Page:CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070028-8.pdf/15

 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070028-8

salvage equipment, and manufactures a number of Western marine diesel engines under license.

2. Biological and chemical warfare (S)

Biological warfare (BW) and chemical warfare (CW) research and development programs are conducted under the auspices of the Ministry of National Defense. The Polish chemical industry ranks third among East European Communist countries and is potentially capable of supporting an expanded research and development effort. Many Polish institutes conduct research on subjects peripheral to CW, and at least three have reported, in open literature, some scientific work with direct CW implications: the Technical University of Lodz, and the WAT and the Military Institute of Aviation Medicine, both in Warsaw. Currently, there are no positive indicators of offensive BW research in Poland, but activity directed to that end could readily be obscured and integrated in the existing programs of modern Polish institutes. Polish bacteriologists and virologists maintain contact with highly competent counterparts on an international level and keep abreast of developments in their field.

Poland has the facilities and personnel to conduct limited offensive and defensive BW research and development. Offensive BW research was conducted as early as 1957 on the infectivity, virulence enhancement, and antibiotic resistance of microorganisms causing tularemia, plague, typhus fever, brucellosis, cholera, anthrax, encephalitis, Q-fever, rabies, and foot-and-mouth diseases. The work was directed by the Polish Government on orders from the U.S.S.R.

Current research areas in biochemistry include oxidative phosphorylation, protein biosynthesis, toxicology, new diagnostic testing, energy transfer in microbial systems, and viral nucleic acids. Selected advances in knowledge and technique derived from these studies could be utilized for BW purposes. Polich investigators have recently published the results of quality research on staphylococcal enterotoxins, arbovirus isolations, tick-borne encephalitis culturing, growing and harvesting free Shigella endotoxin, and scrub typhus epidemiology, which could also have BW application. A recent advance at the Warsaw Medical Academy in bacterial transformation involving a double protein competence-provoking factor may have BW application in making it possible to introduce virulence or drug resistance into otherwise harmless microorganisms.

'''FIGURE 3. Prof. Stephen Slopek, Director of the Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy, Wroclaw, with the electron microscope (U/OU)''' (picture)

Prof. Stephan Slopek, Director of the Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy, Wroclaw (Breslau) (Figure 3), was reported at that post as recently as 1971. During early 1972, however, Prof. Slopek was identified with the Veterinarian and Bacteriological Institute in Pulawy. This institute probably is the same as the State Veterinary Institute. Information obtained in August 1972 revealed that the Pulawy facility is well staffed and well equipped to conduct both offensive and defensive BW. After many years as a recognized expert on bacillary dysentery, Prof. Slopek's work at Pulawy has taken an unusual turn in that he is nw working on the transformation of bovine staphylococci with the aid of T bacteriophages. Genetic manipulation of any pathogen could enhance its resistance to therapy, its stability to environmental effects, and/or alter its host range. Ostensibly, research in the laboratories of this institute appears to be directed toward the prevention and cure of veterinary diseases, but it could readily apply in all of its diversity to a BW program.

At the same time that offensively oriented BW research was begun in 1957, Poland also began an accelerated program of BW detection, identification, and rapid diagnosis. All conventional and sophisticated techniques have been investigated by the Poles for this purpose. In late 1970 an article in the Polish

9

APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070028-8