ASSESSING THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS 

AND BIOTERRORISM THREAT

Milton Leitenberg

December 2005

This publication is a work of the United States Government as defi ned in Title 17, 

United States Code, section 101. As such, it is in the public domain, and under the 

provisions of Title 17, United States Code, Section 105, it may not be copyrighted.
ii

*****

 The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not 

necessarily refl ect the offi cial policy or position of the Department of the Army, the 

Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. This report is cleared for public 

release; distribution is unlimited.

*****

 This is an expanded version of a paper prepared for an international conference, 

“Meeting the Challenges of Bioterrorism: Assessing the Threat and Designing 

Biodefense Strategies.” The conference was convened on April 22-23, 2005, by the 

Center for Security Studies of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology located 

in Zurich, Switzerland. The paper is essentially a sequel to the author’s book, The 

Problem of Biological Weapons, published in August 2004 by the Swedish National 

Defense College, which is the Swedish equivalent of the U.S. National War College. 

Although the book is relatively diffi cult to obtain in the United States, by and large 

material that is provided in much greater detail in the book is not repeated here. 

This monograph is composed almost entirely of new material.

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cfm.

ISBN 1-58487-221-7
iii

CONTENTS

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii

PART I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

PART II. The Evolution of State Biological 

Weapons Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

PART III. Evolution of Nonstate Actor/

Terrorist Biological Weapons Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

PART IV. Framing “The Threat” and Setting the Agenda

of Public Perception and Policy Prescription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

PART V. Costs and Consequences 

of the U.S. Biodefense Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

PART VI. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

v

FOREWORD

 It is nearly 15 years since biological weapons (BW) have become a 

signifi cant national security preoccupation. This occurred primarily 

due to four circumstances, all of which occurred within a short span of 

years. The fi rst, beginning around 1990 and repeated many times in the 

years that followed, was the offi cial U.S. Government suggestion that 

proliferation of offensive BW programs among states and even “nonstate 

actors”—terrorist groups—was an increasing trend. The second was 

the discovery, between 1989 and 1992, that the Union of Soviet Socialist 

Republics (USSR) had violated the Biological Weapons Convention 

(BWC) since its ratifi cation in 1975 and had built a massive covert 

biological weapons program, the largest the world had ever seen. The 

third was the corroboration by the United Nations Special Commission 

(UNSCOM) in 1995 that Iraq had maintained a covert biological weapons 

program since 1974, and had produced and stockpiled large quantities 

of agents and delivery systems between 1988 and 1991. The last was the 

discovery, also in 1995, that the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo group, which 

had carried out the nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system, also 

had spent 4 years attempting—albeit unsuccessfully—to produce and 

disperse two pathogenic biological agents. 

 The events of September 11, 2001, although not in any way related 

to BW, combined with the distribution of professionally prepared 

anthrax spores through the U.S. postal system in the weeks afterwards, 

magnifi ed previous concerns by orders of magnitude. In December 2002, 

after U.S. forces had overrun much of the territory of Afghanistan, it was 

discovered that the al-Qaida organization also had spent several years 

trying to obtain the knowledge and means to produce biological agents. 

These new factors shifted the context in which BW was considered 

almost entirely to “bioterrorism.” Within 4 years, almost $30 billion in 

federal expenditure was appropriated to counter the anticipated threat. 

This response took place in the absence of virtually any threat analysis. 

The purpose of this monograph is to begin to fi ll that gap. The purpose of this monograph is to begin to fill that gap.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 

SUMMARY

 This monograph is comprised of six substantive sections. An 

opening introductory section sets the global context in which the 

threat of “bioterrorism” should be placed. It briefl y surveys other 

nonmilitary challenges to national and global security that the United 

States and other nations currently face, and will face in the coming 

decades. It does so, where possible, by including the mortality levels 

currently resulting from these factors, particularly natural disease 

agents, and the levels that can be projected for them. This provides 

a comparative framework within which bioterrorism can more 

properly be assessed.

 The second section, using U.S. Government sources, surveys 

the evolution of offensive state biological weapons programs. This 

demonstrates that offi cial estimates of the number of such programs 

have diminished by between one-fourth and one-third, from a 

peak of some 13 nations in mid-2001. What is known regarding any 

proliferation from these programs is also surveyed, as well as state 

assistance to nonstate actors.

 The third section surveys the evolution of the efforts by nonstate 

actors—terrorist groups—to obtain, develop, and use biological 

agents. The survey covers the entire 20th century, and up to the present 

day, focusing on the last 25 years. The efforts by the two groups which 

involved the most serious attempts to produce biological agents, the 

Japanese Aum Shinrikyo group between 1990-94 and the al-Qaida 

organization in Afghanistan between 1997-98 and December 2001, 

are reviewed in detail. Using information provided by declassifi ed 

documents, as well as information from other sources, this section 

provides as detailed an examination as is available of the BW efforts 

of the al-Qaida organization. 

 The Japanese Aum group did not succeed in obtaining virulent 

strains of pathogens, nor was it apparently capable of working 

successfully with the strains that it did have. The al-Qaida group 

also appears not to have been able to obtain pathogens, nor to have 

reached the stage of laboratory work by the time U.S. military forces 

occupied Afghanistan.

vii
viii

 As the most signifi cant examples available, these highlight all the 

more the unique character of the anthrax postal mailings in the fall 

of 2001 in the United States. The quality of the material that was 

distributed demonstrates the dangerous possibilities that could be 

achieved. However, until the perpetrator is identifi ed, and unless 

it becomes possible to exclude any links with the U.S. biodefense 

program, it remains impossible to assess the relevance of this event 

as an indicator of what might be expected from international terrorist 

organizations.

 The fourth section reviews the public portrayal of the BW 

threat by U.S. offi cials. It includes a review of offi cial and unoffi cial 

exercise scenarios that have been carried out in the past half-dozen 

years, as well as recommended planning scenarios proposed by U.S. 

Government agencies. It includes a very detailed examination of 

several of these scenarios. Many of the exercises are predicated on 

the repeated use of the aerosolized pathogens which produce plague 

and smallpox. These pathogens are not easy to obtain, and they are 

relatively diffi cult to work with. Producing aerosolized formulations 

of them is far beyond the current or near-term capabilities of any 

identifi ed international terrorist group.

 The fi fth and fi nal section discusses the impact of the U.S. 

biodefense research program on the possible future development 

of biological weapons. A signifi cant issue is the interaction of 

constraints and limitations imposed by the terms of the Biological 

Weapons Convention, an international treaty which the U.S. 

Government was instrumental in bringing about, and the greatly 

expanded U.S. biodefense research program already in progress and 

set out in planning documents for the near future. The current lack of 

departmental and government-wide oversight over these programs 

is noted.

 The monograph ends with a brief section of conclusions, including 

policy recommendations.
1

PART I

INTRODUCTION

 Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 

on January 27, 2005, U.S. Senate Majority Leader William Frist stated 

that “The greatest existential threat we have in the world today is 

biological.” He added the prediction that “an inevitable bio-terror 

attack” would come “at some time in the next 10 years.”1 He was 

seconded by Dr. Tara O’Toole, head of the Center for Biosecurity at 

the University of Pittsburgh: “This [bioterrorism] is one of the most 

pressing problems we have on the planet today.”2

 Are these statements realistic?

 Are they even proximately realistic?

 By way of the most cursory comparison, one can set potential 

bioterrorism against:

 • Global climate change, which could affect populations in every 

corner of the globe, alter the current growth cycles of food 

crops that have evolved over millennia, and consequently 

food production;3

 • Ocean quality deterioration, deforestation, desertifi cation, 

depletion of fresh-water aquifers—all of these are also global 

in impact;4

 • The complex of global population growth, food production, 

energy and other resource constraints, and the waste 

products—solid, liquid and gaseous—produced by human 

society and the impact of these on regional and global 

ecosystems;

 • Between 224.5 and 236 million people died in the 20th century 

in wars and confl ict—say, roughly 230 million.5 This early in 

the 21st century, it is impossible to say whether the harvest of 

confl ict-related deaths will be any different in the 21st century 

than it was in the 20th century.

 • If one adds deaths due to poverty, the fi gures become 

astronomical. Jeffrey Sachs currently estimates this sum 
2

worldwide at 20,000 people per day, or 7.3 million per year, 

approximately 75 million over a 10-year period.6 Some portion 

of the deaths that Sachs counts may be due to treatable disease: 

these are discussed separately below. 

 • A working group convened by the Strategic Assessments 

Group of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the 

RAND Corporation in September 2004 listed 10 “future 

national security threats . . . to the United States” looking 

ahead to 2020. Of the 10, one was “proliferation of weapons 

of mass destruction (WMD)” and a second was “new health 

threats, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).” 

There was no mention of the use of biological weapons by a 

terrorist group.7

 • Turning to the 1999 Millennium Project list of “The 15 Global 

Challenges We Face at the Millennium,” only 1 of the 15 dealt 

with disease agents: “What can be done to reduce the threat of 

new and reemerging diseases, and the increasing number of 

immune micro-organisms.” It did not include consideration 

of “bio-terrorism” at all.8

 • No attempt is made in this monograph to draw parallels—

or to attempt a comparison of relative risk or potential 

consequences—between the prospect of “bioterrorism” and 

cyberterrorism.9 This is despite the fact that hundreds of 

attacks on U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) computers 

and on national infrastructure targets take place every day 

of the year, and that numerous successful penetrations have 

occurred. Available data a full decade ago indicated that as 

many as 250,000 attacks on DoD computers took place in 

1995. A 1996 Government Accountability offi ce (GAO) report 

characterized 65 percent of them as “successful.”10

 • Within a 10-day period between April 6 and April 16, 2005, no 

fewer than fi ve other competitors were announced as being 

the most dire threat faced by nations:

 — nuclear terrorism;11

 — 640 million small arms and light weapons around the 

world, which are responsible for an estimated 300,000 

deaths per year;12
3

 — a terrorist attack using high explosives aimed at cooling 

ponds holding stored irradiated nuclear reactor rods 

at civil nuclear power plants, leading to reactor core 

meltdown and radiation release analogous to the 

Chernobyl reactor disaster;13

 — the possibility of impact of an asteroid with the earth;14

and

 — a missile attack that would detonate a nuclear explosive 

over the United States producing an Electromagnetic 

Pulse (EMP) “. . . that could come not only from terrorist 

organizations like al Queda but from rogue nations such 

as Iran or North Korea.”15

To complete the picture, Rogelio Pfi rter, Director General of the 

United Nations Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, stated, perhaps unsurprisingly, that “. . . chemical terrorism has 

been identifi ed in different regions of the world as the number one 

potential threat.”16

 If one looks only at disease and other human public health 

concerns, we see the following:

 • Three diseases alone—malaria, tuberculosis, and human 

immuno-defi ciency virus/acquired immune defi ciency 

syndrome (HIV/AIDS)—kill 5 million people globally year in, 

year out. In 2004, that sum reportedly reached 6 million.17 In 1 

decade, that is 50 million dead. And although the contribution 

of HIV/AIDS to this sum is more recent, the overall total 

has apparently been roughly the same for many years past. 

Projected HIV/AIDS mortality estimates are available for 

the decade to come, and will very likely produce another 50 

million dead due to these three diseases. Falciparium malaria 

is estimated to currently infect 515 million people worldwide, 

with 2.2 billion people—one out of every three people in the 

world—at risk of infection. The cost of malaria to the economy 

of African nations alone is estimated at $12 billion per year.18

Malaria is preventable or treatable. Tuberculosis currently 

infects nearly 1 billion people, and 1 billion new cases are 

anticipated by 2020, 35 million of whom will die. 
4

The direct impact on the United States of global infectious disease 

was recognized by the U.S. Government in 1996 by the establishment 

of “. . . a national policy to address the threat of emerging infectious 

diseases through improved domestic and international surveillance, 

prevention, and response measures,” and a standing Task Force in 

the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) to coordinate 

those efforts,19 and by a January 2000 National Intelligence Estimate 

titled The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the 

United States.

20

 • Diarrheal diseases kill 3.5 million people per year. Most are 

preventable. The number can be considered more or less 

constant over many years, and would mean roughly 35 million 

dead over a period of 10 years.21

 • When the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control—a 

global anti-tobacco treaty—came into effect on February 27, 

2005, World Health Organization (WHO) authorities stated 

that smoking kills 13,500 people per day, or 5 million people 

per year.22 That is another 50 million people every 10 years. 

The world has an estimated 1.2 billion smokers, and notably 

the United States (and China) are among the treaty signatories 

that have, however, not ratifi ed it. In this sum are 500,000 

deaths per year due to smoking in European Union (EU) 

countries, and probably an additional half to two-thirds that 

number in Russia.

 • On March 4, 2005, WHO announced that measles mortality 

had dropped from 873,000 in 1999 to 530,000 in 2003.23 That 

amounts to 3.6 million dead in the past 5 years. As measles 

mortality was over 1 million children alone per year “as 

recently as a decade ago,” that would mean around 10 million 

for the decade 1989 to 1999, and the same for preceding 

decades. (In early 2005, the nongovernmental organization 

(NGO) Doctors Without Borders, claimed that measles was 

still “killing nearly a million children every year.”)24 Almost 

all nonimmune children will contract measles if exposed to 

the virus. The measles vaccine has been available for 40 years. 

Immunization costs U.S. $0.30 per vaccination.
5

 • Between the 22 years from 1977 to 1999, fl u killed 788,000 

people in the United States, an average of 36,000 people per 

year.25 Even if there is no outbreak of pandemic fl u, one can 

project another 360,000 fl u-related deaths in the United States 

alone in the coming decade. 

Number of fl u-related deaths

80 thousand

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

77 87 97

Figure 1.

 • WHO offi cials have been warning for years of the imminence 

of a pandemic fl u outbreak. They have warned that the 

pandemic was “almost inevitable,” and long overdue.26 There 

were three infl uenza pandemics in the 20th century. The worst 

was the 1918-19 “Spanish fl u.” Estimates of the mortality it 

caused range from a low of 20 million to higher estimates of 

over 50 million worldwide and even 100 million.27 The Asian 

fl u of 1957-58 killed about 1 million people globally, while 

the third fl u pandemic, the 1968-79 Hong Kong fl u, killed an 

estimated 1-4 million people.28

Flu pandemics usually occur about every 20 to 30 years, and it has 

now been 40 years since the last one. The H5N1 avian fl u strain, which 

fi rst appeared in the 1997 Hong Kong outbreak, is still believed to 

be generally incapable of person-to-person transmission. Until very 

recently, the human lethality of the H5N1 strain was considered to 

be approximately 50 percent of those infected. However, it is now 
6

understood that the actual incidence of infection is substantially 

higher, due to cases that produce atypical symptoms or do not show 

any symptoms at all, as well as because of underreporting from 

affected countries such as Laos, Cambodia, and China.29 While this 

happily means that lethality is actually lower than 50 percent, it also 

means that the chance of recombination to a human-transmissible 

variant is very much higher, since a much larger population is being 

infected. 

What has been feared for the past half-dozen years is the 

recombination of the H5N1 avian fl u in a person or animal 

simultaneously infected with a human fl u strain, so that the 

recombinant would acquire the ability to be spread from person to 

person. Such a recombinant strain would display the lethality of the 

strain that caused the 1918 to 1921 fl u pandemic which killed tens of 

millions worldwide. On February 23, 2005, the WHO Asia Director 

stated that “The world is now in the gravest possible danger of a 

pandemic.”30 Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the U.S. Centers for 

Disease Control and Prevention, told a meeting of the American 

Association for the Advancement of Science 2 days earlier that avian 

fl u poses the single biggest threat to the world at present, the “most 

important threat that we are facing right now.”31 Even Dr. Anthony 

Fauci, Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious 

Diseases, has fi nally discovered the seriousness of pandemic fl u. Dr. 

Fauci, who in recent years made bioterrorism his main preoccupation 

and the subject of many public statements, acknowledged on 

February 28, 2005, that “the possibility of an infl uenza pandemic . . . 

is a greater threat today than bioterrorism.”32 On March 21, 2005, Dr. 

Fauci presented the keynote address at the 2005 Bio Defense Research 

Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. His address was 

titled “Infl uenza and Bird Flu: The Ultimate Threats.”33

At the end of May 2005, Dr. Peter Cordingly, the WHO Regional 

Coordinator for Asia, stated that analyses of fl u transmission in the 

preceding months had led to “strong suspicions that person-to-person 

transmission had taken place in two foci, one in Vietnam and one in 

Thailand,” and possibly a third in Cambodia. The H5N1 strain was 

continuing to evolve. “It’s learning to live in the human house, and 

that is potentially very worrying.” The fatality rate also continues to 

drop, and there is confi rmed evidence of asymptomatic infection.34
7

Cordingly added that on the basis of the timeline demonstrated in 

the 1957-58 outbreak, the pandemic could begin within 6 months 

of demonstration of sustained person-to-person transmission.35 In 

recent Senate testimony, Dr. Craig Venter suggested that “outbreaks 

and spread of avian and other fl u virus strains . . . could potentially 

kill hundreds of millions and wreak havoc with our global health 

system.”36 Dr. Venter may have had advance notice of the report of the 

Global Task Force for Infl uenza, which appeared in the May 26, 2005, 

issue of Nature. This report predicted that 20 percent of the world’s 

population would be infected in a fl u pandemic, but estimated that 

perhaps only 7.5 million people would die.37 Writing in the special 

issue of Foreign Affairs in the summer of 2005, Dr. Michael Osterholm 

extrapolated estimates of the 1917-18 pandemic fl u mortality to the 

current world population and arrived at 180 to 360 million deaths.38

However, the U.S. Fiscal Year 2006 budget is to provide $4.2 billion 

to the Department of Health and Human Services for biodefense 

programs, $1.76 billion of which will go to NIH for biodefense 

research. At the same time, NIH will only be spending $120 million—

less than one-tenth as much—for work on infl uenza.39 Imagine, in 

the current climate, what the reaction of the U.S. Administration, 

Congress, the media, and bioterrorism publicists would be if an 

agency were predicting with near certainty that “bioterrorists” 

were “about to launch a biological weapons attack that would kill 

somewhere between 10 and 100 million people, perhaps more.”40

 • On March 1, 2005, 758 microbiologists sent an open letter 

to NIH Director Elias Zerhouni criticizing NIH expenditure 

priorities which greatly favored research grant funds for the 

“select agent” pathogens of particular interest to biodefense. 

The supplementary materials that accompanied the letter 

included a brief discussion of the spread of antibiotic resistance 

to major human pathogens:

The 2003 National Academy of Sciences report “Microbial Threats 

to Health” warned that “The world is facing an imminent crisis 

in the control of infectious diseases as the result of a gradual but 

steady increase in the resistance of a number of microbial agents 

to available therapeutic drugs,” and recommended that “The 

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services should ensure 

the formulation and implementation of a national strategy for 

developing new antimicrobials.”
8

These threats are posed by bacterial agents now established in 

human populations. Tuberculosis is in global resurgence. The 

World Health Organization projects that there will be more 

than 10 million new cases of tuberculosis in 2005 and that 

there will be nearly 1 billion new infected people by 2020, 200 

million of whom will become seriously ill, and 35 million of 

whom will die. Additional threats are posed by other bacterial 

agents, including the agents responsible for salmonellosis, 

shigellosis, borreliosis, legionellosis, ehrlichiosis, pertussis, 

syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, meningococcal infections, 

and staphylococcal infections. For each of these agents, strains 

resistant to multiple current antibiotics have emerged, and 

strains resistant to all current antibiotics have emerged or are 

expected soon to emerge.41

 In all of the above, which has been by way of introduction, two 

groups of global problems faced by humankind are listed. The second 

group enumerates only a few pathogen and public-health problems, 

with an annual mortality of above 11 million people per year. So, 

is bioterrorism “the greatest existential threat we have in the world 

today”? And is it “one of the most pressing problems we have on the 

planet today”?

 No. Absolutely not. That is clearly demonstrated by the above 

examples.

 A 2003 report for the Century Foundation nevertheless noted, that 

the 2001 “Amerithrax” events demonstrated that “. . . bioterrorism 

could have an uncertain, far reaching, and potentially devastating 

impact.”42 The statement that the release of a biological pathogen 

by a terrorist group should be considered as an occurrence of “low 

probability but high impact” is correct, but only with important 

qualifi cations. It does not mean any release of any agent formulation 

under any circumstances. Rather, it presumes the release of a 

very high quality product, effi ciently distributed under optimum 

conditions. Later sections of this monograph return to this question 

in more detail.

 There were repeated statements in 1999, most prominently 

in the September 1999 GAO report, Combating Terrorism: Need for 

Comprehensive Threat and Risk Assessment of Chemical and Biological 

Attacks, that no threat analysis of this subject—an examination of 
9

specifi c potential actors, their capabilities and intentions, and potential feasibilities—had ever been prepared inside the U.S. Government.43 U.S. Government Accountability Offi ce (GAO) reports 

for several years afterwards indicated that this situation had not 

changed. The task in this monograph is—in brief—to provide an 

evaluation of the overall problem, including several aspects rarely 

considered as being themselves contributions to the threat. This will 

be done by examining the following subjects:

 • The evolution of state biological weapons programs.

 • The evolution of nonstate actors (“terrorist”) biological 

weapon capabilities.

 • Framing “the threat” and setting the agenda of public 

perceptions and policy prescriptions.

 • Costs and consequences of the U.S. biodefense research and 

development (R&D) program.

 A threat assessment of the potential for the use of biological agents 

by terrorist groups is a very different exercise than that customarily 

faced in providing military threat assessments. No one ever did a 

threat assessment of a Soviet T-34 tank, the Galosh antiballistic missile 

(ABM) system that encircled Moscow, or an Akula-class nuclear 

attack submarine (SSN) without those systems actually existing. 

Declassifi cation of historical intelligence estimates of the capabilities 

of forces and weapon systems that U.S. forces might have confronted 

have certainly provided examples of inaccurate evaluations.44

Nevertheless, performance characteristics and capabilities were 

often reasonably well known. Threat estimation of potential 

bioterrorism is as different as possibly can be from the assessment 

of a real operational system. It is almost purely hypothetical, and 

rarely, if ever, is predicated on a specifi c identifi able group and its 

capabilities. The range of possible assumptions is enormous, the 

utilization of extreme worst-case assumptions is the rule, and these 

universally depend on the projection of capabilities into the future, 

rather than their existence at the present time.

11

PART II

THE EVOLUTION OF STATE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS 

PROGRAMS

 Information derived solely from offi cial U.S., Russian, and United 

Kingdom (UK) sources has been available since 1988 which specifi es 

how many and which nations maintain offensive biological weapon 

programs. Offi cial U.S. Government statements repeated for many 

years that there had been four nations in possession of offensive 

biological weapons programs in 1972 at the time of the signing of 

the Biological and Toxin Weapon Convention (BTWC), and that this 

number had increased to ten by 1989. (See Table 1.) In November 

1997, the Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency 

(ACDA), in the course of a statement to BTWC negotiating states in 

Geneva, increased the U.S. estimate to 12 nations. The additional two 

states have never been identifi ed by U.S. offi cials. In July 2001, a U.S. 

Government offi cial stated that 13 countries had offensive biological 

weapons (BW) programs.45

 There has been no equivalent statement or revised estimate since. 

All through the 1990s, it was common—in fact, nearly universal—

for commentators to depict the proliferation of state BW programs 

as a constantly increasing trend. For example, Ambassador Donald 

Mahley, the senior U.S. diplomat to all multilateral negotiations 

in Geneva concerning chemical and biological weapons, stated in 

an October 1996 Voice of America broadcast that “It is estimated 

that over the last several years, the number of countries suspected 

of having a biological weapons capability has risen.”46 However, 

it seems very possible that it may have been a more or less stable 

constant for the last 20 years. Moreover there were several notable 

reductions or deletions from the list in the past decade. Since the 

overall total was not very large to begin with, that would be a very 

signifi cant reduction: 

 • The BW program of South Africa was terminated by 1995.47

 • On November 1, 2002, U.S. Undersecretary of State John 

Bolton stated that “Libya has an offensive BW program in 

the research and development stage, and it may currently be 
12

capable of producing small quantities of biological agents.”48

The statement was consistent with other U.S. statements 

regarding Libya and BW during the preceding decade. The 

phrasing in the 1993 report of the Russian Foreign Intelligence 

Service was substantially stronger, stating that “There is 

information that Libya is engaged in initial testing in the 

area of biological weapons.”49 At the end of 2003, U.S. and 

UK government teams working in Libya ascertained that 

Libya had never had an offensive BW program. In the words 

of a U.S. administration briefer, “Libya acknowledged past 

intentions to acquire equipment and develop capabilities 

related to Biological Weapons.” Libya additionally 

“committed not to pursue a biological weapons program and 

to accept the necessary inspections and monitoring to verify 

that understanding.”50 Apparently Libya may at some point 

have either procured or investigated the procurement of 

dual-use equipment that might have served such a program, 

information which had been picked up by intelligence. This 

experience demonstrates a weakness in judgments based on 

procurement monitoring. It can be a useful indicator, but it 

cannot be considered defi nitive.51

 • It is now clear that under the pressure of UNSCOM 

inspections, the BW program of Iraq was disbanded between 

1992 and 1995.52 Unfortunately, the Iraqi program provided 

two other lessons. First, as shown by the period 1985 to 1990, 

an offensive BW program can be hidden for quite a number 

of years, including during the period in which it initiates 

production. Second, as demonstrated in precisely the opposite 

direction by the period 1998 to 2002, the most basic errors in 

judgment can be made by Western intelligence agencies.53

In addition, further public political manipulation of those 

mistaken judgments by political elites can take place.

 • In 2004, the present U.S. administration also withdrew the 

charge that Cuba maintained an offensive BW program.54

 • Given the continued total denial by the Russian government 

of international access to the BW facilities of the Ministry of 

Defense of Russia (Kirov, Sergeiv Posad, and Yekaterinburg), 
13

as well as continued impeded access to relevant facilities of 

the Ministry of Health, it is impossible to be certain of the 

status of BW-related activities in Russia. Nevertheless, they 

certainly are very greatly reduced from what they were up to 

1991-92.

U.S. Government 

Arms Control 

Compliance Reports 

to Congress (1993, 

1995)

Admirals Brooks, 

Studeman, Trost1

(1988, 1990, 

1991); Sec. 

Cheney, 1990

U.S. and UK 

Governments 

(1995) 

Russian 

Federation2

Foreign 

Intelligence 

Report, 1993

Middle East 

Iraq X X

Libya X X X

Syria X X

Iran X X X

Egypt X

South/East Asia 

China X X

North Korea X X

Taiwan ? X

India ?

South Korea ?

Africa 

South Africa X

Russia Ambiguity regarding continuation of offensive program dating from the USSR

1: “Statement of Rear Admiral Thomas A. Brooks, USN, Director of Naval Intelligence, before 

the Seapower, Strategic, and Critical Materials Subcommittee of the House Armed Services 

Committee on Intelligence Issues,” March 14, 1990, p. 54; “Statement of Rear Admiral William 

O. Studeman, USN, Director of Naval Intelligence, before the Seapower, Strategic, and Critical 

Materials Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee on Intelligence Issues,” March 

1, 1988, p. 48; “Statement of Admiral C. A. H. Trost, USN, Chief of Naval Operations, before the 

Senate Armed Services Committee on the Posture and Fiscal Year 1991 Budget of the United 

States Navy,” February 28, 1990; “Remarks Prepared for Delivery by the Honorable Dick Cheney, 

Secretary of Defense, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Washington, DC, June 11, 1990,” 

News Release, No. 294-90, p. 4.

2: Proliferation Issues: A New Challenge After the Cold War, Proliferation of Weapons of Mass 

Destruction, Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Report (translation), JPRS-TND-9-3-007, 

March 5, 1993.

Table 1. Nations Having BW Programs 

at Least Approaching Weaponization.
14

This would mean an absolute reduction by four states—South Africa, 

Libya, Iraq, and Cuba—roughly one-third or one-fourth of the total 

number of states that, according to the U.S. Government, maintain 

offensive BW programs.

 In addition, the status of several of the other national BW programs 

appears to be less certain than previously implied. If one looks at a 

recent public Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assessment of the 

BW programs of Iran, North Korea, and Syria, it reads as follows:

 Iran: Biological. Even though Iran is part of the BTWC, Tehran 

probably maintained an offensive BW program. Iran continued 

to seek dual-use biotechnical materials, equipment, and expertise 

that could be used in Tehran’s BW program. Iran probably has the 

capability to produce at least small quantities of BW agents.

 North Korea: Biological. North Korea has acceded to the 

BTWC but nonetheless has pursued BW capabilities since the 

1960s. Pyongyang acquired dual-use biotechnical equipment, 

supplies, and reagents that could be used to support North 

Korea’s BW program. North Korea is believed to possess a 

munitions production infrastructure that would have allowed 

it to weaponize BW agents and may have some such weapons 

available for use.

 Syria. Chemical and Biological. Syria probably also continued 

to develop a BW capability.55

A sentence on North Korea by CIA Director Porter Goss on March 

17, 2005, was somewhat stronger: “We believe North Korea has 

active chemical weapons (CW) and BW programs and probably has 

chemical and possibly biological weapons ready for use.”56

 By political agreement among the States Parties to the BTWC, 

Confi dence Building Measures (CBM) were to be submitted 

annually, beginning in 1987. Iran did not submit any until 1998 

and 1999, and when they did, they conveniently “forgot” to submit 

perhaps the two most critical CBM forms out of eight. These were the 

declarations that require the state to list national biological defense 

research and development programs (Form A2) and past activities 

in offensive/defense biological research and development programs 

(Form F). In 2002, Iran declared that it “did not and does not have 

any national, subnational or individual programs/activities and/or 

facilities related to biological offensive purposes” and that it “did 
15

not and does not have any ‘National Biological Defensive Program’. 

