Adele Ferguson-Nerve gas threat in Syria recalls NW crisis in 1969

“I SEE WHERE the president of Syria is threatening to use sarin nerve gas to quell the revolution aimed at getting him out of office and we are concerned it might wind up in the hands of terrorists,” said a caller. “Didn’t we have a problem with nerve gas once?”

Indeed we did, right here in Washington state. We were never told it was sarin, an amount of which on the point of a pin can kill you, just that nerve gas was coming. And that was thanks to an amendment to the military procurement bill in 1969 requiring that governors be notified when shipments of such chemicals would be crossing their states. Up until then, the Army just did its thing on its own.

In December of 1969, Gov, Dan Evans got the word that several shipments of nerve gas from Okinawa would be landed at Bangor Naval Ammunition Depot on Hood Canal and then taken by train to Umatilla, Ore., for storage.

It was panicsville among the public, with predictions of sabotage or accident resulting in people wiped out by the thousands from this deadly gas we were told so little about. U.S. Rep. Floyd Hicks, D-Tacoma, tried to get the Army to detoxify the gas on Okinawa and restore its properties here but that wasn’t possible. To destroy the gas and replace it would cost $30 million, he was told.

DON’T REPLACE IT, said Hicks. No way, said the Army. People were threatening to lie down on the tracks to prevent any nerve gas shipments from coming through their areas, despite the Army’s insistence it was perfectly safe.

Here’s what we are going to do in Operation Red Hat, said the Army. The cargo vessels carrying the gas containers from Okinawa will be met at the mouth of the Straits of Juan de Fuca by naval vessels under orders to interpose themselves and take the damage in case of any threatened collision with other vessels.

Once they get the gas to Bangor, it was to be loaded on munitions trains, 12 in all. Each of the trains would be led down the tracks by another train in case of rail damage and followed by yet another, loaded with medical teams, etc. Trucks loaded with more medical teams would travel along the highway parallel to the tracks. Helicopters will fly overhead and five helicopters will be on stand-by with more medics ready if needed.

Now the people really came unglued. If it takes that much precaution, they said, one slip could eliminate civilization between here and St. Louis. Stop the nerve gas!

IN MAY 1970, Gov. Evans and Gov. Tom McCall of Oregon scheduled simultaneous news conferences to jointly announce they were going to Washington, D.C. to plead with President Nixon to stop the gas shipment.

On the Saturday afternoon before the scheduled confabs, who should announce the good news that the nerve gas wasn’t coming after all but U.S. Sen.

Henry M. Jackson, who learned of it in a personal phone call from the president.

The two governors learned of it when contacted by the press for comment.

Evans and McCall were furious at having a Republican president bypass two Republican governors to give a plum announcement to a Democrat.

But, remember, Nixon was trying to get Jackson to be his Secretary of Defense at the time.

What happened to the gas? Who knows? Except that it didn’t come through here. That doesn’t mean poison gas hasn’t come through here since. There are or were eight chemical depots in the nation, closest one at Umatilla. Governors are still notified; they just don’t tell the public, not only to forestall panic but avoid alerting terrorists.

In the spring of 1995, a release of sarin gas in the Tokyo subways by terrorists killed a number of people. There since has been a treaty committing the U.S. and 123 other nations to destroying their chemical weapons.

Question: where did Syria get theirs?

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)