US planned nuclear
no-man’s land 08-07-2012
By Lee Tae-hoon
The United States
considered creating a no man’s land with radioactive nuclear waste halfway
across the Korean Peninsula in the early 1950s in an attempt to deter communist
aggression, according to a declassified intelligence document.
The memorandum titled
“Radiological Warfare” and created on April 20, 1951 by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), confirms allegations that the U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission (AEC) reviewed the option of placing radiological agents on a strip
of land across the peninsula.
Cryptome, a
whistleblower site dedicated to exposing confidential information, posted the
sensitive document on its website on Aug. 5.
U.S. media outlets,
including the New York Times, alleged in early 1951 that Albert Gore Sr., a
state legislator, urged President Harry S. Truman to use radioactive materials
to create a belt of territory across Korea that would be unable to support life
in the midst of the 1950-53 Korean War.
The FBI report
discloses that the AEC examined the possibilities of creating such a belt
across the peninsula with radioactive material as Gore suggested to hamper the
Communists from marching further toward the South.
“While discussing other
matters with Dr. Paul McDaniel of the Atomic Energy Commission, he brought this
subject up with Agent Bates of the Liaison Section,” the report says.
“Dr. McDaniel pointed
out that a commission, set up in 1948 to examine the possibilities of using
radiological warfare in such a manner, as outlined by Representative Gore, had
furnished their final report to the Atomic Energy Commission on April 11.”
The FBI document
states that the U.S. commission’s report concluded that it was possible for an
area to be completely "dehumanized" by periodically laying down
radioactive nuclear waste, but it advised the U.S. government not to adopt
the “cataclysmic” method.
“It would mean greatly
curtailing the present production of plutonium in order to produce the necessary
radiological agents,” the declassified dossier said, noting that the AEC
assessed that it had insufficient waste material for such a program.
“Under the present AEC
facilities and proposed facilities, there is no provision for the production of
such agents. Research would have to be done to develop a radiological agent of
sufficient strength to last long enough to be effective.”
Gore’s proposal would
have required poisoning a strip up some 170 kilometers in length and several
kilometers in width to be effective.
Nevertheless, the FBI
document showed that the U.S. commission pointed out that the use of
radiological agents should not be completely ruled out and should be kept in
mind for future discussions.
