Test Gas Attack Is Coming to the Subway

At first and second glances, it looks just like the announcements that you see in subway stations, using the same typeface. “Planned Service Changes,” it says, with a box drawn around the days and times. Then it goes on to describe something that isn’t the usual fare of diversions, skipped stops and closed entrances. 

“The N.Y.P.D. will release small amounts of harmless, colorless gas in 5 boroughs and 21 subway lines,” it says, and continues, in neutral language, to describe it as a test to help the Police Department be ready for a terrorist attack. “M.T.A. customers are advised to stay calm,” it states, concluding with a quote from the police commissioner.An illustration showing the planets of our solarledlight03. 

How quickly could airborne poison spread if the subways and trains were used to disperse it? That is what the study will try to find out with a tracer gas in the perfluorocarbon family, the Police Department announced last month. This has detonated suspicion on the Internet. 

“Anytime the words ‘spread of gas in the subways’ are strung together, while in this instance harmless, a public explanation is required,” Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman, said on Tuesday. 

Entirely admirable, but history teaches that it is quite possible to sneak into the subway system and do almost anything that the human mind can conceive — flash mobs have set up gourmet meals and served them to startled passengers; trysts are known to have been creatively carried out; routinely, break dancers, muralists and musicians perform; and all manner of mayhem is caused by individuals and mobs. 

In fact, a team of Army researchers from a unit that specialized in biological and chemical warfare came to New York in June 1966 and secretly dropped light bulbs loaded with what they regarded as harmless bacteria onto the tracks of stations along Avenue of the Americas and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. Another technique was to drop the light bulbs on the sidewalk ventilation grates, and let the little cloud of bacteria drift down below in a kind of mist. People waiting for trains got doused with the stuff. 

“When the cloud engulfed people, they brushed their clothing, looked up at the grating apron and walked on,” according to Leonard Cole in the book “Clouds of Secrecy,” an account of the Army’s experiments in populated areas. 

Other scientists brought meters in satchels and handbags to measure how quickly the stuff spread. Concerned that they might have to explain what they were doing, they brought fake letters of identification. Only one had to explain himself: a scientist who walked into a station smoking a cigarette and was stopped by a police officer. Elsewhere, nosy bystanders were given icy glares, and backed off. 

Although the bacteria were generally believed to be harmless, there were reports that some people were sickened by them. But it was years before anyone realized that the Army had carried out this and other experiments. They were done by a special unit at Fort Detrick, Md., which working in some cases with the Central Intelligence Agency, had devised poison dart guns, exploding fluorescent lights and lethal toothpaste. 

Their operations were revealed in Congressional hearings in 1975 and later through reporting by Scott Shane, then of The Baltimore Sun, and now a reporter for The New York Times. When the experiments were first disclosed in 1975, the subways were in a particularly smelly era. Russell Baker, writing on the Op-Ed page of The Times, said that for most subway riders, “The only thing we are really afraid of is oxygen.” 

Now the study is being done in public, using what the researchers say is a harmless chemical, already present in the city’s bouquet of gases. Monitoring boxes will be clearly marked and give a Web site for more information.