ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the decision-making process during the incident and the wider implications for our understanding of science and secrecy. An anti-personnel biological bomb remained the central goal of the early Cold War biological warfare research programme. Secrecy does not simply hide experiments; it is a social order which makes possible, and in turn proliferates through, different forms of knowledge production. On the last day of the Cauldron series of trials, a secret signal was sent from the captain of the Ben Lomond to the Admiralty. The signal contained a cryptic but worrying message: During Cauldron trials using agent at 1900 15th September, steam trawler CARELLA Number H4 of Hull bound Fleetwood from Iceland disregarded signals and crossed danger area after release of agent. The military, politicians and civil servants remained in control of the exercise using a proliferation of secrets to stop the fishermen from knowing about their predicament.
