A Brief History of Ft. Detrick

Just the truth, the whole truth-

Fort Detrick, Maryland
An offensive biological program was begun in 1942 under the direction
of a civilian agency, the War Reserve Service (WRS). The Army Chemical
Warfare Service was given responsibility and oversight for the effort.
Detrick Field was chosen for the site of the exhaustive research effort
because of its reasonably remote location and proximity to Washington,
D.C., as well as Edgewood Arsenal, focal point of US Chemical Warfare
research.

Building 470 was built in 1952 as a pilot plant where quantities of
agents were cultured. It was a massive operation and part of the
offensive research program. Efforts to demilitarize Fort Detrick
included cleaning up Building 470, a facility more than seven stories
tall, containing large tanks and ringed with catwalks from top to
bottom. The primary agent grown at the pilot plant was anthrax, a
dangerous organism which can lie dormant for thousands of years in a
spore state. Area B was established as a proving ground in the former
BW program. It was laid out in a circular grid, a series of seven
concentric circles with measurement devices from 50 feet to 1000 feet.
It was designed to test the flow of materials through the air.

A major change occurred in August 1971 when the U.S. Biological Defense
Research Center was redesignated and reorganized. It was changed from a
research center to research laboratory. The organization was Fort
Detrick's primary operation after the offensive program ceased in 1969.


Another Field Operating Agency of The Surgeon General of the Army, the
Army Medical Intelligence and Information Agency (USAMIIA), also moved
to Fort Detrick in the spring of 1979. Today it occupies a large,
secure complex and is managed through the Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA) as the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center (AFMIC).

The Naval Medical Materiel Support Command, now the U.S. Naval Medical
Logistics Command (NMLC), was "piped aboard" Fort Detrick in August
1985. The arrival of the Navy completed the co-location of the medical
materiel managers of each of the Armed Services in one location. The
concept, originally proposed in 1973, was to prove a major success when
Operations Desert Shield/Storm commenced in August 1990.

The demilitarization effort closed down the former biological warfare
laboratories in late 1972. Extreme secrecy in the old Biological
Warfare Laboratories prevented widespread recording and maintenance of
traditional history. When the Biological Warfare (BW) programs were
disestablished in 1972, much of the historical matter was destroyed or
scattered. The staff of several hundred scientists and researchers
moved to other lines of work when the offensive biowar facility at Fort
Derrick was closed.

The Army Medical Unit (USAMU), which was established in June 1956,
began the move into its new $17.5 million facility as the standdown
began in 1970. It was designated the U.S. Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in 1972 under the
management of The Surgeon General of the Army and Medical Research and
Development Command (MRDC). Currently USAMRIID developes vaccines and
treatments to defend against offensive bioweapons. The current
principal laboratory facility for USAMRIID was completed in 1971 in two
phases. Phase I construction cost $7.6 million, Phase II $6.33 million.
With associated equipment the facility today is considered to have a
value of $17.5 million.

USAMRIID's research facility has more than 10,000 square feet of
Biosafety Level 4 (BL4) and 50,000 square feet of Biosafety Level 3
(BL3) laboratory space. It is the largest containment laboratory in the
United States. There has never been a release of any dangerous organism
outside the laboratory environment. In addition, a special BL4 patient
containment ward is available for medical care of patients, who may
have been accidentally exposed to infectious agents within the
laboratory, or who may have acquired a highly hazardous disease in an
endemic area. The Institute also houses a 16-bed research ward, where
clinical trials of vaccines and drugs are conducted. The Institute's
military and civilian staff of approximately 500 includes physicians,
veterinarians, microbiologists, pathologists, chemists, molecular
biologists, physiologists, pharmacologists. It also includes technical
and administrative staff to support research.

In 1989, USAMRIID's expertise was called on by the Virginia Department
of Health and Hygiene when a commercial laboratory animal holding
facility in Reston, Va., experienced an outbreak of an Ebola virus in
its primate population. The potentially devastating outbreak was
quickly handled by USAMRIID personnel, preventing what health officials
feared could have a terrible effect on humans. A book was written by
author Richard Preston (The Hot Zone) on the handling of a potentially
dangerous situation. This in turn sparked at least one major movie
(Outbreak), which based its story on the basic scenario of the Ebola
outbreak, but created a fictional disease and used characters based
loosely on USAMRIID Col. Jerry Jaax and his spouse, Col. Nancy Jaax.
Otherwise the situations were completely fictional.

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