However the state has carried out some defensive studies on 

identifi cation, decontamination, protection, and treatment against 

some agents and toxins.”57 Offi cial U.S. statements regarding the 

Iranian BW program from 2001 onward reduced its apparent status 

compared to assessments that had been offered in the late 1990s. 

Reference to agent and weapon stocks disappeared. During President 

George W. Bush’s fi rst term, the administration submitted only one 

Arms Control Compliance report to Congress, although this report 

is intended by Congress to be an annual submission. It did this in 

its fi rst year in offi ce,58 and there has not been another one since. It 

therefore remains to be seen how the Iranian BW program will be 

described in any forthcoming version. 

 It is useful to recall a statement in 1999 by Dr. John A. Lauder, 

then the Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence for 

Nonproliferation:

Intelligence is all about ascertaining not only the capabilities, but also the 

intentions of one’s adversaries. Because of the dual utility of the technology 

and expertise involved, the actual CBW threat is in fact directly tied to 

intentions. Getting at this intent is the hardest thing for intelligence to 

do, but it is essential if we are to determine with certainty the scope and 

nature of the global biological and chemical weapons threat.59

 U.S. Government offi cials have never explained what the 

word “capability” means in these statements: whether it means 

the procurement of dual-use biotechnology equipment, a national 

pharmaceutical production capacity, a dedicated defensive BW 

R&D program, or the identifi cation of dedicated infrastructure for 

offensive BW R&D. It is clear however that after the Iraq weapons of 

mass destruction (WMD) intelligence failures demonstrated by the 

reports of the Iraq Survey Group, the U.S. administration decided to 

be much more cautious in the conclusions that it drew from perhaps 

rather ambiguous information.60 Now and then over the previous 

years, one had overheard a comment by a government offi cial or 

former government offi cial to the effect that the evidence regarding 

country X or Y was ambiguous or weak. But that body of relevant 

evidence was never available for examination.61 In 2003, a WMDwide review of U.S. assessments was initiated, and the review on the 
16

proliferation of BW was headed by Lawrence Gershwin, National 

Intelligence Council offi cer for Science and Technology. This 

apparently led to the readjustment of some previous assessments.62

 In the case of Iran, an unusual opportunity was provided in 

2003 by the presentation in Washington, DC, of detailed allegations 

regarding Iran’s alleged BW program.63 The information was 

provided by the same group that, in some cases, has been the fi rst to 

provide information on Iran’s nuclear weapon complex, information 

that had not been publicly known, nor apparently known by the 

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and which led to 

subsequent international action which forced Iranian government 

disclosures. The BW information was quite detailed, naming 

individuals, institutions, facilities, and locations. However, there has 

never been any comment or corroboration of these allegations by 

the U.S. Government or by any other government or international 

agency. In November 2004, CIA Director Goss reported to Congress 

that Iran continued “to vigorously pursue indigenous programs 

to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.” However, 

in March 2005, a special Presidential panel decried the state of 

knowledge available to the U.S. Government regarding even Iran’s 

nuclear weapon program.64 The U.S. Senate Select Committee on 

Intelligence is currently reviewing the information available to 

the administration regarding the nuclear, chemical, and biological 

programs of Iran and North Korea. It will be interesting to see if that 

report is made public, and, if so, what it will say in regard to the BW 

programs of these two countries.

 The CIA document containing the assessments of the Iranian, 

North Korean, and Syrian BW programs quoted above is released 

twice a year. Although the analogous paragraphs of the preceding 

half-dozen or so years have not been included here for comparison, 

the above statements are all lower key than they were in earlier years 

in the same report. The caveats are notable: “probably,” “continued 

to seek,” “the capability to,” “would have allowed it to,” “probably 

also continued to develop.” No defi nitive statements of production, 

stockpiling, or the nature of munitions are included.

 As always, there is no discussion of Israel’s BW “capability” or 

the status of its BW program in any public U.S. Government report. 

It is interesting to note, in regard to the comments on proliferation 
17

that follow below, that in the only relevant data that appears to be 

available, Israel had the second largest number of visitors to the U.S. 

Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) 

following the UK, a country with which the United States shares BW 

relevant information.65

 We know that there was exaggeration of chemical weapon 

proliferation in the past, so this is not a unique experience. In 1990, 

Brad Roberts wrote “We entered the 1980s with three, four, or fi ve 

chemically armed states; we will enter the 1990s with upward of two 

dozen chemically armed states” [my emphasis].66 The estimate of the 

Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency had 

been somewhat less, saying that “at least 15 states possessed chemical 

weapons, with others attempting to acquire them.” However, on 

January 24, 1989, his successor, General William Burns, told the 

U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that only fi ve or six of 

these countries actually possessed stockpiles of chemical weapons 

in addition to the U.S. and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 

(USSR).67

 In August 2005, the U.S. Department of State released its most 

recent version of its “Noncompliance” Report.68 Although nominally 

an annual report, none had been released in 2004. Eight countries 

are discussed in the section dealing with the Biological and Toxin 

Weapons Convention. A sentence in the opening introductory 

paragraph of the section states that “the specifi c cases addressed 

here are those that have assumed obligations relevent to the BWC 

and for which the most evidence exists of actual or potential 

noncompliance.” The insertion of the word “potential” would 

seem to substantially undercut the utility of the entire section. A 

country should be considered in compliance with the BWC, or not 

in compliance. Libya is still included as one of the eight nations, 

although previous evidence presented by the current administration 

and discussed earlier would provide no reason for that. Cuba also 

is still present. The discussion of several countries was larded with 

caveats, explicit or implicit. Most problematic was the inclusion of 

general descriptors as suggestive evidence of noncompliance, such 

as work in “advanced biotechnology techniques,” “aerosolization 

techniques,” “legitimate public health and commercial uses [that] 
18

could also offer access to . . . BW enabling capabilities,” “the technical 

capability to conduct limited offensive research,” the existence of 

facilities that “could easily hide . . . capabilities for a potential BW 

program.” All of these nonspecifi c indicators could equally apply to 

every NATO ally of the United States, every EU country, to many 

advanced developing nations, and above all, they would be more 

applicable to the United States than to any other country. They are not 

evidence of BWC treaty noncompliance. The use of such descriptors 

will almost certainly place previous U.S. attributions of BWC 

noncompliance in question in the minds of international diplomats 

who have regularly read the analogous BW sections in earlier annual 

U.S. Noncompliance reports. Finally, the 2005 report reinforces the 

conclusion that the trend of BW proliferation has not been increasing 

over the past decades, but that it has either been essentially constant 

or has been decreasing.

 The possibility of proliferation from three of the former or present 

programs—South Africa, Iraq, and Russia—has been raised at times 

by commentators. What is known is as follows.

South Africa. The South African BW program was minimal, 

no more than a handful of researchers were involved. Contrary to 

various press reports in the media, the program did not include 

genetic engineering of pathogens, nor—as best is known—has there 

been any proliferation from the program whatsoever.69

Iraq. There was no known emigration of researchers from the 

former BW program of Iraq. However, the Addendum to the report of 

the Iraq Survey Group released in March 2005 states that “Migration 

of some WMD-associated program personnel to countries like Iran 

or Syria is possible.” The phrasing is ambiguous in that it cannot be 

deciphered if this is assumed to already have happened, or if it is a 

generic statements suggesting that such migration could take place 

in the future. No disaggregation of “WMD” is provided. The report 

continues: “Since OIF [Operation IRAQI FREEDOM], the ISG [Iraq 

Survey Group] is aware of only one scientist associated with Iraq’s 

pre-1991 WMD program assisting terrorists or insurgents. However, 

there are multiple reports of Iraqis with general chemical or biological 

expertise helping insurgents produce chemical and biological 

agents.”70 Nothing further is said about these “reports,” or whether 

the ISG considered them credible or not. Much more signifi cantly, 
19

the Addendum then discusses a list of Iraqi BW scientists prepared in 

early 2002 for the purpose of possible transmission to Syria. However, 

it was not known if the list was or was not ever transmitted to Syria, 

and the ISG did not discover any evidence of emigration of Iraqi BW 

scientists to Syria. 

 The Twentieth Quarterly Report Twentieth Quarterly Report of the United Nations Monitoring, of the United Nations Monitoring, 

Verifi cation, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) to the UN 

Security Council does raise the possibility that some of the pathogen 

cultures used for Iraq’s BW production program may still remain 

unlocated in Iraq, a consideration that was also raised in the report 

of the U.S. Iraq Survey Group.71

Russia. Again, contrary to undocumented hints that fi nd their 

way into media reports, there is no known evidence of the transfer 

of pathogens from the Soviet or continuing Russian programs to any 

other state, either prior to 1992 or since 1992. Emigration of former 

Soviet BW-related researchers to any proliferant state has been 

minimal. The one known example is the move of 10-12 researchers, 

largely from the institutes belonging to the Russian Academy of 

Sciences rather than from former BW institutes, to Iran. There 

continue to be statements, particularly by Dr. D. A. Henderson and 

the Pittsburgh group, to the effect that the location of Soviet BW 

“stockpiles”—not culture collections—produced in the USSR prior 

to 1990 are not known. U.S. intelligence and defense agencies have 

believed for over a decade that those “stockpiles” were destroyed 

by the USSR roughly between 1988 and 1990, and there are no 

indications that these agencies have ever altered that judgment. 

Contrary statements appear to be deliberately misleading. 

 As late as June 2005 at a seminar at the Council on Foreign 

Relations in New York City, Dr. Henderson said in reference to the 

possible dispersion of smallpox from the USSR or Russia: 

There have been economic problems in the Soviet Union, or now Russia. 

Many of the scientists have left the laboratories. They’ve gone all over 

the world, different places, some in the United States, Europe, some have 

gone to North Korea, Iraq, Iran. So that [is what] the problem is, there is 

just no way of knowing who has what and where, and that’s the concern, 

that there may be others with the virus, but we just can’t fi nd out about 

it.72
20

No Soviet or Russian BW scientists are known by the U.S. intelligence 

community to have gone to North Korea or to Iraq. Those few Russian 

scientists that went to Iran did not come from institutes that worked 

with smallpox. The U.S. intelligence community does not believe that 

smallpox virus was transferred from the USSR or Russia to any other 

state, not the three mentioned nor any other. The great majority of 

Russian BW relevant scientists that emigrated did so to the United 

States, the UK, Germany, France, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Israel, 

etc., and not to states of BW proliferation concern.
21

PART III

EVOLUTION OF NONSTATE ACTOR/TERRORIST

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS CAPABILITIES

 Five extensive databases were published in the 1990s covering 

nearly the entire 20th century, and several of these have been updated 

so as to remain current. It is extremely important to distinguish 

between the seven different categories of BW-related events that they 

cumulatively cover: hoaxes, threats, consideration or discussion of 

use, product tampering, purchase of materials, attacks on facilities, 

attempts to produce biological agents or attempts to use them, and 

actual use.73

These databases were compiled by:

 • Harvey McGeorge, 1994, covering 1945-94;74

 • Ron Purver, 1995, covering 1945-95;75

 • Bruce Hoffman, 1998, covering 1990-98;76

 • Seth Carus, 1999, covering 1990-99, and since updated;77 and,

 • The Monterey Institute, 1999, covering 1990-99, and since 

updated.78

 The conclusions from these independent studies were uniform 

and mutually reinforcing. There is an extremely low incidence of real 

biological (or chemical) events, in contrast to the number of hoaxes, 

the latter spawned by administration and media hype since 1996 

concerning the prospective likelihood and dangers of such events. 

A massive second wave of hoaxes followed the anthrax incidents in 

the United States in October-November 2001, running into global 

totals of tens of thousands. It is also extremely important that 

analysts producing tables of “biological” events not count hoaxes. A count hoaxes. A 

hoax is not a “biological” event, nor is the word “anthrax” written 

on a slip of paper the same thing as anthrax, or a pathogen, or a 

“demonstration of threat”—all of which various analysts and even 

government advisory groups have counted hoaxes as being on one 

occasion or another.79
22

 Those events that were real, and were actual examples of use, 

were overwhelmingly chemical, and even in that category, involved 

the use of easily available, off-the-shelf, nonsynthesized industrial 

products. Many of these were instances of personal murder, and not 

attempts at mass casualty use. The Sands/Monterey compilation 

indicated that exactly one person was killed in the United States in 

the 100 years between 1900 and 2000 as a result of an act of biological 

or chemical terrorism.

 Excluding the preparation of ricin, a plant toxin that is relatively 

easier to prepare, there are only a few recorded instances in the 

years 1900 to 2000 of the preparation or attempted preparation of 

pathogens in a private laboratory by a nonstate actor.

 The signifi cant events to date are:

 • 1984, the Rajneesh, The Dalles, Oregon, use of salmonella on 

food;

 • 1990-94, the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo group’s unsuccessful 

attempts to procure, produce and disperse anthrax and 

botulinum toxin;80

 • 1999, November 2001, al-Qaida,81 the unsuccessful early 

efforts to obtain anthrax and to prepare a facility in which to 

do microbiological work;

 • October-November 2001, the successful “Amerithrax” 

distribution of a high-quality dry-powder preparation of 

anthrax spores, which had been prepared within the preceding 

24 months.

 Before discussing the Amerithrax and al-Qaida experiences in 

some further detail, two books, one published and one still in press, 

should be mentioned. These are particularly important because 

they are collections of case studies which, between the two, contain 

detailed reviews of virtually all the groups or individuals who 

have—or who had been alleged to have—prepared or used chemical 

or biological agents. The fi rst of the books is Toxic Terror, edited by , edited by 

Jonathan Tucker,82 and the second is the forthcoming Motives, Means 

and Mayhem: Terrorist Acquisition and Use of Unconventional Weapons, 

edited by John Parachini.83 Between them the two books report on 

28 case studies. They demonstrate that several right-wing groups in 
23

the United States produced ricin by extraction from mashed castor 

bean pulp, and that the Rajneesh group did culture the salmonella 

that it obtained. However, there is apparently no other “terrorist” 

group that is known to have successfully cultured any pathogen. It 

is precisely because of the exceptional nature of the Amerithrax case 

that it becomes crucially signifi cant to identify the person or persons 

who made the U.S. anthrax preparation, and to determine whether 

that is the same individual or individuals who prepared and mailed 

the postal envelopes. We will return to this in a moment.

 In advance of the publication of his book, Parachini summarized 

the conclusions from those studies that “provide an empirical 

foundation to assess the motivations, behavior, and patterns related 

to terrorist interest, or alleged interest, in unconventional weapons.”84

Perhaps the most important discovery from the fi rst of the two books 

was that “Upon rigorous inspection, several of the empirical cases 

frequently cited in the media and scholarly literature proved to be 

apocryphal.” Parachini then discusses several factors that appear 

to be most signifi cant in understanding the case studies. He fi nds 

the mindset of the group leaders of the organization, exogenous 

and internal constraints, and a combination of opportunity and 

the technical capacity of the group to be “. . . the factors that most 

signifi cantly infl uence a group’s propensity to seek to acquire and 

to use unconventional weapons.” These conclusions are consistent 

with those made by another highly experienced terrorism specialist, 

Dr. Yoram Schweitzer of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel 

Aviv University. In a recent conference presentation, he enumerated 

four factors which he felt served as inhibitions to the consideration of 

biological weapons within terrorist organizations: state dependency, 

requirements of their own local constituency, requirements of the 

international constituency, and group survival.85

 To the degree that the leadership of a particular terrorist 

organization does not have or escapes from these considerations, 

they may consider the use of biological agents more seriously. This 

may explain why the experience of the Rajneesh, Aum Shinrikyo, 

and al-Qaida groups followed a path different from other terrorist 

groups. Similar conceptions were explored as far back as 1989 in a 

RAND study authored by Dr. Jeffrey Simon.86 This sort of analysis 
24

of real cases of the relevant behavior of real terrorist groups, carried 

out by experienced analysts of terrorism, when it is not disregarded 

entirely, is frequently met with disdain by the proselytizers of “the 

bioterrorist threat,” as an example presented later in this monograph 

indicates.

 The extremely brief entry regarding terrorist groups and BW 

and CW capabilities that appeared in the December 2004 report of 

the U.S. National Intelligence Council was again minimalist in its 

description:

Developments in CW and BW agents and the proliferation of related 

expertise will pose a substantial threat, particularly from terrorists, as we 

have noted.

• Given the goal of some terrorist groups to use weapons that can be 

employed surreptitiously and generate dramatic impact, we expect 

to see terrorist use of some readily available biological and chemical 

weapons.87

Since this is a report that was looking ahead to the period between 

2005 and 2020—the next 15 years—the reference to “readily available” 

materials is particularly notable. It harks back to the conclusions 

of the 20th century database studies, and certainly does not seem 

to anticipate efforts at synthesis, genetic engineering, or anything 

beyond the most elementary products. Dr. Stephen Morse predicted 

much the same speaking to a day-long conference convened by the 

U.S. National Academy of Sciences in January 2003. Morse previously 

served in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 

of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and currently is director of 

the Center for Public Health Preparedness at Columbia University’s 

School of Public Health. In answering his own question “What 

sources would terrorists use,” he stated that “Most are likely to use 

easily obtained materials,” and that “state-sponsored [terrorists] 

might use ‘classical BW’.”88

 The latest U.S. Government intelligence estimates of the BW 

capabilities of terrorist/nonstate actor groups became available in 

February and March 2005. They fi rst appeared in three presentations 

to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February 16, 

2005.
25

Porter Goss, Director of Central Intelligence: “It may be only a 

matter of time before al-Qaida or another group attempts to 

use chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons 

(CBRN).”

Robert Mueller, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation: 

“. . . we are concerned that they are seeking weapons of mass 

destruction including chemical weapons, so-called ‘dirty bombs’ 

or some type of biological agent such as anthrax. . . . I am also 

very concerned with the growing body of sensitive reporting 

that continues to show al-Qaida’s clear intention to obtain and 

ultimately use some form of chemical, biological, nuclear or 

high-energy explosives (CBRNE) material in its attacks against 

America.”

Jim Loy, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security: 

“. . . the most severe threats revolve around al-Qaida and its 

affi liates’ long-standing intention to develop, procure, or acquire 

chemical, biological, radiological, and even nuclear, weapons for 

mass-casualty attacks. Al-Qaida and affi liated elements currently 

have the capability to produce small amounts of crude biological 

toxins and toxic chemical materials, and may have acquired small 

amounts of radioactive materials.”89

On March 17, 2005, it was the turn of Vice Admiral Jacoby, Director 

of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, in a presentation to the U.S. 

Senate Armed Services Committee:

We judge terrorist groups, particularly al-Qaida, [to] remain 

interested in Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) 

weapons. Al-Qaida’s stated intention to conduct an attack exceeding 

the destruction of 9/11 raises the possibility that planned attacks 

may involve unconventional weapons. There is little doubt it has 

contemplated using radiological or nuclear material. The question 

is whether al-Qaida has the capability. Because they are easier to 

employ, we believe terrorists are more likely to use biological agents 

such as ricin or botulinum toxin or toxic industrial chemicals to cause 

casualties and attack the psyche of the targeted populations.90

CIA Director Porter Goss made a presentation to the Committee as 

well, and repeated the exact wording of his February 16 remarks 

quoted above. 

 These rather similar extracts are the only references to nonstate 

actor interest or capability in the CBW area in all the presentations. 
26

They are signifi cant for several reasons:

 • No other group than al-Qaida was mentioned.

 • All of the statements are less specifi c, more general, lower 

key, than in the preceding (Tenet) years.

 • In two of the three statements, B is grouped together with C, 

R and N, and in one even with “E” (high-energy explosives), 

making it impossible for someone without prior knowledge 

to know whether there is a specifi c basis for including B.

 • One of the statements refers to “small amounts of crude 

biological toxins” which undoubtedly refers to ricin and not 

to any pathogen.

 • It has been known at least since November 2001, when U.S. 

and UK military forces occupied Afghanistan, that al-Qaida 

had been “seeking . . . anthrax” for 2 or 3 years prior to that 

date. The information therefore concerns al-Qaida activities 

before the fall of Afghanistan, and there is no publicly 

available information to indicate that the group has been able 

to continue their efforts since the end of 2001.

Anthrax is endemic in Afghanistan, and a limited domestic animal 

vaccination program existed in the country. Nevertheless, there were 

undoubtedly some number of animal cases of the disease per year, 

but the group apparently never obtained a pathogenic strain. 

 In addition, all of the four recent specifi c references to al-Qaidaaffi liated groups and ricin have turned out to be spurious. When the 

Al Ansar camp in Northeast Iraq, “Kermal,” was overrun by U.S. 

military forces, sampling showed no presence whatsoever of ricin, 

nor of materials for its preparation. (In fact, the camp lacked running 

water.) Before the invasion, there had been several statements by 

U.S. Government and military offi cials stating that the group was 

preparing ricin in the camp. As late as the Vice Presidential debate on 

October 5, 2004, U.S. Vice President Cheney, referring to Abu Musab 

al-Zarqawi, said, “He set up shop in Baghdad, where he oversaw the 

poisons facility up at Kermal, where the terrorists were developing 

ricin and other deadly substances to use.”91 Since this remark was 

made long after the U.S. Government knew that the camp had 
27

contained no ricin, Cheney’s statement has to be considered either 

ignorance or fabrication. There is no mention whatsoever of the Al 

Ansar camp in the report of the Iraq Survey Group. 

 Individuals arrested by French police did not have any ricin nor 

had they prepared any; they had only “planned to” produce ricin. The 

“chemicals” that the group had was apparently sodium cyanide.

 The “plots” in the spring of 2003 by a group associated with 

Abu Musab Zarqawi in Jordan reportedly again involved sodium 

cyanide, and not ricin. (Since Jordanian authorities have referred to 

the planned use of 20 tons of high explosives in the planned event, 

there is every reason to assume that the cyanide would have been 

destroyed in any such massive high explosives blast.)

 The London case is the last, and it is interesting to look at it in 

some detail. The group, arrested in Wood Green, London, was in 

possession of 22 castor bean seeds. Their equipment was a coffee 

grinder, “. . . with a brown residue” (probably of coffee), a mortar 

and pestle, and a hand-written recipe taken off the internet at an 

internet café and transcribed into Arabic. The recipe was a derivative 

of the Maxwell Hutchkinson recipe in the notorious The Poisoner’s 

Handbook sold in thousands of copies at U.S. gun shows, a recipe that 

would very likely not produce ricin or extremely little of it.

 The fi rst tests for ricin in the London apartment were done by a 

fi eld test kit and apparently registered positive. Within 2 days, 20 

more specifi c tests were carried out at the British Defense Science 

Technology Laboratory, Porton Down, resulting in 17 “negatives” 

and three false positives. However the task of informing the London 

Metropolitan Police fell to another Porton staffer with public liaison 

responsibilities, who apparently either did not understand or 

confused the information that he was to relay, with the result that he 

phoned the press and police, saying that “traces of ricin” had been 

found.92 His actions were later attributed to “incompetence.” Despite 

this, as late as mid-February 2005, an offi cial UN investigative group 

reported to the UN Security Council that “al-Qaida-associated groups 

in both the United Kingdom and Jordan came close to mounting 

such [C, B, R, or N] attacks. It seems only a matter of time before 

a successful chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attack 

occurs.” (All four at once!)93 All of the above is incorrect. No ricin was 
28

found. Whether the UK Metropolitan Police ever announced a public 

correction in 2003 is not known. It is unfortunate that misinformation 

of this sort found its way into a UN document. 

 Scientists at Porton Down subsequently followed the Hutchkinson 

recipe as an experiment. It produced suffi cient ricin to kill one person 

if the total quantity would have been injected into a person. If eaten, it 

was suffi cient to have caused vomiting and abdominal pain. If applied 

to doorknobs to act as a contact poison, it would have had no effect 

at all.94 Three other “recipes” were found with this ricin “recipe”: a 

“rotten meat poison” to be prepared by mixing “corn fl our, meat, 

dung, and dust together in a can,” a “recipe” for “cyanide poison” 

to be obtained by boiling many thousands of ground apple seeds, 

and a “potato poison” of equal inutility.95 However, Peter Clarke, 

the head of Britain’s antiterrorist police branch, described the poison 

plot as being “highly serious,” while Nigel Sweeney, the prosecutor, 

said “These were no playtime recipes. These are recipes that experts 

give credence to and experiments show work. They are scientifi cally 

viable and potentially deadly.”96 Both statements are clearly wrong, 

and there is no reason that law enforcement offi cials anywhere in 

the world should be able to do their work without inaccurate and 

sensationalist comments.

 As for the “Encyclopedia of Jihad,” in which such rudimentary 

and often inadequate recipes are supposedly located, it is not clear 

when it was composed. One suggestion is that its origin goes back to 

the 1978-88 period of Afghan resistance to the USSR, which would 

be as much as 10 years before al-Qaida came into existence. A second 

suggestion is that it is an agglomeration that grew over the years, 

with material successively added to it, materials on toxin production 

being added in later years. Although the “Encyclopedia” is routinely 

attributed to al-Qaida, it therefore may rather have been inherited, 

or adopted, by the group. 

Al-Qaida BW Efforts in Afghanistan: 1997-98 to 2001.

 When we move to the al-Qaida group in Afghanistan, the 

picture rapidly becomes much more serious, and all the preceding 

semi-farcical events can be seen as inconsequential trivia. The fi rst 

signifi cant and meaningful information on what al-Qaida may have 
29

hoped at some point to achieve in the area of BW appeared in a 

single page in the journal Science in mid-December 2003,97 and then 

in declassifi ed documentary materials that were obtained in the last 

week of March 2004. Appended to the single page in Science by a 

computer link was a list of 32 items: 11 books and 21 professional 

journal papers nearly all dating from the 1950s and 1960s dealing 

with pathogens or with BW. These were found in an al-Qaida training 

camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 2001.98 Half of the 

books dealt with historical or general aspects of BW and would be of 

little operational utility to an effort to produce BW agents. However, 

at least some of the journal papers and the remaining half of the 

books could be useful for such an effort. A note in the Science paper 

identifi ed these as the documents referred to by CIA Director Tenet 

in his February 2002 Senate testimony quoted below. They were 

found only a few kilometers from the site near Kandahar airport 

which contained the rudimentary equipment also procured by alQaida. 

 Most important of all, the documents indicated that “. . . al-Qaida’s 

BW initiative included recruitment of individuals with Ph.D.-level 

expertise who supported planning and acquisition efforts by their 

familiarity with the scientifi c community.” The journal papers 

concerned B. anthracis and Clostridium botulinum, but also Yersinia 

pestis (plague) and Hepatitis A and C. Fragments of two of the 

classifi ed materials were included in the Science article as photocopies 

of handwritten letters. The letterhead of one of them read “Society for 

Applied Microbiology.” The second item reports that the individual 

was not able to obtain a pathogenic culture of anthrax, and that “the 

culture available in [deleted] is nonpathogenic.” The webpage of the 

Society for Applied Microbiology advertises that organization as 

“the UK’s oldest microbiological society.” Another snippet from the 

handwritten letter, which explained that its author would “require 

at least the air ticket expenses,” indicated that the person was fl ying 

either to or from the UK. The letter fragment also explained that “The 

money with me is only to buy strains of vaccines.”

 When the classifi ed documents were obtained, it turned out that 

nearly all of the pages consisted of the journal articles themselves, as 

well as medical handbook excerpts on anthrax, plague, botulinum, 
30

etc.99 There were also many additional pages of references to both 

books and journals, including many standard reference works 

such as the SIPRI volumes on The Problems of Chemical and Biological 

Warfare and the 1969 UN study on chemical and biological weapons. 

It was the remaining 10 pages that were of importance. They were 

two 3-page letters and accompanying handwritten notes suggesting 

the layout of a laboratory and the equipment recommended to outfi t 

it, and “program requirements” including the time needed to train 

whoever was going to work in the laboratory, and that person’s 

assistants. 

 The correspondent already had a Ph.D. It is clear that the author 

of the letter was not a native English speaker, and annotations on 

some of the papers that he sent from England were in Arabic. Yet 

the letters and the accompanying notes were written in English. It 

suggested that either English was the only language that he and 

the recipient shared in common, or it was the preferred language 

for them to use with each other. In fact, the author was a Pakistani 

microbiologist, whose native language would be Dari, and there 

is reason to believe that he was writing to the Egyptian, Dr. alZawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy. The writer reports visiting 

a BL-3 facility—apparently in the UK—at which time he had been 

shown a pathogen collection. He was not only trying to obtain and 

export pathogen cultures, but he was also seeking to buy vaccines 

for protecting personnel against anthrax infection. He was being 

supplied by al-Qaida with funds with which to buy equipment and 

materials, which he itemized. He had also been attending various 

European conferences dealing with pathogens—or had obtained their 

proceedings—including a conference on anthrax. The latest dates of 

these were in July and September 1999. He had signed his letters, 

named the laboratory that he had visited, and named its laboratory 

director and identifi ed one or two other individuals by name. All 

these identifi cations were deleted in the declassifi ed materials. 

 What the documents indicated was an individual with Ph.D.-level 

training, who understood the professional microbiology literature, 

and who understood professional procedures for purchasing 

pathogen cultures. He was willing to trade on the access provided 

by his status, while concealing the true purpose of his activities, 

which was to provide al-Qaida with the means to attempt its fi rst 
31

real BW production capability. However, he was not prepared to do prepared to do 

any of the laboratory work himself. There is no evidence in any of the 

declassifi ed pages to indicate that any bacterial cultures had yet been 

obtained, or that any had been shipped to Afghanistan or Pakistan, 

or that any work had yet begun. In fact, all the phrasing on these 

pages suggests that none of these things had yet occurred. There is 

also no mention of the procurement of bacterial culture media that 

would be necessary to have in hand before any work could begin.

