Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
The event that caused the aerosol release remains obscure. A high-
level defector from the Soviet BW program has stated that Compound 19
was a major production facility for the USSR's BW program, producing
dried anthrax spores in large amounts. He was told that the accident was
the result of an inadvertent removal of an exhaust filter during a produc-
tion run. However, he ascribed this event to a different date, so the reli-
ability of his sources is questionable.
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It is also unclear how much material was released. Estimates by the
CIA and DIA assumed that “large quantities” must have been released in
order to cause such an outbreak, but this inference seems to have been
based more on intuition than on science. Estimates based on different
aerobiological models and different assumptions about infectious dose
gave very different results, ranging from 4 to 600 milligrams.
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The responsibility of the Soviet government for the outbreak was ad-
mitted by Boris Yeltsin, who said that the military had caused the out-
break. However, many Russian military personnel still deny that the
event was an accidental release, and instead cling to the infected-meat
scenario, or allege US sabotage.
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Conclusion
Allegations of BW use are very serious matters, asserting as they do that
the accused has violated international law in using weapons banned by
international treaty and by customary law. Allegations of violation of the
BWC short of use are also serious matters. Both call into question the ef-
fectiveness of international norms and legal prohibitions, and they re-
duce the trust upon which compliance with these norms and laws par-
tially depends. And so long as allegations remain neither verified nor
disproven, they suggest that covert biowarfare may be waged without
significant political cost.
Given this context, nations have a responsibility not to make such alle-
gations without a high level of certainty that they are correct, and with-
out adequate evidence to present to the international community. We be-
lieve that all the accusing states we have considered here fall short, to
varying degrees, of that standard of responsible behavior.
The historical evidence suggests to us that all the accusers believed that
their accusations were correct. Even the Korean War allegations, long
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