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.
THANKS much for posting this. You beat me to it.
Sobering. Cause for more prayer!
Not likely that the State Dept OR the Senate will be cleaned out before Jesus comes back.
What is it about our beloved FREEPER abode which seems to attract and elevate smug, pontifical, arrogant, shallow . . . types? And, why, are they so prone to rabid hostility? No fair reminding me that I'm the shrink.
So many thin skins.
Their smug arrogance really doesn't wear well on me, at all.
Good to see your screen name, as ever. God's best to you.
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