Biological Weapons and "Bioterrorism" in the First Years of the 21st Century

by Milton Leitenberg

Milton Leitenberg
Center for International and Security Studies School of Public Affairs
University of Maryland

Paper prepared for Conference on "The Possible Use of Biological Weapons by Terrorists Groups: Scientific, Legal, and International Implications
[ICGEB, Landau Network, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Italy]
Rome, Italy April 16, 2002

Paper updated to July 10, 2002

Contents Page

Introduction

Part I: The US Destruction of the Verification Protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention: July and November/ December 2001

Part II: September 11, 2001: The First Success in Mass Casualty Terrorism

Part III: Al Queda and Biological Agents or Weapons

Part IV: The Anthrax Events in the United States in the Fall of 2001

Part V: The Question of Offensive/ Defensive Distinctions in Biological Weapons Research, and the Potential Stimulus to BW Proliferation By Expanded Research Programs

References and Notes INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to review three processes that are providing the context in which biological weapons issues are evolving. Two of these have already taken place. The first is the destruction in 2001 by the United States of any possibility of achieving a negotiated Verification Protocol to the Biological Weapon Convention, following a full ten years of international diplomatic effort between 1991 and 2001. The second is the emphasis on the threat of bioterrorism that became a significant national political concern in the United States since the second half of 1995, but which has been enormously magnified by the September 2001 events, as well as the subsequent distribution of expertly prepared powdered anthrax through the US postal system.

These two events and/ or processes unquestionably produced disturbances bordering on the level of shock to the international regime controlling biological weapons. The second of these, the frequently exaggerated anticipation of "bioterrorism," produced the third process: an enormous expansion in the U. S. biodefense program, the consequences of which risk catalyzing a major expansion in both global interest and capabilities in the area of biological weapons and warfare.

In a sequence of papers published in the last year or two I have reviewed the experience of biological weapons in the twentieth century, 1 and presented an analysis of the degree of threat posed by these weapons in the period 1995 to 2000, in distinction to the portrayal of that threat, most particularly in the United States. 2 The present paper sets the context in which events that will take place in the near future will unfold.

PART I: THE US DESTRUCTION OF THE VERIFICATION PROTOCOL TO THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION; JULY AND NOVEMBER/ DECEMBER 2001

The elaboration of a Verification Protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) essentially began in 1991. At the Third BWC Review Conference, the European countries sought a rigorous and intrusive on-site inspection regime for the BWC, more or less analogous to that which was being elaborated for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) at the same time. US opposition led to the compromise "VEREX" (Verification Experts) exercise. That effort occupied 1992 and 1993. It was followed by five years of the Ad-Hoc Group (AHG) negotiations, beginning in 1995. The States that most impeded progress during that period were Iran, Russia, and the United States.

Taken all together, the achievement of a Protocol was delayed for ten years, with a major factor in that delay being US government policies. 3 On July 25, 2001, the US government delivered the final deathblow to the entire effort.

At least since the middle of 1999, the U. S negotiating position on the BWC Verification Protocol had been driven by restrictions desired by the US Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and the CIA in order to protect against the exposure of biodefense activities taking place in the US. As the negotiating text of the Verification Protocol got weaker – ironically, largely in response to US demands --if a text would ever have been approved and submitted to the US Senate, it would have faced the anticipated argument that it offered no benefits at all. Senate opposition would have been expected on this ground, as well as for the alleged protection of US pharmaceutical interests. As others have pointed out, the ability to obtain US Senate ratification of arms control treaties negotiated and signed by the United States in recent years has been very difficult. At the beginning of the second Clinton administration, more than half a dozen treaties were awaiting Senate action. By the end of that administration, passage of only one had been obtained, the Chemical Weapons Convention, while the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty had been acted upon but it had been rejected b y the Senate (with arguments being presented related to verification issues.) The others, minor treaties, were not brought to the Senate at all.

PhRMA, the major US pharmaceutical manufacturers industry association, was vociferously opposed to intrusive inspection measures. Their European industrial counterparts however, were not hostile at all. In the case of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the U. S. chemical industry was entirely and actively in its favor, and the US military leadership, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were convinced to support its ratification.

And even in those circumstances, US Senate opponents attached a multitude of unilateral US provisions to the CWC Treaty ratification. Neither of these two circumstances held for the BWC Verification Protocol. In the Geneva Ad-Hoc Group negotiations, all of the Western European allies of the US sought a rigorous Verification Protocol, and opposed the US positions. Yet, the US kept pushing for continued dilution of inspection provisions, and the other Western nations successively compromised their own positions in order to convince the US to come along.

US intra-administration politics on the Biological Weapons Convention during the two Clinton administrations, from 1993 to 2000, were a disaster. The chief US delegate in Geneva for those eight years, Ambassador Donald Mahley, had served in the Reagan and previous Bush administrations in positions concerned with BW policy.

Senior officials in the Reagan administration had disapproved of the BWC itself, not to speak of the forthcoming Verification Protocol. In addition, Acting Assistant Secretary of State, Edward Lacey, when he returned to serve in the Clinton Administration, had also served in the previous Bush Administration. Both basically opposed any Verification Protocol, and most certainly did not favor an intrusive one. They never altered their positions.

Congressional testimony by senior administration officials in September 2000 was striking in the strength of open hostility to a BWC Verification Protocol. From Dr. Susan Koch, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Threat Reduction Policy, Office of the Secretary of Defense:

"… we do not believe that the Protocol being negotiated will be able to provide the kind of effective verification that exists in other arms control treaties. That is, it will not provide a high degree of confidence that we could detect militarily significant cheating. We therefore recognize that this Protocol will not "solve" the problem of biological weapons proliferation, even among the BWC States Parties who opt to join."

From Ambassador Mahley, Special Negotiator for Chemical and Biological Arms Control, Department of State:

"As you know, the United States has substantive requirements for attributing effective verifiability to a treaty. It involves being able to make a judgement of high confidence in detecting a violation before it can become a military significant threat. I have already noted that a small program can become a threat. Likewise, the inherent "cover for an illicit program in legitimate activity makes differentiation much more imprecise. The United States has never therefore, judged that the Protocol would produce what is to us effectively verifiable BWC." 4

Nevertheless, in other portions of these same statements to the US Senate in 2000, both Mahley and Koch still maintained the value of the Verification Protocol for US interests. Ambassador Mahley's July 25, 2001 statement closely mirrored a position that had been expressed six years earlier by another senior ACDA official, Dr. Edward Lacey:

"… our own analyses indicate that the BWC cannot be made more effective by adding verification measures known to us. The small size and complex structure of microorganisms, and the dual-purpose nature of many items used in biological production, make verification of a ban on biological weapons problematic, to say the least… Our concerns about the verifiability of the BWC are the primary reason the United States delegation opposed the proposals for specific verification regimes made at the September 1991 review conference. But it should also be noted that the United States opposes any measure that would limit our ability to pursue a biological defense program or unduly burden American industry." 5

The way in which policy on the Verification Protocol was established, and the way in which it was implemented during the Clinton administration, had major defects.

The new administration took office at the end of January 1993, and by September 1993 had carried out a Non-Proliferation Policy Review, which was described by President Clinton in an address to the United Nations General Assembly. A new policy on the BWC Verification Protocol, in distinction to that of the previous Bush administration, was part of that overall review, but was expressed only in a cursory statement. Its details remained to be elaborated, and the VEREX process was still taking place. The Bush administration had favored only confidence-building measures (CBMs), and investigations only of outbreaks of disease and of allegations of use. It opposed anysite visits. The new Clinton administration eventually supported clarification visits and facility investigations. Problems then arose in the US intra-governmental debates on the details of the Geneva Ad-Hoc Group negotiations. More significant however, was the fact that the most senior administration policy makers, "the Principals," did not see to it that their policy preferences were actually implemented.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher and his successor, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, were uninterested in the subject. The subject was also not a significant priority for either of President Clinton's National Security Advisers, Anthony Lake or Sandy Berger. During Lake and Christopher's tenure, US domestic political considerations led to the policy decision to first focus on obtaining US Senate ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention, before attempting to negotiate US interagency disputes on a BWC Verification Protocol.

Obtaining ratification of the Chemical treaty moved very slowly and was not achieved until the last moment in April 1997. Although President Clinton oversaw a nominal shift in US policy on the BWC Protocol and publicly addressed it again in 1998, his attention to the issue was marginal, and he never imposed his policy preferences on the substantial bureaucratic opposition in his own administration. He never established the circumstances that would have made it mandatory for opposing mid-level bureaucrats to accede to his stated interest, and neither were they removed or replaced for opposing his stated policy preferences. This was in fact a rather typical occurrence in the Clinton administration on major foreign policy issues, and it was not peculiar to policy on the BWC Verification Protocol. In the absence of that leadership, even the Director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, John Holum, took the position of his agency staff rather than the President's nominal position. All of this led not only to years of US bureaucratic deadlock, but to even more egregious actions. 6

Since mid-1999, Ambassador Mahley, the chief US negotiator in Geneva, had told major US allies that he sought a total and basic change in the mandate for the negotiations, in direct contravention of official administration policy at the time. He argued that the entire effort was a misguided affair, and that the US government should go to the 5 th BWC Review Conference, scheduled to be held in November 2001, and ask for a new negotiating mandate for the Protocol based on entirely different negotiating principles. For several months prior to the change in administrations, the US delegation at the Ad Hoc Group (AHG) was the only one to oppose the submission of a draft Protocol by the AHG Chairman, a move strongly favored and even urged by our European allies. The US delegation abstained from virtually any substantive contribution to the proceedings at the AGH meetings just before and just after the US Presidential elections in November 2000.

