archived as http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Germ_01.doc read more at http://www.stealthskater.com/Science.htm note: because important web-sites are frequently "here today but gone tomorrow", the following was archived from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weapon/ on February 9, 2007 . This is NOT an attempt to divert readers from the aforementioned web- site. Indeed, the reader should only read this back-up copy if it cannot be found at the original author's site. The Living Weapon PBS / "The American Experience" In early 1942, shortly after the United States entered World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt received an alarming intelligence report: Germany and Japan were developing biological weapons for potential offensive use. In response, the U.S. and its allies rushed to develop their own germ warfare program, enlisting some of America's most promising scientists in the effort. This "American Experience" production examines the international race to develop biological weapons in the 1940s and 1950s, revealing the scientific and technical challenges scientists faced, and the moral dilemmas posed by their eventual success. 1
Transcript
archived as http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Germ_01.doc
read more at http://www.stealthskater.com/Science.htm
note: because important web-sites are frequently "here today but gone tomorrow", the following was archived from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weapon/ on February 9, 2007 . This is NOT an attempt to divert readers from the aforementioned web-site. Indeed, the reader should only read this back-up copy if it cannot be found at the original author's site.
The Living WeaponPBS / "The American Experience"
In early 1942, shortly after the United States entered World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt received an alarming intelligence report: Germany and Japan were developing biological weapons for potential offensive use. In response, the U.S. and its allies rushed to develop their own germ warfare program, enlisting some of America's most promising scientists in the effort.
This "American Experience" production examines the international race to develop biological weapons in the 1940s and 1950s, revealing the scientific and technical challenges scientists faced, and the moral dilemmas posed by their eventual success.
As America's germ warfare program expanded during the Cold War, scientists began to conduct their own covert tests on human volunteers. The United States continued the development and stockpiling of biological weapons until President Nixon terminated the program in 1969. "Biological weapons have massive, unpredictable, and potentially uncontrollable consequences," he told the Nation. "Mankind already carries in its hands too many of the seeds of its own destruction."
Film DescriptionA synopsis of the film, plus film credits.
Primary SourcesAir Force charts showing scenarios for using bioweapons.
Further ReadingA list of books, articles, and Web sites relating to the program topic.
AcknowledgementsProgram interviewees and consultants.
[Narrator]: In November 1969, President Richard Nixon made a startling declaration.
[President Nixon (archival)]: The United States of America will renounce the use of any form of deadly biological weapons that either kill or incapacitate.
[Narrator]: Nixon's announcement was widely acclaimed. Yet few Americans knew that for more than 25 years, the United States had been operating an extensive research program to harness germs as weapons of mass destruction. Born during a terrible World War, America's bioweapons program was fueled by fear and insulated with secrecy.
[Matthew Meselson, Biologist]: Biological weapons are designed to kill vast numbers of civilians.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: You couldn't have these programs out in the open because the public should not know.
[Narrator]: American researchers would enter uncharted territory as they ran an escalating series of experiments -- ultimately using human subjects.
[Norm Covert, Camp Detrick Historian]: I've read the day-to-day notebooks of the laboratory scientists. They never reached an end point. They just kept pushing that point farther and farther every day.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: There is an appeal to these weapons to certain members of the scientific community, almost being seduced by the dark side.
[Brian Balmer, Author]: It's essentially invisible. You can't see it. You can't hear it. You can't smell it.
[Richard Preston, Author]: A "biological weapon" is alive. What it wants to do is survive and reproduce itself -- inside a host, the human body.
[Narrator]: On December 9, 1942, the U.S. Government convened a secret meeting at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
Army officers had urgent questions for an elite group of scientists. America and its allies were fighting a horrific World War. Intelligence suggested that Germany might soon target Britain with a terrifying new weapon -- a bomb packed with biological agents.
The meeting was called to respond to a critical British request. Could the Americans create a large-scale biological warfare program to help their allies? And do it virtually "overnight"?
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: If you brought all that we knew about microbiology and infectious diseases into a military context, you could develop a weapon that would be amazingly effective. It would be dangerous. It could change the course of the war.
[Narrator]: Only a few months before, the president of the United States had grappled with the issue of biological weapons.
"I have been loath to believe that any nation --" Franklin Roosevelt said, "even our present enemies -- would be willing to loose upon mankind such terrible and inhumane weapons."
Secretary-of-War Henry Stimson thought differently. "Biological warfare is ... dirty business," he wrote to Roosevelt. "But ... I think we must be prepared."
The President approved the launch of America's biological warfare program. For the first time, U.S. researchers would be trying to make weapons from the deadliest germs known to Science.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: Once you're looking at a science not strictly for the benefits that it can bring but for the damage it can inflict on an enemy, you're in a whole new world.
[Narrator]: Now, at the request of a desperate ally, America was entering a realm lacking clear ethical limits where Science and secrecy would go hand-in-hand.
As the meeting broke up, the researchers were now warned that anyone who leaked details of the discussion would face 40 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
By the time of the Washington meeting, German bombs had been raining down on Britain for 2 years. The English feared that the next bomb might carry a biological payload.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: You can look at the British in 1940. When the Blitz is going on, that's when they decide that they're going to start a biological weapons program. They are absolutely at the edge. They're really desperate, and they want to seek any kind of defense that they can.
[Narrator]: In July 1942, Britain began secret trials of unconventional weapons on a small Scottish island called Gruinard.
[Brian Balmer, Author]: It was picked because of its remoteness. Partly because of reasons of secrecy, but also partly because there were very few populated areas around the island.
[Narrator]: The British believed they had a weapon that would disperse infectious germs into the air. In their labs, they had evaluated a handful of lethal agents. Now in the field, they would test the most promising -- the bacterium that causes the dreaded disease anthrax.
Led by bacteriologist Paul Fildes, the team first considered how far beyond the island wind might spread the germs. Then they positioned their subjects -- a score of sheep purchased from local crofters. A scaffolding held a bomb packed with hardy anthrax spores.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: They really have to turn to an agent like anthrax because the anthrax spore is able to withstand the pressure of an explosion.
[Brian Balmer, Author]: This was an anti-personnel bomb. But, obviously, doing experiments with humans with anthrax was out of the question.
[Narrator]: Over the next minutes, the cloud of germs passed over the animals.3
For several days, nothing. Then the sheep began to tremble and stagger. Blood oozed from their bodies shortly before death.
[Brian Balmer, Author]: What Fildes' experience on Gruinard Island had shown was that an anti-personnel biological bomb could be produced. What it did convince the allies of was that they had a really potent weapon.
[Narrator]: A potent weapon … but one exceedingly hard to contain.
[Brian Balmer, Author]: The dead sheep were put at the bottom of the cliff with some explosives. The explosives were let off to bury the sheep. One-or-two of the sheep were blown into the water and floated away.
[Narrator]: Soon, animals began to die on the mainland. If word of the lethal experiment got out, Fildes feared that the public would panic.
British security services concocted a story -- Greek sailors had tossed infected carcasses overboard. The British reimbursed farmers "on behalf of the Greek government."
Fildes had a successful field trial but scant resources. To move into production, the British would need American help.
[Brian Balmer, Author]: One of the advantages of bringing the U.S. into the research on biological warfare as far as Britain was concerned was that they didn't have the facilities, the resources, the money.
[Narrator]: A British politician of the day described the United States as a "gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate."
Fildes had lit the "boiler".
In Spring 1943, American scientists and staff began arriving at a sleepy airstrip in rural Maryland. Operating under the Army's Chemical Warfare Service, Camp Detrick would become the Top-Secret enclave for enthusiastic American biowarfare researchers.
[Norm Covert, Camp Detrick Historian]: They were passionate about their science. They were the best in the Country. If someone said to you, "Here is an unlimited budget, here's all the equipment you need, tell me which kind of building you want to work in and we'll build it", you would jump at that opportunity. And that's exactly what they did. But the imperative was that "we need results very quickly!"
[Narrator]: The American bioweapons program would embody the same security precautions that the British had adopted.
[Norm Covert, Camp Detrick Historian]: It was the highest level of secrecy. In some cases, there were only 4-or-5 people who actually knew the extent of what was going on at Camp Detrick.
[Mike Foster, Captain/Chemical Warfare Service]: I remember one time we had a party and somebody said, "Hey! Lot of bacteriologists here, aren't there?" That was quickly shushed up. We were taught at Detrick: "Don't talk about Detrick."
4
[Matthew Meselson, Biologist]: If an activity is conducted in secret, people who can see the mistakes in it or the danger in it or the false assumptions in it may not know about it -- even people within the Government. And therefore, you might embark upon a course which is disastrous.
[Narrator]: Detrick's scientific director was Ira Baldwin, the 47 year old chairman of the Bacteriology Department at the University of Wisconsin.
In one sense, Baldwin was an unlikely choice to lead the project.
[Norm Covert, Camp Detrick Historian]: He had Quaker roots, a very strict way of living. And their morality was that war was not the way you do things. You would think that Doctor Baldwin would have rejected the value of using biological warfare and the ethics of using biological warfare.
[Narrator]: Like other Detrick scientists, Baldwin struggled over his decision. But then he quickly got down to work. It was wartime.
[Norm Covert, Camp Detrick Historian]: Not many people today can understand the mindset of 1941 when we were attacked by Japanese. The entire Nation was at war! So we had a real mission to protect our Nation.
[Mike Foster, Captain/Chemical Warfare Service]: Do I find anything morally wrong with biological warfare as compared with other warfare? No. I don't see where there's any difference. The purpose is the same in every case: Kill 'em!
