of the army chemical corps were insect dropped over north korea and parts of china my sense is that there were incidents that involved. probably quite limited but very very important us testing of biological materials and how will the issue ever be laid to rest once for all i don't know of the issue will be later i mean how would it be a is with the smoking gun with with with definitive testimony from a us official who was involved in the program and can say yes we did. the key to the mystery may lie with the american at force offices who originally confessed to dropping jumbo loans. very few are still alive today. but we tracked down one of the survivors to this peaceful senior citizens community

near houston texas. kenneth enoch is 85 years old today he enjoys a comfortable retirement sharing wartime memories with his wife barbara these are supposed to be bombs over here is that right those are balmy survey and i think it says if this man is hungry give him food. but from 1950 onward left tenant kenneth enoch was another gates on u.s. air force b. 26 bombing missions over north korea all but one or 2 most of missions we flew at night our favorite target was trains we were in and i trains you know but sometimes the one would almost hit the engine. and actually if we drop net napalm on the engine you know to try and discourage them i guess it was the you could feel old napalm go off on january the 13th 952 after 53 night bombing

missions the next plane was shot down and he bailed out over north korean territory and landed in the parachute spilled and i found a corner of a rice paddy. and it was snowy there were quite a bit of snow on the ground and i saw a dark spot over there on the corner and so i thought well that's a good place for me to be but in less than an hour kenneth enoch was captured by north korean and chinese soldiers it was the morning but this 27th birthday they marched me down a house and i had a place to sit. and they had a guard there and they handed me a piece of paper in english. said. don't worry about it and all that which they're going to send and anyway you know they don't want to trouble for awhile least but anyway. so i was. left in and would be held captive in north korea for the next 20 months but what happened to him and

what he did during his time as a prisoner of which proved to be one of the most bitterly disputed pieces of evidence in the allegations of american biological warfare. that. there. was. no. there. on april the 1st 952 can if you know committed detailed confession that he had taken part in a series of biological warfare missions. on film and over 8 closely written pages left hadn't he not described his biological weapons instructions. or the techniques of dropping germ bombs that they have. never read but. they and the code word assigned to log them on

his return 3. or more. ordinary. in all 36 american air force officers made written or filmed confessions of dropping germ bombs while in captivity. but when they were sent back home at the end of the war the us department of defense woman them that they could be brought before courts martial to face treason charges subsequently in response to identical questions each officer made a carefully worded retraction just released films lay bare the shocking truth behind communist charges of germ warfare in korea and the so-called confessions of captured u.s. airmen each retraction was filmed by military cameras and handed to television news reel companies with their unit it is. a minute. that you have been there

but the basic bulk of your war they're bombing the other not very good care to make a statement regarding the. if left in and kenneth enoch's retraction was typical. movie we're recording interviews were forced upon me that johnny. i said that due to my fault too much due to my confession which which is absolutely false in my confession i would now be branded by the people of the world as in fact a war criminal you describe the method you better find if. you think your statement. yesterday they use both physical and mental pressure they pushed me around. did me attention for long periods. forced me to sit at attention. finally i could see that there was no

alternative insanity or death they they threaten me and threaten me again that i should never leave alive if i didn't cooperate but nearly 60 years later kenny enoch now denies he was ill treated by his captors what imagines these very brutal thoughts no no no no no. no no no. but here i lay there one time they had me and i did the stay in the same place all the time and i can't recall one particular thing but. maybe maybe they wanted to move somebody else you know how whatever they do so i got transferred to another building another house not home and it was cold and the so my room wasn't quite as big but it was it was all i needed you know.

but they came with because it was so cold they came with. a pot full of charcoal you know lay it. and they put it in the room to keep me warm the 2nd reason flight left tenant gay for making his confession was mental pressure also forced to read their propaganda. make they were about comment on it that is there there are russian publications and so on communism today once again his story changes try and talk to let you. know if you want to be that really hurts. you know i mean. i don't think so for your time dockery they had all kinds of books or if you want

to go i guess and if you bought one you did like you know it just over here so why then did he make such a detailed confession today he claims that it was a deliberate deception. for days false and anything else i could think of he says that he booby trapped the document giving his fellow crew members the names of american cartoon characters there was a fellow named dick tracy dick tracy you know dick tracy over there yeah richard tracy what. you know and i was going to put a junior in there to you know if we're doing a trick see you tell you only does this make you always like. yeah but they were there i wanted them to be recognizable so i think that tracy and jr that would have been great except that. you know you can't put too many people on one of them or it's worse or it would have been a real dandy probably would have had a president from where. the difficulty with this story is that many of the dates

and places detailed in kennedy knox confession have since been confirmed as accurate. the only mention of anything approaching a cartoon character is a passing reference to his gunnery officer sergeant tracy. and then nearly 60 years on kenneth enoch seems to make at least a partial admission that the united states did deploy bacteriological weapons 1st of all i think you have to understand what what this. biological warfare or whatever or car is a pretty big deal and it's health what you've got specialists and evil doctors and all of that nonsense but but there's the people who deal and they're don't have to go high and so asked for a sweet deal for them you know but they send you send it when you nevertheless he

still denies that he personally played any part in the affair i thought what you were as you know going nowhere the same errors fly you know i was just a passenger. official records of bombing raids over north korea held in the u.s. national archives one way to clear up the confusion about kenneth enoch's confession and subsequent retraction would be to examine the flight logs for his missions over korea but they were removed from the files by the us air force on march the 23rd 19522 months after he was captured and one week before he made his written confession. and after the war the u.s. military imposed a top secret classification on all documents relating to biological warfare in the far east. many of the flight records for korea have never been released.

