[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ASSESSING THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS THREAT: RUSSIA AND BEYOND
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND EMERGING THREATS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 7, 2014
__________
Serial No. 113-142
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
or
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
87-836PDF WASHINGTON : 2014
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800
DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC,
Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania AMI BERA, California
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida GRACE MENG, New York
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
TED S. YOHO, Florida JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
LUKE MESSER, Indiana
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats
DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman
TED POE, Texas WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
PAUL COOK, California BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
Amy Smithson, Ph.D., senior fellow, James Martin Center for
Nonprolferation Studies........................................ 5
David R. Franz, Ph.D. (former Commander, U.S. Army Medical
Research Institute of Infectious Diseases)..................... 17
Christopher Davis, M.D. (former member, Defense Intelligence
Staff of the United Kingdom)................................... 26
Mr. Milton Leitenberg, senior research scholar, Center for
International and Security Studies at Maryland, School of
Public Policy, University of Maryland.......................... 36
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Amy Smithson, Ph.D.: Prepared statement.......................... 8
David R. Franz, Ph.D.: Prepared statement........................ 19
Christopher Davis, M.D.: Prepared statement...................... 31
Mr. Milton Leitenberg: Prepared statement........................ 40
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 54
Hearing minutes.................................................. 55
Mr. Milton Leitenberg: Material submitted for the record......... 56
The Honorable George Holding, a Representative in Congress from
the State of North Carolina: Questions submitted for the record
and written responses from:
Amy Smithson, Ph.D............................................. 61
Mr. Milton Leitenberg.......................................... 64
ASSESSING THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS THREAT: RUSSIA AND BEYOND
----------
WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 2014
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:07 p.m., in
room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana Rohrabacher
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I call this subcommittee hearing to order.
The subject today is, ``Assessing the Biological Weapons
Threat: Russia and Beyond.'' The purpose of today's hearing is
review the progress of the United States and our partners in
Eurasia have made to dismantle and secure the remnants of the
Soviet Union's biological weapons program. We will be
discussing what the United States and our partners in Russia,
Central Asia and the caucuses have accomplished, what, if any,
lessons have we learned, and what we can or should not be
done--or what can and what should be done to strengthen the
Biological Weapons Convention.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union developed an
offensive biological weapons program. It was supported by a
large network of facilities which employed an estimated 60,000
workers at its height. Soviet scientists were able to engineer
pathogens so deadly that they could be deployed with the same
killing power as a nuclear bomb. Biological weapons created in
labs are inherently different from natural diseases. Weaponized
germs are purposely made to be more deadly, act differently,
and resistant to medicine. They can also be delivered in
extremely high doses or in combinations to create certain
results.
It is alarming to hear that the Soviets continue to develop
these weapons into the early 1990s in violation of the 1972
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, or the, as it is known
as, the BWC. That treaty, still in force today, bans the
development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons.
The United States Government, by comparison, unilaterally and
completely ended its weapons program, beginning in 1969, so we
rapidly ended our biological weapons program as the Soviet
Union accelerated theirs.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the United
States worked to secure these deadly pathogens, dismantle the
facilities, and prevent scientists from selling their knowledge
on the black market. Congress created the Cooperative Threat
Reduction Program, sometimes informally referred to as Nunn-
Lugar, and this was to secure the WMD materials in Russia and
the newly independent States formerly ruled by Moscow.
To date, our Government has spent over $2 billion to secure
biological weapons facilities and related materials in the
former Soviet Union. I am pleased by the apparent success of
these initiatives and at least the preceded success in many
cases. The cooperation between our Government and many other
countries in Central Asia and the caucuses has led to a safer
world, we hope, and that is what we will be talking about
today, we believe.
An important part of the BWC is that every 5 years there is
a review conference, and it is convened to find ways to improve
the convention and to share the data. The next review
conference is set to take place in 2016. I look forward to
hearing from the witnesses and to hear about their conclusions
that they have had about how successful our efforts have been
to secure former Soviet biological weapons sites, and based on
that experience, what new lessons we can apply to verification
or inspections of suspected biological weapons programs in
other situations.
There are steps we should take to improve and strengthen
the BWC, are there such steps that we can take? And that is
what we need to hear today as well, and have we used the
lessons from implementing Nunn-Lugar to improve our own
defense, at least our own defenses in case of a future
biological attack.
Without objection, all members have 5 legislative days to
submit additional written questions or extraneous materials for
the record.
And with that, I turn to our ranking member, Congressman
Keating, for his opening statement.
Mr. Keating. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am pleased to welcome Dr. Smithson, Dr. Franz, Dr. Davis,
and Mr. Leitenberg. I am certain we are going to benefit from
all your experience. I am pleased, in particular, that Mr.
Leitenberg is with us today. Mr. Leitenberg's 2012 book, which
was coauthored with Raymond Zilinskas is widely viewed as the
seminal history of the Soviet Union's biological weapons
program, including the covert program launched in 1970s, well
after the Soviet Union signed onto the Biological Weapons and
Toxins Convention.
Since the mid-1990s, the United States has invested
billions of dollars through Cooperative Threat Reduction
Program in dismantling and decontaminating biological weapons
testing and productions sites in the former Soviet Union. U.S.
programs have also focused on securing pathogens and employing
former weapons scientists in civilian work.
This has not been an easy task, given the scope of the
Soviet biological weapons program, which at one point employed
an estimated 60,000 people at more than 50 sites throughout the
Soviet Union.
Although cooperation with former Soviet republics in
Central Asia has been generally successful, resulting in the
decontamination of biological weapons facilities and
containment of dangerous pathogens, the same cannot be said for
our cooperation with Russia. In 1992, Russian President Boris
Yeltsin acknowledged the existence of a covert Soviet program.
He publicly committed Russia to establishing compliance with
the biological weapons and toxins convention by prohibiting
offensive biological weapons work, initiating the dismantlement
of the program inherited from the Soviet Union, and agreeing to
allow on-site verification procedures of this dismantlement.
Despite these commitments, Russia refused to allow
international inspection in key biological weapons facilities,
a policy continued under President Putin. As a result, there
has been considerable uncertainty about the dismantlement
status of Russia's inherited biological weapons capabilities
and reason to believe that Russian scientists may still be
engaging in research and development activities. The recent
deterioration in U.S. relations with Russia complicates matters
even further, as do President Putin's recent statements
suggesting a willingness to use biological weapons to ``respond
to new challenges.''
As such, there is much we do not know about Russia's
current programs or their intentions. Indeed, what is most
striking about the threat posed by biological weapons is how
much we don't know. I hope this hearing will help the
subcommittee to better understand the scope of the threat as
well as the appropriateness and effectiveness of U.S. measures
to counteract the threat.
In particular, I look forward to learning how other
countries perceive U.S. policy and our commitment to
eliminating biological weapons. Successive administrations,
Republican and Democrat, have advocated against adding a
verification mechanism to the BWC. In 2001, former Under
Secretary of State for International Security John Bolton, an
official in the George W. Bush administration, argued that
traditional arms control measures would not work for biological
weapons. Obama administration officials have made similar
claims. I look forward to hearing our panelists' views on
whether it is possible to strengthen the BWC, and if so, how
useful new protocols would be in countering the threat posed by
biological weapons.
