Historian Laura de Oliveira Sangiovanni was in a basement in Washington, D.C., when the air began to run out. In front of her, Chris Milensky, a staff member at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, carefully pulled open a long metal drawer. Inside were hundreds of perfectly taxidermied Amazonian birds resting silently, among them the black vulture. Milensky opened another drawer. There were many of them—part of the museum’s so-called technical collection.
The scene was a materialized nightmare that Oliveira had not anticipated upon entering the room. The researcher from Goiás suffers from ornithophobia—an extreme fear of birds. “I’ve seen enough, thank you,” she managed to say amid the crisis. The irony was brutal. What could have led the researcher to that very archive inside the world’s largest complex of museums and research centers?
The answers—some of them still unpublished and told exclusively to Agência Pública—came in the form of even more questions. The first results of her historical research, which will mark eight years in 2025, have been made public mainly in academic circles, through articles and conference presentations across Brazil. Among her findings is the revelation that thousands of Amazonian birds may have become part of a U.S. viral testing project carried out on Brazilian soil during the Cold War.
The story intertwines the Vietnam War, the development of biological weapons, and Belém—the host city of the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP30—in a narrative that connects ornithology and virology.
A little bird that told too much
Laura never imagined that, during a lunch while having a bowl of bean soup, she would receive a tip that would lead her into a plot involving the U.S. Army operating on Amazonian soil. “I’ve been waiting for a Brazilian for so long,” said Pamela Henson, director of the Smithsonian, with a smile that Laura would only understand later, when the two met in 2017. The director, who was also a historian, knew exactly what she was about to set in motion. Henson was straightforward: “The program you want to study is one of the most controversial in the Smithsonian’s history,” she said.
In 2014, Henson published an article in Acervo magazine, from Brazil’s National Archives, inviting Brazilian researchers to consult the Smithsonian’s archives, which, she wrote, contained a vast amount of material about the country. The complex includes 19 museums, 7 research centers, the National Zoo, and a collection of more than 142 million items.
That was how, three years later, Oliveira left for the United States to pursue her postdoctoral studies. Her goal was to study the rise of international environmentalism through two Smithsonian projects focused on the Amazon.
During her master’s degree, years earlier, the Brazilian researcher had delved into the history of bioethics through the trials of Nazi doctors in Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II. In her doctoral studies, she investigated the activities of a U.S. federal agency, the United States Information Agency (USIA), which was responsible for anti-communist propaganda in Brazil during the Cold War. Her analysis focused on editorial policy.
In front of the Brazilian academic, Henson mentioned a name from the Smithsonian Institution that would change the course of Oliveira’s research: the ornithologist Philip Strong Humphrey. Between 1963 and 1970, Humphrey coordinated a research project on islands in the Pacific Ocean — the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program (POBSP) — which led both the scientist and the institution itself to be accused of covering up biological weapons testing using birds as vectors during the Cold War, allegedly on behalf of the U.S. Army and in direct connection with the notorious chemical and biological warfare center Fort Detrick, in the state of Maryland. As expected, the United States never confirmed the information.
The Pacific program had already been the subject of research by historian Roy Mcleod, author of the article “‘Strictly for the Birds’: Science, the Military, and the Smithsonian’s Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program, 1963–1970,” published in 2001. In 2023, a more comprehensive study on the topic would be published in Ed Regis’s book Science, Secrecy, and the Smithsonian: The Strange History of the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program.
Those authors had only briefly mentioned another project analogous to the POBSP, also coordinated by Humphrey in Belém, where thousands of Amazonian birds may likewise have been used under the ornithologist’s supervision for biological testing: the enigmatic Belém Ecological Project (BEP).
A flock from D.C. to Mocambo
The Belém Ecological Project (BEP) was a program previously unknown to Brazilian historiography. Under the guise of studying nature, the initiative may also have concealed a U.S. military operation deep in the Brazilian Amazon during the military dictatorship (1964–1985).
To understand the BEP, it’s necessary to go back to the fall of 1962. Philip Humphrey had just accepted the position of curator of birds at the Smithsonian—a job that other, more prestigious scientists had refused, considering it part of a “fossilized 19th-century science.” Humphrey, then 36 years old, saw it differently. “That’s what he went there to do. He went to expand the Smithsonian’s collection,” explains Laura de Oliveira. But shortly after his hiring, Humphrey received a visit to his office from U.S. Army officers.
The John F. Kennedy administration, under Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, had launched Project 112, a vast program for testing chemical and biological weapons. The military wanted the Smithsonian’s help with a bird-related project in the Pacific. Humphrey, according to his own account to journalist Philip Boffey of Science magazine in February 1969, not only agreed but also suggested that the Smithsonian itself should host the operation.
