Iranian atomic energy chief Ghulam Reza Aghazadeh (shown in a 2003 photo) said yesterday that Iran has resumed some uranium processing activity (AFP photo/Henghameh Fahimi). Report Alleges Hidden Iran Nuclear Activities; Tehran Readmits Inspectors, Restarts Uranium Processing A committee of senior Iranian officials is coordinating concealment of the country’s nuclear program, even as international inspectors arrived Saturday to inspect Iran’s atomic facilities, according to Western diplomats and an intelligence report (see GSN, March 25)...Full Story

Pakistan Rejects Request to Inspect Nuclear Sites Rejecting a request to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect his country’s nuclear facilities, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States pledged Saturday to cooperate to a lesser extent with the agency’s investigation of Iran’s nuclear program (see GSN, March 26)...Full Story

Iraqi Defector Provided Now-Discredited Information on Alleged Iraqi Mobile Biological Facilities The U.S. case for Iraq’s development of mobile biological weapons facilities was based largely on information from an Iraqi defector who has since been called an “out-and-out fabricator,” the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday (see GSN, March 24)...Full Story

	Monday, March 29, 2004

U.N. Security Council Revamps Counterterrorism Committee By Jim Wurst Global Security Newswire UNITED NATIONS — The Security Council on Friday unanimously voted to revamp its Counterterrorism Committee (CTC) “to make the committee more agile, more operative, more efficient,” said the committee’s chairman, Ambassador Inocencio Arias of Spain (see GSN, March 5). At a news conference following the vote, Arias said, “The committee is doing a decent job” but “it needed to be revitalized,” particularly in providing technical help to countries that want to comply with council-mandated counterterrorism actions but do not have the means. Resolution 1535, adopted Friday, endorses the reform plan Arias presented to the council earlier this month. The plan called for a “counterterrorism executive directorate,” headed by an executive director who would be appointed by the U.N. secretary general, and composed of council members, secretariat staff and an expanded team of technical experts. The team would include experts on issues such as customs, international financial systems, drug trafficking, human rights and weapons of mass destruction. The new structure would have a “sunset” clause of Dec. 31, 2007, meaning it would automatically expire if the council does not vote to extend it. Secretary General Kofi Annan has 45 days to name the director, then the director would have another 30 days to form the team and present to the council a program of work. The CTC was set up under Resolution 1373, which was unanimously adopted less than two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. The CTC’s mandate is to monitor states’ compliance with the multiple anti-terrorism measures in the resolution, such as denying safe haven for terrorists and cracking down on money laundering, and to assist governments in complying with the resolution. Arias said that nearly 50 countries have not complied with 1373’s mandate to report to the CTC on their governments’ counterterrorism measures. With an executive director, “we will know if it is a lack of means or a lack of will,” he said. “If it is a lack of will, that’s very serious,” Arias said. The director “will go to the committee and you will know the names,” he added. Even though the CTC have been working for 2 1/2 years, he said “it’s not clear” which countries are acting in bad faith. It could be another year before the council starts to take action against noncomplying governments. At one level, this revamped CTC echoes the establishment of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), which was responsible for investigating evidence of illicit Iraqi weapons programs. The head of UNMOVIC, Hans Blix, while reporting to the council, had a great deal of autonomy to conduct investigations as he saw fit. “My dream is to have a Mr. Blix for terrorism,” said Arias. The executive director position “must be a post with status, with clout, visibility and authority, otherwise it will be a stupid game,” he added. Back to top       Charges Dropped Against U.K. Terror Suspects The United Kingdom has dropped charges against four suspects arrested in December on terrorism charges, the BBC reported yesterday. Three of the four, ages 23 to 26, were accused of receiving training in the production of chemical and biological weapons. A West Midlands Police Statement said the charges were dropped because evidence could not be prepared in time to meet court deadlines. Inquiries are continuing and “the charges may be resurrected in due course if appropriate,” police said (BBC News, March 28). Back to top

