A century of biological-weapons programs (1915–2015): reviewing the evidence

ABSTRACT

This article reviews what is known about the proliferation of biological-weapon programs during the past century. Collecting information on biological-weapon programs is difficult, even for intelligence organizations, and there is limited information available on the extent and character of past programs. A review of the open-source literature supports claims that twenty-three states had, probably had, or possibly had a program. The number of active programs has varied over time, from a low of zero in 1920 to a high of possibly as many as eight in 1990. Program size and sophistication also has varied enormously; most were small and unsophisticated, and many existed for only a short period of time.

KEYWORDS:

• biological weapons
• history
• proliferation

Disclaimer

Views represent those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the US government.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Dave Franz, John Lauder, Milton Leitenberg, Leonard Spector, and John R. Walker, as well as the Nonproliferation Review's anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments on drafts of this paper.

Notes

1 Mark L. Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I,” in Erhard Geissler and John Ellis van Courtland Moon, eds., Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development, and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 35.

2 To cite a few examples: David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); John Wilson Lewis and Litai Xue, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991); David Albright and Andrea Stricker, Revisiting South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Program: Its History, Dismantlement, and Lessons for Today (Washington, DC: Institute for Science and International Security Press, 2016); Feroz Hassan Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); Ian Clark and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The British Origins of Nuclear Strategy, 1945–1955 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). See also Ariel Levite, “Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited,” International Security, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2002), pp. 59–88, which provides a dated but still useful review of the roughly twenty countries that gave up nuclear weapons or that abandoned their programs to acquire them.

3 Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I,” pp. 35–62.

4 Peter Li, “Japan's Biochemical Warfare and Experimentation in China,” in Peter Li, ed., Japanese War Crimes: The Search for Justice (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2003), pp. 289–300; Sheldon Harris, “The Japanese Biological Warfare Programme,” in Geissler and Moon, eds., Biological and Toxin Weapons, pp. 141–46.

5 B. Kournikakis, S.J. Armour, C.A. Boulet, M. Spence, and B. Parsons, “Risk Assessment of Anthrax Threat Letters,” Technical Report, Defence Research Establishment Suffield, Medicine Hat, AB, September 1, 2001.

6 Reid Kirby, “The CB Battlefield Legacy: Understanding the Potential Problem of Clustered CB Weapons,” Army Chemical Review, December 2006, pp. 25–29; SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare; A Study of the Historical, Technical, Military, Legal and Political Aspects of CBW, and Possible Disarmament Measures, Volume 2: CB Weapons Today (New York: Humanities Press, 1971), pp. 79–90.

7 Anders Norqvist and Åke Sellström, Comparison of States vs. Non-state Actors in the Development of a BTW Capability (Stockholm: Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, 2004), <www.wmdcommission.org/files/No16.pdf>.

8 “DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms,” August 2017, <www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/dictionary.pdf>, p. 26.

9 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, April 10, 1972, BWC Article I.

10 For an elaboration of the complexities associated with defining BW agents, see Lajos Rozsa, “A Proposal for the Classification of Biological Weapons Sensu Lato,” Theory in Biosciences, Vol. 133, Nos. 3–4 (2014), pp. 129–34.

11 In practice, toxins are poisonous proteins. Some poisons normally not considered to be toxins also can be found in lethal concentrations in certain plants. For example, World Health Organization, Public Health Response to Biological and Chemical Weapons, 2nd edn., Geneva, p. 215, reports that hydrogen cyanide is found in 400 plant varieties, including some used as food. For that reason, it considers hydrogen cyanide and other toxic chemicals found in plants or animals to be toxins.

12 Graham S. Pearson, New Scientific and Technological Developments of Relevance to the Fifth Review Conference (Bradford: Bradford Project on Strengthening the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention [BTWC], University of Bradford, 2001), <http://hdl.handle.net/10454/708>; J.M. Madsen, “Bio Warfare and Terrorism: Toxins and Other Mid-Spectrum Agents,” in Philip Wexler, ed., Encyclopedia of Toxicology, 2nd edn., Vol. 1 (Oxford: Elsevier, 2005), pp. 273–79.

