Sept. 11 commission member Bob Kerry (shown in a June 17 photo) urged the House Government Reform Committee yesterday to provide adequate authority for a new national intelligence director (AFP photo/Bob Pearson). Democratic Lawmakers, Panel Members Question White House Stand on Intelligence Director By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers and members of the Sept. 11 commission yesterday questioned whether the White House plan for a national director of intelligence would create a supervisor strong enough to manage the intelligence community (see GSN, Aug. 3)...Full Story

Greenpeace Asks IAEA to Investigate Missing Material From Iraqi Tuwaitha Nuclear Site Greenpeace has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate missing radioactive materials from the Tuwaitha nuclear complex in Iraq, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said yesterday (see GSN, July 20)...Full Story

Anniston Depot Destroys All Liquid Sarin Rockets Workers at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama have completed incineration of rockets filled with liquid sarin nerve agent and are now set to begin destroying gelled sarin rockets, the U.S. Army announced on Monday (see GSN, July 20)...Full Story

	Wednesday, August 4, 2004

Democratic Lawmakers, Panel Members Question White House Stand on Intelligence Director By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers and members of the Sept. 11 commission yesterday questioned whether the White House plan for a national director of intelligence would create a supervisor strong enough to manage the intelligence community (see GSN, Aug. 3). Earlier this week, U.S. President George W. Bush publicly supported the creation of a national intelligence director — one of the key reform proposals included in the report released last month by the Sept. 11 commission. The White House, however, proposes giving the new director less budgetary and personnel authority than recommended by the commission, and does not support the body’s call to place the position within the executive office. During two hearings held yesterday in both houses of Congress, the White House’s position came under criticism by Democrats who fear it would result in a weak director. “I worry that that would create a kind of Potemkin national intelligence director … where you see the facade but there’s not real authority behind it,” said Senator Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), the top Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. “In this city, if you have a fancy title, but you’re not in the chain of command, and you don’t control the budget, you’re a figurehead. And another figurehead is not what the 9/11 commission recommended and what our nation needs,” said Representative Henry Waxman (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee. In testimony before lawmakers, some commission members tentatively praised the White House’s vision of the new director. It is “a constructive beginning,” commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow told the Senate committee.  Commission members also reiterated, though, their recommendations that the new director be given the authority to apportion and reprogram funding to and among the various intelligence agencies and the power to “approve and submit” to the president nominees to head various intelligence agencies. “You’re better off, in my view, with nothing than creating something that just adds one more impression that this person has power that they don’t have,” commission member Bob Kerry told the House committee. Commission members also reaffirmed the need to locate the new director within the executive office for better access to the president. Zelikow rejected the argument put forth by the White House that the new director would be less subject to potential White House pressure by working outside the executive office. “Those dangers have always arisen from the functions and relationships that go with the job, regardless of where the person sits,” Zelikow said. “Those dangers should be offset by selecting a person who believes the president is served by rigorous truth-telling and by making the … director fully accountable to Congress,” he said. U.S. intelligence officials, though, told the Senate committee that they agreed with the administration on the need to separate the new intelligence director from the executive office. “We have a community that’s spent many decades trying to build a tradition that says we should provide unvarnished and unbiased information to the president. And I think it’s good to keep some air gap between the White House and the national intelligence director,” said Philip Mudd, deputy director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center. The intelligence director position would be created through congressional action. Several committees in both houses of Congress are scheduled to hold hearings this month on the commission’s proposals, with the aim of producing legislation by the end of the year.  Commission member John Lehman expressed hope that the new director would ultimately receive the authority called for by the Sept. 11 panel. “Those powers must be given. And I don’t believe the president will oppose them. I think, unlike the rest of us, he has a whole administration that he’s got to kind of herd along and keep consensus in,” he said. Lehman rejected suggestions that the new director, who both the White House and the commission have envisioned would oversee the entire intelligence community, may assume too much authority and become a type of secret police chief. “If you compare the powers of the secretary of defense, compared to this intelligence director, the intelligence director’s pale in comparison to what we’ve put into the centralized secretary of defense. So we believe it is manageable,” he said. In testimony before the Senate committee, senior intelligence officials also expressed support for another key intelligence reform measure proposed by the Sept. 11 commission and supported by the White House — the creation of a national counterterrorism center. As envisioned by the commission, the proposed center, to be built upon the existing Terrorist Threat Integration Center, would be responsible for both joint foreign and domestic intelligence and operational planning efforts.  TTIC Director John Brennan warned senators against moving too quickly to establish the new center, saying that the Sept. 11 commission’s report did not provide the necessary “detailed type of engineering blueprint.” “What I don’t want to do is to move and to have a dropped [a] piece of information because, in fact, we went through rapid change very quickly,” he said. Improving Congressional Oversight Addressing the calls in the Sept. 11 commission’s report for improved congressional oversight of intelligence efforts, panel members testified in support of creating a joint House of Representatives-Senate intelligence committee to replace the separate committees in each congressional house. “Fix that first if there has to be a priority, because the rest of the system that we’re recommending will not function properly without Congress fixing its own committee structure and jurisdiction,” Lehman said. Kerry told lawmakers that a joint intelligence committee should be required to release an unclassified annual report on the U.S. intelligence community. Such a committee should also be created through legislative action, not by a congressional resolution, to improve its standing in the eyes of the intelligence agencies, Kerry said. “No matter what the critics of the CIA will tell you, the men and women who work there follow the law. And they’re just a little less persuaded of a congressional resolution,” he said. Back to top

