White House Backs Senate Intelligence Reform Bill

From Wednesday, September 29, 2004 issue.

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The White House yesterday came out in favor of legislation being debated in the Senate that would create a national intelligence director, but raised concerns about several of the bill’s provisions (see GSN, Sept. 28).

In a formal statement, the White House said it “supports” passage of a bill prepared by Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) and top committee Democrat Joseph Lieberman (Conn.) intended to implement the intelligence reform proposals made this summer by the Sept. 11 commission. The bill, approved unanimously by the Governmental Affairs Committee last week, would create a position with a large degree of budgetary and personnel authority over many of the agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, as well as implement other structural changes to the community (see GSN, Sept. 23).

“The administration supports, in particular, the establishment of a NID [national intelligence director] with full, effective and meaningful budgetary authorities to manage the intelligence community,” the White House policy statement says.

The administration also said that it would oppose any amendments to the bill “that would weaken the full budget authority or any other authorities that the president has requested for the NID.”

During a press conference yesterday, Collins said the White House statement would provide the Senate bill with “momentum” and would help deflect calls for a slower approach to the issue of intelligence reform, as has been proposed by some lawmakers and outside experts (see GSN, Sept. 22).

“The statement of administration policy makes clear that the president wants this bill on his desk as soon as possible,” Collins said. “At a time when our nation is under increased threat of a terrorist attack, it would be irresponsible for Congress to adjourn for the year without enacting this important legislation.”

The White House raised concerns, though, about several provisions in the Senate bill, such as those that would “create a cumbersome new bureaucracy” in the national intelligence director’s office. That was an apparent reference to the Senate bill’s call for a group of new administrative positions, including an intelligence community ombudsman intended to prevent politicization of intelligence. Similar legislation making its way through the House of Representatives call for fewer bureaucrats and would not create an intelligence ombudsman (see GSN, Sept. 27).

In addition, the White House signaled its opposition to a move supported by the Sept. 11 commission, and included in part in the Senate intelligence reform bill — the declassification of the intelligence budget. While the Sept. 11 panel recommended that the total amounts allocated to the various intelligence agencies be declassified, the Senate bill contains a provision that would only allow the release of the amount of the overall intelligence budget as requested by the White House and appropriated by Congress.

“The legislation should not compel disclosure, including to the nation’s enemies in war, of the amounts requested by the president, and provided by the Congress, for the conduct of the nation’s intelligence activities,” the White House policy statement says.

The House intelligence reform bill would continue to keep the total intelligence budget requested by the president and appropriated by Congress classified.

Collins said yesterday, though, that “on the fundamental issues,” the White House’s positions were in line with those of the Senate bill.

While the White House said it would oppose amendments offered to the Senate bill that would weaken the authority of the planned national intelligence director, there was debate on the Senate floor yesterday over an amendment offered by Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) that some have said would give the new director too much authority. 

The Specter amendment would give the new national intelligence director the authority to manage the CIA and a number of Defense Department-controlled agencies, such as the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The amendment is based on a proposal made this summer by Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (see GSN, Aug. 27).

The Specter amendment was opposed, though, by a number of lawmakers, including Collins, Lieberman and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.), who said that such a move would hurt the agencies’ ability to provide information to military commanders.

“To ensure that these agencies provide the proper intelligence to our military customers, the secretary of defense must be able to direct them in executing their operational missions,” Warner said.

Specter accused Warner, whose committee oversees the Pentagon, of engaging in a “turf battle.” Specter’s criticisms resulted in a sharp reply from the Virginia senator.

“I am really quite in temper that that word continues to be brought up, because I personally am striving to do what is best for this country and to make our intelligence system stronger as a consequence of this legislative process,” Warner said.

A vote on Specter’s amendment is expected to be held today, according to reports.

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House Homeland Security Committee Seeks Permanency

From Friday, October 1, 2004 issue.

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Invoking the Sept. 11 commission’s call for stronger congressional oversight of antiterrorism programs, a temporary House of Representatives panel formally asked yesterday to be granted permanent status (see GSN, Aug. 18).

In recommendations submitted to the House Rules Committee, the 22-month-old Select Committee on Homeland Security called for the creation of a standing, 29-member Homeland Security Committee with jurisdiction over most aspects of the Homeland Security Department’s work.

The matter was immediately referred to the Rules Committee’s Technology and the House Subcommittee, where congressional sources said action is likely to be taken early in the next Congress.

“Not only the 9/11 commission but virtually every other commission and outside expert has recognized that effective and efficient legislation and oversight with respect to homeland security requires congressional reorganization that vests in a single standing committee in each chamber jurisdiction that parallels the homeland-security mission,” the homeland-security committee said in a report containing its proposed changes to a law governing the structure of Congress.

“Despite [a] significant executive-branch reorganization” since 2001, the panel wrote, “congressional structures remain almost the same as they were before the 9/11 attacks. Scores of committees and subcommittees of the Congress have some claim to jurisdiction over various elements of the Department of Homeland Security. … This creates chaos for the department.”

