amounts.”
In the Sixties and Seventies, British germ-warfare trials spread Bacillus globigii and E. coli from a ship and a Canberra bomber converted with stainless steel tanks and sprayers.
For people with breathing problems or poor immune systems, these bacteria can cause septicemia, fever, pneumonia and chest infections.
Congress also learned that in 1956, U.S. military personnel released mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida. Following each test, Army agents posing as public health officials tested victims for the effective spread of this disease.
In 1966, U.S. Army bioweaponeers dispensed Bacillus subtilis variant Niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians were exposed when army scientists dropped lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates. Similar biowarfare canisters were released in London subways.
In 1977, Senate hearings found that 239 U.S. populated areas had been contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969. Some of the areas included San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Key West, Panama
City, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.
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…why do it? If you want to test your great new weapon in a real world setting, you’d think you’d want more controlled conditions anyway (like an island) and you could hurt non-US citizens who couldn’t take the same legal action against you. Why drop chemical on people in Minnesota when logically you’d get better experiemental results dropping it on an island chain in say…the Caribbean