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87–836PDF 2014

ASSESSING THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS THREAT:

RUSSIA AND BEYOND

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND 

EMERGING THREATS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MAY 7, 2014

Serial No. 113–142

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

PAUL COOK, California 

GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

LUKE MESSER, Indiana 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND EMERGING THREATS

DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman 

TED POE, Texas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

PAUL COOK, California 

GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Amy Smithson, Ph.D., senior fellow, James Martin Center for Nonprolferation 

Studies .................................................................................................................. 5

David R. Franz, Ph.D. (former Commander, U.S. Army Medical Research 

Institute of Infectious Diseases) .......................................................................... 17

Christopher Davis, M.D. (former member, Defense Intelligence Staff of the 

United Kingdom) .................................................................................................. 26

Mr. Milton Leitenberg, senior research scholar, Center for International and 

Security Studies at Maryland, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland ........................................................................................................................ 36

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Amy Smithson, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ........................................................... 8

David R. Franz, Ph.D.: Prepared statement .......................................................... 19

Christopher Davis, M.D.: Prepared statement ...................................................... 31

Mr. Milton Leitenberg: Prepared statement ......................................................... 40

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 54

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 55

Mr. Milton Leitenberg: Material submitted for the record .................................. 56

The Honorable George Holding, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of North Carolina: Questions submitted for the record and written responses from: 

Amy Smithson, Ph.D. ........................................................................................... 61

Mr. Milton Leitenberg ......................................................................................... 64

(1)

ASSESSING THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS 

THREAT: RUSSIA AND BEYOND 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 2014

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND EMERGING THREATS,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:07 p.m., in room 

2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana Rohrabacher 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I call this subcommittee hearing to order. 

The subject today is, ‘‘Assessing the Biological Weapons Threat: 

Russia and Beyond.’’ The purpose of today’s hearing is review the 

progress of the United States and our partners in Eurasia have 

made to dismantle and secure the remnants of the Soviet Union’s 

biological weapons program. We will be discussing what the United 

States and our partners in Russia, Central Asia and the caucuses 

have accomplished, what, if any, lessons have we learned, and 

what we can or should not be done—or what can and what should 

be done to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention. 

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union developed an offensive biological weapons program. It was supported by a large network of 

facilities which employed an estimated 60,000 workers at its 

height. Soviet scientists were able to engineer pathogens so deadly 

that they could be deployed with the same killing power as a nuclear bomb. Biological weapons created in labs are inherently different from natural diseases. Weaponized germs are purposely 

made to be more deadly, act differently, and resistant to medicine. 

They can also be delivered in extremely high doses or in combinations to create certain results. 

It is alarming to hear that the Soviets continue to develop these 

weapons into the early 1990s in violation of the 1972 Biological and 

Toxin Weapons Convention, or the, as it is known as, the BWC. 

That treaty, still in force today, bans the development, production, 

and stockpiling of biological weapons. The United States Government, by comparison, unilaterally and completely ended its weapons program, beginning in 1969, so we rapidly ended our biological 

weapons program as the Soviet Union accelerated theirs. 

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the United States 

worked to secure these deadly pathogens, dismantle the facilities, 

and prevent scientists from selling their knowledge on the black 

market. Congress created the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, sometimes informally referred to as Nunn-Lugar, and this 

2

was to secure the WMD materials in Russia and the newly independent States formerly ruled by Moscow. To date, our Government has spent over $2 billion to secure biological weapons facilities and related materials in the former Soviet 

Union. I am pleased by the apparent success of these initiatives 

and at least the preceded success in many cases. The cooperation 

between our Government and many other countries in Central Asia 

and the caucuses has led to a safer world, we hope, and that is 

what we will be talking about today, we believe. 

An important part of the BWC is that every 5 years there is a 

review conference, and it is convened to find ways to improve the 

convention and to share the data. The next review conference is set 

to take place in 2016. I look forward to hearing from the witnesses 

and to hear about their conclusions that they have had about how 

successful our efforts have been to secure former Soviet biological 

weapons sites, and based on that experience, what new lessons we 

can apply to verification or inspections of suspected biological 

weapons programs in other situations. 

There are steps we should take to improve and strengthen the 

BWC, are there such steps that we can take? And that is what we 

need to hear today as well, and have we used the lessons from implementing Nunn-Lugar to improve our own defense, at least our 

own defenses in case of a future biological attack. 

Without objection, all members have 5 legislative days to submit 

additional written questions or extraneous materials for the record. 

And with that, I turn to our ranking member, Congressman 

Keating, for his opening statement. 

Mr. KEATING. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am pleased to welcome Dr. Smithson, Dr. Franz, Dr. Davis, and 

Mr. Leitenberg. I am certain we are going to benefit from all your 

experience. I am pleased, in particular, that Mr. Leitenberg is with 

us today. Mr. Leitenberg’s 2012 book, which was coauthored with 

Raymond Zilinskas is widely viewed as the seminal history of the 

Soviet Union’s biological weapons program, including the covert 

program launched in 1970s, well after the Soviet Union signed onto 

the Biological Weapons and Toxins Convention. 

Since the mid-1990s, the United States has invested billions of 

dollars through Cooperative Threat Reduction Program in dismantling and decontaminating biological weapons testing and productions sites in the former Soviet Union. U.S. programs have also focused on securing pathogens and employing former weapons scientists in civilian work. 

This has not been an easy task, given the scope of the Soviet biological weapons program, which at one point employed an estimated 60,000 people at more than 50 sites throughout the Soviet 

Union. 

Although cooperation with former Soviet republics in Central 

Asia has been generally successful, resulting in the decontamination of biological weapons facilities and containment of dangerous 

pathogens, the same cannot be said for our cooperation with Russia. In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin acknowledged the existence of a covert Soviet program. He publicly committed Russia 

to establishing compliance with the biological weapons and toxins 

convention by prohibiting offensive biological weapons work, initiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:23 Jun 11, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_EEET\050714\87836 SHIRL
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ating the dismantlement of the program inherited from the Soviet 

Union, and agreeing to allow on-site verification procedures of this 

dismantlement. 

Despite these commitments, Russia refused to allow international inspection in key biological weapons facilities, a policy continued under President Putin. As a result, there has been considerable uncertainty about the dismantlement status of Russia’s inherited biological weapons capabilities and reason to believe that Russian scientists may still be engaging in research and development 

activities. The recent deterioration in U.S. relations with Russia 

complicates matters even further, as do President Putin’s recent 

statements suggesting a willingness to use biological weapons to 

‘‘respond to new challenges.’’

As such, there is much we do not know about Russia’s current 

programs or their intentions. Indeed, what is most striking about 

the threat posed by biological weapons is how much we don’t know. 

I hope this hearing will help the subcommittee to better understand the scope of the threat as well as the appropriateness and 

effectiveness of U.S. measures to counteract the threat. 

In particular, I look forward to learning how other countries perceive U.S. policy and our commitment to eliminating biological 

weapons. Successive administrations, Republican and Democrat, 

have advocated against adding a verification mechanism to the 

BWC. In 2001, former Under Secretary of State for International 

Security John Bolton, an official in the George W. Bush administration, argued that traditional arms control measures would not 

work for biological weapons. Obama administration officials have 

made similar claims. I look forward to hearing our panelists’ views 

on whether it is possible to strengthen the BWC, and if so, how 

useful new protocols would be in countering the threat posed by biological weapons. 

