During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union produced vast quantities of germ weapons, enough to wipe out the planet. In the early 1970s, the United States unilaterally gave up germ arms and helped lead the global campaign to abolish them.

The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, which was ratified by the United States and 143 other countries, banned the development, stockpiling, and production of germ warfare agents that had “no prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes.” They also pledged not to develop or obtain weapons or other equipment “designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.” But the treaty allowed work on vaccines and other protective measures. United States government officials said the secret research, which copied the major steps a state or terrorist would take to create a biological arsenal, was aimed at better understanding the threat.

However, there were at least two significant loopholes: The pact did not define "defensive" research or say what studies might be prohibited, if any. And it had no provision to prosecute countries or groups which cheated. In the following decades, several countries did cheat, some on a huge scale. The Soviet Union built entire cities devoted to developing germ weapons, employing tens of thousands of people and turning anthrax, smallpox, and bubonic plague into weapons of war. In the late 1980s, Iraq began a program to produce its own germ arsenal. However, both the Soviet Union and Iraq insisted that their programs were for defensive purposes.

Clinton administration officials became worried about the possibility that scientists could use the widely available techniques of gene-splicing to create even more deadly weapons. Those concerns deepened in 1995, when Russian scientists disclosed at a scientific conference in Britain that they had implanted genes from Bacillus cereus, an organism that causes food poisoning, into the anthrax microbe. The scientists said later that the experiments were peaceful. The two microbes could be found side-by-side in nature and, the Russians said, they wanted to see what happened if they cross-bred.

A published account of the experiment, which appeared in a scientific journal in late 1997, alarmed the Pentagon, which had just decided to require that American soldiers be vaccinated against anthrax. According to the article, the new strain was resistant to Russia's anthrax vaccine, at least in hamsters. American officials tried to obtain a sample from Russia through a scientific exchange program to see whether the Russians had really created such a hybrid. The Americans also wanted to test whether the microbe could defeat the American vaccine, which was different from that used by Russia. Despite repeated promises, the bacteria were never provided. Eventually the CIA drew up plans to replicate the strain, but intelligence officials said that the agency hesitated because there was no specific report that an adversary was attempting to turn the superbug into a weapon. (New York Times, September 4, 2001)

The Clinton administration also embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that tested the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons. The Pentagon focused on the former Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq, and Libya, among others. Much of the initial emphasis was on the germs that enemies might use in an attack. Two other projects were completed during the Clinton years that focused on the mechanics of making germ weapons.

In 1997, the CIA began research on Clear Vision, a weapons systems which would deliver the germs. The CIA built and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb that agency officials feared was being sold on the international market. The CIA device lacked a fuse and other parts that would make it a working bomb, intelligence officials said. The tests on the bomb model touched off a dispute among government experts after the tests were concluded in 2000, with some officials arguing that they violated the germ treaty's prohibition against developing weapons. Intelligence officials said that lawyers at the agency and the White House concluded that the work was defensive, and therefore allowed. But even officials who supported the effort acknowledged that it brought the United States closer to what was forbidden. (New York Times, September 4, 2001)

Clear Vision was led by Gene Johnson, a senior CIA scientist who had long worked with some of the world's deadliest viruses. Johnson was eager to understand the damage that Soviet miniature bombs -- bomblets, in military parlance -- might inflict. The CIA instructed its spies to find or buy a Soviet bomblet which released germs in a fine mist. That search proved unsuccessful, and the agency approved a proposal to build a replica and study how well it could disperse its lethal cargo. CIA lawyers concluded that such a project was permitted by the treaty because the intent was defensive. Intelligence officials said that the CIA had reports that at least one nation was trying to buy the Soviet-made bomblets.

A model was constructed and the agency conducted two sets of tests at Battelle, the military contractor. The experiments measured dissemination characteristics and how the model performed under different atmospheric conditions, intelligence officials said. They emphasized that the device was a "portion" of a bomb that could not have been used as a weapon.

However, the experiments caused concern at the Clinton White House which learned about the project after it was under way. Some White House officials worried that the benefits did not justify the risks. But a White House lawyer led a joint assessment by several departments that concluded that the program did not violate the treaty. Consequently, the program continued.

