Iraq:  U.S. Planning Action Against Iraq, Says Newsweek

The United States views Iraq’s ability to build and proliferate weapons of mass destruction as a direct threat to U.S. security and plans to eventually attack Iraq, according to Newsweek (see GSN, Dec. 19).  The United States has not yet decided, however, when and how to take action against Iraq, the news magazine reported today.

“The question is not if the United States is going to hit Iraq; the question is when,” said a senior U.S. envoy in the Middle East. 

Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have quietly said they would cooperate with U.S. action against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.  “If there is a war against terror, Iraq is part of the terror,” said Kuwaiti Information Minister Ahmad Fahd al-Ahmad al-Sabah.

“Suppose we agree with you Americans?  How do you plan to do it?  That is the dialogue right now,” said an adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud.

Russia and several European countries have urged the United States to avoid conflict with Iraq until operations against al-Qaeda are finished (see GSN, Nov. 28).  They have expressed skepticism that Iraq was tied to the Sept. 11 attacks and want the United States to focus on restructuring sanctions and renewing U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq, Newsweek reported (see GSN, Nov. 30).

“There will be a second phase where we look at all the different aspects of international terrorism—issues to do with weapons of mass destruction … But the method of acting, that’s something for later deliberation,” said British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

U.S. strategists have not yet decided what type of action to take, although it could include military and diplomatic initiatives, Newsweek reported.  The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered a plan to send 50,000 troops to Iraq’s southern border and another 50,000 to the northern border, then attack from both sides to eventually meet in the middle around Baghdad, according to Newsweek.

Other experts, however, have argued that 100,000 troops would be insufficient.  Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek, commander of U.S. ground forces in the region, has said at least 169,000 soldiers would be necessary.  Senior military officials have indicated that U.S. President George W. Bush would probably not agree to action that would require a force of that size, Newsweek reported.

Meanwhile, disagreement exists in the Bush administration about supporting Iraqi opposition groups, especially the Iraqi National Congress, lead by Ahmed Chalabi.  Supporters of the INC and opposition groups have said previous attempts to overthrow Hussein via such groups failed because former U.S. President Bill Clinton did not provide sufficient support.  Advocates have further argued that deploying some troops and showing U.S. determination would lead to population uprisings in Iraq.

Opponents of opposition groups have argued that the INC lacks real support in Iraq.  They have pointed to fighting among Kurdish groups and said the Iraqi Republican Guard is a disciplined force completely different from the unorganized Taliban (Dickey/Barry, Newsweek International, Jan. 7).

Meanwhile, the United States recently suspended funding to the Iraqi National Congress due to an audit that found the organization lacked proper financial accounting.

“The financial controls were insufficient and did not match requirements under U.S. laws,” said Gregg Sullivan, a State Department spokesman.  The audit did not discover any financial wrongdoing.  The INC has until Jan. 15 to implement new financial controls.  The State Department still considers the INC an important opposition group, Sullivan said. 

INC spokesman Sharif Ali Bin al-Hussein said the U.S. State Department suspended funds because some U.S. officials opposed aggressive action against Iraq (Larry Margasak, London Independent, Jan. 7).

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Italy:  Troops Will Take Part in Afghanistan Peacekeeping

By the end of January Italy will send troops trained to combat weapons of mass destruction to Afghanistan, the Italian Defense Ministry said last week (see GSN, Nov. 8).  The troops are part of a deployment of 350 Italian soldiers taking part in the international peacekeeping mission (Rome ANSA, Jan. 2, in FBIS-WEU, Jan. 2).

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United States I:  Arms Controllers Anxious About Nuclear Posture Review

By David Ruppe

Global Security Newswire

Arms control advocates are speculating that a new review of U.S. nuclear weapon policy will call for keeping large numbers of strategic forces on a Cold War state of high alert and will not make major arsenal cuts.

They also believe the Bush administration may have developed new rationales for using nuclear weapons in a combat.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week suggested new policies, the product of a congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review, would amount to a “significant change” in how the military uses its nuclear weapons and would include “deep reductions” in the U.S. arsenal.

