- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
United States, under attack by someone mailing anthrax, once had its own
stockpile of more than 200 pounds of the deadly spores before its biological
weapons program was dismantled in 1970, a think-tank said on Friday.
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- It also had gallons of viruses that could cause deadly
or incapacitating fevers if sprayed over cities or delivered in a missile
warhead.
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- Dozens of documents show the lengthy discussion that
led to the decision by then-president Richard Nixon to do away with the
U.S. biological and chemical warfare program in 1969, according to the
National Security Archive, a nonprofit group dedicated to publishing declassified
documents.
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- The U.S. program, which was scaled up during World War
II and reached its peak during the height of the Cold War in the 1960s,
is no secret now.
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- The so-called ``anthrax tower'' still exists at Fort
Detrick in Maryland, although the laboratories are either boarded up or
have been converted to more benign medical research.
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- The documents, released under the Freedom of Information
Act requests from the group and published on the Internet at http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB58/,
illustrate the back-and-forth discussions that changed U.S. policy.
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- Partly under pressure from a public disillusioned by
the Vietnam War, Washington dumped its offensive chemical and biological
weapons program -- which included warheads loaded with bacteria.
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- A memo from the then-secretary of defense, Melvin Laird,
dated July 6, 1970 and declassified earlier this year, shows the United
States had produced and stored enough deadly agents to kill hundreds of
thousands of people.
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- ``A detailed plan for the destruction of all biological
agents, toxins and associated weapons has been prepared,'' it reads.
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- GALLONS OF VIRUS
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- The document lists the materials to be destroyed, including
4,991 gallons of Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis virus, a relative
of yellow fever; 5,098 gallons of the Coxiella burnetii microbe that causes
Q fever, which is usually transmitted by infected milk; 220 pounds of dried
anthrax bacillus spores and 804 pounds of the bacteria that causes tularemia,
also known as rabbit fever.
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- It also lists more than 150,000 pounds of fungi designed
to destroy crops, including wheat rust and rice blast.
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- This arsenal was deadly. A 1970 report by the World Health
Organization said that the release of 100 pounds of anthrax spores upwind
of a city of 500,000 could kill 95,000 people and incapacitate 125,000.
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- All the agents are still considered by the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be likely agents used in biowarfare
or bioterrorism attacks.
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- As Americans have found out in recent days, much depends
on how the agents are prepared. Anthrax spores become much more deadly
when they are finely dispersed so they float in the air and are inhaled.
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- The United States, Russia and Iraq all had the technology
to do this.
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- Another 1969 document published by the group, headquartered
at George Washington University in Washington, shows the United States
spent $36.4 million a year in 1969 on the biological weapons program.
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- It said the United States shared information and research
on chemical and biological warfare with Britain, Canada and Australia.
``We have less extensive CBW (chemical and biological warfare) information
exchange agreements with other countries, including Germany,'' it reads.
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