MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD FROM L. K. WHITE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01284A001800130047-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 19, 2005
• Sequence Number: 47
• Publication Date: November 18, 1969
• Content Type: MFR

Approve or RasS
18 November 1969
Morning Meeting of 18 November 1969
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Godfrey briefed on action along the Cambodian border involving
an attack targeted at a Communist installation but erroneously obliterating
a Cambodian outpost. Godfrey went on to forecast that the world will
hear from Sihanouk on this one.
Godfrey mentioned that NSA has reevaluated North Vietnamese
infiltration activity and has determined that an average of two new
groups per day are infiltrating. He commented how this will conflict
with infiltration assessments in recent publications but added that we
will be publishing on this new translation of NSA material.
DD/S reported that there was a bomb scare yesterday at Building
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causing an evacuation of personnel. No bomb was found, but
the DD/S commented that this was the third such incident in this
Building, I and that there appears to
be little we can do to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Maury briefed on yesterday's session of the Symington Subcom-
mittee on U. S. involvement in Thailand and Laos. He noted that during
the course of the hearing Senator Fulbright reconvened the session as
the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Maury noted that Secretary
Rogers will testify on this matter today.
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Bross reported that there is no requirement for the Director
to brief before the 21 and 22 November sessions of PFIAB. Bross
went on to say that he will be discussing with the Director his own
possible briefing of the "blue ribbon" panel (President's eight-member
panel appointed June 1969 to study Procurement and Management
Practices of the DOD).
DD/P expressed his concern over a State cable going to the
Vientiane Embassy providing guidance on what to say or do vis-a-vis
the Laotians with respect to Chinese roadbuilding.
DD/P noted receipt of a cabled account of the good conversation
in Saigon between the Chief of Station and Deputy Secretary Packard.
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Germ Warfare:
pry`
l 1st
It is profoundly unnatural to use medicine to kill-for men to
assist the primordial enemies of human life that every instinct
moves us to abhor and combat. Yet we have in America a thriving
biological warfare establishment, developing and preparing for
use virulent agents more deadly than were ever contrived by
nature itself.
This lethal machinery is not directed and operated by some
band of hellish necromancers - some inhuman magicians of
death. It is run as part of the ordinary business of society, involv-
ing in its operations not only huge military bases and the highest
political institutions, but also several universities and even a
pacifist church. And while the idea of a germ warfare arsenal is
terrifying in itself, perhaps more terrifying is the society's
capacity to fit CB W development so smoothly into its ordinary
way of life.
We would like to think it impossible for normal men to involve
themselves with biological warfare in any way. Yet a look at
such involvement within various social spheres reveals some
common patterns that help explain how easily it can happen
and why. -THE EDITORS
For God
y first acquaintance with Operation Whitecoat came
when ... an old friend mentioned'that he had just
returned from duty [as a conscientious objector
doing "non-combatant service"] at Fort Detrick,
Maryland. While assigned there, he stated, he had been a subject,
a human guinea pig, for experiments with diseases.... So it was
with a little knowledge of the situation that I volunteered [also
as a C.O.] for Operation Whitecoat in March of 1962.... One
of the unusual aspects of being a volunteer was that during the
times scheduled [in basic training] for injections to keep up our
immunity to diseases of one type or another, the volunteers were
excused and thus our built-up immunity was purposely allowed
to disintegrate, allowing disease to get a head start on us....
During the 18 months that I was assigned to Fort Detrick as a
human guinea pig volunteer, many projects were carried out.... .
"I volunteered for the next project.... One man ... rejected
the experiment, as he had gotten married and could lake no
chances with his health or his life. He was pressured but did not
waiver in his stand.... We were told the project would last a
minimum of 21 days and that we would receive $25 per pint of
blood that would be drawn during the project.... At the begin-
ning, we had been examined by the director of the project, a
medical doctor devoted to his chosen profession. Each of us
queried him as to the value of this particular project ; however, we
learned exactly what he wanted us to know and that was
nothing....
"There was some apprehension among the project members, as
it was made known this was D-Day. Much blood had been drawn
previously, and therefore another needle stick or two didn't
bother us. What we were to learn this morning was that we would
be injected with endotoxin [a poison obtained from dead bac.
teria]. This time both a nurse and Lt. Col. Biesel of the Army
Medical Corps were present at the injection. He injected the
needle deep into my vein and told me that shortly I should have
some reaction. Pain medication in the form of pink and gray
Darvon capsules were left on my bedside table. We were told
to lie in bed until whatever happened was over. Within an hour,
the top of my head felt like all the gremlins in Hades were inside
trying to emerge by hitting the underside of my skull with sledge
hammers. A dozen or a hundred, I couldn't have felt any worse
if I had been hit by a speeding automobile. This type of endo-
toxin would surely slow down an enemy soldier who had been
infected. The Darvon was there to use if the pain became severe
enough, but an idiosyncrasy of mine is being unable to swallow
capsules; thus I chose to bear the pain until it quit, which was
some 3'/2 or 4 hours later. The balance of the three-week period
was used to recuperate."
