This week we welcome Mike Kenner, open government campaigner and Cold War researcher, who joins us for Part One of a detailed look at the highly-questionable activities of Porton Down, the UK Government's chemical and biological warfare research establishments in Wiltshire.

Between 1949 and 1976, military scientists from Porton Down conducted over 350 separate experiments ("field trials") in public areas of the UK, during which massive amounts of live bacteria and hazardous chemical compounds were sprayed over populated areas. Designed further to investigate the feasibility of Biological Warfare (BW), these field trials were conducted in utmost secrecy, and often involved the unwitting co-operation of local authorities, local police forces, and in some cases, local populations, who were always told that the trials were to investigate atmospheric pollution.

Until 1997, the UK public remained unaware of Porton Down's public area BW field trial programme. Since then, more and more field trials have been discovered. More disturbing, however, is the Ministry of Defence's refusal to rule out conducting similar, large-scale, public area BW field trials in the future, should they deem there to be a military need to do so. (For show notes, please visit TheMindRenewed.com)