U.S. Admits to Using “Types of Tear Gas” in Vietnam

Mar. 22, 1965 - The United States disclosed today that it was giving the South Vietnamese some temporarily disabling “types of tear gas” for combat use against the Viet Cong.

The gases, at least some which induce extreme nausea, have been employed “a few times,” officials said. South Vietnamese soldiers were reported to have “operated” the gas dispensers aboard U.S. helicopters.

One source said he believed the gases had been used twice, once in December and once in January, in areas where rebels had mingled with civilian populations to avoid bombing attacks.

As far as is known, this was the first time that the United States was involved in the combat use of gas since World War I.

The blister gases widely used in World War I had a delayed rate of action, destroying tissue and injuring blood vessels several hours after contact. They sometimes led to death. The gases used in Vietnam apparently have an immediate but temporarily disabling effect that wears off after several hours.

Officials, obviously sensitive to the propaganda problems posed by the disclosure, insisted that the use of “nauseous gases” was “not contrary to international law and practice.”

The U.S. is not a party to any valid international agreement outlawing the use of gas, but it has shared a general abhorrence of “inhuman” forms of warfare. A spokesman said the State Department did not consider the gases used in Vietnam to be the kind barred from warfare by law or consensus. 

Officials in Washington, as well as in Vietnam, suggested that gases that had “only temporary effects” were more humane in certain situations than indiscriminate artillery fire or bombardment. The State Department said the gases in question were “similar to types of tear gas employed in riot control all over the world.”

The official view that the use of such gases was permissible under codes of warfare was challenged by Senator Wayne Morse (D-Ore.), an international lawyer and vigorous critic of the Administration’s Vietnam policies.

“It is interesting to see,” Morse said, “how easy it is, once we depart from the principles of international law, to violate more and more of them.”

Support this project at patreon.com/realtime1960s