The social context shaping bioweapons (non)proliferation

Biosecurity and Bioterrorism

Volumn 8, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 9-24

  Ouagrham Gormley, Sonia Ben ^a   Vogel, Kathleen M ^b  

^a GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Department of Obstetrics Gynecology   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANTHRAX; ARTICLE; BIOLOGICAL WARFARE; HUMAN; INTERVIEW; ORGANIZATION; PUBLIC RELATIONS; RESEARCH; RUSSIAN FEDERATION; TECHNOLOGY; UNITED STATES; WEAPON;

ANTHRAX; BIOLOGICAL WARFARE; HUMANS; INTERPROFESSIONAL RELATIONS; INTERVIEWS AS TOPIC; ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE; RESEARCH; RUSSIA; TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER; UNITED STATES; WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION;

EID: 77949637135     PISSN: 15387135     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1089/bsp.2009.0054     Document Type: Article

References (100)

1. See Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad, Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001)
2. Staff Statement, Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Case Study on the Aum Shinrikyo, Senate Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, October 31, 1995; see: http://www.fas.org/irp/ congress/1995-rpt/aum/index.html.
3. In 1991, Congress passed the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act to address the former Soviet Union's proliferation threats to U.S. national security. Under this Act, a collection of U.S. interagency programs are frequently referred to as the "Nunn-Lugar" programs after Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, who cosponsored the original bill. The initial CTR efforts to engage the Soviet bioweapons complex date back to 1994, when the U.S. government sponsored a conversion project at Stepnogorsk. Later, in 1997, new projects were discussed with the Russian and Kazakh governments, resulting in security and safety upgrades at Vector and Obolensk, Russia, and in a dismantlement project at Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan. These efforts are described in: Kathleen M. Vogel, "Pathogen Proliferation: Threats from the Former Soviet Bioweapons Complex," Politics and the Life Sciences 19 (March 2000)
4. Gulbarshyn Bozheyeva et al., "Former Biological Weapons Facilities in Kazakhstan: Past, Present and Future," Occasional Paper No. 1, (Monterey, CA: Monterey Institute of International Studies, 1999), http://cns.miis.edu/opapers/op1/ index.htm
5. Sonia Ben Ouagrham and Kathleen M. Vogel, "Conversion at Stepnogorsk: What the Future Holds for Former Bioweapons Facilities," Occasional Paper No.28 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Peace Studies Program, 2003).
6. Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, March 31, 2005, see: http://www.wmd.gov/ report/index.html
7. White House, National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, December 2002, see: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/16092.pdf;
8. Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, World at Risk (New York: Random House, 2008), http://www.preventwmd.gov/report/.
9. The core of the Soviet BW complex was composed of facilities under the authority of the ministry of defense and Biopreparat, representing about 30 facilities. The complex included a second circle of facilities, which participated actively in the offensive or defensive aspect of the program but also maintained a legitimate civilian activity, such as disease surveillance. Many facilities under the authority of the ministries of health and agriculture and the Academy of Sciences fell into this group. A larger circle of facilities participated passively in the BW program by providing to the Soviet Ministry of Defense and Biopreparat research results not initially developed for, but useful for, bioweapons purposes. The number of facilities included in the last 2 circles is more difficult to estimate, as many of them were not aware of their participation in BW work, but it is probable that the number exceeded 50 facilities. For instance, the Soviet anti-plague system alone was composed of more than 100 facilities in the Soviet time and had 1 facility that was devoted 100% to the offensive program (Volgograd), about a dozen facilities in the second circle, and the rest of the system in the third circle. See: Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman, Biohazard (Random House, 1999); Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley, "Growth of the Anti-plague System During the Soviet Period," Critical Reviews in Microbiology 32 (2006): 33-46, http://cns.miis.edu/ antiplague/pdfs/sonia.pdf
10. and Raymond Zilinskas, "The Anti-Plague System and the Soviet Biological Warfare Program" Critical Reviews in Microbiology 32 (2006): 47-64, http://cns.miis.edu/ antiplague/pdfs/zilinskas.pdf.
