United States Capitol

Document disclosures to Church researchers produced damning evidence of dangerous agency experimentation on American citizens.

The outcry in the press ran internationally in major newspapers including the International Herald Tribune, published in Paris, which noted on July 31, 1979 that the Church’s report to the UN Disarmament Committee “represents more than 500,000 hours of research here and overseas....” Indeed, the U.S. and Britain had conducted extensive experimentation with BZ — the Tribune noted a U.S. Army admission that 362 people had been given BZ in July 1975. International condemnation of the stockpiling of this dangerous chemical compelled governments to begin its destruction. A decade later, the U.S. Army finally announced that it had completely destroyed its entire supply.

In the early 1980s, Church researchers also uncovered that the West German government knew about the stockpiling of hazardous chemical weapons in the rural areas outside the city of Pirmasens, despite being prohibited from developing atomic, biological and chemical weapons under the 1954 ABC³ Convention. Although the storage posed an imminent threat to citizens due to the possibility of a leakage, the German daily Heilbronner Stimme reported on July 11, 1981, that “there are no special precautions for the protection of the population against accidents that could arise from the transport and storage of the poisons.”

These findings triggered public discussion about the potential dangers of such weapons and greatly increased awareness of this vital topic. On July 14, 1981, Stuttgarter Zeitung reported that “This religious community [the Church of Scientology] has initiated a ‘Chemical Weapons Archive’ in Munich. Its main organisation in America also uncovered a series of dangerous accidents in handling chemical weapons in the United States.”

And indeed, irresponsible and dangerous experimentation by a U.S. government agency on unsuspecting citizens was the focus of another exposé by Church researchers in 1984. Personnel from the U.S. Army Chemical Corps’ Special Operations Division, these researchers revealed, had utilised specially modified suitcases to spray bacteria on unsuspecting passengers in Washington D.C.’s National Airport and Greyhound bus terminal. Those 1964 and 1965 tests, intended to study the consequences of the use of smallpox or other biological agents in public places, employed Bacillus subtilus, a germ since found to cause symptoms of respiratory infections, and blood and food poisoning. Special Operations Division staff calculated that “infected passengers” transported the bacillus to more than 200 cities.

Shortly after these disclosures, the Church submitted documentation to U.S. Senator James Sasser. Later, Associated Press reported that Sasser had blocked Army funding to upgrade biological weapons test facilities.

Researchers and experts in the field of chemical and biological warfare have often drawn upon the Church’s work in documenting and exposing such harmful experimentation. For example, in their highly regarded 1982 (since republished) book, A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, British authors Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman thanked “The Church of Scientology... [for having] made available documents they had unearthed in their campaign against chemical warfare.”

3: The term “ABC weapons” refers to atomic, biological and chemical weapons.