ANALISIS CUALITATIVO

An American citizen born at North Bay, Ontario, in 1928, Gerald Bull suffered a loveless childhood, raised by an aunt after his mother died and his father left for parts unknown. Still, he excelled in school and was rated a virtual genius, earning his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto at age 23. By that time he was already obsessed with the idea of building giant guns that could propel satellites into outer space, a vision fueled in equal parts by childhood readings of Jules Verne and study of the giant field guns used by Germany to bombard Paris during World War I.

Bull took the first step toward realizing his vision when he joined the Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment (CARDE), involved throughout the 1950s with problems of supersonic aerodynamics for aircraft and missiles. BULGARIA

Robert Somers Brookings founded the Washington institute that Watergate conspirators plotted to destroy in 1972.

Supersonic wind tunnels were expensive to build, so Bull devised an alternative method of testing: In lieu of constructing vast tunnels, he proposed using can- non to fire models down a test range at supersonic speed. The early tests were successful, and at age 31 Bull was promoted to lead CARDE’s aerophysics department. A loathing for bureaucratic red tape drove Bull to a series of unapproved media inter- views, which in turn alienated his superiors, and he was dismissed from CARDE two years later in 1961. Briefly adrift in private life, Bull soon found sup- port from the Pentagon, the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA), and the Canadian Defense Depart-

ment for a new experimental program dubbed Pro- ject HARP (High-Altitude Research Program), created to study large guns and high-altitude ballis- tics. Initial testing was done in subterranean tunnels on land that Bull purchased along the Vermont- Quebec border. Free-flight tests were later conducted on the island of Barbados, where giant projectiles were lobbed over the Atlantic, peaking at an altitude of 108 miles.

Diversion of military funds for the ongoing Viet- nam War doomed Bull’s project and once again left him without official sponsors. Before the bitter end, Bull transferred HARP’s assets to his own company— Space Research Corporation (SRC)—operating from an 8,000-acre spread in rural Vermont. By the 1970s CIA contacts had placed Bull in touch with govern- ment representatives from SOUTH AFRICA, CHINA,

and IRAQ, but those connections ultimately landed

Bull in jail. American relations with South Africa’s racist apartheid regime were severed in the latter 1970s, and U.S. corporations were banned from doing business with Johannesburg. Bull ignored the restrictions until he was arrested for smuggling 30,000 artillery shells to South Africa via the West Indies. A guilty plea on that charge brought Bull a six-month jail term, despite a federal prosecu- tor’s recommendation that Bull serve no time in custody. The conviction left Bull bankrupt and des- perate. On release from prison he moved to Brussels, seeking any clients who would keep his dream afloat financially.

By 1981 Bull had a new deal with Iraq, by then immersed in a marathon war with neighboring IRAN.

Rumors persist that Bull met personally with Saddam Hussein, then a favorite client of the Pentagon and the REAGAN-BUSHWhite House for his opposition to

Iran. According to journalist David Silverberg, Hus-

sein was so taken with Bull’s presentation that he “downed a bottle of Johnny Walker Red and called up his cronies in the middle of the night, insisting that they rush right over to hear Bull.” Be that as it may, Bull soon found himself at the helm of Project Babylon, designing a “supergun” for Iraq that would sport a 120-meter barrel and tip the scales around 4.2 million pounds. A model of the giant weapon was displayed in May 1989 at the Baghdad Interna- tional Exhibition for Military Production. On the side, Bull also helped Iraq design a multistage missile that would have permitted long-range strikes against Hussein’s enemies.

At 6:20 P.M. on March 22, 1990, as Bull paused to

unlock the door of his sixth-floor apartment in Brus- sels, an unknown assassin shot him three times in the back with a silencer-equipped pistol. Bull collapsed to the floor, where two more shots were fired into the back of his head at close range. Killed instantly, he lay bleeding on the floor for 20 minutes before police arrived. Bull’s briefcase lay untouched nearby, con- taining various papers, financial documents, and close to $20,000 in cash. Within days of the murder, Saddam Hussein declared in a speech from Baghdad, “A Canadian citizen with U.S. nationality came to Iraq. He might have benefited Iraq. I don’t know. They say the Iraq intelligence service is spread over Europe, but nobody spoke of human rights of the Canadian citizen of U.S. nationality. After he came to Iraq, they killed him.”

ISRAEL was the immediate prime suspect in Bull’s

murder because Israel was committed to retarding weapons-development programs in Iraq and other hostile Arab states. Alternate scenarios blame the Iranian government (known enemies of Iraq), British intelligence, and the CIA. The British theory, advanced by journalist Walter De Bock in 1998, claims that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ordered Bull’s murder because he was taking lucra- tive Iraqi arms contracts away from British firms. (As support for his claim, De Bock noted that reporter Jonathan Moyle was murdered in Chile on March 31, 1990—eight days after Bull’s assassination— while investigating claims of secret British military trading with Iraq.) American involvement in the murder was suggested by Canadian journalist Dale Grant, reporting that Michael Bull “broached the idea that the CIA did it, because his father was applying for a U.S. pardon of his arms-smuggling conviction.” Two years later, former SRC employee BULL, Gerald Victor

Christopher Cowley told the House of Commons that he and Bull had briefed the CIA and Britain’s MI5 on the progress of Project Babylon as it pro- ceeded. While convinced that Israel was responsible for killing Bull, Cowley “speculated that the CIA must have been tipped off by the MOSSAD [Israeli

intelligence] and thus had acquiesced in the assassi- nation.”

Project Babylon disintegrated after Bull’s death, which was doubtless the intention of his killer(s). SRC immediately closed its doors, and the employees scattered. Iraqi forces invaded neighboring KUWAIT

on August 2, 1990, and U.S.-led forces responded with aerial attacks in January 1991, climaxed by a swift land offensive the following month. Bull’s superguns were located and destroyed by UNITED NATIONSweapons inspectors in the wake of the Gulf

War. No suspects have yet been identified in Dr. Bull’s murder.