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expressing particular interest in having US munitions tested at Suffield,
since the Granite Peak, Utah, and Horn Island, Mississippi testing facilities
were scheduled for closing. He also indicated that the CWS regarded the
postwar development of BW as essential to US national security “on a
basis comparable to the Atomic Bomb.”
9
An important dimension of Canada's BW planning was direct linkages
with the scientists at the UK Microbiological Research Department. These
linkages were in part an extension of wartime cooperation, when key sci-
entists (David Henderson, Paul Fildes, Lord T. C. Stamp) had been closely
associated with the Suffield operation, and in part a result of British inter-
est in developing an offensive BW capability.
10
Within the hierarchy of
Canada's Department of National Defence (DND), there was certainly an
awareness of the top-secret Operation Red Admiral, which called for the
mobilization of Britain's scientific expertise “to bring into service by 1957
biological weapons comparable in strategic effect with the atomic bomb,
and defense measures against them.”
11
Moreover, during their frequent
North American forays, Porton scientists made a point of visiting Suffield
and Ottawa, as was the case in 1947, when David Henderson attended
the first Tripartite meeting at Suffield. On this occasion he noted that Ca-
nadian scientists retained “a very keen interest in BW Research and are
anxious that the facilities at Suffield should be fully utilized for co-opera-
tive effort with USA or United Kingdom, or both.” On the research front,
Henderson found DRES scientists of high quality, and was particularly
anxious to recruit University of British Columbia scientist Dr. Alex Wood,
professor of animal husbandry, as director of field operations for Opera-
tion Harness, the first of a series of British BW sea trials.
12
This ambitious undertaking was a continuation of wartime attempts to
determine the threat of BW in terms of agents, delivery systems, and pos-
sible defensive measures—building upon previous wartime trials carried
out at Suffield, Detrick, Dugway, and Porton Down itself. The maritime
exercises, however, had the great advantage of being able to use “hot”
pathogens—
Bacillus anthracis, Yersinia pestis,
and
Francisella tularensis
—in
order to test “the generally accepted belief that the most effective way to
distribute pathogenic bacteria was to produce airborne particles contain-
ing the virulent organism...[and] by the direct inhalation of such clouds
a percentage of casualties in man or animals would follow.”
13
Many of
the results obtained from Operation Harness were reassessed during fol-
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