2/x
Under Mr. Patrick’s direction, scientists at Fort Detrick developed a tularemia agent that, if disseminated by airplane, could cause casualties & sickness over 1000s mi². In a 10,000 mi² range, it had 90% casualty rate & 50% fatality rate
3/x His team explored Q fever, plague, & Venezuelan equine encephalitis, testing more than 20 anthrax strains to discern most lethal variety. Fort Detrick scientists used aerosol spray systems inside fountain pens, walking sticks, light bulbs, & even in 1953 Mercury exhaust pipes
4/x After retiring in 1986, Mr. Patrick remained one of the world’s foremost specialists on biological warfare & was a consultant to the CIA, FBI, & US military. He debriefed Soviet defector Ken Alibek, the deputy chief of the Soviet biowarfare program
https://t.co/sHqSaTSqtB
5/x Back in Time
In 1949 the Army created a small team of chemists at "Camp Detrick" called Special Operations Division. Its assignment was to find military uses for toxic bacteria. The coercive use of toxins was a new field, which fascinated Allen Dulles, later head of the CIA
7/x Gottlieb
In 1951, Dulles hired a chemist to oversee a systematic search for key to mind control: Sidney Gottlieb, a 33-year-old Jew who limped & stuttered, meditated, lived in a remote cabin without running water & rose before dawn to milk his goats.
https://t.co/O6zZlhd2QC
8/x Gottlieb wanted to use Detrick’s assets to propel his mind control project to new heights. The CIA acquired the knowledge, skill, & facilities of the Army to develop biological weapons suited for CIA use. Gottlieb created a hidden CIA enclave inside Camp Detrick.
9/x Gottlieb searched relentlessly for a way to destroy human minds so new ones could be implanted in their place. He tested an astonishing variety of drug combinations (LSD was one of them) often combined with electroshock & sensory deprivation (MKULTRA)
https://t.co/DaZJcTYXYT
10/x In the US, his victims were unwitting subjects at jails & hospitals. In Europe and East Asia, Gottlieb’s victims were prisoners in secret detention centers. These were the most gruesome experiments the U.S. government ever conducted on human beings.
https://t.co/UOQcwoyLEf
11/ x Fort Detrick Experiments
7 prisoners in Lexington were given multiple doses of LSD for 77 days straight!
Captured North Koreans were given depressant drugs, then potent stimulants & exposed to intense heat & electroshock while they were in the weakened state of transition
12/ x These experiments destroyed many minds & caused an unknown number of deaths. Many of the potions, pills & aerosols administered to victims were created at Fort Detrick.
One of the most well-known victims of Gottlieb's experiments was Frank Olson:
https://t.co/7zx4YoLsAx
13/ x A decade of intense experiments taught Gottlieb ways to destroy a human mind. Fort Detrick, as it was renamed in 1956, remained Gottlieb’s chemical base. After the end of MK-ULTRA, he used it to develop and store the CIA’s arsenal of poisons.
https://t.co/qXEFgMBy59
14/ x Freezer
In his freezers he kept biological agents that could cause diseases including smallpox, tuberculosis & anthrax as well as organic toxins, including snake venom & paralytic shellfish poison. He developed poisons intended to kill Fidel Castro & Congo's Patrice Lumumba
15/ x Fort Detrick Reborn! Hallelujah!
The US officially abandoned its biological weapons programme in 1969, but Fort Detrick has continued "defensive research" into deadly pathogens including Ebola virus, the plague & poisons like Ricin.
https://t.co/BqahYJ06RX
16/ x Anthrax at Fort Detrick
Bruce Ivins, was a senior biological weapons researcher at Fort Detrick. He killed himself in 2008, shortly before the FBI was planning to charge him with the 2001 anthrax attacks.
https://t.co/ALnY6GqWIc
17/ x
It is ironic that the culprit was a top government anthrax expert: Since 2001, US built many labs, spent over $62 billion, & hired an army of researchers to prevent a 2nd bioterror attack. In effect, devoting 20 years to training & equipping hundreds of people like Ivins!