Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Germ Laboratory Read online

  Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Germ Laboratory

  Michael Christopher Carroll

  Strictly off limits to the public, Plum Island is home to virginal beaches, cliffs, forests, ponds — and the deadliest germs that have ever roamed the planet. Lab 257 blows the lid off the stunning true nature and checkered history of Plum Island. It shows that the seemingly bucolic island in the shadow of New York City is a ticking biological time bomb that none of us can safely ignore.

  Based on declassified government documents, in-depth interviews, and access to Plum Island itself, this is an eye-opening, suspenseful account of a federal government germ laboratory gone terribly wrong. For the first time, *Lab 257* takes you deep inside this secret world and presents startling revelations on virus outbreaks, biological meltdowns, infected workers, the periodic flushing of contaminated raw sewage into area waters, and the insidious connections between Plum Island, Lyme disease, and the deadly West Nile virus. The book also probes what's in store for Plum Island's new owner, the Department of Homeland Security, in this age of bioterrorism.

  Lab 257 is a call to action for those concerned with protecting present and future generations from preventable biological catastrophes.

  Michael Christopher Carroll

  Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Germ Laboratory

  For a quiet outing where the air is a real tonic to a run-down man or woman; where you could have your bluefish and blackfish, sea bass, and lobsters fresh out of the water, cooked to a turn; milk, eggs, and chicken in abundance, Plum Island was the ideal place. What more could one ask?

  — Plum Island adventurer (1909)

  Plum Island is a biological Three Mile Island.

  — Plum Island employee (2003)

  Map

  Preface

  In May 1998, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a Western-educated nuclear physicist, was cheered by throngs gathered in the narrow cobblestone streets of Islamabad. They set off fireworks and wielded large placards emblazoned with his likeness. As the powerful chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Mahmood developed nuclear power plants with the help of Canada and other Western nations. At the direction of the Pakistani government, Mahmood and others co-opted this technology and developed nuclear weapons; and that May their first atom bomb was successfully tested to counter a nuclear test by their archenemy, neighboring India. A joyous national celebration in Mahmood's and the other nuclear scientists' names ensued, a celebration rivaling Pakistan's independence day holiday. Mahmood was a national hero.

  In 2002, he was under twenty-four-hour house arrest and his assets were frozen.

  The clean-shaven, moderately religious nuclear engineer, educated in Britain in the early 1970s, had drifted toward hard-line Islamic views by the mid-1990s. The snow-white-haired Mahmood became a bona fide religious extremist. He began fortune telling by reading people's palms and grew a long, unkempt beard. Urging Pakistan to adopt neighboring Afghanistan's Taliban way of life, his writings stressed the sacredness of keeping beards, the correlation between natural catastrophes and places of immoral behavior, and hidden scientific knowledge from Allah contained in the Koran. After he obstreperously opposed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in favor of a vigorous bomb-testing program, an apprehensive Pakistani leadership forced Mahmood out of the atomic energy program. He then relocated to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he set up a relief organization called Tameer-e-Ummah, or "Islamic Reconstruction."

  One month after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, U.S. Army intelligence and the CIA intercepted telephone communications between Mahmood and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, whose oppressive, terrorist-sponsoring regime was on the verge of being crushed by American forces.[1] The United States government declared Tameer-e-Ummah, his Islamic "charity," a terrorist front organization. Its assets were seized by Pakistan's central bank, and Pakistani troops arrested their nuclear hero and turned him over to American authorities. CIA Director George J. Tenet rushed to Islamabad to take personal control of the Mah-mood affair.

