The United States is expected to announce tomorrow that Iraq has violated the recent U.N. resolution requiring it to reveal all of its weapons of mass destruction, senior Bush administration officials said yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 17).
Senior U.S. State Department nonproliferation official John Wolf met yesterday with U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to outline the flaws U.S. intelligence agencies have said they have found in Iraq’s WMD declaration, according to the New York Times. While Wolf did not provide Blix with the data used to support the U.S. evaluation of the declaration, “we gave him the thrust with some examples,” a Bush administration official said (Sanger/Preston, New York Times, Dec. 18).
The White House is expected to publicly present the U.S. assessment of the declaration Friday, the day after U.N. inspectors brief the Security Council on it, according to the Washington Post. U.S. President George W. Bush might deliver the statement himself, the Post reported.
The United States and U.N. inspectors agree that the declaration fails to provide a full and accurate picture of Iraq’s WMD efforts as called for under U.N. Resolution 1441, sources said (see GSN, Nov. 8; Pincus/DeYoung, Washington Post, Dec. 18).
The United States has chosen to wait until at least Friday to reveal its assessment of the declaration to avoid being seen as trying to pre-empt the U.N. report, U.S. officials said.
“We’re not going to get too detailed on Thursday. We’re not going to be talking so much about mustard gas and (nerve agent) VX as the fact that there were omissions in the declaration,” a U.S. official said. “It wasn’t detailed enough. It didn’t give any proof as to what was destroyed,” the official added.
When the United States does present its assessment, it will only be a preliminary maneuver, officials said.
“Don’t bill this as a definitive or instant grand jury indictment on Thursday,” a senior State official said. “We will base our final conclusions down the road on the Blix assessment as well as on further analysis, discussions with supplier countries (that sold Iraq items used for weapons systems), other permanent members of the Security Council and other things,” the official added (Wright/Farley, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 18).
Senior U.S. national security advisers met yesterday to discuss the Iraq issue, including the issue of when Bush should declare that Iraq is in “material breach” of the resolution, according to several officials. Bush is expected to consider the question during a national security meeting set for today, officials said (Sanger/Preston, New York Times).
During yesterday’s meeting, White House foreign policy officials began preparing a three-pronged strategy to launch after the United Nations presents its assessment of the declaration, Bush administration officials said. The strategy will include a public relations campaign to convince the U.S. public and other countries that Iraq has not fully revealed its WMD programs, a diplomatic campaign to build Security Council unity for further action, and planning for a new round of strengthened inspections to prove that Iraq has lied, the officials said (Wright/Farley, Los Angeles Times).
As part of the toughened inspections, the United States plans to provide U.S. intelligence data to inspectors and hopes they will also be able to interview scientists who were involved with Iraqi WMD programs, officials said. The overall purpose of the strategy is to find a “smoking gun” to prove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has lied when he has said Iraq no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Proving Hussein has lied, however, will be an difficult task, a State official said (Strobel/Ibarguen, Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 18).
Security Council
Even though the United States and the United Kingdom agree that the declaration is heavily flawed, Washington expects different reactions from the remaining permanent council members — China, France and Russia, said U.S. officials and U.N. diplomats. The officials and diplomats said they believe, however, that the Security Council will decide that now is not the right time for military action against Iraq, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“Expect to see varying degrees of reaction — some will say partial breach, others will say complete,” said a Security Council diplomat. “The only point of full agreement is that this is not the trigger for military action,” the diplomat added (Wright/Farley, Los Angeles Times).
Russian U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov yesterday called on countries to refrain from making a judgment on the declaration until the inspectors have presented their report.
“We are not happy that some people in Washington are trying to interpret in public the resolution in a way that is clearly prejudging what inspectors say,” Lavrov said (Turner/Williamson, Financial Times, Dec. 18).
