U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, shown at a Jan. 18 hearing to review her nomination to serve as secretary of state, has continued to suggest that Iraq posed a WMD threat prior to the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 (AFP photo/Tim Sloan). Bush and Rice Insist on Prewar Iraqi Threat Despite ISG Report By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Senior Bush administration officials in recent weeks have continued to suggest that Iraq could have threatened the United States with weapons of mass destruction, despite conclusions by the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group that the country did not have such weapons, nor intended to use any against the United States (see GSN, Jan. 18). How officials are characterizing the threat, however, appears to have changed. While administration officials previously said Iraq had or sought weapons of mass destruction in order to commit aggression, they now say that an Iraqi threat stemmed from the former regime and its leader’s brutal nature — paralleling President George W. Bush’s statements in his inauguration address last week that “tyranny” is the greatest threat facing the United States today...Full Story

U.S. Favors Diplomatic Solution on Iran, Straw Says The United States favors diplomacy in dealing with Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said yesterday after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice (see GSN, Jan. 24)...Full Story

Additional Tularemia Exposure Incidents at Boston University Microbiology Laboratory Revealed The tularemia exposures of three researchers disclosed by Boston University last week were not the first at the Clinical Microbiology and Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, New Scientist reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 24)...Full Story

	Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Bush Nominates Michael Jackson as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Department U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday nominated Michael P. Jackson to serve as deputy homeland security secretary, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Jan. 11). Jackson, who has previously served as deputy treasury secretary and is now an executive with the engineering firm AECOM Technology Corp., would replace current Deputy Homeland Security Secretary James Loy. Loy is set to leave the department March 1, the Post reported. Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson also submitted his resignation yesterday, the Post reported. Hutchinson, who headed the department’s Border and Transportation Security directorate, is expected to stay until March 1. He is reportedly considering a run for governor of Arkansas (John Mintz, Washington Post, Jan. 25). Back to top