The new committee would have “exclusive authorizing and primary oversight jurisdiction with respect to the Department of Homeland Security’s responsibilities and activities related to the prevention of, preparation for and response to acts of terrorism within the United States.”

The panel would oversee areas of information analysis and distribution, research and development, borders, immigration, transportation security and terrorism-response preparedness — taking some responsibilities away from other House committees.

“If we are truly serious about increasing security and better protecting our communities,” said the top Democrat on the select panel’s Rules Subcommittee, Louise Slaughter (N.Y.), “we must give Congress this power.”

Select committee Chairman Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) claimed support for the proposal from virtually all the select panel’s members, the Sept. 11 commission, two former House speakers and “a wide array of commissions and think-tanks across the political spectrum.” House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has expressed support for a permanent select committee, which would be more secure in its prerogatives than the current panel but enjoy less extensive powers than a permanent standing committee as proposed yesterday.

Yesterday’s report was signed by dozens of the select panel’s members, including leaders of other House committees. Notably absent, however, were the signatures of Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska), whose panels stand to lose the most responsibility if a permanent homeland-security committee is created.

Rules Technology and the House Subcommittee Chairman John Linder (R-Ga.) is expected soon to begin informal consultations with various House committee chairs on the proposal.

As the select committee works to secure its own future status, it has also seen its signature piece of legislation to date — a bill to reform federal funding of emergency responders to better reflect the varying terrorist threat around the United States — given new life through inclusion in a mammoth bill designed to implement the Sept. 11 commission’s recommendations (see GSN, March 19).

The bill on “faster and smarter funding for first responders” seeks to replace current grant-giving formulas used by Homeland Security’s Office for Domestic Preparedness, which are based heavily on population and per-state minimums that have been widely criticized as inappropriately political.

The bill was expected to reach the House floor earlier this year (see GSN, May 11) but was stymied by other priorities and an inability to gain the support of a few key legislators, congressional sources said. Now, the measure’s inclusion in the popular Sept. 11 commission bill, which is expected on the House floor next week, appears likely to ensure its passage in some form.

Talks on the stand-alone responder-funding bill were cut short by the Sept. 11 commission bill’s creation, said one source familiar with the legislation.

“We were just in the process of negotiations with New York City, and, at that point, the speaker decided to create this H.R. 10” implementing the Sept. 11 panel’s recommendations, said the source. New York and its congressional delegation have been among the most vocal supporters of reforming responder funding to direct more grants to high-threat cities.

The related Senate responder-funding bill has also been included in that chamber’s version of legislation to implement the Sept. 11 panel proposals (see GSN, Dec. 19).

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United States Imposes Sanctions on 14 Entities for Allegedly Aiding Iranian WMD, Missile Efforts

From Thursday, September 30, 2004 issue.

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United States announced yesterday that sanctions have been imposed on 14 entities from a number of countries, including China, India and Spain, for allegedly aiding Iranian WMD and ballistic missile efforts (see GSN, April 5).

The entities were sanctioned for violating the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 by transferring items to Iran since 1999 that are controlled under a multilateral export control regime or otherwise have the potential “to make a material contribution” to an Iranian WMD, ballistic missile or cruise missile program, according to a notice published yesterday in the Federal Register. U.S. officials have refused to describe what types of items the various entities may have transferred.

Those sanctioned include seven Chinese entities — the Beijing Institute of Aerodynamics, the Beijing Institute of Opto-Electronic Technology, the China Great Wall Industry Corp., the China North Industries Corp. (NORINCO), the LIMMT Economic and Trade Co., the Oriental Scientific Instruments Corp. and the South Industries Science and Technology Corp. 

The sanctioned entities also include the Belarusian company Belarus Belvneshpromservice, two Indian nationals identified as “Dr. C. Surendar” and “Dr. Y.S.R. Prasad,” the North Korean firm Changgwang Sinyong Corp., the Russian firm Khazra Trading, the Spanish company Telstar and the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhya Regional Foreign Economic Association.

Under the two-year sanctions, which went into effect last week, the entities are prohibited from entering into contracts with, or receiving aid from, the U.S. government. In addition, the sanctions prohibit new licenses from being approved, and they suspend existing licenses, for U.S. exports of controlled, high-technology and military items to the entities. The sanctions only apply to the entities themselves and not to their respective governments. With the exception of North Korea, the nations have been formally notified of the sanctions, according to a U.S. State Department official.

During a press conference yesterday here, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher defended the move to impose sanctions against a company located in Spain, a noted U.S. ally.

“This law applies internationally and globally,” Boucher said. “If we find somebody in whatever place that’s violating the law, shipping equipment and technology … then we apply the law.”

Five of the sanctioned entities were previously sanctioned in April for violating the Iran Nonproliferation Act — Belarus Belvneshpromservice, the Beijing Institute of Opto-Electronic Technology, NORINCO, Oriental Scientific Instruments Corp. and Changgwang Sinyong. 

The State Department official today said that NORINCO and Changgwang Sinyong have developed reputations as “serial proliferators,” noting that the United States has imposed sanctions against both companies numerous times.

