Threat Assessment:  United States Still On Alert

The United States is still on alert for possible terrorist attacks, officials said today, even though the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, which prompted the latest warning, has come to an end (see GSN, Dec. 4).

“The alert remains in effect because the threat still remains,” Office of Homeland Security spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.  The threat warning issued at the beginning of the month will stay in effect at least through the Jewish and Christian holidays, according to the Associated Press.

U.S. agencies have received information on possible threats since the Dec. 3 warning was issued, law enforcement and intelligence officials said.  The information is not specific, but does illustrate that terrorists sympathetic to suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden want to attack, the officials said.

Bin Laden supporters have also viewed the end of Ramadan as a time to strike, they added. In a recently released videotape, bin Laden is heard predicting Allah will provide “more victory during the holy month of Ramadan,” according to the AP.

There are no plans to issue a new warning, the AP reported.  People will be informed that the recent warning is still in effect and that they need to be on the lookout for any suspicious activity, the officials said.

According to one senior official, the U.S. message is “not to let your guard down one bit.  There are terrorists whose plans might have been disrupted who remain at large and are looking for the opportunity.”

New Alert System Planned

The Bush administration is examining new ways of issuing threat warnings, the AP reported. Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge is considering a four-stage plan similar to the U.S. military’s “DEFCON” system.  The plan, scheduled to be implemented next year, would help local law enforcement rate the seriousness of each threat, officials said (John Soloman, Associated Press, Dec. 18).

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U.S. Export Controls:  Bush May Ease Restrictions on High-Performance Computers

By David Ruppe

Global Security Newswire

U.S. President George W. Bush is considering an executive order to greatly relax restrictions on exports of U.S.-made, high-performance computers (HPCs) to countries that could use them to develop nuclear weapons and other military advances.

Proponents of the move contend the spread of advanced computer technology is uncontrollable, and so U.S. companies should not be held back.  Critics disagree, saying the proposed relaxation could greatly harm U.S. national security.

The most powerful computers are, in principle, already available to all but a handful of designated rogue states—but for many countries only if approved after a U.S. review for national security implications.

The new regulations would eliminate that review on the latest generation of commercially available computers for more than 40 “Tier 3” countries of proliferation concern, including Pakistan, India, Russia, Israel and China, which are known or are believed to have nuclear weapon programs.

The Commerce Department, with input from the Pentagon and other agencies, is responsible for restricting licenses of HPC exports that might be used to build weapons of mass destruction or otherwise be detrimental to U.S. national security interests.

Under the new regulations, exports of computers capable of performing 190,000 million theoretical operations per second (MTOPS) would no longer require an export license or U.S. scrutiny for those countries.  The previous threshold was 85,000 MTOPS, set by former President Bill Clinton just before he left office last January.

The average desktop computer operates at around 1,000-2,000 MTOPS.  A joint Defense-Commerce Department study several years ago found that nuclear blasts could be simulated with computers performing at between 10,457 and 21,125 MTOPS.

The decision regarding HPC exports will be made “by presidential action,” said Catherine Willis, a spokeswoman for the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Export Administration, which throughout the Clinton administration was an aggressive proponent of relaxing HPC export controls.

International Reaction

The control relaxation plan was discussed with other friendly and allied governments at a recent arms control cooperation meeting in Vienna, where, according to one Pentagon source, it was coldly welcomed.

“Some of the allies asked, what’s the strategic rationale?  They were very cynical in their treatment of the U.S. proposal,” said Peter Leitner, a strategic trade adviser in the Pentagon, speaking as an independent expert and longtime critic of executive branch export control relaxation polices.

“There has been zero strategic analysis. It’s all based on economic objectives,” he said.

Some Security Implications

Computer experts say the more powerful a computer is in terms of the number of operations per second it can perform, the more precisely and rapidly it can perform a simulation.

“When you have a large computer, you assume you have a lot of memory. You essentially will be able to solve more challenging problems,” said Jack Dongarra, a computer science professor at the University of Tennessee.

In practical terms, it could help countries more quickly and accurately develop nuclear weapons, according to Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington. “My impression is there are not too many limits on what you can do.”

