NY Times- U.S. Selling How to Make Germ Weapons

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Sunday, January 13, 2002 6:50 AM

U.S. Selling Papers Showing How to Make Germ Weapons

 

 

U.S. Selling Papers Showing How to Make Germ Weapons

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

NY Times

January 13, 2002

 

Months into an expanded war on bioterrorism, the government is still making

available to the public hundreds of formerly secret documents that tell how to

turn dangerous germs into deadly weapons.

 

For $15, anyone can buy " Selection of Process for Freeze-Drying, Particle Size

Reduction and Filling of Selected BW Agents, " or germs for biological warfare.

The 57-page report, dated 1952, includes plans for a pilot factory that could

produce dried germs in powder form, designed to lodge in human lungs.

 

For years, experts have called such documents cookbooks for terrorists and

condemned their public release. Now, with new urgency, scientists and military

experts are campaigning to have the weapon reports locked away from public

access. The Bush administration is considering such restrictions, said John H.

Marburger III, the White House science adviser.

 

Experts warn that the documents, even though decades old, have information that

could help produce the kind of sophisticated anthrax powder that killed five

people and traumatized the nation last fall.

 

" It's pretty scary stuff, " said Raymond A. Zilinskas, a senior scientist at the

Monterey Institute of International Studies, a private group that studies germ

defenses. " There's a whole bunch of literature out there that's really

cookbook. "

 

One report obtained by Dr. Zilinskas from the government is " Development of `N'

for Offensive Use in Biological Warfare. " `N' was the code letter for Bacillus

anthracis, the germ that causes anthrax. Another is " The Stability of Botulinum

Toxin in Common Beverages. " The germ-derived substance is the most poisonous

known to science.

 

Such documents were written from 1943 to 1969 when the United States employed an

army of scientists and engineers to research, develop and build a stockpile of

germ weapons. Although Washington renounced germ warfare in 1969 and dismantled

its arsenal, the government preserved the studies, recipes and blueprints on

which the arms were based.

 

Hundreds of the documents have been declassified over the decades as part of an

effort to make public the inner workings of government. Today, federal agencies

routinely sell the documents to historians and other researchers, mostly by

Internet and telephone. More sensitive but still unclassified reports are made

available by mail under the Freedom of Information Act.

 

Critics of the disclosure policy inside and outside the government now fear that

the germ warfare documents, in the wrong hands, could speed the development of

weapons meant to cripple the United States, and they want new precautions.

 

" We can't get it back, " Dr. Zilinskas said of papers already released. " But we

can prevent further leakage of this material to the general public. "

 

Shortly before the terror attacks, Dr. Zilinskas and W. Seth Carus, a germ

expert at the military's National Defense University, wrote a report on

bioterrorism that called for a group of experts to review the old literature and

see which reports should be reclassified, safeguarding them with new layers of

federal secrecy.

 

But just the opposite has been under way at Fort Detrick, Md., home of the

Army's old program to make germ weapons. Two years ago, in the Clinton

administration, the military post was asked to examine what other secret and

confidential reports should be declassified.

 

With new resolve since the anthrax attacks, that work has now shifted into

reverse. In an interview, the military expert evaluating 3,500 documents at Fort

Detrick said he became alarmed at those already available and is calling for new

barriers.

 

" The problem is not declassification - it's reclassification, " said the

official, Harry G. Dangerfield, a medical doctor at Fort Detrick during the

offensive germ program. Dr. Dangerfield now works for the Science Applications

International Corporation, a military contractor conducting the Fort Detrick

study.

 

" My major concern is the number of unclassified documents that need to be

protected against F.O.I.A. requests, " Dr. Dangerfield said, referring to the

Freedom of Information Act. " They're locked up, but it doesn't do any good if

people can write or call in and get them because of the law. "

 

Dr. Dangerfield, a retired Army colonel, is preparing a report on the topic for

Maj. Gen. John S. Parker, the Fort Detrick commander.

 

Dr. Dangerfield said in an interview that the report would call for the

reclassification of more than 200 reports he characterized as how-to manuals for

turning germs into weapons. His first examination of them, he said, " raised the

hair on the back of my neck. "

 

But advocates of public access to government information are wary of the new

push. Steven Aftergood, a secrecy expert at the Federation of American

Scientists, a private group in Washington, said that it could promote bad

policy. " If these documents pose a threat, they should be controlled, if

possible, " Dr. Aftergood said. " But classification abuse is rampant in the

government and authority to reclassify things could wreak havoc. "

 

Ronald M. Atlas, president-elect of the American Society of Microbiology, the

world's largest organization of germ professionals, based in Washington, echoed

those concerns.

 

" Once the cat's out of the bag, can you ever really put it back? " Dr. Atlas

asked. And even if new secrecy is possible, he said, it would be wise to

exercise caution.

 

" I don't think how-to manuals should be out there, " Dr. Atlas said. " But if it's

information that has dual purposes and can protect public health, it should be

released. "

 

Experts say several factors contributed to the original declassification of the

documents.

 

After the germ warfare program was ended in 1969, fewer scientists were

available to help assess what declassifications might be appropriate. So federal

officials over the years increasingly fell back on automatic declassification

steps that encourage disclosure.

 

That trend quickened after the cold war when the Clinton administration urged

that secrets throughout the government by divulged whenever possible, experts

said.

 

Today, the germ reports declassified by military officials are made available to

the public by the Defense Technical Information Center, at Fort Belvoir, Va. The

center, the Pentagon's main repository of scientific and technical data, has a

comprehensive Web site that helps identify old documents.

 

The military center provides many of its reports to an arm of the Commerce

Department known as the National Technical Information Service, in Springfield,

Va. From its Web site, the service sells the pilot- factory document and many

others to the public.

 

For instance, " Screening Studies with Variola Virus, " dated 1958, describes Army

studies to explore the weapon potential of smallpox, a highly contagious illness

that even without military aid managed to kill more people over the ages than

any other disease.

 

Experts judge it problematic, if not impossible, to shield reports already

declassified and made public. Mr. Aftergood, of the Federation of American

Scientists, said the current executive order governing such issues, signed by

President Clinton in 1995, bars reclassification. Mr. Aftergood added, however,

that agencies could stop sales and try to limit disclosures to those documents

that have to be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

 

Steven Garfinkel, who recently stepped down as director of the government's

Information Security Oversight Office after 21 years, said protecting the

unclassified documents under the current law " would be very difficult. "

 

Because of such difficulties, Mr. Garfinkel added, the Bush administration is

considering an executive order that would allow reclassification, which the

government permitted from 1982 to 1995 but is barred under the Clinton order.

 

Dr. Marburger, the White House science adviser, said the issue was under

high-level review. He added that he was personally concerned that terrorists

might obtain potentially deadly information from the government but urged a

cautious approach to the problem.

 

Experts agree that reclassification might work fairly well for documents already

declassified but not yet publicly disseminated, like some at Fort Detrick.

 

But Mr. Garfinkel added that, for documents already made public,

reclassification might do more harm than good. " It could give visibility to

information that would have been less noticed if left alone, " he said.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/national/13GERM.html