Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It - Softcover

Alibek, Ken; Handelman, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385334966 ISBN 13: 9780385334969

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

“Read and be amazed. . . . An important and fascinating look into a terrifying world of which we were blissfully unaware.”—Robin Cook, author of Contagion

Anthrax. Smallpox. Incurable and horrifying Ebola-related fevers. For two decades, while a fearful world prepared for nuclear winter, an elite team of Russian bioweaponeers began to till a new killing field: a bleak tract sown with powerful seeds of mass destruction—by doctors who had committed themselves to creating a biological Armageddon. Biohazard is the never-before-told story of Russia’s darkest, deadliest, and most closely guarded Cold War secret.
 
No one knows more about Russia’s astounding experiments with biowarfare than Ken Alibek. Now the mastermind behind Russia’s germ warfare effort reveals two decades of shocking breakthroughs . . . how Moscow’s leading scientists actually reengineered hazardous microbes to make them even more virulent . . . the secrets behind the discovery of an invisible, untraceable new class of biological agents just right for use in political assassinations . . . the startling story behind Russia’s attempt to turn a sample of the AIDS virus into the ultimate bioweapon. And in a chilling work of real-world intrigue, Biohazard offers us all a rare glimpse into a shadowy scientific underworld where doctors manufacture mass destruction, where witnesses to errors are silenced forever, and where ground zero is closer than we ever dared believe.
 
Praise for Biohazard
 
“Harrowing . . . richly descriptive . . . [an] absorbing account.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“Remarkable . . . terrifying revelations . . . [Ken Alibek’s] overall message is ignored at great national peril.”—Newsday

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ken Alibek was born in Kauchuk, Kazakhstan, in 1950. He graduated in 1975 from the military faculty of the Tomsk Medical Institute, where he majored in infectious diseases and epidemiology. He holds a Ph.D. in microbiology for research and development of plague and tularemia biological weapons and a doctorate of science in biotechnology for developing the technology to manufacture anthrax on an industrial scale. He joined Biopreparat in 1975 and was its first deputy chief from 1988 to 1992. Since his defection to the United States in 1992, he has briefed U.S. military intelligence on biological weapons. He is now working in biodefense.

Stephen Handelman is a columnist at Time. He was the Moscow bureau chief of The Toronto Star in the late eighties and early nineties and is the author of Comrade Criminal: Russia’s New Mafiya.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Anthrax. Smallpox. Incurable and horrifying Ebola-related fevers. For two decades, while a fearful world prepared for nuclear winter, an elite team of Russian bioweaponeers began to till a new killing field: a bleak tract sown with powerful seeds of mass destruction -- by doctors who had committed themselves to creating a biological Armageddon. Biohazard is the never-before-told story of Russia's darkest, deadliest, and most closely guarded Cold War secret.

No one knows more about Russia's astounding experiments with biowarfare than Ken Alibek. Now the mastermind behind Russia's germ warfare effort reveals two decades of shocking breakthroughs...how Moscow's leading scientists actually reengineered hazardous microbes to make them even more virulent...the secrets behind the discovery of an invisible, untraceable new class of biological agents just right for use in political assassinations...the startling story behind Russia's attempt to turn a sample of the AIDS virus into the ultimate bioweapon. And in a chilling work of real-world intrigue, Biohazard offers us all a rare glimpse into a shadowy scientific underworld where doctors manufacture mass destruction, where witnesses to errors are silenced forever, and where ground zero is closer than we ever dared believe.

Aus dem Klappentext

Anthrax. Smallpox. Incurable and horrifying Ebola-related fevers. For two decades, while a fearful world prepared for nuclear winter, an elite team of Russian bioweaponeers began to till a new killing field: a bleak tract sown with powerful seeds of mass destruction--by doctors who had committed themselves to creating a biological Armageddon. Biohazard is the never-before-told story of Russia's darkest, deadliest, and most closely guarded Cold War secret.
No one knows more about Russia's astounding experiments with biowarfare than Ken Alibek. Now the mastermind behind Russia's germ warfare effort reveals two decades of shocking breakthroughs...how Moscow's leading scientists actually reengineered hazardous microbes to make them even more virulent...the secrets behind the discovery of an invisible, untraceable new class of biological agents just right for use in political assassinations...the startling story behind Russia's attempt to turn a sample of the AIDS virus into the ultimate bioweapon. And in a chilling work of real-world intrigue, Biohazard offers us all a rare glimpse into a shadowy scientific underworld where doctors manufacture mass destruction, where witnesses to errors are silenced forever, and where ground zero is closer than we ever dared believe.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Army Headquarters
Moscow, 1988

Late in the winter of 1988, I was called to a meeting at Soviet army headquarters on Kirov Street in Moscow. The note of urgency in the message was hard to ignore. "We've set aside a special room for you, Colonel," said the clipped voice on the phone.

A black Volga was waiting at the curb, its motor running. The two armed bodyguards who accompanied me on top-secret business were slouched alongside, their fur hats pulled low against the cold. One held the door open as I climbed into the backseat, and followed me inside. The second slid in beside my driver, Slava. I told Slava to drive quickly.

It was usually a thirty-minute drive across town from my office to Red Army headquarters, but a fresh snowfall that morning had turned the streets into an Arctic snarl of spinning tires and raging drivers. Once or twice the flashing blue light on our official vehicle aroused the attention of a traffic policeman, who thrust his gloved hand in the air to clear the way.

