The RATS BBS - VETLink #72

Dugway Proving Ground 1942 - 1972

30 YEARS OF RECKLESS GERM, CHEMICAL AND RADIOLOGICAL WARFARE TESTING

( Dog Area - RATS #2 )

Best viewed in 600x800 mode.

The RATS BBS... the site committed to the military personnel who participated in the US Army's
atmospheric testing of CBR warfare agents... striving to aid veterans exposed to dangerous
substances without their full knowledge of the consequences or informed consent.

It's not how and what CBR agents were used by the DOD that is secret today.

It's who they were used on and why.

^{Dugway Survivors Poll}

^{Test Docs Listed for Dugway}

^{Test Trends and Totals}

^{Army Dodges Blame}

^{Dugway - The Early Days}

^{Lethal Breeze}

^{Open Air Testing Testimony}

^{MS Linked to Dugway???}



The chief of the Chemical Warfare Division in the early 1950s, when the same division tested LSD on groups of human subjects in concert with the CIA, was Dr. Laurence Laird Layton, whose son Larry was convicted for the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan at Jonestown; ("Come to the pavilion! What a legacy!"). Dr Layton was married to the daughter of Hugo Phillip, a German banker and stockbroker representing the likes of Siemens & Halske, the makers of cyanide for the Final Solution, and I.G. Farben, the manufacturer of a lethal nerve gas put to the same purpose. Dr. Layton, a Quaker, developed a form of purified uranium used to set off the Manhattan Project's first self-sustaining chain reaction at the University of Chicago in 1942 by his wife's German-born Uncle, Dr. James Franck. At Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Dr. Layton concentrated his efforts, as did I.G. Farben, on the development of nerve gasses. Dr. Layton later defended his participation in the Army's chemical warfare section: "You can blow people to bits with bombs, you can shoot them with shells, you can atomize them with atomic bombs, but the same people think there's something terrible about poisoning the air and letting people breath it. Anything having to do with gas warfare, chemical warfare, has this taint of horror on it, even if you only make people vomit." Alex Constantine - Aspartame Information

SECRETS AT SEA: CLOUD OF SECRECY LIFTING ON DUGWAY NAVY'S TESTS OF GERM AND CHEMICAL AGENTS IN THE PACIFIC DURING VIETNAM WAR.

"The Deseret News and victim groups have for years continually found pieces of the puzzle to what happened in such tests - including at least 328 open-air germ tests at Dugway Proving Ground, the release of 15,000 pounds of nerve agent at tests there and tests that intentionally exposed soldiers to such weaponry."

"Dugway Proving Ground, a massive firing range that for 50 years was the U.S. Army testing ground for some of the most lethal chemical, biological and nuclear weapons ever made. A slope of the mountains to the east is pockmarked with hundreds of fortified bunkers storing enough toxin to eradicate mankind. The ground water is fouled with carcinogens.

This was where the Cold War was waged, not on battlefields in foreign lands, but in factories and laboratories and testing ranges".

TONY FREEMANTLE / Houston Chronicle

Workers exposed to chemical warfare agents suffer from similar symptoms as Gulf War veterans with Gulf War Illnesses (or medically unexplained illnesses). This has been noticed by many medical researchers who are investigating the link between low-level chemical exposures in the Persian Gulf and poor health in Gulf War veterans today." - - - - - MATTHEW L. PUGLISI * Assistant Director * Persian Gulf Task Force

A recently uncovered Army report from 1972 about the March 14, 1968 chemical weapons test at Dugway Proving Ground that went awry and 6,400 sheep keeled over in their fields, suggests the sheep died from a lethal combination of nerve-gas traces and pesticides.

Gulf War veterans, who were exposed to insecticides, oil-fire smoke and possibly chemical agents as the Iraqi stockpile was blown up, are suffering from chronic ailments similar to those found near Dugway Proving Ground.

"Does low-level exposure to nerve agent amount to overexposure to pesticides? Basically, all we know is that a certain percentage of people subjected to these substances have health problems."

Jim Tuite, a researcher with the Chronic Illness Research Foundation.

In 1959 the USAF tried to assess the hazards from a reactor meltdown in a nuclear-powered aircraft at Dugway Proving Ground. They did not try to assess the heath hazards created for Utahans by sending clouds of radiation toward highway U.S. 40 (now Interstate 80) and the communities of Wendover and Knolls.

