"Even before Chinese troops had entered the fray in October 1950, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff had authorised the use of atomic weapons against targets within China if their troops became embroiled in the conflict. And even though the famously aggressive Gen Douglas MacArthur argued for their use, President Truman withheld permission. Historians argue that a nuclear detonation, impossible to conceal from the eyes of the world, would have increased tensions between East and West, but a more insidious form of warfare would have been relatively easy to carry out, and much simpler to dismiss as enemy disinformation.
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"'In the light of all these and similar facts,’ the report concluded, 'the Commission has no option but to conclude that the American Air Force was employing in Korea methods very similar to, if not exactly identical with, those employed to spread plague by the Japanese during the Second World War.’ It added that the testimony of the hundreds of witnesses interviewed for the report were 'too simple, too concordant and too independent’ to be doubted. Washington dismissed the Commission’s findings."