 These materials were characterized by various senior U.S. offi cials 

in 2002 and 2003. On February 25, 2002, General Tommy R. Franks, 

the commander of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, reported that 

following the examination of over 110 sites in Afghanistan: 

. . . the United States has yet to fi nd evidence that al-Qaida 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-Qaida 

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.100

Similarly in February 2002, U.S. CIA Director Tenet stated:

. . . we know that al-Qaida was working to acquire some of the most 

dangerous chemical agents and toxins. Documents recovered from alQaida facilities in Afghanistan show that Bin Laden was pursuing a 

sophisticated biological weapons research program.

101

In his analogous “Threats” assessment in 2003, Tenet told the U.S. 

Senate Committee on Armed Services, “I told you last year . . . that 

bin Laden has a sophisticated biological weapons capability. . . . In 

Afghanistan, al-Qaida succeeded in acquiring both the expertise and 

equipment needed to grow biological agents, including a dedicated 

laboratory in an isolated compound in Kandahar.”102

 The inclusion of the words “pursuing” and “research program” 

in 2002 arguably makes the statement factually correct. “Pursuing” 

is not the same as saying that al-Qaida had produced any usable 

product. However, Tenet’s 2003 language is substantially different 

and implies much more, stating that al-Qaida “has a sophisticated 

biological weapons capability” [emphasis added]. Nevertheless, the 

declassifi ed materials permitted some proper understanding for the 
32

fi rst time of the basis for statements by U.S. Government offi cials 

that the status of al-Qaida’s BW program might be more advanced 

than had been anticipated. 

 The relevant passages in the annual CIA and Defense Intelligence 

Agency (DIA) threat assessment presentations to the U.S. Senate 

in February 2004 also very likely refl ected judgments based on the 

materials described above. From the Director of the DIA:

Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups remain interested in acquiring 

Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) weapons. We 

remain concerned about rogue scientists and the potential that state 

actors are providing, or will provide, technological assistance to terrorist 

organizations. . . . While we have no intelligence suggesting states are 

planning to give terrorist groups these weapons, we remain concerned 

about, and alert to, the possibility.103

And from the Director of the CIA:

. . . I have consistently warned this committee of al-Qaida’s interest in 

chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons. Acquiring 

these remains a “religious obligation” in Bin Ladin’s eyes, and al-Qaida 

and more than two dozen other terrorist groups are pursuing CBRN 

materials. . . . Although gaps in our understanding remain, we see alQaida’s program to produce anthrax as one of the most immediate 

terrorist CBRN threats we are likely face.104

 The report of the U.S. September 11, 2001 (9/11) Commission 

includes a bare few lines on the single individual identifi ed to date, 

a Malaysian, who was to have carried out al-Qaida’s laboratory 

work:

In 2001, [Yazid] Sufaat would spend several months attempting to 

cultivate anthrax for al-Qaida in a laboratory he helped set up near the 

Kandahar airport. . . . Sufaat did not start on the al-Qaida biological 

weapons program until after the JI’s [Jemaah Islamiah] December 2000 

Church bombings in Indonesia, in which he was involved.105

 Yazid Sufaat was arrested in Malaysia in December 2001. Publicly 

available information about him has come from two important alQaida sources. The fi rst was Khaled Sheikh Mohammed who was 

arrested on March 1, 2003, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, at the home 
33

of a fugitive Pakistani bacteriologist, Dr. Abdul-Quddis Khan. 

Handwritten notes and computer hard drives were seized in the 

home, showing, according to a reporter’s description, that al-Qaida 

had “. . . completed plans and obtained the materials required to 

manufacture two biological toxins—botulinum and salmonella—

and the chemical poison cyanide.”106 Cyanide would not be 

“manufactured,” and it is ambiguous if the “materials required” 

were the pathogen cultures, the bacterial growth media, equipment 

needed, or which of the above. “Plans” does not indicate that any 

production took place. The press report of these discoveries was 

contradictory in places, but claimed that the recruitment of named 

scientists was discussed in the materials seized, production steps 

were outlined, and equipment, such as that found in Afghanistan, 

was described. Among items found was “a direction to purchase” 

Bacillus anthracis. Nothing so far translated indicated access to the 

most dangerous microbial strains or to any advanced processing or 

delivery methods.

 Mohammed also told his interrogators that Sufaat “. . . took the 

lead in developing biological weapons for al-Qaida until he was 

arrested by Malaysian authorities.”107 Sufaat reportedly obtained a 

Bachelors degree “in biological sciences,” with a “clinical laboratory 

concentration” from California State University in Sacramento in 1987. 

He then served as a laboratory technician in the Malaysian military 

and in 1993 established a company in Malaysia “to test the blood and 

urine of foreign workers and state employees for drug use.”108 In the 

course of recent years, his company, and possibly another owned 

by his wife, appear to have been involved in fi nancial transfers and 

the purchase of ammonium nitrate for producing explosives on 

behalf of groups affi liated with al-Qaida operating in Indonesia, 

Malaysia, and the Philippines. The suggestion that Sufaat was not 

able to procure an appropriate strain of anthrax for use as a pathogen 

demonstrates the same diffi culty faced by the Aum Shinrikyo group 

in Japan, which was only able to obtain the veterinary vaccine strain 

of anthrax. This appears to have been corroborated by reports in 

October 2003.109 A photograph taken at an internationally supported 

animal vaccine production facility outside of Kabul by an Associated 

Press photographer in November 2001 showed a large glass carboy 

jar labeled “Anthrax spore Concentration.” It almost certainly 
34

contained Sterne strain anthrax vaccine. While incriminating as to 

al-Qaida’s eventual intentions, all information to date indicates that 

al-Qaida could not possibly have been responsible for the anthrax 

attacks in the United States in 2001.

 Additional reporting about Yazid Sufaat came from Hambali 

(Raduan Isamuddin), the Indonesian operative of the al-Qaida 

affi liated organization, Jemaah Islamiah, who was responsible for 

the Bali bombing attack in August 2003. After his capture, Hambali 

told his interrogators that he had earlier been collaborating with 

Sufaat, that he had been “trying to open an al-Qaida bio-weapons 

branch plant,” and that Sufaat had been “working on an al-Qaida 

anthrax program in Kandahar,” in Afghanistan, but that after the U.S. 

attack on the Taliban, they had planned to move the “program” to 

Indonesia. However, Sufaat had been unable to obtain a pathogenic 

strain of anthrax.110 In another report, U.S. and Malaysian security 

offi cials more accurately described the al-Qaida program to develop 

biological and chemical weapons as having been “in the early 

‘conceptual stage’ when it was cut short by the U.S. invasion of 

Afghanistan.”111 CBS nevertheless reported this as “al-Qaida may 

be hard at work trying to produce weaponized anthrax and other 

biological weapons.” Two weeks later, rumors that Jemmah Islamiah 

branches in the Philippines were producing biological or chemical 

agents were quickly proved to be spurious.112

 An important question is how much and what kind of actual 

laboratory work Sufaat might have been able to achieve in the 

“several months” available to him at the Kandahar site. Sufaat and 

Hambali apparently made four trips between Kandahar and Karachi 

to purchase materials.113 The 1,000+ kilometer distance each way 

means that these trips would have been by air, but nevertheless 

could have together required several weeks to a month. Other lowerranking al-Qaida members also made purchasing trips to Pakistan. 

As best is known, the Kandahar site appears not to have yet been 

functioning, and may have contained little equipment aside from an 

autoclave.

 In addition to the declassifi ed documentation found in Kandahar, 

information obtained through the interrogations of K. S. Mohammed, 

Hambali, and possibly some others at Guantanamo, Cuba, there was 
35

yet one more source of information that was obtained from within 

al-Qaida regarding its interest in biological weapons. Additional 

fragments of information found at the end of 2001 on computer discs 

that appear to have belonged to Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri provide 

little confi dence in the competence of the al-Qaida group to carry 

out either chemical or biological agent production. If anything, they 

detract from assumptions of capability, although they apparently 

date from early in their efforts. The initial program investment was 

either $2,000 or $2,000 to $4,000, and, after several months, Dr. alZawahiri considered it to have been “wasted effort and money.” The 

group at that time seemed quite constrained in economic resources 

as well as in applicable talent, and did not at all appear to have the 

kinds of fi nancial resources available to the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo 

group. This early effort appears to have been intended to produce 

a “nerve gas” from a commercial agricultural insecticide. Perhaps 

the most important information in an al Zawahiri memorandum of 

April 15, 1999, is contained in the following sentences:

. . . we only became aware of them [biological weapons] when the enemy 

drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing concerns that they 

can be produced simply with easily available materials. . . .

I would like to emphasize what we previously discussed—that looking 

for a specialist is the fastest, safest, and cheapest way [to embark on a 

biological and chemical weapons program].114

Other information indicates that Al-Zawahiri’s remark about “the 

enemy drew our attention to them” refers to U.S. Secretary of Defense 

William Cohen’s November 1997 national television appearance, 

which included greatly exaggerated prediction of what his 5-pound 

bag of sugar standing in for anthrax could achieve if dispersed over 

Washington, DC.115

 Early in March 2005, a press item returned to the material found 

on a computer disc when K.S. Mohammed was captured, and the 

sentence quoted earlier from the 2003 Washington Post Washington Post story: “. . . story: “. . . 

[al-Qaida] obtained the materials required to manufacture two 

biological toxins—botulinum and salmonella—and the chemical 

poison cyanide. They are also close to a feasible production plan 
36

for anthrax.”116 This information was attributed to “U.S. intelligence 

services quoted in the U.S. media.” This can only refer to the general 

and ambiguous statement by senior U.S. intelligence offi cials quoted 

previously. As indicated, the cyanide information dates back to 1998. 

“Managed to obtain material necessary to make” does not indicate 

that anything was made, or even that all materials necessary—such 

as the pathogen—had been obtained. The very next day, an editorial 

in the Washington Post Washington Post stated, “This country has already experienced stated, “This country has already experienced 

one anthrax attack. Security offi cials have repeatedly stated their 

belief that al-Qaida and others continue to search for more lethal 

bioweapons.”117 The “others” referred to by Tenet in February 2004 

claimed their interest in “CBRN” not specifi cally “bioweapons.” 

And there are no identifi able public statements by U.S. “security 

offi cials” saying that “al-Qaida and others” were searching “for more 

lethal bioweapons” than anthrax. It is possible that the “security 

offi cials” that Washington Post Washington Post editors had in mind came from editors had in mind came from 

another press comment during a March 1, 2005, Interpol conference: 

“Security offi cials have long worried of the risk of an al-Qaida attack 

using biological weapons such as anthrax, ricin, botulinum toxin, 

smallpox, plague, or Ebola.”118 There are no identifi able statements 

by any “security offi cial” warning of the potential use by al-Qaida of 

smallpox or Ebola, and the suggestion is highly implausible.

 On March 31, 2005, the Report of the Commission on the Intelligence 

Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction

became available. The information that it contained concerning 

the status of al-Qaida and BW was vastly different from the brief 

paragraph in the report of the 9/11 Commission.

The Intelligence Community concluded that at the time of the 

commencement of the war in Afghanistan, al-Qaida’s biological weapons 

program was both more advanced and more sophisticated than analysts 

had previously assessed.

. . . al-Qaida’s biological program was further along, particularly with 

regard to Agent X, than prewar intelligence indicated. The program was 

extensive, well-organized, and operated for 2 years before September 

11, but intelligence insights into the program were limited. The program 

involved several sites in Afghanistan. Two of these sites contained 

commercial equipment and were operated by individuals with special 

training. Documents found indicated that while al-Qaida’s primary 
37

interest was Agent X, the group had considered acquiring a variety of 

other biological agents. The documents obtained at the training camp 

included scientifi c articles and handwritten notes pertaining to Agent X.

Reporting supports the hypothesis that al-Qaida had acquired several 

biological agents possibly as early as 1999, and had the necessary 

equipment to enable limited, basic production of Agent X. Other 

reporting indicates that al-Qaida had succeeded in isolating cultures of 

Agent X. Nevertheless, outstanding questions remain about the extent of 

biological research and development in pre-war Afghanistan, including 

about the reliability of the reporting described above.119

The sources for the Commission’s remarks all refer to classifi ed 

reports. The two Presidential Commissions appear to have used 

different procedures to obtain documents for examination, and one 

suggestion is that, as a result, they did not, in all cases, obtain the 

same documentation for review.120 Of course, if the hard information 

prior to the coalition invasion of Afghanistan regarding al-Qaida and 

BW was nil, then their efforts will certainly appear “more advanced 

and more sophisticated” than was previously understood once the 

actual information in the now declassifi ed documents was found. Is 

it possible to make any further guesses regarding the substance of 

the Commission’s phrasing?

 The information in the “documents obtained at the training 

camp” and “the handwritten notes” have just been explained in 

detail in the preceding pages, and concern anthrax, botulinum toxin, 

plague, and Hepatitis A and C. Hepatitis viruses are extremely 

diffi cult to work with, even for professional virologists. They require 

cell culture technology, but could in theory be used to contaminate 

food and water. The most recent U.S. intelligence statements quoted 

earlier refer more often to botulinum toxin than they do to anthrax. 

Nevertheless, “Agent X” almost certainly refers to anthrax, with 

botulinum toxin the most plausible second guess. The key question 

regarding the information quoted above is whether there is additional 

documentary or material evidence to support it beyond that already 

obtained in the papers found in November 2001 and the locations 

occupied at that time.121 Those did not indicate success “in isolating 

cultures of Agent X.” And only the Sterne vaccine strain had been 

available to the group in Afghanistan. The statement that much of 
38

the Commission’s brief summation was a “hypothesis” dependent 

on “reporting,” at the same time as there remain “outstanding 

questions . . . including about the reliability of the reporting described 

above,” seems to leave much of it an open question and possibly 

adds nothing of substance to what was already known from the 

declassifi ed documents.122 Nevertheless, the reference to two sites 

containing “commercial equipment” may suggest additional alQaida efforts beyond those disclosed in the declassifi ed documents 

and related information so far available to the author.

 A member of the Presidential Intelligence Commission was 

asked if he thought that one should be any less skeptical regarding 

the intelligence concerning al-Qaida BW activities in Afghanistan 

than the allegations that had been made by the U.S. administration 

regarding the status of Iraq’s BW program in the years between 

1995 and 2002. He replied that one should not be any less skeptical 

regarding the intelligence about al-Qaida’s BW capabilities.123

Table 2. Comparison of BW Efforts 

by the Aum Shinrikyo and al-Qaida.

 Pakistani press reports indicate that the Pakistani microbiologist 

who had assisted al-Qaida in information gathering, as well as an 

alleged “Yemeni . . . studying microbiology at the University of 

Karachi” were arrested in October 2001. If this is the case, with the 

facility overrun by U.S. forces in December 2001, Sufaat also arrested 

in December 2001, and the two above individuals arrested in October 

2001, even before US/UK forces had found the documentation in 
39

Kandahar, it would appear that the al-Qaida BW program may have 

been dismantled at the end of 2001. The location of Dr. Khan, in whose 

home K. S. Mohammed was captured, is known to the Pakistani 

government. He is incapacitated and is therefore reportedly not a 

factor of concern. Whether other dispersed individuals of the group 

have any available work sites for microbiology in any other location 

is unknown. The statement by French Interior Minister Dominique 

de Villepin at Interpol’s First World Conference on Bioterrorism in 

Lyon, France, on March 2, 2005, claiming that “. . . after al-Qaida 

groups were smashed in Afghanistan, international terrorist groups 

were still working on chemical and germ weapons in Georgia’s 

Pankisi Gorge” seems highly implausible insofar as it refers to “germ 

weapons.”124 Al-Qaida elements in the Pankisi Gorge had reportedly 

been killed, captured, or dispersed by a joint U.S.-Georgian special 

operation in 2002. In contrast to the French statement, Major 

General Eric Olson, the second ranking U.S. military offi cer in 

Afghanistan, told the Associated Press on February 25, 2005, that he 

had no indications that al-Qaida was attempting to obtain nuclear or 

biological weapons, that there was “no evidence that they’re trying 

to acquire a terrorist weapon of that type.”125

 The three terrorist groups that have been innovative in their 

methods have one aspect in common: the Tamil Elam in Sri Lanka, 

the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo, and the al-Qaida organization have 

all actively recruited among educated, college graduates, and 

specifi cally sought individuals with particular knowledge and 

training. (The Tamil Elam showed no interest in BW, and in only 

one anomalous incident used industrial canisters of chlorine gas.) 

K. S. Mohammed completed a degree at a U.S. college, as did Yazid 

Sufaat. An unclassifi ed summary of information on detainees at 

Guantanamo states that “More than 10 percent of the detainees 

possess college degrees or obtained other higher education, often at 

Western colleges, many in the United States. Among these educated 

detainees are medical doctors, airplane pilots, aviation specialists, 

engineers, divers, translators, and lawyers.”126 At least one holds a 

degree in electrical engineering, another holds a graduate degree in 

aviation management, and a third holds a masters degree in petroleum 

engineering. Such recruiting patterns do not automatically translate 
40

into either interest or capability in BW, but they would be a key 

advantage should the interests of such a group turn in that direction, 

as Dr. al Zawahiri’s memorandum quoted earlier indicates.

 The reports of the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) and 

that of the U.S. CIA’s Iraq Survey Group (ISG) provide valuable 

insights into what one might expect of the initial efforts by a terrorist 

group. The report of the ISG describes the initial failures of the 

Iraqi national CW national CW program to produce a chemical weapon between program to produce a chemical weapon between 

1971 and 1978.127 The information provided does not clarify if the 

impediments were in the industrial synthesis of chemical agents or 

in their weaponization. Nevertheless, this involved a state program, 

state resources, and a period of 8 years. It was previously known 

from UNSCOM reports that the same failure occurred in the Iraqi 

BW program in the “early 1970’s,” and again between 1974 and 

1978. The ISG report also provides information on two efforts made 

by insurgent groups inside Iraq in 2002-03 to produce very basic 

chemical weapon agents. Although the services of several chemists 

were obtained to produce the agents, both these efforts failed.128 It is 

uniformly assumed that the production of classical chemical weapon 

agents as well as their dissemination is simpler than that of classical 

biological weapon agents.

 All of the preceding explains the crucial signifi cance of establishing 

precisely who was the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax incidents in 

the United States, and how and where the anthrax preparation was 

produced. It is the sole outlier event. Without it, and except for the 

Rajneesh salmonella incident, there would still be no evidence of 

capability on the part of a nonstate actor to produce a biological agent. 

There has also been no evidence to date of the provision of assistance 

by a state to a nonstate actor to produce biological agents.129 If it should 

turn out, as is currently assumed, that the Amerithrax perpetrator 

came from within the U.S. Government’s own biodefense program, 

with access to strains, laboratories, people, and knowledge, then all 

the conceptions about the signifi cance of the events get substantially 

altered. It does not alter the fact that it can be done, and that the alter the fact that it can be done, and that the

preparation could have been dispersed in a much more harmful 

way. But it does affect the crucial question of “By Whom”?—and 

the projections imputed to traditional “terrorist” groups.130 With this 
41

exception, all attempts by other groups have either failed or been 

limited to relatively low levels of competence. Reports in 2002 and 

again in mid-2004 indicated that the investigations into the source of 

the anthrax used in the U.S. events were yielding results.131 These had 

apparently reached the stage that suggested which U.S. laboratory 

had been the source of the strain used. Nevertheless, there has been 

no identifi cation of the perpetrator or resolution of the case. In the 

words of former Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for 

Chemical and Biological Defense, Dr. Anna Johnson-Winegar, “We 

do not know who was responsible. We do not know the source of 

the anthrax spores (i.e., were they produced, stolen, or purchased?). 

We do not know the motive for the attacks. And, therefore, we are 

unable to make intelligent assessments about the likelihood of similar 

attacks in the future.”132

 In the midst of all these developments, and the information 

derived from investigations in Afghanistan, October 2003 saw 

the amazing report that the U.S. DoD had been selling surplus 

equipment of the kind that could be used precisely for producing 

BW pathogens, and that some of the equipment purchased by 

middlemen in the United States had been resold to buyers in, among 

other countries, the Philippines, Malaysia, Egypt, Canada, Dubai, 

and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), “for transit to other countries 

prohibited from receiving exports of trade security controlled items.” 

U.S. offi cials in the past had identifi ed individuals in Canada, the 

Philippines, Dubai, and in the UAE who are known to be involved 

in transshipments to terrorist-supporting countries. The sales had 

been made by the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service, 

which in 3 1/2 years had sold 18 safety cabinets, 199 incubators, 521 

centrifuges, 65 evaporators, and 286,000 full-body protective suits.133

One can compare this to the reports of the few pieces of elementary 

equipment found in the al-Qaida site in Afghanistan, and the 

signifi cance that was given to those fi nds. 

 The items sold are all available on the commercial market in 

the United States as well as elsewhere, but DoD’s selling price was 

additionally “pennies on the dollar” of the cost of the original items. 

More accurately, it averaged 10 cents on the dollar of original costs, 

even if the equipment was unused. In the words of a Congressional 
42

subcommittee chairman, “DoD should not be a discount outlet for 

bioterrorism equipment.” Export of these items would routinely 

require an export license if they had been sold for export, and the 

new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had already begun 

monitoring the import and export of the same kinds of materials. 

Even recent internal DoD regulations had been violated. The U.S. 

GAO, the investigative and oversight body that serves the U.S. 

Congress, was responsible for the report, which documented this 

absent-minded but gross evasion by a branch of the U.S. DoD of 

common sense and of existing export controls on materials that could 

be used for the production of biological agents. 

 After the years of strident alarms regarding the interest of 

international terrorist groups in biological weapons, and after the 

U.S. domestic anthrax incidents in 2001 and the enormous post-9/11 

buildup of “Homeland Security” to protect against bioterrorism 

involving expenditures of $7-8 billion by the time of the GAO 

report in the fall of 2003, this was an amazing demonstration of one 

dysfunctional branch of government facilitating exactly what the rest 

of the government was ostensibly trying to protect against. To add 

to the irony, the 3 1/2-year period investigated—between October 1, 

1999, and March 31, 2003—places its onset during the tenure of none 

other than Secretary of Defense William Cohen, avid warner of “the 

bioterrorism threat.”
43

PART IV

FRAMING “THE THREAT” AND SETTING THE AGENDA 

OF PUBLIC PERCEPTION AND POLICY PRESCRIPTION

 Well before October-November 2001, the spectre of “bioterrorism” 

benefi ted from an extremely successful sales campaign. Between 

1995 and 2001, the most common portrayal of the potential for 

“bioterrorism” was the facile catchphrase, “It’s not a matter of 

whether; just when.”134 This proved to be one of the most successful 

catchphrases since the old soap-powder advertisement, “Duz Does 

Everything.” But, of course, it was a matter of both “whether” and 

“when,” or at least it might have been in this initial period. Those 

calling for preparation and preventive measures certainly believed, 

at a minimum, that the imagined sequel to whether and when, 

“. . . and with what consequences,” could be affected. That was the 

purpose of the wake-up calls. But “whether” and “when” were 

modifi able also, depending on the policies chosen. It depended 

most particularly on how the threat was portrayed, and how that 

portrayal was broadcast to potentially interested parties around the 

world. Perhaps bioterrorism is a given between whenever “now” 

is and decades hence, but lots of things can intervene between now 

and then. The infl ated predictions that were common were certainly 

not realistic. Much worse, in addition to being wrong, infl ated realistic. Much worse, in addition to being wrong, inflated 

predictions were counterproductive. They induced interest in BW in 

the wrong audiences.

 One immediate problem was the confl ation of biological 

weapons and “bioterrorism” (and even between biological “agents” 

and “weapons”). Biological weapon use had been possible in the 

entire 20th century. Now the entire subject became subsumed 

under “bioterrorism.” That simple switch in language made it 

easy to transfer levels of state capability to “terrorists.” Everything 

became and was referred to as “bioterrorism.” This wiped out any 

discrimination, or attempt to discriminate, between the relevant 

capabilities of state programs and existing terrorist groups as they are 

known to date. The possibility of incidents involving low numbers of 
44

casualties evolved in 2 or 3 years to “mass casualty” terrorism, and 

in several more years to “Apocalyptic Terrorism.” Generic terrorist 

groups (excluding the perpetrator of the U.S. anthrax events)—none 

of which had yet shown the ability to master their microbiological A, 

B, C’s in the real world—were endowed with the prospective ability 

to genetically engineer pathogens. Yet the resources and capabilities 

available to states and to terrorist groups are vastly different.

 If we go back 10 years or so, we can look at a series of portrayals 

of the threat. A 1997 U.S. DoD Defense Science Board report grouped 

the characteristics of both chemical and biological warfare agents:

 • They are relatively easy to obtain (certainly compared to 

nuclear), and potential users do not need access to large and 

expensive facilities to achieve potent capabilities.

 • They can be developed and produced in laboratory or small 

scale industrial facilities, which makes them diffi cult to detect. 

Also, the technologies required to produce them often have 

commercial applications as well, so their “dual use” can be 

plausibly denied.

 • They can be extremely lethal, so small quantities can be very 

effective.

 • They can be delivered by a variety of means.135

The paragraph went on to add that “A few kilograms of a biological 

agent could threaten an entire city.” Summations of this kind were 

grossly oversimplifi ed even further. Former Secretary of the Navy 

Richard Danzig’s 1997 and 1999 papers contain an example: “. . . 

a kilogram [of anthrax], depending on meteorological conditions and 

means of delivery, has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of 

people in a metropolitan area . . . biological weapons are so potent 

and so cheap . . . the technology is readily available . . . so many of our 

adversaries have biological warfare capabilities . . .”136 They do have 

“the potential,” but they might also kill only few, or none at all. More 

correctly, not 1 kilogram but some 50 kilograms could kill anywhere 

between 0 and 95,000 people, depending on the initial population 

number, the quality and nature of the anthrax preparation, the 

meteorological conditions, and the means of delivery if distributed 
45

over a city. More recent model studies by Dean Wilkening at Stanford 

University have demonstrated the diffi culties in releasing biological 

agents so that they are infective in large airborne releases. The model 

studies show very wide ranges of variability, over fi ve log units 

(orders of magnitude).137

 The years between 1995 and 2000 were characterized, then, by:

 • spurious statistics (hoaxes counted as “biological” events);

 • unknowable predictions;

 • greatly exaggerated consequence estimates;

 • gross exaggeration of the feasibility of successfully 

producing biological agents by nonstate actors, except in the 

case of recruitment of highly experienced professionals, for 

which there still was no evidence as of 2000;

 • the apparent continued absence of a thorough threat 

assessment; and,

 • thoughtless, ill-considered, counterproductive, and 

extravagant rhetoric.

 Nonetheless, these descriptions were considered realistic and 

taken seriously by people responsible for public safety in various 

sectors: the Director of the World Trade Center in 2001 reported that 

“What the security people and others were telling us was that the 

threat was chem-bio. . . . We felt this was the coming wave.” He 

acted on that information, purchasing protective suiting and training 

programs for his own security personnel. The very day after 9/11, 

former Secretary of Defense Cohen predicted that the next attack by 

al-Qaida would involve biological weapons. There were authoritative 

assessments during the same period that were substantially different, 

offering more sophisticated accounts of impediments to successful 

“bioterrorism.” Some of these were made by Colonel David Franz, 

then Deputy Commander of USAMRIID; John Lauder, then Special 

Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence; and Dr. Steven 

Block, Chair of a U.S. DoD Defense Science Board “Summer Study 

on Biological Weapons”—as well as Dr. Brian Jenkin’s critique of 

“fact-free analysis.” All these went by the board after 9/11 and the 

anthrax events that followed in October and November 2001.138
46

 Five essential requirements must be mastered in order to produce 

biological agents:

 • One must obtain the appropriate strain of the disease 

pathogen.

 • One must know how to handle the organism correctly.

 • One must know how to grow it in a way that will produce the 

appropriate characteristics.

 • One must know how to store the culture, and to scale-up 

production properly.

 • One must know how to disperse the product properly.139

 A U.S. military fi eld manual dating back to the 1960s remarks 

on the attributes of a desirable BW agent, that in addition to its 

pathogenicity, “means must be available for maintaining the 

agent’s virulence or infectivity during production, storage, and 

transportation.”140 One should add, most particularly during its 

dispersal as well. Two members of Sweden’s biodefense program 

stress methods on how to optimize formulations of BW agents as 

the most critical step of all: “They key competence is . . . how to 

formulate the organisms to facilitate aerosolization of particles that 

cause severe disease by inhalation.”141

 It is interesting that the classifi ed 1999 DIA report quoted earlier in 

the section on state programs contained a single sentence regarding 

the possible use of BW agents by terrorist groups: “Terrorist use 

should also be anticipated primarily in improvised devices, probably 

in association with an explosive.”142 No anticipation of the capability 

for aerosol distribution was mentioned, no overfl ight of cities, sports 

stadiums, etc.

 In a recent BW “Risk Assessment” published elsewhere, a group of 

authors from the Sandia National Laboratory listed a series of factors 

closely paralleling the above as “Technical Hurdles to Successful 

BW Deployment”: acquisition of a virulent agent; production of the 

agent in suitable form and quantity; and, effective deployment of the 

agent.

 This was summed up in simple words as “obtaining a pathogen or 

toxin . . ., isolation, amplifi cation, protection against environmental 

degradation, and development of an effective dissemination method.” 