With the change in administration, Ambassador Mahley, the head of that delegation, chaired an interagency review of US policy on a BWC Verification Protocol. The outcome was predictable. By mid-March, it was known that senior officials in the new administration would not support a Verification Protocol. On April 23, the first press reports appeared stating that the Bush Administration had decided to reject the draft Protocol. 7 In mid-May, Ambassador Mahley and US Assistant Secretary of State Avis Bohlen traveled to major European capitals to inform the major allies of the United States of the US decision not to support the Verification Protocol, and to seek their support. 8 The European reaction was a simultaneous EU diplomatic démarche to both the US and the Russian governments, urging them to support the BWC Verification Protocol. The European démarche to the US read in part:

"The European Union has already accepted a lot of compromises in order to meet the concerns of the USA, especially on the declaration of biodefense programs and facilities, on the declaration of production facilities other than vaccines ones, as well as on the provisions related to the conduct of on-site activities." 9

The EU démarche had no effect on the US decision. As for Russia, it was known that the Defense Ministry opposed the Protocol, and that even the Foreign Ministry opposed it as well, but that the Russian government would support it if the US did and a Protocol was achieved, so as not to place Russia in a prominent position of opposition. Russian proposals during the years of Ad-Hoc Group meetings had been retrogressive, demanding the establishment of lists of proscribed agents and thresholds of permissible materials, proposals that were opposed by virtually all other states. In addition, at the April Ad-Hoc Group meeting, seven countries in the Non-Aligned group – China, Cuba, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – had tabled their opposition to the compromise text for a Verification Protocol produced by the Ad-Hoc Group Chairman.

India was also hostile to the Verification Protocol. It is possible that positions hostile to a Verification Protocol taken by at least some of these states were designed to protect offensive BW programs.

Nevertheless, it was the US that decided to abort the process. Ambassador Mahley's address to the AHG on July 25, 2001 announced the US position:

"… the mechanisms envisioned for the Protocol would not achieve their objectives,… no modifications of them would allow them to achieve their objectives and …trying to do more would simply raise the risk to legitimate United States activities….[ B] ecause the difficulties with this text are… inherent in the very approach used in the text, more drafting and modifications of this text would in our view, still not yield a result we could accept."

The United States was "… unable to support the current text, even with changes as an appropriate outcome of the Ad Hoc Group efforts." 10 The US would not negotiate any further on the basis of the 210 page draft Verification Protocol proposed by the Chairman of the Ad Hoc Group, and now claimed to believe that the principles on which all the past years negotiations had been based was flawed. An official of the US National Security Council in Washington stated:

"The protocol does not stop the threat posed by the spread of biological weapons, or deter cheaters, or enhance verification,"…. But the protocol's requirement that states declare facilities in which weapons are made and permit them to be inspected "does put our bio-defense activities and proprietary commercial interests at risk." 11

Neither the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty nor the Chemical Weapons Convention have prevented nations from cheating in recent years, nor can they do that with certainty in the future. Nevertheless, the US government does not propose to withdraw from them; in fact, it was a major supporter of both and a strong member of both of those treaty regimes. Only the year before, in testimony to the US Senate, administration spokesmen, including Ambassador Mahley, had pointed out the utility of the proposed Verification Protocol despite its inability to provide certain disclosure of cheaters. 12 Complaints that the Protocol's Verification mechanisms were not foolproof were disingenuous. As others have pointed out, "no one argues for lax police enforcement on the grounds that crime, like cheating, is always with us." The additional complaint of administration officials, "that they had virtually no chance to affect the protocol that was drafted by the chairman of the negotiating group in Geneva. The draft was circulating less than six weeks after President Bush took office," was additional hypocrisy. As already indicated, in the proceeding months, the United States was the only country that urged the negotiating chairman not to release his compromise text at all. In addition, US diplomats scarcely uttered a word in the two previous negotiating sessions.

The negotiations collapsed. Six other nations: China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Cuba, and Iran all opposed the AHG Chairman's compromise text and demanded various modifications to it. 13 They essentially opposed the compliance measures portion of the protocol. Back in the 1994 Special Conference that had established the Ad-Hoc Group, China, India and Iran had argued that the conditions were not yet suitable for negotiating a Verification Protocol. Problems had been expected from precisely each of them, but with the totally destructive US move they could all portray themselves as having nothing but the best of intentions and being totally cooperative.

The EU nations simply gave up overnight, and no thought was given to going ahead without the US. The logic seemed to be that without the US, Russia would not join; without Russia, China would not; without China, India would not; and without India, Iran would not. With all that to contemplate, the EU states presumably did not care to have to fight about export control regimes, plus having to absorb the majority of the inspections. The Ad Hoc Group was to have agreed on a report of its efforts to be forwarded to the Review Conference, but that proved impossible. Cuba and Iran demanded that the report attribute blame for the collapse of the AHG's work to the United States, then to "one delegation," and finally to "a delegation." The United States and the Western European group refused. The Non-Aligned Group (NAM) then required that the statements of all states be appended to the report. The West again refused, and requested that the report be put to a vote. The NAM refused to permit a vote to take place. No compromise was achievable, and no report approved. 14

Nominally, the mandate of the Ad-Hoc Group remained, and the next 5 year Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention would take place in mid-November 2001. 15

One more surprise was to follow. New York Times reporters had learned of the Bush administration's decision to scuttle the BWC Verification Protocol at about the same time as people in the interested policy community in Washington. But they had also learned of something else. The Biological Weapons Convention permits research, but no development, production, or testing of the weapons specific to distributing biological agents. However, the treaty does not refer to "offensive" or "defensive" research or how to distinguish between them. Within the burgeoning US biodefense program, the reporters had learned of several projects which straddled the distinction, and possibly even overstepped the boundary of permissible activities, although there was no recognized definition of that boundary. Nevertheless, if it came to be judged that such a boundary had been crossed, the United States would be in technical violation of the Biological Weapons Convention, of which it was one of the three treaty repositories. One of the projects, to build and test a model of a former Soviet BW weapon, was being carried out by the US Central Intelligence Agency. Other projects involved the use of two large aerosol test chambers, of 70 and 155 cubic meters in size, in which simulants were being tested, but in which it was planned to test pathogens as well. The Australia group uses a threshold "trigger" of 1 cubic meter for an aerosol chamber for the purpose of export limitations, and the proposed BWC Verification Protocol had proposed 5 cubic meters as a reporting trigger. It then developed that the US had not declared any of these disputable BW R & D programs in its BWC/ CBM declarations between 1997 and 2001. The New York Times reporters delayed publication of what they had learned about the controversial projects until after Ambassador Mahley delivered the coup de grace to the Verification Protocol in Geneva on July 25, 2001. In the event, they actually delayed publication until September 4,2001. 16 The implications were obvious. Whether prior publication could actually have averted the new administration's decision is questionable, but it would have made it more difficult.

The more significant question is how, in the United States, the research boundaries dealing with biological weapons could have been pushed into questionable territory. The answer may be simple. The Central Intelligence Agency took upon itself weapon assessment tasks that should have been the responsibility of Department of Defense facilities, and it pushed its project aggressively. Oversight within the government was poor, and some of the disputable projects were not even reported to National Security Council officials. Those that were reviewed did receive approval : in the mood that prevailed, it was known that the President and other senior officials were generally anxious for action on the issue, and there were few naysayers. A single courageous legal official did raise explicit objections. Few doubt that the United States has a solely defensive BW program, but one thing seems almost equally certain : if the US found the same projects taking place in Russia, Iraq, or Iran or any of several other countries, it would consider them to be part of an offensive BW program. (This subject is discussed in greater detail in Part 3 of this study).

On October 10, US Assistant Secretary of State Avis Bohlen, in an address to the First Committee of the UN General Assembly stated that there had been no change in US policy since July:

"Last July, we made clear that we could not support the protocol, because the measures that were proposed to enforce the ban against the possession and development are neither effective or equitable, and given the inherent properties of biological products it seems all but certain that they can never be made so.

This continues to be our view. But in addition, the events of September 11 have reinforced our view that the priority focus must be on use. The international community must here and now state our abhorrence of use…

"The possibility that BW might be used on a massive scale must now, after September 11, be regarded as less remote than before. This possibility 'mus t give new urgency to our efforts to combat the threat of biological weapons -and by weapons I mean here biological agents used with lethal intent. A first step must be to strengthen the norms against use of biological weapons, to make clear and doubly clear that this form of terrorism, like all others, is unacceptable. We believe that the international community, which has in Security Council resolutions 1368 and 1373 so clearly stated its resolve to combat terrorism by all means at its disposal, must equally clearly state that any use of biological weapons -whether by state, an organization or an individual -would be a crime against humanity to which the international community will respond. We must also make clear that transfer of BW and other toxins to those who would use them in is similarly unacceptable'." 17

Of course, the Geneva Protocol already forbids the use of BW, and articles 5 and 6 of the BWC provide mechanisms for states to press for investigations of BW use.

Following the events of September 11, 2001 it was much easier for the US to obtain international diplomatic support for proposals it sought to substitute for the Verification Protocol. Without those events having taken place the US, after having destroyed the Verification Protocol, would have found scant diplomatic support from other nations for restating the same ideas that it favored eleven years earlier: investigation of the use of biological weapons and of unusual outbreaks of disease, strengthened export controls, and amplified CBMs.

The US again carried out bilateral consultations with its EU allies in October. In Washington, US officials had apparently already determined three objectives: the termination of the Ad Hoc Group, the termination of the mandate that had been given to the Ad Hoc Group to negotiate a binding Verification Protocol, and as a coda, the removal of the Chairman that had guided the diplomatic negotiations through the ten years of the VEREX process and the Ad Hoc Group deliberations. However, in their discussions with their European counterparts in October, the US team, again of Bohlen and Mahley, still indicated that the US could continue to support the Ad Hoc Group. The US changed this position very soon afterwards, but did not communicate the change to the Europeans.

On November 1, US President Bush released a statement claiming that "The United States is committed to strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) as part of a comprehensive strategy for combating the complex threats of Weapons of mass destruction and terrorism." 18 Among seven itemized proposals included in the statement two were particularly notable: "Establish an effective United Nations procedure for investigating suspicious outbreaks [of disease] or allegations of biological weapons use," and "Establish procedures for addressing BWC compliance concerns."

