5 Proliferation of Biological Weapons

On January 31, 1992, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), in the only session that it has ever held at the level of Heads of State or Government, produced a Final Declaration that stated:

The Proliferation of all weapons of mass destruction constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The members of the Council commit themselves to working to prevent the spread of technology related to the research for or production of such weapons and to take appropriate action to that end.

Three years earlier, in the year or two that US administrations began to release the names of states that it believed were engaged in offensive chemical or biological weapon programs, an Assistant Secretary of Defense offered the following assessment in Congressional testimony.

More nations possess chemical and biological weapons today than at any other time in history. The majority of these nations acquired their chemical weapons after the United States began its moratorium on chemical weapons production and testing in the late 1960s. Some are acquiring long-range delivery systems suitable for chemical and biological warheads. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention prohibits possession of biological weapons, but we know of at least ten countries with BW programs. Most of the ten are signatories to the convention. CW and BW proliferation has occurred and continues.[1]

To take a closer look at biological weapons proliferation in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the following questions should be addressed.

· How many nations have sought to acquire BW since 1972?

· Which ones?

· How advanced are or were their BW programs?

· Do we have any idea of why these programs were initiated?

· Is there any likelihood that ongoing programs could be reversed and closed down?

Official US 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. Beginning in 1989, testimony to Congress by senior US government officials and the annual Non-Compliance statement by the administration to Congress specifically identified these states by name.

These statements additionally noted that some of the states listed were signatories of the BTWC. Israel and South Africa, however, were never mentioned or listed. Israel is omitted from annual US arms control non-compliance statements because it has neither signed nor ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It is also omitted entirely in the US Department of Defense=s annual report on proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Proliferation: Threat and Response. No mention whatsoever is made of Israel; in fact, it is not even listed among countries in the report=s Middle East section. In any case, what this means is that since Israel is not a BTWC signatory, it is technically not in Anon- compliance,@ whatever the status of its BW program may be. However, it is clear that South Africa maintained an offensive BW program in the past, and Israel did so as well, and presumably continues to do so. (See Table 1.)

In November 1997, the Director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) increased the US estimate to 12 nations (in the course of a statement to negotiating states to the BTWC in Geneva), although the additional two states have never been identified by US officials. In July 2001, US governmental officials stated that thirteen countries now had offensive BW programs.

The number is therefore twelve, and not sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, as are sometimes found in the press. These are offensive biological weapons programs, which the BTWC prohibits, but it does not in all cases mean regular production of biological weapon agents, the storage of stockpiles, or the possession of weapons. Official US or British government statements have further been confounded by the inclusion of caveats such as Asuspected@, Adeveloping@ or Acapable of@. We have only one example in the public record of what the scale of these differences may be, and that statement is ten years old and pertained to chemical weapons. At the same time as US government officials were routinely saying that Aabout 20" nations had chemical weapons Acapability,@ the Director of ACDA told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 24, 1989, that apart from the US and the USSR A...no more than a handful, five or six@ actually possessed a stockpile of chemical weapons.@ In the case of biological weapons, there are no equivalent statements in the public record. However in 1994, two senior US government officials stated in private meetings that no nation was then known to be producing and stockpiling BW agents. This was five years after US officials had publicly identified the ten nations having offensive biological weapons programs. In the years since 1994, official US statements have identified Iran as producing BW agents.

Accurate understanding has been further complicated, and continues to be so, in statements by official US government spokesmen in 1997 and 1998, that provide a single number grouping together nations with biological or chemical weapon programs. In October 1998, Richard Clarke continued the policy of US officials announcing confusing assessments, even including nuclear weapons in one single tally. In his remarks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he observed that ATwenty-two countries, however, do possess them, if you consider biological weapons, chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons to be weapons of mass destruction.@

On the other hand, statements of denial by various nations carry very little credibility in this field. The USSR did not admit to possessing chemical munitions until 1987. Indian officials denied for decades that their country possessed chemical munitions; they even claimed that their government had never so much as considered obtaining them. This past year, under the terms of being a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, India declared its chemical weapons stocks. The government of Iraq lied for years about its production and possession of biological weapons stocks and delivery systems, and every indication is that they continue to lie about it.