Higher-powered computers can improve modeling and simulation of nuclear weapons and the dispersal of chemical and biological agents in the atmosphere, said Leitner.

The proposal is “so massively bizarre … it’s during a war with the threat of [weapons of mass destruction] ... And what is the best way to have a clandestine WMD program?  Modeling and simulation,” he said.

Foreign governments also could use high-performance computers to break secret U.S. military encryption more rapidly and easily, said Stephen Bryen, founder and former director of the Pentagon’s technology control office, the Defense Technology Security Administration.

“What you’re getting into is machines that can crack almost any code, and that affects our eyes and ears,” he said. “It makes, for example, our fleet operations in the Pacific more vulnerable.”

Futile to Control a Widely Available Technology

Proponents of easing controls maintain that advanced HPC technology is becoming so widely available around the world it would be futile to try to prevent countries from acquiring it by limiting U.S. exports.

“Dramatic technological advances, globalization, and increases in foreign competition have made it unrealistic for the United States to think it can control access to computing power,” said the Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports, which represents leading U.S. computer companies, in a statement earlier this year.

CCRE Communications Director Jennifer Greeson suggested critics of the proposed control loosening are out of step with the national security community consensus in Washington.

“More and more members of the national security community have come to the conclusion that controlling commodity-type systems like the ones we’re talking about, that are essentially used for business processes and payroll calculations, do not pose a threat to national security interests,” she said, citing two think tank studies and a Pentagon report.

A Center for Strategic and International Studies report released in June recommended ending performance-based hardware controls on computers and microprocessors.  It suggested strengthening controls focused on the users and purposes of the equipment and finding new ways for the U.S. military to use information technology.  Click here to read CSIS report.

Because smaller-scale HPCs can be linked together to make more powerful ones, it is a waste of government resources to hold back the more powerful models, Greeson said.

They “are essentially commodity items that someone in another country could surpass the restrictions by clustering lower-powered computers together and downloading computing power literally off the Internet, and by remote access, simply sending the problem off to a supercomputer center to have it calculated.”

MTOPS Matter

Milhollin disagreed, saying increased access to more-powerful U.S.-made HPCs would help the Tier 3 countries develop computing power much more quickly.

“It makes a big difference what you start scaling with.  If you started assembling groups of computers operating at 190,000 [MTOPS] it would be much faster than if you started assembling groups of computers starting at 85,000,” he said.

The University of Kentucky’s Dongarra said it is advantageous to build a system using higher-powered computers, as opposed to scaling together many lower powered computers.

“It’s always easier with fewer.  When it becomes more, it complicates things,” he said.

CCRE’s Greeson said national security interests are protected, since U.S. controls over sensitive software remain in place, such as “controls over more advanced, specialized systems, military applications, submarine detection [and] special algorithms.”

Where are HPCs Today?

Bush’s decision comes as high-performance computer power is rapidly advancing, especially in the non-Tier 3 world:  the West, Japan and South Korea.

“We have this incredible situation where the performance of the computers we use is doubling every year and a half,” said Dongarra, who compiles twice yearly a list of the top 500 supercomputers around the world.  Click here to read the list.

Ranked first on the most recent list, released Nov. 10, is Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s ASCI White, at roughly seven trillion operations per second.  Number 500 is the Environmental Protection Agency’s Cray computer, which can perform 94,000 operations per second (see GSN, Dec. 3).

Complicating export control efforts, very advanced HPCs can and are being used today by nonmilitary concerns such as banks, telecommunications firms, insurance companies and universities for weather research centers, the list shows.  Ranked 25^th is the investment company Charles Schwab, 46^th is State Farm (insurance) and 118^th is Bayer AG (pharmaceuticals), all with computers rated above 250,000 operations per second.

But that is mostly in the West. Only two computers in China, a traditional country of concern for national security reasons, made the list.  Both are of U.S.-origin:  Number 434 on the list is a Hewlett-Packard owned by the Finnish engineering company Kone Cranes with a speed of 99,900 million operations per second, and number 471 is a Hewlett-Packard owned by an undescribed entity, Jiangxi Beijing, rated at 99,200 million operations per second.

