Posted on 02/11/2005 8:11:49 PM PST by aculeus
Britain and America's most guarded germ warfare secrets have been known to the Russians for decades and spies continue to operate at the heart of the West's biotechnology industry, a former KGB spymaster says today.
Alexander Kouzminov also discloses that covert Soviet sabotage agents prepared secret sites where phials of lethal bacteria would be left, ready to poison western military establishments, civilian settlements and even assassinate political leaders in the event of war with the Soviet Union.
The scientist, once a senior member of the KGB unit responsible for biological espionage, says that the secrets of Porton Down and the Pentagon's equivalent, Fort Detrick in Maryland, were discovered through the work of deep-cover Russian espionage agents.
Dr Kouzminov's unit was Department 12 of Directorate S, the part of the KGB that ran its "illegals", or deep-cover spies, around the world.
The department concentrated on biological warfare and was so secret that even the defectors Oleg Gordievsky and Vasiliy Mitrokhin did not know what it did.
Before the publication today of Dr Kouzminov's book, Biological Espionage, nobody in the West had any real idea of Department's 12's role in penetrating biological research programmes around the world and stealing secrets of research that could be used for the benefit of the Soviet, and later Russian, state.
Nigel West, the author and espionage expert, said: "None of this material has ever been disclosed before and we have never had a defector from this unit, which is obviously of huge significance. I found it all pretty damn surprising because we just didn't know any of this.''
Dr Kouzminov, who has lived and worked in New Zealand since leaving Russia with his wife in 1994, having left the KGB two years before, said yesterday in an interview that he was certain that the KGB's activities were still being carried out by its successor, the SVR.
"Can you imagine such power being abandoned just because of detente and democratisation?" he said.
"Would all the efforts and money expended in training and developing our people be forgotten?
"Would all our agents be stood down and the 'illegals' recalled just because Russia was taking part in the next round of biological weapons talks in Geneva? I wouldn't bet on it."
He said he was sure that Fort Detrick was penetrated and said that a long-term agent codenamed Rosa had reached the inner sanctum of Britain's biological weapons programme, which is centred on Porton Down.
Another highly-placed Department 12 source, who Dr Kouzminov believed was British or based in Britain, reached high levels in Nato's headquarters at Mons in Belgium.
Another agent ran a spy ring inside the World Health Organisation.
His disclosures about the use of "dead drops" to hide biological weapons of mass destruction in the event of a global war will send shudders down the spine of the western defence community.
"I was asked to carry out analysis of the suitability and effectiveness of the places selected for the potential clandestine storage of containers with dangerous biological materials and toxins so that when needed they could be used to disable or destroy objectives.
"I remember one of the operational files given to me for analysis – five pages of typed text with attached diagrams and clandestine photos of places selected for dead drops close to a naval base in Australia, which was used by the US navy.
"I had to evaluate whether the places selected were suitable for infecting or poisoning the naval garrison through, for example, a local water supply system, or by using transport entering the base, or through the dispersal of bacteria near air-conditioning and ventilation systems."
Although Dr Kouzminov would not identify the base, it is almost certainly Townsville, the Queensland naval port much used by the United States navy.
He believes that as many as 60 agents were operating against western biological programmes at any one time and that at least one "package" of live biological samples was being sent to Moscow from Britain or Germany every month.
Dr Kouzminov said that in the early 1990s at least two of his colleagues who regularly handled these packages died suddenly and in mysterious circumstances, presumably from leakages of the deadly contents.
He added that one of the great discoveries of his department was that any exchange of biological weapons during the last stages of the Cold War would have been one-sided because the West had no plans for such a strike.
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence.
ping
More likey:
Another agent ran THE SPY RING THAT IS the World Health Organization.....
