By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 22, 1998; Page A28

Inside the windowless lab at the U.S. Army medical facility in Maryland where she assists in researching the deadly anthrax spore, Tammy Lewis feels a faint sense of deja vu these days as the United States heads for another showdown with Iraq over the issue of biological warfare weapons.

"I was hired seven years ago during the last Gulf War because they needed people to help with the research," said Lewis, 30, a technician at Fort Detrick. "This is kind of what goes around, comes around. When a situation like this happens, it hits home."

It hits home because Fort Detrick is the focal point for U.S. efforts to defend against biological warfare. The innocuous-looking installation, covering 1,200 acres in the foothills of the Catoctin Mountains at the north end of the city of Frederick, is home to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

As the Defense Department's lead laboratory for the medical aspects of biological defense, the institute develops vaccines, drugs and diagnostics to protect U.S. troops from biological warfare agents, including anthrax and botulinum toxin. It also directs military training for managing biological casualties.

Its expertise goes beyond the military, however. Following the arrest in Las Vegas Thursday of two men charged with possessing anthrax, the FBI turned to the institute for help in testing the material seized from the men.

The FBI delivered the suspected anthrax to Fort Detrick on Friday. "They're going to do a whole battery of tests, so it may take some time," said Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman for the institute.

With the ongoing crisis in Iraq, the work done at Fort Detrick had taken on increased prominence even before the arrests in Las Vegas.

"We've been real busy here in the last couple of months," said Carol Linden, chief of research programs.

In recent days, scientists at the institute have been responding to new concerns about the current anthrax vaccine, with which the Pentagon plans to inoculate all U.S. troops. "With what's going on in the Gulf itself, there've been questions about the effectiveness of the vaccine," said Col. Arthur M. Friedlander, chief of the bacteriology division.

The concern is based partly on recent reports that a genetically engineered form of anthrax has been developed in Russia. The institute is trying to obtain samples to test whether the organism might be immune to the current vaccine, according to Friedlander. "It is of some concern to us," he said. There are no indications that Iraq also has developed this organism, officials said.

The institute, one of a number of military medical organizations based at Fort Detrick, employs about 450 military and civilian workers, including about 100 doctoral-level scientists with specialties in fields such as pathology, toxinology and virology.

Housed in a unremarkable-looking two-story beige building, the institute is the largest biocontainment facility in the United States. Anyone can drive onto the base, but once inside the building, access is restricted.

The 23 containment labs are set along hospital-like corridors with painted cinder block walls. The labs are set behind stainless steel gray doors with thick windows. Special sensor cards restrict access to each containment lab: Only workers who have been properly immunized are allowed in.

Not all the work involves biological warfare. Scientists at the institute also study some of the deadliest viruses in the world, among them Ebola. When monkeys at a private medical research lab in Reston showed symptoms of an unexplained illness in 1989, specialists from Fort Detrick diagnosed the disease as Ebola and helped contain it, a story made famous by the 1994 book, "The Hot Zone."

In the lab where Lewis works, researchers are trying to improve the ability of military medics in the field to diagnose anthrax, a lethal infectious disease that Iraq has admitted placing in weapons. "The earlier we can find it, the better for our troops," Lewis said. "It'll mean the quicker they can take protective measures, put on [protective gear] or get out of the area."

Another team is at work trying to develop a new vaccine against botulinum toxin, one of the most noxious compounds known, of which it is estimated Iraq has produced more than 100,000 gallons.

"It's a hot subject," said Leonard A. Smith, chief of the institute's immunology division and an expert on botulinum toxin. "I don't think we can work any faster."

Because their role is nearly all research, scientists at the institute are not likely to be sent to the Gulf in the event war breaks out or U.S. bombing results in the release of biological warfare microbes. However, the military could send an Army medical lab unit whose members are trained at Fort Detrick in how to diagnose biological warfare agents, officials said.

Fort Detrick, with a work force of 4,800, is the largest employer in Frederick County. It began life in the 1930s as a National Guard airfield and became a biological laboratory during World War II.

Fort Detrick's role in biological warfare has not always been defensive or occupied the same moral high ground as current work. As home to the Army Biological Warfare Laboratories, the facility ran a top-secret program producing offensive biological weapons from 1943 until 1969.

During World War II, for example, 5,000 bombs filled with anthrax spores were produced at Camp Detrick, as it was known then. Two workers at Fort Detrick died from exposure to anthrax in the 1950s. Another died in 1964 from viral encephalitis. After President Richard M. Nixon discontinued the U.S. biological weapons program in 1969, the medical research institute was created.

Along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Fort Detrick is one of only two U.S. facilities with "Biohazard Level 4" maximum-containment labs.

The tightly sealed labs have negative air flow, which prevents air inside the labs from escaping to the outside. Because air pressure is kept lower inside the lab than outside, any leak would cause outside air to flow into the lab.

Researchers wear baby-blue, spacesuit-like pressurized outfits and breathe filtered air as they work with exotic and deadly infectious diseases such as Ebola, Rift Valley fever, Lassa fever, Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever and the Machupo virus. They take disinfecting showers in their suits in decontamination rooms before reemerging from the labs.

In the event a researcher is accidentally infected, he or she can be treated in a special isolation chamber known as "The Slammer." The last time it was used for employees was in the mid-1980s, as a precaution.

Officials at Fort Detrick say a series of safeguards prevents the deadly microbes from escaping. Air from the biohazard level 4 labs goes through two filtering systems equipped with backup generators and is decontaminated with formaldehyde gas. "The citizens in our area are not concerned about Fort Detrick, because of the safety record they've had for many, many years," said County Commissioner Bruce L. Reeder (D).

Relations with the county government are close: the president of the Board of Commissioners -- Mark L. Hoke -- is a former commander of Fort Detrick.

As for the workers, they say their training and equipment protect them against the deadly materials they must handle. "We keep an eye on each other," Lewis said.