A New Bio Warfare Arms Race Begins in Maryland

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Sun, 4 Jun 2006 21:01:05 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

A New Bio Warfare Arms Race Begins in Maryland

 

 

 

 

http://democracyrising.us/content/view/498/151/

 

 

 

A New Bio Warfare Arms Race Begins in Maryland

 

 

Written by Kevin Zeese

Wednesday, 31 May 2006

 

 

" You will do well to try to innoculate the Indians by means of

blanketts, as well as to try every other method that can serve to

extirpate this execrable race... "

- Approval by Lord Gen. Jeffrey Amherst, British Commander-in-Chief of

America, for Col. H. Bouquet's suppression of Pontiac's Rebellion with

smallpox laced-blankets, July 1763. The attack partially backfired

when Bouquet infected his own troops.

 

The United States has come along way since our British ancestors used

small pox poisoned blankets as a biological weapon against Indians.

But, sadly, biological weapons are still with us - indeed they are

becoming a major thrust of the U.S. military and a threat to humanity.

 

Ft. Detrick in Frederick, MD, just 45 miles away from the nation's

capitol, is going through a massive expansion into the largest

bio-weapons facility in the world. The federal government is

installing a 220 acre campus that will bring together numerous federal

agencies anchored by a massive U.S. Army building - 22 acres in size.

The National Interagency Biodefense Campus (NIBC) is likely to ignite

a bio-weapons arms race.

Expansion of Bio-Weapons Activity Will Make America, and the World,

Less Safe

 

Not only is this a multi-billion dollar misuse of federal funds, but

it will encourage our adversaries to develop similar programs, lead to

the invention of new, infectious agents and increase the risk of

diversion of U.S. made bio-weapons to our adversaries. If the

government really want to increase the safety of Americans the U.S.

would invest in the public health system, strengthen international

controls and work to remove pathogens from the face of the earth,

rather than creating new ones.

 

The only modern bio-weapons attack was the use of anthrax in letters

to Senators Daschle and Leahy at the time the Patriot Act was being

considered. There is no question the anthrax used in this attack was

produced in the United States and came through Ft. Detrick. The type

of anthrax used was the " Ames strain, " with a concentration and

dispersability of one trillion spores per gram - a technology that is

only capable of production by U.S. scientists.

 

It is not surprising that the only bio-weapons attack originated in

U.S. laboratories. As advocates Barry Kissin and Richard Ochs point out:

 

" University of Michigan science historian Susan Wright calls the

extent of fear of terrorism with biological weapons `completely

unrealistic.' `Heaven only knows how they think a terrorist is going

to put up a lab and do this stuff without being caught,' she said.

`Labs with ventilation and good scientists leave huge footprints.'

Milton Leitenberg of the University of Maryland demonstrates in his

recently published `Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism

Threat' that billions of federal expenditures have been appropriated

in the absence of virtually any threat analysis, and that the risk and

imminence of the use of biological agents by non-state

actors/terrorist organizations has been systematically and

deliberately exaggerated. It is critical to recognize that the only

bio-attack in American history, namely the anthrax letters of October

2001, almost certainly was generated by our own bio-weapons

establishment. "

 

Now, the U.S. is expanding the number of laboratories involved in

bio-weapons development by the hundreds, the number of individuals

involved by the thousands thereby increasing exponentially the number

of people who have access to these weapons and the risk of diversion

of the material. The U.S. may end up spending billions of dollars and

provide those who oppose the United States with weapons they could not

produce themselves.

 

The U.S. is also developing new methods of using bio-weapons.

Attorney and Congressional candidate Barry Kissin testified recently

that " In May of 2003, it was reported that the United States Army has

developed and patented a new grenade that it says can be used to wage

bio-warfare. This is in explicit violation of the BTWC, which

explicitly prohibits all development of bio-weapons delivery devices.

US Patent #6,523,478, granted on February 25th 2003, covers a `rifle

launched non lethal cargo dispenser' that is designed to deliver

aerosols, including, according to the patent's claims, `crowd control

agents, biological agents, [and] chemical agents...' "

 

International Controls Weakened By the Bush Administration

 

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) bans the

development, production, stockpiling, acquisition and retention of

microbial or other biological agents or toxins, in types and in

quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or

other peaceful purposes. The Convention also bans weapons, equipment

or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile

purposes or in armed conflict. The actual use of biological weapons is

prohibited by the 1925 Geneva Protocol and Article VIII of the BTWC

recognizes that nothing contained in the Convention shall be construed

as a derogation from the obligations contained in the Geneva Protocol.