11. For additional background on the Soviet BW program, see: Milton Leitenberg, "The Conversion of Biological Warfare Research and Development Facilities to Peaceful Uses," in Control of Dual-Threat Agents: The Vaccines for Peace Programme, eds. E. Geissler and J.P. Woodall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
12. Milton Leitenberg, "The Possibilities and Limitations of Biological Weapons Conversion," in Conversion of Former BTW Facilities, ed. E. Geissler (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998)
13. Igor V. Domaradskij and Wendy Orent, Biowarrior: Inside the Soviet/Russian Biological War Machine (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, October 2003)
14. G. Bozheyeva, Y. Kunakbayev, and D. Yeleukenov, "Former Soviet Biological Weapons Facilities in Kazakhstan: Past, Present, and Future," Occasional Paper No.1 (Monterey: Monterey Institute of International Studies, June 1999)
15. John Hart, "The Soviet Biological Weapons Program," in Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945, eds. Mark Wheelis, Lajos Rózsa, and Malcolm Dando (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 5
16. See: Funding Analysis of FY09 International WMD Security Programs, Michelle Marchesano with contributions from Kenneth N. Luongo and Raphael Della Ratta, http://www.ransac. org/;
17. Cooperative Threat Reduction: Annual Report to Congress Fiscal Year 2009, p. 20, see: http://www.dtra.mil/documents/ oe/ctr/ FY09%20CTR%20Annual%20Report%20to%20Congress. pdf
18. Alan Pearson, "Federal Funding for Biological Weapons Prevention and Defense, Fiscal Years 2001 to 2009," April 15, 2008, see: http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/media/fy2009-bw- budgetv2.pdf. Other countries such as Canada, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and theUK have also provided additional nonproliferation funding (not included in the U.S. sum) to the former Soviet biological weapons establishment. 6 Ibid.
19. Richard Stone, "Nonproliferation: New Initiatives Reach Out to Iraq's Scientific Elites," Science 303 (12 March 2004): 1594, see: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/303/5664/1594? ijkey=6gppG2upCaTco. Also see: http://www.usip.org/library/ oh/sops/iraq/rec/dehgan.pdf.
20. Matthias Mitman, "ISN/CTR and the Global Threat Reduction (GTR) Programs," see: http:==www.http:==www.state.gov= documents=organization= 110582.pdf
21. and Jason Rao, "Biose-curity Engagement Program," see: http://ironside.sandia.gov/ AsiaConference/JasonRao-BEP.pdf. A further articulation of this new global focus is seen in: U.S. National Academies of Science, Global Security Engagement: A New Model for Cooperative Threat Reduction (Washington, DC: U.S. National Academies of Science, 2009)
22. U.S. National Academies of Science, Countering Biological Threats: Challenges for the Department of Defense's Nonproliferation Program Beyond the Former Soviet Union (Washington, DC: U.S. National Academies of Science, 2009).
23. This question was addressed recently at an AAAS meeting during which Ben Ouagrham-Gormley presented the preliminary results of this study. In attendance at the meeting were U.S. government officials in charge of CTR programs and defense contractors responsible for implementing these programs. These government representatives debated the value of quantitative metrics and emphasized the need to develop new ways to measure the efficiency of the CTR-funded programs. "Forward-looking Biological Engagement and Cooperative Threat Reduction Efforts in Russia," American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Biosecurity Group Meeting, Washington, DC, February 25, 2009.
24. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Weapons of Mass Destruction: Nonproliferation Programs Need Better Integration, GAO-05-157 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2005).
25. GAO, "DOE's Program to Assist Weapons Scientists in Russia and Other Countries Needs to Be Reassessed," GAO-08-189, December 2007.
26. While Vogel was working in the State Department, there were repeated entreaties by officials within the State Department and from representatives and officials from other U.S. agencies, including the National Security Council, to provide metrics for exit strategies for the BW-related Nunn-Lugar programs. From the authors' recent private communications with U.S. State Department officials, this focus on and concern about metrics and exit strategies continues.
27. See: U.S. National Academies of Science, Global Security Engagement: A New Model for Cooperative Threat Reduction (Washington, DC: U.S. National Academies Press, 2009). 14The term "dual-use" is defined as technologies that can have both military/weapons and civilian applications. For funding information, see: Funding Analysis of FY09 International WMD Security Programs, Michelle Marchesano with contributions from Kenneth N. Luongo and Raphael Della Ratta, http:/ / www.ransac.org/;
28. and Matthias Mitman, "ISN/CTR and the Global Threat Reduction," http://www.state.gov/documents/ organization/110582.pdf.
29. National Research Council, Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2004), http://darwin.nap.edu/ 0309089778/html
30. National Research Council, Globalization, Biosecurity, and the Future of the Life Sciences (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2006), http://darwin.nap.edu/books/0309100321/html/
31. Office of Biotechnology Activities, National Institutes of Health. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB). Bethesda, MD: NSABB; http://www.biosecurityboard.gov/.
