“Look what’s going on inside you.
Ooooh that smell,
Can’t you smell that smell,
Ooooh that smell,
The smell of death surrounds you.”
“…(the) homeless man who found a drum of sodium cyanide in a dumpster was arrested and charged with possession of a chemical weapon, even though the drum was sealed, he had no means for dispersal, and showed no intention of doing anything with the material. The police explanation for the arrest was that even though sodium cyanide is a common industrial chemical, the man had no legitimate use for such, and therefore its possession was illegal. What’s going on here? Does this really fall under our new definition of a weapon of mass destruction…?!”
~ OpEd Article, New York Times September 2002
“We recently treated a 34-year-old man for Graves disease with 20 mCi of Iodine 131. Three weeks after treatment, he returned to our clinic complaining that he had been strip-searched twice at two different Manhattan subway stations. Police had identified him as emitting radiation and had detained him for further questioning. He returned to the clinic and requested a letter stating that he had recently been treated with radioactive iodine and was in fact not a terrorist.”
~ Letter to the editor, JAMA December 4, 2002
“Mullah Mohammed Hasan, the new leader of Ansar Al Islam, a radical Taliban-style mini-state in Northern Iraq where ricin and other chemical agents have been tested as potential weapons, has vowed to use his arsenal to fight America and its allies if a war is launched against Saddam Hussein.”
~ Gulf News Tuesday January 14, 2003
THE PROJECT
This project, Prevailing Winds, is about weapons of mass destruction (WMD), what they are, how they are designed and by whom, how they work and how they’re delivered. It is about efforts by scientists, technicians, law enforcement personnel and military around the world whose job it is to defend against WMD, including gas, disease, and radiation inspection and detection. It is also about what happens after a WMD event: what is the response, who responds, what are the tools involved?
Finally, it is about the long term effects of an event on people and the environment – the immediate ones are obvious. Some of the most advanced medical, scientific and technological advances come into play at this level.
There is enough evidence available, much of it contemporary, to afford the production a detailed look at all of the above and produce an entertaining, compelling and thought-provoking documentary.
What this project is not about is “why”.
To enter the “why zone” of WMD is to create a social documentary of formidable political weight, considering the present diplomatic climate. This isn’t to say that WMD in and of themselves aren’t political – they may well be the ultimate political tool. But strip away any overt politicization and what remains is fascinating, inventive, if somewhat diabolical science.
Much of what constitutes a WMD, be it nuclear, biological, chemical or radiological, is based on decades of research and development. For instance, the use of yperite (a form of mustard gas) as a large scale deadly deterrent goes back over a hundred years. But this project is not about the history of WMD, either. However, we will find it useful to point out certain events in the past, some quite recently, that illustrate and underscore the global risk over production, proliferation, stockpiling and potential use of WMD. When it comes to weapons of mass destruction, what’s past is definitely prologue.
Over the two-hour time frame of this documentary, Prevailing Winds will cover seven areas of importance, not to mention audience interest:
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○ Construction
○ Delivery
○ Defence
○ Inspection
○ Detection
○ Response
○ Effects
The world that WMD inhabits is infested with deadly materials: arcane chemicals, once-eradicated life-threatening diseases, and destructive perpetual radiation. Its descriptions and explanations lie in a wilderness of acronyms, obfuscation and double-speak. But its science is pure, and deceptively simple in some cases.
It is a dangerous and misunderstood place… where opening Pandora’s Box brings you face-to-face with Dante’s Inferno.
THE CONTEXT
One would have to be living in a cave (which may yet prove to be the safest place) not to be aware of the calamity of September 11, 2001 and the corresponding residual events that have become the cause of great fear the world over.
