Today, although the Soviet-era program has been canceled, Russia -- like the U.S. -- maintains a bio-warfare research program for defensive purposes. TIME Pentagon correspondent Mark Thompson is skeptical of Alibek's warning that the Russians may maintain an offensive capability. Thompson points out that the difference between a research program and offensive capability is simply a matter of quantity, and more importantly, that biological weapons are militarily inefficient. "No conventional military of the technological sophistication of either the U.S. or Russia has much use for biological weapons," says Thompson. "They carry great risk of blowback, and because they mostly take days to kill people, they have no battlefield application -- they're essentially a terrorist weapon."
From Russia With Germs
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In a doomsday showdown with the U.S., the old Soviet Union's offensive
capability included missile warheads loaded with hundreds of tons of
anthrax, smallpox and plague viruses, according to a scientist who
helped run the Soviet biological warfare program. The New York
Times today published the revelations by Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, the
former deputy director of the Soviet-era program who defected to the U.S.
in 1992 and is now known as Ken Alibek.