"The Mighty Microbe Can Go to War:" Scientists, Secrecy, and American Biological Weapons Research, 1941-1969

Abstract

During WWII and the early Cold War, an American research program centered on Fort Detrick, Maryland sought to transform germs into weapons. Though sponsored by the military officials of the US Army Chemical Corps, this program was heavily intertwined with the civilian microbiologist community. Some of the most prominent members of this community had organized biological weapons research and staffed Detrick during WWII, and microbiologists’ influential relationship with the military continued into the Cold War. In this dissertation, I examine this relationship, focusing in particular on the roles that military secrecy played in these scientists’ lives. I examine the informal agency of scientists who served as military ‘advisors’ within the classified world, as well as the role of these same scientists in disciplining dissent within their own scientific community. I examine the evolution of laboratory safety technologies at Detrick from a means to contain secrets to one of the major legacies of biological weapons research in the ‘open’ world. I examine the contingent nature of the secrecy system itself, and how scientists variously subverted and supported it. Finally, I examine how would-be scientific critics of biological warfare negotiated their position as ‘outsiders’ of the secrecy system to contribute to the eventual end of this research at Detrick in 1969. With this work, I contribute to the underdeveloped historiography of the biological sciences in the Cold War, as well as to that of secrecy and science.