Albert Wohlstetter's Legacy: the Neo-Cons, Not Carter, Killed

SPECIAL REPORT: NUCLEAR SABOTAGE

ALBERT WOHLSTETTER’S LEGACY Wohlstetter was even stranger than the “Dr. Strangelove” depicted in the 1964 movie of that name. An early draft of the film was titled “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” the same title as Wohlstetter’s best-known unclassified work. Here, a still from the film.

tives—Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Zalmay Khalilzad, to name a few. In Wohlstetter’s circle of influence were also Ahmed Chalabi (whom Wohlstetter championed), Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.), Sen. Robert Dole (R- Kan.), and Margaret Thatcher. Wohlstetter himself was a follower of Bertrand Russell, not only in mathematics, but in world outlook. The pseudo-peacenik Russell had called for a preemptive strike against the Soviet Union, after World War II and before the Soviets developed the bomb, as a prelude to his plan for bully- ing nations into a one-world government. Russell, a raving Malthusian, opposed economic development, especially in the Third World. Admirer Jude Wanniski wrote of Wohlstetter in an obituary, “[I]t is no exaggeration, I think, to say that Wohlstetter was the most influential unknown man in the world for the past half century, and easily in the top ten in importance of all men.” “Albert’s decisions were not automat- ically made official policy at the White House,” Wanniski wrote, “but Albert’s The Neo-Cons, Not Carter, genius and his following were such in the places where it counted in the Establishment that if his views were Killed Nuclear Energy resisted for more than a few months, it was an oddity.” Wanniski also noted that by Marjorie Mazel Hecht “every editorial on America’s geopoliti- cal strategy that appeared in the Wall Street Journal during the last 25 years he conventional wisdom in the Administration, the idea that civilian was the product of Albert’s genius.” Tnuclear community and in general is nuclear power was bad, and that repro- Like Bertrand Russell, Wohlstetter saw that President Jimmy Carter drove the cessing should be stopped, was exten- the world in terms of a bounded chess- nail in the civilian nuclear coffin when sively argued by Albert Wohlstetter, one board of U.S. and Soviet nuclear missiles, he stopped the reprocessing of nuclear of the most ghoulish, secretive, and where his clever gaming strategies would fuel in 1976. But this is wrong. The dis- influential of U.S. nuclear strategists, ensure that more of “them” were killed honor does not belong to Carter. The from the late 1950s to his death in 1997. than of “us.” His strategic policies were policy that ended nuclear reprocessing Wohlstetter was a University of madder than MAD (Mutually Assured was first promoted under the Ford Chicago mathematician-logician and a Destruction), which he found too juve- Presidency, in a 1975 policy paper writ- RAND consultant, who kept himself in nile in concept. Instead, he supported ten under Ford’s chief of staff Dick the shadows as he mentored some of the flexibility—the preemptive strike, high- Cheney. And long before the Ford most public of today’s neo-conserva- precision weaponry with precision target-

