Secret germ warfare document sent to Pakistan

Ananova ^ | July 21, 2002

[HAL9000]

A top secret document detailing Britain's post-war biological weapons research was sent to Pakistani officials by mistake.

Papers released by the Public Record Office say it was sent to the High Commissioner for Pakistan 15 years later.

A test programme for studying ways to turn the plague, anthrax and other deadly diseases into weapons was described in the 1947 file.

Officials at the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence were forced to send their "sincere regrets" over the blunder to the US Government, which had co-operated in the work,

Some parts of the 1947 Report on Biological Warfare are still shrouded in secrecy and are not included in the papers.

A MoD memo dated March 1963 said: "Unfortunately, when these papers were despatched... It was not noticed that four of them were graded TOP SECRET."

The error only came to light "when the Pakistanis telephoned to inquire what procedure they should adopt for handling TOP SECRET papers", according to another note from March 1963.

"There are certain references in the paper to work which was being carried out at the time and may still be carried out in the United States and Canada."

It adds that American and Canadian authorities "might have reason for guarding the degree of their involvement in certain fields".

It states: "From the technical aspect there is nothing novel in this nowadays, but it could be that the Americans might be embarrassed by the Pakistanis being aware of this work. The same thing applies, of course, to the Canadians."

[Jhoffa_]

"There are certain references in the paper to work which was being carried out at the time and may still be carried out in the United States and Canada."

Now this is interesting..

Civilian testing perhaps? Covery testing elsewhere? Why should we be embarrassed (especially when they are the ones who screwed up) and minimize these parts of the report?