[CPEO-MEF] Fort Detrick's Tower of Doom To Come Down

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Maryland
Fort Detrick's Tower of Doom To Come Down
Stories of Anthrax Production Survive as Feared Building Nears Its End
By David Snyder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 9, 2003; Page C01

The old laboratory, closed for decades, is widely known in Frederick
County as "the tower of doom" -- a nearly windowless, seven-story
structure of dark brick looming over the Army's Fort Detrick. It was the
cloistered, pressure-sealed edifice in which Cold War scientists brewed
microbes for the U.S. military's biological weapons program.

The program was halted long ago, the government says. Now only the
building -- Building 470 -- and its legends remain.

It's a sort of haunted house, said Al Weinberg, a Hood College professor
and Frederick native. "When you were showing somebody around" the
county, he said, "you could drive by and say, 'There's the Anthrax Hotel
-- it's so dangerous, they sealed it up, and nobody's been in there for
years.' "

Before the Nixon administration declared an end to the biological
weapons program, the lab-coated warrior-researchers of Building 470
spent almost two decades cooking up microscopic payloads meant to
fatally sicken America's enemies. The building has been mostly
unoccupied since 1969 and was officially decommissioned in 1971. Ever
since, the story has persisted in Frederick that the tower is
contaminated.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45811-2003Feb8.html

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