Bush and Rice Insist on Prewar Iraqi Threat Despite ISG Report By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Senior Bush administration officials in recent weeks have continued to suggest that Iraq could have threatened the United States with weapons of mass destruction, despite conclusions by the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group that the country did not have such weapons, nor intended to use any against the United States (see GSN, Jan. 18). How officials are characterizing the threat, however, appears to have changed. While administration officials previously said Iraq had or sought weapons of mass destruction in order to commit aggression, they now say that an Iraqi threat stemmed from the former regime and its leader’s brutal nature — paralleling President George W. Bush’s statements in his inauguration address last week that “tyranny” is the greatest threat facing the United States today. “The removal of [former Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein has made America safer because a dictator, a tyrant, a thug, with whom we had been at war in the past, who was destabilizing a vital part of the world, who was paying the families of suicide bombers, is no longer in power. And he no longer has the capacity to reconstitute a weapons program,” Bush said in an interview with ABC News reporter Barbara Walters that aired Jan. 14. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice concurred during her preconfirmation hearing for secretary of state last week. “It was case that, yes, that the threat that this horrible dictator sitting in the Middle East, in the world’s most dangerous region, with whom we had gone to war … before, who had used weapons of mass destruction, who was shooting at our aircraft, that it was not acceptable to have him with weapons of mass destruction,” Rice said. “We weren’t prepared to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt, given his history and given the shadow of the future,” she said. For Security and Prestige The Iraq Survey Group, which pulled out of Iraq last month, concluded in its most recently released report that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction prior to the war, nor active programs or even written plans to develop and build nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Moreover, the report, titled “Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD,” found that Hussein had no intention of attacking the United States or its allies with nonconventional weapons and that Hussein had desired them for defense — mainly to balance suspected Iranian banned-weapons capabilities. While Hussein intended “to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD,” the report said, “Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of this policy,” and to a lesser degree “a wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerations.” Hussein viewed such weapons primarily as a means of ensuring the regime’s survival, it said. “In Saddam’s view, WMD helped to save the Regime multiple times,” it said, citing chemical weapons used during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war to halt Iranian ground offensives, a belief the WMD threat had prevented U.S. forces from pushing to Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War, and the suspected use of chemical weapons against revolting Shiite Iraqis in 1991. The report’s conclusions were based on interviews with former Iraqi regime officials who said the United States was not a target. “Saddam did not consider the United States a natural adversary, as he did Iran and Israel, and he hoped that Iraq might again enjoy improved relations with the United States, according to Tariq Aziz and the presidential secretary,” it said. Iraq did not come clean about destroying its weapons as required by the United Nations, the report said, because Hussein hoped to maintain a deterrent against Iran and did not believe the United States would attack. “Even if Saddam had some intention of restarting his banned weapon programs in the future, all the evidence indicates that his concern was his domestic opposition and regional adversaries — most importantly, Iran,” said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There is just no evidence whatsoever to support the claim that Saddam was a serious threat, a growing threat or an uncertain threat,” he said. Democratic senators last week pressed Rice to concede an error on the decision to invade. An admission of error on invading Iraq, however, might undermine support for the Iraq war, as well as for any future application of the administration’s preventive war doctrine, which holds that the United States may attack a country to prevent it from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, out of suspicion the weapons would be shared with terrorists, according to critics. “An admission they were wrong … would undermine support for taking other actions, for example against Iran,” Cirincione said (see related GSN story, today). Administration Suggested Iraqi Intent Administration officials prior to the war had argued that Iraq possessed banned weapons and intended to attack the United States or its interests with them.   When Bush first publicly made a case for preventive war in his 2002 State of the Union address he said that “rogue” states such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea were acquiring such weapons in order to commit aggression. “Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction.  Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th.  But we know their true nature,” he said in the 2002 address. “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world,” he said.   A key White House document, the September 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, made a similar claim.  “In the 1990s we witnessed the emergence of a small number of rogue states that, while different in important ways, share a number of attributes. These states … are determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, along with other advanced military technology, to be used as threats or offensively to achieve the aggressive designs of these regimes,” it said. “We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends,” it said. In a key speech just before the war began, Bush again suggested that Hussein sought unconventional weapons for aggression. “In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth,” he said. The speech also argued, as officials had previously, that a conspiracy to attack with unconventional weapons can be difficult to detect. “Terrorists and terror states do not reveal these threats with fair notice, in formal declarations — and responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide. The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now,” Bush said. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in an interview with PBS on Jan. 19, said the Sept. 11 attacks made officials more aware of the threat. “Sept. 11 came along, and suddenly we had to think about the possibility of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists with a completely different assessment of risks,” he said. Critics have charged, however, that the administration made an unwarranted leap of logic following the Sept. 11 attacks regarding that possibility.  That Islamic terrorists attacked the United States using hijacked airplanes as missiles, they said, does not indicate that countries including Iraq, then with a secular government and apparently no ties to the strikes, would have shared weapons of mass destruction with a terrorist group to attack the United States and risk annihilation if discovered. The attacks produced a U.S. reaction “that did not necessarily have a direct, logical connection to what had taken place,” Milton Leitenberg, an arms-control expert at the University of Maryland, wrote in 2002. New Focus on Tyranny Critics contend the Duelfer report findings have undermined the preventive war argument. “Whatever the Hussein regime once had is gone because the international community insisted. It was all destroyed a decade ago, under world pressure,” the New York Times said in a Jan. 13 editorial. “This is not a lesson that many people in power in Washington are prepared to carry away, but it is what the national adventure in the reckless doctrine of preventive warfare has to teach us,” it said. The administration’s recent, more general focus on the nature of regimes as a source of threat may be a result of that, Crowley said. “Once argument A has been disproved, you go to argument B and go to argument C and each time you’ve recast the adversary in larger terms and now what we’ve seen with the inauguration is literally something taken to its extreme,” he said. Tyranny and oppression are at the roots of the gravest U.S. security threats today and must be eliminated, Bush said in his second inaugural address last week. “We have seen our vulnerability — and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny — prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder — violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat,” he said. “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion,” he said. “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.” Cirincione said he suspects Bush’s emphasis on tyranny and oppression, rather than as previously on unconventional weapons possession or suspected intent to use them, is an attempt to argue a new justification for attacking countries such as Iran, which is suspected of developing nuclear weapons. “They are laying the case for military action against Iran and there’s no proof that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. What you have are the same kinds of assumptions and suspicions that swirled around Iraq and the conviction among the administration that they know what the Iranians are up to,” he said. Such an emphasis on eliminating tyrannical regimes would undermine efforts to negotiate Iranian and North Korean disarmament, he said. “You cannot negotiate the disarmament of a nation if your avowed goal is to overthrow the government of that nation,” he said. Unidentified White House officials, however, have reportedly said that that the speech did not indicate a policy change.  Bush’s father, former President George H. W. Bush, said the speech should not be interpreted by foreign governments and the American people as a prelude to a more aggressive and bellicose foreign policy in his second term, according to an Associated Press story on Saturday. William Kristol, writing in the Jan. 31 issue of The Weekly Standard, wrote the speech may herald a new approach to policy. Of so-called “outlaw regimes, he wrote, “for those nations we intend to promote regime change — primarily through peaceful means, but not ruling out military force in the case of threats to us.” Back to top

