To my nonscientists eye. Similar caveats we may never have incontrovertible proof, its remotely possible, though perhaps eternally unprovable, we may never know, its at least possible, will we ever know?, let me just blurt out what I think happened, etc. infest Bakers narrative, usually preceded or followed by wild accusations (and, occasionally, by a sign of self-awareness: I lay in bed some of today reading more of this book, hating it, excited by it, embarrassed by it).
At times, the book is framed as a deliberate challenge to the intelligence community: I could be completely wrong. The only way to prove me wrong is by declassifying the entire document. But this is not how a historian proceeds. Again and again, Baker bristles with anger over actions that were seriously contemplated by the C.I.A., other intelligence agencies and the military but never undertaken. I felt trembly and disgusted at the same time, he writes of Operation Sphinx, a proposal to gas millions of Japanese from the air during World War II. Its a horrible and disillusioning thing to know that your own country was passing around a paper like Sphinx in the Pentagon. Really? To know that in a brutal war men thought brutal things?
At another point, he questions the long, interesting, confusing letter he got from Floyd ONeal, one of some 30 captured American airmen and Marines who confessed to germ-warfare bombing in Korea. ONeals confession is surprising and moving, though, whether or not its true, Baker tells us. ONeal recanted completely after he was released, and writes in his letter of sustaining torture so awful he still wont describe it to Baker more than 50 years later: What they did for the next days I dont care to discuss but I finally agreed to sign their confession. There is nothing surprising or moving about a coerced confession, save for ONeals ability to endure the price it exacted.
Baker concedes that Americans individually have done good things, a gesture followed by a banal list that includes sunglasses, topiary, no-hitters and the midcentury New Yorker. Yes, and also little baby ducks and old pickup trucks. This is another affectation of virtue, not a moral argument.
I share Bakers disgust with all the crazy, wasteful, illegal, counterproductive and murderous things the C.I.A. has done, and no doubt continues to do. Hell, I even like dogs. Bakers Olympian worldview, though, takes him to almost the same place he landed in Human Smoke, his paste-up 2008 history of the road to World War II: immobilized by purity and concluding that we should never have intervened, even to stop the Nazis. Americans are neither beasts nor angels, just human beings trying to forge our way through the murky moral choices this world poses. To pretend otherwise is perhaps the worst deception of all.
Read the original:
Did America Use Bioweapons in Korea? Nicholson Baker Tried to Find Out - The New York Times
- Germ Warfare: Learning About Germs - January 21st, 2017 [January 21st, 2017]
- Germ warfare - mutant bugs could wipe out human life - January 24th, 2017 [January 24th, 2017]
- Germ warfare: the battle for the key to modern vaccines - The Guardian - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Deadly global pandemic to kill tens of millions: Bill Gates - Press TV - February 18th, 2017 [February 18th, 2017]
- Biopreparat - Wikipedia - February 18th, 2017 [February 18th, 2017]
- 'Ideation' is complex, convoluted, not-so-funny satire - Marinscope Community Newspapers - February 24th, 2017 [February 24th, 2017]
- The Vaccine Race: How Scientists Used Human Cells to Combat Killer Viruses by Meredith Wadman review - The Guardian - February 27th, 2017 [February 27th, 2017]
- We're 'in touch' every day with things that can make us sick - Williamsport Sun-Gazette - February 28th, 2017 [February 28th, 2017]
- Getting ready for a global pandemic - Amandala - March 1st, 2017 [March 1st, 2017]
