Members of the military are not shorn of their constitutional rights while they remain in the military service. Blackstone said: ‘. . . he puts not off the citizen when he enters the camp; but it is because he is a citizen, and would wish to continue so, that he makes himself for a while a soldier.’[i]
After the Germans were defeated in World War II, it was not long before both an International War Crimes Tribunal was created, and a separate Military Tribunal, to try members of the German High Command and others for their “War Crimes, Crimes Against Peace and Against Humanity.”[ii] These military tribunals were held under the auspices of the four individual Zone Commanders, into which Germany had been divided at the end of the war. The Chief Prosecutor for the military tribunals in the American Zone was General Telford Taylor, U.S. Army. There were twelve separate trials held at Nuremberg by the American Military Governor, promulgated by Military Government Ordinance Number Seven, dated 25 October 1946. This ordinance was passed pursuant to the authority granted by Control Council Law Number 10, which set forth exactly who and what could be prosecuted and how the process was to occur (including that someone sentenced to death would be executed no later than 30 days after the “decision has become final”).[iii] It was in the American occupation zone that the second “series” of trials occurred in 1947 against the doctors who performed medical experiments on Jews, Poles, and other persons who were being held prisoner. These trials came to be known as the “Doctors Trials” or the “Medical Trials”. German scientists, some of them renowned in their fields, were tried as war criminals because of the experiments they had performed on behalf of the German High Command on unwilling victims.
Some of the experiments named in the indictment against the German doctors were startlingly similar to those detailed previously in Chapter 1. For example, Count II of the indictment, entitled War Crimes, [specification] Number 6 alleges that
Between September 1939 and April 1945 all of the defendants herein unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed war crimes, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving medical experiments without the subjects’ consent, upon civilians and members of the armed forces of nations then at war with the German Reich and who were in the custody of the German Reich in exercise of belligerent control.[iv]
The indictment goes on to list a number of different experiments, the most similar to American experiments of which were the lost (mustard) gas experiments. These were “[c]onducted at Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler, and other concentration camps for the benefit of the German Armed Forces to investigate the most effective treatment of wounds caused by Lost gas. Lost is a poison gas which is commonly known as mustard gas.”[v] One of the most horrifying aspects of the experiments was the scientific precision, and simultaneously the complete disregard for the subjects’ humanity, with which they were carried out – as if they were being conducted on mice. Many of the experiments had obvious utility for all Armed Forces. The U.S. prosecutor acknowledged as much in his opening statement.
A sort of rough pattern is apparent on the face of the indictment. Experiments concerning high altitude, the effect of cold, and the potability of processed sea water have an obvious relation to aeronautical and naval combat and rescue problems. The mustard gas and phosphorous burn experiments, as well as those relating to the healing value of sulfanilamide for wounds, can be related to air-raid and battlefield medical problems. It is well known that malaria, epidemic jaundice, and typhus were among the principal diseases which had to be combated by the German Armed Forces and by German authorities in occupied territories.
To some degree, the therapeutic pattern outlined above is undoubtedly a valid one, and explains why the Wehrmacht, and especially the German Air Force, participated in these experiments. Fanatically bent upon conquest, utterly ruthless as to the means or instruments to be used in achieving victory, and callous to the sufferings of people whom they regarded as inferior, the German militarists were willing to gather whatever scientific fruit these experiments might yield.[vi]
The high altitude tests were done to determine how high pilots would be able to fly; freezing tests on human subjects were done to learn how cold a person could get before dying, as well as what the best ways were to re-heat a freezing person. This had important implications for the Germans fighting on the brutally cold Russian front. Of more specific import for the anthrax vaccine herein discussed, the Germans also conducted a number of experiments involving chemical and biological warfare.