They concluded that “Even a low-consequence event requires a 
47

considerable level of expertise to execute.”143 Dr. Steven Block, Chair 

of the U.S. DoD Defense Science Board Summer Study on biological 

weapons in the late 1990s explained the same requirements. 

A lesson from the Aum Shinrikyo case is that any group bent on developing 

offensive bio-weapons capabilities must overcome two signifi cant 

problems, one biological and the other physical. First, it must acquire 

and produce stable quantities of a suitably potent agent. For a variety 

of reasons, this is not the trivial task that it is sometimes made out to be. 

Second, it must have an effective means of delivering the agent to the 

intended target. For most, but not all, bio-weapon agents, this translates 

into solving problems of dispersal. Programs in both the United States 

and the USSR devoted years of effort to perfecting these aspects.144

 Unfortunately, a recent example provides the sort of grossly 

uninformed description that is more frequently provided to the 

general public. Speaking at the Harvard Medical School on June 1, 

2005, and trading on his training as a medical doctor as he frequently 

does, Senator Frist claimed that “. . . a few technicians of middling skill 

using a few thousand dollars worth of readily available equipment 

in a small and apparently innocuous setting [could] mount a fi rstorder biological attack. It is even possible to synthesize virulent 

pathogens from scratch, or to engineer and manufacture prions . . .” 

He repeated that this was “the single greatest threat to our safety and 

security today.”145 The remarks are a travesty: “. . . a few technicians . 

. . middling skill . . . few thousand dollars,” leading to a “fi rst-order first-order” 

a biological attack, and additionally extending this to “synthesizing 

virulent pathogens” in the same breath. 

 To bolster his argument, Senator Frist larded his presentation 

with other gross inaccuracies, claiming that “During the Cold War, 

the Soviet Union . . . stockpiled 5,000 tons annually of biowarfareengineered anthrax resistant to 16 antibiotics.” The only source in 

the world for the tonnage of anthrax stockpiled by the USSR is Dr. 

Ken Alibek.146 He has never quoted a fi gure higher than 200 tons, and 

he has never claimed that the 200 tons was produced “annually,” 

or in any single year. The USSR’s anthrax stockpile consisted of a 

genetically unmodifi ed classical strain (or strains).147 The antibiotic 

resistant strain which was developed by Soviet BW laboratories in 

the mid- to late-1980s was not resistant to 16 antibiotics, but to half 

that number, and had not yet reached the point of being stockpiled 
48

by the time that the Soviet BW program began to be cut back in 1989. 

Finally, the 5,000-ton fi gure is the approximate sum of the annual 

production capacities of all Soviet-era BW mobilization production 

facilities that would have initiated production only with the onset 

of, or just prior to a (nuclear) war with the United States. No such 

quantities of BW agents were ever produced in the USSR.

Scenarios and Exercises.

 If one looks at the scenarios used in various exercises carried 

out by U.S. Government agencies or private institutes, one fi nds the 

following:148

 • [Unnamed], March 1998, Mexico-Texas border: smallpox 

chimeric viral agent (following Alibek).

 • Top Off I, May 2000: aerosolized plague, FEMA and U.S. 

Department of Justice.

 • [Unnamed], July 2000: aerosolized pneumonic plague, U.S. 

Department of Justice and DoD DTRA.

 • Dark Winter, June 2001: aerosolized smallpox, Johns Hopkins 

Center for Biosecurity and three collaborating groups.

 • Sooner Spring, April 2002: smallpox, National Memorial 

Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), Oklahoma.

 • Top Off II, May 2003: aerosolized plague, U.S. DHS and U.S. 

Department of State.

 • Atlantic Storm, January 2005: Aerosolized dry powder 

smallpox, Center for Biosecurity (now affi liated with the 

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center).

 • Top Off III, April 2005: aerosolized pneumonic plague, U.S. 

DHS.

 The Dark Winter exercise used a person-to-person secondary 

transmission rate (RO) of 10, three times the historical average of 

three.149 Pneumonic plague has a historical average transmission rate 

of one.150 Nevertheless, there are indications that the Top Off 2 and 

3 exercises used values fi ve times as high, and the July 2000 exercise 

used a value of 10. Such infl ated transmission rates, of course, 
49

make it next to impossible for the game players to do very much to 

contain the outbreak, and assure a disastrous outcome irrespective 

of whatever control measures the players may attempt to carry out.

 Plague is known to microbiologists who routinely work with 

it as a “diffi cult,” “skittish” agent, “fragile and fastidious” in the 

laboratory. That a terrorist group would be likely to manage that 

seems very unlikely. In addition, plague organisms die very quickly 

when aerosolized, and both the United States and the UK failed for 

years in attempts to aerosolize plague. Both the British and U.S. BW 

programs in the 1950s fi eld tested plague in open air fi eld trials using 

animals, and the tests failed. The USSR BW program, with many 

more man-years of work, apparently did succeed in producing 

an aerosolizable plague agent. Did the Top Off scenario builders 

know of the efforts of the British and American BW programs to 

aerosolize plague and the outcome of those efforts? Did they know 

of the negative results, or decided to simply disregard them in any 

case? In the fi rst case they could be accused of ignorance, in the 

second case of incompetence. They fi nessed the problem, however, 

by saying that the terrorists “obtained a sample” of the plague. But 

what kind of sample? Was it aerosolizable? From whom did they get 

it? In what quantity? Did they have to culture it? If so, how did they 

manage that? How was it dispersed? The scenario is not meant to 

answer these questions, which, of course, would all be crucial in the 

real world to determining whether a terrorist group was capable of 

producing and dispersing plague. Its purpose is simply to present a 

situation for the responders to deal with, without bothering with the 

question of how the situation came about, its likelihood, or in fact if 

it could take place at all.

 In an infl uential August 2003 monograph, Richard Danzig 

suggested four cases that he recommended for “near term planning 

premises.” 

 1. A large-scale outdoor aerosol anthrax attack.

 2. A large-scale outdoor aerosol smallpox attack.

 3. An attack that disseminates botulinum toxin in cold drinks.

 4. An attack that spreads foot and mouth disease among cattle, 

sheep, and pigs.151
50

Danzig adds that “. . . these cases . . . are real, possibly imminent, and 

very substantial dangers. Virtually all experts and policymakers agree 

with this.” Despite that, he added “. . . in the immediate future, most 

attacks are likely to be versions, often lesser version, of these cases.” 

Nevertheless, at the same time Danzig routinely speaks of “reloads,” 

and of terrorists producing suffi cient quantities “that can be used 

again and again” in a series of attacks crossing the United States.152

That is scarcely “a lesser version.” Casualties resulting from Case 

#3 would be identifi ed almost immediately and would be quickly 

limited. Case #4 would have serious economic consequences, but 

not human public health ones. Cases #1 and #2 are the signifi cant 

ones, and comparable to the exercise scenarios listed above. 

 The same holds for the BW cases among the offi cial “Planning 

Scenarios” of the U.S. DHS. Of 15 selected scenarios, four concerned 

BW:

 #2. Biological Attack, aerosolized anthrax, in fi ve cities in 

succession;

 #4. Biological Attack, aerosolized plague in three locations in a 

single city;

 #13. Biological Attack, liquid anthrax placed in ground beef in a 

factory, resulting in intestinal anthrax, mortality in the low hundreds; 

and,

 #14. Biological Attack, Foot and Mouth Disease; economic loss, 

no human mortality.153

Again, it is the fi rst two of these four scenarios that are of prime concern 

since they are the ones capable of producing mass casualties.154

 However, the capabilities that would have to be posited for the 

above scenarios are far beyond the present and “near term” capabilities 

of any known terrorist group. (As before, the perpetrator(s) of the 

U.S. anthrax events is/are excluded.) That is particularly the case for 

smallpox. The counter argument, even by those who accept that fact, 

is obvious, and was presented by Dr. Gerald Epstein in Congressional 

testimony in February 2005.

Exactly how close terrorist groups are right now to the capability to 

conduct a major biological attack matters if we want to know how likely 

it is that such an attack will take place in the near future. However, 

looking out over the several years that our defensive preparations will 
51

take to implement, the details of today’s threat are less important than 

the realization that the rapidly increasing capability, market penetration, 

and geographic dissemination of relevant biotechnical disciplines will 

inevitably bring weapons capabilities within the reach of those who may 

wish to use them for harm.155

“Inevitably” is longer than “several” years.

Examining the Assumptions of One Exercise in Detail: Atlantic 

Storm. 

 An excellent example of grossly misleading assumptions 

underlying the more advanced scenarios and base cases was provided 

by the seventh exercise listed above, “Atlantic Storm,” which took 

place on January 14, 2005.156 The comments below concern only the 

assumptions used by the producers of the exercise to argue that the 

terrorist group they envision would have obtained, produced, and 

distributed a dry-powder preparation of smallpox. These comments 

do not concern at all how the scenario unfolded once the hypothesized 

preparation had been released.

The group responsible for producing and releasing the 

smallpox was defi ned as a “Radical al-Qaida Splinter Group.” In 

contrast, as best is known from the declassifi ed documents and all 

the other materials obtained by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan in 

November and December 2001:

 • No al-Qaida capacity for culturing viruses has ever been 

identifi ed.

 • No al-Qaida group has yet been able to obtain a pathogenic 

strain of anthrax.

 • The group operating in Afghanistan in 2000-01 had 

apparently not yet reached the stage of attempting to culture 

vaccine strain anthrax. It had been provided with U.S. and 

UK microbiological journal literature from the 1950s and 

1960s. The “methods” sections of those papers would have 

provided some aid for understanding culturing requirements 

for anthrax. They would not have assured success in doing 

it.

 • Al-Qaida affi liated groups apparently either have not yet been 

able to synthesize ricin, or have not yet attempted to do so. 
52

As indicated earlier, the “traces” of ricin reported as having 

been found in London several years ago turned out to be false 

positives. No ricin was found when the United States overran 

the al-Qaida affi liated Ansar al-Islam camp in Northern Iraq 

in March 2003.

The scenario posits that “Seed stocks of Variola major [smallpox] virus . . . 

were obtained . . . from a bioweapons facility in the former Soviet Union. 

This strongly implies that the “facility” suggested would be one 

of the former premier institutes of the Soviet Biopreparat system, 

Vector, located in Koltsovo near Novosibirsk, Russia. When the 

Iranian government made overtures to Vector scientists in the years 

around 1994, offering very generous payment to come and work 

and/or teach in Iran, they failed to convince a single member of the 

institute to come to Iran. These facilities are in better shape now than 

they were 10 years ago, both in their fi nancial circumstances and in 

their biosecurity arrangements. At a fi rst approximation, it therefore 

seems highly unlikely that an al-Qaida affi liated group would be able 

to obtain a smallpox sample from Vector. A U.S. Government offi cial 

with frequent contact with this facility thought that “the probability 

was low.”157

 The Atlantic Storm scenario attempts to prop up the basic 

implausibility of this point in its assumptions by a gratuitous 

“Intelligence Briefi ng” which states that “information from U.S., UK, 

French, and German intelligence” corroborated that the al-Qaida 

group “has made contacts with former Soviet bioweaponeers.” If it 

were the case that no less than four Western intelligence agencies 

had been informed of the “contacts” by the al-Qaida group, it would 

seem that there would have been a good chance to abort the activities 

of the group. The scenario organizers point out that smallpox is also 

assumed to be located in Russia in another institute besides Vector, 

one belonging to the Ministry of Defense (MOD). That may very 

well be the case, but if Vector has, to date, not been penetrated by 

“terrorist” groups, it is still less likely that a Russian MOD facility 

would be successfully penetrated.

 The scenario posits that the al-Qaida group’s scientists received 

microbiological training at Indian and U.S. universities. These 

scientists received additional training when the group hired a 
53

scientist who was part of the former Soviet Union’s offensive 

biological weapons program. This scientist taught the [al-Qaida 

group] scientists how to grow a number of biological agents, 

including variola major [smallpox], Bacillus anthracis, Ebola virus, 

and Burkholderia mallei [glanders]. The terrorist group combined 

this knowledge with publicly available technical information to 

develop dry powder preparations of the viruses. Then, with their 

own microbiology training, the terrorist group was able to acquire all 

the required laboratory equipment to grow and process the Variola 

major seed stock they had acquired into a relatively high-quality dry 

powder that was then used in the attacks.

 In the real world, Al-Qaida had one single individual who had 

received a BS degree in Biology “with a clinical concentration” at 

a U.S. college. He could in no way be described as a “scientist.” 

Furthermore, he was arrested in December 2001. The individual 

with more advanced training who supplied al-Qaida with its 

microbiological literature was unwilling to himself do any laboratory 

work for them. The few pieces of standard equipment obtained by 

the group in Afghanistan were rudimentary in the extreme.

 The USSR’s BW program and the organization of its relevant 

institutes would make it extremely unlikely that a single former 

Soviet BW scientist would know how to grow and work with both 

Variola (smallpox) and Ebola viruses, as well as B. anthracis and B. 

mallei bacteria. Even the Soviet virologists who worked with Ebola 

and with Variola were in separate teams. Even more signifi cant, 

growing the viruses in tissue culture requires knowledge of tissue 

culture growth and maintenance. Soviet institutes such as Vector 

had very sizable teams of specialists simply to do the tissue culture 

preparations on which the viruses could grow. These individuals 

would never have had experience growing B. anthracis or B. mallei. 

In addition, not even the Soviet BW program succeeded in making a 

dry-powder preparation of Ebola, the second virus that the scenario 

includes.

 When the former director of a Western national BW defense 

laboratory was asked how long it would take a fully competent 

professional group of experienced microbiologists who had never 

before worked with viruses or tissue culture to successfully grow 

Variola in tissue culture, he estimated 5 years. When asked how long 
54

he thought it would take a group of not very competent individuals 

to do it, he estimated 10 years to never.158 Smallpox can also be grown 

on the Chorio-allantoic membrane of fertilized chicken eggs. While 

Soviet scientists grew vaccinia in eggs in their process of making 

vaccine against smallpox, even that requires experience and careful, 

tedious technical work.

 In response to some of these criticisms of the Atlantic Storm 

scenario, two of its principal creators, Colonel Randall Larsen and 

Dr. Tara O’Toole have both invoked, 

. . . a once-secret Defense Department experiment called Project Bacchus 

[sic], which was conducted in the late 1990s to assess whether terrorists 

could create a biological terror weapon using commercially available 

equipment.

The project “demonstrated quite persuasively that about four people, 

only one of whom had any biological training at all—and that was not 

with the U.S weapons program; that was a degree in biology—could, 

using materials bought through the Internet, set up shop, undiscovered, 

and create a Bacillus anthracis look-alike,” O’Toole said.159

 The statement is wrong on numerous grounds. First, the 

description of the Biotechnology Activity Characterization by 

Unconventional Signatures (BACUS) project that has been publicly 

available and is repeated by O’Toole and Larsen is essentially 

misleading.160 Its purpose was not to see “ to see “whether terrorists terrorists could

create” but to be certain that the experimental group did successfully 

“create,” in order to see if detectable signatures would result that 

could subsequently be used by U.S. forces in the fi eld hunting for 

such sites. To that end, the group was composed of much more than 

“about four people, only one of whom had any biological training at 

all.” The on-site portion of the team was composed of 8-10 people, 

many of whom had post-graduate degrees and experience. One held a 

Ph.D. in microbiology from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Another 

had a masters degree in engineering, while another served in Special 

Forces intelligence, and so on. The team had been specifi cally selected 

so that all the aptitudes considered necessary to complete the project 

successfully would be represented. They were to produce a harmless 

bacterial anthrax simulant; no work with viruses or with any lethal 
55

pathogen comparable to smallpox was involved. In addition, this 

on-site group was backed up by four or fi ve highly experienced 

biological weapons specialists acting as consultants, whose role it 

was to oversee their work to be certain that no errors were made, to 

the point of correcting a decimal place in a calculation.

 In addition, the same group had gone through this exercise in an 

earlier classifi ed project named BITE SIZE. The two projects differed 

primarily in their physical location—underground and above 

ground—and the purpose of both projects was to serve as a test for 

new detection methodologies. They were not experiments to see experiments to see 

“whether” the group could succeed. The claim that the experience 

of the BACUS group proves the legitimacy of the Atlantic Storm 

scenario is completely unsupportable.

Location of preparatory work by the al-Qaida splinter group: 

The scenario describes the group’s laboratory as having been 

“disguised as a small brewery in Klagenfurt, Austria.” With all 

the years of claims that the production of biological agents could 

take place “in breweries,” it would not be surprising if readers of the 

extensive media coverage of the Atlantic Storm exercise might have 

thought that the smallpox was being grown in the fermenting vats 

of a brewery. For various technical reasons, that would be virtually 

impossible. Viral bioreactors are, in contrast to brewery fermenting 

vats, relatively small. The scenario, in fact, does not explain by which 

method the group would have been able to produce its smallpox. It 

says only “Smallpox virus can be grown in embryonated eggs and a 

variety of tissue culture systems.” Work with viruses and cell culture 

is very much more diffi cult than growing bacterial cultures, and the 

diffi culties of cell culture for the putative group have been referred 

to above. Embryonated chicken eggs must be special-ordered. The 

suppliers are limited, and the customers are limited and usually 

well-known to the suppliers. If the group ordered the thousands and 

possibly tens of thousands of embryonated eggs and the egg incubators 

that would be required for this method of growing smallpox virus, 

local suppliers might wonder why an ostensible brewery needed 

thousands of embryonated eggs, since only yeast, hops, and grain 

would be ordered by a brewery. Suppliers therefore would be likely 

to report such information to local authorities, offering another 
56

opportunity to abort the group’s activities. Operating breweries in 

Austria are very highly regulated and routinely inspected. Even 

construction of a brewery requires government licensing, design 

approval and construction inspections. Applications for ownership 

or operation are also regulated. Inspectors who would chance on 

masses of incubating embryonated eggs would immediately be 

alerted to the covert operation.161

 The group would also have to prevent the escape of the grown 

smallpox virus in liquid and solid waste effl uents. Incineration, 

water sterilization and air-handling equipment are not normally 

installed in “a small brewery.” These auxiliary systems alone are 

relatively large, and the ability for them to be housed together with 

the laboratory facilities “in a building as small as a 3-car garage,” 

which the scenario suggests would be possible, is extremely unlikely. 

More probably, it is impossible. These auxiliary systems must also 

be custom-installed by specialists, and then tested. Depending on 

how or where the smallpox vaccinations for the terrorist group were 

obtained, that too could run the risk of being noted.

The Atlantic Storm scenario involved the distribution of a 

dry-powder smallpox preparation from “a commercially available 

dry powder dispenser” by vaccinated individuals in six different 

cities (Istanbul, Frankfurt, Rotterdam, Warsaw, Los Angeles, and 

New York City) over a span of 4 days. As regards preparation of the 

smallpox powder, the scenario says only that “several sources for 

information on methods” are available, and that “Variola virus can 

be processed to a stable dried form just as vaccinia virus is dried to 

make a vaccine.”

 Such work was never carried out in the British government’s 

BW program. Work with virus culture in the British program was 

extremely rudimentary overall. It did advance further in the pre1969 U.S. BW program, but some years ago one of the individuals 

involved in that work, Dr. William Patrick, offered the judgment 

that “Only a state-sponsored group of terrorists with a lot of money 

and connections would be able to acquire the smallpox virus and the 

means for wielding it as a weapon.”162 The Atlantic Storm scenario 

producers knew this quotation, since they have elsewhere used an 

accompanying sentence by Patrick as a source.
57

 Speaking at a conference on April 22, 2005, after the details of 

Atlantic Storm were known, Dr. Ken Alibek, the former Deputy 

Director of the Soviet-era Biopreparat BW research and development 

program, commented that he could “not understand why some 

people make these scenarios using dry powder smallpox.” He 

explained that “no one”—that is, the Soviet BW program—“wanted 

to or could develop dry powder smallpox.”163 He gave two reasons 

for that: fi rst, that the Soviet BW program had been able to develop 

a preparation that kept smallpox stable in liquid; and second, that it 

was much too dangerous for their own staff to prepare dry powder 

smallpox preparations, even working in facilities with elaborate and 

advanced containment systems. The claim in the Atlantic Storm 

scenario that, nevertheless, this could have been achieved by a small 

inexperienced group has absolutely no chance of being credible.

 As for “Sources for Information” on methods, simply having them 

on paper would certainly not be suffi cient, though it is the necessary 

fi rst step. Even vaccinia is grown under conditions of containment, 

but there is one critical difference: drying variola would have to be 

carried out under extremely rigorous conditions of containment 

of the opposite nature, that is, under negative air pressure, rather 

than positive. The necessary air-handling equipment is sizable and 

is not part of the infrastructure of a brewery. It is also not simply 

purchasable from catalogues and, as indicated, would have to be 

custom installed. 

 Elsewhere, Dr. Patrick has written, 

A dry product with these [desired] properties requires serious 

development with skilled personnel and sophisticated equipment. . . . 

[While] Iraq successfully produced high quality liquids of anthrax and 

botulinum toxin A in quantity, their efforts to weaponize their agents 

were crude and far from successful. . . . By analogy, if a dedicated nation 

such as Iraq had problems with agent delivery and dissemination, it 

follows that terrorists would also experience these problems, and at a 

higher level of intensity.164

Dispersal of the dry-powder preparation took place over a period 

of several hours in each location. Does a “commercially available dry 

powder dispenser” produce the particle size distribution required 

for human aerosol infection? Is it battery-powered or gas cartridge-
58

powered to operate noiselessly? The device that the Aum Shinrikyo 

group had made but never used in a Tokyo subway was designed to 

distribute a liquid and would have worked for only a short period.

Spread of the smallpox epidemic. The Atlantic Storm scenario 

uses rates of fi rst generation person-to-person transmission of 1:3, and 

1:0.25 for second generation transmission. This is a major correction 

from the value of 1:10 used by the same exercise sponsor in “Dark 

Winter,” its previous smallpox exercise in June 2001. As recently as 

the spring of 2004, a member of the University of Pittsburgh group 

still defended the 1:10 estimate in a briefi ng given in Washington, 

DC.165

Adding anthrax production by the same “al-Qaida splinter 

group,” presumably at the same brewery location. Several months 

after the initial Atlantic Storm exercise, its creators were able to repeat 

the exercise with 28 of the 34 members of the Homeland Security 

Committee of the U.S. Congress. After replaying the Atlantic Storm 

scenario (which followed a separate simulation of a terrorist attack 

using a 10 kiloton nuclear device), this time yet another component 

was added: “. . . [a] few days into the disaster, terrorists followed 

up with anthrax attacks in major cities.”166 No other details were 

provided. This adds an entire additional layer of implausibility 

regarding the ability of an “al-Qaida splinter group” to produce 

anthrax, the delivery of growth media to the “brewery,” and so on, 

not to speak of the technical requirements of producing both anthrax 

and dry-powder smallpox. Brewery fermenters are not useful for 

growing anthrax, just as they are not useful for growing smallpox.

The individuals who played the roles of “World Leaders” 

in the exercise. These took the roles of purely political fi gures, 

presidents and prime ministers of their respective countries, except 

for one who played the role of Director-General of the World Health 

Organization (WHO). Of the 12 individuals, one had been the former 

Director-General of WHO, and a second had been a Minister of 

Health. Nevertheless, none had any experience with issues regarding 

biological weapons. This point is mentioned only to note that none 

apparently raised any questions regarding the basic plausibility of 

the scenario. According to those responsible for the exercise, the 

players were not even informed of the antecedent assumptions that 

are being discussed here. Two members of a European advisory 
59

panel to the Atlantic Storm exercise recommended that it should 

deal with an outbreak of pandemic fl u rather than smallpox, but the 

suggestion was rejected. Had pandemic fl u been chosen, references 

to a “radical al-Qaida splinter group,” invoking “bioterrorism,” and 

so on would all have had to be discarded.

Media response. As best is known, not a single report of the 

exercise raised any questions whatsoever regarding the plausibility 

of the basic assumptions of the scenario.167 Dr. O’Toole, Director of 

the Pittsburgh group that produced the exercise, stated that “The 

scenario we posited is very conservative. . . . This could have been 

much worse. The age of engineered biological weapons is here. It 

is now.”168 Portions of the scenario once it was in play may have 

been conservative; however, “engineered biological weapons” are 

not relevant to an “al-Qaida splinter group,” and they are not “now” 

in relation to “terrorist” groups. Dr. O’Toole has also claimed that 

the scenario antecedents were made “as scientifi c as possible.” The 

preceding discussion demonstrates that they were very far from 

“scientifi c,” and were a combination of unrealistic and implausible 

imaginings. A Washington Post Washington Post editorial ended with another O’Toole editorial ended with another O’Toole 

quote: “This is not science fi ction. The age of Bioterror is now,”169

and an enthusiastic Washington Post Washington Post columnist described the exercise columnist described the exercise 

as an “eminently plausible scenario.”170 Rather, it was science fi ction 

because the scenario antecedents are not “now,” and they were not 

in the least plausible.

Another Recent Example: Botulinum Toxin 

and the U.S. Milk Supply.

 Substantial controversy surrounded the recent publication of a 

model study examining the consequences of the postulated addition 

of botulinum toxin to the U.S. milk supply.171 Publication of the paper 

in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) had 

been delayed for a month due to a request by an offi cial in the U.S. 

Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). 172 During that 

interval, the author, Dr. Lawrence Wein, released his conclusions in 

a guest editorial in the New York Times.

 173 Dr. Wein, a mathematical 

modeler at the Stanford University School of Business, posited that “a 

terrorist”—that is, a single individual—could produce, variously, a 
60

“few grams,” ten grams, or even as much as a kilogram of botulinum 

toxin, “using a 28-page manual called ‘Preparation of Botulinum 

Toxin’ that has been published on several jihadist websites, and 

[could buy] toxin from an overseas black-market laboratory.” He 

estimated that ten grams of the toxin might poison 568,000 people, 

of whom as many as 60 percent might die. 

 It was possible to obtain a copy of the manual, which appeared to 

be composed of the linked reproductions of the methods sections of 

several journal papers. The manual did not explain how to obtain “a 

producer strain” of clostridium botulinum in the fi rst place, other than 

suggesting trial and error from sources in the wild. There are seven 

serotypes of C. botulinum, each containing around 100 strains. Many 

strains of C. botulinum produce no toxin at all, or very little. It took the 

pre-1969 U.S. biological weapons program many man-years of work 

by competent professionals to fi nd a reliable toxin producing strain. 

The manual required the use of a walk-in cold room, a refrigerated 

vacuum centrifuge, highly specifi c reagents, etc. None of these, as 

well as many other necessary components, would likely be found in 

“jihadist” camps. More importantly, having the manual, or having 

the books or journals from which it is derived, does not confer on 

anyone the ability to make botulinum toxin. That requires knowledge 

and experience, and it is not the simplest procedure. Producing ten 

grams would be a feat even for an experienced professional. It is 

useful to remember that the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo group, with no 

constraints on funds for purchasing equipment and supplies, spent 3 

to 4 years attempting to produce botulinum toxin and failed. It is now 

known that the Aum had never even been able to obtain a culture of 

the organism to work with. The author of the model introduced “an 

overseas black market” as an obvious deus machina to evade these 

diffi culties, but no international black market for botulinum toxin is 

known to exist. The author also appeared to be unacquainted with 

the journal literature regarding the purifi cation of Botulinum toxin, 

which would indicate what some of the diffi culties are. 

 The author admitted in the PNAS paper that three variables in 

his model “each contain several orders of magnitude of uncertainty.” 

They appear to each contain at least three orders of magnitude of 

uncertainty. Cumulatively, the author’s calculations could therefore 

be off by as much as nine orders of magnitude—a billion times—
61

which could mean that not a single person would be poisoned or 

die. If a mathematical model is widely divergent in its assumptions 

from reality, all the mathematics in the world will not improve the 

accuracy of its predictions.

 One of Dr. Wein’s two main recommendations was that the 

milk industry increase the temperature and duration time for milk 

pasteurization. Over a period of several years, the International Dairy 

Foods Association (IDFA) had, in fact, already done this, developing 

new procedures which result in 99 percent inactivation of any 

botulinum toxin present. By mid-2004, the IDFA had recommended 

to its affi liated milk distributors that such changes be instituted, 

although there was no legal statute that required that the steps be 

followed by all producers. Dr. Wein had learned of this in 2004 while 

giving seminar presentations of his model, but it apparently did not 

alter his calculations.174

 Efforts to arrive at realistic assessments have frequently been 

unwelcome. In 1998, D. A. Henderson wrote that:

Four points of view prevalent among national policy circles and the 

academic community at various times have served to dismiss biological 

terrorism as nothing more than a theoretical possibility. 1) Biological 

weapons have so seldom been deployed that precedent would suggest 

that they will not be used. 2) Their use is so morally repugnant that no one 

would deign to use them. 3) The science of producing enough organisms 

and dispersing them is so diffi cult that it is within the reach of only the 

most sophisticated laboratories. 4) Like the concept of a “nuclear winter,” 

the potential destructiveness of bio-weapons is essentially unthinkable 

and so to be dismissed.175

Henderson concluded that “Each of these arguments is without 

validity.” Three of them certainly are: I have seen no one arguing the 

fi rst, second, or fourth of these parodies. The closest approximation 

to the second are those studies by terrorism experts that seek to 

understand whether real terrorist groups might or might not consider 

using BW in light of their political interests, the potential responses of 

the publics whose support they seek, etc. Examples of such analyses 

by Parachini, Schweitzer, Simon, and others, based entirely on years 

of study of real international terrorist groups and not the result of 

abstract speculation, were referred to earlier. Only the third “point 

of view” which Henderson refers to, with some modifi cation, is at 
62

issue. More recently, Jill Dekker-Bellamy, Biodefense Consultant 

to a new European defense policy interest group, the New Defense 

Agenda, wrote:

We shouldn’t be stuck in the box debating the lack of sophistication 

terrorists have yet employed; the feasibility question or which pathogen 

they will use, be it in a material or weaponised form. Our focus instead 

would be better placed considering the stated intent of terrorists to do 

so and preventing and denying them access to all the means to conduct 

their terror campaign. . . .

