Stan Statham: My take on biological weapons – Red Bluff Daily News

Last month President Trump authorized an attack that launched 50 Tomahawk missiles into Syria. That brought a personal experience back to me that I had long ago.

We all know that Syrias President Bashar Al-Assad has used biological weapons, or WMDs, against his own citizens. Sarin gas was just one of the Weapons of Mass Destruction that Al-Assad has used over the years. His actions are beyond despicable. It is not unlike something Adolph Hitler would have done against the Jewish people if such biological weapons would have been available to him then.

The reason this was a personal experience was because of my service in the United States Army in the late 1950s. As a member of the 131st Medical Technical Intelligence Group, I joined a Mayor and a Sergeant Major and we were all assigned to a small intelligence unit. That was 1956 in Berlin, Germany.

The unit was in the espionage business. Both the Major and the Master Sergeant spoke German. I did not. We had all received Top Secret clearances and were assigned to gather as much information as possible from East Germany regarding biological weapons. At that time I still remember that we called it Germ Warfare.

Those two gentlemen and I were assigned to gather intelligence by meeting with people we referred to as sources. After those meetings my task was to microfilm documents and type a report which I forwarded immediately to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

One of my favorite memories of that time was that the other two guys regularly used a small tape recorder the size of a Walkman that they stuck into a back pocket. There was a long, thin cord which had to be put down the sleeve of the Major or Master Sergeants coat and plugged into an actual fake wrist watch, which was in fact was the microphone.

I remember that just one of the locations from which we gathered information was the Institute for Serum and Vaccine Testing located in Leipzig, Germany. That facility was then thought to be developing those kind of deadly weapons.

I was quartered in a private home in the then American sector of Berlin. The previous occupants had been a Jewish family that had been forcibly removed by Hitlers people.

Incidentally, my very own father, who served in the Canadian Army in World War One, was in France fighting the Germans when the new biological weapon of nerve gas was first used. Little did I know that I would be spending my last teenage years as a James Bond type and be actually located only a few miles from the then Berlin Wall.

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Twenty six countries have already prohibited use of these modern uncivilized weapons. In fact Syrias use of Sarin gas recently killed many innocent men, women and children. China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and America are known to have WMDs and are also capable of using them.

The information that bothers me most today is that the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, also has the ability to start using chemicals in warfare. And, that is tragic because I think he is one crazy bastard.

My take on the movies

I recommend The Circle.

If you are a techie I think you should enjoy watching Tom Hanks, Emma Watson and the late Bill Paxton in is final film appearance.

It also shows us that the power of women can easily be equal to the power of men. Duh.

Stan Statham served 1976-1994 in the California Assembly and was a television news anchor at KHSL-TV in Chico 1965-1975. He is past president of the California Broadcasters Association and can be reached at StanStatham@gmail.com.

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Stan Statham: My take on biological weapons - Red Bluff Daily News