These had been, of course, prime objectives of the procedures developed in the BWC Verification Protocol. The irony would be even more pointed given what was to follow. 19 Public relations "spin" had become integrated into US Presidential policy statements.

The United States government completed the destruction of the BWC Verification Protocol in November 2001. US Under Secretary of State John Bolton spoke on November 19. The strongest part of his rather brief presentation was to accuse Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Libya of maintaining offensive BW programs, and being in violation of the BWC Treaty to which they were states parties. 20

These were certainly not new accusations: they had appeared in official US government reports or testimony since 1988, although their presentation in an international diplomatic context was certainly unusual. In fact, that led some observers to assume that the actual purpose of making the charges at the BWC Review Conference was to produce an acrimonious debate leading to deadlock. Moreover, Bolton also stated that the US government believed that additional countries were also violating the BWC, but that the US was not prepared to identify them, but would speak to them privately. Finally, despite the explicit accusations, the US government would not invoke Article 5 or Article 6 procedures of the BWC so as to resolve and/ or end the alleged violations. Towards the end of his official statement, Bolton ironically suggested that

"To preserve international unity in our efforts to fight against terrorism and WMD proliferation we need to work together and avoid procedural or tactical divisiveness during the Review Conference that may hinder reaching our mutual goal of combating the BW threat."

During the following days of debate the US proposed phrasing for the Final Declaration of the Review Conference that noted that a number of state parties to the BWC were not in compliance. If true it was certainly merited; but the US has never in the past 13 years openly presented the evidence for these claims to the international diplomatic community. The countries that had been named by US Under Secretary Bolton of course all denied the accusations. If they are in non-compliance they will scarcely proceed to take the unilateral measures that the US suggested would be helpful to prevent further BW proliferation. In addition, other non-aligned or states sympathetic to them will find denunciation of the US a useful curtain behind which they too can sit on their hands and do nothing to impede BW proliferation. 21 Bolton left his most explicit statements to the effect that the US would not participate in a further negotiation on the Verification Protocol to a press conference which followed his formal presentation to the Review Conference.

In the very final hour of December 7, the last day of the conference, Bolton and the US delegation delivered the coup de grace: it tabled a non-negotiable proposal that

"The Conference takes note of the work of the Ad Hoc Group, and decides that the Ad Hoc Group and its mandate are hereby terminated, and replaced with the process elaborated in paragraphs 1 and 2."

These paragraphs called for annual meetings until November 2006 with no authority to negotiate any measures, only to "consider and assess progress by States Parties in implementing the new measures adopted at the Fifth Review Conference," i. e., those suggested by the United States. Not a single other government present at the Review Conference was prepared to accept that US position. The United States had made no mention of terminating the AHG in any of the various Western Group meetings that took place during the Review Conference right up to the final day. The US delegation concealed its final act from its European allies to the very end. Even at a Western Group meeting which took place on the morning of December 7, the US delegation did not mention the paper that it would circulate some hours later. The Europeans had no knowledge of the final US position until they heard it presented during the plenary meeting.

The Review Conference was adjourned immediately after the US tabled its resolution. States parties will meet again in November 2002. There was no diplomatic cost to the United States as a result of the debacle. There is absolutely no reason to expect any modulation in the US position before November 2002, nor to expect any outcome at that time significantly different than occurred in November 2001. Most significant of all, although the US had argued that the preeminent issue was compliance by member states to the provisions of the BWC, and that compliance was its main concern, none of the proposals that the US had offered dealt in any way with compliance short of a nation actually using BW. At a meeting in Washington D. C. on January 11, 2002 Under Secretary Bolton reiterated absolute US government opposition to the Verification Protocol, as well as the claim that the preeminent US concern was BWC Treaty compliance. Bolton also explicitly stated that the primary reason for US government rejection of the Verification Protocol was to protect the US biodefense program from intrusion. 22 The contradiction --as well as the priorities of the US government --were thus clear and explicit. As the Review Conference opened, Elisa Harris, the National Security Council director for chemical and biological weapon issues for the proceeding eight years, had commented that

"… if the review conference ends after three weeks with no tangible manifestations of decisions that would help address the biological weapons problem… it will represent a very serious blow to the whole regime prohibiting biological weapons, and I think it will send a very bad signal to proliferators that the international community lacks the will to enforce compliance with this agreement" 23

That was exactly what happened, and solely due to US government actions. Despite its claimed concern for Treaty compliance, the US was not prepared to accept the only mechanism available to address the issue. The US biodefense program took precedence.

As to what might occur in November 2002 at the renewed Review Conference, one can envision a range of alternative outcomes;

1. Once again, no Final Declaration is achieved. This leaves the AHG and its mandate in effect, but without a practical means of achieving consensus, even on more AHG meetings. This is a likely outcome given the obstacles to getting US, European, and NAM agreement on any constructive outcome.

2. A Final Declaration that abolishes the AHG and terminates its mandate but provides for experts groups to discuss the US and other proposals and to report to annual meetings of states parties. This is a possible outcome, given the US determination to kill the AHG and its mandate; the Europeans and moderate NAM interest in achieving "something" from the Review Conference; and the hard-line NAM opposition to legally-binding measures.

3. A Final Declaration that retains the AHG but replaces the protocol-related element of the mandate with a narrower charge to consider the US and other more modest proposals to strengthen the BW. This is an unlikely outcome, as it would require the US to shift position on continuation of the AHG.

4. A Final Declaration that leaves the AHG and its mandate intact and is similar to what was in the drafting committee at the adjournment of the Review Conference in November 2001 (i. e., annual meeting of states parties at which decisions would be made on whether to convene experts groups on specific issues). This is quite unlikely, as it would require the US to abandon its position from December 2001.

5. No Review Conference session takes place, as it is postponed once more. 24

On April 15, 2002, the European Union's General Affairs Council, the Foreign Ministers of the fifteen member states, adopted a series of resolutions. One of these was to "Reinforce, where needed, the multilateral instruments, in particular by: …Working for the successful conclusion of a reconvened 5 th BWC Review Conference in November 2002." What this "successful conclusion" will mean in real terms remains to be seen.

At the end of April 2002, the British government released a study intended to facilitate discussions in November. It noted that

"… the Protocol would have delivered significant benefits for transparency, monitoring and deterrence in key dual-use areas capable of misuse…. It would as such help to deter and investigate suspected non-compliance, whether concerning the activity of a particular facility, an alleged use of biological weapons or a suspicious outbreak of disease…."

It also stated that "The UK would have preferred stronger measures for ensuring compliance and transparency." 25

The document also made two important categorical statements, the first on deterring CBW use, and the second on current BWC treaty non-compliance:

"The UK believes that it is also essential to deter CBW use by assuring a potential aggressor of three related outcomes: CBW use will not be allowed to secure political or military advantages; it will, on the contrary, invite a proportionately serious response; and those at every level responsible for any breach of international law relating to the use of such weapons will be held personally accountable."

"Compliance with the BTWC is an issue the international community cannot avoid; if the Convention is to remain credible, there needs to be concerted determination to deal with the problem of non-compliance in an effective and sustainable manner. The UK and other BTWC State Parties cannot shirk their responsibilities on this matter." 26

None of the "three related outcomes" stipulated by the British government were applied to Iraq at the time of its extensive use of chemical weapons against Iran between 1983-84 and 1988, and it is notable that the British government does not indicate any specific ways for the international community to manifest its "concerted determination to deal with the problem of non-compliance in an effective and sustainable manner." Nothing could be a less promising indicator that anything like that can be expected than by the defection of Russia, France and China between 1996 and the present time on maintaining the United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq's continuing and blatant violation of the provisions requiring it to divest itself of its WMD programs, including biological weapons.

One of the areas that the UK document recommended "for immediate action" was the "establishment of an effective and legally binding process for investigation into suspected non-compliance with the Convention, to include misuse of facilities, unusual outbreaks of disease believed to be connected to a violation of the convention, and alleged use of BW." This suggestion, however, as does the earlier and partially similar US one, depends on having the United Nations Secretary-General carry out such investigations. That would likely introduce the question of UN Security Council approval, the issue of veto rights of the permanent five members, and the requirement for agreement by the investigated party. Since all this is substantially less than was provided for in the draft Verification Protocol, it seems unlikely to be accepted by many states if unaccompanied by the rest of the edifice of that framework. The United States is additionally wary of allowing investigation of the "misuse of facilities" under United Nations auspices for the same reason that it opposed the broader Protocol, the safeguarding of US biodefense facilities.

The result of the US diplomatic maneuvers at the final summer 2001 Ad-Hoc Group meeting of member states of the BWC and at the November-December 2001 BWC review conference was to scuttle ten years of efforts to arrive at verification provisions for the BWC at least approximate to those for the NPT and the CWC, the international non-proliferation regimes dealing with nuclear and chemical weapons.

There would continue to be no international mechanism to monitor compliance precisely when the inte rnational regime was under pressure from – if the US government were correct – BW proliferation and noncompliance with the BWC by some of its treaty members and the risk of the spread of BW capabilities to non-state actors. In addition, there were new questions about the boundaries of rapidly expanding biodefense research programs combined with advances in molecular biology and biotechnology.

These subjects are discussed in the sections of the study that follow.