The list also says that U.S. companies Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Cray, Intel, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, are by far the dominant suppliers of the most advanced computer systems worldwide, with a few Japanese companies having a relatively tiny share of the market.

That indicates that the United States could successfully control the access Tier 3 countries have to more powerful computers, said Leitner.

“We have an infinite ability to control access in exports. There is no foreign availability,” he said.  “The Japanese on this issue are much more conservative than we are.”

Clinton Administration Legacy

A White House decision favoring loosened controls would add to a string of HPC export control relaxations by President Clinton during his two terms.  Those decisions were encouraged by the computer industry and were also criticized by some in Congress on national security grounds.

In his most significant action, on Jan. 19, one day before he left office, Clinton relaxed the Tier 3 license threshold from 28,000 to 85,000 MTOPS.

When Clinton took office in 1993, the United States controlled computer exports up to a capacity of 12.5 MTOPS and China was believed to have no high-performance machines.  It has since imported hundred from the United States.

Clinton also last year eliminated the distinction between Tier 3 military and civilian importers of U.S. high-performance computers.

“It means that overtly military sites in [the countries] can get computers up to this limit with no government scrutiny,” said Milhollin.

Eliminating the licensing requirement for higher-level computers also means the higher-level computers can be retransferred anywhere in the world without U.S. knowledge or control over the end-user, said Leitner.

“There [would be] no restrictions on re-exporting these things. If they don’t require a license, they don’t require restrictions on re-exporting.”

Greeson said the MTOPS measurement of computing power is not a good way of determining the national security implications of a computer export, and said a better measurement needs to be developed. Higher-performance computer exports, however, should not be held up until that happens, she said.

“By that point in time, we could have missed [the opportunity to export] two or three generations of technological advances.”

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U.S.-Russia:  Nuclear Talks to Start in January

Russia and the United States will meet formally in January to discuss major cuts in strategic nuclear weapons, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced yesterday.  The two officials are in Brussels for NATO talks that start today.

U.S. President George W. Bush announced last month that the United States would cut its nuclear arsenal by about two-thirds, to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads (see GSN, Nov. 14), and Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed last week that the two countries reduce their stockpiles to between 1,500 and 2,200 warheads (see GSN, Dec. 17).

After meeting with Rumsfeld for about two hours, Ivanov said in a joint press conference that Russia’s top priority at the talks in January would be to hammer out an agreement between both countries on the cuts, including “levels of reductions and the time frame for those reductions ... [and] the issues of verification and transparency” (Vernon Loeb, Washington Post, Dec. 18).

The two countries would limit negotiations to the aggregate limits of deployed warheads and would not include the structure of the nuclear forces. Ivanov predicted the two countries would likely reach an agreement on the cuts by June (Pavel Koryashkin, ITAR-Tass, Dec. 18).

“One way to characterize what’s happened in the United States-Russian relationship is the way President Bush did—that we’re moving from mutual assured destruction to mutual assured cooperation,” Rumsfeld said (Loeb, Washington Post, Dec. 18).

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Russia:  Keep ICBMs Only, Arbatov Says

Russia should consolidate its strategic nuclear forces by integrating them back into the general armed forces and deploying only land-based ICBMs, said Duma Defense Committee Deputy Chairman Alexei Arbatov yesterday.

“When you have little money, you concentrate all your resources on what is best and strongest,” Arbatov said in a wide-ranging Moscow press conference on nuclear arms policy.  “You do not spread your resources thin, especially on areas where you have always been far behind and will stay this way forever.”

“All our limited resources should be focused on that single component which is really organic to Russia, in which Russia is ahead of everyone, and which suits Russia most of all, and that is, of course, our land-based missiles,” Arbatov said.

The two remaining legs of the Russian nuclear triad—bombers and submarines—should be maintained until their service lives are over, Arbatov said.  “These triads and diads are relics of the Cold War,” he said.

All of Russia’s strategic forces should be incorporated under the command of the armed services to conserve resources and maximize coordination, Arbatov said, suggesting that the forces to be incorporated include offensive strategic weapons, the Moscow missile defense system (see related GSN story, today), early-warning systems and space-based military systems.

