Concerns hang over US research site

Amid calls for Fort Detrick investigation, expert says 'that's where all the toxins are'

A foreign affairs expert at a prominent US university would like to see the veil of secrecy pulled back from Fort Detrick in Maryland, a US Army installation with a history as a bioweapons facility, amid growing calls for an investigation into the site.

"A deep investigation of everything that happened at Fort Detrick would be interesting indeed, but difficult for reasons of secrecy," Stephen Kinzer, a foreign affairs expert at Brown University, told Xinhua News Agency on Friday.

The facility, which opened in 1931 in Frederick, Maryland, about an hour northwest of Washington DC, was the center of the US bioweapons program from World War II to 1969 and now focuses on biodefense.