The “main effect” of repeating sanctions on a particular entity is to extend their duration, Boucher said. 

“Somebody who has been doing something more recently deserves to suffer the consequences for a longer period of time, so it sort of makes sense that if you impose the same sanctions again and again you’re basically extending the period of penalty for an extension of the period of activity,” he said.

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Kerry, Bush Differ Sharply on Nonproliferation

From Friday, October 1, 2004 issue.

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Debating head-to-head for the first time last night, President George W. Bush and Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) expressed numerous, strong differences in their views on how the United States should stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

The differences were apparent on how the candidates would deal with North Korea, Iran, unsecured nuclear-weapon materials in Russia, new U.S. nuclear weapons, and using force against countries suspected of developing catastrophic weapons — as well as even how the two defined the problem.

Asked about “the most serious threat” facing U.S. national security, Kerry said “nuclear proliferation.”

“There are some 600-plus tons of unsecured material still in the former Soviet Union and Russia. At the rate that the president is currently securing that, it will take 13 years to get it,” Kerry said, referring to ongoing U.S. cooperation with Russia and other states to secure, neutralize and destroy such materials through the U.S. Defense Department’s Cooperation Threat Reduction program and similar efforts.

Kerry said nuclear proliferation demanded increased spending on such programs, a new approach on negotiations with North Korea, and termination of a U.S. program to develop a “bunker-buster” nuclear weapon capable of penetrating the earth (see GSN, July 16).

“We’re telling other people, you can’t have nuclear weapons, but we’re pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using,” Kerry said. Not this president.  I’m going to shut that program down, and we’re going to make it clear to the world, we’re serious about containing nuclear proliferation.”

Bush said the “biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network.”

He listed several efforts the administration had undertaken to address the problem: creation of the multinational Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict suspected unconventional weapons and materials shipments at sea (see GSN, Aug. 6), the rollback of a Pakistani-linked nuclear smuggling network, successful efforts to persuade Libya to renounce its weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Sept. 23), and the aggressive development and activation of a national missile defense system (see GSN, Sept. 30).

“We’ll be implementing a missile defense system relatively quickly. And that is another way to help deal with the threats that we face in the 21st century,” he said.

Kerry vowed to increase spending sufficient to reduce to four years the projected time for securing Russian nuclear materials.

“Now, there are terrorists trying to get their hands on that stuff today. And this president, I regret to say, has secured less nuclear material in the last two years since 9/11 than we did in the two years preceding 9/11,” he said.

“The president actually cut the money for it,” Kerry said.

Bush said funding on nuclear nonproliferation increased by about 35 percent during his administration, though several nonproliferation experts said they are not aware of the increased spending he described.

“The numbers we have is it has increased 29 percent,” mostly as a response to requests by the Bush administration for Energy Department nonproliferation activities, according to Molly Pickett, an analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.

She said, though, that some of the overall increase, to about $2 billion this year for programs in the Energy, State and Defense departments, occurred as a result of Congress’ unwillingness to approve a significant cut to the Cooperative Threat Reduction program proposed by the administration for fiscal 2002.

“There was a backlash and Congress put it back in,” she said.

The White House did not respond in time this morning to a request for clarification.

The candidates also sharply differed on how they would try to stop suspected North Korean nuclear weapons development. 

Kerry advocated bilateral talks between North Korea and the United States.

“I want bilateral talks which put all of the issues, from the Armistice of 1952, the economic issues, the human rights issues, the artillery disposal issues, the DMZ issues, and the nuclear issues on the table,” Kerry said.

He argued the administration had failed to stop North Korea from pursuing nuclear weapons because it had refused to negotiate with the country’s leadership.

“For two years, this administration didn’t talk at all to North Korea. While they didn’t talk at all, the fuel rods came out, the inspectors were kicked out, the television cameras were kicked out, and today there are four to seven nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea. That happened on this president’s watch,” Kerry said.

Bush argued against bilateral negotiations.

“I can’t [tell] you how big a mistake I think that is, to have bilateral talks with North Korea. It’s precisely what Kim Jong Il wants. It’ll cause the six-party talks to evaporate, it means that China no longer is involved in convincing, along with us, [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Il to get rid of his weapons.”

“We must have China’s leverage on Kim Jong Il, besides ourselves. And if you enter bilateral talks, they’ll be happy to walk away from the table. I don’t think that’ll work,” he said.

Bush said North Korea was breaking a previous bilateral agreement by processing highly enriched uranium.

Kerry charged the Bush administration’s approach toward Iran has been unsuccessful, saying, “Iran is moving towards nuclear weapons and the world is more dangerous” (see GSN, Sept. 29).

He said the United States earlier could have offered to provide Iran with nuclear fuel, to challenge the country to renounce alleged weapons-oriented efforts. If Iran refused, he said, the United States might have had more leverage to muster international sanctions.

“The president did nothing,” he said.

Bush advocated multilateral discussions with Iran to try to persuade it to discontinue its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“We’ve worked very closely with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Great Britain, who have been the folks delivering the message to the mullahs that if you expect to be part of the world of nations, get rid of your nuclear programs,” he said.

