Off Topic: American Aid to Russia diverted to Germ Warfare

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

U.S. Aid Is Diverted to Germ Warfare, Russian Scientists Say

By JUDITH MILLER ome of the American money awarded to support Russia's civilian biological research was secretly shifted to Biopreparat, a shadowy organization that once directed the Soviet Union's germ warfare program, several Russian scientists say.

American officials, who for five years have walked a delicate line in providing aid to Russia, remain suspicious about the activities of Biopreparat, which has been reborn as a state-owned drug company. The Americans are concerned because of its continuing secrecy and because it is led by the same military and intelligence officers who spearheaded and concealed the Soviet Union's biological weapons programs during the coldwar.

Separately, Clinton administration officials acknowledged that the United States had been less than meticulous in the mid-1990's in enforcing its ban on aid to Biopreparat.

Records show that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the United States Agency for International Development made grants in that period that benefited Biopreparat. Administration officials said today that they had tightened their procedures. "There's been a learning curve," one administration official said.

A spokesman for the space agency said it would investigate whether any American aid money had been diverted to the organization and would withhold $1.6 million in assistance until Moscow accounted for its spending of previous grants. Officials at A.I.D. said they had not been aware of Biopreparat's history and should have checked with national security officials before approving aid to a joint venture that involved the organization.

Russian biologists familiar with Biopreparat said its director, Gen. Yuri T. Kalinin, had shifted at least 10 percent of several NASA grants intended for biological research in space to his organization. General Kalinin has headed Biopreparat since its inception in 1973, and Western officials say he is the focal point of concern among American and British intelligence analysts about whether Moscow has fully given up research into germ warfare and what Acting President Vladimir V. Putin will decide."The Russian government is facing a key test," said Amy E. Smithson, a defense expert at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, who said Russian scientists had told her in confidence about diversions of money.

"Either Putin will support the old guard of biological cold warriors, exemplified by Kalinin and his cronies, or scientists who want to put their biological warfare knowledge to peaceful use."

Asked today about the scientist's accusations, a spokesman for Biopreparat declined to comment. Neither General Kalinin, a former intelligence officer, nor any senior Biopreparat official who was active in the Soviet germ warfare program would agree to talk about Biopreparat's current or past activities.

The United States and the Soviet Union developed biological weapons after World War II. They agreed by treaty in 1972 to give them up, but a year later, Moscow secretly mounted a crash program to produce and stockpile even more lethal germs. Ken Alibek, General Kalinin's former deputy in Biopreparat and the most senior Soviet germ official to defect to the West, and Igor V. Domaradsky, an early leader of the program, have identified General Kalinin and Biopreparat as the hub of the former Soviet germ warfare program, which at its peak involved some 40 institutes across the Soviet Union and more than 60,000 people.

General Kalinin and other senior officials from Biopreparat were also instrumental in covering up the program's existence after the first key scientists defected to the West in 1989, said Mr. Alibek, who left in 1992. Russian scientists said General Kalinin had supervised Biopreparat's transition to civilian work after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Western officials say they know little about Biopreparat's operations. But a Biopreparat brochure signed by Yuri T. Kalinin, identified not by military rank but as a "professor, doctor of science," states that the Russian government owns 51 percent of the joint-stock company and that Biopreparat now includes some 20 research institutes and other enterprises that make about 1,000 vaccines, medicines and biotechnology products.

In response to American protests in 1992 over Russia's germ warfare activities, Boris N. Yeltsin, then the Russian president, assured Washington that he had ended his country's germ warfare program. He also promised to dismiss General Kalinin as Biopreparat's director. But for unknown reasons he was unwilling or unable to fulfill that pledge.

In recent months tensions have arisen between Biopreparat and several of the civilian institutes that remain under its control. American officials say their aid efforts are intended in part to funnel money to those institutes while starving Biopreparat of funds. But Russian scientists and American officials say General Kalinin has undermined that policy, using his bureaucratic powers over the institutes and their employees. The general, who authorizes foreign travel by employees, has also tried to prevent institutes from developing independent ties to Western institutes and companies. General Kalinin appears to have gained access to American money nonetheless.

In 1995, NASA awarded $1.6 million to more than a dozen civilian institutes to conduct biological research in space. The executive committee set up by Russia and the United States to distribute the money included a scientist identified in documents only as Y. Kalinin.

Dr. Arnauld E. Nicogossian, head of a NASA's $20 million joint research program with Russia, said a man he knew as Dr. Kalinin had helped identify which institutes were to receive American aid. Dr. Nicogossian said he had not heard of Biopreparat until last year. Biopreparat also stands to benefit from a grant made by the Agency for International Development in 1997. In a project approved by a Russian-American commission headed by Vice President Al Gore, the aid agency awarded a $6 million grant to a collaboration between the Searle pharmaceutical unit of Monsanto and a Russian institute partly owned by Biopreparat.

Officials and scientists say none of the A.I.D. money went directly to Biopreparat. But, they acknowledge, Biopreparat stands to earn a share of the profits if the company's sale of high-quality medicines succeeds. In interviews, administration officials defended the grants. The American money, they say, has helped deter a scientific brain drain to rogue states and terrorists and there is no indication that it was used to support covert germ research.

But many national security officials were furious when they first learned of Biopreparat's involvement in the grants last year. "What happened in these cases was outrageous," said a senior national security official who spoke on condition that he not be identified. "A.I.D. and NASA were essentially running their own foreign policy."

Several officials attributed the early problems to the reluctance of intelligence officials to share information. As a result, few American officials reviewing the NASA grants in 1995 were aware of Biopreparat's key role in the Soviet germ warfare program. Administration officials said the system for reviewing sensitive projects was now far tougher. For example, in June 1998, the Energy Department rejected a request that all American research grants to institutes linked to Biopreparat be channeled through Biopreparat officials. "By that time," the official said, "we knew we wanted nothing to do with them."

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), January 28, 2000


Moderation questions? read the FAQ