The U.S. Department of Defense released summaries on 28 cases, involving 5,500 soldiers, in which it carried out chemical weapons testing in the 1960s over several U.S. states, including Alaska, Florida, and Hawaii, as well as sites in the United Kingdom and the Marshall Islands, at the time a U.S. colony.

The military brass also acknowledged that in May 1969 Marine jets sprayed trioctyl phosphate (TOF)--a chemical simulating the nerve gas VX--on Marine units that were practicing an amphibious assault on Vieques and on a base ship. TOF can harm the skin, eyes, and respiratory system, and is known to cause cancer in animals. In disregard for the health of the soldiers and residents of Vieques, the jets sprayed the TOF over land and water in order to assess how Marines operated in chemical protective gear and how effective chemical weapons would be. Because Washington carried out the experiments outdoors, Vieques civilians were also exposed to chemical and biological agents.

Since World War II, when the U.S. government establish a Navy bombing range on the small eastern island of Vieques in Puerto Rico,--its main colony in the Caribbean--fishermen and other local residents have protested the infringement of the U.S. military on their land. They have opposed Washington’s use of Vieques as a training ground for invasions or assaults on other countries--from Grenada and Nicaragua to Yugoslavia and now Iraq. In addition, the repeated bombings, as well as the storage of hazardous materials, have had a devastating effect on the residents’ livelihoods and health.

Pentagon admissions of chemical weapons testing "bolsters what we’ve said, that the health of Vieques residents has been threatened by the Navy," said Ismael Guadalupe of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques (CRDV). For example, the cancer rate in Vieques is twice that of the rest of Puerto Rico. At an October 23 press conference in Washington, a CRDV delegation explained its demands for the ‘four Ds’: demilitarization, decontamination, devolution (return of the lands), and sustainable development. "For us nothing has changed," Guadalupe said, in the continuing "struggle to gain ownership of our land."

Rafael Rivera Castaño, an epidemiologist from Vieques who attended the news conference, added that Puerto Rican governor Sila Calderón’s study of the high cancer rate in Vieques and the use of chemical weapons in military maneuvers must include the participation of the local residents in order to disclose the full truth.

The Vieques-based committee has called on Washington to release all information related to military use of chemicals and toxins on the island. Earlier protests forced a Navy admission that it had fired 263 depleted uranium shells in Vieques in March 1999, and 1,520 uranium shells in Torii Shima, an uninhabited island off the coast of Okinawa, in 1996. The Navy calls these all "accidents."

In the past three years in particular, demonstrations and other protests have taken place both in Puerto Rico and in several U.S. cities against the bombing exercises. Up to 1,500 protesters have been arrested for "trespassing" and on other charges related to mass civil disobedience to protest the U.S. military’s use of the island. Four more protesters were sentenced October 21 to terms from 10 days to four months probation.

Calderón, who faces mounting pressure to make good on her pledge to end the bombing exercises on Vieques, announced October 18 that she had received an official letter confirming that the U.S. Navy would withdraw from the island by May 2003. That date had been set in 1999, at a time of massive protests demanding Navy withdrawal from Vieques, in an agreement between then-president William Clinton and the colonial governor at the time, Pedro Rosselló.

Calderón, however, has refused to make public the content of the letter from Secretary of the Navy Gordon England, and England’s spokesperson subsequently stated that the letter is not a "guarantee" that the Navy will leave the island.

Earlier, Admiral Robert Natter, commander of the Atlantic Fleet, said the Navy is considering various alternatives to Vieques for military training and maneuvers, and pointed to possible sites in Florida, Georgia, and North and South Carolina.

Until recently, U.S. Navy officials, joined by a number of capitalist politicians, had insisted that Washington continue its war training on Vieques, calling the island and surrounding waters "irreplaceable."

Ismael Guadalupe of the CRDV, while calling Calderón’s announcement positive news, pointed to Washington’s decades-long history of lying to the people of Puerto Rico. "We’re fed up with the lies," he said, and "we are not going to stop the fight."

Guadalupe added that the withdrawal of the Navy is only the first battle to be waged, and that a victory in this fight will be won only with the U.S. government taking responsibility for cleaning and decontaminating the lands bombed and occupied for six decades by the Navy.

"The Navy has a history of not cleaning the lands it has occupied," Guadalupe explained. "We are going to demand participation in this process because we don’t want what happened in Culebra," referring to a nearby island that, decades after the U.S. Navy was forced to stop its bombing exercises there, has not been decontaminated.  
 
 
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