Science, Secrecy, and the Smithsonian The Strange History of the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program

About this book

This is the story of how the Smithsonian Institute became intertwined in a secret biological warfare project.

During the 1960s, the Smithsonian Institution undertook a large-scale biological survey of a group of uninhabited tropical islands in the Pacific. It was one of the largest and most sweeping biological survey programs of all time, a six-year-long enterprise during which Smithsonian personnel banded 1.8 million birds, captured live specimens and took blood samples, and catalogued the avian, mammalian, reptile, and plant life of 48 Pacific islands.

But there was a twist. The study had been initiated, funded, and overseen by the U.S. Biological Laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The home of the American biological warfare program. In signing the contract to perform the survey, the Smithsonian became a literal subcontractor to a secret biological warfare project. And by participating in the survey, the Smithsonian scientists were paving the way for top-secret biological warfare tests in the Pacific.

Critics charged the Smithsonian with having entered into a Faustian bargain that made the institution complicit in the sordid business of biological warfare, a form of combat which, if it were ever put into practice and used against human populations, could cause mass disease, suffering, and death. The Smithsonian had no proper role in any such activities, said the critics, and should never have undertaken the survey.

Science, Secrecy, and the Smithsonian: The Strange History of the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program explores the workings of the survey program, places it in its historical context, describes the military tests that followed, and evaluates the critical objections to the Smithsonian's participation in the project.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. Secrecy Comes to the Smithsonian
Chapter 2. Recruitment
Chapter 3. Prequels
Chapter 4. Life in the Field
Chapter 5. The Artificial Atoll
Chapter 6. Project 112
Chapter 7. "Bird Bombs"
Chapter 8. The Military Payoff
Chapter 9. The "Secret" Emerges
Chapter 10. Fate of the Islands
Chapter 11. Aftermath and Aftereffects

Epilogue
Appendix

Customer Reviews

Biography

Ed Regis holds a PhD in philosophy from New York University and is the author of ten science books. He lives with his wife, Pam, and Kerry Blue terrier, Razzle, near Camp David in the Maryland mountains.