The 10 nonpermanent Security Council members were given an opportunity yesterday to receive edited copies of the Iraqi declaration. Some of the declaration’s annexes and Arabic materials might be given to the nonpermanent council members later if the Security Council agrees to do so, said U.N. spokesman Ewen Buchanan. The International Atomic Energy Agency presented copies of its report on Iraq nuclear program to the nonpermanent council members yesterday, according to the Associated Press.
The edited declaration contains many deletions, including the names of foreign individuals and companies as well as some Iraqis, a Security Council diplomat said. Some of the editing, however, appears to have been done quickly, for example, leaving the names of some Swiss and West German companies in the missile section still discernible, according to the diplomat.
“There seem to be a lot of gaps and omissions in this declaration but they seem to be produced by UNMOVIC [the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission], the IAEA and the five permanent members, not by Iraq,” a diplomat said (Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Dec. 18).
Scientists
Meanwhile, as requested by inspectors Iraq has begun preparing a list of personnel who worked in its WMD programs, U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki said. “I understand they are working on it,” he said.
The list is expected to include personnel ranging from top WMD program officials to scientists and engineers, Ueki said (DAWN, Dec. 18).
Inspections
U.N. inspectors searched at least nine suspect Iraqi sites today, according to Reuters. UNMOVIC inspectors visited a Baghdad water facility; a missile launch pad north of Baghdad; and a paint factory in southern Iraq, Iraqi officials said. UNMOVIC teams also visited a Directorate for Military Works and Clothing Stores depot and the biology department of a university in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. They revisited the al-Nassr Company for Mechanical Industries in the Taji area north of Baghdad.
IAEA inspectors visited the Engineering Industries Institute and the al-Fida Company in Dora, just south of Baghdad, according to Reuters. A second IAEA team visited the Saddam Dam near Mosul (Reuters/MSNBC.com, Dec. 18).
Yesterday, an UNMOVIC biological team traveled to Mosul to visit previously declared sites in the area, according to an IAEA press release. UNMOVIC missile experts visited the Oxidizer Production plant, which produces ballistic missile fuel; and the al-Almeen Factory, which produces components for the al-Fet’h and al-Abour missiles. An UNMOVIC chemical team revisited the Fallujah 2 site.
IAEA experts visited the Iraqi Plant, a previously declared site, the agency release said.
An additional eight UNMOVIC inspectors arrived in Baghdad yesterday, bringing the total number of inspectors to 113 — 94 from UNMOVIC and 19 from the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency release, Dec. 17).
For further information, see:
UNMOVIC
IAEA Iraq Action Team
U.N. Resolution 1441
Inspectors from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency have now visited dozens of sites in the round of post-Gulf War inspections that resumed Nov. 27 after a four-year lapse. The following chart summarizes some of their reported activities.
| Date | Site | Activity | | Dec. 18 | Baghdad water facility | See GSN, Dec. 18. | | Missile launch pad north of Baghdad | | Paint factory in south | | Biology department of a university in the northern city of Mosul | | Engineering Industries Institute | | Al-Fida Company at Dora, just south of Baghdad | | Saddam Dam, near the northern city of Mosul | | Al-Nassr Company for Mechanical Industries at the Taji area, north of Baghdad | | Directorate for Military Works and Clothing Stores depot | | Dec. 17 | Previously declared biological sites near the northern city of Mosul | See GSN, Dec. 18. | | Oxidizer Production plant | | Al-Almeen factory | | Falluja 2 site | | Iraqi Plant facility | | | Several medical and biotechnology laboratories at Baghdad University | See GSN, Dec. 17. | | Unspecified site in the northern city of Mosul | | Pharmaceutical factory in the northern city of Mosul | | Radwan, 10 miles west of Baghdad | | Dijla, northeast of Baghdad | | Al-Sawari company at Taji, on the northern outskirts of Baghdad | | Dec. 16 | Saad General Company | See GSN, Dec. 