A weekly current affairs programme presented by Ross Stevens.
“Chemical weapons: quite literally the most unnerving form of human warfare. Example. Just one droplet of the liquid agent VX, enough to cover a pinhead, will kill you in a few minutes. And that’s important when you realise there are 400 tonnes of the stuff on board two cargo ships now heading for the Pacific to dump their most deadly of cargoes for destruction on Johnson Atoll. Hello, and this is Frontline”.
“Johnson Island, a US possession about a thousand kilometers south-west of Hawaii, may be the most toxic place on earth. Just two miles long and half a mile wide, the tiny coral island harbours an old nuclear weapons site that’s still contaminated with plutonium, 25 thousand barrels of the chemical emollient Agent Orange, and thousands of aging nerve and mustard gas missiles buried in concrete igloos. The end of the cold war means these weapons are scheduled for incineration. So too are another 25,000 tonnes of chemical warfare agents stored in West Germany and the United States. Two ships full of deadly nerve gas are at this time on the high seas bound for the Pacific. And the rest of the US stockpile could follow, as American communities bring pressure to bear not to have these weapons incinerated on mainland U.S.A.
The chemical weapons issue: why should they be burnt off in New Zealand’s back yard? Jenny Brockie of the ABC’s four corner’s programme reports.”
‘Backyard Burn-off’.
Interviewees include: Hayden Burgess, World Council of Indigenous People; Senator Gareth Evans, Minister for Foreign Affairs; Lee Feinstein, The Arms Control Association; Dr Bill Richardson, Dep. Asst. to Defence Sec, Pentagon; Dr Saul Hormats, Former Director, Aberdeen Arsenal, Maryland; Sebia Hawkins, Greenpeace; Charles Baronian, US Army Chemical Demilitarisation; Dr Jim Maragos, former US Army Pacific Env. Chief; Colonel Jim Knipp, Chemical Demilitarisation 1971-74; Steve Erickson, Utah.