Hazardous materials experts enter the U.S. Senate Hart Office building following the anthrax mailings in 2001. Experts today warned a U.S. House of Representative subcommittee that the knowledge needed to engineer new weapon-usable biological agents is common around the world (Getty Images/Stephan Jaffe). Experts Paint Dire Picture of Bioterrorism Threat By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The knowledge needed to engineer new weapon-usable biological agents is common around the world, and the United States must seek the proper balance between agility of response and countermeasure stockpiling in defending against biological terrorism, experts told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee this morning (see GSN, July 6)...Full Story

Biological and Conventional Terrorism Top Priorities in U.S. Homeland Security Department Overhaul U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is expected to create an intelligence director within his agency to concentrate terrorism analysis and a chief medical officer dealing with bioterrorism, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, June 30)...Full Story

Seoul Confident Pyongyang Will Accept Energy Deal South Korea is confident that North Korea will accept its offer of 2 million kilowatts of electricity in exchange for Pyongyang dismantling its nuclear weapons program, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, July 12)...Full Story

	Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Senate Democrats Want More Homeland Security Funds Senate Democrats yesterday criticized the Bush administration’s $31.9 billion domestic security budget for fiscal 2006, saying last week’s London bombings show that more money is needed to protect mass transit and other areas, the New York Times reported (see GSN, July 12). “We cannot seem to get the leadership, the planning, the money and the values right to do homeland security the way it should be done in our country,” said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). Costs for the war in Iraq and tax cuts have prevented the White House from requesting enough money for domestic security priorities, said Democrats. “They are willing to spend too little money to protect the homeland security of the American people,” said Senator Joseph Lieberman (Conn.). Republican leaders, however, have pointed out that domestic security funding has skyrocketed, having grown at a faster rate over the past two years than almost any other federal department, according to the Times. Senate Republicans are also advocating more prevention measures aimed at terrorists seeking to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction, with funding to come from a 12 percent spending cut on airport screeners and a 26 percent reduction in antiterrorism grants to local and state agencies. Senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), chairman of the Homeland Security appropriations panel, said he would support increases for mass transit security in the coming fiscal year by $100 million. That would bring the total to $200 million. Gregg questioned the value of further spending in that area. “If a group of terrorists want to attack the mass transit system, they will be able to find a weakness somewhere,” he said. In addition, the Senate yesterday rejected a measure, proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and supported by the White House, that would have required that 90 percent of Homeland Security grants be allocated based on risk assessment. Senators opted instead to apportion 70 percent of the funds in this way, leaving considerable grants for those states considered to be at less of a risk (Eric Lipton, New York Times, July 13). Meanwhile, during the third in a series of Sept. 11 commission follow-up hearings, former panelists called on Congress to allocate homeland security funding based on risk assessment, not pork-barrel politics, the Christian Science Monitor reported (Gail Russell Chaddock, Christian Science Monitor, July 13). Back to top

