The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, celebrated its golden anniversary last night in typically low-key style with a banquet here at the Washington Hilton.

The 1,600 tuxedoed attendees included nine former DARPA directors, program managers past and present, and scientists and engineers from DARPA's contractors in the private sector and academia.

A few months ago, the news buzzed with reports that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had received an unusual honor. They had each had a species of slime-mold beetle named after them, courtesy of scientists at Cornell University. Debates raged on Internet chat rooms and blogs: Could the scientists be serious? Was it really an honor to be associated with such a creature as a slime-mold beetle?

On February 5, before a rapt U.N. General Assembly, U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell presented the case for invading Iraq. Using an array of evidence -- satellite photos of suspicious activities at missile facilities, sinister audio tapes of Iraqi scientists -- he delivered a clear message: Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program not only persisted but was tailored to evade U.N. inspections. Notably, Powell cited seven mobile labs, each capable of producing "enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people."