Project 112/SHAD: The Chemical-Biological Testing Program Kept Secret From Participants
From 1962 to 1973, the U.S. Army Deseret Test Center planned 134 chemical and biological tests. About 6,400 service members were identified as participants only years later, and they were never told which test they were in.
Read in Vietnamese →Between 1962 and 1973, the U.S. Army Deseret Test Center planned 134 chemical and biological tests. The military ran 50 of them and canceled 84. Years later, the Department of Defense identified about 6,400 service members who had taken part in at least one test. The shipboard part was called SHAD, short for Shipboard Hazard and Defense. The land tests watched how agents behaved in different environmental conditions. The people inside those tests were never told which test they were in.
The Department of Defense released those figures decades after the fact, not when the program ended. The Deseret Test Center closed in 1973, and its records were split among military services, sites, and archives. Only in 2002 did the government set up the Project 112/SHAD program to find participants and explain the tests. The program stopped in 1973, but organized notification began 29 years later. That gap turns a story about military testing into a question about hidden information.
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