Yellow Rain

Soviet chemical warfare

American intelligence experts have long suspected that chemical poisons developed in the Soviet Union have been used in military operations in Afghanistan, Laos and Cambodia. Eyewitnesses in all three countries have reported seeing "yellow rain" fall from the skies. Shortly afterward, victims on the ground have suffered burning sensations, convulsions and massive internal bleeding. Many have died painful deaths. Still, there had never been scientific evidence that the poison came from the Soviet Union. So the U.S. has withheld any official accusation of Soviet violations of a 56-year-old international agreement banning chemical weapons.

TIME has learned that in at least one instance, the use of a Soviet chemical agent has been proved beyond any scientific doubt. The site of the offense, by Vietnamese troops, was in Cambodia. Military patrols from Thailand gathered samples of foliage, soil and water from Cambodia and sent them to the U.S. for analysis. The State Department, in turn, sent the samples to private American laboratories without revealing the source of the evidence or why it was to be examined. The civilian scientists found that the samples contained the chemical agent trichothecene toxin, known as T2. Soviet scientists have published articles on how to mass produce T2, which occurs naturally in grain molds common in the Soviet Union.

The T2 connection was first made by Writer Sterling Seagrave, who presents a persuasive circumstantial case for the Soviet violations in his forthcoming book Yellow Rain. Seagrave interviewed victims of chemical attacks in Southeast Asia, Yemen and Afghanistan, as well as the doctors who treated them. In Afghanistan soldiers fighting the Soviet invaders told him about being attacked by rockets fired from helicopters. The rockets released a "yellowish-brown" cloud that caused victims to "die quickly, vomiting blood and fouling their clothes."

The State Department is still reluctant to level public accusations at the Soviet Union. Some officials would like to do so on the humane grounds that public disclosure might prevent further use of the poison and avoid more such deaths in both Southeast Asia and Afghanistan. More cautious U.S. officials prefer to await similar verification that the chemical has been used in both Laos and Afghanistan.

That may not be long in coming. At least three more samples of the yellow powder produced by the "yellow rain" are under study in private U.S. laboratories. If those tests lead to the same conclusions, the State Department presumably will make the details public and then make more formal charges against the Soviet Union.

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