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Operation Tailwind Journalist April Oliver and Peter Arnett ran the story "Did The U.S. Drop Nerve Gas?" in the June 15th 1998 issue of Time Magazine. In that article they alleged that the U.S. Air Force A1E Skyraiders dropped CBU-15 Cluster Bomb Units containing the Nerve Agent Sarin (GB). According to Oliver and Arnett one of the mission objective was to kill American defectors. Also included in these allegations where charges that non-combative women and children where targeted. The mission took place on September 11, 1970 near the town of Chavan. These allegations stirred up many emotions. The United Sates had sworn they would never use chemical or biological. Now we have a story out saying they did. You can imagine the uproar that caused. However, this ended up being one of those all too typical cases of journalist not researching their topic and making up lies to sell a story. The truth about Operation Tailwind is far less sinister than Oliver and Arnett lead us to believe. Tailwind was not a mission to kill American defectors as Arnett and Oliver led us to believe. Instead it was a side mission to Operation Honorable Dragon. Tailwind was used as a diversion to pull North Vietnamese Troops away from the Honorable Dragon Theater. As for the allegations about sarin gas being employed. These also proved to be false. The gas released was the riot control agent CS, other wise know as tear gas. It was not Sarin as we were led to believe. All this can be found in the book titled "SOG:The Secret Wars of Americas Commandos in Vietnam", written by John L. Plaster (Simon and Schuster 1997). In this book Tailwind is described in detail. To add injury to insult, this is supposedly one of the books Arnett read and quoted for his analysis of Tailwind.(35)
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