NCJ Number
190653
Date Published
December 1999
Length
117 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the task of preventing proliferation from the former Soviet chemical and biological weapons complexes.
Abstract
The report was compiled from public sources and interviews with current and former U.S. government officials and with numerous veterans of the former Soviet chemical and biological complexes. The report describes in detail the nature of the proliferation problems associated with the former Soviet biological and chemical weapons institutes. It presents an overview of the main organizations that provide grant assistance to these germ warfare and poison gas scientists. It reviews the main critiques of "brain drain" prevention programming, namely the possibility that grant funds might be diverted to weapons work and that grant recipients might be moonlighting for proliferators. It also examines the adjustments that have been made to these grant programs. It describes grants funded by the United States to engage former Soviet biological weapons researchers in cooperative research on dangerous pathogens and to tighten the security at a small group of biological institutes. The report concludes that the grant assistance reaching chemical and biological weapons scientists was glaringly insufficient given the scope and implications of the proliferation threat posed by the former Soviet weapons research complexes. Abbreviations, notes, tables, figures