you saw you also know the date that you. will show it in this weather come up during this or you can it is someone you. wish is used in the. world order new car i know a lot of fun out there it doesn't matter if you use a sage just there to tell him that he's got. more. now they can easily do with a quick analysis of the jew or not just look at. washington remembers the korean war very differently to pyongyang. the united states still on as its military men and women as heroes who fought on behalf of the free world to

hold back the march of international communism. and yet when we asked both the department of defense and the state department for filmed interviews to discuss the allegations of america's biological warfare program both refused. they also declined to respond to 10 specific questions about north korea's claims. instead a government spokesperson issued a 2 line statement describing the allegations as baseless and the disinfo mission campaign that refuses to die. for it is. one thing is clear. until those allegations are laid to rest and america's innocence or culpability is established beyond doubt perhaps by an independent inquiry. one of the most enduring cold war mysteries will continue to haunt its relationship. with the

world's most secretive state. dirty little secrets from 2010 a persuasive story but one that has been consistently denied by every american administration for more than 60 years and north korea though this story contributes to a profound suspicion of the united states and its intentions and southeast asia i'm joined now from u.k. by professor hazel smith a korea expert from london school of oriental and african studies professor thank you so much for joining us so if all of this happened with you know deadly insects biological weapons if all this happened it was more than 60 years ago but having said that is this still a very real live issue for north koreans now the truth is about the korean war is that it was a very dirty war on all sides there atrocities by the north koreans by the south koreans there were many many people killed and many many orphans and many maimed

so the whole of the war still remains controversial particularly for north koreans and for south koreans because they've still got family members that have split since not 53 once when the war ended there's been no communication between the 2 sides so the issues about alleged germ warfare a part and parcel of the discourse which takes place in north korea this is a controversial topic at the time in the 1950 s. remains controversial now this story no smoking gun evidence this to took place but it forms part of the official discourse it doesn't however form part of the day to day discussions of north koreans i lived and worked in north korea for 2 years all over the country not so different settings in farms and hospitals and. clinics and. talked to lots and lots of different people open. never raised once as

an issue with me not even in passing where some other issues were raised of course things like the fact that there were so many men killed in the 1950 s. in the war that there were a disproportionate amounts of women left alive today for a brief moment there was a slight deescalation but obviously the tension is still there how do you see things playing out on the korean peninsula well there are different objectives the north koreans want to preserve regime security which for them means both territorial defense for prevention of military intervention from the outside but also security for the current government and for those in power it saw what happened in iraq to saddam hussein and in libya to gadhafi and their argument is that if those countries had maintained nuclear weapons program or

similar sorts of programs they wouldn't have been vulnerable to invasion from the united states and others although what's encouraging is with south korea north korea after all at the heart of the matter on the korean peninsula at least talking to each other now in 2080 in a way that they haven't been for 2 or 3 years there are some diplomatic channels which will at least at this stage allow for talks on more sensitive issues but there is a long long way to go before we can see an end to these conflicts thank you professor hazel smith for joining us and that is it from us to check out the rewind page at al-jazeera dot com for more films from the series irish al carry thank you for joining us so you answer. thank you. it's my privilege to name al-jazeera english the broadcaster of the

year the country has a fight each other that we've been told that we can still hear these is the largest demonstration that's been held by will come to refugees since over $700000.00 additional dear some of the americas who sits on the planet earth here for them to think of it could be plus that here. in syria english proud percipient of the new crystals called costa of the year award for the city of. hello again or welcome back what we are seeing continued rain showers and thunderstorms across parts of turkey that is going to continue over the next few days we do have an area of circulation if you take a look at the satellite imagery and we have a little bit of turning across much of turkey that is helping to keep those areas unstable and those thunderstorms pop up in the heating of the day a little bit further to the south and also towards the east we're looking at dry conditions across much of the area now for baghdad $41.00 degrees is going to be

the expected high court city $45.00 and we are expected to see winds across much of the area over the next few days not of lot in terms of clouds or rain so staying dry for many areas at $34.00 degrees there well here across doha the winds are going to be a big problem they have been over the last day or so that is going to continue as we go towards mid week $45.00 degrees is our expected high we are expected to come down though a couple of degrees by the time we get towards thursday must got though is going to be a nice day with attempt to there $34.00 degrees as well and then very quickly down across parts of southern africa not looking too bad across much of the area we do have some clouds along the coast that's going to keep cape town mostly to partly cloudy there but over here towards madagascar it is going to be rainy across much of the coastal areas with a temperature of $24.00 degrees. after decades of being programmed with instructions data on greek computers can now know

on their own identifying patterns and predicting human behavior. official intelligence can monitor ombudsman. and decide on a future big picture decodes the world according to ai and exposes the bias inside the machine to on al jazeera. the only thing these corrupt politicians will understand is an earthquake at the ballot box.