14 March 1998
Source: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/aaces002.html

[Congressional Record: March 12, 1998 (Senate)]
[Page S1876-S1882]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr12mr98-126]



 
                           RUSSIAN BW PROGRAM

  Mr. KYL. Mr President, I call to the attention of my colleagues an 
article appearing in the March 9 edition of The New Yorker magazine 
that offers a chilling account of Russia's offensive biological weapons 
program. This article is based on an extensive interview with Mr. Ken 
Alibek, a Russian defector who was once second in command of the 
Russian offensive biological weapons program. Alibek's description of 
the Russian BW program is generally considered authoritative by a wide 
range of U.S. experts.
  The article provides a number of startling details about the Russian 
offensive BW program, also known as Biopreparat. Most startling of all 
is just how little we in the United States knew about this program. 
Despite the fact that Biopreparat was established in 1973--the year 
after the Soviet

[[Page S1877]]

Union signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and pledged to 
forego an offensive BW program--and despite intelligence to the 
contrary, some in the U.S. scientific and arms control communities 
continued to maintain that Russia was not violating the treaty up to 
the moment that President Yeltsin admitted otherwise in 1992.
  Mr. President, what the Russians had accomplished by 1991 is 
frightening. According to Alibek, the Soviet Union had warheads for 
carrying biological weapons on intercontinental missiles that were 
aimed at the United States. These warheads could carry smallpox, plague 
and anthrax. The Soviets had apparently weaponized the Marburg virus--a 
hemorrhagic virus as gruesome as the Ebola virus--and were ready to 
begin large scale manufacture of the weapon as the Soviet Union was 
crumbling apart. Alibek is concerned that scientists may have left 
Russia with samples of this virus and other deadly bacteria. The 
possibility that Russian scientists, know-how and biological materials 
are available to rogue states and terrorists underscores the critical 
importance of improving our domestic preparedness to respond to BW 
attacks against the United States.
  We do not know the extent of the Russian biological weapons program 
today. There is evidence to suggest that a clandestine program 
continues, hidden away in military facilities run by the Ministry of 
Defense, which are off-limits to the West. The trilateral process, 
which was set up by the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia in 
1992 and calls for inspections of Russian biological-related 
facilities, has broken down. It has been years since an inspection took 
place. The Russians have objected to visits to military facilities. And 
where inspections occurred, the inspectors faced the same obstacles as 
U.N. inspectors face in Iraq.
  Mr. President, The New Yorker article should be required reading for 
all Senators. I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in 
the Record. I understand from the Government Printing Office that it 
will cost approximately $2504 to include this article in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                  [From the New Yorker, Mar. 9, 1998]

                  Annals of Warfare--The Bioweaponeers

[Full text of article omitted here]