[net-gold] Secrecy News -- 07/18/12
- From: "David P. Dillard" <jwne@xxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2012 11:15:51 -0400 (EDT)
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Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2012 10:25:10 -0400
From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood@xxxxxxx>
To: saftergood@xxxxxxx
Subject: Secrecy News -- 07/18/12
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SECRECY NEWS
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from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2012, Issue No. 70 July
18, 2012
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Secrecy News Blog:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
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** THE HISTORY OF THE SOVIET BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS PROGRAM
** PUBLISHING SCIENTIFIC PAPERS WITH POTENTIAL SECURITY RISKS
** FY2013 DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION, AND MORE FROM CRS
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THE HISTORY OF THE SOVIET BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS PROGRAM
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In 1972, the United States, the Soviet Union and other nations signed the
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention that was supposed to ban biological
weapons. At that very same time, however, the Soviet Union was embarking on
a massive expansion of its offensive biological weapons program, which began
in the 1920s and continued under the Russian Federation at least into the
1990s.
The astonishing story of the Soviet biological weapons enterprise is told in
an encyclopedic new work entitled "The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A
History" by Milton Leitenberg and Raymond A. Zilinskas (Harvard University
Press, 2012).
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674047709
The Soviet biological weapons (BW) program was by far the largest and most
sophisticated such program ever undertaken by any nation. It was also
intensely secretive, and was masked by layers of classification, deception
and misdirection.
"The program's most important facilities remain inaccessible to outsiders to
this day," Leitenberg and Zilinskas write, "and it has been made a crime for
anyone in present-day Russia to divulge information about the former
offensive BW program." Needless to say, official archives are closed and
Russian government officials are uncommunicative on the subject, or deny the
existence of the program altogether.
Over a period of a decade or so, Leitenberg and Zilinskas were able to
interview about a dozen former Soviet scientists who were involved in the
Soviet BW program, along with dozens of other sources. Their revelations
inform the authors' analysis and serve to advance public knowledge of the
subject far beyond previous reports. Even relatively well-known incidents
like the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax epidemic are cast in a new light. Many
other aspects of the program will be entirely unfamiliar to most readers.
Much of the book is devoted to a description of the vast infrastructure of
Soviet BW research and production, including descriptions of the various
institutes, their history, their workforce and the nature of their research,
as far as it could be discerned. Along the way, many fascinating and
sometimes horrific topics are addressed. For example:
** In an effort to enhance the weapons-related properties of BW agents,
Soviet scientists spent years working to create a viral "chimera," which is
an organism that contains genetic material from two or more other organisms.
** Other scientists worked to eliminate the "epitopes" on the surface
of existing BW agents in order to make them unrecognizable to regular
diagnostic techniques. By using such a modified agent, "the Soviets would
have made it considerably more difficult for the attacked population to
identify the causative pathogen of the resulting disease outbreak and begin
timely treatment."
** A project codenamed Hunter (Okhotnik) sought to develop hybrids of
bacteria and viruses such that use of an antibiotic to kill the bacteria
would trigger release of the virus. "Unlike other national BW programs,
which without exception used only classical or traditional applied
microbiology techniques to weaponize agents, the post-1972 Soviet program
had a futuristic aspect. By employing genetic manipulation and other
molecular biology techniques, its scientists were able to breach barriers
separating species...."
** The Soviet BW program appears to have taken advantage of the
declassification in the 1970s of a large number of documents from the United
States BW program. Thus, the design of the Soviet Gshch-304 BW bomblet was
found to closely resemble that of the declassified US E-130R2 bomblet. In
2001, the US Government moved to reclassify many documents on the US BW
program, but "nothing could be done about recalling reports that had been
distributed relatively freely for more than 35 years."
** The quality of US intelligence about the Soviet BW program left much
to be desired. "Intelligence about Soviet BW-related activities is
relatively thin for the pre-1972 period; meager and often of dubious value
during 1970-1979; and a little less meager and of better quality during
1980-1990." After 1990, little has been declassified. "There is an unknown
number of still-classified reports concerning the Soviet BW program produced
by the CIA and perhaps by other agencies that we do not have," the authors
write. The state of declassification is such that "we have been able to
collect far more information" about the history of Soviet BW activities from
interviews with former Soviet scientists and others than from declassified
official records.