I hope our witnesses will also assess the risk that Soviet
biological weapons, materials, or know-how have fallen into the
hands of rogue states or nonstate actors and whether any state
or nonstate actors currently have the capability sufficient to
use biological weapons to create a mass casualty event.
Finally, despite considerable debate over the extent of the
threat posed by biological weapons, the United States has spent
over $64 billion on biodefense programs since the anthrax scare
of 2001. I hope our witnesses will be able to comment on
whether this massive expenditure is proportionate to the threat
and welcome their thoughts on the effectiveness of our
biodefense programs.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you, and do either of our other
colleagues have--Judge Poe. You have an opening statement.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Chairman.
I thank the witnesses for being here. As you know, Mr.
Chairman, we are in judiciary in a markup dealing with revising
the PATRIOT Act, so I will have to excuse myself and go back to
that.
The problem we face today is, how do we protect Americans
from the threat of biological weapons when we are dealing with
a country, primarily the leader of this country, who cannot be
trusted to tell the truth about anything? Now, the United
States, United Kingdom eliminated their biological weapons
programs over 40 years ago, before the Biological Weapons
Convention even existed. The Soviet Union promised, they
promised to stop their biological weapons program, but of
course, they didn't. Their biological weapons program remained
active until the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990s.
Today, Russia is led by Colonel Putin, KGB, who would like
nothing more, in my opinion, than to go back to the glory days
of the old Soviet Union. Putin, or the Napoleon of Siberia, as
I like to call him, has taken over part of a sovereign country,
at least two of them now, Georgia and part of Ukraine. I have
been to both.
He is using his military and political operatives in these
countries to create unrest, and then he says he has to go in
and control the area to stop the unrest he started. He did that
in both Georgia and Eastern Ukraine, and I do not believe he is
through with his aggression. Who's next? Moldova? We will see.
So that is who we are dealing with, Mr. Putin, and he and
Russia have signed onto the Biological and Toxin Weapons
Convention, the BWC, but we do not know if Russia has followed
it because there is no true verification measures in place.
Some believe that it has been reported by some that the
Russians in fact helped facilitate chemical weapons going to
Syria. I don't know if that is true or not, but that has been
out there.
In 2009, this administration stopped even negotiating about
trying to verify a country was following the BWC; instead, the
State Department believes that transparency and diplomacy are
enough. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I wonder if we
still follow that philosophy. Apparently, we do. It appears to
me, it is the height of ignorance to trust Putin and his
government to keep its word on anything; therefore,
verification must be an absolute.
Putin is not our ally; he is not a friend. He is not a
friend of the world. And I certainly don't think we can let him
get away with breaking his word, so we must act accordingly.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. That is just the way it is.
Mr. Poe. That is just the way it is, Mr. Chairman, to quote
a phrase.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And Mr. Sires.
Mr. Sires. I will be very brief.
Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing and thank you
for being here today. I have a big concern about the region
that used to be part of the Soviet Union, because a lot of
these weapons were made in some of these countries, and I am
concerned that, are they secure, because they have had a number
of militant Islamic groups in this regions? And I am concerned
that not--the whole world is in danger from these groups, so I
just want to hear what you have to say and maybe get a idea how
secure some of these places are where they made some of these
weapons. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Oh, thank you.
To testify before us today, we have four distinguished
experts on this topic. Each of your full statements will be
made part of the record. If you could keep your statements, the
verbal part of it, down to about 5 minutes apiece, that would
be a big help, but your actual--the whole statement that you
have will be part of the record.
Dr. Amy Smithson is a senior fellow at James Martin Center
for Nonproliferation Studies and an expert on biological
weapons. In the past, she has worked for the Center on
Strategic and International Studies and the Henry Stimson
Center. At the Stimson Center, she founded their Chemical and
Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project, and she has also
worked to help--worked to and helped former weapons scientists
engage with civilian companies, thus finding them a peaceful
way to use their talents and skills.
We also have with us Dr. David Franz, a retired colonel and
a 27-year veteran of the United States Army. He served 23 of
those years in the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command
and came to command the Army's Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases. During the 1990s, he served as a member of
a joint British team which inspected former Soviet bioweapons
sites. He also later served as the chief inspector for three
United Nations inspections missions to Iraq, focusing on that
country's bioweapons program.
Mr. Davis served in the Royal Navy and spent--Mr. Davis,
our next witness--spent--served in the Royal Navy and spent 10
years in British Intelligence as its principal biological
warfare analyst. He debriefed high level Soviet defectors
regarding their biowarfare program, and after 1991, he went on
the ground to inspect Soviet weapons sites. He has had a very
distinguished academic and private sector career with numerous
honors, including the Order of the British Empire, bestowed by
Queen Elizabeth, II. Mr. Davis is also a fellow in the
pharmaceutical medicine and holds doctorate degree in
philosophy from the University of Oxford.
Mr. Milton Leitenberg is a senior research scholar at the
University of Maryland Center for International and Security
Studies. He has almost four decades of experience working in
the arms control and issues affiliated with that, and he has
been with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
and published and edited over 150 scholarly works, including a
book recently published by Harvard University on the history of
Soviet biological weapons and the weapons program.
So I would ask all of you again to keep your statements
down to about 5 minutes verbally, but you can put whatever else
you want right in the record, and we will start with Dr.
Smithson.
STATEMENT OF AMY SMITHSON, PH.D., SENIOR FELLOW, JAMES MARTIN
CENTER FOR NONPROLFERATION STUDIES
Ms. Smithson. Good afternoon. Since many of the other
panelists will focus on issues of Russia and Central Asia,
although I address those in my written statement and have been
to many of those facilities, I will concentrate instead in my
oral remarks on how to strengthen the BWC. And in doing so,
what you are going to get is not just the benefit of my
thoughts but literally an array of the top experts around the
world and from the United States biopharmaceutical industry as
well as from the United Nations Special Commission, which was
established in 1991 after the first Gulf War to strip Iraq of
its weapons of mass destruction.
With regard to the former group of scientists, the ones
from the U.S. industry, I convened them on a number of
occasions to ponder whether or not the BWC could indeed be
monitored because conventional wisdom says that is not
possible. And much to my surprise, quite frankly, they crafted
a detailed monitoring protocol for the BWC that relies on many
of the standard tools that the inspectors of UNSCOM later used
when they went into Iraq.
Now, I don't have time to go into the details of this
proposal. I would like to, in question and answer, but what I
would like to leave you thinking about that proposal is that it
is much more stringent than the draft protocol that the United
States Government rightly rejected in 2001. So they are asking
for tougher monitoring provisions.
It is also quite contrary to the position of the industry's
main trade association, PhRMA, which tends to say that just
having inspectors on site could compromise its trade secrets.
In contrast, they believe that their monitoring protocol could
be implemented without doing that. In fact, they think it would
be very, very effective, and their monitoring protocol is
equally or less demanding than the inspections that the
industry currently undergoes from the Food and Drug
Administration. In all except for two cases, one would be the
size of the inspection team, which would come with a pack of
U.S. escorts that might be difficult for some companies to
handle, and the other is the length of time that they would
stay on site.
Now, after this work was completed, and I started to
interview the UNSCOM inspectors about their experience in Iraq,
what struck me is the similarity between what the industry
experts were proposing and what UNSCOM actually did in Iraq and
how successfully that worked out, even though, before they ever
landed in Iraq, quite frankly, the deck was stacked against the
UNSCOM inspectors.
