The Sunshine Project
Biosafety Bites (v.2) #17 - 20 September 2006

FBI Wants Biodefense Work Secret says Newark, New Jersey Lab

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has told a New Jersey lab to keep research on biological weapons agents ("select agents") a secret, according to a statement received by the Sunshine Project from the Public Health Research Institute (PHRI) in Newark. PHRI President David Perlin and biosafety chair Claudia Manca say that PHRI has entered into an agreement with the FBI to "not publicly disclose which specific select agent pathogens and/or strains are stored at our facility." (1)

If what the PHRI leaders claim is correct, then this FBI secrecy initiative could pose serious risks for communities near bioweapons agent labs - of which there are more than 400 across the US. The public might now be kept in the dark about research risks and accidents under apparent FBI order. Such a profusion of secret and quasi-secret biological research programs across the country would also undermine international confidence in the intent US biodefense program.

Contradictions abound, however, because the secrecy deal that PHRI claims is also an obvious, abject failure. Various PHRI projects involving bioweapons agents can be easily documented from open sources (see below), as is normally the case with any such scientific institution. This raises questions about what, exactly, the FBI has allegedly requested. PHRI researchers up to and including David Perlin publicly broadcast their involvement in studies involving biological weapons agents, despite this being in apparent violation of their FBI agreement.

The only way to effectively enforce the FBI-PHRI secrecy agreement would be for PHRI to cease scientific publishing and remove information from the public domain. This would mean restricting public and foreign access to journals such as Genetics, Microbiology, Journal of Virology, and Vaccine, Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, and many others where PHRI researchers place articles. Unless the FBI and PHRI believe that would-be bioterrorists are illiterate and haven't heard about google. (A situation that would call into question exactly how much of a threat they are!)

Perlin and Manca's claims were made in the course of defending the heavy redactions they made to the PHRI Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) meeting minutes. If those minutes contained very specific security details, such as lock combinations or room numbers, those would understandably be removed and nobody would object. But that's not PHRI's approach. Instead, it blacks out all information about its research involving select agents, denying its very existence in the PHRI IBC minutes.

What secrets?

It is common knowledge that PHRI handles select agents. Many readers will recall that PHRI's problem with disappearing mice infected with plague was the subject of international media attention in September 2005. But all references to this incident, if any (2), have been blotted from PHRI's IBC minutes.

In an ironic fashion, the plague problem demonstrates a danger of the alleged PHRI-FBI agreement. The criticism and public attention focused on PHRI due to disclosure of its sloppy practices with bioweapons agent research served an important public purpose: PHRI is now far more likely to pay attention to good safety practices than if the mishap was allowed to remain confidential. Newark is a safer place without the secrets, if anything because PHRI now knows that the public is unlikely to be very tolerant of more screw-ups.

It's not only PHRI research problems with biological weapons agents that are public record; but PHRI's own website (link) mentions its work with select agents, for example, a press release proclaiming "PHRI receives $2 million biodefense grant". (3) This explains that PHRI is working with anthrax and plague at its biodefense ABSL-3 small animal core. At PHRI's "Combatting [sic] Bioterrorism" page (link), PHRI researchers are identified as handling anthrax and botulinum toxin.

Clicking over to the National Institutes of Health CRISP database (CRISPER - link) and searching on PHRI, it can be quickly seen that the Newark, NJ lab is aerosolizing anthrax to study infection in animals (4).

A visit to the Northeast Biodefense Center (link) reveals a home page highlight article written by PHRI's David Perlin and four other PHRI scientists explaining their aerosol challenges of mice with plague bacteria.(5)

Yes, this is the same David Perlin who wrote to the Sunshine Project stating that he had agreed with the FBI not to divulge PHRI's select agent research and that, therefore, PHRI was obligated to black out its IBC minutes.

Hmm... Dr. Perlin, the Special Agents are in the lobby and would like to see you now... you say that you pledged to the FBI not to divulge this information, no?

A massively failed secrecy program ...
... or massive confusion and arbitrary behavior?

It's certainly not a secret that PHRI handles select agents. It's no secret either what those agents are: anthrax, plague, and botulinum toxin for starters. Nor, like many other labs, is it very hard to determine the names of people handling them. And there's nothing unexpected or inherently wrong with that situation ... it should be so, to ensure public accountability.

Which begs the question, just what exactly did the FBI and PHRI agree to? Because if the intent, however garbled the thinking, was to try to protect security by preventing the public from learning that PHRI has bioweapons bugs, then the agreement is a catastrophic failure. Such an agreement could only have been designed by a person unaware of things like academic journals and the internet ... or even the newspaper. Could the FBI be so naive?

If PHRI says so, then it must presumed that it really does have some sort of secrecy agreement with the FBI. Perhaps to delete select agent information when it appears in IBC minutes? If so, why? To protect against Al-Qaeda acquiring IBC minutes? That hardly seems like a threat. Why would aspiring bioterrorists invoke US government guidelines to lodge a written request with PHRI in order to ascertain information that can be can gleaned from the newspaper, the radio, or by browsing PHRI's website? (Which handily includes maps.)

Or is it that PHRI is just really confused and can't properly resolve the contradictions inherent in trying to balance an alleged need to hide select agents against the scientific compulsion to publish? (Not to mention boisterous select agent self-promotion ... PHRI suddenly sprouted all sorts of advice and expertise about anthrax in late 2001.)

Could it then be that what is really happening is that PHRI is just arbitrarily deciding when to keep its select agents a secret and when not to? What good is a part-time secret? Apparently PHRI's people haven't asked themselves the question. What's the security benefit of blacking out information if the Sunshine Project asks for it; but leaping at the opportunity to broadcast much the same data to the world if given the opportunity in a scientific journal? We asked PHRI what it thought. It didn't answer.

Whatever PHRI's mysterious agreement with the FBI is, it is obviously pointless from a security perspective, and it has resulted in arbitrary and inconsistent invocation of alleged security concerns. These are to the detriment of the public and serve no valid security purpose.

An explanation, from both parties, is in order.

[Prior to release of this Biosafety Bites, the Sunshine Project wrote PHRI and raised many of the issues discussed herein. We requested a discussion; but PHRI did not answer our queries.]

Notes
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(1) E-mail from Claudia Manca and David Perlin, PHRI, to the Sunshine Project, 6 September 2006.

(2) Although the extensive redactions make it difficult to be certain, from context and chronology it appears - shockingly - that the PHRI IBC never discussed the disappearing plague mice incident, obviously calling into question the IBC's competence. PHRI was asked to clarify this issue. It did not reply.

(3) http://www.phri.org/news/news_inthenews50217.asp

(4) "Cytokines in Pathogenesis of Anthrax Infection", NIAID Grant 1R21AI057781.

(5) http://www.nbc.columbia.edu/nbc_2/pdfs/VSVPlagueVaccine.pdf