17. | | Taji Fiberglass production plant, part of the Thaat al-Sawary plant | | Amariyah Serum and Vaccine Institute, west of Baghdad at Abu Ghraib | UNMOVIC inspectors conducted an inventory of the site and took samples (IAEA release, Dec. 16). | | Al-Nassir al-Atheen State Company | UNMOVIC inspectors conducted a rebaselining inspection and inspected all buildings and dual-use equipment (IAEA release, Dec. 16). | | Iskanderya Foundry, part of al-Hatten | IAEA inspectors took environmental samples, inspected machine tools and conducted a radiological survey (IAEA release, Dec. 16). | | Iskanderya State Enterprises for Mechanical Industries | IAEA inspectors took environmental samples, inspected machine tools and conducted a radiological survey (IAEA release, Dec. 16). | | Mussayib Army Munitions Depot | IAEA inspectors monitored production of small rockets (IAEA release, Dec. 16). | | Al-Motaseem factory | | Al-Hatten Establishment’s testing range | | Al-Qaqaa company | See the Dec. 15 entry below. | | Al-Hatteen | See the Dec. 12 entry below. | | Electronics and heavy machinery factory in Baghdad | | | Biological and Technical Institute at Baghdad Univeristy | | Small boat factory 20 miles north of Baghdad | | Dec. 15 | Al-Fatah State Company | See Baghdad Iraqi Satellite Television, Dec. 15, in FBIS-NES, Dec. 16. | | Theo al-Fekar factory | UNMOVIC inspectors visited the site, which produces missile components. | | Al-Mutassem Solid Rocket Plant | UNMOVIC inspectors visited the site, which conducts the final assembly of the Ababil and al-Feta’h ballistic missiles. | | Al-Qaqaa company | UNMOVIC inspectors updated information about select facilities, including a sulfuric acid plant and an explosives production plant. | | Amariyah Serum and Vaccine Institute, west of Baghdad at Abu Ghraib | See the Dec. 10 entry below. | | Al-Maarik | IAEA inspectors worked to review the site’s activities since 1998 and to review the use of dual-purpose items. | | Sites near al-Maarik | IAEA inspectors worked to review the site’s activities since 1998 and to review the use of dual-purpose items. | | Badr | IAEA inspectors worked to review the site’s activities since 1998 and to review the use of dual-purpose items. | | Ramadi Glass and Ceramic Company | | | Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, located south of Baghdad | IAEA inspectors took water and silt samples for radiological analysis. | | Dec. 14 | Al-Quds State Company | IAEA inspectors asked experts about the nature of the company’s work and inspected several buildings at the site (Baghdad Republic of Iraq Television, Dec. 14, in FBIS-NES, Dec. 16). | | Al-Mahawil Warehouse | IAEA inspectors determined the nature of some materials at the site subject to monitoring (Baghdad Republic of Iraq Television, Dec. 14, in FBIS-NES, Dec. 16). | | Al-Nasr State Company | IAEA inspectors evaluated seals on several of the site’s buildings (Baghdad Republic of Iraq Television, Dec. 14, in FBIS-NES, Dec. 16). | | Dhu-al-Faqqar factory, part of al-Rashid State Company | IAEA inspectors examined machines at the site (Baghdad Republic of Iraq Television, Dec. 14, in FBIS-NES, Dec. 16). | | Al-Tahaddi State Company | IAEA inspectors conducted a radiation survey (Baghdad Republic of Iraq Television, Dec. 14, in FBIS-NES, Dec. 16). | | Samarra | IAEA inspectors examined remote monitoring systems (Baghdad Republic of Iraq Television, Dec. 14, in FBIS-NES, Dec. 16). | | Al-Qayyarah | | Al-Mishraq | | Al-Kindi, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul | IAEA inspectors examined the remnants of a remote monitoring system damaged during the 1998 U.S.-British air campaign (Baghdad Republic of Iraq Television, Dec. 14, in FBIS-NES, Dec. 16). | | Center for the Control of Communicable Diseases in Baghdad | UNMOVIC inspectors reviewed seals that had been placed on locked areas. | | Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center | | | Al-Samood factory | See the Dec. 10 entry below. | | Al-Fat’h facility, west of Baghdad | | | Sulphiric acid plant at the al-Qaqaa company | UNMOVIC inspectors verified equipment and materials at the site. | | The main storage areas of the al-Qaqaa company | UNMOVIC inspectors verified equipment and materials at the site. | | Shaheed | | | Al-Hatteen | See the Dec. 12 entry below. | | Iskanderiya | | | Daura heavy engineering facility | IAEA inspectors reviewed the use of dual-use