13 Jonathan B. Tucker, “A Farewell to Germs: The U.S. Renunciation of Biological and Toxin Warfare, 1969–70,” International Security, Vol. 27, No. 1 (2002), pp. 107–48.

14 United States Department of the Army, Military Biology and Biological Agents (Washington, DC: Departments of the Army and the Air Force, 1956), p. 2.

15 United States Department of the Army, Military Biology and Biological Agents. (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 21.

16 The most recent version of this annual report can be found in Department of State, “Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments,” April 14, 2017, <www.state.gov/t/avc/rls/rpt/2017/270330.htm>.

17 National Science and Technology Council, Fast Track Action Committee Report: Recommendations on the Select Agent Regulations Based on Broad Stakeholder Engagement. (Washington, DC, 2015), <https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ftac-sar_report_20151029.pdf>.

18 Mark E. Woolhouse and E. Gaunt, “Ecological Origins of Novel Human Pathogens,” Critical Reviews in Microbiology, Vol. 33, No. 4 (2007), pp. 231–42. These authors identified 1,399 human pathogens, but that included 285 helminths (parasitic worms) not typically considered BW agents.

19 S. Cleaveland, M. K. Laurenson, and L. H. Taylor, “Diseases of Humans and Their Domestic Mammals: Pathogen Characteristics, Host Range and the Risk of Emergence,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, Vol. 356, No. 1411 (2001), pp. 991–99; D.J. Ecker, R. Sampath, P. Willett, J.R. Wyatt, V. Samant, C. Massire, T.A. Hall, K. Hari, J.A. McNeil, C. Buchen-Osmond, and B. Budowle, “The Microbial Rosetta Stone Database: A Compilation of Global and Emerging Infectious Microorganisms and Bioterrorist Threat Agents,” BMC Microbiology, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2005), p. 19.

20 Woolhouse and Gaunt, “Ecological Origins of Novel Human Pathogens.”

21 A 1969 British government discussion of draft BWC language reportedly mentioned both hookworms and locusts. See Nicholas A. Sims, The Diplomacy of Biological Disarmament: Vicissitudes of a Treaty in Force 1975–85 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), p. 18. The international community agreed to review allegations that the United States violated the BWC by deliberately attacking Cuban agriculture with a pest insect, suggesting that at least some countries agreed that the treaty covered use of insects as weapons. This allegation and the resulting international diplomacy are reviewed in Raymond A. Zilinskas, “Cuban Allegations of Biological Warfare by the United States: Assessing the Evidence,” Critical Reviews in Microbiology, Vol. 25, No. 3 (1999), pp. 173–227; Raymond A. Zilinskas, “Cuban Allegations of U.S. Biological Warfare: False Allegations and Their Impact on Attribution,” in Anne L. Clunan, Peter R. Lavoy, and Susan B. Martin, eds., Terrorism, War, or Disease? Unraveling the Use of Biological Weapons (Stanford, CA: Stanford Security Studies, 2008), pp. 144–64. According to Nicholas A. Sims, “Legal Constraints on Biological Weapons,” in Mark L. Wheelis, Lajos Rózsa, and Malcolm R. Dando, eds., Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 353–54, two countries, Denmark and the Netherlands, suggested that the BWC did not cover insects, but there was no explicit consensus on this point.

22 Simon M. Whitby, Biological Warfare against Crops (New York: Palgrave, 2002).

23 R. Keith Schoppa, In a Sea of Bitterness: Refugees during the Sino-Japanese War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 285–300.

24 Milton Leitenberg, “Distinguishing Offensive from Defensive Biological Weapons Research,” Critical Reviews in Microbiology, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2003), pp. 223–57; David L. Huxsoll, “Narrowing the Zone of Uncertainty between Research and Development in Biological Warfare Defense,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 666 (December 1992), pp. 177–90.

25 SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare; A Study of the Historical, Technical, Military, Legal and Political Aspects of CBW, and Possible Disarmament Measures, Volume 5: The Prevention of CBW (New York: Humanities Press, 1971), pp. 141–43. A modified version appears in Charles Pillar and Keith R. Yamamoto, “The U.S. Biological Defense Research Program in the 1980s: A Critique,” in Susan Wright, ed., Preventing a Biological Arms Race (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), p. 142, but it was explicitly intended to focus on US activity and not be a generic template. The seven types of activities identified in the SIPRI list were:

1. Administrative and budgetary activity in the policy-making arena.

2. Agent research.

3. Agent development, including assessing suitability for use, development of production methods, and design of dissemination systems.

