Scientist defends federal bioweapons research

In a heated exchange, a U.S. government scientist is publicly disputing a charge made by two independent scientists that the United States is conducting illegal biological weapons programs-activity prohibited by the Biological Weapons Convention.

In articles appearing recently in two prominent publications, professors Mark Wheelis of the University of California at Davis and Malcolm Dando of the United Kingdom's University of Bradford hypothesized the administration had scuttled a proposed treaty inspection protocol primarily to prevent discovery of growing, illicit U.S. research.

The "United States may have rejected the bioweapons protocol because it is committed to continuing and expanding secret programs," they wrote in an article published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists this month.

Offering no new evidence to support their hypothesis, the authors contend illicit research offers the best explanation for the U.S. opposition despite support from the closest U.S. allies, including the United Kingdom.

"Why did the U.S., unlike any other major Western power, conclude that the protocol would not enhance its security? What was perceived as so threatening in the protocol that it justified opening a serious rift between the U.S. and its closest allies?" they ask in the CBW Conventions Bulletin, a quarterly journal produced by the Harvard-Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation.

"The U.S. rejection of the protocol raises the possibility that there are new classified biodefense programs that are deemed too sensitive politically or technically for even the limited disclosure that the protocol would require," they conclude.

Charge Disputed

Alan Zelicoff, senior scientist at the Center for National Security and Arms Control at Sandia National Laboratories, complained about the charges on an international e-mail forum widely read by biological arms control specialists. He said he was "insulted." Zelicoff's center develops technologies to improve weapons of mass destruction counterproliferation, and to verify arms control treaties.

The authors "indulge in an ugly exercise allegedly based on scientific hypothesis formation, concluding that the explanation most consistent with the U.S. rejection of the protocol is that the U.S. is pursuing an illicit program to develop biological weapons to wage warfare," he wrote. "Perhaps they are correct, but I doubt it," he said.

Zelicoff cited the Bush administration's official explanations for its opposition to the inspections protocol, which led to a dramatic suspension of a treaty review conference in December 2001 and the limited agreement last November which does not include the protocol.

"The current administration rejected the protocol because its studies (funded by the previous administration) showed that the risk of loss of proprietary national security and business-related information far outweighed the benefits of the protocol (and indeed, few benefits at all could be demonstrated in those studies)," Zelicoff wrote.

In November, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker said there was a concern the protocol would have required the United States to declare agents created for biological defense research, information that could aid U.S. enemies.

No Personal Knowledge

Zelicoff also argued that he personally has no knowledge of any illegal biological weapons work in the U.S. biological defense program. He said if he knew of any he would make it public.

If the United States were "developing biological weapons for warfare, as opposed to peacekeeping or riot control, I suspect I would have to be in line behind anyone else making phone calls to The New York Times," he told Global Security Newswire Friday.

The scientist wrote in the e-mail he has regular access to classified documents describing U.S. biological defense work and the "intent behind it," and wrote "never (that is to say, not once, never) have I had any suspicion that the U.S. biodefense program was intended in any way to develop weapons for use on the battlefield."

Wheelis and Dando "do an enormous disservice to the people working on biodefense to suggest that they … know better or are somehow more sensitive to the possibility of illegal work. They aren't," he wrote.

Zelicoff, who previously has publicly denied there is a secret, illicit U.S. program, said in the interview he took the charges personally.

"There are three explanations-I'm stupid, I'm a dupe of the U.S. government or I'm lying-those are the only three explanations for what they said and I reject them all. That's why I said I was insulted. I chose that word carefully," he said.

He said there are a small number of biological defense scientists in the U.S. intelligence community and he knows them all.

"I've asked them looking into their eyes, 'Has the U.S. in your agency violated the Biological Weapons Convention?' And they looked me right back in the eye and said, 'no.' Could they be lying to me? Sure. And this building might fall down too. It's possible, but it's extremely unlikely," he said.

"It's not possible to keep that kind of a secret," he said.

No Evidence Provided

Wheelis and Dando provided no evidence to substantiate the charge of a secret, growing biological weapons program. They wrote in the CBW Conventions Bulletin it is a possibility that "has not, to our knowledge, been discussed much, but which seems to be in the air."

They cited, however, previously reported revelations of controversial U.S. biological research, including a 2001 New York Times report that the CIA had conducted work that could be construed to have violated the treaty and reports following the October 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States that the government was producing dried, weaponized anthrax for biological defense testing.

The treaty allows for small quantities of such biological weapons agents to be produced for peaceful purposes. Regarding the weaponized anthrax, the professors wrote, "the U.S. won't tell anyone how much it made, and for what purpose."

The United States "not only pressed, or passed, the limits of legality under the treaty; it also failed to honor its obligation to report these programs" in accordance with treaty confidence-building measures, the professors wrote.

Wheelis and Dando urged the U.S. Congress to investigate classified U.S. biological defense programs.

"If we are right, the implications for arms control are very serious, and threaten to fatally undermine the BWC and the CWC [Chemical Weapons Convention] by leading to a new biological and chemical arms race," they concluded.

Zelicoff said the only nondefensive chemical or biological weapons work he was aware of is a "very small program, mostly farmed out to places like Penn State University from the intelligence community to study the feasibility of developing [chemical] incapacitants for peacekeeping and riot control purposes."

Differentiating Offensive From Defensive

Experts say the Biological Weapons Convention allows countries to produce small quantities of offensive biological agents to test defensive equipment or vaccines.

The State Department's Rademaker last November said such defensive research activity could closely resemble offensive work and lead international investigators to misconstrue work as offensive.

"To conduct biodefense, you basically have to create a biological weapon to figure out how to defend against it," he said.

When asked whether the United States was, therefore, building biological weapons for defensive research, he clarified his statement to indicate that it is not necessarily that weapons are created for defensive purposes, but "agents," allowable by the treaty.

Zelicoff in his comments suggested Wheelis and Dando were misinterpreting defensive work as offensive.