The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

dioxin: a polluter working with the pentagon 39as possible the first atomic bombs in history, those that were to be droppedon Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Endowed with a $2 billionbudget, the Manhattan Project assembled the best American physicists inthe Pentagon’s nuclear weapons laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, whileMonsanto chemists under Thomas’s direction were given a delicate mission:to isolate and then purify plutonium and polonium, which would be used totrigger the nuclear bombs. Enjoying the Pentagon’s absolute confidence, thecompany received consent for this important work to be carried out in its researchlaboratory in Dayton, Ohio.Promoted to vice president of Monsanto after the war, Charles Thomastook charge of the Clinton Laboratories in Oak Ridge, where he was giventhe project of developing civil applications for nuclear power for the federalgovernment, while maintaining his office in St. Louis. He ended his careeras CEO of Monsanto in 1960, at a time when his company, which had becomeone of the most powerful chemical enterprises in the world, was aboutto secure the largest contract in its history: the production of Agent Orangefor the Vietnam War.Operation Ranch Hand and Agent Orange“The Ranch Hand operation was unique in the history of American arms,and may remain so. In April 1975, President Ford formally renounced thefirst use of herbicides by the Unites States in future wars. ‘As long as thispolicy stands,’ Major [William] Buckingham writes, ‘no operation like RanchHand could happen again.’” 12 These are the words of Richard H. Kohn inforeword to a book by Buckingham published by the Office of Air Force Historyin 1982 covering the use of herbicides in Southeast Asia from 1961 to1971.The advantage of this book, which carefully avoids considering the healthand ecological consequences of the massive spraying of defoliants in SouthVietnam, is that it presents in clinical technical detail the genesis of thechemical warfare waged by the United States under the euphemistic titleRanch Hand to the great benefit of multinationals such as Dow Chemicaland, of course, Monsanto. It also tells us that “herbicides, or weed-killingchemicals, had long been used in American agriculture” and that the first experimentalairborne spraying of pesticides took place near Troy, Ohio, on