The most basic mustard gas tests involved simply gassing subjects and measuring its effect upon them. The Germans operated with the complete permission and authority of both their government and the society generally; the subjects weren’t even German soldiers, but captured enemy civilians or belligerents, so some of the tests went a step further and wounded some prisoners first to determine the effect the gas would have upon a wound under battlefield conditions. While it is important to state that none of the experiments involving the U.S. Department of Defense (of which we are aware) involved this kind of treatment, the ‘baseline’ experiments conducted by the German doctors were identical to the U.S. Department of Defense’s ‘man break’ tests conducted in the late Forties and Fifties. In fact, the lawyers for several of the Nazi doctors argued at trial that the German experiments were identical to the experiments conducted by the U.S. and Britain using human subjects in the period between World Wars War and Two. Of course, as has already been shown, the U.S. experiments were conducted, in most cases, AFTER the Nuremberg Trials, and in secret, and on U.S. citizens.
During their trial, the Nazi doctors offered several legal defenses to their actions, chief among these was that the doctors had not known that anything they were doing was wrongful because the experiments (in some cases) were no different than ones which had been regularly carried out by the Americans and Germans prior to the War. In other words, the argument is essentially a combination of challenging the war crimes tribunal’s charges as ex post facto laws, as well as a challenge to the notion of being on ‘notice’ that one’s actions are prohibited. i.e. The doctors argued that there existed no agreed-upon international common law on the use of human beings as subjects. While the world might say now, after victory, that the German doctors’ actions were wrongful, there was no law in existence prior to their actions to let them know what they were doing was criminal. This is a fundamental tenet of criminal law generally: the necessary existence of some law making the act criminal before it is committed, in order to provide notice to the actor that such acts are forbidden. This isn’t merely a matter of legal theory; while the reasons aren’t given, four of the seven defendants charged with experiments involving lost gas were acquitted.
Two doctors who worked with the U.S. prosecution team at Nuremberg, Drs. Andrew Ivy and Leo Alexander, were concerned with the defense arguments about there being no previous international statement or standard regarding the treatment of human subjects and their consent in medical experimentation. In April 1947, Dr. Alexander submitted a memorandum to the American Counsel of six points regarding medical experimentation on human subjects. The verdict against the doctors was returned on August 19, 1947. In the verdict, each of the six points was covered and expanded into ten points under a section entitled “Permissible Medical Experiments.” This came to be known as “The Nuremberg Code.” The Nuremberg Code’s first principle was that “the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” The principles of the Nuremberg Code were adopted by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1953 when the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force all adopted a memorandum entitled “Use of Human Volunteers in Experimental Research.” The first principle was verbatim from the Nuremberg Code. In 1964, the World Medical Association in its “Helsinki Declaration” adopted the Nuremberg Code. Eventually, these principles were codified in U.S. law as Title 50, section 1520a, but this didn’t happen until 1977, two years after the famous Church Committee hearings on the CIA and DoD experiments herein discussed.
There is, however, a seminal case from the Supreme Court called The Paquete Habana, which international law professors will say stands for the proposition that international law, in the form of treaties, executive agreements, and international norms and customs, are an essential part of U.S. domestic law.[vii] If that legal proposition is true, then the DoD’s experiments on its own soldiers without their informed consent was pushing up against the propositions that had been adopted in the aftermath of the Nuremberg Trials. It is certainly clear that by 1977, Congress thought something ‘wrongful’ had happened with the CIA’s MKULTRA program. At the opening of the hearings regarding the program, Senator Inouye, presiding, stated that “[i]t is also the purpose of this hearing to address the issues raised by any additional illegal or improper activities that have emerged from the files and to develop remedies to prevent such improper activities from occurring again.”[viii] Notice, however, what is conspicuously absent from that statement: any mention of holding people accountable for those putative violations of the law.
Admiral Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA, also seemed to believe that something illegal had happened because he conspicuously noted that (a) he was cooperating with the Attorney General, and (b) reminded the committee that MKULTRA did not occur on his watch, but was a program of another director and that the events were some 12-24 years past at the time of the hearings. MKULTRA lasted from 1953 to 1964 and was conducted in concert with the Department of the Army.[ix]
Interestingly, no one ever stated exactly what law they believed had been broken, nor what the penalty was for this crime. There was not then, and is not now, any federal criminal statute prohibiting a person or agency from conducting experiments on military members or ordinary citizens without their informed consent. Some members of the committees invoked the then-newly passed that was the product of a 1975 initial inquiry into these matters, but it wasn’t a criminal statute – it simply mandated informed consent with no actual punishment or remedy listed for violations. Chapter 3 delves into judicial remedies against a government agent or agency conducting such experiments. Technically, an unconsented medical procedure would constitute a battery or an assault consummated by a battery, but there is no federal “battery” statute; criminal law is almost entirely a matter for the states.
