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There is no doubt, if you were vaccinated or didn’t care about your life, you could acquire and produce a spore product if you had the correct shopping list and recipe.
—Craig Smith of the Infectious Disease Society of America, speaking about the difficulty of producing biological weapons.
The U.S. government has awarded a $428 million contract to produce 155 million doses of smallpox vaccine to be delivered by the end of 2002, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced yesterday. The vaccine will be produced by a joint venture of Acambis and Baxter International...Full Story
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he preferred a limited missile defense system that does not scrap the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, according to a Sunday New York Times Magazine article...Full Story
Pakistani authorities had not established any link between two detained Pakistani former nuclear scientists and al-Qaeda attempts to develop anthrax capability, said Pakistani spokesman Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi yesterday...Full Story
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Thursday, November 29, 2001 |  | | |  |
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Pakistani authorities had not established any link between two detained Pakistani former nuclear scientists and al-Qaeda attempts to develop anthrax capability, said Pakistani spokesman Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi yesterday. Qureshi confirmed that authorities had detained the two scientists (see GSN, Nov. 26), who were held for questioning about anthrax information found in their organization’s offices in Kabul (see GSN, Nov. 28). Pakistani officials might share information with U.S. officials, he said. “I am sure the information is shared if it is of any value,” Qureshi said.
Meanwhile, a U.S. spokesman declined to say whether the United States had asked Pakistan to extradite the scientists for questioning (B. Muralidhar Reddy, Hindu, Nov. 29).
The Lahore High Court yesterday adjourned a hearing on the legality of detaining one of the scientists, Sultan Bashiru-din Mehmood. Justice Khalilur Rahman Ramday asked at the end of the hearing if it would be better for the two detained scientists to wait for their release since government officials had said there was no evidence against them and they would likely be free soon, according to DAWN (Shujaat Ali Khan, DAWN, Nov. 29).
Egypt received an “understanding” from the Bush administration that the United States would not attack Iraq or any other Arab country accused of harboring terrorists, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 28). Egypt strongly supports the U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition, Maher said.
“If we want to keep this consensus … we should not resort, after Afghanistan, to military means,” Maher said. Any extension of the war beyond Afghanistan would “cause serious internal problems” for U.S. allies in the Middle East (Norman Kempster, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29).
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The United States should wave export controls and, when necessary, rules in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that prevent exports, to allow the transfer of technology to Pakistan to protect the its nuclear arsenal from theft or unauthorized use (see GSN, Nov. 5), said Mansoor Ijaz of Crescent Investment Management and R. James Woolsey, former CIA director in an editorial in the New York Times yesterday.
The United States should provide “vaults, sensors, alarms, tamper-proof seals, closed-circuit cameras and labels to identify, track and secure Islamabad’s nuclear materials,” Ijaz and Woolsey wrote.
Access to radioactive materials in Pakistan is the most likely way for al-Qaeda to develop nuclear capability that would threaten the United States, Ijaz and Woolsey said. Providing security assistance to Pakistan would “dramatically reduce” the possibility that an al-Qaeda supporter could provide stolen uranium or plutonium to terrorists, they said.
The authors suggested the United States implement a program to protect Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal similar to the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction program in Russia. They also encouraged Congress to approve financing for the next phase of the Nunn-Lugar program in Russia, which the House leadership is expected to consider this week (Ijaz/Woolsey, New York Times, Nov. 28).
North Korea has rejected U.S. President George W. Bush’s request on Monday for the country to allow nuclear inspections to resume, CNN reported today.
“The U.S. is unreasonably demanding the DPRK receive an ‘inspection’ just as a thief turns on the master with a club,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement reported by the state-run Korea Central News Agency, according to CNN.
North Korea also stated its objection to U.S. plans to build a missile defense system. “It is preposterous for the U.S., styling itself a ‘superpower,’ to claim that it should establish the missile defense system for fear of the DPRK’s missile [program] solely meant for self-defense,” the statement said.
North Korea said U.S. demands concerning terrorism and missile proliferation demonstrate that U.S. statements of interest in establishing a dialogue with North Korea “is nothing but hypocrisy” (CNN, Nov. 29).
