An Open Letter to the Biological Weapons Convention

By Janet Phelan

The 8th review conference of the Biological Weapons Convention, held in December 2016 in Geneva,  saw progress in confronting the fact that one state party to the convention, the USA, was engaged in considerable violations of the prohibitions contained in the Convention.  The subsequent media coverage to the report on the US’s violations, specifically articles in TASS, Natural Blaze and elsewhere, were the beginnings of acknowledgement that the US’s violations have put the entire world at risk.

In the intervening year, another report was published revealing that the US is also violating the UN 1540 Resolution, which was passed by the UN Security council in 2004 and covers all weapons of mass destruction—biological, chemical, radiological and nuclear.  This report focused on biological and chemical weapons and dealt with levels of violation by the US that can be discerned and checked by any interested observer. The violations discussed in the 1540 report were largely those of a legal nature, involving the nature of the legal instruments that the US has passed into law and her failure to disclose these to the 1540 Committee. Many of these legal instruments give the US government immunity from violating the prohibitions concerning WMDs.

There are many indications that the US’s violations are not restricted to “paper” violations, and that the US is in fact creating and stockpiling WMDs.  However, it would take  a concerted effort by weapons inspectors to rout this out, and the US has consistently refused to endorse any protocol under which her biological weapons labs and facilities might be inspected. A protocol of this nature was presented to the BWC by an ad hoc committee in 2001, only months before the anthrax attacks in the US, and the US delegation, led by Ambassador John Bolton, boycotted the protocol, walking out of the meeting.

I had hoped to be able to attend the 2017 Meeting of State Parties for the BWC, which will convene on  December 4, in order to present at that meeting the findings concerning the 1540 Resolution violations by the US. As it has turned out, I will not be able to make the trip and therefore, in this open letter to the BWC, am asking for the collective attention of delegates and NGO participants in terms of grappling with the evidence that the US is involved in a massive deception concerning her biological weapons program.

As detailed in the 2016 presentation, which relied only on previously published and open sourced material, the US has:

1. Violated the politically binding mandates of the BWC by presenting false information as to the US’s domestic BW legislation;
2. Violated the terms of the Convention by sending live anthrax to at least 194 labs worldwide;
3. Violated the terms of the Convention and put into place a covert delivery system for a selective domestic BW or CW attack, via reconfigurations of the water systems countrywide. The Convention at large was provided a blueprint to back up this allegation. http://activistpost.net/bwcreport%20ithaca.pdf

A team of investigators is now researching US State Department cables to discern if the US has indeed exported the weapons system revealed in the blueprint, under the aegis of USAID and other forms of economic assistance in the aftermath of natural disasters, wars, etc. This investigation has been hampered by the fact that the US State Department has not released cables from 1980 onward. Nevertheless, we have already determined several instances in which WikiLeaks released cables have revealed the exportation of this system to foreign countries. We hope to have a full report to the BWC by the date of the Meeting of State Parties in 2018.

I am asking that these violations be given the most serious consideration possible. You, the national delegates and NGO participants, are tasked with a considerable job: to keep the world and its people safe from an entity which is hell bent on destruction, using some of the most devious and horrific weapons known in order to accomplish its unspeakable aims. You need look no further than the panel of delegates from the US State Department to locate the perpetrators.

We, the people of the world, are asking for your appropriate intervention. Our future depends on you.

Janet Phelan is an investigative journalist and author of the groundbreaking exposé, EXILE. Her articles previously appeared in such mainstream venues as the Los Angeles Times, Orange Coast Magazine, Long Beach Press Telegram, etc. In 2004, Janet “jumped ship” and now exclusively writes for independent media. She is also the author of two collections of poetry—The Hitler Poems and Held Captive. She resides abroad.