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News :: Government Secrecy |
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Just Across The Stateline: Where The WMDs Are |
Current rating: 0 |
by ML and Cryptome
(No verified email address) |
13 Jul 2003
Modified: 12:58:39 PM |
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Looking for WMDs? You don't have to travel far from Central Illinois. |
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Aerial Photo of Newport Army Ammunition Depot (from Cryptome)
Amidst the manufactured, hyped-up hysteria that the Bush Adminstration used to promote its inevitable (once elected) war with Iraq in the post-9-11 madness that gripped our nation, little has been said about the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that the U.S. still possesses, probably in greater numbers than anywhere else in the world (except perhaps the leftovers from the Cold War in Russia.) Quietly, Bush has moved to resume building and testing nuclear weapons, in defiance of world opinion. And the U.S. still possesses large stocks of chemical weapons, although the U.S. is suppossed to be moving (under the kind of multi-lateral international agreements that Bush now rejects) to destroy the thousands of tons of these horrific agents it still possesses. One place where this remains to be accomplished is the Newport, Indiana chemical weapons depot, just across the stateline, about an hour's drive from Champaign County.
Prior to 9-11, those with scanners could easily monitor the daily shoot-to-kill drills of the security force there guarding some 1,700 tons of VX nerve gas stored in underground bunkers in the bucolic Indiana countryside, upwind from Indianapolis. After jetliners were shown to be destructive devices, palpable fear crept into the voices of the gaurds at Newport, with the approach of any aircraft, once air traffic resumed, triggering concerned calls to "check with the FAA" whenever a plane would venture into the sight of the guards.
Although a "no-fly zone" was expanded around the depot, as was done at other such facilities after Sept. 11, and Army units equipped with surface-to-air missiles were brought in the supplement the secuity force (already armed with assulat rifles and machine guns), it is clear that there are fears that the bunkers containing the nerve gas might be vulnerable to intentional air crashes. Such a crash could release the deadly toxin stored within, sending a cloud of VX downwind toward heavily populated areas like Indianapolis. VX is so deadly that a drop the size of a pin head could result in a horrifying death within minutes. Soon after, the guards finally received encrypted radios, replacing the previously easily monitored conversations of the guards with the harsh buzz of encrypted traffic.
This week, Cryptome (http://www.cryptome.org/), a major source of information the government would just as soon have the populace not know, released overhead photos of the Newport depot. They are fascinating to look at.
Newport was originally constructed in order to make RDX explosive in WWII, then was converted to make heavy water (deuterium) for the U.S nuclear weapons program, but changes in nucelar bomb designs lessened the need for production of heavy water. A VX plant was built within the depot's confines in 1960, but ceased operations when Pres. Nixon agreed with the Soviet Union to dismantle chemical weapons programs in the late 1960s. Since then, the VX has sat in concrete-reinforced bunkers, where it has occasionally leaked (fortunately in only small quantities) so far. A chemical deactivation plant has been constructed there to destroy the VX, but has not yet gone into operation as enviiromental impact negotiations continue.
Certainly, the threat of WMDs is a serious one that continues to require the kind of diplomacy that the Bush Administration has backed away from. This only adds to the hubris of those within it who have beat the drums of pre-emptive war in order to attack other nations who might be striving to achieve in small measure what the U.S. already possesses in mass quantities. It is our responsibility as a nation in possession of these horrific weapons to continue to push for the quick disposal of these weapons and the disposal of a regime that hypocritically attacks others while it continues to possess the same or to even build new WMDs.
To view the pictures of Newport and find links to further information about it, go to:
http://cryptome.org/newport-eyeball.htm |
