Animals go to War

It is in experiments such as these, utilising creatures that have never known the meaning of war, that scientists the world over are engaged in the most intricate planning imaginable for Armageddon. On a deeper level, this kind of research not only reflects the excesses of utilitarianism as a dogma which has run amok, but also science's chronic blindness towards spiritual and ethical values. Indeed, the exploitation of animals in laboratories is still firmly rooted in the archaic and mechanistic principles that were expounded by the earliest patriarchs of vivisection, men like René Descartes, who believed that animals were inanimate objects that must be "strictly considered as machines," and Claude Bernard, the nineteenth century French physiologist who declared that he could "act upon living bodies as upon inanimate objects." In much the same way, even the closest of our fellow species which are conscripted into fatal military service every year are also reduced to mere statistics, and "scientific models." The dry and impassive statistics so grudgingly produced by the military establishment actually provide a convenient curtain against a litany of individual suffering.

The ritual justifications for military experiments on animals bear more than a passing resemblance to Orwell's drab and fearful world of Nineteen Eighty Four, where hypocrisy has been tuned to a fine art, and where, governed by Big Brother and the paranoia of power, doublespeak is the order of the day - "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength." It is thus that military vivisection is justified as being "strictly for the purposes of defence" - although animals are also routinely killed in the development of obviously offensive weapons systems; that the secrecy surrounding such experiments is for the protection of "national security" - but also to save the public from "emotional prejudices" and "sentimentality"; and that while animals are utilised precisely because of their alleged physiological and psychological resemblance to humans, "anthropomorphic judgements" which might accidentally confer upon them some shred of fundamental rights and dignity must be avoided at all costs.

From chariot horses in the ancient world, to Hannibal's merciless exploitation of elephants to cross the Alps and confront the Roman Empire, animals have played a fundamental role in the long and murky history of human warfare. But it was not until the twentieth century that the military use of animals became distinctly sinister and bizarre. During the Second World War, the American army used kamikaze "tankdogs" to blow up German panzers. In their book A Higher Form of Killing, Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman describe how the dogs were taken away from their mothers as soon as they were weaned, and were only given food under the bellies of tanks. Once on the battlefield, the dogs were held on the verge of starvation, with explosives and a tall triggering antenna strapped to their backs. As the German panzers approached, the hungry animals were released. Running instinctively under the enemy tanks searching for food, the antenna would scrape along the metal belly, detonating the explosives and thus destroying both tank and dog.

Even more imaginative plans were laid by the American OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, reports Harris and Paxman. One of these focussed on the instinctive fear of cats for water and their legendary ability to always land on their feet. The OSS scientists thus reasoned that a bomb could be attached to the cat which would then be strapped under a fighter plane. When dive-bombing Nazi warships, the cat would be released and in the animal's desperation to avoid water, it would almost certainly guide the bomb onto enemy decks. Experiments with the flying cats however, proved rather less than successful since the animals became unconscious long before the ship far below them presented an ideal place to land. Over the following years, millions of animals were to become victims of World War III. The justification was as simple as ABC, that acronym of the kindergarten, representing the first steps of knowledge, also applied with unintended cynicism to atomic, bacteriological and chemical weapons.

But it is in the USA, which gave the world its first monkey head transplant, that military experiments seem most grotesque. By the early 1960's, the military scientists had shifted their unquenchable curiosity to the cetaceans, both as a research tool and a war machine. The US Navy launched its secret dolphin project in 1960, trying to discover whether the sleek physiology of the animals could be applied to the design of submarines, underwater missiles and torpedoes. The programme however was soon growing by leaps and bounds, encompassing distinctly more sinister research. This included the training of dolphins to attach explosives and electronic eavesdropping devices on enemy ships and submarines, and helping Navy divers recover lost, expensive weapons from the ocean floor. By 1965, it became obvious that the USA was facing stiff competition from the USSR, raising the spectre, according to the CIA, of "a dolphin gap." According to US intelligence reports, the Soviet dolphin project involves five Black Sea research stations, including small bio-acoustics laboratories and a dolphinarium. The Russian programme, the CIA fretted, "could enable the Soviets to evaluate the potential benefits of developing acoustic jamming countermeasures to US Navy dolphin programs. . ." In the 1981 issue of US Naval Institute Proceedings, Lt. Commander Douglas R. Burnett, an admiralty attorney, discussed the issue of combat-dolphin escalation between the superpowers. "There may be no choice except to destroy dolphins," he warned, "or any marine mammal representing a similar threat."