32. We are also currently studying the former U.S. offensive program, but we do not include this as part of our discussion in this article.
33. For details on the early engagement and implementation of the bio programs, see: Kathleen M. Vogel,"Pathogen Proliferation: Threats from the Former Soviet Bioweapons Complex," Politics and the Life Sciences 19(1) (2000): 3-16 (cited in note 2).
34. In 1998-1999, the authors were postdoctoral research associates at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), Monterey Institute of International Studies, where they worked on evaluating the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. Prior to joining the George Mason University faculty in 2008, Ben Ouagrham-Gormley spent the previous 10 years working as a senior research associate at CNS, where she focused on studying proliferation from former Soviet weapons scientists. From 1999-2001, Ben Ouagrham-Gormley was based in the CNS Almaty office in Kazakhstan, where she conducted studies on the restructuring of the nuclear sector in Russia and on the conversion of BW facilities in the FSU. In 2002-2005, she conducted a study of the Anti-Plague System of Central Asia and the Caucasus and participated in the CTR-funded Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention Program aimed at curbing the proliferation threat from former biological facilities in Russia. From 2003 to 2004, Vogel served as a William C. Foster fellow in the Office of Proliferation Threat Reduction (PTR), Bureau of Nonproliferation, U.S. Department of State. PTR led the U.S. government's efforts in nonproliferation programs with the former Soviet Union. Vogel's responsibilities involved developing nonproliferation policies and programs with former biological weapons facilities in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Russia. Prior to this appointment, Vogel spent 5 years conducting policy research on the former Soviet biological weapons establishment. From 1999 to 2001 Vogel carried out several months of field research in Kazakhstan with Ben Ouagrham-Gormley, visiting 3 biological weapons facilities undergoing conversion with U.S. assistance.
35. This article concentrates on the Soviet BW program. A subsequent article will provide a comparative analysis of the Soviet and U.S. bioweapons programs.
36. For example, see: John Hart, "The Soviet Biological Weapons Program," in Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945, eds. Mark Wheelis, Lajos Rózsa, and Malcolm Dando (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006)
37. Anthony Rimmington, "From Offence to Defence? Russian Reform of Its Biological Weapons Complex and the Implications for Western Security," Journal of Slavic Military Studies 16 (March 2003): 1-43
38. Anthony Rimmington, "Invisible Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Soviet Union's BW Programme and Its Implications for Contemporary Arms Control," Journal of Slavic Military Studies 13(3) (2000): 1-46.
39. One exception, however, is a forthcoming book by Milton Leitenberg and Raymond Zilinskas, which does include extensive interviews with former Soviet bioweapons scientists. In addition, Jonathan Tucker has conducted a brief interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer Ken Alibek: see Jonathan B. Tucker, "Biological Weapons in the Former Soviet Union: An Interview with Dr Kenneth Alibek," Nonproliferation Review 6(3) (1999): 1-10.
40. Finally, former Soviet bioweapons scientists Ken Alibek and Igor Domaradskij have published their own autobiographies from their work in the former Soviet bioweapons complex. See: Ken Alibek and Stephen Handelman, Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World-Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It (New York: Random House, 1999)
41. Igor Domaradskij and Wendy Orent, Biowarrior: Inside the Soviet/Russian Biological War Machine (Amherst: Prometheus, 2003). None of these books and articles, however, has specifically focused on understanding and analyzing the social context of bioweapons development.
42. Donald MacKenzie and Graham Spinardi, "Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons," American Journal of Sociology 101(1) (1995): 44-99
43. K. Jordan and M. Lynch, "The Sociology of a Genetic Engineering Technique: Ritual and Rationality in the Performance of a 'Plasmid Prep,' " in The Right Tools for the Job: At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences, eds. Adele E. Clarke and Joan H. Fujimura (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 77-114.
44. H. M. Collins, "Tacit Knowledge, Trust and the Q of Sapphire," Social Studies of Science 31(1) (2001): 71-85.
45. Collins also provides a discussion of different types of tacit knowledge in this article. The difficulties of acquiring and transferring tacit knowledge vary depending on the category involved. 23For a discussion of individual versus communal tacit knowledge, see: Donald MacKenzie and Graham Spinardi, "Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons," American Journal of Sociology 101(1) (1995): 44-99
46. Laura McNamara, PhD Dissertation, Ways of Knowing about Weapons: The Cold War's End at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2001).
