Fort Detrick
Fort Detrick (DEE-trik) is a United States Army Futures Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland, United States. In 1943, in response to the Japanese use of bioweapons during World War II, the US expanded Fort Detrick from a small airfield to a major installation intended to house the new U.S. biological weapons program,[1] serving as the program's headquarters until 1969. Detrick was also the center of the sprawling CIA torture and mind control operation codenamed MKUltra;[2] some Nazi scientists and torturers imported under Operation Paperclip were employed at the Fort under both operations.[1]
From mid-1959 to mid-1960, protesters convened once a week at the fort gate to protest against what became increasingly clear as the Fort's role in biological and anti-crop warfare. In 1969-70, President Richard Nixon shuttered all US bioweapons research and ordered all government agencies to destroy their supplies of chemical and biological weapons and toxins, including Agent Orange. Since then, the fort officially only conducts research into the defense and mitigation of bio-attacks.
As of the early 2010s, Fort Detrick's 1,200-acre campus officially supported a multi-governmental community that conducts biomedical research and development, medical materiel management, global medical communications and the study of foreign plant pathogens, researching pathogens such as Ebola and smallpox. Fort Detrick remains the home of the US biodefense program and is also home to medical research projects such as the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research[3] and the National Interagency Confederation for Biological Research.[4] The base is currently the largest employer in Frederick County, Maryland.
In August 2019, its deadly germ research operations were shut down following serious safety violations.[5][6]
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic took off, some leftist and rightist critics of the United States came to doubt that the virus was zoonotic (transferred from wild animals) and in fact was developed and released, accidentally or deliberately, as a bioweapon originating from Fort Detrick, a highly controversial view known as the COVID-19 lab leak theory.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Kinzer, Stephen (15 Sep 2019). "The Secret History of Fort Detrick, the CIA's Base for Mind Control Experiments". POLITICO Magazine. Retrieved 13 Dec 2023.
- ↑ Kinzer, Stephen. "The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief'" (Interview). Interviewed by Terry Gross. NPR. Retrieved 13 Dec 2023.
- ↑ "Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research". Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research. National Cancer Institute, NIH, HHS. 2012-01-31. Retrieved 2023-03-29.
- ↑ "National Interagency Confederation for Biological Research (NICBR)". Detrick.army.mil. 2012-05-31. Retrieved 2012-07-26.
- ↑ Grady, Denise (2019-08-05). "Deadly Germ Research Is Shut Down at Army Lab Over Safety Concerns". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-06-21.
- ↑ DiGangi, Diana (2020-01-22). "Army germ lab shut down by CDC in 2019 had several 'serious' protocol violations that year". WJLA. Retrieved 2020-06-21.