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: The people who worked in the biological weapons programs were able to convince themselves that there was a patriotic reason for doing this work. That the nation-state would be in danger of not surviving if they did not do this work. They lived in a closed, moral order.
[Narrator]: The British had made 2 requests. One was for anthrax. Another was for a toxin produced by bacteria -- botulinum -- the most lethal substance ever discovered.
[Richard Preston, Author]: A person who is poisoned with botulinum toxin develops paralysis. Doctors can watch it creep through the body. And when the paralysis reaches the center of the chest, you have a breathing arrest and a heart attack. And you can't be resuscitated.
[Narrator]: The British provided Detrick with the botulinum recipe. Scaling it up was Ira Baldwin's job. He built a temporary tarpaper shack. Protected by guards armed with machine-guns, it ran 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week.
Researchers tested the deadly toxin on mice. But no one could say exactly what would happen in human beings.
[Mike Foster, Captain/Chemical Warfare Service]: One milliliter will kill a million mice. Now, how much would it take to kill a person? I can't answer that. But it's very, very toxic; very potent.
[Narrator]: A special plan provided for staff who might be accidentally killed on the job. They were to be buried on Detrick's grounds in airtight metal caskets without any report on the cause of death.
5
For decades, nations had debated the use of unconventional weapons. In World War I, many saw Germany's use of chlorine gas -- a chemical weapon -- as an outrageous violation of the norms of War and a corruption of Science.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: Wonderful things came out of modern chemistry that improved people's lives. But unfortunately in World War I, you find that a great science can be exploited for military purposes.
[Narrator]: In 1925 in Geneva, over 30 nations signed a protocol banning first use of unconventional weapons -- germs and chemicals alike.
[Richard Preston, Author]: A chemical weapon is a poison. And it kills usually very rapidly. A biological weapon is a microorganism. A biological weapon is alive. And like all other life forms, what it wants to do is survive and reproduce itself.
[Narrator]: The U.S. signed but didn't ratify the Geneva Protocol -- an agreement which still permitted research and production of germ weapons.
By the late 1930s as tensions rose in Europe, the door was open to the scientific creation of new weapons of mass destruction.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: This war coming in 1939, 1940 was envisioned as a war of scientists against scientists. Whoever had the best scientists was going to win this war.
[Narrator]: In 1944, V-1 rockets launched from Germany pounded London, raising British fears of a Nazi biological attack.
The fears would prove unfounded. But not before British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had placed an urgent order with the U.S. for half-a-million anthrax bomblets. "Pray let me know when they will be available," he wrote. "We should regard it as a first installment."
The British request far exceeded Detrick's capacity. To fill it, Ira Baldwin began converting an old munitions factory in Vigo, Indiana. The new plant was designed as a gigantic industrial assembly line that could produce anthrax bacteria by the ton!
Still, critics at the highest levels of American government voiced concerns about the germ program. Admiral William Leahy -- President Roosevelt's chief of staff -- said that using germ weapons, "would violate every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of War."
But in a time of national crisis, Leahy's objections were not enough to slow the momentum of the U.S. program.
In December 1944, reports came of a potential germ attack on the United States launched by Japan. Balloons began to fall from the western skies of North America. Amid worries that the balloons might contain a biological agent, Detrick dispatched a scientist to one of the crash sites.
The balloons contained only explosives. Still, the incident fueled the fears that kept America's biological program moving forward.
6
By August 1945, the American biological program had spent 60 million dollars. Thousands of workers at Detrick and satellite facilities had sacrificed over half-a-million experimental animals while investigating a dozen devastating illnesses. And soon the new Vigo plant would be ready for its first anthrax run.
But then came surprising news from Japan. As citizens, the biowarfare researchers celebrated the American victory. But as government scientists, they knew they had a problem. Another unconventional weapon had proved itself in war.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, biological weapons were put in a kind of a shadow. They didn't look as powerful or promising as they had before the revelations about what a nuclear weapon could do.
[Narrator]: Nuclear weapons were now in ascendance. After 3 frantic years, the U.S. biological warfare program seemed headed for extinction.
Then an unexpected reprieve. Not long after the War's end, the U.S. received unconfirmed intelligence of biological weapons research conducted by America's wartime ally -- the Soviet Union.
The looming Cold War would drive the American program for decades to come.
The U.S. germ program was launched in World War II because of reports of German and Japanese bioweapons research. Now with the war over, America dispatched investigators to uncover the real extent of its defeated enemies' germ technology.
In Germany, the U.S. had expected to find a large biological program. But no one calculated that Hitler -- himself wounded in a chemical attack in World War I -- would constrain the development of a German program.
[Brian Balmer, Author]: As it turned out, the German program was very scattered, and Hitler himself had given an order very early in the war that there was to be no offensive biological weapons research.
[Narrator]: But in Japan, Americans were surprised by the ways that germ research surpassed what wartime intelligence had suggested.
The name of one officer and physician kept coming up. One informant called him "the germ man." Another said his entire career "starts with germs and ends with germs." He was Shiro Ishii -- the driving force behind Japan's secret biological weapons program.
Ishii was interrogated by Detrick investigators in May 1947. And what came out exceeded anything the British or Americans had imagined. Detrick researchers could now piece together the story of Japan's no-holds-barred germ warfare program.
Its headquarters was a facility called "Unit 731" in a Japanese-controlled region of China. The site housed 3,000 Japanese personnel and included labs, a Shinto temple, a cinema, and a brothel.
Like his Allied counterparts, Ishii understood the need for the utmost secrecy. He operated under a cover as "Chief of the Water Purification and Epidemic Corps."
7
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: He had tremendous access to human subjects -- mostly peasant Han Chinese. He would just pick people up out of their homes or off the street and bring them in and keep them captive. Then he also would perform on them really atrocious experiments equal to anything that was ever conducted in the Nazi death camps.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: The human experiments always ended in death. Even those who recovered from the disease were killed so that their autopsies could be completed and added to the files. They sought the scientific information so avidly, they often did the autopsy before the patient died so that the tissues would be perfectly fresh.
If you look at the number of people who were murdered in the facility in experiments, there were at least 3,000 -- and more likely closer to 10,000 people.
[Narrator]: Ishii and his team infected people with germs causing plague, cholera, dysentery and typhoid. But they had a preferred lethal agent.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: They conducted human subjects experiments with anthrax -- something that the United States and the United Kingdom scientists may have theorized but they had never brought themselves to that actuality.
[Richard Preston, Author]: If you inhale anthrax spores into your lungs, you can come down with pulmonary anthrax. It's a very bad disease that is very hard to survive.
Your lungs fill up with fluid. Your skin turns blue. The lymph nodes inside the chest can swell up to the size of tennis balls and can rupture. It's a very painful, grizzly death.
[Narrator]: The Japanese experiments were not just confined to the laboratory. They also took place in Chinese cities.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: One of the weapons that Ishii developed were fleas that had been infected with the plague bacterium. These were released from airplanes and dropped over Chinese cities.
[Narrator]: Outside Ishii's compounds, thousands of Chinese were infected with Black Death and other diseases spread by Japan's forces. The extent of Ishii's experiments amazed the American investigators.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: The more they learned about the Japanese program, the more they wanted to know about the Japanese program. The work that the Japanese did was beyond the experience of those American scientists.
[Narrator]: The Japanese had crossed an ethical line.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: All of the work in America had been done on animals. The Japanese data was a proof test. It showed that such a weapon could kill people.
[Narrator]: Ishii had kept what appeared to be meticulous records including autopsy diagrams and microscope slides of human tissue.
8
In exchange for his human data, Ishii wanted immunity from war crimes prosecution for himself and his colleagues. His case came to the top allied commander in post-war Japan -- General Douglas MacArthur.
He took the matter to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They gave MacArthur a free hand but stressed the importance of hiding biowarfare information from the Soviets. By early 1948, the U.S. understood that it was fighting a Cold War with its former ally. Americans saw the Soviet Union -- already in control of Eastern Europe -- as a ruthless nation in pursuit of unconventional weapons.
That March, MacArthur formally approved a highly secret deal with Ishii.
In Nuremberg, Germany, Nazi doctors had been convicted and hanged. The Tokyo War Crimes trial would play out differently.
Not a single biowarfare case was prosecuted.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: The immunity deal was a disgrace. The Japanese workers deserved to be tried for their war crimes. If that had happened, there would have been a precedent against such things.
[Narrator]: Detrick researchers considered the deal helpful for the American germ program. It put unique human data in their hands. It suppressed testimony that might have encouraged Soviet scientists. And it offered something else just as important.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: The United States got secrecy around its own program. Think of it: if the Japanese scientists had been prosecuted in Tokyo, the World would have reacted with such horror that it would have been very difficult for Americans to move forward with an offensive biological weapons program.
[Narrator]: But thanks to the deal, the program was advancing once again. And faster than ever!
In the early years of the Cold War, many Americans -- and Detrick workers in particular -- feared the worst from the Soviets.
[Bill Patrick, Microbiologist]: We felt very strongly that the Soviet Union had a very strong program in biological warfare and that we were putting our lives at risk to work with all these nasty organisms.
[Narrator]: The U.S. military concluded it had to make plans despite not knowing if the Soviets really had germ weapons.
[Matthew Meselson, Biologist]: If they do, do you need them yourself? If you had no nuclear weapons, I think the decision would have been that "we'd better have a biological capability". And we would be in bad shape if we found out that they did and had nothing of that sort ourselves.