** In what the authors term "a horrendous mistake by the United
States," the US government undertook a covert deception and disinformation
program aimed at the Soviet Union in the late 1960s which implied falsely
that the US had a clandestine biological weapons program. This unfortunate
campaign may have reinforced an existing Soviet belief that the US had never
terminated its own offensive BW program, a belief that lent impetus, if not
legitimacy, to the Soviet BW program.
** Today, the situation with respect to BW in the former Soviet Union
is "ambiguous and unsatisfactory," Leitenberg and Zilinskas write. "There
remains the possibility that Russia maintains portions of an offensive BW
program in violation of the BWC." Alternatively, "since we do not actually
know what is and has been taking place within the three [Ministry of Defense
BW] facilities since 1992, perhaps the situation is better than might be
feared."
In 23 chapters, the authors painstakingly examine many facets of the
history, structure and operation of the Soviet BW program. They
scrupulously cite prior scholarship on the subject, while sorting out
verifiable fact, plausible inference, dubious speculation, and error or
fabrication. (Thus, "No SS-18 ICBM bomblet delivery system was ever
completed, none was ever tested, and obviously none could ever have been
employed.")
But even after 900 pages of often dense text, "there are large gaps in our
understanding of the Soviet BW program" and "readers are cautioned that much
remains to be discovered."
"We have not been able to resolve definitively some of the most important
questions," they observe. Unanswered questions involve basic issues such as
the motivation and purpose of the program. Why did the Soviet Union pursue
the development and acquisition of biological weapons? Who was to be
targeted by Soviet biological weapons - the US? China? Europe? - and under
what conceivable circumstances? And what happens now?
Following a brief period during the Yeltsin years during which Russian
officials acknowledged this activity, "Russia's current official position is
that no offensive BW program had existed in the Soviet Union."
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The History of the Soviet Biological Weapons Program was reviewed by author
David E. Hoffman in Foreign Policy last month.
http://hoffman.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/17/why_did_they_do_it
In 2010 the US Government signed an agreement with the former Soviet
Republic of Armenia to cooperate in the control or destruction of dangerous
pathogens, and in other efforts to prevent proliferation of biological
weapons. The agreement, one of several such documents, was published
earlier this year.
http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/cbw/armenia-2010.pdf
PUBLISHING SCIENTIFIC PAPERS WITH POTENTIAL SECURITY RISKS
The recent controversy over publication of scientific papers concerning the
transmissibility of bird flu virus was reviewed in a new report by the
Congressional Research Service. The report cautiously elucidates the
relevant policy implications and considers the responses available to
Congress.
"Because of the complexity of dual-use issues, analysis of a topic according
to one set of policy priorities may lead to unforeseen complications due to
its intersection with other policy priorities," the report says. "For
example, maximizing security may lead to detriments in public health and
scientific advancement, while maximizing scientific advancement may lead to
security risks."
See "Publishing Scientific Papers with Potential Security Risks: Issues for
Congress," July 12, 2012:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/R42606.pdf
FY2013 DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION, AND MORE FROM CRS
Some other new and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service
that have not been made readily available to the public include the
following.
Defense: FY2013 Authorization and Appropriations, July 13, 2012:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42607.pdf
The Unified Command Plan and Combatant Commands: Background and Issues for
Congress, July 17, 2011:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42077.pdf
LIBOR: Frequently Asked Questions, July 16, 2012:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42608.pdf
The 2001 and 2003 Bush Tax Cuts and Deficit Reduction, July 16, 2012:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42020.pdf
Guatemala: Political, Security, and Socio-Economic Conditions and U.S.
Relations, June 26, 2012:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42580.pdf
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_______________________________________________
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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation
of American Scientists.
The Secrecy News Blog is at:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
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_______________________
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Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@xxxxxxx
voice: (202) 454-4691
twitter: @saftergood
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Other related posts:
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