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CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean war (2022)

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Re: CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean war (2022)

#41

Post by jeffreyames »

phpisthebest wrote: post #32

You can not have "Government by the people, for the people" when you allow some people to keep secrets from other people under the guise of "national security" Self governance is incompatible with states secrets, and only leads to abuse, corruption, and tyranny. History is full of known abuses, and for every known abuse there is the potential for LOTS of unknown abuse. One can say "well congress will hold them accoun…

Not just secrets but deliberate misinformation in the name of national security

Re: CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean war (2022)

#42

Post by colordrops »

phpisthebest wrote: post #32

You can not have "Government by the people, for the people" when you allow some people to keep secrets from other people under the guise of "national security" Self governance is incompatible with states secrets, and only leads to abuse, corruption, and tyranny. History is full of known abuses, and for every known abuse there is the potential for LOTS of unknown abuse. One can say "well congress will hold them accoun…

Another problem with state secrets is that the class of people with access to secrets is usually biased toward specific groups, races, or creeds, and said secrets are used to keep the group in a position of power.

Re: CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean war (2022)

#43

Post by creato »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #8

I stopped reading when the author categorized "prisoners of war being told to read confessions over Chinese propaganda radio" as "testifying publicly", almost at the start of the piece: > It was the propaganda version of an incendiary bomb. In 1952 U.S. Air Force and Marine flyers, shot down during the Korean War, testified publicly that they had been ordered to drop biological weapons (BW) on China and North Korea.…

I really don't know what to think of HN these days. You're absolutely right, and yet this post is at the bottom being downvoted.

If the pilots knew, then a large number of support crew also would have known. But the only "testimony" we have is from captured PoWs, after how many decades of opportunities for deathbed confessions? Give me a break.

Re: CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean war (2022)

#44

Post by the-printer »

phpisthebest wrote: post #32

You can not have "Government by the people, for the people" when you allow some people to keep secrets from other people under the guise of "national security" Self governance is incompatible with states secrets, and only leads to abuse, corruption, and tyranny. History is full of known abuses, and for every known abuse there is the potential for LOTS of unknown abuse. One can say "well congress will hold them accoun…

"Self governance" at the scale being discussed here is a myth.

Re: CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean war (2022)

#45

Post by [deleted] »

discardedrefuse wrote: post #34
mytailorisrich wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US had invaded Japan, they did not need to be "nice" to acquire any of Japan's knowledge. My understanding is that the US were worried about the communists and Japan's stability in general and decided not to unduly rock the boat.

There's some interesting analysis of WWII that posits that the nukes were completely unnecessary. Stalin was poised to invade Japan from the north so the US had to act fast. https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap... I don't know how accurate this is, but its a good read.

[deleted]

Re: CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean war (2022)

#46

Post by retrac »

the-dude wrote: post #12

This reminds me of a video I stumbled across on YT : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMq-fApmzts This guy alleges that the US were 'kind' on Japan (only light tribunal?) after the war because they wanted to acquire the bio-warfare knowledge of the Japanese. And the Japanese tested bio-bombs.

This is a constantly changing area of history, so we're on shaky ground. The diaries of the chamberlain to Hirohito were only published a couple years ago, for example. They implicate the emperor deeply in war-time decisions in a way that contradicts the post-war narrative of a hapless well-meaning buffoon misled by his underlings.

I suspect the real reason is close to the usually accepted story, though. Millions of Japanese thought the emperor was a living god. That's how many Americans viewed it then. It's a useful interpretive lens even now.

If the Emperor concedes and surrenders, all of his legitimacy transfers to whoever the Emperor says to listen to. MacArthur got the unofficial title gaijin shogun -- foreign Shogun, the shogun being the military dictator who ruled pre-Meiji Japan, in the name of the Emperor.

Dépose or kill the emperor and all bets are off. What would be institutionally legitimate in its place? How long to construct it? When you have an entire administration in place, it'd be awfully tempting to whitewash the imperial institution. Which is exactly what MacArthur did. Speaking of which, the personality of Douglas MacArthur dominates this whole topic. He had carte blanche. Complete unlimited authority. And he exercised it, often in ways not anticipated in Washington. He was an eccentric man and quite opaque as to his decision-making.

Re: CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean war (2022)

#47

Post by GartzenDeHaes »

Biological weapons are not used by the US due to practicality, not morality.

1. It's difficult to manufacture biological agents in large quantities.

2. It's hard to store biological agents for long periods of time, since living things tend to die.

3. It's hard to disperse biological agents over a large area. Spray tanks require flying at low altitude at slow speeds, or multiple deployments at high speeds. Munitions with bursters are problematic because the explosive burster tends to destroy much of the biological agent that you're trying to spread.

4. It's easy to protect troops in the field from biological agents and all major countries maintain and exercise the capability to do so.

5. Biological agents are slow acting and unreliable in their effect.

Long after the Korean War, the Soviet microtoxin program overcame many of these problems. The Americans took a different approach and focused on improving nerve agents, with the most recent development (that I know of) being a multi-part agent called GB-2.

Re: CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean war (2022)

#48

Post by VagueMag »

TheBlight wrote: post #4

I've heard another variation of this story. The broad outline is that the USG thought the Chinese/Soviets had some sort of mind-control/brainwashing technique that triggered these confessions. It was allegedly a large part of the impetus that led them to create their own ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA program. But in the end the CIA determined the only technique that was really necessary and used on the men for this purpose was s…

> It was allegedly a large part of the impetus that led them to create their own ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA program.

This is a commonly repeated refrain, but it just exists to provide a comforting explanation for the fact that the U.S. security state decided to embark on a program of mind control experimentation on many unwitting and unwilling human guinea pigs. The truth is that as WWII wound down, we eagerly imported Nazi scientists who were already engaged in this kind of research, and ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA/etc were just the continuation of it for all the same purposes but under a different name.

Re: CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean war (2022)

#49

Post by twelve40 »

retrac wrote: post #46
the-dude wrote: post #12

This reminds me of a video I stumbled across on YT : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMq-fApmzts This guy alleges that the US were 'kind' on Japan (only light tribunal?) after the war because they wanted to acquire the bio-warfare knowledge of the Japanese. And the Japanese tested bio-bombs.

This is a constantly changing area of history, so we're on shaky ground. The diaries of the chamberlain to Hirohito were only published a couple years ago, for example. They implicate the emperor deeply in war-time decisions in a way that contradicts the post-war narrative of a hapless well-meaning buffoon misled by his underlings. I suspect the real reason is close to the usually accepted story, though. Millions of…

they had to quickly repurpose it to be used in the next big thing with whatever tools did the trick, so makes sense
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