This raises an uncomfortable moral/ethical/legal question: which is worse, the German doctors who operated (they claimed) out of a genuine ignorance that their actions were wrong – and historically speaking they have a fair case for it – or the DoD and its doctors who clearly knew that their actions were wrongful in light of the German doctors’ trials? Someone will undoubtedly want to take me to task for comparing the CIA’s or DoD’s doctors to the Nazi doctors of World War II, however, either the principles of the Nuremberg Code are the standards of the medical profession or they are not – they cannot be called principles if they can be bent to the will of the doctor performing the particular tests, or justified and waived away after-the-fact with vague references to ‘national survival’ because short of the Revolution or the War of 1812, the U.S. has never faced the kind of military pressure against the homeland as Germany did in WW2.
The first principle enunciated in the Nuremberg Code is that “the informed consent of the subject is absolutely essential.” There is nothing equivocal about that statement. It does not say, for example, that “the informed consent of the subject is somewhat or mostly essential.” Nor does it manifest any limitation to only Nazi doctors or doctors of defeated Axis powers. As one author has noted, “[t]here is no exception for soldiers or for wartime.”[x] Which all goes to this simple point: there is no “greater good” exception or argument against the principle, because that is exactly what the Nazi doctors said they were doing.
Sidney Gottleib’s statement that it was considered a matter of ‘national survival’ has two dangerous flaws in it, one obvious, the other insidious. The first, obvious flaw is that it is exactly the same argument that the U.S. and other Allied powers forbade as a defense in Control Council Law Number 10. The Wehrmacht doctors certainly performed a number of experiments whose results had only one possible practical application and that was in the war effort in which they were engaged. In fact, the German doctors, involved as their country was in a losing battle against foreign powers with bombs dropping on them daily, probably had a much better claim to Gottleib’s “national survival” argument than the CIA or DoD had in the continental United States post World War II with the U.S. as one of the world’s only two (nuclear) superpowers.
More insidious, and hidden in Gottleib’s argument, however, is a claim of moral superiority. Gottleib’s argument allows that either he, or someone else on behalf of the state, can take away the subject’s right to decide the most fundamental question of humanity: the right to live. It is an objectification of the person – the person as tool of the State. As was pointed out by Supreme Court Justice William Brennan’s dissent in the Stanley case, quoting a law review article,
[Human experimentation authorized by the state] dramatizes the notion that the state is free to treat its nationals in the manner it chooses because it perceives itself as the source of all rights, and therefore as beyond the reach of law, rather than regarding rights as inalienable, that is, not subject to arbitrary cancellation by the State.[xi]
This is more insidious because it sounds academic and benign, perhaps even agreeable, because, after all, doesn’t each of us owe our way of life to the state? This simple, yet bankrupt, logic, and consequent objectification of human beings can easily be turned on particular groups and yields exactly the kind of thinking that helped create the Holocaust in the first instance. I do not want to oversimplify a tragedy on the scale of the Holocaust into one short sentence; it doesn’t do it justice nor does it take into account the myriad other factors in involving anti-Semitism in Europe that help account for what happened in Europe from 1933 to 1945. It is, however, critical to recognize arguments like Gottleib’s “national survival” and follow them to their logical conclusion, otherwise tragedies like the Holocaust get put aside as historical anomalies and when programs like MKULTRA, the Tuskegee experiments, and yes, even the current DoD anthrax program are announced, apologists differentiate them because, clearly, WE are not in any way morally comparable to the (gasp!) Nazi doctors… even when government actors are violating the exact same principle in the same way.