I hope our witnesses will also assess the risk that Soviet biological weapons, materials, or know-how have fallen into the hands of 

rogue states or nonstate actors and whether any state or nonstate 

actors currently have the capability sufficient to use biological 

weapons to create a mass casualty event. 

Finally, despite considerable debate over the extent of the threat 

posed by biological weapons, the United States has spent over $64 

billion on biodefense programs since the anthrax scare of 2001. I 

hope our witnesses will be able to comment on whether this massive expenditure is proportionate to the threat and welcome their 

thoughts on the effectiveness of our biodefense programs. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you, and do either of our other colleagues have—Judge Poe. You have an opening statement. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, Chairman. 

I thank the witnesses for being here. As you know, Mr. Chairman, we are in judiciary in a markup dealing with revising the PATRIOT Act, so I will have to excuse myself and go back to that. 

The problem we face today is, how do we protect Americans from 

the threat of biological weapons when we are dealing with a country, primarily the leader of this country, who cannot be trusted to 

tell the truth about anything? Now, the United States, United 

Kingdom eliminated their biological weapons programs over 40 

4

years ago, before the Biological Weapons Convention even existed. 

The Soviet Union promised, they promised to stop their biological 

weapons program, but of course, they didn’t. Their biological weapons program remained active until the Soviet Union fell in the 

early 1990s. 

Today, Russia is led by Colonel Putin, KGB, who would like 

nothing more, in my opinion, than to go back to the glory days of 

the old Soviet Union. Putin, or the Napoleon of Siberia, as I like 

to call him, has taken over part of a sovereign country, at least two 

of them now, Georgia and part of Ukraine. I have been to both. 

He is using his military and political operatives in these countries to create unrest, and then he says he has to go in and control 

the area to stop the unrest he started. He did that in both Georgia 

and Eastern Ukraine, and I do not believe he is through with his 

aggression. Who’s next? Moldova? We will see. 

So that is who we are dealing with, Mr. Putin, and he and Russia have signed onto the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, 

the BWC, but we do not know if Russia has followed it because 

there is no true verification measures in place. Some believe that 

it has been reported by some that the Russians in fact helped facilitate chemical weapons going to Syria. I don’t know if that is 

true or not, but that has been out there. 

In 2009, this administration stopped even negotiating about trying to verify a country was following the BWC; instead, the State 

Department believes that transparency and diplomacy are enough. 

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I wonder if we still follow that 

philosophy. Apparently, we do. It appears to me, it is the height 

of ignorance to trust Putin and his government to keep its word on 

anything; therefore, verification must be an absolute. 

Putin is not our ally; he is not a friend. He is not a friend of the 

world. And I certainly don’t think we can let him get away with 

breaking his word, so we must act accordingly. 

And thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is just the way it is. 

Mr. POE. That is just the way it is, Mr. Chairman, to quote a 

phrase. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And Mr. Sires. 

Mr. SIRES. I will be very brief. 

Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing and thank you for 

being here today. I have a big concern about the region that used 

to be part of the Soviet Union, because a lot of these weapons were 

made in some of these countries, and I am concerned that, are they 

secure, because they have had a number of militant Islamic groups 

in this regions? And I am concerned that not—the whole world is 

in danger from these groups, so I just want to hear what you have 

to say and maybe get a idea how secure some of these places are 

where they made some of these weapons. Thank you. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Oh, thank you. 

To testify before us today, we have four distinguished experts on 

this topic. Each of your full statements will be made part of the 

record. If you could keep your statements, the verbal part of it, 

down to about 5 minutes apiece, that would be a big help, but your 

actual—the whole statement that you have will be part of the 

record. 

5

Dr. Amy Smithson is a senior fellow at James Martin Center for 

Nonproliferation Studies and an expert on biological weapons. In 

the past, she has worked for the Center on Strategic and International Studies and the Henry Stimson Center. At the Stimson 

Center, she founded their Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project, and she has also worked to help—worked to 

and helped former weapons scientists engage with civilian companies, thus finding them a peaceful way to use their talents and 

skills. 

We also have with us Dr. David Franz, a retired colonel and a 

27-year veteran of the United States Army. He served 23 of those 

years in the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and 

came to command the Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. During the 1990s, he served as a member of a joint 

British team which inspected former Soviet bioweapons sites. He 

also later served as the chief inspector for three United Nations inspections missions to Iraq, focusing on that country’s bioweapons 

program. 

Mr. Davis served in the Royal Navy and spent—Mr. Davis, our 

next witness—spent—served in the Royal Navy and spent 10 years 

in British Intelligence as its principal biological warfare analyst. 

He debriefed high level Soviet defectors regarding their biowarfare 

program, and after 1991, he went on the ground to inspect Soviet 

weapons sites. He has had a very distinguished academic and private sector career with numerous honors, including the Order of 

the British Empire, bestowed by Queen Elizabeth, II. Mr. Davis is 

also a fellow in the pharmaceutical medicine and holds doctorate 

degree in philosophy from the University of Oxford. 

Mr. Milton Leitenberg is a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland Center for International and Security Studies. He 

has almost four decades of experience working in the arms control 

and issues affiliated with that, and he has been with the Stockholm 

International Peace Research Institute and published and edited 

over 150 scholarly works, including a book recently published by 

Harvard University on the history of Soviet biological weapons and 

the weapons program. 

So I would ask all of you again to keep your statements down 

to about 5 minutes verbally, but you can put whatever else you 

want right in the record, and we will start with Dr. Smithson. 

STATEMENT OF AMY SMITHSON, PH.D., SENIOR FELLOW, 

JAMES MARTIN CENTER FOR NONPROLFERATION STUDIES 

Ms. SMITHSON. Good afternoon. Since many of the other panelists 

will focus on issues of Russia and Central Asia, although I address 

those in my written statement and have been to many of those facilities, I will concentrate instead in my oral remarks on how to 

strengthen the BWC. And in doing so, what you are going to get 

is not just the benefit of my thoughts but literally an array of the 

top experts around the world and from the United States biopharmaceutical industry as well as from the United Nations Special Commission, which was established in 1991 after the first Gulf 

War to strip Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. 

With regard to the former group of scientists, the ones from the 

U.S. industry, I convened them on a number of occasions to ponder 

6

whether or not the BWC could indeed be monitored because conventional wisdom says that is not possible. And much to my surprise, quite frankly, they crafted a detailed monitoring protocol for 

the BWC that relies on many of the standard tools that the inspectors of UNSCOM later used when they went into Iraq. 

Now, I don’t have time to go into the details of this proposal. I 

would like to, in question and answer, but what I would like to 

leave you thinking about that proposal is that it is much more 

stringent than the draft protocol that the United States Government rightly rejected in 2001. So they are asking for tougher monitoring provisions. 

It is also quite contrary to the position of the industry’s main 

trade association, PhRMA, which tends to say that just having inspectors on site could compromise its trade secrets. In contrast, 

they believe that their monitoring protocol could be implemented 

without doing that. In fact, they think it would be very, very effective, and their monitoring protocol is equally or less demanding 

than the inspections that the industry currently undergoes from 

the Food and Drug Administration. In all except for two cases, one 

would be the size of the inspection team, which would come with 

a pack of U.S. escorts that might be difficult for some companies 

to handle, and the other is the length of time that they would stay 

on site. 

Now, after this work was completed, and I started to interview 

the UNSCOM inspectors about their experience in Iraq, what 

struck me is the similarity between what the industry experts were 

proposing and what UNSCOM actually did in Iraq and how successfully that worked out, even though, before they ever landed in 

Iraq, quite frankly, the deck was stacked against the UNSCOM inspectors. 

