>U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits
>By THE NEW YORK TIMES
>September 4, 2001
>This article was reported and written by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William J. Broad.
>The 1972 treaty forbids nations from developing or acquiring weapons that spread disease, but it allows work on vaccines and other protective measures. Government officials said the secret research, which mimicked the major steps a state or terrorist would take to create a biological arsenal, was aimed at better understanding the threat.
Дык это давно известная вещь. Газета вру как раз КЛЮЧЕВОЙ момент и упустила. Про эти mockups всем давно известно.... А я-то думал...
>The projects, which have not been previously disclosed, were begun under President Clinton and have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.
Earlier this year, administration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax, a deadly disease ideal for germ warfare.
Вот это флаг им в руки и танк навстречу. Во-первых это не нужно, во-вторых настолько опасно, что амеры вряд ли свяжутся. Им дом в Форт-Детрике ещё долго икаться будет.
>The experiment has been devised to assess whether the vaccine now being given to millions of American soldiers is effective against such a superbug, which was first created by Russian scientists. A Bush administration official said the National Security Council is expected to give the final go-ahead later this month.
Никогда в России не было генноинженерных боевых штаммов СЯ. И тут очень хитрые манипуляции с контекстом. На самом деле СНАЧАЛА говорится, что амеры-де будут инженерить штамм (что скорее всего фигня), а потом говориться, что русские создали супер-СЯ. Из контекста должно как бы исходить, что наши штаммы-генноинженерные, хотя прямо об этом не сказано. Манипуляторы хреновы. Но...где тонко, там и рвётся.
>Two other projects completed during the Clinton administration focused on the mechanics of making germ weapons.In a program code-named Clear Vision, the Central Intelligence Agency built and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb that agency officials feared was being sold on the international market. The C.I.A. device lacked a fuse and other parts that would make it a working bomb, intelligence officials said. At about the same time, Pentagon experts assembled a germ factory in the Nevada desert from commercially available materials. Pentagon officials said the project demonstrated the ease with which a terrorist or rogue nation could build a plant that could produce pounds of the deadly germs.
А, дык это модель (неработающая) для демонстрации того, что СЯ можно делать практически на коленке. Но это людям не очень далёким от темы ясно уже тридцать лет. И это НЕ промышленный объект. Это просто пугало. Поскольку такую фабрику можно построить за неделю при наличии соответсвующего здания.
>Both the mock bomb and the factory were tested with simulants — benign substances with characteristics similar to the germs used in weapons, officials said.
Ну да, вырастили безплазмидные штаммы СЯ или вакцинные штаммы чумы, показали и успокоились :)
>A senior Bush administration official said all the projects were "fully consistent" with the treaty banning biological weapons and were needed to protect Americans against a growing danger. "This administration will pursue defenses against the full spectrum of biological threats," the official said.The treaty, another administration official said, allows the United States to conduct research on both microbes and germ munitions for "protective or defensive purposes."
Опять же давно известная вещь.
>Some Clinton administration officials worried, however, that the project violated the pact. And others expressed concern that the experiments, if disclosed, might be misunderstood as a clandestine effort to resume work on a class of weapons that President Nixon had relinquished in 1969.
Simultaneous experiments involving a model of a germ bomb, a factory to make biological agents and the developoment of more potent anthrax, these officials said, would draw vociferous protests from Washington if conducted by a country the United States viewed as suspect.
Никто в этом не сомневается :). Но к реальному бакоружию это не имеет отношения.
>Administration officials said the need to keep such projects secret was a significant reason behind President Bush's recent rejection of a draft agreement to strengthen the germ-weapons treaty, which has been signed by 143 nations.The draft would require those countries to disclose where they are conducting defensive research involving gene-splicing or germs likely to be used in weapons. The sites would then be subject to international inspections.Many national security officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations opposed the draft, arguing that it would give potential adversaries a road map to what the United States considers its most serious vulnerabilities.
Гы, а вот это фигня. Штаты достаточно печатают открытых статей, чобы понять, чем они там занимаются. Специалисту понять. И чего они больше всего опасаются тоже как бы не секрет - все того же опасаются.
>A model was constructed and the agency conducted two sets of tests at Battelle, the military contractor. The experiments measured dissemination characteristics and how the model performed under different atmospheric conditions, intelligence officials said. They emphasized that the device was a "portion" of a bomb that could not have been used as a weapon.
>The experiments caused concern at the White House, which learned about the project after it was under way. Some aides to President Clinton worried that the benefits did not justify the risks. But a White House lawyer led a joint assessment by several departments that concluded that the program did not violate the treaty, and it went ahead.
>The questions were debated anew after the project was completed, this time without consensus. A State Department official argued for a strict reading of the treaty: the ban on acquiring or developing "weapons" barred states from building even a partial model of a germ bomb, no matter what the rationale.
>"A bomb is a bomb is a bomb," another official said at the time.
>The C.I.A. continued to insist that it had the legal authority to conduct such tests and, intelligence officials said, the agency was prepared to reopen the fight over how to interpret the treaty. But even so, the agency ended the Clear Vision project in the last year of the Clinton administration, intelligence officials said.
>Bill Harlow, the C.I.A. spokesman, acknowledged that the agency had conducted "laboratory or experimental" work to assess the intelligence it had gathered about biological warfare.
