Volume 12, Number 6 · March 27, 1969
Your Friendly Neighborhood MACE
By Seymour M. Hersh
Most military historians cite April 22, 1915, the day the Germans used chlorine to kill 5,000 Frenchmen, as the beginning of gas warfare in World War I. A year earlier, however, both sides had set a dangerous precedent by firing tear gas shells and grenades at each other. Still, for nearly fifty years, gas was not systematically used again in warfare, until, late in 1963, the United States authorized tear gas attacks in the Vietnam War. The pattern was the same: tear gas followed by more lethal agents (see my earlier essays in the NYR, April 25 and May 9, 1960). Moreover, in 1963, during the Yemen war, the Egyptians began using mustard gas against the Royalists, and aroused little public protest; by 1967 Egypt was using nerve gas, according to official, but little noted, United States reports and evidence accumulated by the US State Department and Central Intelligence Agency.[1]
Feature, 3677 words
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