REPORT SUGGESTS CIA INVOLVEMENT IN FLA. ILLNESSES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000400410003-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 1, 2004
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: December 17, 1979
• Content Type: NSPR

v' Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP88-01315R00040041000 3 r
%RRTICLE Af,THE WASHINGTON POST
ON PAGr_ l ?_ 17 December 1979
e on rt Suggests
C]-,'-,-4 Involvermteni
The same heavily censored records also contain
fragments of information that indicate the CIA
reimbursed a physcian, whose name is deleted, for
$4 for the bacteria withdrawn from Fort Detrick on
Jan.26, 1955.
A few days later, according to. receipts from the
CIA, the intelligence agency paid for a pair of boots
contaminated during testing. The boots were pur-
chased in Sebring, according to copies of the re-
ceipts.
The CIA records also show reimbursements-for
Jeeps, lumber, several test animals and long dis-
tance calls regarding security set up at "field test
sites." Several other entries at the time indicate the
team was testing some type of biological agent.
According to the records, several test animals were
killed and buried and a "biological specimen" was
skipped by air to an unnamed location by the re-
searchers. CIA petty cash vouchers show a one-way
railway ticket was purchased March 6, 1953, for
$54.99. A Seaboard Railroad chart from that time in-
dicates $54.99 was the fare from Sebring to Wash-.I
ington, D.C.
The Scientologists said they checked Florida
state medical records and found whooping cough
cases jumped 300 percent over previous years, with
the highest increase recorded in July 1955.
Earlier this year, Army records indicated that a
biological warfare test conducted in San Francisco
in 1950 may have been responisble for the death of a
hospital patient there.
. Brian Anderson, a spokesman for the ScientoIo?
gists, said in a statement that the evidence the
group has gathered indicates a need for the release
of all government biological warfare test files.
The CIA says most of its chemical and biological
"test files were destroyed in 1973 at the order of for-
mer CIA director Richard Helms.
161. Fla. Illnesses
By Bill Richards
wa;hinetop. Post Staff Writer
The CIA may have conducted open-air tests of
whooping cough bacteria in Florida in the mid-
1950s, when state medical records show a whooping
cough outbreak killed 12 persons, according to a
Church of Scientology analysis of Pgcncy records.
The Scientologists said their examination of about
150 pages of financial records released in recent
years by the Central Intelligence Agency indicates
that the agency conducted at least cane open-air bio-
logical test along Florida's Gulf Coast in 1955.
In a report the Scientologists are scheduled to
make public today, the group said the CIA docu-
ments show that shortly before the test someone in
the agency signed out a specimen of whooping
cough bacteria known as Hemophitus pertussis from
the Army's biological warfare center at Fort De-
trick, _11d.
The bacteria apparently was used in tests con-
ducted around the Tampa Bay area near Sebring,
Fla., according to the Scientologists' report.
State medical records examined by the group
show that the number of whooping cough cases rec-
orded in Florida jumped from 329 and one death in
1954 to 1,080 and 12 deaths- in 1955. A spokesman for
the Scientologists said one of three areas that expe-
rienced a sharp increase in 1955 was the Tampa Bay
area.
.;It is our hope that the outbreak and the testing
is.a mere coincidence," the Scientologists said.
A spokesman for the CIA said the agency would
have no comment on the report.
American Citizens for Honesty in Government, a
group formed by the Church of Scientology,--has
been active in recent months in. analyzing chemical
and biological testing programs run by the Army
and possibly the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s. .
Earlier this month the. Scientologists said their
analysis of financial records that were part of the
CIA's MK-ULTRA testing program showed the
agency conducted open air. tests aro and New York
Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000400410003-3