News Release
September 14, 2011
A day after the United States Ambassador inaugurated a $26 million dollar nuclear detection facility at the Port of Manila, the umbrella group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan slammed the US government’s “nuclear hypocrisy.”
Citing a declassifed document from the independent National Security Archive based in the George Washington University, Bayan said that the US government had previously stored nuclear weapons in the Philippines, during the time of the Marcos dictatorship. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB197/nd-17c.pdf
According to the “Top Secret” document issued in 1969 from the US State Department, Marcos was informed of the storage of nuclear weapons in the Philippines (presumably in the former US bases) as early as 1966.
It said that “divulgence of the fact that nuclear weapons are stored in the Philippines, and have been there for many years without prior consultation with the Philippine government, would greatly jeopardize US-Philippine relations, particularly on the eve of presidential elections scheduled on October 11,” the memo said.
The memorandum was issued in response to a Senate inquiry led by Sen. Stuart Symington into CIA operations in Laos and the storage of nuclear weapons anywhere. The memo sought to provide instructions on how to deal with questions of nuclear weapons storage and what to do if sensitive information on nuclear weapons in the Philippines would be divulged to the media .
“US nuclear hypocrisy is when they act as if they are concerned with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, while on the other hand, they remain the world’s biggest prolifierator of nuclear arms. They would act as if they are concerned with nuclear weapons entering the Philippines while secretly storing nuclear weapons in our country without informing our government,” said Bayan secretary general Renato M. Reyes, Jr.
“This chapter of our history should be revisited and the US should be called to task for its deception. This is another proof on why we should never allow the return of US bases in the country,” Reyes said.
The National Security Archive, which hosts a wide range of declassified US documents, “is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located atThe George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA),” according to its website.
In the inauguration, US Ambassador Harry Thomas said that “the US and the Philippines have a long history of cooperation and shared many bonds and common values. These shared values are shown here today with our mutual commitment to improve security and safety in the maritime shipping industry,”
“The so-called shared bonds and values are tainted with US deception. The US also has a long history of connivance with the puppet and dictator Marcos in concealing the presence of nuclear weapons in the Phillippines,” Reyes said.
Problems with VFA
Bayan said that under the Visiting Forces Agreement, Philippine authorities have no way of determining if warships entering the country are carrying nuclear weapons. Philippine authorities are prohibited from inspecting US ships.
“The US government’s hi-tech nuclear detection device, unfortunately, does not apply to US warships that freely enter the Philippines under the past and present administrations,” he added.###
