Schwartzstein: That's true. And neither do toxic substances come out of bees.
Crimson: Professor Meselson, what makes you sure that the yellow spots which have been found are bee feces?
Meselson: they [the yellow spots] have the same diameter as bee feces. They have the same color and texture as bee feces. They have the same number of drops per square foot. The areas that are reported to be covered--a fraction of an acre up to quite a few acres--is the same as the massive flights of bees. That's all we can see with the naked eye. Now we go to what we can see with the microscope. They contain the same high content of pollen, pollen from plants that are mainly pollinated by insects, from plants all of whose pollen gathered by bees, and from plants which are found, all of them, in South Asia, and some of them found nowhere else but Southeast Asia. The spots also looked at under the microscope seem to contain hairs of bees.
Schwartzstein: Bear in mind, sometimes a year has passed between the time that something that has been gathered as a sample is in a laboratory, in analysis. Also the individuals who are gathering samples are not scientists.
Ashton: What you just said is the kind of evidence on which our position rests, namely the use of these kinds of substances in warfare is based totally on heresay. At this point, the evidence is quite inadequate.
Schwartzstein: My point is that you cannot necessarily draw conclusions about the entire issue from one or two samples.
Meselson: Yes, but we have found spots where the composition was very different. That's also true with bee feces because no two bees eat the same meals. They eat differently. They store the pollen heterogeneously and they eat it heterogeneously. So if this had been an agent of warfare, with no two spots being the same, it would mean that whoever is doing this makes teeny little batches, makes them all different, and sprays them all separately.
Crimson: Do you think that the State Department's assertions are attempts to embarrass the Soviet Union?
Schwartzstein: Well, first of all, let me say this; prior to making public statements there were approaches to the Soviets, the Vietnamese and to Laos on this--through diplomatic channels--which had no effect. Next step, the United States took a compilation of reports, about which it made no statements as to the accuracy, but simply said these were reports of chemical weapons use, to the United Nations and said we believe a multilateral investigation is necessary. And the United Nations, in the autumn of 1980 mandated a four-member panel to do an investigation. That investigation that demanded of that investigatory panel was renewed in the autumn of 1981. Significantly, none of the countries in which the chemical warfare was reported, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, were admitted to that UN panel or had access to its territory.
Meselson: We're [the United States] just wrong, we made a mistake, an honest mistake, but a mistake. Because the State Department had woefully inadequate scientific advice and they made a mistake. A very serious mistake. I think that if the scientific advice had told them what this stuff really is, they would not have made public statements.
Ashton: I would say that I think it was very unfortunate that the evidence, samples that were available were not circulated more widely among the scientific community. This would have led to the mistake being avoided.
Schwartzstein: I think there is a basic truth that chemical warfare is being waged. I think there have been a lot of small mistakes in how the investigation has been conducted, but you don't put a stop to something like chemical warfare by simply saying, "we need a few more years to test this, we need a few more years to do scientific laboratory analysis. "You don't save any lives in doing that. I think there's a very strong humanitarian concern in the State Department.
Ashton: You'll see that the principal difference between our two positions is what we accept as good evidence.
Meselson: The reason that this is a very serious kind of mistake is that it's all tied up with the importance of verification. If we have low standards of verification and make certain allegations as part of the verification process, we are making ourselves vulnerable. It's the same kind of problem, whether you call it verification or an allegation; how do you evaluate evidence regarding violation or non-violation of international agreements which have scientific basis. There's a very great vulnerability of our government at present to inadequate scientific advice.
Schwartzstein: Obviously verification depends to a considerable degree on intelligence data.
Meselson: Well, intelligence data doesn't have to be classified, I'd go beyond that and say this; these standards of evidence that are shown by the way in which the government has dealt with the non-classified data are so well known that you would have every reason not to expect the classified material to be reliable.
Crimson: Do you think that there's any possibility the State Department would have knowingly fabricated reports?
Schwartzstein: The U.S. government is too big and too open for something like this to be fabricated or to be an elaborate plot of some sort.
Meselson: It wouldn't have been done so incompetently if it were fabricated.