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Despite a campaign promise to rethink nuclear policy, the Bush administration has taken no significant steps to alter nuclear targeting policies or reduce the alert status of U.S. nuclear forces. Meanwhile, domestic weapons laboratories continue working to refine existing warheads and design new weapons.
—George Lopez, chairman of the board of directors for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, outlining why the Bulletin moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock up two minutes today.
By Greg Seigle
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The U.N. International Maritime Organization supports a U.S. proposal to have ships inspected at ports of origin instead of ports of destination, but only by “trusted agents”of the port country and not by U.S. law enforcement officials, the agency’s head of security told Global Security Newswire this morning...Full Story 
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military may be providing President George W. Bush a broader range of options for using nuclear weapons in contingencies around the world, analysts say, even as the Bush administration last week said it is sticking by a long-standing U.S. pledge to not use nuclear weapons on non-nuclear states...Full Story
By Greg Seigle
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Handheld radiation detectors used to detect a nuclear bomb smuggled through a U.S. seaport might not be enough, and an attack with weapons of mass destruction at any U.S. port would wreak havoc on global commerce by halting shipping for four months, senior transportation officials told a Senate subcommittee yesterday...Full Story
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By Greg Seigle
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Handheld radiation detectors used to detect a nuclear bomb smuggled through a U.S. seaport might not be enough, and an attack with weapons of mass destruction at any U.S. port would wreak havoc on global commerce by halting shipping for four months, senior transportation officials told a Senate subcommittee yesterday.
A terrorist attack involving even a single ship might force Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta to abruptly close all 361 U.S. ports, said William Schubert, the Transportation Department’s maritime administrator.
Grounding air transportation for four days last year as a result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks cost businesses billions in lost revenue and forced the federal government to bail out airlines. Those events would pale in comparison to a seaport shutdown, Schubert told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information.
“We would have to shut our ports down for four months just to check all the containers,” Schubert said, referring to the tens of thousands of 40-foot containers stacked at U.S. ports on any given day. “If anything would ruin our economy, that would.”
The few lawmakers present at the hearing, including those who represent the nation’s largest ports in New York and Los Angeles, agreed that ports are extremely vulnerable to WMD attacks. These concerns are accentuated by predictions that container cargo traffic, which constitutes 90 percent of global trade, could double or triple within 20 years.
“If it comes to commerce or protection, protection will always come first,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), whose state has three of the busiest ports in the country, Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland.
“I don’t mind our ports being shut down for four months if that will prevent a nuclear explosion. That’s nothing,” she said.
Terrorists Likely to Shield Weapons
Meanwhile, any nuclear bomb smuggled into a U.S. port in a shipping container would probably be encased in lead, shielding it from inspectors’ handheld radiation detectors, Customs Service assistant commissioner Bonni Tischler told the subcommittee.
If terrorists or agents of any country ever try to sneak a nuclear bomb into a U.S. seaport — a realistic scenario considering that on a daily basis drugs, weapons, material goods and even people are smuggled into the country in shipping containers — they would likely conceal its radiation emissions with lead casing, Tischler said.
A smuggled nuclear device “probably will come shielded,” Tischler said.
“If it’s shielded, you’re not going to pick it up” with the 4,000 handheld radiation detectors currently used by customs inspectors throughout the country, she added. “So I think we need lead detectors.”
Customs inspectors do use X-ray devices to scan containers — readings that would detect lead casings — but these contraptions are large, cumbersome, crane-like devices only used on a small percentage of the 6 million containers shipped into the United States each year.
While it has been frequently reported that inspection rates for containers are only 2 percent, Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner said the figures are higher. Rates are even up to 10 percent with Canadian goods, under the belief terrorists might try to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States through Canadian ports of entry, Bonner said.
Shipping containers offloaded at Canadian and U.S. ports could soon wind up almost anywhere in the United States after being trucked or railroaded from a seaport without even being opened. Any containers that contain hidden nuclear, biological or chemical weapons could then be detonated or released at some unsuspecting site.