Biological and Conventional Terrorism Top Priorities in U.S. Homeland Security Department Overhaul U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is expected to create an intelligence director within his agency to concentrate terrorism analysis and a chief medical officer dealing with bioterrorism, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, June 30). The changes are part of an overhaul to focus the department, plagued by bureaucratic troubles and other problems, on biological and conventional terrorism, according to AP.  “Our department must drive improvement with a sense of urgency,” Chertoff said in a transcript of a statement he is set to make today to lawmakers. “Our enemy constantly changes and adapts, so we as a department must be nimble and decisive.” The medical officer is expected to lead bioterror policy and coordinate response to an attack by federal, state and local agencies. Officials said the post was prompted federal agencies’ troubles in exchanging information during the March anthrax scare in the Washington area, AP reported (see GSN, April 14). Chertoff also is expected to make transportation and border security top department priorities by adding personnel as well as new detection and screening technologies, according to department officials. Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said that Chertoff, in a briefing to lawmakers, also pegged chemical and nuclear plant security and immigration as areas of importance (Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 13). In an interview with USA Today, Chertoff said the aim of the changes is to stop a WMD attack. Chertoff is announcing the changes less than a week after the Bush administration raised the terror threat level to high for mass transit systems following the London bombings, USA Today reported today. However, the secretary rejected calls from Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and others to direct significantly more money to transit security. The department needs to “keep our eye on the ball and focus on our priorities,” Chertoff said. Chertoff added that the public should be aware that “we’re going to have the issues of terrorism and these kind of events for a very long time to come. … We can't be complacent, but we also need to kind of build in a sense of stability and calmness, and not react or overreact to individual instances.” USA Today also reported that Chertoff plans a new division focusing on preparedness at vulnerable locations such as chemical and nuclear facilities, bridges and dams (Mimi Hall, USA Today, July 13). Back to top       Bolton Said Open to Recess U.N. Appointment Embattled U.N. ambassador nominee John Bolton would accept a presidential recess appointment that would last until the end of 2006, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, June 24). A Bush administration source said Bolton is prepared to accept the recess appointment next month if the White House and U.S. Senate Democrats do not find a compromise on the nomination. The White House and Senate Democrats have made no headway toward resolving their standoff over the release of documents relating to Bolton’s work at the U.S. State Department. “He’ll take the recess” appointment, said the source. President George W. Bush “has made his selection, and the president is asking the Senate to confirm the selection, and if the Senate refuses to do that, then most assuredly [Bush] will make a recess appointment.” The monthlong congressional recess begins July 30. Some Senate Republicans, however, warn that a recess appointment would weaken Bolton’s influence and effectiveness within the U.N. General Assembly, according to the Post. Bolton, the former undersecretary of state for arms control, has spent the last four months preparing for the United Nations. In May, as his confirmation ran into problems, he started efforts to double the State Department office space reserved for the U.N. ambassador in order to accommodate a larger staff in Washington, according to State Department officials. “Bolton isn't going to sit in New York while policy gets made in Washington,” said the administration source. Other colleagues said the request was inappropriate because Bolton had not yet been confirmed (Babington/Linzer, Washington Post, July 13).    Back to top