64 Spring–Summer 2006 21st CENTURY NUCLEAR REPORT Stuart Lewis/EIRNS Helene C. Stikkel/DOD Wohlstetter’s Weenies: Although Wohlstetter kept to the shadows, his protégés are very public. Clockwise: Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel to the Pentagon; Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Defense Secretary, now president of the World Bank; Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Ambassador to Courtesy of the University of Chicago. Iraq; and Ahmed Chalabi, former leader of the Iraqi National Congress. Albert Wohlstetter in a photo from the 1960s. ting, and “nimble” military units. This is precisely the thinking behind Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s revamping of the U.S. military, which was designed by longtime Pentagon consultant Andrew Marshall, another Wohlstetterite. Wohlstetter rated his scenarios in terms of their death tolls, with the aim of allow- ing America to come out with the least damage. And, like Russell, while he loved playing with nuclear weapons, Wohlstetter hated civilian nuclear energy: He saw that it had the potential to allow unlimited population growth, which was Stuart Lewis/EIRNS Stuart Lewis/EIRNS impermissible in his worldview. the Mideast was a very bad idea—cost- people, in classified briefings with mili- Unlike other nuclear strategists and ly, unnecessary, and dangerous. tary and other government officials, as Dr. Strangeloves, Wohlstetter writes rel- A Delicate Balance of Insanity well as Congressmen, which trickled atively clearly, though tediously and Wohlstetter’s first acclaimed paper, down to the general public. exhaustively logically, often using statis- published in 1958, was “The Delicate One of Wohlstetter’s last public arti- tical arguments to “prove” his points. Balance of Terror,” which reportedly so cles, published on April 4, 1995, by his He has no understanding of physical enthralled Richard Perle, then a high longtime neo-con friend Robert Bartley, economy or of development, just crude school chum of Wohlstetter’s daughter, editor of the Wall Street Journal, argued cost-benefit analyses. His view of that it got Perle started on his “Prince of that the Non-Proliferation Treaty was human beings in all this is that of a Darkness” career as a Wohlstetterite. bad, because it makes it easier for grade-B cowboy film—good guys ver- While Wohlstetter was working on nations without nuclear weapons to gain sus bad guys, where everything possible Pentagon contracts, calculating kill- access to them—using plutonium pro- must be done to keep control in the ratios of missiles and chessboard missile duced in civilian nuclear reactors. “It has hands of his good guys: the financial moves, he developed the argument that long been plain that plutonium for elec- oligarchy or, as President Eisenhower civilian nuclear power was no good in tric power has a large negative value. labelled it, the “military-industrial com- itself, that it would only lead to the abil- The civilian benefits are a myth. The mil- plex.” It is no surprise, therefore, that ity to make nuclear bombs, and that itary dangers are real and immediate.” his prize student, Paul Wolfowitz, wrote nonproliferation had to be enforced to This is the essence of what Wohlstetter his doctoral dissertation under make sure that bad guys didn’t get any promoted in the 1960s and 1970s. He Wohlstetter (published in 1972) arguing nuclear bombs. To put this policy across, created the myth that civilian benefits of at length that nuclear desalination for he used his mathematical skills to scare nuclear energy “are a myth.” As the Wall

NUCLEAR REPORT 21st CENTURY Spring–Summer 2006 65 Street Journal identified Wohlstetter in nuclear energy. The scientists who creat- They will not abolish want and are unlike- his 1995 op-ed, he “headed the 1975 ed the bomb, he said, wanted to find ly to reduce the great inequalities between study that led the U.S. to abandon the compensatory benefits for humankind rich and poor countries.” As to why this use of plutonium fuel for civilian power for their wartime creation of destruction. was the case, Wohlstetter noted that ener- reactors.” But, he warned, “Some of these civilian gy costs are just a small percentage of the Atoms for War uses have a large war potential. . . . gross national product, and “cheap ener- In the 1960s, when the civilian [T]here is a massive overlap between the gy can help, but is not the key to eco- nuclear program was still moving for- technology of civilian nuclear energy nomic progress.” ward under the philosophy of Atoms for and that of weapons production. The Wohlstetter was particularly concerned Peace, launched by President good military atom therefore doesn’t dis- that the Middle East remain free of Eisenhower in his famous 1953 speech at place the bad military one. Expanding nuclear power plants to desalt water, and the United Nations, Wohlstetter pushed civilian use in general makes it easier, to convey to his scientist audience that his “atoms for war” policy. While FDR quicker, and cheaper to get bombs. . . . poor countries would not be able to gain Democrats and Republicans were elabo- An essential trouble with nuclear plow- from capital-intensive power reactors. As rating visions of what the atom could do shares, therefore, is that they can be for breeder reactors, Wohlstetter’s view for peace in the world, providing energy, beaten into nuclear swords. . . .” was only negative. Instead of seeing the desalinated water, and process heat for Wohlstetter noted that the nuclear ener- benefit of a reactor that produced more industry, Wohlstetter marshalled his gy forecast in 1967 envisioned that by fuel than it consumed, he said that if math to stop civilian atoms. 1980, nuclear would supply 25 percent of breeder reactors came into operation as In 1967, Wohlstetter was the invited U.S. electricity, with large reactors at costs the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission luncheon speaker at a Manhattan competitive with electricity from fossil expected by 2000, “there may be a mil- Project 25th anniversary event at the fuels. And then this “genius” informed the lion bombs worth of civilian plutonium in University of Chicago. He told the nuclear scientists: “Nonetheless it has the world, doubling every ten years.” assembled nuclear scientists that there been clear that such important benefits As negative as was this 1967 speech, it were no short-term civilian benefits to fall short of ushering in the golden age. was short, and at least mentioned that in

