20071113 Newsday.com: Ex-Walter Reed Chief to Run Fort Detrick By David Dishneau

Newsday.com: Ex-Walter Reed Chief to Run Fort Detrick

By DAVID DISHNEAU, Associated Press Writer

November 13, 2007 HAGERSTOWN, Md.

A two-star general who was fired as the head of Walter Reed Army Medical Center amid reports of shoddy treatment of wounded soldiers will oversee U.S. biological weapons defense research as commander of Fort Detrick, the Army said Tuesday.

Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, a physician who works in the Army surgeon general's office in Falls Church, Va., will command both Fort Detrick in Frederick and the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command there, Army spokesman Paul Boyce said.

Weightman had been at Walter Reed for six months when The Washington Post began publishing stories in February about recovering soldiers languishing in dilapidated housing and their families complaining of inattentive administrators.

The disclosures forced the resignations of then-Army Secretary Francis Harvey and then-Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley.

When Weightman was fired from the Army's flagship hospital March 1, the Army said senior officials "had lost trust and confidence" in his leadership abilities to solve the problems at Walter Reed. In September, the top Pentagon health officer, Dr. S. Ward Casscells, said the military's medical community "got a black eye that we didn't completely deserve."

Read the entire article here: Newsday.com: Ex-Walter Reed Chief to Run Fort Detrick