The details of the review are contained in a classified document and are not yet publicly known, but Rumsfeld suggested an unclassified version would be soon released and Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Michael Humm told Global Security Newswire Friday it would happen this week.

Artificial Reductions? …

Arms control proponents say their concerns stem largely from U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) pressures.

In July congressional testimony, then-STRATCOM Commander in Chief, Navy Admiral Richard Mies argued forcefully against further cuts in the U.S. arsenal and against taking U.S. forces down from their current state of alert.

His positions appeared somewhat at odds with those of President George W. Bush, who has supported major cuts.

In November, Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Crawford, Texas, where they announced “substantial” joint reductions in nuclear arms, but did not specify how they would occur [See GSN, Nov. 14].

Bush announced reductions down to 1,700-2,200 “operationally deployed strategic warheads” over a decade, which would appear to be around the 2,000-2,500 goal set by Russian and U.S. Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton in 1997.

Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, however, believes the administration may fudge the reductions by simply not counting submarines or bombers that are in overhaul to meet the proposed limit.

By defining the numbers as such, the count could exclude warheads that are on submarines or bombers normally rotated through overhaul, “because they’re not ‘operationally deployed,’” said Cirincione.

“At any given time we have one or two Trident submarines in overhaul, 192 warheads on each boat, that’s 384 warheads that you can take off the top,” he said. “It doesn’t indicate any actual reduction in the force, it’s just a change in the accounting method.”

… Or Real Accomplishment?

Rose Gottemoeller, a former Clinton administration arms control official also with Carnegie, however, thinks “from a public presentation point of view” the announced reductions were a significant accomplishment for Bush.

The number “2,000 was always the kind of major barrier below which the U.S. could not go,” she said. “I think they probably had to press the bureaucracy to get it.”

The number is significant because conventional wisdom has held that if the U.S. reduced below 2,000 warheads, it would not be able to sustain its strategic triad of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers.

Certain cuts may be camouflaged, she said, but “that’s often been the case with arms control agreements, the public presentation is very enthusiastic but both sides hedge their bets.”

De-linking Force Size With Threats

Perhaps of greater concern to arms controllers is that the STRATCOM chief, in his testimony, endorsed an emerging view of U.S. nuclear doctrine and strategy that de-emphasizes Russia as a potential threat and justifies force levels based upon unspecified threats that might or might not emerge in the future.

The new view is outlined in an influential January 2001 report produced by the National Institute for Public Policy. Click here to read NIPP report.

Nuclear force posture, that report said, should be determined by considering factors, such as “current and potential threats, U.S. deterrence and wartime goals, nuclear targeting strategy and warhead options, enemy active and passive defenses, conventional strike capabilities, and third country use.”

While the report acknowledged the absence of Russia as a nuclear challenger, it essentially argued for maintaining a substantial capability to deal with unidentified threats of the future: “It is not now possible to predict with confidence future deterrence requirements. The future may prove to be far more dangerous than benign.”

Mies, who left the command Nov. 30, said in his July testimony: “We must preserve sufficient deterrent capability to respond to future challenges, to provide a cushion against imperfect intelligence and surprises, and to preserve a reconstitution capability as a hedge against unwelcome political or strategic developments.”

One major recommendation of the January report Mies did not directly address is that nuclear weapons could be used in increasing roles, including for deterring all weapons of mass destruction, not just nuclear, for use in other regions and for attacking deep underground or biological weapons targets.

Mies in his written testimony, however, lauded the study, calling it a “good blueprint to adopt.”

Study director and NIPP President Keith Payne was made a co-chair of an advisory panel on nuclear deterrence concepts last year, which helped produce the Nuclear Posture Review, Inside the Pentagon reported in October.

Questions Over Usage

Stan Norris, a senior National Resources Defense Council analyst, disagrees with the logic that without Russia as a threat, the United States can justify maintaining a large nuclear arsenal.

“The Soviet Union is no more, we are told Russia is not our enemy and Putin is big buddies with the president, which is all to the good. But we continue to do things, though, that belie that,” he said.

