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Fort Detrick () is a United States Army Futures Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland. Fort Detrick was the center of the U.S. biological weapons program from 1943 to 1969. Since the discontinuation of that program, it has hosted most elements of the United States biological defense program.
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As of the early 2010s, Fort Detrick's campus supports a multi-governmental community that conducts biomedical research and development, medical materiel management, global medical communications and the study of foreign plant pathogens. The lab is known to research pathogens such as Ebola and smallpox.
Fort Detrick is home to the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC), with its bio-defense agency, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). It also hosts the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Frederick Campus, Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research and is home to the National Interagency Confederation for Biological Research (NICBR), National Interagency Biodefense Campus (NIBC), National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, and the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI).
In August 2019, its deadly germ research operations were shut down following serious safety violations, in particular relating to the disposal of dangerous materials.
Fort Detrick is the largest employer in Frederick County, Maryland.
A concrete and Asphalt concrete airfield replaced the grass field in 1939, and an upgraded Detrick Field served as a Cadet Pilot Training Center until the country's entry into World War II. Detrick Field was formally leased from the City of Frederick in 1940 (having previously been leased from the state for just two weeks per year). The last airplanes departed Detrick Field in December 1941 and January 1942 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. All aircraft and pilots in the 104th and the cadet program were reassigned after the Declaration of War to conduct antisubmarine patrols off the Atlantic Coast. The 2nd Bombardment Squadron, U.S. Army Air Corps was reconstituted at Detrick Field between March and September 1942, when it deployed to England to become the nucleus of the new Eighth Air Force headquarters. Thereafter, the base ceased to be an aviation center. The airfields buildings, runway and tarmac have all disappeared which ran along today's Hamilton Street from Beasley Drive to about Neiman Street.
The Army's Chemical Corps was given responsibility and oversight for the effort that one officer described as "cloaked in the deepest wartime secrecy, matched only by … the Manhattan Project for developing the Atomic Bomb".Clendenin, Lt. Col. Richard M. (1968), Science and Technology at Fort Detrick, 1943–1968; Technical Information Division Three months after the start of construction, an additional $3 million was provided for five additional laboratories and a pilot plant. Lt. Col. Bacon was authorized 85 officers, 373 enlisted personnel, and 80 enlisted Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) members under two WAAC officers. At its peak strength in 1945, Camp Detrick had 240 officers and 1,530 enlisted personnel including WACs.Covert (2000), Op. cit.
After the defeat of Japan, the researchers working at Unit 731 were given immunity from prosecution. In return, director Shirō Ishii provided "8,000 slides of tissue from human and animal dissections" from the experiments, which were reportedly stored at Fort Detrick.
In 1952, the Army purchased over more of land located between West 7th Street and Oppossumtown Pike to expand the permanent research and development facilities.
Two workers at the base died from exposure to anthrax in the 1950s. Another died in 1964 from viral encephalitis.Davis, Aaron, Michael E. Ruane and Nelson Hernandez, " Lab And Community Make For Uneasy Neighbors", Washington Post, August 2, 2008, Pg. 10.
There was a building on the base, Building 470, locally referred to as "Anthrax Tower". Building 470 was a pilot plant for testing optimal fermentor and bacterial purification technologies. The information gained in this pilot plant shaped the fermentor technology that was ultimately used by the pharmaceutical industry to revolutionize the production of antibiotics and other drugs. Building 470 was torn down in 2003 without any adverse effects on the demolition workers or the environment. The facility acquired the nickname "Fort Doom" while offensive biological warfare research was undertaken there. 5,000 bombs containing anthrax spores were produced at the base during World War II.