PART II. SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 – THE FIRST SUCCESS IN MASS CASUALTY TERRORISM

On September 11, 2001, individuals apparently associated with Al Queda, the organization founded and directed by a Saudi, Osama Bin Laden, hijacked and then took over the flight controls of four large passenger aircraft in the United States. 27 Two of those aircraft were deliberately flown into the two 110 floor towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. The perpetrators could not have known what the consequences of the aircrafts' impact would be, as the World Trade Center towers had been designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707 jet aircraft, and in fact they each survived the impact forces of the larger Boeing 767s as well. They presumably hoped for the same outcome that their colleagues had hoped for in the bombing carried out in 1993, when 1,500 pounds of a urea-nitrate mixture, a more sophisticated explosive than an ammonia-nitrate mixture, were detonated at the base of one of the World Trade Center towers. At that time, the perpetrators hoped to topple one of the towers into the second, and thereby topple both of the towers. On September 11, the temperatures produced by unimpeded burning of nearly full loads of jet fuel led to the weakening of the steel columns supporting the mass of the buildings above the floors into which the aircraft had crashed, and both of the 110 floor tall towers collapsed in almost perfect vertical synchrony, the increasing mass pushing straight down into the floors below, ending in the total demolition of both towers. 28 The structural collapse of the buildings was due to the effects of fire. Only small portions fell on several adjacent smaller buildings, causing their destruction. Luckily, sufficient time elapsed for nearly 90 percent of the occupants of the buildings to be evacuated before both collapsed. The loss of life is now estimated as 2,838 people, including the 147 occupants of the two aircraft. 29

The third aircraft was purposely crashed into the Pentagon, housing the US Department of Defense. Due to the massive construction of the building, and its low-lying construction, only 184 people lost their lives, including the 59 in the aircraft. In the fourth aircraft, passengers informed by cell telephone of what had already occurred, decided to fight the hijackers at the cost of their lives. The aircraft crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, and whatever its intended target was fortuitously escaped destruction.

These cataclysmic events produced, among other reactions in the US, one that did not necessarily have a direct, logical connection to what had taken place. It had two related parts. Within days there occurred an enormous outburst of speculation about the subsequent likelihood of chemical and biological terrorism as "next" to occur, with an overwhelming emphasis on biological terrorism. This frequently was combined with the suggestion that the next act that would be carried out by the Al Queda group in the United States would involve chemical and biological terrorism. The speculation was led, perhaps predictably, on the very next day, September 12, by former US Secretary of Defense William Cohen.

"Americans must now think the unthinkable – that the next terrorist attack could well involve a contagious agent carried to our soil or airspace in a briefcase or bottle. We face opponents who are working diligently...." 30

Even seasoned specialists working in the field of chemical and biological weapons who had previously taken the position that terrorist groups would be very unlikely to be able to produce and carry out an attack with biological agents so as to produce mass casualties, now expressed the opinion that perhaps that judgment should be reassessed (Julian Perry Robinson and Jonathan Tucker are examples).

The essential question then was: should that assessment be revised? Had September 11 introduced considerations that should alter the previous assessment?

This section of the study examines the first of three subjects:

? Whether the September 11 aircraft hijackings by themselves can be interpreted as increasing the subsequent likelihood of biological terrorism

? The available evidence to indicate whether the Al Queda group had obtained or developed any biological agents

? The apparently unrelated anthrax events in the United States in September and October 2001

The remaining two are discussed in the sections of the paper which follow.

The September 11 events demonstrated three things:

1. As became apparent after the US military forces had destroyed the Taliban, Al Queda had successfully co-opted the sovereign government of an entire country, Afghanistan. It was a relatively complex and coordinated organization, disposing of substantial resources, multiple international centers of operation, long-range recruitment and planning, years of preparation and training, all able to be brought to bear at a single moment for a joint operation.

2. By the very means of destruction chosen, the use of aircraft as a very large cruise missiles, it indicated that the group had not used the four or five years to produce chemical or biological weapons. However, it was clear at the same time that the group did not limit itself to a single mode of attack. The 1993 World Trade Center bombings, as well as the August 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, had used truck bombs. The October 2000 attack on a US destroyer in a Yemeni port, and an earlier attempt to do the same, used a waterborne equivalent of a truck bomb. US authorities also suspected that there could have been or still were Al Queda plans to use additional truck bombs within the United States. It is now known, from Philippine court documents, that the concept of hijacking and crashing a US aircraft into the US CIA headquarters had already existed within the group by 1995. Finally, there was the post-September 11 discovery that the group was interested in learning how to use small crop spraying aircraft, and perhaps purchasing one. That led to the immediate supposition that this indicated an intention to use such aircraft for the aerial dispersion of chemical or biological weapons over US domestic targets. On-line aerosol dispersion is a standard form of delivery for either C or B agents, although crop-dusting aircraft are neither easy to fly nor directly suitable for the role. In a press conference on October 11, President Bush stated the following:

"Let me give you one example of a specific threat we received. You may remember recently that there was a lot of discussion about crop-dusters.

We received knowledge that perhaps an Al Qaeda operative was prepared to use a crop-duster to spray a biological weapon or a chemical weapon on American people. And so we responded. We contacted every crop-dust location, airports form which crop-dusters leave. We notified crop-duster manufacturers to a potential threat. We knew full well that in order for a crop-duster to become a weapon of mass destruction required a retrofitting and so we talked to machine shops around where crop dusters are located." 31

The wording is suggestive, but imprecise, and from the statement alone, one cannot tell if the "received knowledge" is something more specific than the information that members of the group were interested in purchasing such an aircraft.

3. It also demonstrated that the group had absolutely no limits whatsoever to the number of people that it would like to kill by any particular act. Had one of the World Trade Center towers fallen into the second, as the perpetrators presumably hoped, and had both then toppled over into the buildings of the surrounding financial district, deaths could have exceeded 100,000.

The sum of all of those demonstrated factors is very considerable. Nevertheless, none of them pertain directly to the variables involved in being able to successfully produce or disperse a biological (or chemical) agent, except for the interest in crop-spraying aircraft, whose actual intended purpose still remains unexplained. They demonstrated ruthlessness, determination, organization, and an interest to kill very large numbers of people, as well as to attack and destroy targets of great symbolic national significance. As indicated, none of these characteristics are directly germane to the ability to produce biological agents or weapons. One should also note that the indicator of willingness to kill very large numbers of people was already passed, both in 1993 and 1995. The World Trade Center bombers in 1993 had exactly the same intention, or wish, as those who carried out the September 11, 2001 events. The only difference was that the first and simpler attempt in 1993 failed, while the second one in September 2001 succeeded. It is also clear that the Japanese Aum group in 1995 had no upper threshold to the number of people that they might have envisioned killing.

Some of their own descriptions of their intentions were nothing short of apocalyptic. They hoped to precipitate, through a convoluted series of events, a US nuclear attack on Japan by their initial use of nerve gas in Japan on Japanese civilians, which they would then blame on the United States. Although the conception is totally irrational, and would never have taken place as they conceived it, it certainly indicates no particular qualms about limiting intended deaths.

PART III. AL QUEDA AND BIOLOGICAL AGENTS OR WEAPONS?

What in fact would change the estimate of the likelihood of potential BW terrorism? First, evidence that Al Queda or another group had actually begun working with biological agents. Second, if unequivocal evidence becomes available demonstrating the collaboration of the Al Queda group with the government and security agencies of Iraq. There have heretofore been no examples of states with biological (or chemical) weapons capabilities extending assistance in those areas to terrorist groups that they support or collaborate with. However, both Iraq and the Al Queda group have amply demonstrated that they do not operate on the basis of precedent. The possibility therefore must at least be anticipated, although the discovery of definitive evidence of Iraqi collusion in suc h an activity would result in the most dire consequences for Iraq.

In his Presidential Statement of November 1, 2001, President Bush said "… we know that the scourge of biological weapons has not been eradicated… Rogue states and terrorists possess these weapons and are willing to use them," and in his 2002 State of the Union message, President Bush said that Iraq could give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. This remark was directly criticized by Paul Pillar, the US National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia. Pillar said that the President should not have said that, since there was no evidence of this having ever occurred in the past. 32 If that remains the case, the situation remains exactly the same as that described in the previous Centro Volta volume, Bioterrorism and Biosecurity. 33 That paper demonstrates that there had been little or no acquisition of biological weapons by non-state actors or "terrorist" groups in the entire 20 th century, and argues that it will still remain difficult for such groups to obtain or manufacture BW in the near future.

What little information there is available concerning Al Queda and biological weapons appeared in two stages: first soon after September 11, 2001, and second, once US forces had been able to carry out detailed examinations of Al Queda facilities on the ground in Afghanistan in February 2002. In the first instance there was the information already provided, in addition to the interest in crop-spraying aircraft discovered to have existed among the individuals who carried out the September 11, 2001 events, and the possibility that such aircraft might have been envisaged as a BW dispersal mechanism.

Several press reports then referred to an ostensibly leaked satellite photo showing "animal corpses," "dead animals," "dead dogs," in the vicinity of Al Queda training camps in Afghanistan, suggesting that this demonstrated Al Queda testing of biological agents. The US Central Intelligence Agency has explicitly denied that its satellites have recorded any such images:

"Dozens of rabbits and dogs have been found fatally poisoned near Bin Laden's Jalalabad training camps, according to a foreign intelligence agency. Although US officials adamantly deny that their own satellites spied any such thing, in June, CIA Director George Tenet warned, 'Terrorists who fly no national flag are trying to acquire chemical and biological weapons'." 34

This leaves the strong implication that the information was provided by Israeli sources, and the stronger implication that it is disinformation. There would be no way of distinguishing if the "dead dogs" had been exposed to chemical rather than biological agents, and the resolution of a satellite photo that could distinguish dogs from rabbits would have to be an inch or two, which is beyond the theoretical capability of any satellite photograph, aside from the question of what resolution Israeli photo reconnaissance capabilities have attained.