The 1995 Nuclear Posture Review established that the START II 3,500-warhead level would be required for deterring a hostile Russia, by holding at risk a range of assets valued by its political and military leaders.  Click here to read a Pentagon summary of that review.

De-alerting

The STRATCOM chief also opposed taking U.S. strategic forces down from their current state of alert.

Under the current state, according to Cirincione, there are approximately 2,000 weapons ready to launch on 15 minutes’ notice of an incoming attack, “the Cold War standard.”

“To do that requires a very high state of alert,” he said. “If you were to change that to being able to launch a smaller number of your missiles for example under those extreme conditions, say 10, or 50, and extend the other ones to say days or weeks, this would make your nuclear forces less prone to accident or miscalculation and a safer force to operate.”

Mies, in his testimony, argued against de-alerting forces, saying it could increase the vulnerability of the U.S. arsenal vulnerable, “create a premium for attacking first,” and could provide an incentive for a potential foe to rearm.

He said “multiple, stringent” safeguards are in place to guard against an accidental or inadvertent launch.

Norris, on the other hand, said having U.S. forces on high alert, and building a national missile defense program that could protect the U.S. arsenal, could only encourage Russia and China also to maintain their forces on high alert.

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India-Pakistan:  India Reaffirms No-First-Use Policy

Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said recently that India would not consider using nuclear weapons unless it was under nuclear attack.

“India will never be the first one to use nuclear weapons,” Fernandes said in an interview published yesterday in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.  The statement came as tensions have increased between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan since terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament on Dec. 13.  Fernandes called the attack “a crime of a greater scope” than the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

Fernandes said Pakistan is responsible for the terrorist attack and that it had conducted a “war by proxy against India” for 12 years by training and equipping terrorists.  India killed 1,990 terrorists in 2001, Fernandes said.  He added that India and Pakistan could “take joint action” against terrorism if Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf ended his support for attacks on India (Welt am Sonntag, Jan. 6 in BBC Monitoring, Jan. 7).

Latest Developments

Meanwhile, Pakistan has arrested hundreds of people suspected of having links to militant Islamic groups in response to the attack on India’s Parliament, which killed 14 people (see GSN, Jan. 4).  Indian officials questioned whether those arrested were militant leaders and how long Pakistan would detain them.

Pakistan would consider extraditing non-Kashmiri suspects to India if evidence against them were provided, Pakistani foreign ministry official Aziz Khan said yesterday (Eric Bellman, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 7).

Pakistan has refused to extradite more than 20 people, mostly Indians, that India has said were part of terrorist or criminal activities in India, the New York Times reported today.  Musharraf said India should provide Pakistan with evidence against the suspects, and Pakistan would prosecute them.

India yesterday shot down an unmanned Pakistani spy plane that had crossed into the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and fallen on Pakistani territory, according to Indian officials.  Pakistan denied that the plane went down.

Are the Countries Talking?

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee continued to refuse to participate in official talks with Pakistan until India was convinced Pakistan had shut down militant groups operating against Kashmir and India.  Vajpayee and Musharraf met for a few minutes during a conference of South Asian countries in Katmandu last weekend but did not discuss anything “significant,” Vajpayee said (see GSN, Jan. 3).

Pakistani officials, however, indicated that discussions occurred behind the scenes, the Times reported.  The countries’ foreign ministers met for almost an hour Saturday, although neither country would say what they discussed.  Pakistani Foreign Affairs Minister Abdus Sattar and Indian National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra were filmed looking at a document at the convention, and Musharraf indicated they were discussing something important, the Times reported.

India, however, has tried to keep pressure on Pakistan to act against militant groups by refusing official talks, according to the Times.

“I don’t think Pakistan is prepared to renounce the use of cross-border terrorism as an instrument of policy toward India,” said Nirupama Rao, a spokeswoman for India’s ministry of external affairs (Celia Dugger, New York Times, Jan. 7).

