The US Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 40

BW R&D. 141 No sooner was the BWC in place than accusations of Soviet
cheating began to circulate in American government circles. Between
1975 and 1992 a number of startling revelations unveiled an extensive
Soviet BW program. Instead of complying with the prohibitions in the
treaty, the USSR had systematically violated it.
On 23 August 1976 the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) evaluated
the charges that the USSR was violating the BWC. 142 In 1980 the US
charged that an anthrax outbreak at Sverdlovsk was the result of an acci-
dent at an illegal BW facility (since proven correct; see Chapter 13). The
1980s had also brought a number of serious charges that the USSR and
its allies were violating the Geneva Protocol and the BWC by using le-
thal chemical agents and trichothecene mycotoxins throughout South-
east Asia and Afghanistan (also discussed in Chapter 13). 143
In September 1983 the CIA published a study titled “Implications of
Soviet Use of Chemical and Toxin Weapons for US Security Interests.”
Claiming that the increased Soviet chemical and biological warfare ac-
tivity posed a threat to the West, the CIA asserted a by-now-common
theme: the Soviets were ahead of NATO in CBW, and intelligence in this
field was hampered by its low priority. 144
From 1984 to the close of his administration, President Ronald Reagan,
in his noncompliance reports to Congress, charged that the Soviets were
violating the BWC and the Geneva Protocol. 145 Despite considerable
skepticism from the scientific community, successive American adminis-
trations have never retreated from these charges. One reflection is in or-
der. Is it credible to argue that the Soviets would have transferred ad-
vanced weapons to their allies in Southeast Asia?
Although the use of trichothecene mycotoxins remains controversial,
it is now an inescapable fact that the USSR and its successor Russia pur-
sued an aggressive BW program. 146 Confronted with American intelli-
gence evidence a few months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pres-
ident Boris Yeltsin admitted “that the USSR had systematically violated
the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention ...InSeptember 1992,
Moscow declared that the offensive biological weapons program had
been terminated ...Yeltsin offered to allow U.S. and British inspectors
into the facilities concerned, a deal that came to be known as the trilateral
agreement.” 147 But the success of this process (spanning 1993 and 1994)
was limited.