machine tools. | | Dec. 13 | Al-Mussaib Pesticide Store | | | Three Major Iraq Surface Water Drainage Basins of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers | IAEA inspectors performed hydrological sampling. | | Baghdad area | IAEA inspectors conducted a wide-area gamma survey. | | Bin al-Haitham missile center in the northern Baghdad suburb of Kadhimiya | UNMOVIC inspectors visited the facility, which was built in 1982 to help develop the short-range al-Sumoud ballistic missile, according to a report by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (see GSN, Dec. 13). | | Center for the Control of Communicable Diseases in Baghdad | The UNMOVIC team that visited the center — which the Iraqi Health Ministry operates — had to summon top Iraqi and U.N. monitoring officials to gain access to several rooms (see GSN, Dec. 13). | Nov. 27-
Dec. 12 | See GSN, Dec. 13. | |
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Even though North Korea has called for the International Atomic Energy Agency to remove seals and monitoring equipment from North Korean nuclear facilities, there are currently no signs that it plans to expel the agency’s inspectors, an agency spokesman said today (see GSN, Dec. 16).
“What the North has so far told the International Atomic Energy Agency is that it wants the agency to unseal and remove surveillance cameras (from the nuclear plant),” agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has informed North Korea that he is willing to send agency officials or technicians to Pyongyang or to receive North Korean delegates at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna to discuss monitoring and other nuclear issues, Gwozdecky said (Yonhap/BBC Monitoring, Dec. 18).
Russia Divided on North Korea
Meanwhile, Russia appears to be divided on how to handle the North Korean nuclear issue — hindering U.S. efforts to create a united international front to pressure Pyongyang into abandoning its suspected nuclear weapons programs, U.S. officials said yesterday.
“There is a huge tug-of-war within the Russian government,” a U.S. official said. “There are many people whose careers depend on integrating North Korea,” while the U.S. policy is one of isolation, the official added.
The internal Russian division was illustrated Monday when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that officials worldwide, including in Russia, are “united in calling for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.” A few hours before Powell’s comments, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov had said that Russia would not “unite with anyone to pressure North Korea.”
During a visit to Japan this week, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov plans to announce new proposals to ease tensions, Losyukov has said.
“Russia has an approximate list of proposals,” Losyukov said. “We are prepared to make such steps and we have instruments no other country has — our rather strong contacts with the North Korean leadership,” he added.
The U.S. official expressed optimism that Russia could be persuaded to support the U.S. position on North Korea.
“We are still at the initial stages of working with the Russians on this, and I’m fairly optimistic we’ll be able to bring them on board,” the official said (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, Dec. 18).
For further information, see:
Agreed Framework Text
KEDO
The United States believes North Korea has conducted more than 70 high-explosive tests in a suspected nuclear weapons program since 1998 — four years after the creation of the Agreed Framework to freeze such activities, a South Korean official said today (see GSN, Dec. 17). The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency informed South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Lee Nam-shin of the tests during a Dec. 5 meeting in Washington, according to the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo.
A South Korean official confirmed that North Korea has conducted high-explosives tests, but could not confirm the number, the newspaper reported (Lee Kyo-kwan, Chosun Ilbo, Dec. 18).
For further information, see:
Agreed Framework Text
KEDO
Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces plans to stop using rail-mobile SS-24 intercontinental ballistic missiles by 2010, commander Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov said Sunday (see GSN, Oct. 24).
