1. Setting the Scene
- The first Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Jose Mauricio de Figueiredo Bustani believes the UK made a premature decision to blame Russia for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, in an interview from Rio de Janeiro on Friday. (Ruptly is a German Media organisation)
On 29th of March 2019, at 11pm, the UK will depart from the European Union. An event of enormous significance, no matter which side of the fence you are looking at it from. Yet the main concern on many peoples minds right now is the use of chemical weapons in Salisbury and Syria. The UK government stands firm in it’s position that Russia is to blame, and has received backing from the 28 EU leaders. Yet, despite their firm insistence, and claims of overwhelming evidence, there are concerns that the situation requires deeper investigation. Faith that Boris Johnson’s Foreign Office are capable of dealing with this issue is stuntedly decumbant. They have already been caught lying about the Porton Down scientists' ability to determine if the chemical was made in Russia.
I am a recent graduate with a science degree, as soon as I heard this it aroused suspicion. How could they know this unless they had a sample, and where did they get the sample? I am not an Organic Chemist, I did Food Science, my course was more concerned with flavours, colours, & nutrients. But we also learned a lot about other chemicals in food like pesticides, chemicals made in processing, and these things called mycotoxins. The Skripal incident was starting to remind me of something we learned about in one of our modules, a particularly bizarre incident that occurred during the Second Cold War.
In 1981 tensions were high between the Soviet Union and the US. The actor Ronald Wilson Reagan had been sworn into office on the 20th January of that year. Russia was still under Communist rule, and Reagan was known for holding anti-communist beliefs. He had previously approached the FBI with names of other actors he believed held communist sympathies. Acting as his Secretary of State was the Pennsylvania born, ex-military general, Alexander Haig. This man was about to accuse the Soviet Union of an attack on US allies of a kind that had never before been carried out. He presented evidence that the Soviet state had developed a new, deadly chemical agent, and had used it on allies of the US in Laos and Cambodia.
Haig was experienced in war, having fought in both the Korean War, and Vietnam. He had also acted under President Nixon as the guy in charge of wiretaps, and was White House Chief of Staff at the height of Watergate. In March of 1981, a failed assassination attempt was made on Reagan. While the President was recovering, Haig received a lot of media attention after he wrongly claimed in a press conference “I am in control here, in the White House”. He was also known for so-called ‘Haigspeak’, a use of language “obfuscatory or convoluted speech, often producing a surreal effect” (Oxfordreference.com).
On the 13th of September, 1981, Alexander Haig made a speech to the Berlin Press Association where he made a serious allegation against the Soviet Union. He accused them of being involved in biological warfare, raining down poisonous mycotoxin compounds on allies of the US (Tucker, 2000).
“the international community has been alarmed by continuing reports that the Soviet Union and its allies have been using lethal chemical weapons in Laos, Kampuchea, and Afghanistan. We have now found physical evidence from Southeast Asia which has been analyzed and found to contain abnormally high levels of three potent mycotoxins—poisonous substances not indigenous to the region and which are highly toxic to man and animals.” Mycotoxins are chemicals produced by fungi as a secondary metabolite. Basically this just means that they are chemicals produced for reasons that have no obvious connection to the normal metabolism of the organism. The reason that fungi produce these chemicals is thought to be because they weaken the host organism so the fungi find it easier to proliferate. LSD is made from one of these mycotoxins, and many of them are capable of causing disease and even death.
Haig based his claims on evidence compiled by US government intelligence agencies. These included refugee accounts, interrogations, classified evidence, and samples of foliage analysed to contain mycotoxins. His claims were countered by a group of academic chemists that alleged the chemicals were simply showers of Bee poo. This led to one of the most bizarre controversies in the effort of assessing compliance with arms control treaties. The US has to this day, not retracted it’s claims that the Soviets had carried out this attack, but they have never been able to prove it. The case remains unsolved.
Disinformation is a powerful method of deception and derives its name from a KGB black propaganda department title. It involves the use of deliberate falsehoods, or to use the modern term for it ‘fake news’, to cause confusion on certain matters, allowing truths to be concealed. Disinformation was also employed by the US. The most notable case was a 23 year mission that involved the fake defection of a US Army Sergeant. Joseph Edward Cassidy was approached by the FBI and urged to make contact with a Soviet naval attache.
Cassidy offered to exchange military secrets for money, and began receiving requests from the Russians. Their main interested was in the US nerve gas program. He gave them information on a nerve agent that the US thought could not be weaponised, a G-series chemical. These are agents that are liquid at room temperature, and evaporate at rates similar to water. He provided them with over 4,000 documents on both real and fake research. The intent was to confuse them, and waste Soviet resources as they tried to work out how the US was able to weaponise the chemical. It is believed to be this information that influenced the FOLIANT program that produced the Novichok agents. The story is detailed in David Wise’s book “Cassidy’s Run: The Secret Spy War Over Nerve Gas”.
Considering their history with disinformation, it is entirely plausible that the Soviets used their intelligence officers to plant the idea that the US military institutions had in fact been analysing bee poo. In the coming parts of this article, we will be looking at the situation further, and examining the evidence from either side, and comparing it to the current situation with the Skripals. The main disconcerting point for me about the issue surrounding the poisoning of the Skripals, is that the UK is not playing the game very well. If this were a football match, we would be five or six goals behind Russia right now, and with no signs of being able to regain the lead. The Russians are experts at this kind of thing, and disinformation for them is almost a Modus Operandi. There is a lot at stake here, and I feel worried that the UK could end up facing a serious backlash over how they have handled the situation.
International incidents like these illustrate the confusing and deceptive world of international relations. We may not have the smoking gun in this situation, but we do have some bullets. We have been unable to determine where the bullets are from, and probably will not be able to until we have the gun that they came from (i.e. a sample of the batch of agent used). There's a lot going on in the world right now, we have accusations of Russian involvement in US elections, and of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. I feel that we should be looking into this issue with a little bit more scientific rationality, rather than acting on hunches. This article will be looking at the evidence, and the background to the situation. We really don't know right now if Russia did this or not. We really don't know if some other organisation could have created this situation to gain something for themselves.
Please get involved with the discussion in the comments section, I really want to hear your thoughts on the matter!