But are the animals trained or brainwashed to become killers? Ironically, it was the neurophysiologist and "New Age Guru" Dr. John Lilly who first perfected a technique of implanting electrodes into the brains of unanaesthetised animals and stimulating the "pain and pleasure sectors" of the mind. After butchering monkeys by the dozen at the National Institute of Mental Health, Lilly concluded that judicious manipulation of these brain areas could inspire joy and well-being, or pain, anger and fear. Indeed, by using the electrodes to deliver reward or punishment stimuli, the animal could be entirely subordinated to human will. The ingenious Lilly then turned his attention to dolphins, under the pretext of wishing to "communicate" with these intelligent and highly perceptive creatures. To insert electrodes into the brains of the fully-conscious animals, holes were made in the skull with a sharp instrument and a carpenter's hammer. According to Prof. Giorgio Pilleri, "the dolphin was held down but tried to jump up at every blow - not because of the pain, but because of the unbearable noise produced by the hammering." Indeed, many of Lilly's dolphins suffered an agonising death. "Despite disappointment and sadness," he announced, "we had to go on with our research: our responsibilities lie with finding the truth." It was not until years later however that a repentant Lilly finally stumbled across that apparently elusive truth. After suffering drug addiction and a mental breakdown, he characterised his research in an entirely different light: "I was running a concentration camp for my friends."

But predictably perhaps, the practical applications of such research were not lost upon the US military and intelligence services, which had promptly ordered Lilly to provide full demonstrations of his work. Not long afterwards, the Sandia Corporation, under government contract to design a small and easily portable nuclear bomb, presented its experimental delivery system: a mule, controlled by a sun compass and brain electrodes. Although crossing mountainous country and difficult terrain, the mule was kept on a perfectly straight course by the feelings of punishment or reward that the electrodes delivered into its brain.

Judging from the testimony of former trainers in the CIA and US Navy, similar, though perhaps less invasive "brainwashing" techniques have been employed using cetaceans since the early 1970's. One former and disillusioned trainer, the neurophysiologist Dr Michael Greenwood, revealed that the US Navy had trained orcas to carry and deliver explosives. Most frightening of all, he declared, the animal, capable of towing a weight of up to 7 tons for several miles, has been taught to carry nuclear warheads to enemy shores. Stopping a nuclear killer whale on such a mission would be virtually impossible, he added.

By 1972, the US Navy had deployed a top-secret team of "warrior porpoises" in Vietnam, part of its "Swimmer Nullification Program", yet another Orwellian code name for killing. For at least a year, these experimental dolphins were utilised to protect strategic Vietnamese harbours against infiltration by enemy frogmen. According to Dr. James Fitzgerald, pioneer in dolphin research for the CIA and US Navy, after detecting an intruding diver, the animals were trained to pull off his face mask and flippers, tear the air-supply tubes, and finally "capture him for interrogation." In fact the dolphins serving in Vietnam seem to have been considerably less benign. Indeed, it was the increasingly sordid exploitation of cetaceans by the US military which began to provoke repulsion amongst its own dolphin trainers. Several resigned in disgust, and experienced few qualms about betraying at least some of the military's secrets to the public. According to Dr. Michael Greenwood, the Navy's dolphins had also been taught to kill, with knives attached to their flippers and snouts. Worse was to come however, when dolphins were equipped with large hypodermic syringes loaded with pressurised carbon dioxide. As the dolphin rammed an enemy frogman with the needle, the rapidly expanding gas would cause the victim to literally explode. Years later, it was revealed that the killer dolphins of Vietnam had actually been responsible for the deaths of 40 Vietcong divers, and accidentally, two American servicemen. As one former dolphin trainer for the CIA put it, "they can't tell the difference between a friend and an enemy." Indeed, perhaps the very concept of friend and deadly foe - a duality manifesting itself within the same species - is an alien concept to the dolphin.

