President Nixon’s Decision to Renounce the U.S. Offensive Biological Weapons Program

On November 25, 1969,  President Richard Nixon announced the end of the U.S. offensive biological weapons program. This case study, the first in the WMD Center Case Study Series, sheds light on the interagency policymaking process at multiple levels of the U.S. national security bureaucracy and shows how the BW decision emerged from a confluence of international, domestic, bureaucratic, and personal factors.

Author:
Jonathan B. Tucker and Erin R. Mahan, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Publish Date:
Oct 2010

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