According to the GAO, because of stonewalling by Moscow, the United States could certify that only two of Russia’s 49 known biological sites had adequate security measures by 2003. The congressional watchdog agency made similarly discouraging findings at biological facilities that benefit from US-Russia collaborative research projects. Of those 14 biological sites where American and Russian scientists work together at the Pentagon’s expense, Moscow had allowed DOD officials to complete basic US-funded security enhancements (perimeter fences) at only two—Obolensk, an anthrax research facility, and Vector,6 home of Russia’s official smallpox sample—despite criminally negligent conditions at other labs. Moscow has since agreed in principle to open an additional two biological sites (Golitsino and Pokrov) to security upgrades, but the current rate’s tortured progress is too slow to ensure that US nonproliferation goals will be safely met anytime soon.

Notably, the United States has no access to many of Russia’s largest and most dangerous biological sites. Moscow refuses to allow Westerners into eight institutions believed to house dangerous pathogens, including five “anti-plague” institutes where actual strains are stored, one agricultural pathogen facility, and two (of four closed) major compounds still owned and operated by the Ministry of Defense (MOD). In September 2002, Senator Richard Lugar, now Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was denied entry at two of the four MOD sites, including the Center for Military-Technical Problems of Biological Defense at Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk), the site of an accidental anthrax release in 1979 that killed at least 66 people, and the Scientific Research Institute at Kirov-200 in Strizhi, where Russian officials have boldly lobbied for US pharmaceutical investments. During the same trip, the congressional delegation failed to pry loose from Russia a genetically altered strain of anthrax Moscow had earlier promised to deliver to the US government in exchange for a research grant. The Pentagon is eager to determine if the supergerm can defeat current US bio defenses, but Moscow refuses to honor its side of the deal despite an informal bilateral agreement to expand cooperation on these matters.7 Reportedly resistant to many common anthrax vaccines, the strain was developed at the Russian State Research Center for Applied Microbiology in Obolensk, one of the two sites that have benefited from US security upgrades.8 As Senator Lugar smartly noted, the four closed military facilities (the other two are at Sergeyev Possad and the Military Medicine Institute at St. Petersburg) represent “a mistake that must be corrected.”9

The secrecy surrounding the four MOD-run bio sites is worrisome. Based on available evidence, the Department of State recently determined that “Russia continues to maintain an offensive biological weapons program in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention,” a statement punctuated by firm assurances that “there is no disagreement about the nature of the program” within the US government.10 According to the White House, “Many key officials from the former Soviet offensive BW [biological warfare] program”—the world’s largest ever, at one point employing an estimated 60,000 people at more than 50 sites11—“continue to occupy influential positions,” while “funding for activities at certain suspect military BW sites has continued.”12 One such holdover was General Yuri Kalinin, from 1973 to 2001 head of the state-owned drug company Biopreparat, under which the Soviet Union conducted most of its biological warfare research and development. Several years ago, Russian scientists charged that General Kalinin had diverted some American grant money intended for biological research in space to his organization; responding to the accusations, NASA later found that it had in fact funded with virtually no oversight a number of projects at Biopreparat subsidiaries once a part of the Soviet germ warfare program.13

[...]

The Bush White House determined during the same certification process that Moscow is in violation of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the treaty that prohibits the development, production, stockpiling, and use of such devices, and mandates their destruction. The Department of State says it believes Moscow is lying about the full extent of its chemical agent and weapon inventory, and that a Russian declaration required by the CWC is “incomplete with respect to CW [chemical weapons] production, development facilities, and chemical agent and weapons stockpiles.”15 More specifically, Russia—which the President finds “may maintain CW production mobilization capacities,”16 a costly and illegal undertaking—likely omitted from the declaration modern weapons it has made. Since 1992 Russian scientists have been publicizing information on a new generation of agents called “Novichoks,” some of which are binaries—munitions consisting of two agents that are benign when kept separate but lethal when mixed—designed to defeat the Chemical Weapons Convention as well as Western detection and protection measures.17 Binaries are potentially far more difficult to detect and much easier to manufacture covertly because they can be made with common chemicals in relatively simple pesticide factories.

Testifying in 2003 to the arms control problems such issues have raised, the State Department’s top treaty verification and compliance official complained that the United States needs “greater access—not only to the biological weapons sites—but to chemical weapons activities as well.”18 Long-running negotiations have achieved little progress toward opening up suspect undeclared chemical weapons sites, with Moscow agreeing only to visits at previously declared storage and destruction facilities. (Under the Chemical Weapons Convention, Russia is required to declare all former and current chemical weapons production facilities in its ownership or possession.) In response to Washington’s concerns about the suspect sites and incomplete inventory, Russia provided some information and offered US experts the opportunity to review historical documentation used to prepare its stockpile declaration; but an American team that visited Moscow in late 2002 to review the papers found that Russia had “knowingly provided only documents already available to the United States and other CWC States Parties” through the treaty’s organizing institution.19

The problem of access is not unique to biological and chemical sites. For years the Ministry of Atomic Energy has blocked US officials from helping Russia secure parts of its sprawling nuclear arsenal, including some 600 metric tons of bomb-grade fissile material and up to 25,000 warheads. Perhaps most alarmingly, GAO found that as of December 2002, the Ministry of Defense reported installing only about one-third of the 76 miles of perimeter fencing that the United States began providing Russia in 1997 for warhead storage sites at 52 separate locations, and that as of 2003 DOD has been unable to install security equipment to address insider theft threats at any of the sites because Moscow had not provided access. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy has finished installing security improvements at only 13 of the 133 buildings at sites in the nuclear weapons complex that fabricate, refurbish, or dismantle components and material for nuclear weapons, leaving nearly 60 percent of Russia’s bomb-grade fissile material at risk. GAO put the blame for this state of affairs squarely at Moscow’s feet when it reported that, “despite years of negotiations, Russia will not let DOE visit or begin work at nearly three quarters of the buildings in the weapons complex,” and that a “lack of progress at these sites significantly hampers DOE’s programmatic goals because weapons complex sites store most of the weapons-usable nuclear material in Russia.”20 Overall, the United States has been given access to only four of 49 biological weapons sites (eight percent) and to only 35 of 133 nuclear weapons complex buildings (26 percent).

Moscow seemed to agree with the basic GAO assessment. Only days after the investigative agency released its official findings on the access problem, Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev proudly declared that the limitations will continue: “As for access by representatives of other countries to our sites where nuclear materials are located, we will not show all sites. And where the arrangement of these installations [is] confidential, we will not display them for international observation. . . . It is a question linked to our defensive capability.”21 In response, Senator Lugar confirmed that there is “a lengthy list” of cases where Russia has “rebuffed” the United States in seeking access to nuclear sites.22 One year later, a top DOE official told Congress that “achieving adequate transparency” for many initiatives was still “an ongoing problem,” and that the situation was “about the same . . . always difficult.”23

There's a lot more here, including on Russia's technology transfers to Iran. It's perfectly true, of course, that the primary reason for those is surely monetary; Russia has, a passing knowledge of a map and history informs us, even less reason to be thrilled with a powerful, nuclear-armed, Iran than the U.S. does. That doesn't make the ongoing aid to Iran more palatable.

Read The Rest Scale: oh, only you paranoid sorts will, I know.

In an unconnected Parameters piece, Ralph Peters argues that wars of attrition aren't a bad thing.

While I'm on military topics, I'll note that Philip Caputo doesn't think much of the new book from General Anthony Zinni, Tom Clancy, and company.

But for a special treat, check out the photos I linked to here. Trust me.