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]