The State Department memo, however, contained a long list of stringent limitations on such use. 1 Nevertheless, the State Department eventually sent the Defense Department a memo agreeing that the non-lethal agents were legal. The State Department has traditionally been skeptical about the use of CBW agents the United States had been one of the principals of the 1925 Geneva Conference which outlawed the use of asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases. The Pentagon’s point of view already was known: Army Field Manual 27-10, Law of Land Warfare, says “the United States is not a party to any treaty, now in force, that prohibits or restricts the use in warfare of toxic or non-toxic gases, or smoke or incendiary materials, or of bacteriological warfare.” Sometime early in 1964 the Pentagon asked the State Department to investigate and prepare a memo on the legality of the use of non-lethal gases in South Vietnam.
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