I write from nearby Toronto, and though I find that a dead crow found at 1km of my home with the West Nile virus is not the fruit of a secret biowarfare programme, I am not so sure about what we faced regarding SARS. I personally did see a major security concern with that outbrake, which came _by plane_ from a different part of the world and spread here. By the time they found the first guy infected (if it indeed was the first guy), he was dead. What’s the truth behind it? Is it some virus that mutated/adapted and jumped from chicken to humans or was it a “trial run” to see how a target country responds to the threat? In any case, the story about SARS is just NOT CLEAR.

In sum, despite some liberties that the author took, and maybe even some disinformation put there on purpose (former CIA authors also go through the scrutiny of their former employer), the book made sense. I just hope we never see this threat turned reality.

Reality, fantasy, or disinformation (or a bit of each)?, April 15, 2005
Reviewer: Raymond A. Zilinskas (Monterey, CA)

The book by Alexander Kouzminov, “Biological Espionage: Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence Services,” certainly left me with mixed, disturbed feelings. On the positive side, it is interesting in what it tells about a previously unknown aspect of Soviet/Russian espionage – how it was concentrated on collecting information on biological developments in both civilian and military applied microbiology throughout the democratic nations. Kouzminov’s claims that the Soviet secret service had spies in both the UK and US biological warfare (BW) programs, if true, has frightening implications because it indicates yet more counterintelligence failures by these countries and, of course, information vital to our security would have been compromised.
But on the negative side, little actual information is provided about the accomplishments of these Soviet/Russian intelligence activities. The spies in the West are not named and the information that was collected about the UK and US BW programs is not specified. I read again and again about “significant” information being collected by Soviet agents, but little if any clue is provided as to what this information was and why it was significant. And the author is needlessly secretive about some facts; for example, he mentions that there were two BW facilities near Pushchino, but does not name them. Of course, it is well known in the West that a Biopreparat facility in Obolensk and Ministry of Defense institute in Zagorsk (now Sergiyev Posad) fit the bill because they are near Pushchino, so why the hesitancy about naming them?
I was also troubled by scientific/technical inaccuracies. For a supposed biomedical expert, he should know that the bacterial pathogen Bacillus anthracis is not a virus and that the bacterial disease tularemia is not caused by a virus. Even a first year student in microbiology knows this. There are other, equally obvious technical mistakes.
The book’s final chapter is almost a joke, was it not that for the possibility that misguided or ill-willed persons might disseminate Kouzminov’s absurd claims as facts. The KGB had plenty of experience doing so in the early 1980s when as part of a disinformation campaign they publicized claims made by an East German scientist that HIV was created in Fort Detrick. If Kouzminov is to be believed, almost every unusual disease outbreaks in the 1990s and early 2000s was caused by a deliberate release of a BW agent or an accidental release from a BW facility. Even in Africa and India, where it is hard to imagine why anyone would use biological weapons or that biological weapons laboratories exist and are operating. His claim that the strain of Hantavirus that caused a Hantavirus disease outbreak in Four Corners in 1994 probably was engineered to attack specifically Navajo Indians of “middle height” is ludicrous. It is as if he neglects a huge body of scientific literature demonstrating clearly that persons throughout North America of all races, ages, and sizes have been the unfortunate victims of Hantavirus disease since 1994.
In the final analysis, I had the feeling that Kouzminov might have made a deal with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) along these lines; “I get to publish a book about a potentially interesting subject, but you get to edit it so it contains no really important or interesting information. This way the exploits of the KGB and, by extension the FSB, are glorified at no cost in terms of loss of security. Further, if some of its information is misused to denigrate the U.S. or other Western democracies, so much the better.” Or it could be the start of another disinformation campaign, but one that this time is carried out by the FSB. Anyway, in the final analysis, the book is a huge disappointment.

Raymond A. Zilinskas