Soviet Union's Bio-Chemical Threat
By Amy Smithson

My task today is to cover things chemical and biological, and whether or not they are leaking out of the former Soviet Union. So, to begin with, I would like to provide a thumbnail sketch of what the former chemical and biological weapons programs of the USSR consisted of.

In the bio-field, you have probably heard a few things lately. The thumbnail sketches: they weaponized over fifty diseases, including small pox, anthrax, and plague. Two of them, and this is a quiz, which two are contagious? Not anthrax! They manufactured tons of those agents and put them on top of ICBMs pointed at Western population centers. According to Ken Alibek, who is the most senior defector from this program, they also engaged in research to cross the properties of diseases, and create what are called "carmara" agents. Superbugs. We don't know how far they got with that.

There were over fifty institutes, populated with roughly 65,000 scientists and technicians engaged in this work. Not only did they work in anti-human agents, they worked in anti-cropping and anti-livestock agents as well. It was the most prodigious biological weapons program ever established. Heaven forbid we ever see something else like that come along.

In the chemical weapons area, as Paul Walker was discussing, essentially Russia has declared, under the chemical weapons convention, a chemical stockpile of 40,000 metric tons, of which over 80% is composed of nerve agents. Thanks to a very brave man, Dr. Vil Mirzayanov, a twenty-six-year veteran of this program, we know that they also researched, developed, tested, and produced in small quantities an entirely new generation of nerve agents, known as the "novichok" agents. In fact, we have Irene Goldman here and her colleague, Gail Kolby, who have had a lot to do with rescuing Vil from dire circumstances. He was arrested, thrown in jail, and put on trial for revealing state secrets, although he never did that. He simply stood up and blew the whistle on a program that the Soviet government never admitted.

Let me give you some numbers to think about. When it comes to the critical number of weaponiers who could pose a proliferation risk if they went to help another government, or a terrorist group, the number associated with nuclear weaponiers is 2,000. Critical proliferation risk weaponiers. The Russian and the U.S. governments agree on this. Chemical weaponiers, 3,500. Bio weaponiers, conservative estimate is 7,000 critical proliferation risk weaponiers. I've interviewed a number of both the chemical and biological weaponiers.

After Moscow had its encounter with terrorism--remember the apartment bombings?--they began to take U.S. suggestions that they not cooperate with possible terrorists very seriously. In fact, one of the things they mentioned to me most frequently was that terrorism is our common enemy. Even before that, they said no to the Japanese cult, Aum Shinri Kyo, which did knock on institute doors, asking for weapons materials and cookbooks. So we can take some comfort in the fact that they were observing some boundaries. But we do know that some weaponiers in the biological side of the house have gone to Iran and Iraq, probably also China and North Korea as well. I interviewed weaponiers who knew the individuals who have gotten these invitations to teach. We don't know exactly what they have shared. And it may be that way for quite some time. We also know from Vil that there was probably chemical cooperation with Syria.

To the rescue come Senators Nunn and Lugar, just discussed. Thank them, thank them, thank them, thank them, for the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. Otherwise we would not have any fingers in the dyke. I'd like to spend the remaining time talking about a sub-set of these programs that are aimed at preventing brain drain from these weapons institutes. The goal of these programs is to keep the scientists gainfully employed, and to help them make the transition to using their science for peaceful purposes. It's not an easy transition to make, because they have a lot to learn in terms of Western laboratory and manufacturing standards and practices. And there are programs that aim to help them scale this learning curve so that they can put their science to peaceful uses.

In 1994, the International Science and Technology Center started to make its first grants to former weaponiers. There is a sister organization in Ukraine, called the Science and Technology Center, operating out of Kia. There is another program called the Initiative for Proliferation Prevention, which has a sub-set of work in the chemical and biological areas, as well as the Civilian Research and Development Foundation. I diagrammed this set of activities, which has three different funding streams, not only cooperative threat reduction, but there's a chunk of the Department of Energy budgets that go into this. Also, the Freedom Support Act, which goes to the State Department. And the map looks something like a plate of spaghetti. It's a rather Byzantine organization, but they've been doing some very good work.

Let me give you an idea of the imbalance that I've found when I looked at how the programs were working. From 1994 to the middle of 1999, the total that was spent on grants in chemistry--the average annual total of grants to weaponiers, to keep them gainfully employed and doing peaceful research--was $1.37 million per year. The total average annual total of grants in biology was $2.4 million across all four of these programs. That works out to be respectively 0.0051% of the Pentagon's budget. On the biological side it's 0.0013%. Now long before our recent encounter with letters laced with anthrax, there were policymakers in Washington saying "we need to do something to prevent the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons." Which is why I wrote a report called "Toxic Archipelago," and if you would like to see more in-depth discussion of all of this, it's on the Stimson website (www.stimson.org). I've been begging for money for these programs now for years, and I hope somebody's finally starting to listen. Because, quite frankly, the poverty level in Russia hovers around $37 dollars per month. The Japanese and the Western Europeans, who also support these programs, are putting even less into these programs than we are. Is it enough, all together, to keep the critical proliferation risk chemical and biological weaponiers gainfully employed? Not even close, much less to allow them to support a small family. These people used to be the most privileged, elite, especially in the bio-side of the house, in Russia. This program was buried deep.

The Soviets were proud of their nuclear weapons. They still don't talk very much about their bio program. There are still a lot of things they do not concede. I would actually have to differ a bit with Paul Walker's assessment that we have their complete cooperation, even on the chemical side of the house. Remember that they have not coughed up the novichok program yet either. There are a number of hard-liners who remain in key positions of power who would probably like to retain this capability or have other personal interests at stake. So we can use a little bit more cooperation on their side of the Atlantic, and we can certainly use more money in these programs on our side of the Atlantic.

How much does it cost to develop, test, and deploy a new gas mask for American troops? $380 million. It's a lot cheaper to address proliferation at its source, than it is to try to create defenses against this. A lot of Americans have become aware of this, now that you hear about smallpox and other diseases on the nightly news. In fact, we went all anthrax all the time, for a while. They're briefly putting more money into these programs, getting the former weaponiers and working on cures for these diseases, instead of making them into weapons of war. Getting their chemists working on environmental remediation and other tasks, which their science is well-suited for, is a no brainer. I'm not about robbing Peter to pay Paul here. I'm not saying we should take money away from the programs that are going to keep the nuclear and missiles weaponiers gainfully employed [as opposed to those whose expertise is in producing chemical and biological agents.] I'm just saying "let's put some more money in this, instead of chump change."

Another thing we need to do is to get more money into the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to enhance the security around these sites. I wrote a piece in 1995 highlighting the security problems that Paul Walker described at the chemical weapons storage sites. There have been funds put into enhancing security at those sites since then. But we're only working at present at two or three of the bio-weapons institutes to enhance the security there. For those who may not know, a biological C-culture of smallpox is as small as my little finger, and that's the size of the vile. But you can actually smuggle it out in the white part of my little fingernail, that's how small it would need to be. We're probably never going make a place smuggle-proof; our top laboratories are not smuggle-proof. But we can certainly enhance the security and the accountability around these sites.

We can also put more money again into helping these people convert their science into peaceful uses. We've got no time to waste. This is by far the richest talent pool of chemical and biological weapons expertise in the world. Terrorists might have a difficult time figuring out how to do this on their own, but they could get a quantum leap forward if any of these weaponiers decided to cooperate. So, let's get to it. Thank you.

(Amy E. Smithson is currently a Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center and director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project.)

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