It may be that our government agents do not use specifically identical means that the Nazi doctors did: that is, brute force at the point of a gun. Instead, however, the CIA doctors in the MKULTRA program and the DoD doctors in the mustard and lewisite gas tests, or the Atomic Energy Commission in its radiation tests on soldiers, used deception or trickery, additionally backed by the very credible threat of future punishment (court-martial), in order to silence those who might bring their actions to light. In normal criminal trials, attempting to hide conduct is frequently admissible as “consciousness of guilt” – that is, evidence that the actor was aware of the wrongfulness of their actions. Worse than Gottleib’s public justification, however, is that in some cases, government actors consciously change history or the law: destroy documents, close test sites, classify evidence they don’t want to become public, and then offer some higher moral calling as justification – the threat of an invisible enemy, international terrorism, the ticking time bomb, etc. The end result is that these excuses either gain public acceptance, or create a sense of public indifference, to the rights of their fellow citizens.
Lest there be any question about whether this line of reasoning was ever explored by the Army or CIA doctors at the time, internal documents that were accidentally discovered because they were mis-filed and did not get destroyed like the rest of the more direct source documents became public and put a finer point on it. In 1977 hearings in front of the Senate, internal CIA documents revealed that the CIA believed that it must “conceal these activities from the American public in general,” because public knowledge of the “unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its mission.”[xii]
In a 1959 Staff Study, the United States Army Intelligence Corps (USAINTC) even more candidly explained its justification for abandoning the principles of the Nuremberg Code.
It was always a tenet of Army Intelligence that the basic American principle of dignity and welfare of the individual will not be violated . . . In intelligence, the stakes involved and the interests of national security may permit a more tolerant interpretation of moral-ethical values, but not legal limits, through necessity . . . Any claim against the US Government for alleged injury due to EA 1729 [LSD] must be legally shown to have been due to the material. Proper security and appropriate operational techniques can protect the fact of employment of EA 1729.[xiii]
That is to say, legal liability could be avoided by covering up the LSD experiments. If no one could prove they had been given the drug, no one on the administering side would ever have to pay the consequences for their actions.
Putting aside the moral reprehensibility of this position, the issue of the legality of the DoD’s tests is beyond cavil: the experiments violated a slew of laws. They certainly violated the spirit and letter of the Nuremberg Code. They violated any number of state criminal battery or assault statutes: an unconsented drug in one’s drink is a battery. By common law, the person administering such a treatment would be criminally liable for whatever happened to the person taking the drug.[1] These batteries would also be actionable in a tort suit for damages were the doctors in private practice. They violated the “common rule” and accepted standards of medical practice. They violated the civil rights of U.S. citizens, yet no one was ever prosecuted for these (and other) acts; no government agent or agency was ever forced to pay a service member a dime by any court for the harms done to them. The explanation as to why is a sobering bit of legal legerdemain.
[1] “During the Rockefeller Commission and Church Committee investigations in 1975, the cryptonym [MKULTRA] became publicly known when details of the drug-related death of Dr. Frank Olsen were publicized. In 1953 Dr. Olsen, a civilian employee of the Army at Fort Dietrick, leaped to his death from a hotel room window in New York City about a week after having unwittingly consumed LSD administered to him as an experiment at a meeting of LSD researchers called by CIA.” Prepared statement of Adm. Stansfield Turner, Director of the CIA, before a Senate Committee, August 3, 1977.
[i] U.S. v. Manuel, 43 M.J. 282, 286 (C.A.A.F. 1995)(citations omitted).
[ii] Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10., Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953.
[iii] Control Council Law No. 10, Dec. 20, 1945.
[iv] From the indictment, U.S. v . Brandt, et al. (The Medical Case), 2 Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, (1949).
[v] Id.
[vi] U.S. v . Brandt, et al. (The Medical Case), 2 Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, p. 37 (1949).
[vii] The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677 (1900).
[viii] Project MKULTRA: The CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification, Hearings Before the Senate Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Health and Human Resources, p. 2, August 3, 1977.
[ix] Id. at pp. 9-14.
[x] G.J. Annas, Changing the Consent Rules for Desert Storm, 326 New Eng. J. Med. 770 (1992).
