Project Clear Vision was a covert examination of

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

-made biological

bomblet A cluster munition is a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects smaller submunitions. Commonly, this is a cluster bomb that ejects explosive bomblets that are designed to kill personnel and destroy vehicl ...

s conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute under contract with the CIA. The legality of this project under the

Biological Weapons Convention The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), or Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), is a disarmament treaty that effectively bans biological and toxin weapons by prohibiting their development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpil ...

(BWC) of 1972 is disputed.

History

The operation

Project Clear Vision was conducted between 1997 and 2000, during the

Clinton Administration Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following a decisive election victory ove ...

. Miller, Judith, Engelberg, Stephen and Broad, William J.
U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits
, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', September 4, 2001. Retrieved January 6, 2009. The project's stated goal was to assess the efficacy of

bio-agent A biological agent (also called bio-agent, biological threat agent, biological warfare agent, biological weapon, or bioweapon) is a bacterium, virus, protozoan, parasite, fungus, or toxin that can be used purposefully as a weapon in bioterrorism ...

dissemination from bomblets. The program received criticism due to suspicions that its findings could possibly be used in a covert US bioweapons program.

Reportage

The secret project was disclosed in a September 2001 article in ''

''. Reporters Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William J. Broad collaborated to write the article. Shortly after the article appeared, the authors published a book that further elaborated the story. The 2001 book, '' Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War'', and the article are the only publicly available sources concerning Project Clear Vision and its sister projects,

Bacchus In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; grc, wikt:Διόνυσος, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstas ...

and Jefferson.Enemark, Christian. ''Disease and Security: Natural Plagues and Biological Weapons in East Asia'',
Google Books
, Routledge, 2007, pp. 173-75, ().

Legality

As signatory to the BWC, the United States is committed to refrain from development of bioweapons. Moreover, the US did not disclose the secret project in its annual confidence-building measure (CBM) declarations. Tucker, Jonathan B.
Biological Threat Assessment: Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?
", ''Arms Control Today, October 2004. Retrieved January 6, 2009. The US maintains that the program was fully consistent with the BWC because the project was defensive in nature.

History

The operation

Reportage

Legality

References

Further reading