Article targets Alibek

The LA Times has published an article slamming Ken Alibek for playing a major role in fearmongering with regard to biological weapons and bioterrorism. In “Selling the threat of bioterrorism” writer David Williams concludes that fanciful tales and fearmongering helped Alibek establish himself in the U.S. as a highly profitable author, professor, and microbiologist in academia and industry. But Williams is so busy slamming Alibek for being a capitalist, he seems to forget who’s actually responsible for making the decisions around here.

To be fair, in my own circles we make a few snide remarks about Alibek but regardless of that I’ve nothing against the guy. There’s always a bit of head-shaking at how well he’s done here, becoming wildly rich and famous by selling his knowledge of the legacy Russian programs, as well as things he maybe didn’t really have firsthand knowledge of. We imply with skeptical expressions that it “must be tempting” to stretch the truth on occasion if it sells more books or garners more contracts. Yet, it’s certainly not his fault that he was in overwhelming demand on the Hill for years (still pops up occasionally) to scare the bejeezus out of a bunch of moronic lawyers about the horrors of biological weapons. They knew what he’d say and they kept asking him back. Some of his claims of genetically modified pathogens (and those of colleague Sergei Popov) were outlandish, although perhaps someday yet we will discover there was some sort of truth behind them. In the public sphere, the words of defectors such as these are a primary vehicle to judge what our potential adversaries may be cooking up but it’s our own responsibility to take them with a grain of salt and not just gobble them up like candy.

One thing that bugged me about the article was that it makes a point about Alibek believing Iraq was hiding WMD at the start of the Iraq war. Uh…so what? Williams had enough negative things to say about Alibek already that he didn’t really need to drag this up and frankly, I’ve had it up to the gills with this one being aimed at people. Most people, including those in Congress and throughout the government, thought Iraq was hiding WMD. Iraq had engaged in years of in-your-face obfuscation during inspections and lying to the U.N., so such opinions were inevitable. Alright now, put your hackles back down—whether we should have gone to war over it is a completely different matter so let’s not get off on that track! The point here is that most analysts had looked at the available evidence and Iraq’s behavior and concluded they were hiding something. Alibek certainly didn’t have a “tipping point” impact on whether the U.S. was going to war, if that’s what Williams is trying to say. That’s giving him way too much credit.

As to Alibek’s too-friendly dealings with individuals in Congress, his contracts and business ventures, again I say, uh…so what? There are about a bazillion business people out there doing exactly that, every day. His current company, AFG Biosolutions (which, BTW, has about the most irritating “trying-too-hard-to-be-hip” web site complete with aggravating music and meaningless flashy graphics), has developed or is developing—it’s hard to determine what’s vaporware these days—a high throughput drug discovery system they call Rev-VAT (Reverse Vaccinology and Antibody Technology). Most of their recent staff publications are related to anthrax and smallpox. Since this high throughput drug discovery focused on synthetic antibodies is entirely in line with the intent behind HSPD-18 (funding systems that will enable future biological weapons countermeasures to be developed and produced with blinding speed), I don’t know why this company shouldn’t be landing government research dollars like many other biotech companies. However, the article also talks about past concerns with Alibek’s research practices, which were properly addressed by the government, as they rightly should have been.

The issues Williams has with Alibek’s “character” may be in parts valid but the fact is, the guy’s done nothing illegal or even particularly significant apart from revealing that the Russians had a regular ant-farm of a bioweapons program long after we’d tanked ours, and this article just detracts from seeing an underlying problem: maybe he’s been fearmongering, or maybe it’s his actual opinions, but as I see it, it’s the government’s own damn fault if it falls hook, line, and sinker for everything these overnight-success defectors say. I guess the good thing I can say about the article is that it might serve to remind our intrepid leaders of that fact.

Update: Dick Destiny has a great post listing many of Alibek’s exploits. I guess you can decide: is it Alibek who should be skewered, or our decision makers? Personally, I’m still in favor of skewering those who dole out the funds rather than those who compete for them, but that’s just me.

Update: At Danger Room, Noah tends toward the Dick Destiny (AKA George Smith) point of view. I suppose I may have just seen so many experts and contractors soaking money from the government that I don’t find it surprising anymore.

Update: Wow, even when people generally don’t agree with me, a Danger Room link results in a huge number of visits so I really can’t complain. I hope all of you new visitors hang around long enough to find something else here that you like, at least