4. Field testing of weapons.

5. Production of agent.

6. Transport and storage of agent.

7. Development of military doctrine, troop training, and exercises.

26 US Congress OTA, Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC, 1993), pp. 83–84. Their list of activities included the following:

1. Establishment of one or more facilities and associated personnel with organizational and physical provisions for the conduct of work in secret.

2. Research on microbial pathogens and toxins, including the isolation of virulent or drug-resistant strains.

3. Pilot production of small quantities of agent in flasks or small fermenter systems.

4. Characterization and military assessment of the agent, including its stability, infectivity, course of infection, dosage, and the feasibility of aerosol dissemination.

5. Research, design, development, and testing of munitions and/or other dissemination equipment.

6. Scaled-up production of agent (possibly in several stages) and freeze-drying.

7. Stabilization of agent (e.g. through microencapsulation) and loading into spray tanks, munitions, or other delivery systems.

8. Stockpiling of filled or unfilled munitions and delivery vehicles, possibly accompanied by troop training, exercises, and doctrinal development. (In some but not all cases, a country planning the offensive use of BTW [biological and toxin weapons] agents would take measures to protect its own troops, such as immunization, the acquisition of respirators, and training in self-protective measures.)

27 Ibid., p. 72.

28 SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Volume 5, pp. 157–58.

29 Whitby, Biological Warfare against Crops, pp. 2–3.

30 Magnus Normark, Anders Lindblad, Anders Norqvist, and Björn Sandström, Israel and WMD: Incentives and Capabilities (Umeå, Sweden: FOI Defence Research Agency NBC Defence, 2005), pp. 37–38. The criteria mentioned were:

• active research and development to develop or improve agents;

• the development of improved production techniques for specific warfare agents;

• the optimization of agents for large-scale dissemination in the environment;

• continuously ongoing production of specific warfare agents and weaponization of these agents or

• continuously upgrading deployed operational weapons and storage depots for bulk agents to be used in weapons or the ready-made operational weapons.

31 Ingrid Fängmark and Lena Norlander, eds., Indicators of State and Non-state Offensive Chemical and Biological Programmes (Stockholm: Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, 2005), p. 9, <www.wmdcommission.org/files/No30.pdf>. The criteria offered were:

• state leadership (e.g. existence of an authoritative regime, or lack of transparency);

• political outlook (e.g. past or present WMD dynamics in the region, doctrines, severe security dilemmas);

• industrial capacity and profile (e.g. covert import of dual-use equipment and raw material, capability for reconfiguration, raw material or growth media that do not match output, or oversized safety systems);

• protective measures (e.g. restricted areas or high levels of secrecy);

• research capability (e.g. pilot plant for scaling up or under military influence);

• funding and resources (e.g. highly educated personnel but low publication rate or military presence);

• delivery systems (e.g. research on delivery systems, exercises and field trials, or aerosol dissemination devices).

32 UNMOVIC, Compendium of Iraq's Proscribed Weapons Programmes in the Chemical, Biological, and Missile Areas (New York: United Nations, 2007), p. 1143ff.

33 United States Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States, 2005, p. 506.

34 Milton Leitenberg, Raymond A. Zilinskas, and Jens H. Kuhn, The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 9.

35 Geissler and Moon, eds., Biological and Toxin Weapons.

36 Brian Balmer, “The UK Biological Weapons Program,” in Mark L. Wheelis, Lajos Rózsa, and Malcolm R. Dando, eds., Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 47–83; Olivier Lepick, “The French Biological Weapons Program,” in Wheelis, Rózsa, and. Dando, eds., Deadly Cultures, pp. 108–31.

37 Göran Bucht, John Hart, Karin Hjalmarsson, Anders Lindblad, Roger Roffey, Roger Sundqvist, Lars Trogen, Jean Pascal Zanders, and Kristina S Westerdahl, Iran's Disarmament and Arms Control Policies for Biological and Chemical Weapons, and Biological Capabilities (Umeå: NBC Defence, Swedish Defence Research Agency, 2003), p. 97.

