COMMENTS FROM STREET TALK NETWORK ABOUT THIS POST-

1. Do your own research on the information provided and then come up with your own conclusions.

2. This article contains many names and other information that can be researched.

3. Trust your gut feeling on information provided as this post may contain slanted information.

4. Street Talk can find spraying chemicals on us by our own government going back to 1949.

5. Of course, the big question is how our own government spray dangerous chemicals on children and adults that were unaware of what was going on.

6. Raises questions about the streaks we see in the sky from airplanes. What are they spraying on us and why?

The United States operated secret chemical and biological programs intended to discover how crops could be damaged, diseased, or destroyed. Rice was one of the principal targets.

However, after searching government reports, congressional testimony, military histories, declassified material, scholarly studies, and contemporary reporting, I did not find reliable documentation proving that the CIA itself secretly sprayed dangerous chemicals directly over commercial Louisiana rice fields.

The available evidence points primarily to the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, the Army Biological Laboratories at Fort Detrick, the Air Force, and cooperating agricultural researchers. The CIA conducted related covert biological and chemical research, but that does not establish that every military crop experiment—particularly those in Louisiana—was a CIA operation.

That distinction is important: the underlying anti-crop program was real and alarming, but the specific statement “the CIA sprayed Louisiana rice fields with dangerous chemicals” is stronger than the presently available evidence supports.

Louisiana’s documented connection

During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States developed biological agents intended to attack the food supplies of potential enemies, particularly the Soviet Union and China. Three principal anti-crop agents were eventually produced or stockpiled:

• Wheat stem-rust fungus
• Rye stem-rust fungus
• Rice-blast fungus, then known as Pyricularia
  oryzae and now commonly classified as Magnaporthe oryzae

Rice blast was assigned the military designation Agent LX and became a standardized anti-crop biological-warfare agent in March 1958. Pfizer produced quantities of rice-blast spores under government contract and shipped them to Fort Detrick for processing, drying, classification, and storage. The Army’s history reports that the anti-crop stockpile was destroyed during biological-warfare demilitarization, completed in February 1973. Army history of Fort Detrick

Louisiana appears in historical accounts in two different ways:

1. Military logistical activity in Shreveport

Historical scholarship reports that material associated with the anti-crop program was taken to Shreveport, Louisiana, and loaded aboard military aircraft. Some of this material was reportedly transported to the Avon Park testing range in Florida. That establishes a Louisiana connection to the military program, but transportation or loading in Louisiana is not the same as spraying Louisiana rice farms.

2. Rice-disease research in Louisiana

Louisiana was—and remains—one of America’s principal rice-producing states. Military accounts say rice-blast studies occurred at several southern and Midwestern sites, with research connected to Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and later Okinawa. Unfortunately, many surviving public summaries do not identify the Louisiana farms, acreage, formulations, dates, or whether every Louisiana study involved the release of a militarized strain.

The strongest official military history states that rice-blast and cereal-rust experiments were conducted at several locations in the southern and Midwestern United States and on Okinawa. It places responsibility on the Defense Department and Chemical Corps—not specifically on the CIA. U.S. Army history of chemical and biological warfare

Was rice blast a “dangerous chemical”?

Rice blast was not a chemical poison like Agent Orange or a nerve agent. It was a living fungal plant pathogen developed as a biological weapon.

Its intended danger was primarily to rice:

• Spores land on susceptible rice plants.
• The fungus penetrates the plant’s outer surface.
• It produces lesions on leaves, stems, and
  grain-bearing structures.
• Severe infection can burn or kill large areas of
  foliage.
• Infection of the neck below the rice head can
  prevent grain from developing.
• A large-scale attack could destroy food, create
  shortages, raise prices, and cause hunger.

Modern agricultural sources describe rice blast as one of the world’s most destructive rice diseases. Researchers estimate that it destroys enough rice annually to feed tens of millions of people. National Science Foundation explanation

The fungus is not generally treated as a human-infectious biological weapon. The danger was the deliberate destruction of agriculture, although people conducting concentrated spore-production or dissemination work could also face occupational exposure and respiratory irritation.

What was actually sprayed over rice fields?

The best-documented releases of militarized rice-blast material occurred outside the continental United States.