Kerry said the “British, French and Germans were the ones who initiated an effort — without the United States, regrettably.”

Bush said Iran already is sanctioned by the United States. “We can’t sanction them anymore. There are sanctions in place on Iran.”

Kerry responded, “The United States put the sanctions on alone. And that’s exactly what I’m talking about. In order for the sanctions to be effective, we should have been working with the British, French and Germans and other countries.”

The candidates also differed strongly on when the United States would be justified in attacking another country suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction, and debated whether the United States should have attacked Iraq as it did.

Bush reiterated his administration’s policy that the United States should be willing to attack another country before there is complete evidence the country has the ability and intention to strike the United States with a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon.

“In Iraq, we saw a threat, and we realized that after September the 11th, we must take threats seriously before they fully materialize. Saddam Hussein now sits in a prison cell; America and the world are safer for it,” he said.

That so-called “Bush Doctrine” of preventive war is considered destabilizing by many in the international community, and Bush administration critics have argued that the policy could encourage countries to seek their own nuclear weapons to deter U.S. action.

International law permits pre-emptive war, meaning a country can attack another if it has demonstrable evidence of an imminent attack.

Kerry reiterated his support for this approach, and criticized Bush for pursuing Iraq without evidence of an imminent threat or alternatively with U.N. Security Council approval

“A president always has the right, and always had had the right, for [a] pre-emptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War, and it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control,” Kerry said.

“But if and when you do it, … you’ve got to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test, where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you’re doing what you’re doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons,” he said.

Kerry faulted Bush for maintaining he would in hindsight have still attacked Iraq, “even knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction, even knowing there was no imminent threat, even knowing there was no connection of al-Qaeda.”

Kerry said he too viewed ex-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as a threat prior to the war, but supported securing U.N. Security Council authority for military force.

He said his position was “Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him, and a wrong way. And the president chose the wrong way.”

Bush dismissed the idea the United States should seek global authority for such action, because it was done “to protect the American people.”

“To date the campaign and the coverage of it have not addressed how each candidate proposes to address the biggest threat to U.S. security: the world’s growing set of weapons of mass destruction dangers. But that may have begun to change with last night’s refreshingly substantive debate,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

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North Korea Will Not Benefit by Stalling Six-Nation Nuclear Talks, Armitage Says

From Thursday, September 30, 2004 issue.

North Korea would not improve its options by waiting to resume six-party talks until after the Nov. 2 U.S. elections, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 29).

“If the North Koreans have come to the conclusion they want to wait for the result of the election, fine, let them do so,” Armitage said. “If North Koreans have come to the conclusion they want to wait to see if they can get a better deal, that is a big miscalculation for them.”

Armitage said Tuesday that President George W. Bush was “very patient” on resolving the standoff through the multilateral negotiations.

“They are still important, they are important today, they will be important Nov. 3,” he said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 29).

North Korea’s postponement of talks would slow agreements on a multilateral security guarantee and aid for the communist nation, Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday.

“I think what they are also delaying is an opportunity for the international community to give them what they’ve asked for: a security agreement and to provide them assistance with their internal economic needs, whether it’s in the form of fuel from some of the countries initially or other economic assistance,” he said.

“All of that, I think, is put into abeyance,” he added (Matthew Lee, Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 29).

Meanwhile, North Korea announced today it was bolstering its defenses in response to what it described as increased U.S. air and naval presence in South Korea, United Press International reported.

Pyongyang would strengthen its “self-defense capability,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency announced (United Press International/Washington Times, Sept. 30).

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United States Opposes Third Term for IAEA Chief

From Thursday, September 30, 2004 issue.

The United States would oppose a third term for the head of the international nuclear watchdog, but would do so based only on a two-term principle, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 27).

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is expected to seek a third term at the helm of the Vienna-based institution.

The United States, however, supports the “Geneva rule,” Powell said — a position taken by the top 10 funding contributors to international organizations that heads of such agencies should not serve more than two terms.

“We think the Geneva rule is a good rule: two terms,” Powell said. “It’s not been followed in the past on many occasions, more often than not, but we still think it’s a good, useful rule. But we will make our judgment on specific cases when the time comes”

“I’ve told him that, Mohamed knows, we’ve talked about it,” Powell added. “It’s a good rule (but) he’s free to offer his candidacy” (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 29).

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World Must Reject Nuclear Terror, Allison Says

From Wednesday, September 29, 2004 issue.

By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire

NEW YORK — A nuclear attack on the United States by terrorists is “inevitable if the U.S. and other governments just continue to do what they are doing,” Graham Allison, author of Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, said here Monday in pressing for greater security of nuclear materials.

“We are living on borrowed time. It’s more puzzling why it hasn’t already happened than why it could happen,” Allison, a director at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Pointing to the title of the book, he said the chances of such a disaster could be “reduced to virtually zero” if extra safeguards are placed on the world’s supply of weapon-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium (see GSN, Sept. 22).