-Letter, dated July 1969, from a Seventh-day Adventist
who had served as a volunteer in Project Whitecoat
conducted by the Army with the assistance of the
Adventist Church.
HE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH believes the one
great hope of mankind is the second coming of
Christ. When He comes,. all of the sins of mankind
will be washed out-along with mankind. While
awaiting this apocalyptic rendezvous, church members-who
do not smoke, drink, dance or go to movies-are urged to
by Seymour Hersh
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avoid the social issues of war and peace, and to concentrate on "In the context of biological warfare even life-saving techniques
ect: immunity
e as
tran
k
doing their utmost, individually, to live in strict adherence to
the Ten Commandments.
God said, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," and accordingly the
church forbids its men to engage in military combat. Yet
nothing in the church's literal reading of divine intent has
prevented it from embracing a unique paramilitary mission-
' enthusiastically training its men from high school on to become
I battlefield medics, and willingly supplying 1500 youths for
experiments connected with the Army's biological warfare
program at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
This pacifist church, which has no qualms about supplying
men to help America fight a war in Viet-Nam or conduct
biological warfare, has no problem gaining conscientious
objector status for its young men. A church publication makes
clear why: "The '0' in the classification stands for 'objector,'
but Adventists, who neither burn draft cards nor join the lines
of bearded protesters, consider themselves 'cooperators.' "
Control of the rich ($1 billion in assets around the world),
,1,500,000-member church is tightly held by the officers at the
top. And, as one young Adventist, Martin Turner of Weeds-
port, New York, puts it, the church leaders' "attitude toward
war is that they don't have an attitude toward it ... as long
as we get our Saturdays [Sabbath] off and don't have to shoot
anyone, it's all right." The church has boasted that "Not only
does the Adventist consider himself a 'conscientious cooper-
ator' in military service, but [the Church] has done something
no other has done thus far-established on the denomina-
tion's high school and college campuses throughout the world
an organization called the Medical Cadet Corps to train young
men in military courtesy, drilling, first aid, and battlefield
duties of the medic so that they will be better prepared for
military duty." An estimated 30,000 young Adventists have
gone through this training in the United States and Canada
since 1960.
The Adventists' ties with biological warfare date back to
1 954,when Major-General GeorgeE.Armstrong, ArmySurgeon
General, wrote a letter to the church requesting its participa-
tion in Project Whitecoat at Fort Detrick. Armstrong reassured
church leaders that "The program has the full concurrence
p
g
e on a s
such as immunization ta
. among one's own population and troops is a prerequisite to
the initiation of disease by our own forces, as well as a pre-
caution against the, initiation of others. Some diseases are
currently excluded from active consideration as BW agents
simply because no vaccines against them have yet been
developed."
The first project to which Adventists were assigned involved
Q fever, one of the first diseases to be tested as a biological
weapon by the United States. Soon the men were helping to
develop vaccines for anthrax, tularemia, psittacosis, and
Venezuelan equine encephalitis-all highly infectious diseases
that have been selected for military use in case the decision is
made to initiate biological warfare.
But developing vaccines for the U.S. biological warfare
arsenal was not the only job of the Adventists. By the mid-
1960's, volunteers were being exposed to heavy doses of air-
borne diseases in order to determine how quickly various
strains could infect men. A paper published in Bacteriological
Reviews, September, 1966, by four doctors at Fort Detrick.
reported on the deliberate infection with tularemia of more
than 20 Adventists. Some were immediately cured with anti-
biotics; others suffered a relapse. All of the subjects had been
infected with an altered strain of tularemia, one that was bred
to be resistant to streptomycin, a standard medical cure for
the disease. And all were made very sick. "Volunteers exposed
to [tularemia] became acutely ill after a mean incubation
period of three days," said the paper. All recovered eventually,
according to the doctors, and with no apparent complications.
But the Army Training Manual 3-216, Military Biology and
Biological Agents, reports that such temporary infections with
tularemia can eventually lead to "a chronic condition that
may be accompanied by enlargement of the rgglonal lymph
glands."
Given this background, a church statement commending
Project Whitecoat, supplied to the Army upon request in the
mid-1950's, seems-at best-wonderfully naive. "Seventh-day
Adventists are well aware of the exploits of Pasteur, Gorgas,
Reed and their associates by which many of the dangerous and
epidemic diseases have been robbed of their terror.. , . It is
the attitude of Seventh-day Adventists that any service
rendered voluntarily by whomsoever in the useful, necessary
research into the cause and the treatment of disabling disease
is it legitimate and laudable contribution to the success of our
nation and to the health and comfort of our fellow men."
of our highest military and governmental officers," and he re-
ceived a quick, affirmative reply. "We feel," it'said, "that if
anyone should recognize a debt of loyalty and service for the
many courtesies and considerations received from the Depart-
ment of Defense, we as Adventists are in a position to feel a
debt of gratitude for these kind considerations."