South Asian Anti-Terrorism Agreement

Meanwhile, members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation agreed yesterday at the Katmandu conference to change their laws to conform to the recent U.N. Security Council resolution requiring countries to fight terrorism (see GSN, Dec. 5).  The resolution that the SAARC countries adopted condemns terrorism and calls upon members to increase cooperation, Star News TV reported, according to United Press International.  Both Vajpayee and Musharraf attended the conference (United Press International, Jan. 6).

India and the United States Agree to Share Intelligence

India and the United States have agreed to exchange military intelligence related to terrorism, said a defense ministry official, according to the Associated Press.  The two countries developed an outline of the agreement last month when U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith visited India, the official said.  The countries are expected to sign the agreement when Fernandes visits the United States later this month, according to a Hindustan Times report the official said he could not confirm (Associated Press, Jan. 7).

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North Korea:  IAEA to Visit Isotope Laboratory

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are scheduled Jan. 12 to begin a weeklong visit to a North Korean isotope production laboratory, a government source told Agence France-Presse.  Officials announced in early December North Korea would allow the limited inspection in the Yongbyong nuclear complex north of Pyongyang (see GSN, Dec. 3). 

The IAEA welcomed the offer to tour the isotope facility, but said it falls far short of the agency's goal.  The agency wants to inspect facilities from North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, which the country agreed to freeze in 1994 in exchange for construction of two light-water nuclear reactors.

The agency has said it wants full access to the Yongbyong site, where many experts suspect North Korea produced weapon-grade plutonium.  North Korea has said it would refuse to allow the IAEA access to those sites until the international consortium building the reactors—the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization—completes a significant portion of the project (Agence France-Presse, Jan. 7).

North Korea Opposes KEDO Communication Satellite

Meanwhile, a senior North Korean official said last week that North Korea opposes a KEDO proposal to construct an independent satellite communication system, according to Seoul Yonhap. The satellite would allow South Korea to link to the KEDO construction site in North Korea (see GSN, Nov. 9).

North Korean officials opposed the proposal during KEDO-North Korea negotiations in November because of security concerns, Yonhap reported.  KEDO planned to continue attempts to persuade North Korea to allow the communication system, the official said, adding that the system was "essential for constructing the nuclear reactors" (Seoul Yonhap, Jan. 3 in FBIS-EAS, Jan. 4).

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Iran:  No Illegal Weapons, Official Says

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said Iran would not attempt to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction, EFE News Service reported today.

“Despite the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the most important countries in the weapons industry, it has never tried to acquire nonconventional arms, and will not do so,” Rafsanjani said (EFE News Service, Jan. 7).

Rafsanjani last month attacked the United States and the United Kingdom for seeking to arm Israel with weapons of mass destruction while blocking Islamic countries from trying to obtain the same.  He also said that the Islamic world could survive a nuclear war with Israel.  “The use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything,” Rafsanjani said.  “However, it will only harm the Islamic world.  It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality” (BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Dec. 15).

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United States II:  Budget Increase Would Help Refit Trident Submarines

The U.S. Defense Department wants to increase its fiscal 2003 budget by almost $20 billion, part of which would help fund programs to refit Trident submarines, the New York Times reported today.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said he would use the fiscal 2003 defense budget to “transform” the military, according to the Times.  One such program would convert Trident submarines to carry cruise missiles equipped with conventional weapons, instead of the current nuclear-armed ballistic missiles (see GSN, Dec. 7).

The proposed increase would also help fund stockpiling efforts of weapons guided by lasers and satellites, “bunker-busting” munitions and the development of new weapons systems, such as the U.S. army’s Crusader mobile artillery unit, the Times reported.

“There is a real necessity to do something we didn’t really address in the last budget, which is ramp up procurement,” said Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim.  “It’s got to go up.”

The new proposed increase is less than the $33 billion increase that Congress approved last year.  The new proposal, however, comes at a time when federal agencies are being told to trim their budgets, the Times reported. 

White House Budget Director Mitchell Daniels told the Defense Department to reduce an earlier, larger proposed increase, Congressional officials said.  Daniels has said, however, that the White House will agree to a major increase in the Pentagon budget.