At that moment, the science of collecting and cataloging birds intersected with U.S. war policy. Oliveira discovered correspondence from Humphrey that reveals a sudden shift in his focus. If, at the beginning of 1962, his interest was purely ecological, by the end of that same year—when he contacted the Rockefeller Foundation seeking support to enter Brazil—the subject had already changed: virology. Birds as virus vectors. The first letter Humphrey sent to the Rockefeller Foundation, a document that could clarify this transition, mysteriously disappeared from the archives. Only the reply remains, beginning with a formal introduction: “Regarding your correspondence about funding for an expedition to the Amazon…”
In 1963, when Humphrey first arrived in Belém, the scientific field in the region already included important institutions such as the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi and the Evandro Chagas Institute, which hosted a Rockefeller Foundation virus laboratory—an important reference in viral studies and public health. Humphrey was not starting from scratch; he was inserting himself into a pre-existing network, apparently using it as a smokescreen for a project that was far from transparent.
The correspondence between Humphrey and the directors of the Rockefeller Virus Laboratory, prior to his arrival in Belém, reveals meticulous planning. He arrived with scalpels, formaldehyde, firearms, and ammunition—all detailed in the budgets that Oliveira found decades later. In addition, he needed a taxidermist, nets to capture birds in the forest canopy, and, above all, discretion.
Oliveira explains that the Rockefeller Foundation operated as a vanguard of U.S. foreign policy, providing an institutional “shield” and a network of contacts that facilitated the work of scientists connected to strategic interests. With funding from the Smithsonian Institution (partly sourced from the U.S. Army’s Office of Research), an area of forest belonging to Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture was demarcated in 1966 and named the Guamá Ecological Research Area (APEG). In that area, locally known as Mocambo, Humphrey’s testing laboratory was consolidated between 1967 and 1971.
The mystery of a silent import
During the period in which the project was active, according to data from the National Museum of Natural History, 4,426 Brazilian birds were sent to the Smithsonian’s collection in the United States, stored in the technical reserve drawers that would later cause panic in the historian years afterward. Of that total, 2,895 came from the state of Pará, accounting for 90% of all Brazilian bird specimens added to the museum’s collection during the BEP period.
The Brazilian historian’s research found no record of the nearly five thousand birds leaving the country in Belém’s customs archives, nor any authorization from the Council for the Supervision of Artistic and Scientific Expeditions in Brazil (CFE), the agency that should have controlled such activities at the time. There was a customs fund from Belém in the National Archives. Oliveira looked for it and found nothing. The project simply did not appear.
There were also no records of the BEP in the documentation of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) or in the National Information Service (SNI). How could a project of that scale, with foreign funding, have operated for eight years without leaving a trace in Brazilian bureaucracy?
For Oliveira, the answer may lie in institutional shielding. The project operated within the Evandro Chagas Institute, which already hosted the Rockefeller laboratory. The Foundation had a long history in Brazil, with partnerships established since 1916. Humphrey did not need to request authorization from the Brazilian government. He entered through the front door—under the Rockefeller umbrella.
In the documents Oliveira reviewed, there is evidence that the same kind of testing conducted in Belém was also carried out in parts of Hawaii, as well as in places like Line, Phoenix, Tokelau, Gilbert, Marshall, Baker, French Frigate Shoal, and Sand Islands, within Johnson Atoll — a U.S. territory known for nuclear weapons testing, chemical weapons stockpiles, and incinerators.
The birds were captured, inoculated with viruses, monitored, killed (possibly shot — Humphrey’s budgets included allocations for weapons and ammunition), taxidermized, and sent to Washington. Formally, the BEP aimed to identify environmental conditions in the Amazon delta near Belém and assess the impact of human activity in the region. In practice, it focused on studying ecological distribution, diversity, flight routes, and the relationships between arboviruses and birds.
Brazilian ornithologist Fernando Novaes, from the Goeldi Museum, even coordinated the project for a month in 1963, and his reports show cooperation with the Rockefeller Foundation’s virus lab until the early 1970s. So far, there is no evidence that he or any other Brazilians were aware of Humphrey’s military agreements or the project’s true intentions.
In 1965, a young assistant joined the team: Thomas Lovejoy, who would later become one of the world’s most renowned environmentalists. Lovejoy was responsible for setting up the mist nets in the forest canopy — the technique that allowed birds to be captured in mid-flight. In an interview with Pesquisa Fapesp magazine in 2015, Lovejoy denied any involvement with viral testing, claiming he worked only on “bird ecology” and that he had handed over “all viral and epidemiological data to the Virus Laboratory in Belém.”