First of all, Iraq had already begun to implement a strategy to 

hide not just its nuclear program but its biological weapons program from the inspectors. Next, the intelligence that they had to 

work from was, quite frankly, incomplete and sometimes inaccurate. For example, U.S. intelligence had not even managed to 

identify Al Hakam, which was Iraq’s main biological weapons production facility. From the air, it looked very much, in fact almost 

identical to Iraq’s chemical weapons production facility, Al 

Muthanna. That is just one of the things that intelligence didn’t 

manage to pick up on. 

And it is not surprising to me, having worked in this area, that 

the 2005 report of a blue ribbon panel on U.S. intelligence capabilities to detect weapons of mass destruction programs stated that the 

U.S. intelligence community ‘‘substantially underestimated the 

scale and maturity of Iraq’s’’ biological weapons program leading 

into the first Gulf War, and with regard to its estimate going into 

the 2003 Gulf War, it was ‘‘simply wrong.’’

Nonetheless, during the first two inspections that UNSCOM conducted in the summer of 1991, they managed to pick up significant 

evidence that there was a biological weapons program. Happy to 

answer questions about that. Moreover, they identified two commercial facilities, supposed commercial facilities that were actually 

part of that program. So they believe that it is possible to distinVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:23 Jun 11, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_EEET\050714\87836 SHIRL
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guish between the two types of facilities; not in every case, but in 

some cases. 

Now, in 1994, when they resumed inspections, there were only 

three unspecific intelligence tips that they had to help them in 

their job. Nonetheless, they did manage to unmask the program 

using a lot of just plain old smarts and old-fashioned gum shoe detective work. For example, they collected hundreds of documents 

from suppliers to Iraq’s program that allowed them to reverse engineer it. They sampled a sprayer from the production line at Al 

Hakam that the Iraqis said was making a biopesticide using Bacillus thuringiensis. This is also a simulant for anthrax, and when 

they took this sample, what they found out is that it would be inoperable for a biopesticide because you would need something of 150 

microns or larger, and instead, the sample particle size was 10 microns or less, ideal for a biowarfare agent. 

So, with tactics like this, during routine inspections, not no-notice challenge inspections, they painted Iraq into a corner. On the 

1st of July 1995, Iraq confessed to having produced anthrax and 

botulinum toxin. On the spot, the inspectors knew this wasn’t the 

whole truth because the Iraqis said they destroyed these agents in 

1990. 

Now, this just doesn’t make sense. What state makes a super secret weapon only to demolish it before going to war? They also already had a handle on Iraq’s biological delivery systems, including 

the fact that they had purchased a very sophisticated, finely machined spinning dispersal device from a German company, so when 

the executive director of UNSCOM returned to New York, he 

briefed the Security Council that, yes, Iraq had produced chemical 

weapons—excuse me—biological weapons, and they admitted that, 

but we know that was not the whole truth. We think they 

weaponized this stuff as well. 

So, contrary to popular thinking, the UNSCOM experience really 

upends conventional wisdom and stands as a direct challenge to 

the U.S. policy that the BWC is ‘‘inherently unverifiable.’’ So my 

recommendation in preparation for the 2016 Review Conference is 

that Congress require the executive branch to do its homework, to 

study the experience of UNSCOM, to take counsel from scientists 

inside the pharmaceutical industry, and to prepare a report, a 

multifaceted report that examines the capabilities and limitations, 

not just of inspections but of intelligence because we are going to 

need both if they are going to be able to detect and deter biological 

weapons programs in the future and at present. 

I thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee, 

and I look forward to questions that you might have. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Smithson follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Dr. Franz. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID R. FRANZ, PH.D. (FORMER COMMANDER, U.S. ARMY MEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES) 

Mr. FRANZ. Chairman Rohrabacher, Ranking Member Keating, 

and distinguished members, it is an honor to be here today. I think 

I am going——

Mr. POE. You still live? I didn’t pull the plug on you. 

Mr. KEATING. Another undetected weapon. 

Mr. FRANZ. I think you are going to see that I am going to talk 

about another piece of this elephant that you are trying to describe, 

and you will also see that individuals can be friends for a long time 

and not necessarily agree. 

First, I will state four personal biases related to your questions 

that you provided to us. The Biological Weapons Convention is an 

important international norm and law. As a Nation, I think it is 

absolutely critical that we demonstrate globally and consistently 

our full support for the BWC. 

Secondly, the BWC is necessary but not sufficient for our national biosecurity. Verifying that any nation state is in compliance, 

I believe, is not possible. 

Third, reducing the threat requires an integrated effort by the 

whole of government, academe, industry, NGOs, and a healthy 

multinational set of partnerships. 

And fourth, we must recognize that personal relationships and 

professional networks that are developed through our cooperative 

programs contribute directly to our national security. 

Now, I would like to go very quickly to pose nine relevant propositions with regard to this space. 

One, it is a dangerous biological world out there: 15 million people die annually of communicable and contagious diseases. No one 

dies from biological warfare or biological terrorism, and a few people die from biocrimes. However, I am convinced that we did 

achieve nuclear equivalence in killing power in our offensive program before we stopped it in 1969, and that was long before the 

current biotech revolution. 

Two, the threats have changed significantly since the Cold War. 

We have gone from protecting the military on a distant battlefield 

to protecting citizens at home, and threats today may come from 

subnational groups, insiders, biocriminals or nation states. The 

phrase ‘‘of types and in quantities’’ in Article I of the BWC no 

longer means ton quantities.Today it can mean grams, or in the 

case of viruses particularly, it can be much less than grams 

Three, in biology, proliferation is over. This is not a nonproliferation issue any more. Proliferation of knowledge, technologies, and 

capabilities is now global. 

Four, quoting Professor Joshua Lederberg, ‘‘there is no technical 

solution.’’ Cutting up an anthrax production fermenter, which we 

did in Stepnogorsk, the size of a Kansas farm silo is not a lot different than eliminating an ICBM silo. But when the fermenter is 

scrap and its operator is retired or conducting legitimate research, 

how do we increase the likelihood that the next generation of molecular biologists and virologists, with much better tools and much 

18

more knowledge, continue to work for the good of their people, 

their country, and the global community? 

Five, health engagement is national security. Leading with public health brings like-minded people and their capabilities together 

in a nonthreatening environment, working toward an unambiguously positive or humanitarian outcome. It almost guarantees improved understanding and even trust among collaborating partners. Trust between technically qualified individuals often leads to 

communication and even sometimes trust between governments. 

Six, it is about people and relationships. While our understanding of natural health risks and intentional threats will never 

be close to perfect, it could be better. We must be alert to the everchanging biological world around us. Friends can and do help us 

when and where we have them. 

Seven, the right engagement metrics can lower the cost and increase our national security. Our tendency is to measure outputs 

rather than outcomes in these cooperative programs. I have long 

advocated for a simple set of metrics that begin with wise use of 

taxpayer dollars and lead to personal relationships of trust as the 

ultimate goal. It is not easy. It is not very scalable, I admit that, 

but critical to our national security. 

Eight, we must be in it for the long haul. I sometimes have to 

explain to my international colleagues the short attention span of 

my Government. Too often we make promises and then move on to 

something we think is more important the next moment or forget 

about friends and promises made. A more consistent and stable 

long-view policy would enhance our national security in this area. 

