Plum Island’s past as a secret military base has been the subject of a number of conspiracy theories after years. Even though the lab will be moving to Kansas sometime around 2020, officials continue to do community outreach tours in an effort to improve the island’s image.
The outward face of the tours is Plum Island’s public affairs officer, Jason Golden.
Golden said he gives tours a lot, about once a week during the summertime. It’s part of a conscious effort to show the local community Plum Island is, in Golden’s words, “secure, but not secret.”
“People have a real interest in Plum Island,” he said. “We’ve had high school science programs out here. We’ve had community college science programs. We work with the Coast Guard Academy to get some of their guys out here for a visit as well. But it’s also organizations who are interested in things like history.”
Plum Island first started giving tours in the 90s after declassified documents revealed a long-shelved plan to attack Russia with animal diseases. A media storm ensued, and, since then, officials began offering more frequent tours trumpeting the research that happens on the island.
“We have a really important mission that has everything to do with keeping the food supply chain," Golden said. "Everything you guys eat and drink and hold near and dear to your heart in terms of your way of life, that lab in there, and [its] mission, has a lot to do with that.”
Plum Island focuses mostly on foot and mouth, which is a highly contagious disease found in pigs and cows. In 2001, an outbreak in the U.K. cost $16 billion. In the U.S., an outbreak could cost taxpayers some $60 billion dollars.
Plum Island researchers have developed a way to vaccinate animals for foot and mouth without the risk of exposing the animal to a live virus. They also spend time thinking up countermeasures for combating an outbreak if it were to happen, but Plum Island’s main job is testing.
Tens of thousands of cattle cross the Mexican and Canadian border every day. Eight to ten times a year, federal or state animal inspectors spot what may be foot and mouth disease. They take blood or tissue samples and rush them to Plum Island to get tested.
When the government first started declassifying documents, a swirl of conspiracy theories made their way in to bestselling books and movies- rumors that Lyme disease originated from Plum Island, of experiments on aliens, and even a mutant animal dubbed the Montauk Monster.
Golden acknowledged that’s what secrets do.
“For 55 years or so, the federal government did just that. They kept quiet. They didn’t say much about anything. They didn’t refute any of the stories," he said. "So, even though they aren’t true, they become urban legend, and the locals consider them to be truths. So there is a conscious movement to...help the public understand, help build that trust.”
Experts who study governments and their secrets agree that openness is a good way to dispel myths. Or, the converse: myths are a good way to open up government.
“When the Oliver Stone movie JFK came out officials suddenly got very alarmed that people were starting to think that the CIA killed President Kennedy,” said Steven Aftergood, director of Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. “And that ended up inspiring legislation to accelerate the declassification of assassination related files.”
Of course, Aftergood said, the alternative could also be true. There really could be a Montauk Monster on Plum Island and officials just didn’t include it in the tour.
“But, usually, government is not that sophisticated,” he said.