By 2010, the Russian Strategic Missile Forces will consist of two armies, each with 10 to 12 divisions, Solovtsov said. The divisions will be armed with Topol-M ballistic missiles and “will probably have no rail-mobile missile systems,” he added (ITAR-Tass, Dec. 16 in FBIS-SOV, Dec. 16).
As of July, Russia had 36 deployed SS-24 rail-mobile ICBM systems, according to a START memorandum of understanding that the United States and Russia exchange twice a year. Of those 36 SS-24s, 15 are at the Kostroma missile base, nine are at the Bershet base and 12 are at the Krasnoyarsk base. Russia also had 30 Topol-M missiles deployed at the Tatishchevo missile base, according to the START memorandum (Mike Nartker, Global Security Newswire, Dec. 18).
The U.S. Navy has awarded contracts to three U.S. defense firms for work to convert four Trident ballistic missile submarines to a non-nuclear, conventional role, the Day.com news service reported today (see GSN, Nov. 25).
Electric Boat, a subsidiary of General Dynamics, received a more than $38 million contract this month. The company received a $443 million contract last year for design and related support work, according to the Day.
The Navy awarded a $90 million contract to Advanced Information Systems, another General Dynamics subsidiary, for development and support for weapons control systems for the converted submarines.
U.S. defense contractor Northrop Grumman was awarded a contract worth more than $34 million to develop a prototype of a Multiple All-Up-Round Canister for the converted submarines. The canister is an insert for the submarine’s ballistic missile tubes, which will each hold seven conventional missiles when converted, the Day reported.
Under the conversion plan, two of the Ohio-class submarines — the USS Florida and the USS Georgia — are set to be converted at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia. The USS Ohio and the USS Michigan will be converted at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington (see GSN, Oct. 2; Robert Hamilton, Day.com, Dec. 18).
The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration yesterday announced plans to reduce its federal workforce by 20 percent, and administration officials said they plan to achieve the mark by 2004 (see GSN, Mar. 29).
The personnel reduction is part of a reorganization that takes effect Friday and aims to remove a layer of the agency’s management, the NNSA said in a press release. Personnel in the agency’s security forces and the Navy Nuclear Propulsion program will not be cut, the agency said.
“We have worked hard this year to make sure our reorganization is done right. We will manage the reductions in a way that is fair to our outstanding people, while ensuring that the NNSA of the future will have a world-class business environment that eliminates duplication and micromanagement and provides more effective federal oversight,” said Linton Brooks, the agency’s acting administrator.
The agency is altering the current management system in which site offices report to regional operations offices. Beginning Friday, site offices that oversee contractor work — which currently report to operations offices in Oakland, Calif., Las Vegas, Nev., and Albuquerque, N.M. — will instead report directly to the principal deputy of the NNSA administrator, the release says. The plan calls for the NNSA operations office in Oakland to be closed and downsizes the Las Vegas site office, which is to focus on managing the Nevada Test Site.
Albuquerque will become the home of an NNSA service center, which will provide support services to the site offices, the agency said (NNSA press release, Dec. 17).
Agency officials said that they want to achieve workforce cuts through attrition and buyouts. The 158 employees at the Oakland office will either move to direct oversight jobs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or they will relocate to Albuquerque, the Contra Costa Times reported today. The Albuquerque office, however, will eventually be reduced to 500 jobs from 678 (Andrea Widener, Contra Costa Times, Dec. 18).
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Two U.S. teaching hospitals have announced they are opting out of the voluntary U.S. plan to immunize up to 10 million emergency health care workers across the United States against smallpox, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Dec. 17).
Emergency workers and intensive care personnel at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta will not be required to take the vaccine, officials at those hospitals said.
Officials at three other medical facilities, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Emory Medical Center in Atlanta and the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics are considering not immunizing their personnel, the Post reported.
Grady Memorial is closely linked with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control — which is responsible for running the immunization program — but officials there cited the vaccine’s dangerous side effects, particularly among those with suppressed immune systems. The vaccine could spread from immunized hospital workers to patients who may be more at risk of adverse reactions, one official said.
