On 10 December 1976, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution with the long title of “Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques,” and commonly called ENMOD.
Secret rainmaking project in Vietnam
Tracing the origins of the UN convention can begin with a public revelation by newspaperman Jack Anderson in 1971. Anderson acted as the Wiki Leaks of the times, and on this occasion, he unearthed a top secret memo sent from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to then President Lyndon Johnson in 1967. The memo exposed a weather modification tactic used regularly in Vietnam called “Operation Popeye.”
The text of the memo read as follows: “Laos operations - Continue as at present plus Pop Eye to reduce the trafficability [sic] along infiltration routes & Authorization requested to implement operational phase of weather modification process previously successful tested and evaluated in some area.” (US Senate, 1972, p. 5)
Operation Popeye was a rainmaking operation akin to cloud seeding which extended the monsoon season in the jungles of North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Its military usefulness was to disrupt arms traffic by the Viet Cong. Its adverse effects included severe rains, flooding, mudslides and typhoons. This was the introduction of weather warfare.
As a result of Anderson’s leak, the US Senate pressured the military leaders at the Pentagon to provide details on Operation Popeye. Senator Claiborne Pell, chair of the Subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment, led the charge, calling rainmaking the forerunner of “dangerous environmental techniques,” that could result in “irreparable damage to our global environment.” (US Senate, 1972, p. 4) Pell called on the United States to ban all environmental modification techniques from warfare use. However, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird flatly denied that the U.S. engaged in any environmental modification in Vietnam.
U.S. Senate Resolution 71
Senator Pell and the Subcommittee continued to push for transparency about the geophysical warfare revealed in the Operation Popeye memo, holding hearings throughout 1972. In July, Pell introduced a resolution that urged the U.S. government to cooperate with other nations in forming an international agreement to ban the use of geophysical warfare. After a year of discussion and modifications, this was passed as Senate Resolution 71 in July 1973. This measure would become the basis for the United Nations measure known as ENMOD.
Nearly a year later, as the Nixon administration began to unwind, the top secret rainmaking strategy was admitted first in a letter to senators by Laird and then in secret Senate hearings. In May 1974, the Senate transcript was released to the American public.
Operation Popeye revealed
Three years after Jack Anderson leaked the secret memo from military leaders to Pres. Johnson, and a year after Nixon negotiated a peace treaty with North Vietnam, Operation Popeye became public knowledge and an undeniable fact. The transcript from the Senate hearing revealed that it had begun in 1967 and was concluded in July 1972, at about the time Pell introduced the prelude to Resolution 71.
The Department of Defense detailed its mission and hopes with the environmental modification program that was also known as “Operation Intermediary” or “Operation Compatriot.” Briefly, the objective was to deny the enemy use of road systems by softening them through saturation. The destruction of river crossings was also part of the plan.
C-130 aircraft from a base in Thailand flew 2,602 cloud seeding missions during the five year span. Altogether, over 47,000 cloud seeding packets were dropped at a cost of $21.6 million. The secret operation began in Laos and North Vietnam and eventually covered South Vietnam and Cambodia.
ENMOD and Resolution 71
The first stages of ENMOD had been hammered out in an extended battle between the legislative and executive offices of the United States, forced into a conclusion in May 1974 with the public admission of Operation Popeye.
Seventy member states of the UN signed the Convention in Geneva on May 18, 1977. The ENMOD Convention was entered into force in October 1978. It consisted of ten articles outlining the harmful effects of environmental modification on human welfare and allowing its use for peaceful purposes. In December 1979, President Jimmy Carter ratified the convention.
In urging a new Congress to adopt the convention, Carter gave credit to Senate Resolution 71. In mentioning this, he also referred to subsequent talks between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. In his letter to Congress, Carter stated that “…after three rounds of bilateral consultations,” the two nations “tabled identical draft texts of a multilateral convention at the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament in 1975. Negotiations on the basis of these texts resulted in the document I am transmitting to you today.” (Public Papers, 1978, Book II)
Opening Global Eyes
Claiborne Pell’s introduction of Resolution 71 played a significant part in the 1976 ratification of ENMOD. However, news columnist Jack Anderson must be credited with propelling the issue of environmental warfare to the forefront. Without his revelation, it is questionable if and when Operation Popeye would have been revealed. Operation Popeye opened global eyes to the harmful nature of geophysical engineering in wartime.
References
Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques. 2007. James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Operation Popeye. 2010. Citizendium: The Citizens Compendium.
Public Papers of the Presidents: Jimmy Carter, 1978, Book II. 1978 September 22. Convention on the Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques Message to the Senate Transmitting the Convention. The American Presidency Project.
The Limits of Inside Pressure: The US Congress Role in ENMOD. n.d. The Sunshine Project.
U.N. Documents: Gathering a Body of Global Agreements. n.d. Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques. NGO Committee on Education.
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