Vaccine Liability Measure Appears Set for Passage

A congressional measure boosting liability protection for vaccine producers could be approved in a matter of days by being attached to a defense appropriations bill, the Christian Science Monitor reported today (see GSN, Oct. 26).

People who suffer side effects from a vaccine would find it more difficult to sue the manufacturer if the treatment was being used during a national health emergency as designated by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. 

This plan and similar measures are meant to promote corporate development of vaccines to counter natural outbreaks of disease such as avian flu or acts of bioterrorism.

“It looks like the liability-protection language is in (the defense bill), which will be very difficult for (members of Congress) to vote against,” said Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center.

Fisher called the bill “a threat to civil rights, to access to the judicial system, and to human rights.”

Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.) in October introduced legislation that would provide liability protection for companies and create the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency to direct U.S. biological defense research (see GSN, Oct. 19). Movement on Burr’s bill has slowed and is now expected to be revised and reintroduced in 2006, the Monitor reported. It was not known how the new plan might affect the future of Burr’s proposal.

Government watchdogs have questioned components of Burr’s bill that would largely exempt the new agency from standard Freedom of Information Act and Federal Advisory Committee Act requirements for public transparency. The legislation would also free the agency from certain federal cost oversight requirements.

“I don’t know of any other agency in the government that has been given that kind of authority,” said Pete Weitzel, coordinator for the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government.

“(The Burr bill) was breathtaking in its scope in the way it wanted to completely exclude this new agency from FOIA,” said Lucy Dalgish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The measure added to the defense appropriations bill might not include such secrecy components, the Monitor reported (Gregory Lamb, Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 15).

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U.S. Right to Invade Iraq, Bush Says

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday said he accepted responsibility for bad intelligence on prewar Iraq’s WMD programs, but said removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision (see GSN, Dec. 9).

“In an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long,” Bush said in a speech, according to Agence France-Presse.

“As president, I’m responsible for the decision to go into Iraq — and I’m also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we’re doing just that,” he added.

Bush said that this week’s parliamentary elections in Iraq are “a watershed moment in the story of freedom. Iraq would be “a model for the Middle East. Freedom in Iraq will inspire reformers from Damascus to Tehran,” he said.

Bush, in an interview with Fox News, acknowledged making some errors.

“No question we made some, I would call them, tactical mistakes,” he said.

Bush rejected accusations that the White House misused intelligence to make its case for war. 

“These charges are pure politics. They hurt the morale of our troops,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Dec. 14).

A Japanese official said today that Iraq’s history of WMD development and use made the invasion reasonable, the Associated Press reported.

“Based on the existing fact that Iraq used weapons of mass destruction and biochemical weapons in the past, Japan had a rational reason to assume that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction,” said Shinzo Abe, Japanese chief cabinet secretary (Associated Press, Dec, 15).

Retired Israeli Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon argued that Iraq moved its chemical weapons to Syria before the U.S.-led invasion

Hussein “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria,” Yaalon told the New York Sun. “No one went to Syria to find it.”

“We don’t have any way to find anything out about Syria because we don’t have intelligence,” said Entifadh Qanbar, an official at the Iraqi Embassy in Washington (Ira Stoll, The New York Sun, Dec. 15).

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Kazakhstani Parliament Ratifies Export Controls

A Eurasian Economic Community agreement on dual-use technology export controls was ratified last month by the parliament of Kazakhstan and submitted to President Nursultan Nazarbayev for final approval, RIA Novosti reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 1).

The measure is designed to block misdirection of materials, equipment and technology that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The Eurasec territory encompasses Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have already ratified the dual-use materials pact, according to RIA Novosti (RIA Novosti, Dec. 14).

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Bush Administration Official Appeals for Multilateralism in Fight Against WMD Proliferation

“Effective multilateralism” and “zero tolerance” for nonproliferation treaty violations are essential in the struggle to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, a senior State Department official said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 22).

U.S. experts are working with governments around the world to help strengthen export controls, said Stephen Rademaker, assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation.  Washington also works with Russia and other former Soviet states through threat reduction programs to secure and eliminate WMD-related facilities and materials, he said during a conference in Indonesia.

The U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, a series of bilateral interdiction agreements, aims to prevent illicit transfers of WMD-related materials on the high seas. PSI partners have cooperated on 11 successful interdictions in less than three years, Rademaker said. The initiative includes 70 states that are “cooperating as never before to interdict shipments, disrupt proliferation networks, and to hold accountable the front companies that support them,” he said.

Rademaker encouraged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional forum and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to press their nonproliferation efforts and called for a “zero tolerance” policy for nonproliferation treaty violations.