The CIA continued to insist that it had the legal authority to conduct such tests, and the agency was prepared to reopen the fight over how to interpret the treaty. But even so, the agency ended the Clear Vision project in the last year of the Clinton administration.

The Bush White House expanded the secret research on biological weapons. In early 2001, administration officials approved research for the genetic engineering of a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax. The experiment was devised to assess whether the vaccine, used in the military, would be effective against such a superbug which was first created by Russian scientists. (New York Times, September 4, 2001)

Additionally, Pentagon experts assembled a germ factory in the Nevada desert from commercially available materials. Pentagon officials said the project demonstrated the ease with which a terrorist or rogue nation could build a plant that could produce pounds of the deadly germs. Both the mock bomb and the factory were tested with simulants with characteristics similar to the germs used in weapons. Among the facilities likely to be open to inspection under the draft agreement would be the West Jefferson, Ohio, laboratory of the Battelle Memorial Institute, a military contractor that has been selected to create the genetically altered anthrax.

A senior Bush administration official said all the projects were "fully consistent" with the treaty banning biological weapons and were needed to protect Americans against a growing danger. Another White House official said that the treaty allowed the United States to conduct research on both microbes and germ munitions for "protective or defensive purposes." (New York Times, September 4, 2001) But during the Clinton administration, officials worried that such a project violated the pact. Furthermore, others expressed concern that the experiments, if disclosed, might be misunderstood as a clandestine effort to resume work on a class of weapons that President Nixon had relinquished in 1969.

After six years of negotiations, diplomats in Geneva produced the draft agreement which established measures to monitor the ban on biological weapons which the White House claimed was difficult to enforce. But the Bush administration refused to accept the 210-page agreement to enforce the treaty banning germ weapons. In rejecting the treaty, the White House still tried to reassure other countries that the United States remained committed to strengthening the global ban on germ weapons. Surprisingly, the Bush administration acknowledged that rejecting the protocol could produce considerable diplomatic fallout. (New York Times, May 5, 2001; Environment News Service, July 12, 2001)

Under the international treaty banning chemical weapons, inspectors have been allowed to visit plants unless 75 percent of the countries represented in the treaty executive voted to block the inspection. But the biological weapons treaty required a mere majority vote of the executive to authorize an investigation, to which American pharmaceutical corporations objected. Consequently, the American delegation demanded a double standard -- one rule for the United States and another for the rest of the world. American officials complained both that the draft protocol was too strict, opening up American biomedical facilities and Pentagon germ warfare labs to foreign espionage, and that it was too loose, leaving room for "cheating" by countries such as Iran and Iraq.

The 1972 treaty, which 143 nations ratified, prohibited the development, production, and possession of biological weapons. In 1972, President Nixon and other world leaders signed the treaty. But Russian President Boris Yeltsin said in 1992 that the Soviet Union had violated the accord by maintaining a long-standing biological-weapons program after the treaty went into force. Then evidence was acquired after the Persian Gulf war confirming that Iraq also had germ weapons, heightening fears over biological warfare. Therefore, the senior Bush's administration and other nations began talks on a new protocol.

However, China was reluctant to allow on-site inspections. Pakistan was concerned that inspectors searching for germ weapons might investigate its nuclear weapons sites. And Iran hoped to weaken controls on the export of biological equipment and materials, claiming that it hurt civilian economies. Additionally, the United States had conflicting motivations. On one hand, it wanted to limit the number of visits by foreign inspectors in order to protect American pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies which dominated the worldwide industry. And the United States was insistent in protecting trade secrets.