Russian Deterrence in Doubt

Arbatov was concerned that the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty would affect Russian security (see GSN, Dec. 13), contrary to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s public statements (see GSN, Dec. 17).

After the recently announced nuclear reductions are completed, Russia would have about 1,500 strategic nuclear warheads, Arbatov said, plenty to overcome a limited U.S. missile defense.  Russian deterrence, however, needs to be considered from the perspective of Russia’s ability to retaliate after suffering an enemy’s first strike.

From that perspective, “I very much doubt that we will be able to penetrate [a U.S. national missile defense] under any and all circumstances,” Arbatov said.

“This is the hitch because in the first strike there may be 1,500 warheads in their silos.  In a retaliatory strike, depending on circumstances, there may be 15,” Arbatov said.

The Need for a Treaty

The U.S.-Russian nuclear reductions need to be codified by a treaty, Arbatov said (see related GSN story, today).  It could be a treaty with minimal verification provisions, but an agreement based on unilateral declarations “does not suit us,” he said.

“We have some unpleasant experience in terms of unilateral declarations connected with tactical nuclear weapons,” Arbatov said.  “[Former Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev and [former U.S. President George] Bush Sr., then [former Russian President Boris] Yeltsin and Bush Sr. made declarations and nobody can sort out what is happening—that’s unilateral declarations for you.”

“It’s a complete mess, nobody knows who has destroyed what and who has withdrawn what and from where.  So, we don’t want the same to be repeated in the field of strategic weapons,” Arbatov said.

Chinese Implications

China would probably respond to the U.S. ABM Treaty withdrawal by expanding its strategic nuclear forces, Arbatov said.  “China has more than enough money for that,” he said.  “If we speak about strategic missiles, they [currently] have 20 missiles.  In ten years they may have 500 or perhaps 1,000.”

“To Russia, this is entirely bad news,” he said.

“Considering the cuts of Russian strategic forces which will continue anyway, the growth of Chinese forces creates additional problems for Russia because the Chinese nuclear potential has always been targeted on Russia,” Arbatov said.

In addition, “a Chinese buildup will prompt India to start building up its potential.  And that in turn will prompt Pakistan to start a buildup.  It may spur on the process of nuclear proliferation in threshold countries.  All these countries are close to Russia and all of them will be able to reach Russia with their carriers at an early stage.  So, to us it is bad news all round,” Arbatov said (Federal News Service transcript, Dec. 17.)

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U.S. Testing:  Officials Conduct Subcritical Nuclear Test

The United States conducted a successful subcritical nuclear experiment last week at its Nevada test site, according to the U.S. Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.  The test, called Oboe 7, involved small amounts of nuclear material and was subcritical, meaning “no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurred,” an administration statement said.  Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California set off the experiment at 1 p.m. on Thursday.

The Oboe 7 was the 15^th such experiment the United States conducted since July 1997.  The experiments are designed to provide information about the aging U.S. nuclear arsenal without conducting full nuclear tests, which the United States froze indefinitely in 1992.  U.S. officials said they planned to conduct more experiments like the Oboe 7 in the future (Las Vegas Review-Journal, Dec. 14).

Anti-nuclear organizations have said the subcritical tests violate the spirit of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (Japan Economic Newswire, Dec. 13).  The United States signed the CTBT in 1996 but has not ratified it (Federation of American Scientists release, Dec. 18).

The Energy Department said the tests did not violate the treaty because no critical mass of fissile material was formed and no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction took place during the experiments.

The test was originally scheduled for Wednesday but was delayed until Thursday due to operational support problems, the Energy Department said (Japan Economic Newswire).  A two-day strike by security guards was responsible for delaying the Oboe 7 test, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported last week (Keith Rogers, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Dec. 14).

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North Korea:  Nuclear Weapons Years Away, Says Report

North Korea has extracted sufficient plutonium to build one or two nuclear bombs but would need several years to build them, according to a South Korean Defense Ministry report published today. North Korea extracted 22 to 26 pounds of weapon-grade plutonium from its Soviet-designed nuclear reactors before 1994, the report said.  That year, North Korea struck a deal to freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for newly designed nuclear reactors from a U.S.-led consortium (see GSN, Nov. 9).