Another reporter who claims to have seen the satellite photograph stated that it was impossible to distinguish what the animals were. 35

On October 9, 2001, "British Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw," speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation television network is reported to have said, "We know that the al Qaeda network has been trying to get hold of biological and chemical weapons for the last 10 years. We believe they've probably got some. What we're not sure about is whether they've got a delivery mechanism." 36

The substance behind this statement is not currently known. Should it refer to the testimony of Ahmed Ressam in the US embassy bombings trial that has been previously reported, it would refer to training that Ressam reported having been given in the early 1990s in Bin Laden training camps to use cyanide, and it would include no content dealing with biological weapons. 37 However, on October 12, 2001, US Vice President Richard Cheney virtually repeated the UK minister's phrase, saying that "We know that he [Bin Laden] has over the years tried to acquire weapons of mass destruction, both biological and chemical weapons." He also said that the "United States had copies of the manuals that they [al Qaida] used in their training camps to train their people with these things." 38 As best as is known, these manuals describe how to handle poisons safely. 39

The remaining relevant information was interesting, ambiguous, and, in the end, totally contradictory. In his November 19, 2001 statement at the BWC Review Conference, US Under Secretary of State Bolton included the following in his remarks:

"... we are concerned by the stated intention of Usuma Bin Ladin and his Al Queda terrorist organization to use biological weapons against the United States. While we do not yet know the sources of the recent anthrax attacks against us, we do know that some of the September 11 terrorists made inquiries into renting crop dusters, almost certainly to attack other cities… We are concerned that he could have been trying to acquire a rudimentary biological weapons capability, possibly with support from a state. While the United States is not prepared, at this time to comment on whether rogue states have assisted a possible Al Queda biological weapons program…" 40

In contrast, George Tenet, the US Director of Central Intelligence, included the following statement in February 2002 testimony to the US Senate,

"… we know that Al Queda was working to acquire some of the most dangerous chemical agents and toxins. Documents recovered from Al Queda facilities in Afghanistan show that Bin Laden was pursuing a sophisticated biological weapons research program" 41

The "documents recovered" that CIA Director Tenet refers to presumably do not refer to the descriptions of BW delivery techniques that two senior Pakistan's nuclear physicists supplied to Al Queda, as these blackboard sketches are neither useful or realistic. It is possible that these "documents," or perhaps some of them, have in fact been publicly identified. The home of the Pakistani nuclear physicist reportedly also contained "… the results of a massive internet search on anthrax vaccines, a report titled 'Bacteria: What You Need to Know, '… a report titled 'Iraqi Anthrax Troops, ' and a New York Times article on Plum Island." 42 Another uncorroborated press report in February 2002 stated that

"Al Queda… appears to have targeted ex-Soviet (biological) weapons scientists for recruitment. According to US intelligence reports, some Russian experts traveled to Kandahar for job interviews with unidentified Qaeda leaders. Intelligence officials believe that the Russians turned down the chance to work for Bin Laden, however, and by all accounts Al Qaeda's efforts to make or acquire bioweapons have gone nowhere" 43

An earlier Newsweek item in December 2001 was even more sensational, reporting that "… one or more Russian scientists were working inside Afghanistan with Queda operations…. The renegade Russians were helping Al Queda to develop anthrax." 44

Despite the reference to "US intelligence reports," this press item was described by a US government specialist as "journalistic invention." On February 25, 2002, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of US military forces in Afghanistan, reported that following the examination of over 110 sites in Afghanistan

"… the United States has yet to find evidence that Al Qaeda was able to create a chemical or biological weapon at any of its camps, command centers, or caves in Afghanistan… We have seen evidence that Al Qaeda had a desire to weaponize chemical and biological capability, but we have not yet found evidence that indicates that they were able to do so." 45

After the months and even years of suggestions which all appeared to be tending in the same direction, several very contradictory assessments were provided by US government officials within days of each other in the last weeks of March 2002.

Perhaps unavoidably, within a day or two there was a slight caveat. On March 19, Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford, the Director of the US Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, testified to the US Senate on the proliferation of biological weapons. His testimony included several paragraphs on non-state, or terrorist, groups.

"What is the potential access of international terrorist groups and capability to produce and employ CBW?

"Terrorist interest in chemical and biological weapons has been growing and probably will increase in the near term. The threat is real and proven. The ease of acquisition or production of some of these weapons and the scale and terror they can cause, will likely fuel interest in using them to terrorize. The transport and dispersal techniques also are manageable and can be made effective easily, as seen recently in using the mail as a delivery system to spread anthrax.

"Many of the technologies associated with the development of chemical and biological agents, have legitimate civil applications. The increased availability of these technologies, particularly if a group is already in the United States and therefore not subject to many of the controls in place that monitor and limit the export of these technologies, coupled with the relative ease of producing chemical or biological agents, makes the threat very real.

"In addition, the proliferation of such weapons raises the possibility that some states or rogue entities within these states could provide chemical or biological weapons to terrorists. It remains unlikely that a state sponsor would provide such a weapon to a terrorist group. But an extremist group with no ties to a particular state (but which likely does have friends in state institutions) could acquire or steal such a weapon and attempt to use it." 46

The statement is remarkable for its generality, imprecision, and weakness. There is no mention of any specific group. Al Queda is not mentioned.

On the very same day "US government officials" reported that "although Al Queda researched chemical and biological weapons, there is no indication that it ever acquired or produced them." 47 However, the only substance mentioned was cyanide.

The report added that "Among the documents found in Qaeda sites were …scientific writings on poisons, diagrams of chemical agents and research on germ warfare vaccines." There is every likelihood that, as in the case of nuclear-related material, the "research" was routine journal papers obtainable in libraries and on web sites. A copy of the notorious "The Poisoner's Handbook" was found (sold at US gun shows and gatherings of right-wing militants) and another official correctly noted: "It's nonsense." 48

Three days later, a New York Times press item reported

"The United States has discovered a laboratory under construction near Kandahar, Afghanistan, where American officials believe Al Qaeda planned to develop biological agents, officials said today.

"According to a confidential assessment by the United States Central Command, the laboratory was intended to produce anthrax. The assessment was presented to senior American officials in recent days and is based on documents and equipment found at the site.

"No biological agents were found in the laboratory, which was still under construction when it was abandoned. American intelligence officials still believe that Al Qaeda would need assistance from foreign governments to mount an effective program to make weapons of mass destruction….

"… in addition to documents found at the site, some unused equipment was also uncovered.

"American officials did not describe the evidence in detail but said that it included medical equipment and supplies that would be useful for legitimate research but could also be used to produce biological agents.

"Officials also said there was no evidence of pathogens at the Kandahar location. But the evidence, which included documents, indicated that Al Qaeda was interested in producing anthrax." 49

In December 2001, a computer file belonging to Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri, the Egyptian co-head of Al Queda, was found to contain an April 1999 memorandum which noted that "the destructive power of these [chemical and biological] weapons is no less than that of nuclear weapons," and lamented that "despite their extreme danger, we only became aware of them when the enemy drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing concern that they can be produced cheaply." 50 This was followed by a May 7,1999 computer file recording that Al Queda had set aside $2,000 to $4,000 for "start up" costs of experiments by an elderly Egyptian chemical engineer, Midhat Mursi (called Abu Khabab) who belonged to the Al Queda organization i n Afghanistan. Unless US government officials supply additional information, one could, as a first approximation, guess that the "documents" may refer to these items or those referred to previously. As for the "unused equipment…. medical equipment…", it could have included centrifuges, autoclaves, culture media, an incubator, etc.

This seemed to fit well with a report in the British newspaper Observer several months earlier that "The only evidence of a biological weapons laboratory was the discovery last December of an abandoned, half finished building containing medical equipment near the Taliban's former power base of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. This had been reported previously." 51 In November 2001, CNN had reported that an Al Queda front organization named "Wafa" had procured laboratory equipment, allegedly from the United Arab Emirates and from the Ukraine, for the Al Queda site at which Abu Khabab reportedly worked. 52 Finally, on March 25, a press briefing by US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Army Chief of Staff General Myers explained that an informant had "led us to that particular site."

"There was a lab in Kandahar where we did find some equipment that was indicative of perhaps manufacturing anthrax. Not all the equipment you would need was there, but there was some of the equipment. Looked like some of it had been tried to have been destroyed…. Most equipment like that is dual use…. There was a dryer. There was an autoclave. There's some other…" 53

One therefore had the statements by Gene ral Franks and INR director Ford on one side, and the New York Times report and General Myers on the other. It is particularly notable – and very ironic – that US officials could decide on this apparently extremely fragmentary evidence that what they had was a facility intended for BW production, and anthrax in particular, while having only months before rejected the BWC Verification Protocol as unverifiable.

Post-September 11 comments by specialists were by and large very tentative. Gordon C. Oehler, former director of the US CIA's Nonproliferation Center

"called the chemical and biological threat "a grave concern." But he said that any such attack by al Qaeda would probably be no more effective than the crude sarin gas attack staged by Aum Shinrikyo [in Japan, in 1995]." 54

Jonathan Tucker commented that "It would be a long and fairly challenging process to acquire the capability for mass destruction on the level of what we saw with the World Trade Center. There have been reports that some of Osama Bin Laden's people have been experimenting with some kind of poisons, but while they might be able to acquire small quantities, they would need substantial quantities for large-scale attack." 55

The irony of the current situation is that during the twelve months preceding September 11, 2001, a very substantial number of the specialists frequently quoted by public media sources had begun to express the position presented in the previous Centro Volta volume. 56 That even continued to a substantial degree after September 11, despite the pressure of the full blast of renewed media attention to the potential of bioterrorism. An excellent treatment of the problem in the New York Times of October 2, 2001, which emphasized the successive difficulties that would have to be overcome by a terrorist group in order to carry out any significant attack with biological agents, additionally quoted several authorities who either served or are urrently serving the US government:

° Dr. David Franz, former director of USAMRIID: "People don't understand how difficult it is to pull off a biological attack." 57

° Dr. C. J. Peters, formerly a senior virologist at USAMRIID: For a chemical or biological attack with mass casualties, "You have to have a state or the equivalent." 58

° Dr. Margaret Hamburg, former Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, on October 9, 2001, "The risk [of BW terrorism] hasn't changed, or our vulnerability; just our perception." 59

° Dr. Steven Block, chair of a Defense Science Board Summer Study several years ago that dealt with BW, and a very strong proponent of the biological and bioterrorist weapons "threat;" "A crop-duster is likely to do a very bad job." Dr. Block also noted "that fears rooted in unrealistic appraisals of the germ threat can greatly magnify an assault's effectiveness. 'A bad job may be all that's necessary to sow disruption and panic' even if the attack itself produces 'a mere handful' of fatalities or serious infections." 60

This was a remarkable statement from someone who always spoke of the BW threat in the direst terms, including the more advanced potentials of genetic engineering. A similar opinion was suddenly offered by another analyst, Dr. Alan Zelicoff of Sandia Laboratories, who had also been given to very high-end assessments:

"The chance of a large (bioweapons) attack that affects tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands is very small. But is that what the terrorist cares about?

