Up to 1,000 NATO Servicemen to Take Part in Military Drills in Ukraine This Month

WASHINGTON, September 2 (RIA Novosti) – Despite the ongoing hostilities in southeastern Ukraine, the United States plans to go ahead with the Rapid Trident military exercise, scheduled to take place in western Ukraine later this month and expected to involve up to 1,000 servicemen from NATO countries and other US allies, Reuters reported Tuesday.

“At the moment, we are still planning for [the exercise] to go ahead,” the agency quoted US Navy Captain Gregory Hicks, a spokesman for the US Army’s European Command, as saying.

The annual exercise was initially scheduled to take place in July, at the Yavoriv training center near Ukraine’s border with Poland, but was put off until September 16-26 due to the Kiev government’s ongoing military operation against independence supporters in southeastern Ukraine.

US, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and British soldiers conduct a convoy into the training field.

Continue reading “Up to 1,000 NATO Servicemen to Take Part in Military Drills in Ukraine This Month”

Metal band Skinny Puppy send US government invoice after finding out their music was ‘used as torture device in Guantanamo Bay’

Use of their songs ‘didn’t sit right’ with the band

Christopher Hooton

Friday 31 January 2014

The US Army’s use of Metallica’s oeuvre as a tool in its interrogations in Iraq is well documented, but it opted for something a little more esoteric in Guantanamo Bay, according to one Canadian industrial metal band. Continue reading “Metal band Skinny Puppy send US government invoice after finding out their music was ‘used as torture device in Guantanamo Bay’”

Army Fires Back on Its right to experiment on military personel without informed consent pre-1988

– at least 7,800 soldiers had been used as guinea pigs in Project Paperclip.

– Soldiers were allegedly administered at least 250 and perhaps as many as 400 types of drugs, among them Sarin , one of the most deadly drugs known, amphetamines, barbiturates, mustard gas, phosgene gas and LSD.

– U.S. government sought drugs to control human behavior etc…

– Based on interpretation of the disputed Army regulation, Wilken agreed “that the duty to warn is properly interpreted as applying on an on-going basis, not just as part of the pre-experiment consent process, and is owed to service members who became test subjects before 1988.”

By BARBARA LEONARD

(CN) – The 9th Circuit battle over U.S. veterans subjected to Cold War-era drug experiments just got uglier as the Army filed a cross-appeal Tuesday.

The notice of appeal comes five years after Vietnam Veterans of America led a class action against various government entities, claiming that at least 7,800 soldiers had been used as guinea pigs in Project Paperclip. Continue reading “Army Fires Back on Its right to experiment on military personel without informed consent pre-1988”

US Army Studying Replacing Thousands of Grunts with Robots

Jan. 20, 2014 – 04:21PM | By PAUL McLEARY

A US soldier drops an unmanned ground vehicle over a wall during an exercise at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., in 2010. (US Army)

WASHINGTON — The postwar, sequestration-era US Army is working on becoming “a smaller, more lethal, deployable and agile force,” according to Gen. Robert Cone, head of the service’s Training and Doctrine Command.

But just how much smaller might come as a surprise.

During remarks at the Army Aviation Symposium in Arlington, Va., on Jan. 15, Cone quietly dropped a bomb. The Army, he said, is considering the feasibility of shrinking the size of the brigade combat team from about 4,000 soldiers to 3,000 over the coming years, and replacing the lost soldiers with robots and unmanned platforms. Continue reading “US Army Studying Replacing Thousands of Grunts with Robots”

U.S. Army says only two brigades fully trained due to budget cuts ( That is only 7,000 to 10,000 soldiers )

Source: Reuters – Mon, 21 Oct 2013 10:44 PM

Author: Reuters

* Spending reductions this year fell heavily on training dollars

* Top Army leaders appeal for greater budget certainty

By David Alexander

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) – Two years of budget cuts and fiscal uncertainty have forced the U.S. Army to greatly curtail spending on training, leaving it with only two combat brigades fully prepared to go to war, the Army’s top officer said on Monday.

“Right now, we have in the Army two brigades that are trained. That’s it. Two,” General Ray Odierno told a news conference at the annual conference of the Association of the U.S. Army.

Odierno’s comments came as he and Army Secretary John McHugh discussed the impact of the recent U.S. government shutdown as well as across-the-board budget cuts that forced the military to slash spending in March, nearly halfway through its fiscal year.

