The Persecution of Armen Victorian
The persecution of Armen Victorian (and his wife), described in Lobster 28, seems to have come to a halt. All the charges against them have been dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service. As I expected, the prosecutions were sustained, via a number of postponements, until the last possible minute, then dropped. It was pure judicial harassment. Just how spurious these charges were can be seen from the fact that one of them was that Armen ‘between 25/4/60 and 14/7/94 dishonestly induced BT PLC to forgo payment of 3762.18 by deception’. (Letter from the Crown Prosecution Service of Nottingham, 10 January 1995.)
In 1960 Armen was 9 years old, had never visited the UK, and British Telecom PLC did not exist!
The bug pictured on the front cover was found in Armen’s house on 24 February 1995 after it was ‘swept’ by an operative from the Ellis Swain Group, private detectives.
The identity of those responsible for this campaign is still unknown, but it seems very likely that it has been the result of Armen’s interest in the American, former Colonel John Alexander, who is now NATO advisor on non-lethal weapons. As was reported in the previous Lobster 28, Alexander has consulted with both British and American intelligence agencies since Armen’s interest in him.
Armen is undeterred by this harassment and his research is continuing. He has recently received 2,500 pages of declassified material on Project Pandora, the US investigation of the Soviet irradiation of the US embassy in Moscow, aspects of which, when digested, will no doubt appear in these columns.
Meanwhile here is another example of the duplicity of the British state.
Robin Ramsay
Britain’s Role in Human Nuclear Experiments: what’s been did and what’s been hid
Armen Victorian
Eileen Welsome’s articles in the Albuquerque Tribune in New Mexico in 1993, described a series of human experiments by the US Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Energy (DOE) and led up to the opening of the DOE’s classified files on projects using human beings as guinea pigs. To date several thousand pages or records and documents have been gathered, reviewed, declassified and released by the DOE.
British secrecy and …
Information on nuclear issues in Britain is sketchy at best, but it is known, however, that based on the ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK, there has always been constant exchange and co-operation in nuclear defence issues. In response to my inquiry concerning Britain’s role in human experimentation, either independently or in collaboration with the US, D. J. Hawkins, from the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston, wrote on February 9, 1994: ‘No radiation tests involving human subjects are currently being conducted by AWE. Furthermore, we are not aware of any such tests or collaboration with the US on such tests since AWE (formerly AWRE) was formed in 1950. We have consulted the Ministry of Defence who are the custodian of much of our early history, and they have confirmed this.’ (Emphasis added.)
… American openness
Gayla D. Sessoms, Director, Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act Division of the Office of the Executive Secretariat of the US Department of Energy, in her letter of February 10, 1995, wrote to me, ‘….you also indicated in your letter that you were interested in documents pertaining to radiation studies on humans that involved the United Kingdom. A word search was performed for British related citations, and enclosed is a listing of documents that have those citations.’
The computer print-out she sent me was 150 pages long, detailing events over several decades.
A letter dated October 6, 1953, from W. G. Marley, of the Health Physics Division, Atomic Research Establishment, to Professor J. S. Mitchell, Department of Radiotherapeutics, Cambridge University, provides a glimpse into human experimentation in Britain. Marwell wrote:
‘The Army has sent to work in this Division at Harwell a young PhD graduate in chemistry named R. Hardy, who is actually doing his military service. We want him to contribute paticularly to problems in which the Army is interested and I think he could probably make some useful contribution in connection with the problem considered by the P.A.B.E. Committee of injury from beta irraditation of wide areas of body. You will recall that you were going to carry out some tests on RAF volunteers who were to be provided by Captain Wilson here….it is becoming increasingly urgent to obtain more information regarding the emergency beta tolerance for wide areas of body, both in relation to atomic explosions and also in relation to possible accidents to some of the more “advanced” type of atomic energy reactors involving wide-scale dispersal of fission products’. (Emphasis added.)
As for the collaboration denied by AWE, W.G. Marley wrote a letter on June 10, 1953 (AERE, Director’s Office), titled ‘Defence questions for US’. In it he provided twelve such questions – eleven of which address matters relating to human tolerance – which provide evidence of close co-operation and collaboration between the two countries. The questionnaire details an array of important issues, such as ‘Data on later effects (hours and weeks) of gamma radiation on humans: comments on British Table’, and ‘Late effects of high neutron exposure, e.g. fertility, cataract, leukaemia’.