Close to an hour had passed by the time we finally pulled up in front of the austere granite building that housed the Ministry of Defense. I entered through a side entrance and stamped the snow from my boots. A junior officer took me to a small adjoining room, where I was issued a pass, and then on to a guard booth, where a young soldier examined my pass and picture, stared hard, and waved me on.

The first officer led me up a flight of stairs to a heavy armored door with a coded lock. He punched in a series of numbers and we walked into the sprawling suite of offices occupied by the Fifteenth Directorate of the Soviet army, the military wing of our biological weapons program.

I unzipped my parka and tried to relax.

Although I was a colonel, I never wore my uniform. Like all military personnel at Biopreparat, I was provided with a cover identity as an ordinary scientist. I carried two different versions of my internal passport, the identity card required of every Soviet citizen. One identified me as a civilian employee of Biopreparat. The other showed my military rank.

I had moved to Moscow with my wife Lena and my three children a year earlier, in 1987, to take a position at Biopreparat headquarters. The move to the capital was a refreshing change from the dreariness of army life in the provinces.

Thirteen years at a succession of secret laboratories and institutes in some of the most remote corners of the Soviet Union had not prepared me for the bewildering pace of my new job. There were meetings every week at army headquarters, the Kremlin, the offices of the Communist Party Central Committee, or one of the myriad scientific institutes in our network. By the spring of 1988, when I was named first deputy chief, I was seeing a doctor for a stress-related illness.

The commander of the Fifteenth Directorate, Lieutenant General Vladimir Lebedinsky, looked at me disapprovingly when I entered his office. He was absorbed in a discussion with three colonels, none of whom I had seen before.

"It's about time," he said curtly.

I started to complain about the snow, the traffic, but he waved me into silence.

Of all the military commanders I dealt with, Lebedinsky was the one I most hated to keep waiting. He had taken a paternal interest in my career since we first met in a laboratory at Omutninsk, six hundred miles east of Moscow, where I'd been assigned for several years after graduating from military medical school. Then in his sixties and at the end of an illustrious military career, he was one of the few senior officers who didn't hold my youth against me. At thirty-eight, I had vaulted over older and more experienced scientists to become the youngest first deputy director in Biopreparat's history. Many of the scientists I used to work for were now taking orders from me, and they didn't bother to hide their resentment.

Lebedinsky turned to the three colonels.

"Are we ready?" he said.

They nodded, and the general led us into an adjoining soundproof room. Notepads had been placed on the large wooden table, in front of each chair.

An orderly arrived with four steaming glasses of tea. Lebedinsky waited for him to leave and firmly closed the door.

"I'm not staying," he said, as I glanced at the glasses and did a quick count.

The three colonels came from the Biological Group, a unit of the General Staff Operations Directorate whose role was to arm bombers and missiles with the weapons we produced. It was the first time I had met anyone from that unit. Biopreparat was then developing a new biological weapon every year. Most of our time was devoted to research; we paid little attention to the details of deployment.

Lebedinsky quickly explained the reason for the special meeting. A decision had been made at the highest levels, he said, to arm SS-18 missiles with disease agents.

"We need to calculate how much time it will take to prepare the missiles for launching. I'm counting on you to help us out."

I nodded, as if this were a perfectly reasonable request. But I had been caught off guard. The giant SS-18 missiles, which could carry ten five-hundred-kiloton warheads apiece over a range of six thousand miles, had never been considered before as delivery vehicles for a biological attack.

When the Soviet biological warfare program began in the 1920s, our scientists attached crop sprayers to low-flying planes and hoped that a contrary wind wouldn't blow the germs the wrong way. After World War II, bombers armed with explosives were added to the arsenal. The Cold War fueled the development of ever more destructive armaments, and by the 1970s we had managed to harness single-warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles for use in the delivery of biological agents. Multiple-warhead missiles represented more of a challenge. Few of the agents we had weaponized could be prepared in sufficient quantities to fill hundreds of warheads simultaneously.

Work I had done with anthrax a few years earlier must have caught the attention of our strategic planners. Through a series of tests, I'd found a way to create a more potent anthrax weapon, so that fewer spores would be needed in an attack. The new technique allowed us to load more missiles with anthrax without straining our labs' resources. In the language of American nuclear strategists, we could produce "more bang for the buck."

I was being asked to put my discovery to work.

The colonels knew little about the fine points of microorganisms, but they understood missile technology. If I could develop the pathogens in sufficient quantities, they would target the warheads on major cities in the United States and Europe.

I made a few quick calculations on my notepad. At least four hundred kilograms of anthrax, prepared in dry form for use as an aerosol, would be required for ten warheads.

Our seed stock for anthrax production was kept inside refrigerated storerooms at three production facilities in Penza, Kurgan, and Stepnogorsk. The seed stock would have to be put through a delicate fermenting process to breed the billions of spores required. The process was complicated--and it took time. A single twenty-ton fermenter working at full capacity could produce enough spores to fill one missile in one or two days. With additives, we could probably boost the output to five hundred or six hundred kilograms a day. I finished my calculations and leaned back in my chair.

"With the fermenters we have available, it would take ten to fourteen days," I said.

The colonels looked pleased. Two weeks was not a problem. No one expected to go to war overnight.

The colonels didn't tell me which cities had been targeted for biological attack, and I didn't ask. New York, Los...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0385334966
• ISBN 13: 9780385334969
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 344
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Scooter-Deluxe GmbH; https://www.roller.com; ; Am Schürmannshütt 30; Moers; 47441; Deutschland