The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

THE little-known fact the country was once used as a site for biological and chemical warfare testing by both American and British governments has resurfaced with local activists drawing links to the need for a functioning Freedom of Information Act.

Save The Bays legal director Fred Smith, QC, told The Tribune he was shocked to learn of warfare testing in the early 1950s.

British scientists and military personnel - in two secret operations - tested the efficacy of biological weapons on animals 60 miles off the coast of Nassau without the knowledge of local people. The tests ran until 1957 when the British abandoned this type of research and destroyed stockpiles.

Mr Smith said: “I am shocked that The Bahamas was used as a guinea pig for biological warfare in the 1950s. The reports are to say the least alarming and unsettling.

“Operation Ozone, which was apparently launched about 60 miles south of Nassau in 1954 must be explained by The Bahamas and UK governments.”

Mr Smith added: “This issue again highlights the absolute critical need for a Freedom of Information Act in The Bahamas so that the citizens in this country can find out what various governments have done to us in the past, and what may be going on now under our very noses in complete ignorance.”

Detailed reports of the British weapons tests first surfaced in the UK in 2001 but appear never to have been reported fully here in The Bahamas.

In The Tribune’s files there is only a passing reference to the experiments, written in an article by this newspaper’s late columnist, Larry Smith, on the diaries of the Countess of Ranfurly.

“Perhaps the oddest item in Hermione’s diary,” he wrote, “was a passing reference to a top secret British military operation during the social chit-chat at Government House. We are talking about Indochina and the McCarthy trials in the US. Here we have an American submarine exercise going on and germ warfare experiments. Very hush hush.”

Mr Smith continued: “In fact, the British conducted several trials with biological warfare agents in the Bahamas, Antigua, Scotland and other places. Operation Ozone in 1954 and Operation Negation in 1955 experimented on animals on remote islands in the Bahamas, without the knowledge of local people.”

Politicians The Tribune has spoken to all said they had no knowledge of the tests being carried out.

The details of the experiments were published in research by Brian Balmer, a specialist in science policy at University College London, who uncovered extracts from declassified documents that show the British military’s interest in biological weapons after the Second World War. The potential impact of biological weapons was at one point considered to be equal in destructive power and usefulness to nuclear weapons, according to Mr Balmer.

Mr Balmer was able to confirmed five open-air trials of dangerous bacteria and viruses had been carried out at sea in the late 1940s and 1950s - three in the Caribbean and two off Stornoway in the Hebrides. The British decided to move the experiments to The Bahamas as the wind conditions in the Hebrides were too strong, disrupting the effectiveness of the aerosol weapons.

Mr Balmer uncovered a wide range of pathogens were used including anthrax. There was also brucella and francisella tularensis, which cause severe fever. Pasteurella pestis, the plague bacterium, was released in the first Hebrides trials, despite safety concerns.

A highly infectious and debilitating, if rarely fatal, virus called Venezuelan equine encephalitis was deliberately released in trials off the at Green Cay, 60 miles south of Nassau and off the coast of Andros, in 1954. Planning Operation Ozone, defence officials cheerfully suggested there would be “no adverse effect on the tourist trade”.

British servicemen who crewed the vessels carrying out the tests were not told they involved in biological weapons until after the Ozone flotilla had set sail for the Caribbean. One lab technician caught brucellosis from the test samples; his relatives were told that disease was “frequently contracted in tropical climates”.

The test rig was made of 35 linked rubber dinghies each with a crate for a live sheep, a box for a monkey and a carrier for three guinea pigs. During preparations, two of the dinghies were taken by sharks.

A video explaining the scientific process used for Operation Ozone can be found on YouTube. It centres on the use of a 200ft long and 60ft wide pontoon. It was 10ft deep and used weighted tanks filled with water to angle the pontoon until its slope was level with the water for optimum wind flow.

Animal samples were positioned in an arc with a 75ft radius, and sprayed with germs from various distances simulating the dispersion of a bomb.

A total of 2,400 guinea pigs and 100 monkeys were taken for experimentation. They were fed pellets and “green stuff” and given distilled sea water to drink. The guinea pigs were held eight to a cage, while the monkeys were kept in individual cages.

For loading on to the pontoon, guinea pigs were put in individual boxes with no room to move and only their heads exposed.

Animals were loaded from a holding vessel on to a control boat that took crews to the pontoon where animals were offloaded.

The control boat directed the trials by radio, ordering the detonation of trial weapons from a safe distance. Once a “cloud” of the pathogen being tested had “passed over” the pontoon the exposed animals were recovered go be held for observation and postmortem to see how effective the weapon had been.

Fresh animals would then be brought on to the pontoon and the test repeated, either with the same pathogen or a different agent. There were usually three trials per day. Waste and corpses were disposed of by incinerator.

Yesterday, Mr Smith said: “I call on the government to immediately be transparent and accountable and to come clean with the Bahamian public urgently. The fact that we may have been guinea pigged for biological warfare is but one of the many issues that have surfaced in conspiracy with what other governments may have subjected the people of The Bahamas to.

“Others include the reports that the US government has secretly recorded all telephone and data conversations in The Bahamas, the past stories about the use of extremely destructive sonar weapons which resulted in hundreds of whales and dolphins dying off in The Bahamas, and what may or may not be happening now at AUTEC in Andros.

“The Bahamas belongs to Bahamians and it is not a crucible of experimentation for other governments and we need our government to protect us from foreign exploitation.”