According to the South Korean report, North Korea faced significant obstacles obtaining components to produce dependable nuclear devices.  Between 1983 and 1993, however, the country conducted at least 70 nuclear-related high-explosive tests, and it continued such tests until 1998.

“North Korea may have a capability of putting together a crude nuclear explosion device … but its technology is believed to be still in a rudimentary stage,” the report said.  “Even if it has manufactured an explosion device, it will be still low in dependability and it will take the North at least several years to turn the system into a weapon.”

North Korea Sunday repeated its refusal (see GSN, Dec. 10) to allow nuclear inspections (Sang-Hun Choe, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Dec. 18).

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Anthrax:  Spores Came From Domestic Source, White House Says

The anthrax spores sent in several tainted letters probably came from a U.S. source, the Bush administration said yesterday, but a U.S. Army spokesman said the powder certainly did not come from Ft. Detrick in Maryland (see GSN, Dec. 17).  Meanwhile, federal health officials said yesterday that workers at high risk to anthrax exposure, such as those at the U.S. Capitol, should be inoculated with the anthrax vaccine.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the administration’s belief that the spores came from a domestic source is based on “scientific means.”  The U.S. Army said earlier this week that the Ames strain spores used in the letters exactly matched those the Army produced in small amounts for testing purposes.

U.S. and British investigators have questioned researchers at laboratories where the Ames strain is stored, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Subpoenas also have been issued for records of employees and visitors to the facilities in recent years. 

Some scientists, however, wonder if the investigators’ list of facilities is extensive enough, the Times reported.  Previously, anthrax strains and other microbes could be sent from laboratory to laboratory with few records kept.  “You’d get to know someone doing research and say, ‘Can I have selection of what you’ve got?’ and it turned up in the mail,” one anthrax researcher said (Megan Garvey, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 18).

DOE Laboratory Illegally Obtains Anthrax Samples

An Energy Department laboratory illegally received live anthrax samples from a U.S. university in late October, Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said yesterday.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) “requested, received, and used virulent anthrax it was not authorized to possess,” Markey said.

LANL received the anthrax from Northern Arizona University on Oct. 26, but did not report the shipment for more than a month, Markey said.  He added that the laboratory was not authorized to work with virulent anthrax.  The Energy Department had no comment (Gwen Robinson, Financial Times, Dec. 18).

Army Has Its Doubts

The scientists at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases did not have the equipment or ability to make the kind of anthrax found in the tainted letters, Maj. Gen. John Parker, head of the facility, said yesterday.

Parker made the statement in response to charges that the spores used in the letters were a genetic match with those used at USAMRIID and five other labs that received their samples from the facility, according to the Associated Press. 

Scientists at the Army facility grew the Ames strain for experiments that used a liquid form of the bacteria, and they never made the dry powder form, Parker said.

“We don’t have that capability here nor do we have the scientists who know how to do that,” he said.  “I can’t give credibility to others who say they would have had to have been in our program.”

Parker said he doubted that a trained scientist would be responsible for the mailed anthrax.  “This person is a criminal,” Parker said.  “They have to be of the ilk of a terrorist.  I don’t think they can be logical thinkers” (David Dishneau, Associated Press, Dec. 18).

New Tests May Help Determine Source

While previous testing showed that the anthrax sent in the letters was of the Ames strain, new, more refined testing methods may be able to more accurately determine where the anthrax originated, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

Scientists are conducting the new tests at the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md., a not-for-profit laboratory founded by human genome decoder Craig Venter.  At the institute, investigators are attempting to find and catalog thousands of tiny genetic mutations, called single nucleotide polymorphisms, within the anthrax genome. 

These small changes occur as the cells of anthrax bacteria mutate, the Journal reported.  Finding and identifying these differences could help investigators determine which of the existing anthrax stockpiles most closely resemble the mailed spores, according to the Journal.

“The sophisticated tests aren’t done yet,” said an FBI agent.  “There haven’t been any conclusions.”

It is unknown whether investigators have taken anthrax samples from facilities known to have a supply, the Journal reported.  A collection of samples would be needed in order to find a precise match.

