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When nations indulge in making weapons of mass destruction, they exercise a great deal of secrecy. So would you, if you were planning to poison the waters and suffocate the skies and thereby end the lives of a few million or so of your fellow human beings.

The veil, though, has lifted somewhat in recent years. The programs of Iraq in this field were exposed after the compulsory inspections of the weapons facilities by UN inspectors after the Gulf war. The stupefying vastness of the Soviet biological program was exposed after two of its top scientists defected to the US and UK. The US biological offense program, which at least for some time after ww2, was probably larger than the Soviet effort, was disbanded in 1969 by President Richard Nixon and the details of the program were gradually made public.

Other than the programs of these three countries, not much is known about biological weapons research being carried out in the world. And yes, it IS definitely being carried out in other countries. Israel and Iran almost definitely have biological programs of their own. Iran maintains a large stockpile of smallpox vaccine (1.6 million doses) . Pakistan is another country that probably has an active biological weapons research program. India was accused in certain quarters of having considered using biological weapons during the Kargil war. 

The section therefore mainly details the programs of three countries : US, the former USSR and Iraq. I shall stick only to facts while describing the programs of these countries. For description of the rest of the programs (which are appropriately brief), I am unable to present anything more concrete than rumors and unsubstantiated news articles.