U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits

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http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/international/04GERM.html

SEP 04, 2001

U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

This article was reported and written by Judith , Engelberg

and J. Broad.

Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of

secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the

limits of the global treaty banning such weapons.

The 1972 treaty forbids nations from developing or acquiring weapons that

spread disease, but it allows work on vaccines and other protective

measures. Government officials said the secret research, which mimicked the

major steps a state or terrorist would take to create a biological arsenal,

was aimed at better understanding the threat.

The projects, which have not been previously disclosed, were begun under

President Clinton and have been embraced by the Bush administration, which

intends to expand them.

Earlier this year, administration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans

to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium

that causes anthrax, a deadly disease ideal for germ warfare.

The experiment has been devised to assess whether the vaccine now being

given to millions of American soldiers is effective against such a superbug,

which was first created by Russian scientists. A Bush administration

official said the National Security Council is expected to give the final

go-ahead later this month.

Two other projects completed during the Clinton administration focused on

the mechanics of making germ weapons.

In a program code-named Clear Vision, the Central Intelligence Agency built

and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb that agency officials

feared was being sold on the international market. The C.I.A. device lacked

a fuse and other parts that would make it a working bomb, intelligence

officials said.

At about the same time, Pentagon experts assembled a germ factory in the

Nevada desert from commercially available materials. Pentagon officials said

the project demonstrated the ease with which a terrorist or rogue nation

could build a plant that could produce pounds of the deadly germs.

Both the mock bomb and the factory were tested with simulants - benign

substances with characteristics similar to the germs used in weapons,

officials said.

A senior Bush administration official said all the projects were " fully

consistent " with the treaty banning biological weapons and were needed to

protect Americans against a growing danger. " This administration will pursue

defenses against the full spectrum of biological threats, " the official

said.

The treaty, another administration official said, allows the United States

to conduct research on both microbes and germ munitions for " protective or

defensive purposes. "

Some Clinton administration officials worried, however, that the project

violated the pact. And others expressed concern that the experiments, if

disclosed, might be misunderstood as a clandestine effort to resume work on

a class of weapons that President Nixon had relinquished in 1969.

Simultaneous experiments involving a model of a germ bomb, a factory to make

biological agents and the developoment of more potent anthrax, these

officials said, would draw vociferous protests from Washington if conducted

by a country the United States viewed as suspect.

Administration officials said the need to keep such projects secret was a

significant reason behind President Bush's recent rejection of a draft

agreement to strengthen the germ-weapons treaty, which has been signed by

143 nations.

The draft would require those countries to disclose where they are

conducting defensive research involving gene-splicing or germs likely to be

used in weapons. The sites would then be subject to international

inspections.

Many national security officials in both the Clinton and Bush

administrations opposed the draft, arguing that it would give potential

adversaries a road map to what the United States considers its most serious

vulnerabilities.

Among the facilities likely to be open to inspection under the draft

agreement would be the West Jefferson, Ohio, laboratory of the Battelle

Memorial Institute, a military contractor that has been selected to create

the genetically altered anthrax.

Several officials who served in senior posts in the Clinton administration

acknowledged that the secretive efforts were so poorly coordinated that even

the White House was unaware of their full scope.

The Pentagon's project to build a germ factory was not reported to the White

House, they said. President Clinton, who developed an intense interest in

germ weapons, was never briefed on the programs under way or contemplated,

the officials said.

A former senior official in the Clinton White House conceded that in

retrospect, someone should have been responsible for reviewing the projects

to ensure that they were not only effective in defending the United States,

but consistent with the nation's arms-control pledges.

The C.I.A.'s tests on the bomb model touched off a dispute among government

experts after the tests were concluded in 2000, with some officials arguing

that they violated the germ treaty's prohibition against developing weapons.

Intelligence officials said lawyers at the agency and the White House

concluded that the work was defensive, and therefore allowed. But even

officials who supported the effort acknowledged that it brought the United

States closer to what was forbidden.

" It was pressing how far you go before you do something illegal or immoral, "

recalled one senior official who was briefed on the program.

Public disclosure of the research is likely to complicate the position of

the United States, which has long been in the forefront of efforts to

enforce the ban on germ weapons.

The Bush administration's willingness to abandon the 1972 Antiballistic

Missile treaty has already drawn criticism around the world. And the

administration's stance on the draft agreement for the germ treaty has put

Washington at odds with many of its allies, including Japan and Britain.

The Original Treaty

During the cold war, both the United States and the Soviet Union produced

vast quantities of germ weapons, enough to kill everyone on earth.

Eager to halt the spread of what many called the poor man's atom bomb, the

United States unilaterally gave up germ arms and helped lead the global

campaign to abolish them. By 1975, most of the world's nations had signed

the convention.

In doing so, they agreed not to develop, produce, acquire or stockpile

quantities or types of germs that had no " prophylactic, protective or other

peaceful purposes. " They also pledged not to develop or obtain weapons or

other equipment " designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes

or in armed conflict. "

There were at least two significant loopholes: The pact did not define

" defensive " research or say what studies might be prohibited, if any. And it

provided no means of catching cheaters.

In the following decades, several countries did cheat, some on a huge scale.

The Soviet Union built entire cities devoted to developing germ weapons,

employing tens of thousands of people and turning anthrax, smallpox and

bubonic plague into weapons of war. In the late 1980's, Iraq began a crash

program to produce its own germ arsenal.

Both countries insisted that their programs were for defensive purposes.

