University spokeswoman Christine LaPaille confirmed the resignation and said that George Mason was no longer collaborating with Alibek's company on research backed by any of the recent federal grants or contracts. LaPaille declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding Alibek's departure.
Alibek said the college administration had grown displeased with his company's role in sharing grant-funded research. The university, he said, requested that he dismantle or leave AFG Biosolutions. He chose to resign from George Mason.
This spring, Alibek traveled to the Ukrainian city of Kiev to push his plans for the drug-manufacturing plant and for a center for cancer and cardiac care. He did so after making comments, reported by the Russian news agency Interfax, which struck some officials in Washington as inconsistent with his previous dramatic claims:
Since 1992, Alibek has told U.S. intelligence agencies, and later general audiences, that Russia had persisted in developing biological weapons. For instance, in his memoir, "Biohazard," subtitled, "The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World -- Told From Inside by the Man Who Ran It," Alibek wrote in 1999:
"I am convinced that a large portion of the Soviet Union's offensive program remains viable despite [then-President Boris N.] Yeltsin's ban on research and testing."
And in a September 2000 interview with an online publication sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Alibek said:
"Russia is still retaining its biological weapons capability, specifically at the Ministry of Defense. The Ministry of Defense is maintaining four major research and production sites, which are still active."
But as reported by Interfax, Alibek in November 2005 told a different story in his ancestral hometown of Almaty: As of the early 1990s, Alibek said, the Russians had stopped "all work to develop biological weapons."
The arc of Alibek's statements has not been lost on Bailey, the former USAMRIID chief who remains at George Mason after having been recruited there six years ago by his former friend. Does the inconsistency cause him to reassess Alibek's earlier statements regarding global biological threats?
Bailey answered quietly.
"Definitely, it does."
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david.willman@latimes.com
Times researcher Janet Lundblad in Los Angeles contributed to this report.\o7
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