Congressman's outrage led to ban on disposal of chemical weapons at sea

The Army's ocean dumping of chemical weapons ended abruptly when Congress discovered what had been going on and halted an operation that could have sent a cloud of deadly nerve gas over New York City.

In the late 1960s a congressman from Buffalo named Richard ''Max'' McCarthy learned that a shipment of chemical weapons was heading for disposal at sea. He raised hell.

He had the prestigious National Academy of Sciences examine an Army plan to scuttle a ship full of concrete-encased nerve gas off the coast of New York.

The scientists were aghast. The Army was called on the carpet in a confrontational congressional hearing.

''That dump could have killed everyone in Manhattan,'' recalled Matthew S. Meselson, a Harvard professor and an academy member who testified at the hearings. ''The Army had maintained this was very far into the sea and they maintained it was very deep, too deep for fish. That wasn't right. Our report put the kibosh on the Army's plan.''

The dump site wasn't nearly as far from shore as the Army insisted it would be, the scientists concluded.

Scientists determined the water was not nearly as deep as the Army said it would be at the dump site, supposedly more than 7,000 feet deep, Meselson said.

Also, the plan to encase ''a whole world war's worth'' of VX nerve gas in concrete before sinking the ship was flawed from an engineering standpoint, and the concrete wouldn't contain a catastrophe, scientists determined.

Scientists feared water pressure changes as the ship sank would set off an explosion that would cause a chain reaction that would blow up the entire ship, Meselson said.

That could have sent a toxic cloud high into the air, and prevailing winds could have swept it toward New York City, Meselson said.

A drop of the nerve gas can kill a person within a minute.

As a result of the hearing, the Army pulled the plug on two scheduled sea dumps of chemical weapons in 1970. Two years later Congress passed a law that prohibits disposing of chemical weapons in the ocean.