Germ War Agents Sent By Airlines

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32005, 4 June 1969, Page 13

Germ War Agents Sent By Airlines

(N.Z. P. A .-Reuter— Copyright) KANSAS CITY, (Missouri), June 3. The United States Army has been shipping containers of highlydangerous germ warfare agents by commercial carriers—including regular airline flights—for at least four years, the “National Catholic Reporter” reports.

A copright article by Seymour Hersh in the magazine’s June 4 issue, said official permission for such shipments was given in an Army regulation dated June 7,1965. The article said the United States stockpile of germ warfare agents included anthrax —a scourge of the Middle Ages capable of killing up to 99 per cent of its victims—tularemia, or rabbit fever, and Q fever, a non-fatal but persistent disease.

The writer, a former reporter at the Pentagon and author of the book, “Chemical

and Biological Warfare,” said the first public hint of the biological shipments came two weeks ago during hearings before a Senate commerce subcommittee, headed by Senator Vance Hartke (Democrat, Indiana). The committee was studying Army plans—later cancelled—to ship 27,000 tons of poisonous gases from Denver, Colorado, to the United States east coast for eventual disposal at sea. In an editorial in the same issue, the “National Catholic Reporter” suggested that the United States Army be required by Congress to answer the following questions. "What happens. General, if a commercial airliner carrying three gallons of anthrax solution blows up over Chicago? Or if a jet with a consignment of plague bacilli runs into a helicopter just after taking off from National Airport, Washington?” '

Or: “Suppose, for example, that a plane with ‘biological agents’ aboard crashes in the Mississippi just upstream from St Louis. All the way to New Orleans, communities draw iheir water from the

river. What should they do?” The United States Army admitted that it sometimes shipped containers of germ warfare agents aboard commercial airliners.

But, it said in a statement, such shipments were made only occasionally and under strict conditions to guard against leakage and contamination.

The Army—in defending its action—added that commercial laboratories, vaccine companies, hospitals and university laboratories made many such shipments of diseasebearing biological materials under similar regulations. “The United States Army has on occasion shipped biological agents by common carrier,” the statement said. Although the regulation allowed shipments of up to three gallons at a time, the statement said, the triplethickness containers currently carried no more than one gallon.

It added that the “extremely rigid” safety standards were approved by the United States Public. Health Service. ' ...