U.S. Favors Diplomatic Solution on Iran, Straw Says The United States favors diplomacy in dealing with Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said yesterday after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice (see GSN, Jan. 24). “The issue of a military option simply wasn’t raised today,” Straw said, according to Agence France-Presse. Straw added that the difficulty remains in deciding how ensure that Iran’s future activities are “entirely for peaceful purposes and (that) there’s no intention, no possibility, that it’s being used for nuclear weapons purposes” (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Jan. 25). For its part, however, Iran would not yet engage the United States in direct negotiations, a spokesman said yesterday. “We have said before that if anyone wants to talks to us in a threatening language, we will adopt the same tone,” said Iranian government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Jan. 24). Meanwhile, Meir Dagan, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, told the Israeli parliament yesterday that Iran could acquire the capability to design and construct a nuclear weapon by the end of the year, and could build one within a year or two after that, said parliament spokesman Giora Pordes. Vice Premier Shimon Peres said he believes the United States would continue to seek a diplomatic solution to the situation, and that Israel would not lead any military intervention, the Associated Press reported. “The United States has to decide, not us,” Peres told Israel Army Radio. “If we go it alone, we will remain alone. Everyone knows our potential but we also have to know our limits. As long as there is a possibility that the world will organize to fight against Iran’s nuclear option, let the world organize.” “I don’t think that the United States will begin with a military attack,” Peres added. “The United States says itself that it wants a diplomatic offensive first, then maybe economic pressure.” Peres indicated, however, that military action had not been ruled out (Associated Press, Jan. 24). Elsewhere, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder rejected any military option against Iran. “What has been achieved there so far must be lastingly sustained,” Schroeder said. “We are of the opinion that this must be pursued exclusively with diplomatic and peaceful, not military, means” (Bloomberg, Jan. 24). Back to top       China Denies Knowing of North Korea Uranium Program A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said today that his country’s leadership has not taken a stance on the existence of a North Korean uranium-enrichment program, contradicting a report published yesterday in Japan’s Nihon Keizai business newspaper, Reuters reported (see GSN, Jan. 24). “We have expressed our position many times, including on the enriched uranium issue,” said spokesman Kong Quan. “We have no understanding of this situation,” he added. “We think this issue should be clarified within the framework of the six-party talks” (Reuters, Jan. 25). Meanwhile, a senior aide to South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said yesterday that North Korea is likely to agree to another round of talks on its nuclear program late next month or in early March, the Yonhap news agency reported. “I assume North Koreans will come out for the talks by then, because North Korea will (first) have to analyze the confirmation hearings of U.S. Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush’s inaugural speech and State of the Union address in early February,” said Moon Jung-in (Yonhap/BBC Monitoring, Jan. 24). Back to top       Egypt Fully Abiding by Nuclear Nonproliferation Commitments, Foreign Minister Says Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu Gheit said yesterday that his country is adhering “100 percent” to its nuclear nonproliferation commitments, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, Jan. 21). After discovering evidence of past undeclared Egyptian nuclear experiments, the International Atomic Energy Agency has been investigating a plutonium reprocessing laboratory outside of Cairo that is believed to have never been used. Gheit praised Egypt’s relations with the agency, adding that Cairo was cooperating with the investigation. “I think that very soon the IAEA is going to come to the point when it will give Egypt a 100 percent clean bill of health, as we are 100 percent in line with the rules,” Gheit said (Agence France-Presse/TurkishPress.com, Jan. 24). Back to top       U.S. Customs to Deploy Radiation Detection Portals The United States plans to use radiation detection portals to screen vehicles at the U.S.-Mexico border to detect possible smuggling of nuclear or radiological materials, the State Department announced yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2004). The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency announced Jan. 21 that the ground-mounted Radiation Portal Monitors would be installed before the end of the month at Calexico, Calif. to screen cars and trucks entering the United States, according to the State Department. The monitors are “passive devices” that “do not emit any radiation and are completely safe,” Calexico’s Assistant Port Director Al Miramontes said in a press release. The monitors can detect radiation emitted by nuclear devices, “dirty bombs,” and isotopes used in medicine and industry, according to the Customs and Border Protection agency. Customs officers now use hand-held radiation isotope identifier devices and belt-mounted personal radiation detectors at major U.S. airports, seaports and border crossings, according to the press release (U.S. State Department release, Jan. 24). Back to top       Mexico to Host Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone Conference Representatives from more than 100 member nations of the world’s four nuclear weapon-free zones have been invited to attend a conference set to be held April 26-28 in Mexico City, the Mexican Foreign Ministry announced yesterday (see GSN, July 9, 2004). The nuclear weapon-free zones cover Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia and Africa, Kyodo News reported. Mongolia, which declared itself a nuclear weapon-free zone in 1992, would also be invited to the first-ever conference on such sectors, according to Kyodo News. The five nuclear weapon states — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — would be invited as observers. Conference participants are expected to adopt a declaration on the importance of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and to call for full disarmament by the nuclear powers. The nuclear powers would also be urged to offer “effective guarantees” that “they will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against” the non-nuclear nations. The conference would contribute to “the combat against dangers related to the existence and the proliferation of the nuclear weapons,” said Joel Hernandez, general director of the ministry’s United Nations’ System (Kyodo News/Yahoo!News, Jan. 25). Back to top       U.N. Conference on Disarmament Begins New Session The U.N. Conference on Disarmament began a new session yesterday in Geneva that is expected to include discussions on ending the production of weapon-grade nuclear material and on overall nuclear disarmament, according to the Bahrain News Agency (see GSN, Nov. 5, 2004). The session is set to last until April 1 (Bahrain News Agency, Jan. 24). The conference has not been able to perform substantive work for the last six years due to an annual lack of agreement on a program. The main sticking points have been nuclear disarmament and preventing a space arms race. The preliminary agenda of this year’s conference includes: cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament; prevention of nuclear war; prevention of an arms race in outer space; international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon states against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons; new types of weapons of mass destruction, including radiological weapons; and transparency in armaments (United Nations release, Jan. 20). Back to top