American intelligence officials had suspected that Baghdad and Moscow were

clandestinely producing germ weapons. But the full picture of their efforts

did not become clear until the 1990's, after several Iraqi and Soviet

officials defected.

Fears about the spread of biological weapons were deepened by the rise of

terrorism against Americans, the great strides in genetic engineering and

the collapse of the Soviet Union, which left thousands of scientists skilled

in biological warfare unemployed, penniless and vulnerable to recruitment.

The threat disclosed a quandary: While the United States spent billions of

dollars a year to assess enemy military forces and to defend against

bullets, tanks, bombs and jet fighters, it knew relatively little about the

working of exotic arms it had relinquished long ago.

Designing a Delivery System

In the mid-1990's, the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies stepped up

their search for information about other nations' biological research

programs, focusing on the former Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq and Libya, among

others. Much of the initial emphasis was on the germs that enemies might use

in an attack, officials said.

But in 1997, the agency embarked on Clear Vision, which focused on weapons

systems that would deliver the germs.

Intelligence officials said the project was led by Gene , a senior

C.I.A. scientist who had long worked with some of the world's deadliest

viruses. Dr. was eager to understand the damage that Soviet

miniature bombs - bomblets, in military parlance - might inflict.

The agency asked its spies to find or buy a Soviet bomblet, which releases

germs in a fine mist. That search proved unsuccessful, and the agency

approved a proposal to build a replica and study how well it could disperse

its lethal cargo.

The agency's lawyers concluded that such a project was permitted by the

treaty because the intent was defensive. Intelligence officials said the

C.I.A. had reports that at least one nation was trying to buy the Soviet-

made bomblets.

A model was constructed and the agency conducted two sets of tests at

Battelle, the military contractor. The experiments measured dissemination

characteristics and how the model performed under different atmospheric

conditions, intelligence officials said. They emphasized that the device was

a " portion " of a bomb that could not have been used as a weapon.

The experiments caused concern at the White House, which learned about the

project after it was under way. Some aides to President Clinton worried that

the benefits did not justify the risks. But a White House lawyer led a joint

assessment by several departments that concluded that the program did not

violate the treaty, and it went ahead.

The questions were debated anew after the project was completed, this time

without consensus. A State Department official argued for a strict reading

of the treaty: the ban on acquiring or developing " weapons " barred states

from building even a partial model of a germ bomb, no matter what the

rationale.

" A bomb is a bomb is a bomb, " another official said at the time.

The C.I.A. continued to insist that it had the legal authority to conduct

such tests and, intelligence officials said, the agency was prepared to

reopen the fight over how to interpret the treaty. But even so, the agency

ended the Clear Vision project in the last year of the Clinton

administration, intelligence officials said.

Bill Harlow, the C.I.A. spokesman, acknowledged that the agency had

conducted " laboratory or experimental " work to assess the intelligence it

had gathered about biological warfare.

" Everything we have done in this respect was entirely appropriate,

necessary, consistent with U.S. treaty obligations and was briefed to the

National Security Council staff and appropriate Congressional oversight

committees, " Mr. Harlow said.

Breeding More Potent Anthrax

In the 1990's, government officials also grew increasingly worried about the

possibility that scientists could use the widely available techniques of

gene-splicing to create even more deadly weapons.

Those concerns deepened in 1995, when Russian scientists disclosed at a

scientific conference in Britain that they had implanted genes from Bacillus

cereus, an organism that causes food poisoning, into the anthrax microbe.

The scientists said later that the experiments were peaceful; the two

microbes can be found side-by-side in nature and, the Russians said, they

wanted to see what happened if they cross-bred.

A published account of the experiment, which appeared in a scientific

journal in late 1997, alarmed the Pentagon, which had just decided to

require that American soldiers be vaccinated against anthrax. According to

the article, the new strain was resistant to Russia's anthrax vaccine, at

least in hamsters.

American officials tried to obtain a sample from Russia through a scientific

exchange program to see whether the Russians had really created such a

hybrid. The Americans also wanted to test whether the microbe could defeat

the American vaccine, which is different from that used by Russia.

Despite repeated promises, the bacteria were never provided.

Eventually the C.I.A. drew up plans to replicate the strain, but

intelligence officials said the agency hesitated because there was no

specific report that an adversary was attempting to turn the superbug into a

weapon.

This year, officials said, the project was taken over by the Pentagon's

intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency. Pentagon lawyers reviewed

the proposal and said it complied with the treaty. Officials said the

research would be part of Project Jefferson, yet another government effort

to track the dangers posed by germ weapons.

A spokesman for Defense Intelligence, Lt. Cmdr. , declined

comment. Asked about the precautions at Battelle, which is to create the

enhanced anthrax, Commander said security was " entirely suitable for

all work already conducted and planned for Project Jefferson. "

The Question of Secrecy

While several officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations called

this and other research long overdue, they expressed concern about the lack

of a central system for vetting such proposals.

And a former American diplomat questioned the wisdom of keeping them secret.

F. Leonard, head of the delegation that negotiated the germ treaty,

said research on microbes or munitions could be justified, depending on the

specifics.

But he said such experiments should be done openly, exposed to the scrutiny

of scientists and the public. Public disclosure, he said, is important

evidence that the United States is proceeding with a " clean heart. "

" It's very important to be open, " he said. " If we're not open, who's going

to be open? "

Mr. Leonard said the fine distinctions drawn by government lawyers were

frequently ignored when a secret program was exposed. Then, he said, others

offer the harshest possible interpretations - a " vulgarization of what has

been done. "

But he concluded that the secret germ research, as described to him, was

" foolish, but not illegal. "

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company