“We cannot allow rogue states that violate their commitments and defy the international community to undermine the fundamental role of these treaties in strengthening international security,” he said (U.S. State Department release, Dec. 14).

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U.S., Australian Militaries Plan for New Threats

The militaries of the United States and Australia are planning significant changes in order to better focus on the treats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, according to reports this week (see GSN, Aug. 8).

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to release the quadrennial long-range plan for the Pentagon in early 2006, the Associated Press reported. He is looking to craft a military able to move faster and better equipped to deal with terrorists and unconventional weapons, according to AP.

Cost-savings are expected to come through personnel cuts rather than from weapons programs, AP reported. Options being considered include: cutting 40,000 active duty, reserve and civilian Air Force positions over six years; eliminating three National Guard brigades, a potential total of more than 10,000 positions; and trimming a planned increase of active Army forces (Lolita Baldor, Associated Press/HeraldTribune.com, Dec. 14).

Australia’s Defense Force will gain 1,500 new troops and be divided into more flexible battle groups, AFX reported today.

The army now has 51,000 service people. The new structure is expected to make it more mobile and to increase the amount of time it could stay in combat situations.

“Defeating the threat of terrorism, countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and supporting regional states in difficulty remains the government’s highest priorities,” said Defense Minister Robert Hill (AFX, Dec. 15).

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Clarification

In an Oct. 13 article about the readiness of emergency personnel to respond to terrorist attacks involving radiation, GSN incorrectly suggested that Chris L'Heureux, a senior staff member of Canada Health, spoke in an official capacity. Rather, he spoke as a Canadian subject matter expert.

In addition, the article did not make clear that Canada Health is the lead federal department responsible for coordinating the response to a nuclear or radiological emergency. Furthermore, the article incorrectly reported that L'Heureux said that poor training among first responders could exacerbate a radiological incident.

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Hobson Claims Promise on “Bunker-Buster” Test

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — In potentially a significant blow to Bush administration efforts to research and develop a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, U.S. Representative David Hobson (R-Ohio) said yesterday he received assurances from Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman that the proposed weapon would not be tested at a DOE facility (see GSN, Dec. 14).

Speaking at an event sponsored by the Center for American Progress, Hobson said Bodman pledged that a planned “sled test” of the weapon’s shell and a mock warhead would not take place as planned at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

“We have a commitment from the secretary of energy that he will not allow that test at Sandia,” said Hobson, who chairs the House Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee.

“I don’t care where else they do it, as long as they do it at a DOD site. If they do it at a DOD site, that sends the right messages that it’s not a nuclear test. And I think if they do it at a national lab, it sends the wrong” one,” he said.

The Energy Department has been assembling at Sandia a huge block of concrete, into which the mock weapon would be slammed at high speed from a sled track to test its ability to reach buried and hardened targets. In a letter to Congress in October the department argued that moving the test to a Defense Department facility would be costly (see GSN, Nov. 4).

“Construction of the target, while on hold since December 2004 when the FY 2005 budget was signed, is close to complete at SNL.  Moving the work to another location would increase costs significantly (many millions of dollars), require unnecessary and redundant safety analyses, and cause significant adverse logistical and schedule impacts,” according to that letter.

Critics of the program have said that moving the test away from the Energy Department could help ensure that it would not benefit a nuclear penetrator, while still potentially providing information on the feasibility of improved conventional penetrators. Following Hobson’s lead, Congress — just as it did last year — approved no money for fiscal 2006 that would enable the Energy Department to continue study of the nuclear “bunker buster.”

A senior Air Force official appears to have undermined the case made by critics in comments published in Defense Daily.

Billy Mullins, the deputy director of strategic security for the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for air and space operations, said the purpose of the sled test was to develop a nuclear penetrator, that the test would be conducted this fiscal year, and that Energy Department participation would not be needed. He said data from the test could be fed into computers to determine how well a nuclear warhead would operate after impact with solid earth.

Hobson said yesterday he intended to continue opposing administration attempts to complete a feasibility study of the penetrator. He said the program is a waste of money because the potential for high casualties makes the weapon unlikely to be used and that it undermines U.S. efforts to promote global nonproliferation.

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New Delhi Will Not Tolerate Changes to India-U.S. Nuclear Technology Sale Agreement

India would reject any amendments to a planned nuclear technology sharing deal with the United States that has yet to be approved by the U.S. Congress, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Dec. 7).

New Delhi views the July pact as a “binding commitment” that should proceed on the basis of “strict reciprocity,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told his parliament today.

“If the U.S. does not carry out its obligations, we are also free not to carry out our obligations,” he said.

Implementation of the agreement would be guided “fully and entirely” by the July joint statement by Singh and U.S. President George W. Bush, said Junior Foreign Minister Rao Inderjit Singh.