  During his interrogation about the phone calls, Mahmood claimed to have discussed only Omar's personal safety and a flour mill that the charity wanted to build in Kandahar. But he failed six separate lie detector tests and disputed the results, calling the technology flawed. Then he admitted meeting on multiple occasions not only with Omar but also with a rogue Saudi millionaire named Osama bin Laden (and his top deputy, Al Zawahiri) as recently as August 2001. He described meeting with bin Laden and Omar, perched atop fluffy pillows, drinking green tea and praising Allah, in a scene reminiscent of the video footage aired worldwide featuring Osama bin Laden plotting destruction with his cohorts. Mahmood told interrogators that bin Laden had more in mind than schools and flour mills — bin Laden said he had radioactive material and wanted to know how to build a "dirty bomb" nuclear device (and "other things," according to Mahmood's son Azim, who later confirmed the meeting).

  Fearing further embarrassment to its already tarnished nuclear energy program, Pakistan decided in early 2002 not to put Mahmood — whose "noble cause" was featured on the cover of the December 2001 issue of the radical glossy Kashmir Jihad—on public trial. The Pakistani government instead charged him with violating national secrecy oaths. Today, he remains under house arrest (and a media gag order) in a gated, two-story home.

  After Pakistan arrested Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and U.S. forces secured the Kabul perimeter as part of the Afghanistan phase of America's war on terrorism, CIA and U.S. Army commandos stormed Mahmood's Kabul residence and the offices of Tameer-e-Ummah. Inside, they found copies of books he authored, with disturbing titles such as Mechanics of the Doomsday and Life After Death, and Cosmology and Human Destiny, which contained the following prediction: "During the autumn of 2000–2001, due to the high energy solar cycle and its impact on people, certain crazy actions are likely to happen." Then they uncovered some very incriminating raw material. One item was a diagram of a helium balloon designed to release large quantities of anthrax spores into the atmosphere. Another was a large document titled "Bacteria: What You Need to Know." And a hefty file folder contained a bundle of papers from an Internet search on anthrax vaccines.

  Then there was a dossier. It contained information on a place in New York called the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. There was even a New York Times article in the dossier about this island.

  Why would an associate of Osama bin Laden be so interested in some obscure New York island?

  If Plum Island isn't exactly a household name in America, it apparently holds a prominent place in the minds of people like Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. And it's not the sandy beaches and swaying plum trees they're after.

  * * *

  Less than 2 miles off the east end of Long Island and 85 miles from New York City lies an unimposing 840-acre island, unidentified on most maps. On the few where it can be found, Plum Island is marked red or yellow, stamped u.s. government — restricted dangerous animal diseases.

  Six huge ferries, each carrying 1,000 people and 120 cars, pass within one quarter mile of it every day, making the journey from Orient Point— the tip of Long Island's North Fork — to New London, Connecticut. More than one million people live and spend their summers in the Hamptons, within a scant mile or two from its shores, yet few know the name of this pork chop-shaped island that lies on the periphery of the largest population center in the United States. Even fewer can say whether it is inhabited or why it doesn't exist on the map.

/>   * * *

  I've often been asked why I decided to write about Plum Island. In the summer of 1992, as part of a ritual before picking up a friend from the Connecticut-to-New York ferry, I drove out to Orient Point, the end of the narrow strip of rural land that lies on either side of Route 25. Abandoning my car at the end of the road, I hiked through a mile's worth of tall beach grass, making my way to the very tip of Long Island. I climbed a high rocky bluff that sloped off to a sandbar that stretched far into the water, until it stopped abruptly at an ancient lighthouse that looked more like a cast-iron coffeepot than a warning beacon. Crouching on the bluff, I gazed at the waves from the Long Island Sound as they met the current of Gardiner's Bay — the precipice of the great Atlantic Ocean — crashing together, spitting spindrift high into the air, and falling against the shore. Through the light haze, ten miles off to the north, was the long coastline of Connecticut; between us, the ferry slowly chugged its way toward me. Out past the lighthouse was a wide green landmass. It looked deserted except for a powder blue water tower that sprouted above a green canopy. The island triggered a series of thoughts — rumors of biological warfare tests, news stories about deadly virus experiments, talk about Lyme disease being hatched there, stories about a man who worked on Plum Island and contracted some strange, undiagnosed ailment during a storm. But it doesn't make sense — it looks so pristine! What is happening out there? And why?

