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A review by wintermute47
Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from the Inside by the Man by Stephen Handelman, Ken Alibek
2.0
Let's say I'm a bit more skeptical now than I was when I originally read this in college.
There's good reason to conclude the Soviet Union had an industrial-scale biological weapons program during the Cold War. The anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk effectively proves it. And I'm sure the internal justification was the belief of the Soviets that the U.S. had an offensive bioweapon program (which there's absolutely no evidence we did after say, 1972).
But some of the stuff Alibek talks about sounds like sheer nonsense. He describes genetically engineered smallpox with Ebola genes that make it capable of presenting as both illnesses. Aside from the biological implausibility, it sounds like a hat on a hat: if you're going to attack a country with smallpox, regular ol' wild type smallpox works just fine.
Politically, Alibek also clearly knows on which side his bread is buttered: he describes the Soviet Union as a mess of lies, corruption, and political infighting. This is probably at least partially true, but it's presented as being utterly without purpose. This makes Alibek, who decided to defect (though not until his personal position and safety were in doubt) one of the "good ones" who can safely be allowed into the country and given cushy government consulting jobs.
Still interesting, but requiring a whole lot of grains of salt.
There's good reason to conclude the Soviet Union had an industrial-scale biological weapons program during the Cold War. The anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk effectively proves it. And I'm sure the internal justification was the belief of the Soviets that the U.S. had an offensive bioweapon program (which there's absolutely no evidence we did after say, 1972).
But some of the stuff Alibek talks about sounds like sheer nonsense. He describes genetically engineered smallpox with Ebola genes that make it capable of presenting as both illnesses. Aside from the biological implausibility, it sounds like a hat on a hat: if you're going to attack a country with smallpox, regular ol' wild type smallpox works just fine.
Politically, Alibek also clearly knows on which side his bread is buttered: he describes the Soviet Union as a mess of lies, corruption, and political infighting. This is probably at least partially true, but it's presented as being utterly without purpose. This makes Alibek, who decided to defect (though not until his personal position and safety were in doubt) one of the "good ones" who can safely be allowed into the country and given cushy government consulting jobs.
Still interesting, but requiring a whole lot of grains of salt.