the possibility" of biological agents and toxins being used as weapons by abolishing the weapons themselves. "In the past, the United States has understood the need for transparency and limits in its biodefence programme. A Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) covering biological research, development, testing and evaluation conducted by the Department of Defense (DoD), finalised in 1989, stated that the programme "does not include the development of any weapons, even defensive ones, nor does it attempt to develop new pathogenic organisms for any use. All work conducted under the BDRP is unclassified. However, results may be classified if they impinge on national security by specifying US military deficiencies, vulnerabilities or significant breakthroughs in technology ... Sometime during the 1990s, the situation in the United States changed from a policy of relative openness to secrecy, precipitated perhaps by the Gulf War and the findings of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Iraq, the disclosures of Soviet defectors, and the attempted biological attacks by Aum Shinrikyo in Japan. Donald Mahley, who had been Chief Negotiator on BW for the US, told the House Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations that a number of US government agencies conduct biological activities that raise "ambiguities" regarding their purpose; therefore, to protect their interests, the agencies refused to accept many of the monitoring measures proposed for the Protocol. "The kinds of agency activities that prompted Mahley's testimony and the hardline US opposition to a Protocol were illuminated by a New York Times article on September 4, 2001, exposing three secret biodefence projects that push up against the permissible limits of the BWC. Government officials knew about the article as early as May, but it was not published until after the United States had rejected the Protocol. US allies have privately said that their consternation would have been overt, had their anger not been overshadowed by sympathy on September 11. "The secret projects detailed in the Times report were: construction from off-the-shelf materials of a plant for production of microbial anthrax simulants, known as Project Bacchus and conducted by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA); a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) plan to genetically engineer a vaccine-resistant strain of anthrax developed by the Russians; and a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project, called Clear Vision, to construct and test a Soviet-model biological bomblet. "There is no record of concerns about the legality of the DOE