Chemical Demilitarization

For more than 15 years, the Army's chemical demilitarization program has been criticized and castigated as a potentially dangerous effort, poorly executed without concern for the public. By reviewing the chemical demilitarization program as a public policy area, Mauroni offers a different perspective on how the Army worked with Congress and the public to offer the safest program possible. The Army was forced to delay its own schedule and increase the breadth and depth of the program to address political demands and idealistic environmental concerns. Mauroni contends that Army and Department of Defense leadership's insistence on treating this program as a strictly technical effort, rather than as a public policy concern is in part responsible for the public's misunderstanding of the Army's execution of the program.