The attached article appeared in The Dallas Morning News on Saturday, August 16, 1980. Written by Washington correspondent Barbara Strong,

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it reported that the U.S. Army Chemical Corps secretly used cattle and several American cities to study how a simulated biological or chemical-warfare contaminant could spread through the food supply.

The article was based principally on an Army report obtained through government records. Its broad account is consistent with the Army’s official 1977 history, congressional hearings, and later National Academy of Sciences reviews. However, the article combines three separate programs:

1. Tests involving cattle and meat distribution.

2. Open-air dispersion tests over cities and rural areas.

3. Experiments involving military volunteers at Fort Detrick.

That distinction is important because the three Fort Detrick deaths were not deaths among the cattle-test population or Project Whitecoat volunteers.

1. The Fort Worth cattle experiment

According to the article:

• Army personnel
  went to the Fort Worth Stockyards.
• Cattle arriving
  for slaughter were sprayed with a detectable “deodorant.”
• The cattle were
  then processed normally.
• Investigators
  followed the contaminated or “tagged” meat through commercial
  distribution.
• The objective was
  to determine how widely a contaminant placed on livestock might travel and
  which sections of the country might receive the resulting meat.
• The Fort Worth
  portion was reportedly conducted on November 30 and December 1, 1964.

The material was a tracer or simulant—not anthrax or another lethal warfare organism. It allowed investigators to detect where material placed on the cattle subsequently appeared.

The test nevertheless raises substantial ethical issues: livestock handlers, processing employees, retailers, and consumers apparently were not told that an Army warfare-distribution study was being conducted.

2. Cities involved in the related cattle/meat tests

The article states that a second series was conducted from December 3, 1964, through January 15, 1965. The following locations can be read from the article:

The article does not establish that every city was sprayed from aircraft. These appear to have been livestock-contamination and commercial-distribution studies in or around major stockyards and meatpacking centers.

I found no reliable public record showing that this particular cattle-and-meat tracer program continued after January 15, 1965, much less through 2025.

3. Broader city tests after December 3, 1964

If “similar tests” means all documented military simulations of biological attacks—not merely the cattle experiment—the confirmed post–December 3, 1964 urban locations include the following:

The Army also considered or planned terminal tests in Chicago and San Francisco, but surviving public documents do not conclusively establish that every proposed operation was carried out. They therefore should not be presented as confirmed releases.

The Army ultimately acknowledged 239 open-air biological-warfare-related trials from 1949 through 1969. Depending on how individual releases are counted, the National Research Council later described 160 tests at 66 military and civilian locations and 34 zinc-cadmium-sulfide test series. These totals differ because “test,” “trial,” “release,” and “location” were counted differently. National Research Council history, 1977 Army and Senate records.

4. Dallas-area tests

The article says:

“The military also sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide in the Dallas area in 47 tests between 1959 and 1964.”

The 47 figure apparently refers to individual releases rather than 47 wholly separate experimental programs.

Zinc cadmium sulfide, abbreviated ZnCdS, was a fluorescent powder:

• Its particles were
  approximately comparable in size to particles used in aerosol
  biological-warfare models.
• It could be
  collected on filters and detected under ultraviolet light.
• Releases could
  therefore be followed across a city or rural area.
• Army contractors
  released ZnCdS elsewhere from airplanes, building rooftops, towers, and
  moving vehicles.

The National Research Council confirmed that the Army released ZnCdS from aircraft, rooftops, and vehicles in 33 urban and rural areas. It concluded in 1997 that estimated exposures from the documented tests were below levels expected to cause illness, while also acknowledging that some original exposure records were missing. National Academies assessment.

The attached article does not provide enough information to establish:

• The exact Dallas
  release points.
• Whether every
  Dallas release used ZnCdS.
• Whether releases
  occurred from buildings, vehicles, aircraft, or a combination.
• The individual
  dates of all 47 releases.
• The amount
  released in each event.

Consequently, the newspaper’s “47 tests” claim is historically significant but should not be converted into a detailed location list without the underlying Army test logs.

5. Victoria, Texas

The article says that during August 1965:

• Army personnel
  drove two automobiles around Victoria.
• The cars sprayed
  zinc cadmium sulfide.
• They also
  disseminated lycopodium spores.
• Investigators
  placed approximately 166 collection or sampling stations in and around the
  city.
• The object was to
  measure the movement, concentration, and recoverability of the simulated
  aerosol.

Materials

Zinc cadmium sulfide: A fine fluorescent inorganic tracer. It could be detected at very low concentrations under ultraviolet light.

Lycopodium spores: Dry club-moss spores that form a fine yellow powder. They were commonly used in pharmaceuticals, fireworks, fingerprint powders, and laboratory measurements. Because their particles are uniform and easily counted, they could serve as a biological-particle simulant.

The article reported an Army position that the Victoria materials were “completely harmless.” That wording should be understood as the Army’s 1960s assessment, not an absolute modern scientific guarantee. Later reviewers distinguished between the very small estimated dose received during the tests and the known hazards of sufficiently high or prolonged cadmium exposure.

6. Soldiers recruited at Fort Sam Houston

The soldiers mentioned in the article were associated principally with Project Whitecoat.