[xi] Bassiouni, Baffes, & Evrard, An Appraisal of Human Experimentation in International Law and Practice: The Need for International Regulation of Human Experimentation, 72 J. of Crim. L. & C. 1597, 1607 (1981).
[xii] S. Rep. No. 94-755, Book I, p. 385 (1976)(quoting CIA Inspector General’s Survey of the Technical Services Division, p. 217 (1957)).
[xiii] Id., at 416-417 (emphasis added)(quoting USAINTC Staff Study, Material Testing Program EA 1729, p. 26 (Oct. 15, 1959)).
First
“interests of national security may permit a more tolerant interpretation of moral-ethical values”
*vomits*
“No ammendment is absolute…”
*vomits again*
Yeah, imagine my face when I read that just a month after passing the Bar. I was like, “WTF…!?”
They don’t mention these kinds of things in law school.
I’ll read this tomorrow. A quick skim shows many things worth absorbing.
I’ll cruise by in the morning (PST) and hang out to play lawyer on the comments, Spud.
While I agree there are universal human rights (as pointed out by the declaration and constitution) until the whole world is ruled by those standards and not the made up human rights of the UN, international rights will always be a sham, and thus trying someone under international law that is not adopted by their own country is ex post facto. So it’s all a mess.
It’s an interesting conundrum, CP. On the one hand, if no consensus exists on whether experimenting on people w/o their consent is bad, does that mean that no right to self-determination exists? i.e. Is it all cool that states experiment on their people simply because that’s what the people who run nations do? Or do we at some point put a stake in the ground and say, for another example, owning other humans = bad?
I think the lawyers for the Nazi doctors were in the impossible position of defending the indefensible, yet they could point to a lot of bad acts on the part of the Allied powers and legitimately ask: “Okay, how come our guys are getting the gallows and your guys are getting medals?”
Once we’re past a certain point in history, though, I think those kinds of defenses disappear. Again, slavery – while once a fairly standard practice worldwide – is gonna be a hard sell at this point.
The majority of Developed countries think guns are bad, mmkay. So get rid of those guns, mmkay. The majority of civilized countries have universal healthcare, that’s a right, mmkay. Food, housing and sex changes are also a right, mmkay….
Just sayin, to make it a point about international law is a bad move. To frame it as a conquered people being subjected to the laws of the conquerors is the truth. And that is fine; but to pretend some kangaroo international court is more just is opening a bad batch of things.
mmkayultra!
Mmkay.
I think we’re missing each other, CP. I’m not suggesting that just because some number of countries think “X = bad” that X is magically transformed into a violation of someone’s ‘rights.’ For example, to be crass, I’m disinclined to take our cue on ‘rights’ from countries that are still stoning their women for adultery.
My view is that rights exist outside of the State or its officers.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident… that [human beings] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, etc.”
It wasn’t a perfect formulation by any stretch, but it was a great attempt at articulating Human Rights, at a time when people were still being burned at the stake.
But, by what authority did the Nuremberg trials hold power over the defendants? As I said, as a conquered foe, ok, then our charter has sway; of under some nebulous ‘international law’, then we to are subjected to such. More a critique of language than ideals.
I’m just telling you that as a matter of law, if we sign onto a particular treaty, it becomes a part of domestic law; caveated of course, that it’s dependent upon the particular treaty and the language therein, and there are also things like ‘signing statements’ where the President or Congress may only adopt specific parts of a treaty, or reserve rights that they believe might be unintentionally implicated by the treaty language.
But the Geneva Conventions that came out of WW2 are generally good, I would say, and a fairly well-established part of US domestic law.
If our charter forbids expost facto, how can that chartered government sign on to a treaty that expels expost facto?
Can you be more specific? I’m not sure what law you specifically believe is ex post facto.
And I’m not sure you meant ‘expels’ ex post facto.
Also, remember, an ex post facto law isn’t one that creates a new crime. Congress and the States can both create new criminal laws: what they can’t do is reach back in time to make criminal an action that was taken *before* the law rendered the act criminal.
