Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley

Ouagrham-Gormley is an assistant professor in the Biodefense Program at George Mason University (GMU), Department of Public and International Affairs. Before joining GMU in 2008, she worked 10 years at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies as a senior research associate and founding editor-in-chief of the International Export Control Observer. Over the past decade her research has covered a large spectrum of weapons of mass destruction proliferation issues, including proliferation finance, illicit trafficking, export control, brain-drain prevention and WMD knowledge-transfer mechanisms. She is currently creating an oral history of the US and Soviet bioweapons programs in cooperation with Kathleen Vogel (Cornell University) with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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Articles by Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley

Opinion
4 October 2013
Biosecurity

Bioweapons alarmism in Syria

Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley

In the case of Syria, is the media falling prey to the same biological weapons hysteria that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003?

Opinion
1 November 2011
Biosecurity

Amerithrax review: Lessons for future investigations

Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley

When the National Academy of Sciences issued its review of the FBI anthrax investigation earlier this year, the press fixated primarily on one point: The report found no conclusive evidence that Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist the government contends was responsible for a series of anthrax-laced letters mailed in 2001, produced them.

1 January 2010
Feature

Breaking Out of the CTR Mold?

Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley
Canada's recent biosecurity partnership with Kyrgyzstan could create a new model for preventing brain drain, showing it has learned a lot from the Cooperative Threat Reduction program–both good and bad.
Opinion
22 October 2007
Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear terrorism's fatal assumptions

Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley

In a casual, often-irreverent tone, journalist William Langewiesche walked readers of the December 2006 issue of The Atlantic through the possibilities and hurdles associated with procuring the required material for a nuclear weapon, transporting it to a safe place, and assembling the bomb. With no ambitions to provide solutions to these questions, his article was a pretext to draw attention to the successes and failures of U.S.