Hardly a day goes by without various news reports covering all manner of WMD events: Iraq’s possible WMD arsenal and UN Inspectors’ continuing search; missing vials containing the plague virus in Texas; anthrax attacks in Washington, DC and New York City; depleted uranium (DU) use in live ammunition exercises by the U.S. Navy in the waters off Seattle; ricin factories discovered in urban neighbourhoods in both London and Manchester; nuclear brinkmanship in North Korea; the discovery of videotapes allegedly showing toxic gas tests on animals by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; black market capitalism utilizing nuclear weapons stored in the republics of the former Soviet Union (FSU); Russia’s President Putin authorizing the use of a deadly ‘knockout’ gas to quell the rebel takeover of the Moscow Theatre; and President Bush receiving a very public inoculation against smallpox.
In fact, there’s virtually no city or town, large or small, anywhere in the world that hasn’t overhauled its ‘disaster preparedness’ policies in anticipation of some kind of extreme emergency or catastrophic event. In major urban centres all across the United States municipal officials are re-instituting the decades-old concept of ‘civil defence’ – the once-familiar “CD” symbols popping up with increasing regularity. While in the Midwest, Kennedy-era bomb shelters are being reopened and renovated and farmers are dusting off their root cellars.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines paranoia thusly:
“a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others.”
Such is the bipolar world of the 21st century in which we live.
Prevailing Winds is the title of this documentary, but it also serves as a reminder – a perhaps not so gentle one – that ‘prevailing winds’ are the secondary enemy of a WMD. Once released, radiation, gas, chemicals, diseases, indeed toxins of any type are carried by the wind beyond their initial impact zone.
In the case of a rocket or bomb attack the destruction is pinpointed, surgical even, these days with a degree of accuracy measured in inches. But what if those rockets or bombs contained a chemical or biological agent? What if a toxic gas or a fine powder is released into the air…?
Whether the battlefield is an unstable and confused desert as it was initially in Afghanistan in 2002, or if it’s central Tel Aviv at dinner time, as it was during a SCUD missile attack during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, either is an ideal situation for the covert use of a chemical or a biological agent. A bomb, a missile or an artillery shell needn’t be employed as a delivery device. Any radical faction or individual could surreptitiously release one of these agents and be reasonably certain they wouldn’t be identified – recent Al Qaeda tactics notwithstanding. Also, if it were a gas such as sarin, or a powder such as anthrax, the wind alone could increase its effect as a weapon of mass destruction.
To emphasize the concept of ‘prevailing winds’, witness the near-toxic dust from the devastation of the World Trade Center attack covering cars, coffee tables and clothing at the opposite end of Manhattan within hours of the collapse. Or the remnants of volcanic ash – no matter how minute – discovered thousands of miles away within days of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. The most extreme case of this in modern history was the eruption of Krakatoa in Java in 1883. Volcanic ash was deposited in Western Europe, almost 10,000 miles away, within weeks. When you grasp this concept and add the fact that even one speck of sarin or anthrax is deadly, you begin to understand the use of the word ‘MASS’ as an understated adjective between the words ‘WEAPONS’ and ‘DESTRUCTION’.
As coalition troops discovered at the end of the Gulf War, an attempt to destroy or even sabotage WMD facilities could create toxic hazards in and of themselves with deadly repercussions for those troops and regional civilians alike. Some even believe that this is the true source of the mysterious “Gulf War Syndrome”. The effects of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War , to both the Viet Cong on the ground and the American pilots dispersing it in the air, continues to reveal its horrific legacy almost fifty years on.
The subtitle of Prevailing Winds is The Science and Technology of Annihilation. To help us illustrate these two disciplines and their relation to WMD, we need to look at a little ‘back story’.
THE BACKSTORY
The German use of mustard gas in the First World War killed a million people in central Europe, mostly France. For this reason most of the research on the production and proliferation of the gas and its derivatives is being administered by the French. Members of the Japanese Imperial Army killed thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and Allied POWs with plague “bombs”, anthrax and gas gangrene at special research camps set-up throughout Manchuria during the Second World War. Today, China and Japan continue an uneasy alliance in the clean up effort trying to dispose of the nearly one million chemical and biological bombs of Japanese construction still remaining in Eastern China. More recently Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein has used chemical weapons against Iran and even his own people in Northern Iraq. The great irony here is that Iraq’s chemical warfare (CW) and biological warfare (BW) capabilities began in the seventies and early eighties with purchases of toxins, cultures and technology from Western-based companies (including America), then freely available to any friendly or allied country wishing to pursue “scientific” research (the United States supported Iraq in its war against Iran in those days.)
