Operation bacterium.

• Author: Cole, Leonard A.
• Position: Secret biological warfare tests on the public

It would have been hard to pick them out of a crowd: average-looking men walking through Washington's National Airport, carrying suitcases. But the men were agents of the United States Army, and the suitcases were something out of a James Bond movie--disguised atomizers which imperceptibly sprayed unsuspecting travelers with a bacteria-laden mist. The undercover operation, which took place in 1964-65, was part of a nationwide program of so-called 'vulnerability' testing designed to gauge the impact of an enemy-launched epidemic of smallpox.

For 20 years ending in 1969, the Army staged hundreds of these secret germ 'attacks' in a number of cities, using microorganisms the Pentagon claimed were harmless to humans. It wasn't until 1977, during a hearing before the Senate, that civilian experts suggested that vulnerability testing may have caused outbreaks of disease which occured in some of the test areas.

Although vulnerability testing took place only two decades ago, it seems like a bad memory from a distant era--when, for example, we were rehearsing troops for atomic combat by marching them through radioactive fields following nuclear detonations. Many of these soldiers were never informed about the risks to their health; neither were the civilians who lived downwind from the explosion sites in Utah and Nevada, among other places.

It would be inconceivable today for the Army to propose a new round of live nuclear tests on unknowing human subjects. Yet at the 1977 Senate hearing on biological vulnerability testing, military spokesmen insisted their experiments had been safe and refused to rule out renewed open-air germ spraying. One Pentagon witness, Lt. Colonel George A. Carruth, declared that although such operations were not then underway, the Army might well find "a specific area of vulnerability that takes additional tests."

In light of the military's refusal to swear off future vulnerability testing, several recent developments deserve more attention than they have received:

First, the Reagan administration has argued that the Soviet Union is violating international agreements and developing offensive biological weapons. On the strength of these allegations--which has been challenged by some scientists--the White House has succeeded in pushing through Congress a vastly increased budget for chemical and biological weaponry. In deciding how to use its new biological research money, the Army recently contracted for a special scientific study. The recommendation: resume open-air vulnerability tests to evaluate "meteorological variables" and available "detection devices." What is most alarming is that the Pentagon insists there would be no legal or ethical barriers to such a vulnerability testing program.

Biological weaponry is, by nature, an elusive issue, made more complex by a multilateral treaty which imposes an ambiguous partial ban and fails to provide for verification. Officially, the United States maintains no germ arsenal; thus, for Congress, there are no missiles to count or basing systems to debate. Biological weapons are overshadowed in public discourse by questions over more tangible--and far more expensive--weapons systems. Were the Army to decide to start spraying people with germs again, few on Capitol Hill would have enough information to put up much of a fight. And the rest of us might not hear about it until it's all over.

'Innocent' organisms

Biological weaponry is often lumped together with chemical agents, such as mustard gas, which was first used with devastating effect in World War I, and nerve gas, which the United States and Soviet Union currently stockpile in huge quantities. The differences, however, are significant.

Chemical weapons are either man-made synthetics or inanimate agents produced by living organisms. While the effects of chemical weapons may be lethal, the materials used ultimately dissipate; their toxicity lasts for a limited period. Biological weapons, on the other hand, consist of living organisms which cause disease. The organisms, such as bacteria, reproduce and may become increasingly lethal with the passage of time. Unlike some chemicals, biological agents cannot easily be separated from a natural habitat; it may be impossible to detect their presence until after widespread infection has occurred. Ounce-for-ounce, therefore, biological weapons are potentially more dangerous than chemical.

The United States has never used germs to fell enemy soldiers, but research on biological weapons has been conducted since the early 1940s. By the late 1960s, the Army had developed at least 10 different strains of biological agents. It was a Ft. Detrick, a biological and chemical research base outside of Frederick, Maryland, that the organisms for vulnerability testing were grown.

Most of the open-air test sites are known only from a list provided by the Army for a 1977 hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, a panel then chaired by Senator Edward M. Kennedy but since disbanded. Details about a few of the actual tests have since become available through law suits and Freedom of Information Act claims. Although documents describing open-air testing have been partially censored by the Military, they indicate that one of the Army's chief goals was to conduct the experiments without raising suspicions among exposed populations.

A 79-page report entitled "Miscellaneous Publication 7," for example, which was obtained through a FOIA claim by the Church of Scientology, describes the spraying of the common bacterium, Bacillus Subtilis, in the North Terminal of National Airport. After millions of the germs were dispersed, the report states, "test team members, each with a suitcase sampler, selected a passenger at random at the entrance to the North Terminal and covertly collected air samples in close proximity to the passenger." If the agents had sprayed smallpox germs, the report...