Profits From The Fear Factor

The Los Angeles Times has begun a series of investigative reports on the business side of combating terrorism. Today's article in that series called "Fear Inc" describes the activities of a Russian emigre who quickly became the darling of the CIA and Congress.

In the fall of 1992, Kanatjan Alibekov defected from Russia to the United States, bringing detailed, and chilling, descriptions of his role in making biological weapons for the former Soviet Union.

As a doctor of microbiology, a physician and a colonel in the Red Army, he helped lead the Soviet effort. He told U.S. intelligence agencies that the Soviets had devoted at least 30,000 scientists, working at dozens of sites, to develop bioweapons, despite a 1972 international ban on such work. ...

He said that emigrating Russian scientists and others posed imminent threats. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, he said, several specialists went to Iraq and North Korea. Both countries, he said, may have obtained anthrax and smallpox. The transfer of smallpox would be especially ominous because the Russians, he said, had sought to genetically modify the virus, posing lethal risk even to those who had been vaccinated.

His expertise, combined with his dire pronouncements, solidified his cachet in Washington. He simplified his name to Ken Alibek, became a familiar figure on Capitol Hill, and emerged as one of the most important voices in U.S. decisions to spend billions of dollars to counter anthrax, smallpox and other potential bioterrorism agents. ...

Having raised the prospect that Iraq had acquired the ability to wield smallpox or anthrax, Alibek also was outspoken as the U.S. went to war in early 2003, saying there was "no doubt" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. [Emphasis added]

While Mr. Alibek's contributions on Soviet research and development on biological welfare are apparently still considered reliable, his more recent assertions on the proliferation of such knowledge to other nations are increasingly being called into question for obvious reasons. Furthermore, his own research in the US has not produced any results deemed acceptable by the scientific community.

No biological weapon of mass destruction has been found in Iraq. His most sensational research findings, with U.S. colleagues, have not withstood peer review by scientific specialists. His promotion of nonprescription pills — sold in his name over the Internet and claiming to bolster the immune system — was ridiculed by some scientists. He resigned as executive director of a Virginia university's biodefense center 10 months ago while facing internal strife over his stewardship.

Still, Mr. Alibek has had quite a ride, mostly at government expense:

And, as Alibek raised fear of bioterrorism in the United States, he also has sought to profit from that fear.

By his count, Alibek has won about $28 million in federal grants or contracts for himself or entities that hired him.

Most of that $28 million came in the form of earmarks under the GOP controlled Congress. He had friends in the right places in Congress, and solidifying those friendships cost him less than $15 thousand in campaign contributions.

Huckster and conman? Perhaps not, but Mr. Alibek certainly took advantage of the fear generated after 9/11. He, and others, started a whole new industry that has burgeoned over the years, garnering millions of dollars in government contracts.

And, thanks to that deplorable congressional quirk known as earmarks, it appears that millions more will be made.

As Yakov Smirnoff would say, "What a country!"