http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1833723,00.html

US begins building treaty-breaching germ war defence centre

Julian Borger in Washington
Monday July 31, 2006
The Guardian

Construction work has begun near Washington on a 
vast germ warfare laboratory intended to help 
protect the US against an attack with biological 
weapon, but critics say the laboratory's work 
will violate international law and its extreme 
secrecy will exacerbate a biological arms race.

The National Biodefence Analysis and 
Countermeasures Centre (NBACC), due to be 
completed in 2008, will house heavily guarded and 
hermetically sealed chambers in which scientists 
simulate potential terrorist attacks.

To do so, the centre will have to produce and 
stockpile the world's most lethal bacteria and 
viruses, which is forbidden by the 1972 
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. Three 
years before that treaty was agreed, President 
Richard Nixon halted the production of US 
biological weapons at Fort Detrick in Maryland. 
The same military base is the site for the new 
$128m (£70m), 160,000 sq ft laboratory.

The green light for its construction was given 
after the September 11 attacks, which coincided 
with a series of still-unsolved anthrax incidents 
that killed five people. The department of 
homeland security, which will run the centre, 
says its work is necessary to protect the 
country. "All the programmes we do are defensive 
in nature," Maureen McCarthy, director of 
homeland security research and development, told 
the Washington Post. "Our job is to ensure that 
the civilian population of the country is 
protected, and that we know what the threats are."

The biological weapons convention stipulates that 
the signatories must not "develop, produce, 
stockpile, or otherwise acquire or retain" 
biological weapons, and does not distinguish 
between offensive and defensive intentions.

A presentation given by Lieutenant Colonel George 
Korch said the NBACC would be used to apply "red 
team operational scenarios and capabilities" - 
military jargon for simulating enemy attacks.

Some analysts say the extraordinary secrecy 
surrounding the project will heighten suspicions 
of US intentions and accelerate work on similar 
facilities around the world.