On a smaller scale – unintended to be sure – there are the events in Tokyo in 1995. The release of sarin gas in the subway system killing twelve and injuring thousands, and the spraying of a homemade anthrax compound from a downtown rooftop by members of Aum Shinrikyo (the “Supreme Truth” cult) altered the world view in a very significant way as the millennium drew to a close. It became clear that weapons of mass destruction were no longer the sole dominion of the world’s military industrial complex, and the definition of “battlefield” expanded to include boulevards, sidewalk cafes and rush hours. The still-unsolved anthrax “letter bombs” mailed to American politicians and media outlets in the weeks following 9/11 provided the exclamation point.
“MIC is also found in cigarette smoke!”
Of all the WMD, chemical and biological weapons (CBW) are the most difficult to manufacture and once released almost impossible to contain. Two events that are now mostly forgotten – both accidents ironically – serve to underscore this fragility.
The port of Bari lies halfway along Italy’s Adriatic coast. On December 2, 1943 an American merchant ship, the USS John Harvey, lie at berth awaiting orders for its next port of call. During the night the German Luftwaffe carried out a heavy bombing raid over the town and nearby industrial targets and some seventeen ships were totally destroyed, among them the John Harvey. What was unknown to most people at the time was that this ship was carrying over one hundred tonnes of one hundred pound bombs containing mustard gas. All the weapons were blown apart spreading mustard gas across the harbour. As this was an act of war autopsies were not performed on the dead, so the cause of death in many apparently “uninjured” military personnel was never explained. To this day, more than sixty years later, there are still land areas within the region that are scientifically “dead” – rendered useless, contaminated by this gas.
At the other end of the spectrum lies Bhopal, India, a city of a million people. In 1984 it was the site of the largest industrial disaster the world has ever known when 40 tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC – a chemical used in the production of various pesticides) leaked from the Union Carbide plant in the centre of town. It was the dead of night and by the time the leak was discovered thousands lay dying in their beds oblivious to the cause, and thousands more were disabled with blindness and severe respiratory ailments. Five years later ground water and soil samples taken revealed chemical contamination ranging from 10% to 100% throughout Bhopal’s Madhya Pradesh region. More than twenty years on hundreds of thousands more have succumbed to the longer term effects of contact with the gas through various cancers and depleted organ function. Recently, mercury, lead and organochlorines were found in the breast milk of pregnant women living near the now derelict plant.
The Bhopal disaster wasn’t the result of WMD attack. However, it does illustrate the devastation that results when volatile chemicals are brought into contact with any kind of life form – the raison d’être of any CBW agent. There are a number of reasons for using Bhopal and the Union Carbide leak here by way of example, but one is particularly ironic. As an extremely toxic form of pesticide, MIC is one of several chemicals that can be utilized as a starter, or secondary agent, in making mustard gas.
Beyond that, MIC shares a deadly history with another now-infamous pesticide: Zyklon-B. Zyklon-B was used by the Nazis at various concentration camps during the Second World War as the ultimate tool in their “solution to the Jewish problem”. It was chosen by the Nazis over less reliably potent compounds because of its superior effectiveness as an extermination tool. This is because it acts as a carrier for hydrocyanic gas (HCN) which is the same chemical used in the gas chambers of eight American death row penitentiaries to this day. Incidentally, MIC is also found in cigarette smoke!
These events have given the world a wide-eyed look into the stark realities of non-conventional warfare. Indeed, it is the repetition of these very events, and the possibility that a new ‘theatre of war’ may include their home, that scares the living hell out of everybody and has acted as the catalyst for global anti-WMD conventions and treaties.