Much debate has gone into whether or not terrorists or states pose 

the greatest threat in the use of disease as a weapon. These debates 

over whether or not terrorists are capable of successfully conducting a 

biological attack normally get bogged down in a number of areas related 

either to acquisition, technical areas (i.e., feasibility/dispersal/capacity) 

or areas related to kill ratios and casualty numbers as if this is the Geiger 

counter of successful biological terrorism. This may be of interest in 

ranking weapons of mass destruction but not necessarily in ranking a 

successful bio-terror campaign. Contemporary threat assessments, even 

more than 2 years ago, point to smaller groups as now being more likely 

to succeed in a bio-terrorism event, utilizing a diversity of agents.176

 The “contemporary threat assessments” referred to remained 

unidentifi ed, and no one is “stuck in [a] box” or “bogged down.” 

The intellectual “know-nothingism” in the above comment is 

palpable, and harks back to Brian Jenkins’ 1999 description of “fact 

free analysis” in the area of bioterrorism assessment. There is no 

incompatibility between seeking the best preventive measures and 

having a moderately realistic threat assessment. A statement by 

U.S. Department of State Anti-Terrorism Coordinator William Pope 

that “Europe should expect biological, chemical, and radiological 

terrorist attacks at any time” is an example of the inadequacy that 

is so common in many cases.177 In contrast, one recent thorough 

study carried out for the UN WMD (“Blix”) Commission rendered 

a considered assessment without fear of getting into “boxes” or 

“bogged down,” and without contrived scenarios carried out in a 

show-business atmosphere.178

 This brings us to some anticipation of the future. A very brief 2-

page statement released in November 2003 by the U.S. CIA titled “The 

Darker Bioweapons Future” was limited to very general remarks:
63

A panel of life science experts convened for the Strategic Assessments 

Group by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that advances 

in biotechnology, coupled with the diffi culty in detecting nefarious 

biological activity, have the potential to create a much more dangerous 

biological warfare threat. The panel noted:

 • The effects of some of these engineered biological agents could be 

worse than any disease known to man.

 • The genomic revolution is pushing biotechnology into an 

explosive growth phase. Panelists asserted that the resulting wave 

front of knowledge will evolve rapidly and be so broad, complex, 

and widely available to the public that traditional intelligence 

means could prove inadequate to deal with the threat from these 

advanced biological weapons.

 • Detection of related activities, particularly the development 

of novel bioengineered pathogens, will depend increasingly 

on more specifi c human intelligence and, argued panelists, 

will necessitate a closer—and perhaps qualitatively different—

working relationship between the intelligence and biological 

sciences communities.

In the last several decades, the world has witnessed a knowledge 

explosion in the life sciences based on an understanding of genes and 

how they work. According to panel members, practical applications of 

this new and burgeoning knowledge base will accelerate dramatically 

and unpredictably.

Growing understanding of the complex biochemical pathways that 

underlie life processes has the potential to enable a class of new, more 

virulent biological agents engineered to attack distinct biochemical 

pathways and elicit specifi c effects. The same science that may cure some 

of our worst diseases could be used to create the world’s most frightening 

weapons.

The know-how to develop some of these weapons already exists.179

 Others have fi lled in what this may evolve into in future decades 

in more detail. Papers by James Petro, et al., Robert Carlson, Raymond 

Zilinskas, Aleksandr Rabodzey, and others are recent examples which 

were published prior to the brief CIA item above.180 These projections 

are not discussed further here. The purpose of this monograph 

has been to present a current current threat assessment of “Bioterrorism” threat assessment of “Bioterrorism” 

and what one may expect “in the near future.” Advanced genetic 
64

engineering capabilities are not likely to become available to realworld nonstate actor/terrorist groups in the near future. Judgments 

based on the prevalence of genetic engineering competence in the 

general academic molecular research community are still not useful 

guides to terrorist capabilities. A classifi ed U.S. Defense Intelligence 

projection prepared in July 1999 looking ahead to 2020 presented 

the following anticipation of developments in future national BW 

programs:

An increasing number of countries with biological warfare programs will 

be able to develop infectious agents such as anthrax and plague, as well 

as toxins such as botulinum and ricin. . . . New types of agents, such 

as modifi ed infectious organisms, low-molecular weight physiologically 

active substances that disrupt body function, and synthetic modifi ed 

toxins, are also in development.181

Given that this was written when the number of existing states with 

offensive BW programs was still considered to be higher and that the 

“new type of agents” referred to had all been available for decades, 

this was a relatively low keyed assessment. Speaking in 2001, Dr. 

Joshua Lederberg, probably the most highly qualifi ed expert in this 

fi eld, said “I don’t think we’re going to leapfrog to the second or 

third generation without seeing some of the more primitive efforts 

in the fi rst instance.”182 In response to a statement by an offi cial of 

the DHS in June 2005 that the Department had “developed a strategy 

to address the potential for a bioengineered attack,” Dr. Richard 

Ebright commented that “There is no—zero—current likelihood 

that a terrorist organization would construct ‘bioengineered’ viral 

pathogens, or would construct ‘bioengineered’ bacterial pathogens 

other than antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens.”183
65

PART V

COSTS AND CONSEQUENCES 

OF THE U.S. BIODEFENSE PROGRAM

 Until quite recently the massive U.S. post-9/11 biodefense buildup 

has been discussed almost exclusively in terms of its presumed 

necessity, the substantial improvements achieved in response 

readiness, the successive increase of expenditure and broadening 

programs, and urgings from various quarters for still further increases 

in expenditure and expansion of programs. Certainly, some of this 

was needed, and others have analyzed the effi cacy or performance of 

various elements of U.S. biodefense expansion since 2001.184 However, 

these programs should be justifi ed on their intrinsic merits, and not 

due to alleged “spin-off” benefi ts for generic public health. “Spinoff” rationalizations for defense R&D expenditure historically have 

been spurious. They were made for the U.S. BW program over 35 

years ago as well. The suggested “spin off” can always be procured 

for a fraction of the cost of whatever the larger parent program may 

be, by direct, targeted investments.

 There are, however, also costs. The fi rst of these is direct federal 

expenditure. Dr. David Franz is fond of pointing out that in 1996 

and 1997, after the three major BW disclosures—of the USSR’s 

enormous covert and illegal BW program, the Iraqi BW program, 

and the failed attempts of the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo group to 

produce BW agents—U.S. biodefense expenditures were still in 

the range of roughly $150 million per year. They increased to $414 

million by FY 2001. It was estimated at $7.5 billion for 2005.185 Annual 

civilian biodefense expenditure has risen more than 18-fold and has 

accounted for over $22 billion in expenditure during the past 4 fi scal 

years.186 The U.S. FY 2006 civilian biodefense budget adds another 

$4.2 billion.187 The question, of course, is whether this degree of 

expenditure is merited. That is where the threat assessment should 

be the crucial determinant. Cumulative DoD biodefense expenditure 

for the past 4 years is not available. The budget for the joint DoD 
66

CB defense program was $1.25 billion in FY 2004, $1.38 billion in FY 

2005, and $1.6 billion in FY 2006.188

 The paradox of this situation is that this change in U.S. 

Government priorities is primarily due to the events of 9/11, which 

had no relation whatsoever to the capability to produce biological 

agents by terrorist groups. And as has already been indicated, the 

signifi cance of the U.S. anthrax events in regard to the anticipation 

of future events of the same nature carried out by terrorist groups is 

also unclear. In carrying out the 9/11 aircraft attacks in the United 

States, the al-Qaida organization certainly was able to demonstrate 

its enterprise, ingenuity and organizational capabilities—as well as, 

we now know, a modicum of luck and the failure of various existing 

U.S. Governmental functions.189 At the same time, it demonstrated 

that the group had not been spending the major portion of its time 

and effort to develop biological weapons. As a preceding section of 

this monograph indicates, as best is known, little regarding al-Qaida 

and BW has changed since. It is very possible that the U.S. political 

response and the congressional funding levels and programs that 

followed, would have been substantially smaller if it were known 

for certain that the Amerithrax anthrax had been prepared by a U.S. 

professional, or had been diverted from stocks prepared within the 

U.S. biodefense program. On the other hand, it undoubtedly would 

also have led to greater oversight of the U.S. biodefense program.

 Another predictable cost has been the impact on other U.S. publichealth programs and expenditures.190 Currently one-third of both the 

National Institutes of Health (NIH) infectious disease budget and the 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) budget and more 

than half of U.S. Government and corporate vaccine development is 

relegated to biodefense, that is, it focuses on the “select agents,” those 

pathogens that are considered most likely to be used as biological 

weapon agents.191 Equally or more striking were tallies produced in 

February and March 2005 of changes in the funding patterns of the 

National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at 

NIH in the years between 1996 and 2000 compared to 2001 to 2004. 

Grants for research on six bacterial pathogens on the select agent 

list grew from 33 in the fi rst 4r-year period to 497 in the second. 

Tabulations for research on viral pathogens were similar, except for 

research on infl uenza. Grants for all other agents dropped between 
67

20 and 50 percent just between FY 1999 to 2001 and FY 2002 to 

2004, including for tuberculosis and acquired immune defi ciency 

syndrome (AIDS).192 There has been a 30-fold increase in NIH-NIAID 

biodefense expenditure since 2001. It now accounts for over 35 

percent of the current NIH-NIAID budget, an amount greater than 

for AIDS research and greater than for all other non-AIDS infectious 

disease research.193 An extremely sharp attack on this shift in public 

health priorities appeared in the American Journal of Public Health in 

October 2004.194 At the end of May 2005, NIH announced a shift in 

disbursement schedules for grants that would also lead to an earlier 

termination than planned for grants for some research projects on 

malaria, HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.195

 In a May 2005 report on U.S. preparations for a pandemic fl u 

outbreak, the U.S. GAO pointed out that “the Department of Health 

and Human Services has not fi nalized planning for an infl uenza 

pandemic. In 2000, GAO recommended that DHHS complete the 

national plan for responding to an infl uenza pandemic, but the plan 

has been in draft format since August 2004.”196 At the time of the 

2000 report, GAO also took the DHHS to task for lack of progress 

in developing a vaccine against H5N1 fl u.197 At his retirement on 

December 3, 2004, DHHS Secretary Tommy Thompson cited 

pandemic fl u as the greatest threat to be faced; yet the situation is 

virtually the same today as it was in 2000. Washington policymakers 

have had almost 9 years since the fi rst outbreak of avian fl u in 1997 

to come to grips with the problem Instead, the focus has been on 

“bioterrorism” and biodefense.

 The U.S. CDC has offered one estimate of the consequences of a 

“medium level” fl u pandemic outbreak in the United States “in the 

absence of any control measures” (e.g., vaccination and drugs):

 • 15 to 35 percent of the U.S. population infected;

 • 20 to 47 million cases of illness;

 • 18 to 42 million outpatient hospital visits;

 • 89,000 to 207,000 deaths; and,

 • “associated costs ranging from $71 billion to $167 billion.”198
68

The estimate of mortality appears to be low, given that its lower 

level is about the same as the upper level of ordinary annual U.S. fl u 

mortality as shown in Figure 1 (page 5).

 Nevertheless, even weeks after the above information was 

presented to Congress, U.S. senators and congressmen, both Democrat 

and Republican, were still focused on drumming up support for 

further increases in Federal expenditures against “Bioterrorism” to 

support “Bioshield II,” subsidies for medical countermeasures against 

“select agents.”199 Only in November 2005 did the administration 

fi nally announce a plan and accompanying recommendations for 

expenditures to prepare for and to combat pandemic fl u.

Biodefense Research and the Biological Weapons Convention.

 The third area of cost concerns biological weapons arms control. 

This was treated to some degree in The Problem of Biological Weapons,200

and summarized in a subsequent paper by Jonathan Tucker.201

Tucker makes two major points. The fi rst concerns proliferation, and 

it is that “The most serious risk associated with science-based threat 

assessment is that the novel pathogens and information it generates 

could leak out to rogue states and terrorists.”202 The risk may be less 

a “leak” in the classic sense than simply the accelerated accretion of 

relevant science and publications, and the substantial overall push 

that the fi eld is now getting and which will continue in the coming 

years. Both the Aum Shinrikyo and the al-Qaida groups went back 

to look at professional literature of previous decades. It is the same 

procedure that new or expanding state programs followed, whether 

it was Russia in the 1950s and 1960s, or Iraq in the 1980s.

 Tucker’s second main point is that the greatly increased 

magnitude of the U.S. biodefense R&D program will promote a BW 

arms race, and, at least on the part of others, perhaps not all of it 

of a defensive nature. The same point was made by Dr. Malcolm 

Dando in a submission to the British Parliament in February 2003.203

That arms race, at least in its initial stages, is more likely to be 

with developments in our own BW research program than against 

developments in the programs of other states or nonstate actors. This 

is exactly the process that took place in the United States from the late 

1950s to the mid-1970s regarding development of intercontinental 
69

ballistic missile (ICBM) re-entry vehicles (warheads) and ABM 

systems. It was succinctly described by Dr. Jerome B. Wiesner, 

President John F. Kennedy’s “Science Adviser” (Special Assistant 

for Science and Technology), who had been involved with policy 

planning for these antagonistic weapon systems for years. It was a 

process in which development in our own offensive and defensive 

strategic nuclear missile systems fed off the certain knowledge of 

developments in the other.204 The “intelligence” was much more 

certain than guessing about what was going on in other nations’ 

analogous programs, and could always be assumed, or attributed, 

to them. At times, such attribution was correct, and at times not, 

but even in the former case, new technological developments in the 

U.S. programs quite frequently were made well in advance of when 

they appeared elsewhere. Overall, the outcome was the same as that 

posited by Tucker: the stimulation of parallel programs in other 

states. The same very likely will occur now. At the present time, one 

can assume that a smaller replica of the U.S. biodefense program 

is taking place in Russia, smaller because of the great disparity in 

funding levels. Russia retains the personnel and facilities to build 

on their own work dating from their accelerated 1973 to 1992 (or 

longer) offensive program, as well as the ability to pick up from 

developments in the United States and in the nonmilitary published 

literature on the functioning of the human immune system, etc. In 

some cases, the United States is currently funding research in Russia 

that is BW applicable.205

 The fourth cost also concerns arms control but is suffi ciently 

signifi cant and different to require separate consideration. It is the 

question of whether the U.S. Government, because of the biodefense 

R&D program, remains in compliance with the provisions of the 

Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), specifi cally Article I.

 Towards the end of 1999, U.S. Director of Central Intelligence 

George Tenet had established a Non-Proliferation Advisory Group 

(NAG) to advise the CIA on what kinds of research it should undertake 

in order to better understand the problems that the agency faced 

in learning about WMD proliferation and, if possible, hindering it. 

In one of its meetings, NAG was given a briefi ng on a particular 

CIA BW-related project, code-named “CLEAR VISION.” It involved 

the fabrication and testing of a model of a Soviet BW bomblet.206 It 
70

appears that the project was already underway since 1997. One of the 

members of NAG was Dr. Joshua Lederberg, who has served as an 

adviser and consultant for BW issues to U.S. Government agencies 

for the past 4 decades. After hearing the briefi ng, Dr. Lederberg 

raised two considerations:

 • that the project raised BWC compliance issues,

 • that the project raised perceptual issues; that is, if the project 

subsequently became publicly known, it would raise questions 

in the view of observers as to whether the U.S. Government 

was engaged in activities of an offensive BW character.

He therefore suggested that the CIA Director could not authorize 

such a project on his own authority; it would have to be referred to the 

offi ce of the President for consideration, and to undergo interagency 

review.207 Another member of NAG offered a third consideration: 

that if U.S. intelligence agencies discovered that another country 

was carrying out such a project, it would be considered prima facie 

evidence of the existence of an offensive BW program in that country. 

The project was then referred to the National Security Council 

(NSC) for review. It was nevertheless ultimately approved, over the 

minority objections of the legal adviser in the U.S. Department of 

State. It would be carried out at a classifi ed level.208 As indicated, it 

appears the project was already in process by the time the briefi ng 

was given, and before the NSC review took place, and that more than 

one bomblet was actually produced in order to carry out different 

tests at different sites. None of four such projects—CLEAR VISION, 

BACUS, BITE SIZE, and JEFFERSON—were reported by the United 

States in its annual Confi dence Building Measures submissions 

under the terms of the BWC.209 The ongoing utilization of several 

very large aerosol test chambers in U.S. biodefense projects was also 

not reported.

 In the spring of 2004, a briefi ng which described the work 

program planned for the prospective National Biodefense Analysis 

and Countermeasures Center (NBACC), particularly for one of its 

four sub-centers, the Biothreat Characterization Center (BTCC), 

became available.210 It was proposed that studies be carried out 

in 16 different subject areas, of which the following nine seemed 
71

particularly signifi cant: genetic engineering; susceptibility to current 

therapeutics; host-range studies; environmental stability; aerosol 

animal-model development; aerosol dynamics; novel packaging; 

novel delivery of threat; bioregulators and immunomodulators; 

and “Red Teaming,” that is, duplication of threat scenarios. In 

addition, task areas for biothreat-agent (BTA) analysis and technicalthreat assessment were summarized as “Acquire, Grow, Modify, 

Store, Stabilize, Package, and Disperse.” Classical, emerging, and 

genetically engineered pathogens were to be characterized for their 

BTA potential. Aerobiology, aerosol physics, and environmental 

stability would be studied in wet-laboratory and computerlaboratory settings. “Computational modeling of feasibility, 

methods, and scale of production” would be undertaken, and “Red 

Team” operational scenarios and capabilities would be assessed. 

BTA use and countermeasure effectiveness would be studied “across 

the spectrum of potential attack scenarios” through “high-fi delity 

modeling and simulation.”

 Article 1 of the Biological Weapons Convention states:

Each State Party to this Convention undertakes never in any circumstances 

to develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise, 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 justifi cation 

for prophylactic, protective, or other peaceful purpose.

(2) Weapons, equipment, or means of delivery designed to use such 

agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed confl ict.

In order to assure that the activities of all U.S. Government entities 

remained within the bounds of Article 1, on the ratifi cation of the 

BWC in 1975 the White House issued the so-called “Scowcroft 

Memorandum” on December 23, 1975.211

 As an indication of both the ambiguity and confusion surrounding 

the question of “offensive” and “defensive” biological weapons 

relevant research, the following offi cial U.S. policy statements are 

important to note. A very brief U.S. DoD press statement on January 8, 

2002, on Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Warfare Defense answers 

the question, “Is the U.S. still developing biological weapons to use 
72

against our enemies?” The answer provided began: “As required by 

executive order, the U.S. Government ceased all offensive biological 

research in November 1969 . . .”212 However, the original 1969 U.S. 

policy decision is worded rather differently. The operative paragraph 

of National Security Decision Memorandum 35 of November 25, 

1969, reads:

The United States bacteriological/biological programs will be confi ned 

to research and developments for defensive purposes (immunization, 

safety measures, etc.). This does not preclude research into the offensive 

aspects of bacteriological/biological agents necessary to determine what 

defensive measures are required.213

The analytic study that supported the U.S. policy decision also 

included a very important relevant paragraph. In response to the 

question, “Should the U.S. maintain only a 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.214

 At least through 1989, DoD considered studies which produced 

more virulent pathogens, sought to stabilize them, or studied 

dissemination methods, to be characteristic indicators of offensive

BW research, and explicitly prohibited by the BWC. This was stated 

by Colonel David Huxsoll, then director of USAMRIID, in testimony 

to the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs in May 1989, 

and clearly displayed in a diagrammatic schema attached to his 

testimony. (See Figure 2, below.)215

In 1989, after court action requiring a programmatic review of its 

Biological Defense Research Program, the United States recorded a 

decision to continue the Program, stating that it “is in full compliance 
73

with the Biological Weapons convention” and “does not include the 

development of any weapons, nor does it attempt to develop new 

pathogenic organisms for any use.”216

Figure 2.

 After learning of the contents of the NBACC briefi ng described 

above, three veteran observers of biological weapons issues authored 

a memorandum entitled “Biodefense Crosses the Line.”217 The three 

authors had no knowledge whatsoever of the 1999/Lederberg/CIANAG experience. The memorandum argued four points:

 • That taken together, many of the activities itemized within 

the NBACC/BTCC research program—most particularly the 

“Store, Stabilize, Package, and Disperse” sequence and the 

“Computational modeling of feasibility, methods, and scale 

of production”—may constitute development development in the guise of in the guise of 

threat assessment. Development is prohibited by the Biological 

Weapons Convention.

 • That they very likely would be interpreted that way by at least 

some other states.

 • That U.S. intelligence agencies would judge a BW research 

program of this character and magnitude found in any other 

state to be an offensive BW program.
74

 • That the program would stimulate analogous efforts in other 

states; in other words, the BW arms race that Tucker and 

Dando warned against. 

Individuals within the current administration have agreed with the 

third point in conversations among themselves.218

 The response to this critique of the NBACC/BTCC research 

program by an offi cial of the DHS in 2005 was a barely qualifi ed selfincriminatory admission of the charge:

Homeland Security offi cials defend the biodefense program, saying that it 

will be as open as possible and will not breach the biowarfare agreement. 

But they concede that biodefense today, by necessity, requires stretching 

research boundaries beyond what would have been acceptable before the 

anthrax attacks. “If you have a bad guy who is trying to hurt you with 

a bioweapon, you have to understand how much material it will take 

to do harm, what kinds of packages he’ll use to keep it stable, how he 

might deliver it, and how effective it will be,” says Maureen McCarthy, 

director of the Offi ce of Research and Development in the Homeland 

Security Department’s science and technology division. “Those are hard 

questions. You can’t answer them in a vacuum.”219

There is no “vacuum;” Article 1 of the BWC fi lls that space. And one 

cannot “stretch” international treaties to which one is a state party. A 

recent report on NBACC prepared for Congress by the Congressional 

Research Service unfortunately includes no discussion of these 

issues.220

 On April 28, 2004, at the conclusion of a year’s review, the Bush 

administration disclosed details of the new National Biodefense 

Directive.221 Among them, reportedly, was that “the U.S. intelligence 

community is under orders to carry out studies examining the types 

of genetically engineered ‘bugs’ terrorists could be working on to 

mount an attack.”222 The intelligence community is not the place that 

such research should be carried out, if it should be carried out at all.223

Biodefense is the mission, all or in part, of a suffi cient number of other 

U.S. Government agencies and facilities, which are perfectly capable 

of carrying out whatever tasks are necessary. These include:

USAMRIID (DoD)

Dugway (DoD)
75

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (DoD)

Naval Medical Research Institute (DoD)

DARPA (DoD)

Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) (DoD)

DTRA (DoD)

Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories

Department of Agriculture

Environmental Protection Agency

and now, even the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The CIA can obtain any information regarding biological agents that 

it needs in order to carry out its legitimate activities in the sphere of 

U.S. national security from these other U.S. agencies or organizations. 

Placing molecular genetics research under the jurisdiction of the 

intelligence community guarantees that there will be no independent 

oversight of it.

 In the last year or two, there have been a series of major national 

and international reports that have identifi ed lines of “dual use” 

molecular genetics research which are particularly problematical. 

In essence that means that they could be misused to develop more 

advanced biological weapons. Each of these reports suggests that such 

lines of research should be subject to particular and special formal 

oversight by one or another mechanism, much more oversight than 

presently exists anywhere. Although none of these explicitly engage 

the question of BWC treaty compliance, it is interesting to match the 

nine NBACC program elements quoted earlier with the research 

groupings in these reports. Two German researchers, Nixdorff and 

Bender, were the fi rst to produce a short compilation. In discussing 

“modifi cations of microorganisms that might have signifi cance for 

bioweapons, [they] identifi ed four classes of microbial manipulations 

that have been the subject of intense debate within and outside 

the scientifi c community: 1. The transfer of antibiotic resistance 

to microorganisms; 2. Modifi cation of the antigenic properties of 

microorganisms; 3. Modifi cation of the stability of microorganisms 

to the environment; and 4. The transfer of pathogenic properties to 

microorganisms.”224
76

 A few months later, DoD’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency 

convened a workshop to consider possible limitations on the 

publication of scientifi c research that “could be misused for biological 

warfare or terrorism.” It considered research that aims to achieve 

one or more of six weaponization-related goals.

 • Enhance pathogen infectivity, pathogenicity, antibiotic 

resistance, or resistance of host immunological defenses.

 • Improve the ability of a microbial pathogen to remain viable 

and virulent during prolonged storage and/or after release 

into the environment.

 • Facilitate the dissemination of biological agents as a fi neparticle aerosol.

 • Facilitate the dissemination of a biological agent by 

contamination of food or water sources.

 • Create a novel pathogen or one with characteristics that have 

been altered to evade current detection methods or host 

immune defenses.

 • Assemble oligonucleotides to synthesize the genome of a 

pathogenic microorganism.225

 The third compilation appeared in a 2004 report prepared by a 

Committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The Committee 

identifi ed seven classes of experiments that it believes illustrate 

the types of endeavors or discoveries that will require review and 

discussion by informed members of the scientifi c and medical 

community before they are undertaken or, if carried out, before they 

are published in full detail. They include experiments that:

 • Would demonstrate how to render a vaccine ineffective.

 • Would confer resistance to therapeutically useful antibiotics 

or antiviral agents.

 • Would enhance the virulence of a pathogen or render a 

nonpathogen virulent.

 • Would increase transmissibility of a pathogen.

 • Would alter the host range of a pathogen.

 • Would enable the evasion of diagnostic/detection 

modalities.

 • Would enable the weaponization of a biological agent or 

toxin.226
77

 In December 2004, a report of WHO included a relatively similar 

group of six:

 • Facilitate the production of toxins that were previously 

diffi cult to acquire on a large scale;

 • Make a pathogen resistant to the immune system or to 

antibiotic treatment, hence rendering defensive measures in 

effective;

 • Modify the environmental stability of a pathogen;

 • Create bacteria and viruses of greater virulence or render 

previously harmless organisms pathogenic;

 • Change host specifi city of microorganisms; or,

 • Render the identifi cation and detection of engineered 

pathogens very diffi cult (e.g., to bypass the current detection 

technologies).227

 A fi fth group of experimental categories were elaborated under 

a University of Maryland project aimed at designing a national 

and international mechanism for oversight of such work. It divides 

projects that would be considered “dangerous” into three groupings: 

extremely, moderately and potentially dangerous. (See Table 3 

below.)

 The overlap between the nine NBACC program elements quoted 

earlier and all of these fi ve lists is obvious. 

 On April 18, 2005, the DHS proposed to categorize the NBACC 

facility as a Federally Funded Research and Development Center 

(FFRDC).228 Historically, a very large portion of the work carried out 

at FFRDCs, such as the Lincoln Laboratories, the Mitre Corporation, 

the Center for Naval Analysis, the Institute for Defense Analysis, the 

three U.S. Department of Energy laboratories (Los Alamos National 

Laboratory, Livermore National Laboratory, and Sandia National 

Laboratory), the RAND Corporation (Air Force), and others is 

classifi ed. As of 2005, there are 37 FFRDCs altogether. In the words of 

a May 2005 Congressional Research Service report, “Many FFRDCs 

conduct research principally in classifi ed fi elds for the Defense and 

Intelligence Communities.”229 Whether the transformation of NBACC 

into a FFRDC will make oversight of its work signifi cantly more 

diffi cult than it would otherwise have been in any case, no one can 

say, but it probably can be assumed that it will. It is almost certain 
78

Extremely Dangerous Activities (EDA):

 • Work with eradicated agent 

 • Work with agent requiring Biosafety Level-4

 • De novo synthesis of above

 • Expanding host range of disease agent to new host (in humans, other animals 

and plants) or changing the tissue range of a listed agent

 • Construction of antibiotic- or vaccine-resistant listed agent

Moderately Dangerous Activities (MDA):

 • Increasing virulence of listed agent or related agent

 • Insertion of host genes into listed agent or related agent

 • Increasing transmissibility or environmental stability of listed agent or related agent

 • Powder or aerosol production of listed agent or related agent

 • Powder or aerosol dispersal of listed agent or related agent

 • De novo synthesis of listed agent or related agent

 • Construction of antibiotic- or vaccine-resistant related agent

 • Genome transfer, genome replacement, or cellular reconstitution of listed agent 

or related agent 

Potentially Dangerous Activities (PDA):

 • Work with listed agent—or exempt avirulent, attenuated, or vaccine strain of select 

agent—not covered by EDA/MDA 

 • Increasing virulence of nonlisted agent

 • Increasing transmissibility or environmental stability of nonlisted agent

 • Powder or aerosol production of nonlisted agent 

 • Powder or aerosol dispersal of nonlisted agent 

 • De novo synthesis of nonlisted agent

 • Genome transfer, genome replacement, or cellular reconstitution of nonlisted agent

Defi nitions

Agent: fungus, protist, rickettsia, bacterium, virus, viroid, or prion; or genetic element, 

recombinant nucleic acid, or recombinant organism.

Listed agent: agent on CDC Select Agent list, USDA High-Consequence Livestock 

Pathogens list, or USDA/APHIS/PPQ Plant Pathogens list.