To this end, Allison said foreign policy in the field should be based on three “no’s” — “no loose nukes,” meaning “locking down as good as gold” all existing plutonium and HEU supplies; “no new nascent nukes,” stopping additional countries, particularly Iran, from developing a nuclear program; and “no new nuclear weapons states.” On this last point, he said, there are eight nuclear weapons states “and then there’s North Korea slinking across. I would draw a bright line under the eight and say ‘that’s how many there are and there’s not going to be more.’”

This strategy requires a hard line against the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, he said. This requires “a bunch of carrots” and “a very large stick;” the carrots being economic and political incentives and the stick being military action to destroy their nuclear sites if required.

Allison said North Korea presents the greatest threat since it was more likely to sell nuclear weapons to terrorists. The communist nation will “absolutely” develop nuclear weapons “if we just keep doing what we are doing. This will be judged by historians as the worst failure in American foreign policy ever,” he said. 

The Bush administration’s behavior toward North Korea has been “strange,” he added. U.S. officials have refused to negotiate bilaterally with the communist regime or offer economic incentives for it to eliminate its nuclear program. The carrots here should be “all the bribes they want” and the stick should be the warning that a nuclear North Korea will provoke a new Korean War in which North Korea would be destroyed, said Allison.

“That’s an extreme proposition justified only because when I ask myself what is the world going to look like if North Korea succeeds in having nuclear weapons. … I think that world is going to be even worse,” he said (see GSN, Sept. 28).

Allison said Iran has been clear in its objectives to produce a complete domestic nuclear cycle, but the United States alternates between “barking speeches” and “ignoring them.”

“We haven’t threatened them with anything plausible, we haven’t actually offered them anything, but we’ve told them we want them to change their regime (and) we don’t want you to have nuclear weapons,” he said. The goal should be to “freeze Iran where it is today.”

The West should offer Iran “a lot of carrots” including a promise not to attack, allowing Iran to finish the Bushehr nuclear plant with the guarantee of a constant supply of nuclear fuel from Russia as long as the spent fuel is returned, and supporting European investments. He estimated that such “a grand bargain” would have an 80 percent chance of success.

The sticks should include sanctions, but “the really big stick is a credible military threat to destroy their facilities for enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium before they turn on,” Allison said.

By “locking down as good as gold” the world’s supply of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, Allison said he meant the nuclear material should be as completely secured as the U.S. stock of gold.

“Locking it down at the source is the point of greatest leverage” to prevent terrorists from getting nuclear weapons, he said.

The U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which is designed to secure all Russian nuclear weapons and fissile materials, has succeeded in securing half the Russian materials after 13 years at a cost of $1 billion per year, he said. The present schedule, which Allison said the Bush administration endorses, means the job will not be finished until 2020. He added the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, says it can be completed in four years.

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Bush Vows Iran Will Not Get Nuclear Weapon; EU Says Tougher Action on Iran Likely

From Monday, September 27, 2004 issue.

U.S. President George W. Bush this weekend said he hopes for a negotiated settlement to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program, but that United States would never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Sept. 23).

“My hope is that we can solve this diplomatically,” Bush said in a three-part interview with Fox News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor, excerpts of which aired yesterday.

“Let me try to solve it diplomatically first,” said Bush. “All options are on the table, of course, in any situation. But diplomacy is the first option.”

“We’ve made it clear, our position is that they won’t have a nuclear weapon,” Bush said. “We are working our hearts out so that they don’t develop a nuclear weapon, and the best way to do so is to continue to keep international pressure on them.” (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 26).

The European powers are losing patience with Iran and could soon be ready to support U.S. demands to refer the Islamic republic to the U.N. Security Council in November, said Western diplomats familiar with negotiations between France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Iran said Friday, Reuters reported.

“It looks like Iran is going to the Security Council,” said one diplomat. “People now are discussing what will happen when it goes there.”

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said Iran must reassure the international community that its nuclear program is solely peaceful.

“We are concerned that Iran is moving into research programs which might lead to nuclear weapons,” he said. “Assurances must be given that Iran that does not wish to and shall not acquire nuclear weapons.”

“The other alternative, if we are not reassured, is naturally to submit this question to the Security Council,” Barnier said. 

If the case were taken to the council, diplomats said permanent members Russia and China would probably back a strong statement urging Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Negotiations between Iran and the European nations are expected to continue, but diplomats close to the talks said Iran’s was unlikely to accept the IAEA call for a freeze of enrichment-related activities.

Another diplomat said it would be “very Iranian” if Tehran agreed to a suspension immediately prior to the issue is discussed at the Nov. 25 IAEA board meeting, but added that such a move would now be insufficient.

“The resolution called for an immediate suspension of the enrichment program,” said a Western diplomat on the IAEA board. “It is already too late” (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, Sept. 24).

Meanwhile, Iranian officials said yesterday that the Islamic republic has no immediate plans to resume uranium enrichment, Reuters reported.

“Resuming uranium enrichment is not in our agenda. We are still committed to the suspension,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.

“We have started some activities like building centrifuge parts.  No discussion about enrichment at all,” Asefi said.

