Army lab’s leaders cited in safety flaws
Accidents at testing site were downplayed, data manipulated
Leaders of the Army lab responsible for an international anthrax scare had a long history of downplaying and dismissing serious accidents and mishaps as their staff worked with some of the world’s most deadly pathogens and nerve agents, a new military accountability review has found.
Despite being a major testing facility for the Army’s chemical and biological defense programs, the Dugway Proving Ground had appointed an unqualified biosafety officer who lacked the education and training to do the job. Other staff “regularly manipulated data” in important records certifying that pathogens being shipped to other labs were killed and safe for other researchers to use without special protective equipment, according to a copy of the investigation report provided to USA TODAY.
The review is the latest to examine how a research facility at Dugway could have mistakenly shipped live anthrax specimens — labeled as killed — for more than a decade to unsuspecting researchers developing detection equipment and diagnostic tests against bioweapons. The live anthrax ended up at nearly 200 private, academic and federal labs spread among every state plus nine foreign countries.
Dugway’s failures to fully kill anthrax specimens with radiation went undetected for more than a decade by military officials and federal lab inspectors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was only discovered last May, when a private biotech firm that received some of Dugway’s purportedly killed anthrax specimens did their own tests and found the spores could still grow.
Dugway’s authority to work with any potential bioterror pathogens remains suspended by federal lab regulators at the CDC. And in an interview with USA TODAY, Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr said Dugway will no longer be allowed to produce pathogen specimens for shipment to other facilities.
“They will make what they need for their own internal testing purposes,” Spoehr said, “but they will not be an exporter of biological products for the greater world or anybody else other than for Dugway’s internal use.”
The Army’s investigation has found that systemic issues contributed to Dugway’s live anthrax shipments, including gaps in scientific knowledge, poor lab practices and a “culture of complacency.”
Spoehr said all of the Pentagon’s biodefense labs remain under a self-imposed research moratorium while a new, unified lab oversight structure is put in place and protocols for working safely with pathogens are standardized and undergo scientific review. The process, especially creating verified kill methods for anthrax specimens — plus reliable tests to verify the spores are dead — could take another year, Army officials said.
Restarting the biodefense research is critical in developing a wide range of tests and equipment to protect against deadly pathogens, such as those that cause Ebola, plague, botulism and anthrax, said Maj. Gen. Brian Lein, commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. “We have to do this to protect our troops going into harm’s way,” he said.
Anthrax spores can be fatal if inhaled. More than 30 people who had contact with the Dugway specimens were put on antibiotics as a precaution after the live specimens started being discovered last May. No illnesses were reported.
The military’s accountability review, also called “15-6 investigation,” was launched last summer to determine whether there were any failures of leadership at the Dugway Proving Ground. An initial Pentagon investigation last year found that Dugway’s lab records showed a 20% failure rate when it used radiation kill anthrax specimens, and it also found indications that officials at the facility should have known there was a problem.
A USA TODAY NETWORK investigation published last year found hundreds of additional accidents with dangerous pathogens at corporate, university, government and military labs nationwide — and a system of self-policing and fragmented oversight that obscures failings by facilities and regulators.
USA TODAY reported last year that Dugway had previously faced a federal enforcement action in 2007 for improperly shipping live anthrax that was put through a different kill process that treated spores with chlorine dioxide. Records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed what experts said were egregious and cavalier failures by a Dugway scientist. In testing a batch of anthrax to confirm it had been thoroughly killed, the scientist saw that some was still alive and able to grow in a test tube — but simply threw out that tube and issued “death certificates” for the rest of the batch. A lab that received the specimens found that some of the anthrax bacteria it received also was still alive.
The new accountability review highlights Dugway’s 2007 mistaken shipment of live anthrax to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories as one of several red flags that should have triggered wider safety reviews and action years ago by the facility’s own leadership.
The 12 personnel who now face potential discipline for lapses in handling deadly toxins at Dugway include two former commanders and three other leaders at the Army post, four workers with oversight responsibilities and three technicians, Maj. Gen. Paul Ostrowski, the investigating officer, told USA TODAY. The 12 people identified range from mid-level government employees to now-Brig. Gen. William E. King IV, who was a colonel when he commanded Dugway from July 2009 to July 2011, the report says.
King was the only person facing sanctions named in the report, which was heavily redacted. As a general officer, King is considered a public figure and must be named, the Army said.
“Let me be clear, these acts in terms of accountability can be anything from counseling to retraining to remove and replace,” Ostrowski said.
As the investigating officer, Ostrowski does not recommend corrective action or punishment. Those decisions are left to local commanders.