t's very dangerous and you need to explain why you are genetically altering such virus. ... [however] smallpox virus (variola major) and vaccinia virus are very close genetically. When you conduct genetic engineering work with a vaccinia virus, the result of such a work would be applied to variola major. When we conduct this work, we cannot say what could be the real purpose or real result of this work. But some results obtained when you conduct work with vaccinia virus, could be applied for smallpox virus.Was there ever a fear, during the time that you were there, that the U.S. was going to discover the program and therefore bring pressure against the Soviet government? Somewhere in 1986-1987, we started feeling some pressure. We could understand what was the primary source for this pressure. We were asked by the government of the Soviet Union to analyze whether or not it would be possible to open some facilities [without] revealing the real purposes of these facilities. We conducted this work for several years. And a lot of scientists, a lot of leaders didn't believe it would be possible to open, because these facilities were clearly offensive facilities. But in 1989, we started feeling severe pressure from the United States and Great Britain. We were forced to open our facilities because in 1989, the United States and Great Britain realized that the Soviet Union had a very sophisticated and powerful offensive program. When these countries started pressuring the Soviet Union very hard, it was a kind of starting point for the destruction, for the dismantling of this program. What do you think the ramifications are of the long-term program that did exist--the amount of material and the amount of knowledge that was created?The problem now is [that] practically all the countries in the world understand that biological weapons are a very serious threat ... a lot of countries are trying to develop biological weapons, and for these countries...
