Anthrax Vaccine Possibly Linked to 21 Deaths

The existing anthrax vaccine could be linked to 21 deaths and more than 4,100 illnesses, Newsday reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 2).

Experts also questioned whether the vaccine now being stockpiled or those being developed could protect people who inhale the pathogen during a terrorist attack.

BioPort Corp. has received orders worth nearly $250 million from the federal government for 10 million doses of its existing anthrax vaccine, while VaxGen Inc. of California is being paid at least $877 to produce 75 million doses of a new vaccine.

The Food and Drug Administration in December 2004 said that BioPort’s vaccine could be linked to 16 deaths. When questioned by Newsday, that number rose to 21.

The agency also noted 347 “serious” illnesses among the 4,100 adverse reactions possibly linked to the treatment since 1990.

The rate of serious illness linked to the anthrax vaccine is lower than those connected to treatments for smallpox, influenza and other diseases, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

“The vaccine is as safe as any,” said BioPort spokeswoman Kim Brennen Root.

The BioPort vaccine is known to protect against anthrax contracted through the skin, but its effectiveness against inhalational anthrax — the form most likely to be used in a large-scale terrorist incident — remains in question.

“The number of doses they are amassing is wildly out of proportion to any possible threat from anthrax,” said David Ozonoff, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. “What the benefits are is very unclear and there are always (health) risks … when you vaccinate a whole lot of people.”

The single significant study of the BioPort vaccine found that it had to be used along with antibiotics following inhalation to be effective in test animals, Newsday reported. VaxGen officials are so far unsure that their vaccine — now being tested on animals — could provide adequate, safe protection against aerosolized anthrax.

“We’d hopefully achieve a high level of protection, and the alternative is severe disease,” said Harry Keyserling, an Emory University School of Medicine pediatrics professor who was involved in early trials of the VaxGen vaccine.

A study led by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland found the best results for treating monkeys exposed to anthrax came from using both the BioPort vaccine and antibiotics. All monkeys that received both treatments following exposure survived. Roughly 90 percent of monkeys survived if they received only the antibiotics, while only 20 percent of the monkeys that received only the vaccine lived.

The vaccine was “not meant to be given after exposure,” said lead study author Arthur Friedlander. “The vaccine alone doesn’t protect and we wouldn’t expect it to protect” those already infected with anthrax (Thomas Maier, Newsday, Nov. 20).

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German Officials Say U.S. Exaggerated Iraq Intel

The White House and the CIA exaggerated claims made by the source known as “Curveball” on prewar Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts and ignored warnings on his unreliability, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday (see GSN, April 8).

The Iraqi defector was the primary source for U.S. claims that Saddam Hussein’s regime was operating a biological weapons program. However, his handlers in German intelligence said his information was vague, secondhand and could not be confirmed.

“This was not substantial evidence,” said a senior German intelligence official, one of five to speak to the Times. “We made clear we could not verify the things he said.”

The official who supervised Curveball’s case said the informant had mental difficulties. “He is not a stable, psychologically stable guy,” the official said.

While Curveball’s role has been well documented regarding the collection of bad intelligence on Iraq, the Times said its investigation shows that mistakes in the case were far worse than previously reported. 

The Bush administration ignored U.N. evidence contradicting almost all of Curveball’s claims, instead issuing dramatic warnings about biological weapons before the war, the Times reported.

The CIA, although not able to verify the source’s claims, accepted them and punished agency personnel who questioned his assertions, according to the Times.

With the CIA’s support, President George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address said Iraq had “mobile biological weapons labs” that could produce “germ warfare agents.” In a radio speech a month later the president said Iraq “has at least seven mobile factories” for making biological weapons.

However, Curveball told German intelligence officials that he had helped put together only one truck and had heard of others. He was unable to say what the equipment did, according to the Times.

“His information to us was very vague,” one German official said.

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in a February 2003 presentation on Iraq to the United Nations warned, based on information provided by Curveball, that the trucks could produce enough biological agents “in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people.”

The German supervisor said he was surprised to hear Powell use the information.

“We were shocked,” the official said. “Mein Gott!  We had always told them it was not proven.”

Powell also said at the United Nations that Curveball was present at a 1998 accident that killed 12 Iraqi weapons technicians. German intelligence officials said Curveball “only heard rumors of an accident.”

The CIA has now acknowledged that the information provided by Curveball was a mix of fact, information taken from the Internet and “water cooler gossip.” He provided the information in hopes of receiving a German visa, the Times reported (Drogin/Goetz, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 20).

Meanwhile, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said last week that weapons of mass destruction might still be buried somewhere in Iraq, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Postwar searches of the country have found no evidence of an ongoing WMD program.