- Killen Church Youth Taking Out Germs - courierjournal - March 1st, 2017 [March 1st, 2017]
- Ed Vasicek: The ever-surfacing future has arrived - Kokomo Tribune - March 2nd, 2017 [March 2nd, 2017]
- A human pinball in a germ warfare experiment - Varsity Online - March 7th, 2017 [March 7th, 2017]
- US Navy Film Reveals Crazy Cold War Chemical Weapons Plans - The National Interest Online (blog) - March 12th, 2017 [March 12th, 2017]
- Amherst College announces the Mammoths as first official mascot ... - Boston.com - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- Letter: Protect the public health officials who protect us - Republican Eagle - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- Geoffrey Norman: What Next? After The Syrian Strike - Caledonian Record - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- Could The Global Community Coexist With A Nuclear Pyongyang ... - Daily Caller - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- Nuclear war: the US took a highly bureaucratic response to preparing for it - The Australian Financial Review - June 9th, 2017 [June 9th, 2017]
- Shoemaker: Seeing a tragedy or a mere statistic? - Opinion ... - MetroWest Daily News - June 11th, 2017 [June 11th, 2017]
- LETTER: Process of forgetting simply facilitated - The Guardian - June 14th, 2017 [June 14th, 2017]
- 'New' way to look at smallpox - Fiji Times - June 16th, 2017 [June 16th, 2017]
- I meant every word - Fort Madison Daily Democrat - June 16th, 2017 [June 16th, 2017]
- What Do We Celebrate? - The Runner - June 17th, 2017 [June 17th, 2017]
- We'll pass on the Liberal Lollapalooza - Net Newsledger - June 18th, 2017 [June 18th, 2017]
- Whom Are You Fooling? - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com - June 23rd, 2017 [June 23rd, 2017]
- The case for keeping 'Langevin Block' - Macleans.ca - June 30th, 2017 [June 30th, 2017]
- Military Tested Germ Warfare on San Francisco and Other ... - June 30th, 2017 [June 30th, 2017]
- Area man wants Amherst to change town's name - The Recorder - August 25th, 2017 [August 25th, 2017]
- EARLE LOCKERBY: A simplistic approach - The Guardian - August 25th, 2017 [August 25th, 2017]
- Belchertown man wants Amherst's town name banished - Amherst Bulletin - August 25th, 2017 [August 25th, 2017]
- Shir Ishii - Wikipedia - February 27th, 2018 [February 27th, 2018]
- U.S. Germ Warfare Experiments used against the American ... - March 10th, 2018 [March 10th, 2018]
- The Long Read: The Germ Warfare Island Abandoned by the ... - May 12th, 2018 [May 12th, 2018]
- Conspiracy Theory? US Army Has Admitted to Conducting 100s ... - May 30th, 2018 [May 30th, 2018]
- US Army Has Admitted To Conducting 100s Of Germ Warfare ... - May 30th, 2018 [May 30th, 2018]
- GERM WARFARE - Carpet Cleaning and Upholstery Cleaning - July 10th, 2018 [July 10th, 2018]
- Coconut Oil: Germ Warfare! | Underground Wellness - July 15th, 2018 [July 15th, 2018]
- Germ Warfare | Recess Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia - July 16th, 2018 [July 16th, 2018]
- History of cancer chemotherapy - Wikipedia - October 16th, 2018 [October 16th, 2018]
- International Military Tribunal for the Far East - Wikipedia - October 16th, 2018 [October 16th, 2018]
- Recess Season 4 Episode 38 | Germ Warfare | Recess Full Episodes TV Series - November 30th, 2018 [November 30th, 2018]
- U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits - The New ... - December 4th, 2018 [December 4th, 2018]
- Germ Warfare | Dexter's Laboratory Wiki | FANDOM powered ... - December 4th, 2018 [December 4th, 2018]
- Colonial Germ Warfare : The Colonial Williamsburg Official ... - December 30th, 2018 [December 30th, 2018]
- America's Secret War: Germs & Biological Weapons - Spies, Scientists (2001) - December 30th, 2018 [December 30th, 2018]
- UNIT 731 Japan's Biological Warfare Project - March 29th, 2019 [March 29th, 2019]