Inducing enough disease to produce panic or disrupt life is probably enough. I would posit that one or two cases of pulmonary anthrax in downtown Washington would achieve that goal." 61

The reference to "one or two cases" is astonishing, and the implication, which other commentators have stated explicitly, that so small a number of cases would cause civilian panic and loss of confidence in the government is totally implausible given the quite opposite evidence that was clearly shown following the September 11, 2001 events.

In its basic essentials, the situation remains essentially the same as it was before. In July 2000, the senior national security official in the US government oversight body, the General Accounting Office, testified to Congress in a context that focused on biological and chemical terrorism, that government efforts to combat terrorism "have been based on vulnerabilities rather than an analysis of credible threat... agencies initiatives appear at odds with the judgment of the intelligence community," suggesting a failure to distinguish between "what is conceivable or possible and what is likely in terms of the threat of a terrorist attack." 62

It is notable that several of the more competent of the post-September 11 assessments of the likelihood of BW use by terrorist or non-state actors also pushed such an event off ten years into the future, when relevant technology and knowledge would have diffused to an even greater degree than currently is the case. This stands in contrast to the many predictions that were offered in the years following 1995, claiming that bioterrorism would occur b y the year 2000. It is, however, difficult to imagine any other eventual outcome if groups such as Al Queda continue to exist in the decades ahead, and most particularly if they are told that "The terrorists didn't use biological or nuclear weapons, and next time they well could. A future enemy assault could kill not 6,000 people on American soil, but 600,000." 63 Nothing could more provoke their interest and attention.

PART IV. THE ANTHRAX EVENTS IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE FALL OF 2001

The most significant question of interest to the concerns raised in this study is whether the US anthrax incidents are a significant indicator of what may be expected with increasing frequency in the future, or whether they are in fact one more essentially anomalous event. If we very briefly recapitulate the experience of recent decades the following are the key data points:

(1) As best is known, there has never yet been an instance of state supported BW terrorism.

(2) The 1984 US Rajneesh Salmonella event: successful use of an incapacitant, purpose was local and application local. The mechanism used was application to food, and the laboratory culturing of the agent was carried out by a very small number of individuals in relatively primitive facilities.

(3) Japanese Aum Shinrikyo efforts between 1990 and 1994 to produce anthrax and Botulinum toxin: conceptions of the perpetrators were much more grandiose, as were the efforts, facilities and expenditure. Nevertheless total failure, including effort to purchase professional assistance, both in Japan and in other countries.

(4) A forthcoming book, Malicious Motives: Assessing Terrorist Motivations and Behavioral Patterns (edited by John Parachini, to appear in 2002) examines 15 case studies of specific international terrorist groups (PKK, IRA, Hizbollah, Tamil Elam and so on) for which there existed a record of allegations in the public media of either interest in or use of chemical or biological weapons. The result of these detailed and extensive investigations of each individual case demonstrated virtually zero evidence of effort to produce any biological agents. Evidence regarding the Al Queda group seems to indicate only interest (and should the US government release the details of information discussed further below, possibly the purchase of some laboratory equipment).

Should it develop that the US anthrax incidents were perpetrated by an "insider," a well trained professional, with access to facilities, strains, vaccination, etc., --as now seems increasingly likely, and solely suggested by official US agencies--then it is altogether possible to suggest that in the absence of such a perpetrator having carried out these events there might not have been another "bioterrorist" event for perhaps a decade or more, in any case for an indeterminate period into the future. Given that the events have occurred however, no matter by what manner, most analysts assume that they will bring the next similar event to pass sooner then would otherwise have been the case.

The anthrax events began at the end of September and continued into October 2001. As of this writing – July 10, 2002 – it is unknown if they are related to the aircraft attacks, but it is apparently the official US government position that they are not.

According to data compiled by the US Center for Disease Control letters mailed through the US postal system produced 18 confirmed cases of anthrax and a possible additional four cases in a period of 8 weeks. The quality of the anthrax samples varied. Some apparently were crude, but the samples that were sent to US Senators Daschle and Leahy, reportedly of several grams, were prepared so that most of the particles were under five microns in size and additionally were also treated to facilitate easy aerosolization. The anthrax spores were of an extremely high concentration and purity.

The envelopes containing the anthrax were mailed to media organizations and to two members of the US Senate. The mechanics of postal processing machinery combined with the pore size of ordinary mailing envelope paper led to the exposure of postal workers, as well as to cross contamination of mail. This resulted in some 19 buildings or facilities in the Washington D. C. area possessing levels of anthrax contamination, described as "medically insignificant" and too small to lead to human infection. The largest number of people infected were postal employees. So far, the method chosen by the perpetrators for distribution of the anthrax does not appear to have been intended, or capable of, producing mass casualties.

At this time only the advanced technical quality of some of the agent is known, and the means of its distribution to date. 64 The perpetrators are unknown. To date only four envelopes containing anthrax have been recovered, although there was at least one other, and possibly more. The anthrax strain contained in all the envelopes appears to be the same: one of the known variants of the Ames strain. It is a strain that only became available to the US biodefense program in the early 1980s. Due to its potency, it became the standard strain for use in animal model efficacy studies during the development of new anthrax vaccines. As best as is known, somewhere between 15 and 20 laboratories in the UK, US, Canada and probably Israel have possessed or worked with the Ames strain. There is now a major effort to distinguish small differences in the genomes of the Ames cultures possessed by these different laboratories in order to identify the culture most closely resembling that used in the attacks. 65

The proximity in time of the anthrax distribution to September 11 was initially strongly suggestive. In addition, the knowledge, equipment and working conditions necessary to produce a high quality, dry powder anthrax led many specialists to favor the likeli hood of state support for the production of the anthrax. That, as well as some technical characteristics of the preparation, produced substantial suspicion that Iraq was the most likely state to be implicated. This position was summed up in US Congressional testimony by Dr. Richard Spertzel, the former Head of Biological Weapons inspections for UNSCOM between 1994 and 1998.

"I have maintained from the first descriptions of the of the material contained in the Daschle letter that the quality appeared to be such that it could be produced only by some group that was involved with a current or former state program in recent years. The level of knowledge, expertise, and experience required and the type of special equipment required to make such quality product takes time and experimentation to develop. Further, the nature of the finished dried product is such that safety equipment and facilities must be used to protect the individuals involved and to shield their clandestine activity from discovery. "… I do not believe science will identify the laboratory or country from which the present anthrax spores are derived. The quality of the product contained in the letter to Senator Daschle was better than that found in the Soviet, US or Iraqi BW program, certainly in terms of the purity and concentration of spore particles.. . .

"Iraq certainly knows how to produce 100 percent pure spores. That is a technique that they developed in a two -step fermentation process which is capable of giving them the kind of concentrations that we are seeing in the Daschle letter.

"… Although Iraq claims a low concentration in its final liquid product, such low levels can not be substantiated and the process used by them is capable with slight tweaking to produce the levels seen in the Daschle letter. Iraq used bentonite in its production of Bacillus thuringiensis spores as recovered in 1994 by UNSCOM; however, Iraq through TSMID, its procurement arm for its BW program, also sought a supply of pharmaceutical grade silica in 1988 and 1989. Although suggestive evidence indicates Iraq was able to obtain such material we did not obtain definitive evidence to prove this acquisition.

Iraq was also interested in obtaining other materials that would make a good additive for weapons-grade material. Iraq, unlike the Soviet and US programs, did not mill its dried product; rather the Iraqi BW team learned the method of obtaining a readily aerosolizable small particle product in a one step spray drying procedure. "… we know from actual evidence i n 1994 of a related agent, bacillus thuringensis, a biopesticide, that they demonstrated their capability of producing a small particle using a spray dryer without milling. In that case, they used Bentonite as the additive." 66

It is clear from UNSCOM's investigation that the Iraqi BW program was extraordinarily thorough in searching the research and patent literature of Western states that had maintained offensive BW programs. Whether they were able to achieve this on their own, or whether they were assisted in such an effort by another government, or by private consultants, is unknown.

It has been indicated earlier that there have heretofore been no examples of states with biological (or chemical) weapons capabilities extending assistance in those areas to terrorist groups that they support or collaborate with. However, as also indicated, neither Iraq nor the Al Queda group operate on the basis of precedent.

Whatever the evidence eventually demonstrates to have been the case: direct state action, state assistance to a terrorist group, or an act carried out by a domestic US group or individual, the anthrax events will be seen as having passed another threshold. 67

However US government officials have made clear that they believe the perpetrator or perpetrators are US nationals, and almost certainly ones with experience in and access to the US biodefense program and facilities. 68 US officials went so far as to veto an effort made by France to have the UN Security Council condemn the anthrax incidents, on the grounds that it was likely that the perpetrators were US citizens, and that the issue was therefore "a domestic criminal matter." 69 In mid-December 2001 it became known that Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, one of the major facilities in the US biodefense program, had been producing small quantities of Ames strain anthrax for nearly two decades. 70 It had also been producing dry powder versions of anthrax simulants, as well as weapon-grade dry powder anthrax. (Further details are in Part V.)

