PENTAGON'S ULTIMATE WEAPON- LASER GUNS

The American Defence Department once considered—but finally rejected —using laser beams as a weapon against liberation troops in Vietnam, according to syndicated columnist Jack Anderson.

He said Pentagon-sponsored research showed • laser beams could explode the eyeball and blind the victim.

Research was carried out for the Aero-Space Medical Research laboratories at the Wright-Patterson air force base in Ohio and presented to a conference on laser technology in San Diego, California, in the 1960s, Anderson wrote.

The Defence Department said in a statement that a report on 'ocular hazards of laser radiation' was presented to a San Diego conference in 1963 by a company under contract from the Wright-Patterson medical centre.

It said the work was continuing at another air base in Texas.

However, the Pentagon said: 'The Defence Department, as a matter of policy, does not comment on the possible use of lasers as weapons.' It said the objective of research is to determine hazards of laser radiation and related techniques.

'These have resulted in establishment of safety standards for air force and department of defence personnel using laser equipment and serve as a general standard for the entire laser industrial community' The report presented San Diego conference made no mention of a laser beam being developed that would 'explode eyeballs'.

'There was a reference possibility of retinal tissue damage which could lead to blindness,' the statement said. "The damage produced is like that which would be produced by looking at an arc welder or the sun without adequate eye protection.

Jack Anderson, whose syndicated column appears in several hundred American newspapers and whose revelations often embarrass government and Congress, said the report presented at San Diego discussed laser beam experiments which '(were) used to bring rabbit and monkey eyes to boiling Above: Jack Anderson point, causing bleeding and an actual explosion in the eye.

This, the result of the experiments, is important in considering the anti-personnel weapons application of lasers,' Anderson quoted the report as saying. ' ... It would not matter upon which portion of the retina the image was formed because the resulting microexplosion of the tissue would lead to blindness.' The study also said protection against a laser beam blindness ray would be difficult because lasers can penetrate most protective filters, Anderson wrote.

remained stacked in warehouses.

In the face of protests from non-Stalinist printworkers and journalists, the CGT blandly denies that any ban is in operation. 'We challenge the leaders of "Lutte Ouvrière" to show that their paper has been blacked, the CGT district committee says.

But 'Lutte Ouvrière' has obtained copies of motions passed at CGT branch meetings in various parts of Paris, one of which reads: 'The workers of NMPP have decided kir to step luvrieres the weekly from one week to the next until elements of "Lutte Ouvrière" put an end to their provocations outside the gates of the NMPP warehouses.' 'Lutte Ouvrière' has described the Stalinists' talk of 'provocations' as 'pure invention'. But they add that on June 6, a group of about 20 CP and CGT members beat up three youths selling the paper.

It is worth noting that the CGT's political blockade is exclusively directed at the left-wing press. The union chiefs have no intention of taking any action to prevent the distribution of extreme right-wing propaganda handled by the publishing agency.