[Narrator]: Because the U.S. still had few nuclear bombs, germ weapons got a boost.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: The biological weapons program was able to step up and at least claim that it could provide a weapon of mass destruction that would augment the atomic arsenal.
9
[Narrator]: With the American biological warfare program ramping up, Detrick researchers had high hopes for the human data from Japan.
But they were deeply disappointed.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: It turned out that Shiro Ishii was not the kind of scientist they wanted. What they wanted was a scientist who would tell them how many airborne bacteria would infect people a half-a-mile downwind. But there was nothing like this in the Japanese documents.
[Narrator]: The U.S. had let war criminals go free in exchange for junk science!
American bioweapons researchers now came to a sobering realization. If they wanted reliable human data, they would have to get it themselves.
On a sticky August day in 1949, technicians from Detrick visited the Pentagon on a secret mission. Disguised as maintenance workers, they used "simulants" -- non-infectious bacteria -- to assess the vulnerability of people inside large buildings to attack. Only a few of the Pentagon's employees were aware of the test. A technical success, the undercover Pentagon trial on unsuspecting personnel revealed the threat -- and promise -- of germs for sabotage.
But the American biological program had ambitions beyond workers in buildings.
[Matthew Meselson, Biologist]: The characteristic of biological weapons is the ability to cover very large areas with windborne disease organisms. Automatically that tells you that if there is any utility to biological weapons, it lies in the attack of civilians.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: This is a great change in notions of conducting war, waging war in the 20th Century. You have to start thinking of the enemy civilian as aiding and abetting the enemy -- as part and parcel of the aggression that you're trying to overcome. So your victory may depend greatly on the killing of civilians.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: A series of tests were done on American cities. There was still some doubt that biological weapons could be effective against a target the size of a city.
[Narrator]: An early trial took place in San Francisco in September 1950. Outside the Golden Gate Bridge, a Navy ship sailed a carefully charted course. It released a plume of simulant bacteria that dispersed like anthrax germs.
If the test had been real, most of San Francisco's 800,000 residents would have been exposed to anthrax and a large number would have been infected.
3 years later as the Cold War raged on, American planners took their secret exercises into the American heartland. In St. Louis and Minneapolis -- 2 cities thought to resemble potential Soviet targets -- sprayers hidden in cars dispersed invisible clouds of simulants.
U.S. citizens knew almost nothing about the American germ program. Nor did most of their representatives in Washington. Every year, the House Appropriations Committee approved biowarfare spending within the defense budget. However, only a few selected congressmen were briefed on the details in closed meetings.
What the American public was told was how to respond to a biological attack.10
[Actor 1, "What You Should Know About Biological Warfare (archival)"]:Biological warfare? What do they expect me to do about it? It's not my headache.
[Narrator, "What You Should Know About Biological Warfare (archival)"]:You're wrong. You had better find out the facts about biological warfare or BW!
[Actor 2, "What You Should Know About Biological Warfare (archival)"]:
There's a new poison. One ounce can kill all the people in the United States!
[Actress, "What You Should Know About Biological Warfare (archival)"]:Germ warfare can wipe out an entire city!
[Narrator]: In a period of escalating Cold War tensions, Americans were encouraged by their government to prepare for a germ assault by a ruthless Soviet enemy thousands-of-miles away.
Few were aware of what the U.S. had already done within its own borders. Fewer still knew what was coming next.
In 1954, a group of American servicemen -- all volunteers -- began participating in a series of experiments at Detrick. They stepped up to a new testing facility. The "8-ball" was a million-liter sphere, --the largest known aerosol testing chamber in the World. Inside, a sprayer or bomb set up a cloud of microbes.
The human subjects were Seventh Day Adventists. As "conscientious objectors", they refused to carry arms. But 2,200 of them -- called the "Whitecoats" -- agreed to serve in experiments including inhaling germs they knew might make them sick.
All human studies were approved by the Secretary of Defense.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: The Seventh Day Adventists presented an ideal population for testing biological weapons. Their religious beliefs prevented them from smoking, drinking, and in general, their religion taught them to live a healthy lifestyle. Even among healthy Army recruits, they were perhaps the healthiest.
[Narrator]: Some Whitecoat trials evaluated new vaccines developed at Detrick. But curing disease was not the primary goal of the studies.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: The Adventists were told that they were undergoing these experiments in order to save lives. But in fact, they were undergoing the experiments in order to calibrate a weapon to take lives.
[Narrator]: Bill Patrick helped prepare the germs inhaled by the Whitecoats.
[Bill Patrick, Microbiologist]: You stick your nose into a hood that's attached to a tank. You don't smell it and you don't see it. The psychological impact of this, I think, would be very, very difficult to take.
[Narrator]: In the Whitecoat era, Detrick scientists worked with a wider variety of germs.
11
[Richard Preston, Author]: The American biowarfare program seemed to emphasize research into non-lethal biological weapons -- weapons that wouldn't necessarily make an enemy soldier dead but would make that person pig-sick for a long time.
A sick soldier is more damaging to an Army than a dead soldier. If a soldier is killed, all you need to do is just leave the soldier and continue with the campaign. But an ill soldier is going to require several people to take care of that person.
[Narrator]: Hundreds of Whitecoats would eventually inhale germs including those causing tularemia and sandfly fever. At least half of the exposed men became sick. But all eventually recuperated.
Researchers knew that it's one thing to test disease agents in the lab but quite another to make them work on the battlefield. So in 1955, Detrick scientists prepared for America's first outdoor test of infectious germs on human subjects.
They arranged for a group of Whitecoats to be flown to Utah.
[Lloyd Long, Whitecoat Volunteer]: I know that they were not intentionally going to harm us in any way, that they had our best interests at heart.
You have to remember we're 18-, 19-year-old kids. It was all kind of a big adventure.
[Narrator]: The site chosen for the experiment was the Dugway Proving Ground located on a remote stretch of desert.
At the end of a July day, scientists prepared to release an aerosol of germs that cause Q fever -- a debilitating infection.
Downwind, Whitecoats waited. A half-mile line of platforms held 30 men, 300 hundred guinea pigs, and 75 monkeys.
[Lloyd Long, Whitecoat Volunteer]: The monkey's faces were blue. It was cold. The wind was coming right at us. I took my blanket and I put it over the monkeys.
We knew that when the siren blew, this was the signal to get up, sit on the stool, face the wind, and just breathe naturally.
[Narrator:] It took 4 minutes for the infectious cloud to reach the test stands. After the trials, men, monkeys, and guinea pigs sat in the silence of the desert.
45 minutes later, the Whitecoats were picked up. Their contaminated clothes were incinerated and the men boarded a flight to return to Maryland that night.
Back at Detrick, the Whitecoats passed the time as the researchers waited to see if they'd come down with Q fever.
[Lloyd Long, Whitecoat Volunteer]: They had all kinds of activities for us to do. We could eat. We played games. We had ping-pong. We shot pool.
[Narrator:] After about 2 weeks, most of the exposed men began to fall ill.12
[Lloyd Long, Whitecoat Volunteer]: I woke up feeling I was coming down with the worst case of flu that I ever had. My eyes were very, very sensitive to light. I wanted the room dark. I ached everywhere. I was just incredibly sick -- just very, very sick!
[Narrator:] The ill men took antibiotics. Though one was hospitalized for months, all of the Whitecoats recovered.
With the cooperation of Seventh Day Adventists, researchers had proved that windborne germs could infect a small group of people under field conditions. Now with the help of monkeys, they would try to determine if a biological weapon could match the impact of a hydrogen bomb.
The tests began early in 1965 as barges took position near a Pacific atoll called Johnston.
[Richard Preston, Author]: Inside the barges were cages filled with monkeys. The monkeys were both on the deck of the barge and inside the hold of the barge. There were also human beings wearing space suits and probably quite nervous.
[Narrator]: A low-flying military plane sprayed a 32-mile line of germs that cause a lethal disease -- tularemia or rabbit fever. Drifting over a vast swath of ocean, the microbes remained infectious for 60 miles.
[Richard Preston, Author]: The barges were towed back to the island. And in the next days, the monkeys became ill. Ultimately, about half of the monkeys became sick and -- of those -- most of them died.
[Bill Patrick, Microbiologist]: These large-scale field tests demonstrated -- beyond any shadow of a doubt -- the feasibility of biological warfare. And that is why we know that one particular agent -- when properly stabilized and properly disseminated -- is a terrific, very effective weapon system.
[Richard Preston, Author]: In theory, a single jet could knock out a city. It could perhaps infect as many as half the people in Los Angeles with tularemia.
[Narrator]: Though skeptics said the results were oversold, Detrick researchers were jubilant. After 20 years of hard work, they believed they had made the case that biological weapons deserved a place in the U.S. arsenal.
In fact, they may have succeeded too well.
[Richard Preston, Author]: I think it frightened the U.S. Government. It was relatively easy to make biological weapons, relatively easy to disperse them. It wasn't as difficult by any means as building a hydrogen bomb. There was a thinking here that we don't really want to publicize how powerful these weapons are. Because all we're really doing is proving to the rest of the World that biological weapons work.
[Narrator]: Even as the trials were being conducted in the Pacific, other events were casting all unconventional weapons in a negative light.
13
News stories broke about the American use of tear gas in Vietnam -- the first combat use of a chemical weapon by the U.S. since World War I. America was also spraying a chemical defoliant tested at Detrick -- Agent Orange.
Public protest erupted.
[Reporter (archival)]: Do you think germ warfare would be justified in Vietnam if it shortened the war and saved the lives of U.S. servicemen?
[Protestor (archival)]: I feel that the best way to save lives of U.S. servicemen is to pull them out of Vietnam immediately.