From 1945 to 1955 under Project Paperclip and its successors, the U.S. government recruited over 1,600 German people and Austrian people scientists and engineers in a variety of fields such as aircraft design, missile technology and biological warfare. Among the specialists in the latter field who ended up working in the U.S. were Walter Schreiber, Erich Traub and Kurt Blome, who had been involved with medical experiments on concentration camp inmates to test biological warfare agents. Since Britain, France and the Soviet Union were also engaged in recruiting these scientists, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) wished to deny their services to other powers, and therefore altered or concealed the records of their Nazi past and involvement in war crimes.Peter Knight, Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia, Volume One. ABC-CLIO, 2003.
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Many experiments that tested various biological agents on human subjects, referred to as Operation Whitecoat, were carried out at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in the 1950s. The human subjects originally consisted of volunteer enlisted men. However, after the enlisted men staged a sitdown strike to obtain more information about the dangers of the biological tests, Seventh-day Adventists (SDAs) who were conscientious objectors were recruited for the studies.Staff Report prepared for the committee on veterans' affairs December 8, 1994 John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia, Chairman at gulfweb.org
The Army purchased an additional in 1946 to increase the size of the original "Area A" as well as located west of Area A, but not contiguous to it, to provide a test area known as Area B. In 1952, another were purchased between West 7th Street and Oppossumtown Pike to expand the permanent research and development facilities.
Jeffrey Alan Lockwood wrote in 2009 that the biological warfare program at Ft. Detrick began to research the use of insects as disease vectors going back to World War II and also employed German and Japanese people scientists after the war who had experimented on human subjects among POWs and concentration camp inmates. Scientists used or attempted to use a wide variety of insects in their biowar plans, including fleas, ticks, ants, lice and mosquitoes – especially mosquitoes that carried the yellow fever virus. They also tested these in the United States. Lockwood thinks that it is very likely that the U.S. did use insects dropped from aircraft during the Korean War to spread diseases, and that the Chinese and were not simply engaged in a propaganda campaign when they made these allegations, since the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense had approved their use in the fall of 1950 at the "earliest practicable time". At that time, it had five biowarfare agents ready for use, three of which were spread by insect vectors.Jeffrey Alan Lockwood, Six Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War. Oxford, 2009.
The most recent land acquisition for the fort was a parcel of less than along the Rosemont Avenue fence in 1962, completing the present .
On Veterans Day, November 11, 1969, President Richard M. Nixon asked the Senate to ratify the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons. Nixon assured Fort Detrick its research would continue. On November 25, 1969, Nixon made a statement outlawing offensive biological research in the United States. Since that time any research done at Fort Detrick has allegedly been purely defensive in nature, focusing on diagnostics, preventives and treatments for BW infections. This research is undertaken by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) which transitioned from the previous U.S. Army Medical Unit (USAMU) and was renamed in 1969.
As he ended the offensive biological research done at Fort Detrick, Nixon pledged to make former laboratories and land available by the disestablishment of the offensive biological warfare program transferred to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services during the 1970s and later. The Frederick National Cancer Research and Development Center (now the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research) was established in 1971 on a parcel in Area A ceded by the installation.
In 1989 base researchers identified the Ebola virus in a monkey imported to the area from the Philippines.
In 2009, author H. P. Albarelli published the book about Frank Olson's death and the experiments conducted at Fort Detrick. The book is based on documents released under FOIA and numerous other documents and interviews to the police and investigators."A Terrible Mistake:The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments" – by H. P. Albareeli Jr 2009 publisher by Trine Day LLC accessed August 14, 2010 at aterriblemistake.com "Son probes strange death of WMD worker" – Scott Shane writing for The Baltimore Sun (September 12, 2004), accessed January 20, 2009 at sfgate.com
In the 1980s and 1990s, KGB disinformation agent Jakob Segal claimed that Fort Detrick was the site where the United States government "invented" HIV.