  The long white ferry charged into the foreground, sailing through Plum Gut, the deep, narrow strait between where I sat and Plum Island. As I returned to the car, I resolved to uncover one day exactly what Plum Island is.

  Those were my thoughts over a decade ago. Years later, fresh out of law school, I began to revisit that haunted place, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. To begin unraveling the real story — what happened (and still happens) behind the island's locked gates — I needed to educate myself in a variety of divergent topics. I immersed myself in research on a wide range of far-reaching subjects — geology, colonial history, animal disease, human disease, animal psychology, microbiology, biological warfare, coastal artillery, terrorism, lighthouses, and American Indians. I spoke to scientists, government officials, local residents, historians, and past and present employees of Plum Island, collecting firsthand accounts of this inexplicably anonymous place. Friends thought I had become a bit fanatical about the topic. They were right — the passion of "Plum" (as it's called by those in the know) had consumed me.

  Research turned up disquieting descriptions of Plum Island, like "Right Out of The Andromeda Strain" and "Uncle Sam's Island of No Escape" and "The Setting of an Ian Fleming Novel." And my personal favorite: "Asking for directions to Plum Island is like asking for directions to Frankenstein's castle." One local newspaper took an opposing viewpoint, glibly describing Plum Island as a place where "white-coated scientists work on animal viruses before they wash up, climb aboard a ferry and then eat dinner with their families. It's no more exciting or diabolical than that." As I delved deep into researching and writing this story, I harkened back to the science fiction novels I enjoyed as a child, and came to a numbing realization: scientific truth can indeed be stranger than science fiction.

  I came to realize that the USDA is far more than wholesome Grade A eggs, and that veterinarians are not all "doggy docs" who tend gingerly to the well-being of golden retrievers and calicos. Once the story began to take shape, those mom-and-apple-pie feelings quickly dissipated. I found Plum Island to be more than a nearby atoll covered in a blanket of trees and secrecy. The island's vibrant history stretches back 350 years: it was once an ancient Indian fishing outpost, later colonized by early English settlers, then a sheep and cattle farm, a Revolutionary War battleground, a rendezvous for the British in 1812, a coastal defense fort, a submarine mine factory, and an Army biological warfare laboratory. Since 1954, the ostensible mission of Plum Island's Animal Disease Center has been to protect America's $100 billion livestock industry and defend it from foreign viruses, like the foot-and-mouth disease virus epidemic that ravaged Europe in 2001. After September 11, 2001, its mission returned to biological warfare.

  Today, it is home to virginal beaches, cliffs, forests, ponds, bogs, trails, paths, roads, buildings, and people — and the deadliest germs that have ever roamed the Earth.

  * * *

  On the last of my six voyages to Plum Island, I toured the island grounds with retired draftsman Ben Robins. He carried a flashlight in his rear jeans pocket, and wielded a two-foot machete in his left hand. We climbed through the Army bunkers and coastal defense installations of Spanish-American War vintage, while thorns and brush from everywhere snapped into my face. Ben knew every inch of Plum Island because he had to — for decades it was his job to draw the maps and blueprints. I quickly realized Plum Island is like a preserve that hasn't known much orderly planting, pruning, or occasional TLC. "We have industrial grade poison ivy," said Ben, pointing out pea-sized gray clusters reaching out to touch someone along the overgrown dirt trails. It's a dense jungle on the eastern seaboard — perhaps the most untouched, uncared for, undeveloped, and unnoticed spit of land around.

  We reached a high bluff on the island's east end and entered an old Army weather station. Up a narrow crumbling staircase was a lookout room with a wind-speed detector and wind cups twirling in the breeze, hand-painted signal flags, and a Morse-code alphabet key. The room was littered with glass from broken thin slat windows and bird dung. Heavy brush concealed a breathtaking view of the Atlantic.

