Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, a proud isolationism combined with the belief that biological warfare was pure fantasy left the United States woefully unprepared for — and fully exposed to — a real threat. Britain, Canada, Germany, Russia, Japan, and France had initiated germ warfare programs decades earlier. But America made up for the lost time. By war's end it built the largest and most advanced program of them all.
War Research Service launched "Project No. 1" in 1942. Dr. Hagan was chosen to take the lead. Dean of the Cornell University Veterinary College, Dr. Hagan was an expert on Bacillus anthracis, or anthrax, a disease of sheep and cattle. Also known as woolsorter's disease, because the germ occasionally infected people shearing wool off sheep, it was a rare human affliction — but an exceptionally lethal one. Merck thought it would make a superb bioweapon and commissioned it as WRS's first priority. Anthrax is virulent, but it carries a minimal threat of a boomerang because it is not contagious person to person.
Dr. Hagan tested many sample strains of anthrax (which WRS code-named "N") in a four-foot-tall glass apparatus called a vinegar tower. Under the right conditions, anthrax rolls up into a ball and hibernates, or spores, and becomes resistant to threatening environmental conditions like cold temperatures. When returned to a hospitable environment, the hardy spores unfold and come back to life. Hagan found that Strain No. 99 sporu-lated and retained its high pathogenicity, or ability to spread disease. Dr. Hagan concentrated, purified, and dried Strain No. 99 into enough powder to make a biological bomb. In a small lab in Ithaca, New York, in 1943, Dr. Hagan created the most virulent, concentrated brand of anthrax on Earth. Anthrax became the most important biological agent developed by the American biological warfare program, and Hagan gained the dubious title of the father of weapons-grade anthrax. Late in the war, Great Britain requested samples of Hagan's anthrax, naming it "Hagan's Best."
After the war, Hagan became a driving force behind Plum Island's creation (Nazi germ warfare scientist Erich Traub would be the other). He used his clout with Congress, the Army, and the USDA to lead the charge for an island virus laboratory. He inspected Plum Island personally and lent his imprimatur to its selection. Upon its inauguration, Hagan bequeathed to the island twelve vials of "N," enough to kill about a million people, considering it takes between 4,500 and 8,000 organisms to cause an infection. To this day, Plum Island denies ever hosting anthrax or working with it, though a now-declassified catalog of deadly germs imported to Plum Island in the early 1950s clearly shows that twelve vials of "N" have been kept in its freezers since the very beginning.
Presumably, Dr. Hagan believed strongly that his secret wartime research would contribute to a greater good. However, the consequences of "Hagan's Best" — particularly in light of the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks— call into question that belief.
At a full cabinet meeting at the White House on January 23, 1948, Agriculture Secretary Clinton Anderson briefed President Harry S Truman on the need for an exotic animal disease laboratory, and on the Mexican virus outbreak. Truman listened to Secretary Anderson and nodded. Two months later, the Soviet Union blockaded all roads, rivers, and rails from the American and British zones of Berlin, forcing food and supplies to be airlifted in. Then the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb. America had a new enemy.
"Especially in view of present world unrest, and with biological warfare a distinct possibility," the USDA told Congress, an island research laboratory "would be a major asset in repelling or mitigating such danger." In April 1948, Congress passed Public Law 48-496, which established the framework for Plum Island:
The Secretary of Agriculture is authorized to establish research laboratories… for research and study, in the United States or elsewhere, of foot-and-mouth disease and other animal diseases… provided that no live virus of foot-and-mouth disease may be introduced for any purpose into any part of the mainland of the United States except coastal islands separated therefrom by waters navigable for deep-water navigation and which shall not be connected with the mainland by any tunnel…
USDA engineers and architects armed with magnifying glasses analyzed maps of America's coastline, searching for the right place. Two weeks after the law passed, the USDA found the perfect coastal island: Prudence Island, off the coast of Rhode Island. The USDA had looked at many other sites, including Fort Terry, Plum Island, a surplus island fortress of 840 acres off the east end of Long Island.
Meanwhile, the Army was separately fixing its sights on Fort Terry as a germ warfare island laboratory. At the last minute, it abruptly canceled the surplus sale of the island to Suffolk County and invited the USDA — which watched in horror as wealthy Newporters, after forming the Anti-Prudence Island Laboratory Committee, killed the aggies' plan for nearby Prudence Island — to join them. Debating the need for Plum Island in the U.S. Senate, New York's senators, Irving Ives and Herbert Lehman, demanded that a provision in the law be included to protect the local New York community:
[A]t a location to be selected by the Secretary of Agriculture after full hearings of which reasonable public notice shall be given to those who may reside within twenty-five miles from the island selected. [Italics added]
Senator Kenneth McKellar from Tennessee, the Appropriations Committee chairman, expressed his understanding of the public hearings provision for the record. "I think it is the legislative intent," he said, "that if a majority of the people are opposed to it, then under no circumstances would the Department [of Agriculture] establish the laboratory."
THE HEARINGS
As their "reasonable public notice" given, the USDA placed ads in the newspapers one week before the Plum Island hearings. Despite the short notice, 1,544 people objected through sixteen petitions, written statements, and telegrams. Recorded opinions ran three to one against the laboratory. An examination of the USDA's internal files reveals very few supported the plan. The five local dairies urged "all civic-minded citizens to fight against the menace to our community interest." The Greenport Oyster Growers' Protective Association said the pollution from its sewage would tarnish the "clarity and wholesomeness" of the oyster beds.[13] The Long Island Association, an esteemed body of business leaders, denounced the selection of "Pest Island, in the midst of a recreational area during a post-war suburban boom" and the manner in which the hearings were handled — "arbitrarily in conduct," with "too short a time given" for notice.
"Positively outrageous," cried one resident in the local newspaper, who added a foreboding message. "Nature has a way of doing things that scientists do not or cannot anticipate. Who knows whether some pollution of the waters may occur, or whether the disease may be carried by flies or mosquitoes." Another asked, "Why should the farmers, the fishermen, and the summer residents be placed in jeopardy for the sake of an industry unrelated to this area?" And yet another wrote, "The action of your department establishes a plague spot in our beautiful vacation land. After hoof-and-mouth disease — then what?"
Secretary of Agriculture Brannan "selected" Plum Island on July 28, 1952. "Views expressed… were divided concerning the location," he said, but everyone recognized the need for such a facility somewhere. The USDA's fuzzy logic held that 99 percent of the population fully supported the lab, since only 1 percent vocally objected. The timing and manner of the public hearings point to a far different calculation: 99 percent of the people were not at all aware of the USDA's laboratory plan or their public hearings. Those who knew of the plan vehemently opposed their government, and the government won by stifling public opinion and by keeping the true purpose for Plum Island secret.
13
After the hearings, Doc Shahan would say the sewage "ought to enrich marine life because there's so much organic material in it." Known as Blue Point oysters (after Blue Point, Long Island), Long Island oysters had been farmed by European settlers in coastal waters since the 1600s. But by the 1970s, coastal development, pollution, and new parasites had depleted oyster populations. One foreign parasite, MSX, found its way into the Long Island Sound, and by the millennium it had wiped out 76 percent of the oysters in the Sound.