McHugh and Odierno both appealed to Congress to find a way to give the military more financial predictability so it can plan effectively. McHugh said that with the way the military is currently funded, budgets that are approved today are based on planning that occurred three years earlier.

“You can’t run the most important military on the face of the Earth locked into three-year-old budgets,” McHugh said.

The Army was hit particularly hard by the cuts in March, known as sequestration, because of higher-than-projected Afghanistan war costs and the need to make up those funds from its operations accounts, which include money for training.

“We had to stop training, basically, in the last six months of the year,” Odierno said.

The ongoing uncertainty with the defense budget could make the situation worse in the fiscal year that began in October. The U.S. government began the year with a shutdown that lasted nearly three weeks and put many federal workers on unpaid leave.

The government resumed operations last week under a deal to fund operations at last year’s spending levels and priorities.

The Army chief said he hoped to be able to devote enough money to training this fiscal year to ensure that seven combat brigades are fully ready by June to respond to a conflict. He said the current lack of training was his biggest concern.

A combat brigade team has about 3,500 to 5,000 soldiers.

“The worst-case scenario is you ask me to deploy thousands of soldiers somewhere and we have not properly trained them to go because we simply don’t have the dollars and money because of the way sequestration is laid out,” Odierno said.

Odierno said that while troops going to Afghanistan had been trained, they were “trained now to do training and advising only. They’re not trained to do combat operations … because that’s not their mission in Afghanistan any more.”

The Army grew to about 570,000 uniformed personnel over the past decade. But with the war in Iraq over and the one in Afghanistan winding down, officials plan to reduce the size of the force to 490,000. The number of brigade combat teams is due to fall from a total of 45 currently down to 33.

With the Pentagon increasingly likely to face cuts of nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, the Army could be forced to cut further. A management review this summer conducted by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel indicated the Army might have to shrink by up to 70,000 more soldiers, to 420,000.

McHugh said that if the across-the-board cuts continue in force, essentially all of the Army’s programs will be affected.

Odierno also said the Army needs a replacement for its armored fighting vehicles, its workhorse Humvee vehicles and its helicopters. “The bottom line is we can’t afford all of that. And so we’re going to have make some tough decisions,” he said. (Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Will Dunham)

(U//FOUO) U.S. Army Cyber/Electromagnetic Contest Capabilities Based Assessment (C/EM CBA) V0.9

EEV: Old but still of interest

September 9, 2013 in U.S. Army

The following documents were obtained from the website of the Cyber Conflict Studies Association. The documents are draft capabilities based assessments (CBA) of the U.S. Army’s efforts in relation to the cyber/electromagnetic contest, which is defined as the “dimension of full spectrum operations which aims to gain advantage, maintain that advantage, and place adversaries at a disadvantage in the increasingly contested and congested cyberspace domain and electromagnetic spectrum.”

Army Cyber/Electromagnetic (C/EM) Contest Capabilities Based Assessment (CBA) Final Report V0.9	December 23, 2010	90 pages	Download
Functional Solution Analysis (FSA) Report for the Cyber/Electromagnetic (C/EM) Contest Capabilities Based Assessment (CBA) V0.9	December 23, 2010	144 pages	Download

(U//FOUO) Trends in the operational environment continue to indicate that cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) will remain important entities within the operational environment for the foreseeable future. The Army understands the importance of cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum to human societies in general, and to military operations specifically. Army leaders and Soldiers must possess an in-depth understanding of this contest, and how to gain, maintain, and leverage advantages in this contest. To this end, the Army Concept Framework recognizes an increasingly important aspect to military operations: the cyber/electromagnetic contest (C/EM contest).

(U//FOUO) Understanding how to posture the Army to fight the C/EM contest is critical to success on the future battlefield. The Commanding General, Training and Doctrine Command directed the Cyber/Electromagnetic Contest Capabilities Based Assessment (C/EM CBA) to gain a holistic review of the Army‘s required capabilities. The study‘s objective was to identify C/EM requirements across Full Spectrum Operations, then assess capability gaps and potential solutions.

Scope

(U//FOUO) This study considered Army echelons that include BCT to Army and Joint echelons. It considered all phases of Joint operations and the ARFORGEN cycle from reset and pre-deployment to deployment through power projection platforms to the theater of operations and addresses requirements from the 2016-2028 timeframe.

