Over the course of its 27-year history, the program weaponized and stockpiled seven bio-agents — Bacillus anthracis (anthrax), Francisella tularensis (tularemia), Brucella spp (brucellosis), Coxiella burnetii (Q-fever), Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Botulinum toxin (botulism), and Staphylococcal enterotoxin B.
[3] That fall, U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson requested that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) undertake consideration of U.S. biological warfare.
Your organization already has before it a request from The Surgeon General for the appointment of a committee by the Division of Medical Sciences of the National Research Council to examine one phase of the matter.
[7] By November 1943 the biological weapons facility at Detrick was completed, in addition, the United States constructed three other facilities - a biological agent production plant at Vigo County near Terre Haute, Indiana (Vigo Ordnance Plant), a field-testing site on Horn Island in Mississippi (Horn Island Testing Station), and another field site near Granite Peak in Utah (Granite Peak Installation).
[7] According to an official history of the period, "the elaborate security precautions taken [at Camp Detrick] were so effective that it was not until January 1946, 4 months after VJ Day, that the public learned of the wartime research in biological weapons".
[12] By 1950 the principal U.S. bio-weapons facility was located at Camp Detrick in Maryland under the auspices of the Research and Engineering Division of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps.
[17] At the trial of John W. Powell and two other defendants for sedition for reporting that the U.S. used biological weapons during the Korean War, the U.S. Attorney in the case, Robert H. Schnacke and the former Chief of the Special Operations Division at Ft. Detrick during the Korean War (and long-time U.S. Chemical Corps officer), John L. Schwab, entered sworn affidavits that the U.S. Army had the capability to use both offensive and defensive biological and chemical weapons "during the period from January 1, 1949 through July 27, 1953.... based upon resources available and retained only within the continental limits of the United States.
[11] The first American large-scale aerosol vulnerability test, code-named Operation Sea-Spray, occurred in the San Francisco Bay Area in September 1950, using two types of bacteria, Bacillus globigii and Serratia marcescens, and fluorescent particles.
Theodor Rosebury, who previously worked as a supervisor at Camp Detrick, issued a warning against the development of biological weapons during the Cold War.
[22] By the time his book was available, publications were becoming more restricted and the extent of the Soviet threat of biological weapons was being overstated by Congress and the media.
[22] In 1969, Harvard biologist Matthew Meselson argued that the biological warfare programs would eventually hurt US security because potential enemy nations could easily emulate these weapons.
Jeanne Guillemin, wife of biologist Matthew Meselson, summarized the controversy:[23] The entire experimental legacy is dismaying, from the hundreds of dead monkeys at Fort Detrick to the spectacle of Seventh Day Adventist soldiers, the vaccinated volunteers in Project Whitecoat, strapped to chairs amid cages of animals in the Utah sunlight as Q fever aerosols are blown over them.
Most chilling are the mock scenarios played out in urban areas: light bulbs filled with simulated BW agents being dropped in New York subways, men in Washington National Airport spraying pseudo-BW from briefcases, and similar tests in California and Texas and over the Florida Keys.
[24] President Richard M. Nixon issued his "Statement on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs" on November 25, 1969, in a speech from Fort Detrick.
[33] The Geneva Protocol had encountered opposition in the U.S. Senate, in part due to strong lobbying against it by the Chemical Warfare Service, and it was never brought to the floor for a vote when originally introduced.
[46] A committee led by Joseph Needham gathered evidence for a report that included testimony from eyewitnesses, doctors, and four American Korean War prisoners who confirmed use of biological weapons by the U.S.[46] In eastern Europe, China, and North Korea it was widely believed that the accusations were true.
[44] A 1988 book Korea: The Unknown War, by Western historians Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings, also suggested the claims might be true.
[47][48] In 1998, Canadian researchers and historians Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman of York University made the case that the accusations were true in their book, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea.
[50] In the same year Endicott's book was published, Kathryn Weathersby and Milton Leitenberg of the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington released a cache of Soviet and Chinese documents that claimed to have revealed that the biowarfare allegation was an elaborate disinformation campaign by the communists.
[46] In 2001, anti-communist historian Herbert Romerstein supported Weathersby and Leitenberg, criticizing Endicott's research for using evidence provided by the Chinese government.
[53] In this program, Professor Mori Masataka investigated historical artifacts in the form of bomb casings from US biological weapons, contemporary documentary evidence and eyewitness testimonies.
[54] One report from an identified Chinese military unit on February 26, 1952, said, "yesterday it was discovered that in our bivouac area there was a real flood of bacteria and germs from a plane by the enemy.
In another example, on March 6, 1952, the 23rd Brigade of the Korean People's Army sent a "long detailed ... message to one of its subordinate battalions" suggesting preventive measures be taken against "bacteria" dropped by UN aircraft, apparently in the area around Sariwon.
Six years after the event, the newspaper Newsday, citing an anonymous former CIA agent,[60][61] claimed that anti-Castro saboteurs with at least the tacit backing of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officials introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba six weeks before the outbreak in 1971 to destabilize the Cuban economy and encourage domestic opposition to Fidel Castro.
According to the Newsday report, the virus was allegedly delivered to the operatives from an army base in the Panama Canal Zone by an unnamed U.S. intelligence source.
[62][63] Evidence linking these incidents to biological warfare has not been confirmed,[57] however, according to Kieth Bolender, a French scientist analyzing the situation concluded that it was not possible that the outbreak had occurred naturally.
[57][59] Since July 1981, Cuba has had widespread sugar cane rust, African Swine Fever, tobacco blue mold, Dengue 2, meningitis, hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, and several parasites targeting staple crops such as rice, corn, and potatoes.
[71] Scientists tested biological agents, including Bacillus globigii, which were thought to be harmless, at public places such as subways.
After the DoD halted efforts to find those who may have been affected by the tests, veteran health activists and others identified approximately 600 additional individuals who were potentially exposed during Project 112.
[80] The laboratories were first established following the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction to secure and dismantle the remnants of the Soviet biological weapons program, and since then have been used to monitor and prevent new epidemics.