HIDDEN AGENDA

A letter from Or HC Evans in your May issue alleges that the Sunshine
Project's campaign against the biological weapon Agent Green is
'propaganda', and that we have a 'sinister agenda' that Evans implies
favours drug trafficking.

Using the US Freedom of Information Act, the Sunshine Project has
obtained a small mountain of US government documents on Agent Green.
It includes Evans' own Agent Green research, paid for by the US
government. Surely, Evans' personal involvement is why he has come
forward so heatedly.

Evans defends Agent Green by (falsely) claiming that it is safe and by
conveniently ignoring the fact that it is illegal - development of
biological agents with a hostile intent is prohibited by the
Biological Weapons Convention.

The US State Department has repeatedly said that drug eradication and
counterinsurgency are inseparable in Colombia and yet it seeks to
escalate this war with a biological agent that is more powerful than
the currently-used chemical herbicides. The department intends to
spray Agent Green from C135 military cargo aircraft not unlike those
that blasted Vietnam with Agent Orange. The fungus formulation is
designed to kill crops and establish persistent colonies of this
dangerous pathogen across the world's second most biodiverse country.

Agent Green is not specific to coca cultivars used to produce cocaine.
It infects unrelated plants too (killing some). Evidence suggests that
it kills related members of the genus Erythroxylum (there are more
than 200, including four listed as endangered in Colombia).

Evans' research did not consider impacts on indigenous peoples'
traditional use of the plant and its relatives, nor did it test Agent
Green on many crops grown in the region. Instead of focusing on
plantains, cassava, coffee, cacao, palms, and dozens of other
Colombian crops (including many in which Fusarium species are a
problem) and uncultivated plants, Evans' group tested Agent Green on
flax (linseed) and North American weeds - species uncommon or not
present in the tropical

South American ecosystems where coca is sown. No assessment was made
of impacts on Colombian soil ecology.

Or Evans and his allies are losing their bizarre fight for biological
warfare. CABI Bioscience avoids the topic at United Nations meetings.
The UK no longer supports the research. Former US President Clinton
shelved plans to test Agent Green in Colombia. Biological control
specialists in the Americas, Europe, and Africa have denounced Agent
Green as a perversion of their science, which seeks ecological
balance, not eradication and ecocide. Prodded by the US, the UN Drug
Control Program (UNDCP) initially backed Agent Green; but when Kofi
Annan ordered it to produce a reasoned response to government and
activist criticisms, UNDCP could muster nothing adequate. It instead
abandoned Agent Green because it is simply indefensible.

It is sad commentary on the state of the international prohibition on
biowarfare that Agent Green has advanced this far. Working with many
other dedicated NGOs and indigenous peoples, the Sunshine Project is
trying to permanently end this threat. Should Evans renew his
bioweapons project, we and our partners will seek Crown prosecution
under the UK's biological weapons law. Evans might think that is a I
sinister agenda'; but we call it upholding the Biological Weapons Convention.

Edward Hammond, Director,
The Sunshine Project, Austin, USA