Anyways, whatever the case biological weapons i guess would seem to those who use them as a perfect weapon during an Armageddon scenario. After all, nukes will destroy both nations, thus why not strike with biological weapons as well to make sure that whatever is not tainted by radiation is crippled by disease? And since this would be during the occurence of a nuclear conflagration it really wouldn't matter even if super-virulent strains of spliced smallpox was released (even though it would have a high chance of eventually getting back to the nation that created it. Why care if you would not be alive!)
Those leftists are still working for the KGB!
You never know whether to believe these defector stories. Been burned before. But assuming this is true it is quite scary. Shelf lives of some biological agents are quite limited; others, like anthrax spores, will outlast any of us.
This will interest you.
Hmmm...who was the fellow who convinced Kissinger and Nixon there was no Soviet program...
What's he doing these day?
sheesh.
phials of lethal bacteria
Of course they did! First, you got Willie and the many other leftie but promising kids who were turned on all expense paid sex and drug-fests in Moscow in the '60s and '70s (all the film Russia has on the thousands of Western kids, mostly males, may really be worth something). Then, ther are all the deep commies in the US Sate Department who have been there since McCarthy outed them and are still there to this day. Maybe, one day, we'll clean out State!
1. Gelen's network bilked Company while providing fake information
2. Iraqi congress spun tall tales
Probably there is much more. Whoever deflected wanted to present himself/herself as valuable asset.
I am suspicious about the timing of release of this story. Yesterday, it was Novikov's "Ruskies run AQ", last week "Ruskies are comming, Ruskies are comming"...
At the same time, Dims accuse Condie of being a liar.
Methinks someone wants to provoke Condie's kneejerk reaction and put her into defensive Cold War mindset.
Not good, not good at all.
Bubonic Plague that ravaged the Asian steppes and Europe slowed in winter. That's when the rats nested in holes. When the weather warmed...out came the nasties again.
Heck it was probly Hill/Bill that gave them the secrets for campagn contributions, ala Korea and China
Just for your convenience, the answer to this Q has been known for some decades. The difficulty in turning this particular bacterium into an effective BW agent is...that noone has been willing to attempt to aerosolise it on a WMD basis; the risk of losing a top scientist IN such attempt is/has been generally deemed unacceptable. (smile...)
So...your answer to the Q is:
________________ .
Do fill in the blank, when or if you can do. Thank you!
Man you're strange
Have you noticed the 'strange' deaths of an unusual amounts of bio-weapons scientists?
What medical science knows is that the bacterium Y. pestis is generally benign, a nothing bacterium among millions in the world, that happens to live, under normal conditions, in the guts of various species of fleas. Ordinarily, this bacterium just sits around and minds its own business.
What medical science does NOT know is what event/sequence of events/dietary change/other factors cause one of Y. pestis' genes, specifically the 'hemin storage' gene, to switch on. When this gene does switch on, Y. pestis becomes incredibly virulent; somehow multiplies its rate of reproduction almost factorially over time, a rate that occurs almost nowhere else in nature. The flea's natural metabolism can't cope with this gigantic expansion of an alien organism w/in its body.
As one of many results thereof, the flea loses part or all of its ability to digest food, and -- somewhat similarly to a drunk who wants to puke out the contents of his/her/its stomach (this comparison is of course not precise) -- tries to disgorge the too-numerous bacteria into the flesh of other critters by biting any critter that has warm blood...wups, that means you and me included.
You could kill every rat, every member of any species or sub-species or variant of rat, in the world tomorrow morning, and burn the carcasses...and you would still have the occasional plague outbreak for as long a period as you would care to consider.
My apologies to all biopathologists for any and all misstatements/omissions in the process dispersion above regarding Y. pestis. Most of the above is accurate; I've doubtless omitted or poorly explained one or another significant features of the process.
Nonetheless, RATS aren't the villains, necessarily, in the dispersal of plague; they're just a common transport vector for the spread of the disease. Blaming rats (and I've no love at all for rats, btw, so pls spare me the 'Willard' comments) is just blaming the messenger for something not in its/their control.
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