The Living Weapon (TV) [2007] PBS

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The American Experience

The Living Weapon


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0956473/

Original Air Date:5 February 2007

You canΓΓé¼Γäót see it. You canΓΓé¼Γäót hear it. You canΓΓé¼Γäót smell it. Yet a biological weapon could decimate an entire city. In 1942, the United States government, sanctioned by President Franklin Roosevelt, began a highly classified program to research and develop bioweapons. It was the first in a series of steps, each motivated by fear of powerful enemies, that took the United States down a path to develop a new weapon of mass destruction.

From producer John Rubin, this one-hour AMERICAN EXPERIENCE documentary offers an unprecedented look at more than two decades of closed-door meetings, secret test sites, determined scientists, and human subjects that attempted to turn some of the worldΓΓé¼Γäós most potent germs into some of the worldΓΓé¼Γäós most effective weapons. ΓΓé¼┼ôIt was a turning point in the way America was willing to fight,ΓΓé¼┬¥ says producer John Rubin. ΓΓé¼┼ôRooseveltΓΓé¼Γäós decision acknowledged the readiness to use a kind of weapon that military leaders had long shunned as dishonorable.ΓΓé¼┬¥

The United States had just been attacked at Pearl Harbor and was fighting a world war on two fronts. Intelligence fueled fear that Adolf Hitler was developing a terrifying new weapon ΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥ a bomb that could target soldiers and civilians alike with lethal microbes. And in the world of medicine, doctors and scientists were prepared to exploit their new understanding of germs. The stage was set for America to enter the dirty business of biological warfare. ΓΓé¼┼ôOnce youΓΓé¼Γäóre looking at a science not strictly for the benefits that it can bring, but for the damage it can inflict on an enemy, youΓΓé¼Γäóre in a whole new world,ΓΓé¼┬¥ explains Jeanne Guillemin, Senior Advisor to MITΓΓé¼Γäós Security Studies Program.

In the spring of 1943, scientists began arriving at Camp Detrick in Maryland. The team was comprised of virologists and bacteriologists from the top universities and pharmaceutical companies in the nation. Their work took place under the ultimate security classification ΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥ the same level as the parallel Manhattan Project to build an atom bomb. ΓΓé¼┼ôIn some cases there were only four or five people who actually knew the extent of what was going on at Camp Detrick,ΓΓé¼┬¥ says Norman Covert, an expert in the history of AmericaΓΓé¼Γäós bioweapons program. What was going on was the race to develop biological weapons strong enough to destroy an entire population.

But when World War II ended after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world saw what nuclear weapons could do and many questioned the need for biological warfare. Advocates, however, pushed forward, and with the rise of the Cold War the program intensified. No one knew what the Soviets had in development, but U.S. strategists were determined to be ready. ΓΓé¼┼ôDuring the Cold War, the idea of retaliation was paramount,ΓΓé¼┬¥ explains biowarfare expert Martin Furmanski. ΓΓé¼┼ôIf the Soviets had biological weapons, we had biological weapons.ΓΓé¼┬¥

For more than two decades testing continued ΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥ not just in Maryland laboratories, but in ventilation systems in Washington, D.C., on the streets of St. Louis, on the shores of San Francisco Bay, and in the desert of Utah. The most conclusive tests took place in 1965 near a Pacific atoll called Johnston, when a single military plane sprayed a long line of germs that cause a deadly disease, tularemia. ΓΓé¼┼ôThese field tests demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt the feasibility of biological warfare,ΓΓé¼┬¥ says Bill Patrick, former chief of product development at Detrick. ΓΓé¼┼ôWe infected animals some sixty, seventy kilometers downwind from the point of spray. And that is why we know that one particular agent, when properly stabilized and properly disseminated is a very effective weapon system.ΓΓé¼┬¥

But just four years later, the program came to an abrupt end. On November 25, 1969, President Richard Nixon made a stunning announcement: ΓΓé¼┼ôMankind already holds in its hands too many of the seeds of its own destructionΓΓ鼪 Therefore I have decided that the United States will renounce the use of any form of deadly biological weapons that either kill or incapacitate.ΓΓé¼┬¥

While NixonΓΓé¼Γäós declaration ended AmericaΓΓé¼Γäós offensive bioweapons programs, military leaders and researchers had opened a door that could never be shut. ΓΓé¼┼ôTheyΓΓé¼Γäóve bequeathed on a world this knowledge and we now have to control it and contain it and make sure the biological weapons are never used,ΓΓé¼┬¥ cautions historian Brian Balmer.

ΓΓé¼┼ôToday, perhaps more than ever, people are aware of what a biological attack could do to a city or a nation,ΓΓé¼┬¥ says AMERICAN EXPERIENCE executive producer Mark Samels. ΓΓé¼┼ôThe program was, in many ways, a consequence of the mindset that scientific and medical advances could be turned on their heads to create massive destruction.ΓΓé¼┬¥