washingtonpost.com
Ft. Detrick Celebrates 60 Years, New Role
Facility a Leader In Bioterror Fight
By David Snyder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 5, 2003; Page C07
Fort Detrick, the once-shadowy Army installation that produced anthrax and other deadly agents for weapons during the Cold War, marked its 60th anniversary yesterday with a day-long program celebrating a new image: defender of the homeland against biological terrorist attacks.
"Just as we did in World War II and the Cold War, the United States has turned to Fort Detrick," said U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), the keynote speaker at a two-hour ceremony for Detrick workers and veterans. "The United States today is threatened by chemical and biological terrorism. . . . We know what you're doing here, and you should know how grateful your nation is."
Founded in intense secrecy in April 1943 as Camp Detrick, the Army installation was charged with developing weapons to match the growing stockpiles of biological and chemical arms in production by Japan and Germany.
The 1,200-acre compound in Frederick was at the center of the nation's biological weapons program until 1969, when President Richard M. Nixon decommissioned offensive biological weapons research. Recently, however, Congress approved $100 million to build a new lab at Fort Detrick to study deadly pathogens. The lab is part of a larger effort to bolster the nation's defenses against biological attack.
"For many years at Fort Detrick, you've had a glorious history, but what I see for you also is a glorious future, because the talent you have here is something that can and should be used in a variety of venues, not the least important of which is in the biodefense of our nation," said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who also spoke at the ceremony at Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, about 15 miles north of Fort Detrick.
Anthrax was once brewed by the gallon in Building 470, which for years was the tallest building in Frederick County. But decades ago, Detrick shed its role as a producer of biological agents. The symbol of that role, Building 470, has been vacant for years and is being dismantled.
After the nation's biological weapons program ended, the installation fell from national attention but has grown as a research hub for 36 federal agencies, including the National Cancer Institute. Anthrax, Ebola and other deadly bugs are still researched in Detrick labs, but government officials say the microorganisms are kept only in small quantities, for research into vaccines and treatments.
The anthrax mailings in fall 2001 brought the attention back to Detrick, which became a major focus of the FBI's investigation into those attacks. News organizations from around the world have descended on Frederick to chronicle the FBI's searches of the apartment of Steven J. Hatfill, a former Detrick researcher whom Attorney General John D. Ashcroft named as a "person of interest" in the anthrax investigation.
Detrick researchers tested the envelopes laced with anthrax spores that were sent to the offices of U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and others. Former Detrick scientists have become regulars at lectures and on news programs about biological weapons.
With the increased attention to Detrick has come greater awareness of its role in researching biological weapons. During yesterday's celebration, prominent figures from the world of politics and science converged on bucolic Emmitsburg to pay homage to the research conducted at Detrick, including the development of many of the vaccines against biological agents that U.S. soldiers took before combat in Iraq.
Yesterday's ceremony was part of a broader celebration of Detrick's 60th year, which included a weekend-long series of events commemorating Operation Whitecoat. The once-secret Army program, which used human volunteers to test a wide range of potentially deadly pathogens, began in 1954 and lasted 19 years.
Some members of Congress, including U.S. Rep Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.), are lobbying for even more facilities at Detrick. Researchers there "were important before, but they're doubly important today," Bartlett said yesterday. "If you knew of the potential for biological warfare, you'd have trouble sleeping." |