Asefi said Iran did not fear the prospect of sanctions if its case were referred to the Security Council.

“In case of any sanctions on Iran, the international community will be harmed more than Iran,” Asefi said (Reuters, Sept. 26).

Iran also called on European countries to negotiate, while displaying no signs of halting its nuclear work in accordance with this month’s resolution, according to AFP.

“No negotiations with the Americans are on the agenda, but we call on the Europeans to discuss with us,” Asefi said.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer held “very blunt” talks with his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharazi on the sidelines of last week’s U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York last week, according to AFP.

“You are making a terrible mistake,” Fischer told Kharazi, according to one participant (AFP/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 26).

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IAEA Concerned Brazil May Have Bought Nuclear Technology Through Black Market, Expert Says

From Friday, October 1, 2004 issue.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is concerned that Brazil may have acquired nuclear technology through the international smuggling network headed by former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, a nuclear proliferation expert said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 24).

“They are specifically worried about the Khan network being one of the sources of this program,” said Henry Sokolski, a former U.S. Defense Department official and now head of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. “I can’t tell you how I know, but I know.”

Several diplomats on the IAEA’s Board of Governors confirmed Sokolski’s comments, Reuters reported. 

Early this year, Khan confessed to transferring nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. 

While the U.N. nuclear watchdog is continuing its investigation, it has not received “information that any other country shopped on the network,” said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, Sept. 30).

Brazil yesterday rejected allegations that it had illicitly obtained uranium centrifuges, according to the Associated Press.

“Brazil is a country with uranium-enrichment technology of its own. It does not belong to the category of nations which are learning technologies,” Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said. “I don’t think there is any concern about Brazil” (Vivian Sequera, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 30).

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Pakistan Denies Access to Khan, IAEA Says

From Thursday, September 30, 2004 issue.

Pakistan has refused to provide the International Atomic Energy Agency with direct access to top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has confessed to transferring nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said today (see GSN, Sept. 23).

“The Pakistanis have made it clear that while they will provide the IAEA all information available to them, direct access to Mr. Khan would not be possible,” Gwozdecky said.

The agency has repeatedly asked Pakistan for access to Khan to aid its investigation into the nuclear network revealed by the scientist, according to Agence France-Presse. Gwozdecky said that today’s statement was the first public acknowledgement by the agency that Pakistan has refused access to Khan.

“From the beginning, we have made it clear to the Pakistani authorities that we would like the maximum amount of information on the Khan network, including access to any person with such knowledge,” Gwozdecky said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 30).

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Defense Department Conducting Cost-Reduction Studies for Pueblo Chemical Destruction Project

From Friday, October 1, 2004 issue.

Design work on the U.S. Army’s chemical weapons disposal facility in Pueblo, Colo,, will halt for nine months while the U.S. Defense Department seeks design alternatives to reduce the project’s cost, according to a press release issued yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 4).

The Pentagon plans to explore ways to build a smaller plant with fewer operating personnel than the facility currently being designed. Neutralization is expected to remain the disposal method at the Pueblo Chemical-Agent Destruction Pilot Plant

The facility is scheduled by 2010 to destroy 2,600 tons of mustard-agent filled weaponry stored at the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot (U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency release, Sept. 30).

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Hungary Had Cold War Chemical Arms Stockpile

From Wednesday, September 29, 2004 issue.

The Hungarian Defense Ministry has acknowledged possessing chemical weapons during the Cold War-era, the Hungarian newspaper Nepszabadsag reported last week (see GSN, July 23).

In addition to possessing chemical weapons, the Hungarian military also conducted exercises involving small amounts of agent in the 1960s and the 1970s, the newspaper reported. Since 1990, Hungary has worked to reduce its chemical weapons stockpiles to a small amount of mustard gas, nerve agent and lewisite for use in testing protective equipment, Nepszabadsag reported (Zoltan Haszon, Nepszabadsag/BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Sept. 28).

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U.S. Missile Defense Can be Fooled by Decoys, Documents Say

From Wednesday, September 29, 2004 issue.

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Documents published by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency over the past two years appear to confirm what experts have charged is a fundamental flaw of the national missile defense system the Bush administration plans to make operational in Alaska this year (see GSN, Sept. 22).

The documents — technical appeals for innovative ideas from the small business community — say readings from the sensors that would be used by the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system are “not adequate” for distinguishing an enemy warhead from a decoy or other nearby objects.

Furthermore, they suggest that the system, if used, might face numerous decoys and other sophisticated countermeasures. That appears to undercut assertions by officials that missile defense would provide a “modest” or “rudimentary” defense against a “limited” threat.

The problems are described in little-noticed solicitations published on the Internet by the Missile Defense Agency’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, written in fairly technical language with the intent of attracting innovative technological solutions to problems. Critics say the language appears to confirm a fundamental flaw that they have argued for years would render the system ineffective at defeating even a basic ICBM attack.

“It’s the Achilles heel of this system,” said Ted Postol, an MIT arms control expert. “Given the fact that they have only certain sensors they can use, [the problem is] impossible to solve.”