The Inside Job Against Nuclear Energy

While Albert Wohlstetter’s nuclear nuclear energy was squeezed again, say, however, that such a course of report put a hold on nuclear develop- into being just another energy office in action could “increase the likelihood ment from the top down, other forces the new Department of Energy, headed of proliferation, since the United States were squeezing nuclear development by “energy czar” James Schlesinger, a would lose influence over the nature of from the bottom and middle levels of Wohlstetter colleague at RAND who nuclear power development abroad.” policy-making. Such a squeeze was then, and still is, anti-nuclear. The The most striking aspect of the Ford required the right sort of bureaucrat regulatory oversight for nuclear energy Foundation study is that it has the and the right bureaucracy to carry out was given to the newly created same Mickey Mouse approach to eco- the anti-nuclear thrust, and so the Ford Nuclear Regulatory Commission. nomics as Wohlstetter et al. There is Administration at the end of 1974, In this same time period, 1975, the no concept of physical economy or a removed Dixy Lee Ray, the pro- Ford Foundation released a 450-page “science driver.” Everything is meas- nuclear chairman of the Atomic tome on nuclear energy, “Nuclear ured in strict cost-benefit terms, with- Energy Commission; and Congress Power: Issues and Choices; Report of out any idea of development. abolished the agency, and reorganized the Nuclear Energy Policy Study On the ground level in this period, energy policy into a mishmash agency Group,” purporting to be “fair” but was a growing swarm of environmen- known as the Energy Research and arrived at by a group of Establishment talist groups, hatched by the counter- Development Administration. academics, many of whom had the culture and the campus turmoil during (Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, who had been same Russellite credentials as the Vietnam War period. These were brought into the Atomic Energy Wohlstetter. As the overview to this the most visible of the anti-nuclear Commission by President Nixon in report states, “We believe the conse- forces, in the media and on the street. 1972, was a scientist and an FDR quences of the proliferation of nuclear But the policies they carried out came Democrat, who fought to expand weapons are so serious compared to straight from the neo-con pen of the nuclear and educate the public about the limited economic benefits of shadowy Albert Wohlstetter and the every aspect of nuclear technology. nuclear energy that we would be pre- lower-down Establishment figures She went on to become governor of pared to recommend stopping nuclear who conducted the Ford Foundation Washington state, and she continued power in the United States if we study. The environmentalists and the to fight for nuclear energy expansion.) thought this would prevent further pro- so-called “left” were the legs, not the Under the Carter Administration, liferation.” The overview went on to head of the anti-nuclear movement.

66 Spring–Summer 2006 21st CENTURY SPECIAL REPORT the long-range future, nuclear energy might have some benefit. In Wohlstetter’s 1975 report, “Moving Toward Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd?” the message is incessantly negative—for 286 pages. This report was prepared for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency “to provide a clear definition of trends in the spread of nuclear technology, and a precise analysis of the problems (political, military, and economic) that these trends pose for policy.” Wohlstetter and his co-authors pre- sented a statistical Mickey Mouse economic analysis of nuclear energy, which was designed to prove that civilian nuclear power is too costly, that reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is not essential and a money loser, that breeder reactors are too dangerous even to be seriously considered, and that nuclear energy retards development in the developing sector. In these pages is everything the anti-nuclear environmentalists and lawmakers could draw on to make sure that Wohlstetter got his anti- nuclear way. The overriding argument for Wohlstetter was that civilian nuclear energy can only be meaningfully meas- ured in bomb-production capacity. The report particularly targetted the Less Developed Countries (LDCs). The nuclear optimism that scared Wohlstetter: This illustration is from a children’s “Investment in nuclear energy is a poor book in the 1960s, describing the benefits of nuclear energy. choice among alternatives for the economic development for the LDCs,” the tric or geothermal power.” nuclear power.” And another favorite report stated. “It diverts capital from more Taking note of the nuclear optimism theme: “Every time a new country obtains productive uses. . . . [I]nstead of speeding still in operation, the Wohlstetter report a nuclear power reactor, it is moving sig- economic development and slowing the listed the projections for civilian nuclear nificantly closer to a nuclear weapon spread of military technology, as we had plants in the 1990s, and then offered development capability, since the plutoni- hoped for decades, the subsidized trans- suggestions of how such growth could um produced by all nuclear reactors can fer of nuclear technology has slowed be derailed—exactly what occurred. be made into nuclear weapons.” development and may speed the spread.” “This large growth is not inevitable,” the Like Wohlstetter’s tediously exhaustive For Wohlstetter et al., the benefits of report stated. “It presumes the carrying strategic analyses, this report reviewed nuclear energy were “exaggerated” through of plans, negotiations, and con- every aspect of how every country might because of the emotions connected to structions not yet committed and of be able to make bombs with their civil- the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima varying degrees of firmness; some have ian nuclear reactors, and what might be and Nagasaki. “In fact,” the report stat- had setbacks. The growth, moreover, is done to constrain this. The main con- ed, “if we could have detached our- open to influence, a subject for the elab- straints from the Wohlstetter point of selves” from these emotions, “we might oration of policy of supplier as well as view were simple: stop nuclear technol- have more easily questioned that subsi- recipient governments.” ogy, stop reprocessing, don’t even think dizing civilian nuclear energy was the Unflagging Pessimism about breeder reactors, load on the sta- way to stop the spread of the military Wohlstetter’s pessimism was unflag- tistics equating power plants with technology. Since civilian and military ging. The report reiterated in every section bombs, and don’t mention any new tech- nuclear energy programs overlap so how “nuclear power promises very limit- nology development. His constraints extensively, a more plausible course ed economic benefits to less developed worked. From this evil-minded Russellite might have been to subsidize research countries.” “In all likelihood,” the report neo-con, who remained in the shadows, and development on the improvement wishfully stated, “history will reveal that came the antinuclear policies that have of fossil fuels or of more exotic non- once again the nuclear optimists have kept nuclear technology suppressed for nuclear alternatives such as solar elec- greatly overestimated the future growth of 30 or more years.