The Cyber/Electromagnetic Contest

(U//FOUO) The C/EM Contest is defined as ―That dimension of full spectrum operations which aims to gain advantage, maintain that advantage, and place adversaries at a disadvantage in the increasingly contested and congested cyberspace domain and electromagnetic spectrum. The C/EM Contest is a holistic, combined arms approach that offers five key ideas:

(U//FOUO) Cyberspace and the EMS are ‗commander‘s business‘ and activities in these mediums must be fully integrated within the overall operation.

(U//FOUO) Today‘s environment requires an expanded notion of combined arms operations. Commanders must think broadly and employ the full range of their capabilities to win the contest.

(U//FOUO) The Cyberspace domain and the EMS must be thought of as maneuver space where positional advantage can be gained or lost.

(U//FOUO) Cyberspace operations and EMS operations have converged in technology and must converge operationally; many times drawing on the same capabilities to meet objectives in either.

(U//FOUO) Winning the contest (maintaining our freedom of action in the cyberspace domain and the EMS while denying our adversaries the same) greatly facilitates our efforts; and if not, our operations can be severely degraded.

(U//FOUO) The fundamental objective of the C/EM contest is to establish a network that enables effective Mission Command; then operate and defend it. In conjunction with this primary effort, commanders seek to develop C/EM situational awareness, which enables all aspects of the C/EM Contest. Operations are directed to attack and exploit adversary systems, and to protect friendly individuals and platforms. Support activities underpin these efforts to gain and maintain advantages.

http://publicintelligence.net/us-army-cyber-contest/

“Purge the Generals: What it will take to fix the army”

The US military is preparing for the wrong future

When it comes to military reform, China appears to be doing it a lot better than the United States

Daniel Davis

theguardian.com, Thursday 8 August 2013 10.30 EDT

US army 1LT Matthew Hernandez looks down the Korengal Valley from a mountaintop outpost 24 October 2008 in the Kunar Province of eastern Afghanistan. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

In the years after World War I, British military strategist Captain B H Liddell Hart advocated a new fighting concept that solved the problem of the static, set-piece nature of that conflict that resulted in the pointlessly slaughter of millions. He advocated for a force of coordinated armored, infantry, and air power fighting in mobile formations, operating under the “indirect method”.

Unfortunately, key leaders in London and Paris rejected his theories because they had “won” the Great War and didn’t feel the need to change. Less than two decades later, a combined British and French field army would be swept off the continent and into the English Channel in a lightning war by a German army that had listened to and incorporated some of Captain Liddell Hart’s key concepts. Unless significant changes are made, the modern-day US army could be half-way to suffering a similar fate.

In an article published today by the Armed Forces Journal in Washington DC, I argue that the US army’s generals, as a group, have lost the ability to effectively function at the high level required of those upon whom we place the responsibility for safeguarding our nation. Titled “Purge the Generals: What it will take to fix the army”, the article details how our senior military leaders have amassed an unprecedented record of failure in major organizational, acquisition and strategic efforts over the past 20 years.

The worst part is that senior leaders are likely to repeat the mistakes of the past by readying the US army for the wrong future; one in which the US could suffer an otherwise avoidable military defeat.

The global strategic situation has undergone considerable change in the past five years. Beginning in late 2007, the US economy suffered its most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression; recovery has been slow in coming and tepid since its arrival. With the conclusion of the eight year war in Iraq and the sun setting on the 12 year bleed in Afghanistan, the US is being forced to reduce both domestic and defense budgets. Whether anyone wants to scale back the armed forces or not, reductions are coming. The question, then, is how those cuts are to be made.

According to the 8 July edition of the Army Times, senior leaders have announced they will reduce the US army from the current level of approximately 535,000 down to 490,000. The unequivocal result: a smaller and less capable army. Many military leaders warn that these cuts will have a hollowing effect “putting our national security at risk“, (pdf) as General Odierno told a Congressional panel in February 2013, and imply there are no other alternatives.

That is not correct.

In 1997, then-lieutenant colonel Douglas A Macgregor published Breaking the Phalanx: a New Design for Landpower in the 21st Century describing a military transformation that would result in a smaller, less expensive force which would produce greater combat capability than the larger formations it would replace. Unfortunately, US officials rejected those new ideas, opting instead for incremental changes, which left the field army little changed from the version that won Desert Storm in 1991. One nation, however, did not reject Macgregor’s ideas.

