Biohazard
Subtitle: the chilling true story of the largest covert biological weapons program in the world, told from the inside by the man who ran it
By: Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman
Contributors: Handelman, Stephen
Edition: 1st ed
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 319
Subjects: Biological weapons -- Soviet Union
Description: For fifty years, while the world stood in terror of a nuclear war, Russian scientists hidden in heavily guarded secret cities refined and stockpiled a new kind of weapon of mass destruction - an invisible weapon that would strike in silence and could not be traced. It would leave hundreds of thousands dead in its wake and would continue to spread devastation long after its release. The scientists were bioweaponeers, working to perfect the tools of a biological Armageddon.

Ken Alibek began his career as a doctor wanting to save lives and ended up running the Soviet biological weapons program - a secret military empire masquerading as a pharmaceutical company. At its peak, the program employed sixty thousand people at over one hundred facilities.

Biohazard is a terrifying, fast-paced account of tests and leaks, accidents and disasters in the labs, KGB threats and assassinations. The book is full of revelations - evidence of biowarfare programs in Cuba and India, actual deployments at Stalingrad and in Afghanistan, experiments with mood-altering agents, a contingency plan to attack major American cities, and the true story behind the mysterious anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk.

But beyond these is a twisted world of lies and mirrors, and the riveting parable of the greatest perversion of science in history.
Notes: Includes index