Institute scientists plan to find the polymorphisms by comparing two complete versions of the anthrax genome already mapped out.  “It’s a pretty new field,” said David Alland, a researcher at the institute.  “But we think these changes in the DNA provide a good way to identify a strain and even to understand its genealogy” (Regaldo/Fields, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 18).

Vaccine Urged as Post-Exposure Treatment

Federal health officials yesterday advised workers at the U.S. Capitol to get inoculated with the unlicensed anthrax vaccine to prevent against developing anthrax symptoms after their courses of antibiotics end.

An inoculation plan could involve up to 3,000 Senate and U.S. Postal Service workers in Washington, New York and New Jersey, according to the Washington Post.  Officials want to begin as soon as possible because many of the 10,000 Capitol staff members and postal workers placed on 60-day antibiotic treatments are starting to finish the regimens, the Post reported.  They could still be at risk if anthrax spores are lingering in the body and their immune systems are not prepared.

Capitol workers will be the first to be inoculated because Capitol officials requested they be so, health officials said.  That plan, however, has generated controversy among Washington municipal health officials, according to the Post. 

“There are only 10,000 doses of the latest batch of vaccine—and that is the lot that the Capitol Hill physician has requested,” said Washington Deputy Health Director Larry Siegel.  “We have made it very clear that if it is released, we want access to the same lot.” 

Siegel said he disagreed that only 3,000 workers were at high enough risk for the vaccine.  “There’s no science yet that will allow anybody to make a determination that any of the 3,500 people in Brentwood [postal facility] are at any lower risk than the people in [Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s (D-S.D.) offices],” Siegel said.  “If anybody is going to be offered vaccine, everybody should.” 

The Postal Service and the postal unions have made no decision on the vaccination plan, said Postal Service spokeswoman Kristin Krathwohl.  “It’s an area that few of us know anything about,” said Barry Burns, a chief shop steward at the Brentwood facility.  “The only thing we can do is put our trust in [the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention].”

“We have very little trust of postal management and what the post office was telling us,” Burns said.  “As of yet, we have no reason to distrust the CDC” (Vedantam/Connolly, Washington Post, Dec. 18). 

State Department Startled by Possible Anthrax Hoax

A possible anthrax hoax shut down the office of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage yesterday after a staff member opened an envelope containing white powder, according to the Washington Post.

The hazardous materials specialists who responded to the incident said they believed the letter was a hoax because of the irregular-sized granules in the powder, a State Department official said. Powder samples were taken to the FBI for further testing and results should be available this week, the Post reported.

State Department spokeswoman Eliza Koch said she believed the letter posed little risk because it had been irradiated at an Ohio facility.  The bulk of the mail sent to the State Department has been sent through the Ohio facility after anthrax spores were found in a State mailroom two months ago.

“Because it came through the postal service we assume it was irradiated and therefore poses no immediate health threat,” Koch said (Steven Mufson, Washington Post, Dec. 18).

Hart Office Cleanup Delayed…Again

The cleanup of the Hart Senate Office Building was delayed again yesterday after mechanical problems stopped the fumigation of the building’s ventilation system, according to Reuters.

The fumigation of the ventilation system in the southeast quadrant of the Hart building was scheduled for Friday.  Problems, however, delayed the process until late Sunday, according to Reuters.  After seven hours, mechanical glitches stopped workers from reaching the needed saturation level in the building, which led them to cease operations, authorities said.

Federal officials said they would attempt the plan again, but did not say when (Reuters/Boston Globe, Dec. 18).

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Smallpox:  CDC Trains Health Officials for Smallpox Outbreak

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday began a three-day training course for 200 public health workers on how to diagnose and contain smallpox.  The course includes information on how to detect smallpox and differentiate the disease from more common infections, such as chicken pox and syphilis (Erin McClam, Associated Press/Chicago Tribune, Dec. 18).

Course instructors are also teaching medical personnel how to quarantine confirmed smallpox cases and to vaccinate people who have had contact with the victim, according to the CDC emergency smallpox plan (see GSN, Nov. 27). Click here to read the plan.