Although the Navy conceded that it had been able to "program the dolphins and keep them under control for distances up to several miles," it strenuously denied allegations of brainwashing. Training however, remained strictly secret, prompting Dr. Farooq Hussain of the Department of Biophysics at King's College, University of London, to ask: "How is an animal which for centuries has only been recorded for its intelligence and friendliness towards man, now taught by one man to kill another? They must use electrical stimulation of the pain and pleasure centres of the brain in order to induce and reward aggressive behaviour. Of all the depraved and disgusting activities of which man seems capable, this one in particular must rank highly." By 1984, the Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson alleged that the military dolphins would soon be used clandestinely to mine Nicaraguan harbours. Attesting to the unsurpassed skills of the cetaceans in this area of warfare, former trainers declared that the dolphins could sow mines a hundred times faster than the Navy's most elite units of frogmen. By October 1987, however, the role of the animals had been reversed, when six of the Navy's dolphins were deployed in the Persian Gulf to search for Iranian mines. According to the Pentagon, they would also be responsible for security patrols against potential saboteurs around the large barge off Farsi island which served as a floating base for helicopter gunships and more than 200 American servicemen. In spring 1989, Rick Trout, who worked as a Navy animal trainer between 1985-1988, revealed that the military's dolphins and seals had been starved as part of their training at the Naval Oceans Systems Center in San Diego, California, and even punched and kicked. Official documents show that 13 dolphins have died in Navy hands over the past three years, more than half suffering from starvation or stomach disorders. "My second day on the job I saw a sea-lion kicked in the head for refusing to eat," Trout testified. "I also saw a dolphin punched in the face." An "independent" government commission has confirmed some of Trout's allegations, yet predictably tame, its final recommendation was that the Navy should capture no more marine mammals until it has hired more veterinarians. It currently holds, trains or deploys at least a 100 marine mammals, with one team of dolphins used to patrol the waters around Trident nuclear submarine bases in the states of Georgia, Connecticut and Washington. However, it is reported that significant numbers of dolphins and sea-lions have been escaping from their military tormentors. According to local conservation officials, several sea lions recently turned up on the beaches of San Miguel island off the coast of Southern California, still wearing Navy equipment harnesses.

Apart from active service, dolphins are also recruited extensively as passive "models" for "invasive laboratory research." The mysteries of dolphin sonar, for example, have obsessed military scientists for at least twenty years for the simple reason that the species' innate abilities in echo-location, or "seeing with sound" far surpasses even the most advanced radar equipment in the arsenals of the great powers. Indeed, that obsession alone has resulted in several thousand dolphin deaths, and in the USA, an annual budget of at least one million dollars.

	Photo courtesy Giorgio Pilleri.

This was precisely how countless dolphins died in Prof. René Guy Busnel's laboratories, and it must be said that the Taiwan dolphins were probably more fortunate to perish during capture than to end at the Laboratoire d'Acoustique Animale. Prof. Giorgio Pilleri describes many of the French scientist's dolphin experiments as "horrific". Explaining why he cut short a working visit to the French laboratory, Pilleri explained: "The last straw was when they showed me - evidently with great pride - a dolphin which had been totally mutilated, a huge carving knife sticking out of its back. On top of that, in sending a greeting card to one of their colleagues abroad, this 'research team' all signed their names in dolphin blood."