When did the United States realize that the former Soviet Union had an offensive biological program?
In the early 1970s some U.S. officials, particularly in the intelligence community, suspected there was a Soviet program. After an unusual anthrax outbreak in 1979 in Sverdlovsk, USSR, the existence of such of program was debated within the international scientific/intelligence communities for almost a decade. Not until after the defection of Dr. Valdimir Paschenick in 1989, and inspections by joint U.S.-British teams in 1991, did the West conclude the Russians definitely had amassed a significant bioweapons program.
