Biohazard

Over a twenty-year period that began, ironically, with Moscow's endorsement of the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972, the Soviet Union built the largest and most advanced biological warfare establishment in the world. We were among the 140 signatories of the convention, pledging "not to develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire or retain" biological agents for offensive military purposes. At the same time, through our covert program, we stockpiled hundreds of tons of anthrax and dozens of tons of plague and smallpox near Moscow and other Russian cities for use against the United States and its Western allies.

What went on in Biopreparat's labs was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War.

Before I became an expert in biological warfare I was trained as a physician. The government I served perceived no contradiction between the oath every doctor takes to preserve life and our preparations for mass murder. For a long time, neither did I.

Less than a decade ago, I was a much-decorated army colonel, marked out for further promotion in one of the Soviet Union's most elite military programs. If I had stayed in Russia, I would have been a major general by now, and you would never have heard my name. But in 1992, after seventeen years inside Biopreparat, I resigned from my position and fled with my family to the United States. In numerous debriefing sessions, I provided U.S. officials with their first comprehensive picture of our activities. Most of what I told them has never been revealed in public.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the danger once posed by our weapons work has sharply diminished. Biopreparat claims that it no longer conducts offensive research, and Russia's stockpile of germs and viruses has been destroyed. But the threat of a biological attack has increased as the knowledge developed in our labs — of lethal formulations that took our scientists years to discover — has spread to rogue regimes and terrorist groups. Bioweapons are no longer contained within the bipolar world of the Cold War. They are cheap, easy to make, and easy to use. In the coming years, they will become very much a part of our lives.

Since leaving Moscow I have encountered an alarming level of ignorance about biological weapons. Some of the best scientists I've met in the West say it isn't possible to alter viruses genetically to make reliable weapons, or to store enough of a given pathogen for strategic purposes, or to deliver it in a way that assures maximum killing power. My knowledge and experience tell me that they are wrong. I have written this book to explain why.

There are some who maintain that discussing the subject will cause needless alarm. But existing defenses against these weapons are dangerously inadequate, and when biological terror strikes, as I'm convinced it will, public ignorance will only heighten the disaster. The first step we must take to protect ourselves is to understand what biological weapons are and how they work. The alternative is to remain as helpless as the monkeys in the Aral Sea.

Map: Soviet Biological Warfare Installations

MILITARY MEDICINE

Army Headquarters

Moscow, 1988

Late in the winter of 1988, I was called to a meeting at Soviet army headquarters on Frunze Street in Moscow. The note of urgency in the message was hard to ignore. "We've set aside a special room for you, Colonel," said the clipped voice on the phone.

A black Volga was waiting at the curb, its motor running. The two armed bodyguards who accompanied me on top-secret business were slouched alongside, their fur hats pulled low against the cold. One held the door open as I climbed into the backseat, and followed me inside. The second slid in beside my driver, Slava. I told Slava to drive quickly.

It was usually a thirty-minute drive across town from my office to Red Army headquarters, but a fresh snowfall that morning had turned the streets into an Arctic snarl of spinning tires and raging drivers. Once or twice the flashing blue light on our official vehicle aroused the attention of a traffic policeman, who thrust his gloved band in the air to clear the way.

Close to an hour had passed by the time we finally pulled up in front of the austere granite building that housed the Ministry of Defense. I entered through a side entrance and stamped the snow from my boots. A junior officer took me to a small adjoining room, where I was issued a pass, and then on to a guard booth, where a young soldier examined my pass and picture, stared hard, and waved me on.

The first officer led me up a flight of stairs to a heavy armored door with a coded lock. He punched in a series of numbers and we walked into the sprawling suite of offices occupied by the Fifteenth Directorate of the Soviet army, the military wing of our biological weapons program.

I unzipped my parka and tried to relax.