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Amy E. Smithson, Ph.D. COL. EITZEN: Our next speaker I'm proud to introduce, Dr. Amy Smithson. Dr. Smithson is the Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center. Many of you probably may not know that when the U.S. first started getting in the biological warfare business back in 1943, the Secretary of War at that time was Henry Stimson, and the center that Amy works at is named after Mr. Stimson. The Stimson Center conducts analytical research across the spectrum of complex topics associated with the threats of biological and chemical terrorism. Dr. Smithson has served as a consultant to both government and media. She has a Ph.D. in political science from G.W.U. and an M.A. in international relations from Georgetown University. She has many publications. The two most recent notable publications, well known to many of us, are entitled -- the first is Ataxia, the Chemical and Biological Terrorism Threat and the U.S. Response, and that one has been mentioned in the media a great deal recently, and more appropriate to her talk today, a publication from December of 1999 called Toxic Archopelago, Preventing Proliferation from the Former Soviet Chemical and Biological Weapons Complexes. Dr. Smithson will speak to us today on "International Cooperation to Prevent Biological Weapons Research and Development." Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Dr. Amy Smithson. (Applause.) DR SMITHSON: Thank you, Colonel Eitzen, for that gracious introduction and also thank you to Dr. O'Toole and her colleagues for asking me to be here with you today. As he noted, my presentation is based on a publication from about a year ago, and it addresses a very important proliferation problem and the programs that are meant to resolve that problem if that is, indeed, possible. The report was based on interviews with dozens of former chemical and biological weaponeers in the former Soviet Union, as well as interviews with U.S., European, and Russian officials working in what are known as brain drain proliferation efforts. To set a little bit of context here for the nature of the proliferation threat, when Americans think about proliferation problems in the former USSR, what they're most likely to think about is what are known as "loose nukes" and that problem. I'm going to talk today about the more human context. And these figures denote the size of the scientific communities working on nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in the former Soviet Union, and as you can see, the size of the total number of weaponeers is roughly comparative in the nuclear and biological fields. Try as I might, I could not get anyone to give me an exact number of chemical weaponeers. So the figure there is really a rough estimate. The other column denotes the number of weaponeers that the U.S. government deems to be a critical proliferation risk should they sell their expertise or perhaps weapons materiels to other governments or to terrorist organizations. And what is of interest here is the fact that the number of nuclear weaponeers is much smaller than the number of critical chemical weaponeers and is much, much smaller than the number of critical biological weaponeers that would pose that type of a threat. This map depicts what I dubbed the "Toxic Archipelago," and this is a string of facilities scattered across eight different countries these days since the Soviet Union collapsed, and for those who are unfamiliar with the astounding achievements of the former Soviet biological warfare program, let me give you a thumbnail sketch. There were over 50 nominally civilian institutes involved in the research, development, testing and production of biological weapons. In addition, there are four military institutes that no outsider has ever set foot in. Only the Russians have been in there to date. The Soviet conducted research with over 50 diseases for military purposes, weaponizing several of them, including tularemia and Marburg. They also produced tons of anthrax, plague, and smallpox, and loaded these agents on top of ballistic missiles aimed at Western civilian population centers. Some of their agents they made antibiotic resistant, and according to the former Deputy Director of Bio Preparat, Ken Alibek, they were also conducting research into chimera agents that would marry two diseases to create a super bug. We simply don't know how far they got in this regard. In addition -- let's be kind to our fine feathered friends. (Laughter.) DR. SMITHSON: Hey, I'm all for a good laugh. In addition, they had 10,000 scientists alone working on anti-crop and anti-livestock agents. So there's a thumbnail sketch of the "Toxic Archipelago." When the Soviet Union collapsed, the seven governments that also inherited these facilities were largely unaware of what they had on their hands. These were top secret facilities, and so they were unprepared to incorporate them or the scientists that were employed there into the civilian economy. In addition, although Yeltsen stepped up in 1992 and gave the mea culpa that the Soviet Union had violated the biological and toxin weapons convention, he also decreed that the offensive weapons program would be shut down. Unfortunately, his decrees have been implemented unevenly largely because a number of the individuals who ran these offensive weapon programs are still in their jobs, in the ministries that oversee these institutes, and in the institutes themselves. Now, the scientists that I spoke with by and large wanted out of the biological weapons business. They wanted out of it badly. They didn't want to be in it to begin with, but a number of these senior aparatcheks certainly do not share that view. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the funding for the weapons institutes, and it was not uncommon for me to interview scientists whose institute was receiving only five percent of the funding that at one time they had received from Moscow. They're having a hard time keeping the lights on, and in the Moscow and Russian winters, which are rather rigorous, they weren't even working in heated laboratories. In 1995, it was not uncommon to find senior scientists being paid at a level of 25 to $50 per month. I even interviewed scientists who had been paid less than a dollar a month. Now, in 1999, according to the World Bank, the poverty level in Russia was $37 per person needing food and clothing. You can do the calculation yourself. A lot of people -- and this is the way that people being paid who were fortunate enough to keep their jobs. Scientists at these institutes were laid off by the thousands. And last year, for those who had managed to stay on the payroll, their pay was sporadic. Certainly there were those in Washington who recognized that this presented a proliferation problem, and thanks largely to Senators Nunn and Lugar and the cooperative reduction program, there were some initiatives that were begun to try to get cooperative grant assistance to these scientists so that they would be able to resist the offers from governments or from terrorist groups that we know have come their way. What this rather spaghetti-like chart shows is the funding for four collaborative grant programs. One is the cooperative threat reduction money which goes to the Department of Defense and works through the International Science and Technology Center, and the Civilian Research and Development Foundation to fund collaborative research grants. A second funding stream is the