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WASHINGTON - While soldiers in the Persian Gulf
prepare for the possible use of germ warfare by Iraq, recently
released military documents show the Army once sprayed its own troops
with such weapons
in the deserts of Utah.
An aerosol bomb containing the germ Coxiella burnetii was dropped on
volunteer troops in field tests at Dugway Proving Ground in 1955 and
1956, according to a copyright story in yesterday's Deseret News.
The documents show another Dugway-based experiment exposed Americans
east of the Rockies to potentially toxic fluorescent particles dropped
to determine how biological toxins might spread if the United
States were attacked.
The information is in documents given the newspaper by the watchdog
group Downwinders, which said it obtained them through a Denver
television station. KUSA-Channel 9 had obtained them through a
Freedom of Information Act request on an unrelated story, the
newspaper reported.
Documents indicated the Army thought the tests successful in that they
proved biological agents could be spread over large areas, but the
military planned further tests in 1959.
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