ARMY SPRAYED BACTERIA ON UNSUSPECTING TRAVELERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201000006-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: December 5, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-00
WASHINGTON POST
5 December 1984
806R000201000006-2
1
717S,prai~ed on
Unsuspecting Travelers
By Ken Ringle
Wa,i a gtnn Pont Staff Writer
Army agents carrying suitcase atomizers
sprayed unsuspecting travelers at National
Airport with common bacteria 20 years ago,
declassified documents revealed this week, in
an experiment designed to gauge the nation's
vulnerability to an enemy-launched epidemic
ttf smallpox.
The v%periment, one of a series first made
public in 1977, was part of the Army's highly
.;ecrr-t l;iu:'gical w?arf:,re research conducted
between 1 x'43 and 1971 at Fort Detrick, Md.
and, a microbiologist said yesterday, may
have been more potentially harmful to. those
sprayed than scientists realized at the time.
The La,:Eeria used in the experiment, Ba-
cillus subtilis, 1s in the air all around us and
won't harm a healthy person," said Dr. Arthur
Saz, professor of microbiology at the George-
town University Medical Center.
. But in infirm or elderly persons, whose im-
mune system is impaired, heavy concentra-
tions of the "opportunistic" microorganism
can produce potentially complicating infec-
tions, Saz said. "We know more about such
substances now. You couldn't do such an ex-
periment legally today."
Saz was questioned about the experiment
after the Church of Scientology released gov-
ernment documents this week detailing ex-
periments mentioned only sketchily in testimony during intelligence oversight investi-
gations in Congress seven years ago.
Sylvia Stanard, a spokesman for the Scien-
tologists, said the organization obtained the
documents under the Freedom of Information
Act two years ago and has been studying
them ever since.
She said the material was sent 'to the
House subcommittee on investigations and
the House committee on science and tech-
nology after the Army recently requested
funds to expand its biological warfare de-
fense facilities at Dugway Proving Ground in
Utah.
Both the United States and the Soviet
Union signed a 1972 treaty banning biological
weapons, but research continues on both
sides. The Soviets are reported to have used
poison gas or chemicals in the war in Afghan-
istan.
"The Pentagon says it is only interested in
defensive studies at Dugway, but this was a
defensive study at Washington National and it
may have been harmful," Stanard said. '11.1e
don't want innocent people being used as
guinea pigs."
An Army spokesman said yesterday that the
tests in question were fully listed in the two-vol-
ume report released in February 1977 and de-
clined further comment saying there were "no
new developments to report."
Declassified documents made public Burin
the mid-1970s disclosed that the Army and the
Central Intelligence Agency triggered mock ep-
idemics during the 1960s by sprays g such tar- '
gets as Chicago and New York subway passen-
gers and even "assassinated" President Richard
M Nixon with germs via the White House air
conditioning system.
Details on the "attacks," however, have been
few.
The Army's "Miscellaneous Publication 7"
from Fort Detrick, which the Scientologists ob-
tained, sought to prove how relatively simply an
enemy agent might scatter smallpox through the
United States with.less than an hour's work in an
urban airport.
Using five suitcase-housed aerosol generators
and an equal number of disguised air samplers,
the agents sprayed bacteria in the North Termi-
nal and then tested various locations in the ter-
minal for effective dispersal of the germ.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201000006-2