S FAR AS CHURCH OFFICIALS ARE CONCERNED, Project
Whitecoat was set up to enable Adventists to "take
part in studies aimed at developing medical protective
measures against disease-producing organisms which
'might be disseminated by an enemy in the event biological
'warfare is ever used against this country." (Excerpt from
a church booklet.)
In fact, however, many Adventist volunteers have been used
in tests to determine the number of organisms of a particular
disease required to infect a man-a study critical to the Army's
ability to carry out offensive biological warfare. But even if the
ouths had been enlisted only in developing vaccines and other
y
defensive measures, church officials never considered the possi-
bility that, as Elinor Langer once wrote in Science Magazine,
By the late 1950's the Army was having its troubles with
Project Whitecoat, which at that time included non-Adventist
volunteers. Enlisted men formerly connected with the bio-
logical warfare program have told me that Fort Detrick's
guinea pigs once staged a sit-down strike over lack of full
information about the test program. In the early 1960's the
Army, apparently taking advantage of the docility encouraged
by the church, converted the project into an all-Adventist
operation.
The Adventist leadership has elevated service in Project
Whitecoat almost to an act of faith. Twice a year, a key official
of the church accompanies Army doctors on Whitecoat recruit-
ing trips, and a church pamphlet explaining the program in
fawning terms is issued to prospective volunteers. It notes that
the church official's mission in accompanying. the Army men
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"is not to recruit, but to reassur men of our denomination- "Status of the Me 1 Research Effort," by Crozier's prede-
al approval of this type of service." Potential Whitecoats are cessor at Fort Detrick, Colonel W. D. Tigertt. Tigertt writes:
also told that "there are no special compensations offered for "[It] is not surprising that attention is also given to the
those who volunteer to serve in Whitecoat. It is commendable possibility of deliberately inducing infections in man in such
for a man to be willing to face risk in order to render a special a manner as to facilitate the attainment of [military] objectives.
service, but he should look for no special favors in return." What is surprising is that many physicians have refused to
The pamphlet was written by an Adventist pastor. deal with the problem. They explain their apathy by stating
that ethics prohibit their participation in any endeavor the
HEN A FEW YOUNG CHURCH MEMBERS began writing derivatives of which might be used to produce suffering or
in protest of Whitecoat and asking for more cause loss of life. Yet our profession admits that to be prepared
information, church officials brushed their com- to deal with such a threat we must have an understanding of
plaints aside. Leading the attack was 23-year-old the methodology. This writer once heard a solemn proposal
Martin Turner, who was having difficulty getting church en- to provide a medical education for certain men, but to deny
dorsement for his draft exemption because, being morally ' them the Hippocratic Oath, so that they might participate in
opposed to the Viet-Nam War, he refused to take non-com- the study of biological weapons, thereby obtaining the
batant service. Turner sent a round of letters to church leaders: ! necessary medical information but keeping the medical pro-
last spring asking, them to spell out the nature of the project. fession free from blemish."
The letters brought uniform responses. Colonel Tigertt is too candid to conceal the ultimately
Reverend William Loveless, pastor of the Adventists' largest destructive ends of the kind of "medical" work he oversaw at
congregation (Tacoma Park, Maryland) said: "The Operation Detrick. The guardians of the Adventist Church would most
Whitecoat is classified. This means that you won't get much of : likely sympathize with the "solemn proposal" that he scorns,
an answer from the Army and it also means that 'I don't : since they seek in a similar way to keep their "profession free'
know, nor does anybody know, a great deal about Operation from blemish." They too are content with a'moraJity of form
Whitecoat, nor are the men in the Operation permitted to without substance, one in which the arts of disease can be
discuss it in any detail. I do know that there have been presented as the healing arts, and in which germ' warfare
projects, all of them classified, which deal in the area of can be embraced in pious obedience to a divine -injunction
biological warfare. In what way they deal with this and to , against death.
"
reversed field altogether, following a conversation with Colonel I
Daniel Crozier, commanding officer of the Army Medical he crew of researchers normally were quartered at Fort
Unit at Fort Detrick-the unit responsible for Whitecoat. Greeley or Fort Wainwright [in Alaska]. I was em-
u 1'.
L.11U11.11 J llaLlUUai ..L.l ?.L.a, varj".a...aaa.v...
In a second letter sent to Turner two weeks later, Smith; Alma TV1 ter
is classified and therefore all statements would have' to be?~
cleared before release," wrote Clark Smith, director of the
what ends I do not know.
"I do not know what official statement I could get from the
'Department of Army concerning this project inasmuch as it [PART II]
Smith quoted Colonel Crozier as saying that any research played as afield biologist and I resigned in September,
work which results in anything worth printing is immediately 1965, due to:
put into print widely throughout the world in professional "1) My having learned beyond all reasonable doubt that I was
medical journals." Less than one per cent of the Whitgcoat eniploved to contribute to the progress of studies connected wit/,
work is classified, Smith wrote, and the only reason so' much biological war/arc. The above had not been mace known to me
-remains unpublished is that it is not complete. Smith relayed prior to n-y employment. My ir?:ptiries