[A-List] Russia: chemical weapons alert

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Silence surrounds the deadly saviour
IAN BRUCE and KEITH SINCLAIR
The Herald, 29 October 2002

RUSSIA was stubbornly refusing to tell the world yesterday what kind of gas
killed at least 115 hostages in the Moscow theatre siege.

The substance was pumped into the theatre by special forces to overcome 50
heavily-armed Chechen terrorists.

The agent, which was used without telling health authorities, allowed the
elite troops to knock out and shoot dead the guerrillas - who had been
holding 750 people hostage since last Wednesday. However, it also killed all
but two of the 117 hostages who died in the siege.

Initial relief that accompanied the first reports that perhaps only 10
hostages in the theatre had died was replaced by doubts about the unnamed
gas, and criticism of the operation, as the death toll mounted.

"They poisoned us like cockroaches," a woman quoted her daughter as saying
in the Kommersant newspaper.

Russia declined to divulge the substance even to medical workers treating
the hostages, raising further doubts about its legality and bringing sharp
criticism.

Vietnam war

One doctor claimed countless lives could have been saved and expressed
frustration at the lack of information.

"Those who died had swallowed their vomit or their tongue or their hearts
had stopped," he said.

"If only we had known beforehand. If they had told us that we would be
getting large numbers who had lost consciousness or heart failure, it might
have been a bit different."

America claimed last night that doctors from an unidentified Western embassy
in Moscow had examined some of the hostages and concluded that the agent
they were exposed to was "consistent" with an opiate rather than a nerve
agent.

However, there was also speculation that the deadly gas was a nerve gas
created by the Americans in the 1950s and first used in the Vietnam war.

Major-General William Creasey, chief of the US Army's chemical corps, waxed
lyrical in the 1950s about a new kind of mind-bending weapon which would
"revolutionise warfare."

He dreamed of aircraft and helicopters swooping down over frontlines to
release what he described as hallucinogenic "madness gas" to sap America's
enemies of the will to resist.

The compound he was describing was quinuclidynil benzilate, or BZ for short,
an easily dispersed incapacitating agent which could reduce the toughest
veteran "grunt" to semi-consciousness in seconds.

The drug, whose effects are similar to those reported by some of survivors
of the Moscow siege, works by inhibiting the chemical which transmits
messages from the brain. The results include headaches, dizziness, total
disorientation, loss of muscle control, and hallucinations.

Depending on the strength of the dosage, the effects could last from three
days to six weeks, during which the victim is "completely out of touch with
his environment", according to Dr Van Sim, formerly chief of research at the
US Army's Edgewood arsenal experimental centre.

BZ was adapted to an aerosol and used in grenades, bombs and shells for
clearing buildings and bunker complexes. It was first used in action during
the Vietnam war to attack the warren of tunnels built by the Vietcong across
the Mekong delta to protect them from bombardment.

Clinical trials of BZ continued until 1975 and 2800 military volunteers were
exposed to its effects. Some later claimed that what they called "the
Pentagon's people zapper" had a permanent psychological effect on their
behaviour. An overdoze could be fatal.

Robert Bowen, an air force guinea pig, said the concentrated drug induced
feelings of temporary insanity and that those exposed to it became totally
divorced from reality. He cites the example of one paratrooper he witnessed
taking a shower in full combat gear while smoking a cigar.

Most of the crowd control drugs tested by the US military were rejects
deemed commercially useless by the pharmaceutical industry because of
unwanted side effects. BZ was a gift from Hoffman-La Roche's New Jersey
laboratories in the late 1950s.

The Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the use of all toxic agents,
except for law enforcement, medical or scientific research, and protection
against chemical weapons.

Russia has the world's largest stockpile of chemical weapons, about 40,000
tons compared with 30,000 for the US.