The long white ferry charged into the foreground, sailing through Plum Gut, the deep, narrow strait between where I sat and Plum Island. As I returned to the car, I resolved to uncover one day exactly what Plum Island is.
Those were my thoughts over a decade ago. Years later, fresh out of law school, I began to revisit that haunted place, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. To begin unraveling the real story — what happened (and still happens) behind the island's locked gates — I needed to educate myself in a variety of divergent topics. I immersed myself in research on a wide range of far-reaching subjects — geology, colonial history, animal disease, human disease, animal psychology, microbiology, biological warfare, coastal artillery, terrorism, lighthouses, and American Indians. I spoke to scientists, government officials, local residents, historians, and past and present employees of Plum Island, collecting firsthand accounts of this inexplicably anonymous place. Friends thought I had become a bit fanatical about the topic. They were right — the passion of "Plum" (as it's called by those in the know) had consumed me.
Research turned up disquieting descriptions of Plum Island, like "Right Out of The Andromeda Strain" and "Uncle Sam's Island of No Escape" and "The Setting of an Ian Fleming Novel." And my personal favorite: "Asking for directions to Plum Island is like asking for directions to Frankenstein's castle." One local newspaper took an opposing viewpoint, glibly describing Plum Island as a place where "white-coated scientists work on animal viruses before they wash up, climb aboard a ferry and then eat dinner with their families. It's no more exciting or diabolical than that." As I delved deep into researching and writing this story, I harkened back to the science fiction novels I enjoyed as a child, and came to a numbing realization: scientific truth can indeed be stranger than science fiction.
I came to realize that the USDA is far more than wholesome Grade A eggs, and that veterinarians are not all "doggy docs" who tend gingerly to the well-being of golden retrievers and calicos. Once the story began to take shape, those mom-and-apple-pie feelings quickly dissipated. I found Plum Island to be more than a nearby atoll covered in a blanket of trees and secrecy. The island's vibrant history stretches back 350 years: it was once an ancient Indian fishing outpost, later colonized by early English settlers, then a sheep and cattle farm, a Revolutionary War battleground, a rendezvous for the British in 1812, a coastal defense fort, a submarine mine factory, and an Army biological warfare laboratory. Since 1954, the ostensible mission of Plum Island's Animal Disease Center has been to protect America's $100 billion livestock industry and defend it from foreign viruses, like the foot-and-mouth disease virus epidemic that ravaged Europe in 2001. After September 11, 2001, its mission returned to biological warfare.
Today, it is home to virginal beaches, cliffs, forests, ponds, bogs, trails, paths, roads, buildings, and people — and the deadliest germs that have ever roamed the Earth.
On the last of my six voyages to Plum Island, I toured the island grounds with retired draftsman Ben Robins. He carried a flashlight in his rear jeans pocket, and wielded a two-foot machete in his left hand. We climbed through the Army bunkers and coastal defense installations of Spanish-American War vintage, while thorns and brush from everywhere snapped into my face. Ben knew every inch of Plum Island because he had to — for decades it was his job to draw the maps and blueprints. I quickly realized Plum Island is like a preserve that hasn't known much orderly planting, pruning, or occasional TLC. "We have industrial grade poison ivy," said Ben, pointing out pea-sized gray clusters reaching out to touch someone along the overgrown dirt trails. It's a dense jungle on the eastern seaboard — perhaps the most untouched, uncared for, undeveloped, and unnoticed spit of land around.
We reached a high bluff on the island's east end and entered an old Army weather station. Up a narrow crumbling staircase was a lookout room with a wind-speed detector and wind cups twirling in the breeze, hand-painted signal flags, and a Morse-code alphabet key. The room was littered with glass from broken thin slat windows and bird dung. Heavy brush concealed a breathtaking view of the Atlantic.
On the way out, I noticed a weathered gray metal ammunition storage box behind the door on the first floor. Brushing off decades of dust, I read faded stenciling, printed sideways along the box: sprayer — chemc — engineers, troop supply. I wondered what it was used for. It is the highest point on the island, so outdoor tests spraying pathogens or insect vectors would have been run from here. But Ben was outside calling my name. I dashed out to meet him and continued the tour.
In the van returning to the lab for lunch, I looked down at my khakis. A burst of heat flashed up through my legs straight to my gut as I saw about eight or so tiny black dots, a few on each pant leg — immediately I realized I was covered in ticks. I carefully brushed them off onto the floor of the minivan, wondering why I'd been trekking through these overgrown woods with a short-sleeved shirt and no hat. Looking at the front passenger seat, where Ben was chatting amiably with our driver, I noticed with new interest his red mesh baseball cap and long sleeves. I tried to keep cool, but I was perspiring like crazy.
It didn't help that an awful burning smell joined us in the van at that point, hard to describe except to say the stench reminded me of something noxious that shouldn't be burned or smelled. Then we saw a thick cloud creeping slowly to the southwest. Ben whirled around on me and chirped, "Look — it's time to burn the animals!" The rolling black cloud was heading for Gardiner's Island, on its way over to greet Sag Harbor and the Hamptons.
When we stopped for lunch back at the laboratory, I excused myself and went to the men's bathroom. There I swiped off seven ticks attached to my shirt, and four more on my the inside of my pant leg. I ripped my fingers through my scalp, tilting my head toward the mirror in desperation, not knowing what to do should I see a tiny black dot attached to my skin.
Nervous as hell, I went into the stall, peeled off my clothes, and examined every inch of fabric and every inch of my body. Three more ticks met their demise in the toilet bowl. Thankfully, I found nothing, and I would contract nothing. The rest of the day, I flicked more black spots off my clothing and covered my head with my hands as we hiked under the trees.
The uncomfortable connections between West Nile virus, Lyme disease, and Plum Island unfortunately proved difficult to dismiss as my research deepened. Of course you cannot coax an island to speak up for itself. To chart the story of Plum Island, then, you must see the people that "touch" the place. They may have been there for a month or for thirty-five years, or they may never have set foot on its soil, but in some way they've shaped Plum Island. Through the lives of these individuals and the one common thread they share, the story unfolds. Among the key people in this book is Dr. Jerry Callis, a Georgia farm boy who devoted his life to animal disease research and rose through government ranks to command Plum Island for more than thirty years. There is Dr. Callis's successor, Dr. Roger Breeze, an Englishman enraptured by the American meritocracy, seeking the grail of scientific glory. There are those caught in the cross fire — people like Phillip Piegari, a support employee mired in a biological meltdown during a violent hurricane, a catastrophe that would have easily been avoided were it not for management's recklessness, and Frances Demorest, one of Plum Island's oldest veterans, who paid a terrible price for speaking out. And while there aren't any three-headed chickens or five-legged cows as the USDA is quick to point out with a chuckle, you'll be introduced to Nazi germ warfare scientists, ancient American Indians, germ warriors, germ hunters, Mexican cowboys, the father of anthrax, virus outbreaks in New York's backyard, and a biological and environmental muddle about to boil over.