 

The investment in bio-weapons that is likely to spur a bio-weapons

arms race is occurring at a time when the Bush administration is

blocking the strengthening of international controls of such weapons.

In 2001, the U.S. rejected an effort to conclude an inspections

protocol for the BTWC. The United States was the only country to favor

terminating efforts to create a legally binding inspection and

verification mechanism.

 

Further, on October 23, 2002, when the UN Disarmament Committee

adopted a resolution reaffirming the 1925 Geneva Protocol " prohibiting

the use of poisonous gases and bacteriological methods of warfare, "

the resolution passed unanimously, with two abstentions: the U.S. and

Israel. The U.S. abstention amounts to a veto: banning the resolution

from being reported.

 

The combination of massive new investment in bio-weapons facilities

and the blockage of international controls on such weapons could be a

deadly one for the world.

 

History of Fort Detrick

 

Fort Detrick actually began in 1943 as Camp Detrick and worked with

the British in creating an anthrax bomb. It became a permanent Army

installation, Fort Detrick in 1956 and developed offensive

bio-weapons. But, in 1969 during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. was

criticized for using gas, napalm and herbicides in Vietnam, President

Nixon unilaterally ended the nation's offensive biological warfare

program and ordered pathogens and toxins destroyed. This also led to

the signing of the Biological Weapons and Toxins Convention in 1972

which became law in 1975. It was discovered in 1975 that the CIA had

disobeyed the order to destroy all bio-weapons stocks, and had

retained pathogens and toxins for its own use. In the 1980's, the

Reagan and Bush Administrations revived the dormant budget for

" defensive " biowarfare research. It was also in the 1980's that the

U.S. supplied Saddam Hussein with basis for Iraq's biowarfare capability.

 

After 9/11 the Bush administration dramatically increased funding for

bio-weapons activity. Ft. Detrick will become the National Interagency

Biodedefense Campus (NIBC) bringing together the U.S Army Medical

Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of

Health, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of

Agriculture. The campus will cost billions of dollars, cover hundreds

of acres, include millions of square feet of buildings and thousands

of square feet of BSL-4 (Level 4) laboratory space - laboratories used

for experimentation with infectious agents which there exists neither

a vaccine nor a cure. All of this in the now heavily populated

Frederick County with more than 200,000 residents.

As part of their efforts of " defending " the United States from

bio-weapons, Ft. Detrick will be creating new weapons, as well as the

means to mass-produce and disseminate them. The rationale is that to

defend against the weapons we have to understand them. In the

Frederick News Post, Barry Kissin, a lawyer activist who is running

for Congress in Frederick, asked Col. Mary Deutsch, Fort Detrick's

Commander, about the work at the base and she acknowledged that among

the technology used will be " genetic engineering or recombinant DNA

technology " along with many other " advanced methods. " Follow up

questions by Kissin's colleagues about allowing international

inspections and potential violations of international treaties went

unanswered. The former chief American negotiator of the Biological

Weapons Convention, James Leonard, has warned that the

administration's initiative could be interpreted as " development " of

biological weapons in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention

 

Of course, there are endless variations of pathogens so this is a

never ending task - a constant drain of billions of U.S. tax dollars

on a strategy that will never lead to safety. According to Dr. Milton

Leitenberg, a veteran arms control advocate and senior scholar at the

University of Maryland's Center for International and Security

Studies, germ warfare agents can be genetically modified and each

modification may require a different vaccine or countermeasure.

 

History of Problems with Security at Ft. Detrick Continue to This Day

 

Ft. Detrick has had significant problems over the years. Before 1969 a

seven story tower was used to house anthrax bacteria. When Nixon

stopped production the tower was off limits. There were repeated

efforts to clean the tower. A 1993 Ft. Detrick publication noted that

the tower had been used to grow anthrax " a dangerous organism which

can lie dormant for thousands of years in a spore state [and then

become reactivated]. " The Tower was demolished in 2003 and all

indications are that the rubble was deposited in the Frederick County

landfill.

