Soviet spies may have stolen deadly viruses from a U.S. biodefense laboratory in Maryland in the 1980s and shipped them to Moscow, a report says.

A U.S. arms control expert says he has independent evidence of a Soviet spy at Fort Detrick 20 years ago, The Baltimore Sun reported, and a former Soviet scientist says his laboratory routinely received dangerous pathogens and other materials from Western labs through clandestine channels.

The allegations, while not definitive, raise questions about whether the United States' huge $7-billion-a-year biological defense effort at Fort Detrick will increase the odds of bioterrorism -- by generating dangerous new microbes and scientific knowledge that could be diverted or stolen, the newspaper said.

The FBI would not comment on the possibility of Soviet spying at Fort Detrick in the 1980s. But if an agent did penetrate the top U.S. biodefense lab, biowarfare experts say, the incident would show how difficult preventing such losses can be, the Sun says.

Source: UPI