Rumsfeld's Ray Gun

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Rumsfeld's New Ray-Gun

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:00:00 -0700

 

 

 

http://www.alternet.org/story/24044/

 

Rumsfeld's Ray Gun

 

By Kelly Hearn, AlterNet. Posted August 19, 2005

 

 

 

A non-lethal -- but potentially harmful -- crowd control weapon that

heats human skin is bound for Iraq, and possibly to a police

department near you.

 

 

A tough-talking Texan named Edward Hammond has to be a key element of

any accurate study of the spooky history of what the military calls

the " Active Denial System. "

 

The head of The Sunshine Project, a Texas-based group opposing

biological weapons, Hammond shows his disdain for military excesses

through swear words and federal disclosure suits that seek to lift a

window on military science projects. Two times now, he says, Marine

Corp staff handling his Freedom of Information Act claims have mailed

him the wrong envelope, mistakenly sending him materials meant for

another military office, envelopes that contained classified information.

 

One of those times, he says, was in May when he received 112 pages of

files on the Active Denial System, or ADS, a crowd control weapon

built by Raytheon Corporation and slated for military deployment in

Iraq in 2006. The documents included descriptions of tests conducted

on volunteer subjects at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.

Hammond, who had requested the documents, noticed something odd. " I

saw some of the documents that were marked classified should have been

redacted, " he said in a telephone interview.

 

The Secrets of 'Active Denial'

 

The Active Denial System is a Pentagon-funded, $51 million crowd

control device that rides atop a Humvee, looks like a TV dish, and

shoots energy waves 1/64 of an inch deep into human skin. It dispenses

brief but intolerable bursts of pain, sending bad guys fleeing but

supposedly leaving no lasting damage. (During a Pentagon press

briefing in 2001, this reporter felt a zap from an ADS prototype on

his fingertip and can attest to the brief but fleeting sensation that

a hot light bulb was pressing against the skin). ADS works outside the

range of small arms fire.

 

After a decade-long development cycle, the ADS is field ready but not

free of controversy. Military leaders, as noted in a recent USA Today

article, say it will save lives by helping U.S. troops avoid bombs and

bullets in urban zones where insurgents mix with civilians. Temporary

pain beats bullets and bombs, but Edward Hammond's files have

rekindled scientific questions about how the classified system works,

what it does to the body and how it will be used in the streets of

Basra or Baghdad or, one day, Boston.

 

As key scientific questions go unanswered, a version of the Active

Denial System is being developed by the Justice Department for use by

U.S. police departments. The National Institute of Justice, the

research arm of the Department of Justice, has issued a half-million

dollar grant to Raytheon Corporation for a " Solid-State Active Denial

System Demonstration Program, " according to the NIJ website. Alan

Fischer, a Raytheon spokesperson, said the company is " working on a

number of active denial projects, with various ranges. ADS may some

day be miniaturized down to a hand-held device that could be carried

in a purse or pocket and used for personal protection instead of

something like Mace. The potential for this technology is huge. "

 

The DOJ isn't the only one excited. The Department of Energy is

experimenting with ADS as a security device that would " deny access "

to nuclear facilities.

 

For most Americans, zapping Iraqi insurgents in Baghdad with a

potentially unsafe weapon is one thing; cooking political protestors

in Boston or Biloxi will surely be another. Against this backdrop,

observers say, Hammond's files become particularly important. " Right

now the press really isn't on this, " says Hammond. " But that will

change when the first videos are released showing this thing being

used on people. "

 

Far from a national security breach, Hammond's documents do offer a

small but worrisome glimpse inside a weapon that appears to be

slipping beneath the scrutiny of a lethal world with bigger

priorities. In July, New Scientist magazine reported on the files,

citing red flags that troubled some scientists. Though the ADS, for

example, will be face chaotic, unruly situations, the reports said

volunteers were banned from wearing glasses and contact lenses to

prevent possible eye damage. In other tests, volunteers were told to

remove metallic objects such as keys to avoid " hot spots " that might

burn skin.

 

Neil Davison, an expert in non-lethal weapons at Bradford University

in England, reviewed the files and questions how ADS would perform in

live conditions. In email interviews with AlterNet, Davison, a social

researcher with biology training, pointed out that one section on

medical risk analysis states that " ...exposure levels [of energy

waves] may exceed permissible exposure limits specified by the

relevant safety standard by as much as 20-fold... "

 

What millimeter waves (MMW) do to the body depends on the dose. And

about that, Davison and other experts have questions, lots of them.