Iraqi Defector Provided Now-Discredited Information on Alleged Iraqi Mobile Biological Facilities The U.S. case for Iraq’s development of mobile biological weapons facilities was based largely on information from an Iraqi defector who has since been called an “out-and-out fabricator,” the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday (see GSN, March 24). The story of the man code-named “Curveball” began after U.N. inspectors in the early 1990s sought help from Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, to confirm suspicions that Iraq had developed mobile biological weapons facilities, the Times reported (see GSN, March 16). Later, an Iraqi chemical engineer in a German refugee camp came forward and claimed that he had been hired out of Baghdad University to design and build such vehicles for the Iraqi military, the Times reported.  The United States received the man’s information through German intelligence and was not given access to the defector, according to the Times. While Bush administration officials made repeated warnings about the vehicles, based mainly on the defector’s information, the CIA later learned that the man was the brother of a top aide to Chalabi and suspected that he might have been instructed to provide inaccurate information, the Times reported. No mobile biological facilities have been found to date in Iraq. Labeling Curveball as an “out-and-out fabricator,” former U.S. chief weapons inspector in Iraq David Kay said the case was one of the most damaging to the U.S. intelligence community’s record regarding prewar Iraq. “This is the one that’s damning,” Kay said. “This is the one that has the potential for causing the largest havoc in the sense that it really looks like a lack of due diligence and care in going forward,” he said. Former CIA Deputy Director Richards Kerr, who is leading an internal CIA review into prewar Iraqi intelligence, defended the agency’s handling of Curveball, saying the information he provided was consistent with intelligence on Iraq’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. “It was detailed and specific and made a lot of sense,” Kerr said, adding that the CIA had suspected that Iraq was hiding WMD programs in civilian facilities. “You get reporting on mobile production facilities … and you say it makes some sense,” Kerr said. He also defended the CIA’s decision to rely on an anonymous, inaccessible source. While German intelligence rejected U.S. requests for access, it did provide its file on the defector to U.S. officials and had him answer questions posed by U.S. intelligence, Kerr said.    “Intelligence is often based on information where you can’t go back and talk to the source or verify it,” Kerr said. “So you turn to the basic questions. ‘Does it make sense?  Is it logical? Does it appear he could have been at the right place at the right time to know these things?’” he added (Drogin/Miller, Los Angeles Times, March 28). Back to top       Israeli Intelligence Based Prewar Iraq WMD Claims on Speculation, Parliamentary Inquiry Finds Israel’s intelligence assessments of Iraq’s prewar WMD capabilities were based mainly on speculation, an Israeli parliamentary committee said in a report released yesterday (see GSN, March 24). Prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Israeli military warned of Iraq’s WMD capabilities while arguing that Israel faced a low risk of attack. Even so, Israeli citizens were ordered to ready gas masks and to prepare a sealed room in the event of a chemical weapons attack. The report, released after an eight-month inquiry, says that Israel had little concrete information on Iraq’s alleged biological and chemical weapons prior to the war and that Israeli intelligence based its assessments on speculation, according to the Associated Press. “Why didn’t we succeed in laying down a broad and deep (intelligence) framework so we could rely on reports and not speculation and assumption? That is the central question,” said inquiry head Yuval Steinitz of the governing Likud Party. The committee also found that Israeli intelligence did not intentionally mislead Israeli officials about prewar Iraq’s WMD capabilities, nor was there an attempt to push the United States into invading Iraq, AP reported. “We did not take the decision to go to war. We were not telling the Americans or the British, ‘do this,’ or ‘don’t do that,’” said committee member Haim Ramon of the opposition Labor Party. The report further criticizes as “intolerable” Israeli intelligence’s failure to uncover Libya’s WMD programs (Josef Federman, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, March 29). Back to top       NATO Aircraft and Ships to Patrol Olympics; Multinational Security Effort Continues in Greece NATO has pledged surveillance assistance for the Summer Olympics in Greece, officials said Friday, increasing international support for the $800 million security operation (see GSN, Feb. 20). NATO would monitor the games with AWACS surveillance aircraft and participate in naval security, but would not station troops on Greek soil, U.S. Marine Gen. James Jones, NATO’s top commander, told the Washington Post. “I don’t think we’ll have a footprint ashore,” Jones said. About 400 U.S. Special Operations troops last week concluded a 13-day training exercise in Greece, according to Achilles Paparsenos, a spokesman for the Greek Embassy in Washington (see GSN, March 10). Greek officials said the large-scale effort, known as “Hercules Shield 2004,” was “the most elaborate and intensive security exercise” in Greece’s history. Troops enacted and responded to various scenarios, including mock biological attacks.  