Seoul Confident Pyongyang Will Accept Energy Deal South Korea is confident that North Korea will accept its offer of 2 million kilowatts of electricity in exchange for Pyongyang dismantling its nuclear weapons program, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, July 12). “With the fourth round of six-way talks slated late this month, there will be an answer (from the North Koreans) in whatever form it is before the talks,” Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon told SBS radio. “They may have other factors to consider, but they are expected to accept the offer in whatever form it is, given its constructive and positive effect,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 13). South Korea could install power lines and begin providing electricity to the North by 2008, said South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young. The energy offer seemed to be aimed at replacing a suspended 1994 deal to build two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea under a Clinton administration disarmament plan, according to the New York Times. The Bush administration halted the project in 2002 after Pyongyang reportedly admitted possessing a nuclear weapons program (Joel Brinkley, New York Times, July 13). Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today praised the energy aid proposal, the Associated Press reported. The proposal “gives an opportunity for the North Koreans to address questions of their energy needs,” said Rice. “It can be clear to anyone who looks at photographs of what North Korea looks like at night that they have energy needs,” Rice said, referring to satellite images that show the North in almost complete darkness due to electricity shortages, according to AP (Burt Herman, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 13). Parties to the multilateral negotiations with North Korea must form a united front if the upcoming talks are to have any chance of success, one expert told AFP. The countries — China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States — have different concerns within the overarching issue of North Korea’s nuclear effort. The United States is firmly focused on nonproliferation, while China is worried about the collapse of the regime in Pyongyang and Japan continues to press the issue of North Korean kidnappings of its people, analysts said. “Bringing the five allied countries — or at least the United States, Japan, and South Korea — together to a unified stance against North Korea’s nuclear programs is essential if the talks are to succeed,” said Balbina Hwang of the Heritage Foundation. “Without such coordination, the six-party process is unlikely to produce any concrete results because North Korea will continue to ‘divide and conquer,’” she said (P. Parameswaran, Agence France-Presse, July 13). Back to top       Iran to Take New Direction in Nuclear and Foreign Policy, President-Elect Says Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledged yesterday that his nation would implement “new measures” in its nuclear and foreign policy (see GSN, July 12). “There will be new measures concerning foreign policy,” said Ahmadinejad, without elaborating. He takes office on Aug. 3 (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 12). Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani said in an interview published in today’s Sharq daily that Ahmadinejad may remove him from his position, Reuters reported. “The new president naturally has the right to appoint whoever he chooses,” Rohani said. He also warned that a negotiating team appointed by the new administration could overturn Tehran’s November agreement with the European Union to freeze sensitive nuclear work for the duration of their negotiations. “I don’t think anyone is against negotiations (with the European Union), but there might be differences in our approach about suspension (of nuclear work). It is possible that this different viewpoint may be implemented,” Rohani said (Paul Hughes, Reuters, July 13). Iran and the European Union are scheduled to resume working-level nuclear talks Monday, with EU officials expected to offer their official proposal on Iran’s nuclear program by Aug. 1, Iranian Supreme National Security Council spokesman Ali Aqa-Mohammadi, said yesterday (Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran/BBC Monitoring, July 12). Back to top       Russia Hosts IAEA Conference on Nuclear Fuel Cycle The Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency are hosting a three-day conference in Moscow beginning today to examine ways to regulate use of the nuclear fuel cycle, the U.N. agency announced in a press release (see GSN, May 31). Yuri Sokolov, the agency’s deputy director general for nuclear energy, told conference delegates that the agency favors improving regulation of the nuclear fuel cycle. “The IAEA is addressing the challenges through implementing strengthened safeguards and promoting assurances of supply of nuclear fuel cycle services together with assurances of nonproliferation,” he said. “In this regard, the agency is seeking to promote enhanced controls over sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, in particular uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing technology” (IAEA release, July 13). Meanwhile, Russian atomic energy chief Alexander Rumyantsev yesterday called for increased nuclear security following last week’s bombings in London, the Associated Press reported. Rumyantsev said that while Russian and U.S. nuclear sites are guarded, “in connection with the changing contemporary threats, new challenges arise which must be resisted — today we understand this when an appalling terror attack has just occurred” (Associated Press, July 12). Back to top       Scientist Backs Reliability of W-76 Nuclear Warhead A Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist has said U.S. W-76 nuclear warheads are dependable and reliable despite some concerns in U.S. nuclear laboratories, the New York Times reported today. About 70 percent of the warheads would explode as intended if they were used in combat, according to the researcher’s findings (see GSN, July 5). “No matter how cautious the assessment, the W-76 remains a reliable component of the U.S. nuclear deterrent,” nuclear weapons expert Geoffrey Forden wrote in the July issue of Jane’s Intelligence Review. Developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in the early 1970s, the W-76 is carried on submarines patrolling the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  Physicist and former Los Alamos official Richard Morse has led criticism that a design flaw makes the warhead unreliable and that the weapon would be a dud or explode with reduced force, according to the Times. Federal officials have denied any problems with the warheads. Forden’s estimate is based on a statistical analysis of the probable number of classified W-76 tests during the warhead’s development, the Times reported. He wrote that the W-76 had been tested eight times and that only one test “produced a substantially lower yield than expected.” “At the very least, this 70 percent of the W-76’s should detonate as planned,” Forden wrote. “This is a worse-case scenario” (William Broad, New York Times, July 13). Back to top