Meanwhile, South Korean National Defense Minister Kim Tong-sin said that despite apparently increasingly hard-line U.S. statements, the United States would not “not try to stage an independent war against North Korea” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo.com, Nov. 29).
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung urged the United States and North Korea to directly discuss their disagreement related to U.S. suspicions that North Korea is developing weapons of mass destruction. “Both sides have many things to tell each other, so I hope that both sides, U.S. and North Koreans, will be able to sit face-to-face to discuss these issues,” he said in an interview with Reuters this week (Martin Nesirky, Reuters, Nov. 28).
South Korean Unification Minister Hong Sun Yong said Tuesday he believed that North Korea is “capable of cultivating and producing 13 different types of germs, including anthrax and smallpox” (see GSN, Nov. 20). He refused to say whether North Korea possesses nuclear weapons (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific, Nov. 28).
North Korean Anti-Terrorism
The United States, Japan and South Korea urged North Korea to increase its cooperation with the international anti-terrorism coalition in a joint statement released yesterday, after Bush called on North Korea to halt development of weapons of mass destruction, according to the Associated Press.
The three countries said North Korea had taken some positive actions in response to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, including calling the attacks “tragic” and agreeing to two U.N. treaties on terrorism, but criticized the country for not doing more to oppose international terrorism. North Korea has been “less than forthcoming in supporting the coalition against terrorism,” said U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Thomas Hubbard (Jae-Suk Yoo, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Nov. 28).
Hubbard also restated U.S. interest in opening a dialogue with North Korea and expressed disappointment that North-South Korean talks broke down earlier in November (Korea Herald, Nov. 30).
Meanwhile, North Korea agreed to two U.N. anti-terrorism treaties on Nov. 12. North Korea signed the 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (U.N. release, Nov. 29) and acceded to the 1979 International Convention against the Taking of Hostages (U.N. release, Nov. 29).
Russian military officials Tuesday denied reports that rail-mobile strategic missiles were being moved to disposal sites (see GSN, Nov. 28). “No missiles are moving anywhere and saying that we have entered the stage of scrapping these complexes would be premature,” said Maj.-Gen. Vitaliy Linnik, strategic missile troops deputy commander.
Russia plans to begin dismantling its rail-mobile launchers no earlier than 2002, according to Linnik. Construction of a disposal facility near Bryansk is nearing completion, but, “the facility needs to be tested before being declared ready to use,” Linnik said (Moscow Interfax, Nov. 27, in FBIS-SOV, Nov. 27).
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The U.S. government has awarded a $428 million contract to produce 155 million doses of smallpox vaccine to be delivered by the end of 2002, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced yesterday. The vaccine will be produced by a joint venture of Acambis and Baxter International.
“By signing this contract, we have created a stockpile of security against the smallpox virus,” Thompson said.
The contract is a scaled-down version of earlier U.S. plans to buy the vaccine (see GSN, Oct. 23), the New York Times reported. According to earlier reports, Thompson had allotted up to $509 million to create a stockpile of up to 300 million doses of vaccine (see GSN, Nov. 28).
The new plan will provide 209 million new doses of vaccine—the 155 million in the contract plus 54 million already ordered from Acambis (see GSN, Oct. 3). Also on hand are 15 million vaccine doses left over from the 1970s, which the National Institutes of Health hopes to dilute to 77 million doses, according to the Times. That would make a total of 286 million doses of vaccine, enough for the entire country, the Times reported (Stolberg/Petersen, New York Times, Nov. 29).
Office of Public Health Preparedness Director D.A. Henderson said the vaccine deal was not a response to any immediate threat of a smallpox attack, the Washington Post reported today. “Obtaining the vaccine represents an important insurance policy,” Henderson said. (Connolly/Gillis, Washington Post, Nov. 29).
Preliminary positive tests for anthrax in a letter mailed from the United States to Chile (see GSN, Nov. 27) might be the result of laboratory contamination, health officials said yesterday. Meanwhile, investigators finalized plans on the best way to open the anthrax-tainted letter sent to U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) as the investigation into the recent U.S. anthrax incidents continued.