First of all, Iraq had already begun to implement a
strategy to hide not just its nuclear program but its
biological weapons program from the inspectors. Next, the
intelligence that they had to work from was, quite frankly,
incomplete and sometimes inaccurate. For example, U.S.
intelligence had not even managed to identify Al Hakam, which
was Iraq's main biological weapons production facility. From
the air, it looked very much, in fact almost identical to
Iraq's chemical weapons production facility, Al Muthanna. That
is just one of the things that intelligence didn't manage to
pick up on.
And it is not surprising to me, having worked in this area,
that the 2005 report of a blue ribbon panel on U.S.
intelligence capabilities to detect weapons of mass destruction
programs stated that the U.S. intelligence community
``substantially underestimated the scale and maturity of
Iraq's'' biological weapons program leading into the first Gulf
War, and with regard to its estimate going into the 2003 Gulf
War, it was ``simply wrong.''
Nonetheless, during the first two inspections that UNSCOM
conducted in the summer of 1991, they managed to pick up
significant evidence that there was a biological weapons
program. Happy to answer questions about that. Moreover, they
identified two commercial facilities, supposed commercial
facilities that were actually part of that program. So they
believe that it is possible to distinguish between the two
types of facilities; not in every case, but in some cases.
Now, in 1994, when they resumed inspections, there were
only three unspecific intelligence tips that they had to help
them in their job. Nonetheless, they did manage to unmask the
program using a lot of just plain old smarts and old-fashioned
gum shoe detective work. For example, they collected hundreds
of documents from suppliers to Iraq's program that allowed them
to reverse engineer it. They sampled a sprayer from the
production line at Al Hakam that the Iraqis said was making a
biopesticide using Bacillus thuringiensis. This is also a
simulant for anthrax, and when they took this sample, what they
found out is that it would be inoperable for a biopesticide
because you would need something of 150 microns or larger, and
instead, the sample particle size was 10 microns or less, ideal
for a biowarfare agent.
So, with tactics like this, during routine inspections, not
no-notice challenge inspections, they painted Iraq into a
corner. On the 1st of July 1995, Iraq confessed to having
produced anthrax and botulinum toxin. On the spot, the
inspectors knew this wasn't the whole truth because the Iraqis
said they destroyed these agents in 1990.
Now, this just doesn't make sense. What state makes a super
secret weapon only to demolish it before going to war? They
also already had a handle on Iraq's biological delivery
systems, including the fact that they had purchased a very
sophisticated, finely machined spinning dispersal device from a
German company, so when the executive director of UNSCOM
returned to New York, he briefed the Security Council that,
yes, Iraq had produced chemical weapons--excuse me--biological
weapons, and they admitted that, but we know that was not the
whole truth. We think they weaponized this stuff as well.
So, contrary to popular thinking, the UNSCOM experience
really upends conventional wisdom and stands as a direct
challenge to the U.S. policy that the BWC is ``inherently
unverifiable.'' So my recommendation in preparation for the
2016 Review Conference is that Congress require the executive
branch to do its homework, to study the experience of UNSCOM,
to take counsel from scientists inside the pharmaceutical
industry, and to prepare a report, a multifaceted report that
examines the capabilities and limitations, not just of
inspections but of intelligence because we are going to need
both if they are going to be able to detect and deter
biological weapons programs in the future and at present.
I thank you for the opportunity to appear before the
committee, and I look forward to questions that you might have.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Smithson follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Mr. Rohrabacher. Dr. Franz.
STATEMENT OF DAVID R. FRANZ, PH.D. (FORMER COMMANDER, U.S. ARMY
MEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES)
Mr. Franz. Chairman Rohrabacher, Ranking Member Keating,
and distinguished members, it is an honor to be here today. I
think I am going----
Mr. Poe. You still live? I didn't pull the plug on you.
Mr. Keating. Another undetected weapon.
Mr. Franz. I think you are going to see that I am going to
talk about another piece of this elephant that you are trying
to describe, and you will also see that individuals can be
friends for a long time and not necessarily agree.
First, I will state four personal biases related to your
questions that you provided to us. The Biological Weapons
Convention is an important international norm and law. As a
Nation, I think it is absolutely critical that we demonstrate
globally and consistently our full support for the BWC.
Secondly, the BWC is necessary but not sufficient for our
national biosecurity. Verifying that any nation state is in
compliance, I believe, is not possible.
Third, reducing the threat requires an integrated effort by
the whole of government, academe, industry, NGOs, and a healthy
multinational set of partnerships.
And fourth, we must recognize that personal relationships
and professional networks that are developed through our
cooperative programs contribute directly to our national
security.
Now, I would like to go very quickly to pose nine relevant
propositions with regard to this space.
One, it is a dangerous biological world out there: 15
million people die annually of communicable and contagious
diseases. No one dies from biological warfare or biological
terrorism, and a few people die from biocrimes. However, I am
convinced that we did achieve nuclear equivalence in killing
power in our offensive program before we stopped it in 1969,
and that was long before the current biotech revolution.
Two, the threats have changed significantly since the Cold
War. We have gone from protecting the military on a distant
battlefield to protecting citizens at home, and threats today
may come from subnational groups, insiders, biocriminals or
nation states. The phrase ``of types and in quantities'' in
Article I of the BWC no longer means ton quantities.Today it
can mean grams, or in the case of viruses particularly, it can
be much less than grams
Three, in biology, proliferation is over. This is not a
nonproliferation issue any more. Proliferation of knowledge,
technologies, and capabilities is now global.
Four, quoting Professor Joshua Lederberg, ``there is no
technical solution.'' Cutting up an anthrax production
fermenter, which we did in Stepnogorsk, the size of a Kansas
farm silo is not a lot different than eliminating an ICBM silo.
But when the fermenter is scrap and its operator is retired or
conducting legitimate research, how do we increase the
likelihood that the next generation of molecular biologists and
virologists, with much better tools and much more knowledge,
continue to work for the good of their people, their country,
and the global community?
Five, health engagement is national security. Leading with
public health brings like-minded people and their capabilities
together in a nonthreatening environment, working toward an
unambiguously positive or humanitarian outcome. It almost
guarantees improved understanding and even trust among
collaborating partners. Trust between technically qualified
individuals often leads to communication and even sometimes
trust between governments.
Six, it is about people and relationships. While our
understanding of natural health risks and intentional threats
will never be close to perfect, it could be better. We must be
alert to the ever-changing biological world around us. Friends
can and do help us when and where we have them.
Seven, the right engagement metrics can lower the cost and
increase our national security. Our tendency is to measure
outputs rather than outcomes in these cooperative programs. I
have long advocated for a simple set of metrics that begin with
wise use of taxpayer dollars and lead to personal relationships
of trust as the ultimate goal. It is not easy. It is not very
scalable, I admit that, but critical to our national security.
Eight, we must be in it for the long haul. I sometimes have
to explain to my international colleagues the short attention
span of my Government. Too often we make promises and then move
on to something we think is more important the next moment or
forget about friends and promises made. A more consistent and
stable long-view policy would enhance our national security in
this area.
And finally, nine, keeping channels of communication open.