[Narrator:] Adding to the controversy, a news story in February 1969 disclosed an accident at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground. At a nearby Utah ranch, an errant cloud of nerve gas was claimed to have killed 6,000 sheep.
[Civilian (archival)]: The Army finally admitted that they had conducted experiments in the area with nerve gas agents.
[Military officer (archival)]: There are too many confusing aspects. We have been working in this area for 25 years in this particular part of this country. And we have never done anything to damage the surrounding area. If we are the cause of this, we have a problem.
[Narrator]: For critics, the incident strengthened the argument that unconventional weapons of all types could not be controlled. For biowarfare researchers, it reinforced the need for secrecy established long ago at Gruinard Island. Germ weapons programs could not survive the sunlight of public scrutiny.
In Washington, President Richard Nixon was feeling the mounting political pressure. His National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger ordered a full review of American chemical and biological weapons policy in May 1969.
Among the invited contributors was Harvard biologist Matthew Meselson. Meselson had been pushing for a re-assessment of America's unconventional weapons strategy. Working for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, he had visited Fort Detrick.
[Matthew Meselson, Biologist]: I asked my hosts what value they saw in these weapons. And the main answer I got back was that it would save money, that it was cheaper than nuclear weapons. I was amazed at this answer. It took a little thought -- but not much -- to realize that to pioneer a cheap weapon of mass destruction is exactly what the United States should never do.
[Narrator]: Kissinger presented Nixon with Meselson's brief, arguing that biological weapons were redundant with nuclear weapons and easier for poor countries to make.
The U.S. had been developing biological warfare since World War II. Now, the president's advisors undercut the weapons: they had a short shelf life, they were sensitive to weather, and germs might get out of control.
On November 25, 1969, Nixon surprised the World.
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[President Nixon (archival)]: Biological warfare -- which is commonly called "germ warfare." This has massive unpredictable and potentially uncontrollable consequences. It may produce global epidemics and profoundly affect the health of future generations. Therefore, I have decided that the United States of America will renounce the use of any form of deadly biological weapons that either kill or incapacitate. Mankind already carries in its own hands too many of the seeds of its own destruction.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: Nixon was under great pressure to do something. And disavowing biological weapons was an easy bone to throw to his critics.
[Narrator:] Nixon had killed the American offensive biological weapons program after nearly 3 decades of secret work.
[Richard Preston, Author]: It enabled us to take the moral high ground and to say "We've ended our program. And other countries should do the same."
[Matthew Meselson, Biologist]: I thought that the decision he made was historic. It was good for the United States and -- even better -- good for all of Humanity.
[Narrator:] In 1975, the U.S. finally ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning first use of germ weapons.
And a new international agreement went further -- prohibiting the development and possession of germ weapons. The Biological Weapons Convention outlawed -- for the first time in history -- an entire class of weapons.
[Martin Furmanski, Pathologist]: One of the ironies of the United States' biological weapons program was that it created its own monster. Although it was designed to reduce threats to the United States, it in fact increased the threats.
[Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist]: There's something in the military thinking about war and "honor" which puts biological weapons in a very negative category. It's like dirty weapons, it's like poison. It's like something that somebody does on the sly who really lacks a sense of honor.
[Matthew Meselson, Biologist]: "We don't fight with poisons. We don't fight with illness. This is alien."
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Weapons Pioneer
In 1943, Ira Baldwin -- then chair of the Bacteriology Department of the University of Wisconsin -- was appointed by the United States military to lead the nation in the development of biological weapons. For the rest of World War II while he directed the biological weapons program at Camp Detrick, Maryland, Baldwin remained a full-time employee of the university. He also joined the nation's Chemical Corps Advisory Council and served as a consultant to the CIA.
Baldwin returned to Wisconsin and served as a professor of Bacteriology, dean of the Graduate School, dean of the College of Agriculture, and vice president of Academic Affairs and continued to advise the U.S. military during the Cold War. When the university began an oral history program, Baldwin became its 4th interview subject in a series of conversations with Donna Taylor Hartshorne in 1974; additional recordings were made in 1985 and 1987. In 1999 at the age of 103, Ira Baldwin died in his home in Tucson, Arizona.
Listen to Baldwin's candid recollections on the process of developing biological weaponry as a civilian researcher.
Justifications for Biological Weaponry"The immorality of war is war itself."
Safety Measures"We developed many new techniques to handle things much more safely."
Civilian Command"I wasn't even on the payroll of the Department of Defense."
On November 18, 1941 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., United States Secretary-of-War Henry Stimson convened a committee to investigate the threat of biological warfare. Over the next year, this committee catalogued a myriad selection of possible biological and germ warfare agents.
In June 1942, they issued their recommendation to the War Bureau of Consultants: "In biological warfare, the best defense is offense and the threat of offense." While American forces were entrenched in the Pacific and European theaters, scientists began developing and testing biological weapons on the homefront -- classified programs that would continue after the end of WWII and into the Cold War.
Find some of the declassified United States biological weapons program sites on this map.
WWII Weapons Production Secured Area Tests Public Airborne Tests Large Airborne Tests Biological Weapons production and TestingSpecial Ops team Project 112
WWII Weapons Production In November 1942, the head of Britain's biological weapons program Paul Fildes traveled to Washington, D.C., to seek assistance from the U.S. in the production of biowarfare agents for Britain.
Special Projects Division Production Facility / Vigo, Indiana 1944-1946Biological Agent: Bacillus anthracis, Bacillus globigii
In May 1944, the Army's Special Projects Division converted a munitions plant to produce anthrax spores for bombs: half for the British military, half for the U.S. At the end of World War II, the Army shut down the Vigo plant before it ever went beyond the testing stage.
Horn Island Chemical Warfare Service Quarantine Center / Pascagoula, Mississippi 1943-1945Biological Agent: Clostridium botulinum
On October 29, 1943, the Army opened this testing facility on this isolated island off the southern coast of Mississippi. Scientists detonated 4-pound bombs filled with botulinum toxin over guinea pigs confined in boxes, but only one died from inhalation of the botulinum (others died from licking the botulinum off of their fur). By 1945. the Army closed the facility.
On March 9, 1943, the Army took over this site from the Maryland National Guard to house their chemical warfare personnel who were soon joined by their biological warfare counterparts. The first order of business at Camp Detrick was the production of botulinum for the British. Production operations shut down at the end of World War II. But the "camp" was renamed Fort Detrick and continued to house the headquarters of the biological weapons program.
Secured Area Tests Even though World War II had ended -- and the atomic bomb had been added into the U.S. military arsenal -- America's biological warfare program continued.
The Army established a massive chemical weapons testing facility in the Utah desert in 1942. In January 1945 after spending $1.3 million, they converted an area of the site for biological weapons testing. One weapon tested was a 91-pound bomb containing vegetable killer acid that could be used to destroy Japanese rice crops. The facility was shut down at the close of World War II.
Suffield Experimental Station, Area E / Alberta, Canada 1944Biological Agent: Brucella suis
Army scientists from Camp Detrick field tested 4-pound bombs filled with Brucella suis in this remote Canadian test site, jointly established by Canada and Britain in 1941 for chemical weapons testing and later adapted for biological tests.
Public Airborne Tests In October 1948, Ira Baldwin -- the chairman of the United States' Committee on Biological Warfare -- issued a report detailing the threat of covert biological threats on American soil. In May 1949, the Army established their own covert group at Camp Detrick -- the Special Operations Division -- to test the vulnerability of American targets and the effectiveness of biological warfare.
The Pentagon / Arlington, Virginia August 1949Biological Agent: Serratia marcescens
John Schwab -- chief of Camp Detrick's Special Operations Division -- persuaded Pentagon officials to allow his group to conduct a covert test of the building's defense against biological attack. Small groups of operatives set up fake "air pollution tests" in the hallways spraying Serratia marcescens, a harmless bacteria. The ventilation system distributed the bacteria efficiently throughout the building.
Atlantic Ocean near Hampton, Virginia / April 1950Biological Agents: Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii
Camp Detrick's Special Operations Division coordinated the large scale spraying of microbe spores from the decks of the USS Coral Sea and the USS K. D. Bailey. The clouds of spores -- chosen for their similarity to the anthrax spore -- blew in from the ocean into the cities of Hampton, Norfolk and Newport News.
Pacific Ocean near San Francisco, California / September 1950Biological Agents: Serratia marcescens & Bacillus globigii
Camp Detrick's Special Operations Division repeated their offshore tests later the same year off the coast of San Francisco. This time, they added clouds of fluorescent particles to the mix which would appear visible when exposed to ultraviolet light. The entire population of the city was exposed to the simulants and traces of the sprayed particles were found 23 miles inland.
St Jo Program / St. Louis, Minneapolis, Winnipeg January - September 1953Biological Agent: Bacillus globigii
In the early 1950s, the Army established the St Jo Munitions Expenditure Panel to test the effectiveness of biological aerosol attacks on urban environments. Camp Detrick scientists dispersed simulants from the top of automobiles in St. Louis, Minneapolis and Winnipeg -- all selected based on their similarities to particular Soviet cities.
Large Airborne Tests Seeking to incorporate meteorological understanding of "large air masses" that regularly swept over the continent into their distribution tests, the Army embarked on large scale airborne biological tests in 1957.
