PROJECT 112

Opening

From 1962 to 1973, the US Department of Defense ran Project 112, a series of chemical and biological warfare tests. The part carried out at sea was called Project SHAD, Shipboard Hazard and Defense. Navy ships and their crews were exposed to nerve agents, biological agents, and harmless "simulant" bacteria to test how vulnerable ships were and how well decontamination worked. Many of the sailors weren't told what they were being exposed to. The Pentagon denied the tests had involved live agents until 2000, when reporting forced it to release fact sheets.

Timeline

1962Project 112 begins under the Deseret Test Center at Fort Douglas, Utah, as part of a Kennedy administration review of chemical and biological warfare. Tests take place at sea, in Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, the UK, and elsewhere.

1962 to 1973SHAD tests spray ships with agents including sarin and VX nerve agents, as well as simulants such as Bacillus globigii, Serratia marcescens, and E. coli. Some crews wear protective gear. Many don't know the purpose of the exercise.

1973The program ends.

May 2000CBS News reports that veterans were exposed to live agents in SHAD. The Pentagon, which had previously denied it, begins a review.

2000 to 2003The Department of Defense releases fact sheets on the tests and identifies about 6,000 service members who took part.

2002Congress holds hearings and passes legislation requiring the Pentagon to identify participants and share information with Veterans Affairs.

2008A Government Accountability Office report finds the Pentagon's effort to identify and notify participants incomplete.

Key figures

Veterans of SHAD pushed for disclosure after decades of unexplained health problems.

Representative Mike Thompson of California led congressional pressure for disclosure.

The Deseret Test Center planned and ran the tests.

Physical and documentary trail

The trail: Pentagon fact sheets on each test, congressional hearing records, the 2008 GAO report, VA guidance, and veterans' testimony.

The fact sheets confirm which agents were used in which tests. They don't settle what the exposures did to individual sailors' health, and VA studies have reached mixed conclusions.

Things you might not know

• At least 50 tests ran. At least 18 used biological simulants and at least 14 used chemical agents.
• At least 13 warships took part. Most sea tests were launched from two converted ships, USS George Eastman and USS Granville S. Hall.
• Washington was sprayed in 1965. Army agents released a harmless bacterium at the Greyhound bus terminal and National Airport, using sprayers hidden in briefcases.
• So was the New York subway. In June 1966 light bulbs filled with bacteria were dropped in the subway. Local police and transit authorities were not told.
• Rice blast fungus was released on Okinawa. It was used in field tests at least a dozen times in 1961 and 1962.
• The health study cost $3 million. Veterans Affairs spent about that on a three-year comparison of SHAD veterans with others.

Competing explanations

A legitimate defence-testing programme done badly. The tests had a real purpose, which was to find out if ships could survive attack. The failure was in secrecy, consent, and follow-up.

Human experimentation. Exposing sailors to agents without their informed consent amounts to using them as test subjects. The veterans' groups and some members of Congress take this view.

Later life of the case

Project 112 is regularly cited alongside MKUltra and the Tuskegee study as a documented case of the US government testing on its own people. Veterans are still pursuing health benefits linked to the tests.

Finding

This isn't disputed. The Pentagon admits it exposed thousands of service members to chemical and biological agents in secret tests, some with live nerve agents, and denied it for decades. What's still open is the long-term health damage, and how many participants have never been told.

What still will not resolve: a complete list of participants and exposures, which the GAO found the Pentagon had not produced.