New Fort Detrick "biodefense" laboratory may reflect a Bush germ warfare effort.

• Author: Ross, Sherwood
• Position: Biodevastation - President George W. Bush - Viewpoint essay

Although no foreign power has threatened a bioterror attack against America, since 9/11 the Bush administration has allocated a stunning $43 billion to "defend" against one. Critics are now saying, however, Bush's newest "biodefense" initiative is both offensive and illegal.

The latest development, according to the Associated Press, is that the US Army is replacing its Military Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, MD, "with a new laboratory that would be a component of a biodefense campus operated by several agencies." The Army told AP the laboratory is intended to continue research that is only meant for defense against biological threats.

But University of Illinois international law professor Francis Boyle charged that the Fort Detrick work will include "acquiring, growing, modifying, storing, packaging and dispersing classical, emerging and genetically engineered pathogens." Those activities, as well as planned study of the properties of pathogens when weaponized, "are unmistakable hallmarks of an offensive weapons program."

Boyle made his comments to Fort Detrick as part of its environmental impact assessment of the new facility. Boyle pointed out in his letter that he authored the 1989 US law enacted by Congress that criminalized BWC violations.

The Fort Detrick expansion is but one phase of a multi-billion biotech buildup going forward in 11 agencies sparked by the unsolved October, 2001 anthrax attacks on Congress that claimed 5 lives and sickened 17.

The attacks, and ensuing panic, led to passage of the BioShield Act of 2004. There is strong evidence, though, that the attacks were not perpetrated by any foreign government or terrorist band but originated at Fort Detrick, the huge, supposedly super-safe biotechnology research center. Despite an intensive FBI investigation, no one has been charged with a crime.

Referring to the work undertaken at Fort Detrick, Mark Wheelis, Senior Lecturer in the Section of Microbiology of the University of California, Davis, told the Global Security Newswire (GNS) as far back as June 30, 2004, "This is absolutely without any question what one would do to develop an offensive biological weapons capability."

"We're going to develop new pathogens for various purposes. We're going to develop new ways of packaging them, new ways of disseminating them. We're going to harden them to environmental degradation. We'll be prepared to go offensive at the drop of a hat if we so desire," he told GNS.

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