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Spokesperson Chris Isleib did not respond to a request for comment on a passage from the Defense Department’s annual report sent to Congress last April that suggests the Pentagon is gearing up to resume the tests.

Resumption of open-air testing would reverse a long-standing moratorium adopted after a public outcry against them following accidents in the Sixties.

The Pentagon’s annual report apparently calls for both the developmental and operational “field testing of (CBW) full systems,” not just simulations.

The Pentagon’s report to Congress contains the following passage: “More than thirty years have passed since outdoor live-agent chemical tests were banned in the United States, and the last outdoor test with live chemical agent was performed, so much of the infrastructure for the field testing of chemical detectors no longer exists or is seriously outdated. The currently budgeted improvements in the T&E infrastructure will greatly enhance both the developmental and operational field testing of full systems, with better simulated representation of threats and characterization of system response.” “T&E” is an acronym for testing and evaluation.

“Either the military has resumed open-air testing already or they are preparing to do so,” said Francis Boyle, a University of Illinois Professor of International Law who authored the implementing legislation for the U.S. Biological Weapons Convention signed into law by President George Bush Sr. and who has tracked subsequent developments closely.

“I am stunned by the nature of this development,” Boyle said. “This is a major reversal of policy.” The 1972 treaty against germ warfare, which the U.S. signed, forbids developing weapons that spread disease, such as anthrax, a pathogen that is regarded by the military as “ideal” for conducting germ warfare.

“The Pentagon is fully prepared to launch biological warfare by means of anthrax,” Boyle charged. “All the equipment has been acquired and all the training conducted and most combat-ready members of U.S. armed forces have been given protective equipment and vaccines that allegedly would protect them from that agent.”