38 Milton Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons (Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, Department of Security and Strategic Studies, 2004); Milton Leitenberg, Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2005); William E. King, Biological Warfare: Are U.S. Armed Forces Ready? (Arlington, VA: Institute of Land Warfare, Association of the United States Army, 1999); W. Seth Carus, “The Poor Man's Atomic Bomb”? Biological Weapons in the Middle East (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1991).

39 Michael C. Horowitz and Neil Narang, “Poor Man's Atomic Bomb? Exploring the Relationship between ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction,’” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 58, No. 3 (2014), pp. 509–35; Milton Leitenberg, “Biological Weapons in the Twentieth Century: A Review and Analysis,” Critical Reviews in Microbiology, Vol. 27, No. 4 (2001), pp. 267–320; W. Seth Carus, “Biological Warfare Threats in Perspective,” Critical Reviews in Microbiology, Vol. 24, No. 3 (1998), pp. 149–55; Elisa D. Harris, “Towards a Comprehensive Strategy for Halting Chemical and Biological Weapons Proliferation,” Arms Control, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1991), p. 198; Harvey J. McGeorge, “Chemical Addiction,” Defense and Foreign Affairs, April 1989, pp. 16–19, 32–33.

40 For example: Anthony H. Cordesman, Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East: The Impact on the Regional Military (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2005), <http://csis.org/publication/proliferation-weapons-mass-destruction-middle-east-impact-regional-military-balance>; CNS, “Chemical and Biological Weapons: Possession and Programs Past and Present,” March 2008, <http://cns.miis.edu/cbw/possess.htm>; Arms Control Association, “Chemical and Biological Weapons Status at a Glance,” February 2014, <www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/cbwprolif>.

41 For example: Department of Defense, Proliferation: Threat and Response (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1996); Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Service, Foreign Intelligence Service Report; A New Challenge after the Cold War: Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (Arlington, VA: Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 1993); Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, “Adherence to and Compliance with Agreements, June 24, 1992,” 1992; Paul K. Kerr, Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons and Missiles: Status and Trends (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2008); US Congress OTA, Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Assessing the Risks (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1993).

42 David Fairhall, “Eleven Countries Defying Ban on Germ Weapons,” Guardian, September 5, 1991, p. 1.

43 Horowitz and Narang, “Poor Man's Atomic Bomb?,” Appendix. Their dataset was critiqued by Biejan Poor Toulabi, “The Perils of Collecting Proliferation Data: A New Dataset on the Spread of Chemical and Biological Weapons,” paper presented at 58th International Studies Association Conference, Baltimore, February 22–25, 2017. Poor Toulabi's skepticism is generally consistent with the research presented here, although he reaches different conclusions on the status of some BW programs.

44 NTI, “Profile for Libya,” April 2015, <www.nti.org/learn/countries/libya/biological/>; US Congress OTA, Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction; CNS, “Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East,” April 2006, <http://cns.miis.edu/wmdme/>; CNS, “Chemical and Biological Weapons: Possession and Programs Past and Present.” Although they cite Pike as a source, Horowitz and Narang do not include any articles by him in their bibliography, but the source presumably is a version of “Libyan Biological Warfare,” Global Security.org, <www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/libya/bw.htm>. Each of these sources was located, and reviewed both for information about the Libyan BW program and to identify their sources. Because Horowitz and Narang relied heavily on web resources, the Wayback Machine was used to locate no longer available webpages. See <https://archive.org/web/>.

45 Carus, “The Poor Man's Atomic Bomb?”; Harris, “Towards a Comprehensive Strategy for Halting Chemical and Biological Weapons Proliferation;” Fairhall, “Eleven Countries Defying Ban on Germ Weapons,” p. 1; McGeorge, “Chemical Addiction;” Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Service, Foreign Intelligence Service Report.

46 Dick Cheney, Remarks of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to the American Israel Political Action Committee Policy Conference, Topic: US–Middle East Policy and Israel, Sheraton Washington Hotel, Washington, DC, June 11, 1990 (Federal News Service), Lexis/Nexis.