“Apparently the big defense contractors — Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed — have not been able to solve this problem, or else the MDA would not be turning now to small businesses for creative ideas,” said Philip Coyle, the Pentagon’s former top weapons testing official, now a senior adviser with the Center for Defense Information.

The system reportedly faces other serious technological challenges that could hamper effective operation, such as significant delays in the flight test program (see GSN, Aug. 18) and in producing a new rocket booster, and insufficient overall development that has delayed the onset of realistic operational testing.

Even if the system could be made to work, said Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) in an e-mail to Global Security Newswire, “It will still have virtually no capability to tell the difference between decoys and real warheads, which means it will be essentially useless against any enemy capable of attacking us with a nuclear missile.” 

Distinguishing a warhead from a decoy is “one of the most difficult technical problems they face, and to the degree it cannot be solved, it will prevent the GMD system from being effective, now and in the future,” Coyle said.

While acknowledging that countermeasures pose a challenge, administration and agency officials have asserted that the system could offer an effective defense against “limited” ICBM threats it would face in the near future.

The Missile Defense Agency “will present to our combatant commanders by the end of 2004 an initial missile defense capability to defeat near-term threats of greatest concern,” then-MDA Director Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish said in congressional testimony in March.

The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system is being developed to intercept enemy warheads in space as they head toward the United States. On the president’s order, the Pentagon plans to install up to 10 interceptors this year in Alaska and California to offer some defense against a projected North Korean ICBM capability. The Missile Defense Agency has reported that it lowered the fifth interceptor into its silo at the Alaska site this week (see GSN, Sept. 24).

An additional 10 are scheduled for emplacement in 2005 and the administration is requesting money this year for at least 10 more beyond that.

Kill vehicles launched from those sites would be required to “discriminate” —using heat sensing, infrared sensors — an enemy warhead from decoys and other objects in a matter of seconds with the hope of striking the warhead.

A key technical difficulty of that challenge, experts have said, is distinguishing a warhead from decoy balloons, chaff or other objects that might resemble the weapon to the kill vehicle’s sensors. To the infrared sensor, the oncoming warhead appears as a very rough blur among other blurs, according to Coyle.

“Even though the EKV [exoatmospheric kill vehicle] has already had to commit to a target, all it sees is a bunch of shapeless blurry pixels.  If there are two objects like that in the field of view, the EKV has no way of knowing which is which,” he said, citing photos published in a report he co-authored in May.

A key passage from two small business solicitations published in late 2002 appears to confirm that that challenge has not been solved.

“Target discrimination (the ability to identify or engage any one target when multiple targets are present) during National Missile Defense (NMD) midcourse engagement is a complex technological hurdle. … Feature differences among decoys, penetration aids, and targets are not adequate for discrimination by current missile passive IR sensors,” it says.

The agency is pursuing advanced X-band radars that could aid the discrimination system by showing the shapes of the warhead and other objects. However, they will not be deployed at least for another year and along with the infrared sensors could be fooled by an “antisimulation” countermeasure of concealing the warhead in a Mylar balloon amid a field of empty, decoy balloons, critics say.

The small business solicitations suggest the system could face in the near term such countermeasures in the event a threat materialized.

“Threats envisioned for the near- and far-term are a challenging mixture of countermeasures that include chaff, jamming, low observable RVs (re-entry vehicles), balloons, coatings, antisimulation, and simulation, among other countermeasures, that will require novel approaches to the discrimination problem,” according to a document published this summer.

Another solicitation posted this summer says that “Ballistic missile threat capabilities continue to proliferate and progressively evolve to fainter targets and the use of more sophisticated decoys — conditions that increase the potential limitations of background clutter on surveillance system performance.”

Another said missile interceptors in the future could face up to 200 decoys or objects at one time.

Such passages offer rare insight into what the agency thinks about the limitations of the system, Postol said.

“It looks like an honest engineer who was actually trying to solve a problem wrote this up, rather than a spin doctor,” he said.

A Missile Defense Agency spokesman acknowledged in an e-mail that countermeasures challenge the system.

“As we have said for years, countermeasures do now, and probably always will, present technical challenges for both current and future missile defense systems,” said spokesman Richard Lehner. 

The agency in a statement released to Global Security Newswire said, though, that the small business solicitations refer to potential challenges from future threats.

“They are not written to advertise limitations in existing systems or near-term block upgrades, but to focus attention on improvements that would add significantly to performance, lower cost, and add robustness against more complicated future threats (including sophisticated countermeasures),” the statement says.

Agency officials have argued that the system would likely face a primitive threat from any near-term ICBM aggressor and that against such a threat the system could be fairly effective.

A Washington Post article this month, for instance, suggested that the Missile Defense Agency estimates an 80 percent rate of effectiveness for the system, though the story indicated little about the assumptions underlying the estimate. It did suggest, however, that the number did not include data from early flight tests, which apparently include the only two tests using a type of decoy that critics said was found to closely resemble the dummy warhead to the infrared sensor.