The testing between 1949 and 1953 at Dugway was a full-scale radiological warfare program that released more than 153,000 curies of radioactive products produced from a atomic pile for the purpose of killing man, animals and plants.

The use of various radioactive materials on the test grids included tantalum. Among the the common radioactive material of the day, only plutonium was more dangerous. Tantalum 182 was more cancer-causing than such elements as cesium and strontium 90. It was hot stuff, with acceptable exposure of just 7 microcuries.

1954 Report indicates the extent of US Navy and USAF involvement in the testing at Dugway.

             Typical Dugway BW Aerial Spray Test of the 1950s and 60s.

             Map of Dugway Proving Ground showing test area locations.

             Aerial view of Dog Area

Under top-secret rules adopted in 1953, Defense Department researchers were required to inform human test subjects of the health risks associated with radioactive, chemical and biological warfare experiments.

Chemical Weapons Testing Sites Using Human Subjects

Camp LeJeune, NC              Dugway Proving Ground, UT

Camp Polk, LA              Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, IL

Gulfport, MS              Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D. C.

El Centro, CA              Edgewood Arsenal, MD

Fort Richardson, AK              Bushnell Field, FL

Fort Detrick, MD              Fort Pierce, FL

Fort Benning, GA              San Jose Island, Panama Canal Zone

Camp Sibert, AL

             U. S. Navy, Harts Island, NY

Click to enlarge photos of human subjects from chemical weapons tests.

Memorandum from the Army Chief of Staff to the Surgeon General outlining the use of Volunteers for research with atomic, biological and chemical warfare agents.

Wilson Memorandum - Adopted after years of debate by the medical and scientific community with the Department of Defense.

An outbreak of Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis (VEE) occurred in a unit of military personnel who had gone to Panama for jungle training in 1981. Exposure was linked to training in a previously implicated area of Fort Sherman.

The testing of chemical, biological, radiological, and exotic agents by the DOD and the CIA might have been credible under the guise of national security.

The way the veteran and civilian victims have been treated is unconscionable.

Records are conveniently lost by the Army (in one case mysteriously disappeared from a civilian medical office) and in the expert opinion of James E. Starrs, a George Washington University professor of law and forensic science, have eliminated conceived trouble makers (germ-warfare researcher Frank R. Olsen).

Intimidation of physicians; "I thought I had found a M.D. in Salt Lake City but when he heard I was exposed at Dugway he backed off. He was harassed by the DOD when he treated civilians from Dugway! He wanted no part of me." says Dugway survivor.

^{Does the VA claim it has no knowledge of your}

^chemical ^{or biological exposure?}

The Top Secret development of small arms biological weapons, including the spore-forming bacteria that causes anthrax, an acute infectious disease, was carried out at Dugway in 1960. The test area for the anthrax shot was expected to be contaminated for decades.

1955 - 56 Infectious Disease Survey . . . with the appropriate obliterations. Just count the spaces and see what fits.

Tuite Reports    Human Radiation Experiments VX MSDS

OUTBREAK Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Downwinders

Yellow Jacket Ranges

John DeBusk's Atomic Vets Keith Whittle's Atomic Vets

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Last updated - 12 December 99

This site is provided as a public service by the The RATS BBS and it is intended to be used by the public for viewing and retrieval purposes only. All information on this site has been previously published or the account of a Dugway survivor. Unauthorized attempts to upload or change information on this service are strictly prohibited

^{WEBMASTER: Kenneth Knowlton}


The RATS BBS... the site committed to the military personnel who participated in the US Army's atmospheric testing of CBR warfare agents... striving to aid veterans exposed to dangerous substances without their full knowledge of the consequences or informed consent.

Camp LeJeune, NC	Dugway Proving Ground, UT
Camp Polk, LA	Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, IL
Gulfport, MS	Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D. C.
El Centro, CA	Edgewood Arsenal, MD
Fort Richardson, AK	Bushnell Field, FL
Fort Detrick, MD	Fort Pierce, FL
Fort Benning, GA	San Jose Island, Panama Canal Zone
Camp Sibert, AL	U. S. Navy, Harts Island, NY


Click to enlarge photos of human subjects from chemical weapons tests.