SPECIAL REPORT 21st CENTURY Spring–Summer 2006 67 A SPECULATOR, A PRINCE, AND A NEO-CON Who’s Sabotaging the PBMR? by Dean Andromidas

here is an ongoing international Tcampaign to block South Africa’s development of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), the small high-temperature nuclear reactor that promises to produce cheap and abundant energy for all of Africa. The campaign brings together mega-speculator George Soros, the U.S. neo-cons, the Danish government, and the Prince Consort to the Danish Queen. The PBMR is a joint venture of South Africa’s state electricity company Eskom, the state-owned Industrial Development Authority, and Westinghouse, which was recently sold by British Nuclear Fuels to the Japanese company Toshiba. The inherently safe nuclear reactor design, which would produce between 110 and 165 megawatts of electric power, repre- sents the ideal solution for bringing cheap electrical power to vast areas of Africa, Asia, and Ibero-America, where millions of people continue to Stuart Lewis/EIRNS live in a “dark age” because of the lack Mega-speculator George Soros funds the South African environmentalist groups to of electricity. attack economic development projects like the PBMR, and thus protect his raw Eskom, the South African state elec- materials looting. tricity company and major shareholder in the project, plans to begin building a cially those that have hit central Africa, and deploys them as tough guys to demonstration reactor by 2007. In South the Democratic Republic of the Congo, attack nuclear energy as “unsustain- Africa alone, the company intends to and the Great Lakes region. able.” At the same time, these deploy- build at least 30 reactors to expand the It is not surprising, in this context, ables promote so-called “sustainable” nation’s electricity grid to the 30-40 per- that the Bush Administration’s interna- technologies, like wind turbines and cent of the population lacking electric tional “War on Terror” has set up bases solar energy, both of which are totally power. in Africa’s Sahel, where rich deposits incapable of sustaining an industrial While for Africans the prospect of of gas have been discovered, as well economy. abundant power can only be welcomed as uranium and other strategic raw Since the collapse of the high-tech with open arms, for powerful interna- materials. bubble in 2000, Soros has shifted his tional financial interests, such a prospect A preliminary investigation by investment strategy from high-risk cur- poses a far greater “existential threat” Executive Intelligence Review has rency speculation to investment in than any nuclear-armed “rogue state.” revealed that the “usual suspects” are physical assets, especially raw materi- As the speculative financial bubble of intimately involved in this operation. als, gold, silver, and so on. Africa plays the world financial system is on the They are the environmentalists, backed a large role in this strategy. With verge of bursting, the control of the mas- by powerful international financial and George’s brother Paul Soros, invest- sive raw materials of Africa, including its political interests who operate like ments have been made in African min- gold, diamonds, oil, copper, and urani- gangsters. ing companies and state-owned compa- um, is essential to the very survival of Soros: The ‘Capo di Tutti Capi’ nies which governments are being the international financiers. It is the mas- At the top, operating like a racketeer- forced to privatize by conditionalities sive flows of funds buying up these ing mafia boss, is mega-speculator imposed on them by the World Bank resources which have led to the George Soros, who finances local envi- and the International Monetary Fund. “resource wars” of the last decade, espe- ronmentalists and other useful dupes, Valuable assets, including mines, plan-