A biological warfare detection battalion from the Czech military, well regarded for its expertise in chemical and biological defense, would be stationed at the games by request of the Greek government, Paparsenos said. U.S. officials said the top CIA counterterrorism official was in Athens for Olympic security meetings last week. FBI director Robert Mueller said last week that he was concerned about security for the Games, which begin in August, and was awaiting results of a counterterrorism exercise to find out “if there are areas that need to be shored up.” An Olympic Security Advisory Group, made up of the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany, Israel and Australia — all countries experienced in counterterrorism — has also been working for months with Greek officials (Thomas Ricks, Washington Post, March 27). Back to top

Report Alleges Hidden Iran Nuclear Activities; Tehran Readmits Inspectors, Restarts Uranium Processing A committee of senior Iranian officials is coordinating concealment of the country’s nuclear program, even as international inspectors arrived Saturday to inspect Iran’s atomic facilities, according to Western diplomats and an intelligence report (see GSN, March 25). Iran organized the committee last year after international inspectors found evidence that Tehran was conducting research on centrifuges that could produce weapon-grade uranium, among other illegal activities, the sources said. The report was prepared by a country other than the United States, and is considered credible, said a Bush administration official. “The report is being viewed seriously because it originates from outside U.S. intelligence sources,” the official said. “It has contributed to a greater sense of frustration, both in the U.S and within the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency],” the official added. The report, prepared before Iran temporarily suspended international inspections, says the committee was “formulating a contingency plan: thinking up reasons for delaying the inspectors’ return to Iran, if it becomes necessary.” The committee’s priority was to hide nuclear evidence at nearly 300 sites in Iran, one diplomat said. Iran agreed to allow inspectors to return Saturday, but a diplomat involved in the inspections process said the team was only allowed by Tehran to view locations already identified as nuclear installations, and that the inspectors were reportedly barred from other sites due to a New Year holiday, according to the Los Angeles Times (Frantz/Efron, Los Angeles Times, March 27). Meanwhile, Iran’s atomic energy chief said on Iranian state television on Sunday that the country has resumed some uranium processing activity, highlighting ongoing differences of interpretation of an earlier Iranian pledge to suspend uranium enrichment activities, Agence France-Presse reported. Ghulam Reza Aghazadeh said the “voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment in Iran was a move to build trust with the IAEA, and based on the order of the Supreme National Security Council secretariat, the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization will suspend … building parts and facility construction.” He added that the Isfahan facility, where the resumption of processing is to take place, was “not part of the deal with the IAEA” (Agence France-Presse/Al Jazeera, March 28). Back to top       Pakistan Rejects Request to Inspect Nuclear Sites Rejecting a request to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect his country’s nuclear facilities, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States pledged Saturday to cooperate to a lesser extent with the agency’s investigation of Iran’s nuclear program (see GSN, March 26). Agency inspectors hoped samples from the Pakistani sites could verify Iranian claims that traces of highly enriched uranium contamination in that country originated in Pakistan. “We won’t allow any intrusive inspections of our sites — no state does that, and neither will we,” Pakistani Ambassador Ashraf Qazi said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.  “We are mindful of our own sovereign independence and sites. Those are off-limits.  