In 1999 two colonels from the Chinese people’s liberation army (PLA) published a strategic analysis called Unrestricted Warfare. In this essay, they discussed the changing military environment and ways China could modernize its force for future war. Regarding force design and operating methods, they wrote: “In his book, ‘Break the [Phalanx] (sic),’ [Macgregor] advocated simultaneously abandoning the systems of divisions and brigades and replacing them with … battle groups of about 5,000 men each… [The book recommends the adoption of] building-block methods according to wartime needs and put into practice mission-style group organization.”

These views apparently heavily influenced PLA modernization theories, as one year later Breaking the Phalanx was translated into Chinese. A decade after that, the US army’s Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) reported the PLA had incorporated many of Macgregor’s concepts. In the SSI’s 2011 study Chinese Lessons from Other People’s Wars (pdf), the author noted

The PLA entered the 21st century in the midst of a transformation from essentially an infantry based force into one designed around combined arms mechanized operations. A decade into the new century, the PLA is redesigning its forces into battle groups, using modular force structures and logistics to support operations in high altitude and complex terrains, conduct out of area operations, and develop the core for its vision of a hardened and network-centric army.

Macgregor has recently updated his concept to account for the past decade of US war experience. Whereas current army plans call for reducing the force to 490,000, the Macgregor Transformation Model (MTM) can produce an army with as few as 420,000 troops that actually has greater combat power than the force of 535,000 had before the reduction, but cost more than $10bn a year less. The MTM would also produce a more strategically responsive army, and perhaps most importantly, could be sustained at this high level of performance even in the era of constrained budgets. The US military leaders continue to reject MTM, while the Chinese have embraced it and are years into the transformation.

Before the United States shares a fate with 1940 Great Britain and falls victim to an ignored reformer’s ideas, we must reorganize the US army into a stronger force while there is yet time. Logic affirms the reasonableness of such action. Budgets demand it.

• The opinions expressed here are those of the author alone and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the US Army.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/08/us-military-preparing-for-wrong-future

U.S. Army Learns Hard Lessons in N. Korea-like War Game

Mar. 26, 2013 – 12:44PM |

By PAUL McLEARY |

WASHINGTON — It took 56 days for the U.S. to flow two divisions’ worth of soldiers into the failed nuclear-armed state of “North Brownland” and as many as 90,000 troops to deal with the country’s nuclear stockpiles, a major U.S. Army war game concluded this winter.

The Unified Quest war game conducted this year by Army planners posited the collapse of a nuclear-armed, xenophobic, criminal family regime that had lorded over a closed society and inconveniently lost control over its nukes as it fell. Army leaders stayed mum about the model for the game, but all indications — and maps seen during the game at the Army War College — point to North Korea.

While American forces who staged in a neighboring friendly country to the south eventually made it over the border into North Brownland, they encountered several problems for which they struggled to find solutions. One of the first was that a large number of nuclear sites were in populated areas, so they had to try to perform humanitarian assistance operations while conducting combined arms maneuver and operations.

One way of doing this was to “use humanitarian assistance as a form of maneuver,” Maj. Gen. Bill Hix, director of the Army’s Concept Development and Learning Directorate, told reporters. The Army dropped humanitarian supplies a short distance from populated areas, drawing the population away from the objective sites, he explained.

Many of the problems encountered were hashed out with Army leaders at a Senior Leader Seminar on March 19 at Fort McNair in Washington. The event—which included the Army chief of staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, and the vice chief, Gen. John Campbell, along with a collection of three- and four-star generals — was off the record, but under terms of the agreement that allowed a handful of reporters to cover the event, unattributed quotes can be reported.

One of the major complications was that “technical ISR was not capable of closing the gap” caused by not having human intelligence assets in the country for years before the fight, one participant said. Also, “our ability to get north was hindered by our operational inflexibility,” particularly when it comes to dropping troops into austere, contested areas.

To move soldiers quickly, Marine Corps V-22 Ospreys quickly inserted Army units deep behind enemy lines, but leaders found that inserting troops far in front of the main force so quickly often caused them to be surrounded, after which they had to be withdrawn.

Overall, the friendly force ultimately “failed to achieve the operational agility” it needed to succeed, another participant complained, “largely due to the rigidity” of current deployment models. What’s more, the joint force was “able to get the force there quickly, but it was the technical force” that proved more difficult to deploy.

