KILLER GERMS.

• Author: Miller, Judith
• Position: Anthrax bacteria buried by Soviets in 1980s poses hazard for Uzbekistan - Brief Article

FOR YEARS, THE OLD SOVIET UNION BUILT A SECRET PROGRAM FOR GERM WARFARE. TODAY THE SOVIET UNION IS GONE. BUT THE DEADLY GERMS ARE STILL ALIVE.

In the spring of 1988, germ scientists 850 miles east of Moscow were ordered to undertake their most critical mission.

The scientists, working in great haste and total secrecy, first transferred hundreds of tons of anthrax bacteria--enough to destroy the world's people many times over--into giant stainless-steel canisters. They were trying to cover up a massive program of germ warfare by their government, the Soviet Union.

The scientists poured bleach on the germs to try to kill the anthrax, a deadly disease usually afflicting livestock. They then packed the canisters onto a train two dozen-cars long, and sent the cargo almost a thousand miles across Russia and Kazakhstan to this remote island in the heart of the Aral Sea, American and Central Asian officials say.

Here Soviet soldiers dug huge pits and poured the sludge into the ground, burying the germs and, Moscow hoped, a grave political threat.

At the time, Russia was part of the Soviet Union, a global superpower that had long vied with the West but now sought closer ties with it. Evidence was mounting in Washington that the Soviet Union was producing deadly germs that had been banned by a 1972 treaty. The stockpile had to be destroyed in case the United States and Britain demanded an inspection.

Today, Vozrozhdeniye (voz-ROZ-deh-ni-yeh) Island, or Renaissance Island, as it translates from the Russian, is shared by the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. It is the world's largest anthrax burial ground. For the last four years, American military scientists and intelligence experts have been secretly invited to survey the island and take samples of the buried bacteria.

ALIVE AND DEADLY

What they have found is stunning, the experts say. Tests of soil samples show that although the anthrax was soaked in bleach at least twice--once in the 66-gallon containers, and again after it was dumped and buried under three to five feet of sand--some spores are still alive and potentially deadly.

Normally, anthrax is spread from animals to people by direct contact, and is treatable with antibiotics if detected immediately. But the Soviets were working on a strain to be disbursed as an aerosol poison. If breathed in by humans, it would produce a pneumonia that would rapidly cause respiratory distress, followed by death.

"We have always known that...