What Project Whitecoat was

From 1954 to 1973, the Army recruited approximately 2,300 Seventh-day Adventist servicemen, most of whom were noncombatant conscientious objectors. Many were approached while receiving medical training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. They were then sent to Fort Detrick, Maryland, where the actual infectious-disease experiments usually occurred.

Research involved:

• Q fever.
• Tularemia.
• Yellow fever.
• Venezuelan,
  Eastern, and Western equine encephalitis.
• Chikungunya.
• Plague.
• Typhus.
• Rocky Mountain
  spotted fever.
• Adenovirus and
  respiratory diseases.
• Experimental
  vaccines, antibiotics, and protective treatments.

Some volunteers were exposed to controlled doses of organisms; others received experimental vaccines or served as unexposed comparison subjects. The program contributed to vaccines and treatments, but informed consent and the ability of enlisted men to refuse participation remain subjects of ethical debate.

Number killed

There is no substantiated evidence that three Fort Sam Houston recruits or Project Whitecoat volunteers were killed in these experiments.

The most supportable findings are:

• Approximately
  2,300 men participated.
• No Project
  Whitecoat volunteer is documented as dying during the experimental program
  from the agent administered to him.
• A 2005 follow-up
  study of 358 exposed and 164 unexposed former participants found no
  conclusive overall association between participation and later adverse
  health outcomes. The study was limited because it did not examine every
  participant and relied considerably on self-reporting. Medical follow-up study.

The article’s statement that biological testing “killed three volunteers” appears to conflate Project Whitecoat with three occupational deaths among Fort Detrick employees.

7. The two anthrax deaths

These men were Fort Detrick workers—not soldiers killed in the cattle trials and not verified Project Whitecoat experimental deaths.

A contemporary retrospective identifies the first victim as a microbiologist and the second as an electrician. University of Maryland Capital News Service report.

These deaths were occupational laboratory infections. They should not be described as deliberate anthrax injections or as evidence that Project Whitecoat volunteers were intentionally killed.

Anthrax deaths after 1958

The most notable later American anthrax deaths occurred during the 2001 letter attacks. Twenty-two people became ill and five died. Those deaths were criminal attacks, not acknowledged military experiments. FBI Amerithrax history.

I found no verified record of another Project Whitecoat or Fort Sam Houston volunteer dying from experimentally administered anthrax through 2025.

8. The 1964 “viral encephalitis” death

The 1980 article calls the third Fort Detrick death “viral encephalitis.” Later historical sources identify him more precisely:

• Albert Nickel
• A 53-year-old Fort
  Detrick animal caretaker
• Died in 1964
• Infected after an
  incident involving an animal carrying Machupo virus
• Machupo virus
  causes Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, not ordinary seasonal
  encephalitis

Some early Army summaries used the broader or apparently incorrect expression “viral encephalitis.” Later accounts describe the illness as Bolivian hemorrhagic fever. A peer-reviewed historical review confirms three occupational fatalities at Fort Detrick—two anthrax cases and one viral case in 1964. Peer-reviewed historical review.

Thus, the confirmed Fort Detrick occupational death total discussed in this article is three, but they were employees or laboratory workers, not three Fort Sam Houston volunteers:

1. William Allen Boyles — anthrax, 1951.

2. Joel Eugene Willard — anthrax, 1958.

3. Albert Nickel — Machupo virus/Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, 1964.

9. Did similar secret city spraying continue until 2025?

I found no credible evidence that the Army’s Cold War program of secretly releasing biological simulants over unwarned American cities continued through 2025.

The documented chronology is:

• Open-air
  offensive-program testing: principally 1949–1969.
• President Richard
  Nixon renounced offensive U.S. biological warfare in November 1969.
• The United States
  signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972.
• Subsequent
  military biological research has been officially limited to defense,
  detection, vaccination, protective equipment, and treatment.
• Modern field
  exercises may use inert tracers, test kits, or controlled environmental
  sampling, but that is not evidence that pathogenic agents are secretly
  sprayed over cities.

The National Security Archive’s declassified collection confirms Nixon’s 1969 decision and provides the Army’s official history of the program. National Security Archive biological-warfare records.

Bottom line

The central story was real: the Army conducted secret Cold War studies to learn how simulated biological contaminants could spread through livestock, meat-distribution networks, buildings, transportation systems, cities, and large geographical areas.

The strongest conclusions are:

• Fort Worth cattle
  were sprayed with a tracer in late 1964.
• Related livestock
  studies were conducted in six identified meatpacking areas.
• Dallas reportedly
  experienced 47 Army tracer releases between 1959 and 1964.
• Victoria was
  sprayed from moving automobiles in August 1965 using zinc cadmium sulfide
  and lycopodium spores.
• Fort Sam Houston
  was an important recruiting location for Project Whitecoat, but most
  experiments occurred at Fort Detrick.
• No confirmed
  Project Whitecoat volunteer was killed by an experiment.
• The three deaths
  mentioned in the article were Fort Detrick occupational infections: two
  anthrax deaths and one Machupo-virus death.
• No verified
  evidence establishes continuation of the Cold War unwarned urban-release
  program from 1970 through 2025.

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