That doesn’t mean we can’t work out modalities which can provide the necessary information. Within those parameters, we will cooperate with the IAEA, and I think we’ll be able to work out something where they can verify or ascertain whatever information they need,” he said (Jonathan Curiel, San Francisco Chronicle, March 28). Pakistani Nuclear Transfers Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday there was no evidence that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was involved in the nuclear transfers involving former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, according to the Los Angeles Times. “If you’re asking me, do I think Musharraf, either now or when he was head of the military, was engaged with that … I have no reason and have seen no evidence to suggest it,” Rumsfeld said during an appearance on ABC’s This Week. In an interview Friday, Musharraf sought to reduce the proliferation concerns generated by Khan’s activities, saying that even if terrorists were to obtain a nuclear weapon, they could not use it without a triggering mechanism. “People are, I think, over-assessing the physical damage of the proliferation that he has done. It is a highly technical issue,” Musharraf said. “If I hand over a missile or a bomb to any extremist, believe me, he can do nothing about it. He cannot explode it,” Musharraf added. He also denied that Pakistan and the United States had made an agreement for Pakistan to crack down on suspected al-Qaeda militants operating on its border with Afghanistan in exchange for the Bush administration taking a soft approach on Khan’s nuclear activities. “There is no deal whatsoever,” Musharraf said. “This is all humbug.  There is just no deal,” he added (Chuck Neubauer, Los Angeles Times, March 29). Back to top       North Korea Rejects U.S. Nuclear Conditions; South Korea, China Pledge to Pursue Talks North Korea on Saturday rejected U.S. demands for the “complete, verifiable and irreversible” dismantlement of Pyongyang’s nuclear program, the New York Times reported (see GSN, March 26). Radio Pyongyang said North Korea would not accept the U.S. demands, which Bush administration officials said are non-negotiable in reaching a resolution to the standoff. North Korea has often criticized the United States for its “inflexible stance,” but this is the first time it has gone on record explicitly rejecting the Bush plan point by point, according to the New York Times. North Korea continued to demand U.S. concessions, including energy aid and security guarantees (Joseph Kahn, New York Times, March 27). Meanwhile, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon traveled to Beijing to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing, and the two pledged today to push for a third round of negotiations on the issue (Agence France-Presse/Khaleej Times, March 29). Elsewhere, Japan today issued a three-month export ban against a Tokyo company, Meishin, whose president is a North Korean national, for attempting to ship nuclear-related devices to North Korea last year, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, July 9, 2003). Meishin attempted in April to ship three devices which can be used for uranium enrichment to the communist nation, according to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Last month a Japanese court fined Meishin $19,000 and imposed a one-year prison term, suspended for three years, on company President Kim Hak-Chun (Agence France-Presse/Channel News Asia, March 29). Back to top       NNSA Chief Outlines Schedule for Nuclear Goals U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks last week outlined several timelines for various activities related to adapting the U.S. nuclear arsenal to meet “new or emerging threats” or to repair design or maintenance problems should they occur (see GSN, March 23). In testimony before a Senate Armed Services subcommittee, Brooks said the agency hopes to be able to modify and deploy warheads found with “relatively minor” problems found in the U.S. nuclear stockpile within one year. He also described for the committee the office’s goals in preparing to adapt or begin initial production of nuclear weapons should Congress choose to do so. According to Brooks, the agency plans to achieve a capability to modify existing nuclear weapons within 18 months of approval; and to be able to design and begin initial production of a new warhead within three to four years of a congressional decision to do so. “While there are no current plans to develop new weapons, maintaining the capability is an important prerequisite to extensive reductions,” Brooks said. While there are also no plans to resume nuclear weapons testing, the agency is working to improve test readiness as “a prudent hedge” against possible stockpile problems that cannot be solved without testing, Brooks told the Strategic Forces Subcommittee. As a result, the department is working to achieve an 18-month underground “test readiness posture as directed by the Defense Authorization Act,” he said. Another NNSA goal is to “maintain sufficient production capacity to produce new warheads” without disrupting the refurbishing of existing nuclear weapons, Brooks said. He added that refurbishment demands are likely to “dominate” production capabilities until 2014. Brooks also said that it was “essential” to develop the Modern Pit Facility to produce plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons. Such triggers, also known as “pits” are necessary even if the United States “never produced another new weapon” because of the need to replace existing pits lost to aging, he said (U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee release, March 24).  