“I don’t like to cause disease,” said Carlos del Rio, chief of medicine at Grady Memorial. “If, say, a patient with AIDS became infected, that would be a disaster,” he added.
Virginia Commonwealth University officials questioned whether the vaccine is necessary at all, noting the incremental approach to immunizations in the U.S. plan.
“There is a lack of logic to the current proposal,” said Richard Wenzel, chairman of the internal medicine department at Virginia Commonwealth. “If our government in all its intelligence thinks smallpox exists in enemy hands, why would we creep up on that policy? We would rush to vaccinate everybody right now,” he added.
The CDC expects some hospitals to choose against the inoculation program, but most will probably cooperate, said CDC head Julie Gerberding.
“This is a voluntary program,” she said. “We understand not all hospitals will choose to participate,” she added (Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, Dec. 18).
By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — U.S. regulators have failed to license any new drugs for biological defense in the past 12 years, despite an enormous contribution of finances and resources from the U.S. Defense Department, the Pentagon’s top microbiologist said last week.
“That is not a happy story for me to have to tell to senior leadership,” said Anna Johnson-Winegar, deputy assistant to the U.S. defense secretary for chemical and biological defense, at a Dec. 16 meeting on the issue.
New drug licensing rules, some bureaucratic restructuring and a new study underway all offer hope that problems will be solved, she said.
Funding for Pentagon research on medical defenses such as vaccines increased more than 400 percent from 1996 to 2002, to more than $160 million, Johnson-Winegar said.
The “complex and challenging” science needed to develop the medicines, however, hinders the quick results that Congress and defense officials want to see and congressional staffers have asked why the United States is funding the same efforts year after year, she added.
A shortage of scientific researchers that have the expertise to develop vaccines and biological warfare treatments have also hampered efforts, according to Johnson-Winegar.
Rules and Restructuring
The future holds promise, however, especially in the form of new rules from the Food and Drug Administration, Johnson-Winegar said.
In May, FDA officials announced a rule change that, in select cases, allows researchers to determine the effectiveness of a drug using only animal testing (see GSN, May 31). Previously, the agency required developers to test new drugs in human trials before licensing them, but it was often considered unethical to expose a person to a disease simply to test a vaccine.
The new regulations “should help,” according to Johnson-Winegar.
“We will rely heavily upon animal models” when developing vaccines, said William Raub, deputy assistant Health and Human Services secretary for planning and evaluation, during testimony to Congress in June. The rule change “creates a better defined path for the kind of evidence a sponsor would need with animal models in those instances where it’s unethical to expose humans to the actual disease,” he added.
A proposal to realign the structure of the Pentagon’s chemical and biological management and acquisitions efforts presents another opportunity to make biological defense research more efficient, according to Johnson-Winegar. Pentagon officials plan to license a smallpox vaccine by 2006 and FDA licensing on military vaccines for botulinum toxin and tularemia is scheduled for 2012, she said.
Study to Hasten Licensing
Johnson-Winegar spoke Monday to a new committee that was established to hasten licensing processes for biological warfare medicines.
The 2002 National Defense Authorization Act directs the Pentagon to aggressively accelerate biological research programs and to invest in new technologies against the most dangerous biological warfare agents, including anthrax. The Pentagon should take advantage of advancements and technology in the private sector, the legislation says.
The legislation also calls on the Pentagon to establish a study through the U.S. Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council to investigate “review and approval processes for new medical countermeasures for biological warfare agents.”
The 17 members of the Committee on Accelerating the Research, Development, and Acquisition of Medical Countermeasures Against Biological Warfare Agents — including doctors, researchers, lawyers and consultants — gathered in Washington for the first time this week to begin that study.
An interim committee report is planned for spring 2003, and a complete report, due in December 2003, is intended to suggest faster methods for biological research in the Defense Department, according to the legislation. The committee has also been asked to identify factors that are slowing the development of biological warfare drugs, the Institute of Medicine said in a statement describing the study’s scope.
