IT'S A GAS, GAS, GAS

Fentanyl Story Quietly Absorbed By Media

It first it looked like a cause for international outrage-"Nerve Gas
Mystery" was the New York Post's headline on October 28. What had started
as a crisis, with about 750 people held hostage in a Moscow theater by
Chechen rebels, turned into a scandal when Russian authorities revealed
they had used an aerosol form of the drug fentanyl to rescue the hostages,
about 120 of whom died from overdose. Why did the controversy subside into
a muted debate? Perhaps it's because the Pentagon wants to keep fentanyl in
its medicine cabinet, in a drawer labeled "nonlethal weapons." If the U.S.
denounces Russia for spraying drugs at a crowd, where does that leave us?

Just after the hostages died, talking heads speculated freely about the
identity of the killer drug. Was it nerve gas left over from the Cold War,
or one of the other substances specifically banned by the 1993 Chemical
Weapons Convention? On October 29, CNN's Connie Chung asked plaintively,
"Could that be used on us? And does the U.S. even know about it? Is the
U.S. military using it as well?" The day before, CNN reported, citing
Pentagon sources, "It could have been some form of chemical agent with the
same chemical structure as heroin or opium. In other words, it's a
hallucinogen."

Then suddenly the Russians dropped the veil. The killer drug wasn't nerve
gas, or heroin, or BZ, the U.S. Army hallucinogen that dates back to the
1950s. It wasn't an approved riot-control drug like tear gas, pepper spray,
or mace. It was a derivative of fentanyl, which is also a pharmaceutical
drug manufactured in the U.S., injected as an anesthetic during surgery,
and prescribed in patch and lollipop form to treat chronic pain. While the
Russian authorities insist the gas is not in itself lethal, every doctor in
the U.S. knows an overdose of medical fentanyl can kill you. According to
the Drug Enforcement Administration, the effects of the fentanyl class "are
indistinguishable from those of heroin, with the exception that the
fentanyls may be hundreds of times more potent."

That mystery drug? Shh. It's legal in the U.S.

With one mystery solved, another unfolded: How did a carefully controlled
hospital narcotic become a military experiment in mass anesthesia? And why
is everyone nodding their heads in consent? On October 29, The New York
Times and Los Angeles Times published some clues. According to documents
obtained by the Austin-based Sunshine Project, the Pentagon is currently
studying the use of fentanyl, Valium, and other psychoactive drugs as
"incapacitating," "nonlethal" weapons. (The feds deny conducting such
research, but documents show the work is being contracted out by the
Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. A recent report outlines
proposed plans for Valium-laced pepper spray, carfentanyl dart guns,
psychoactive chewing gum, and drug granules encased in a shell that can be
fired from a mortar at thousands of granules per round.)

To put it another way, products originally sold as medicine have now become
weapons in the hands of the U.S. military. For some, this is a comical
revelation that gives new meaning to the terms "drug war" and
"military-industrial complex." But for people who take warfare more
seriously than a James Bond movie, it raises a serious question: Does
manufacturing drug weapons violate international treaties?

According to experts polled by The New York Times, the Pentagon's secret
drug weapons are legal for law enforcement and riot control. But Sunshine
Project director Edward Hammond says they are not. In September, Hammond
issued a press release accusing the U.S. of violating the 1993 Chemical
Weapons Convention. The Sunshine Project called on Congress to freeze
funding for the "nonlethal" research, declassify related documents, and
hold the top dogs responsible. The group even called for a UN inspection team.

"We can present hard evidence for an illicit and shameful chemical weapons
program in the U.S.," said Hammond. "If the U.S. invades Iraq and uses
these weapons, we may witness the depravity of the U.S. waging chemical
warfare against Iraq to prevent it from developing chemical weapons." As
with other aspects of U.S. unilateralism, this predicted line of action
would not only be hypocritical, but would also set a dangerous global example.

Since the hostage crisis ended, fentanyl gas and the Pentagon's nonlethal
weapons program have received considerable attention in The New York Times,
The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, The
Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, Time, and the San Francisco Chronicle,
among others. Many reporters are now quoting Hammond and citing his
documents. But several angles deserve more attention.

The most important is the question of whether drug weapons are prohibited
by international treaties, or are legal, as long as they are used for crowd
control, but not warfare. (That's the so-called loophole.) Aside from
footnoting a possible treaty violation, reporters have yet to fully
investigate the arguments pro and con. In an October 30 editorial, The New
York Times hemmed and hawed about the potential downsides of drug gases,
including fatalities and treaty violations, and then concluded that "in an
age of terrorism, it would surely be desirable to develop a mist that could
put people to sleep quickly without harming them permanently." Ah, poppies!

The Washington Post and Newsday have tried in vain to determine the exact
nature of the gas used in Russia. Maybe Congress should be asking the
Pentagon who makes this lethal gas and what countries possess it. After
all, Israel used fentanyl gas in 1997. In an assassination attempt widely
reported at the time, two Mossad agents approached a Hamas political leader
and sprayed a variation of fentanyl into his ear. (The Baltimore Sun
mentioned that story recently, but no one else has.)

Israel isn't the only U.S. ally with access to secret drug weapons: The
Sunshine Project has evidence that the United Kingdom has looked into
developing incapacitating gases. On October 31, the Times of London and
Financial Times reported that the British government admits doing such
research in the past, but says the research has now stopped. (Don't look
for the U.K. connection in the U.S. media.)

"Most of the reporting that has been done on this issue in the U.S. has
been off-base," Hammond told the Voice on a phone call from Geneva, where
he has been attending the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention. "The
media focus on whether or not the U.S. should develop this kind of
technology missed the whole point of why this technology is broadly
considered something beyond the pale of law and morality," based on a
number of incidents dating back to World War I.

Hammond continued, "The failure of the U.S. and the U.K. to say anything
about what happened, coupled with the knowledge that they, too, are
interested in and developing this kind of weapon, will effectively result
in the legitimization of using drugs in warfare and in many other
situations of civil unrest."