Project Clear Vision was a covert investigation of Soviet

Soviet Armed Forces

The Soviet Armed Forces, also called the Armed Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Armed Forces of the Soviet Union refers to the armed forces of the Russian SFSR , and Soviet Union from their beginnings in the...

-built biological bomblets conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute

Battelle Memorial Institute

Battelle Memorial Institute is a private nonprofit applied science and technology development company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Battelle is a charitable trust organized as a nonprofit corporation under the laws of the State of Ohio and is exempt from taxation under Section 501 of the...

 under contract with the CIA

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

. The legality of this project under the Biological Weapons Convention

Biological Weapons Convention

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction was the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the...

 is highly disputed.

Revelation to the public

The secret Project Clear Vision was revealed to the public in a September 2001 article in The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

. Reporters Judith Miller

Judith Miller (journalist)

Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction program both before and after the 2003 invasion generated much controversy...

, Stephen Engelberg and William J. Broad collaborated to write the article. It is presumed that the reporters had knowledge of the program for at least several months; shortly after the article appeared they published a book that detailed the story further. The book, Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War

Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War

Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War is a #1 New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller. It was written by The New York Times journalists Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad...

, and the article are the only publicly available sources concerning Project Clear Vision and its sister projects, Bacchus

Project Bacchus

Project Bacchus was a covert investigation by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency US Defense Department to determine whether it is possible to construct a bioweapons production facility with off-the-shelf equipment.-Revelation to the public:...

 and Jefferson

Project Jefferson

Project Jefferson was a covert U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency program designed to determine if the current anthrax vaccine was effective against genetically-modified bacteria...

.

Project

The project was completed from 1997–2000, during the Clinton Administration. The project's stated goal was to assess agent dissemination characteristics of the bomblets. However, program has received criticism due to the suspicions of its findings possibly being used in a covert bioweapons program.

Legality

As part of the Biological Weapons Convention

Biological Weapons Convention

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction was the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the...

 (BWC), the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 committed not to develop bioweapons. Moreover,
the United States had not reported the secret projects in its annual confidence-building measure (CBM) declarations. The United States maintained that the program was fully consistent with the BWC and that the projects were defensive in nature.

Further reading

• Miller, Judith
  Judith Miller (journalist)
  Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction program both before and after the 2003 invasion generated much controversy...
  
  , Engelberg, Stephen and Broad, William J. Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War, (Google Books), Simon and Schuster, 2002, (ISBN 0684871599).