Editor's note: This is an excerpt from Dan Russell's Drug War: Covert Money, Power and Policy (New York: Kalyx, 2000). This comprehensive, 675 page tome sports 400 photos, a 16 page bibliography, and over 1300 footnotes. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

Drug War: Agent Green: McCollum's "Silver Bullet" - In the Head

The early summer 1996 aerial spraying of Ultra Glyphosate (Monsanto's "Round-Up") on 45,000 acres of Guaviare coca caused convulsive vomiting and hair loss among the children. The enraged mothers organized the August 1996 march of more than 150,000 campesinos in Guaviare, Putumayo and Caqueta provinces. The Colombian federales diffused the protest with false compromises, then stealthily assassinated the march leaders. Many of the surviving campesinos turned, for the first time, to the guerrillas. The U.S. then insisted that Colombia allow it to switch to the far more poisonous tebuthiuron (Dow's "Spike"). Now, if the US State Department has its way, the ongoing chemical spraying will be followed by the massive, nearly indetectable high altitiude dropping of Agent Green (the mycoherbicide fusarium oxysporum formae specialis [f.sp.] erythroxyli). Agent Green is an extension of the US-engineered 1997 UN Drug Control Program's SCOPE program (Strategy for Coca and Opium Poppy Elimination). [1]

The SCOPE program is, ultimately, a CIA/Defense contractor/World Bank/International Monetary Fund plan to force the corporatization of millions of acres of campesino-held land by physically destroying their only economic mainstay, their agriculture. "Drugs" have no more to do with this war than "communism" had to do with the 1954 war against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. That war was about ownership of Guatemala. Arbenz' government was about as communist as Franklin Roosevelt's. This war is about ownership of Colombia, and, for that matter, Burma, Thailand, Peru, Bolivia et al.

But the UNDCP was forced to admit, January, 2000, that Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have refused to carry out the field testing of the opium poppy mycoherbicide that they had previously approved. Then, on March 24, Peru passed a law banning the use of biological agents in coca eradication. And in Lima, Sept. 7, 2000, the Andean Committee of Environmental Authorities (CAAAM), representing the governments of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, stated its "rejection of the use of the 'Fusarium oxysporum' fungus as a means of eradicating illegal crops in the Member Countries of the Andean Community." [2] The CAAAM was following the lead of the Colombian Ministry of the Environment, which declared on July 18 that the Colombian Government, "did not accept the proposal put forward by the United Nations International Drug Control Programme to conduct tests using the Fusarium oxysporum because it considered that any agent foreign to the native ecosystems of our country could pose a serious threat to the environment and to human health."

Even Bush/McCollum-led Florida has rejected the mycoherbicide idea, thanks to a Bush-appointee with some real backbone, and its rejection reveals the real purpose of the policy. In 1999, Ag/Bio Con, Inc., a Montana-based USDA-connected company with an inside track to Defense Department financing, proposed using a cannabis-killing strain of Fusarium oxysporum in Florida. The proposal was engineered by James McDonough, Florida's Director of the Office of Drug Control. Jeb Bush brought McDonough to Florida from his position as McCaffrey's Director of Strategy for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Florida's Rep. Bill McCollum engineered the first $23 million for mycoherbicide financing in his defense contractor's dream bill, the $2.3 billion "Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act." Virtually all of McCollum's $2.3 billion went for weapons purchases for the vast US Southern Command and for the dope dealing armies of Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, etc. Beamed Bill, "All of the indications are that this [mycoherbicide] has the potential for making a big difference in the drug war.... This could be the silver bullet." [3]

The head of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, David B. Struhs, quashed the maniacal idea, pointing out that it was more like a silver bullet in the head: "Fusarium species are capable of evolving rapidly. Mutagenicity is by far the most disturbing factor in attempting to use a Fusarium species as a bioherbicide. It is difficult, if not impossible to control the spread of Fusarium species. The mutated fungi can cause disease in large numbers of crops, including tomatoes, peppers, flowers, corn and vines and are normally considered a threat to farmers as a pest, rather than as a pesticide…. Fusarium species are more active in warm soils and can stay resident in the soil for years. Their longevity and enhanced activity under Florida conditions are of concern, as this could lead to an increased risk of mutagenicity." [4]

This information was not news to the Department of Defense, and its contractor, Ag/Bio Con. Quite the contrary. Fusarium's spectacularly deadly mutagenicity has been firmly established in biological science for years. Like various other plant pathogens, Fusarium oxysporum has several specialized forms - known as formae specialis (f.sp.) - that infect a variety of hosts causing various diseases. In Hawaii, these include: Fusarium oxysporum f.sp.asparagi (fusarium yellows on asparagus); f.sp.callistephi (wilt on China aster); f.sp.cubense (Panama disease/wilt on banana); f.sp.dianthi (wilt on carnation); f.sp.koae (on koa); f.sp.lycopersici (wilt on tomato); f.sp.melonis (fusarium wilt on muskmelon); f.sp.niveum (fusarium wilt on watermelon); f.sp.pisi (on edible-podded pea); f.sp.tracheiphilum (wilt on Glycine max); and f.sp.zingiberi (fusarium yellows on ginger).

These specialized forms are an indication of the spectacular mutagenicity referred to by Florida's chief environmental officer. Once released, the thing would become a deadly threat to Florida's major industry, as race 2 of Fusarium oxysporum now is to the watermelon industry in Texas and Oklahoma. [5]

US Forest Service: Forest Health Protection, Southern Region: "Mimosa Wilt, caused by Fusarium oxysporium var. perniciosum: Importance. - Mimosa wilt is the most devastating disease of mimosa. In many areas it has almost eliminated ornamental mimosas."[6] Worldwide, Fusarium oxysporum is deadly to chrysanthemum, grape, potato, cotton, vanilla, date, sunflower, coffee, mimosa, avocado, cabbage, celery, squash, soy, tobacco, clover, various melons, eucalyptus, pine trees, sesame, beet, African palm, eggplant, numerous other important cultivars and innumerable wild plants on which wildlife depend.

When the Kenyans tried to do something about the Fusarium oxysporum f.sp.cubense that was devastating their small-scale banana farms, they found 4 different Fusarium oxysporum races and more than more than 20 different "bridging groups." [7] Scientists in Hawaii have reported over 24 fusarium species there. The list of affected Hawaiian plants is about three times longer than the list I cited above and the economic and ecological damage in Hawaii has been severe. [8] Yet our own Department of Defense, under McCaffrey's direction, is proposing intentionally dropping this stuff on small-scale campesinos worldwide. All in the name of a war on "drugs," meaning the traditional sacramental herbs of native peoples. The transparent purpose is corporate, that is, defense-contractor, land theft.

Remember the American Chestnut tree? I bet you don't. At the end of the nineteenth century, the American chestnut was a major component of eastern deciduous forests from Maine to Georgia and west to Illinois, in some places constituting more than 40% of overstory trees. Early in the twentieth century, chestnut blight, a nonindigenous fungal disease from Asia, broke out near New York City and quickly infected almost all American Chestnuts on the continent, driving the species to ecological extinction. American Chestnuts now exist only as scattered small trees that become infected and die as they mature. There is no known cure for the Chestnut fungus Cryphonectria parasitica. That's how dangerous fungal diseases are. And Fusarium oxysporum is far more evolutionarily agile than the unstoppable Chestnut blight. That's what these maniacs are playing with.