Freedom Support Act, which passes through the State Department on its way to the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow and its sister organization in the Ukraine. And the third funding stream is through the Department of Energy's initiatives for proliferation prevention, and, yes, I do see the bird flying around now. (Laughter.) DR. SMITHSON: The International Science and Technology Center is the largest of the four grant research programs, and it is also funded by the European Union and a few other countries. What this chart shows is a comparison of the number of projects being funded in different disciplines. The top bar shows the number of projects across all four of these research grant programs which total just over 1,700 projects. The very small slice that you see below it are the number of projects funded in the area of chemistry, under 70. The slightly larger slide below that is the number of projects funded in the field of biology, which is just over 300 out of those 1,700 projects from 1994 to 1998. Now, the caveat that I'd like to put on this is that some of the chemical and biological weaponeers are being reached under other discipline areas, grants in those areas such as environmental research. But by and large, it's pretty easy to see that there is a skew in the funding that does not favor getting research grant assistance to the chemical and biological weaponeers. In addition, there was a slight rise in funding in 1998 and 1999 aimed at the biological weaponeers in the former Soviet Union. Now, they've been making headway with these grants, but when a research grant is given to these scientists, you have to recognize that they're truly starting from scratch. These are people who don't know how to manage grants, who do not know how to take their science from the laboratory to the commercial marketplace, and they have to be taught business practices. They also have to be taught things that many of us take for granted, like intellectual property rights and Western standards of animal care so that their research can apply in Western markets. And in addition to giving them research grants, these programs are providing this critical training. Some of the research institutes where I interviewed scientists have begun to spin off for profit companies, and they are beginning to produce some products for the domestic market, but they're not really making that much money on this yet because the economy there is depressed and because this is a real novel adventure for most of the scientists involved. Some patents are being applied for. so it's possible to see that the seeds of transformation of these institutes from places that made weapons of war to centers of peaceful research and commercial expertise has begun, but certainly there's a long way to go. Now, out of my research, I came to four basic conclusions. One is that the programs that are allotting these grants could certainly do it on a faster timetable. I interviewed scientists that had waited over two years to hear whether or not their application for a research grant had been approved. Now, it's pretty tough to feed a family on a dollar a month or $25 a month if that's what you're getting. So I think they should speed that up in the governments that are reviewing these grant applications. In addition, it's abundantly clear that the Putin government needs to take this issue in hand and lay off or fire the people who used to run the offensive weapons programs and are in many ways thwarting the efforts to reach these scientists and give them assistance. If you'll recall the spaghetti-like chart, it's also pretty clear that the U.S. government could be better organized to address this problem. And finally, a point that I'd like to elaborate on a little bit more is that the funding for these weapons scientists needs to be increased. Now, from the 1994 to 1999 time period, the United States government provided, on average, $3.5 million for biological grants. I want to say that number again: 3.5 million. That's a small number in the scheme of the rhetoric that has come out of this town about the severity of the biological weapons proliferation threat and the possibility that these scientists have to exponentially help other countries or terrorist organizations in acquiring these weapons. Now, at the Stimson Center, we did a calculation on how much would be needed to actually reach just the critical weaponeers, and that's the conservative number there, the conservative estimate, and a minimum increase in funding to these programs would be $12.6 million per year. Now, in case you're wondering how that figures into the Pentagon's budget of over $260 billion this year, it's a number so small I don't even know how to say it so I'll just read it: 0.0046 percent of the U.S. defense budget is all that I'm asking for, and I don't think that's too much, given the severity of the threat that these scientists represent if they are unable to support their families and to resist the offers that are coming at them from places like Iran, China, North Korea, and Iraq. And, yes, I did interview scientists who knew colleagues who had gone to these places to teach. So I would argue that much, much more needs to be done in this regard and remind you that this is like turning a super tanker. The radius for turning a super tanker is miles, and we've just begun to convert these facilities. This is a battle that's going to be fought institute by institute and literally scientist by scientist. And in comparison to defense programs, and I'm all for defense programs, it's relatively cheap to address the proliferation problem at its source. A couple of figures to keep in mind in that regard. The U.S. anthrax vaccination program for our soldiers, price tag, roughly $130 million for over six years, and that's just to vaccinate them against one threat agent. Price tag for research, development, testing and deployment of new gas mask for our air crews and ground crews, 838 million bucks, and I'm just asking for 12 million to get just to the critical weaponeers. I would argue that this money is a counter proliferation and counterterrorism bargain and also ask you to think about the fact that we really need these people to explain to us what they've done in order for our defenses to be as strong as they can be. There's a lot of uncertainty about just what they have accomplished in their program. In addition, I would ask you to imagine what it would be like if we could get all of these weaponeers working on cures instead of diseases and weapons of war. So let's put a little bit more funds in this. It's not much. And for those of you who are interested in looking at the research in a little bit more detail, the whole report is up on our Web site, and the address is there for you to take down if you'd like it. The report that Colonel Eitzen mentioned, Ataxia, is also up on the Web site in its entirety, although my colleague and co-author, Leslie Ann Levy, is here if she can wave her hand. If you find Leslie Ann or Claudia McCarthy, who also works with me in the project, you may be able to sweet talk them out of a disk copy of Ataxia so that you don't break your back when you hit the printer button. Thank you. (Applause.) COL. EITZEN: I wanted to mention that there was no extra charge for the arranged animal entertainment as part of this panel. Such an extra charge might be perceived as the organizers trying to feather their nests. So -- (Laughter.)
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