U.S. Army Set for Final Test of Warning System The U.S. Army is ready to conduct a final round of tests on an early warning radar designed to detect chemical and biological agents, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, April 23). The Army has completed several rounds of tests on the radar at the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City with the help of other government and research groups, and is preparing for a final round of testing for Aug. 10-22. In the tests, aircraft drop clay dust and water to see whether a Federal Aviation Administration radar can detect the simulated chemical or biological agent. “Our previous results look promising — it looks like the system will work,” said Arne Johnson, project manager for the Homeland Defense Chemical Biological Umbrella program. The Army hopes to install the system at airports across the country, Johnson said, adding that specific sites have not yet been chosen (April Marciszewski, Associated Press, Aug. 3). Back to top

Greenpeace Asks IAEA to Investigate Missing Material From Iraqi Tuwaitha Nuclear Site Greenpeace has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate missing radioactive materials from the Tuwaitha nuclear complex in Iraq, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said yesterday (see GSN, July 20). In a letter sent to IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, the international environmental group said that a mission it sent to Iraq last year detected radioactive contamination in the communities near Tuwaitha, according to Agence France-Presse. The agency plans to send inspectors to Iraq, but only to check sites covered under IAEA safeguards, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.  “During the upcoming inspection, the IAEA must identify the radioisotopes and other dangerous materials still missing,” Greenpeace said. The U.N. agency should also compare prewar inventories of radioactive materials against the 1.7 tons removed by the United States to determine how much could be found in communities or obtained by terrorists, the environmental group added. “When it comes to the possibility of loose nukes and terrorists building so-called dirty bombs, U.S. assurances that ‘roughly’ 1,000 highly radioactive sources had been taken out of harm’s way are simply not good enough,” Greenpeace said. Fleming said that ElBaradei is considering Greenpeace’s request (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Aug. 3). Back to top       Russia, NATO Could Cooperate on Securing Nuclear Sites, Russian Defense Minister Says Russia and NATO could begin exchanging technologies to help improve security at nuclear facilities, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 4). “It is likely that we will reach a point when we start exchanging technologies for safe storage of nuclear weapons and dealing with the effects of accidents involving them,” he said, according to RIA Novosti. Ivanov made his remarks following successful training exercises carried out by the Russian Defense Ministry on responding to transportation accidents involving nuclear weapons. Russia plans next year to observe similar exercises by a NATO country, he said (RIA Novosti/BBC Monitoring, Aug. 3). Ivanov also denied yesterday that Russian nuclear weapons were at risk for possible theft by terrorists. “Never, neither in the history of the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation [were] there are any real attempts to seize nuclear weapons,” Ivanov was quoted by Interfax as saying. “But unfortunately, myths are spreading in various regions of the world that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is of poor quality and unsafe,” he added (Agence France-Presse, Aug. 3). Back to top       Y-12 Plant Seeks Relaxed Trash Standards The U.S. Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is seeking federal approval to reduce efforts to recover enriched uranium from trash at the facility, the Knoxville News-Sentinel reported yesterday (see GSN, June 28). The plant is seeking permission to raise its “economic discard limits,” which would allow workers to dispose of rags and other trash items without processing them to recover all traces of enriched uranium, according to U.S. officials. The contaminated trash items are sent to the Nevada Test Site for disposal, National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Steven Wyatt said. Wyatt said that the increased discard limits would help to save the Y-12 plant tens of millions of dollars in waste processing costs. “It could be a lot more,” he said (Frank Munger, Knoxville News-Sentinel, Aug. 3). Back to top