47. Graham Spinardi, "Defense Technology Enterprises: A Case Study in Technology Transfer," Science and Public Policy 19(4) (1992): 198-206.
48. Donald MacKenzie and Graham Spinardi, "Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons," American Journal of Sociology 101(1) (1995): 44-99.
49. Laura McNamara, PhD Dissertation, Ways of Knowing About Weapons: The Cold War's End at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2001).
50. Benjamin Sims, "The Uninvention of the Nuclear Weapons Complex? A Transactional View of Tacit Knowledge," paper presented at October 2007 Society for Social Studies of Science annual meeting: http://www.4sonline.org/ ProgramSynopsis 060907.pdf.
51. Benjamin Sims, "Safe Science: Material and Social Order in Laboratory Work," Social Studies of Science 35(3) (2005): 333-366.
52. Jeronimo Cello, Aniko V. Paul, Eckard Wimmer, "Chemical Synthesis of Poliovirus cDNA: Generation of Infectious Virus in the Absence of Natural Template," Science 297(5583) (August 2002): 1016-1018.
53. 107th Congress, 2d session, H.Res. 514, "Expressing serious concern regarding the publication of instructions on how to create a synthetic human polio virus, and for other purposes," July 26, 2002, accessed November 6, 2006 at: http://thomas. loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.RES.514
54. Dana A. Shea, Balancing Scientific Publication and National Security Concerns: Issues for Congress, CRS Report for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2006), http://www.fas.org/ sgp/crs/secrecy/ RL31695.pdf
55. Rick Weiss, "Mail-Order Molecules Brew a Terrorism Debate; Virus Created in Lab Raises Questions of Scrutiny for DNA Supplies," Washington Post (2002):A01.
56. Kathleen M. Vogel, "Framing Biosecurity," Science and Public Policy 35 (2008): 45-54.
57. Hamilton O. Smith, Clyde A. Hutchinson III, Cynthia Pfannkoch, and Craig J. Venter, "Generating a Synthetic Genome by Whole Genome Assembly: pX174 Bacteriophage from Synthetic Oligonucleotides," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100/26(23 December 2003): 15440-15445.
58. Kathleen M. Vogel, "Framing Biosecurity," Science and Public Policy 35 (2008): 45-54.
59. Michael J. Czar, J. Christopher Anderson, Joel S. Bader, and Jean Peccoud, "Gene Synthesis Demystified," Trends in Biotechnology 27(2) (2008): 63.
60. Michael M. Hopkins, Alison Kraft, Paul A. Martin, Paul Nightingale, and Surya Mahdi, "Is the Biotechnology Revolution a Myth?" In Comprehensive Medicinal Chemistry II, vol.1, eds D. Triggle and J. Taylor (New York: Elsevier, 2006)
61. Michael M. Hopkins, Paul A. Martin, Paul Nightingale, Alison Kraft, and Surya Mahdi, "The Myth of the Biotech Revolution: An Assessment of Technological, Clinical, and Organizational Change," Research Policy 36(4) (May 2007): 566-589
62. Gary Pisano, Science Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006)
63. Roberta Joppi, Vittorio Bertele, and Silvio Garattini, "Disappointing Biotech," British Medical Journal 331(7521) (15 October 2005): 895-897
64. Paul Nightingale and Paul Martin, "The Myth of the Biotech Revolution," TRENDS in Biotechnology 22(11) (November 2004): 564-569
65. Adam Hedgcoe and Paul Martin, "The Drugs Don't Work: Expectations and the Shaping of Pharma-cogenetics," Social Studies of Science 33(3) (June 2003): 327-364
66. David F. Horrobin, "Modern Biomedical Research: An Internally Self-consistent Universe with Little Contact with Medical Reality?" Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 2 (February 2003): 151-154
67. David F. Horrobin, "Realism in Drug Discovery-Could Cassandra Be Right?" Nature Biotechnology 19(12) (December 2001): 1099-1100
68. Paul A. Martin and M. Morrison, Realising the Potential of Genomic Medicine. Report for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (Pharmacy Practice Research Trust, 2006)
69. Mariana Mazzucato and Giovanni Dosi, Knowledge Accumulation and Industry Evolution: The Case of Pharma-Biotech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
70. Two exceptions are Sonia Ben Ouagrham and Kathleen M. Vogel, "Conversion at Stepnogorsk: What the Future Holds for Former Bioweapons Facilities," Occasional Paper No.28 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Peace Studies Program, 2003)
71. and Kathleen Vogel, "Bioweapons Proliferation: Where Science Studies and Public Policy Collide," Social Studies of Science 36(5) (2006): 659-690.
