Barriers to Bioweapons: The Challenges of Expertise and Organization for Weapons Development

237 Pages·2014·1.142 MB·English

by  Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley

Barriers to Bioweapons
a volume in the series
Cornell Studies in Security Affairs
Edited by Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis, and Stephen M. Walt
A list of titles in this series is available at www .cornellpress .cornell .edu .
Barriers to
Bioweapons
The Challenges of Expertise and
Or ga ni zat ion for Weapons Development
Sonia Ben Ouagrham- Gormley
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
Copyright © 2014 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this
book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address
Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca,
New York 14850.
First published 2014 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Ben Ouagrham- Gormley, Sonia, author.
Barriers to bioweapons : the challenges of expertise and or ga ni za tion for weapons
development / Sonia Ben Ouagrham- Gormley.
pages cm — (Cornell studies in security affairs)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 8014- 5288- 8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Biological arms control— Former Soviet republics. 2. Biological arms control—
United States. I. Title. II. Series: Cornell studies in security affairs.
UG447.8.O93 2014
358'.388—dc23
2014006190
Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible
suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing
of its books. Such materials include vegetable- based, low- VOC inks
and acid- free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine- free, or partly
composed of nonwood fi bers. For further information, visit our
website at www .cornellpress .cornell .edu .
Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover photograph: H5N1 virus and 1960s-era photograph of Soviet anti-plague scientists,
displayed at the anti-plague institute in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 2002.
To my loving husband, Dennis

Contents
Preface and Ac know ledg ments ix
1. The Bioproliferation Puzzle 1
2. The Acquisition and Use of Specialized Knowledge 17
3. Impediments and Facilitators of Bioweapons
Development 37
4. The American Bioweapons Program: Struggling
with a Split Personality Disorder 64
5. The Soviet Bioweapons Program: Failed Integration 91
6. Small Bioweapons Programs and the Constraints
of Covertness 122
7. Preventing Bioweapons Developments: Policy
Implications 144
Appendix 1: American Bioweapons Program: Contractors 169
Appendix 2: American Bioweapons Program: Approximate
Bud get Figures 175
Notes 179
Index 213
vii

Preface and Ac know ledg ments
When the Soviet U nion broke up and revealed the enormity and desperate
state of its former bioweapons complex, like many researchers and policy
analysts then, I was convinced that a state or terrorist group could readily
exploit the expertise available at these former facilities and use it to produce
a bioweapon. But after spending extensive time in the former Soviet Union,
interacting with former bioweapons scientists supported by government or
privately funded research, I found that my assessment of the threat began
to change. Several themes started to emerge from my discussions with
these individuals about their past bioweapons work and their current civil-
ian work. A key observation— the importance of which I came to appreciate
only later— is that working with live organisms is not easy. Live agents are
capricious, and modifying or controlling their behavior to achieve specifi c
objectives requires special knowledge and skills. Second, it was clear that
the economic, pol itic al, and social environment in which people worked
affected their results. Being an economist and a student of industrialization,
particularly in the Soviet context, I was not surprised by this fi nding. But
not until September 11, 2001, and the anthrax letters did I start to link these
two themes and examine their role in shaping the threat of bioweapons
proliferation.
Although the 2001 events seemed to corroborate the imminence of the
bioweapons threat, contemporary assessments seemed to ignore three im-
portant questions: What is bioweapons knowledge? How can it be acquired
and transferred? What facilitates or impedes bioweapons developments?
These questions spurred the start of a research project, conducted in coop-
eration with Kathleen Vogel at Cornell University, with support from the
Carnegie Corporation of New York. The project aimed to produce an oral
ix