Related agent: for fungi, protists, rickettsiae, or bacteria, an agent in the same genus 

as a listed agent; for viruses, viroids, or prions, an agent in the same family as a listed 

agent; for genetic elements, recombinant nucleic acids, or recombinant organisms, an 

agent orthologous to a listed agent. (This category includes any avirulent, attenuated, 

or vaccine strain of a listed agent, if said strain is exempt under the CDC Select Agent 

list, USDA High-Consequence Livestock Pathogens list, or USDA/APHIS/PPQ Plant 

Pathogens list.)

Non-listed agent: agent other than a listed agent or related agent.

Antibiotic: antibiotic of therapeutic utility against listed agent.

Vaccine: vaccine of therapeutic utility against listed agent.

Powder: powder other than lyophilized reference specimen (<10 mg.)

Table 3. Groupings.

230
79

that all of the “threat assessment” research that it will undertake will 

be classifi ed.231 NBACC’s initial building cost is currently estimated 

at $128 million. In addition to NBACC, the DHS has now announced 

plans to build a National Bio and Agrodefense Facility (NBAF) at 

an initial projected building cost of $451 million. It would feature 

large animal BL-3 and BL-4 research capability in order to work with 

foreign animal diseases. The insertion of the NBAF into the DHS 

budget proposal was made by senior administration offi cials. In 

May 2005, the Army proposed a $1 billion expansion to USAMRIID 

to be built at the National Interagency Biodefense Campus at Fort 

Detrick, Maryland.232 With inevitable cost overruns by the time 

these three new facilities will all be completed, the infrastructure 

investment for them will very likely exceed $2 billion. In addition, 

the U.S. Department of Agriculture is modernizing the National 

Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa, at a cost of an additional $406 

million.233

 A new element, at least as problematic if not more so than the 

NBACC research program alone but certainly associated with it, is 

the newly announced wording by the DHS on the programmatic 

mission of NBACC. It clearly moves U.S. Government policy in 

the same—wrong—direction. The NBACC research program does 

so by implication; this does so in a more formal way. The DHS 

has apparently adopted and begun to publicly use its own novel 

interpretation of the provisions of Article 1 of the Biological Weapons 

Convention. In the FY 2006 Congressional Justifi cation for DHS, the 

DHS wrote the following in discussing NBACC:

The work in these laboratories will be for defensive purposes only. The 

Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling 

of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, 

also known as the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), 

prohibits the development, production, stockpiling, and acquisition of 

offensive biological weapons. The U.S. is a signatory to this treaty, and 

all activities performed at the NBACC Facility will comply with this 

treaty and with all other applicable laws. [Emphasis added.]234

 The insertion of the single word “offensive” in front of “biological 

weapons” is a direct contradiction of all the rest of the statement and 

of all existing international legal interpretations of Article 1 of the 
80

BWC. It implies that the BWC does not prohibit the development, 

production, and stockpiling of “defensive” biological weapons. But, 

the Biological Weapons Convention does not distinguish between distinguish between 

“offensive” biological weapons, and any other kind. There is no such 

thing as “defensive” biological weapons. Whatever military doctrine 

may say regarding distinctions between offensive and defensive 

conventional weapons, this does not apply to biological weapons. 

Article 1.1 of the Biological Weapons Convention (see page 71) allows 

the growth of laboratory quantities of pathogens (agents) for defensive 

purposes, that is, in order to develop vaccines and pharmaceuticals, 

test rapid detection systems, masks, decontamination systems and so 

on. However even the “development” of the pathogen is explicitly 

forbidden – “never in any circumstances” – as is production and 

stockpiling. Article 1.2 is a blanket prohibition on the development 

and production of “weapons, equipment, or means of delivery 

designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed 

confl ict.” The three qualifying words in Article 1.1 – prophylactic, 

protective, and peaceful – which operationally defi ne “defensive” 

in the treaty do not apply to “weapons, equipment, or means of 

delivery” in Article 1.2.

DHS’s choice of language in its FY2006 budget request was not 

an accident, but a deliberate, considered decision.235 The new DHS 

BWC treaty interpretation fi rst appeared in the September 17, 

2004, DHS submission for comments on the Draft Environmental 

Impact Statement (EIS) for NBACC, and was repeated in the fi nal 

EIS released by DHS on December 23, 2004. In between the two 

submissions the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation 

in Washington, DC had questioned the DHS treaty interpretation, 

pointing out that in the 1989 Programmatic Environmental Impact 

Statement for the DoD Chemical and Biological Defense Program 

(CBDP), DoD states that the Biological Weapons Convention “makes 

the clear distinction between defensive and offensive efforts by 

identifying the development of biological weapons delivery systems 

as a discrete and prohibited activity.” In addition, U.S. statutory 

law, the 1989 implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons 

Convention [18U.S Code 175] makes no distinction between 

“offensive” and “defensive” biological weapons. DHS responded to 

these points by stating in its fi nal EIS that “the DoD’s programmatic 
81

NEPA documentation cited has been superseded.” (NEPA refers 

to the National Environmental Policy Act, under which federal 

agencies are required to provide Environmental Impact Statements.) 

In essence, the formal DHS response in this instance was the same as 

the informal comment by DHS’s Maureen McArthy quoted earlier: 

that the times had changed. The DHS phrase about “superseded” 

brashly presumes to revoke the DoD legal commitments made in 

1989, and the interpretation of Article 1 of the BWC that the U.S. 

Government presumably held between 1972 and certainly at least 

until 1989, and as best as anyone knows until 2004. The times may 

very well have changed, but the provisions of the Biological Weapons 

Convention have not, and under international law, they are not open 

to being changed by unilateral interpretations.

 An analogous situation occurred some 20 years ago involving 

another arms control treaty. In the mid-1980s the Reagan 

administration attempted to reinterpret one of the provisions of 

the ABM Treaty through a memorandum—the so-called “Sofaer 

amendment”—written by Abraham Sofaer, Legal Advisor to the 

Department of State. It blandly stated that the United States could 

carry out a particular category of ABM testing which the ABM Treaty 

forbade. In that instance, the U.S. Senate took objection, stating that 

since it was the duty of the Senate to ratify international treaties, 

the Offi ce of the President had no authority to modify the terms of 

the treaty once it had been ratifi ed. Extensive Senate Hearings were 

held, and books and monographs were written on the subject.236

The USSR, the treaty cosignatory with the United States, also stated 

that it would not accept the suggested modifi cation or the activities, 

and that the integrity of other U.S.-USSR strategic arms limitation 

agreements would be placed in jeopardy if the United States 

unilaterally began the testing that it proposed to do. The Reagan 

administration ultimately withdrew its proposed unilateral treaty 

modifi cation. 

 These issues have certainly come to the attention of working 

level offi cials in the Foreign Ministries of at least some countries 

closely allied with the United States, but it is not known whether it 

has become a matter of private diplomatic discussion between those 

countries and the United States. Probably not. The subject has not 

been broached publicly. 
82

 The entire area of oversight of problematical “dual use” research 

in molecular genetics and its applications in the United States appears 

to range from inadequate at local levels to virtually nonexistent at 

the national level and in terms of BWC treaty compliance.

 In the late 1970s, the NIH established a system applicable to any 

institution within the United States or overseas that receives any 

support from NIH for recombinant DNA research. That system 

required every such institution to establish an Institutional Biosafety 

Committee (IBC), and to register that IBC with the NIH Offi ce of 

Biotechnology Activities. The IBCs were then to oversee projects 

within their own institutions following a common set of guidelines 

and criteria. Failure to adhere to the NIH guidelines could result 

in the suspension, limitation, or termination of NIH funding for 

recombinant research. However, this system does not apply except 

on a voluntary basis to a very large population of institutions that 

are not recipients of NIH funding, such U.S. Government biodefense 

laboratories and U.S. Government contractors, as well as hundreds 

of commercial biotechnology enterprises. For example, the Battelle 

Memorial Institute, a government contractor which has been carrying 

out Project Jefferson at least since 2001, the development of a vaccine 

resistant strain of anthrax to duplicate Soviet-era work, apparently 

has no functioning IBC, although the research is by defi nition 

recombinant DNA work.237 The Departments of Energy, Defense, 

and Agriculture have numerous facilities carrying out recombinant 

DNA research at the same time as they have no NIH-registered IBCs. 

No one knows how much biodefense and bioterrorism research falls 

entirely outside the NIH guidelines and the IBC system. In addition, 

a recent study demonstrated that a very large proportion of the IBCs 

operated in haphazard fashion or not at all.238 Some three dozen 

commercial entities that do receive NIH funding for biodefense 

research had no IBC registered with the NIH at all. Finally, the 

existing NIH guidelines do not currently include consideration of 

the security or proliferation implications of dual-use research, and it 

is for that reason that the National Academy of Sciences committee 

recommended that the seven categories of experiments of concern be 

added to the NIH oversight process. 

 In response to the recommendations of the NAS committee 

report, the administration announced the establishment of a National 
83

Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) on March 4, 2004. 

Its mandate was to last for 2 years. The NSABB was established by 

the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and is to 

be housed within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The staff 

of the NSABB was not appointed until 11 months later in February 

2005. No announcement of the membership of the Board was made 

until its fi rst meeting on June 30, 2005. The responsibilities of the 

NSABB obviously were not seen as a signifi cant priority by the 

administration. A May 30, 2005, announcement stated that “The 

Board is charged with advising on the development of: guidelines 

for the oversight of dual-use research; national policies governing 

the publication and communication of sensitive research results 

. . .”239 The apparent notion was that the NSABB would oversee a 

process by which the National Academy committee’s suggestions 

regarding experiments of “dual use” concern would be grafted on to 

the IBC system. The NSABB will not itself review individual research 

project protocols; it will only respond to requests for guidance. That 

the local institutional committees would perform this much more 

substantive task, given their highly problematic record mentioned 

above in dealing with much less demanding considerations, seems 

dubious at best.240 A very similar opinion was expressed by the 

chairmen of six IBCs at major universities in the southeastern United 

States.241 But most importantly, the NSABB is to have no oversight 

over classifi ed BW-relevant research, which is the location in which 

the most problematical dual-use research is likely to take place. 

 As an example of the contradictory and counterproductive nature 

of even current NIH funding decisions, the NIAID at NIH recently 

announced a grant for a researcher hoping to develop a method of 

countering the action of botulinum toxin. The grant recipient, Dr. Kim 

Janda, noted that the task would be diffi cult because “the neurotoxin 

[is] quite unstable.” He would therefore be “collaborating with 

scientists in Wisconsin to develop a more stable form of the neurotoxin, 

one that is more easily studied.”242 The biological weapon programs 

of both the United States and the USSR discovered, independently, 

that botulinum toxin was not a very useful biological weapon because 

the toxin becomes unstable with increased purifi cation. Here was 

an NIH research award whose purpose was announced as “aimed 
84

at stopping bioterrorism weapons” that was proposing to develop 

“a more stable form of the toxin” in order to carry out its research. 

However, that means preparing a much more effective botulinum 

toxin than had been available before, which had evaded preparation 

by the two largest offensive biological weapons programs in history, 

except in very small quantities.243

 Another example is the proposal that,

Better developed animal models and studies of the aerobiological 

properties of fi loviruses [Ebola and Marburg virus] need to be conducted—

which are critical to evaluating the threat posed by fi loviruses. . . . 

Without data, there can be little understanding of the level of threat 

that fi loviruses present. For example, it is not clear from the available 

data whether fi loviruses would cause large-scale infections and deaths 

if disseminated by aerosol over a city without extensive preparation or 

modifi cation (“weaponization”).244

This is a perfect example of research designed to probe a potential 

vulnerability, threat assessment in the absence of a verifi ed threat. 

As the authors clearly state in their paper, fi lovirus infection in 

nature does not occur via aerosol. The research therefore breaks new 

ground, and innumerable examples could be proposed all of which 

would, in effect, be pushing into areas that may not be justifi able. 

 It is clear that at the time of the three classifi ed biodefense projects 

in the 1999-2001 time period, there was no U.S. Government-wide 

NSC-interagency process to review the compatibility of all elements 

of the U.S. biodefense program with Article I of the BWC. Six years 

later, there still is none. Even existing mandated treaty compliance 

frameworks, such as within the U.S. DoD, to carry out reviews of 

BW R&D projects did not function in the case of its own classifi ed 

project in 1999-2001. DoD Directive Number 2060.1 mandated the 

establishment of DoD Compliance Review Groups (CRGs).245 An 

analogous directive existed in years prior to 2001. No CRG review 

of the DoD project (BACUS) ever took place.246 Whether one took 

place within the DIA, whose project it was, is unknown. Nor was 

information about the project ever brought to the attention of the 

National Security Council (NSC). 

 There is no functioning overall U.S. Government compliance 

oversight process today for research that impacts the BWC. DoD 
85

continues to oppose the formation of such an NSC-level treaty 

compliance process.247 Others have suggested that a U.S. BWC 

compliance review process should be located in the National Academy 

of Sciences. That may additionally be desirable as a backstop, but 

it is a government function, and it belongs at the NSC level. With 

a second heavyweight Cabinet department, Homeland Security, 

reinterpreting the most critical provisions of the BWC, presumably 

to permit research that was heretofore considered out of bounds, the 

picture becomes problematical and dangerous.

 The cost of a U.S. BW research program that may cross into 

“development,” and of potential U.S. noncompliance with the BWC, 

very simply means the weakening of the BWC and the international 

regime that stands in the way of the proliferation of BW to new states 

or to nonstate actors/terrorist groups. That is certainly not something 

that anyone who wants such proliferation halted and reversed can 

possibly want to happen. On May 2, 2005, the U.S. Department of 

State released a Fact Sheet on “United States Initiatives to Prevent 

Proliferation.” It described seven unquestionably desirable U.S. 

Government programs. It did not, however, so much as mention 

any of the international nonproliferation treaty regimes: the Nuclear 

Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, or 

the Biological Weapon Convention. This emphasis was repeated 

at the end of May in statements by President George W. Bush and 

Secretary of State Condolezza Rice on the occasion of the second 

anniversary of the U.S. Proliferation Security Initiative. The current 

U.S. administration does not show much sympathy for international 

regimes. 

 It is sometimes said that criticism of the United States and its 

policies in regard to the BWC itself weakens the Convention, and 

serves to give other nations that may have no interest at all in 

observing its provisions a cover for their own misbehavior. There 

appears to be no way to address major issues without introducing 

such risk. Caution and reconsideration only rarely take place within 

the government, and if the trend appears to be a deteriorating one, 

the issues have to be raised publicly. Unfortunately, the United States 

also loses a portion of its leverage to raise questions about possible 

questionable activities in other states. 

87

PART VI

CONCLUSION

 A summary of the material presented in this monograph produces the following conclusions:

 • Signifi cance of the problem. “Bioterrorism” may or may not 

develop into a serious concern in the future, but it is not “one 

of the most pressing problems that we have on the planet 

today.”

 • The evolution of state biological weapons programs. The 

number of state BW programs has apparently been reduced 

by one-third or one-fourth in the past 15 years. The remaining 

number of countries appears to be stable; no compensating 

rise in offensive state BW programs has been identifi ed. In 

addition, the U.S. Government—which has almost without 

exception in past decades been the only country to publicly 

identify WMD proliferants—appears in its most recent 

statements to be qualifying the status of states with presumed 

offensive BW programs. To date, no state is known to have 

assisted any nonstate or terrorist group to obtain biological 

weapons.

 • The evolution of nonstate/terrorist biological weapon 

capabilities. The production and distribution of a dry powder 

anthrax product in the United States in 2001 is the most 

signifi cant event. However, understanding to what degree 

that demonstration of competence is relevant to “traditional” 

terrorist groups is impossible until the perpetrator(s) of the 

anthrax events are identifi ed. If it was done with assistance, 

materials, knowledge, access, etc., derived from the U.S. 

biodefense program, the implications change entirely.

 The Rajneesh group (1984) succeeded in culturing 

Salmonella. The Japanese Aum Shinrikyo group failed to 

obtain, produce, or disperse anthrax and botulinum toxin. 
88

The steps taken by the al-Qaida group in efforts to develop 

a BW program were more advanced than the United 

States understood prior to its occupation of Afghanistan in 

November-December 2001. Nevertheless, publicly available 

information, including the somewhat ambiguous details that 

appeared in the March 31, 2005, report of the Commission 

on Intelligence Capabilities, indicates that the group failed 

to obtain and work with pathogens. Should additional 

information become available regarding the extent to which 

the al-Qaida BW effort had progressed, that assessment might 

have to be changed.

 Scenarios for national BW exercises that posit various 

BW agents in advanced states of preparation in the hands 

of terrorist groups simply disregard the requirements in 

knowledge and practice that such groups would need in 

order to work with pathogens. Unfortunately, 10 years 

of widely broadcast public discussion has provided such 

groups, at least on a general level, with suggestions as to what 

paths to follow. If and when a nonstate terrorist group does 

successfully reach the stage of working with pathogens, there 

is every reason to believe that it will involve classical agents, 

without any molecular genetic modifi cations. Preparing a dry 

powder preparation is likely to prove diffi cult, and dispersion 

to produce mass casualties equally so. Making predictions on 

the basis of what competent professionals may fi nd “easy to 

do” has been a common error and continues to be so. The 

utilization of molecular genetic technology by such groups is 

still further off in time. No serious military threat assessment 

imputes to opponents capabilities that they do not have. There 

is no justifi cation for imputing to real world terrorist groups 

capabilities in the biological sciences that they do not posess.

 • Framing “the threat” and setting the agenda of public 

perceptions and policy prescriptions. For the past decade the 

risk and immanence of the use of biological agents by nonstate 

actors/terrorist organizations—“bioterrorism”—has been 

systematically and deliberately exaggerated. It became more 

so after the combination of the 9/11 events and the OctoberNovember 2001 anthrax distribution in the United States that 
89

followed immediately afterwards. U.S. Government offi cials 

worked hard to spread their view to other countries. An edifi ce 

of institutes, programs, conferences, and publicists has grown 

up which continue the exaggeration and scare-mongering. 

In the last year or two, the drumbeat had picked up. It may 

however become moderated by the more realistic assessment 

of the likelihood of the onset of a natural fl u pandemic, and the 

accompanying realization that the U.S. Government has been 

using the overwhelming proportion of its relevant resources 

to prepare for the wrong contingency.

 Others see exaggeration as necessary in order to prompt 

preparation. They acknowledge the exaggeration but argue 

that political action, the expenditure of public funds for 

bioterrorism prevention and response programs, will not 

occur without it. “Bioterrorism” may come someday if 

societies survive all their other impending crises. However, 

the persistent exaggeration is not benign: it is almost certainly 

the single greatest factor in provoking interest in BW among 

terrorist groups, to the degree that it currently exists, for 

example, in the al-Qaida organization. Precisely this occurred: 

Their most senior leadership was provoked by statements 

regarding bioterrorism and its supposed ease by U.S. offi cials 

in 1996-97.

 • Costs of the U.S. biodefense program. On the grounds of 

“necessity,” the U.S. biodefense research program appears to 

be drifting into violation of Article 1 of the BWC. There is little 

question but that U.S. offi cials would make that judgment of 

any other nation’s biodefense program in which the same 

kind of work was being carried out as is taking place and is 

planned by U.S. agencies, or in the case that agencies of another 

government put forward reinterpretations of the provisions 

of Article 1 of the BWC so as to imply that work could be 

done on “defensive” biological weapons. A national-level 

oversight system to see that BWC compliance is maintained 

by all projects of the U.S. biodefense program—unclassifi ed, 

classifi ed, and perhaps yet other “black” projects—does not 

exist. Should the BWC be weakened further and if other state 
programs begin to go down the same research path as the 

U.S. biodefense program, together with any eventual 

recourse to BW by nonstate actors, the international regime 

against the development of biological weapons may be 

irrevocably damaged. 

Policy Recommendations. 

 The policy recommendations derive directly from the 

analysis presented in the study, and fall into two groups: 1) 

threat assessment, and 2) U.S. biodefense program oversight. 

 Recommendation 1: A thorough national BW threat 

assessment is necessary, to the degree that the best available 

information permits. It should be based on the realities of 

state and nonstate actor capabilities, rather than on 

hypothetical projections of technological state-of-the-art. 

 Recommendation 2: Government officials should avoid, 

and where necessary correct, exaggerated portrayals of the 

biological weapons threat. Such exaggeration, even if seen as 

politically useful by some, runs counter to the national 

interest by stimulating the interest of others in BW 

development. 

 Recommendation 3: Federal expenditures for Bioshield I 

and II—to procure vaccines against BW “select agents”—

would very likely be of far greater benefit to the U.S. public 

if they were redirected to procuring vaccines against 

pandemic flu strains. Such reconsideration and redirection 

should be an urgent executive and legislative priority. 

 Recommendation 4: The U.S. Government should make 

every effort to strengthen the Biological Weapons 

Convention, the international treaty regime whose essential 

purpose it is to maintain the norm against the proliferation 

of BW. It should do nothing to damage it or reduce its 

stature or relevance. 

90 
 Recommendation 5: A serious national policy of 

oversight for the U.S. biodefense research program is 

necessary: 

 • Above all, oversight should exist at the level of the 

National Security Council. 

 • The Department of Defense should see that its 

relevant Compliance Review Group is functional. 

 • The Department of Homeland Security should 

institute a similar group to monitor the compliance of 

the work program of the National Biodefense 

Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) with 

the provisions of the Biological Weapons Convention. 

 • Authority to explicitly review international treaty 

compliance of all programs carried out by NBACC 

should additionally be extended to the Committee on 

Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures of the 

National Research Council. Most desirable would be 

an advisory group of the stature of the President’s 

Science Advisory Council of the 1960s. Review panels 

with members selected from in-house laboratories 

and federal contractors are unlikely to provide a 

critical review. 

 • The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity 

(NSABB) should be provided with authorization to 

include classified biodefense research programs 

under its jurisdiction. 

91 

93

ENDNOTES

 1. “US Senate Leader Urges ‘Manhattan Project’ Against Bio-Terror Threat,” 

Agence France Presse, January 27, 2005. It is clear from other statements by Senator 

Frist roughly at the same time that his reference in January 2005 to “biological” 

referred to “bioterrorism” and not to any other biological problem or context. 

Senator Richard Lugar previously had used the phrase that terrorists armed 

with WMD present an “existential” threat to the United States, and Senator Frist 

presumably adopted that word to deal with “bioterrorism” alone. Very similar 

phrasing to Senator Lugar’s was also used by President Bush in an address at the 

National Defense University on February 11, 2004 (except that he expanded the 

threat from the United States to “humanity”): “The greatest threat before humanity 

today is the possibility of secret and sudden attack with chemical, or biological, or 

nuclear weapons.” 

 2. Ibid. 

 3. On March 15, 2005, Britain’s Finance Minister, Gordon Brown, stated that 

“human-made climate change is the most far-reaching and almost certainly the 

most threatening of all the environmental challenges facing us. Problems from 

soil erosion to the depletion of marine stocks threaten future economic activity 

and growth.” Heather Timmons, “Climate Change is Called Economic Threat at 

Talks,” New York Times, March 15, 2005. See also Jeremy Lovell, “Photos Show 

Climate Change; Ministers Meet in UK,” Reuters, March 14, 2005. A report released 

on March 14, 2005, reported on greatly increased glacial melting in the Himalayas. 

This will introduce an additional regional aspect: at fi rst, increased fl ooding 

followed by decades of drought as traditional agricultural water sources disappear. 

This will severely reduce food crop production for hundreds of millions of people. 

See World Wildlife Fund, An Overview of Glaciers: Glacier Retreat and Subsequent 

Impacts in Nepal, India, and China, WWF Nepal Region, March 2005. One of the 

most useful general surveys remains The Global 2000 Report to the President: Volume 

I. Entering the Twenty-First Century, and Volume II: The Technical Report, a Report 

Prepared by the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Department 

of State, 1980. In addition, the annual State of the World volumes produced by 

the Worldwatch Institute and published by W. W. Norton and Company are an 

invaluable resource.

 4. See the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. A brief press summary appears 

in Shankar Vedantam, “Report on Global Ecosystems Calls for Radical Changes. 

Earth’s Sustainability is Not Guaranteed Unless Action is Taken to Protect 

Resources, Experts Say,” Washington Post, March 30, 2005.

 5. Milton Leitenberg, Deaths in Wars and Confl icts Between 1945 and 2000, 

Occasional Paper No. 29, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Peace Studies Program, 

2003. A revised second edition of the monograph is available on the website of 

the Cornell University Peace Studies Program. These sums include mass domestic 

slaughters and politically-determined starvation in the absence of civil war as 

occurred in the USSR and in China during the 20th century. 
94

 6. Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, New York: 

Penguin Group (USA), 2005; “Thousands Died in Africa Yesterday” [Editorial], 

New York Times, February 27, 20005.

 7. Gregory F. Treverton and Seth G. Jones, “Measuring National Power,” 

RAND Corporation, National Security Research Division, 2005, p. 6.

 8. Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon, 1999 State of the Future: Challenges 

We Face at the Millennium, Washington, DC: American Council For the United 

Nations University, The Millennium Project, 1999.

 9. Stephen J. Lukasik, et al., Protecting Critical Infrastructure Against CyberAttack, Adelphi Paper No. 359, London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 

2003; Gabriel Weimann, “Cyberterrorism: How Real is the Threat,” Special Report 

No. 119, Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, May 2004; Justin Blum, “Hackers 

Target U.S. Power Grid; Government Quietly Warns Utilities to Beef Up Their 

Computer Security,” Washington Post, March 8 or 9, 2005; Jacques S. Gansler and 

Hans Binnendijk, eds., Information Assurance: Trends in Vulnerabilities, Threats and 

Technologies, Washington, DC: National Defense University, 2004; Jacques Gansler, 

“Protecting Cyberspace,” in Hans Binnendijk, ed., Transforming America’s Military, 

Washington, DC: National Defense University, 2002, pp. 331-344; DOD Information 

Security: Serious Weaknesses Continue to Place Operations at Risk, GAO/AIMD-99-

107, Washington, DC: U.S. General Accountability Offi ce, August 1999; and Clay 

Wilson, Computer Attack and Cyberterrorism: Vulnerabilities and Policy Issues for 

Congress, RL32114, Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, The Library 

of Congress, April 1, 2005.

 10. Information Security: Computer Attacks at Department of Defense Pose Increasing 

Risks, GAO/AIMD-96-84, Washington, DC: U.S. General Accountability Offi ce, 

May 1996.

 11. “Nuclear terrorism is the biggest concern that we face. The threat is real, 

and the worst possible threat we could ever imagine,” Wesley Mark, the University 

of Toronto, cited in Estanislao Oziewicz, “Arms Strategy at Center of Discussion 

on UN Reform,” The Globe and Mail, April 6, 2005. See also John Mintz, “US 

Called Unprepared for Nuclear Terrorism. Experts Critical of Evacuation Plans,” 

Washington Post, May 3, 2005. Colonel Randall Larson (Ret.) paired biological 

terrorism with nuclear terrorism, and stated that these “. . . are the only existential 

threats we face.” Randall J. Larsen, “Years After 9/11 . . . No One Is In Charge of 

Fighting Our Two Biggest Threats,” Washington Post, May 20, 2005. Colonel Larsen 

is Director of the newly formed Institute for Homeland Security. 

 12. Dr. Keith Krause, Small Arms Survey Project, Geneva, cited in Oziewicz. 

 13. “Terrorist Attacks on Reactor Pools,” New York Times, April 8, 2005, 

reporting on a study released by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

 14. Guy Gugliotta, “Science’s Doomsday Team vs. the Asteroids,” Washington 

Post, April 9, 2005.

 15. Jon Kyl, “Unready for this Attack,” Washington Post, April 16, 2005.
95

 16. “Chemical Weapons: No. 1 Threat,” SA/Malaysia newswire, May 19, 

2005.

 17. Josh Ruxin, et al., “Emerging Consensus in HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis, 

and Access to Essential Medicines,” The Lancet, Vol. 365, February 12, 2005, pp. 618-

621. HIV, the disease agent of AIDS, kills by compromising the human immune 

system. It is therefore more accurate to refer to “AIDS-related illnesses,” and the 

infected individual is ultimately killed by secondary infections. In many countries, 

particularly in Africa, that disease is often tuberculosis or malaria; nevertheless, 

the fi gures are customarily presented as indicated. These fi gures also represent the 

number of deaths reported by hospitals and clinics. Available statistics therefore 

are probably conservative estimates and underestimate true totals due to lack of 

reliable diagnostic or reporting capabilities in many third world countries. The 

actual numbers are therefore likely to be higher. 

 18. Robert W. Snow, et al., “Malaria: A World View. The Global Distribution 

of Clinical Episodes of Plamodium Falciparium Malaria,” Nature, Vol. 434, March 

10, 2005, pp. 214-217; and “Malaria Estimated at 515 Million Cases Worldwide,” 

Reuters Foundation AlertNet. See also One in Two: Children Are The Key to Africa’s 

Future, Save the Children, 2005; and “Africa: Report Highlights Plight of African 

Children,” Irin News, UN Offi ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 

March 14, 2005. At least one in six children in Sub-Saharan Africa die before the 

age of fi ve, compared to one in 140 in developed countries. Another major killer is 

pneumonia, which is also treatable.

 19. The White House, Offi ce of Science and Technology Policy, Fact Sheet: 

Addressing the Threat of Emerging Infectious Diseases, June 12, 1996.

 20. National Intelligence Council, National Intelligence Estimate: The Global 

Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States, NIE-99-17D, January 

2000. 

 21. World Health Organization statistics, 2002.

 22. Marc Kaufman, “Global Tobacco Control Pact Takes Effect,” Washington 

Post, February 27, 2005; and “Worldwide Anti-Tobacco Treaty,” New York Times, 

February 27, 2005.

