Death in the backyard: Part 3

Replying to some comments about his most recent post, Diogenes protested, “Yes, some people call me a conspiracy theorist, but that’s nonsense. I don’t think the army established an RDX plant in 1941 with the intention of converting it to VX manufacture twenty years later. VX hadn't even been developed then.

“What I do think is that they took advantage of a trusting and credulous populace. Even though the plant manufactured weapons of war and was guarded by the military, it frankly posed little risk of enemy attack, and virtually no risk to the surrounding population.

“RDX is a remarkably stable explosive; it’s still popular for that characteristic and is the primary ingredient of C-4. It explodes when primed by a fuze or blasting cap, but is almost impossible to energize in any other way. In the unlikely event of an explosion at the plant only those working there would have been harmed, and they surely knew the risks.

“Likewise with heavy water; you could bathe in it, drink it, use it otherwise just like common H₂O, with no ill effects. It is not radioactive, and you would have to ingest a great deal of it if it were to be injurious.

“So you have a plant that, despite its purpose, had a friendly and benign reputation and relationship with its host communities. And one of the things the military does very well is to recognize an opportunity when it sees one. 

“Retooling the plant to manufacture VX was obviously less expensive than building a new one, and they had a ready-made and willing work force nearby. It would seem, as the saying goes, to be a win-win situation. Unless, of course, some VX got loose. Then no one would have won.

“Again, this goes back to the military-industrial partnership, which even such a dyed-in-the-wool conservative as Dwight Eisenhower spoke against. Both the military and large corporations are by nature impersonal, and that makes them dangerous. Their officials think nothing of writing off death and injury as ‘collateral damage’ if their goal is attained.

“In any event, after Richard Nixon frustrated the M-I alliance by shutting down all U. S. chemical weapons manufacture in 1968, there remained as much as a quarter-million gallons—yes, you heard that correctly—of VX to do something with. The Newport facility was never designed as a storage depot, and for long periods of time a great deal of VX was stored under less than ideal conditions. It was not made truly secure until after 9/11.

“Ironically, the only reported accidents took place after the neutralization process had begun. All were blamed on faulty valves or gaskets. Four of those involved the spills of the waste byproduct from the process. It’s not dangerous in the same way as VX, but is highly caustic. Across the four spills hundreds of gallons were involved, but were reportedly cleaned up with no casualties.

“The one truly frightening and potentially hazardous reported spill happened on June 10, 2005, when 30 gallons of VX—not the byproduct—was spilled. VX is a viscous liquid, not a gas (although it can be aerosolized and sprayed), but again, only a minuscule amount can be lethal. The official report claimed the spill was safely contained and neutralized, but in such a situation mightn’t it have been possible for someone to make off with a small amount? Everyone has a price.

“By now, anyone reading this series will have done some research and learned that VX is generally not dangerous to the public at large under normal circumstances. Its primary military importance was as an area denial weapon; that is, if it were applied to an area via bombs, missiles or artillery it would make that area deadly and unusable. The problem with that strategy is that it would make that bit of real estate unusable by anyone for a long time. It’s remarkably persistent.

“I mentioned before that it can be aerosolized and sprayed, but the chief danger to the peacetime public would be a fire or explosion. VX doesn’t burn easily, but an explosion or hot enough fire can ignite it and spread it for miles if conditions are right. We know that VX was released from leaky valves and ruptured gaskets, and an unrelated explosion could certainly cause that kind of part failure. Or what if a train carrying VX munitions had derailed—remember Lac Megantic—or a plane crashed at the site causing an explosion?

“If any of those things had happened, God knows how many people would have been at risk and not even known it. With the exception of employees and maybe their family members all most people knew was that some kind of chemical was made at the plant, and their long familiarity with the plant made them accepting. The nature of that chemical wasn’t widely known until 1987, and the staggering amount of VX stored at Newport wasn’t made public until 1994.

“That’s the crux of my chagrin with the situation, even all these years later: Not the hypothetical ‘what if,’ but the plain fact that if VX got loose the local towns, including people I cared about, lacked preparedness and didn’t know what measures to take because for almost 30 years after production began they hadn’t specific information about what was there. 

"It doesn't matter that nothing happened; it matters that the government owes its own people the ability to protect themselves against danger and they did not provide it.

"That is one reason why I do not trust the word of the military establishment, nor that of most government agencies.”

I was exasperated. “For heaven’s sake, are you ever going to tell me where Kim Jong-nam comes in?”

“Sorry,” he said. “Next time.”

--Richard Brown