As to how far offensive national BW programs have been carried out by different states, the relevant bits of information available in the US Non-Compliance documents and in the 1993 Russian Foreign Intelligence Report, as well as several estimates of my own, have been compiled in the summary shown in Table 2. It should be noted that US Department of Defense issues of Proliferation: Threat and Response do not identify specific BW agents produced by either Iran or North Korea. Testimony at the unclassified level by the Directors of the CIA and DIA has also omitted any reference to specific agents. Only the 1993 Russian FIS Report identified specific agents for North Korea. (It has proved impossible to corroborate various statements made in 1999 by US DOD officials, and in the Defense White Papers of South Korea and Japan, regarding numbers of different BW agents, or their identities, allegedly possessed by North Korea.)

There are two or three other sources that can be presumed to have access to classified (US) information or to US government sources that have added the names of one or two countries that are not identified in the official US government catalogues of states maintaining offensive BW programs:

In 1994, a Congressional Research Service report included a table of nations either possessing or having “programs” of weapons of mass destruction. For biological weapons it listed Russia as the only nation with “possession confirmed,” Iraq as “clear intent” (which, by 1994, should also have been in the “confirmed” column), China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Taiwan, Iran and Syria as “probable possession” and Egypt and Libya as “suspected programs.” The interesting – or anomalous – listings are of India and Pakistan, which have not otherwise been included in any unclassified US listings.[2]
In an October 1999 monograph, Major William King listed the following countries as having “identified BW programs:” China, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Taiwan. He gave as the source “Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Worldwide Threat Brief 22.”[3]
In a 1997/2000 publication of the US National Defense University, there appeared the following statement: “Iran, Iraq, Syria, Cuba, China, and North Korea, among others, are believed to have active biological weapons programs, and in the case of Iran and Iraq, at least to have weaponized BW agents. Other countries such as India, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt, Argentina and Brazil may be pursuing BW.”[4]

Evidence of Transfer of Technology or of Personnel

There is unquestionable evidence that Iran has been attempting to recruit Russian scientists who had previously worked in the USSR’s BW program, as well as some in now-independent former Soviet republics. Work in the former USSR on plant and animal pathogens was carried out in the institutes of the Ministry of Agriculture. Iran has succeeded in recruiting some scientists who worked in the former Soviet BW program, including some from Ministry of Agriculture institutes. In 1997, an Iranian delegation visited the All-Russian Institute of Phytopathology in Golotsino, and three of the institute’s scientists reportedly did “travel to Teheran” for an unidentified length of time.”[5] An invitation to the Deputy Director of the Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov Institute in Moscow “…to visit Iran to discuss possible ‘future collaboration’ “ came form the “deputy chief of a research organization in Iran’s Agriculture Ministry” (which would not necessarily mean that the intended collaboration concerned anti-plant or anti-animal pathogens.) A more recent press report states that “Iran…continues to recruit such talent [former Soviet BW scientists] with some success, American and Russian officials agree.”[6]

As regards the US, in an interview with a US journalist, Dr. William Patrick described an approach to “a then friendly” government that he and several colleagues made after the 1972 closing of Fort Detrick and the US offensive BW program. The US government stepped in to end the contact.[7] Ironically, the government in question was very probably Iran.

As for the motives for national BW development programs, Table 3 indicates that every nation that has embarked on an offensive BW program has also sought or has produced either chemical weapons or nuclear weapons, or both.

There are several important additional points that should be noted in this section:

C None of the national BW programs cited above are new. They all date back about 15 years or more.

C One, South Africa=s (which apparently was responsible for low-level BW use outside its own borders), was discontinued, as was the South African nuclear weapons program, immediately prior to the end of the apartheid government.

C There is no available evidence of the transfer of BW agent cultures from the former USSR or from Russian laboratories since 1992 to other countries of BW proliferation concern.

C There has also been minimal dispersion of researchers from former Soviet BW facilities to countries of concern. The total number of such individuals who emigrated from Russia (as of late 1997) was small, and of those, 90 percent became employed in the United States, Western Europe or Israel. That leaves a very small number who moved to other countries, and some of those countries were also not of BW proliferation concern.