Back to top       Pentagon Panel Backs Smaller Nuclear Weapons The U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Science Board has recommended that the United States develop smaller nuclear weapons rather than refurbishing existing “high-yield” weapons, the Washington Post reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 20, 2003). The current plan to refurbish existing high-yield nuclear weapons is inadequate against the threats posed by rogue states and terrorist groups, according to a Science Board report circulated within the Pentagon in February and made public last week by the Federation of American Scientists. “The nuclear weapons program as currently conceived — a program focused primarily on refurbishing the (current) stockpile — will not meet the country’s future needs,” the board said in its report. “Nuclear weapons are needed that produce much lower collateral damage,” the report adds. The board recommended that the number of high-yield nuclear weapons, now being prepared to last another 20 years, be reduced. It also recommended the development of new special-purpose non-nuclear weapons and a submarine-launched non-nuclear missile, the Post reported. In addition, the board called for the Air Force to preserve 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs slated to be deactivated and to convert them for use with conventional warheads (see GSN, Feb. 4, 2003). That would give the United States “a 30-minute response capability for strategic strike worldwide,” the board said. “Future presidents should have strategic strike choices between massive conventional strikes and today’s relatively large, high-fallout weapons delivered primarily by ballistic missiles,” the report says. The public release of the board’s recommendations comes on the heels of a congressional appearance last week by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee that a plan for the future size and makeup of the 6,000-warhead U.S. nuclear arsenal would soon be submitted to Congress. That plan, according to the Post, was originally scheduled to be submitted last month (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, March 28). Back to top       Pantex to Reform Procedures, Training Pantex Plant is set to increase standards for worker training, procedures and reviews, following an incident in which workers may have mishandled a cracked explosive charge in a nuclear warhead, the Amarillo Globe News reported today (see GSN, Jan. 22). After contractor BWXT Pantex completed a corrective action plan, plant officials approved it and presented it to top National Nuclear Security Administration officials and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, said Steve Erhart, senior scientific and technical adviser for the Pantex Site Office. Erhart also said a self-assessment at the Texas nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility concluded that workers responded properly in the incident, in which technicians taped and moved a damaged explosive charge while dismantling a nuclear warhead, but that procedures could be improved. “We concluded that local oversight of the nuclear explosive charge control process and weapons-specific training for facility representatives, although satisfactory, could be enhanced,” he said in a statement. Officials at the plant said Friday that the Jan. 8 incident did not cause a safety hazard. “Our investigation determined that there was never, at any time, a safety issue related to this incident,” said a statement by Jud Simmons, a BWXT Pantex spokesman. “The technicians were working in a safe and professional manner. They performed the process as they were trained, and they stopped work when appropriate,” he added. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Chairman John Conway said a nuclear safety expert should have been called in sooner to supervise workers, who could then have concluded the procedure more quickly. “I think they should have stopped it sooner. … They called for assistance — that’s the key thing — and the laboratory had a so-called expert there, who did not come down to eyeball it, but rendered an opinion that all they had to do was tape it up,” Conway said. “Then it was taped, but not the way the safety expert would have done it presumably, as I have been told,” he added. Pantex is expected to resume dismantlement operations once the review is complete and additional safety standards are put in place (Jim McBride, Amarillo Globe News, March 29). Back to top       Nuclear Power Plant Operator’s Security Exemption Request Raises Secrecy Debate A nuclear power company’s request to be exempted from some sections of new security requirements has illustrated a growing debate over the secrecy of counterterrorism-related decision-making, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Feb. 10). Duke Power asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to waive certain security precautions typically required when a quantity of special nuclear materials capable of producing a weapon is present at a site, the Post reported. The request, which the commission deemed