Operation Large Area Coverage / South Dakota to Minnesota; Ohio to Texas; Michigan to Kansas via Illinois December 1957
Agent: Zinc Cadmium SulfideBuilding on the airborne tests conducted off the coasts of Virginia and California, the Army
tested the dispersal of particles over huge swaths of the Country. Using planes loaned from the Air Force, 3 separate tests dumped large clouds of simulant over the continental United States with some particles traveling over 1,000 miles. These tests proved that a single plane equipped with biological weapons could devastate an entire continent.
Biological Weapons production and TestingIn the early 1950s, the Army's biological weapons program began developing and testing actual weapons to be deployed.
Herbert G. Tanner -- the head of Camp Detrick's Munitions division -- envisioned an enclosed environment where biological tests could be conducted on site, rather than at remote places like Dugway and Horn Island. The result was the "8-ball" -- a 4-story high, 131-ton other-worldly sphere that could withstand the internal detonation of "hot" biological bombs without risk to outsiders. Live animals were inserted into the ball along with biowarfare bombs for exposure tests.
M33/Brucella Cluster Bomb Field Tests /Dugway Proving Ground, Utah August, 1952Biological Agent: Brucella suis
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Having perfected a true biological weapon with the aid of the "8-ball", the Army set about conducting a field test. In 1952, scientists constructed a mock city at the Dugway Proving Ground with plywood houses and over 3,000 guinea pigs set up in cages. On August 9, an Air Force B-50 bomber flying from Florida dropped several cluster bombs -- each containing over 100 biological bombs -- on a well-marked bullseye in the center of "town". The official report concluded that atomic bombs were much more devastating, deadly, and efficient than the Brucella bombs.
Directorate of Biological Operations Pine Bluff Arsenal / Pine Bluff, Arkansas 1953-Biological Agents: Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis, Brucella suis, Coxiella burnetii,
Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Clostridium botulinum, Staphylococcal enterotoxin BIn 1953 the Army converted an arsenal -- originally built in 1941 to store chemical weapons -- to manufacture and stockpile biological weapons. The Army continued to produce and store biological agents at Pine Bluff until President Richard Nixon discontinued America's biological weapons program in 1969. The Army's cleanup effort took over 2½ years at a cost of over $10 million.
Project CD-22 Human Test / Dugway Proving Ground, Utah July 12, 1955Biological Agent: Coxiella burnetii (Q fever)
In the mid-1950s, the Army began testing biological weapons on live human test subjects: Seventh Day Adventist Army volunteers. 30 volunteers participated in the first test of Project CD-22 (also known as "Project Whitecoat") along with dozens of rhesus monkeys and guinea pigs. Instead of a cluster bomb drop, the Army sprayed microbes upwind from the test subjects. Some of the subjects did contract Q fever. They were effectively treated with antibiotics.
Special Ops team In the early 1950s, the Army's biological weapons program began developing and testing actual weapons to be deployed.
Greyhound Bus Terminal; Washington National Airport / Washington, D.C. May 1965Biological Agent: Bacillus globigii
Special Operations agents entered these high volume transportation hubs armed with specially outfitted briefcases to spray an anthrax simulant. Other agents -- armed with briefcases containing vacuum pumps -- took samples from various points within the locations.
New York City Subway / New York, New York June 1966Biological Agent: Unknown simulant
Teams from Detrick's Special Operations division descended into the New York City subway system with a new delivery mechanism -- a light bulb filled with powdered simulant. Agents dropped the light bulbs between moving cars, creating a cloud of simulant that was pushed through the tunnels by each succeeding train. Other agents equipped with quiet "Mighty Mite" vacuum samplers tested the effectiveness of the transmission at various points throughout the subway system.
Project 112 In 1961, Secretary-of-Defense Robert McNamara created Project 112 -- one of dozens of projects -- to test the effectiveness of biological and chemical weapons in warfare. Under this directive, the Army began conducting larger scale tests in remote locations outside of the continental United States.
Deseret Test Center --Fort Douglas, Utah 1962 - 1973In May 1962, the Army established a new center for biological warfare studies at Fort Douglas,
Utah named the Deseret Test Center. The facility was used to organize and deploy dozens of large
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scale remote tests in areas including Alaska, Panama, Hawaii, remote areas of Canada and the Pacific Ocean. The Army closed the Deseret Test Center in 1973.
Project SHADProject SHAD ("Shipboard Hazard and Defense") was a group of tests conducted in remote
waters, most in the Pacific Ocean. In some tests, biological agents or simulants were released from the decks of warships and their spread was monitored from other ships. In other tests, aircraft sprayed materials over animals on ships or islands.
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Diseases As Weapons
Glossary
Disease -- A distressed condition of a biological system in reaction to external stimuli -- such as infection by bacteria or virus -- and characterized by a set of identifiable symptoms.
Bacteria -- One-celled organisms that can replicate themselves.
Virus -- Genetic material that needs to invade a cell in order to replicate.
Bacterium vs. Virus -- A single bacterium can be grown to the desired amounts whereas a virus requires a host organism to be grown to large quantities. Both bacteria and viruses are considered "agents" of a disease.
Weaponize -- Creating an aerosol or other form that would spread and infect people easily through ingestion, inhalation, or skin contact.
Reservoirs -- Organisms that host the agent in nature -- the natural environment of the germ, which often causes no harm to its host. The reservoir determines whether a disease could ever be fully controlled and in the case of viruses, suggests the medium required to make more of the agent. Natural reservoirs could also be used to spread a disease -- dropping a rat infected with plague into a city, for example.
Categories for Bioweapons Agents (as defined by the Center for Disease Control)Category A - Agents that spread easily and have a high mortality rate.Category B - Agents that spread moderately and have lower death rates.Category C - New, possibly genetically engineered diseases.
Anthrax
Bacteria Bacillus anthracisCategory AReservoir cows, sheep, goats and others; spores live for decades in the earthTransmission skin contact, inhalation or ingestion
The cycle of anthrax transmission typically begins when grazing animals eat infected soil. It can then be passed on to humans who consume meat contaminated with Bacillus antracis, inhale dust while rendering hides, or come in skin contact. Cutaneous (skin) anthrax first appears as a bump on the skin that soon ulcerates. Inhalation anthrax is typically flu-like at first, but rapidly progresses into difficult breathing and shock. Mortality rates for untreated cases range from 20% for skin anthrax to nearly 100% for inhalation. While early treatment with antibiotics can work, the shock late-stage anthrax cases are usually fatal.
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Anthrax is quite rare in the U.S. with only a handful of cases over one 21 period. Inhalation anthrax in particular has typically
been limited to industries that handle dead animal wool or skin. Its occurrence is more common in developing countries. Anthrax spores can be extremely difficult to eradicate, lingering in soil for up to 70 years. They are also heat resistant, another factor that made them attractive to wartime scientists.
During World War II, Paul Fildes supervised the making of 5 million linseed cakes contaminated with anthrax bacterial spores for possible use against German livestock. When the War ended, the U.S. was beginning work on the production of a million anthrax bombs. The actual application of anthrax bacterial spores for weapons use has been quite rare -- one tragic case being the attacks during the fall of 2001 that utilized envelopes containing anthrax bacterial spores which infected 22 people in the U.S. and caused 5 deaths.
Botulinum toxin -- among the most deadly substances in the World -- was one of the first agents considered for use as a biological weapon. An ounce has the potential to kill everyone on Earth.
The toxin causes botulism, which is today quite rare with about 110 cases reported annually in the United States. The vast majority arise from the consumption of contaminated home-canned foods like green beans and corn. Infants are also susceptible to botulism if they eat honey.
Left unchecked, botulism presents with muscle paralysis and respiratory failure. Treatment is often the administration of an antitoxin and -- in severe cases -- use of a breathing machine until the patient's lungs can
function once more. (The muscle paralysis is exploited when botox -- a form of the toxin -- is used for cosmetic applications.)
Current death rates from botulism are under 10%. But in the World War II era, more than half of patients died. That made it appear attractive for weapons use to scientists like Paul Fildes. But botulinum toxin (called "Agent X" by the Allies) was difficult to produce in the large quantities. And the aerosol form necessary for widespread use is unstable. Although the first production order placed by the British for Camp Detrick was 7 pounds of dried botulinum toxin, field tests conducted by the Americans at Horn Island were a notable failure and the Army concluded that botulinum toxin would likely not be a good bioweapon agent.
See a photograph of a victim of anthrax (i.e, not caused by weaponry. Be advised -- it is a graphic image.
See a photograph of a wound complicated by botulism (i.e, not caused by weaponry. Be advised -- it is a graphic image.
This lesser-known disease agent became a staple of the United States biological weapons program in the 1950s. Like anthrax bacteria, Brucella bacteria are spread to humans by infected animals or animal products -- often through the ingestion of unpasteurized milk and cheese.
Unlike anthrax, brucellosis has a very low mortality rate -- around 2 percent. It can, nonetheless, incapacitate its victims with waves of flu-like symptoms for months.
Today brucellosis strikes from 100-200 people a year in America and is treated with antibiotics. But it remains a much more widespread problem elsewhere in
the World. Though not readily passed from human-to-human, brucellosis is very infectious. A high percentage of people exposed to its bacteria are likely to come down with the disease.
The Brucella bacteria are fairly easy to grow. To U.S. planners in the early Cold War years, Brucella bacteria therefore appeared an effective yet "humane" biological weapon. In 1952, the first large-scale field tests began at Utah's Dugway Proving Ground. That summer, thousands of guinea pigs in mock enemy cities were exposed to Brucella bacteria bombing runs, leading one general to remark, "Now we know what to do if we ever go to war against guinea pigs."