How do operators control the dose that an individual receives? What is

the safety margin, rather, the difference in exposure time between it

being an effective weapon and it being harmful? Does the weapon cut

out after a certain time to prevent overexposure? What about people

targeted at different distances? How do operators avoid

unintentionally overexposing people at short ranges when aiming at

long range? And what of individual differences in health, age, and

sensitivity to MMW?

 

" What public information will be required before it is deployed to

control riots on the streets of Seattle or Boston? " Davison asked.

 

Military spokespeople are hush about the weapon's specifications but

dismiss claims that glasses and other everyday objects present

dangers. Rich Garcia, press officer at Air Force Research Laboratory's

Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, said he was

safely zapped by the weapon while wearing contact lenses and clothes

with zippers. When asked about the weapon's safety margin, Garcia said

he could not give specific times or exposure levels but added that

" the safety margin is determined by a variety of factors, including

the power of the system and the amount of time for each exposure. The

operator is key to ensuring that a person is not over exposed. "

 

But what about the eyes? The military's fact sheet for ADS cites a low

risk for blindness. Experts such as Dr. Henry Lai, a bioengineer at

The University of Washington in Seattle, agree the possibility exists.

" Hitting the eyes of a subject and causing corneal damage could be a

concern, " he said. " I doubt very much a subject once hit can close his

or her eyes fast enough to prevent extensive damage, since the reflex

is triggered by pain. That means the response would be too late. "

 

Long Term Problems

 

Aside from thermal injuries like blindness or burns, could a protestor

who got zapped by an overzealous ADS controller eventually wind up

with disease such as cancer? Another way of stating it: Do millimeter

waves at the frequency of 95 gigahertz cause long term biological

changes that are not related to heat?

 

The military says no. Others aren't so sure. And these things are

often hard, if not near-impossible, to prove.

 

In 2004, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization report on non-lethal

weapons raised warnings. " The long-term physiological effects of the

microwaves received by an individual are still being studied (maximum

acceptable dose, cumulative effect of successive exposures), " the

report states. " The absence of definitive results is the main obstacle

to the use of radio frequencies " . The report goes on to note that

" excessive power levels can have serious consequences for human targets. "

 

Those concerns were already planted. In 2001, days after ADS was

unveiled, Professor Ross Adey, one of the world's leading

bio-electromagnetic researchers, told UPI (in an article written by

this reporter) that he believed the device could lead to cancer or

cataracts, especially if the subject already carried an illness made

worse by the beams. Adey, who died last year, was a professor of

physiology at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda,

Calif, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a

former professor of the Royal Society of Medicine. He said Russian

studies in 1980s, as well as his own research, showed that millimeter

waves at some frequencies have a non-heat related impact on white

blood cells.

 

Adey noted that Soviet researchers have used millimeter waves in

experiments designed to treat diseases including skin disorders, heart

disease and cancer, suggesting that therapeutic benefits raises the

specter of potential hazards if a subject is overexposed.

Specifically, Adey said his work showed that radio frequency and the

lower microwave range effected enzyme systems that regulate growth and

division of white blood cells. He added that while the ADS does not

employ those specific wavelengths, no scientific evidence exists to

prove that millimeter waves could not cause similar damage.

 

Marvin Ziskin, a medical doctor and researcher at Temple University

who studies the bioeffects of millimeter waves of different frequency

said the weapon's 94 GHz " could affect enzyme systems within the skin

on a short term basis, " adding, however, that there are no known long

term effects. Ziskin said the military can't say for certain that the

device has no long term bioeffects, adding, however, that " this could

be said about anything. Science can not rule our the possibility of

future harm from any environmental stress. Nothing can be claimed to

be absolutely 'safe.' " Ziskin also said it is " probably true " that the

vast majority of the scientific literature on bioeffects research on

94 GHz comes from researchers associated with the Pentagon's weapon

development program.

 

He says, she says. Who can know? Can the Pentagon's claims be verified?

 

Davison, for one, says not likely. That's because the majority if not

all literature detailing research on bio-effects of the weapons'

specific wavelength (95 gigahertz) appears to have been conducted by

researchers linked to the Pentagon's weapon development program. In an

ADS fact sheet, the Air Force says a panel of non-governmental

scientists and medical experts reviewed bio-effects tests on humans.

When asked for the names of those experts, a press official at the Air

Force Research Laboratory's Human Effectiveness Directorate at Brooks

City Base, Texas, said experts were not immediately available to

answer. The Air Force's Garcia said he knows of no independent

research. A Marine Corp spokesman said the Joint Non-Lethal Weaponsate, the military organization in charge of ADS, is " unaware

of any release of classified documents or information relating to

Active Denial System. "

 

Kelly Hearn is a former UPI staff writer who lives in Washington DC

and Latin America. His work has appeared in the Christian Science

Monitor, American Prospect, and other publications.