And finally, nine, keeping channels of communication open. For 

years, during the Cold War, our nuclear scientists and their Soviet 

counterparts maintained open lines of communication through 

science academies and organizations like Pugwash. The outcome 

was, to some degree, stabilizing, I believe. I believe it is easier to 

do this in biology. Remember, these are long-term tools that I am 

talking about. Our specialty is not putting out fires but weaving 

fire retardant into the fabric. 

Now is a good time, I believe, to see how well we did 10 years 

ago—not look at this like an outbreak today—and then adjust as 

needed. The global biological tapestry is not always a pretty one, 

but we need every view of it we can find. And we can’t do these 

global things alone. Friends of longstanding in science and public 

health networks can and will help us even when we are not there. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Franz follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Dr. Davis. 

STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER DAVIS, M.D. (FORMER MEMBER, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE STAFF OF THE UNITED KINGDOM) 

Dr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman, the timer isn’t working. It appears 

damaged. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Your mike isn’t working? 

Dr. DAVIS. The timer isn’t working. I fear it was damaged in the 

recent ‘‘attack,’’ yes. 

Mr. Chairman, Congressman, good afternoon. First of all, after 

introduction, I would like to make it quite clear that I am, in fact, 

a U.S. citizen, although I do sound slightly different, and I am 

about 407 years too late. I missed the boat all those years ago, but 

I did make it in the end. 

First, please forgive me if I am a little difficult to understand 

today. I suffered a ‘‘biological agent attack’’ last week in England, 

concluding my homeland is still upset that I left, so my voice is 

slightly compromised. 

Second, I would like to thank you most sincerely for inviting me 

to attend this hearing. Friends and colleagues alike have been 

genuinely worried about what I might experience here. But you 

know, it never occurred to me to worry. I felt happy to come and 

share with fellow citizens some thoughts about an important topic. 

Finally, having read through my short text, it occurred to me 

that I might be cast as anti-Russian or rather too critical of my 

former colleagues in the diplomatic services of the U.K. And the 

U.S. and neither is true. I have worked with many Russians who 

were in the former Soviet program and, indeed, some have been 

guests in my home. And the Russians are very jolly people. I have 

no problem. 

And diplomatic colleagues took positions years ago that they believed at the time were correct. I disagreed then, and I still do. 

That doesn’t mean to say that they are bad people or bad things 

were done, particularly. It really means that we took a different 

view of the world. 

So I would like just to say a few things. I am going to stick pretty much to what I submitted. I come before you today as a private 

citizen. I represent no one but myself. The views and opinions expressed by me are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect 

those of my own consultancy company, my employer, or my employer’s client in whose offices I work, and these organizations and 

their officials bear nor responsibility whatsoever for my oral and 

written testimony today. That is important because I absolve everybody from any responsibility. It is me. 

In light of my previous work in or with security and intelligence 

services and organizations on both sides of the Atlantic, I also must 

make it clear, in giving this testimony, I will at no time write or 

say anything that transgresses the agreements I made with those 

organizations many years ago with respect to maintaining the confidentiality of their systems and the knowledge I gained during 

their employ. 

I am a scientist and a physician educated at the Universities of 

Oxford and London, as was mentioned, and a fellow of the Faculty 

27

of Pharmaceutical Medicine. I have had 38-year career spanning 

hospital medicine, academic research, military medicine, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, government service, and 

commercial and contracting companies consulting in the United 

States, Europe, and Australasia. For 35 of those years, I have been 

involved with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons issues. 

With the singular exception, thank goodness, of actually building 

nuclear weapons or chemical weapons of any kind or biological 

weapons of any kind, I have worked on every aspect of the problem 

of biological weapons, from intelligence through threat analysis and 

weapons effects, through R&D on personal and collective protection, medical countermeasures, detection systems to national policy, international diplomacy, and cooperative threat reduction. 

For 10 years, I served on the Defense Intelligence staff of the 

United Kingdom with special responsibility for global biological 

weapons threats and the medical aspects of chemical and biological 

agents. My particular focus for much of those 10 years was the biological weapons program of the former Soviet Union and Russia, 

and I was closely involved in a debriefing of the very first defector 

from the Soviet program, Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, a very senior institute director who came to the U.K. in October 1989. 

Today I have come to ask you to lift the veil that hides the ‘‘elephant in the room’’ that was left behind in the 1990s when direct 

efforts to persuade Russia to completely abandon their biological 

weapons appear to have failed. 

There is no doubt that what we have come to know as ordinary 

everyday infectious diseases, to which Dave Franz referred, are 

making a come back and that a major issue for societies across the 

globe is the increasingly rapid emergence of multidrug resistant 

forms of these diseases. I say this up front because it is an existential risk to society, and I do not want the statements I am about 

to make taken out of context or the question of relative risk to be 

used as an argument to continue to ignore ‘‘the elephant.’’

Additionally, it is important to state the outset, that for the 

greater part of the last 20 years, the context of discussions about 

biological weapons and appropriate medical countermeasures has 

been that of bioterrorism. Finally, prior to the exposure of the illegal biological weapons program of the former Soviet Union, in the 

years between 1989 and 1994, the situation was obfuscated by ignorance and denial. That was the era from 1972 to 1989, for which 

I coined the term ‘‘nuclear blindness,’’ to describe a condition characterized by the inability of almost everyone involved in the world 

of diplomacy, security, intelligence, policy making, or defense, on 

the allied side, to understand that there was any treat to our security other than that from the possession of tactical or strategic nuclear weapons. Indeed, the mere possession of nuclear weapons was 

seen to be the answer to all threats and to the possible or actual 

use of strategic force against the state. 

And so to the nub of the matter. The context or room, if you will, 

in which the pachyderm in question sits has changed. The Russia 

of today is not the Soviet Union of old, but neither is it the open 

democratic state for which we hoped, somewhat naively perhaps, 

back in the 1990s. We have been made patently aware by the 

events in Georgia and now in Ukraine that Mr. Putin retains all 

28

the values and attitudes that allowed him to rise successfully 

through the ranks of the KGB. Sadly, this includes an 

unenlightened quest for power and control over everything and a 

very typical Russian propensity to never let go of something that 

could prove of use against any perceived enemy at some point in 

the future. 

For those who, like Putin, live in a world where fear is the predominant emotion determining their existence, enemies are everywhere, and any and all actions are permissible to deal with existential or theoretical threats. Add to this the noxious combination of 

patriotism and hurt pride born of a bruising exit from the Soviet 

Communism, and the stage is set. The ‘‘elephant,’’ ignored for 18 

years, demands our attention. 

The ‘‘elephant in the room’’ is, of course, the Russian biological 

weapons capability. The problem is not new, but the context, 

Putin’s new Russia is. In fact, for most of you, even if you never 

ever knew anything about this topic, the assumption will be that 

this is old hat, a problem that was taken care of way back in the 

early nineties, the 1990s that is, and the story goes something like 

this: The Soviets and Russians, admitted possession of a massive 

biological weapons research, development, testing, production, storage, and launch capability; but did that actually happen? No, I contend. They committed to destroying the system, all weapons and 

methods of dissemination, agents, seed stocks, and productions and 

operational plans; but did that actually happen? No, it didn’t. 

Complete openness was achieved, and the new Russian state allowed inspections and verification of all suspect sites; but did that 

actually happen? No. 

As far as I am aware, pretty much all discussion between the 

U.S. and the U.K. and Russia ground to a halt in mid-1990s because of Russian insistence on pursuing reciprocity, a condition 

that the then Soviet negotiators persuaded the U.S. State Department to accept at their very first encounter in London in 1990, following the defection of Vladimir Pasechnik in 1989. I know because 

I sat around that table. 