For years, during the Cold War, our nuclear scientists and
their Soviet counterparts maintained open lines of
communication through science academies and organizations like
Pugwash. The outcome was, to some degree, stabilizing, I
believe. I believe it is easier to do this in biology.
Remember, these are long-term tools that I am talking about.
Our specialty is not putting out fires but weaving fire
retardant into the fabric.
Now is a good time, I believe, to see how well we did 10
years ago--not look at this like an outbreak today--and then
adjust as needed. The global biological tapestry is not always
a pretty one, but we need every view of it we can find. And we
can't do these global things alone. Friends of longstanding in
science and public health networks can and will help us even
when we are not there. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Franz follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Mr. Rohrabacher. Dr. Davis.
STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER DAVIS, M.D. (FORMER MEMBER, DEFENSE
INTELLIGENCE STAFF OF THE UNITED KINGDOM)
Dr. Davis. Mr. Chairman, the timer isn't working. It
appears damaged.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Your mike isn't working?
Dr. Davis. The timer isn't working. I fear it was damaged
in the recent ``attack,'' yes.
Mr. Chairman, Congressman, good afternoon. First of all,
after introduction, I would like to make it quite clear that I
am, in fact, a U.S. citizen, although I do sound slightly
different, and I am about 407 years too late. I missed the boat
all those years ago, but I did make it in the end.
First, please forgive me if I am a little difficult to
understand today. I suffered a ``biological agent attack'' last
week in England, concluding my homeland is still upset that I
left, so my voice is slightly compromised.
Second, I would like to thank you most sincerely for
inviting me to attend this hearing. Friends and colleagues
alike have been genuinely worried about what I might experience
here. But you know, it never occurred to me to worry. I felt
happy to come and share with fellow citizens some thoughts
about an important topic.
Finally, having read through my short text, it occurred to
me that I might be cast as anti-Russian or rather too critical
of my former colleagues in the diplomatic services of the U.K.
And the U.S. and neither is true. I have worked with many
Russians who were in the former Soviet program and, indeed,
some have been guests in my home. And the Russians are very
jolly people. I have no problem.
And diplomatic colleagues took positions years ago that
they believed at the time were correct. I disagreed then, and I
still do. That doesn't mean to say that they are bad people or
bad things were done, particularly. It really means that we
took a different view of the world.
So I would like just to say a few things. I am going to
stick pretty much to what I submitted. I come before you today
as a private citizen. I represent no one but myself. The views
and opinions expressed by me are entirely my own and do not
necessarily reflect those of my own consultancy company, my
employer, or my employer's client in whose offices I work, and
these organizations and their officials bear nor responsibility
whatsoever for my oral and written testimony today. That is
important because I absolve everybody from any responsibility.
It is me.
In light of my previous work in or with security and
intelligence services and organizations on both sides of the
Atlantic, I also must make it clear, in giving this testimony,
I will at no time write or say anything that transgresses the
agreements I made with those organizations many years ago with
respect to maintaining the confidentiality of their systems and
the knowledge I gained during their employ.
I am a scientist and a physician educated at the
Universities of Oxford and London, as was mentioned, and a
fellow of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine. I have had
38-year career spanning hospital medicine, academic research,
military medicine, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology
industry, government service, and commercial and contracting
companies consulting in the United States, Europe, and
Australasia. For 35 of those years, I have been involved with
chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons issues. With the
singular exception, thank goodness, of actually building
nuclear weapons or chemical weapons of any kind or biological
weapons of any kind, I have worked on every aspect of the
problem of biological weapons, from intelligence through threat
analysis and weapons effects, through R&D on personal and
collective protection, medical countermeasures, detection
systems to national policy, international diplomacy, and
cooperative threat reduction.
For 10 years, I served on the Defense Intelligence staff of
the United Kingdom with special responsibility for global
biological weapons threats and the medical aspects of chemical
and biological agents. My particular focus for much of those 10
years was the biological weapons program of the former Soviet
Union and Russia, and I was closely involved in a debriefing of
the very first defector from the Soviet program, Dr. Vladimir
Pasechnik, a very senior institute director who came to the
U.K. in October 1989.
Today I have come to ask you to lift the veil that hides
the ``elephant in the room'' that was left behind in the 1990s
when direct efforts to persuade Russia to completely abandon
their biological weapons appear to have failed.
There is no doubt that what we have come to know as
ordinary everyday infectious diseases, to which Dave Franz
referred, are making a come back and that a major issue for
societies across the globe is the increasingly rapid emergence
of multidrug resistant forms of these diseases. I say this up
front because it is an existential risk to society, and I do
not want the statements I am about to make taken out of context
or the question of relative risk to be used as an argument to
continue to ignore ``the elephant.''
Additionally, it is important to state the outset, that for
the greater part of the last 20 years, the context of
discussions about biological weapons and appropriate medical
countermeasures has been that of bioterrorism. Finally, prior
to the exposure of the illegal biological weapons program of
the former Soviet Union, in the years between 1989 and 1994,
the situation was obfuscated by ignorance and denial. That was
the era from 1972 to 1989, for which I coined the term
``nuclear blindness,'' to describe a condition characterized by
the inability of almost everyone involved in the world of
diplomacy, security, intelligence, policy making, or defense,
on the allied side, to understand that there was any treat to
our security other than that from the possession of tactical or
strategic nuclear weapons. Indeed, the mere possession of
nuclear weapons was seen to be the answer to all threats and to
the possible or actual use of strategic force against the
state.
And so to the nub of the matter. The context or room, if
you will, in which the pachyderm in question sits has changed.
The Russia of today is not the Soviet Union of old, but neither
is it the open democratic state for which we hoped, somewhat
naively perhaps, back in the 1990s. We have been made patently
aware by the events in Georgia and now in Ukraine that Mr.
Putin retains all the values and attitudes that allowed him to
rise successfully through the ranks of the KGB. Sadly, this
includes an unenlightened quest for power and control over
everything and a very typical Russian propensity to never let
go of something that could prove of use against any perceived
enemy at some point in the future.
For those who, like Putin, live in a world where fear is
the predominant emotion determining their existence, enemies
are everywhere, and any and all actions are permissible to deal
with existential or theoretical threats. Add to this the
noxious combination of patriotism and hurt pride born of a
bruising exit from the Soviet Communism, and the stage is set.
The ``elephant,'' ignored for 18 years, demands our attention.
The ``elephant in the room'' is, of course, the Russian
biological weapons capability. The problem is not new, but the
context, Putin's new Russia is. In fact, for most of you, even
if you never ever knew anything about this topic, the
assumption will be that this is old hat, a problem that was
taken care of way back in the early nineties, the 1990s that
is, and the story goes something like this: The Soviets and
Russians, admitted possession of a massive biological weapons
research, development, testing, production, storage, and launch
capability; but did that actually happen? No, I contend. They
committed to destroying the system, all weapons and methods of
dissemination, agents, seed stocks, and productions and
operational plans; but did that actually happen? No, it didn't.
Complete openness was achieved, and the new Russian state
allowed inspections and verification of all suspect sites; but
did that actually happen? No.
As far as I am aware, pretty much all discussion between
the U.S. and the U.K. and Russia ground to a halt in mid-1990s
because of Russian insistence on pursuing reciprocity, a
condition that the then Soviet negotiators persuaded the U.S.