“My guess is there are no decoys involved [in deriving the threat estimate], that they’re just asking can this thing hit an object in space with a reliability of x,” Postol said.   “If there are decoys there, the numbers very quickly go to zero. They can’t look inside the balloons, period.”

MDA Spokesman Lehner said that estimates and computations of effectiveness behind such numbers are classified, and said Postol “does not have access to highly classified information detailing our technical, scientific and engineering approach to defeating countermeasures.”

He also said the “most important data” used to derive such estimates comes from computer modeling and simulation and ground tests “that can postulate a huge number of likely scenarios and match system performance to determine expected effectiveness.”

Critics have charged that the administration must be assuming very simplistic or no countermeasures to arrive at such estimates, and add that models used for estimates may not be realistic as the agency has excluded advanced countermeasures from its testing regime (see GSN, June 8).

“The MDA has avoided the problem of target discrimination, by defining an ‘unsophisticated threat,’ that is, one or two missiles from a rogue nation involving no effective decoys countermeasures.  If the threat is defined as being nonthreatening, that ‘solves’ the problem,” Coyle said.  

“Since no flight intercept tests have been done with decoys that resemble the target RV, nor have flight intercept tests been done with radar chaff or other countermeasures, the system has no demonstrated capability to deal with the types of decoys or countermeasures a determined enemy would employ,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the MDA makes the artful assumption that North Korea … will not field any countermeasures that could defeat the U.S. interceptors,” writes Richard Garwin in an article due to appear in the November issue of Scientific American. 

“My assessment … is that the present missile defense approach is utterly useless against ICBMs of new or existing nuclear powers because midcourse countermeasures are so effective,” he writes.

Garwin and other experts have insisted that effective countermeasures are simple to build and well within the reach of an ICBM-armed country.

“The fundamental problem is that any country capable of building and successfully launching a nuclear-tipped ICBM can easily make and deploy many Mylar balloons ð— just like the ones you can buy in the supermarket ð— that look just like a nuclear warhead to a far away radar or satellite,” said Senator Reed. “And if there are many decoys and only one target, you have very little chance of hitting the target if you can’t discriminate.”

In that way, “An attacker could overwhelm the system by using antisimulation balloon decoys,” the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote in a critical report in April 2000. The 2000 report concluded, “Any country capable of deploying a long-range missile would also be able to deploy countermeasures that would defeat the planned NMD system.”

To try to solve the problem, the agency says it is simultaneously pursuing various technological solutions, including advances in radar and infrared sensors, lasers, signal processing, data fusion, and decision-making algorithms. A prominent approach, according to Coyle, is to have the kill vehicle carry different types of sensors, including infrared, radar and visible light, looking for differences between the suspected warhead and other nearby objects.

“Then they hope to fuse all that data together to pick out the target RV [re-entry vehicle] from the accumulated signals that the various sensors collect, and compare those signals with stored data files that have been precoded to predict what the actual target might look like,” he said.

“As indicated in the SBIR solicitation, some of these sensors don’t exist and would have to be invented and developed,” he added.

Postol said that solution offers little promise for solving the problem of a warhead hidden in a balloon, equating it to searching luggage at an airport without being able to open it or subject it to x-rays or sniffing dogs.

“It’s the equivalent to being restricted because of circumstances to only inspecting suitcases by vision,” he said. “You can use binoculars, or microscopes or rose-colored glasses … but you’re still basically looking at the outside of suitcase.”

Garwin argues there are other potential solutions to the midcourse intercept countermeasures challenge: space- or aircraft- based lasers for “popping” balloons or interceptors carrying gas to push the balloons, which would cause the decoys with less mass to move farther than the warhead. He said in an e-mail, though, that the Missile Defense Agency does not appear to be pursuing them and that they would require significant and costly changes to the planned system.

“Anyhow, that would be quite a different system, and we would begin its development only if MDA accepted the fact that they will be impotent if an adversary adopts AS [antisimulation] for the nuclear warheads on its early ICBMs,” he said.

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SBIRS-High Could Face Two-Year Delay

From Thursday, September 30, 2004 issue.

Completion of the Space-Based Infrared System-High could be delayed by two years instead of the previously estimated one year, the program’s director said Monday. The system is intended to replace the current U.S. system of satellites to detect missile launches (see GSN, April 1).

Contractors Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman had estimated a one-year delay for delivery of the system’s geosynchronous satellite segment.

“We are less optimistic,” Air Force Col. Randy Weidenheimer told Defense Daily. He said the estimated launch date could slip from October 2006 to as late as fall 2008 (Amy Butler, Defense Daily, Sept. 30).

Weidenheimer also said Northrop Grumman committed a “pretty significant error” by improperly using a key piece of test equipment, thereby causing an 18-month delay in the delivery of the first SBIRS-High sensor.

Using the test equipment in the wrong mode led incomplete data to be submitted to engineers fixing high levels of electromagnetic interference coming from the satellite, Weidenheimer said.

Air Force program executive officer Lt. Gen. Brian Arnold awarded the contractor team $1 million out of a potential $8 million fee because of the delay, Weidenheimer said (Amy Butler, Defense Daily, Sept. 30).

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