  On the way out, I noticed a weathered gray metal ammunition storage box behind the door on the first floor. Brushing off decades of dust, I read faded stenciling, printed sideways along the box: sprayer — chemc — engineers, troop supply. I wondered what it was used for. It is the highest point on the island, so outdoor tests spraying pathogens or insect vectors would have been run from here. But Ben was outside calling my name. I dashed out to meet him and continued the tour.

  In the van returning to the lab for lunch, I looked down at my khakis. A burst of heat flashed up through my legs straight to my gut as I saw about eight or so tiny black dots, a few on each pant leg — immediately I realized I was covered in ticks. I carefully brushed them off onto the floor of the minivan, wondering why I'd been trekking through these overgrown woods with a short-sleeved shirt and no hat. Looking at the front passenger seat, where Ben was chatting amiably with our driver, I noticed with new interest his red mesh baseball cap and long sleeves. I tried to keep cool, but I was perspiring like crazy.

  It didn't help that an awful burning smell joined us in the van at that point, hard to describe except to say the stench reminded me of something noxious that shouldn't be burned or smelled. Then we saw a thick cloud creeping slowly to the southwest. Ben whirled around on me and chirped, "Look — it's time to burn the animals!" The rolling black cloud was heading for Gardiner's Island, on its way over to greet Sag Harbor and the Hamptons.

  When we stopped for lunch back at the laboratory, I excused myself and went to the men's bathroom. There I swiped off seven ticks attached to my shirt, and four more on my the inside of my pant leg. I ripped my fingers through my scalp, tilting my head toward the mirror in desperation, not knowing what to do should I see a tiny black dot attached to my skin.

  Nervous as hell, I went into the stall, peeled off my clothes, and examined every inch of fabric and every inch of my body. Three more ticks met their demise in the toilet bowl. Thankfully, I found nothing, and I would contract nothing. The rest of the day, I flicked more black spots off my clothing and covered my head with my hands as we hiked under the trees.

  * * *

  The uncomfortable connections between West Nile virus, Lyme disease, and Plum Island unfortunately proved difficult to dismiss as my research deepened. Of course you cannot coax an island to speak up for itself. To chart the story of Plum Island, then, you must see the people that "touch" the place. They may have been there for a month or for thirty-five years, or they may nev
er have set foot on its soil, but in some way they've shaped Plum Island. Through the lives of these individuals and the one common thread they share, the story unfolds. Among the key people in this book is Dr. Jerry Callis, a Georgia farm boy who devoted his life to animal disease research and rose through government ranks to command Plum Island for more than thirty years. There is Dr. Callis's successor, Dr. Roger Breeze, an Englishman enraptured by the American meritocracy, seeking the grail of scientific glory. There are those caught in the cross fire — people like Phillip Piegari, a support employee mired in a biological meltdown during a violent hurricane, a catastrophe that would have easily been avoided were it not for management's recklessness, and Frances Demorest, one of Plum Island's oldest veterans, who paid a terrible price for speaking out. And while there aren't any three-headed chickens or five-legged cows as the USDA is quick to point out with a chuckle, you'll be introduced to Nazi germ warfare scientists, ancient American Indians, germ warriors, germ hunters, Mexican cowboys, the father of anthrax, virus outbreaks in New York's backyard, and a biological and environmental muddle about to boil over.

  Plum Island demands a carefully written, unbiased look, not from both sides, but from all sides. It needs to be probed by someone who isn't obsessed with rooting out government waste and corruption, or wed to conspiracy theories. The purpose of this book, then, is to explore the last half century on Plum Island in depth — a half century of biological experimentation and scientific breakthroughs, darkened by upheaval, concealment, and astonishingly careless management. Plum Island's inhabitants are in many ways the gang that couldn't shoot straight. Except here, this gang's ammunition is the deadliest germs known to mankind.