68 Spring–Summer 2006 21st CENTURY SPECIAL REPORT tations, and other agro-investments, have been bought up by Soros and the international corporations he supports financially. Through his “Open Society” net- work of foundations, Soros organizes the “street” against the government and power centers that stand in the way of his financial operations. Thus, he puts into power those leaders who will implement the appropriate free- market laws. One celebrated example was the so-called Orange Revolution in Ukraine. In South Africa, George Soros oper- ates through his Open Society Foundation, based near Cape Town. The Foundation’s major source of funding is from the profits of the Soros Fund Management, LLC and other enti- www.sandia.gov ties from which Soros rakes in billions of a PBMR demonstra- of dollars annually. According to U.S. tion plant was under Securities Exchange Commission fil- way, the Soros appara- Henrik, the Prince ings dated Sept. 30, 2005, among the tus moved to sabotage Consort of many companies in which Soros Fund it. Denmark, has Management holds millions of dollars The Environmental championed in stock are mining companies with Justice Project of the windmills as a huge assets in Africa. These include Legal Resources Centre, Danish export, Anglogold Ashanti Ltd., which controls which is funded by especially in the one of the largest gold mines in the Soros’s Open Society developing sector, world, which the government of Foundation, commis- and funded the Ghana was forced to privatize, and sioned one Stephen opposition to the Barrick Gold, the Canadian company Thomas to write a report PBMR. Above, that bankrolled the overthrow of the trashing the PBMR and one of Denmark’s Mobutu regime, leading to a decade of nuclear energy in gen- royally subsidized civil war in the Democratic Republic eral in 1999. At the windfarms on the of the Congo. Other companies time, Thomas worked southwest coast. include Newmont Mining, which has at the Science Policy mines in Ghana, and the Ibero- Research Unit of the American-based Apex Silver, in which University of Sussex, in Soros holds very large interests and has Great Britain; he now Rigmor Mydtskov/www.denmark.dk placed his brother Paul on its board of works for the Public Service Inter- Institute for Democracy, both of which directors. national Research Unit of the University are also financed by the Open Society Although Soros has publicly com- of Greenwich, also in Great Britain. The Foundation. pared President George W. Bush to report was then handed over to Earthlife The Thomas report, which has gone Adolf Hitler, that has not stopped him Africa, a South Africa-based environ- through several versions, is a piece of from holding stock in the Iraq War mentalist organization which used the sophistry, which makes no attempt to mega-profiteer firm Halliburton, whose report as documentation for a court deal with the technological feasibility former CEO was Vice President Dick action to prevent approval for going for- of the project. For instance, in an earli- Cheney. ward with the PBMR demonstration er version of the report, Thomas trash- Another Soros stockholding directly plant. es high-temperature-reactor technolo- related to our story is in the Exelon This court action was supported not gy as problematic, citing how the Corporation, whose decision to with- only by the Legal Resources Centre, Chinese program was allegedly mori- draw its investment from the PBMR proj- but by the Open Democracy Advice bund. In its latest version, the report ect in April 2002 almost led to the pro- Centre, which provided legal and cites the same “moribund” Chinese project’s collapse. financial assistance. This latter entity gram as representing a major potential Sabotage is also financed by Soros’s Open competition to the South African In 1999, when the process for gain- Society Foundation. It is a joint ven- PBMR! ing the authorization for the building ture of the Black Sash Trust and the But the key point of Thomas’s report is