72. This section is based, in part, on: Sonia Ben Ouagrham and Kathleen M. Vogel, Conversion at Stepnogorsk; Kathleen Vogel, "Bioweapons Proliferation."
73. Vogel, "Bioweapons Proliferation," p. 667.
74. Interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer, Russia, May 27, 2008.
75. Sister facilities in the Soviet Union were duplicate facilities that conducted similar work. The purpose of such duplication was to ensure the continuation of research and production in case one of the facilities was destroyed during war time.
76. Interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer, Moscow, Russia, June 3, 2008.
77. Interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer, Washington, DC, March 17, 2008.
78. Ken Alibek, Biohazard, p. 162.
79. Interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer, Moscow, September 8, 2008.
80. Interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer, Moscow, September 8, 2008.
81. Interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer, Washington, DC, March 17, 2008.
82. Interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer, Moscow, June 3, 2008.
83. Interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer, Washington, DC, March 17, 2008.
84. Ken Alibek also writes that even during intense work deadlines, "Sandakhchiev was determined to protect his employees. He repeated time and again that he would not sacrifice the health of a single worker to the pressure of a deadline." Ken Alibek, Biohazard, p. 119.
85. Jonathan Tucker writes that Sandakhchiev personally considered biological weapons work uninteresting, although he knew that his future in the Soviet BW system depended on how well Vector accomplished the tasks it was given by the Soviet state. See Jonathan Tucker, Scourge (New York: Grove Press, 2001), p. 152.
86. Interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer, Washington, DC, April 9, 2008.
87. Interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer, Washington, DC, March 17, 2008.
88. Jonathan Tucker, Scourge, pp. 153-154.
89. Ken Alibek, Biohazard, p. 120.
90. Interview with former Soviet bioweaponeer, Washington, DC, March 17, 2008.
91. Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley, "Growth of the Anti-Plague System during the Soviet Period," Critical Reviews in Microbiology, February 2006.
92. B. B. Atshabar, S. A. Aubakirov, G. A. Temiralieva, et al., Predvaritelny Otchet po Protivochumnoy Sisteme Sredney Azii, Kavkaza i Kazakhstana (Preliminary Report on the Anti-plague System of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Kazakhstan), March 3, 2003.
93. Interview with former BW scientist, Almaty, Kazakhstan, August 13-20, 2008.
94. Interview with former BW scientist, Almaty, Kazakhstan, August 13-20, 2008.
95. Ben Ouagrham-Gormley's visit to the anti-plague institute of Almaty, Kazakhstan, October 2003.
96. National Research Council of the National Academies of Science, The Biological Threat Reduction Program of the Department of Defense: From Foreign Assistance to Sustainable Partnerships (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2007), http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record-id=12005#toc.
97. Sergei Netesov, "Scientific and Production Association, VECTOR: The Situation Today," in Control of Dual-use Threat Agents (SIPRI, 1994), 135.
98. We see some evidence of this starting to happen, but on Russian initiative instead of due to a U.S.-led Nunn-Lugar strategy. For example, we learned from one reviewer that as of March 2009, several Vector scientists have moved to Russian Academy of Sciences institutes and universities located in Novosibirsk. However, similar to what we have described above, this seems to be an ad-hoc strategy that is not being initiated by the Nunn-Lugar programs or assessed as to its effectiveness.
99. Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley, "Plagued by Errors: New Approach Needed to Tackle Proliferation Threats from Anti-Plague System, Arms Control Today March 2006, see: http:// www.armscontrol.org/act/2006-03/MARCH-PlagueFeature.
100. One reviewer noted that the Nunn-Lugar programs did once consider moving some BW scientists from their isolated areas to Moscow, but that the project was considered cost-prohibitive. However, to be successful, relocation strategies need to rely on systematic, in-depth analysis of various options. For example, from her analysis of the Soviet/Russian defense sector, Ben Ouagrham-Gormley notes that although Moscow is a natural relocation choice because of the diversity of its economy, it is not the only city/region in Russia that can offer job outlets to former bioweaponeers. Other cities with a growing market economy, such as St.Petersburg, Nizhnyi Novgorod, or Vladivostok, could possibly be considered. A better strategy would be to integrate former bioweaponeers into their existing local economy, when possible. Even if these economies are less diversified than those of bigger cities, they may nonetheless provide viable job opportunities for former BW scientists.