Details of Utah, Alaska, Hawaii tests to be given to Congress
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 — The United States held open-air biological and chemical weapons tests in at least three states — Alaska, Hawaii and Utah — during the 1960s in an effort to develop defenses against such weapons, according to Defense Department documents, the first time it has been disclosed that tests were conducted over land and not out at sea.
ONE 1965 TEST in Alaska, for example, used artillery shells and rockets filled with the nerve agent sarin, the records show.
The Defense Department planned to release summaries of 28 chemical and biological weapons tests Wednesday at a hearing of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. The Associated Press obtained the summaries Tuesday.
The documents did not say whether civilians had been exposed to the poisons. Military personnel exposed to weapons agents would have worn protective gear, the Pentagon says.
The Pentagon previously acknowledged that it had conducted biological and chemical tests, but it had said the tests were conducted out at sea.
The tests were part of Project 112, a military program in the 1960s and 1970s to test chemical and biological weapons and defenses against them. Parts of the testing program done on Navy ships were called Project SHAD, or Shipboard Hazard and Defense.
The tests were directed from the Deseret Test Center, part of a biological and chemical weapons complex in the Utah desert. Some of those involved in the tests say they now suffer health problems linked to their exposure to dangerous chemicals and germs. They are pressing the Veterans Affairs Department to compensate them and the Defense Department to release more information.
REAL POISONS USED
In response to pressure from veterans and Congress, the Pentagon began releasing details of the tests last year. Earlier this year, the Defense Department acknowledged for the first time that some of the 1960s tests used real chemical and biological weapons, not just benign stand-ins.
The Defense Department has identified nearly 3,000 soldiers involved in the tests, but the VA has sent letters to fewer than half of them. VA and Pentagon officials acknowledged at a hearing in July that finding the soldiers has been difficult.
The tests described in the latest Pentagon documents include:
Devil Hole I, designed to test how sarin gas would disperse after being released in artillery shells and rockets in aspen and spruce forests. The tests occurred in the summer of 1965 at the Gerstle River test site near Fort Greeley, Alaska, the documents said.
Sarin is a powerful nerve gas that causes a choking, thrashing death. It killed 12 people in a Tokyo subway attack in 1995, and the Bush administration says it is part of Iraq’s chemical arsenal.
Big Tom, a 1965 test that included spraying bacteria over the Hawaiian island of Oahu to simulate a biological attack on an island compound and to develop tactics for such an attack.
The test used Bacillus globigii, a bacterium believed at the time to be harmless. Researchers later discovered that the bacteria could cause infections in people with weakened immune systems.
