Soviet Defector Offers Timely Warning on Bioweapon Threat; Ex-CIA Director Woolsey Rejects On-Site Visits as Rx

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s New York Times publishes a chilling warning
about the danger of
biological weapons (BW) in the hands of terrorists and/or their state-sponsors from a man who
should know what he is talking about: Ken Alibek (the Americanized pseudonym used by Dr.
Kanatjan Alibekov), who used to be the deputy director of the largest and most
dangerous
illegal BW program in the world — that run by the Kremlin’s Biopreparat organization.

Unfortunately, while Mr. Alibek provides a wealth of information that should rouse American
policy-makers and citizens to action, the most important specific action he recommends would not
ameliorate that threat — and, as former CIA Director R. James Woolsey recently noted in an
interview with the Center for Security Policy, may actually make matters much
worse.

The Horse’s Mouth

Among the more frightening observations contained in Mr. Alibek’s latest crie de
coeur⁽¹⁾ are the
following (emphasis added throughout):

A scenario in which passengers on an intercontinental flight are exposed to deadly plague
virus
and only discover the cause of their imminent demise after it is too late to treat — and after
they have exposed family members and others to their contagious disease. Alibek declares
unreservedly that, “on the basis of my 20 years experience working in bioweapons
research, development and testing in the former Soviet Union and Russia,” such a
terrifying BW attack is entirely possible.

“[Biological] weapons are attractive to some nations and terrorist groups
alike, because
they are relatively easy and inexpensive to produce and can cause widespread illness, fatalities
and panic. And the effect of these weapons is not immediately obvious, allowing time for the
terrorists to escape.”

“Many signatory countries, including Russia and Iraq, have flouted [the Biological
Weapons Convention’s] provisions. The Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, which killed 12
people in the Tokyo subway in 1995 using nerve gas, had also obtained anthrax bacteria,
though it never perfected a way to disperse it.”

“Biological weapons were so attractive to the Soviet Union that it risked
international
censure and spent vast resources to produce them. The Soviet
program reached its heyday
in the 20 years after the Soviets ratified the 1972 treaty.”

“The Soviet program was easily the most sophisticated in the world.
At its height,
32,000 people worked for Biopreparat (the civilian pharmaceutical and vaccine
company that served as a cover for biological weapons work), an additional 10,000 or
so worked in Defense Ministry bioweapons laboratories, and thousands of others were
scattered through other agencies.”

“The Soviets had the capacity to produce huge amounts of many different
agents. The hundreds of tons of anthrax and dozens of tons of smallpox and
plague that the Soviets kept stockpiled could be loaded into bombs and missiles
for use within days.”

Regarding the current status of Moscow’s BW program, Alibek expresses doubt that it has
been “shut down,” despite Boris Yeltsin’s 1992 order to that effect:

“As the first deputy director of Biopreparat in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I was
fully aware of plans for future research and development in the area of bioweapons.
Today, when I read the recent work of my former colleagues in scientific publications,
it is hard for me to imagine that their efforts have no relation to biological
weapons.”

“For example, Russian scientists have created genetically altered
antibiotic-resistant strains of plague, anthrax, tularemia and glanders. They are
working to create a strain of anthrax that will overcome the immune system.
They have been developing methods for genetically altering smallpox virus while
preserving its virulence. They have developed techniques for cultivating Marburg
and Machupo viruses.”

Alibek fears that his former colleagues’ published studies are “just the tip of the iceberg.
There
is almost surely more work that is not being published, and still more that is being done
behind the closed doors of Defense Ministry laboratories.“

“…A great deal of the information that Russia’s scientists have published in the last decade —
and continue to publish — would be of great use to other countries or terrorist groups
interested in bioweapons. A number of experts also suspect that since Russia scaled
back
its program in 1992, some Russian researchers have been marketing their services to
other countries.“

Alibek’s Useful Advice

In his op.ed. article, Mr. Alibek offers some very constructive suggestions about what to do
about
the threat of biological weapons. Specifically, he argues:

“In my opinion, far too much hope is being placed in vaccines. Even if
vaccines existed for
every possible agent — and they do not, it would be impossible to inoculate every person in the
United States against dozens of diseases. And vaccines are of relatively little use if an attack
has already occurred.

“Instead, we should devote our resources to preventing disease from occurring
after
exposure and to treating the disease that does occur. Such research would have the
added
benefit of helping those who contract these diseases under natural conditions.

“We must also prepare thorough plans for responding to any imaginable act of
biological
terrorism. That includes deciding who would respond to the emergency and how, as
well as details like quarantine procedures and shipment of medications.”

