Dangerous Games

The BSH-4 facility at Fort Detrick is a danger to the American public

This image is from “People’s Daily Online,” which is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) . It is used for educational purposes only.

At a BSL-4 high-security risk laboratory located at Fort Detrick, an army base in Frederick, MD, during March 2025 there was a serious incident involving two laboratory workers. It is reported that one of the workers poked holes in the high biocontainment suit of another worker, potentially exposing the latter to at least one dangerous pathogen, although the specific pathogen was not disclosed.

Dr. Richard H. Ebright reports that the NIH BSL-4 facility at Ft. Detrick is contractor-staffed and contractor-operated. So, neither NIH nor military staff were directly involved in the incident. He found evidence that this facility was staffed and operated through a $116 million minority-set-aside contract to a Native Hawaiian LLC contractor located in an office park in Orlando, Florida.

These sorts of contracting arrangements are common in the DoD, and reflect preferential award ranking conferred to companies that are native American-owned, which has resulted in a rather odd business model of shell small minority-owned company prime contractors under which the usual larger contractors operate as subcontractors. The small minority-owned company prime contractor is granted a few years to operate with these special privileges and then typically folds, a new company is formed with the same basic ownership, the special privileges then apply to the newco for the same period, and the cycle repeats itself. This works for the large corporate “subcontractors” as it provides them some legal cover in terms of compliance with burdensome Federal Acquisition Regulation contract terms and conditions. A win-win for all concerned except taxpayer, government, and warfighter.

A BSL-4 laboratory is the highest level of biocontainment designed for work with the most dangerous and exotic pathogens. There are reportedly only fourteen Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratories in the United States. The level of training and skill required to work in these labs is extensive, and there are relatively very few people with the skills needed to work directly with such pathogens. Furthermore, Personnel must pass FBI-led security risk assessments (SRAs) to handle Tier 1 agents like anthrax.

These are the types of pathogens housed in the facilities, most are considered tier 1 pathogens, which are considered the most deadly:

Generated by CHAT-GP3

These facilities are supposedly for the development of new vaccines, as it is the official narrative that bioweapons research in the United States ended in 1969. Research yielding new technologies or information with the potential for both benevolent and harmful purposes is referred to as “dual-use research.” The justification for bio-weapons research is therefore carefully parsed to suggest that there are alternative, more benign reasons for conducting this research. But the dual-use narrative doesn’t account for the anthrax research that led to the weaponized anthrax spore leaks that were associated with the anthrax attacks in 2001.

What is commonly written about that attack is that the anthrax used was the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis. This strain is known as a highly virulent laboratory strain that was originally isolated from a cow in Texas in 1981. It is widely used by the U.S. Army for vaccine development and challenge studies due to its potency. Although it was reported that the anthrax was weaponized, there is little information available on why anthrax was being weaponized at Fort Detrick in 2021, which was done so by making it capable of being aerosolized. Once aerosolized, anthrax then becomes a weapon capable of mass destruction via a variety of weapons platforms. Anthrax is relatively easy to weaponize, and has been used in biological attacks globally during the twentieth century.

Following the anthrax attacks of 2001 that resulted in five deaths, Congress significantly strengthened oversight of select agents by passing the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001 and the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 requiring HHS & USDA to publish regulations for possession, use, and transfer of select agents. However, these regulations only include requirements for registration, security risk assessments, restricted access, security, biosafety, restricted experiments, incident response, training, transfers, records, inspections, notification of theft, loss, or release, and civil penalties. These regulations are tricky, and a careful analysis suggests that they do not appear to specify what these agents can’t be used for.

The weaponized anthrax was actively being manipulated in 2001 by Dr. Ivins and his staff at Fort Detrick. There is not a chance in heck that making anthrax a respiratory pathogen is necessary for development of a vaccine. Hence, the work being conducted on anthrax in 2001 was not bio-defense or dual-use but bio-weapons research. Those writing of the anthrax attacks at the time somehow miss this logical conclusion. Just what the heck was the army lab doing – making anthrax a weapon of mass destruction?

