U.S. military could hold 12 accountable over anthrax scandal

A dozen U.S. military individuals, including a brigadier general, could be held accountable for failing to taking actions that could have prevented the shipment of live anthrax spores to a number of laboratories in the U.S. and abroad in the past decade, according to a military investigation report released Friday.

The investigation focused on a lab at the Dugway Proving Ground, a U.S. army facility in Utah, from where it found at least 17 lots containing low concentrations of live anthrax spores were send to 194 laboratories in the U.S. and nine foreign countries between 2004 and 2015.

Although no individual or institution was directly responsible for the errors, "we did find through evidence that a combination of events, including gaps of science, institutional issues and personally accountability, when taken together each contributed to this event," Army Maj. Gen. Paul Ostrowski, who led the probe, told a news briefing in Pentagon.

"With respect to individual accountability, we saw failures to take action, we saw best practices by lab technicians not being used, and so the intent is to ensure that the secretary of the Army and the leadership of the Army has an opportunity to adjudicate that."

The report identified three current leaders and two former leaders at Dugway who failed to "take appropriate action" in response to past mishaps and allowed "a culture of complacency" to exist at the lab.

It also identified four personnel who failed to "adequately execute oversight responsibilities" and to ensure compliance with lab protocols and army regulations.

In addition, three laboratory technicians failed to exercise due care in the performance of their duties.

Specifically, the report singled out Brig. Gen. William E. King IV, who commanded Dugway as a colonel from July 2009 to July 2011, saying he "repeatedly deflected blame and minimized the severity of incidents."

When asked to explain what will happen to those that could be held accountable, Ostrowski said: "It doesn't necessarily mean remove and replace. If we have a situation where we have an individual who needs to be retrained, I will say he needs to be held accountable for retraining."

Ostrowski also mentioned gaps in science, including a lack of research on the effectiveness of inactivating anthrax using gamma irradiation and post-irradiation viability testing.

At the news conference, Pentagon officials also outlined a number of recommendations in response to the anthrax accident, including eliminating Dugway's missions of producing biological agents for export to other facilities.

The recommendations also included new procedures for the inactivation and testing of anthrax and a central process to track and monitor all requests and transfers for biological products.

The anthrax scandal was first revealed in May last year, when a private U.S. company reported a low concentration of live anthrax spores in a shipment from Dugway that should have only contained dead spores. The investigation claimed that the event did not pose a risk to public health. Enditem