Training outlines from 1962 show they were briefed on work with germs causing some of the deadliest diseases known to man, including tularemia, anthrax, parrot fever, Q fever, African swine fever, the plague and botulism.

Participants were also given numerous inoculations, although documents do not say specifically which ones, for such diseases.

Sailors also worked with nerve agents GB and VX — a small drop of which is deadly — and were taught how to protect themselves and use gas masks if accidents occurred.

They were trained how to prepare germ and chemical "agents" for spraying in field testing, how to perform autopsies on test animals, how to decontaminate areas with chlorine and other chemicals, and how to test for contamination.

Several training sessions were devoted to "safeguarding of classified information" — including its transmission, storage and destruction — and making clear participants were restricted to "need-to-know" information and were warned against "excess knowledge."

A SAN FRANCISCO TEST

One of the ships' first tests occurred in San Francisco Bay in 1956 as part of "Operation Transit III," designed for "the assessment of the ship's protective defenses against a covert BW (biological warfare) attack."

In September 1956, plans called for a 40-foot munition boat to create clouds of bacillus globigii germs that the Eastman would travel through and then turn over its sampling devices to labs on the Hall for study.

Plans called for enough germs to ensure "a minimum respiratory dose of 10,000 organisms is received on deck."

Planners considered bacillus globigii a safe "simulant" of more dangerous germs, and the Army still uses it for some field testing.

However, Rutgers University political science professor Leonard Cole, who has written books on secret Army testing, notes that standard bacteriology textbooks warn the germ can cause serious infections to people who are already sick. And its spores can live literally for centuries before causing such infection.

Planning documents said later phases of Operation Transit III were to use the more dangerous serratia marcescens germ at open sea if the San Francisco test proved successful.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

But the mere mention of a test series involving serratia and San Francisco raises eyebrows among some researchers because of mysterious serratia infections in San Francisco hospitals.

The first such infections occurred in 1950 days after, the military later admitted, it had sprayed serratia around San Francisco Bay. Such infections had never been seen there previously. One man died. His family later sued in 1981. The case made the early 1950 test widely known.