A Biological Weapons Threat Worse Than

By Joseph D. Douglass Jr.
The Wall Street Journal, 10 March 1998

What’s most unfortunate about the continuing conflict with Iraq is that it diverts Western
attention away from the broader problem of chemical and biological weapons world-wide–and
especially in Russia. In the long run, the Russian threat is far worse than the Iraqi one. While it’s
true that the current leadership in Moscow does not display Saddam’s brutality, the Russian
leadership could change overnight.

Adding more arms-control treaties, such as the new Chemical Weapons Convention, won’t
solve
the problem. Existing treaties are being flagrantly violated. Antiproliferation efforts are also futile,
since all that is needed to build chemical or biological weapons is the knowledge in someone’s
head. The one remedy that does have promise is sunlight: The best way to discourage
proliferation of these horrible weapons is to focus public attention on what is happening. But such
information seldom gets aired in public. Indeed, over the years Washington officials have often
covered up Moscow’s efforts to develop chemical and biological weapons, fearful that public
disclosure would undermine arms-control efforts.

52 Biological Agents

This pattern has continued despite the end of the Cold War. Consider: Two weeks ago, ABC
News’s “PrimeTime Live” aired an interview with Kanatjan Alibekov, a Russian defector who had
been a deputy director of Biopreparat, a massive Soviet (now Russian) biological warfare
development program. Biopreparat employed more than 25,000 engineers, technicians and
scientists developing biological agents, in blatant violation of arms-control treaties Moscow had
signed. Mr. Alibekov told ABC the facility had developed 52 biological agents before he left in
1992 and had ballistic missile warheads loaded with plague, anthrax and smallpox intended for
delivery against American cities.

The program continued, notwithstanding evident instructions from President Boris Yeltsin to
shut
it down. Mr. Alibekov said he had written a long report for the CIA about this program. So why
was that report not printed and distributed to every member of Congress and every U.S.
newspaper? The CIA cannot be trying to hide it from the Russian government, which is well
aware of what Mr. Alibekov knew.

Such secrecy has typified the U.S. approach for three decades. In 1969 the CIA prepared a
study
on Soviet activities in developing chemical and biological weapons. According to Herb Meyer,
former deputy director of the National Intelligence Council, the report was “removed” at the
direction of then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, presumably so it would not interfere
with arms-control efforts.

In 1976, officials of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency questioned a top
National
Security Council official about new intelligence on Soviet violations of the 1972 agreements on
chemical and biological weapons. The NSC official discounted the alleged violations and advised
they be ignored, on the grounds that chemical and biological weapons had no strategic value that
would warrant such violations.

That same year, Luba Markish, a Soviet émigré, testified to Congress on the
Soviets’ use of
students as unwitting guinea pigs in testing chemical and biological weapons.
Émigré David Azbel
confirmed her testimony and said the research was focused “on poison gases that act on the brain
and the nervous system.”

In 1980 Soviet dissident Mark Popovskiy testified on the objectives of biological warfare
programs headed by a top molecular biologist named Yuri Ovchinnikov. “If we bring to the
Central Committee vaccines, nobody will pay attention,” Popovskiy quoted Ovchinnikov as
saying, “but if we bring a virus, oh, then this will be recognized by all as a great victory.” No one
in Congress ever pursued the matter, to my knowledge.

In 1981 one of the authors of the suppressed 1969 CIA report gave a copy to Herb Meyer
and
suggested he read it. He did, and was so alarmed he took it in to CIA Director William Casey,
who immediately went over to the White House to tell President Reagan about it. Nothing more
happened.

Members of the Army’s intelligence unit, however, were gathering considerable information
about
the Soviet chemical and biological weapons program, and they took it upon themselves to brief
appropriately cleared people. But after giving numerous such briefings, they were suddenly
ordered to stop by the head of Army intelligence.

In 1984 The Wall Street Journal editorial page published an impressive series of articles
entitled
“Beyond Yellow Rain” on biological weapons use in Indochina. Author William Kucewicz’s
findings echoed those of Army intelligence. From Washington there was no serious reaction. A
few years later, top Pentagon scientists said there was no cause for concern. Significant Soviet
developments, they insisted, were more than a decade away.

But in 1989, when Vladimir Pasechnik, the first defector from the Biopreparat program,
emerged,
intelligence specialists were horrified. The Soviet effort was more than 10 times as large as even
the most pessimistic of them had estimated. The Bush administration’s response was to keep the
whole thing quiet and send a complaint through diplomatic channels. In 1992, when Mr. Alibekov
confirmed what Mr. Pasechnik had said, the response was to negotiate with the Russian
government. The objective may have been to avoid upsetting the chemical and biological arms
control efforts President Bush had championed.

This year’s “PrimeTime Live” interview with Mr. Alibekov was important, but it left much
out.
There was no hint of overall Soviet development objectives, no discussion of the technology or of
Soviet efforts to use genetic engineering. This may have been how they developed a new type of
anthrax, reportedly resistant to U.S. vaccines. There have also been reports of their splicing the
gene responsible for the toxic component in cobra venom into common organisms, making it easy
to disseminate. We have also learned that the Russians have developed a weapon based on the
Ebola virus.

Other defectors have stated that experimental biological and chemical agents were tested on
U.S.
and South Vietnamese military bases during the Vietnam War. The experiments were so
successful that the Soviets ended them prematurely, fearing that the Americans would learn what
was happening. Other tests were run against U.S. military bases in Okinawa and in Europe,
according to a Soviet defector.

U.S. officials have tended to think, and arms-control negotiations have tended to focus on,
lethal
weapons and battlefield applications. But most of the Soviet, and now Russian, development
efforts concerned other applications of chemical and biological weapons. Special institutes
concentrated on the development of chemical and biological agents for assassinations. One
objective was to mimic the effects of natural diseases; another was to render a person ineffective
without killing him. The idea was that a disabled person would make bad decisions, which was
better than killing him and having him replaced. A variety of such agents were intended for very
focused military use–special nonlethal agents for use against pilots, tank drivers, command posts
and field commanders. The Soviets had a major effort to determine which U.S. airplane crashes in
Vietnam were the result of their chemical agents.

The Russians have stressed highly potent agents that required only trace quantities to have
effect,
agents and delivery techniques that would make highly selective attacks possible, and, in the case
of biological agents, ones that could spread like the flu or plague and ones that the enemy would
not know how to treat. There were special chemical agents for use against cities, agents that
would work quickly, unlike plague or smallpox.

Unwanted Stepchild

U.S. defense planning for chemical and biological weapons has been the unwanted stepchild
of the
U.S. national security apparatus since 1969. Intelligence has generally been poor, since key
officials did not want to find a threat that might breathe new life into U.S. offensive programs.
The subject was also a no-no because it would embarrass the Russians and interfere with
arms-control efforts.

ABC News performed an important service in calling attention to the seriousness of the
Russian
chemical and biological threat. Now it’s time for other news organizations–especially
investigative journalists in Eastern Europe, Russia and the former Soviet republics–to start
digging into other aspects of the problem. There is plenty more left to be discovered and no end
of leads to follow.

Mr. Douglass is co-author of “America the Vulnerable: The Threat of Chemical and
Biological
Warfare” (Lexington Books, 1987).