Another participant agreed, adding “the key challenge was timely access to joint enablers” such as ISR and counter-weapons of mass destruction units, which were desperately needed by the general-purpose ground units.

While not all lessons learned from the exercise were fully hashed out in this unclassified setting, some officers involved expressed their views of how the past decade of war has influenced how the Army prepares to fight.

“We’ve had the luxury in the last several wars of a place called Kuwait” from which to launch troops and stage equipment, one officer said. “I think our skills have atrophied in the call you get in the middle of the night,” and in forcible-entry operations from the air and sea. Skills haven’t been kept fresh in doing things such as loading trains full of equipment, and in setting up new command posts, he said.

Another leader agreed. “We have been spoiled by a command-and-control network that has been established for a decade” in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said, adding that the Army has to get back to training to operate in an austere environment.

One lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan, reinforced by the Unified Quest game, was that “we’re not going to fight a pure military war again,” one four-star general opined. Instead, being successful in conflict will require a variety of solutions requiring cultural knowledge, political acumen and other intelligence activities. The problem is, according to another officer, that the service needs to better understand the cultures in which it will fight, since “we tend to focus on the clash, when we need to focus on the will” of the local population.

Gen. Robert Cone, director of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, said the difficulties the Army faces in moving troops and materiel around the battlefield again reinforced that “we have significant inter-service dependencies on our ability to move” and that any future fight will be a joint fight.

When asked about the potential for conflict in North Korea specifically, Cone said that while he thinks the forces the U.S. has today in South Korea “are adequate … the question is what forces are adequate for the problem of loose nukes?”

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130326/DEFREG02/303260020/U-S-Army-Learns-Hard-Lessons-N-Korea-like-War-Game?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p

U.S. contractor charged with passing nuclear secrets to Chinese woman

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:18 GMT

Reuters

By Tim Gaynor

March 18 (Reuters) – A U.S. defense contractor in Hawaii has been arrested on charges of passing national defense secrets, including classified information about nuclear weapons, to a Chinese woman with whom he was romantically involved, authorities said on Monday.

Benjamin Pierce Bishop, 59, a former U.S. Army officer who works as a civilian employee of a defense contractor at U.S. Pacific Command in Oahu was arrested on Friday and made his first appearance in federal court on Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Hawaii said in a news release.

He is charged with one count of willfully communicating national defense information to a person not entitled to receive it, and one count of unlawfully retaining documents related to national defense. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Bishop met the woman – a 27-year-old Chinese national identified as “Person 1” – in Hawaii during a conference on international military defense issues, according to the affidavit.

He had allegedly been involved in a romantic relationship since June 2011 with the woman, who was living in the United States on a visa, and had no security clearance.

From May of that year through December 2012, he allegedly passed national defense secrets to her on multiple occasions, including classified information about nuclear weapons and the planned deployment of U.S. strategic nuclear systems.

Other secrets included information on the United States’ ability to detect foreign governments’ low- and medium-range ballistic missiles, as well as information on the deployment of U.S. early warning radar systems in the Pacific Rim.

Bishop had top secret security clearance since July 2002. A court-authorized search of his home in November found around a dozen individual documents each with classification markings at the secret level, the affidavit said.

The case is being investigated by the FBI’s Honolulu Division and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in coordination with U.S. Pacific Command and the U.S. Army. (Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Paul Simao.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/us-contractor-charged-with-passing-nuclear-secrets-to-chinese-woman/

The Army’s obesity problem: By the numbers

*Repost at request

In 2007, 116 troops were dismissed for being out of shape. In the first 10 months of this year, that figure was a rather massive 1,625

By Samantha Rollins | December 11, 2012

Members of the U.S. Army at a food court: While these soldiers look rather fit, some of their colleagues are struggling to stay in shape.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

When an entire nation has an obesity problem, it should be no surprise that its army will have one as well. These days, being “too fat to fight” is an increasingly common concern in the U.S. military. According to The Washington Post, obesity is now the leading cause of ineligibility among potential Army volunteers and current military personnel. Indeed, as pressure mounts for the Army to cut its budget, it has begun to dismiss troops who need to cut a few pounds. Here, a look at the Army’s weight problem, by the numbers:

241
Maximum weight, in pounds, for female enlistees

258
Maximum weight, in pounds, for male enlistees

116
Troops dismissed from the Army in 2007 for being out of shape

1,625
Troops dismissed from the Army in the first 10 months of 2012 for being out of shape

5.3
Percent of U.S. troops classified as overweight or obese in 2010

35.7
Percent of U.S. adults who are obese

75
Percent of civilians hoping to volunteer for the Army in 2009 who were physically ineligible to join, with obesity being the leading cause

Decades after a risky Cold War experiment, a scientist lives with secrets.