Results were favorable enough to officially add Brucella bacteria to the U.S. arsenal. But there was a key production problem. The bacteria decayed completely in a few months. So empty bomb casings had to be prepared and a facility made ready to produce large quantities of the agent at a moment's notice. Such a facility was completed in December 1953 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and the Army eventually assembled more than 2.5 million empty bomb casings.
Q Fever -- named for its discovery in Queensland, Australia in the 1930s -- makes victims very sick with flu-like symptoms (fever, sort throat, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea among others). Only fif50ty percent of those infected with the C. burnetii bacteria show any symptoms. And of those who do, the fatality rate is about 4%. The bacteria lives in domestic livestock and can be transmitted to humans through inhalation of barnyard dust.
See a photograph of a victim of brucellosis (i.e, not caused by weaponry.
Q fever can be treated with antibiotics and an effective vaccine has been developed, primarily for people who work with animals. The ability to treat Q fever and its low morbidity are 2 reasons why the U.S. made it a staple of the human testing conducted in Operation Whitecoat.
Smallpox was the first biological weapon used in America when British soldiers gave infected blankets to Native Americans.
Rashes appear on the skin of smallpox victims, the bumps become pustules -- they feel like there is a small object under the skin -- and then the pustules scab and fall off. Direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected persons or their infected clothing is necessary for transmission. However, smallpox has been known to spread in enclosed environments where the air is re-circulated.
Smallpox was weaponized by the secret Soviet bioweapons program. Unlike most other bioweapons agents, smallpox viruses are easily spread from person-
to-person and this -- combined with a mortality rate of about 10% to 30% -- meant it could devastate a target community.
But smallpox can be prevented by vaccination. In fact, a global public health campaign completely eliminated smallpox -- a disease that had affected human beings for millennia -- in the United States by 1949. Because human beings are the only natural reservoir for smallpox, after the last known case of the disease in Somalia in 1977, the disease has been considered eradicated. Regular vaccination for smallpox is no longer required. Stores of smallpox viruses remain in U.S. and Russian laboratories, however. And bioterrorism fears have led to recent vaccination campaigns and the stockpiling of vaccine for potential future use.
See a photograph of a victim of smallpox (i.e., not caused by weaponry). Be advised -- it is a graphic image.
One of the most historically deadly viral hemorrhagic fevers is yellow fever which killed thousands of Americans in epidemics that terrified the Nation. The fatality rate of this disease is around 10-20%. But because light cases tend to go undetected, the mortality rate is perceived to be much higher.
Victims of this viral hemorrhagic fever have their liver attacked (leading to a yellow complexion) and their clotting mechanisms destroyed. Victims produce black vomit -- the result of bleeding into their stomachs -- before dying. Many believed that the fluids produced in death were the carriers of this virus
until Walter Reed and a U.S. Army team proved that mosquitoes were the source of infections.
In the 1930s, Japanese agents had tried to purchase strains of the yellow fever virus from the laboratories of Rockefeller University where a vaccine was being developed. They were unsuccessful.
An American attempt to weaponize yellow fever involved raising hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes a month at Fort Detrick. Tests included dropping uninfected mosquitoes on Savannah, Georgia in 1956 to see how far the insects would spread. Technical difficulties in infecting and maintaining the insects -- and then the development of an effective yellow fever vaccine -- made the weapons program irrelevant. "Fortunately, this never got beyond the research stage," says Dr. Thomas Monath, a leading yellow fever researcher.
The last outbreak of yellow fever in the United States occurred in New Orleans in 1905. Recent American deaths from the disease have involved travelers to tropical Africa or South America -- regions where yellow fever is still present.
Other viral hemorraghic fevers include Ebola and Marburg viruses which are deadlier because they can be spread directly from person-to-person without the need for an animal host.
Others
A number of other diseases were considered as part of various bioweapons programs. During World War II, the Japanese dropped plague-infested fleas from airplanes and caused disease outbreaks in China. The South African government allegedly released cholera into the water sources of particular villages. Other diseases that the CDC is keeping a watch on include tularemia and genetically-altered diseases.
Other biological weapons that would infect food supplies have also been researched.
See a photograph of a victim of yellow fever (i.e., not caused by weaponry).
Knight and germ warrior, Sir Paul Fildes ran the biology department at Britain's secret Porton Down facility and oversaw his country's first attempts to develop biological weapons.
Becoming a Bacteriologist
Son of a noted painter who had illustrated books by Charles Dickens, Fildes was born in 1882 in London. As a young schoolboy, he already displayed a scientific bent -- even drafting a paper on "The passage of food to the stomach". Although he entered medical school in 1904 with the intent of focusing on surgery, Fildes soon moved into bacteriology. After working in a Royal Navy hospital, he joined Great Britain's Medical Research Council and became head of its Bacterial Chemistry Unit, editing a 9-volume treatise on the field.
In 1940 with Britain at war with Nazi Germany, a new biology department was established at Porton Down -- a secret
British facility near Salisbury that had been established in 1916 to deal with the threat of chemical weapons. Fildes became the head of this department and began conducting research into offensive biological weapons. One early project dubbed "Operation Vegetarian" investigated the practicality of dropping linseed cakes containing anthrax bacterial spores over Germany that would kill any cattle that ate them. Although Fildes ordered the production of 5 million of these cakes, they were never used.
Fildes would later claim he participated in another biological warfare project that did go forward, however. The May 1942 assassination by the British Secret Service of high-ranking Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich near Prague. Heydrich was ambushed and later died of what had appeared to be minor wounds. Although his claims could not be substantiated, Fildes later said he "had a hand" in Heydrich's death -- possibly by supplying the assassins with grenades containing botulinum toxin that were used in the attack.
An experiment being carried out at the chemical defence establishment in Porton Down, Wiltshire, U.K.
Anthrax IslandIndividual grenades were one thing. But llarge-scale biological
weapons another. As Fildes' anthrax experiments continued, he sensed the need for testing beyond that which could be conducted near a populated area like Salisbury.
In the summer of 1942, Fildes and his colleagues settled on Gruinard Island -- a remote 522-acre island off Scotland's northwest coast -- as a field test site. After the military had bought the island
and declared it off-limits, Fildes' team prepared it to become Great Britain's first outdoor biological weapons test site.
On July 15, they dropped a bomb filled with anthrax bacterial spores from a 1-foot wooden gallows about a hundred yards
upwind from a group of 15 sheep, each of whom had been placed in crates with openings for their necks. The sheep began to present with symptoms of anthrax three days after the test. 13 of the animals eventually perished. Another similar test was successfully conducted on July 24.
Some months later on September 26, an airplane dropped a bomb filled with anthrax bacterial spores onto the island. But the bomb became lodged in a bog and thus none of its payload was released. Fildes' team then repeated that experiment a month later on a beach in Wales and this time it went off without a hitch. The British now became convinced that they could make anthrax bombs work but realized they needed help with the large-scale production of anthrax bacteria. For this, they sought America's help.
Turning to America
The Americans had been slower to investigate biological weapons than the British. But in terms of industrial capacity, they had no peer.
In November 1942, Fildes and a colleague arrived in Washington where they requested that the United States set up production facilities sufficient to produce large amounts of anthrax bacterial spores (called "Agent N") and botulinum toxin ("Agent X"). Their initial order was for 7 pounds of Agent X, and an American team overseen by Ira Baldwin at Camp Detrick began working on this in June 1943. They were able to fulfill this order within a couple of months.
Anthrax BombsNot everyone on the British side approved of the mass production of biological weapons. For
example, when they learned of Fildes' activities, 2 members of the Biological Warfare Committee that oversaw Porton Down raised strenuous objections. But they were overruled by Prime Minister Winston Churchill who in March 1944 ordered 500,000 anthrax bombs from America. That summer, Fildes drew up plans for massive anthrax bombing raids of Germany, including the resumption of Operation Vegetarian.
Although Allied military victory ended the war in Europe before any of these operations were conducted, Fildes continued his research and development program and was rewarded for his services
Gruinard -- the island used by British scientists during WWII to test a series of anthrax bombs
researcher works in one of several size aerobiology chambers at Camp Detrick for work on microbial aerosols and the spread of disease
with knighthood in 1946. He carried out open-sea testing of weapons during the winter of 1948-49 near the British colony of Antigua.
With the rise of British nuclear capacity during the 1950s, interest in offensive biological weapons lessened and eventually Fildes left Porton Down. He died a year before the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention that banned offensive biological weapons came into being.
Gruinard Island remained contaminated until 1986 when British scientists finally found a way to kill the bacterial spores that had been infesting "Anthrax Island" since Fildes' tests more than 40 years earlier.
Ira Baldwin (1895-1999)
An Indiana farm boy, World War I veteran, and part-time preacher, Ira Baldwin became a noted agricultural bacteriologist at the University of Wisconsin and the civilian science director of the United States biological weapons research program at Camp Detrick.
Roots
Baldwin was born on a 40-acre farm in 1895 and spent the summers of his youth husking corn and selling ducks to earn money for college. Deeply religious with Quaker grandparents, Baldwin also preached in local churches that lacked regular ministers.
In World War I, he served state-side as a second lieutenant in an artillery unit, commanding a burial detail during the 1918 influenza epidemic. And although Baldwin attended college at Purdue, he sought his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in Madison -- a place he remembered fondly from a summer spent cultivating cucumbers there for the Heinz Company.
Baldwin began his graduate work at University of Wisconsin in the mid-1920s and by the time the United States entered World War II, he had become chair of the bacteriology department. Then in November 1942, Baldwin got a call from Colonel William Kabrich of the Army's Chemical Warfare Service, requesting his presence at a top secret meeting in Washington.