In the world that WMD inhabits, it can be argued that a profligate nuclear arsenal is the best deterrent against nuclear war. In fact, that argument has raged for decades and formed the underpinnings of a caustic battle on both sides of the cold war-era “arms race”. These same arguments have relegated nuclear weapons into schizophrenic categories: they can be both defensive and offensive weapons depending on the context of use. Such is the foundation on which the Pentagon’s policy of MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – is based.
A nuclear weapon is defined by several unique aspects: its blast radius or signature; its payload measured in kilotons; its primary (ground zero) and secondary (residual or collateral) damage zones; and by its short (blast) and long term (radiation) effects. These elements are what separate a nuclear weapon from all other WMD.
However, chemical, biological and radiological weapons (CBW) have only one purpose in life: to destroy it. “Dirty” bombs for instance, are a purely offensive munition.
There are moral arguments, ethical arguments and political arguments all of which have many sides, none of them winable. In the end, it is the desire of this documentary production to put aside the varied arguments and put a human face on the scientific and technical aspects of weapons of mass destruction.
This is the stage onto which we will present Prevailing Winds: The Science and Technology of Annihilation.
Here’s how we do it.
THE TREATMENT & STRUCTURE
This series of one-hour programs will be built around thorough research and a detailed script supervised by myself. Elements of the series will include interviews with witnesses and victims to the historical events; technical specialists (present and former) involved in the design and manufacture of munitions; scientists, specifically virologists, biologists and chemists, whose field of study take them into the realm of weaponry; and experts on weapon detection, assessment and clean-up. Also, military and law enforcement personnel will be featured.
Among the more notable on-camera subjects will be Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) both presently at work in Iraq; Scott Ritter, former chief inspector with the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM); Richard Butler former chairman of UNSCOM; Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations; retired General Lewis MacKenzie, former commander of the U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia (UNPROFOR); and Mark Miller, Disaster Preparedness Advisor to the White House, who has designed, equipped, and trained WMD response teams all over the world. There will be others.
To this will be added visual references taken mostly from broadcast archives and news libraries. News clippings, photographs and witnesses’ personal archives will complete the basic resources to this documentary.
Throughout the programs, visual and narrative links will be established with use of our own documentary production unit. Location photography in key areas such as the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State, the largest enriched plutonium producer and site of the largest radioactive waste clean-up project in the world; the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah which is close to a million acres in size and less than a hundred miles from Salt Lake City, and the site is the largest CBW stockpile and eradication facility in the world; and, UKMoD DERA Porton Down, Britain’s Defense Ministry’s Defense Evaluation and Research Agency in the south of England, which, incidentally, the FBI feels may be the source of the “AMES” strain of anthrax used in the recent attacks on the United States.
The four keywords inherent in this documentary will be:
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○ Demystification
○ Comprehension
○ Illumination
○ Clarity
It is obviously very important to understand that the information imparted in the programs is aimed at a “lay” audience. The use of interviews, graphics and narration to explain analogies, and utilizing visual juxtaposition devices where necessary will assist the production in maintaining content flow and comprehension, thereby increasing the entertainment value. For instance, the analogy earlier about the distribution of volcanic ash as a device to explain ‘prevailing winds’.
As mentioned, this documentary will cover seven specific areas as they relate to WMD. They are as follows:
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1. Construction
2. Delivery
3. Defence
4. Inspection
5. Detection
6. Response
7. Effects
As part of our science and technology perspective we will ask and answer the following questions:
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○ Who makes these weapons and how?
○ What are “wet eyes” and “ethnic bombs”?
○ What devices have traditionally been used to deliver the weapons and are there newer and possibly more lethal means?
○ How does one defend against a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack – is it even possible?
○ We know there is an experienced team of “inspectors” in Iraq doing their level best to hold that country to the terms of the U.N. resolutions, but what tools are they using – what exactly is meant by “inspection”?
○ A WMD event could be either overt or surreptitious – a theatre of war overseas or a crowded football stadium across town for instance. But if it’s the latter, how would we know? What are the signs?
○ Is there medical attention available and is there an antidote?
○ Are we… is anyone prepared to react? If so, how?
