Photographs excavated from the National Archives belie those assertions.
Penned on the reverse of a curled-up black-and-white photograph is the notation lab. bldg. 257. feb 2 1954 is stamped in the lower left-hand corner. Standing at a bench the size of a dining room table, under the fluorescent light fixtures in a windowless, tiled room, are four men in starched white lab coats. They are crowded around a tall, boyish-looking man who is turning on a cylindrical heater, upon which sits a large flask containing a clear liquid. The man at the end of the table is leaning over, watching in earnest, with his arm stretched out on the lab bench, clutching an unlit pipe backward. The notes on the back of the snapshot continue: "Left to Right: Lt. Col. Don L. Mace,
Dr. O. N. Fellowes, Dr. J. J. Callis, Dr. H. L. Bachrach and Dr. M. S. Shahan."
The first two scientists were Army, and the other three were USDA. An Army officer on Plum Island at that time remembers the scene as typical of many "demonstrations" held in Lab 257. Often, he says, Dr. Fothergill, Fort Detrick's scientific director, would fly up and "see what we were doing and how we were doing it, from technical to safety measures. Many of those exotic agents were a real tricky thing up there on Long Island."
Two more dust-caked photographs preserved in the National Archives each picture a man seated alone at a metal office desk, with a pen held in his right hand, peering into the camera lens. Behind each man's right is the same three-shelf, glass-enclosed bookcase; above it, a framed picture of bulls charging across an open swath of country. Behind each man's left shoulder is the same photograph of la Comision Mejicana-Americana para la Erradicacion de la Fiebre Aftosa (the 1948 Mexico virus campaign). On the desk is an inbox tray, a stamp, and a quill-pen cup. Colonel Donald L. Mace is in one of the photos, and the USDA's Dr. Maurice S. "Doc" Shahan is in the other. There are no other differences that distinguish the photos, shot in the exact same setting, dated the exact same day and same year. Clearly there was a USDA-Army relationship.
Retired Major Luke H. West, an Alabaman inducted at Fort McClellan in 1941, was the Fort Terry top-secret control and security officer on Plum Island. Major West devised a scheme of color-coded security cards to enter the lab compound and conducted armed patrols of the compound and island perimeters. Although only a single laboratory report describing USDA's work for the Chemical Corps is publicly available, Major West remembers "at least twenty-five to fifty" research reports coming across his desk before they were mimeographed for Colonel Mace and sent down to Fort Detrick. West wouldn't elaborate on the contents of those reports.
Did the Army's departure from Plum Island change anything? The Army may have shipped its files back to Fort Detrick, but Colonel Mace left something of infinite value behind — the germs. The "defensive" germ research performed by the men from Agriculture would be extrapolated by "standardizing" the virus into a powder and placing it in Air Force cluster bombs. It didn't matter that the USDA told the public its research was only defensive—it was of dual use anyway. The USDA took beneficial control over the Army freezers (the 134 strains of 14 viruses) and did whatever it pleased with them. With the arsenal left behind, research continued unchecked.
Plum Island was now far less safe. Major West and his Army soldiers no longer patrolled the island with military weaponry. As the Army went, so too went its scientific expertise, its regimen, and its deep pockets of financial resources. Now, Plum Island was a USDA site — and it would have to compete with farm-belt states and their powerful lobbies in Congress over a limited pot of agriculture funds. Unlike military installations that enjoyed the backing of enthusiastic congressmen and senators, Plum Island would have little support from elected officials, most of whom still chafed over the harsh maneuvers employed to establish the laboratory in their midst.
The USDA had control now, running not one, but two high-hazard biological laboratories on Plum Island. This was the same USDA whose very competence Congress previously questioned.
Only time would tell whether the veterinarians could handle such great responsibility on their own.
The first microbiology work on exotic viruses at Plum Island was performed by USDA men hired by the animal branch of the U.S. biological warfare program.
Plum Island's first lab experiment was also another first — its first lab accident.
On July 21, 1954, three weeks after the Army transferred the island to the USDA, an angry cow coughed a glob of mucus into the unprotected face of a lab worker, known as "FW."[15] The previous day, FW had injected the cow's tongue with the New Jersey strain of highly contagious vesicular stomatitis virus, a germ probably enhanced by Erich Traub during his days working with the USDA. FW went home early and climbed into bed, ill with acute flulike symptoms and chills. By 7:00 p.m., FW's temperature had spiked to 102 degrees; yellow lesions appeared on his sore throat. He plummeted into malaise and depression. The signs were clear: FW had contracted the animal virus. Hearing the news, FW's Plum Island colleagues saw a window of opportunity. They placed a call to FW's wife — who happened to be a registered nurse — in the name of science. Before FW took a heavy dose of Terramycin, prescribed by the family physician, they asked his wife to collect blood and saliva, and swab the back of his throat with a Q-tip. She complied. The samples were stowed in her refrigerator and later ferried to Plum Island.
Assistant Director Dr. Jerry Callis took FW's blood samples, spun them down in an ultracentrifuge, and stored the human serum in a flame-sealed glass ampoule for future use. Then the man's virus-rich blood cells were injected into chicken eggs. This killed the embryos, drowning them in their own blood. The new "FW Strain" was passed through four successive chicken egg embryos and then isolated again; antibiotics were found to have no medicinal effect. The first published research abstract of the animal disease laboratory carries an incongruous title: The isolation of virus from the blood of man. The report dryly notes, "The infection contracted by FW occurred…in anewly constructed laboratory…. Past experience in other laboratories has shown the dangers associated with infectious materials inhaled or deposited accidentally in the eyes or nasal passages." There is no mention in the report of a safety violation or, more important, the need for revised safety procedures to prevent the human infection that sickened FW. But the USDA scientists had stumbled upon vesicular stomatitis as a promising incapacitating germ weapon. The Army was pleased with the USDA's (inadvertent) human field testing.
With a troublesome "test run" under its belt, Plum Island was ready to handle the real thing. For the first time, exotic animal germs would be unleashed on United States soil. In eerie silence, the two young scientists, Drs. Callis and Howard Bachrach, looked on with reverence as veteran USDA man Dr. George Cottral slowly and carefully unlocked the virus vault, unstrapped the box, unscrewed the canister, and carefully uncorked the ampoules of hot germs. No accidents this time. On with the work.
In their mandarin-collared white lab coats, the lanky Callis and the stumpy, bespectacled Bachrach bent over the flasks, neatly lined up on the long lab bench, stirring and shaking the concoctions, holding test tubes up to the fluorescent light, scribbling observations and mathematical equations on their pads. Any changes in color? Consistency? Evaporation? All were signs of microbiological reaction. They took samples, streaked them on a slide, peered into the microscope, and fiddled with the focus knob.
15
FW is the notation in the records. There is little personal information available about him. He was probably a locally hired laboratory technician.