The study shows that the United States is turning its attention to the licensing process for biological defense drugs, and that effort now has the attention of “senior leadership in DOD [and the] interest and support of Congress,” Johnson-Winegar said.
It will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and at least one more year to fully decontaminate all of the buildings that were tainted with anthrax during the 2001 attacks, the Baltimore Sun reported today. The lasting effects of the attacks far exceed previous expectations, according to the Sun.
“The economic costs are huge,” said Dorothy Canter, chief scientist for biological terrorism issues at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “It’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars for the cleanup alone,” she added.
No precise estimate of total decontamination costs is available yet because work is still ongoing, officials said. The U.S. Postal Service has estimated that it will cost more than $100 million to decontaminate the Brentwood Road postal facility in Washington and a contaminated mail-sorting center in Hamilton, N.J. (see GSN, July 2). It will cost more than $40 million to fully decontaminate Capitol Hill office buildings, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (see GSN, March 7; Scott Shane, Baltimore Sun, Dec. 18).
The project to decontaminate the Brentwood facility — which includes a construction site, a testing ground and a chemical plant — is uniquely complex and the largest of the decontamination projects, Postal Service officials said (see GSN, Dec. 16).
“Ever worked on one of those Rubik’s Cubes?” John Bridges, the Postal Service’s on-site commander in chief, said earlier this week, describing the cleanup project.
Technicians this week began recovering thousands of spore strips and air and surface samples from the facility, which will be tested to determine the success of the decontamination project, according to the Washington Post. The results of those tests are expected to be made available to an independent committee for review next month. If the project is successful, the facility’s 1,600 employees might return by spring, the Post reported.
“We don’t want to claim victory too early,” Bridges said. “We’re very excited it went off without a hitch,” he added (Manny Fernandez, Washington Post, Dec. 18).
Months of experiments to find the best ways to kill anthrax spores have increased decontamination costs, officials said.
“We’ve never had to do anything like this in history,” said Barbara Johnson, president of the American Biological Safety Association. “The government is erring very, very much on the side of safety. It’s a very conservative approach, but I don’t think there’s any other choice,” she added.
A conservative approach has been taken to ensure that workers will be safe when they re-enter decontaminated buildings, officials said. Postal workers, in particular, have been vocal about concerns that they were needlessly exposed to risks during the attacks, according to the Baltimore Sun (see GSN, Dec. 9).
“Some people are ready to go back,” said Dena Briscoe, a postal employee and president of Brentwood Exposed, an advocacy group representing workers of the closed facility. “But a lot of people still have fears. Some people just wish the building could be abandoned,” she added.
The Postal Service has begun testing biological agent detectors, which can identify about 12 biological agents such as anthrax, at Baltimore’s main postal facility, the Sun reported. Evaluators plan to install detectors in an additional 14 facilities for further analysis, Postal Service spokesman Bob Novak said (Shane, Baltimore Sun).
For further information, see:
CDC Frequently Asked Questions About Anthrax
FBI Amerithrax Investigation
Journal of the American Medical Association Background on Anthrax
GSN Anthrax Attack Chronology (Dec. 12, 2001)
A U.S. Defense Department initiative implemented after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is currently monitoring medical information from more than 300 military medical facilities around the world, the Pentagon said in press release yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 5).
The Electronic Surveillance System for Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics, known as ESSENCE, monitors 313 U.S. military medical centers to detect disease outbreaks before they spread, said Army physician Col. Patrick Kelly.
The program compares incoming medical reports to old statistics, Kelly said. The effort began as a pilot project in the Washington area, but was expanded in the aftermath of Sept. 11, he added.
ESSENCE II, a partnership between the Pentagon and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, monitors medical information from civilian hospitals in the United States as well as school absenteeism and veterinary hospitals.
“We will really be doing our job if we have systems that are sensitive enough to pick up problems early,” Kelly said (Gerry Gilmore, Defense Department release, Dec. 17).
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