47 United States Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States, pp. 253–56.

48 Elisa D. Harris, “Stemming the Spread of Chemical Weapons,” Brookings Review, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1989), p. 41.

49 Leitenberg, “Biological Weapons in the Twentieth Century,” pp. 274, 277. Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, Project Coast: Apartheid's Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research [UNIDIR] and Centre for Conflict Resolution [CCR], 2002), p. 29, seem to imply that the technical side of Rhodesia's program consisted of a scientist and possibly a supporting technician. Glenn Cross, Dirty War: Rhodesia and Chemical Biological Warfare 1975–1980 (Solihull, UK: Helion, 2017).

50 Leitenberg, “Biological Weapons in the Twentieth Century,” p. 273; Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, p. 55.

51 Leitenberg, “Biological Weapons in the Twentieth Century,” pp. 274, 281.

52 W.J. Cromartie, “B.W. Intelligence Report—Paris Area, European Theater of Operations, United States Army, ALSOS Mission,” September 18, 1944, RG 112, Entry 295A, Records of the Office of the Surgeon General (Army), Records of the Preventive Medicine Division, Biological Warfare Specialized Files, 1941–47, Box 12, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

53 Andrzej Krajewski, “Broń Biologiczna W Polsce, Czyli Kanapka Ze Śmiercią,” Focus Historia, March 13, 2010, <http://historia.focus.pl/swiat/bron-biologiczna-w-polsce-czyli-kanapka-ze-smiercia-604>, cited in Robert Petersen, “‘When a Nation Is Being Murdered’—the Secret Biological and Chemical War against the Third Reich,” Zeszyty Naukowe Akademii Sztuki Wojennej, Vol. 103, No. 2 (2016), pp. 158–74.

54 Gábor Faludi, “Challenges of BW Control and Defense During Arms Reduction,” in Erhard Geissler, Lajos Gazsó, and Ernst Buder, eds., Conversion of Former BTW Facilities (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer Netherlands, 1998), pp. 67–72.

55 UNMOVIC, Compendium of Iraq's Proscribed Weapons Programmes in the Chemical, Biological, and Missile Areas, p. 1055.

56 Leitenberg et al., The Soviet Biological Weapons Program, p. 293.

57 The Soviet Union had sites for open-air testing of biological weapons from at least the 1930s. There was a facility created in 1925, but it was used for joint chemical agent testing with the Germans, so may only have been used for biological testing after that cooperative arrangement ended in 1933. Ibid., pp. 22–23. The United States also created an extensive infrastructure for testing, and conducted hundreds of open-air tests using both biological agents and their simulants. Many of these tests are described at <www.health.mil/Military-Health-Topics/Health-Readiness/Environmental-Exposures/Project-112-SHAD/Fact-Sheets>. See also, Leonard A. Cole, Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990).

58 Graham S. Pearson, “The Threat of Deliberate Disease in the 21st Century,” in Biological Weapons Proliferation: Reasons for Concern, Courses of Action (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 1998), p. 32.

59 Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I;” C. Redmond, M.J. Pearc, R.J. Manchee, and B.P. Berdal, “Deadly Relic of the Great War,” Nature, Vol. 393, No. 6687 (1998), pp. 747–48.

60 Chandré Gould, “South Africa's Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme 1981–1995,” PhD thesis, Rhodes University, South Africa, 2005; Gould and Folb, Project Coast.

61 Avner Cohen, “Israel and Chemical/Biological Weapons: History, Deterrence, and Arms Control,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 8, No. 3 (2001), pp. 27–53.

62 Faludi, “Challenges of BW Control and Defense during Arms Reduction,” pp. 67–72.

63 See the comment in Matthew Meselson, Martin M. Kaplan, and Mark A. Mokulsky, “Verification of Biological and Toxin Weapons Disarmament,” Science & Global Security, Vol. 2, Nos. 2–3 (1991), p. 236: “Delivered by aircraft, missile, or other means and dispersed near the ground as windborne aerosols to be inhaled by a target population, certain infectious agents could in theory approach the antipersonnel effectiveness of thermonuclear warheads, in terms of the weight of the agent and associated dissemination devices required to attack a given area.” For an explanation of the US Army's Large Area Coverage concept, see Reid Kirby, “The Evolving Role of Biological Weapons,” Army Chemical Review, (July–December 2007), pp. 22–26.