Anniston Depot Destroys All Liquid Sarin Rockets Workers at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama have completed incineration of rockets filled with liquid sarin nerve agent and are now set to begin destroying gelled sarin rockets, the U.S. Army announced on Monday (see GSN, July 20). Alabama environmental regulators have not yet approved the Army’s procedures for handling the gelled rockets.  While they have to be destroyed in a different manner than the liquid rockets, the process is not more dangerous for the gelled sarin rockets, said facility spokesman Mike Abrams. “We’re not requiring the work force to do anything more dangerous,” Abrams said. The incinerator is on schedule to complete all rocket and nerve agent destruction at the depot by 2010, according to Army officials (Associated Press/Tuscaloosa News, Aug. 2). Back to top       Jordan Bans Imports of Weaponizable Fertilizer Jordan has banned the import of a fertilizer that could be used as a chemical weapon, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 2). “The government has banned the trade and import of urea tablets, used in the production of fertilizers ... out of fear they may be used in terrorist chemical attacks,” says a report in the Jordanian al-Ghad newspaper, citing official guidelines on the use of dangerous chemicals. Urea is a component of mammalian urine, and is synthesized from ammonia and carbon dioxide. While the Jordanian government has banned urea tablets, it allows purchases of the substance in liquid form, according to AFP. The trade ban also applies to acids with concentration levels higher than 30 percent, according to the report. However, factories, research centers, schools and universities are exempt from the rule, according to al-Ghad (Agence France-Presse/Turkish Press, Aug. 3). Back to top       South Korea Not Expected to Confront Pyongyang Over Alleged Chemical Testing on Humans South Korea is unlikely to confront North Korea over alleged chemical weapons testing on human subjects, the Korea Times reported today (see GSN, July 29). A North Korean defector identified as “Dr. Kim” claimed in an interview televised last week on the BBC program Newsnight that he had participated in experiments since the late 1970s in which political prisoners were killed using a cyanide-based gas. Similar claims had been made in a BBC documentary in February (see GSN, March 3). “It’s hard to check the authenticity of the North Korean defector’s allegation,” an anonymous official at South Korea’s Unification Ministry told the Korea Times. “But unless the claims can be clarified, we will not take up the issue with North Korea,” he added. South Korea has faced domestic and international criticism for failing to address North Korean human rights violations, according to the Times. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has sought to avoid confrontation with the North under his “sunshine” policy of engagement. “South Korea fully understands the seriousness of the North Korean humanitarian issue, but we are taking a different approach to that of the international community,” the Unification Ministry official said. Experts believe the defectors’ claims are plausible. “Thinking about the character of the North Korean regime, they can do whatever they want disregarding concerns about human rights,” said Park Joon-young, a professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. However, Park added that confronting Pyongyang over human rights could have a negative impact on relations between the neighbors. “The government believes it’s not the time to talk about the dark side of the North Korean system,” he said, adding that it might be possible for South Korea to strike a balance by criticizing the North while continuing economic assistance. Meanwhile, the Korean Institute for National Unification in May issued a human rights “white paper,” according to the Times, which cites reports that Pyongyang has a new gas chamber for testing chemical weapons in Hyeryong, North Hamkyung Province. The existence of the facility has not been confirmed, the paper adds (Reuben Staines, Korea Times, Aug. 4). Back to top       Pueblo Chemical Depot Workers Detect Leak A mustard agent leak was detected Monday during routine monitoring at the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, July 2). Workers found the leak in a storage structure around 4 p.m., officials said, adding that no agent vapor was detected the next day after workers placed a charcoal filter unit on the structure’s back vent on Monday. Officials said the community was not at risk from the leak (Associated Press, Aug. 3).     Back to top

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