BIOHAZARD.

• Author: Schmemann, Serge
• Position: Review

BIOHAZARD By Ken Alibek Random House $24.95

KEN ALIBEK'S BIOHAZARD IS really two books. One is "the chilling true story of the largest covert biological weapons program in the world," as the dust jacket proclaims, by a young Soviet doctor, a descendant of ancient Kazakh khans and son of a patriotic veteran, whose talents, ambition, enthusiasm and credulity as a "bioweaponeer" thrust him swiftly to the peak of the ultra-clandestine, clubby, and privileged program. As Kanatjan Alibekov (he changed his name after defecting to the United States), Alibek proudly plays a central role in "weaponizing" anthrax, and smallpox, among other diseases, pausing rarely, and only perfunctorily, to ponder how this work might violate his doctor's oath.

This is also a gripping and frightening story about weapons that could have sent millions to unspeakably gruesome deaths, their tissues dissolving and blood oozing from their nose, mouth, and genitals--as a colleague of Alibek's dies after accidentally injecting himself with the Marburg virus, or suffocating from pulmonary anthrax, as untold dozens of Russians did when spores were accidentally released into the atmosphere from a secret plant in Sverdlovsk in June 1979. Secret laboratories and plants were scattered across the Soviet Union, hidden from the world by walls, restrictions, anonymous "post-office box" addresses, and layers upon layers of KGB scrutiny.

It was Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika program that spurred Dr. Alibek to question the insidious weapons program of which he was a part. First he puzzles over the bureaucratic inflexibility and reaction of his own secret world, then the usefulness and ethics of what he is doing, and finally, when the Soviet empire collapses, his own place as a Kazakh, a foreigner, in the new Russian state. Dr. Alibek tells us he cannot reveal the details of his defection in order to protect those who were involved. Given the survival of the KGB apparatus and the revival of paranoia in Russia, that is fair enough.

Following his defection in 1992, Dr. Alibek was debriefed at length by American intelligence, and he now works on biodefense. In interviews and testimony before congressional committees, he has repeatedly warned of the continued danger posed by residual Russian expertise in biological weapons, including the fact that much of the program remains carefully guarded. Even if Russia itself is no longer a threat, Dr. Alibek argues, it could export the expertise and...