64 Jonathan B. Tucker, “Motivations for and against Proliferation: The Case of the Middle East,” in Raymond A. Zilinskas, ed., Biological Warfare: Modern Offense and Defense (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), pp. 28–33.

65 Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I.”

66 Harris, “The Japanese Biological Warfare Programme;” Li, “Japan's Biochemical Warfare and Experimentation in China.”

67 “Interview with Major Ludwik Kerstyn Krzewinski, Medical Corps, Polish Army, 14 June 1946,” June 14, 1946, RG 112, Entry 295A, Records of the Office of the Surgeon General (Army), Records of the Preventive Medicine Division, Biological Warfare Specialized Files, 1941–47, Box 9, NARA.

68 Kirby, “Evolving Role of Biological Weapons.”

69 Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William J. Broad, Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), pp. 50–57; Kirby, “Evolving Role of Biological Weapons.”

70 Brian Balmer, “How Does Secrecy Work? Keeping and Disclosing Secrets in the History of the UK Biological Warfare Programme,” in Brian Rappert and Caitriona McLeish, eds., A Web of Prevention: Biological Weapons, Life Sciences and the Governance of Research (Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2007), pp. 173–88.

71 Activities of the United States in the Field of Biological Warfare (The Merck Report), 1946, Entry 488, Box 182, NARA; George Merck, E.B. Fred, I.L. Baldwin, and W.B. Sarles, “Implications of Biological Warfare,” in The International Control of Atomic Energy, Scientific Information Transmitted to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, June 14, 1946–October 14, 1946 (Washington, DC: US Department of State, 1946), pp. 65–71.

72 SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Volume 2, pp. 241–42.

73 Rolf Ekéus, “The Lessons of UNSCOM and Iraq,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 23, Nos. 1–2 (2016), pp. 131–46.

74 Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, “The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2000), pp. 10–23.

75 Leitenberg et al., The Soviet Biological Weapons Program, pp. 631–78. The confidence-building measures mandated by the BWC's Second Review Conference in 1986 are supposed to provide an official statement by states parties as to “whether or not they conducted any offensive and/or defensive biological research and development programmes since 1 January 1946.” Countries are encouraged to report on activities conducted prior to that date. See US Congress OTA, Guide to Participating in the Confidence-Building Measures of the Biological Weapons Convention Revised Edition 2015 (New York: United Nations, 2015).

76 Balmer, “How Does Secrecy Work?”

77 “Interview with Major Ludwik Kerstyn Krzewinski, Medical Corps, Polish Army, 14 June 1946.”

78 Michael Gentile, “Former Closed Cities and Urbanisation in the FSU: An Exploration in Kazakhstan,” Europe–Asia Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2 (2004), pp. 263–78; John Hart, “The Soviet Biological Weapons Program,” in Wheelis, Rózsa, and Dando, eds., Deadly Cultures, pp. 132–56.

79 Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I;” Harris, “The Japanese Biological Warfare Programme;” Lepick, “Deadly Cultures.”

80 Nicolas Isla, Transparency in Past Offensive Biological Weapon Programmes: An Analysis of Confidence Building Measure Form F 1992-2003 (Hamburg: Research Group for Biological Arms Control, University of Hamburg, 2006).

81 Richard Danzig, Marc Sageman, Terrance Leighton, Lloyd Hough, Hidemi Yuki, Rui Kotani, and Zachary M. Hosford, Aum Shinrikyo: Insights into How Terrorists Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons, 2nd edn. (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2012), p. 4.

82 Martin Furmanski, “Misperceptions in Preparing for Biological Attack: An Historical Survey,” Revue Scientifique et Technique (International Office of Epizootics), Vol. 25, No. 1 (2006), pp. 53–70; Erhard Geissler, John Ellis van Courtland Moon, and Graham S. Pearson, “Lessons from the History of Biological and Toxin Warfare,” in Geissler and Moon, eds., Biological and Toxin Weapons, pp. 63–69; Leitenberg et al., The Soviet Biological Weapons Program, pp. 342–96, in a chapter on “Assessments of Biological Warfare Activities by Western Intelligence Services;” Martin Hugh-Jones, “Wickham Steed and German BW,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1992), pp. 379–402.