State Department to accept at their very first encounter in
London in 1990, following the defection of Vladimir Pasechnik
in 1989. I know because I sat around that table.
Reciprocity is difficult to achieve when the problem is
one-sided. We said it at the time. The U.S. and the U.K. had
and have no biological weapons but, in a gesture of
reasonableness and openness, agreed to reciprocal visits. This
was, of course, a time when the Prime Minister and the
President had agreed to deal with this problem secretly,
confidentially, and quietly in order to make it easier for the
Soviet Union/Russia to comply and get rid of the weapons and
move on, rather than pillorying them on the world stage.
Eventually, that mismatch in reality, led to the Russians
asking for access to U.S. facilities, both commercial and
military, that they knew would be denied, leaving them to
maintain that it was in fact the U.S. and the U.K. that were
hiding BW R&D, not them. The result, the perfect impasse.
So despite this failure of the ``trilateral process,''
created in late September 1992 in Moscow and the fact that the
United States and United Kingdom were certain enough that the
offensive biological weapons program was continuing that they
challenged the new Russian regime openly about it as late as
1993, most observers in the world at large assumed that the
problem had been solved. The myth that Russia had owned up,
explained and destroyed its weapons and opened up its
biological weapons establishments grew. And so it was that with
improving relations between East and West, the legitimate and
very real concern over ``loose nukes'' and a fundamental lack
of understanding of biological weapons by just about everyone
involved in decisionmaking, ``the elephant'' took up residence
in the room, and as time passed, it became ever more difficult
to mention the name of ``the elephant,'' let alone suggest that
it be dealt with; for what good does it do a person or a
government to raise an issue that most, if not everyone,
regards as dead and buried, especially if international
relations seem to be improving; why rock the boat? So ``the
elephant'' has remained in the room for 18 years, but just
because we choose not see him does not mean he is no longer
there.
So if we assume, as I suggest to you, that Russia did not
admit to the real size and capability of its biological weapons
systems and it did not get rid of all of them and did not allow
the U.S. or the U.K. free unfettered access to its web of
military as well as civilian BW sites, because those are the
ones that have been mentioned today, and that Mr. Putin, like
all his antecedents, would never give up such a key strategic
military and diplomatic card, it is not unreasonable for a
concerned citizen to ask you to examine following questions:
When many of the Biopreparat sites were abandoned or
downgraded, what happened to the biological material being
worked on at those places? What happened to the experimental
results from the Biopreparat institutes? What happened to the
policies and tactical and strategic plans for the use of the
many types of weapons that were developed? What has been
happening at the Russian Ministry of Defense military
biological weapons sites in the past 18 years? What happened to
the weapon strains of the various BW agents? What happened to
military launch vehicles? What happened to plans dealing with
every aspect of production and deployment? What happened to the
bioregulator program? What happened to the R&D centered on
anticrop, antiplant, and antilivestock biological weapons? What
happened to the stocks of seed cultures of biological weapons
agents designed to be used to fuel a mobilized production of
weapons? And there are a number of other questions.
Finally, biological weapons are not weapons of mass
destruction. It is an epithet coined, you many not be surprised
to hear, by the Soviets back in the 1960s, no doubt to obscure
future discussion and negotiation by lumping them in the basket
with nuclear weapons at a time when their possession was still
legal. In fact, they comprise a complete suite of possibilities
for killing or injuring or disabling humans, animals, plants as
a means to achieve politically sanctioned ends, just as the
panoply of conventional weapons can within a purely ballistic
context. However, they are distinguished in at least one
particular respect from true weapons of mass destruction on one
hand and conventional weapons on the other; they can be used
for strategic purposes without damaging materiel
infrastructure.
Therefore, with Mr. Putin in power in Russia, it would be
as well for the United States to stop ignoring ``the elephant''
and address these unanswered questions. There is now nothing to
be lost and everything to be gained by doing so. Thank you for
your listening.
Mr. Rohrabacher. A little bit longer than 5 minutes.
Dr. Davis. I am sorry. I didn't have a watch.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, it was London time. That was it.
Dr. Davis. I am jet lagged.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Davis follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Mr. Rohrabacher. And finally, we have Mr. Leitenberg with
us and our last witness.
Now, there will be some votes coming up, so we want to get
moving as fast as we can, but Mr. Leitenberg, you may proceed
with your testimony.
STATEMENT OF MR. MILTON LEITENBERG, SENIOR RESEARCH SCHOLAR,
CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AND SECURITY STUDIES AT MARYLAND,
SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Mr. Leitenberg. Thank you very much, and thank you,
Congressman Rohrabacher and Congressman Keating.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Make sure you talk real close to that
mike.
Mr. Leitenberg. I am sorry, I had not pushed the green
button. Thank you for having me to testify.
I will try and be a little briefer. I think a large part of
Christopher's elephant is in there or as much as we could pack
into 900 pages, so I think a substantial number of the
questions that he asked are in fact answerable, and perhaps I
will find a moment to do that.
I submitted a statement, which is simply a precis of the
book but I will try and make my remarks a bit broader and speak
about three things: A little bit about the Soviet program and
what is left of it because an important part of the book
concerned the U.S. and the British Government efforts to get
President Yeltsin--President Gorbachev, first--General
Secretary Gorbachev, President Gorbachev, then President
Yeltsin to put an end to that program, and we failed, both the
U.S. and the British Governments failed in that, and that is
gone into. There is 150 pages in the book describing that, and
in substantial detail.
So I will say a little bit about the Soviets and the
Russians, and then I want to say something about the biological
threat currently to the United States from state and nonstate
actors, since that has been mentioned by both of the
introductory remarks. Finally, I want to say something about
the Biological Weapons Convention and verification and
compliance
Quickly to the remnants of the Soviet BW program existing
in Russia today. There are three reasons to be concerned about
what is in Russia. The first of which was referred to, is that
the Russian foreign ministry and Ministry of Defense took part
in negotiations, but it was essentially the Ministry of Defense
that destroyed what was called the ``Trilateral Negotiations''
between 1993 and 1996, and it was not accepted by either our
Government or the British Government. Secretary Christopher was
going to Moscow, other senior U.S. officials, then Lynn Davis
was going to Moscow. We kept on. I quote President Clinton's
letter to President Yeltsin in 1995, we were pressing--and the
Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission took this up. We were pressing
this issue, but the Russians ran the negotiations into the
ground. I haven't time to deal with it, but they did. It was
not our undoing. It was theirs.
Second, as a corollary of that, which was also mentioned,
the three Ministry of Defense facilities have never been
visited by anybody from any other country to this day. They are
closed. We don't know what they are doing. They may or may not
have an active offensive program. I presume they do. I do not
believe that the U.S. Government thinks they are producing and
stockpiling agents anymore, but we don't know that.
The third thing is President Putin. There was a very
surprising occurrence in February and March 2012, and I will
read this: ``In a somewhat bizarre development in February/
March 2012, Putin and then Russian Minister of Defense Anatoly
Serdyukov publicly referred to 28 tasks that Putin had
established for the Russian Ministry of Defense in order to
prepare for threats for the future.'' Putin wrote that Russia
needed to be prepared for ``quick and effective response to new
challenges,'' and one of the tasks that Putin specified was
``the development of weapons based on new physical principles,
radiation, geophysical, wave, genetic, and psychophysical, et
cetera.'' Genetic can only mean one thing. That would be a
violation of the Biological Weapons Convention. The others
happen to be a violation of one of Brezhnev's favorite arms
control treaties that the Russians fought for
4for deg. years called the ``Hostile Use of
Environmental Modification Technologies,'' signed May 18th,
1977, and entered into force on October 5th, 1978.
