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The Independent (UK)
18 October 2001
Russian military suspected as source of anthrax
By Anne Penketh
The hunt for the source of the weapons grade anthrax that shut down the heart of the American political establishment yesterday has already produced many false trails.
Much of the focus has been on Iraq, but according to the world's leading germ warfare experts the finger of suspicion points more directly at Russia's broken down military industrial complex.
If the finger of suspicion falls on any one country "the obvious one is Russia, it's a league ahead of Iraq", said David Kelly, a senior adviser to UN weapons inspectors for Iraq.
Other countries that are thought to be working on an offensive biological weapons programme include Iran, North Korea, Libya, Cuba, Egypt and Pakistan.
Unemployed top Russian scientists who helped to run the Soviet Union's illegal and secret germ warfare programme appear as a likely source of the anthrax outbreak in the United States. It is known that Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network has attempted to purchase ingredients for weapons of mass destruction in Russia in recent years.
The secret Russian germ warfare programme was set up in the 1970s to allow Moscow to cheat on its treaty commitments to destroy all its anthrax and other germ warfare stocks. Experts believe that parts of that vast programme are still operating today.
The scientists who worked on the programme and were thrown out of work when it was officially disbanded in 1992 may have sold their secrets on the open market.
Mr Kelly said that of the 30,000 people who worked for the Soviet agency known as Biopreparat, "between three and four thousand were professional scientists. Some would be available to go elsewhere."
The al-Qa'ida network is known to be awash with funds, thanks to the fund-raising activities of Saudi-based charities and Mr bin Laden's personal fortune.
The full extent of Russia's cheating was revealed to the CIA by Ken Alibek, the deputy director of Biopreparat, when he defected in 1992. Mr Alibek has described how the Soviet Union churned out two tonnes of anthrax a day at Stepanagorsk in his native Kazakhstan. He also revealed that the Russians had covered up an outbreak of anthrax in the Urals in 1979. He told a US Congressional committee last week that "there are pieces of Biopreparat that are still running, some with a very high level of secrecy."
No one knows where up to 50 Russian scientists possessing anthrax weaponisation secrets may be today, he added.
Dick Spertzl, a biowarfare expert in America, said: "Any dedicated individual can learn how to make weapons grade anthrax. If they had an adviser, it would be easier."
But turning the laboratory-produced liquid into the powder spores is much more tricky. "The knowledge of drying is not that common," Mr Spertzl said.
According to the experts, Iraq had concentrated on the liquid variety of anthrax, which could infect its victims via so-called "drop tanks" or aerosols.
Only three countries, Iraq, the United States and Russia, have weaponised anthrax. Britain announced in 1956 that it was ending its offensive anthrax programme.
A highly potent, finely milled "weapons grade" anthrax powder has infected almost 30 staff-members of the US Senate.
The United States abandoned its own offensive programme in 1969, and says it is concentrating on biodefence. But Russian scientists at Biopreparat continued to work clandestinely on the secret anthrax weapons.
Iraq is believed to possess at least 8.4 tonnes of concentrated liquid anthrax, despite telling UN weapons inspectors that all stocks had been unilaterally destroyed in 1991. The spokesman for the UN inspectors responsible for disarming Iraq, Ewen Buchanan, says: "We had concerns that Iraq was attempting to store it as a dry product, but no hard evidence."
The British specialist, Mr Kelly, cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that state-sponsored terrorism lay behind the US anthrax outbreaks.
Three of the 19 hijackers of the September 11 attacks have been linked to Russia's rebellious republic of Chechnya and the ringleader, Mohamed Atta, twice met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague. American officials say, though, that such meetings did not prove Iraq's involvement in any terrorist acts.
Mr Kelly believes that Iraq, which has won widespread support from Arab states in its efforts to break out of the 10-year- old UN sanctions, has "too much at stake" to take part in such action.
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