Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests over Populated Areas FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the 1970s, Americans learned that for decades they had been unsuspecting guinea pigs in a series of astonishing experiments conducted by the U.S. Army. Military researchers had been secretly spraying clouds of bacteria over populated areas in order to study America's vulnerability to biological weapons. No precautions were taken to protect the millions of people exposed, despite known risks to their health.
The army continues to assume the right to resume bacteriological testing at its own discretion -- a 1986 report to Congress indicates that open air testing is now taking place at a military facility in Utah as part of the Reagan administration's expanded biological warfare program.
Clouds of Secrecy is a probing examination of the Army's germ warfare testing program from World War II to the present. Using extensive information from congressional hearings, courtroom testimony, interviews, and government documents, the author details the nature of the Army's biological experiments, the reasoning behind the tests, and the effects on exposed human populations.
These experiments prompt questions not only about the rationale and conduct of the biological warfare research program, but also about the relation of science to contemporary society. Is such testing, as one critic described it, "science gone mad?"
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
This disturbing study, based on government records, courtroom testimony and interviews, focuses on biological-warfare testing and the U.S. Army's expanding program to develop cheaper and more effective biological weapons. Cole traces the growth of the biological arsenal during World War II, reviews the scientific literature (which questions the Army's contention that bacteria used in tests are harmless) and assesses the spraying of several American locales, including San Francisco and the New York subway system. Cole charges that the Army failed to monitor the health of the targeted population, and quotes from a 1981 trial in a case brought by a San Francisco family, one of whose members is believed to have died as a result of the 1950 test in that city. Reflecting on ``the human capacity to confuse good intentions with harmful actions,'' the author, who teaches at Rutgers University, concludes with a discussion of the ethics of spraying unsuspecting citizens with bacteria and the need for protection against such experiments. (September)
Library Journal
An in-depth analysis of the U.S. Army's biological warfare (BW) research/testing from World War II to the present. Cole (Rutgers Univ.) details unpublicized activities at the Army's BW headquarters, the secret ``test'' spraying of bacteria over major American cities, and a court case on one such test. He also examines the charges of Soviet ``yellow rain'' and genetic engineering. His research is solidon-site visits, interviews, congressional hearings, court testimony, government documents, and scientific and scholarly literature. While this careful work is not a polemic, it raises a specter of government secrecy and deception with chilling implications. One of the best efforts on a topic long concealed from the American public. Clifton E. Wilson, Political Science Dept., Univ. of Arizona, Tucson
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