Reciprocity is difficult to achieve when the problem is one-sided. 

We said it at the time. The U.S. and the U.K. had and have no biological weapons but, in a gesture of reasonableness and openness, 

agreed to reciprocal visits. This was, of course, a time when the 

Prime Minister and the President had agreed to deal with this 

problem secretly, confidentially, and quietly in order to make it 

easier for the Soviet Union/Russia to comply and get rid of the 

weapons and move on, rather than pillorying them on the world 

stage. 

Eventually, that mismatch in reality, led to the Russians asking 

for access to U.S. facilities, both commercial and military, that they 

knew would be denied, leaving them to maintain that it was in fact 

the U.S. and the U.K. that were hiding BW R&D, not them. The 

result, the perfect impasse. 

So despite this failure of the ‘‘trilateral process,’’ created in late 

September 1992 in Moscow and the fact that the United States and 

United Kingdom were certain enough that the offensive biological 

weapons program was continuing that they challenged the new 

Russian regime openly about it as late as 1993, most observers in 

29

the world at large assumed that the problem had been solved. The 

myth that Russia had owned up, explained and destroyed its weapons and opened up its biological weapons establishments grew. And 

so it was that with improving relations between East and West, the 

legitimate and very real concern over ‘‘loose nukes’’ and a fundamental lack of understanding of biological weapons by just about 

everyone involved in decisionmaking, ‘‘the elephant’’ took up residence in the room, and as time passed, it became ever more difficult to mention the name of ‘‘the elephant,’’ let alone suggest that 

it be dealt with; for what good does it do a person or a government 

to raise an issue that most, if not everyone, regards as dead and 

buried, especially if international relations seem to be improving; 

why rock the boat? So ‘‘the elephant’’ has remained in the room for 

18 years, but just because we choose not see him does not mean 

he is no longer there. 

So if we assume, as I suggest to you, that Russia did not admit 

to the real size and capability of its biological weapons systems and 

it did not get rid of all of them and did not allow the U.S. or the 

U.K. free unfettered access to its web of military as well as civilian 

BW sites, because those are the ones that have been mentioned 

today, and that Mr. Putin, like all his antecedents, would never 

give up such a key strategic military and diplomatic card, it is not 

unreasonable for a concerned citizen to ask you to examine following questions: When many of the Biopreparat sites were abandoned or downgraded, what happened to the biological material 

being worked on at those places? What happened to the experimental results from the Biopreparat institutes? What happened to 

the policies and tactical and strategic plans for the use of the many 

types of weapons that were developed? What has been happening 

at the Russian Ministry of Defense military biological weapons 

sites in the past 18 years? What happened to the weapon strains 

of the various BW agents? What happened to military launch vehicles? What happened to plans dealing with every aspect of production and deployment? What happened to the bioregulator program? 

What happened to the R&D centered on anticrop, antiplant, and 

antilivestock biological weapons? What happened to the stocks of 

seed cultures of biological weapons agents designed to be used to 

fuel a mobilized production of weapons? And there are a number 

of other questions. 

Finally, biological weapons are not weapons of mass destruction. 

It is an epithet coined, you many not be surprised to hear, by the 

Soviets back in the 1960s, no doubt to obscure future discussion 

and negotiation by lumping them in the basket with nuclear weapons at a time when their possession was still legal. In fact, they 

comprise a complete suite of possibilities for killing or injuring or 

disabling humans, animals, plants as a means to achieve politically 

sanctioned ends, just as the panoply of conventional weapons can 

within a purely ballistic context. However, they are distinguished 

in at least one particular respect from true weapons of mass destruction on one hand and conventional weapons on the other; they 

can be used for strategic purposes without damaging materiel infrastructure. 

Therefore, with Mr. Putin in power in Russia, it would be as well 

for the United States to stop ignoring ‘‘the elephant’’ and address 

30

these unanswered questions. There is now nothing to be lost and 

everything to be gained by doing so. Thank you for your listening. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. A little bit longer than 5 minutes. 

Dr. DAVIS. I am sorry. I didn’t have a watch. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, it was London time. That was it. 

Dr. DAVIS. I am jet lagged. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Davis follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. And finally, we have Mr. Leitenberg with us 

and our last witness. 

Now, there will be some votes coming up, so we want to get moving as fast as we can, but Mr. Leitenberg, you may proceed with 

your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF MR. MILTON LEITENBERG, SENIOR RESEARCH 

SCHOLAR, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AND SECURITY 

STUDIES AT MARYLAND, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 

Mr. LEITENBERG. Thank you very much, and thank you, Congressman Rohrabacher and Congressman Keating. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Make sure you talk real close to that mike. 

Mr. LEITENBERG. I am sorry, I had not pushed the green button. 

Thank you for having me to testify. 

I will try and be a little briefer. I think a large part of Christopher’s elephant is in there or as much as we could pack into 900 

pages, so I think a substantial number of the questions that he 

asked are in fact answerable, and perhaps I will find a moment to 

do that. 

I submitted a statement, which is simply a precis of the book but 

I will try and make my remarks a bit broader and speak about 

three things: A little bit about the Soviet program and what is left 

of it because an important part of the book concerned the U.S. and 

the British Government efforts to get President Yeltsin—President 

Gorbachev, first—General Secretary Gorbachev, President Gorbachev, then President Yeltsin to put an end to that program, and we 

failed, both the U.S. and the British Governments failed in that, 

and that is gone into. There is 150 pages in the book describing 

that, and in substantial detail. 

So I will say a little bit about the Soviets and the Russians, and 

then I want to say something about the biological threat currently 

to the United States from state and nonstate actors, since that has 

been mentioned by both of the introductory remarks. Finally, I 

want to say something about the Biological Weapons Convention 

and verification and compliance 

Quickly to the remnants of the Soviet BW program existing in 

Russia today. There are three reasons to be concerned about what 

is in Russia. The first of which was referred to, is that the Russian 

foreign ministry and Ministry of Defense took part in negotiations, 

but it was essentially the Ministry of Defense that destroyed what 

was called the ‘‘Trilateral Negotiations’’ between 1993 and 1996, 

and it was not accepted by either our Government or the British 

Government. Secretary Christopher was going to Moscow, other 

senior U.S. officials, then Lynn Davis was going to Moscow. We 

kept on. I quote President Clinton’s letter to President Yeltsin in 

1995, we were pressing—and the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission 

took this up. We were pressing this issue, but the Russians ran the 

negotiations into the ground. I haven’t time to deal with it, but 

they did. It was not our undoing. It was theirs. 

Second, as a corollary of that, which was also mentioned, the 

three Ministry of Defense facilities have never been visited by anybody from any other country to this day. They are closed. We don’t 

know what they are doing. They may or may not have an active 

37

offensive program. I presume they do. I do not believe that the U.S. 

Government thinks they are producing and stockpiling agents anymore, but we don’t know that. 

The third thing is President Putin. There was a very surprising 

occurrence in February and March 2012, and I will read this: ‘‘In 

a somewhat bizarre development in February/March 2012, Putin 

and then Russian Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov publicly 

referred to 28 tasks that Putin had established for the Russian 

Ministry of Defense in order to prepare for threats for the future.’’ 