It additionally became known that at least one contractor to the US Central Intelligence Agency had also been working with the Ames anthrax strain, but again, allegedly had made no dry powder. 71 On April 4, there was the first media suggestion that the US biodefense program has been withholding information from the anthrax investigation:

"… federal investigators say… that the US military is not telling them everything about secret anthrax research programs…. military and intelligence agencies have withheld a full listing of all facilities and all employees dealing top-secret anthrax programs… investigators say the criminal investigation has come up now against some closely held military secrets which are slowing down the pursuit for the anthrax killer." 72

A crude net assessment of the anthrax events to date produced the following summary:

° Total number of anthrax cases, in five states (New York, New Jersey, Florida, Connecticut, Washington D. C.) – 18 confirmed; 4 additional suspected

° Mortality from inhalational anthrax – 5

° Surviving cases of inhalational anthrax – 6

° Cases of cutaneous anthrax – 7

° Individuals exposed, by evidence of antibody response; data never released (a guess: 50 to 100 among postal sorting workers; several hundred in Senate office building)

° Dispersion method – at least five mailed letters.

° False anthrax alarms and hoaxes – as of November 6, 2001: According to FBI testimony to the US Senate, 4,000 in the US and an additional 3,000 worldwide. On November 7, 2001, Gov. Ridge referred to 10,000 such events, apparently referring to the US alone.

° False alarms and hoaxes worldwide: affecting aircraft, government ministries and facilities, etc.

° Economic cost of responding to hoaxes and false alarms by local and federal authorities in the US alone – possibly in the range of $100 million (?)

° Cost of disruption and dislocation of official and economic activity, decontamination, etc. – certainly substantial, no estimate appears to have been made 73

° Level of media attention (TV, radio, press) – massive

° Anticipated costs for future preventive measures in the US Postal System alone --5 billion 74

° Degree of public overreaction – enormous

° Media release of information on the mechanics of producing aerosolizable biological agents (information that was previously unobtainable on the frequently alluded to "web") – very significant and with potentially damaging consequences, not reversible.

° Increment in US mortality several years from now due to increased prevalence of antibiotic resistant strains resulting from unwarranted and uncontrolled public use of antibiotics in response to anthrax scare. Survey studies indicate that approximately 4 percent of US inhabitants (or roughly 11 million people) obtained prescriptions for or purchased antibiotics in response to the anthrax scare. The great likelihood is that a majority of these probably also used the antibiotics in an unprescribed manner. 75 (Estimate of current US mortality due to drug resistant infections range from 14,000 (US/ CDC, 3/ 27/ 00) to 20,000 (WHO, 7/ 2000) per year).

This summary of the anthrax events to date indicated that the public health effects, in the narrow terms of the occurrence of a disease, illness, and death, are small and are being adequately dealt with by the public health system. Contrary to the prediction of recent years, cases of the disease are being recognized by the medical community despite virtually zero past experience. The auxiliary effects outside of the public health system however, have been enormous. Whether or not US government and media response was inappropriate and inordinate, a limited amount of pathogenic material ineffectively disseminated had produced massive political and psychological consequences, and economic expenditures in the billions of dollars.

Two related questions remain: was the government and public response to the events reasonable, and to what degree should previous estimates of the future likelihood of BW terrorism be changed as a result of the US anthrax events. There was no way to know how much anthrax the perpetrators had, whether there was an offshore "pipeline" that might deliver more, whether the events would escalate to more serious forms of mass casualty release mechanisms, or whether, as now seems the case, the incidents had ended with the known cases. As a result of the massive and frequently misleading media attention that was given to the anthrax events, a public opinion poll taken on November 8, 2001 – roughly one month after the anthrax events began – showed that Americans considered bioterrorism to be the most urgent public health problem facing the country. 76

I still see no reason, however, not to compare the anthrax events to more serious public health challenges and mortality levels, as I did in regard to the potential for bioterrorism in general in the 2000 Centro Volta paper. 77 Eighteen people (possibly 22) fell ill, of whom five died in a US population of 275 million. Active prophylaxis definitely prevented other cases, although the number appears to be small. One study estimated that nine people out of the 5,000 Florida media employees and postal workers in Washington, DC and New Jersey who were given antibiotics were prevented from getting inhalational anthrax. However, the study made no estimate of the number of inhalational anthrax cases that were prevented by distribution of antibiotics to the people in the US Senate Office Building, the group that was most severely at risk.

Estimates are that some 500 people in the Hart Building were exposed to hundreds of times the human lethal dose. Some specialists therefore believe that all those exposed in the Senate office building would have succumbed to inhalational anthrax if not for immediate treatment with antibiotics, and therefore clearly some larger number than nine additional cases were prevented. 78

By way of comparison, annual US mortality due to influenza is 30,000 people per year, and 700,000 people worldwide died of Hong-Kong influenza at the end of the 1960s. More than 750,000 cases of sepsis occur annually in the United States, and of those, 215,000 die. 79 Weight-related illnesses – obesity – kill 300,000 people per year, 800 per day, in the United States. 80 Four hundred and forty thousand people per year in the US die from tobacco-related health conditions. 81 HIV/ AIDS now infects more than 40 million people worldwide, and killed over three million last year. The level of antibiotic resistance in common food-borne bacteria continues to rise dramatically. 82

Malaria kills 3,000 people per day, over 1 million per year, in Africa alone. 83 On top of all these, the United States has been suffering shortages since the summer of 2001 of the standard vaccines against basic childhood diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, meningitis and pneumonia, a situation which is expected to continue through the year 2002. These vaccines have been depended upon for decades to prevent millions of childhood deaths per year. 84 Compared to these numbers, one has to conclude that despite the extraordinary quality of the anthrax that was prepared, the level of real danger to public health that was posed remained trivial, because of the ineffective distribution mechanism used by the perpetrator. Enormously increased expenditures to combat bioterrorism have universally been applauded for several years on the grounds that they would bring benefits to the field of public health and disease prevention in general, through enhanced epidemiological disease surveillance, laboratory and research programs, and the development of vaccines and pharmaceuticals. However, that widespread assumption was called into question during a conference on global infectious diseases held at the US National Academy of Sciences in April 2002. Counter-bioterrorism expenditures might produce benefits by "spillover" to the public health arena, but they could turn out "to actually hinder containment of the growing global problem of infectious diseases," by drawing a limited pool of research talent away from work on the major national and international public health killers. 85 New funding initiatives for bioterrorism prevention announced by the US National Institutes of Health (and discussed in Part 5 of this study) suggest precisely that is likely to occur. Even in the current situation, only two of approximately 300 candidates for doctoral degrees in molecular biology at the Harvard Medical School in 2002 were studying malaria. 86

The major questions at the core of the anthrax events remain unanswered more than seven months after they took place:

° Who produced the anthrax, and how much of it did they have?

° Were these events the result of state assisted terrorism, most likely with the production of the anthrax entirely in the hands of a state, with the finished product being passed to the perpetrators? Alternatively, technical advice, equipment, and oversight might have been provided by a state to a group although this seems much less likely.

° Or was the anthrax produced entirely by the perpetrator or perpetrators, and if so, what kinds of professional training and capabilities did they have, and in what kind of facility was the work done?

° Was the anthrax produced and distributed by an individual or group in the United States, unrelated in any way to the September 11, 2001 events? 87

In the short term, the critical question is who is behind the current anthrax incidents. The implications and the likelihood of similar subsequent events depend highly on the answer. Should it be the work of a state, or of one or more highly skilled US professionals using professional government facilities, the expectation of a repetition drops drastically. That is particularly so if the perpetrator is, as is now increasingly suggested, a highly trained US professional. In that case, if this had not been done now, by a person with those kinds of capabilities, there might ha ve been a very long time to the "next" BW event since the failed Aum events in 1990-94, and when it came, it might have been either as crude as in the past, or entirely a failure again.

In the long term, the most serious threat remains the proliferation of state-sponsored programs. Particularly if the events in the United States demonstrate that unassisted terrorists have broken the precedent against biological weapons use, one consequence might be that states may feel emboldened to engage in such warfare, perhaps at first in small covert operations. Research and development will be stimulated, led by the major states, the United States and Russia, with the rationale of anticipating possible threats. That is the subject of the following and last section of this study.

V. THE QUESTION OF OFFENSIVE/ DEFENSIVE DISTINCTIONS IN BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS-RELATED RESEARCH, AND THE POTENTIAL STIMULUS TO BW PROLIFERATION BY EXPANDED RESEARCH PROGRAMS

The word "research," or any specific reference to "offensive" or "defensive" in a research context, does not appear in Article I of the Biological Weapons Convention. That reads as follows:

"Each State Party to the Convention undertakes never in any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire or retain:

(1) Microbial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes;

(2) Weapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict." 88

However, the word research did appear in the provisional treaty draft that had been drawn up by the UK and that had been presented to the negotiating states on July 10, 1969. 89 Even earlier in a working paper on microbiological warfare that the UK submitted to the states negotiating in Geneva, the UK stated:

"The Convention would also need to deal with research work. It should impose a ban on research work aimed at production of the kind prohibited above, as regards both microbiological agents and ancillary equipment. It should also provide for the appropriate civil medical or health authorities to have access to all research work which might give rise to allegations that the obligations imposed by the Convention were not being fulfilled. Such research work should be open to international investigation if so required and should also be open to public scrutiny to the maximum extent compatible with national security and the protection of industrial and commercial processes." 90

The word "research" was, however, omitted by the United States and Soviet diplomats who drafted the text of the treaty that was eventually accepted. The key terms at issue then become "… prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes," and "for hostile purposes."

While at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in 1970, I prepared a study that examined the question of whether there were characteristics that could distinguish between military and civilian research and between offensive and defensive research in areas that related to biological weapons. The study was presented as a background paper for the Tenth International Microbiology Congress of the International Association of Microbiological Societies in Mexico City in August 1970. 91 Having had some laboratory research experience, I came to the conclusion that it was perhaps possible to draw such distinctions, but that one's conclusions were in large part guided by a knowledge or suspicion of the overall nature of the national program in which an individual piece of research was embedded. I referred to this as "the intent" of the national program in question, a phrase that has subsequently been commonly used in many other discussions of the same problem. The circular nature of that conclusion significantly undercut its value.