Additional Tularemia Exposure Incidents Revealed at Boston University Microbiology Laboratory The tularemia exposures of three researchers disclosed by Boston University last week were not the first at the Clinical Microbiology and Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, New Scientist reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 24). In 2000, 12 people at the facility were exposed to samples from a patient who contracted tularemia from a wild rabbit and died. All but one, who was pregnant, were treated with antibiotics and none became infected, according to New Scientist. Steve Hinrichs of the University of Nebraska — which provided Boston University with the original, supposedly benign, tularemia culture that led to the three infections last year — criticized Boston University for failing to disclose the exposures, in light of plans for a controversial Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory. “That was not appropriate,” Hinrichs told New Scientist. “They’ve circled their wagons without going through the typical academic process of discovery and exchange of information” (Jeff Hecht, New Scientist, Jan. 24). Back to top

Army Delays Start of Chemical Destruction in Indiana Pending Wastewater Treatment Tests The U.S. Army is waiting for DuPont scientists to complete their evaluation of wastewater treatment methods before proceeding with the planned destruction of VX nerve agent at the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Indiana, Defense Environment Alert reported this month (see GSN, Jan. 13). The tests are delaying a report — expected last summer — by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the plan to treat the wastewater created by VX neutralization at a DuPont facility in New Jersey, according to regulatory and industry sources.  The agency’s findings are expected to determine whether the Army is allowed to proceed with the plan. Every day of delay costs about $360,000 to operate the Newport facility, said an Army spokesman. The study is ongoing and there is no schedule for completion, according to a DuPont source. The CDC is waiting for the results before it issues its report, according to an official at the Delaware River Basin Commission, an interstate regulatory organization, and another DuPont source. A CDC spokeswoman would only say that the report was “in clearance,” Defense Environment Alert reported (Defense Environment Alert, Jan. 11). Back to top

Bush Did Not Pressure Canadian Prime Minister on Missile Defense, U.S. Sources Say U.S. officials yesterday rejected reports that President George W. Bush tried to compel Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to join the U.S. missile defense program during a meeting last year in Ottawa (see GSN, Jan. 24). “We clearly would disagree” with that report, said a White House source. Bush “took a conciliatory message to Canada, about moving beyond Iraq and moving forward,” the source said. Reports that Bush attempted to strong-arm Canadian officials are inaccurate, said Terry Breese, a State Department spokesman on Canadian issues. “I wasn’t in the meetings but that’s not the read-out I got. I don’t think it was raised in the manner characterized by the press,” Breese said. Breese acknowledged, however, that Canadian officials may have been surprised when Bush raised the subject in a private meeting with Martin. “It wasn’t an issue any of us wanted to press,” Breese said. “Clearly Canada wasn’t ready to make a decision.” “That’s what happens with leaders. They get to raise what they want to raise,” he added (Beth Gorham, Canadian Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 24). Canada was told in 2003 that joining the program would cost little if Ottawa agreed to place the system under North American Aerospace Defense Command control, according to Canadian Defense Department records obtained by the Ottawa Citizen. “Placing [Ground-based Midcourse Defense] under NORAD does not automatically entail any additional costs to Canada aside from any ‘in-kind’ contributions Canada may make to the manning of military installations (such as radars or headquarters) contributing to the NORAD mission,” the analysis states. The Canadian government decided against the move, which was favored by both U.S. and Canadian military officials, and U.S. Northern Command now controls the program, according to the Citizen. Politics are probably the reason for any delays by Canadian leaders on the system, said David Rudd, executive director of the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies. Martin’s is a minority government and slightly more than half of Canadians are against joining the program, according to opinion polls. “Martin has not pulled the trigger because of his uncertain electoral position,” Rudd said. Canadian officials have said there would be a debate in Parliament before any decision is made (David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 25). Back to top

Mexican Authorities Question Man on “Dirty Bomb” Tip Mexican authorities yesterday detained Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinones, who is suspected of having tipped off U.S. law enforcement agencies to a purported plot to detonate a radiological “dirty bomb” in Boston, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Jan. 24). Quinones is being questioned on behalf of the FBI about the tip and his motives for providing it to authorities, according to FBI special agent Kiffa Shirley. “The first area of concern for the FBI is to resolve any pending national security threat issues, and that issue being the statement that was made that nuclear material was being brought into the United States,” said Dan Dzwilewski, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Diego office. “We’re working with Mexican authorities trying to resolve that question.” U.S. officials hope to extradite Quinones, Dzwilewski said (Associated Press/USA Today, Jan. 25).   Back to top

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