USAMRIID had been the principal consultant to the FBI on scientific aspects of the 2001 Anthrax Attacks, which had infected 22 people and killed five. While assisting with the science from the beginning, it also soon became the focus of the FBI's investigation of possible perpetrators (see Steven Hatfill). In July 2008, a top U.S. biodefense researcher at USAMRIID committed suicide just as the FBI was about to lay charges relating to the incidents. The scientist, Bruce Edwards Ivins, who had worked for 18 years at USAMRIID, had been told about the impending prosecution. The FBI's identification of Ivins in August 2008 as the Anthrax Attack perpetrator remains controversial and several independent government investigations which will address his culpability are ongoing. Although the anthrax preparations used in the attacks were of different grades, all of the material derived from the same bacterial strain. Known as the Ames strain, it was first researched at USAMRIID. The Ames strain was subsequently distributed to at least fifteen bio-research labs within the U.S. and six locations overseas.
In June 2008 the Environmental Protection Agency said it planned to add the base to the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country. On 9 April 2009, "Fort Detrick Area B Ground Water" was added to the list which currently includes 18 other sites within Maryland.
The Forest Glen Annex of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Silver Spring, Maryland was transferred to the command of Fort Detrick in 2008 as a result of the Base Realignment and Closure process.
about 7,900 people worked at Fort Detrick. The base has been the largest employer in Frederick County and contributed more than $500 million into the local economy annually.Wood, David, "[https://archive.today/20130117205123/http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-te.detrick02aug02,0,5108456.story Variety Of Research Carried Out At Fort Detrick]", ''The Baltimore Sun'', August 2, 2008.
In 2020, a conspiracy theory regarding COVID-19 arose that alleged that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was developed by the United States Army at Fort Detrick. This allegation has been promoted by Chinese government officials, most notably Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian, who has called for an inspection of the facility, although the allegation remains baseless. A petition organized by the Chinese Communist Party-owned tabloid Global Times urging the WHO to investigate Fort Detrick for COVID origins reportedly amassed 25 million signatures.
In 2012, the United States National Research Council published a report after reviewing two investigations of potential health hazards at Fort Detrick: a 2009 public health assessment conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and a cancer investigation in Frederick County by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Frederick County Health Department. The report found neither study could show whether people were harmed by contaminated groundwater from Area B. It is unlikely that additional studies could establish a link, because no data on early exposures were collected and data cannot be obtained or reliably estimated now.
In May 2014, a developer who had bought 92 acres near the Center for Biological Research sued the U.S. Army for negligence in its chemical disposal practices, which led to levels of TCE of up to 42 times the federal maximum contaminant level. A U.S. attorney representing Fort Detrick argued in July 2014 that nonexistent EPA regulation at the time is an exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act and "protects the Army's waste disposal practices". The $37 million lawsuit was dismissed in January 2015. After the Army denied claims of health problems in 106 Frederick families and individuals in February 2015, the residents filed a class action lawsuit, seeking $750 million for wrongful death and pain and suffering in August 2015.
The installation's Restoration Advisory Board has released a report on some of the findings in relation to the spillage of waste. The public Fort Detrick website provided a copy of the archive from the meeting of an environmental committee.
Following the cease and desist order from the CDC the USAMRIID laboratories at the base were shut down in August 2019. The announcement to resume operations on a "limited scale" was made on November 25, 2019.
The CDC cited “national security reasons” as the reason for not informing the public about its decision. The two breaches reported to the CDC by USAMRIID staff demonstrated failures of biosafety level 3 and 4 protocols in the Army laboratory to "implement and maintain containment procedures sufficient to contain select agents or toxins".
After approximately eight months of closure and restrictions, the USAMRIID BSL-4 lab had been authorized to resume full operational status by April 2020, to the applause of Maryland lawmakers including Senator Ben Cardin, who stated "it is a relief to have USAMRIID fully operational with the current COVID-19 outbreak"'.
The following units and organizations (military and otherwise) are located on the Fort Detrick installation:
U.S. Department of Defense
In addition, Fort Detrick is the support facility for the Raven Rock Mountain Complex.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
U.S. Department of Agriculture
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
In addition, the following sites on the installation are of historic interest:
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