The Chilean scientists who tested the suspicious letter received by a Santiago physician grew only a few colonies of anthrax bacteria from the material collected from the letter, said Mitchell Cohen, director of the Division of Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“If you were dealing with large concentrations of organisms, you would expect to get your [culture] plate covered with microorganisms,” Cohen said. The light growth found in the Chilean tests, however, “is more consistent with contamination from a laboratory source” (Mark Schoofs, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 29).
The Chilean lab contained anthrax on its premises, which may have contaminated the sample before it was sent to a CDC-affiliated Miami laboratory that later confirmed the anthrax, according to the Associated Press.
The anthrax found in the Chilean letter does not match the strains found in the U.S. anthrax cases, the CDC said yesterday. “This strain does not match the strain associated with the contaminated mail in the United States and therefore does not appear to be linked to the situation in the United States,” said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner (Laura Meckler, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Nov. 29).
To date, the CDC has not confirmed any anthrax incidents outside the United States. There have been false positives in several countries, including Kenya (see GSN, Oct. 26) and Pakistan (see GSN, Nov. 13).
Robo-Detective to Investigate
Investigators will use a small robot to open the anthrax-tainted letter mailed to Sen. Leahy (see GSN, Nov. 27), a law enforcement official said yesterday. The robot will be used as part of plan designed to minimize the loss of anthrax spores and DNA evidence from the envelope, officials said. Testing on the letter could begin today, according to USA Today.
The robot is expected to help create a controlled environment for opening the letter, which is highly toxic, authorities said. The letter holds enough anthrax to kill more than 100,000 people, Leahy said Sunday (Kevin Johnson, USA Today, Nov. 29).
Whoever is responsible for the anthrax incidents could have easily produced the tainted letters using relatively simple laboratories and self-protection measures, microbiologists said last week.
Project Bacchus, a 1999 Defense Department study, showed that a domestic team with biological training could produce two pounds of mock-aerosolized anthrax for about $1.6 million. The team was able to gather, in one year, fermenters, grinders and other laboratory equipment needed to produce anthrax.
Terrorists could produce anthrax or other biological warfare agents in their basement or garage if they were unconcerned about infecting themselves or people around them, according to experts. Public health officials would be unaware until those near the secret lab started to become ill, said Lee Thompson of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
“There is no doubt, if you were vaccinated or didn’t care about your life, you could acquire and produce a spore product if you had the correct shopping list and recipe,” said Craig Smith of the Infectious Disease Society of America. “Remember around the world, many of these dual-use items are totally unregulated” (Dan Vergano, USA Today, Nov. 29).
Capitol Police Bolstered
The House of Representatives yesterday passed an anti-terrorism bill that includes measures to enhance the Capitol Police, the Washington Post reported today.
“Our uncertain times have presented enormous, unforeseen challenges for the police,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.). “Now more than ever we need to provide them with all the needed tools and resources to maximize their potential as an elite law enforcement agency.”
The new measures include hiring up to 151 new officers, a new secure command center and a new training academy close to Washington. The House approved emergency anti-terrorism funding that would add more than $100 million to the Capitol Police budget, according to House aides. The police could also deploy up to 72 agents in a new chemical and biological response unit, according to the Post.
“The job of the Capitol Police has changed radically since Sept. 11,” said a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). “These measures will help them face a whole array of new challenges in protecting the Capitol and the people who work and visit here.” (Spencer Hsu, Washington Post, Nov. 29).
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Nerve gas vapor leaked inside the U.S. Army’s chemical weapons incinerator near Stockton, Utah, as a result of a “blip” in power Saturday, the Deseret News reported. No agents were released to the environment, a Deseret Chemical Depot statement said.
The vapor drifted inside the facility around 5 p.m. when utility power blinked off so quickly that emergency generators did not kick in automatically. Workers restarted the plant system within five minutes, according to the Deseret News. The brief deactivation of airflow fans allowed gas to drift.
Plant operators took “contingency actions ensuring the safety of the workers and the environment,” the statement said. “No worker was exposed to agent and all agent vapor was contained with engineering controls” (Deseret News, Nov. 28).