And I’ll answer back in the am. I gotta get some sleep, CP, but thanks for commenting.
what they can’t do is reach back in time to make criminal an action that was taken *before* the law rendered the act criminal.
Right, at the time these atrocities were committed, these people were German citizens, so how could US law supersede that and make them criminal actions after the fact (ex post facto)?
I’m not denying the results as wrong, I’m denying your justification (international law) was wrong.
Oh. Yeah, we’re definitely missing each other CPRM. I’m talking about the American doctors/scientists AFTER the Nazi trials had already happened. My apologies. I have no idea about German domestic law, treaties, etc. I was speaking about US personnel post-Nuremburg.
As far as the Nazis go, I think (as this chapter suggests) the arguments the Nazi doctors were offering were pretty convincing. (It’s why I mentioned that 4 of 7 of them were acquitted on those specific charges.)
The problem they had was that they did a bunch of horrible shit *in addition to* the un-consented medical procedures, as well as things that were clearly violative of long-established norms in the Law of War. For example, on the Continent for centuries captured officers were treated relatively humanely. The Nazis just threw all of that out the window.
In other words, it wasn’t that they simply got the “victors get to try the losers” treatment dressed up in ex post facto international law; they had done shit that violated long-established norms, such as the Law of the Sea (as another example) and the Law of War.
Justice Robert Jackson took leave of the Supreme Court to be the Chief Prosecutor for Nuremburg, as well as helping to draft the “London Charter” which established the trials and gave them legitimacy. I didn’t want to get bogged down in that, but I think you should read it and make up your own mind.
Going further astray, I find it interesting how the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal diverged from the Nuremberg one rather than being strictly a cookie cutter repeat.
Gustave – that whole Tribunal is worth a look on its own. THAT one looks a lot more like, “Find us someone to try for what was done to the Americans and Allies… but not the senior folks in Tokyo because we need them.”
And more to the point for the case at hand – the anthrax vaccine – once the US signs on to a treaty, that is considered a part of domestic law. No one doing experiments on unwitting troops in the 60s and 70s could claim, “Oh, what? Wait, we can’t just inject servicemen with unknown and untested drugs? We can’t spike their drinks with LSD? OH, shit. Sorry about that. We didn’t know.”
I think that ship had long since sailed, and yet – there it is.
This raises an uncomfortable moral/ethical/legal question: which is worse, the German doctors who operated (they claimed) out of a genuine ignorance that their actions were wrong – and historically speaking they have a fair case for it – or the DoD and its doctors who clearly knew that their actions were wrongful in light of the German doctors’ trials? – I would say there is a difference between not trying to actually kill or maim or torture the subject while getting info, and completely different when you kill maim torture on purpose to see what happens. Why both profoundly immoral, I find some experiments worse than others. So for me the Germans are worse, and the ignorance claim is nonsense given what occurred. I did not know it is not okay to murder and torture people without any regard for them whatsoever.
But it is quite a good article for moments when I think I have it tough cause my life is not exactly how I would want it to be, for some perspective. Sadly in this world of ours there is too much perspective on these things…
Yup, agreed. I just started reading The Rape of Nanking. Talk about inhuman barbarism. What the Japs did to those poor Chinese was astoundingly cruel.
also I think Gottlieb may be slightly misspelled 🙂
But then again serves the scumbag right.
Blame the Jews, Pie. It’s always the Jews.
In that vein:
https://freebeacon.com/issues/california-introduces-radical-anti-semitic-high-school-curriculum/
Fuck this state. (((My))) taxes are paying for this.
I will join with those that voiced concern over this link prior, that it does not actually link to anything. I have no context for any those quotes. Might be racist, I dunno. but what I do find funny are people who say Israel is apartheid state, but oddly the folks in charge aren’t allowed access to THE holy site of their faith, that’s some tough apartheiding there.
Damn Ozy! I was expecting a straightforward anthrax travelogue. This is court case or a novel building a foundation. I’m reminded of Chekhov’s gun reading this.
