August 14, 1970

Dr. Ivan L. Bennett, Jr.

The President's Science Advisory Committee
Executive Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20506

Dear Ivan,

I am happy to respond to your questionaire which bears the
improbable date of 11 March 1970. I have probably been remiss in
replying tardily if at all to some other communications along this
line, I can assure you not out of any lack of interest in the subject.
Besides my topical reply I am also enclosin; some material that I
have published on the same question of the best utilization of the
BW facilities.

l. If our existing programs and research in epidemic disease
were really ample in relation to the task we might need only a small
additional effort to cope with problems of infection arising from
human thalice. In my view they are already on a totally inadequate
scale and I would put it to you that pure luck was the main ingredient
to have prevented recent outbreaks labeled Marburg and Ehwsa from
having grown into catastrophies. Lee my

Our risks are then compounded by the possibilities of malicious
interventions. I will assume for the moment that the international
community even including China will in due codrse subsribe to a BW
control treaty along the limes of the UK draft convention. Nevertheless,
we can have less than perfect confidence that every other country will
follow its proscriptions as meticulously as we will be obliged to do.

It would add a further temptation to clandestine violations of such a
treaty if we and other countries failed to maintain an effective

defensive posture in this field. There is on the other hand the considerable
risk, as you also mentioned, of misinterpretation of any BW~related work,
even if substantially as well assertedly defensive, and we must avoid

at all costs re-establishin; mutual fear and mutual escalation of activity
in this field. However, I believe we can establish a pattern of extensive,
opened research in BW defense, preferably on an international basis,

which will have the important bypreduct of discouraging clandestine work
elsewhere. In my CCD paper I also enlarge on the role of such cooperation
for “implicit verification”.

A point I do not wish to enlarge upon publicly but which should be
an important motive for developing a defensive facility is our very
serious vulnerability to insurgent BW. We can anticipate an increasingly
intense revolutionary climate during the next twenty years and this is
just the time scale that our facilities planning should be anticipating.

over
Dr. Ivan L. Bennett -~2- 8/14/70

I had tried to go into this with Joe English when he was Head of
HSMHA and found that the responsible offictaldom was getting
technically superficial and incredibly optimistic accounts of the
robustness of our civil defenses against such attacks. Super-
chlorination will solve everything it seems! You and I know better.

This problem should not be regarded as confined to human disease
and the sabotage of agriculture is for reasons quite transparent to
you and even more attractive possibility for inter~ as well as intra-
national conflict. Even the meanest mercinary motives might come in
to tricks that would influence the commodity future's market! You
may know that off€ee rust, formerly endemic in Africa, has now
suddenly appeared in Brazil:

All the foregoing remarks apply specifically to biological agents
rather than toxins. From almost any point of view except the credibility
of the implementation of BW arms control toxins have to be dealt with
together with other chemical weapons. However, toxins are conceivably
more readily accessible to a guerilla group than, say, nerve gas (until
some is stolen from an army base!) and they might have a special
appeal to the gseni-psychotic mind. Furthermore, I expect that there
will be more scientific discovery in toxin-related fields that is
likely to add to our potential concern about the availability of
toxins for domestic insurgency. However, much the same might be said
about other chemical agents and the issue can be left under that
heading.

2. I believe that work specifically dixected at defensive measures
should be concentrated in government laboratories. This would facilitate
the development of specific international arrangements; it would also
allow for better political communication with the agencies responsible
for public health and civil order. However, grants and contracts on
specific scientific issues related to these questions could undoubtedly
be handled the most competently in various university laboratories but
at that point they would be hardly distinguishable from other inputs
for environmental health.

3. I think that defense-related research is a problem on many
campuses and this is indeed another reason to have a government facility.
Furthermore, the defensive work will have to take account of a lot of
political and operational details in, for example, the protection of
public water supplies and all of this is best handled centerally.

4. I am not prepared to give a brief answer to tiis question. I
think it is one that will have to be dealt with very searchingly by 24
civilian advisory board to the new facility. There is the problem of
self-fulfilling expectations of sources of harm being generated in
the very process of investigating the denfenses. A related question
that I am somewhat conflicted about is whether, for example, the amino
acid sequence of a potent toxin, or especially a small active fragment
thereof should be made classified information or whether there is some
ather wav to vrevent it from being turned into mischief. I in fact assume
Dr. Ivan L. Bennett -~3- 8/14/76

that a fair amount of information along these lines is classified
at the present time and would be quite happy to leave it there until
we have worked out some effective mechanisms for dealing with it.

5. This is a very naughty problem. I think it would be unwise to
commit ourselves in advance to maintaining a zero level of unclassified
work in BW defense. On the other hand, we need to find some way to
providing credible assurances that it really is defens&ve and perhaps
the buffering by some reputable civilian group might do the job. I
think at the very least that the overall scope and even general
directions of such caad&’sified work should be publicized by the buffer
group. The reason we may need to retain some classified research
capability is simply to be able to react appropriately to intelligence
information on BW development elsewhere as part of the enforcement and
verification procedure. However, it would be very easy for such a
program, if it is efficacious at all, to get out of hand and we might
be just about as well off if we did not have any classified laboratorgfe
work. This would not necessarily preclude the utilization of some
investigators, having been appropriately cleared, as consultants to a
non-laboratory intelligence activity and even the factoring of inputs
from intelligence sources into the slection of research topics. As long
as the laboratory and the research itself is quite open I think we can
appear with clean hands. However, I may have overlooked some important
considerations here and a flexible approach to this problem is probably
desirable and could be dealt with as I have indicated in my response to 4.

I would like to suggest that serious consideration be given to delegating
gome operational responsibilities for this kind "peace research" to the

Arms Control Agency. HEW is not particularly well equipped to deal with

the essential inter-national aspects of this problem and I believe it

would also mute the international political impact of our making arrangements
with other countries for cooperative defensive research if it were to be
simply blended in with other health activities. Furthermore, I do nét

believe that this should be simply charged to the general health budget

since our costs in this area are very closely connected with our national
security and our general posture in foreign affairs.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr