The Chemical Scythe is the first book in a projected series to be published by Plenum Press in association with the International Disaster Institute. The aim of the series, Disaster Research in Practice, is to provide scientific and readable accounts on the most urgent areas of disaster research. It is fitting, therefore, that Dr. Hay's investigation into the nature and effects of dioxins heralds the new series. The problem of chemical hazards is one that we will have to learn to live with in future decades. Dr. Hay's book is an authoritative account of the chemistry and proven and potential effects of dioxins, and of the impli cations for safety planning. He concludes with a cautious, yet optimistic note-that indeed we can learn to live with such hazards, providing that we are prepared to understand and plan for the unexpected. The accident at Seveso in 1976 alerted the world to an imperfectly un derstood but immensely alarming environmental hazard. Public debate and argument as to the implications of dioxins and, indeed, the use of herbicides as aggressive weapons in Vietnam, rage on. And yet it is only through the painstaking research exemplified in this book that it will eventually be pos sible to promote the vital accountability on the part of industrialists and governments.

This fascinating new study shows how the CIA and the British secret service, in collaboration with the military alliance NATO and European military secret services, set up a network of clandestine anti-communist armies in Western Europe after World War II. These secret soldiers were trained on remote islands in the Mediterranean and in unorthodox warfare centres in England and in the United States by the Green Berets and SAS Special Forces. The network was armed with explosives, machine guns and high-tech communication equipment hidden in underground bunkers and secret arms caches in forests and mountain meadows. In some countries the secret army linked up with right-wing terrorist who in a secret war engaged in political manipulation, harrassement of left wing parties, massacres, coup d'états and torture. Codenamed 'Gladio' ('the sword'), the Italian secret army was exposed in 1990 by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to the Italian Senate, whereupon the press spoke of "The best kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II" (Observer, 18. November 1990) and observed that "The story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller." (The Times, November 19, 1990). Ever since, so-called 'stay-behind' armies of NATO have also been discovered in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Greece and Turkey. They were internationally coordinated by the Pentagon and NATO and had their last known meeting in the NATO-linked Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) in Brussels in October 1990.