In 1961–1962, American personnel conducted more than a dozen rice-blast trials on Okinawa. Historical accounts say inoculum was released beside rice plots using a small agricultural duster and that investigators measured the resulting infection and crop damage. Tests were also associated with work in Taiwan and with research at Avon Park, Florida.

These experiments were conducted while the United States was considering how anti-crop weapons might be used against Asian rice production. Contemporary documentation reportedly identified China and Southeast Asia as potential strategic targets.

There is considerably better documentation for releasing rice blast over experimental paddies on Okinawa than for spraying operational material over privately owned Louisiana rice fields. Report on the Okinawa rice-blast experiments

Crop-destruction experiments in other states

The following are the principal states connected to documented American anti-crop or tactical-herbicide work. Not every location involved food crops, and testing, routine weed control, storage, disposal, and biological-warfare research should not be treated as identical.

The Department of Veterans Affairs maintains the official list of confirmed American tactical-herbicide testing, storage, and disposal projects. VA list of U.S. herbicide locations

Florida was the major domestic spraying location

If the question is where the clearest domestic evidence exists for purposeful aerial spraying of powerful crop-killing chemicals, Florida stands out.

At Eglin Air Force Base:

• The military established test grids for aerial
  herbicide application.
• Different aircraft, spray equipment,
  concentrations, droplet sizes, and flight patterns were evaluated.
• Agents Orange, Purple, White, and Blue were among
  the tactical formulations tested.
• Agent Orange contained 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T.
• Manufacturing contamination of 2,4,5-T introduced
  TCDD, a highly toxic and persistent form of dioxin.
• Agent Blue contained cacodylic acid, an
  arsenic-based herbicide.
• The purpose was to determine how effectively the
  formulations killed vegetation before large-scale use in Vietnam.

The Government Accountability Office found substantial problems in the Defense Department’s historical list, including inaccurate locations, inconsistent terminology, and inadequate documentation. Therefore, claims about a particular site should be checked against original reports rather than copied from secondary lists. 2018 GAO investigation

Other secret spraying experiments should not be confused with crop tests

The military also conducted more than 200 open-air biological-dissemination experiments over American cities and military facilities between the late 1940s and 1969. Some involved microorganisms; others used fluorescent particles such as zinc cadmium sulfide as tracers.

Examples included:

• San Francisco, California
• Minneapolis, Minnesota
• St. Louis, Missouri
• New York City
• Washington, D.C.
• Norfolk, Virginia
• Various military installations

These experiments are relevant because they demonstrate that secret open-air releases really occurred. Nevertheless, most were designed to measure how an aerosol would spread through a city—not to destroy crops. A National Research Council history says 160 tests involving biological or nonbiological simulants were conducted at 66 locations in the United States and Canada. National Research Council historical review

In March 1977, the Army publicly acknowledged 239 open-air germ-warfare tests conducted between 1949 and 1969. Contemporary Washington Post report

The CIA’s real connection

The CIA did participate in covert chemical and biological research, particularly through its relationship with Fort Detrick and programs associated with its Technical Services Staff. CIA personnel investigated poisons, incapacitating agents, biological materials, crop sabotage, and clandestine delivery systems.

The official Army medical history explicitly says that covert biological programs were conducted by the CIA. Army history of the biological-warfare program

But three different propositions must be kept separate:

• Proven:
  The CIA conducted covert biological and chemical research.
• Proven:
  The military developed rice blast as an anti-crop weapon and conducted
  field research in the United States and abroad.
• Not presently proven: The CIA itself sprayed dangerous chemicals over
  privately operated Louisiana rice fields.

It is possible that additional classified or poorly indexed records could clarify the Louisiana work. Based on presently available evidence, however, the most accurate description is:

During the Cold War, the U.S. military developed rice-blast fungus as a biological weapon and conducted anti-crop research connected to Louisiana, Texas, Florida, and other locations. Louisiana also figured in the program’s logistics and rice-disease research. The CIA had a separate but sometimes overlapping covert biological program, yet available records do not conclusively show that CIA aircraft sprayed dangerous chemicals over Louisiana’s commercial rice fields.

That conclusion recognizes the genuine history without attributing a particular act to the CIA before the documentary evidence supports it.