[Mb-civic] Soviet Germ Factories Pose New Threat

[William Swiggard]

Soviet Germ Factories Pose New Threat
Once Mined for Pathogens in Bioweapons Program, Labs Lack Security

By Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 20, 2005; Page A01

ODESSA, Ukraine -- For 50 years under Soviet rule, nearly everything 
about the Odessa Antiplague Station was a state secret, down to the 
names of the deadly microbes its white-coated workers collected and 
stored in a pair of ordinary freezers.

Cloistered in a squat, gray building at the tip of a rusting shipping 
dock, the station's biologists churned out reports on grave illnesses 
that were mentioned only in code. Anthrax was Disease No. 123, and 
plague, which killed thousands here in the 19th century, was No. 127. 
Each year, researchers added new specimens to their frozen collection 
and shared test results with sister institutes along a network 
controlled by Moscow.
   

Today, the Soviets are gone but the lab is still here, in this Black Sea 
port notorious for its criminal gangs and black markets. It is just one 
of more than 80 similar "antiplague" labs scattered across the former 
Soviet Union, from the turbulent Caucasus to Central Asian republics 
that share borders with Iran and Afghanistan. Each is a repository of 
knowledge, equipment and lethal pathogens that weapons experts have said 
could be useful to bioterrorists.

After decades of operating in the shadows, the labs are beginning to 
shed light on another secret: How the Soviet military co-opted obscure 
civilian institutes into a powerful biological warfare program that 
built weapons for spreading plague and anthrax spores. As they ramped up 
preparations for germ warfare in the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet generals 
mined the labs for raw materials, including highly lethal strains of 
viruses and bacteria that were intended for use in bombs and missiles.

The facilities' hidden role is described in a draft report of a major 
investigation by scholars from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies 
at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. The main conclusions 
of the report, which was provided to The Washington Post, were echoed in 
interviews with current and former U.S. officials familiar with the 
labs. Most scientists who worked in antiplague stations in Soviet times 
knew nothing of their contributions to the weapons program, the report says.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/19/AR2005081901507.html
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