After this event, Congress appointed Dr. Anthony Fauci to head the BSL-4 laboratory at Fort Detrick, which was repositioned under NIAID, and in compensation for this added responsibility awarded him a substantial raise with specific pay adjustments for his biodefense-related work. When he retired in 2024, he was earning almost half a million dollars a year.

So, what was and is now going on at the BSL-4 lab at Fort Detrick lab is anyone’s guess.

Fast forward to this year’s “incident.” An incident that potentially could have resulted in a mass casualty event. This criminal act was not disclosed to the head of NIH, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, until weeks after it occurred. When he was alerted (after the fact), he closed down the laboratory and announced the incident to the press.

The titillating aspect of this crime is that this was a “lover’s spat.” The two co-workers involved were in a toxic relationship that had turned sour. But how is it even possible that a person with advanced safety training in BSL-4 laboratory techniques and having passed the FBI’s pass FBI-led security risk assessments, surreptitiously poke holes in another’s containment suit?

Now, we don’t know what pathogens they were working on, but… At the very least, this should have triggered a police investigation and arrest.

If the intent was to cause serious bodily harm, the accused should face charges of aggravated assault or assault with a deadly weapon, both of which are felonies. If the pathogen(s) being worked with were deadly, charges might have even included attempted manslaughter or murder, even attempted mass murder. Of note, Dr. Richard Ebright asserts on X that the co-worker did try to murder the other worker.

However, a search of arrest records or reports from Frederick County, MD, reveals no such arrest records. Which certainly makes one wonder. What the heck is going on at that military base?

The incident is not isolated; it is part of a broader pattern of safety lapses at Fort Detrick, with additional (details undisclosed) incidents reported in 2024. These repeated breaches have highlighted what officials and outside experts carefully describe as a “poor culture of safety” at the facility. Problems cited include poor documentation of select agents (dangerous pathogens), discrepancies between inventory logs and actual stock levels, and a general lack of psychological screening for personnel handling high-risk materials.

In 2019, CDC Director Robert Redfield closed Fort Detrick after an inspection revealed leaks and mechanical issues in a newly installed chemical system meant for decontaminating wastewater at the facility. These safety concerns heightened worries about possible releases of dangerous biological agents, leading the CDC to pause research activities at the site until the problems were addressed.

The details of the shutdown were not publicly disclosed at the time, with the CDC citing national security as the reason for keeping information about the closure private. This lack of transparency raised public concern and prompted requests for more information regarding possible health and safety risks associated with the laboratory. The facility reopened by the end of March 2020 (!! Key date relevant to the COVID timeline) after resolving the remaining wastewater issues.

Notably and admittedly a rabbit hole, but some of the above research was sourced from CHAT-GPT3. So, as usual, the references were reviewed to weed out the propaganda. The main reference source that emerged was the official newspaper of the CCP. For a mind-blowing exercise of alternate reality theories to the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, read that article linked above and then the following article titled: “Politicians told to stay out of virus origins debate.” Notably, several inaccuracies are present in those articles, including the claim that the USA has never ratified the bioweapons convention and is the only country not to do so. Once one finds such errors, the entire document becomes suspect.

Back to the story at hand…

Dr. Bhattacharya, Director of NIH, wrote on X that the

“ongoing investigation revealed a pattern — going back to the Biden administration — of safety not taken as seriously as it ought. So with Sec. Kennedy’s blessing, I immediately ordered all work to halt & all dangerous pathogens secured. I won’t reopen the lab until I am satisfied that it can be done with zero risk to public safety. No more lab-generated pandemics!”

It is unclear when NIH will give the green light to reopen this BSL-4 laboratory, but this event is yet another warning signal that bio-defense and bio-weapons research must be largely shut down.

What we do know is that in this instance, NIH acted quickly and responsibly to not only address the issue but to alert the American people transparently. Or as transparently as a classified incident such as this can be reported on.

It is time to not only end all gain-of-function, it is time to stop dangerous dual-use research, which includes both bio-defense and bio-weapons development. Human beings are imperfect, become psychologically unhinged from time to time, and can be prone to a wide range of dangerous instincts and actions. Highly pathogenic organisms and high-pressure scientific research have repeatedly led to containment “errors” and mistakes that put the entire population at risk.

Is the juice really worth the squeeze?