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Report details chronic problems at Army anthrax facility

NEW YORK (AP) — Pentagon officials released a report Thursday detailing recurring problems at an Army bioterror facility that accidentally sent live anthrax to other labs for more than a decade.

At a press briefing in Washington, military officials said half the lots of anthrax produced at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah contained live anthrax after workers there failed to kill the bacteria before shipping it to other labs.

“By any measure, this was a massive institutional failure” involving a potentially dangerous biotoxin, said Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work.

He presented the results of an investigation that was launched after the problem first surfaced in May.