[Peace-discuss] Fwd: United States: Scientists Clash Over Alleged Illegal U.S. Research

[Margaret E. Kosal]

fyi


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>Monday, January 13, 2003
>
>
>United States:  Scientists Clash Over Alleged Illegal U.S. Research
>
>
>
>By David Ruppe
>Global Security Newswire
>
>WASHINGTON In a heated exchange, a U.S. government scientist is publicly 
>disputing a charge made by two independent scientists that the United 
>States is conducting illegal biological weapons programs activity 
>prohibited by the Biological Weapons Convention.
>
>In articles appearing recently in two prominent publications, professors 
>Mark Wheelis of the University of California at Davis and Malcolm Dando of 
>the United Kingdom s University of Bradford hypothesized the 
>administration had scuttled a proposed treaty inspection protocol 
>primarily to prevent discovery of growing, illicit U.S. research (see 
><http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2001/11/21/4s.html>GSN, Nov. 21, 2001).
>
>The United States may have rejected the bioweapons protocol because it is 
>committed to continuing and expanding secret programs, they wrote in an 
>article published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists this month.
>
>Offering no new evidence to support their hypothesis, the authors contend 
>illicit research offers the best explanation for the U.S. opposition 
>despite support from the closest U.S. allies, including the United Kingdom.
>
>Why did the U.S., unlike any other major Western power, conclude that the 
>protocol would not enhance its security?  What was perceived as so 
>threatening in the protocol that it justified opening a serious rift 
>between the U.S. and its closest allies? they ask in the CBW Conventions 
>Bulletin, a quarterly journal produced by the Harvard-Sussex Program on 
>CBW Armament and Arms Limitation.
>
>The U.S. rejection of the protocol raises the possibility that there are 
>new classified biodefense programs that are deemed too sensitive 
>politically or technically for even the limited disclosure that the 
>protocol would require, they conclude.
>
>Charge Disputed
>
>Alan Zelicoff, senior scientist at the Center for National Security and 
>Arms Control at Sandia National Laboratories, complained about the charges 
>on an international e-mail forum widely read by biological arms control 
>specialists.  He said he was insulted.   Zelicoff s center develops 
>technologies to improve WMD counterproliferation, and to verify arms 
>control treaties.
>
>The authors indulge in an ugly exercise allegedly based on scientific 
>hypothesis formation, concluding that the explanation most consistent with 
>the U.S. rejection of the protocol is that the U.S. is pursuing an illicit 
>program to develop biological weapons to wage warfare, he wrote.  Perhaps 
>they are correct, but I doubt it, he said.
>
>Zelicoff cited the Bush administration s official explanations for its 
>opposition to the inspections protocol, which led to a dramatic suspension 
>of a treaty review conference in December 2001 and the limited agreement 
>last November which does not include the protocol (see 
><http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2002/11/15/15s.html>GSN, Nov. 15, 2002).
>
>The current administration rejected the protocol because its studies 
>(funded by the previous administration) showed that the risk of loss of 
>proprietary national security and business-related information far 
>outweighed the benefits of the protocol (and indeed, few benefits at all 
>could be demonstrated in those studies), Zelicoff wrote.
>
>In November, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen 
>Rademaker said there was a concern the protocol would have required the 
>United States to declare agents created for biological defense research, 
>information that could aid U.S. enemies.
>
>No Personal Knowledge
>
>Zelicoff also argued that he personally has no knowledge of any illegal 
>biological weapons work in the U.S. biological defense program.  He said 
>if he knew of any he would make it public.
>
>If the United States were developing biological weapons for warfare, as 
>opposed to peacekeeping or riot control, I suspect I would have to be in 
>line behind anyone else making phone calls to the New York Times, he told 
>Global Security Newswire Friday.
>
>The scientist wrote in the e-mail he has regular access to classified 
>documents describing U.S. biological defense work and the intent behind 
>it, and wrote never (that is to say, not once, never) have I had any 
>suspicion that the U.S. biodefense program was intended in any way to 
>develop weapons for use on the battlefield.
>
>Wheelis and Dando do an enormous disservice to the people working on 
>biodefense to suggest that they & know better or are somehow more 
>sensitive to the possibility of illegal work.  They aren t, he wrote.
>
>Zelicoff, who previously has publicly denied there is a secret, illicit 
>U.S. program, said in the interview he took the charges personally.
>
>There are three explanations I m stupid, I m a dupe of the U.S. government 
>or I m lying those are the only three explanations for what they said and 
>I reject them all.  That s why I said I was insulted.  I chose that word 
>carefully, he said.
>
>He said there are a small number of biological defense scientists in the 
>U.S. intelligence community and he knows them all.
>
>I ve asked them looking into their eyes, Has the U.S. in your agency 
>violated the Biological Weapons Convention?   And they looked me right 
>back in the eye and said, no. Could they be lying to me?  Sure.  And this 
>building might fall down too.  It s possible, but it s extremely unlikely, 
>he said.
>
>It s not possible to keep that kind of a secret, he said.
>
>No Evidence Provided
>
>Wheelis and Dando provided no evidence to substantiate the charge of a 
>secret, growing biological weapons program.  They wrote in the CBW 
>Conventions Bulletin it is a possibility that has not, to our knowledge, 
>been discussed much, but which seems to be in the air.
>
>They cited, however, previously reported revelations of controversial U.S. 
>biological research, including a 2001 New York Times report that the CIA 
>had conducted work that could be construed to have violated the treaty and 
>reports following the October 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States 
>that the government was producing dried, weaponized anthrax for biological 
>defense testing.
>
>The treaty allows for small quantities of such biological weapons agents 
>to be produced for peaceful purposes.  Regarding the weaponized anthrax, 
>the professors wrote, the U.S. won t tell anyone how much it made, and for 
>what purpose.
>
>The United States not only pressed, or passed, the limits of legality 
>under the treaty; it also failed to honor its obligation to report these 
>programs in accordance with treaty confidence-building measures, the 
>professors wrote.
>
>Wheelis and Dando urged the U.S. Congress to investigate classified U.S. 
>biological defense programs.
>
>If we are right, the implications for arms control are very serious, and 
>threaten to fatally undermine the BWC and the CWC [Chemical Weapons 
>Convention] by leading to a new biological and chemical arms race, they 
>concluded.
>
>Zelicoff said the only nondefensive chemical or biological weapons work he 
>was aware of is a very small program, mostly farmed out to places like 
>Penn State University from the intelligence community to study the 
>feasibility of developing [chemical] incapacitants for peacekeeping and 
>riot control purposes.
>
>Differentiating Offensive From Defensive
>
>Experts say the Biological Weapons Convention allows countries to produce 
>small quantities of offensive biological agents to test defensive 
>equipment or vaccines.
>
>The State Department s Rademaker last November said such defensive 
>research activity could closely resemble offensive work and lead 
>international investigators to misconstrue work as offensive.
>
>To conduct biodefense, you basically have to create a biological weapon to 
>figure out how to defend against it, he said.
>
>When asked whether the United States was, therefore, building biological 
>weapons for defensive research, he clarified his statement to indicate 
>that it is not necessarily that weapons are created for defensive 
>purposes, but agents, allowable by the treaty.
>
>Zelicoff in his comments suggested Wheelis and Dando were misinterpreting 
>defensive work as offensive.
>© Copyright 2003 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this 
>section is produced independently for the Nuclear Threat Initiative by 
>National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole 
>or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited 
>without the consent of National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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