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Defense Threat Reduction Agency - Wikipedia

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is an agency within the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and is the official Combat Support Agency for countering weapons of mass destruction (WMD; chemical, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_T…

biological, radiological, nuclear, and high explosives). According to the agency's Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2018 to 2022, the DTRA mission "enables DoD and the U.S. Government to prepare for and combat weapons of mass destruction and improvised threats and to ensure

nuclear deterrence." The agency is headquartered in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

DTRA was officially established on October 1, 1998, as a result of the 1997 Defense Reform Initiative, by consolidating several DoD organizations, including the Defense Special Weapons Agency (successor

to the Defense Nuclear Agency) and the On-Site Inspection Agency. The Defense Technology Security Administration and the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program office in the Office of the Secretary of Defense were also incorporated into the new agency.

The majority of

personnel are at DTRA headquarters at Fort Belvoir. Approximately 15% of the workforce is split between Kirtland Air Force Base and the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and the Nevada National Security Site (formerly called the Nevada Test Site), where they do testing

and support the U.S. military's nuclear mission. The remaining 15% of the workforce is stationed at locations in Germany, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, Kenya, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore. DTRA also has liaisons with all of the U.S.

military's Combatant Commands, the National Guard Bureau, the FBI and other U.S. government interagency partners.

After the end of the Cold War, DTRA and its predecessor agencies have implemented the DoD aspects of several treaties that assist former Eastern Bloc countries in

the destruction of Soviet era nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons sites (such as missile silos and plutonium production facilities) in an attempt to avert potential weapons proliferation in the post-Soviet era as part of the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program.

DTRA is responsible for US reporting under the New START Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

DTRA has the responsibility to manage and integrate the Department of Defense chemical and biological defense science and technology programs. In accordance with the

Recommendation 174 (h) of the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Commission, part of the Chemical Biological Defense Research component of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was re-located to Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland in 2011. This

represented a move of about ten percent of the staff of the Chemical Biological Defense Research component of DTRA to Aberdeen Proving Ground; the rest of the staff remain at Fort Belvoir.

Although civilian contractors produced the major portion of conventional munitions for

World War I, the United States government built federally owned plants on Aberdeen Proving Ground for the manufacture of toxic gas. These poison gas manufacturing facilities came to be known as Edgewood Arsenal. Edgewood Arsenal included plants to manufacture mustard gas,

chloropicrin and phosgene, and separate facilities to fill artillery shells with these chemicals. Production began in 1918, reached 2,756 short tons (2,500 t) per month, and totaled 10,817 short tons (9,813 t) of toxic gas manufactured at Edgewood Arsenal before the November

1918 armistice. Some of this gas was shipped overseas for use in French and British artillery shells.

From 1955 to 1975, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps conducted classified medical studies at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. The purpose was to evaluate the impact of low-dose chemical

warfare agents on military personnel and to test protective clothing and pharmaceuticals. About 7,000 soldiers took part in these experiments that involved exposures to more than 250 different chemicals, according to the Department of Defense (DoD). Some of the volunteers

exhibited symptoms at the time of exposure to these agents but long-term follow-up was not planned as part of the DoD studies.

The agents tested included chemical warfare agents and other related agents:
•Anticholinesterase nerve agents (Agent VX, sarin, and

common organophosphorus (OP) and carbamate pesticides)
•Mustard agent
•Nerve agent antidotes atropine and scopolamine
•Nerve agent reactivators (e.g., the common OP antidote 2-PAM chloride)
•Psychoactive agents (LSD, PCP, cannabinoids, and Agent BZ)

•Irritants and riot control agents
•Alcohol and caffeine
During the week of July 14, 1969, personnel from Naval Applied Science Laboratory in conjunction with personnel from Limited War Laboratory conducted a defoliation test along the shoreline of Poole's Island,

Aberdeen Proving Ground using Agent Orange and Agent Orange Plus foam.

Edgewood Chemical Activity is a chemical-weapons depot located at APG. Elimination of the chemicals held here was put on an accelerated schedule after the September 11, 2001, attacks, and all chemical

weapons were destroyed by February 2006.

The U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) is the United States’s principal research and development resource for non-medical chemical and biological (CB) defense.

ECBC has full-time employees located at three different

sites in the United States: Edgewood Area of Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG), Md., Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Rock Island, Illinois. It is a research, development and engineering center (RDEC) under the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM).

