by Xu Chi
GENEVA, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Declassified files by the Central Intelligence Agency have proven that the United States applied Unit 731-inspired bioweapons during the Korean War, said U.S. author Jeffrey Kaye, who has called for establishing an international commission for further investigation.
Kaye, a former clinical psychologist in San Francisco, wrote a book published in 2017 on the torture of detainees in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and later started his research into U.S. biological warfare during the Korean War, most of the documents of which were systematically censored and destroyed during the McCarthy era.
After much searching, Kaye managed to find a large amount of evidence, including a report by the International Scientific Commission (ISC) for Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China, and confessions of 25 U.S. fliers to biological warfare.
Last year, to his delight, Kaye obtained "the final piece of the puzzle."
"The CIA, as part of their (Korean War 60th Anniversary) celebration, released hundreds of previously classified documents to the public," said Kaye. "I found approximately two dozen that did (refer to the biological warfare)."
The documents, based on the work done by the U.S. Armed Forces Security Agency that decrypted, translated and analyzed the communication within China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), showed that militaries of the two countries, unaware of being spied upon, once reported internally germ warfare attacks, illness and casualties.
"The handprint of Unit 731, which the United States and Japan both covered up, were all over this," Kaye said, adding that "the same people (in the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service) who had advocated and lobbied for the amnesty and the collaboration with (Head of Unit 731) Shiro Ishii and his cohorts, ended up later advocating biological warfare and were put in positions of responsibility in 1950-1951."
Noting that his conclusion is based on the released documents, including those declassified by the U.S. Department of Defense over the past few decades, Kaye said he was surprised at how these documents sat unnoticed over the years.
He also stressed the personnel of Unit 731 were pardoned after the war by Douglas MacArthur, then supreme commander for the Allied Powers, and that MacArthur noted with interest that Ishii's biowarfare would be useful "in cold climates," the type of climates found in northeast China, the DPRK and the Soviet Union.
"Fort Detrick of course was and still is, at the center of U.S. biological warfare research. Back in the 1950s, they worked closely with the CIA as well, and there was something called the Special Operations Division within Fort Detrick that worked on making biological weapons," Kaye said.
Multiple Fort Detrick personnel working on a bioweapons program met a violent death shortly after the U.S. biowarfare campaign in the Korean War, with no details ever released from Army investigations into their deaths, Kaye said.
U.S. biowarfare was highly confidential even for those involved, Kaye said. "In (the fliers') confession in fact, high-ranking people ... mentioned how important it is to keep security around this (biological warfare) issue, and if anyone broke security on this, they would be court-martialed, and how even some of the pilots didn't know what they were flying."
To cover up the biowarfare, the United States conducted full-scale censorship, persecution, and tampering of evidence, Kaye said. "Anyone who got through with that, or any other journalists, were red-baited during the McCarthy period."
For Kaye, the CIA-released files conform with the evidence advanced by the ISC report and the fliers' confessions. "I say we have above-preponderance of evidence now showing the U.S. engaged in biological warfare campaign."
Kaye is calling for the establishment of an international commission to investigate.
"The only way to establish trust and restore diplomacy, and not saber-rattling, would be by settling the issue of past crimes," he said. Enditem