“It has been made very clear to the U.S. ... that our commitments and obligations would only be those that have been spelled out in the joint statement,” he said.

A second meeting of the two countries’ Nuclear Working Group is scheduled for this month in Washington, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 15).

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EU Diplomats Anticipate Difficult Nuclear Talks With Iran, Prepare to Lobby Russia

The European Union and Iran are scheduled to resume nuclear negotiations Wednesday, but diplomats expressed skepticism about the possibility of any progress in resolving the dispute, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 9).

“I fear that we’ll just be going through the motions when we meet with the Iranians,” said a diplomat from one the European powers.

“The real diplomatic work at the moment is trying to bring the Russians on board so we can take this to the Security Council,” said the diplomat.

A second EU diplomat said negotiating partners France, Germany and the United Kingdom want to keep Iran’s nuclear dossier separate from the regime’s political views at the talks.

“It serves no good purpose if one went overboard with reaction and linked things,” the diplomat said.

Another diplomat said the talks would allow the European Union to “make a final plea to the Iranians before going to the Security Council.”

The West is likely to lobby Russia for support of Security Council referral after the meeting, the diplomat added (Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, Dec. 14).

The United States and Europe should provide more funding for outreach to the Iranian people, a U.S. official said yesterday.

“In addition to our efforts to deal with the nuclear challenge in 2006, the United States and Europe should assemble an agenda for hope for Iran,” said Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried.

“By agenda for hope I mean an agenda which is directed at support for the Iranian people and the Iranian society and what we believe are universal aspirations, and therefore shared by the Iranian people and Iranian society, of freedom and democracy,” he said (Carol Giacomo, Reuters/Yahoo!News, Dec. 14).

U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday renewed his labeling of Iran as part of an “axis of evil,” AFP reported.

“I called it part of the ‘axis of evil’ for a reason,” Bush said. “It’s a real threat.”

“I’m concerned about [a] theocracy that has got little transparency, a country whose president has declared the destruction of Israel as part of their foreign policy, and a country that will not listen to the demands of the free world to get rid of its ambitions to have a nuclear weapon,” he said.

Asked about his administration’s policy on Iran, Bush said, “We continue to work the diplomatic front” (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, Dec. 14).

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s most recent anti-Israel comments drew unusually harsh condemnation from the European Union, which warned he is damaging Iran’s position in nuclear talks, AP reported.

“It calls our attention to the real danger of that regime having an atomic bomb,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said yesterday.

Iranians “do not have the president, or the regime, they deserve,” he added (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Dec. 15).

Meanwhile, Pakistan announced it would oppose any military action against Iran over its nuclear program, AFP reported yesterday.

“The issue should be settled within the framework of the” International Atomic Energy Agency said Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri (Agence France-Presse III/Yahoo!News, Dec. 14).

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North Korea Denies Financial Misconduct Allegations

North Korea today rejected U.S. allegations of currency counterfeiting and other illicit financial activity, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Dec. 8).

“The D.P.R.K. has never issued counterfeit notes nor had ever been engaged in any illegal dealings,” Pyongyang’s official news agency announced.

“Such illegal activities are unimaginable in the D.P.R.K. in the light of its nature and mission,” it said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Dec. 15).

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department has issued an advisory warning banks to be cautious of potential misdeeds by Pyongyang, the Associated Press reported today.

“U.S. financial institutions should take reasonable steps to guard against the abuse of their financial services by North Korea, which may be seeking to establish new or exploit existing account relationships” for illicit activities, says the advisory, issued Tuesday (William Mann, Associated Press, Dec. 15).

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Judge Orders U.S. to Disclose Rail-Security Documents; D.C. Says Secret Plan Should Be Included

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A federal judge’s order issued yesterday should require the Bush administration at last to hand over a secret rail-security plan for the District of Columbia, according to the D.C. Attorney General’s Office (see GSN, Sept. 22).

In a case in which the federal government and rail operator CSX are challenging what is effectively a ban on carrying certain toxic materials over D.C. rails, District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the federal Transportation and Homeland Security departments to go farther than they have in responding to a discovery request for information from the District and the Sierra Club.

“This is a major victory for the city,” said D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson, who sponsored the new city law. “It is critical that federal agencies be called to account for their failures to protect this and other at-risk cities, rather than hiding behind the cloak of secrecy.”

In adopting the new law, D.C. officials and lawmakers cited concerns that terrorists could blow up trains carrying chlorine, which has been historically used as a chemical weapon, as a way of carrying out a chemical attack without having to procure the chemical agents.

Sullivan earlier this year criticized the federal government’s use of a “secret” plan to protect the rails and its refusal to share the plan with D.C. officials.

