By Greg Seigle

Global Security Newswire

Iraq and Iran are believed to be developing genetically altered biological weapons that could resist vaccines or antibiotics, thereby making them much more deadly, a wide range of intelligence sources told Global Security Newswire in recent interviews.

Baghdad and Tehran might not only possess mutant strains of anthrax or smallpox, they may already have the ability to weaponize and deliver such devastatingly lethal bioagents, according to lawmakers, Pentagon officials, U.N. inspectors, scientists, analysts and a former CIA director.

“It’s a 50-50 possibility that Iraq and Iran have genetically modified biological weapons and may have some of the potential to weaponize them today to be used as weapons of mass destruction,” U.S. representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) said yesterday.

“I would expect it,” said microbiologist Gary Long, a government consultant who was in the last group of U.N. Special Commission inspectors to leave Iraq in 1998. “It would prudent for us to assume that they are developing these types of awful weapons.”

“It’s the perfect weapon,” said Ken Alibek, the former Soviet scientist who headed the Soviet civilian biological warfare agency, Biopreparat, a gigantic, once-secret organization whose experimentations since 1973 created dozens of new harmful and antidote-resistant organisms. “For now, we have no treatment whatsoever for genetically modified weapons.”

While officials at the White House, CIA, State Department and the newly created Office of Homeland Security refused to comment on grounds that the topic is classified, Undersecretary of State John Bolton last week publicly accused Iraq, Iran and four other countries of pursuing biological weapons (see GSN Nov. 20).

Former Soviet Support?

Biological weapons are banned by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention although several countries are thought to have violated the treaty to develop them, including Russia, which according to Alibek and other former Soviet scientists also has worrisome stockpiles of genetically modified agents.

Most officials and analysts believe that any large-scale advanced biological weapons programs in Iraq, Iran or elsewhere—particularly those that manufacture altered organisms—would be spearheaded by Russian scientists who are disgruntled or simply lured away by hefty salaries. Such programs could also be aided by wayward scientists from many other countries, they add.

According to Alibek, a Kazakh native who defected to the United States in 1992, there are 1,000 to 2,000 former Soviet scientists who know how to make deadly biological agents. Of these, “hundreds” have the “ultimate knowledge”—the ability to not only to grow biological organisms but also to effectively dry, mill, weaponize, deliver and disperse them over wide areas. Out of these hundreds, 100 to 200 know how to create genetically modified life forms resistant to vaccines or antibiotics, he said.

Asked where these potentially dangerous scientists are now, Alibek said, “I don’t know.  It would not surprise me if some were in Baghdad or somewhere else other than Russia.”

Focus on Iraq

During a blunt speech in Geneva during a treaty conference Nov. 19, Bolton singled out Iraq as the main biological weapons threat.

Although Bolton stopped short of accusing Iraq of developing genetically altered biological diseases that could be used as devastating weapons, the State Department official who wrote the speech told GSN that “it’s a concern” and that “if they have [such] a program and we know where it is, we’re going to get it.”

U.S. analysts say the United States is actively seeking and collecting evidence on Iraqi biological weapons programs—including those that splice the gene of one bacteria into that of another, creating a new and potentially unstoppable plague—so that President George W. Bush could justify toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The administration is also probing Iran and other nations for such evidence but none with the vigor it is apparently investigating Iraq, which was caught with biological weapons by UNSCOM inspectors throughout the 1990s, analysts note.

One reason White House officials are so concerned about Iraq is that its government openly applauded the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks in New York and Washington, analysts add. There has been much speculation that Saddam Hussein had a hand in either the hijackings of the four commercial jetliners or the mailings of anthrax across the United States that so far have infected 18 people and killed five.

Because the creation of genetically modified weapons is so difficult—even with knowledgeable scientists, the right equipment and sizeable funding, such a task is very painstaking—analysts believe only countries with sizeable infrastructures can accomplish this. Besides Russia, Iraq is believed to have the largest and most comprehensive biological weapons facilities, according to intelligence estimates.

Iraq is a prime suspect for developing genetically altered biological weapons not only because it attempted to hide its biological weapons arsenal from UNSCOM inspectors—investigators found some stockpiles and believe there are many more—but because Saddam Hussein has shown a willingness to use such weapons. In the late 1980s Iraqi forces gassed Kurdish villagers in Iraq with chemical weapons, probably Sarin.