Putin wrote that Russia needed to be prepared for ‘‘quick and effective response to new challenges,’’ and one of the tasks that Putin 

specified was ‘‘the development of weapons based on new physical 

principles, radiation, geophysical, wave, genetic, and psychophysical, et cetera.’’ Genetic can only mean one thing. That would 

be a violation of the Biological Weapons Convention. The others 

happen to be a violation of one of Brezhnev’s favorite arms control 

treaties that the Russians fought for 4 years called the ‘‘Hostile 

Use of Environmental Modification Technologies,’’ signed May 18th, 

1977, and entered into force on October 5th, 1978. 

So all of the things that Putin rattled off would be in violation 

of either the Biological Weapons Convention or what is called the 

ENMOD Treaty. 

Two or three short other points, because they were raised in various remarks and questions. We do not believe that any agents or 

weapons from the Soviet program went out of the Soviet Union or 

Russia to either other states or nonstate actors. There is one possible exception to this, but I don’t think you are really asking about 

that. If you go back to the Reagan administration and the ‘‘YellowRain’’ accusations that the Soviet Union had transferred what were 

called mycotoxins, trichothecene mycotoxins, to Vietnam to use 

against Hmong and Meo tribesmen, which had fought for the U.S. 

This is after 1975, between 1976 and 1982. That has never been 

resolved. The U.S. Department of State to this day maintains those 

claims. Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, and Australia did their 

own chemical analyses and could not verify the U.S. claims, and 

most of the arms control community does not believe those allegations, but except for that story, if you segregate that out, we do not 

believe that any agents went out of the Soviet program anywheres. 

Secondly, because it is in Amy’s testimony, she actually has a 

better summary of the Soviet program than I wrote, she refers to 

genetic engineering. The entire post-1972 Soviet BW program was 

to adapt molecular genetics to do what the classical early program 

from 1945 to 1972 had not succeeded in doing: To insert antibiotic 

resistance, and to change the antigenic structure on the organism 

so that you fool vaccines and things like that. 

Their development program succeeded in that, but that happened 

between 1984, 1985, and 1990. Pasechnik—Vladimir Pasechnik 

came out in October 1989. By April/May 1990, the U.S. Government and the British Government were beating on Mr. Gorbachev’s 

head to put an end to this, and so those new agents were never 

produced and stockpiled. The Soviet stockpile was the classical old 

nongenetically modified agents. 

All right. The current biological weapons threat to the United 

States by state and nonstate actors. There are very few state BW 

38

programs. We have changed our notion from the 1970s, 1980s, that 

there were perhaps 10, 11, 12. In 2006, 2007, our Noncompliance 

statements drastically changed. We reduced that to five or six 

countries, and the phraseology about those five or six countries, 

even the ones that we still were worried about. There is Russia, 

question mark; there is China, also question mark; North Korea, 

probably; Iran, possibly; Israel, yes, but we don’t know what is left 

of it. You have five. We don’t know anything about stockpiles in 

these countries. We assume they have offensive programs, perhaps, 

but our compliance statements uses phraseology about capabilities 

in industrial infrastructure, pharmaceutical infrastructure, scientific capability. That would apply to all our NATO allies, all EU 

countries, and to the United States more than anyone else. So 

those are not criteria for an offensive BW program. So it is a big 

question mark. 

Nonstate actor programs or terrorists, there is no evidence that 

any state has ever given a nonstate actor biological weapons. As for 

the famous programs that were tried by the two major groups: 

First, the Aum Shinrikyo between 1990 and 1994. They never obtained a pathogen, an active pathogen to work with. They had a 

strain that is used for vaccination of animals, a vaccine strain. You 

can’t make a weapon out of that. It obviously doesn’t work. So they 

didn’t have anything of any kind to work with, and what little 

work they did was incompetent. 

The Al Qaeda program between 1997 to December 2001, and I 

am the person that got the papers declassified, the papers we found 

in Afghanistan, they, too, never obtained a pathogen to work with. 

There were two or three incompetent people that they trusted that 

they thought would do the laboratory work. They never got to their 

A, B, Cs. Neither of these two groups got to the first essentials of 

doing anything. 

All right. Now, let’s say something about compliance, and I want 

to use——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If you could summarize, please, because we 

are——

Mr. LEITENBERG. Well, I will be as quick as I can. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We are going to vote pretty soon. 

Mr. LEITENBERG. Dave Franz has as his second point, and I 

think it is quite important, ‘‘Verifying that any individual nation 

state is in compliance with the BWC is not possible.’’ That is true 

as an absolute, but it is not true in the real world. When 

UNSCOM, which Dave participated in, went to Iraq and there were 

teams of 10, 15 people, and there were disputes amongst them 

whether a particular Iraqi facility was an offensive one or a defensive one. There were such disputes, though Amy’s description of the 

early UNSCOM missions is very good. 

Nevertheless, they have also participated in trilateral inspections 

in Russia which began in August 1991 and lasted through 1995. I 

should be corrected if I am mistaken, but to my understanding, 

unanimously, all the members of the U.S. and British teams that 

went to those sites decided that they were looking at elements and 

infrastructure of an offensive BW program. As best I know, nobody 

disagreed with that. 

39

Therefore, you don’t know things absolutely, but if we had such 

people as went into the former Soviet Union in Russia from 1991 

to 1995 walking around the Russian Ministry of Defense facilities 

now, and if we had them walking around facilities in Iran, we 

would have a very much better idea of what was taking place in 

those places and whether they had an offensive BW program or 

not. I can add to this, but your red light is on. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. We do have time constraints here. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Leitenberg follows:]

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Mr. LEITENBERG. I would like to say something about the 

verification protocol if you can have that later. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I will yield to my colleague for his questions 

first, but go, go right ahead. 

Mr. KEATING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

You covered a lot of the ground in terms of the questions I had 

with the remarks, but I want to—part of it could be consensus, too. 

Let me hit a couple of issues. 

One, in terms of the more fundamental attacks and the types of 

biological weapons that could be put into place at a more fundamental basis. One of my concerns is, since this group’s publications 

like Inspire that are providing basic information, how to assemble 

a bomb, how to do this at home, are there biological weapons, more 

simplistic ones that can be manufactured more easily, and therefore, can some of that information be communicated over the internet by groups to disseminate it, how to formulate that now? And 

so if anyone wants to take a shot at that, I will allow them to. 

Dr. Franz, thank you, and thank you for your service to our 

country. 

Mr. FRANZ. I think that it is clear that—first, anything is possible, and as I said, I think proliferation of capabilities and technologies and knowledge is over. 

However, I think about tacit knowledge. Having spent a lot of 

time with some of our old bioweaponeers, it is a little bit like our 

mothers making biscuits without a recipe. There is more than just 

following a cookbook, and as Milton stated, those sub-state actors 

who have tried it have not really been very successful and not even 

been close. 

So I think that starting—I am probably concerned more about an 

insider scientist than I am about a terrorist becoming a scientist. 

I am also concerned about a terrorist organization recruiting scientists, which is certainly possible, but I think it is important to 

note that the—there is a big difference between what the Soviet 

Union was doing and what we were doing in our old offensive program, and what is possible, and it might even just be disruption, 

as you saw with the anthrax letters that we had here on the Hill 

in 2001. It was terribly disruptive, terribly expensive, and yet it 

was—it was gram quantities. 

So, it is—in a sense, you can say anything is possible, but it is—

I have spent my life trying to do good things with biology. It is also 

hard to do bad things with biology, to some degree. 

Mr. KEATING. Dr. Smithson. 

Ms. SMITHSON. One of the things that frustrates me is when I 

see someone go on TV, usually someone with scientific credentials, 

who says I can do this. Yes, perhaps they could, but each of these 

agents actually has different characteristics both in the fermenter 

and to disperse. So while you may be able to read things, in fact, 

can read things on the Web about fermentation of various biological agents, and there is information out there about dispersal, 

knowing what to use with which agent is going to be a considerable 

problem for any individual or group trying to master this. 