Information is extremely sparse regarding the decisions, doctrines, or motivations behind the inception of national BW programs. However, it quickly becomes clear that even a brief look at the programs that one knows of in the 20^th century provides substantial information. The paper already emphasized that all the states with BW programs in the post-WWII period developed at least two of the WMD systems (C and B) and frequently all three (N, C, and B). But looking again at what we know (rather than theoretical speculation), one sees the following:

A. Pre-1945

Germany, World War I, use of anthrax and glanders in an attempt to intervene in the transport of draft animals (horses) so as to damage allied logistics. (If it turns out that the allegation by Alibek of Soviet use of glanders in Afghanistan in 1982 is correct, the purpose was exactly the same.)

Germany and France, late 1930s, potato beetle: to degrade the food crops of the enemies’ civilian population.

Japan, WWII, extensive use in China and elsewhere in the Pacific theatre, but not against US or other allied combat forces; essentially against civilian urban populations (and ineffective).

UK (and US, Canada), WWII, extensive R&D program; anti-personnel anthrax bomb cancelled in last year of war, but anti-animal anthrax-cattle cakes prepared for use in Germany. The US also prepared for an anticipated use of an anti-plant (rice) agent should a land invasion of Japan take place, however using a herbicide and not a biological agent.

USSR, program begun in late 1920s, continued through WWII, emphasized typhus and plague.

B. Post-WWII

UK, US, USSR: all evolutionary continuation of WWII programs

Israel: As early as April 1948, Ben Gurion directed one of his operatives in Europe (Ehud Avriel) to seek out surviving East European Jewish scientists who could “either increase the capacity to kill masses or to cure masses: both things are important.” At that time, that “capacity” meant chemical and biological weapons. This was some eight years before the formal inception of Israel’s development of nuclear weapons, but the basic conception was presumably similar. These were ultimate weapons that could be used either for offense or defense (and the context of the immediate military operations, as well as those that had preceded it, would be the critical factors in that categorization).

Iraq: BW program began around 1975, and was clearly located in an effort to obtain all three WMD, for offensive purposes. Chemical munitions were used by Iraq during the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war, which was begun by Iraq.

BW (and CW) programs initiated by other Arab/Middle East states: These are routinely assumed to have been counters to Israel’s development of nuclear weapons.

South Africa: The BW program was initiated a few years after beginning the CW program in 1981. It was an offensive program with very untraditional, anti-domestic population political motives in its chemical weapons counterpart.

Iran: BW program initiated in 1984, during the Gulf war. Since Iraq was only using chemical agents at that time, it is possible that Iran had obtained intelligence information of the Iraqi BW program. Otherwise it is difficult to see why Iran should have initiated a BW program at the same time as it initiated a CW program.

Following the 1990-1991 Gulf war, and only after the United States had faced an antagonist (in the Middle East) capable of using both C and B weapons in combat, did analysts working in US Department of Defense institutions begin to elaborate conceptions of presumed “asymmetric” utilities for operational use of C and B weapons against overwhelming US conventional forces. (DOD “Counterproliferation” Initiative, Roberts/IDA, Douglas/NDU).

To deter US intervention overall;

To threaten regional allies of the United States that permitted airbases or port facilities on their territory;

To make such facilities unusable by operational attack against them using C or B munitions;

To attack Israel and thus complicate the collaboration of Mideast Arab allies of the United States in military operations against the state in question.

These considerations had quite significant repercussions, affecting the Clinton administration’s 1996 review of US doctrine for potential use of nuclear weapons. The possible use of nuclear weapons to counter either use of chemical or biological weapons against US forces in combat was deliberately phrased in ambiguous terms, ostensibly leaving open the possibility, even in contravention of US non-use security guarantees under the NPT.

After the mid-1995 Aum Shinrikyo events in Tokyo, “Bioterrorism” against peacetime US domestic targets became the overriding concern, attended by a campaign of sustained exaggeration. It has resulted in very sizable expenditure and efforts, and this concern is currently being extended to include “bioterrorism” using anti-crop and anti-animal agents in the US.

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