Last Updated

14 Jun 2003

Source: Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2001.

Politics & Policy

U.S. Begins Testing Security Systems Of University Labs That Use Anthrax

By JOHN FIALKA, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON -- When recent news reports suggested that anthrax sent to Senate offices might have come from U.S. defensive stocks at Utah's Dugway Proving Ground, the Army issued official reassurance: All its anthrax there "has been accounted for."

But while it may be possible to strictly account for the military's guns, bombs and nuclear weapons, tracking deadly, microscopic biological agents that can reproduce themselves poses a far bigger challenge. Doing so requires much more rigorous security that must encompass a raft of civilian as well as military facilities. Even then, the effort could fall short.

Now, federal investigators from the Department of Health and Human Services are taking a controversial first step: They have begun testing the security systems that are supposed to protect university laboratories from thefts of anthrax, and some 30 other biological agents that terrorists could use.

The university probes are the beginning of what probably will be a major expansion of federal regulation of the thousands of labs, pharmaceuticals companies and clinics that handle deadly agents. Until the recent anthrax attacks in Washington, New York and Florida, the facilities mostly hewed to a kind of honor system -- one that assumed no one with access would use the agents to do harm.

And in a sign of the times, President Bush gave the HHS power to invoke military secrecy about its university probes. "We will not discuss any of these activities publicly," says Ben St. John, a spokesman for the HHS Office of Inspector General. "They relate to national security."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein last week helped pass a bill in the Senate that would require HHS to develop regulations for a registry of such labs, criminal background checks of employees and government certification for research involving deadly agents. The House has passed a similar measure. "The big emerging threat here is the rogue individual coming into possession of weapons of mass destruction. This is not just some theoretical issue," the California Democrat says.

The scientific community mostly is amenable to increased oversight. But some also worry about how the system might interfere with their work.

"Scientists want security as much as the nonscientists want it," says Robert E. Shope, a professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where, he acknowledged, the first HHS investigation is taking place. But he and other scientists express concern about the potential cost and impact of the proposed requirements, such as the background checks for handlers of dangerous biological agents.

"If it's the kind of check you use for buying a gun, that's fine. If it's a security clearance, that will be a hassle," says Dr. Shope, an expert on defenses against biological weapons.

No one knows exactly how many facilities handle anthrax and other deadly agents -- the number even includes neighborhood clinics and small veterinary operations -- but Sen. Feinstein says the Federal Bureau of Investigation has told her the U.S. could have as many as 22,000 such sites. The pending legislation would affect only a fraction, however, since it applies only to those that keep dangerous biological agents on hand on a regular basis. Sen. Feinstein singles out for criticism the estimated 250 university labs that she says have a "laissez faire system" when it comes to security.

At a recent Senate hearing, Ronald Atlas, president of the American Society for Microbiology, explained to her the difficulty that regulators -- and scientists -- face in trying to keep tabs on deadly materials: "If I fill this glass with ... a chemical, and someone takes half of it, you know it's gone. But if it's a biological agent and I fill it with water, I need to take only a pinpoint out of there that you would never notice. And then I can grow tons of it elsewhere."

Dr. Robert Rich, president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which includes some 60,000 scientists, says he is concerned about possible restrictions on foreign-born graduate students and scientists with keys to university labs. "They are essential to American science," he argues. Dr. Rich suggests perhaps adopting rules to limit the number of labs handling dangerous agents, and using "buddy systems" requiring more than one scientist to be present during experiments.

Dave Franz, former director of the Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., which uses anthrax to test vaccines, says further regulating scientists who work on defenses against biological warfare not only could be expensive, but could well stifle productivity and creativity by draining funds and time that otherwise would be directed toward research. "We need to make sure that there will be benefits for the costs involved," he says.

Blind alleys and false leads have baffled not only the thousands of FBI agents tracking the source of the anthrax attacks, but the public as well. Such dead ends are familiar to biological-weapons experts, however. "You are dealing with processes that can be very easily hidden. It took us four and a half years to find hard evidence of Iraq's hidden program," says Terry Taylor, a former United Nations weapons inspector. He now heads the Washington office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based research group.

U.S. diplomats have shared the headaches as they have tried, for more than a quarter century, to negotiate effective regulations for enforcing a 1972 global treaty banning biological weapons. While some European allies insist that an accounting system enforced by frequent inspections would deter work with biological weapons, the U.S. has argued that cheaters could easily evade detection because their records could provide cover for clandestine activity.

"This is an extremely difficult problem, one that we don't have any good solutions for," said one U.S. official, who has been following the talks for seven years.

Government investigators are trying both to learn how to identify secret weapons plants and to identify what they produce. A group of federal agencies recently built a small pharmaceuticals plant to mass produce bacteria that are close relatives of anthrax, but harmless. The plant, built from cheap, commercially available equipment, was hidden amid the dry mountainous terrain at the Department of Energy's sprawling Nevada Test Site, to see how difficult it would be to detect.

They ran two tests using Project Bachus -- while the acronym suggests the Roman god of wine, it actually stands for Biotechnology Activity Characterization by Unconventional Signatures -- the last one in August 2000. Maj. Linda Ritchie, a Defense Department spokeswoman for the project, says the results remain a classified secret.

While the experts have wrestled with the peculiarities of biological weapons for years, Congress and the regulatory agencies are newcomers. Since 1997, federal law has required any transfer of dangerous biological agents to be registered with the government. Until then, scientists informally transferred small vials of agents among each another, making it impossible to know precisely whether a specific agent that was produced at one laboratory later ended up at another.

Mr. Taylor, the former U.N. weapons inspector, is matter-of-fact about the likelihood of deadly acts against the U.S. "Attacks like this will happen from time to time," he says. "What we've got to do is minimize them."

Biowarfare Capability and Threats?

A number of nations, including some that have been hostile to the U.S., are believed to have stocks of biological agents that have been converted to weapons.

1. U.S. Dismantled offensive-weapons program but continues secret "defensive" research.

2. RUSSIA Largely dismantled the former Soviet Union's offensive- weapons program, but some military centers haven't been fully inspected.

3. BRITAIN Continues to do defensive research.

4. IRAQ Is rebuilding a biological-weapons program, recent intelligence suggests.

5. CHINA May be reviving an offensive-weapons program.

6. EGYPT Likely maintains a capability for bio-warfare.

7. IRAN Probably has a small quantity of biological weapons.

8. ISRAEL Likely has a bioweapons program similar to those the U.S. and former Soviet Union have dismantled.

9. LIBYA May be trying to weaponize biological agents.

10. NORTH KOREA May have tested bioweapons on island territories.

11. SYRIA Is believed to be developing biowarfare capability.

12. TAIWAN Has shown interest in biological-weapons research.

Source: The Henry J. Stimson Center, from U.S. government sources