Former Ft. Detrick Employee Says Bio Weapons Were Released in DC

FREDERICK, Md. (WUSA) -- A former Ft. Detrick employee says biological weapons were released into the air and the unsuspecting public was exposed. She says it happened in Washington, DC, during the Cold War. Dottie Blank, 77, says she worked as a secretary at Ft. Detrick from 1955 to 1989 ... She says members of the military would expose people in public to biological diseases.

"They called them the suitcase samplers," she said. "They would go down to DC, or where the train is, and they would use whatever they had mixed up and they would just sort of walk through like a regular person that was getting a train and they would let that out into the atmosphere." She says the diseases were known to make people sick, but not cause death. She says they would test the air to see how far the chemical traveled ...

Blank has Leukemia. She says Ft. Detrick has been providing her bottled water for years because chemicals were found in her water at home. She says she believes her illness was caused by chemicals from Ft. Detrick.
9 NEWS NOW
October 21, 2010