So all of the things that Putin rattled off would be in
violation of either the Biological Weapons Convention or what
is called the ENMOD Treaty.
Two or three short other points, because they were raised
in various remarks and questions. We do not believe that any
agents or weapons from the Soviet program went out of the
Soviet Union or Russia to either other states or nonstate
actors. There is one possible exception to this, but I don't
think you are really asking about that. If you go back to the
Reagan administration and the ``Yellow-Rain'' accusations that
the Soviet Union had transferred what were called mycotoxins,
trichothecene mycotoxins, to Vietnam to use against Hmong and
Meo tribesmen, which had fought for the U.S. This is after
1975, between 1976 and 1982. That has never been resolved. The
U.S. Department of State to this day maintains those claims.
Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, and Australia did their own
chemical analyses and could not verify the U.S. claims, and
most of the arms control community does not believe those
allegations, but except for that story, if you segregate that
out, we do not believe that any agents went out of the Soviet
program anywheres.
Secondly, because it is in Amy's testimony, she actually
has a better summary of the Soviet program than I wrote, she
refers to genetic engineering. The entire post-1972 Soviet BW
program was to adapt molecular genetics to do what the
classical early program from 1945 to 1972 had not succeeded in
doing: To insert antibiotic resistance, and to change the
antigenic structure on the organism so that you fool vaccines
and things like that.
Their development program succeeded in that, but that
happened between 1984, 1985, and 1990. Pasechnik--Vladimir
Pasechnik came out in October 1989. By April/May 1990, the U.S.
Government and the British Government were beating on Mr.
Gorbachev's head to put an end to this, and so those new agents
were never produced and stockpiled. The Soviet stockpile was
the classical old nongenetically modified agents.
All right. The current biological weapons threat to the
United States by state and nonstate actors. There are very few
state BW programs. We have changed our notion from the 1970s,
1980s, that there were perhaps 10, 11, 12. In 2006, 2007, our
Noncompliance statements drastically changed. We reduced that
to five or six countries, and the phraseology about those five
or six countries, even the ones that we still were worried
about. There is Russia, question mark; there is China, also
question mark; North Korea, probably; Iran, possibly; Israel,
yes, but we don't know what is left of it. You have five. We
don't know anything about stockpiles in these countries. We
assume they have offensive programs, perhaps, but our
compliance statements uses phraseology about capabilities in
industrial infrastructure, pharmaceutical infrastructure,
scientific capability. That would apply to all our NATO allies,
all EU countries, and to the United States more than anyone
else. So those are not criteria for an offensive BW program. So
it is a big question mark.
Nonstate actor programs or terrorists, there is no evidence
that any state has ever given a nonstate actor biological
weapons. As for the famous programs that were tried by the two
major groups: First, the Aum Shinrikyo between 1990 and 1994.
They never obtained a pathogen, an active pathogen to work
with. They had a strain that is used for vaccination of
animals, a vaccine strain. You can't make a weapon out of that.
It obviously doesn't work. So they didn't have anything of any
kind to work with, and what little work they did was
incompetent.
The Al Qaeda program between 1997 to December 2001, and I
am the person that got the papers declassified, the papers we
found in Afghanistan, they, too, never obtained a pathogen to
work with. There were two or three incompetent people that they
trusted that they thought would do the laboratory work. They
never got to their A, B, Cs. Neither of these two groups got to
the first essentials of doing anything.
All right. Now, let's say something about compliance, and I
want to use----
Mr. Rohrabacher. If you could summarize, please, because we
are----
Mr. Leitenberg. Well, I will be as quick as I can.
Mr. Rohrabacher. We are going to vote pretty soon.
Mr. Leitenberg. Dave Franz has as his second point, and I
think it is quite important, ``Verifying that any individual
nation state is in compliance with the BWC is not possible.''
That is true as an absolute, but it is not true in the real
world. When UNSCOM, which Dave participated in, went to Iraq
and there were teams of 10, 15 people, and there were disputes
amongst them whether a particular Iraqi facility was an
offensive one or a defensive one. There were such disputes,
though Amy's description of the early UNSCOM missions is very
good.
Nevertheless, they have also participated in trilateral
inspections in Russia which began in August 1991 and lasted
through 1995. I should be corrected if I am mistaken, but to my
understanding, unanimously, all the members of the U.S. and
British teams that went to those sites decided that they were
looking at elements and infrastructure of an offensive BW
program. As best I know, nobody disagreed with that.
Therefore, you don't know things absolutely, but if we had
such people as went into the former Soviet Union in Russia from
1991 to 1995 walking around the Russian Ministry of Defense
facilities now, and if we had them walking around facilities in
Iran, we would have a very much better idea of what was taking
place in those places and whether they had an offensive BW
program or not. I can add to this, but your red light is on.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. We do have time
constraints here.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Leitenberg follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Mr. Leitenberg. I would like to say something about the
verification protocol if you can have that later.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I will yield to my colleague for his
questions first, but go, go right ahead.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You covered a lot of the ground in terms of the questions I
had with the remarks, but I want to--part of it could be
consensus, too. Let me hit a couple of issues.
One, in terms of the more fundamental attacks and the types
of biological weapons that could be put into place at a more
fundamental basis. One of my concerns is, since this group's
publications like Inspire that are providing basic information,
how to assemble a bomb, how to do this at home, are there
biological weapons, more simplistic ones that can be
manufactured more easily, and therefore, can some of that
information be communicated over the internet by groups to
disseminate it, how to formulate that now? And so if anyone
wants to take a shot at that, I will allow them to.
Dr. Franz, thank you, and thank you for your service to our
country.
Mr. Franz. I think that it is clear that--first, anything
is possible, and as I said, I think proliferation of
capabilities and technologies and knowledge is over.
However, I think about tacit knowledge. Having spent a lot
of time with some of our old bioweaponeers, it is a little bit
like our mothers making biscuits without a recipe. There is
more than just following a cookbook, and as Milton stated,
those sub-state actors who have tried it have not really been
very successful and not even been close.
So I think that starting--I am probably concerned more
about an insider scientist than I am about a terrorist becoming
a scientist. I am also concerned about a terrorist organization
recruiting scientists, which is certainly possible, but I think
it is important to note that the--there is a big difference
between what the Soviet Union was doing and what we were doing
in our old offensive program, and what is possible, and it
might even just be disruption, as you saw with the anthrax
letters that we had here on the Hill in 2001. It was terribly
disruptive, terribly expensive, and yet it was--it was gram
quantities.
So, it is--in a sense, you can say anything is possible,
but it is--I have spent my life trying to do good things with
biology. It is also hard to do bad things with biology, to some
degree.
Mr. Keating. Dr. Smithson.
Ms. Smithson. One of the things that frustrates me is when
I see someone go on TV, usually someone with scientific
credentials, who says I can do this. Yes, perhaps they could,
but each of these agents actually has different characteristics
both in the fermenter and to disperse. So while you may be able
to read things, in fact, can read things on the Web about
fermentation of various biological agents, and there is
information out there about dispersal, knowing what to use with
which agent is going to be a considerable problem for any
individual or group trying to master this.
