FORT DETRICK, Md. (UPI) -- The Bush administration is building a

massive biodefense laboratory in Maryland that will simulate

calamitous bioterrorism attacks, it was reported Sunday.

But much of what the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures

Center in Fort Detrick, Md., does may never be publicly known because

the White House intends to operate the facility largely in secret, the

Washington Post reported.

In an unusual arrangement, the building itself will be classified as

"highly restricted space," from the reception desk to the lab benches

to the cages where animals are kept, the newspaper said.

Not even nuclear labs operate with such secrecy.

The covertness has some arms-control specialists concerned that U.S.

biodefense policy, as carried out by the Department of Homeland

Security, the center's creator, could "skirt the edges" of an

international treaty outlawing the production of even small amounts of

biological weapons, the newspaper said.

The administration insists the center's work is purely defensive and

thus fully legal. It has rejected calls for oversight by independent

observers outside the department's network of government scientists

and contractors.

===

US begins building treaty-breaching germ war defence centre

Julian Borger in Washington

Monday July 31, 2006

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1833795,00.html#article_continue



Construction work has begun near Washington on a vast germ warfare

laboratory intended to help protect the US against an attack with

biological weapon, but critics say the laboratory's work will violate

international law and its extreme secrecy will exacerbate a biological

arms race.

The National Biodefence Analysis and Countermeasures Centre (NBACC),

due to be completed in 2008, will house heavily guarded and

hermetically sealed chambers in which scientists simulate potential

terrorist attacks.

To do so, the centre will have to produce and stockpile the world's

most lethal bacteria and viruses, which is forbidden by the 1972

Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. Three years before that

treaty was agreed, President Richard Nixon halted the production of US

biological weapons at Fort Detrick in Maryland. The same military base

is the site for the new $128m (£70m), 160,000 sq ft laboratory.

The green light for its construction was given after the September 11

attacks, which coincided with a series of still-unsolved anthrax

incidents that killed five people. The department of homeland

security, which will run the centre, says its work is necessary to

protect the country. "All the programmes we do are defensive in

nature," Maureen McCarthy, director of homeland security research and

development, told the Washington Post. "Our job is to ensure that the

civilian population of the country is protected, and that we know what

the threats are."

The biological weapons convention stipulates that the signatories must

not "develop, produce, stockpile, or otherwise acquire or retain"

biological weapons, and does not distinguish between offensive and

defensive intentions.

A presentation given by Lieutenant Colonel George Korch said the NBACC

would be used to apply "red team operational scenarios and

capabilities" - military jargon for simulating enemy attacks.

Some analysts say the extraordinary secrecy surrounding the project

will heighten suspicions of US intentions and accelerate work on

similar facilities around the world.