A Reporter at Large

Operation Delirium

by Raffi Khatchadourian December 17, 2012

At an Army research facility, a soldier given a powerful mind-altering drug said, “I feel like my life is not worth a nickel here.”

Colonel James S. Ketchum dreamed of war without killing. He joined the Army in 1956 and left it in 1976, and in that time he did not fight in Vietnam; he did not invade the Bay of Pigs; he did not guard Western Europe with tanks, or help build nuclear launch sites beneath the Arctic ice. Instead, he became the military’s leading expert in a secret Cold War experiment: to fight enemies with clouds of psychochemicals that temporarily incapacitate the mind—causing, in the words of one ranking officer, a “selective malfunctioning of the human machine.” For nearly a decade, Ketchum, a psychiatrist, went about his work in the belief that chemicals are more humane instruments of warfare than bullets and shrapnel—or, at least, he told himself such things. To achieve his dream, he worked tirelessly at a secluded Army research facility, testing chemical weapons on hundreds of healthy soldiers, and thinking all along that he was doing good.

Today, Ketchum is eighty-one years old, and the facility where he worked, Edgewood Arsenal, is a crumbling assemblage of buildings attached to a military proving ground on the Chesapeake Bay. The arsenal’s records are boxed and dusting over in the National Archives. Military doctors who helped conduct the experiments have long since moved on, or passed away, and the soldiers who served as their test subjects—in all, nearly five thousand of them—are scattered throughout the country, if they are still alive. Within the Army, and in the world of medical research, the secret clinical trials are a faint memory. But for some of the surviving test subjects, and for the doctors who tested them, what happened at Edgewood remains deeply unresolved. Were the human experiments there a Dachau-like horror, or were they sound and necessary science? As veterans of the tests have come forward, their unanswered questions have slowly gathered into a kind of historical undertow, and Ketchum, more than anyone else, has been caught in its pull. In 2006, he self-published a memoir, “Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten,” which defended the research. Next year, a class-action lawsuit brought against the federal government by former test subjects will go to trial, and Ketchum is expected to be the star witness.

The lawsuit’s argument is in line with broader criticisms of Edgewood: that, whether out of military urgency or scientific dabbling, the Army recklessly endangered the lives of its soldiers—naïve men, mostly, who were deceived or pressured into submitting to the risky experiments. The drugs under review ranged from tear gas and LSD to highly lethal nerve agents, like VX, a substance developed at Edgewood and, later, sought by Saddam Hussein. Ketchum’s specialty was a family of molecules that block a key neurotransmitter, causing delirium. The drugs were known mainly by Army codes, with their true formulas classified. The soldiers were never told what they were given, or what the specific effects might be, and the Army made no effort to track how they did afterward. Edgewood’s most extreme critics raise the spectre of mass injury—a hidden American tragedy.

To read further on this article please follow link to ” The New Yorker ”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/12/17/121217fa_fact_khatchadourian

Monsanto and others conspired with an Army experiment to secretly poison people with toxic chemicals in the 1950s, a class action claims

Army Poisoned People in ’50s, Class Claims

By JOE HARRIS

ST. LOUIS (CN) – Monsanto and others conspired with an Army experiment to secretly poison people with toxic chemicals in a giant segregated housing complex in the 1950s, a class action claims in City Court.

Lead plaintiff Benjamin Phillips Sr. claims defendants Monsanto, Parsons Government Services and SRI International participated in a study beginning in 1953 that lasted into the 1960s.

Phillips claims the study, the “Involuntary Chemical Study on PI Residents” or “ICS”, was conducted around the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis.

“This study consisted generally of the following: defendants, along with other known conspirators such as the United States Army) and unknown conspirators caused to be sprayed upon the residents and structures of PI chemicals, such as cadmium, including potentially radioactive cadmium, with the knowledge or consent of those resident, the administrators of PI or city or other government officials. The purpose of this study is unknown,” the complaint states. (Open parentheses in complaint.)