 23. Lawrence K. Altman, “U.N. Optimistic About Halving Measles Deaths,” 

New York Times, March 4, 2005.

 24. “Containing Deadly Outbreaks,” Doctors Without Borders, Appeal 

Campaign brochure, March 2005.

 25. The chart appears at www.globalaging.org/health/us/fl uaids.htm. See also Keiji 

Fukuda, Centers for Disease Control, reported in the Journal of the American Medical 

Association, January 8, 2003. 

 26. R. J. Webby and R. G. Webster, “Are We Ready for Pandemic Infl uenza,” 

Science, Vol. 302, November 28, 2003, pp. 1519-1522.

 27. John Barry, The Great Infl uenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in 

History, London: Penguin, 2005; and Gina Kolata, Flu: The Story of the Great 
96

Infl uenza Pandemic, New York: Farrer, Straus, and Giroux, 1999. It is interesting 

how frequently policymakers and the public appear to have little or no notion 

of comparative statistics bearing on public health. In his book, Barry notes that 

“Infl uenza killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages 

killed in a century; it killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 

years.” On the other hand, antibiotic resistant hospital infections kill an estimated 

103,000 people in the United States each year—reportedly more than AIDS, breast 

cancer and auto accidents combined. In 10 years that amounts to 1 million dead in 

the United States. These deaths can be prevented or drastically reduced by easily 

instituted hospital procedures. Betsy McCaughey, “Coming Clean,” New York 

Times, June 6, 2005.

 28. “Governments in a Dilemma Over Bird Flu,” In Focus, World Health 

Organization, May 1, 2005.

 29. Charles Piller, “Many Scientists Fear Bird Flu Cases Exceed Data,” Los 

Angeles Times, March 16, 2005; Lawrence K. Altman, “True Toll of Avian Flu 

Remains a Mystery,” New York Times, March 15, 2005; and Elisabeth Rosenthal, 

“Experts Doubt Bird Flu Tallies from China and Elsewhere,” New York Times, 

December 2, 2005. 

 30. “Bird Flu Called Global Human Threat; Asia Outbreak Poses ‘Gravest 

Possible Danger,’ UN Offi cial Says, Urgent Controls,” Washington Post, February 

24, 2005; Darren Schuettler, “World Must Act Now or Face Pandemic—UN,” Boston 

Globe, February 23, 2005; Charles Piller and Thomas H. Maugh, “Poultry Farming 

Reform Urged to Curb Bird Flu,” The Los Angeles Times, February 24, 2005; Charles 

Piller, “Bird Flu Spate Signals Easier Transmission; Outbreaks That Killed 12 in 

Southeast Asia Raise Fears of a Mutated Virus Spread by Humans,” Los Angeles 

Times, February 1, 2005; Alan Sipress, “As SE Asian Farms Boom, Stage Set for a 

Pandemic; Conditions Ripe for Spread of Bird Flu,” Washington Post, February 5, 

2005. 

 31. Maggie Fox, “Avian Flu World’s No. 1 Threat, CDC Head Says,” Reuters, 

February 21, 2005.

 32. Scott Shane, “U.S. Germ-Research Policy Is Protested by 758 Scientists,” 

New York Times, March 1, 2005. It should be noted that Senator Frist’s quoted 

reference to a “biological” threat, consistent with all his analogous statements, 

referred to bioterrorism only; it did not refer to or include pandemic fl u. More 

recently he has combined the two.

 33. Program of the 2005 American Society for Microbiology, www.asmbiodefense.

org/program.asp.

 34. “WHO Inter-Country Consultation; Infl uenza A/H5N1 in Humans in 

Asia,” Manila, May 6-7, 2005. There are strong indications that the incidence of 

H5N1 infection in Vietnam and Thailand were being underreported deliberately 

as well as due to asymptomatic fl u infections. For an example of the latter, see 

Menno D. De Jong, et al., “Fatal Avian Infl uenza A (H5N1) in a Child Presenting 

with Diarrhea Followed by Coma,” New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 352, No. 

7, February 17, 2005, pp. 686-691.
97

 35. Pallab Ghosh, “WHO to Warn on Changing Avian Flu,” BBC, May 18, 2005, 

reported on the BBC News on May 22, 2005; and Amy Kazmin, “WHO Warns 

Mutation of Bird Flu Virus Increases Risk of Pandemic,” Financial Times, May 23, 

2005.

 36. Dr. Craig Venter, Testimony to Hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on 

Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, “21st Century Biological Threats,” May 

11, 2005.

 37. Ron Fouchier, et al., “Global Task Force for Infl uenza,” Nature, Vol. 435, 

May 26, 2005, pp. 419-420. In reporting the Nature story, the BBC repeated the very 

much higher fi gure, of a possible mortality of hundreds of millions of people. 

 38. Michael T. Osterholm, “Preparing for the Next Pandemic,” Foreign Affairs, 

Vol. 84, No. 4, July-August 2005. Dr. Collwells’ estimate was given at a conference 

held at the MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA, June 29, 2005. 

 39. The CDC budget for infl uenza was an additional $179 million. Maggie Fox, 

“US Unprepared Against New Flu: Experts,” Reuters, May 26, 2005.

 40. Dan Gillmor, “Specter of Flu Pandemic Fails to Jog Government,” San Jose 

Mercury News, and Twincities.com, December 17, 2004.

 41. Appendices are available at www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/5714/

1409c/DC1.

 42. Breathing Easier: Report of the Century Foundation Working Group on 

Bioterrorism Preparedness, New York: The Century Foundation Press, 2003, p. 1.

 43. Combating Terrorism: Need for Comprehensive Threat and Risk Assessment 

of Chemical and Biological Attacks, GAO/NSIAD-99-163, Washington, DC: U.S. 

Government Accountability offi ce, September 7, 1999.

 44. Estimates on Soviet Military Power, 1954-1984: A Selection, compiled by Donald 

P. Steury, Washington, DC: History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 

CIA, 1994; and Donald P. Steury, ed., Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet 

Strategic Forces, 1950-1983, Washington, DC: History Staff, Center for the Study of 

Intelligence, CIA, 1996.

 45. See Milton Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, Stockholm, 

Sweden: The Swedish National Defense College, 2004, p. 13.

 46. Editorial: “Biological Weapons Inspections,” Voice of America, October 

1996. As noted elsewhere, exactly what the words “capability” or “capacity” 

means in this context in U.S. Government statements is never clearly defi ned. 

 47. Chandré Gould and Peter Folb, Project Coast: Apartheid’s Chemical and 

Biological Warfare Programme, Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament 

Research, 2002.

 48. “Remarks by John R. Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and 

International Security, to the Second Global Conference on Nuclear, Bio/Chem 

Terrorism: Mitigation and Response,” November 1, 2002.
98

 49. For earlier examples of U.S. assessments of the status of Libya’s BW program, 

see Milton Leitenberg, “Biological Weapons and Arms Control,” Contemporary 

Security Policy, Vol. 17, No. 1, April 1996, pp. 1-78, particularly p. 38. The Russian 

statement appears in Proliferation Issues: Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Report, 

in JPRS-TND-93-007, May 4, 1993, p. 24.

 50. White House Offi ce of the Press Secretary, “Press Background Briefi ng by 

Senior Administration Offi cials,” December 19, 2003. Also, personal briefi ngs by 

U.S. NSC offi cial, April 15, 2004, and U.S. Department of State offi cial, May 2004.

 51. Methods of WMD intelligence include overhead reconnaissance of 

several different kinds (photo, MASINT, etc.), electronic intercepts, procurement 

monitoring, and human intelligence. However, the Iraq experience demonstrated 

that the last of these, human intelligence, could be catastrophically compromised 

by concocted information deliberately passed to multiple Western intelligence 

agencies by politically motivated opposition groups. Precisely that occurred to 

both U.S. and British intelligence agencies in the pre-Iraq war period.

 52. The offi cial title of the fi nal report of the Iraq Survey Group is Comprehensive 

Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, September 30, 2004.

 53. The reports of the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Select Committee on 

Intelligence, and the Presidential Commission on Intelligence Capabilities all 

demonstrate a literally unbelievable mishandling by members of the intelligence 

community of the testimony of the Iraqi defector codenamed “Curveball,” to the 

point of outright lying by Agency staff. Contrary and more accurate assessments 

by other sectors of the intelligence community were routinely rejected.

 54. For a detailed discussion of the charges against Cuba and of Cuba’s actual 

relevant capabilities, see Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, pp. 160-163, 

169.

 55. U.S. CIA, “Unclassifi ed Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology 

Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions, 

1 July Through 31 December 2003.” The statement for Libya in the same document 

reads: 

Biological. Libya disclosed past intentions to acquire equipment and 

develop capabilities related to biological warfare, but it remains unclear 

if these activities were offensive or defensive in nature. At the team’s 

request, Libya took us to a number of civilian medical, biotechnical, and 

agricultural-related research centers that have a “dual-use” potential 

to support BW-related work. The team was given access to scientists at 

these facilities.

A useful recent review of the North Korean BW program appears in North 

Korea’s Weapons Programmes: A Net Assessment, London: International Institute of 

Strategic Studies, 2003, chapter on North Korea’s Chemical and Biological (CBW) 

Programmes, pp. 29-62. A similar Institute for International Strategic Studies (IISS) 

volume on Iran is forthcoming, and it, too, will contain a section on the Iranian BW 

program.
99

 56. Testimony of CIA Director Porter Goss, to the Senate Armed Services 

Committee Hearing on Future Threats to U.S. National Security, March 17, 2005.

 57. Iranian CBM Submission to the BTWC, 2002.

 58. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Verifi cation, Adherence to and Compliance 

with Arms Control and Nonproliferation Agreement and Commitments, found at www.

state.gov/t/vc/rls/rpt/22322.htm.

 59. John A. Lauder, Unclassifi ed Statement for the Record on the Worldwide 

WMD Threat to the Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal 

Government to Combat Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, as prepared 

for delivery on April 29, 1999.

 60. Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, 

September 30, 2004.

 61. Only in the case of Cuba has it been possible to obtain several examples of 

defector information that was presumably also reaching U.S. intelligence agencies. 

In several instances, these were forwarded to the author by the Miami Herald, in 

another case by the former director of Radio Martí. Some information also appears 

in the book by the most senior political defector from Cuba, José Luis LlovioMenendez, Insider: My Hidden Life as Revolutionary in Cuba, New York: Bantam 

Books, 1988.

 62. Douglas Jehl, “US Intelligence Review is Softening Some Judgments about 

Illicit Arms Abroad,” New York Times, November 18, 2003.

 63. National Council of Resistance of Iran Press Briefi ng, Subject: Iranian 

Regime’s Programs for Biological and Microbial Weapons, Alireza Jafarzadeh 

and Soona Samsani, Washington, DC, May 15, 2003; and Joby Warrick, “Iran Said 

to be Producing Bioweapons. Opposition Group Names Anthrax as First of Six 

Pathogens in Intensive Effort,” Washington Post, May 15, 2003. 

 64. Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt, “Data is Lacking on Iran’s Arms, U.S. Panel 

Says. Intelligence on Nuclear Intentions Questioned,” Washington Post, March 9, 

2005.

 65. Defense Research: Protecting Sensitive Data and Materials at 10 Chemical and 

Biological Laboratories, Appendix III, “Foreign Visitor Documentation That GAO 

Reviewed (June 1989 through June 1990),” GAO/NSIAD-91-57, Washington, DC: 

U.S. General Accountability Offi ce, p. 21. For the 2-year period covered, there were 

33 visitors from the UK, followed by 28 from Israel. The next highest numbers 

of visitors from any one country were 11, 10, and 8. Efforts made around 1994-

95 to obtain additional data from USAMRIID for the years that followed proved 

unsuccessful. 

 66. Brad Roberts, “The Outpacing of Negotiations by Circumstance,” in K. M. 

Jensen and David Wurmser, eds., Is It Feasible to Negotiate Chemical and Biological 

Arms Control, Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1990, p. 46. For 

years during the 1990s Roberts repeatedly disregarded offi cial U.S. Government 

estimates and exaggerated the number of states that had offensive biological 

weapons programs.
 67. Testimony of Elisa Harris in Global Spread of Chemical and Biological 

Weapons, Hearings before the Committee on Governmental Affairs, Permanent 

Subcommittee on Investigations, U.S. Senate, February 9, 1989, Senate Hearing 

#101-744, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Offi ce, 1989, pp. 55-59, 267-

281, 605-629. See also Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, p. 13.

 68. Adherence To And Compliance With Arms Control And Nonprolifeeration 

Agreements and Commitments, U.S. Department of State, August 2005. Eight countries 

were discussed in the “Biological” section, and only fi ve in the “Chemical” section, 

an inversion in the number of states usually described as maintaining offensive 

programs in the two respective categories.

 69. Chandré Gould and Peter Folb, Project Coast: Apartheid’s Chemical and 

Biological Warfare Programme, Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament 

Research, 2002.

 70. Addendums to the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI 

on Iraq’s WMD, March 2005, p. 3. See also pp. 2 and 36. There is reported to be 

information available regarding the move of some Iraqi CW weapons scientists 

to Syria in 1994, and perhaps further details regarding this may appear in the 

future.

 71. UN Security Council, “Twentieth Quarterly Report on the Activities of 

the United Nations Monitoring and Verifi cation and Inspection Commission 

in Accordance with Paragraph 12 of Security Council Resolution 1284 (1999),” 

S/2005/129, February 28, 2005, pp. 4-5.

 72. “Transcript of Screening and Discussion of the Atlantic Storm War Game: 

Lessons for Smallpox and Infl uenza,” Council on Foreign Relations, New York City, 

June 7, 2005. Dr. Henderson’s remarks are typical of his style of presentation.

 73. More detailed discussion for the early portions of this section is to be found 

in Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, Part I, Section 3, “The Experience 

of the Use of Biological Weapons by Non State Groups,” pp. 25-35.

 74. Harvey J. McGeorge, “Chemical and Biological Terrorism,” Briefi ng 

Document, Public Safety Group, Woodbridge, VA, April 1996. See also Harvey 

J. McGeorge, “Chemical and Biological Terrorism: Analyzing the Problem,” The 

ASA [Applied Science & Analysis] Newsletter ASA [Applied Science & Analysis] Newsletter, No. 42, June 16, 1994, pp. 1, 13-14. At , No. 42, June 16, 1994, pp. 1, 13-14. At 

a conference in Croatia in 2001, McGeorge reported on an updated compendium 

of 404 incidents involving either “chemical or biological agents.” However, this 

group also included “threatened use,” without any indications of whether real C 

or B agents were in the possession of those making the threats.

 75. Ron Purver, Chemical and Biological Terrorism: The Threat According to the 

Open Literature, Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Security Intelligence Service, June 

1995.

 76. Bruce Hoffman, “The Debate over the Future Terrorist Use of Chemical, 

Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Weapons,” pp. 207-224, in Hype or Reality: 

The “New Terrorism” and Mass Casualty Attacks, B. Roberts, ed., Alexandria, VA: 

Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute (CBACI), 2000.

 100 
101

 77. W. Seth Carus, Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological Agents 

in the 20th Century, Washington, DC: National Defense University, August 1998, 

updated to February 2001.

 78. Jonathan B. Tucker and Amy Sands, ”An Unlikely Threat,” Bulletin of the 

Atomic Scientists, Vol. 55, No. 4, July-August 1999, pp. 46-52.

 79. For example, a U.S. Defense Science Board Summer Study in 1997 referred 

to a particular hoax that had taken place in Washington, DC, as a demonstration 

of “the breadth of the weaponry” available to terrorist groups.

 80. See Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, pp. 27-29. A more 

detailed description of the efforts of the Aum group to produce biological agents 

is now available in three publications by Milton Leitenberg; “The Experience of 

the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo Group and Biological Agents,” in Hype or Reality, pp. 

159-172; “Aum Shinrikyo’s Efforts to Produce Biological Weapons: A Case Study 

in the Serial Propagation of Misinformation,” pp. 149-158, in Max Taylor and 

John Horgan, ed., The Future of Terrorism, London: Frank Cass, 2000; and “Aum 

Shinrikyo’s Efforts to Produce Biological Weapons: A Case Study in the Serial 

Propagation of Misinformation,” Terrorism and Political Violence [Special Issue on 

the Future of Terrorism], Vol. 11, No. 4, Winter 1999, pp. 149-158.

 It has been known for several years that the Aum group was only able to obtain 

a harmless vaccine strain (Sterne) of anthrax. It had been assumed that they had 

not been capable of isolating botulinum toxin from the organism. Although it has 

been known in Japan since 1996-1997, it has only now become clear to observers in 

the U.S. that the Aum group did not possess any strain of Clostridium botulinum 

to work with. This is documented in further detail in a presentation by the author 

to the National Academy of Science Forum on Microbial Threats on October 25, 

2005. See www.iom.edu/fi le.asp?id=30831.

 81. Spellings of the organization’s name very widely, Al or al-Qaida, Al or 

al-Qaida, and with or without a dash following the “Al” or “al,” in addition to 

several other spellings. This report uses the spelling that has been most widely 

adopted by U.S. sources, which is not the spelling found in papers written by 

specialists in Arab affairs. Spellings within quotations were left as they appeared 

in the original source.

 82. Jonathan Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and 

Biological Weapons, Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 

1999.

 83. John Parachini, ed., Motives, Means, and Mayhem: Terrorist Acquisition 

and Use of Unconventional Weapons, Washington, DC: RAND Corporation, 2005, 

forthcoming. Groups that were surveyed in this second set of case studies include 

the Tamil Elam, Sri Lanka; FARC, Colombia; IRA, Northern Ireland; Hamas, West 

Bank; AIG, Kashmir; and several others. Some preliminary judgments from the 

case studies appear in John Parachini, “Putting WMD Terrorism Into Perspective,” 

The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4, Autumn 2003, pp. 37-50.
102

 84. John Parachini, “Putting WMD Terrorism into Perspective,” The Washington 

Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4, Autumn 2003, pp. 37-50.

 85. Dr. Yoram Schweitzer, “Al-Qaida, 9/11 and Unconventional Means: 

Changes in Terrorists’ Mindsets and Effects on their Modus Operandi,” presented 

at the “Conference on Meeting the Challenges of Bioterrorism: Assessing the Threat 

and Designing Biodefense Strategies,” April 22-23, 2005, Furigen, Switzerland.

 86. Dr. Jeffrey D. Simon, “Terrorists and the Potential Use of Biological 

Weapons: A Discussion of Possibilities,” RAND Paper R-3771 AFMIC, December 

1989.

 87. Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council’s 2020 

Project, NIC 2004-13, December 2004.

 88. Dr. Stephen S. Morse, Presentation: “Bioterror R&D: Assessing the Threat,” 

National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, January 9, 2003.

 89. All three presentations were made on February 16, 2005, at the Hearing 

on “The World Wide Threat,” U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence. The 

individual presentations are available on the Committee’s website at intelligence.

senate.gov/index.htm, and the quoted sentences appear in Goss, p. 2; Mueller, pp. 

3-4; and Loy, p. 3.

 90. Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, “Current and Projected National Security 

Threats to the United States,” presentation to the U.S. Senate Armed Services 

Committee hearing on future threats to U.S. national security, March 17, 2005.

 91. Don Van Natta, Jr., “Who is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” New York Times, 

October 10, 2004.

 92. Personal communication, George Smith, Global Security, end-2004, and 

March 15, 2005. A written report appears on the Global Security website.

 93. “Second Report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring 

Team Appointed Pursuant to Resolution 1526, 20024, Concerning Al-Qaida and 

the Taliban and Associated Individuals and Entities,” S/2005/83, February 15, 

2005, Box 6, p. 38. The UN report supported the statement with the following 

footnote: “In January 2003, an attempt to commit a biological attack in the United 

Kingdom was stopped by an intelligence-led operation conducted jointly by the 

Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch, the Metropolitan Police Service Special 

Branch, and the Security Service. Offi cers arrested seven persons and seized a 

quantity of suspect material which was found to contain Ricin.” This information 

is incorrect and long out of date.

 94. George Smith, “More UK Terror Trial: Evil Foiled or More Mendacity,” 

National Security Notes, GlobalSecurity.org, April 13, 2005.

 95. George Smith, “Playtime Recipes for Poisons: The Bourgass Notes of Mass 

Exaggeration,” National Security Notes, GlobalSecurity.org, April 18, 2005.

 96. Alan Cowell, “Just One of 9 Suspects Convicted in 2003 British Poison Plot 

Case,” New York Times, April 14, 2005.
103

 97. James B. Petro and David A. Relman, “Understanding Threats to Scientifi c 

Openness,” Science, 203, December 12, 2003, p. 1898. Dr. Petro at the time was in 

the U.S. DIA, and Dr. Relman is at Stanford University. 

 98. “Operation Enduring Freedom—Afghanistan,” GlobalSecurity.org; “Taliban 

Surrender Last Stronghold,” BBC: World, December 7, 2001. It appears that Dr. 

Al-Zawahiri drew up a list of publications that he wanted to read after reading a 

book about BW, and on April 15, 1999, al-Zawahiri asked Muhammad Atef, the 

No. 3 ranked offi cial in al-Qaida, “Perhaps you can fi nd someone to obtain them 

. . . .” It seems possible that the book was one of the SIPRI CBW volumes, probably 

volume 2, CB Weapons Today, 1973.

 99. A facilitated declassifi cation request was made on February 23, 2004, and 

the declassifi cation letter from the DIA to the author was dated March 25, 2004.

 100. Tom Shanker, “US Analysts Find No Sign That Bin Laden Had Nuclear 

Arms: Captured Evidence Cited; Swindlers on the Black Market May Have Duped 

Al-Qaida with Bogus Substances,” New York Times, February 26, 2002.

 101. George J. Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence, “Worldwide Threat—

Converging Dangers in a Post 9/11 World,” Testimony to the U.S. Senate, 

Committee on Armed Services, The Worldwide Threat to United States Interest, 107th 

Congress, 2nd Session, March 19, 2002, p. 10. The same statement is presented 

annually to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 

 102. George J. Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence, Testimony, U.S. Senate, 

Committee on Armed Services, Hearing: Current and Future Worldwide Threats to 

the National Security of the United States, 108th Congress, 1st Session, February 12, 

2003, pp. 13 and 7.

 103. Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, Director, DIA, “Current and Projected 

National Security Threats to the United States,” Senate Select Committee on 

Intelligence, February 24, 2004, pp. 3, 8.

 104. George J. Tenet, “The Worldwide Threat 2004: Challenges in a Changing 

Global Context,” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, February 24, 2004, p. 4.

 105. The 9/11 Commission Report, June 17, 2004, p. 151 and footnote #23.

 106. Barton Gellman, “Al-Qaida Near Biological, Chemical Arms Production,” 

Washington Post, March 23, 2003.

 107. Susan Schmidt and Ellen Nakashima, “Moussaoui Said Not to be Part of 

9/11 Plot,” Washington Post, March 28, 2003.

 108. Mark Fineman and Bob Drogin, “Terror: In Malaysia a Jailed Cal State 

Graduate Helps Unravel Al-Qaida’s Southeast Asia Network,” Los Angeles Times, 

February 2, 2002; Jack Kelley, “Malaysia Site of September 11 Plotting, FBI Report 

Says,” USA Today, January 30, 2002.

 109. “Al-Qaida Agents Reveal Their Hunt for Anthrax,” The Straights Time, 

Singapore, October 13, and October 14, 2003. The reports were aired by CBS and 

CNN.
104

 110. “Is al-Qaida Making Anthrax,” CBS News, October 9, 2003; Maria Ressa, 

“Reports: Al-Qaida Operative Sought Anthrax,” CNN, October 10, 2003; “Qaida 

Man Discloses Anthrax Plan,” New York Post, October 10, 2003; Lincoln Wright, 

“Hambali’s Taunt: We’ll Kill Again,” Herald Sun, October 12, 2003.

 111. Rohan Sullivan, “Afghan War Curbs al-Qaida Arms Program,” Associated 

Press, January 26, 2004; and Cam Simpson, “US Seeks Access to Al-Qaida Suspect: 

Malaysian Man’s Possible Release Adds to Urgency,” Chicago Tribune, December 

7, 2003.

 112. Luz Baguioro, “Raid on Hideout Raises Fears of JI Bio-terror Plans,” 

Straits Times, October 20, 2003; Luz Baguioro, “Manila Quells Bio-Weapons Fears; 

Residues in JI Hideout Were for Bombs,” October 21, 2003; “Philippines Says No 

Bio-Chem Traces at JI Hideout,” AlertNet, October 22, 2003.

 113. Personal communication, May 2, 2005.

 114. Alan Cullison, “Inside al-Qaida’s Hard Drive,” Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 294, 

No. 2, 2004; Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins, “Forgotten Computer Reveals 

Thinking Behind Four Years of Al-Qaida Doings,” Wall Street Journal, December 

31, 2001; and Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison, “Terrorists Odyssey: Saga of 

Dr. Zawahri Illuminates Roots of Al-Qaida Terror . . .,” Wall Street Journal, July 2, 

2002.

 115. Personal communication. See also, Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological 

Weapons, p. 41.

 116. “Madrid International Terrorism Conference: Matter of Time Before 

Chemical Weapons are Used,” Daily Times, March 9, 2005.

 117. “An Acidic Message” [Editorial], Washington Post, March 10, 2005.

 118. Mark Trevelyan, “France Calls for Global Watchdog on Bio-Warfare 

Risk,” Reuters, March 1, 2005.

 119. Report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States 

Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States, 

March 31, 2005, pp. 269-270.

 120. Personal communication.

 121. Ibid.

 122. This may be justifi ed in that the declassifi ed documents were never 

discussed in the report of the 9/11 Commission. On the other hand, the report of 

this Presidential Commission fi ercely attacks the intelligence process for relying 

on unreliable informants, at the same time as all the new information provided in 

the paragraph quoted from its own report appears to depend on uncorroborated 

interrogation reports.

 123. Personal communication, May 2005.

 124. “French Interior Minister: Chemical and Germ Weapons Developed in 

Pankisi Gorge, Georgia,” Pravada/Interfax report, March 4, 2005.
105

 125. Paul Haven, “Agents Say al-Qaida’s Ability Diminishing,” Associated 

Press, March 13, 2005.

 126. JTF-GTMO Information on Detainees, Unclassifi ed, undated, 6 pp.

 127. Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, 

Volume III, September 30, 2004. See the CW section of the report, pp. 5-6, 58, 61-62. 

The BW section, p. 6, of the ISG report also contains a statement on the initial Iraqi 

BW failure.

 128. Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, 

Volume III, Annex of the CW section, pp. 93-95.

 129. Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, pp. 23-24.

 130. Ibid., Part III:4 “The Anthrax Events in the United States in the Fall of 

2001,” pp. 137-154.

 131. Timothy D. Read, et al., “Comparative Genome Sequencing for Discovery 

of Novel Polymorphisms in Bacillus Anthracis,” Science, No. 296, June 14, 2002, pp. 

2028-2033; and Scott Shane, “Distinct Signature Found in ’01 Anthrax. Discovery 

Raises Hope that Source Can be Traced,” Baltimore Sun, July 4, 2004.

 132. “Purchased” seems unlikely. “Appendix B: Johnson-Winegar Review,” p. 

58, in Bayes, Bugs, and Bioterrorists: Lessons Learned from the Anthrax Attacks, K. M. 

Thompson, et al., Washington, DC: Center for Technology and National Security 

Policy, National Defense University, April 2005. 

 133. DoD Excess Property: Risk Assessment Needed on Public Sales of Equipment 

that Could be Used to Make Biological Agents, Testimony by Gregory D. Kutz, U.S. 

General Accountability Offi ce to the Committee on Government Reform, House 

of Representatives, GAO-04-817NI, October 7, 2003; “Memorandum,” J. Vincent 

Chase, Chief Investigator, Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, 

and International Relations, Committee on Government Reform, House of 

Representatives, October 2, 2003.

 134. The two main popularizers of this phrase, in innumerable press, radio 

and TV interviews, were Drs. D. A. Henderson and Michael Osterholm.

 135. The Defense Science Board 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DoD Responses 

to Transnational Threats, Vol. I, Final Report, October 1997, p. 47.

 136. Richard Danzig and Pamela B. Berkowsky, “Why Should We Be Concerned 

about Biological Warfare,” pp. 9-14, in Joshua Lederberg, ed., Biological Weapons: 

Limiting the Threat, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. This paper fi rst appeared 

in Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 278, No. 5, August 6, 1977, pp. 

431-432. For a more thorough discussion, see the section “The Requirements to 

Produce Biological Agents by Nonstate Groups,” in Leitenberg, The Problem of 

Biological Weapons, Part I, Section 4, pp. 35-40. In December 2004, one could fi nd 

what was not intended as a parody, a description by a university professor of 

the supposed simplicity of producing chemical agents: “You buy the chemicals, 

you mix them, and you have sarin.” Joby Warrick, “The World after 9/11: The 

Chemical Threat. An Easier, but Less Deadly, Recipe for Terror,” Washington Post, 

December 31, 2004.
106

 137. Personal communication, 2004.

 138. See “Offi cial Concern in the United States Regarding the Potential of 

Terrorist Use of Biological Weapons,” in Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological 

Weapons, pp. 29-34, particularly pp. 30 and 34.

 139. Ibid., pp. 35-40.

 140. Quoted in U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, CBR Warfare and 

Its Disarmament Aspects—A Study, August 1960.

 141. Anders Norqvist and Åke Forsberg, BWPP Forum website, February 9, 

2004.

 142. “A Primer on the Future Threat; The Decades Ahead, 1999-2000,” July 

1999. 

