Between 1962 and 1973, the Pentagon involved
more than 5,800 service members in its secret testing of dangerous
chemical and biological agents.
Findings released Monday by the Pentagon said that during a 10-year
period, 50 tests were conducted by the military to see how these chemical
agents measured up.
Some of the tests used non-lethal bacteria and other experiments tested
ways to use submarines to distribute biological weapons.
Officials said the tests were done to study the combat uses of
biological and chemical weapons and how to protect American troops from
such attacks.
It was originally believed that simulated agents were used in the
testing, but last year the Defence Department admitted that real chemical
and biological weapons were used.
One test called Blue Tango, involved spraying two types of bacteria,
including E. coli, in a rain forest in Hawaii in 1968 to gauge how the
bacteria would linger in the vegetation.
Another test, Folded Arrow, involved spraying bacillus globigii from a
submarine over part of Oahu, Hawaii, and over several boats off the coast
in 1968 to gauge how Venezuelan equine encephalitis would be carried by
wind.
"It bespeaks the time, the early '60s, when we were in the Cold War,
and we were concerned that Russia and perhaps China had chemical and
biological capabilities that could be used against American troops and
against us in the homeland," said an official with the Defence
Department's Deployment Health Support Directorate.
The U.S. scrapped its biological weapons program in the late 1960s and
agreed in a 1997 treaty to destroy all its chemical weapons.
