11 June 1998
Cohen Orders Army, Air Force to Check Sarin Allegations
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary William S. Cohen June 9 ordered
the acting secretaries of the Army and Air Force to investigate a news
report that the services used sarin nerve agent in Laos in 1970.
CNN and Time magazine published the allegation June 8 in accounts
about Operation Tailwind, a special operations mission. Use of sarin
would have been against U.S. policy at the time. In 1969, President
Richard Nixon vowed the United States would not use chemical agents
first.
Cohen gave the acting secretaries 30 days to report their
investigation findings to him. He said he was not aware of any
information that would substantiate the news story. Also, Army and Air
Force historians have reported finding no evidence nerve agents were
used.
"The U.S. Army has found no documentary evidence to support CNN's
claims that nerve gas of any type was used in Operation Tailwind in
September 1970 or in any other Army operation within or outside South
Vietnam," said Graham Cosmas, a historian with the Army's Center for
Military History here.
Cosmas also said U.S. forces in Southeast Asia often employed
tear gas and other riot control agents. "However, no lethal agents of
any sort are known to have been employed," he said.
A search of Air Force historical records also did not turn up any
hint of U.S. use of lethal chemical weapons during Operation Tailwind.
According to the news reports, U.S. soldiers and Montagnard
allies went into Laos to destroy an enemy enclave and kill U.S.
defectors believed to be hiding there. (Montagnards are a group of
people who live in the mountainous regions of Laos and Vietnam.) The
story claims sarin was used to eliminate resistance and later to
defeat an enemy counterattack. DoD records say the only mission was to
locate and destroy enemy caches of ammunition, weapons and supplies in
Laos and to gather intelligence.
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