sensitive, involves the planned shipment next year of French-made nuclear fuel rods containing plutonium to Duke Power nuclear plants in North and South Carolina. The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, with the technical assistance of the Union of Concerned Scientists, has filed a challenge to Duke Power’s request, the Post reported. Union scientist Edwin Lyman, who has a security clearance, read Duke Power’s request after signing a nondisclosure agreement, but said that he and the environmental group have been unable to learn more about the NRC’s security standards. In a ruling last month, the commission said that while Duke Power has a “need to know” the new security standards, the environmental group does not, the Post reported. A senior NRC official said “the public does not have a need to know (the postulated terrorist threat) and doesn’t, for the most part, have security clearances. … There is no way you can bring the public into that discussion.” However, “it is the public that has to deal with the consequences” of a security breach at a nuclear site, and therefore the public should have a role in the security debate, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Government Secrecy Project. “Fundamentally, the NRC policy views members of the public as a threat,” Aftergood said (R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, March 29). Back to top       Belize Ratifies Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Belize submitted its ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the CTBT Organization Friday (see GSN, March 25).  To date, 171 countries have signed the document and 110 have ratified it, including 32 of the 44 nations whose ratifications are necessary for the treaty to enter into force (CTBT Organization release, March 29). Back to top

Scientists Criticize Plan to Buy New Anthrax Vaccine Scientific critics have charged that it is too early for the United States to pay up to $1.4 billion for an experimental anthrax vaccine that has not been proven effective, the Chicago Tribune reported yesterday (see GSN, March 16). The administration is soliciting bids to produce millions of doses of the new vaccine, known as rPA102, before clinical trials are completed and before safety and effectiveness testing is conducted, according to the Tribune. “The new vaccine has already been shown to be stronger and more effective than the vaccine being used today,” according to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. Two pharmaceutical companies — U.S.-based VaxGen and British-based Avecia — have each won contracts to produce 3 million doses of the new vaccine and to conduct human safety trials, according to the Tribune. Both companies are also expected to receive contracts to produce 75 million doses of the new vaccine. Anthrax expert Meryl Nass said, though, that the public “should not be misled” into believing that the new vaccine is an improvement over the existing one. “This one is definitely more pure, but unfortunately its purity has not been shown to improve safety or effectiveness,” Nass said. She also criticized the administration’s plans to inoculate an entire city with the new vaccine in the event of anthrax attack, which would theoretically allow the city to remain habitable even if anthrax spores linger for years. “Where’s the science behind that? It’s the biggest, most bogus thing of all,” Nass said. Steven Wolinsky, head of the infectious diseases division at Northwestern University’s Feinberg Medical School, criticized VaxGen’s involvement in the project. The company’s AIDS vaccine failed in clinical trials last year, the Tribune reported. “Once again, VaxGen has managed to leverage few scientific data to capture a significant amount of federal dollars,” Wolinsky said. The vaccine purchase plan was conducted “in a very measured, careful way,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “There were multiple contracts doing the research to show that it was safe and stimulated the immune system against anthrax. Now comes the production capabilities to put it in place,” he said (Peter Gorner, Chicago Tribune, March 28). Military Vaccinations Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) sent a letter last week to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld calling for a re-evaluation of the military’s mandatory anthrax vaccination program given the apparent absence of biological weapons in Iraq, according to the Washington Post. “The apparent absence of an Iraqi biological warfare capability raises serious questions about the threat of an anthrax attack against our troops,” Bingaman wrote. “The use of a vaccination which appears to have the potential for serious health consequences for our troops in an effort to counter a threat that may not exist seems to unnecessarily expose our troops to risk,” he added. The Pentagon said, though, that the absence so far of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would not affect the department’s anthrax vaccination policy. “The lethal anthrax attacks of the fall of 2001 did not need a sophisticated delivery