Engaging in activities designed to broaden both public and academic understanding of chemical and biological weapons issues.

Updated: Aug 20, 2008

Activities

Threat Assessment of Biological and Chemical Terrorism

In March 1995, the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo launched a terror attack on the Tokyo subway with the chemical nerve agent sarin, causing over a thousand casualties including 12 deaths. Although it is impossible to forecast if and when a future similar terrorist event might take place, governments must assume that they will occur and accordingly plan for preventing them and, should they occur, dealing effectively with their aftermath. Assessing the threat of CBW terrorism requires an understanding of the motivations, capabilities, and patterns of behavior of groups and individuals that might be drawn to these weapons. To this end, the CBWNP has developed a comprehensive limited access database that contains information about more than 800 cases in which domestic or international terrorists and criminals sought to acquire or use chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) weapons since 1900. By maintaining and augmenting this database, the Program provides the academic, policy, and law enforcement communities with empirical data needed to better understand the threat and to prepare for the most likely contingencies should the threat be realized.

The CBWNP has also commissioned in-depth case studies of more than twenty incidents of CBW terrorism that have occurred since World War II. These cases have been researched utilizing a variety of primary and secondary sources, including court documents, press accounts, police reports, declassified FBI files, and interviews, with the aim of identifying terrorist motivations and patterns of behavior. An edited book containing the first set of case studies, titled Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons, was published by MIT Press in April 2000. Additionally, CBWNP has commissioned studies on second-tier suppliers of dual use biotechnology equipment and supplies.

Toxins and International Arms Control

Approximately 500 different types of toxins—natural poisons produced by microorganisms, animals, and plants—are known to science, and artificial toxins have been produced by advanced chemical and biotechnology techniques. Toxins can be useful research tools in physiology and pharmacology, and a few, such as botulinum toxin and ricin, have therapeutic value in medical practice. Yet toxins can also be employed for nefarious purposes such as crime, terrorism, and warfare. With funding from the private foundations and government agencies, CBWNP staff are analyzing how best to preserve the legitimate scientific and therapeutic applications of toxins while preventing their proliferation.

In the spring of 2008, CBWNP began working on a project that aims to generate findings on the proliferation threat posed by the illicit manufacture of botulinum toxin (Botox). Specifically, the project is assessing the threat posed to U.S. security by illicit producers of botulinum toxin that are sold for purported therapeutic and cosmetic purposes. Information about illicit manufacturers, criminal middlemen and/or unethical end-users of the black or grey-market toxin is being gathered and analyzed. The threat assessment based on these findings then will be prepared for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

History of the Soviet Biological Weapons Program

In April 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin admitted that the Soviet Union had operated a top-secret biological warfare program in violation of the BWC, which Moscow had ratified in 1975, until its dissolution in December 1991. Some analysts believe that elements of this offensive program still exist in Russia today. CBWNP staff members have conducted a major study of former BW activities and facilities in the former Soviet Union, including having conducted field trips to BW facilities and conducted interviews with former Soviet bioweapons experts still living in Russia and other newly independent states, as well as some who have emigrated to Israel, United Kingdom, United States, and elsewhere. The study's results will be published by Harvard University Press in early 2009.

Beijing On Biohazards: Chinese Experts on Bioweapons Nonproliferation Issues

View the Beijing On Biohazards publication

Completed in September 2007, Beijing On Biohazards offers a first-of-its-kind collection of essays from top Chinese experts on the threat of biological weapons proliferation; new Chinese regulations on biosafety, biosecurity and oversight of genetic engineering research; the lessons that can be learned from the United Nations Special Commission's inspections in Iraq to help construct a verification protocol for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention; and China's policies and programs to hinder bioweapons proliferation. First and foremost, this volume, edited by Amy E. Smithson, is a reflection of the readiness of Chinese experts to discuss and address these extremely important matters. Second, these essays indicate that Chinese views on bioweapons nonproliferation policies and mechanisms are evolving. Third, these essays provide considerable information for their colleagues in the West to contemplate, to appreciate, to agree with, and to contest. These essays, in other words, are seeds for a dialogue between Chinese and Western policy analysts, scientists, and officials about the nature of the biological weapons threat and the tools that can be applied domestically and internationally to reduce the threat of biological weapons proliferation.