Cold Warriors

A chilling look at the top biological warfare experts in the nation.

Photography by KAREN BALLARD

Highway 15 snakes between Frederick, Maryland, and Manassas, Virginia, passing a score of Washington bedroom communities along the way. Their historic names�Leesburg, Stumptown, Germantown�and colonial architecture belie the fact that this area is the seat of the nation�s modern biowarfare program. Frederick, in the north, is home to Fort Detrick and the Department of Defense�s leading biological lab, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the only DOD lab equipped to study extremely hazardous viruses at the highest biosafety level, Level 4. Biosafety Level 4 agents are those for which preventive or therapeutic intervention is usually unavailable�the Ebola and Marburg viruses, for example.

Manassas, a little more than an hour�s drive to the south, is the seat of the National Center for Biodefense at George Mason University. This fall, the university started offering doctoral and master�s degrees in biodefense; this is the only program of its kind in the nation. The faculty is made up of former top-level Soviet bioweapons scientists, as well as a former commander of USAMRIID.

In the following pages, Acumen profiles the leading figures in U.S. bioweapons research, who travel Highway 15 daily on their way to and from the army base and the university.

— Produced by Karen Mullarkey