And Dave is exactly right about the tacit knowledge that
goes into this equation. Inspire does indeed have some
articles, as does the encyclopedia of Jihad, and there have
been analyses done of a variety of cookbooks that individuals
have published, and in almost each and every case, you will
find that there are technical problems to what they recommend.
The issue is that equipment is being deskilled. In other
words, as more sophisticated equipment disperses around the
world, and this has considerable benefit on the good side of
science, but it will also make it perhaps easier for those with
malevolent intent to do something bad with a pathogen, and that
is because they won't have to have as much of this tacit
knowledge, the machine will do it for them. So we have got a
point in the future where our problem will become more
challenging, but right now, it is one where I think his
description of an insider threat versus a terrorist that hasn't
scientific knowledge is very accurate.
Mr. Keating. It is more of a threat of obtaining it rather
than creating it.
Now, I think Mr. Leitenberg was going in this direction,
and I want to ask him this question and all of you this
question because----
Mr. Leitenberg. I would like chip in on these--on this,
too.
Mr. Keating. You can--let me get the question out. You can
jump in and--please. But the--it is the issue of verification.
Some of you have addressed that in your statements, but I want
to get a sense here. Some of you say really it can't be
verified. There are different scales of how much can be
verified. I just want to quickly, our panel to discuss how well
can we verify some of this, because if we can't or if it is
near impossible, then that is good to know as a starting point
because if we are going into the 2016 review conference and--it
would be good to know because that will be discussed, I am
sure, there, but if it is a discussion that is going nowhere, I
would like your opinions on that. Verification, how well can we
do it?
Mr. Leitenberg. Can I first say something about the
previous discussion? I want to make three short points to my
colleagues.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Answer that one and then go right into
your points.
Mr. Leitenberg. Okay. This is----
Mr. Franz. Let me respond to Milton's comment about my
comments. I stand by my statement that we--that it is
impossible to verify compliance. I can't assure you that any
country is not doing anything contravening the Biological
Weapons Convention, and I stand by that.
He talked about my time in Iraq and my time in Russia. In
Iraq, the problem was trying to figure out if it was an
offensive program or if it was a legitimate program. It was
this dual use issue that was really hard, and they were pretty
good at hiding things, so we had to sort through that, and
eventually, we learned from people--and Amy knows this story
better than I do, even though I was there--from people with
regard to what they were doing.
In Russia, there was no question that in my eyes that we
were--when I walked into Obolensk, this was an offensive
program. I had lived and was running a vaccine development
facility here in this country, a biodefense facility, and it
was nothing like that. So I had no question that that was an
offensive program, but I can't verify either that it is ongoing
or that had stopped. That is a--that is the issue with regard
to verification. It is not that you can't walk into a country
or a facility and have some sense, but verifying compliance, I
believe, is not possible.
Mr. Keating. All right. Thank you. Appreciate that.
Mr. Leitenberg, would you like to follow up on that?
Mr. Leitenberg. Well, I think we should probably stick with
the verification for the moment then, and I will try and come
back if I can to the earlier question.
How well can we verify? Much better. One can never know
more by not having on-site inspection than by having it. In
other words, you are not going to learn more by not getting in
the front door than you will if you got in the front door. I
mean, that is--there is no way in the world that I can
understand that any differently.
Mr. Rohrabacher. That makes sense, yes.
Mr. Leitenberg. Now, in publications going back to 1996, I
have used a five-page list of criteria that were developed at
after AFMIC, the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Command, if
I remember. In other words, our BW intelligence community had
drawn up under five different categories, if you walked into a
site or if you looked at the site and then inside and how it
was managed and how its economics were run, they had five sets
of criteria with six or seven points under each one that would
help you distinguish between a facility that was doing
offensive BW work and a facility that was doing none, that was
doing defensive BW work.
Again, I agree with Dave, nothing is absolute, but you--you
get closer and closer, you hone in. I also, since 1970, have
written a successive group of studies, and there is a chapter
in the book which I repeated again in terms of the Soviet
program specifically, can you tell the difference in the
laboratory--in laboratory, not in a production facility but at
the level of the science in the laboratory, can you tell the
difference between work that is offensive and work that is
defensive? It is an extremely intricate question, but I think
you can or you can get a good way toward it. Now, you asked
about----
Mr. Keating. Real quick, if I could. I got the thrust of my
question answered. That being that, forensically, you can go
back and determine that in terms of verification. It is just
not something that could be done, but if I could, just because
I don't want to--we do--we are up against the rollcall, I would
like to yield back to the chair, and you could follow up in his
questioning some of that. I want to make sure the chair has the
chance.
Mr. Rohrabacher. What are the positive--why would someone
want to develop these things for positive reasons? I mean, is
it--keep getting this word ``positive'' in there. Is there a
development of a chemical biological agent for something other
than hurting somebody and killing people? We have just tried to
create a dichotomy here between different substances. It would
seem to me that we are talking about a human endeavor that is
in and of itself evil.
Ms. Smithson. Pathogens are studied by legitimate
scientists in order to find cures for diseases, to develop
antivirals, and antibiotics, and so it is this thin area of
what is--what is a good medical use, and where has this
knowledge been distorted and used for military purposes?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Correct me if I am wrong, but that would
be a very limited, very small operation as compared to
something where you are trying to create a weapons system.
Ms. Smithson. And that is the scale that Dr. Franz referred
to.
Mr. Rohrabacher. That is miniscule compared to major
production.
Ms. Smithson. I have been upstairs in Obolensk as well, and
it hit me across the face that this was no legitimate
pharmaceutical activity because of the scale of the high
containment area there. So, indeed, in some cases, you can tell
right away, not just by the physical infrastructure, but there
are likely to be questions that you want to ask that are hard
questions about, what are you doing here that is different from
what you say you are doing here? And that is the crux of the
verification methodology that the industry experts put forward
in their monitoring proposal for the BWC, and they describe
which areas of a facility that you would go to in order to get
the best information and how you can monitor things just by
looking at the documentation.
And in Iraq, there were many things that they found just in
the documentation that were both incriminating in some cases,
and on other facilities, it was very clear that they were
engaged in legitimate activity, whether it was baking bread,
making beer or, indeed, making medicines. So you can tell the
difference.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Leitenberg's point that there is
certainly no way that you are going to learn less by having
someone go into one of those situations. But it seems to me
that, well, when people did go into this in Iraq, did you find
that people working on these positive type of chemical
biological projects, or was this all the total----
Mr. Franz. No, we didn't at Al Hakum or Al Manal or at
other places, but we did at Samarra drug industries, for
example. We looked at a lot of places. There were just a
handful that were used as negative.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Used as what?
Mr. Franz. Uses for the weapons program, I am sorry.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And the rest of them were used for?
Mr. Franz. And many of these were used for their
biopharmaceutical industry, food industry; it was very common.
Mr. Rohrabacher. There are go. I learned something.
Mr. Leitenberg. Different sites, different sites.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. Different sites. Let me ask you
this about--a vote has been called, and the chair plans to try
to finish the questions up in the next 5 minutes, and we will
have to call an end to the hearing. Let me go real quickly.