The War EffortAt first it was just speculative talk. But after announcing that Germany and Japan were supporting
biological warfare programs, Kabrich asked Baldwin and other assembled scientists whether they thought the U.S. could produce tons of its own bacteriological agents. Absolutely, Baldwin replied. "If
researcher works in one of several size aerobiology chambers at Camp Detrick for work on microbial aerosols and the spread of disease
Malcolm Broster --of the Ministry of Defence Chemical Defence Establishment at Porton Down -- alongside one of the warning signs at Gruinard Island which has been sealed off from the public for almost 45 years (1986)
you could do it in a test tube, you could do it in a 10,000-gallon tank" and "if you get enough tanks, I'm sure you will get tons."
A month later, Kabrich was on the phone again, asking Baldwin to lead the effort to do just that. Baldwin considered the moral implications of this request. But it only took him 24 hours to decide.
"You start out with the idea in war of killing people," he would later say. "And that to me is the immoral part of it. It doesn't make much difference how you kill them."
Armed with this rationalization, Baldwin again headed East -- this time in charge of the science and administration of America's biological
weapons research program.
A Red Tie
Baldwin remained a civilian and found certain advantages to that; he would later say. "As long as I wore a red tie, I could say no to anybody."
But the absence of military rank did not mean Baldwin lacked responsibility. He first undertook to find a home for the program,
eventually settling on a little-used National Guard airfield in Frederick, Maryland known as Camp Detrick. Baldwin recruited scientists for his facility, later observing that unless the person was
also needed by the Manhattan Project, he usually got the men he requested. And aided by a production manual written by British bacteriologist Paul Fildes, Baldwin's team began work on the production of botulinum toxin and anthrax bacterial spores.
In 1943, he scouted locations for outdoor biological weapons testing, eventually settling on Horn Island off the Mississippi coast. As the War dragged on, Camp Detrick expanded, employing more than 2,000 people at its height and conducting tests responsible for the death of 658,039 animals. Faced with requests for a million anthrax bombs from the U.S. and British governments, Baldwin helped set up a large-scale manufacturing facility in Vigo, Indiana. But the War ended before any biological weapons were actually produced by the Vigo plant.
Back to Wisconsin
After World War II ended, Baldwin returned to University of Wisconsin, becoming vice president of academic affairs in 1948 and special assistant to the university's president a decade later. He continued to advise the United States on biological weapons, evaluating the threat posed by Cold War adversaries and suggesting a series of tests on U.S. cities with supposedly harmless bacteria in order to evaluate how pathogens might spread if released by enemy agents. He officially retired from University of Wisconsin in 1966 but continued working in the field of international agriculture for a number of years. Baldwin died in 1999, just a couple of weeks before he would have turned 104.
1943 Chemical Warfare Agents
a Fort Detrick researcher using a Class III safety hood
Both the United States and Great Britain tested biological weapons during World War II. But for ethical reasons such tests were limited to animal subjects.
Japanese medical officer Shiro Ishii had no such scruples and he unleashed some of nature's deadliest pathogens on helpless humans with horrifying results.
PurificationIshii was born in Japan in 1892 and became a doctor in 1920, graduating from Kyoto Imperial
University. He had a reputation for being thoughtless towards colleagues but obsequious to superiors. Ishii married the daughter of the university's president and joined the Army Medical Corps.
When the 1925 Geneva Protocol banned the use of bacteriological and chemical weapons in war, he began to urge the creation of a Japanese bacteriological weapons program. Ishii reasoned that such weapons must be very effective; otherwise they wouldn't have been prohibited. Ishii traveled through Europe and the United States for several years with an interest in the bacteriological weapons used in World War I.
Upon his return he was appointed professor of immunology at the Tokyo Army Medical School and given the rank of major. While there Ishii quickly made a name for himself, inventing an
effective water purification filter that he allegedly demonstrated before the Emperor. But the fame and riches that this invention brought were not enough for Ishii. He continued advocating that the Japanese army develop biological weapons. In 1932, the government put him in charge of a testing and production facility in the Chinese province of Manchuria which the Japanese had invaded the previous year. As head of what would be euphemistically named the "Anti-Epidemic Water Supply and Purification Bureau", Ishii eagerly got to work.
Unit 731
Ishii's first facility was in the city of Harbin. However, the need for secrecy made it necessary for Ishii to relocate his group to a prison camp 60 miles away. After this camp was blown up by escapees, an installation called 'Ping Fan' was constructed about 14 miles from Harbin. When completed in 1940, what became known as 'Unit 731' housed some 3,000 personnel.
At a ceremony honoring the event, the now General Ishii made the facility's purpose crystal clear. A doctor's "god-given mission," Ishii said, was to block and treat disease. But the work "upon which we are now about to embark is the complete opposite of these principles." In the name of defeating Japan's enemies, Ishii and his staff spent the next 5 years mixing witch's brews of pathogens that cause some of the World's most horrific
First building for 'Unite 731'
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diseases: anthrax, plague, gas gangrene, smallpox, and botulism, among others. They then used Chinese prisoners (dismissively termed maruta or "logs") as guinea pigs, forcing them to breathe, eat, and receive injections of deadly pathogens. Allied POWs were also allegedly targeted.
Reign of Horror
Victims were often killed before the diseases had run their course so autopsies could show their progress through the body. Ishii's men also supplied the Japanese Army with typhoid, cholera, plague, and dysentery bacteria for battlefield use. In addition, they contaminated water sources, released disease-carrying fleas, and dropped contaminated wheat from airplanes. Although dissolution of Unit 731 in 1945 led to the destruction of many of its records, there is no doubt that Ishii and his men had caused the death of many thousands of Chinese and possibly hundreds of Russian and Allied prisoners of war.
ImmunityNo doubt aware that his activities constituted war crimes of the highest
order, Ishii faked his own death in late 1945 and went into hiding. When American occupation forces learned that Ishii was still alive, they ordered the Japanese to hand him over and investigators from Camp Detrick began interrogations.
At first, Ishii denied any human testing had taken place but -- aware that the Soviets also wanted to talk to him and their methods might not be so mild -- he later offered to reveal all the details of his program in exchange for immunity from war crimes prosecution. Anxious to learn the results of experiments that they themselves had been unable to perform, the American military accepted Ishii's offer and approval was then given by the highest
level of government.
Ultimately Ishii's materials proved to be of little value, but the United States kept its end of this dubious bargain. Biological weapons were never mentioned in the Japanese war crimes trials and Ishii died a free man in 1959.
Operation Whitecoat
Although they had experimented on animals during and after World War II, Camp Detrick scientists were still unsure of the effects of biological agents on human beings.
Operation Whitecoat aimed to solve that problem by providing volunteers to enable the military to test the effects of a range of disease agents on human subjects.
Group of Biological Warfare technical advisers at Camp Detrick. Ira Baldwin is on the left.
Japanese 'Unit 731' doctor stands with face covered in fron of pile of Chinese prisoner bodies
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Ideal Test Subjects
The first task for the scientists was to find people willing to be infected by pathogens that could make them very sick. They found them in the followers of the Seventh-day Adventist faith. Although willing to serve their country when drafted, the Adventists refused to bear arms. As a result, many of them became medics. Now the U.S. was offering recruits an opportunity to help in a different manner: to volunteer for biological tests as a way of satisfying their military obligations.
When contacted in late 1954, the Adventist hierarchy readily agreed to this plan. For Camp
Detrick scientists, church members were a model test population since most of them were in excellent health and they neither drank, smoked, nor used caffeine. From the perspective of the volunteers, the tests gave them a way to fulfill their patriotic duty while remaining true to their beliefs.
And there was another factor: participation in these tests meant avoiding possibly more hazardous service abroad. For example, one participant -- Carl Walker -- had orders for his deployment to Laos reversed when he volunteered for Operation Whitecoat. An officer told him, "You guys are worth a lot more to your country as guinea pigs than as cannon fodder."
The "8-Ball"
Many of the Adventists were recruited at Fort Sam Houston, Texas -- a training center for medics. The first volunteers were sent to Camp Detrick where biological tests began in late January 1955.
The site for these experiments was a million-liter sphere called "the 8-Ball" that looked to one recruit like an enormous grapefruit.
After having entered the '8-Ball', subjects were placed in structures resembling telephone booths that contained rubber hoses leading to face masks. They put the masks on and then breathed in the current contents of the '8-Ball'. Perhaps air or another harmless substance, or perhaps aerosols that
contained pathogens that caused such diseases as tularemia or Q fever.
Many tests involved Q fever -- a disease first observed in the 1930s that caused intense fever but was rarely fatal. One recruit recalled that he had "never been any sicker"; another's temperature reached 106° F; and a third's gums swelled to the point he "could no longer see my teeth". Once the disease appeared, recruits were given antibiotics and almost all made a quick and complete recovery.
Fort Detrick in late-50s or 60s. Whitecoats and staff.
Workers perform a test on the 1-million liter sphere the "8-Ball" -- the largest aerobiology chamber constructed
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Dugway and BeyondAfter the success of its first experiments, the decision was made to attempt an outdoor release of Q
fever bacteria. 30 recruits traveled to the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. On the evening of July 12, 1955, they were lined up across a ½-mile of desert next to cages of monkeys and guinea pigs.
Located slightly more than 3,000 feet away, several generators filled with pathogens began spraying an infectious mist into the night air. The volunteers were told to breathe normally and within a few minutes, the mist was upon them.
Some had been vaccinated against Q fever and never got sick. Others became ill and ended up in bed for days. From the military's perspective, the Dugway field test proved that under the right meteorological conditions, biological weapons would work.