Experts Paint Dire Picture of Bioterrorism Threat By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The knowledge needed to engineer new weapon-usable biological agents is common around the world, and the United States must seek the proper balance between agility of response and countermeasure stockpiling in defending against biological terrorism, experts told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee this morning (see GSN, July 6). U.S. efforts to defend against known threats, such as the Strategic National Stockpile of countermeasures, have some utility, said Molecular Sciences Institute Director Roger Brent. However, they may represent a “Maginot Line” that terrorists could simply circumvent by using new pathogens, or existing ones not addressed by the stockpile, he told the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack. Brent said terrorists faced with a U.S. stockpile of the antibiotic Ciproflaxin, for example, would be certain, if mounting an anthrax attack, to employ a variety of the bacteria that was resistant to Ciproflaxin. Programs to protect against known threats are not “bad things,” Brent added, but “what’s going to come at you is impossible to predict.” The threat is underscored by the wide dissemination of biological-engineering knowledge around the globe, Brent said. “There are now tens of thousands of people who could engineer drug-resistant anthrax,” said the scientist, who as a consultant to the U.S. government has received numerous briefings on U.S. and Soviet biological weapon programs. George Mason University professor Kenneth Alibek, a top official in the Soviet Union’s biological weapon program before defecting to the United States in 1992, concurred that there is no shortage of knowledge that terrorists could exploit in mounting a biological attack. “The knowledge is there,” Alibek told the subcommittee. “Whether or not they are developing this, they don’t publish — but they can.” Massachusetts General Hospital Biodefense and Mass Casualty Care Director Michael Callahan suggested a few potential “chokepoints” at which the United States could seek to monitor or disrupt terrorists’ biological weapon efforts. Washington could focus on the trade in certain chemicals useful for making pathogens more deadly, he said, or on products and technologies, such as vaccines, that could be used to protect people against biological agents with which they are working. Brent expressed skepticism about such approaches, stressing that the market for such products is diffuse and worldwide. “You wish there were more chokepoints,” he said. “I’m not convinced that there are very good chokepoints.” Back to top       Researchers Test Anti-Anthrax Agent in Humans U.S. researchers have found that an antibody effective in combating inhalation anthrax in animals appears to be safe in humans, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, July 5). “This report describes the first investigational agent against anthrax infection to be evaluated in a clinical study since the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States,” wrote Mani Subramanian of Human Genome Sciences and colleagues in the medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. If additional tests succeed, the antibody, known as “PAmAb” could be used to treat people exposed to aerosolized anthrax, according to Reuters. Subramanian and fellow researchers found that a single dose of PAmAb fully protected rats against anthrax. It also showed positive results in monkeys and rabbits. Favorable animal results led Subramanian to test 105 human volunteers. The drug was well tolerated and test subjects suffered temporary minimal to moderate side effects (Reuters, July 12). Back to top       ‘Anti-Anthrax’ Product Pulled from Web Site The Web site for the U.S.-funded Memorial Institute for Prevention of Terrorism removed the Bio-Germ anthrax protection kit from a list of homeland security products after questions about the product’s efficacy were raised, the Dallas Morning News reported yesterday (see GSN, July 5). “We apologize for any confusion resulting from our actions,” the institute said last week in a statement on its Web site. “We will continue to do our best to deliver trusted equipment information to the community.” According to the statement, information on Bio-Germ was posted to the Web site in January following an initial review. The product stayed on the site while the institute sought to confirm claims that the product could prevent anthrax infection, the Morning News reported. However, while investigating the product, the institute discovered that the product had not — as claimed by the company — been tested by the U.S. Justice Department. “We were informed by DOJ that no certification exists for the products,” the statement said. “This prompted a review by our subject matter experts who informed us that there is insufficient scientific evidence to establish the efficacy of the products.” The University of Texas Medical Branch, meanwhile, has sent an integrity report to the university president on microbiologist John Heggers, who provided scientific support for the Bio-Germ anti-anthrax product. Heggers has been at the University of Texas for 17 years and specializes in burn research (Michael Grabell, Dallas Morning News, July 12).   Back to top

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