Under the protocol, the largest bio-defense installations and facilities, involved with germ agents, included food companies, beverage plants, and pharmaceutical plants. As for inspections, a new executive council would be established and a majority vote of the body would be required before an investigation of a suspicious plant could be carried out. That procedure, insisted on by American industry, was less strict than a similar provision in the treaty banning chemical weapons which stipulated that such investigations were to be done unless there was a vote by three-fourths of a similar body to block them. Inspectors under the biological protocol would have to be granted access 108 hours after an inspection was approved. (New York Times, May 5, 2001)

The treaty also called for routine plant inspections by four-member teams with two weeks' notice, although "challenge" inspections could take place with only a few days' notice. It also limited the time that inspectors could spend on each site, and it restricted the equipment that they normally could carry to a few simple devices, such as tape recorders and personal computers. (Washington Post, July 21, 2001)

The Bush administration opposed the Biological Weapons Treaty, maintaining that it would be difficult to distinguish illegal weapons facilities from laboratories that were engaged in legitimate work -- such as making pharmaceuticals or conducting defensive research. The White House also claimed that it would not deter countries seeking to develop biological weapons. Furthermore, inspections needed to take place on short notice and that they involved teams of specialists.

The administration also viewed international weapons inspectors as spies which Iraq had long contended in its opposition to United Nations weapons inspections. But when it came to the Biological Weapons Treaty, this same procedure allowed foreign governments to use inspections to harass American government laboratories involved in researching biological "defenses," as well as to steal the industrial secrets of American companies. The Bush administration also maintained that the very fact that Iran and other countries, accused by the United States of developing biological weapons, agreed to sign the treaty proves the treaty's enforcement provisions were inadequate. (World Socialist Web Site, July 28, 2001)

The draft protocol essentially died with Bush's rejection of the treaty, since 40 percent of world's pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies were in the United States. First, lobbying by chemical and pharmaceutical companies had weakened the provisions for inspections of plants suspected of producing biological weapons. According to the Washington Post, a German official stated, "Industry, the business community, always wants the least possible intrusive measures. ... One of the reasons that we did not get a stronger protocol is that business communities -- including the U.S. business community -- made sure that there is not a stronger mechanism." (New York Times, May 31, 2001)

However, Alan Zelicoff, a senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories who was an American delegate to the protocol talks throughout the 1990s, faulted the Clinton administration's National Security Council for suppressing the results of two American mock inspections that showed the difficulty of inspecting for germ weapons. Those results, Zelicoff said in an interview, could have been used at the talks in Geneva to help produce a more workable inspections system. He said, the U.S. was essentially sitting on its hands for the past 10 years" and the vacuum created by minimal American engagement in negotiations in Geneva resulted in a draft protocol that was "technically impractical, politically illogical, and dead on arrival in the U.S. Senate." (New York Times, May 31, 2001)

The refusal by the Bush administration to ban germ weapons had a profound effect on the United States' European allies. Hungarian United Nations diplomat Tibor Toth, who had overseen efforts to negotiate the new protocol, traveled to Washington in an effort to persuade the Bush administration to change its view. The Bush position caused more concern in Europe where critics had already been angered by his decision not to ratify the Kyoto agreement and his backing away from the 1972 treaty on anti-ballistic missiles. (Independent Digital, United Kingdom, May 22, 2001)

Since 1995, negotiators worked on legally binding measures to enforce compliance of the treaty. Then in December 2001, the Bush administration stunned its allies by proposing to end the negotiators’ mandate, saying that while the treaty needed strengthening, the enforcement protocol under discussion would not deter enemy nations from acquiring or developing biological weapons if they were determined to do so. Negotiators suspended the discussions, saying they would meet again in November 2002 when United States officials said they would return with creative solutions to address the impasse.

In the summer of 2001, the Bush administration rocked the international community when a State Department envoy abruptly pulled out of biowarfare negotiations at the Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva. The American diplomats told their allies that the administration’s position was so different from the views of the leading supporters of the enforcement protocol that a meeting would dissolve into public squabbling and should be avoided. In fact, they proposed scrapping any future talks.

Less than a year later -- and in another slam to United States allies -- the Bush administration abandoned an international effort to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention against germ warfare. The White House advised its allies that the United States wanted to delay further discussions until 2006.

American allies responded by warning that such a move would weaken attempts to curb germ warfare programs at a time when biological weapons were a focus of concern because of the war on terrorism and the Bush administration’s threats to launch a military campaign against Iraq. (Washington Post, September 19, 2002)