War of Nerves

Next to the H-bomb and the atom bomb, there are few more controversial, carefully guarded U.S. defense secrets than the weapons of chemical and bacteriological warfare. Such an eminent bacteriologist as Johns Hopkins University's Professor Perrin H. Long has dismissed the whole subject of germ warfare as "bunk" (TIME, April 10). But last week the Army Chemical Corps's Major General Anthony ("Nuts") McAuliffe, hero of Bastogne, gave the U.S. a quick peek behind the curtain of secrecy. Addressing a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Detroit, General McAuliffe hinted that the U.S. was hard at work perfecting new poison gases which would completely cripple an enemy's will to resist.

The weapon McAuliffe was talking about was "nerve gas," long a subject of wild speculation among amateur military strategists. Presumably it would be sprayed over enemy cities by planes in the same way that whole areas are sprayed with mosquito-killing DDT, paralyzing the whole population. Then the attacking army, equipped with protective masks, would march in and take over.

Old Soldier McAuliffe did not claim that nerve gases were yet beyond the experimental stage. And he did not think that the U.S. would ever be the first to use such weapons. "Our use of them would be purely retaliatory," said McAuliffe. But he warned the chemists that other countries must be working on nerve gases, too. Said McAuliffe: "It is a well-known fact that many German scientific experts on toxic chemical warfare are being exploited by Soviet Russia. It must be assumed, therefore, that we are not the sole possessors of the offensive and defensive secrets of the new nerve gases."

In Washington, Defense Secretary Louis Johnson backed up McAuliffe's warning and added a few guarded facts. Defense measures "now in effect or in preparation," said Johnson, "should prevent disastrous damage" if a future U.S. enemy used germ warfare. Meanwhile, the "program of research and development in biological warfare is being continued" at full blast.

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