83 John D. Hart, “The ALSOS Mission, 1943–1945: A Secret U.S. Scientific Intelligence Unit,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2005), pp. 508–37.

84 Steven R. Weisman, “In Stricter Study, U.S. Scales Back Claim on Cuba Arms,” New York Times, September 18, 2004, <www.nytimes.com/2004/09/18/world/americas/in-stricter-study-us-scales-back-claim-on-cuba-arms.html?_r=0>.

85 United States Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States, pp. 255–56.

86 Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I.”

87 Leitenberg et al., The Soviet Biological Weapons Program, pp. 343–96.

88 These cases are discussed in the Appendix.

89 Susan B. Martin, “The Role of Biological Weapons in International Politics: The Real Military Revolution,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2002), pp. 63–98.

90 Gregory Koblentz, “Pathogens as Weapons: The International Security Implications of Biological Warfare,” International Security, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2004), pp. 84–122; John P. Caves and W. Seth Carus, The Future of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Their Nature and Role in 2030 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2014), pp. 18–19.

91 Koblentz, “Pathogens as Weapons,” 106.

92 SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Volume 2, pp. 241–42.

93 Tucker, “A Farewell to Germs.”

94 Olivier Lepick, “French Activities Related to Biological Warfare, 1919-45,” in Geissler and Moon, eds., Biological and Toxin Weapons, pp. 70–90.

95 John R. Walker, The 1925 Geneva Protocol: Export Controls, Britain, Poland and Why the Protocol Came to Include “Bacteriological” Warfare (Brighton, UK: Harvard Sussex Program, 2016).

96 United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, “1925 Geneva Protocol,” Disarmament Treaties Database, <http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/1925>.

97 Harris, “The Japanese Biological Warfare Programme;” Tsuneishi Keiichi, “Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army's Biological Warfare Program,” in Jing-Bao Nie, Nanyan Guo, Mark Selden, and Arthur Kleinman, eds., Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities: Comparative Inquiries in Science, History, and Ethics, trans. John Junkerman (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 23–31.

98 United Nations Office at Geneva, “Membership of the Biological Weapons Convention,” <www.unog.ch/80256EE600585943/(httpPages)/7BE6CBBEA0477B52C12571860035FD5C?OpenDocument>.

99 Jonathan B. Tucker and Erin R. Mahan, President Nixon's Decision to Renounce the U.S. Offensive Biological Weapons Program (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2009), p. 17.

100 Kenneth D. Ward, “The BWC Protocol: Mandate for Failure,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2004), pp. 183–99. Among the issues of concern to US negotiators was the proposal to incorporate definitions of proscribed activities that might limit the scope of the treaty, thus allowing some countries to claim that their actions were not covered by the treaty. Similarly, there was concern about efforts to create lists of biological agents, akin to those associated with the Chemical Weapons Convention, which might have enabled countries to adopt pathogens not listed and thus avoid scrutiny under the proposed verification regime.

101 “Testimony of Dr. Barry J. Erlick, Biological Warfare Analyst, Department of the Army,” in Global Spread of Chemical and Biological Weapons: Hearings Before the Committee on Governmental Affairs and Its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, United States Senate (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1990), p. 33.

102 UNMOVIC, Compendium of Iraq's Proscribed Weapons Programmes in the Chemical, Biological, and Missile Areas, p. 771.

103 Neil C. Livingstone and Joseph D. Douglass, CBW, the Poor Man's Atomic Bomb (Cambridge, MA: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1984); Carus, “The Poor Man's Atomic Bomb”?; CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, “Chemical and Biological Weapons: The Poor Man's Atomic Bomb,” Washington, DC, December 1988, National Security Archive; H. Lee Buchanan, “Poor Man's A-Bomb?,” United States Naval Institute. Proceedings, Vol. 123, No. 4 (1997), pp. 83–86; Horowitz and Narang, “Poor Man's Atomic Bomb?”