“The reconstruction of our defenses, which started in the [fiscal 2002] budget, will continue with perhaps more urgency,” Daniels recently said.

Democrats are expected to support the Pentagon budget increase, congressional officials said.  “All of us understand that our first obligation is to defend the nation, and we’re going to make certain that the resources are available to do that,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).  “At the same time, every part of the federal government understands we can’t be giving blank checks,” Conrad added (James Dao, New York Times, Jan. 7).

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India-Russia:  Work Begins on Two Reactors

A Russian company has begun work on two nuclear reactors for the Kudankulam power plant in India, ITAR-Tass reported Thursday (see GSN, Nov. 13).

The Izhora Plants joint-stock company has started construction on two VVER-1000 reactors, which can produce 1,000 megawatts each.  Construction of the reactor casing will take three years, ITAR-Tass reported.  The reactor construction is part of deal signed between India and Russia in November (ITAR-Tass, Jan. 3 in FBIS-SOV, Jan. 3).

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Anthrax:  Second Daschle Letter Found Harmless

A second suspicious letter sent to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) last week contained harmless material, the FBI said Friday (see GSN, Jan. 4).  Meanwhile, with no new anthrax cases recently reported, officials are examining the response to the anthrax attacks, according to reports.

The powder found Thursday in the second Daschle letter was talcum powder, the FBI said.  The letter, postmarked from London, is being investigated as “a criminal hoax,” said FBI spokesman Chris Murray (Susan Schmidt, Washington Post, Jan. 5).  

New Hampshire Teen Makes Threats

A New Hampshire teenager arraigned Saturday on burglary charges said he sent a tainted letter to Daschle and planned to send tainted mail to others, according to authorities.  Elijah Wallace was found in the closet of a vacant house he appeared to have broken into, police said.  Authorities found Wallace with letters addressed to local businesses and white powder.  Initial tests conducted on one of the letters came back negative for anthrax, said Fremont, N.H., Police Chief Neal Janvrin.

Authorities said they do not think Wallace sent last week’s letter to Daschle.  He said he had mailed the letter last week, but because of increased security it would have taken as long as three weeks to arrive at the Capitol, police said (Associated Press/Washington Post, Jan. 6). 

Wallace’s father yesterday said his son is a compulsive liar and had spent time in a state mental hospital.  “He’s telling a story that is a sensational story to, I think, feel important,” Eric Wallace said.  “I don’t think there’s any chance any anthrax was involved.” 

“There is no indication that [Wallace] has the wherewithal to send a contaminated letter,” said U.S. Capitol Police spokesman Lt. Dan Nichols.  Mail from New Hampshire now will be identified by screeners and any letters found will be given to the FBI, Nichols said (Associated Press/New York Times, Jan. 6).

What Can Be Learned?

Officials are examining the anthrax attack response and hope to learn from past mistakes in the event of future bioterrorism, the New York Times reported yesterday. 

The lack of distinction between the goals of warfare and those of terrorism led to many of the mistakes made, experts said.  Warfare plans for the conquering of territory, while terrorism tries to “hurt a few people and scare a lot of people in order to make a point,” said Craig Smith, an infectious disease expert at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Ga. 

Many terrorism drills plan for an attack on mass targets, such as a stadium, which is why lessons learned from such drills were ineffective during the recent anthrax outbreak, the Times reported.

“We’re coming out of a Cold War mentality that says that the big threat we have to face is the Soviet Union unleashing biological or nuclear weapons,” said Jeffrey Hunker, dean of the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University.  “By saying we were preparing for mass attacks, you are saying we were preparing for war.”

Health officials and scientists lacked knowledge about anthrax, according to the Times.  The recent attacks indicated that officials needed to resist drawing conclusions from a small database of information, said D.A. Henderson, director of the U.S. Office of Public Health Preparedness. 

“There is a lot of feeling that we didn’t know what we were doing as scientists in giving advice,” Henderson said.  “But, sorry, we haven’t had a lot of anthrax around to know just how it’s going to behave.”

