Proof Doubted on Charge of Germ Warfare by Vietnam : 3 Experts Say Newly Declassified Files Invalidate 1981 Claim by Reagan Administration

Recently declassified U.S. government documents show the Reagan Administration accused Vietnam in 1981 of using biological warfare against insurgents in Laos and Cambodia even though government scientists at the time considered the evidence to be flimsy and misleading, Foreign Policy magazine said Sunday.

In an article written for the magazine’s fall issue, three university researchers said the Administration originally made the charges on the basis of a single, unverified test and stuck with the claim despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

“The careful analytic work by U.S. Army chemists did not validate the initial reports of trichothecene toxins,” the report said. “The investigative work of the (Defense Department-State Department chemical and biological warfare) team in Thailand cast doubt on the entire body of evidence adduced from interviews with supposed witnesses.”

Accusations of ‘Yellow Rain’

The article, based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, was written by Julian Robinson, a senior fellow of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex in Britain; Jeanne Guillemin, an associate professor of sociology at Boston College, and Matthew Meselson, a professor of Natural Sciences at Harvard University.

The documents show that government scientists shared the doubts previously expressed by outside experts about the Administration’s claims that Vietnam, employing substances developed by the Soviet Union, attacked its foes in Cambodia and Laos with a biological poison called “yellow rain.”

Then-Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig first made the charges Sept. 13, 1981, in a speech in West Berlin. At the time, Haig said, samples collected in Southeast Asia had “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.”

Based on Single Sample

However, according to the researchers, declassified documents show that Haig’s only evidence was “a single uncorroborated analysis of a leaf and stem sample from Cambodia.”

The report said that a scientist at the Army’s Medical Intelligence and Information Agency at Ft. Detrick, Md., concluded on Aug. 17, 1981, that the sample tested positive for trichothecene toxins.

On Aug. 31, Richard R. Burt, then-director of the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs and now ambassador to West Germany, asked the scientist to prepare the report for public release. Although the scientist protested that publication would be “ill advised” because the tests had not been confirmed, Burt overruled her and sent the document to Haig for use in his speech two weeks later.

In May, 1983, Thomas Seeley, a Yale University expert on honeybees, said his analysis of samples of “yellow rain” showed that the substance was not a biological weapon but the excrement of wild honeybees. Administration spokesmen scoffed at Seeley’s report, pointing out that the evidence of biological warfare included the testimony of eyewitnesses in addition to the samples of “yellow rain” residue.

Eyewitness Reports Crumbled

But Robinson, Guillemin and Meselson, in their magazine article, said the declassified documents show that the eyewitness testimony also crumbled when subjected to additional examination. But the Administration did not change its story in spite of the mounting evidence that it was incorrect.

By late 1983, the U.S. Embassy in Thailand had collected a fat file folder of interviews with people, mostly Hmong tribesmen and Khmer Rouge soldiers, who claimed to have been victims of “yellow rain” attacks. To check on these reports, the State and Defense departments sent a joint team to Thailand. The team worked for almost two years, from November, 1983, to October, 1985.

“Documents recently declassified show that when the Defense-State (departments) team began to address these matters, it discovered serious problems with the reliability of previous interviews,” the article said. “For example, earlier interviews had failed to distinguish between firsthand observations and hearsay.”

No Supportive Evidence

Moreover, the article said, there was never any diagnostic or autopsy reports showing that supposed victims had actually encountered biological weapons.

“According to the Haig report, the interviews revealed a common symptomatology suggestive of trichothecene exposure,” the article said. “But simple examination of the Army and State Department medical interviews shows that only two of the 60 alleged witnesses interviewed reported that particular constellation of symptoms. Over time, this ratio did not increase. In a total of 217 interviews accumulated by 1984, only five matched the medical symptoms described in the Haig report.”

Robinson, Guillemin and Meselson concluded that the samples were almost certainly bee excrement and that the traces of toxin found in them resulted from a mold that is common in Southeast Asia.