Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
edly showed a draft declaration to the US listing 4 (Kirov, Sverdlovsk,
Vozrozdeniye Island, and Zagorsk)
87
of 20 facilities the US and UK knew
or suspected of having been involved in producing or stockpiling BW.
88
No mention was made of the Sverdlovsk
Bacillus anthracis
leak (which
some Russian officials have still periodically maintained was a natural
disease outbreak) or Soviet work with hemorrhagic fever viruses.
89
A sec-
ond list was reportedly provided to the US by Russia,
90
which unnamed
US government sources characterized as “marginally better.” US and UK
officials told the Russians, however, that if the data were submitted to the
UN as a CBM declaration, they would publicly “attack it as seriously inac-
curate”;
91
among other things, neither of the drafts provided a “detailed
account of the allegedly extensive work with mycotoxins.”
92
A third and
final draft was also judged inadequate by the US and UK:
93
among other
omissions, like the previous two drafts it failed to acknowledge stockpil-
ing of BW.
94
In 1992 Russia declared that the Soviet Union (and then Russia) had
had an offensive BW program from 1946 to March 1992; that the Soviet
Union had begun a program in the late 1940s to develop BW for retalia-
tory purposes; that work had been carried out with
Bacillus anthracis,
Francisella tularensis, Brucella spp., Yersinia pestis,
VEE virus,
Rickettsia sp.,
and
Coxiella burnetii
at facilities located in Kirov, Sverdlovsk, and Zagorsk
in the 1950s; that models of BW-filled air bombs and rockets had been
tested at Vozrozdeniye Island; and that work had been done to determine
the threat posed by
Burkholderia mallei
and
Burkholderia pseudomallei.
In
addition, “In the late 1960s, industrial facilities with storage capabilities
were, by a government decision, established in Glavmikrobioprom for
the production of medicinal and other protective preparations, which
could also be used for the preparation of biological agents during a crisis.”
Although “investigations with dangerous pathogens” were carried out in
1982 and 1983 at Glavmikrobioprom (at Kol'tsovo, Obolensk, Chekhov,
and Leningrad), the declaration stated that an insufficient level of “scien-
tific-methodological level of work” and a lack of equipment and reagents
“did not permit practical significant results in the military field.” Russia
also declared that a multistep review of the “military biological program”
had been begun before the Second Review Conference (held in 1986).
Finally, Russia stated that it had not stockpiled BW.
95
In short, the decla-
ration described work that was essentially defensive, or at worst prepara-
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