FEAR INC. - A TIMES INVESTIGATION

[<rms () computerbytesman com>]

Shocking!  Someone hypes a security threat in order to make a buck.  This
would never ever happen in the IT security business! ;-)

 

Richard

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-alibek1jul01,1,2787307.
story?track=rss

 

FEAR INC. - A TIMES INVESTIGATION

Selling the threat of bioterrorism

An ex-Soviet scientist raised fears, helped shape U.S. policy and sought to
profit.

By David Willman, Times Staff Writer
July 1, 2007 

 

WASHINGTON - In the fall of 1992, Kanatjan Alibekov defected from Russia to
the United States, bringing detailed, and chilling, descriptions of his role
in making biological weapons for the former Soviet Union.

As a doctor of microbiology, a physician and a colonel in the Red Army, he
helped lead the Soviet effort. He told U.S. intelligence agencies that the
Soviets had devoted at least 30,000 scientists, working at dozens of sites,
to develop bioweapons, despite a 1972 international ban on such work.

He said that emigrating Russian scientists and others posed imminent
threats. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, he said, several specialists
went to Iraq and North Korea. Both countries, he said, may have obtained
anthrax and smallpox. The transfer of smallpox would be especially ominous
because the Russians, he said, had sought to genetically modify the virus,
posing lethal risk even to those who had been vaccinated.

His expertise, combined with his dire pronouncements, solidified his cachet
in Washington. He simplified his name to Ken Alibek, became a familiar
figure on Capitol Hill, and emerged as one of the most important voices in
U.S. decisions to spend billions of dollars to counter anthrax, smallpox and
other potential bioterrorism agents.

 

.

 

 

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