“Our troops found 30 Iraqi planes buried in the sands of the al-Taqqadum airfield, west of Baghdad — 30 planes!” Stevens said in a floor speech, using pictures of the buried aircraft to illustrate his comments. “If Saddam Hussein's troops buried one-tenth of their combat aircraft in the desert, who is to say there were no weapons of mass destruction similarly buried?”

Stevens noted Iraq is the size of California. “The materials needed to make weapons of mass destruction could fit in a container the size of a family bathtub,” he said (Liz Ruskin, Anchorage Daily News, Nov. 18).

Also in Washington, Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) last week accused former Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith of deceiving Congress about links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the Associated Press reported.

Levin said Feith had provided “really erroneous and distorted intelligence” about links between terror groups and Iraq. 

The Defense Department’s inspector general is looking into whether Feith “provided a separate channel of intelligence, unbeknownst to the CIA, to the White House — which he did,” Levin said (see GSN, Nov. 18).

The inspector general has asked the Pentagon to identify points of contact for the investigation by Dec. 1.

“The overall objective will be to determine whether personnel assigned to the Office of Special Plans from September 2002 through June 2003 conducted unauthorized, unlawful or inappropriate intelligence activities,” the inspector general’s office wrote in a letter to Feith’s successor, Eric Edelman, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s intelligence chief, Stephen Cambone.

Feith on Friday rejected the allegations.

“These matters have been carefully reviewed already,” he said, referring to a 2004 bipartisan congressional inquiry. “They concluded that my office worked properly and that it in fact improved the intelligence product by asking good questions. I'm confident the Defense Department inspector general will come to the same conclusion.”

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Office of Special Plans, which was set up by Feith to review Iraq intelligence, had already been the focus of numerous inquiries.

“The Office of Special Plans has been the subject of a high degree of scrutiny over the last several months, and one in which every inquiry into it has yielded no findings of improper or unlawful activity,” he said (Robert Burns, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, Nov. 18).

Meanwhile, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) wants millions of documents on Iraq to be declassified, the Associated Press reported.

These documents, written in Arabic, have not been translated because the United States lacks personnel with Arab language skills.

“Most people have acknowledged that we are never going to get through them,” Hoekstra said. He wants to put the documents online as a resource for journalists, academic and researchers, according to AP.

Hoekstra said one document contains information about Iraq’s WMD programs and its connections to terrorist organizations, although he is unsure of its authenticity.

“I am not asserting that this will prove one thing or another,” he said. “One thing it will surely do is give us a much clearer insight into what was going on in the former Iraqi regime than we have today” (Katherine Shrader, Associated Press II/Detroit News, Nov. 18).

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Canada to Spend $250M on WMD Protection Gear

The Canadian military plans to spend more than $250 million on detection and response equipment against the threat of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, the CanWest News Service reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 3).

Equipment to be purchased includes chemical and biological agent sensors, protective gear for soldiers, and computer software that could track the spread of a deadly agent in the event of a terrorist attack.

This would be the Canadian Forces largest acquisition of such equipment, CanWest reported. Some purchases have already been made, while the entire program is expected to be spread over five years.

Canada has made significant strides in WMD protection, CanWest reported. Scientists produced a technique for detecting and identifying chemical agents at a distance of five kilometers, according to Lt. Col. Rick Barker, head of the Canadian Forces nuclear, biological and chemical defense development office (David Pugliese, CanWest News Service, Nov. 20).

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U.S., EU Step Back From Push to Refer Iran to Security Council

Diplomats and officials said the United States and the Europe Union do not plan to push to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors later this week, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Nov. 18).

The move is designed to give Russia more time to persuade Iran to transfer its uranium enrichment activities to Russian soil, according to AP.

Diplomats and European Union and U.S. officials said the referral of Iran to the Security Council is unlikely. A U.S. official said building criticism of the Iraq War caused the White House to wait and build an international consensus on how to handle Iran rather than face a diplomatic setback.

Diplomats and officials said the United States has begun drafting a resolution setting a timetable for Iran to accept the Russian plan or face referral to the Security Council. 

However, these officials doubt this resolution would be introduced at this week’s meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board. Instead, a statement criticizing Tehran’s reluctance to cooperate with the agency probe into its nuclear program is likely (George Jahn, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, Nov. 21).

The change in the U.S. and European Union’s position comes as Iran yesterday dismissed an agency report that it has received documents that could aid efforts to produce a nuclear weapon, the Associated Press reported.

“This is just a media speculation,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. “It is baseless.”

In its latest report on Iran released Friday, the agency revealed that Tehran had turned over documents relating to the shaping of uranium for a nuclear weapon.

Nations have also been worried by Iran’s announcement that it has restarted uranium conversion and that Tehran has not met IAEA demands on its nuclear program, AP reported (Nasser Karimi, Associated Press I/Waterloo Cedar-Falls Courier, Nov. 20).

However, Iran on Saturday said that delivering the document to the U.N. nuclear watchdog was a sign of openness about its nuclear program, Agence France-Presse reported.