Israel closed a hospital in Netanya yesterday for a chemical warfare exercise stemming from concerns that Iraq might attack Tel Aviv or Jerusalem with missiles carrying chemical agents in response to a possible U.S. attack on Iraq (see GSN, Nov. 28). Other Israeli hospitals planned to conduct similar exercises in the near future.
Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan indicated yesterday that Iraq would retaliate against Israel in the event of a U.S. attack on Iraq, according to the Ottawa Citizen (Christopher Walker, Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 29).
Russia plans to spend more than $250 million (almost 7.7 billion rubles) for chemical destruction in 2002, ITAR-Tass reported Monday. A budget drafted for next year would provide about $175 million (5.3 billion rubles) specifically for scrapping chemical weapons and securing their storage (see GSN, Nov. 21), said Duma member Maj. Gen. Nikolay Bezborodov (ITAR-Tass, Nov. 26 in FBIS-SOV, Nov. 28).
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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak denied reports that Egypt entered into a deal with North Korea to obtain medium-range ballistic missiles and technology, the Egyptian news agency MENA reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 26). “I have already said several times that we are doing nothing to acquire this kind of weaponry,” Mubarak said. “Had there been such a deal, we would have announced it. In today’s world nothing can be hidden away” (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 28).
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U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he preferred a limited missile defense system that does not scrap the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, according to a Sunday New York Times Magazine article. Powell’s idea of a limited missile defense system would consist of sea-based interceptors.
Regarding the restrictions for developing missile defense systems that the ABM Treaty imposes, Powell said he preferred that the United States and Russia agree to an amendment to the treaty rather than abrogating it, as some other senior U.S. officials, such as National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, have suggested. A ratified amendment would carry the blessing of Congress and avoid much of the controversy surrounding the treaty. His second choice would be an informal agreement with Russia that would allow certain tests, he said.
Rice and opponents to the ABM Treaty have argued that an amendment to the treaty would require lengthy debate in the U.S. Senate, and mutual agreements would provide too much leverage to Russia, according to the Times.
Powell said Rice’s argument that legally-binding documents are no longer necessary since the Cold War has ended has some merit. He added, however, that he understands Russian concerns that without binding agreements, hard-line presidents could come to power and create new security dilemmas.
“The one thing that scares them—and I’d be scared if I were them [is that they say] … ‘Powell, we love you like a brother … But you’ll be gone one day. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will be gone. [U.S. President George W.] Bush will be gone. [Russian Foreign Minister] Igor [Ivanov] will be gone. And we will have made some kind of a deal now, and, great, it’s a limited defense. Well, one day another president comes in, and he decides: “I’ll replicate it. I’ll clone it. I’ll geneticize it.” And it goes from being a limited defense to: Pow! [former U.S. President Ronald] Reagan’s back. How do you persuade us that’s not going to happen? We can’t do this on the basis of personal relations. It has to be on the basis of our national interest over time.’”
Do address those concerns, the United States and Russia must codify arrangements, Powell said (Bill Keller, New York Times Magazine, Nov. 25).
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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has begun plans to create stockpiles of the anti-radiation drug potassium iodide (see GSN, Nov. 16), the New York Times reported today.
Potassium iodide works to combat radioactive poisoning in humans by saturating the thyroid gland with normal iodine to prevent the thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine, according to the Times. Iodine is a byproduct of nuclear reactions. Because the drug must be taken before exposure to radiation or soon after, it must be stockpiled close to possible exposure sites to be effective.
The NRC has set aside $800,000 to buy millions of doses of potassium iodide to provide to states, according to the Times. In 1998, the NRC offered potassium iodide free to any state that wanted to stockpile it, but rescinded the offer the following year. The commission is also waiting for guidelines from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on how much radiation exposure warrants taking the drug and what doses would be recommended.
Previous guidelines were based on data taken after the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, the Times reported. New FDA guidelines, based on data taken from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine, would be more complex and would recommend using the drugs for much lower amounts of radiation exposure than had previously been thought, said FDA official David Orloff (Matthew Wald, New York Times, Nov. 29).
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