After assuming command of the Army Materiel Command in October 2001, General Paul J. Kern saw the need to streamline how the Army developed technology. At the time, the Army's laboratories and research centers reported through multiple channels, among other problems. Kern argued

that the Army had to "figure out how to get technology in the hands of the Warfighters quicker" and that it was "the impression of everyone out there that the laboratories take too long, they do science for science's sake, engineering for engineering's sake".

Paul John Kern (born June 16, 1945) is a retired United States Army general and businessman. He served as Commanding General of the United States Army Materiel Command from October 2001 to November 2004. He became President and Chief Operating Officer of AM General LLC on

August 1, 2008.

In 1973 he earned master's degrees in both mechanical and civil engineering from the University of Michigan.

After retiring from the army in January 2005, Kern joined the Board of Directors of Agent Science Technologies, EDO Corporation and iRobot Corporation,

and is a member of the External Advisory Board of the University of Michigan Department of Mechanical Engineering, and a Senior Counselor of The Cohen Group.

The firm was founded in 2001 by former United States Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen to help multinational clients

expand overseas. The Cohen Group has a strategic alliance with DLA Piper, a global law firm specializing in business, real estate, and technology.

While in the Senate, Cohen served on both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Governmental Affairs Committee (1979–1997)

and was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee 1983–1991 and again 1995–1997, serving as Vice Chairman from 1987 to 1991.

On December 5, 1996, President Bill Clinton announced his selection of Cohen as Secretary of Defense, saying that he was the "right person" to build

on the achievements of (retiring defense secretary) William Perry "to secure the bipartisan support America's armed forces must have and clearly deserve." As Secretary of Defense Cohen played a large role in directing the United States military actions in Iraq and Kosovo,

including the dismissal of Wesley Clark from his post as the NATO Supreme Allied Commander.

Cohen faced the question of the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which he supported, and its relationship to Russia. At a summit meeting between President Clinton and

Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Helsinki, Finland, in March 1997, Yeltsin acknowledged the inevitability of broader NATO membership.

Yeltsin and Clinton agreed on the need for early Russian ratification of the Second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) and negotiation

of START III to make further significant cuts in the strategic nuclear arsenals of both nations.

On August 21, 2006, Cohen's novel, Dragon Fire, was released. The plot revolves around a secretary of defense who contends with a potential nuclear threat from a foreign country.

Cohen and Madeleine Albright are co-chairing a new "Genocide Prevention Task Force".

Cohen served as Best Man in then-Senate Naval Liaison John McCain's second wedding (Gary Hart was a groomsman). McCain later became his Senate colleague.

The Cohen Group has a strategic

alliance with DLA Piper.

DLA Piper was formed, in January 2005, by a merger between three law firms: San Diego-based Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich LLP, Baltimore-based Piper Rudnick LLP and United Kingdom-based DLA LLP. It is composed of two partnerships, the United Kingdom-

based DLA Piper International LLP and the United States-based DLA Piper LLP (US). The two partnerships share a single global board and are structured as a Swiss Verein.

DLA Piper's origins can be traced back to Thomas Townend Dibb (1807–1875) and Sir Charles Lupton

OBE (1855–1935).

The Luptons are ancestors of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge: her great-grandmother Olive Lupton married Richard Noel Middleton.

In 2010, DLA Piper represented Paul Ceglia in his claim that he hired Mark Zuckerberg to create a website that became Facebook.

In June 2020, Squire Patton Boggs filed Ferrellgas Partners LP et al. v. DLA Piper LLP US in Kansas, on behalf of former firm client Ferrellgas, for a breach of fiduciary duty.

Ferrellgas Partners, L.P. is an American supplier of propane founded 83 years ago in Atchison, Kansas

by A.C. Ferrell.

Ferrellgas wasn't the only propane company in the nation's heartland that was expanding rapidly in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Another such propane retailer was Buckeye Gas Products Company. Buckeye traced its roots to 1886, when Standard Oil Company

formed the Buckeye Pipeline Co. to move petroleum products to refineries in northwestern Ohio. By the 1940s, the company was supplying refineries from Chicago to Buffalo, and following World War II, it expanded its pipeline network into New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

In 1964, the Pennsylvania Railroad acquired Buckeye, since most of its pipelines paralleled the railroad’s right-of-way across the Mid-Atlantic states. The Pennsylvania Railroad merged with the New York Central Railroad in 1968 when the nation’s freight and passenger railroad

network was struggling to survive. Three years later, in 1971, the merged Penn Central Railroad filed for the then-largest corporate bankruptcy in American history.
Buckeye, meanwhile, remained one of the bankrupt railroad’s more profitable subsidiaries.