Experts at the seminar discussed the best methods for quarantine.  Peter Havens of the Medical College of Wisconsin said hospitals could treat some smallpox cases but the disease was certain to spread in hospitals.  Mike Lane, former director of the CDC’s smallpox eradication program in the 1970s, said he preferred proposals to quarantine smallpox patients and people who had contact with them in a suburban motel or remote government building to prevent further spread of the disease.

“You can bring care to the patient if you elect to use the Motel 6 on the edge of town” rather than put smallpox victims in a hospital where the disease could spread to patients with weakened immune systems, Lane said (see GSN, Nov. 21).

Some health officials said they advocated ordering suspect cases to isolate themselves at home during the disease’s incubation period of seven to 17 days.  Others said mandatory quarantine was necessary for people who had contact with a smallpox patient.

The CDC provided instruction at the seminar for establishing “smallpox strike teams” to search for potential cases and people who had contact with them.  The teams would then isolate patients and their contacts and vaccinate them.  Discovering smallpox cases and potential cases early is essential because a smallpox vaccine can fight the disease if administered within four days of infection, said Walter Orenstein, director of the CDC’s National Immunization Program.

Health officials also debated vaccinating first responders, such as hospital workers and firefighters, before any smallpox case appears (see GSN, Nov. 6).  Some said the vaccine’s potential negative side effects and the high turnover of health workers countered the benefits of vaccinating first responders before a smallpox case was discovered (Chad Terhune, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 18).

CDC Deputy Director David Fleming told state and local health officials to coordinate plans with law enforcement officials, who could be responsible for enforcing quarantines and protecting smallpox vaccine stockpiles if an epidemic occurs.

Health authorities declared smallpox eradicated in 1980, but the Sept. 11 attacks and anthrax mailings have heightened concern that terrorists could release smallpox on a vulnerable population (see related GSN story, today).  “It’s a sad day that we feel this meeting is necessary … I hope and pray that this is a big waste of time,” said Orenstein.

“We have a large, susceptible civilian population,” Orenstein said.  “The threat of smallpox is probably not zero, although it is close to zero, and given its severity we need to be better prepared” (McClam, Associated Press/Chicago Tribune).

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Russian Plans: Moscow to Upgrade ABM System

Russia is planning to modernize its Moscow-based anti-ballistic missile system, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said yesterday.  The Russian Security Council approved the plan a year and a half ago.

“The plans will be implemented,” Ivanov said, according to Interfax (Deutsche Presse-Agentur/European Internet Network, Dec. 18).

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Nuclear Waste:  Nevada Files Lawsuit to Block Yucca Mountain Plan

Nevada yesterday filed a lawsuit to block federal plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, a site 90 miles north of Las Vegas, according to the New York Times (see GSN, Dec. 3).

The suit claims that when deciding to store waste at Yucca Mountain, the U.S. Energy Department disregarded the site’s geology, considering only the metal containers that would hold the waste, the Times reported.  The department has found that water moved faster through the site than previously thought.  Although water can spread radioactive wastes, the department said that it had confidence that the planned storage containers could protect the water.

Nevada’s suit claims federal law requires the department to make its choice for a waste storage site based on the site’s geology.  A change in policy to base the decision on the merits of manufactured storage containers could allow the Energy Department to approve permanent waste storage “at virtually any physical site in the United States,” the suit said.

“Congress wanted the assurance of geologic isolation for the simple reason that we’re fallible as human beings,” said Joseph Egan, one of the lawyers for the state.  “We can’t have any assurance that what we design is going to be perfect.”  Tests carried out by Nevada on the alloy that would be used in the canisters showed that certain combinations of heat and water caused corrosion in less than a year, Egan said.

Nevada also has a lawsuit pending over a rule from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that requires a repository site to be capable of retaining nuclear waste for 10,000 years before a license can be issued.  The Energy Department has estimated that peak releases would come after this time.  Nevada wants the period extended to 100,000 years or longer, according to the Times.

The Energy Department was scheduled to begin accepting waste from 125 U.S. nuclear facilities in January 1998.  The Yucca Mountain site, however, will not be ready for at least a decade, the Times reported (Matthew Wald, New York Times, Dec. 18).

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