 143. Reynolds M. Salerno, et al., “A BW Risk Assessment: Historical and 

Technical Perspectives,” The Nonproliferation Review, Fall-Winter 2004, pp. 25-55.

 144. Dr. Steven M. Block, “The Growing Threat of Biological Weapons,” 

American Scientist, Vol. 89, No. 1, January-February 2001, pp. 28-43.

 145. Senator Bill Frist, Remarks as Prepared for Delivery: Harvard Medical 

School of Health Care Policy Seidman Lecture, “Manhattan Project for the 21st 

Century,” June 1, 2005; “Senate Leader Backs Initiative on Biodefense,” New York 

Times, June 1, 2005.

 146. Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman, Biohazard, New York: Random 

House, 1999.

 147. Dr. Ken Alibek, personal communication, 1999.

 148. See Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, pp. 42-43.

 149. Dr. Peter B. Merkle, “Smallpox and Public Health, A Reality Check,” 

Science, Vol. 298, October 4, 2002, p. 57.

 150. Raymond Gani and Steve Leach, “Epidemiological Determinants for 

Modeling Pneumonic Plague Outbreaks,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol. 10, 

2004, pp. 608-614; and Jacob Kool, “Risk of Person-to-Person Transmission of 

Pneumonic Plague,” Clinical Infectious Diseases, Vol. 40, 2005, pp. 1166-1172.

 151. Richard Danzig, Catastrophic Bioterrorism—What Is To Be Done, Washington, 

DC: Center for Technology and National Security Policy, National Defense 

University, August 2003, p. 5.

 152. Richard Danzig, Presentations in Washington, DC, April 15, 2005, and in 

Fürigen, Switzerland, April 22, 2005. Danzig has been named as the Chair of the 

“Senior Biodefense 2025 Panel” for the Department of Defense Chemical Biological 

Defense Program. Briefi ng by Klaus Schafer [DATSD(CBD)], to the National 

Defense Industrial Association, February 25, 2005. 

 153. The Homeland Security Council, Planning Scenarios: Executive Summaries. 

Created for Use in National, Federal, State, and Local Homeland Security Preparedness 

Activities, July 2004, globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2004/hsc-planningscenarios-jjul04.htm.
107

 154. The enormous casualty estimates that various scenarios in recent years 

have suggested for mortality resulting from aerosol anthrax released over a U.S. 

city have ranged from half a million to three million for quantities as few as a 

few kilograms. In 1979-80, U.S. Government intelligence agencies were suggesting 

that the Soviet release of anthrax in Sverdlovsk was variously “10 pounds,” “10 

kilos,” or “tens of kilograms,” although the mortality in this event was under 500 

people. In this event, much of the downwind plume of the dispersed anthrax 

was, however, not over the city but away from the city into the countryside. Dr. 

Matthew Meselson estimated the amount of anthrax released as in the range of a 

gram, which would fi t the mortality levels better. The ten pounds and ten kilos 

are both found in the testimony by Dr. Barry Erhlick, AFMIC, in a 1989 Senate 

hearing. The estimate of “tens of kilograms” appeared in a DIA(?) document dating 

from October 1981: DAMO-NCC Report, “Alleged Biological Warfare Incident at 

Sverdlovsk, Classifi cation deleted,” October 23, 1981. 

 155. Dr. Gerald Epstein, “Biodefense: Building a Medical Countermeasure 

Capability,” Testimony before the Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness 

Subcommitttee, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, U.S. 

Senate, February 8, 2005, p. 2.

 156. The Center for Biosecurity website for the Atlantic Storm scenario holds 

three documents, the fi rst of which is discussed in this paper: Atlantic Storm 

Scenario Assumptions, distributed at the end of Exercise, January 14, 2005; Atlantic 

Storm Agenda; and, Atlantic Storm, Briefi ngs, January 14, 2005 [the exercise timeline].

 157. Personal communication.

 158. Ibid.

 159. David Ruppe, “Threat Mongering,” National Journal, Vol. 37, No. 17, April 

23, 2005, pp. 1218-1225. See p. 1220 for this quotation.

 160. Judith Miller, et al., “US Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits: 

Pentagon Says Projects are Defensive and is Pressing Ahead,” New York Times, 

September 4, 2001; and J. Miller, et al., Germs, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001, 

Chapter 12, pp. 287-299.

 161. Martin Furmanski, personal communication. I am indebted to Dr. 

Martin Furmanski for these last points regarding Austrian brewery regulation. 

He supplies the following two sources: “Strategy & Concept: What Approvals 

are Necessary?” and “Pub Brewing Technology: Wastes/Effl uent/Exhaust air/

Noise,” both found on the Brauhaus Austria Website accessible at www.Brauhausautria.com. Dr. Furmanski has prepared a separate critique of the Atlantic Storm 

scenario which also extends to the playing of the scenario. 

 162. Shannon Brownlee, “Clear and Present Danger,” Washington Post Magazine, 

October 28, 2001. Emphasis added.

 163. Dr. Ken Alibek, Remarks at the Conference “Meeting the Challenges of 

Bioterrorism: Assessing the Threat and Designing Biodefense Strategies,” Fürigen, 

Switzerland, April 23, 2005.
108

 164. William C. Patrick III, “Biological Terrorism and Aerosol Dissemination,” 

Politics and the Life Sciences, Vol. 15, No. 2, September 1996, pp. 208-210.

 165. In the author’s presence.

 166. “Press Statement, Homeland Committee Members Experience Nuclear, Bio 

War Games,” Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives, 

PRN Newswire, March 9, 2005.

 167. John Mintz, “Bioterrorism War Game Shows Lack of Readiness,” 

Washington Post, January 15, 2005; and Bob Drogin, “Smallpox Exercise Poses Big 

Question: Is Anyone Ready?” Los Angeles Times, January 17, 2005.

 168. Drogin, “Smallpox Exercise Poses Big Question.”

 169. “Not Science Fiction,” Washington Post, January 27, 2005.

 170. Anne Applebaum, “Only a Game?” Washington Post, January 19, 2005.

 171. Lawrence M. Wein and Yifan Liu, “Analyzing a Bioterror Attack on the 

Food Supply: The Case of Botulinum Toxin,” Proceedings of the National Academy of 

Sciences, Vol. 102, No. 28, July 12, 2005, pp. 9984-9989.

 172. Bruce Alberts, “Modeling Attacks on the Food Supply,” Proceedings of the 

National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 102, No. 28, July 12, 2005, pp. 9737-9738.

 173. Lawrence M. Wein, “Got Toxic Milk,” New York Times, May 30, 2005.

 174. The model had assumed only a 68 percent denaturation. For decades, 

this basic problem in mathematical modeling has customarily been referred to 

as “garbage in-garbage out.” A critique of Dr. Wein’s New York Times op-ed was 

sent to the New York Times, which declined to print it, replying that “As a matter 

of policy, we do not publish rebuttals. . . .” It was also sent to the editor of the 

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with the request that the critique be 

printed at the same time as the original paper. That, too, was rejected. The journal, 

Nature, carried a feature editorial about the PNAS decision to delay publication, 

as did the Washington Post. Both of these also declined to publish the substantive 

critique in response.

 175. D. A. Henderson, “Bioterrorism as a Public Health Threat,” Emerging 

Infectious Diseases, Vol. 4, No. 3, July–September 1998. Henderson was the founder 

of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, which then became 

the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh, one of the two groups 

that developed the Atlantic Storm exercise.

 176. Jill Dekker-Bellamy, Next Generation Threat Reduction: Bioterrorism’s 

Challenges and Solutions, a Report of the Third Meeting of the New Defence Agenda’s 

Bioterrorism Reporting Group, New Defense Agenda, Brussels, Belgium, January 

25, 2005, p. 46.

 177. William Pope, “Acting Anti-terrorism Coordinator at the U.S. Department 

of State,” quoted in Thomas Orszag-Land, “G-7 to Establish Germ Warfare Crisis 

Centre,” Jane’s Terrorism and Security Monitor, February 15, 2005.
109

 178. Gary A. Ackerman and Kevin S. Moran, “Bioterrorism and Threat 

Assessment,” WMDC: The Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, Report 

No. 22, undated.

 179. “The Darker Bioweapons Future,” Strategic Assessments Group, Offi ce 

of Transnational Issues, CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, unclassifi ed, November 

3, 2003. See also Malcolm Dando, “The Impact of the Development of Modern 

Biology and Medicine on the Evolution of Offensive Biological Warfare Programs 

in the Twentieth Century,” Defense Analysis, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1999, pp. 43-69; Mark 

Wheelis, “Will the New Biology Lead to New Weapons,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 

34, No. 6, July-August 2004. 

 180. James B. Petro, et al, “Biotechnology: Impact on Biological Warfare and 

Biodefense,” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice and Science, 

Vol. 1, No. 3, 2003, pp. 161-168; Robert Carlson, “The Pace and Proliferation of 

Biological Technologies,” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice 

and Science Vol. 1, No. 3, 2003, pp. 203-214; Raymond A. Zilinskas, “Possible 

Terrorist Use of Modern Biotechnology Techniques,” prepared for the Conference 

on Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, Istituto Diplomatico “Mario Toscano,” Rome, 

Italy, September 18-19, 2000; Raymond A. Zilinskas, “Assessing the Threat of 

Bioterrorism,” Testimony to Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, 

and International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, October 20, 1999; and 

Aleksandr Rabodzey, “Biosecurity Implications of the Synthesis of Pathogenic 

Viruses,” Politics and the Life Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2, September 2003, pp. 44-49.

 181. “A Primer on the Future Threat; The Decades Ahead, 1999-2000,” SECRET 

NOFORN, U.S. DIA, July 1999, pp. 37-38. Extracts published in Rowan Scarborough, 

Rumsfeld’s War: The Untold Story of America’s Anti-Terrorist Commander, Regnery , Regnery 

Publishing Company, Washington DC, 2003, pp. 196-197.

 182. “Bioterrorism: Interview with Joshua Lederberg, Professor Emeritus, 

Rockefeller University,” The Georgetown Public Policy Review, Spring 2001. 

 183. Joe Fiorill, “U.S. Plans to Defend Against Engineered Bioattack,” 

Global Security Newswire, June 15, 2005. Dr. Ebright’s comment was a personal 

communication. 

 184. Sarah A. Lister, An Overview of the U.S. Public Health System in the Context 

of Emergency Preparedness, CRS Report for Congress, RL31719, Washington, DC, 

updated March 17, 2005, and Fighting Bioterrorism: Tracking and Addressing U.S. 

Government Programs, Washington, DC: Chemical and Biological Arms Control 

Institute, 2005. There are also a half dozen very useful reports from the U.S. GAO 

that any interested researcher should examine.

 185. John Steinbruner and Stacy Okutani, “The Protective Oversight of 

Biotechnology,” Biosecruity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science, 

Vol. 2, No. 4, 2004, pp. 1-8.

 186. Ari Schuler, “Billions for Biodefense: Federal Agency Biodefense Funding, 

FY 2001—FY 2005,” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2004, pp. 86-96.
110

 187. Dee Ann Davis, “FY 06 Biodefense Budget $4.2 B,” Washington Times, 

February 10, 2005.

 188. Major General Donna Barbisch, Chemical and Biological Defense Program 

(CBDP): Capabilities for Countering the Threat, Briefi ng, April 26, 2005. 

 189. Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, Part III, Section 2, pp. 115-

119.

 190. Ibid., pp. 148-154.

 191. Richard Ebright, Waksman Institute, Rutgers University, personal 

communication, July 10, 2004.

 192. Richard Ebright, “NIAID: Prioritization of Bioweapon Agents Research: 

Origin, Scale, Implications,” BWPP Forum website, February 1, 2005; Edward 

Hammond, “Some Statistics About the U.S. Biodefense Program and Public 

Health. Change in NIAID Biological Weapons Agent Funding,” BWPP Forum 

website, February 1, 2005; Martin Enserink and Jocelyn Kaiser, “Biodefense: Has 

Biodefense Gone Overboard?” Science, Vol. 307, No. 5714, March 4, 2005, pp. 1396-

1398; Erica Check, “Protest Letter Accuses Health Agency of Biodefense Bias,” 

Nature, Vol. 434, March 3, 2005; Edward Hammond, “Sunshine Project Releases 

CRISP-ER; Open Government Tool Enhances Public Access to U.S. Biodefense 

Program,” BWPP Forum website, March 4, 2005.

 193. Dr. Richard Ebright, seminar presentation at the Program on Science and 

Global Security, Princeton University, July 15, 2004.

 194. H. W. Cohen, et al., “The Pitfalls of Bioterrorism Preparedness: the 

Anthrax and Smallpox Experiences,” American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 94, No. 

10, October 2004, pp. 1667-1671. See also, Scott Shane, “Exposure at Germ Lab 

Reignites a Public Health Debate,” New York Times, January 24, 2005. A minor 

cost, little commented on, is that as many as 2 million Americans may have taken 

ciprofl oxican, “Cipro,” unnecessarily during the Amerithrax events. At $600 for 

a 60-day supply, this would mean wasted expenditure of over $1 billion. More 

importantly, however, the unnecessary use of an important antibiotic, particularly 

if individuals did not complete the 60-day course of medication, would have given 

an added boost to the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains of other human 

pathogens. “Robert J. Blendon, et al., Harvard School of Public Health/Robert Wood 

Johnson Foundation Survey Project on Americans’ Response to Biological Terrorism 

Tabulation Report, Media, PA: International Communications Research, October 

24-28, 2001, p. 5.

 195. Tinker Ready, “Reduced Grants Set Off Short Fuses Among U.S. Scientists. 

Researchers Say the NIH is Staggering Grant Reviews in Order to Save Money,” 

Nature Medicine, May 26, 2005.

 196. “Infl uenza Pandemic; Challenges Remain in Preparedness,” Testimony 

of Marcia Crosse, U.S. GAO, before the Subcommittee on Health, Committee on 

Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, May 26, 2005.
111

 197. Infl uenza Pandemic: Plan Needed Federal and State Response, GAO-01-4, 

Washington, DC: U.S. GAO, October 2000.

 198. CDC, Fact Sheet, Information About Infl uenza Pandemics, Vol. 3, www.

cdc.gov/fl u. In mid-2005, despite WHO prohibitions against such practices, it was 

discovered that China has been using the most potent anti-viral pharmaceutical 

against human fl u, amantadine, as a prophylactic against avian fl u in poultry. That 

has quickly bred amantadine resistance in circulating strains, and made the drug 

useless as a treatment against avian infl uenza for humans. Alan Sipress, “Bird Flu 

Drug Rendered Useless: Chinese Chickens Given Medication Made for Humans,” 

Washington Post, June 18, 2005; and Alan Sipress, “UN Presses China on Bird Flu 

Drug,” Washington Post, June 21, 2005.

 199. David Ruppe, “Legislators Urge Increased Biosecurity Investment,” 

Global Security Newswire, June 10, 2005. This press account reported on a meeting 

held on June 9, 2005, at which Senators Lieberman (D), Burr (R), and Clinton (D), 

and Representative Cox (R) spoke. 

 200. Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, Part III:5. “The Question of 

Offensive/Defensive Distinctions in Biological Weapons Related Research, and 

the Potential Stimulus to BW Proliferation by Expanded Research Programs,” 

pp. 155-206. See also Roger Roffey, “Biological Weapons and Potential Indicators 

of Offensive Biological Weapon Activities,” pp. 557-571 in SIPRI Yearbook 2004: 

Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Stockholm International Peace 

Research Institute, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004.

 201. Jonathan Tucker, “Biological Threat Assessment: Is the Cure Worse than 

the Disease?,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 34, No. 8, October 2004, pp. 13-19.

 202. Tucker defi nes “science-based threat assessment” as work “which involves 

the laboratory development and study of offensive biological weapon agents in 

order to guide the development of countermeasures.”

 203. Malcolm Dando, Memorandum: “The Need for Transparency in Defense 

Research on Chemical and Biological Threat,” February 25, 2003, www.publications.

parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmsctech/415/415ap36.htm.

 204. Jerome B. Wiesner, Where Science and Politics Meet, New York: McGraw 

Hill Book Company, 1965. In particular, see the chapters in Part III, pp. 173-296. 

See also Herbert F. York, Race to Oblivion: a Participant’s View of the Arms Race, 

New York: Simon Schuster, 1970. Dr. York was the fi rst Director of the Livermore 

National Laboratory, and then the Director of Defense, Research and Engineering 

(DDR&E) in the Eisenhower administration.

 205. Biological Weapons: Effort to Reduce Former Soviet Threat Offers Benefi ts, Poses 

New Risks, GAO/NSIAD-00-138, Washington, DC: U.S. General Accountability 

Offi ce, April 2000.

 206. There are suggestions that the CIA had actually obtained one of the 

bomblets. Another version of the events described here is contained in Germs . . ., 

the book by Miller and her New York Times colleagues. An entire chapter in the book 
112

expands on the three “black” projects disclosed on September 4, 2001 in the New 

York Times and their relation to U.S. BWC Treaty compliance. See Judith Miller, 

Stephen Engelberg and William J. Broad, “US Germ Warfare Research Pushes 

Treaty Limits: Pentagon Says Projects Are Defensive and Is Pressing Ahead,” New 

York Times, September 4, 2004; and Judith Miller, et al., Germs: Biological Weapons 

and America’s Secret War and America’s Secret War, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2001, Chapter 12; pp. 287 , New York, Simon & Schuster, 2001, Chapter 12; pp. 287 

to 314.

 207. Personal communication, autumn 2004.

 208. A brief discussion of the CLEAR VISION project and two other classifi ed 

projects appears in Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, pp. 180-181. See also 

Judith Miller, “When is Bomb Not a Bomb? Germ Experts Confront US,” New York 

Times, September 5, 2001; and Elisa D. Harris, “Research Not to be Hidden,” New 

York Times, September 6, 2001. It is not known if one series of experiments that was 

reported by the U.S. Government in its BWC CBM submission for 2000 was or was 

not a sub-portion of the CLEAR VISION project. In Form A: Part 2, ii, for 2000, the 

United States reported that “Simulated threat warhead mechanicals were designed 

and fabricated,” and that these were tested at the Hypervelocity Range/Track G 

facility, Arnold Air Force Base. “The simulated biological target was impacted by 

high speed projectiles to characterize and measure the target response and damage 

resulting from the impact.” The work was done by the Ballistic Missile Defense 

Organization (BMDO) and would appear to be comfortably within a “defensive” 

characterization, if Article I, part II of the Biological Weapons Convention allowed Article I, part II of the Biological Weapons Convention allowed 

one to build even a partial model of a weapon/delivery system.

 209. “US Declarations Under the BWC CBMs Do Not Mention the U.S. Biodefense Projects Disclosed by the New York Times on 4 September 2001,” SIPRI 

CBW Forum website, Stockholm, Sweden, September 2001.

 210. George Korch, “Leading Edge of Biodefense: The National Biodefense 

Analysis and Countermeasures Center,” Proceedings, Military Entomology—Its 

Global Challenge, 2004 DoD Pest Management Workshop, Naval Air Station, 

Jacksonville, FL, February 9-13, 2004. This workshop was sponsored by the Armed 

Forces Pest Management Board Offi ce of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, 

Installations and Environment, Washington, DC. See also Fact Sheet: National 

Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, Offi ce of the Press Secretary, U.S. , Office of the Press Secretary, U.S. 

Department of Homeland Security, February 2, 2005.

 211. “The Scowcroft Memorandum,” Chemical and Biological Weapons Convention 

Bulletin, No. 57, September 2002, pp. 2.

 212. “Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Warfare Defense,” Offi ce of the Special 

Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, Medical Readiness, and Military Deployments, 

U.S. DoD, January 8, 2002. 

 213. National Security Decision Memorandum 35, “United States Policy on 

Chemical Warfare Program and Bacteriological/Biological Research Program,” 

November 25, 1969, Declassifi ed.
113

 214. “US Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and Agents: Report to the 

National Security Council,” Submitted to the Interdepartmental Political-Military 

Group in response to National Security Study Memorandum 59, November 10, 

1969, p. 26, Declassifi ed. 

 215. “Defensive or Offensive Research?” Chart, p. 522, and text, p. 201. 

Testimony of Lieutenant Colonel David L. Huxsoll, Hearings: Global Spread of 

Chemical and Biological Weapons, Washington, DC: Committee on Governmental 

Affairs, U.S. Senate, 1989. See also Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, 

pp. 191-193.

 216. Record of Decision, Biological Defense Research Program, November 17, 

1989, signed by John W. Shannon, Under Secretary of the Army.

 217. Milton Leitenberg, Ambassador James Leonard, and Dr. Richard Spertzel, 

“Biodefense Crosses the Line,” Politics and the Life Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2004, 

pp. 1-2. Ambassador Leonard was the head of the United States delegation that 

negotiated the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972. Dr. Spertzel was a former 

Deputy Director of USAMRIID and Senior Biologist for UNSCOM between 1994 

and 1998.

 218. Personal communication, Spring 2004.

 219. Jeffrey Rothfeder, “Biological Warfare: A Post-9/11, Post-Anthrax 

Funding Boom has Made the Nation’s ‘Hot Zones’ the Hottest Research Areas 

Around. Is This a Good Thing?” Popular Science, March 2005.

 220. Dana A. Shea, The National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center: 

Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service, RL 32891, April 25, 2005.

 221. “Biodefense for the 21st Century,” Offi ce of the President, April 2004; “HHS 

Fact Sheet. Biodefense Preparedness. Public Health Emergency Preparedness. 

Transforming America’s Capacity to Respond,” News Release, U.S. Department 

of Health and Human Services, April 28, 2004; “Fact Sheet: Bush Signs Biodefense 

Presidential Directive,” U.S. Department of State, April 24, 2004.

 222. John Mintz, “Bioterrorism Procedures Are Outlined. Bush Directive 

Specifi es Agency Responsibilities,” Washington Post, April 29, 2004.

 223. Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, pp. 175-177.

 224. K. Nixdorff and W. Bender, “Biotechnology, Ethics of Research, and 

Potential Spin-Off,” INESAP Information Bulletin, Vol. 19, March 2002, pp. 19-22, 

quoted in Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism, Committee on Research 

Standards and Practices to Prevent the Destructive Application of Biotechnology, 

National Research Council of the National Academies, Washington, DC: The 

National Academies Press, 2004, p. 24. 

 225. Raymond A. Zilinskas and Jonathan B. Tucker, “Limiting the Contribution 

of the Open Scientifi c Literature to the Biological Weapons Threat,” Journal of 

Homeland Security, December 2002, www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/tucker.

html#end2.
114

 226. Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism, p. 5. This NAS Committee is 

frequently referred to as “the Fink Committee,” after its chairman, Dr. Gerald R. 

Fink.

 227. Preparedness for Deliberate Epidemics. Life Sciences Research—Opportunities 

and Risks for Public Health: Mapping the Issues, World Health Organization, Draft 

Document, Second Version, December 2004, p. 13.

 228. Department of Homeland Security, Offi ce of the Secretary, Docket no. 

DHS-2005-0032, Offi ce of Research and Development: Proposed Federally Funded 

Research and Development Center, Federal Register Federal Register, Vol. 70, No. 73, April 18, , Vol. 70, No. 73, April 18, 

2005.

 229. Ronald C. Moe and Kevin R. Kosar, The Quasi Government: Hybrid 

Organizations with Both Government and Private Sector Legal Characteristics, RL30533, 

Congressional Research Service, May 18, 2005, pp. 14-16.

 230. “Controlling Dangerous Pathogens,” www.cissm.umd.edu/documents/Patho

gens%20project%20monograph_092203.pdf.

 231. Personal communication, 2005.

 232. Liz Babiarz, “Army Wants to Expand Lab,” Frederick News Post, May 7, 

2005.

 233. “58 Million for Animal Disease Center in Ames Approved,” Ames Tribune, 

May 18, 2005. A report in the Washington Post Washington Post in June 1995 stated that the total in June 1995 stated that the total 

cost currently planned for the National Interagency Biodefense Campus at Fort 

Detrick was to be 10 billion. This was a journalist’s error. When contacted, the 

journalist said that the fi gure should have been one billion. Nelson Hernandez, 

“Fort Detrick’s New ‘Major’ Arms to be Good Neighbor,” Washington Post, June 

26, 2005.

 234. Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Fact Sheet: The Biological 

and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) and its Interpretation by the Department of 

Homeland Security, April 2005, 2 pp.

 235. Personal communication.

 236. Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee of the Judiciary, 

U.S. Senate, Joint Hearings, The ABM Treaty and the Constitution, Washington, 

U.S. Government Printing Offi ce, 1987; Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. 

Senate, Report, The ABM Treaty Interpretation Resolution, Washington, U.S. 

Government Printing Offi ce, 1987; Raymond L. Garthoff, Policy Versus the Law: The 

Reinterpretation of the ABM Treaty, Washington, Brookings Institute, 1987; David 

A. Koplow, “When Is an Amendment Not an Amendment?: Modifi cation of Arms 

Control Agreements Without the Senate,” The University of Chicago Law Review, 

Vol. 59, No. 3, Summer 1992, p. 981; Thomas K. Longstreth, et al., “The Impact of 

U.S. and Soviet Ballistic Missile Defense Programs on the ABM Treaty,” A Report 

for the National Campaign to Save the ABM Treaty, March 1985; Herbert Lin, New 

Weapon Technologies and the ABM Treaty, Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 

1988. 
115

 237. “No Functioning Biosafety Committee at Battelle Memorial Institute,” 

Biosafety Bites #7 Biosafety Bites #7, August 10, 2004, The Sunshine Project, , August 10, 2004, The Sunshine Project, www.sunshine-project.org.

 238. Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Fact Sheet: Biosafety 

and Biosecurity: The Roles, Responsibilities and Effectiveness of Institutional Biosafety 

Committees, IBCs, May 2005; and The Sunshine Project, Mandate for Failure: The 

State of Institutional Biosafety Committees in an Age of Biological Weapons Research, 

www.sunshine-project.org/biodefense/ibcreport.html.

 239. Letter from Dr. Thomas Holohan, NSABB Executive Director, Department 

of Health & Human Services, May 31, 2005.

 240. Richard H. Ebright, “Biodefense Research: NIH Role, NIH Management, 

Oversight of Safety, Oversight of Security, and Oversight of Dual-use Implications,” 

PowerPoint presentation, Washington, DC, April 15, 2005, Howard Hughes 

Medical Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

 241. Robert M. Cook-Deegan, “Issues in Biosecurity and Biosafety,” Science, 

Vol. 308, No. 5730, June 24, 2005, pp. 1867-1868.

 242. Stacy Singer, “Scripps Scientist Gets Anti-Botulinum Grant,” Palm Beach 

Post, May 15, 2005.

 243. Other token gestures towards “self-regulation” have been ineffectual. In 

February 2003, the editors of many major journals agreed to insert consideration 

of the risk involved in publication of certain kinds of information into publication 

review criteria. They would scrutinize submitted manuscripts for information 

that could facilitate the development of biological weapons. When one of these 

journals, Science, evaded the substance of the agreement within months by 

publishing an article in its News section that provided details on how to prepare 

anthrax spores for aerosolization. It then refused to print a letter to the editor by 

two Swedish biodefense scientists protesting the publication decision. In another 

case, an American scientist, Dr. Mark Buller, essentially evaded the new journal 

editorial policy by announcing his research to increase the lethality of orthopox 

viruses at a scientifi c conference, rather than in a peer-reviewed journal.

 244. Elizabeth K. Leffel and Douglas S. Reed, “Marburg and Ebola Viruses as 

Aerosol Threats,” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice and Science, 

Vol. 2, No. 3, 2004, pp. 186-191. In a more recent paper, Dr. C. J. Peters wrote “Until 

we began to see them [fi loviruses] as prime candidates for use in bioterrorism,” 

and “We should . . . remain aware that these viruses may someday be harnessed 

as bioterrorist weapons.” C. J. Peters, “Marburg and Ebola—Arming Ourselves 

Against the Deadly Filoviruses,” New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 352, No. 25, 

June 23, 2005,pp. 2571-2573. However, on being contacted, Dr. Peters said that he 

was thinking of Soviet-era work with Marburg virus, and should have referred 

to biological weapons, and not to “bioterrorism” or “bioterrorists.” Personal 

communication, June 27, 2005. It would be extremely diffi cult for “terrorist” 

groups to either obtain cultures of fi loviruses or work with them without killing 

themselves. Any “terrorist” attempting to use Marburg or Ebola would almost 

certainly have to be an extremely well-trained and equipped scientist. 
 245. Department of Defense Directive Number 2060.1, January 9, 2001, 

“Implementation of and Compliance with Arms Control Agreements.” 

 246. Personal communication, 2004.

 247. Ibid., 2005.

116
117

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MILTON LEITENBERG began work in the fi eld of arms control in 

autumn 1966, after a half-dozen years as a researcher and academic 

in the sciences (Albert Einstein Medical School, Department 

of Neurology; Vassar College; Northeastern University; and 

Washington University, St. Louis). In January 1968, he was the fi rst 

American recruited to work at the Stockholm International Peace 

Research Institute (SIPRI). He later worked at the Swedish Institute of 

International Affairs and Cornell University’s Center for International 

Studies/Peace Studies Program. Since 1989, he has been successively 

Fellow, Senior Scholar, and Senior Research Scholar at the Center 

for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. 

Since 1966, Leitenberg has authored or edited a half-dozen books, 

an equal number of commissioned book-length studies, and written 

some 170 papers, monographs, and book chapters. The fi rst papers 

dealing with biological weapons were published in 1967, and he was 

part of the team at SIPRI that produced the six volumes on “The 

Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare.” Since 1992, he has 

written or published some 30 papers dealing with various aspects of 

biological warfare, and in 2004 published the book, “The Problem of 

Biological Weapons.”