American Experience

Narrator: Though skeptics said the results were oversold, Detrick researchers were jubilant. After twenty years of hard work, they believed they had made the case that biological weapons deserved a place in the U.S. arsenal. In fact, they may have succeeded too well.

Richard Preston, Author: I think it frightened the U.S. government. It was relatively easy to make biological weapons, relatively easy to disperse them. It wasn’t as difficult by any means as building a hydrogen bomb. There was a thinking here that we don’t really want to publicize how powerful these weapons are. Because all we’re really doing is proving to the rest of the world that biological weapons work.

Narrator: Even as the trials were being conducted in the Pacific, other events were casting all unconventional weapons in a negative light. News stories broke about the American use of tear gas in Vietnam, the first combat use of a chemical weapon by the U.S. since World War I. America was also spraying a chemical defoliant tested at Detrick — Agent Orange. Public protest erupted.

Reporter (archival): Do you think germ warfare would be justified in Vietnam if it shortened the war and saved the lives of U.S. servicemen?

Protestor (archival): I feel that the best way to save lives of U.S. servicemen is to pull them out of Vietnam immediately.

Narrator: Adding to the controversy, a news story in February 1969 disclosed an accident at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground. At a nearby Utah ranch, an errant cloud of nerve gas was claimed to have killed 6,000 sheep.

Civilian (archival): The Army finally admitted that they had conducted experiments in the area with nerve gas agents.

Military officer (archival): There are too many confusing aspects. We have been working in this area for twenty-five years, in this particular part of this country, and we have never done anything to damage the surrounding area. If we are the cause of this, we have a problem.

Narrator: For critics, the incident strengthened the argument that unconventional weapons of all types could not be controlled. For biowarfare researchers, it reinforced the need for secrecy established long ago at Gruinard Island. Germ weapons programs could not survive the sunlight of public scrutiny.

In Washington, President Richard Nixon was feeling the mounting political pressure. His National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, ordered a full review of American chemical and biological weapons policy in May 1969. Among the invited contributors was Harvard biologist Matthew Meselson. Meselson had been pushing for a re-assessment of America’s unconventional weapons strategy. Working for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, he had visited Fort Detrick.

Matthew Meselson, Biologist: I asked my hosts what value they saw in these weapons. And the main answer I got back was that it would save money, that it was cheaper than nuclear weapons. I was amazed at this answer. It took a little thought, but not much, to realize that to pioneer a cheap weapon of mass destruction is exactly what the United States should never do.

Narrator: Kissinger presented Nixon with Meselson’s brief, arguing that biological weapons were redundant with nuclear weapons and easier for poor countries to make. The U.S. had been developing biological warfare since World War II. Now, the president’s advisors undercut the weapons: they had a short shelf life, they were sensitive to weather, and germs might get out of control. On November 25, 1969, Nixon surprised the world.

President Nixon (Archival): Biological warfare — which is commonly called “germ warfare.” This has massive unpredictable and potentially uncontrollable consequences. It may produce global epidemics and profoundly affect the health of future generations. Therefore, I have decided that the United States of America will renounce the use of any form of deadly biological weapons that either kill or incapacitate. Mankind already carries in its own hands too many of the seeds of its own destruction.

Martin Furmanski, Pathologist: Nixon was under great pressure to do something. And disavowing biological weapons was an easy bone to throw to his critics.

Narrator: Nixon had killed the American offensive biological weapons program after nearly three decades of secret work.

Richard Preston, Author: It enabled us to take the moral high ground and to say, “We’ve ended our program. And other countries should do the same.”

Matthew Meselson, Biologist: I thought that the decision he made was historic. It was good for the United States, even better — good for all of humanity.

Narrator: In 1975, the U.S. finally ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol, banning first use of germ weapons. And a new international agreement went further, prohibiting the development and possession of germ weapons. The Biological Weapons Convention outlawed, for the first time in history, an entire class of weapons.

Martin Furmanski, Pathologist: One of the ironies of the United States’ biological weapons program was that it created its own monster. Although it was designed to reduce threats to the United States, it in fact increased the threats.

Jeanne Guillemin, Sociologist: There’s something in the military thinking about war and honor, which puts biological weapons in a very negative category. It’s like dirty weapons, it’s like poison, it’s like something that somebody does on the sly who really lacks a sense of honor.

Matthew Meselson, Biologist: We don’t fight with poisons. We don’t fight with illness. This is alien.