- Korean War - Air warfare | Britannica.com - March 29th, 2019 [March 29th, 2019]
- "M*A*S*H" Germ Warfare (TV Episode 1972) - IMDb - April 14th, 2019 [April 14th, 2019]
- Unit 731 - Wikipedia - April 29th, 2019 [April 29th, 2019]
- The Concern for the Secretive Bio-Geopolitics - FXStreet - October 16th, 2019 [October 16th, 2019]
- Depression Quest: Bad Brains, Good Friends and Night in the Woods - HeadStuff.org - November 25th, 2019 [November 25th, 2019]
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service: This Never Happened to the Other Fellow - Ricochet.com - November 25th, 2019 [November 25th, 2019]
- The Fall or Dive of Sydney Gottlieb and Company - CounterPunch - January 9th, 2020 [January 9th, 2020]
- As China death toll rises, do we need a vaccine for the virus of State secrecy - The Conservative Woman - January 30th, 2020 [January 30th, 2020]
- DC Hero's Most Disgusting Power Was Popular With The President - Screen Rant - January 30th, 2020 [January 30th, 2020]
- Lord Jeffery Amherst, the town namesake who attempted a Native American genocide - Buffalo News - January 30th, 2020 [January 30th, 2020]
- Clean Buildings Expo To Offer Expanded Education Sessions - CleanLink - February 12th, 2020 [February 12th, 2020]
- What If Donald Got the Bug? - LA Progressive - March 4th, 2020 [March 4th, 2020]
- Letter to the editor: Don't get your coronavirus information from Rush - The Winchester Star - March 4th, 2020 [March 4th, 2020]
- Herbs That Fight Viruses - Newsmax - March 4th, 2020 [March 4th, 2020]
- Don't Touch Anything: The Unintended Consequences of Environmental Ecosystems - The Good Men Project - March 4th, 2020 [March 4th, 2020]
- COVID-19 and Us OrissaPOST - Wink Report - March 16th, 2020 [March 16th, 2020]
- STERAMIST IS MOBILIZED TO AID IN THE CONTROL SARS-CoV-2 IN DAEGU-KYUNGBUK PROVINCE, SOUTH KOREA - Yahoo Finance - March 16th, 2020 [March 16th, 2020]
- We clean freaks will stand and scrub together | Sam Venable - Knoxville News Sentinel - March 16th, 2020 [March 16th, 2020]
- Corbella: Don't spread the virus or fake news - Calgary Sun - March 16th, 2020 [March 16th, 2020]
- Coronavirus and what we can learn from the 1918 flu's hidden history - Mashable - March 16th, 2020 [March 16th, 2020]
- Exasperating Farrago of Distortions! Coronavirus and the Pandemic of Conspiracy Theories - News18 - March 16th, 2020 [March 16th, 2020]
- Rab McNeil: Stocks wiped out as germ warfare sees panic buyers rolling in the aisles - HeraldScotland - March 16th, 2020 [March 16th, 2020]
- Is biological warfare raising its ugly head? - citytoday - March 16th, 2020 [March 16th, 2020]
- REVEALED: Millions of Brits were in SECRET germ war tests between 1940 and 1979 - Politicalite - March 31st, 2020 [March 31st, 2020]
- Coronavirus: How Orania has been affected by the disease - The South African - March 31st, 2020 [March 31st, 2020]
- The Plague and the Long War - Inkstick - March 31st, 2020 [March 31st, 2020]
- Historically Speaking: The flu epidemic we've been here before - Roswell Daily Record - March 31st, 2020 [March 31st, 2020]
- For China and Russia, coronavirus hoaxes are another strain of disinformation warfare - The Globe and Mail - March 31st, 2020 [March 31st, 2020]
- State Department marks bioweapons accord with reference to pandemic - Washington Times - March 31st, 2020 [March 31st, 2020]
- Past Pandemics Exposed Chinas Weaknesses - Foreign Affairs Magazine - March 31st, 2020 [March 31st, 2020]
- 'All Of This Panic Could Have Been Prevented': Author Max Brooks On COVID-19 - NPR - March 31st, 2020 [March 31st, 2020]
- U.S. Created Coronavirus to Target Islamic Nations! (And Other Conspiracy Theories) | News and Politics - PJ Media - April 9th, 2020 [April 9th, 2020]
- The decade of transformation: Remaking international relations - NationofChange - April 9th, 2020 [April 9th, 2020]
- Mad Man Modly: The Secretary of the Navy Gets the Boot - Antiwar.com - April 9th, 2020 [April 9th, 2020]