"Pentagon Had 50 Tests of Chemical, Biological Weapons Involving Military
Personnel"

Robert Gehrke, The Associated Press, Tuesday 01 July 2003

Several House members are asking Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to
keep alive the Pentagon's investigation into 50 chemical and biological
weapons tests in the 1960s that involved 5,842 military personnel.

The Defense Department released the final findings of an
investigation into Project 112 and Project SHAD, which were
conducted from 1962 to 1973 to test the combat capabilities of
biological and chemical agents and ways to protect U.S. troops
from such attacks.

Monday's report raised the number of U.S. troops identified as having
been present for one or more of the tests to 5,842, many of whom
were not informed of their participation.

Some included releases of deadly biological and chemical agents,
but troops were protected in those cases, said Dr. Michael
Kilpatrick,
deputy director of the Defense Department's Deployment Health
Support Directorate.

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., and several of his colleagues said it
would be premature to close the book on the investigations and asked
Rumsfeld to continue the inquiry.

''Veterans who may have been exposed during these tests deserve
to know all the facts,'' Thompson said. ''The Department of
Defense's
decision to close its investigation may unfairly deny them that
right.''

To date, the Veterans Administration has had 260 claims filed by
service members who believe their ailments are related to their
presence at the test sites, although such cases are difficult to
prove, said Kilpatrick.

Project 112 and Project SHAD were developed in 1961 to study the
combat uses of biological and chemical weapons and methods to
protect American troops from such attacks. Initially it was believed
that only simulated agents were used, but last year the Defense
Department admitted for the first time that some of the tests
used real
chemical or biological weapons.

Most of the tests made public Monday used the benign bacteria
bacillus globigii to simulate how biological weapons agents would
spread through the hold of a ship.

One test, called ''Blue Tango,'' entailed spraying two types of
bacteria, including E. coli, in a rain forest in Hawaii in 1968
to gauge
how the bacteria would linger in the vegetation.

Another, ''Folded Arrow,'' involved spraying bacillus globigii from a
submarine over part of Oahu, Hawaii, and over several boats off the
coast in 1968 to gauge how Venezuelan equine encephalitis would
be carried by wind.

''It bespeaks the time, the early '60s, when we were in the Cold War,
and we were concerned that Russia and perhaps China had chemical
and biological capabilities that could be used against American
troops
and against us in the homeland,'' Kilpatrick said.

The United States scrapped its biological weapons program in the
late 1960s and agreed in a 1997 treaty to destroy all its
chemical weapons.

Headquartered at Deseret Test Center at Fort Douglas, Utah, tests
were conducted in Hawaii, Alaska, Maryland, Florida, Utah, Georgia,
Panama, Canada, Britain and aboard ships in the North Atlantic
and Pacific oceans.

None of the tests were conducted to gauge the human response to
chemical or biological weapons, said Kilpatrick. In each test,
military
personnel were protected from the agents by shelter, protective
clothing or vaccinations.

Even if none of the military personnel was harmed, there remain
ethical questions of conducting tests on unwitting soldiers, said
Steven Aftergood, an expert on government secrecy with the
Federation of American Scientists.

''If there were no illnesses caused, which I think is still an open
question, then it is a matter of luck, and one of the reasons
government accountability and transparency are so important is to
prevent initiatives of this kind,'' he said.

The inquiry began in three years ago, after several Navy veterans
reported health problems they believed might be caused by their
involvement in the tests. Research into the classified project found
more tests and many more veterans present, expanding the scope
of the investigation.

Kilpatrick said the VA was seeking to notify the 5,842 veterans who were
present for the tests.