>"Everything we have done in this respect was entirely appropriate, necessary, consistent with U.S. treaty obligations and was briefed to the National Security Council staff and appropriate Congressional oversight committees," Mr. Harlow said.
Ничего ужасного я в этом не вижу. Какие бы там Штаты ни были, это их право брать оружие потенциального противника и изучать его. Как и наше право ;)
>Breeding More Potent Anthrax
>In the 1990's, government officials also grew increasingly worried about the possibility that scientists could use the widely available techniques of gene-splicing to create even more deadly weapons.Those concerns deepened in 1995, when Russian scientists disclosed at a scientific conference in Britain that they had implanted genes from Bacillus cereus, an organism that causes food poisoning, into the anthrax microbe.
>The scientists said later that the experiments were peaceful; the two microbes can be found side-by-side in nature and, the Russians said, they wanted to see what happened if they cross-bred.
>A published account of the experiment, which appeared in a scientific journal in late 1997, alarmed the Pentagon, which had just decided to require that American soldiers be vaccinated against anthrax. According to the article, the new strain was resistant to Russia's anthrax vaccine, at least in hamsters.
А ВОТ ГРЯЗИ НЕ НАДО. Всё с точность до наоборот. И вот ссылка.
>American officials tried to obtain a sample from Russia through a scientific exchange program to see whether the Russians had really created such a hybrid. The Americans also wanted to test whether the microbe could defeat the American vaccine, which is different from that used by Russia.
>Despite repeated promises, the bacteria were never provided.
А потому что давать было совершенно нечего. Прочтите абстракт и поймёте. Сильно передёргивают, сволочи.
>Eventually the C.I.A. drew up plans to replicate the strain, but intelligence officials said the agency hesitated because there was no specific report that an adversary was attempting to turn the superbug into a weapon.
>This year, officials said, the project was taken over by the Pentagon's intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency. Pentagon lawyers reviewed the proposal and said it complied with the treaty. Officials said the research would be part of Project Jefferson, yet another government effort to track the dangers posed by germ weapons.
>A spokesman for Defense Intelligence, Lt. Cmdr. James Brooks, declined comment. Asked about the precautions at Battelle, which is to create the enhanced anthrax, Commander Brooks said security was "entirely suitable for all work already conducted and planned for Project Jefferson."
Флаг в руки, я уже повторяюсь :)
>Next to Old Rec Hall, a 'Germ-Making Plant'
>By JUDITH MILLER
>September 4, 2001
>CAMP 12, NEVADA TEST SITE, Nevada — In a nondescript mustard-colored building that was once a military recreation hall and barbershop, the Pentagon has built a germ factory that could make enough lethal microbes to wipe out entire cities.
>Adjacent to the pool tables, the shuffleboard and the bar stands a gleaming stainless steel cylinder, the 50-liter (53- quart) fermenter in which germs can be cultivated.
>The apparatus, which includes a latticework of pipes and other equipment, was made entirely with commercially available components bought from hardware stores and other suppliers for about $1 million — a pittance for a weapon that could deliver death on such a large scale.
>The factory was built by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that works to contain the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Officials said the project was intended to assess how hard it would be for a terrorist or rogue nation to assemble a germ factory.
>The agency also wanted to see if a small operation produced any telltale "signatures" — sounds, chemical emissions or patterns of operation that could help intelligence agencies find such plants.
>"The project also showed us how relatively simple it would be for a terrorist to assemble such a facility without being detected," said Jay C. Davis, the former director of the agency who, with the Pentagon's permission, showed the secret plant to a Times reporter and a team from ABC News.
>Officials stressed that the plant never made anthrax or any other lethal pathogen. Rather, it produced only harmless biopesticides during two production test runs in 1999 and 2000. Dr. Davis declined to say how much was made. But if it had been anthrax germs, he said, it would have made enough to kill at least 10,000 people.
>Officials said the Pentagon built the plant in this largely deserted camp because it was well guarded. Building 12-7, the former recreation hall and about four dozen other buildings here were abruptly closed in January 1993 after the global moratorium on underground nuclear testing took effect.
>Between 1951 and 1963, more than 800 nuclear tests were conducted here at the vast Nevada Test Site, whose parched sands and eerily quiet, sagebrush-covered mesas and mountains are scarred by giant atomic craters.
>The interior of Building 12-7 — 120 feet long and 40 feet wide — seems frozen in time. Dusty signs warn visitors not to sit on the pool tables or to talk about secret projects with anyone who has no "need to know."
>Dr. Davis and other officials said the Defense Department's lawyers had carefully reviewed the project to ensure that it did not violate the biological weapons treaty or American law. Because it was purely defensive and never made deadly germs, it was both legal and appropriate, he and others said.
>But apparently few outside of the agency or even in the Pentagon's upper echelons knew much about the secret project. Dr. Davis said the White House was never briefed about it, given its small scale and low cost.
>When subsequently told about the germ factory, several former White House officials said they were stunned that the agency's lawyers had approved it without having referred it to the White House or Congressional oversight committees for legal review.
>The Pentagon's decision to permit a visit to the site came after The Times requested information about the program, called Bachus.
Ну какой же это завод? Смех один.
В общем, крайне причудливая смесь лжи, правды и полуправды. Но ничего нового или особенно опасного. Обычные выкрики.