And Dave is exactly right about the tacit knowledge that goes 

into this equation. Inspire does indeed have some articles, as does 

the encyclopedia of Jihad, and there have been analyses done of a 

46

variety of cookbooks that individuals have published, and in almost 

each and every case, you will find that there are technical problems 

to what they recommend. 

The issue is that equipment is being deskilled. In other words, 

as more sophisticated equipment disperses around the world, and 

this has considerable benefit on the good side of science, but it will 

also make it perhaps easier for those with malevolent intent to do 

something bad with a pathogen, and that is because they won’t 

have to have as much of this tacit knowledge, the machine will do 

it for them. So we have got a point in the future where our problem 

will become more challenging, but right now, it is one where I 

think his description of an insider threat versus a terrorist that 

hasn’t scientific knowledge is very accurate. 

Mr. KEATING. It is more of a threat of obtaining it rather than 

creating it. 

Now, I think Mr. Leitenberg was going in this direction, and I 

want to ask him this question and all of you this question because——

Mr. LEITENBERG. I would like chip in on these—on this, too. 

Mr. KEATING. You can—let me get the question out. You can 

jump in and—please. But the—it is the issue of verification. Some 

of you have addressed that in your statements, but I want to get 

a sense here. Some of you say really it can’t be verified. There are 

different scales of how much can be verified. I just want to quickly, 

our panel to discuss how well can we verify some of this, because 

if we can’t or if it is near impossible, then that is good to know as 

a starting point because if we are going into the 2016 review conference and—it would be good to know because that will be discussed, I am sure, there, but if it is a discussion that is going nowhere, I would like your opinions on that. Verification, how well 

can we do it? 

Mr. LEITENBERG. Can I first say something about the previous 

discussion? I want to make three short points to my colleagues. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Answer that one and then go right into your 

points. 

Mr. LEITENBERG. Okay. This is——

Mr. FRANZ. Let me respond to Milton’s comment about my comments. I stand by my statement that we—that it is impossible to 

verify compliance. I can’t assure you that any country is not doing 

anything contravening the Biological Weapons Convention, and I 

stand by that. 

He talked about my time in Iraq and my time in Russia. In Iraq, 

the problem was trying to figure out if it was an offensive program 

or if it was a legitimate program. It was this dual use issue that 

was really hard, and they were pretty good at hiding things, so we 

had to sort through that, and eventually, we learned from people—

and Amy knows this story better than I do, even though I was 

there—from people with regard to what they were doing. 

In Russia, there was no question that in my eyes that we were—

when I walked into Obolensk, this was an offensive program. I had 

lived and was running a vaccine development facility here in this 

country, a biodefense facility, and it was nothing like that. So I had 

no question that that was an offensive program, but I can’t verify 

either that it is ongoing or that had stopped. That is a—that is the 

47

issue with regard to verification. It is not that you can’t walk into 

a country or a facility and have some sense, but verifying compliance, I believe, is not possible. 

Mr. KEATING. All right. Thank you. Appreciate that. 

Mr. Leitenberg, would you like to follow up on that? 

Mr. LEITENBERG. Well, I think we should probably stick with the 

verification for the moment then, and I will try and come back if 

I can to the earlier question. 

How well can we verify? Much better. One can never know more 

by not having on-site inspection than by having it. In other words, 

you are not going to learn more by not getting in the front door 

than you will if you got in the front door. I mean, that is—there 

is no way in the world that I can understand that any differently. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. That makes sense, yes. 

Mr. LEITENBERG. Now, in publications going back to 1996, I have 

used a five-page list of criteria that were developed at after 

AFMIC, the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Command, if I remember. In other words, our BW intelligence community had 

drawn up under five different categories, if you walked into a site 

or if you looked at the site and then inside and how it was managed and how its economics were run, they had five sets of criteria 

with six or seven points under each one that would help you distinguish between a facility that was doing offensive BW work and a 

facility that was doing none, that was doing defensive BW work. 

Again, I agree with Dave, nothing is absolute, but you—you get 

closer and closer, you hone in. I also, since 1970, have written a 

successive group of studies, and there is a chapter in the book 

which I repeated again in terms of the Soviet program specifically, 

can you tell the difference in the laboratory—in laboratory, not in 

a production facility but at the level of the science in the laboratory, can you tell the difference between work that is offensive and 

work that is defensive? It is an extremely intricate question, but 

I think you can or you can get a good way toward it. Now, you 

asked about——

Mr. KEATING. Real quick, if I could. I got the thrust of my question answered. That being that, forensically, you can go back and 

determine that in terms of verification. It is just not something 

that could be done, but if I could, just because I don’t want to—

we do—we are up against the rollcall, I would like to yield back 

to the chair, and you could follow up in his questioning some of 

that. I want to make sure the chair has the chance. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. What are the positive—why would someone 

want to develop these things for positive reasons? I mean, is it—

keep getting this word ‘‘positive’’ in there. Is there a development 

of a chemical biological agent for something other than hurting 

somebody and killing people? We have just tried to create a dichotomy here between different substances. It would seem to me that 

we are talking about a human endeavor that is in and of itself evil. 

Ms. SMITHSON. Pathogens are studied by legitimate scientists in 

order to find cures for diseases, to develop antivirals, and antibiotics, and so it is this thin area of what is—what is a good medical use, and where has this knowledge been distorted and used for 

military purposes? 

48

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Correct me if I am wrong, but that would be 

a very limited, very small operation as compared to something 

where you are trying to create a weapons system. 

Ms. SMITHSON. And that is the scale that Dr. Franz referred to. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is miniscule compared to major production. 

Ms. SMITHSON. I have been upstairs in Obolensk as well, and it 

hit me across the face that this was no legitimate pharmaceutical 

activity because of the scale of the high containment area there. So, 

indeed, in some cases, you can tell right away, not just by the physical infrastructure, but there are likely to be questions that you 

want to ask that are hard questions about, what are you doing here 

that is different from what you say you are doing here? And that 

is the crux of the verification methodology that the industry experts put forward in their monitoring proposal for the BWC, and 

they describe which areas of a facility that you would go to in order 

to get the best information and how you can monitor things just 

by looking at the documentation. 

And in Iraq, there were many things that they found just in the 

documentation that were both incriminating in some cases, and on 

other facilities, it was very clear that they were engaged in legitimate activity, whether it was baking bread, making beer or, indeed, making medicines. So you can tell the difference. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Leitenberg’s point that there is certainly 

no way that you are going to learn less by having someone go into 

one of those situations. But it seems to me that, well, when people 

did go into this in Iraq, did you find that people working on these 

positive type of chemical biological projects, or was this all the 

total——

Mr. FRANZ. No, we didn’t at Al Hakum or Al Manal or at other 

places, but we did at Samarra drug industries, for example. We 

looked at a lot of places. There were just a handful that were used 

as negative. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Used as what? 

Mr. FRANZ. Uses for the weapons program, I am sorry. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And the rest of them were used for? 

Mr. FRANZ. And many of these were used for their biopharmaceutical industry, food industry; it was very common. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. There are go. I learned something. 

Mr. LEITENBERG. Different sites, different sites. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right. Different sites. Let me ask you this 

about—a vote has been called, and the chair plans to try to finish 

the questions up in the next 5 minutes, and we will have to call 

an end to the hearing. Let me go real quickly. 

