Defense Secretary Robert Gates

In this June 5, 2008 file photo, chickens look out of their pen in a downtown neighborhood in Jakarta, Indonesia. When Indonesia's health minister stopped sending bird flu viruses to a research laboratory in the U.S. out of fear Washington could use them to make biological weapons, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laughed and called it 'the nuttiest thing' he'd ever heard. Yet buried deep inside an 86-page supplement to U.S. export regulations is a single sentence barring U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu for the same reason.