system,” Pentagon spokesman Jim Turner said in an e-mail response to questions posed by the Post. “We vaccinate our people to keep them healthy,” he added (Marilyn Thompson, Washington Post, March 27). Back to top       Pentagon Releases Parts of 2001 Biopreparedness Report, Fights Full Release The U.S. Defense Department has recently released sections of an unclassified report on the 2001 anthrax attacks completed two years ago that warned that the United States is unprepared to detect and respond to biological attacks, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, March 24). The report, prepared by Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow David Heyman, was based mainly on discussions between about 40 governmental and private experts on public health and national security who attended a CSIS meeting held in December 2001, according to the Times. The report warns that biological attacks could cause casualties “equal to, or far greater than,” nuclear weapons and includes several recommendations on preventing and responding to future biological attacks that have been or are being adopted by the Bush administration. The Pentagon until recently rejected repeated requests for permission to release the report, the Times reported. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which commissioned the CSIS report, said in a statement Friday that it had initially refused to release the report and was still preventing certain sections from being made public. The report, according to the agency, could “circumvent” Pentagon “rules and practices established to prevent the spread of information associated with WMD.” Some experts have criticized the Pentagon’s reluctance to release the full report. “This study was based on discussions that were held in an unclassified setting,” said Jerome Hauer, a former assistant Health and Human Services secretary for public health emergency preparedness who attended the December meeting. “To close the results of that forum is myopic and does nothing to better prepare this country to deal with those threats,” he said (Judith Miller, New York Times, March 29). Back to top

U.S. Senator Preparing Legislation to Improve International Missile Defense Cooperation U.S. Senator Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) is preparing legislation that seeks to lower barriers for international cooperation in missile defense, Aviation Week & Space Technology reported today (see GSN, Oct. 20, 2003). Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish has said that international support is needed to develop a more effective missile defense system. He said, though, that there were several obstacles to sharing equipment, including the Missile Technology Control Regime, a 33-nation group that agrees to implement similar export controls on missile technology. Allard’s proposed legislation calls for a “fast-track approval process for missile defense items to be in place this year,” according to Aviation Week. The proposal calls for expanded use of export licensing exemptions with “coalition partners that are already bound by mutual security treaties or other nonbinding nonproliferation agreements.” Allard’s proposal also seeks the “adoption of guidelines for ‘presumption to approve’ in place of today’s strong presumption to deny missile defense applications during case-by-case reviews” that are required for missile-related exports, Aviation Week reported. The purpose of such a shift, according to Allard, would be to “shift the burden of proof from those who support (ballistic missile defense) as a counterproliferation complement to those [who] would oppose.” The White House is reviewing export regulations and their relation to international missile defense cooperation, but it may be several months before a planned presidential directive is released, Aviation Week reported. Some arms control experts have warned against any effort to weaken the control regime, according to Aviation Week. Missile defense-related exports could be applied to offensive purposes as well, said Wade Boese of the Arms Control Association (Robert Wall, Aviation Week & Space Technology, March 29). Back to top

U.K. Is Not Ready for Dirty Bomb Attack, Official Says A lack of experience and resources undermines a British security plan to protect the United Kingdom against a radiological, or “dirty bomb,” attack, according to a leaked letter from government efficiency adviser Peter Gershon, the Financial Times reported today (see GSN, Aug. 5, 2002). Gershon, in a March 11 letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said limited resources are hampering the plan to put up defensive shields at British ports and airports to prevent terrorists from smuggling radioactive material. He asked Blair to warn the British home secretary of his concerns. Home Secretary David Blunkett said there should be a balance between warning the public of such terrorism dangers and making people “jumpy,” according to the Financial Times (Christopher Adams, Financial Times, March 29).   Back to top

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