The judge succeeded in September in obtaining the plan for his own viewing. City officials have not yet been granted access to the plan, but Sullivan’s order yesterday requires the federal government to share it with the District, D.C. Attorney General’s Office spokeswoman Traci Hughes said today.

Sullivan instructed the United States to conduct “a good-faith search” of files at the Homeland Security and Transportation departments, including the latter’s Surface Transportation Board, for additional documents relevant to a D.C.-Sierra Club request to which he had already instructed the federal government to respond.

Sullivan also instructed the federal government to draw up a “detailed log of all documents and information that it seeks to withhold under any claim of privilege (including classification as sensitive security information).” He set Jan. 31 as the deadline by which the federal government must yield the new documents to the city.

The order follows the city’s allegation in a Nov. 18 filing that the federal government “unilaterally” and “in defiance of the plain language of the court’s order” had decided to disclose only documents involved in making and enforcing a 2003 Transportation Department rule on hazardous materials-transport security.

Sierra Club legal expert Jim Dougherty said the discovery response should have been much broader.

“What we’re looking for is anything that they either produced or relied upon when they were making their decision about rerouting,” he said.

Until the lawsuit is resolved, the city and railroad company have reached a voluntary agreement under which CSX is rerouting the materials away from at least one of its two lines through the District.

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U.S. Missile Defense Interceptor Test Called Success; Criticism Continues

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Missile Defense Agency conducted a successful test of its long-range, ground-based missile interceptor Tuesday, the first success after two failures in the past year (see GSN, Oct. 7).

Missile defense supporters, however, continued to criticize the program as insufficiently capable and argued the administration should be prioritizing other interceptor technologies (see GSN, Nov. 30).

In a press release Tuesday, the agency said the “operationally configured” interceptor of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system was launched that day from a base in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. The purpose of the flight was to test the interceptor rocket motor system and the component designed to strike and destroy an incoming missile in space.

“Initial indications are that the rocket motor system and kill vehicle performed well,” the press release said. Several other system parts — including silo support equipment and booster/kill vehicle separation — also functioned correctly.

Rather than use a live target, the test involved a “simulated” launch using previous data from targets, the release said.

The last two tests of operationally configured interceptors, in December 2004 and February of this year, failed when the missiles failed to leave their silos. The agency, which has installed nine such interceptors in Alaska and California, attributed the failures to quality control and technical glitches.

During the test Tuesday, the interceptor successfully exited the silo. Missile Defense Agency Director Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering at a conference in Washington yesterday ran a video clip showing the interceptor beginning flight from several different camera angles.

“We put the entire kill vehicle through its paces, and it was extremely successful. We actually exceeded the test objectives,” he said.

The test did not mollify critics.

“When ballistic missile warheads coming at you are small, cold and fast, namely, after they are well up into space and after separation [from the rocket booster], is not the time to try to shoot them down. The time to shoot them down is when they are still on boosters and the target is large,” former CIA director James Woolsey said at the conference.

Three additional tests of the interceptor system are scheduled for next year. The third launch is expected to include an attempt to hit a real target. The Missile Defense Agency has successfully hit target missiles in five of 10 tests (see GSN, Sept. 8).

Missile defense advocates yesterday at the conference organized by the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Fletcher School of Tufts University, criticized the administration’s focus on the ground-based system, as others have recently.

Development of a ground-based system is a legacy of the Cold War, sustained by politics and “bureaucratic inertia,” said Henry Cooper, chairman of the nongovernmental High Frontier, who said he favors pursuing sea-, space- and air-based approaches to hitting missiles during their boost phase. 

Responding to a question from the audience, Obering said the agency remains committed to upgrading the capability of the ground-based system, despite report this year it had given up efforts to make the system more effective (see GSN, Oct. 7).

Congressional concerns to that effect, he said, were based on a misunderstanding of the administration’s intentions.

“That was based on a chart that I think that somebody had gotten their hands on as we were going through some of our budget bills and it was not taken in what I would call the right context.”

He said the agency plans future upgrades to help the ground-based system defeat defensive countermeasures by developing, for example, miniature interceptors that would destroy both enemy warheads and decoys. 

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Japan Anticipates Paying One-Third of Costs for Joint Missile Defense Program With U.S.

Japan announced today that it expects to provide one-third of the funding for an antiballistic missile system it is planning to develop with the United States, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Dec. 6).

“The Japanese government estimates the cost would be about $1.0 to $1.2 billion for the development program,” said a Defense Agency spokeswoman. The agency requested $25.56 million for fiscal 2006 for the project, she added.

The Yomiuri Shimbun had previously reported that Washington envisioned an even split on costs for the system with Tokyo, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 15).

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