The Defense Department sold openly, over the Internet, gear that could be used for a bio-weapons lab, according to a draft Congressional report.
"Many items needed to establish a laboratory for making biological warfare agents were being sold on the Internet to the public from DoD's excess property inventory for pennies on the dollar, making them both easy and economical to obtain," CNN quotes the report from the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, as saying.
"As requested, GAO established a fictitious company and purchased over the Internet key excess DoD biological equipment items and related protective clothing necessary to produce and disseminate biological warfare agents."
CNN notes that "The Defense Department agency responsible for the sale of excess property to the public, the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service, halted the sale of such items September 19 while the practice is reviewed."
THERE'S MORE: "The DoD selling excess equipment that could be used to make CBW agents is a problem, but focusing on that sale will mislead us," writes Defense Tech Dad Tom Shachtman. "The equipment bought from DoD (by the GAO sting) could also have been bought from regular commercial outlets, possibly even the same ones that sold the stuff originally to DoD.
"The GAO is correct, however, in concluding that DoD does not check out the buyers of its surplus equipment in any significant way; that aspect of the surplus-inventory reduction program could be easily fixed."
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