SP and the Glibs Editorial Staff were kind enough to allow me to publish this serially, but yes, it’s a complete novel. I wrote it quite some time ago and decided to dust it off, do some editing, and tell this story in which I had just one small part. It was the event that led me to libertarianism, although I didn’t even know the word at the time.
Keep going Ozzy! I find it fascinating.
Thanks, Dbl. There’s quite a bit left, so no worries there. Not to give anything away, but the next chapter is back to narrative.
I tried to keep a balance between the necessary legal and historical background information and the court case itself.
As I mentioned when you were over this morning, I think you’re doing a splendid job, Ozy. This is what we envisioned the website bringing to light.
This is more insidious because it sounds academic and benign, perhaps even agreeable, because, after all, doesn’t each of us owe our way of life to the state? – Fuck… No
This is why I often don’t get non libertarians. They look at all this shit in history, and still feel the need for top men to decide their life, with some idiotic belief that the next time they will all be angels and will not do this shit.
Watching the video below of AngryVet reminded me of this anthrax series, if a bit more of an emotional outburst
https://youtu.be/wdHVWMc5eYU
I would believe he got brain damage.
Another great post Ozy. Why are they going up so late?
The Glib Editorial Staff offered this up (with good reason*) and I was happy to take it.
*This is going to probably be 50 chapters or so and they’ve given it its own niche, separate from daily links and other features. I think it’s even on the sidebar from the front page, so it’s not hiding.
It may not grab the same number of comments as the normal links because of the time, but I think in the long run it will get the people who are interested and I’ll be checking in to engage if folks have questions or ideas about the content.
This is going to probably be 50 chapters or so
https://youtu.be/-x3QcE43pMI
I’ll take an Arsenio fist pump! (God, remember when he was considered hip and cool? I do. I’ll admit it: I liked the guy.)
It publishes outside of my normal operating hours, but I see it as required reading nonetheless. Thanks for the well thought out and compelling series, Ozy!
Eh about when I get to work really… reading with the morning coffee works
http://www.treknews.net/2019/08/13/barbara-march-star-trek-lursa-passes-away/
This is fascinating stuff Ozy. It hits a little close to home, so I will definitely be following along. Keep it up, although I don’t think my blood pressure will appreciate it.
That’s what drugs are for.
PS. It’s been a while since we’ve seen an article from you. Just sayin’.
Been focused on work a lot lately. I shall have to compose something!
Offhand, this also reminds me of Japanese unit 731 (and the infamous exploitation flick “The Men Behind the Sun” – which I haven’t yet seen). IIRC we didn’t have a Nuremberg equivalent trial set over there…but do you cover anything from the Pacific Theater in your series?
After his failed suicide, Tojo got new dentures and then was hanged
Thanks, Ozy. This is the kind of info we need to remind ourselves (I’m talking about the super nationalists,Bolton style) of the horrors of war. Napalm is not a boy scout wienie roast.
Operation Phoenix info is probably still classified, what value was gained is unknown to We, the People, but I fear most don’t care anyway. Thanks again, your work is greatly appreciated.
Great read on an important topic, Ozy – thanks!
An interesting qualifier, in hindsight.
Is it just me, or the morning links aren’t up yet?
Idk if it’s intentional or not, but I think its a good idea to delay the links 30 minutes on Ozy nights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUXuQ6Zd9w
It’s just you, and the lynx aren’t up yet.
Lynx like to sleep a lot.
I haven’t seen ’em yet
::flips keyboard over, sets it on fire::
ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!
What are the ethics of experimenting link times om uninformed glibs?
Why? What have you heard? Who told you? You’re not supposed to know!
You could always pop over to hit&run, or whatever it’s called now. Top-shelf commentary happening over there, last I checked. The classiest, really.
Last I heard, they shut that down.
The publication calendar shows a draft links by Mexi scheduled for this morning at 7:00. I think TPTB have to release/approve these before they go live.
Looking at the publication calendar is cheating
Ozy, I have to say this is right up my alley on multiple fronts:
– my first college degree was in history, with a specific focus on military history and the history of technology. The discussion of the WWII trials was a topic we discussed at length in my classes, but we never took it beyond the trials. While I knew of the US programs, I never consciously made the connection between the two. This was fascinating to me.