○ Who are the groups known as the ‘first responders’ – bioterrorism SWAT teams such as Task Force Scorpio, and what exactly are their ‘special weapons and tactics’?
○ What are the short-term and long-term effects of someone experiencing an event?
There is an eighth area of interest, and to many it is the most important of all: Destruction – though not the sort you’re thinking of.
In many countries of the world – the United States and England being the most prolific – there still exist huge stockpiles of CBW. Some dating back almost a hundred years – most from the cold war era when international proliferation was at its peak.
“A weapon of mass destruction is a perfectly pious tool.”
Various global government committees have been engaged in banning outright the manufacture and use of these weapons – the Hague Convention dating to 1907, and the international Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) being the most notable. The resulting conventions and treaties have called for the dismantling of the weapons themselves and the “safe” destruction of the offending toxic warhead. To the extent that this is even possible, the final consequence is supposed to be the complete eradication of CBW worldwide. How is this being accomplished? Is it successful?
Mitigating these areas of investigation are several recent developments, only some of which have made the headlines. Exploring these ramifications will also form part of our narrative. For instance, if wider knowledge about possible chemicals or biological agents that might be used as WMD is paramount to both the understanding of them and defence against them, then it would seem likely that more, not less supervised scientific access is key.
However, a far-reaching regulatory response to terrorism that may affect the conduct of science in thousands of North American laboratories (where most of the research is presently being conducted) has been announced. The U.S government recently unveiled new regulations governing the possession, transfer and use of certain biological agents and toxins that are deemed to be particularly hazardous to public health, or to plant or animal life.
The rules generally require increased security for these materials, termed “select agents,” and impose restrictions on who may have access to them. Several dozen select agents have been designated, including anthrax, ebola, and smallpox.
No one would argue that it is probably a good idea to maintain a careful inventory of the locations of such hazardous materials, and to regulate access to them. But any suggestion that scientific research concerning these agents will continue unimpeded is wishful thinking. The new regulations are sufficiently complex and burdensome that they constitute a significant disincentive to laboratories considering such research, particularly if the labs employ foreign scientists or students – most do.
This development alone goes straight to the heart of WMD detection and response, especially when it comes to agent identification and antidote research.
While history will play an important role in this documentary series – context is vital to the understanding of the science and technology of WMD – its use will be a placement device only. Any such ‘history’ will be have a contemporary resonance.
Prevailing Winds will cover two-hours of airtime over two separate nights. This leaves approximately forty-six minutes of content per hour.
Each hour will consist of five acts and have an opening teaser or arc – the final hour having a closing coda as well.
The opening arc is our opportunity to engage in a little audio-visual foreplay, as it were. It will set the overall tone and style for the series – strong music, striking visuals, masculine montage – and any version of on-air promotion should borrow heavily on it. This opening salvo, if you’ll excuse the pun, will convey to the audience both the wealth and depth of information they’re about to receive.
In terms of structure, placement of commercials, or rather the arrangement of content around the commercials, plays a crucial role. The structure should follow the analogy of a deliverable WMD: load, launch and contact. Where there is a particular event ‘set-up’, ‘savour’ and ‘punchline’, the set-up and savour should occur on one side of the commercial break and the punchline opens the next act. The ‘passage of time’ a commercial break gives us enhances the impact – literally and figuratively.
As we are putting a human face on WMD, we should forgo an actual on-camera host in favour of a dynamic off-screen narrator. I believe this will enhance the production and it makes economic sense too.
This isn’t the type of documentary where interviewees drive the story forward and narration fills in the blanks – in fact the opposite is very much the case. The narration will be clean but compelling prose aimed at delivering on our four key words: demystification, comprehension, illumination and clarity.
Care and attention must be maintained in the choice and use of music in conjunction with the editing style. We are dealing with controversial subject matter here and will be revealing information that will be completely unknown, not to mention sobering to most people. Pace is important. This isn’t a musical comedy, but neither is it Patton. The choice of music will reflect and underscore the serious, and sometimes mysterious nature of the subject.
THE CODA