National Security Archive Update, November 15, 2001
*The September 11th Source Books, Volume V, Anthrax at Sverdlovsk, 1979: U.S. Intelligence on the Deadliest Modern Outbreak*
http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB61/
Today the National Security Archive publishes on the web declassified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency and State Department on the deadliest modern outbreak of anthrax - the 1979 release of anthrax spores from a Soviet biological warfare facility in Sverdlovsk.
Anthrax has long been one of the weapons of choice for those pursuing biological weapons, and its development into more easily-dispersed and more lethal forms was an objective of the U.S. biological warfare program before its end in 1969. The Soviet Union was also supposed to have halted its biological warfare program at the same time, but the deadly anthrax outbreak a decade later would set off a trail of suspicion, evasion, accusation and counter-accusation that would only be resolved with the fall of Soviet Union and the revelation that Russia had indeed not only continued, but had in fact expanded its biological warfare program in size and directions that has left a legacy of lethal knowledge and biological agents that can pose a threat to the world today.
The documents collected here trace the U.S. efforts to penetrate the veil of secrecy, denials and fabrications that surrounded the Sverdlovsk release. In the process, intelligence and scientific modes of analysis were often at odds, as experts on both sides could find ample reason to disagree on the nature and cause of the Sverdlovsk outbreak. This conflict is illustrated by the disagreement between Harvard biologist Matthew Meleson, a preeminent proponent of biological arms control, who argued only a gram or less of anthrax was released, and Dr. William C. Patrick, a veteran of the U.S. biological warfare program at Ft. Detrick, who with his military colleagues argued that it had to have been kilograms, based on their work. Even with the admissions by Boris Yeltsin in 1992 that the Soviet military had deceived the West, and him,about its biological warfare program and his decree to mandate Russian compliance with the international ban on biological warfare, Russian military denials continued into the late 1990s, while pensions promised the survivors of the Sverdlovsk outbreak apparently have not been provided.
The documents are available at the following URL:
http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB61/