 

In addition, in the 1991 it was discovered that water supplies

surrounding Ft. Detrick contained high levels of cancer causing

agents, TCE and PCE. The Washington Post reported: " The Maryland

Department of the Environment and the Frederick County Health

Department tested 33 wells at homes near Area B. Half were

contaminated with the two agents, six so badly that the water was

unfit to drink. In a few wells, concentrations of the two chemicals

exceeded Environmental Protection Agency limits many times over. In an

Army monitoring well nearest the dump, the chemicals were so

concentrated, " you could smell it, " said Joseph Gortva, an engineer

who is managing the cleanup. "

 

In 2003, The Guardian headlined " U.S. Finds Evidence of WMD - at last

- Buried in Maryland. " They reported:

" The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators

had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction,

including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.

 

" The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer

than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland

countryside.

 

* * *

 

" Even more embarrassing for the Pentagon, there was no documentation

about the various biological agents disposed of at the US bio-defence

centre at Fort Detrick.

 

* * *

 

" The Fort Detrick clean-up has unearthed over 2,000 tonnes of

hazardous waste.

 

" The sanitation crews were shocked to find vials containing live

bacteria. As well as the vaccine form of anthrax, the discarded

biological agents included Brucella melitensis, which causes the

virulent flu-like disease brucellosis, and klebsiella, a cause of

pneumonia. "

 

The Washington Post report noted that deer jump through the fields and

cattle roam where the poisons were found. And, in addition traces of

Agent Orange.

 

This year, the Frederick News Post, received responses to Freedom of

Information Act requests that documented anthrax being found in

unprotected areas outside of carefully guarded suites. They also found

documentation of workers' potential exposures to biological agents

between April 1, 2002, and Dec. 1, 2005. The reports also documented

that adherence to and enforcement of safety and security procedures

was lax. Further, 161 biological defense mishap reports were filed

between April 1, 2002 and Dec. 1, 2005. Between 1989 and 2002, Ft.

Detrick's clinic evaluated 234 individuals for potential exposure to

agents of bioterrorism and nonbioterrorism -- 162 cases were assessed

as minimal, negligible or no risk; 67 were assessed as moderate or

high risk. These reports are consistent with whistleblowers who have

reported sloppy procedures and missing bio-agents over the years.

 

Neighbors have also been affected. For example in May of 2005,

residents downwind of Fort Detrick woke up one morning to find their

residential properties coated with flakes of a soot-like substance.

And in August 2005, there was a " suspicious odor " at the Fort's

wastewater treatment plant. According to the Fort's spokesperson an

" unknown source " dumped an " unknown substance " into the sewer line at

the steam plant.

 

How To Really Protect America and the World from Bio-Weapons

 

At a time when the U.S. public health care system is unprepared for

epidemics - natural flu's for example, massive funds are being spent

chasing an endless variety of pathogens, of unpredictable genetic

make-up, a chase the U.S. can never win.

 

Dr. Muin Khoury, Director of the Office of Genomics and Disease

Prevention at the CDC stated in February 2003: " Public health is in

disarray, and this emphasis on terrorism is eroding the public health

infrastructure even more. "

 

In March, 2005, more than 750 US biologists including two Nobel

laureates and seven past presidents of the American Society for

Microbiology, signed an open letter to NIH protesting at the excessive

use of bacteriology funds for the study of bio-terror threats. " The

diversion of research funds from projects of high public-health

importance to projects of high biodefence relevance represents a

misdirection of NIH priorities and a crisis for NIH-supported

microbiological research. " They conlude: " Bioweapons agents cause, on

average, zero deaths per year in the United States, in contrast to a

broad range of non-prioritized microbial pathogens that cause tens or

hundreds of thousands of deaths per year. " Essentially, misdirection

of funds is making America less safe, not more.

 

The direction of the United States is misplaced. It is time for

transparent monitoring under the Bioweapons Convention, investment in

the public health system and making sure pathogens are no longer produced.

 

Kevin Zeese is Director of DemocracyRising.

 

For more information:

Free From Terror: http://www.freefromterror.net/

The Sunshine Project: http://www.sunshine-project.org/

The Bioweapons and Biodefense Freedom of Information Fund:

http://www.cbwtransparency.org/

 

Thanks to Barry Kissin for his assistance in providing research

materials for this article.