Foreign Stockpiles Cause Concern

WASHINGTON —  Until Moscow cut off funding in 1992, the Anti-Plague Scientific Research Institute experimented with anthrax, plague and other disease agents as part of the former Soviet Union’s effort to defend itself against biological attacks. Now, officials want to make sure that none of the lethal material there ends up in the wrong hands. So, early this year, they took a basic security measure.

They put up a barbed-wire fence.

And that is about as sophisticated as security gets at the facility in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan. Plant watchmen do not carry guns, only something akin to nightsticks, according to one recent visitor. Materials are still tracked by pencil-and-paper logs. Workers are paid little, and often late, raising fears that they may be susceptible to approaches from outsiders.

Now, as U.S. officials scramble to find the source of the anthrax spores turning up in American cities, some experts are wondering if a foreign nation could have supplied the deadly material, either on purpose or inadvertently, to whoever is putting it in the mail. While such a possibility is remote, they say, it would be a truly frightening development, suggesting a lack of security in a foreign weapons program, if not outright complicity.

“States have been unlikely to spread advanced weapons to terrorist groups because they could be traced back to the state, and the state would become a target for retaliation,” said Jason Pate, who tracks weapons policy for California’s Monterey Institute of International Studies. “If there is state sponsorship here, it would mean one of our primary barriers to proliferation is eroding. . . . It would be very threatening.”

Some specialists say the current scare underlines the need to boost U.S. efforts to prevent the spread of bioweapons materials and know-how, particularly from the former Soviet Union, which maintained a vast program that employed as many as 60,000 people.

“We have to accelerate the existing programs and maybe expand them,” said Sonia Ben Ouagrham, a Monterey Institute researcher who got a look at security measures at the Kazakhstan facility during a recent two-year stay in the former Soviet republic.

In Central Asian nations, she said, borders are porous and corruption is high. “And they are all close to other countries of concern--Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq.”

The depth of the challenge was underlined just last week. As a U.S. military team examined a former Soviet bioweapons factory in Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan, in preparation for its decommission, the team found live anthrax spores in one of the plant’s pipes.

As Many as 20 Nations May Have Bioweapons

The team members had already been vaccinated for anthrax and were wearing protective gear, said Pentagon spokesman Maj. Tim Blair. But the episode was a reminder that anthrax spores can survive outside lab conditions for years, even decades.

Twelve to 20 countries are thought to have offensive bioweapons programs, including Iraq, North Korea and Libya. Among neighbors of Afghanistan, Iran is thought to have pursued former Soviet scientists.

A Pentagon report this year said that India has a defensive bioweapons program, and Pakistan is believed to have the resources to support a “limited” bioweapons effort.

So far, there is no evidence that a foreign weapons program is the source of the anthrax turning up in U.S. mailboxes, and a state sponsor is not the only potential supplier. A knowledgeable person could culture anthrax bacteria from the soil or a sick animal, and many laboratories keep the germs on hand for research or diagnostic purposes.

Giving a small measure of comfort, the anthrax found in U.S. cities so far has been treatable by antibiotics. The Soviet Union reportedly worked on at least one pernicious strain designed to be untreatable.

It is not clear that U.S. officials can determine the source of the anthrax at all. About 1,200 strains of anthrax have been isolated, but only 400 or 500 have been studied to find the unique DNA landmarks that are used to match one strain to another, said Steven M. Block, professor of biology and applied physics at Stanford University.

Ever since the Soviet Union dissolved, U.S. officials have worried about the movement of Soviet weapons, materials and scientists. But most of their early efforts went toward securing nuclear weapons and keeping nuclear scientists employed in nonmilitary work.

Some officials are particularly worried about a former open-air test site on Vozrozhdeniya island in the Aral Sea near Kazakhstan. Irrigation projects are diverting water from the sea, and the island could be accessible from the mainland by 2010.

The danger, said Pate and other specialists, is that someone could slip onto the island and dig anthrax spores from the ground. Another worry is that rodents or other animals that reach the mainland will carry diseases from the testing program.

At the Anti-Plague Institute in Kazakhstan, scientists developed diagnostic tests and vaccines for Soviet military and civilian programs. The institute still works on vaccines and diagnostics and, according to Ben Ouagrham, it still holds stocks of anthrax, plague and tularemia, another bacterial disease.

With U.S. funding, the facility is adding surveillance video cameras and a computerized system to track biological materials. But Ben Ouagrham said the current security measures are “worrisome.”

Now called the Scientific Center for Quarantine and Zoonotic Disease of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the facility only this year began requiring visitors to make appointments and to wear ID badges. Biological materials are stored behind a locked door but in unlocked refrigerators, Ben Ouagrham said.

Moreover, Ben Ouagrham said, many of the 148 employees at the facility are young and low-salaried, with little loyalty to the facility and less training on the gravity of protecting the disease agents.

But Amy E. Smithson, director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, said that former Soviet scientists “very clearly understood that cooperation with subnational actors was simply not to be done.”