The document obtained from the former nuclear network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan contains “procedural requirements for ... the casting and machining of enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms, according to the IAEA report.

The IAEA report “does not reveal a breach of trust in this matter, but settles for mentioning the complete transparence of Iran,” said Mohammad Saeedi, vice chairman of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Nov. 19).

Meanwhile, Iran’s parliament yesterday ordered the government to block inspections of the country’s nuclear sites if Tehran is referred to U.N. Security Council, the Associated Press reported.

The bill received 183 of a possible 197 votes and comes four days before the agency’s Board of Governors convenes to consider the Iranian situation.

The bill now goes to Iran’s Guardian Council for expected ratification, according to AP. It is expected to become law, giving Iran’s government more power to resist international calls to permanently halt uranium enrichment.

“If Iran's nuclear file is referred or reported to the U.N. Security Council, the government will be required to cancel all voluntary measures it has taken and implement all scientific, research and executive programs to enable the rights of the nation under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” the bill said, according to Iranian lawmaker Kazem Jalali.

Cancellation of these voluntary measures would prevent the agency from conducting in-depth inspections of suspect facilities and would allow Iran to restart uranium enrichment, according to AP (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press III/Yahoo!News, Nov. 21).

The European Union today said Iran had “clear obligations” to allow IAEA inspectors to inspect its nuclear facilities, the Associated Press reported.

“We will be considering what the Iranian parliament said,” said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. “The government of Iran is a signatory to the nonproliferation treaty. It has got clear obligations.  It was declared noncompliant with its obligations, because of its failure to meet various undertakings in the safeguards agreement.”

“This is not good news,” Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief, said of the Iranian parliament vote. He added that he hopes progress could be made before IAEA meeting (Associated Press II, Nov. 21).

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Asefi said yesterday that Tehran will not give in to IAEA demands to inspect the site of the former Lavizan physics research center unless “concrete proof” is offered to justify the visit, Agence France-Presse reported.

Asefi said the IAEA report revealed last week does “not contain any negative points” and that the agency’s probe into Iran’s nuclear program should be closed.

“We only work within the framework of the safeguards, and if they come up with concrete proof within the framework of the safeguards and NPT we will consider it,” Asefi said.

He added that under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran is not obligated to give inspectors access to sites but has done so as a “confidence-building” measure.

“They cannot just say we want to talk to this or that person and keep on dragging out the dossier. They should tell us their aims, and these aims should be towards closing the case,” Asefi said (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, Nov. 20).

A source with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said yesterday that uranium conversion at Isfahan is expected soon to stop temporarily, Agence France-Presse reported.

The source said that the work stoppage would not be due to international pressure but is needed to perform maintenance work.

“The maintenance work should have taken place in recent weeks, but we decided to keep the plant in operation. The repairs were delayed until after the [upcoming] IAEA meeting to avoid any misinterpretation,” the official said. “The work will last for 15 days, and (conversion) work will resume immediately afterwards” (Agence France-Presse III/IranMania.com, Nov. 20).

Meanwhile, communist allies of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are expected to pressure the leader to vote against the referral of Iran to the U.N. Security Council, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Nov. 16).

Prakash Karat, leader of the Communist Party of India, said good relations with Iran must continue in order to protect Indian interests. 

“If the government decides to vote against Iran, it should be viewed seriously as the focus should be on Indian interests, without succumbing to outside pressures,” he said.

Karat last week said he would bring the issue up in parliament is Singh notes to refer Iran to the Security Council. Singh depends on communist support in parliament, according to AP (Ashok Sharma, Associated Press IV, Nov. 20).

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U.S. Urges Chinese Action on North Korea

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill on Saturday said that China, in regards to North Korea’s nuclear program, needs to “take a little more responsibility for cleaning up that mess,” Reuters reported (see GSN, Nov. 18).

Hill made his comments while attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea. 

“We just finished a round last week, and we hope to get going in a few more weeks,” Hill said. “We have many options for dealing with this problem, but diplomacy is the best one. The one option we don't have is to walk away.”

Hill said China had failed to stop North Korea from producing a nuclear weapon, and therefore Beijing should do more to end the situation.

“I think it's time for the Chinese to take a little more responsibility for cleaning up that mess,” he said.

Hill also said that details on how to implement a September nuclear disarmament agreement with North Korea are still being worked out.

“North Korea is saying, we need you first to recognize us, first give us help, give us a lot of economic help, and then we'll think about getting rid of the weapons. But it’s going to be the other way around,” he said (Elaine Lies, Reuters, Nov. 19).

Leaders meeting at the forum demanded “substantive progress” in talks over Pyongyang’s program, Agence France-Presse reported.

Leaders from 21 nations agreed that while “positive steps” had been achieved in September, more action is needed after talks stalled earlier this month, according to South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.

