Guess Who Else Is Cooking Up Biological Weapons? Russia

(Washington, D.C.): Will the third time be a charm? First, the American people were
confronted
with warnings that Saddam Hussein’s successfully concealed biological weapons (BW) program
poses an imminent peril to U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, to Israel and to American interests in
the Middle East more generally — and perhaps beyond. Next, came the scare inspired by the
arrest last week in Las Vegas of two Americans believed to possess deadly anthrax virus. Now
comes a new alarm: A Russian defector has revealed that Boris Yeltsin’s Russia is still
producing deadly biological agents “under the guise of defensive research.”

In a front-page article in today’s New York Times, Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov — a
colonel in the
former Soviet military who served as deputy director of the Kremlin’s illegal BW program —
disclosed a number of profoundly troubling insights into this ongoing endeavor. These include:

• “[Dr. Alibekov, also known as Ken Alibek] said Tuesday that these bacteria and viruses
  could have been mounted on
  intercontinental ballistic missile warheads on several days’ notice in the early 1980s.
• “Alibek, a 47-year-old native of Kazakhstan, said the Russian military was still running a
  biological weapons program in 1991, a year after Mikhail Gorbachev ordered it halted.
• “He said he believes a vestige of Moscow’s cold war biological-weapons program is
  continuing under the guise of defensive research in Russia. The offensive-weapons program
  was officially canceled by President Gorbachev in 1990, officially canceled again by President
  Boris Yeltsin in 1992, and remains officially defunct in today’s Russia.

“Nevertheless, Alibek said, ‘they continue to do research to develop new biological
agents; they conduct research and explain it as being for defensive purposes.’

• “‘We can say Russia continues research in this area to maintain its military biological
  potential,’ Alibek said. ‘They keep safe their personnel, their scientific knowledge. And they
  still have production capability.’
• “The U.S. biological-weapons program was canceled by President Richard M. Nixon nearly
  30
  years ago. The United States continues to do research on programs to defend itself against
  biological attack, as Russia says it does.

“But Alibek said the Soviets never believed that the American biological-weapons
program had ended. Through the 1970s and the 1980s, they pursued their own
program in a secret arms race against a perceived threat.

• “Alibek’s account of the 1979 incident in which a cloud of anthrax was released into the
  atmosphere from a Soviet weapons plant at Sverdlovsk is dramatic. But it was challenged
  Tuesday by American experts who have studied the disaster, including Dr. Matthew Meselson
  of Harvard University and Milton Leitenberg of the Center for International and Security
  Studies at the University of Maryland.”

The Times quotes Matthew Meselson as disputing this claim. Meselson’s
credibility on this
score leaves much to be desired, however.⁽¹⁾ He was a
persistent apologist for the Soviet Union
throughout the Cold War. He helped promote Moscow’s disinformation about, among other
things, the Sverdlovsk incident when, in its aftermath, the Reagan Administration correctly
charged the USSR with violating the Biological Warfare Convention. (Years later, after the fall
of the Berlin Wall, Meselson actually tried to take credit for revealing the truth about this
biological warfare disaster when he led a scientific delegation to the site.)

• “Meselson and Leitenberg said that there were tens of thousands of people in ‘the footprint,’
  or the path, of the toxic cloud; there have been 62 confirmed deaths.”
• The New York Times further reveals, “Alibek also said that Yeltsin, then the
  local Communist
  Party boss in Sverdlovsk, was personally and morally responsible for covering up the
  incident.

“‘Yeltsin is responsible for everything that was done to contain that information,’ he
said. He added that he believed that Russian military leaders have used that fact to
blackmail Yeltsin into continuing a secret biological weapons program.”

This assertion is an interesting variation on the theme often advanced by the Clinton
Administration and others convinced of Yeltsin’s good intentions — namely that he is either
incompetent or unaware that his published directives (for example with respect to shutting down
the biological warfare program or selling ballistic missile technology to Iran) are not being carried
out. Whatever the excuse, the bottom line is the same: Activities highly inimical to U.S. interests
are going forward on Yeltsin’s watch. U.S. policy should be based on this reality, not wishful
thinking that all will be well as long as the incumbent remains Russia’s president.

The Bottom Line

Confirmation of the magnitude and potential destructiveness of the ongoing Russian
biological
warfare program adds further urgency to the task of “getting real” about the emerging,
world-wide BW threat. As the attached column by the Center for Security Policy’s director,
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., which appeared in yesterday’s Washington Times href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾ makes clear, this will require:
abandoning dangerous and prodigiously expensive href=”#N_3_”>⁽³⁾ illusions that arms control can
verifiably constrain the proliferation of biological weapons; reinvigorating export control
arrangements which may help slow that phenomenon somewhat; and building
active and
passive means of defending the American people against biological agents delivered by
ballistic
missiles and other means.

There is literally not a moment to lose.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
‘No More Lies’ Monitor: C.P.S.U. Trial Offers
Yeltsin Opportunity to Honor Commitment to New Transparency ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=92-D_77″>No. 92-D 77, 10 July 1992).

2. This column was adapted from the Center’s recent
Decision Brief entitled Clinton Legacy
Watch # 18: Assured U.S. Vulnerability in the Face of a Burgeoning Biological Warfare
Threat (No. 98-D 30, 20 February 1998).

3. As the Center has previously noted, among those who are likely to
pay dearly as a result of
misbegotten efforts to enhance the “verification and enforcement” of the utterly unverifiable 1972
Biological Weapons Convention are America’s pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. See
No. 98-D 30.