Book Review

Biological Espionage

Several years after Kanjatan Alibekov, who now calls himself Ken Alibek, Alexander Kouzminov, a high-ranking defector, has written his version of the biological weapons „sphere“ in Russia.

bha. Kouzminov is a microbiologist. He left the Russian secret service over ten years ago. However, it was not until the aftermath of 11th September 2001 that he began to speak about it. His book is about the inner circle of the Russian foreign secret service, the SVR, the organisation which succeeded the KGB. The primary tasks of ‘Department 12’ were biological espionage, the planning and preparation of acts of biological warfare terrorism, and the sabotage and planning of biological warfare.

Interest in biological weapons for ‘wars of the future’ first grew in the seventies. In 1972 genetic engineering was born. At the first conference on genetic engineering, which took place in Asilomar, USA in 1975, biological warfare was given a new basis, those of microbiology and genetic engineering. After 1973, after a decision by the Soviet Union‘s Council of Ministers, preparations began for biological warfare on this new basis.

The ‘illegals’, the spies specially trained for the west and in the west, received years of training. They worked for Directory 12, received a second or third training in medicine or biology so that they could be taken for bonafide scientists, as researchers in medical-military laboratories, or as employees of large pharmaceutical firms, as employees in the public health system or as epidemiologists attached to military units. There were also a large number of these ‘illegals’ in agricultural and veterinary faculties and departments. They operated in the west under aliases, playing the role of westerners with well-documented, falsified life-histories. In Russia itself, members of Directory 12 also worked as so-called undercover agents. Their role was to act as conventional scientists, contributing articles to scientific journals and popular magazines, taking part in conferences and fulfilling their duties on government health committees.

Espionage in the area of biological weapons research, genetic engineering and pharmacological research is by no means new. However, to date there remains very little written about the possible areas of ‘use’ and test scenarios, and no light has been shed on those faces behind it all. Since Kouzminov was so knowledgeable about biological weapons and microbiology he no doubt noticed things to which other people paid little attention. Kouzminov points to the unexplained infections which have been passed on to pets and wild animals, as well as people in China and Hong Kong in 1997, to the outbreak of the foot-and-mouth disease in England in 2001, to the new virus infection SARS in China and Hong Kong, which almost spread worldwide in 2003, to two bubonic plague epidemics in the West Indies in September and October 1994, to an epidemic of the Crimean-Congo haemorrhaging fever in the small village Oblivskaya in the Rostov-na-Don region in July 1999, to the West Nile fever outbreak in the Wolgograd region, and to other non-specific outbreaks of diseases in recent years. Kouzminov believes that many of these incidents are the result of secret biological experiments, or chance leaks of new anti-harvest and anti-livestock weapons into the environment.

Kouzminov also deals with the subject of ethnic biological weapons, i.e. weapons which wipe out specific ethnic groups. He mentions the Nes Tsiona Biological Institute in Israel. It is the main centre for chemical and biological weapons research. Even if it is a difficult task to produce an ethnic weapon of this kind, Israeli scientists are working on isolating unique genetic profiles of Arab ethnologies. The nature of such research is practically identical to that of the South African scientist Dr. Daan Gusen who worked on ethnic weapons to be used on black peoples.

Kouzminov’s book ought to generate a great deal of interest. It may well be that BSE, for instance, which was considered an epidemic, was in fact something artificially created. In any case, according to Joseph D. Douglass it appears to be the job of western secret services to ‘bury’ any information pertaining to biological weapons programs. Why? Douglass reckons that any revealing of the serious threat caused by these special chemical and biological substances would cause an investigation into similar American and British biological weapons programs. These programs began in the 1950s and still remain uncovered, says Douglass. However, this theory contradicts what Ed Regis, Judith Miller and Richard Preston and others have written, and whose books provide very valuable background reading to Kouzminov’s book.