According to UNSCOM inspectors and former CIA Director James Woolsey, Iraq protected its biological sites with more zest than its nuclear facilities—a strong indicator that they have something to hide.

 “Even while we were there, under the most intrusive inspections, Iraq continued working on their biological weapons programs,” said Tom O’Brien, an immunologist who was a senior UNSCOM scientist. “They’re very good at hiding and deceiving.”

Why Alter Biological Weapons?

Many analysts dismiss the possibility of Iraq, Iran or other nations splicing the genes of biological agents that could be used as weapons.

Smallpox, anthrax and other diseases are deadly enough without being modified, so a country with limited resources and funds would not want to endure the time, expense and uncertainty of trying alter these agents, said several analysts, including those who also think it is plausible Iraq has done so anyway.

“Why would you want to go through all that trouble? I don’t think they’d bother,” said William Patrick III, the former head of the U.S. biological weapons program until 1969, when then-President Richard Nixon announced the United States would end its offensive biological weapons program and destroy its stockpiles.

While smallpox itself is believed to kill 30 percent of the people it infects, it could be rendered ineffective if dispersed among populations that are vaccinated, many officials said.

Currently only small numbers of the U.S. military are vaccinated against smallpox, but plans are underway to include troops in the nationwide vaccination efforts being readied by health officials.

If U.S. troops are sent to fight in the Persian Gulf region, it is likely that deploying soldiers would receive vaccinations in order to prevent mass-casualty biological attacks by Iraq or, less likely, Iran, Pentagon officials said.

Analysts observe that it is for this particular reason that Baghdad and Tehran are believed to be genetically modifying biological agents—so they can overcome any defenses U.S. troops may possess.

“If you’re practicing bioterrorism, [genetically altered agents] may not be considered more dangerous because people are not vaccinated and they would die anyway,” said Long, the former UNSCOM inspector. “But if you’re going to use it against an army that’s vaccinated then yes, it may give you a little more bang for your buck.”

Number of Altered Biological Weapons Could be Infinite

The possibilities of mutant life forms that could be used as weapons are technically endless, although through decades of experiments the Soviet Union and Russia focused on just a handful, according to Alibek and other former Soviet scientists. Many genetically altered agents turn out to be less harmful than intended, but others have proven to be extremely lethal, they said.

Perhaps the most lethal genetically modified biological agent is “blackpox,” a cross between smallpox and the Ebola virus, Alibek said.

Alibek said blackpox would combine the two most dangerous aspects of Ebola and smallpox—it would have the contagiousness of the latter and produce the severe internal hemorrhaging of Ebola.

“The only purpose of this is to kill,” Alibek remarked.

Alibek said Russia has worked on several other genetically modified bugs, including the mixture of smallpox with the Venezuelan equine encephalitis, known as “Veepox.” Like blackpox this strain would most likely be able to overcome any known vaccines or antibiotics. And Veepox, according to Alibek, would only cost “a few million dollars.”

Russia has also developed modified versions of anthrax, including the so-called Obolensk anthrax, a strain said to be resistant to known vaccines and antidotes. In December 1997, Russian scientists openly published the recipes and methods for making Obolensk anthrax in the British journal Vaccine.

Analysts note that it would be naive to believe that scientists in countries such as Iraq and Iran have not copied these procedures.

Are There Responses to New Weapons?

Pentagon officials refused recent requests for interviews on this subject, but in March, a top military medical official said his office has been working feverishly to learn about genetically modified agents so that they can learn how to defeat them.

 “When it comes to genetically modified agents, there’s almost nothing we can do to protect ourselves until we know what it is—and by then it’s probably going to be too late, at least for the people that have already been infected,” said Army Col. Bob Thompson, the program manager for the Defense Department’s Office of Health Affairs. “This stuff scares the hell out of us.”

D. A. Henderson, the newly-appointed director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Public Health Preparedness, has spent a few decades studying how to eradicate diseases for a variety of U.S. and U.N. agencies.  He said there is a chance that the current vaccine might turn out to be effective against genetically altered life forms.

“It protects against a whole range of biological agents. It provides a very broad base of immunity.” Henderson said. “We’re not exactly sure what it is about this [vaccine] that makes it work, but it works.”

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