SPECIAL REPORT 21st CENTURY Spring–Summer 2006 69 its analysis that nuclear power is not and chairman is Prince compatible with energy liberalization Henrik. (The other founders of and privatization of state electricity the WWF were also European companies like Eskom. It asserts that royalty—Britain’s Prince Philip Eskom will inevitably face being broken and the Netherlands’ Prince up and privatized. Thomas’s 1999 report Bernhard.) states: “The momentum for liberaliza- Like Soros’s “philanthropy,” tion throughout the world now seems this aid is not to help the “little unstoppable and, sooner or later, Eskom people,” but has a real profit is going to have to give up its monopoly motive: killing off the competi- status and run its business under com- tion. Denmark is the largest petitive pressures.” world exporter of wind turbines, But Thomas makes clear that these and since 1984 DANIDA has “pressures” are the higher profit-rates been financing projects through- the radical, globalized free market is out the developing world, where demanding. Thomas draws the compar- Danish-made wind turbines are ison with the privatized British utilities: being built. “Government-owned utilities have usu- For example, DANIDA was ally been able to invest money at very instrumental in establishing the low rates of return on capital partly wind turbine industry in India because new power stations were seen and lent support to India’s as a safe investment and partly because, “wind energy pioneer,” Rakesh for a variety of reasons, governments Bakshi, upon whom, in 1997, have tended to require a lower rate of was conferred the “Diploma return on capital than private industry. of the National Association for Thus, in Britain before privatisation, Danish Enterprise and His the national utility, the CEGB, could Royal Highness Prince Henrik’s invest at a 5 per cent real (net of infla- Medal of Honour.” tion) rate of return and recover the costs “No probative value,” was the verdict of a South Where DANIDA financing over 35 years. After privatisation, it is African court on one of Steve Thomas’s reports goes, the Danish wind turbine known that private investors are look- on nuclear energy. Here the title page from his companies closely follow, and ing for about 12-15 per cent real return December 2005 report. Danish wind turbine manufac- and recover the capital over 15-20 turers, like Vestas, have estab- years.” the environmental impact of PBMR. lished Indian subsidiaries. This is exactly what George Soros and This latter case was thrown out of The DANIDA projects are being car- globalization are all about: Destroy the court in January 2006 and Earthlife ried out throughout the world, including institutions of the nation-state in the had to pay the costs. The judges ruled Africa. One of the most extensive is in name of higher profits. It is not just the that the study by Thomas, which was Egypt, where DANIDA helped fund the PBMR that these financiers oppose, but submitted as evidence, had “no proba- Zafarana wind farm, along with the the very idea of a state-owned public tive value.” Earthlife also lost its German government’s Kreditanstalt für sector, because it serves as a driver for appeal of the decision on this case this Wiederaufbau (Bank for Reconstruction). real economic development instead of month. The project’s 105 turbines are supplied profits that will be taken out of the Windmills and the Prince by the Danish-Germany company country. Soros is not the only financial backer Nordex. In South Africa, DANIDA Since 1999, when Thomas’s words of the anti-PBMR campaign. The other financed a wind farm in Darling, which were written, the world has seen is the Kingdom of Denmark and the is situated in the Western Cape, and an Enron and other such disasters which Consort to the Queen, Prince Henrik. experimental wind station of three tur- have done much to discredit privatiza- The Danish International Development bines operated by Eskom. tion and deregulation of the energy Agency (DANIDA), which is the Danish It is significant that German govern- sector. government’s official aid organization, ment financing was secured at the time Earthlife Africa and the Legal is also funding the operation. DANIDA when the Green Party was a coalition Resources Centre were able to block finances the Environmental Justice partner in the government led by the approval of the PBMR’s environ- Project of the Legal Resources Centre Gerhard Schröder. The Green Party’s mental impact study on a technicality, as well as Earthlife Africa’s Sustain- Heinrich Böll Foundation is actively forcing the study to be redone. But able Energy and Climate Change supporting the anti-PBMR campaign in they lost another case, in which they Project. The latter is also financed by South Africa and has financed South had demanded the release of the min- the World Wildlife Fund Denmark, African environmental activist David Fig utes of the meetings of the government the Danish chapter of the World to write a book attacking the South commission that was formed to assess Wide Fund for Nature, whose founder Africa nuclear industry.