The human experiments continued for almost 20 years, ending in 1973. All told, about 2,200 Adventists participated in Operation Whitecoat. And to this day, many remain proud of their service which resulted in the development of several vaccines and, presumably, the generation of much information on how biological weapons work in the field.
For its part, the Army holds up Operation Whitecoat as a model of "informed consent" in testing on humans. The Army also maintains there were almost "no adverse health effects" for the recruits -- a view disputed by some volunteers. The truth may never be known. Ffollow-up questionnaires were sent to fewer than half of the participants in Operation Whitecoat.
Secret Testing in the United States
The start of the Cold War brought new foes and new fears for the officials running America's biological weapons program. Determined to anticipate possible Soviet attacks, the U.S. staged more than 200 domestic tests aimed at assessing national vulnerabilities to biological warfare.
From the Pentagon to the Pacific
Ira Baldwin -- Camp Detrick's scientific director during World War II -- left his position after the Allied victory in 1945 and returned to teaching at the University of Wisconsin. He continued to advise the government on issues concerning biological weapons, however -- particularly the threat that might be posed by enemy spies releasing biological agents in American cities.
In an October 1948 report, Baldwin posited that the U.S. was "particularly vulnerable to this type of attack." But in order to determine the precise nature of these vulnerabilities, secret field tests would
have to be done to ascertain the vulnerability of targets of potential interest to the enemy. The Army's Chemical Corps -- which ran Camp Detrick -- agreed with Baldwin's assessment and set up a Special Operations Division at Camp Detrick to carry out the tests. Its first target was to be the Pentagon.
In August 1949, the Special Operations Division operatives infiltrated the World's largest office building and sprayed bacteria into the Pentagon's air handling system which then spread them throughout the structure.
The operatives moved to larger scale testing, releasing clouds containing supposedly harmless bacteria from Navy ships off Norfolk, Virginia in April 1950 and the San Francisco coast in September 1950.
The San Francisco experiments showed exposure among almost all of the city's 800,000 residents. Had the bacteria released been anthrax bacteria or some other virulent pathogen, the number of
casualties would have been immense.
The St Jo Program and Large Area Concept
The success of the first field tests only increased demand for more experiments. In response to an Air Force request, in 1953 the Chemical Corps created the St Jo Program and operatives staged mock anthrax attacks on St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Winnipeg. The bacteria were released from generators placed on top of cars, and local governments were told that "invisible smokescreens" were being deployed "to mask the city on enemy radar".
The next stage was to increase dispersal patterns, dispensing particles from airplanes to find out how wide of an area they would affect. The first Large Area Concept experiment in 1957 involved dispersing microorganisms over a swath from South Dakota to Minnesota. Monitoring revealed that some of the particles eventually traveled some 1200 miles away. Further tests covered areas from Ohio-to-Texas and Michigan-to-Kansas. In the Army's words, these experiments "proved the feasibility of covering large areas of the country with [biological weapons] agents."
Airports and SubwaysOpen-air testing continued through the 1960s with the Special
Operations Division operatives simulating even more audacious assaults. In 1965, they spread bacteria throughout Washington's National Airport. A year later, agents dropped light bulbs filled with organisms onto the tracks in New York's subway system. I think it spread pretty good," participant Wally Pannier later said, "because you had a natural aerosol developed every few minutes from every train that went past."
President Nixon's 1969 termination of the United States offensive biological weapons program brought an end to the open-air testing. But the American public did not learn of this testing until 1977. Relatives of one elderly man Edward Nevin -- who had died of a nosocomial infection 6 months after the San Francisco tests --
sued the Government in 1981, arguing that the supposedly harmless Serratia marcescens bacteria used in that test had in fact caused his death. In the event the courts ruled against them, the main reason being that the plaintiffs could not prove that the bacteria used in the test were the same as those that killed Mr. Nevin.
USS Coral Sea -- one of the ships involved in the spraying of bacteria off Norfolk, Virginia in April, 1950.
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Nixon Ends U.S. Biological Weapons Program
In November 1969, President Richard Nixon surprised the American public and the World by ordering the United States to unilaterally discontinue its biological weapons program, thus ending further research into their development.
Though this decision came as a shock to many who operated the offensive biological warfare program at Fort Detrick, Pine Bluff Arsenal, Dugway Proving Ground, and elsewhere, its seeds had been planted years earlier.
Growing PressureOn the surface, the U.S. biological weapons program
appeared to be going swimmingly in the 1960s. frequent tests of simulated pathogens proved the efficacy of biological weapons and in 1967, the Fort Detrick scientists developed a bacteriological missile warhead.
But opposition was growing to the U.S. use of unconventional weapons like napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam. And biological weapons began to be tarred with the same broad brush. Matters weren't helped by a March 1968 accident in which the Air Force mistakenly dropped VX nerve agent outside the Dugway Proving Ground, apparently resulting in the death of over 3,000 sheep (some estimates claim that over
6,000 sheep were killed) in Skull Valley, Utah.
That same year Seymour Hersh published a book called Chemical and Biological Warfare: America's Secret Arsenal and news arose of the large-scale tests the military had conducted in the Pacific with biological agents. A plan to sink ships filled with old chemical weapons in the ocean off Long Island met with furious public protest. Congressional representatives began to demand more scrutiny of what had been heretofore a largely secret program.
The scientific community was also raising alarms. Harvard biology professor Matthew Meselson had already circulated a petition in 1966 signed by 5,000 scientists asking the U.S. to halt the use of chemical weapons in Vietnam and conduct a top-to-
bottom review of American biological and chemical weapons policy.
Working Together
Against this backdrop, word came from Great Britain and Canada that it might be possible to get an international convention passed banning biological weapons if the U.S. made some gesture of good faith in the area. Newly-inaugurated President Nixon decided that the time was right to look into the matter.
Kissinger's Review and Nixon's Decision
Napalm bombs explode on Viet Cong structures south of Saigon in the republic of Vietnam, 1965
Matthew Meselson in Vietnam where he was studying the effects of chemical weapons, 1969-70
Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger headed up the review process which began in late spring 1969. A chance encounter with Meselson at an airport led Kissinger to ask his old Harvard colleague to submit a position paper on the subject of biological weapons. Meselson's conclusion was that biological weapons were both dangerous because the technology could readily fall into the hands of enemy groups or nations and unnecessary because of the U.S.'s massive nuclear arsenal.
His arguments were reinforced by other submissions. In fact, when the National Security Council met with Nixon on November 18, only the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for the retention of biological weapons. One week later, Nixon made his announcement. "I have decided that the United States will renounce the use of any form of deadly biological weapons that either kill or incapacitate," the president said. "Our bacteriological programs in the future will be confined to research in biological defense, on techniques of immunization, and on measures on
controlling and preventing the spread of disease."
In taking this step, Nixon cited the "massive, unpredictable, and potentially uncontrollable consequences" of biological weapons. He added, "By the examples that we set today, we hope to contribute to an atmosphere of peace and understanding between all nations." Privately, Nixon showed more realpolitik. America had no need for biological weapons, he declared. If an enemy used them on the U.S., we would retaliate with nuclear bombs.
The Biological Weapons Convention
Whatever Nixon's motivations, his decision had the desired international effect. Negotiations on a treaty banning all biological weapons intensified and -- after the Soviet Union dropped its opposition -- in April 1972, the Biological Weapons Convention was completed and became open for signature by the nations of the World. The U.S. Senate ratified the convention in December 1974 and it went into effect in March 1975 -- the same year the Senate also finally ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the wartime use of bacteriological weapons.
The Biological Weapons Convention was a historic accomplishment -- not merely restricting biological weapons, but pledging their complete elimination.
Unfortunately, one of its key signatories -- the Soviet Union -- continued a secret biological weapons program in direct violation of the treaty's terms, a fact that would only become known years later.
These 2 charts were prepared for a briefing called "USAF Operational concepts for BW [biological weapons] and CW [chemical weapons]" in November 1952. This occurred in the period in the early 1950s when weapons of mass destruction research was pursued aggressively.
Although the Army Chemical Corps developed the biological and chemical weapons, the Air Force was responsible for delivering the ordnance; these charts show how the weapons would be used in a battle situation. Specifically, the scenario envisioned a Soviet invasion of Western Europe and required some method of slowing the advance until American troops could reinforce Allied positions in Europe. In 1952, the atomic arsenal was still limited and to be kept in reserve for major Soviet positions or retaliation in kind for attacks on American cities. Chemical and biological weapons presented a way to retard the enemy.
Martin Furmanski -- an expert on WMD policies -- writes: "Ultimately, the 1952 Air Force 'crash program' was a failure because the Army Chemical Corps could not produce a useful biological weapon, Britain would not allow biological weapons to be stockpiled on her soil, and the CW nerve gas production plants did not become operational for several more years. By the mid-1950s, the atomic arsenal had greatly expanded and hydrogen bombs had been developed. The Eisenhower administration decided to rely entirely upon nuclear weapons for the 'retardation' operation."
These charts then, represent a hypothetical response that remained a possibility for only a few years before other factors rendered it moot.
1. Experts Q & AMartin Furmanski and Raymond Zilinskas answer questions about biological weaponry.
2. Behind the ScenesFollow filmmaker John Rubin into the Nevada desert where scenes of "Operation Whitecoat" were
filmed.
3. More About BiowarfareLearn more on other PBS sites about how bioweapons work and the history of the Soviet program.
4. Declassified FilmsWatch recently declassified military films on biowarfare.
5. Timeline of Biological Weapons
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