Project AGILE - Coverage - Subproject VII - OCONUS and CONUS Test Programs

OCONUS and CONUS Test Programs

Part of Project AGILE was Subproject VI and the OCONUS (Outside the CONtinental US) DEFOLIATION TEST PROGRAM was sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency under Project Agile, ARPA Order 423. Conducted by the United States Army Biological Center which was based at Fort Detrick, Maryland, one test program was conducted in Thailand in 1964 and 1965 to determine the effectiveness of aerial applications of Purple, Orange, and other candidate chemical agents in defoliation of upland jungle vegetation representative of Southeast Asia. Data provided by these techniques were used in comparative evaluation of defoliant chemicals in relation to rate, volume, season of application, canopy penetration, and vegetation response.

In 1962, the U.S. Army counterinsurgency school in Vietnam moved to Okinawa. USNS Schuyler Otis Bland (T-AK-277) was known to have brought highly classified "agriculture products" under armed guard to southeast Asia, Okinawa, and Panama. The ship’s logbook was found by Michelle Gatz and shows the ship was carrying classified cargo that was offloaded under armed guard at White Beach a U.S. Navy port on Okinawa’s east coast on April 25, 1962. After departing Okinawa in spring 1962, the Bland sailed to the Panama Canal Zone where, the Panamanian government asserts, the U.S. tested herbicides in the early 1960s.

The late author Sheldon H. Harris in his book "Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American cover up" wrote that, The test program, which began in fall 1962 and which was funded at least through fiscal year 1963, was considered by the Chemical Corps to be “an ambitious one.” The tests were designed to cover “not only trials at sea, but Arctic and tropical environmental tests as well.” The tests, presumably, were conducted at what research officers designated, but did not name, “satellite sites.” These sites were located both in the continental United States and in foreign countries. The tests conducted there were aimed at both human, animal, and plant reaction to BW. It is known that tests were undertaken in Cairo, Egypt, Liberia, in South Korea, and in Japan’s satellite province of Okinawa in 1961, or earlier.(Harris, 2002)

Sheldon H. Harris continued that, The Okinawa anti-crop research project may lend some insight to the larger projects 112 sponsored. BW experts in Okinawa and “at several sites in the Midwest and south:”conducted in 1961 “field tests” for wheat rust and rice blast disease. These tests met with “partial success” in the gathering of data, and led, therefore, to a significant increase in research dollars in fiscal year 1962 to conduct additional research in these areas. The money was devoted largely to developing “technical advice on the conduct of defoliation and anti-crop activities in Southeast Asia.” By the end of fiscal year 1962, the Chemical Corps had let or were negotiating contracts for over one thousand chemical defoliants. The Okinawa tests evidently were fruitful.(Harris, 2002)

Read more about this topic:  Project AGILE, Coverage, Subproject VII

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