Equipment sold by Pentagon could be used for bioweapons production: GAO

WASHINGTON (AFP) Oct 08, 2003
The US Defense Department is selling at bargain price via the Internet surplus equipment that could be used to manufacture biological weapons, the investigative arm of the US Congress said in a report made public Tuesday.

Moreover, the General Accounting Office warned that some of these materials could have been exported to countries barred by Washington from obtaining such products.

"Although production of biological warfare agents requires a high degree of expertise, public sales of these DOD (Department of Defense) excess items increase the risk that terrorists could obtain and use them to produce and deliver biological agents within the US," the report said.

The GAO also urged the federal government to evaluate the risk posed to national security by sales of surplus laboratory equipment and biological protective suits.

It insisted Pentagon officials had not always followed the department policy restricting use of biological protective suits and other gear to defense personnel only.

During its investigation, the GAO used a front company to acquire 4,100 dollars worth of new and used biological materials, including driers, centrifuges, incubators and protective suits.

The Pentagon paid 46,960 dollars when it bought that same equipment, according to the report.

In addition, investigators tried to trace the equipment after its sale and found out that several of the items had been re-sold to countries like the Philippines, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

According to the GAO, the investigators have also discovered that some of importers could have resold the biological equipment to nations that are barred by US law from obtaining such materials because of their support for terrorism.

The GAO also said there was no guarantee that biological agents from US stockpiles had not fallen into the wrong hands because of lax security controls in bioweapons laboratories before at least 2002.

According to a Pentagon official quoted in the document, "at the time of the 2001 anthrax attacks, it was determined that the federal government did not have complete inventory of biological source agents.

"Moreover, laboratories did not have a complete inventory of the source agents they handled, and they had not performed risk assessments as a means of identifying and reducing or eliminating vulnerabilities," the report stressed.

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