The French Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 110

stock of studies concerning germ warfare and to lay the foundations of an
organization that will undertake such studies.” 4 The meeting was chaired
by General Devers. Also present were Lieutenant Colonel Ailleret; a rep-
resentative of the Service de Santé des Armées; the surgeon general,
Costedoat; and Colonel Krebs, representing the Comité Scientifique de la
Défense Nationale. In the preliminaries to the discussion General Devers
said that it was “a duty to undertake studies in this field.” 5 The conclu-
sions of the meeting mentioned the need to “propose to the minister of
war the creation of a commission that will be his technical advisory body”
on matters of biological warfare. This commission would have as its mis-
sions the establishment of a research program and the implementation of
a plan, which would be entrusted to the French intelligence agencies, to
gather information on the military biological activity of other principal
nations. Among the military and civil research organizations capable of
undertaking the work necessary for the creation of a BW program, partic-
ipants at the meeting identified the prophylaxis laboratory of the Centre
d'Etudes du Bouchet (CEB), the laboratories of the Service de Santé des
Armées, the Army veterinary research laboratories, and the laboratory
of the Chemical Weapons Section of the Service Technique de l'Armée
(STA).
During the meeting, Surgeon General Costedoat drew up a list of
French initiatives in biological warfare and detailed the knowledge ac-
quired by France during its previous biological program between 1921
and 1940. 6 He described material and documents seized from Germany
by French forces which proved that the Germans were interested in this
subject, although it would not have been possible for him to specify the
nature and scale of these seizures. He also detailed the scope of the Amer-
ican program, citing the Merck Report of the US War Department as his
principal source, as well as the British and Soviet programs, in particular
the Aral Sea installation, Vozrozdeniye Island. Costedoat added that the
only organization working on these matters in France since 1945 was
the Commission Médicale de Défense contre la Guerre Moderne, the cre-
ation of which had been authorized by the military cabinet on 24 Decem-
ber 1946. Forming part of the Direction Centrale du Service de Santé
des Armées, this commission, chaired by Costedoat, was subdivided into
three sections: chemical, microbiological, and nuclear. 7
Referring to the principal recommendations of this meeting, Colonel