“Moreover the leaders urged further substantive progress in the six-party talks and in particular the faithful implementation of the joint statement under the principle of commitment for commitment and action for action,” Roh said. “We hope that such progress will contribute to peace, stability and prosperity in this region” (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 19).

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Verdict Delayed in Nuclear Shipment Case

A Dutch court on Friday delayed its verdict until next month in the case of a businessman suspected of making illicit shipments of nuclear technology to Pakistan, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Nov. 7).

Prosecutors are seeking an 18-month sentence for Henk Slebos, 62, who is accused of sending dual-use technology to Pakistan without the required permit on five occasions between 1999 and 2002. Slebos has pleaded not guilty.

The court said Friday it would make an interim ruling that day, to be followed by a final ruling on Dec. 16, AP reported (Associated Press, Nov. 18).

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Trial of Dutch Businessman Tied to Chemical Attacks in Iraq Scheduled to Begin Today

The trial of Frans van Anraat, a Dutch businessman accused of supplying Saddam Hussein in the 1980s with an important ingredient of mustard gas, is scheduled to begin today in the Netherlands, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 8).

Van Anraat was arrested last year in connection with the 1988 gas attack of Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja. He is the first person to go to court on charges related to the massacre, said Philipe Grant of the human rights organization Trial Watch.

The indictment alleges that van Arrant supplied Saddam Hussein with chemicals used to prepare the mustard gas used in the attack. He also faces charges connected to chemical attacks in two additional Iraqi villages, and seven Iranian villages from 1986 to 1988, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 21).

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Work at Newport Chemical Depot Resumes

Weapons disposal resumed Saturday at the U.S. Army’s Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana after workers replaced faulty gaskets on a neutralization reactor that leaked 490 gallons of wastewater last month (see GSN, Nov. 9).

Gasket failure has been identified as the cause of the Oct. 29 spill. All 88 gaskets are being replaced on the facility’s two reactors. Work on the second reactor tank is expected to take another three weeks, according to AP.

These reactors are being used to destroy 250,000 gallons of VX stored at Newport. To date, 6,571 gallons have been processed (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Nov. 19).

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 chemical munitions have been safely processed at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Alabama, according to an Army Chemical Materials Agency press statement.

“Reaching the milestone reflects the workers’ continued dedication to safe operations and the successful conclusion of our mission,” said Army site project manager Timothy Garrett in the press release.

Since work began in August 2003, Anniston has processed 100,750 weapons and 82,831 gallons of the nerve agent sarin. All M55 rockets, 8-inch projectiles and 155 mm projectiles containing the nerve agent have been destroyed. A “significant percentage” of 105 mm rockets have also been destroyed. Work on the sarin weapons is expected to be completed by early next year, according to the release.

“We originally planned to complete the GB campaign by the end of the year. We are proceeding safely and deliberately,” said plant manager Ken Ankrom in a prepared statement.

Once the 105 mm rockets are destroyed, workers will start preparing the facility to destroy VX nerve agent. Processing of M55 rockets filled with VX is expected to begin in spring 2006 (U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency release, Nov. 18).

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Argentina Joins U.S. Container Security Initiative

The Argentine port at Buenos Aires has become the 41st port to join the U.S. Container Security Initiative, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service announced last week (see GSN, April 29).

Cargo heading to the United States from Buenos Aires will now be screened for weapons of mass destruction or other materials that could be used by terrorists, the agency said in a press release.

“CSI is a way of addressing the threat to global trade making it more secure against terrorist exploitation, and Argentina was the first South American country to agree to participate,” CBP Commissioner Robert Bonner said in the release. His agency “will continue to cast out the CSI security blanket to additional foreign ports.”

Ports in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and North and South America now participate in the effort. Roughly 75 percent of U.S.-bound cargo move through those facilities.

Customs and Border Protection plans to increase the number of CSI ports to 50 by the end of next year, the press release states. That would raise the screening level of all trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific containers heading toward the United States to 90 percent (U.S. Customs and Border Protection press release, Nov. 17).

Bonner in September announced that he would leave Customs and Border Protection after leading the agency for four years.

“I moved back to Washington on Sept. 10, 2001, and I’ve been going a mile a minute since the morning of 9/11,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I believe I have accomplished a lot here, but that’s for others to judge. I do need a change.”

Bonner developed the Container Security Initiative and the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, which studies the chain of supply of foreign materials.

“America is better protected, and I can say that without any equivocation,” he said. “We are better than we’ve ever been in terms of preventing terrorist operatives or weapons from entering the United States.”

The former federal judge and Drug Enforcement Administration chief said he might again become a private-practice attorney (Ricardo Alonso-Zalvidar, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 28).

Bonner is expected to depart this month, the Washington Times reported (Jerry Seper, Washington Times, Nov. 16).

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