Mr. Alibek then declares, correctly, that: “While we prepare for
terrorist attacks, we must
not forget state-sponsored bioweapons programs. The lure of such weapons is
substantial.“
He supports the idea of “insuring that these bioweapons experts have legitimate research work to
do at home, to keep Russian know-how from reaching other countries.”

Although Alibek enthuses about the benefits that such scientific cooperation might provide in
the
way of promoting transparency in the Kremlin’s still secrecy-shrouded, illegal biological weapons
program, he is enough of a realist to warn that until that program is completely opened up —
including Biopreparat complexes at “Yekaterinburg, Kirov, Sergiyev Posad and a
new facility at
Strizhi” — that “cooperation is not only senseless, but also
dangerous.”

Alibek’s Error

Regrettably, an otherwise splendid essay is marred by Mr. Alibek’s endorsement of an addled
idea
currently being embraced by the Clinton Administration, the British government and other
well-meaning — and not-so-well-meaning — parties: the proposition that the Biological Weapons
Convention (BWC) “must be given teeth, primarily in the form of mandatory inspections.” href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

Alibek should know better: Even with the help of a defector like him —
someone who was in a
position to provide a wealth of information about a bioweapon manufacturer’s past BW practices,
development, testing and production sites and programs, there is simply no way to be
sure that
all bioweapons activities have ceased in a country like Russia.

Lest there be any doubt on this score, consider the example of Iraq. For nearly seven years,
the
full scope and status of Saddam Hussein’s illegal BW program has eluded the most intrusive
inspection system imaginable. It is certainly the case that any BWC verification regime will be
less comprehensive, timely and thorough than that under which UNSCOM has ostensibly
operated. And even if Dr. Hindawi — Iraq’s counterpart to Alibek, who was arrested by Saddam
a couple of days ago, as he tried to flee (presumably to the West) with a briefcase believed to
have been full of secret bioweapon-related information — had come in from the cold, the
UN
would not be able to say it could verify the current condition of Saddam’s program, let
alone that it will cease to exist in the future.

Enter Jim Woolsey

Fortunately, in a filmed interview conducted with the Center for Security Policy on 17 March,
President Clinton’s first Director of Central Intelligence, made clear the utter futility — and
unacceptably high costs — of trying to verify the BWC through mandatory, intrusive on-site
inspections. Mr. Woolsey said, in part:

There are things that we can do if we form a partnership between the
government and the life sciences industry that is as close and enduring as the
partnership between the aerospace business and the Defense Department

“[If such a partnership exists,] there are a number of things that one can make
improvements in: sensors to detect when biologicals have been released;
medicines to treat them….It takes a great deal of discipline and it would take a
great deal of production and dissemination of medicine and training of first
responders and mobile hospitals and the like.

“But the United States has done things much more difficult than that. If you look
at how well organized, for example, say the British population was during the
[Nazi] ‘blitz,’ the sort of things they could do, we could do that sort of thing if
we took it seriously.

“One way I think we could destroy the possibility of having that kind of
partnership [between government and the life sciences industry] is to move
toward some ineffective and very intrusive notion of how to verify the
biological weapons convention. Trying to have a verification regime that would
on a routine basis would go into pharmaceutical facilities and look at them would
really only penalize the people who are…behaving themselves and staying within
the law….You’re not going to find what Hezbollah is doing with biological
weapons that way or, for that matter, a Unabomber, who thinks about using
biologicals instead of explosives in packages.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy applauds the respective
contributions of Messrs. Alibek and Woolsey
concerning the need to reduce America’s vulnerability to bioweapon threats. In particular, it
endorses the urgency Jim Woolsey attaches to making the pharmaceutical, animal
sciences,
biotech and related industries integral partners in this effort.

This will require the Clinton Administration, however, to eschew initiatives like the
fatuous
idea of adding an on-site inspection regime to the BWC. Such a proposal has already
had the
effect of alarming the pharmaceutical and biotech industries and risks alienating them altogether.
After all, they understand what most (but, unfortunately, not all) executive branch
officials do, as
well: These inspections will do nothing to reduce the danger of biological warfare from either
BW states or terrorists but will surely inflict serious harm upon the proprietary processes and
information — and therefore the financial viability — of these cutting-edge American
businesses.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Guess Who Else Is Cooking Up Biological
Weapons? Russia (No. 98-D 35, 25 February 1998)
for additional examples of the warnings this
Soviet defector is offering the West in a tardy, but welcome, effort to clear an obviously deeply
troubled conscience.

2. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Clinton Legacy Watch # 20: More Evidence of the
Mounting Biological Weapons Warfare Threat and the Inadequate U.S. Response
(No. 98-D
44, 10 March 1998).