In 1992, the introduction to a New York Academy of Sciences volume, The Microbiologist and Biological Defense Research: Ethics, Politics and International Security, stated:

"Perhaps most crucial for any biological defense research project is clear demonstration of its defensive intent; this is vital since an outsider may find it difficult to differentiate between research and development (R& D) undertaken for defensive and offensive purposes….. The distinction between research and development is critical to interpreting the provisions of the BWC because the treaty does not specifically mention research, offensive or defensive, but does proscribe offensive development while permitting development for peaceful purposes…. The general criterion for distinguishing between offensive and defensive research is intent, which at best is a problematic issue…. Is biological defense research sufficiently "transparent" that an outsider can readily ascertain its defensive intent?" 92

And a year later, the American Society of Microbiology, in its statement on "Scientific Principles to Guide Biological Weapons Verification," although using "development" and "research" interchangeably, reiterated the same theme: "The ASM has indicated that verifying offensive biological weapons development activities is very difficult because of the potential dual nature of research in the biosciences. Effective verification rests with determining intent of ongoing activities in R& D." 93 When an international law specialist, Richard Falk, noted in 1984, that offensive and defensive research were distinguished only by intent, and not by substance, and that this both invited and concealed abuse, Tom Dashiell, a former Fort Detrick Special Projects Officer, then serving in the Department of Defense, administering the buildup of the US biodefense program during the Reagan Administration (which is discussed below), responded that a better definition of defensive biological research "would be extremely difficult – if not impossible – to develop." 94

If one also, on careful examination, concluded that any piece of basic research could have major "offensive" implications (as, for example, in the recent mouse pox study), one was left with the argument that the only distinguishing characteristics of a BW program occurred at the point at which weapon development began. But many have even argued – and acted on – the claim that some degree of weapon development was permissible within a defensive program (as in the case of one of the recent disclosures in the United States.) That pushes one even farther away from research, and leaves the only definitive determinants as production, quantities and weapons.

A useful way to sharpen this issue is to quote form two contrasting US government policy statements. A very brief US Department of Defense press statement on January 8, 2002 on Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Warfare Defense answered the question, "Is the US still developing biological weapons to use against our enemies?" The answer provided began: "As required by executive order, the US government ceased all offensive biological research in November 1969…." 95 However, the original 1969 US policy decision is worded rather differently. The operative paragraph of National Security Decision Memorandum 35 of November 25, 1969, reads as follows:

"The United States bacteriological/ biological programs will be confined to research and development for defensive purposes (immunization, safety measures, et cetera). This does not preclude research into the offensive aspects of bacteriological/ biological agents necessary to determine what defensive measures are required." 96

The analytical study which supported the US policy decision also included a very important relevant paragraph. In response to the question "Should the US maintain only an RDT& E program," it replied

"There are really two sub-issues here: (1) should the U. S. restrict its program to RDT& E for defensive purposes only or (2) should the U. S. conduct both offensive and defensive RDT& E? While it is agreed that even RDT& E for defensive purposes only would require some offensive R& D, it is also agreed that there is a distinction between the two issues. A defensive purposes only R& D program would emphasize basic and exploratory research on all aspects of BW, warning devices, medical treatment and prophylaxis. RDT& E for offensive purposes would emphasize work on mass production and weaponization and would include standardization of new weapons and agents." 97

An excellent thesis which examined US government policy process in 1969-1972 that resulted in the joint decisions to renounce and dismantle the US offensive BW program, negotiate the BWC, and sign the Geneva Protocol, was only able to add a single footnote by way of further amplification.

"There is much debate over what constitutes offensive and defensive research and development in the field of biological weapons. The development of munitions filled with biological agents, delivery vehicles for these munitions, open air field testing of live biological agents, enhancement of the pathogenicity of organisms, and development of production and storage techniques for biological agents constitute offensive program activities which cannot be easily justified under a defensive research program." 98

The US policy statement in NSDM 35 cut away the problem – for the US – of whether a piece of research is "defensive" or "offensive": "offensive" "research" is permitted. On what basis then does the United States government make the assessment that another nation's BW program is offensive or defensive? In its research phase? On evidence of "development"? If so, what aspect of "development," since the US considers it permissible to develop an individual munition to test it for "defensive" purposes? But this presents yet another even more basic problem, as there are no definitions with precisely defined boundaries accepted at an international diplomatic level that clearly separate "research" from "development." 99 On evidence of "testing"? If so, how extensive a testing program, since the US considers it permissible to carry out various degrees of testing for defensive purposes? On evidence of serial or volume production? If so, at what level of production, since small quantities of agent have been produced for defensive purposes? As noted by Howlett and Simpson in 1991, "Small amounts may need to be retained if defensive equipment is to be developed." 100 None of these questions has ever been answered.

The following presentation is somewhat unorthodox. Brief descriptions will be given of a half dozen or so aspects that bear on this issue. Hopefully, at the end of the exercise, the issue will be somewhat more clarified, if not more comprehensible.

(a) Who Has An Offensive BW Program

Since 1988 the US government has repeatedly identified ten nations by name as maintaining offensive biological weapons programs. In the last four years, it has increased the number to thirteen, but has not named the additional three nations. 101 As indicated in an earlier section of the paper, the US government made a particular issue at the 2001 BWC Review Conference of alleged non-compliance with the BWC by treaty member states. However, the US government has never disclosed the evidence to support its charges of BWC non-compliance, or to support its charges that particular nations maintain offensive BW programs. It has also never utilized Articles 5 or 6 of the BWC that provide for procedures under the treaty framework to investigate issues of non-compliance.

A study prepared by an analytic center of the US Department of Defense in 2001 included a list of "Selected Countries with BW Capabilities." The explanatory comments for individual countries were still full of ambiguous and caveated terms such as "can," "may," "likely," "believed to be" – a common occurrence in public versions of US government assessments for the past twenty years. 102 The remarks associated with two quite important countries, both of which are also nuclear weapon states, made no explicit mention of offensive-related activities. In one case, they referred only to "biological warfare defense research." If that is the case, the two countries in question should not have been in that compilation at all. Most, if not all, NATO member states as well many others have defensive BW programs, and they are neither listed nor discussed, nor should they have been. What was the validity of the selection of nations in the compilation?

On May 6, 2002, Under Secretary of State Bolton repeated earlier US charges that "Cuba has provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states. We are concerned that such technology could support BW programs in those states." He continued: "The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort." 103 No evidence was offered for the charge. The exact same single sentence, with one additional qualifying word, had been presented in testimony to the US Senate on March 19, 2002, by Carl Ford, US Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research. 104 A New York Times report of Bolton's presentation expanded the charge by claiming that "The Bush administration has accused Cuba of producing small quantities of germs that can be used in biological warfare… other administration officials say the united States now believes that Cuba has been experimenting with anthrax as well as a small number of other deadly pathogens that they declined to identify." 105 US Secretary of State Powell qualified the charges by saying "We didn't say it (Cuba) actually had some (biological) weapons, but it has the capacity and capability to conduct such research." 106

The statements are astonishing only in their inadequacy. "Capacity and capability" tells one nothing about whether a nation has an offensive BW program. If it did, it very likely would have to be applied to every country in Europe. The United States has been "experimenting with anthrax" continuously since 1969, as have the UK, Israel, and other states. The United States, as will be explained below, has also been producing "small quantities of germs" – in fact, anthrax – since 1969, and has been "experimenting" not with a "small number of other deadly pathogens," but with many dozens of them for the past 30 years. Within days another unidentified US administration official offered that Cuba has "a number of projects that are what could be dual-use things, but they're probably not…. I don't know of any tangible stuff that shows yes, they are making anthrax (or anything else)." 107 What was it that distinguished the Cuban "experimenting" from the US biodefense program? If the US charges are not valid, they would undermine decades of US government initiatives which publicly identified governments (except for Israel) that undertook programs to develop any of the categories of WMD, and to curtail those programs.

In a television address on May 10, Cuban President Castro denied the US charges and stated that "The doors of our institutions are open. Cuba has nothing to hide." 108 It was a rare opportunity that should immediately have been taken up, and not allowed to go to waste. In an ideal world, either the Organization of American States or the EU should have offered to send teams within 24 hours to every institute that Cuba has reported within the BWC framework. In October 1996, in a submission to the Fourth BWC Review Conference, Cuba provided a document which listed nine major institutes dealing with molecular genetics, tropical medicine, pharmaceutical research, veterinary research and so on. It stated, however, that "the information compiled in this paper cannot be regarded as exhaustive, but reflects… the work accomplished by a group of the most representative institutions." 109 It is very possible that these same institutions are listed by Cuba in its BWC Confidence-Building Measures submissions.

During his visit to Cuba, President Carter visited the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, one of these nine institutes. Unfortunately, he was apparently not accompanied by any appropriately trained technical personnel, nor has there been any report as to the degree of thoroughness with which he may have toured the facility.

However, were Cuba to actually be pursuing an offensive BW program, it is unlikely that these are the facilities in which it would be taking place. A report in the Washington Times/ Insight Magazine included a quotation which it attributed directly to a leaked US Department of Defense report: "According to sources within Cuba, at least one research site is run and funded by the Cuban military to work on the development of offensive and defensive biological weapons." 110 Elsewhere the report identifies a newly built annex to the Luis Diaz Soto Naval Hospital, which is situated within a military compound in Havana, as the suspect site. If US officials requested the ability to visit such a facility, Cuba would unquestionably demand the reciprocal right to visit a US military facility, a request that the US government would certainly not be willing to grant it.

Official Chinese government positions on these questions are rarely, if ever, heard, but it appears as if Chinese government officials believe that the United Sates has been maintaining an offensive BW program. On one informal occasion at the Ad Hoc Group meetings, one of their officials remarked that offensive and defensive activities were so close that there was basically no difference. 111 Long Zhou, the Deputy Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Department of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, offered a similar opinion at a meeting in Beijing in April 2001:

"Defensive BW research can easily be offensive." This is certainly not a unique position: In 1984, Dr. M. Schaechter, then head of the American Society of Microbiology, commented on some