Poor public communications during the attacks did little to calm fears, the Times reported.  Early in the attacks, when clear and precise information was most important, there was no government scientist that delivered such information consistently, according to the Times.  “The message was clearly a medical message, and you have got to have medical people talking about medical facts and not nonmedical people prescribing antibiotics,” said John Eisold, the Capitol physician.

Federal officials were disorganized in their communication efforts, Henderson said.  “We felt very strongly about the need to be available and to communicate, and there was just no way in the world you could,” he said.

Another flaw in the response was the lack of cooperation between federal, state and local officials, according to the Times.  “In retrospect, we were certainly not prepared for layers and levels of collaboration” among the wide range of agencies and organizations “that would be required to be efficient and successful,” said Julie Gerberding, deputy director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases.

Connecticut Health Department official Matthew Cartter said local, state and federal agencies must clarify lines of jurisdiction before another attack.  “We were very much aware that we had no jurisdiction over federal facilities whether it was the [Veterans Administration] or the post office,” Cartter said.

Laboratories also had to handle numerous samples that needed to be tested for anthrax, the Times reported.  Even though nasal and surface swabbing mainly helped determine how anthrax spores spread, state officials became swamped with samples that needed to be tested.

“You could never have prepared for the volume that you had to process,” said Lou Turner, director of the North Carolina Laboratory of Public Health.

A remaining problem is how to determine which of the tested items to return, according to the Times.  “We have to figure out how to get rid of all this, which is still evidence and still in the chain of custody,” said Elizabeth Franko, director of the Georgia Public Health Laboratory.  “Either law enforcement needs to come get it, or they need to sign off and say it is trash and they do not want it back.”

Even though no new cases have been recently reported, the attacks may not be over, experts said.  “We still do not know who put anthrax in the mail, we still do not know if they used all they had and we still do not know how to make all the mail safe,” said Florida Health Secretary John Agwunobi.  “So the question becomes how quickly can we apply what we have learned so far to the next event” (Altman/Kolata, New York Times, Jan. 6).

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U.S. Plans:  Pentagon Creates Missile Defense Agency

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced last week that the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization will be elevated to the Missile Defense Agency.

The agency will be responsible for testing and developing a missile defense system, according to a Defense Department release.  The current head of the BMDO, Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, will become MDA director and will continue to report to Edward Aldridge, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics (Defense Department release, Jan. 4).

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Nuclear Waste:  Reports Question Groundwater Monitoring Plan

Two recently released reports question the U.S. Energy Department’s plans to monitor radioactive contamination of the ground water under the Nevada Test Site and the Yucca Mountain proposed nuclear waste repository, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported today (see GSN, Dec. 18).

One report, prepared by a panel of experts led by nuclear engineer Melvin Carter of the Georgia Institute of Technology, recommends building a network of monitoring wells that would detect the movement of radioactive contamination before it could affect drinking water.  The wells should be placed where groundwater paths converge downstream from the cavities caused by nuclear test detonations below the water table, according to the report.

The report will be discussed Wednesday at the Nevada Test Site Community Advisory Board meeting, according to the Review-Journal.

Another report, published in the American Geophysical Union’s Water Resources Research journal, said the Energy Department’s calculations of radiation travel times in the groundwater beneath Yucca Mountain and the Nevada Test Site are incorrect.  Fractures in the rocks would allow radiation to spread “significantly faster than predicted by the Energy Department’s multimillion-dollar [modeling system],” the report said.

Energy Department scientists are taking the wrong approach regarding groundwater contamination, said hydrogeologist David Purvance, who prepared the report.

“They use the slowest, oldest theory of dispersion to describe the process at the Nevada Test Site, and they ignore development of a dispersion theory that’s been ongoing for the last dozen years,” he said.  “It’s like trying to send a man to the moon without knowledge of Newton’s laws.”

Purvance’s methods “have not been fully evaluated or accepted in the scientific community,” said Bob Bangerter, manager of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Underground Test Area Project.  “Should this occur, we will consider the use of this method in our continuing evaluation of new scientific methods and models to address groundwater contamination” (Keith Rogers, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jan. 7).

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