Even with no evidence that the U.S. operations were known locally, the 1964 military coup in Brazil — far from being an obstacle — seems to have been a blessing for the project. During his stays in Washington, While Humphrey expressed concern over political instability, his colleague in Belém, virologist Robert Shope — who had spent three years training at Fort Detrick before heading to the Amazon — wrote in a letter: “The political situation has been extremely interesting, but so far it hasn’t hindered our work at all. I believe the current regime represents a certain stability that should be favorable.”
Viruses, Bacteria, and a Confession Silenced for 20 Years
When the case of the Pacific Project surfaced in the American press — particularly through exposés in Scientific Research magazine and NBC reports — little was said about the Belém Project.
In 1968 and 1969, reports in the U.S. press, including the prestigious Science magazine, addressed the alleged connections between the Smithsonian and biological warfare, amid the growing public backlash against the Vietnam War.
Prominent scientists wrote indignant letters to the publication. One of them, Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould, wrote in Science: “No one can be so naïve as to think that a secret project funded by the Army and managed by Fort Detrick was supported by its sponsors in the name of pure research.” Another letter, sent by reader George Wright to President Lyndon Johnson, read: “As the president of the United States, you have obeyed military interests in international relations and, in doing so, have caused great harm to your country and to other human beings on this planet. You have failed. I pray for you.”
The reports had a strong political impact and triggered backlash against the Smithsonian, which, under pressure, denied the accusations. Interestingly, Humphrey had already been officially detached from the institute since 1967, though he continued to coordinate the projects remotely until 1971 from his new post at the University of Kansas.
Humphrey’s Silence and a Late Confession
Humphrey’s silence lasted for more than a decade — until 1985, when journalist Ted Gup, from The Washington Post, published the story “The Smithsonian Secret — Why an Innocent Bird Study Went Straight to Biological Warfare Experts at Fort Detrick.” Gup wrote that although the program was not officially secret, it carried out covert activities and concealed biological weapons tests using birds as vectors. According to the journalist’s findings, the prototypes developed through these experiments were sent to Fort Detrick.
Research involving birds, both in the Pacific and in Belém, reportedly dealt with at least two types of biological agents: the Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis (VEE) virus and the Q Fever bacterium, linked to Coxiella burnetii.
VEE is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes that usually affects horses and humans, and can cause fever, seizures, and death in animals. Wild birds serve as natural reservoirs of the virus, while mosquitoes act as vectors. Transmission to humans occurs through contact or the bites of infected insects.
In the case of Q Fever, the bacterial disease is transmitted by inhaling contaminated dust, affecting both humans and animals. In humans, infection usually causes flu-like symptoms such as fever, headache, chills, and dry cough. Without proper care, the disease can evolve into a severe chronic form requiring long-term antibiotic treatment and may affect the heart.
In his interview with the Post, Humphrey finally admitted to the Pacific tests. He claimed they were “defensive research,” conducted in the “national interest,” and concluded with a phrase that echoed the banality of evil: “Biological weapons are a fact of life.” The ornithologist insisted, however, that he personally disagreed with their use. The Belém Project was not mentioned.
The Belém Puzzle
In the absence of documents that explicitly prove the testing of biological weapons — which would be expected in covert operations — historian Laura de Oliveira cross-referenced letters exchanged among scientists, project reports, diaries, and other fragments found in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, the Evandro Chagas Institute, the Emílio Goeldi Museum, and Embrapa in Belém.
Although she has not yet found “conclusive proof,” Oliveira defends the historical method and the historiographical narrative based on traces, interpretation, and cross-referencing of sources to suggest that the capital of Pará may have served as an American laboratory for tests using birds as biological weapon vectors.
Oliveira, who teaches history at the University of Brasília (UnB), continues to seek answers: Were there epidemiological outbreaks in communities near Belém? Were the same techniques later applied in Vietnam? And how, after all, could 4,426 dead Brazilian birds have crossed the ocean and ended up in metal drawers, apparently without the Brazilian government ever knowing?
The professor plans to return to Belém to search newspaper archives for records of epidemics from the 1960s. She wants to know whether the project left marks not only in the archives but also on the bodies of the people who lived near Mocambo.
Meanwhile, on the sixth floor of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., some of the Amazonian birds captured by Humphrey are on display, showcased in illuminated cases beneath the stylized sun of the institution’s logo. Visitors pass by, take photos, and admire the colors — unaware that these Brazilian birds may once have been tested as biological weapon vectors. In the corridors of the Smithsonian, the silence of the birds still holds the answers.
PayPal 
