There is one reason above all why transferring Plum Island from the USDA to the DHS might be the best thing that ever happened to Plum Island and its threatened environs: the USDA itself.
Plum Island has taught us that veterinarians aren't all of the Dr. Dolit-tle variety, and that there's plenty more to the United States Department of Agriculture than USDA Grade-A eggs and the food pyramid (or, if you're a traditionalist, the four food groups). Most people know that agriculture relates to a most basic human need: food. But beyond that, what exactly is agriculture? Traditionally defined as the science of crop and livestock production, it represents a sea change in humanity — from that of primitive hunter-gatherer to organized planter and rancher. This science is relatively brand new; a study in 1968 noted that agriculture has been practiced for less than 1 percent of human history. Over the last half-century, the USDA has emerged as its greatest power and tireless promoter, taking modern science methodologies and applying them to foods grown and raised, processed, and shipped into the American marketplace. In a postwar fervor that can best be seen as a scientific "Manifest Destiny," the aggies aided and abetted the demise of the family farm in favor of agribusiness, trading localized production for the largest units of mass food production obtainable. Like a "boiler room" stockbroker, American agriculture has become enslaved to the incessant march of increasing numbers. In 1976, the average U.S. farmworker fed fifty-two mouths, while the Russian worker fed only seven; livestock production per animal was up 130 percent from the previous fifty years. That was a quarter-century ago — since then, production has grown exponentially.
The USDA has accomplished this growth through proselytizing the new religion of science with an uncanny blind faith, ignoring any fallout over the last half-century. It claimed with certainty that its chemical DDT would not contaminate the wildlife and marine ecosystem. Thanks in large part to Rachel Carson, the USDA now admits it does.
The USDA championed chemical pesticides — scientifically engineered to quell insects that threatened exponential agricultural growth — and maintained they were food-friendly. But now, it grudgingly admits the chemicals are infused into the food products people eat, and wreak havoc upon wildlife.
The USDA said that fertilizer nitrates used on large farms would increase crop yields, and they would never reach groundwater aquifers. Today, the USDA admits that nitrates have seeped into and blighted potable water supplies in dangerous concentrations.
The USDA promoted dieldrin — a compound twenty times more toxic than DDT — to eliminate the Argentinean fire ant in a $156 million federal crop spraying program. Over time, the fire ant grew more resistant to pesticides and tripled its original geographic range. Says Smithsonian historian Pete Daniel, "The lost war against the fire ants should have been a cautionary, a warning against hubris and unintended consequences. Instead, it typified a mind-set that substituted faith in science and bureaucratic expertise for common sense."
The USDA has always denied it had anything to do with biological warfare on Plum Island, but such assertions ring hollow. There is its early germ warfare work for the Army in the 1950s, and the joint USDA-Army work on the Rift Valley fever virus in the 1970s and 1980s. A July 13, 1992, Plum Island visitors' manifest lists fourteen visiting Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army, and Pentagon officials. According to the document, the purpose of the visit was "to meet with [Plum Island] staff regarding biological warfare." The visitors were part of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency reviewing the dual-use capabilities of the facility.
The Soviet Union didn't buy the USDA line. Former Soviet biowarrior Dr. Ken Alibek wrote in his 1999 book Biohazard that Plum Island "had figured in our intelligence reports for years. [It] was used during the war to test biological agents." I ask Alibek to explain those reports about Plum Island. "We had these 'Special Information Reports' that came from KGB and GRU [Soviet military intelligence] that described Plum Island, Fort Detrick, and Dugway Proving Ground as biological warfare sites.
"There's no question that Plum Island was a threat — you know, at that time — I cannot even translate for you in Russian how 'Plum Island' would sound. Today I know what a 'plum' is and what 'island' is, but then," he says, laughing, thinking of the fear the strange-sounding name instilled. "Someone had told me they worked in exotic livestock diseases, foot-and-mouth virus and such." As part of a 1994 arms agreement brokered between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the United States, each side was permitted to choose three suspected germ warfare sites for full inspection. When the Russian team arrived in February 1994, they visited their first two choices while aboard Air Force Two: Vigo and a Pfizer pharmaceutical plant in Groton, Connecticut.[50] Then the team announced their third and final snap inspection: Plum Island. Dr. Breeze ventures a guess on why they chose Plum Island out of all places in the United States. "It used to be a military base with all these old underground bunkers, right across [the Long Island Sound] from a nuclear submarine base. We were doing a lot of reconstruction, and I think they looked at their satellite photographs and saw all this construction going on."
Upon arriving, the Russians first demanded a tour through the Army bunkers, searching in vain for a trapdoor leading to an underground complex. Then they walked around Lab 101, blueprints in hand, pointing and insisting to be shown the basement, except that the portion of 101 they were interested in didn't have one. The plans showed the area as an "unex-cavated" crawl space, yet the Russians refused to believe it. It was plainly apparent to the Plum Island staff that not all the Russians sniffing around were scientists. Though Dr. Alibek defected two years earlier, he confirms that inspection team members Grigoriy Shcherbakov and Aleksey Stepanov were two of his subordinates working on weaponizing genetically engineered anthrax. Dr. Carol House recalls, "A couple of them were green-beret types, who would take anybody out without thinking twice, and there were some intelligence agents, too. It wasn't well hidden."
Then there was a question-and-answer session on the viruses being studied there. Team leader Oleg Ignatiev, a short man with a low, booming voice, told Newsday reporter John McDonald afterward, "We find this is a very large center. It does very important work — but we have to work on it and think it over before reaching a conclusion." Days after the Russians returned home, the newspaper Izvestiya reported that the United States was in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention.
According to Alibek, the violation was mutual. The Soviet Union had a biological warfare program against livestock, code-named "Ecology," that boasted thousands of scientists in multiple facilities. One Ecology-designed weapon he heard being discussed was called R-40. "Whether it was some new fever or new foot-and-mouth disease virus, I don't know. What was interesting is that this weapon agent was cultivated in cattle; then, when the virus concentration was high, they bled them and made weapons from cattle blood." Primitive science, but deadly.
The Soviet threat remains strong. Many of the program's scientists, faced with starvation or working for rogue nations, chose the latter. And to this day, Russia still has three "former" biological warfare facilities that continue to be off-limits to the West. "Closed," says Dr. Alibek in his gruff Russian accent. "Top secret — and nobody knows what they do behind those closed doors." The former biowarrior now works for a Virginia biotech company with Pentagon contracts, developing defenses against the recombinant DNA germs he helped create, such as an antibiotic-resistant strain of anthrax. He's even visited Dr. Huxsoll on Plum Island to interest the USDA in some business. Dr. Alibek says of Plum Island, "It's a struggling facility trying to find adequate funding. This is what I know."
50
Vigo was a long-abandoned World War II-era Army germ weapons plant in Terre Haute, Indiana, that had since been sold to Pfizer.