Phillips, who lived at Pruitt-Igoe at the time, claims the chemicals caused emotional psychological trauma and harm as well as personal injury.

He seeks actual and punitive damages for public nuisance, liability, intentional infliction of emotional distress and battery. He is represented by Elkin Kistner, with Bick & Kistner.

The 33, 11-story buildings in the Pruitt-Igoe complex were torn down in the 1970s after the place became famous for its poverty, crime and segregation.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/10/30/51794.htm

U.S. Army General who ‘had forced sex and inappropriate relationships with female soldiers’ in Afghanistan flown home in disgrace

Jeffrey Sinclair returned to Fort Bragg after being posted with Airborne Division in 2010
Sinclair has been in the Army for 27 years and served in first Gulf War
Charges include possessing pornography and alcohol while deployed

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED:14:12 EST, 26 September 2012| UPDATED:17:56 EST, 26 September 2012

An Army brigadier general has been charged with forcible sodomy, multiple counts of adultery and having inappropriate relationships with several female subordinates, two U.S. defense officials said today.

Jeffrey A Sinclair, who served as deputy commander in charge of logistics and support for the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan, was sent home in May because of the allegations.

Sinclair faces possible courts martial on charges that include forced sex, wrongful sexual conduct, violating an order, possessing pornography and alcohol while deployed, and misusing a government travel charge card and filing fraudulent claims.

Shroud of secrecy: Brigadier General Jeffrey A Sinclair has been charged with forcible sodomy of female subordinates and was sent home from Afghanistan to Fort Bragg, North Carolina in May

Sinclair was informed of the charges on Monday, and the next step will be an Article 32 investigation – an impartial investigation before he maybe referred to a general court martial.

The charges were announced at a brief press conference on Wednesday at Fort Bragg, the sprawling U.S. Army base in North Carolina that is home to the 82nd Airborne.

After reading a prepared statement, base spokesman Col. Kevin Arata refused to take any questions.

Reporters were told all questions would have to be made in writing and that no response was likely to come until the following day.

No date has been set for the public hearing. It was not clear if Sinclair had an attorney.

The charges are under the military legal system called the Uniform Code of Military Justices.

The term ‘forcible sodomy’ is defined as contact between a sex organ and any part of another person’s body.

‘It’s a fall back charge,’ a military lawyer who asked to remain anonymous and is unfamiliar with the particulars of Sinclair’s case told Fox News.

He added that when rape would be difficult to prove lawyers often opt for the ‘forcible sodomy’ charge.

Sinclair had arrived in Afghanistan for his deployment in September 2011, but had been serving in the division since July 2010.

Sinclair, a trained paratrooper who has been in the Army for 27 years, was serving his third deployment to Afghanistan.

He had also served two tours in Iraq, as well as a tour in the first Gulf war. He has been decorated in battle including with the Bronze Star Medal.

Sinclair was recruited through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps in 1985 from the University of West Virginia.

He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the school along with a master’s from Central Michigan University and a master’s in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College.

Deployment: Members of the military at NATO’s Regional Command in Kandahar, Afghanistan where Sinclair had been posted since 2010

The 82nd Airborne Division headquarters are in charge of NATO’s Regional Command South in Kandahar province, Afghanistan.

Details have only begun to emerge about the scandal with little information available about the time frame of the charges against Sinclair.

Fort Bragg spokesman Ben Abel confirmed it was a ‘criminal investigation’, according to The Fayetteville Observer.

Sinclair was reassigned to the U.S army base in May as special assistant to the commanding general of the 18th Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg.

It is highly unusual for a senior member of the armed forces to be removed from their position, investigated and face a court martial. There have been only two cases in recent years.

Earlier this year, Army Brig. Gen. Roger Duff pleaded guilty to charges of conduct unbecoming an officer, wearing unauthorized awards or ribbons and making a false official statement.

He was sentenced to two months confinement and dismissal from the military. Under a pre-trial agreement, only the dismissal may be imposed. The case is still pending, said Army spokesman George Wright.

Prior to that, Maj. Gen. David Hale pleaded guilty to seven counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and one count of making a false statement, also in connection with adultery.

He was fined $10,000 and was ordered to retire at the reduced rank of brigadier general, Wright said