American Experience

Narrator: In November 1969, President Richard Nixon made a startling declaration.

President Nixon (Archival): The United States of America will renounce the use of any form of deadly biological weapons that either kill or incapacitate.

Narrator: Nixon’s announcement was widely acclaimed, yet few Americans knew that for more than twenty-five years the United States had been operating an extensive research program to harness germs as weapons of mass destruction. Born during a terrible world war, America’s bioweapons program was fueled by fear and insulated with secrecy.

Matthew Meselson, Biologist: Biological weapons are designed to kill vast numbers of civilians.

Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist: You couldn’t have these programs out in the open because the public should not know.

Narrator: American researchers would enter uncharted territory as they ran an escalating series of experiments — ultimately using human subjects.

Norm Covert, Camp Detrick Historian: I’ve read the day-to-day notebooks of the laboratory scientists. They never reached an end point. They just kept pushing that point farther and farther every day.

Martin Furmanski, Pathologist: There is an appeal to these weapons to certain members of the scientific community, almost being seduced by the dark side.

Brian Balmer, Author: It’s essentially invisible. You can’t see it, you can’t hear it, you can’t smell it.

Richard Preston, Author: A biological weapon is alive. What it wants to do is survive and reproduce itself — inside a host, the human body.

Narrator: On December 9, 1942, the U.S. government convened a secret meeting at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Army officers had urgent questions for an elite group of scientists. America and its allies were fighting a horrific world war. Intelligence suggested that Germany might soon target Britain with a terrifying new weapon — a bomb packed with biological agents.

The meeting was called to respond to a critical British request. Could the Americans create a large-scale biological warfare program to help their allies — and do it virtually overnight?

Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist: If you brought all that we knew about microbiology and infectious diseases, into a military context, you could develop a weapon that would be amazingly effective. It would be dangerous. It could change the course of the war.

Narrator: Only a few months before, the president of the United States had grappled with the issue of biological weapons. “I have been loath to believe that any nation,” Franklin Roosevelt said, “even our present enemies, would be willing to loose upon mankind such terrible and inhumane weapons.”

Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, thought differently. “Biological warfare is … dirty business,” he wrote to Roosevelt, “but … I think we must be prepared.”

The president approved the launch of America’s biological warfare program. For the first time, U.S. researchers would be trying to make weapons from the deadliest germs known to science.

Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist: Once you’re looking at a science not strictly for the benefits that it can bring, but for the damage it can inflict on an enemy, you’re in a whole new world.

Narrator: Now, at the request of a desperate ally, America was entering a realm lacking clear ethical limits, where science and secrecy would go hand in hand. As the meeting broke up, the researchers were now warned — anyone who leaked details of the discussion would face forty years in prison and a $10,000 fine. By the time of the Washington meeting, German bombs had been raining down on Britain for two years. The English feared that the next bomb might carry a biological payload.

Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist: You can look at the British in 1940. When the Blitz is going on, that’s when they decide that they’re going to start a biological weapons program. They are absolutely at the edge. They’re really desperate, and they want to seek any kind of defense that they can.

Narrator: In July 1942, Britain began secret trials of unconventional weapons on a small Scottish island called Gruinard.

Brian Balmer, Author: It was picked because of its remoteness — partly because of reasons of secrecy, but also partly because there were very few populated areas around the island.

Narrator: The British believed they had a weapon that would disperse infectious germs into the air. In their labs they had evaluated a handful of lethal agents. Now in the field, they would test the most promising — the bacterium that causes the dreaded disease anthrax. Led by bacteriologist Paul Fildes, the team first considered how far beyond the island wind might spread the germs. Then they positioned their subjects — a score of sheep purchased from local crofters. A scaffolding held a bomb packed with hardy anthrax spores.

Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist: They really have to turn to an agent like anthrax because the anthrax spore is able to withstand the pressure of an explosion.

Brian Balmer, Author: This was an anti-personnel bomb. But, obviously, doing experiments with humans with anthrax was out of the question.

Narrator: Over the next minutes, the cloud of germs passed over the animals. For several days, nothing. Then the sheep began to tremble and stagger. Blood oozed from their bodies shortly before death.

Brian Balmer, Author: What Fildes’ experience on Gruinard Island had shown was that an anti-personnel biological bomb could be produced. What it did convince the allies of was that they had a really potent weapon.

Narrator: A potent weapon, but one exceedingly hard to contain.

Brian Balmer, Author: The dead sheep were put at the bottom of the cliff with some explosives. The explosives were let off to bury the sheep. One or two of the sheep were blown into the water and floated away.

Narrator: Soon, animals began to die on the mainland. If word of the lethal experiment got out, Fildes feared, the public would panic. British security services concocted a story — Greek sailors had tossed infected carcasses overboard. The British reimbursed farmers, “on behalf of the Greek government.”

Fildes had a successful field trial, but scant resources. To move into production, the British would need American help.

Brian Balmer, Author: One of the advantages of bringing the U.S. into the research on biological warfare, as far as Britain was concerned, was that they didn’t have the facilities, the resources, the money.

Narrator: A British politician of the day described the United States as a “gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate.”

Fildes had lit the boiler. In spring 1943, American scientists and staff began arriving at a sleepy airstrip in rural Maryland. Operating under the Army’s Chemical Warfare Service, Camp Detrick would become the top-secret enclave for enthusiastic American biowarfare researchers.

Norm Covert, Camp Detrick Historian: They were passionate about their science. They were the best in the country. If someone said to you, “Here is an unlimited budget, here’s all the equipment you need, tell me which kind of building you want to work in, we’ll build it.” You would jump at that opportunity, and that’s exactly what they did. But the imperative was, we need results very quickly.

Narrator: The American bioweapons program would embody the same security precautions that the British had adopted.