– I’ve hinted at it here before, and my user name pretty much gives it away, but I am a project manager at the DoD Inspector General. I’ve been asked multiple times how a libertarian/borderline anarchist can justify working in this sort of position, and it’s stories like these and the burning moral rage they induce in me that I point to when responding. The minute I become resigned to the fact that this sort of thing happens is the day that I need to quit my job. Until then I will be the firebrand pushing my agency to actually address the issues it should be reviewing. Unfortunately, I feel like a lone voice screaming in the void most times.
I look forward to the continuation of the story, and the anger that it provokes in me to continue doing my job.
STEVE SMITH SAY DON’T SCREAM AT VOID. RAPE IT!
I’m pretty sure that would violate most everything I’m taught in my sexual harassment prevention training that I have to take every year…
Does S. Harassment change every year and needs to be upgraded and therefore needs annual training?
You are assuming that they actually change the training. I have a long list of mandatory training I have to take every year, and most of them haven’t changed one bit since I started with the government 20 years ago.
I guess they believe that the average government worker won’t be able to remember what they learned on an annual basis since they started working. Based on my experience, they probably aren’t too far from the truth in that belief.
Keep doing what you’re doing, friend. I wish more of us were in a position to do the same.
The real question: is Q allowed to post the daily tits link in such an article as this?
NSFW
https://leakedpie.com/ig-model-demi-rose-mawby-exposed/
NSFW
We can always count on the Count!
Oh yeah. Encouraged even.
BREAKING: Matthew Yglesias Is An Asshole
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1156164664298024960
Great read! Always enjoy reading these in the morning.
Sorry I’m a day late, but I have to say I’m loving your articles. Thanks Ozy.
Life lesson #1: be sure to end up on the winning side.
Yeah, that’s always been the rule. Back in the day it very likely meant a horrible death and/or watching your wives and daughters raped (on the worst end) OR slavery (probably an upgrade from extermination). Now it means trials and reparations and having your ideology become a moniker for Progressives (NAZI !!1!1!!) in perpetuity.
There is nothing in the National Research Act of 1974 that I can see that exempts the CIA from its requirements. So, it is now my goal to sit on the IRB for the CIA – can you imagine how cool that would be? The ethical implications of implanting mind control chips reversed engineered from alien technology are fascinating!
We used to have a lottery when I was a prosecutor at MCB Quantico as to who would have to answer one of these rambling complaints about “THE CIA MIND CONTROL HAS IMPLANTED DEVICES IN MY TEETH AND THE VOICES TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!!” Somehow, these things would occasionally get staffed to us because rambling homeless guy was a vet and made some claims relevant to us. I always felt bad for the people who wrote them, but they clog up the court’s docket.
We should compare stories sometime. I was in charge of the IG office in Germany for six years, and we had some doozies come in. It was usually enough to direct them to the hotline, but there were a handful that kept coming to my office…
Probably a dead string at this point, but I want to thank Ozy for this.
When my father died, he had leukemia (and low blood pressure). He worked most of his adult life doing DoD nuclear power research/tests. My sisters like to think he got exposed to harmful radiation there (knowing full well my dad was a safety freak at work and his personal disputes with lax safety forced us onto food stamps for a few months while he refused to work in conditions where safety standards were being subject to shortcut). My brother is a WWII buff and he knows a lot about the types of military operations and he told them “Dad worked on nuclear stuff in the Air Force in the 50’s and only God knows what kind of exposure he had then. Dad himself eventually wondered which is why he was a safety freak. “
Sorry for your loss, IF. And I’m likely to come down on your brother’s side on this. I’ll try to remind myself to hit you up when a particular chapter comes up later on regarding some more of that type of stuff. When I really started digging in on these kinds of things I was just astounded. The Senate report I mentioned before is worth reading. Sen Rep 103-97, known as the “Rockefeller Report” on US experimentation on servicemembers. It’s heartbreaking, really. And it’s a mater of public record – you can find it in pdf from a quick google search.