70 Spring–Summer 2006 21st CENTURY SPECIAL REPORT The Unsustainability of industry.” These “powerful political cient and dead-end technology. ‘Sustainable’ Energy forces” not only in Denmark but in The PBMR and the Neo-Cons A glance at the Danish wind turbine neighboring Germany, shifted their gov- Meanwhile, in the United States, the industry demonstrates that, without governments’ policies away from nuclear attack on the PBMR came from two very ernment sponsorship and subsidy, the energy into wind, solar, and other alter- related sources. industry would rapidly collapse, native energy sources with tax incen- The first was a report used in the because an electric generator that tives, financial support, and legislation above-mentioned Earthlife Africa case, depends on wind is by definition totally decreeing that thousands of megawatts which was written in 1999 by Dr. Edwin inefficient—especially when there’s no of energy had to be generated by wind S. Lyman of the Nuclear Control Institute wind. turbines, whether or not technically or of Washington, D.C. The South African As the top exporters, the Danes have commercially viable. Vestas soon cap- court stated that this report was written several companies ranging from small tured one-third of the huge German wind turbines to monsters that would market, which expanded greatly after even frighten Don Quixote. the German Green party entered the It is a very special industry. Take Gaia government in 1998. Wind, which produces small 11-kilo- Vestas then grew to employ 10,000 watt wind turbines. Named after the people with subsidiaries all over the Earth goddess, it was set up by the Gaia world. Many of its projects in the devel- Trust, founded by Ross Jackson, an oping sector are financed by DANIDA. American expatriate and “spiritualist” But while foreign sales boomed, in living in Denmark. Jackson is a retired 2001, a new government came to speculator who first financed the trust power and put an end to government through his Gaiacorp, one of the support. The Danish internal market world’s first hedge funds dealing with collapsed to the point that in 2004, special forms of currency derivatives. only five wind turbines were erected in Gaia Wind, along with the Danish all of Denmark. This situation changed wind-turbine consultancy Kentec, won only after the Parliament passed legisla- funding from DANIDA for a feasibility tion in 2004 mandating an additional study in Africa. 750 megawatts of new wind power. On the other side of the spectrum is It is one thing for rich countries like Vestas Wind Systems, the largest wind- Germany and Denmark to make insane turbine manufacturer in Denmark, decisions to throw away taxpayers’ Nuclear Control Institute which makes monster 4.5-megawatt money on wind turbines, and quite The Nuclear Control Institute’s Paul ocean wind turbines. Its history parallels another for the countries of Africa, most Leventhal, like the late Albert the growth pattern of the industry, which of which are desperately poor, to Wohlstetter, defines civilian nuclear has been based on political and finan- expend limited resources on an ineffi- plants as bombs in the making. cial backing of the Danish and other governments. Vestas started making wind turbines in 1978, experiencing a lackluster sales record until 1981, when California passed special tax legislation that made investment in wind turbines profitable. The company expanded until it had 800 employees, while providing the U.S. market with 2,500 wind turbines. But when the California tax legislation expired in 1985, Vestas went from rich- es to rags, and in 1987, the company was reorganized, retaining only 60 The last slide from a workers. 2001 presentation Although this collapse is testimony by Dr. Edwin that the industry is only “sustainable” Lyman, then of the through government support, its revival Nuclear Control was through government support as Institute, well. summarizing his According to Vestas’s website, in thoughts on the 1989 “powerful political forces seek to PBMR. Nuclear Control Institute strengthen the Danish wind turbine