The Nunn-Lugar, the effect of Nunn-Lugar, some indicated to
me that Nunn-Lugar had a major impact of reducing the
stockpiles of chemical-biological weapons in the former Soviet
Union, but what happened is that the actual weapons were
systems that were upgraded. And we were actually paying for
upgrading the weapons systems there.
Mr. Leitenberg. The Nunn-Lugar program has done much to get
rid of the Soviet chemical weapons stockpile. It did nothing to
get rid of the Soviet biological weapons stockpile, because we
and the British believed that they got rid of the stockpile
between late 1989 and perhaps mid-1991 by themselves. Part of
that stockpile we then redug up twice, because it was buried on
this Vozrozhdeniya Island. It was anthrax, and it wasn't
decontaminated very well. We didn't want anybody to get it, so
we dug it up twice and re-decontaminated--so, yes, that was
probably paid for by Nunn-Lugar. But in other words, the
Russians got rid of their stocks initially by themselves.
Now the answer to Chris' questions, where are those
cultures? Where are all the protocols? They are unquestionably
sitting in the Ministry of Defense, the Russian Ministry of
Defense in the old 15th Directorate that was simply renamed. It
now has to do with biodefense; all they did was change the
title. In the early years, they kept all the same people. And
they are no doubt sitting there.
Well, we saved our cultures in our own type culture
collections. We saved 6,000 classified documents. We had a big
team sitting at Fort Detrick in USAMRIID for 2\1/2\ years I
think it was looking at 16,000--17,000 documents deciding which
would be sequestered and kept and which would be released to
the public.
There is no question that the Russians kept their
documentation and their protocols. We don't think they
destroyed that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Do you think--again, we are hearing about
a dichotomy about the type of offensive system versus a
nonoffensive system of earlier weapons. How can you make that
distinction? I am trying to figure that out?
Dr. Davis. Mr. Chairman, a confusion has occurred I think
in semantics here. We are only talking about weapons. We are
not talking about good weapons, bad weapons. We are talking
about weapons. And somewhere along the line, we used the terms
positive and negative. The positive thing was about the use of
biological agents for illness in treatment, et cetera, et
cetera. Antibiotics or those kinds of things. Molecular
biology. That is one side. That is the plus biology side. The
negative biology side is what you do to make weapons.
I would just say, adding quickly here, following the
comments that have been made. When you look at verification,
you look at biological weapons, you are not talking about a
single process, if you like. The process of production has
changed enormously. I was the first man into Obolensk in
January 1991, and it was a massive facility. I was the guy
inside the explosive chamber with the incident and all the rest
of it, and we had a bag full of intelligence to go in with. We
knew exactly the background, et cetera.
Today, if you look at what is happening in the biotech
industry, you can do what you did with something the size of
this room with something much, much smaller. And that is where
so many things on the production side have gone. The signature
of what looks bad; what could be done with a small amount of
materiel.
The second thing is the other side of weapons is that, you
know, it is no good simply having 5 liters of materiel. You
actually have to disseminate that materiel in an effective
fashion. That is where technique, technology and understanding
occurs, and how to make biological agents into weapons.
Mr. Rohrabacher. The point has been made earlier about the
difference between a site that is involved with inventing and
developing a system versus a site that would be producing
enough for a utilization as a weapon.
Just one last point here then. Apparently, it looks like
the United States went into this sincerely with an idea of
trying to bring down the level of the threat of use of some
sort of chemical biological agent on human beings. And that
threat that posed all of human kind. And we stopped our
production; the Soviets did not. But they became Russia. I take
from the testimony that Russia is still producing chemical
biological weapons.
Mr. Leitenberg. No, no, absolutely not.
Mr. Rohrabacher. They just didn't destroy what they had?
Mr. Leitenberg. We keep talking about an offensive and
defensive program. First of all, there is no such thing as a
defensive biological weapon. A defensive biological program
means you make vaccines. You make pharmaceuticals, which is a
chemical, rather than a vaccine. You make masks. You make
suits. You make particular kinds of clothing. That is all
defensive. That is legitimate under the convention. You can do
that.
There is no such thing as a defensive biological weapon.
I forget what the other part of the question was at the
very end.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I am going to give each of you 30 seconds
to summarize, then we have to go vote.
Mr. Keating. The $64 billion, is that well spent?
Mr. Rohrabacher. You got 30 seconds to tell me whether or
not you think this program has been a plus, minus, or what. You
have 30 seconds each because then we have to go vote. I am
sorry.
Ms. Smithson. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program has
been a tremendous plus for U.S. And international security, not
only because they dismantled actual weapons systems, nuclear
and chemical weapons at Shchuchye, but because we went in with
grant assistance for the former Soviet chemical biological and
nuclear weapons at a point at which they were under or
unemployed and we kept them gainfully employed so they would
not----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Good point.
Yes, sir?
Mr. Franz. I have been actively involved in the Nunn-Lugar
program since the beginning, and I am, as you can tell from my
testimony, I am a real supporter of the people-to-people
engagement. And I have close friends in Russia. I have close
friends around the world, some of whom have worked in weapons
programs in the past who no longer work in weapons programs.
And I believe because it is very difficult--I think it is a
lot different to send in an inspector to prove or disprove if
that there is a weapons program in an organization or in a
country than it is to make friends in that country and learn to
know them well and even build trust.
Mr. Rohrabacher. The program is a success, but the
friendship is even better.
Yes, sir, Mr. Davis? Dr. Davis.
Dr. Davis. And I used to contract under CTR with Russia for
a number of years. People on the ground that did the work, I
thought it was an excellent program. I will make my final
remark: ``The elephant is still in the room.''
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Mr. Leitenberg. Three answers to your question: Russia is
not producing chemical weapons, at least we don't think so.
Under the OPCW, both the United States and Russia have now for
20 years been destroying their existing chemical weapons
stocks. We are each down to the last--we are down to our last 7
or 10 percent. The Russians are about down to their last 15 or
20 percent. That is chemical weapons.
Biological weapons, to the best of my knowledge, the U.S.
Government doesn't believe the Soviet Union is producing
biological weapons. We are suspicious that they may be
maintaining an offensive program in those three Ministry of
Defense facilities, but we have no way to know.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And we should demand to see those
facilities?
Mr. Leitenberg. Excuse me?
Mr. Rohrabacher. We should demand to see those facilities.
Mr. Leitenberg. Oh, absolutely.
Mr. Rohrabacher. There you go. Thank you all for testifying
today. There will be a lot of people looking at what you have
said, and this will spur a lot of conservation and talk on this
issue, which was the purpose of this hearing.
This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:30 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
Material Submitted for the Record
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Material submitted for the record by Mr. Milton Leitenberg, senior
research scholar, Center for International and Security Studies at
Maryland, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[Note: The remaining pages are not reprinted here but are available in
committee records.]
__________
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[Note: The remaining pages are not reprinted here but are available in
committee records. This publication may also be accessed on the
Internet at the following URL:
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/download.cfm?q=639]
__________
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[Note: The remaining pages are not reprinted here but are available in
committee records.]
__________
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[Note: The remaining pages are not reprinted here but are available in
committee records.]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses from Mr. Milton Leitenberg, senior research scholar, Center
for International and Security Studies at Maryland, School of Public
Policy, University of Maryland, to questions submitted for the record
by the Honorable George Holding, a Representative in Congress from the
State of North Carolina
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]