Anthrax War: Inside the Vault | ARTE/CBC

The U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground is vast top-secret testing range that is larger than the state of Rhode Island, hidden in one of the most remote parts of the country - the Great Salt Desert of Utah. For more than six decades this is where the military has been testing and developing its most deadly weapons.

Dugway has a long history of working with anthrax and is officially the only lab in the US capable of "weaponizing" anthrax - the process in which anthrax spores are milled and refined into microscopic single spores which are tiny enough to be breathed into the lungs, making it a deadly killer.

The anthrax powder used in the 2001 Anthrax Attacks is considered by many experts to be the most sophisticated and refined ever seen. Yet the FBI has pinned the blame on U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins who was working at the U.S Army's Fort Detrick lab in Maryland. Detrick does not have the equipment to weaponize anthrax, nor did Ivins have the skill set to produce this kind of sophisticated powder.

The FBI has recently suggested that the anthrax attacks powder was not weapons grade or super refined.But many experts suspect that the anthrax actually came from Dugway.

In this interview Doctor Alan Jeff Mohr, chief scientist at Dugway's "Life Sciences" lab where anthrax and other pathogens are weaponized, admits that the powder in the attack envelopes was "milled down to one micron single spores" - an extraordinary feat of engineering. He also admits that Dugway "is probably the only lab in the country" that weaponizes anthrax.

Why is Dugway weaponizing anthrax and in what quantities?

Is Bruce Ivins a fall guy?

What secrets are hidden in the desert?
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