SPECIAL REPORT 21st CENTURY Spring–Summer 2006 71 Chernobyl in such a highly technical style that it oping sector. was unintelligible! McNeill’s successor, John W. Rowe, Continued from page 63 What is the Nuclear Control immediately cancelled Exelon’s support Forum, 2005. “Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Institute? Run by Paul Leventhal, it is of the project on the grounds that it did Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts committed to stopping all nuclear not fit into his strategic plan for the and Recommendations to the Governments of power because it will allegedly lead to company. A lawyer by training, Rowe is Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine,” U.N. Chernobyl Forum. nuclear proliferation. This is the line a very different type of CEO than Forum, 2006. “Health Effects of the Chernobyl now promoted by the neo-conserva- McNeill, and did not share the latter’s Accident and Special Health Care Programmes,” tives in and around the Bush passionate commitment to nuclear U.N. Chernobyl Forum, Expert Group “Health” Administration. It was pioneered by energy, despite the fact that Exelon is (EGH). the late Albert Wohlstetter, one of the the largest operator of nuclear power N.A. Frigerio, K.F. Eckerman, and R.S. Stowe, The Argonne Radiological Impact Program demigods of the neo-cons, who equat- stations in the United States. According 1(ARIP),973. Part I, “Carcinogenic Hazard from Low- ed civilian nuclear reactors with atom- to industry sources, Rowe is a fanatical level, Low-rate Radiation,” ANL/ES-26 Part I (Argonne, Ill.: Argonne National Laboratory). ic bombs. Wohlstetter’s chief disciple believer in the “shareholder value” ide- N.A. Frigerio and R.S. Stowe, 1976. “Carcinogenic was Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy ology which underpins globalization and GeneticBiological Hazard and Environmentalfrom Background Effects Secretary of Defense and now head of and radical free-market policies. Rofadiation,” Low-Level Radiation the World Bank. Wolfowitz, who wrote Unlike the retired military officer Chicago: International Atomic Energy Agency, pp. 385-393. his doctoral thesis under Wohlstetter as McNeill, Rowe is a man of the busi- Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of an attack on nuclear desalination in ness establishment, fancies himself a GUS,Poland, 2001. Vol. 61 (Warsaw: Central Statistical the Mideast, is deeply committed to philanthropist, and belongs to all the Office), pp. 1-734. preventing any development of right clubs. But politically he is close H.R. Harach, K.O. Franssila, and V.M. Wasenius, nuclear energy in the Third World. to the neo-cons, just like Leventhal. 1985. “Occult Papillary Carcinoma of the Unlike the Danes, Leventhal doesn’t Until recently, he was a trustee of the Thyroid—A ‘Normal’Cancer, Finding in Finland. A Systematic Study,” Vol. 56, pp. 531-538. push wind turbines, but preemptive American Enterprise Institute, better T. Henriksen and G. Saxebol, 1988. “Fallout and strikes. He is a member of the Iran known as the Temple of Doom, a cen- Radiation DosesEnvironment in Norway International, after the Chernobyl Accident,” Special Policy Committee, which calls for ter of the neo-conservative movement Issue: The Chernobyl Accident: Regional and “regime change” in Iran. This commit- in Washington, where both Dick Global Impacts, Guest Editor Zbigniew tee is the extreme of the extreme. One Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld worked. Jaworowski, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 157-163. board member, for example, is Gen. Rowe participated in many of the sem- V.K. Ivanov, A.F. Tsyb, S. Ivanov, and V. Pokrovsky, Paul Vallely (ret.), who was featured in inars, conferences, and other affairs 2004. “Medical Radiological ConsequencesNAUKA, of the Chernobyl Catastrophe in Russia,” EIR’s special report on the “spoon-ben- held in the Institute’s “Wohlstetter St. Petersburg, pp. 1-387. ders” in the U.S. military (see Hall,” and perhaps met there another L.E. Ketchum, 1987. “Lessons of Chernobyl: SNM “Cheney’s ‘Spoon-Bender’ Pushing frequenter of these events, Paul members try to decontaminate the world threat- ened by fallout. Experts face challenge of edu- Nuclear Armageddon,” EIR, Aug. 26, Leventhal. Nuclearcating publicMedicine, about risk and radiation.” J. 2005). Vallely is not only for air strikes, Rowe also sits on the National Vol. 28, pp. 933-42. but also for ground assaults against Commission on Energy Policy, along E.M. Parshkov, V.A. Sokolov, A.F. Tsyb, A.D. Proshin, and J.G. Barnes, 2004. “Radiation- Iran. with R. James Woolsey, a Wohlstetterite induced Thyroid Cancer: What WeInt. Know J. Lowand It is curious that EarthLife Africa and and former CIA director, now very Radiation,What We Really Understand,” the Legal Resources Centre, both of prominent among the neo-conserva- Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 267-278. which claim to support the “little peo- tives who want the United States to L.S. Taylor, 1980. “Some Non-Scientific Influences on Radiation Protection Standards and Practice,” ple,” would team up with such an launch a strike against Iran. 5th International Congress of the International extreme group as the Nuclear Control There is now a renewed debate Radiation Protection Association, The Israel Institute. throughout Europe and the United Health Physics Society, Jerusalem, pp. 307-319. The second U.S. attempt to derail the States on nuclear energy. Finland is UNDP, 2002. “The Human Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident: A Strategy for PBMR was through the withdrawal of already building the first new nuclear Recovery.” Chernobyl Report-Final 240102, the U.S. energy company Exelon. The power station in Europe in 10 years. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) move came after the project’s chief Russia and China have announced the with the support of the U.N. Office for Co-ordi- sponsor in Exelon, Corbin A. McNeill, intention to build dozens of new nation of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the retired as chief executive officer and nuclear power stations over the next World Health Organization, pp. 1-75. Sources, Effects, and Risks of chairman in 2002. McNeill’s support quarter century. Africa has to become UNSCEAR,Ionizing Radiation, 1988. New York: United Nations for PBMR dates back to when he was part of this process if it hopes to survive Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic chairman of PECO energy company, the ravages of globalization. Radiation. which later merged with Unicom The PBMR project is on the front UNSCEAR, 2000. Sources and Effects of Ionizing Corporation to form Exelon in 2000. A lines of that fight, and intends to win. Radiation. (New York: United Nations Scientific ______Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation). retired captain of the U.S. fleet of L. Wei, Y. Zha, Z. Tao, W. He, D. Chen, Y. Yuan, 1990. nuclear submarines, McNeill was an Dean Andromidas, based in “Epidemiological Investigation of Radiological enthusiastic supporter of the PBMR Wiesbaden, Germany, is an analyst Effects in High BackgroundJ. Radiat. Res., Radiation Areas of Yangjiang, China. Vol. 31, pp. 119- project. He especially saw the project and writer for Executive Intelligence 136. as ideal for the countries of the devel- Review.

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