The Nunn-Lugar, the effect of Nunn-Lugar, some indicated to me 

that Nunn-Lugar had a major impact of reducing the stockpiles of 

chemical-biological weapons in the former Soviet Union, but what 

happened is that the actual weapons were systems that were upgraded. And we were actually paying for upgrading the weapons 

systems there. 

Mr. LEITENBERG. The Nunn-Lugar program has done much to 

get rid of the Soviet chemical weapons stockpile. It did nothing to 

get rid of the Soviet biological weapons stockpile, because we and 

the British believed that they got rid of the stockpile between late 

49

1989 and perhaps mid-1991 by themselves. Part of that stockpile 

we then redug up twice, because it was buried on this 

Vozrozhdeniya Island. It was anthrax, and it wasn’t decontaminated very well. We didn’t want anybody to get it, so we dug it up 

twice and re-decontaminated—so, yes, that was probably paid for 

by Nunn-Lugar. But in other words, the Russians got rid of their 

stocks initially by themselves. 

Now the answer to Chris’ questions, where are those cultures? 

Where are all the protocols? They are unquestionably sitting in the 

Ministry of Defense, the Russian Ministry of Defense in the old 

15th Directorate that was simply renamed. It now has to do with 

biodefense; all they did was change the title. In the early years, 

they kept all the same people. And they are no doubt sitting there. 

Well, we saved our cultures in our own type culture collections. 

We saved 6,000 classified documents. We had a big team sitting at 

Fort Detrick in USAMRIID for 21⁄2 years I think it was looking at 

16,000—17,000 documents deciding which would be sequestered 

and kept and which would be released to the public. 

There is no question that the Russians kept their documentation 

and their protocols. We don’t think they destroyed that. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Do you think—again, we are hearing about 

a dichotomy about the type of offensive system versus a nonoffensive system of earlier weapons. How can you make that distinction? 

I am trying to figure that out? 

Dr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman, a confusion has occurred I think in semantics here. We are only talking about weapons. We are not talking about good weapons, bad weapons. We are talking about weapons. And somewhere along the line, we used the terms positive and 

negative. The positive thing was about the use of biological agents 

for illness in treatment, et cetera, et cetera. Antibiotics or those 

kinds of things. Molecular biology. That is one side. That is the 

plus biology side. The negative biology side is what you do to make 

weapons. 

I would just say, adding quickly here, following the comments 

that have been made. When you look at verification, you look at biological weapons, you are not talking about a single process, if you 

like. The process of production has changed enormously. I was the 

first man into Obolensk in January 1991, and it was a massive facility. I was the guy inside the explosive chamber with the incident 

and all the rest of it, and we had a bag full of intelligence to go 

in with. We knew exactly the background, et cetera. 

Today, if you look at what is happening in the biotech industry, 

you can do what you did with something the size of this room with 

something much, much smaller. And that is where so many things 

on the production side have gone. The signature of what looks bad; 

what could be done with a small amount of materiel. 

The second thing is the other side of weapons is that, you know, 

it is no good simply having 5 liters of materiel. You actually have 

to disseminate that materiel in an effective fashion. That is where 

technique, technology and understanding occurs, and how to make 

biological agents into weapons. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. The point has been made earlier about the 

difference between a site that is involved with inventing and develVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:23 Jun 11, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_EEET\050714\87836 SHIRL
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oping a system versus a site that would be producing enough for 

a utilization as a weapon. 

Just one last point here then. Apparently, it looks like the 

United States went into this sincerely with an idea of trying to 

bring down the level of the threat of use of some sort of chemical 

biological agent on human beings. And that threat that posed all 

of human kind. And we stopped our production; the Soviets did not. 

But they became Russia. I take from the testimony that Russia is 

still producing chemical biological weapons. 

Mr. LEITENBERG. No, no, absolutely not. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. They just didn’t destroy what they had? 

Mr. LEITENBERG. We keep talking about an offensive and defensive program. First of all, there is no such thing as a defensive biological weapon. A defensive biological program means you make 

vaccines. You make pharmaceuticals, which is a chemical, rather 

than a vaccine. You make masks. You make suits. You make particular kinds of clothing. That is all defensive. That is legitimate 

under the convention. You can do that. 

There is no such thing as a defensive biological weapon. 

I forget what the other part of the question was at the very end. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I am going to give each of you 30 seconds to 

summarize, then we have to go vote. 

Mr. KEATING. The $64 billion, is that well spent? 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. You got 30 seconds to tell me whether or not 

you think this program has been a plus, minus, or what. You have 

30 seconds each because then we have to go vote. I am sorry. 

Ms. SMITHSON. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program has 

been a tremendous plus for U.S. And international security, not 

only because they dismantled actual weapons systems, nuclear and 

chemical weapons at Shchuchye, but because we went in with 

grant assistance for the former Soviet chemical biological and nuclear weapons at a point at which they were under or unemployed 

and we kept them gainfully employed so they would not——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Good point. 

Yes, sir? 

Mr. FRANZ. I have been actively involved in the Nunn-Lugar program since the beginning, and I am, as you can tell from my testimony, I am a real supporter of the people-to-people engagement. 

And I have close friends in Russia. I have close friends around the 

world, some of whom have worked in weapons programs in the past 

who no longer work in weapons programs. 

And I believe because it is very difficult—I think it is a lot different to send in an inspector to prove or disprove if that there is 

a weapons program in an organization or in a country than it is 

to make friends in that country and learn to know them well and 

even build trust. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. The program is a success, but the friendship 

is even better. 

Yes, sir, Mr. Davis? Dr. Davis. 

Dr. DAVIS. And I used to contract under CTR with Russia for a 

number of years. People on the ground that did the work, I thought 

it was an excellent program. I will make my final remark: ‘‘The elephant is still in the room.’’

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. 

51

Mr. LEITENBERG. Three answers to your question: Russia is not 

producing chemical weapons, at least we don’t think so. Under the 

OPCW, both the United States and Russia have now for 20 years 

been destroying their existing chemical weapons stocks. We are 

each down to the last—we are down to our last 7 or 10 percent. 

The Russians are about down to their last 15 or 20 percent. That 

is chemical weapons. 

Biological weapons, to the best of my knowledge, the U.S. Government doesn’t believe the Soviet Union is producing biological 

weapons. We are suspicious that they may be maintaining an offensive program in those three Ministry of Defense facilities, but we 

have no way to know. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And we should demand to see those facilities? 

Mr. LEITENBERG. Excuse me? 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We should demand to see those facilities. 

Mr. LEITENBERG. Oh, absolutely. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. There you go. Thank you all for testifying 

today. There will be a lot of people looking at what you have said, 

and this will spur a lot of conservation and talk on this issue, 

which was the purpose of this hearing. 

This hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:30 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(53)

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

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MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY MR. MILTON LEITENBERG, SENIOR RESEARCH SCHOLAR, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AND SECURITY STUDIES AT MARYLAND, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

[NOTE: The remaining pages are not reprinted here but are available in committee 

records.] 


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[NOTE: The remaining pages are not reprinted here but are available in committee 

records. This publication may also be accessed on the Internet at the following URL:

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/download.cfm?q=639] 


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RESPONSES FROM MR. MILTON LEITENBERG, SENIOR RESEARCH SCHOLAR, CENTER FOR

INTERNATIONAL AND SECURITY STUDIES AT MARYLAND, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, 

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY THE

HONORABLE GEORGE HOLDING, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE

OF NORTH CAROLINA


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