In the past decade the shipping industry has spared safety for profits, said Feinstein.
“Everything has been to speed trade, let it go through, ask questions later,” Feinstein said. “I agree with [Tischler] on the shielding, and I agree with the need for more X-rays.”
U.S. nuclear power plants have 20 days to implement enhanced security measures, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said yesterday.
An order for the new security measures, which was earlier reported in a Reuters story in the Philadelphia Inquirer as having been in effect since mid-February, is now effective immediately, according to NRC statements (see GSN, Feb. 15). Plant licensees now have 20 days to notify the NRC if they believe they would be unable to comply with any of the new security measures.
The enhanced security measures include requirements to:
* Increase patrols at nuclear power plants,
* Strengthen plant guard forces,
* Add security stations,
* Install physical barriers,
* Perform security checks at greater stand-off distances,
* Improve cooperation with law enforcement and military officials and
* Increase on-site access restrictions for plant personnel.
“Some of these requirements formalize a series of security measures that NRC licensees had taken in response to advisories issued by the NRC in the aftermath of the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks,” the NRC said. “The commission views these compensatory measures as prudent, interim measures to address the high-level threat environment in a consistent manner throughout the nuclear reactor community” (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission release, Feb. 26).
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By Greg Seigle
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The U.N. International Maritime Organization supports a U.S. proposal to have ships inspected at ports of origin instead of ports of destination, but only by “trusted agents”of the port country and not by U.S. law enforcement officials, the agency’s head of security told Global Security Newswire this morning.
With the understanding that ports worldwide are extremely vulnerable to weapons of mass destruction attacks and that any such attack would effectively cripple global shipping for months (see related GSN story, today), IMO officials aim to help improve port and ship security, according to Hartmut Hesse, head of the organization’s navigational safety and maritime security section.
However, IMO officials stopped short of backing any moves to post U.S. customs inspectors at foreign ports, Hesse said.
The response to having U.S. officials at their ports has been “very skeptical from some parts of the world,” said Hesse, a German national. “I don’t think European administrations or ports will be open to something like this.”
Last month U.S. Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner said the United States wants to reverse worldwide shipping procedures by inspecting containers on outgoing rather than incoming ships (see GSN Jan. 17). While the proposal has received lukewarm response from other countries (see GSN Jan. 31), the specific suggestion of having U.S. Customs inspectors based in foreign ports has faced stiff resistance.
During a meeting this month to determine its own 12 proposals for bolstering port and ship security — including placement of ship security officers on every ship over 500 tons — IMO officials agreed ports are extremely vulnerable to WMD attacks, Hesse said.
“Once a ship reaches a port it’s too late” to stop a WMD attack, Hesse said. “Inspections have to be done at the port of origin.”
No Sea Marshals
While the IMO does not support placement of law enforcement sea marshals on ships, it does recommend that every ship over 500 tons have a security officer trained in shipping safety, Hesse said.
The IMO is proposing that shipping companies select officers that can be trained by IMO-sponsored organizations to oversee ship security once a vessel is ocean bound, Hesse said. Those selected would likely be deck officers, he added.
Under the IMO proposal, responsibility for port security would fall under “trusted agents” of a port’s home country — their customs officials or other law enforcement agents, Hesse said.
By May the IMO hopes to have training procedures in place — military consultants hired by the IMO are devising such procedures — so training seminars can begin, Hesse said.
“We don’t have time to develop these measures. It’s pretty urgent to get them in place,” Hesse said.
The IMO has had security guidelines in place for years, but the guidelines are only on paper and have largely been overlooked by shipping officials concerned with profit, he said.
“All the security measures are urgent because not much has been done for security in the past,” he said.
Under the IMO proposal, actual inspections of containers would continue to fall under the auspices of customs officials from each port’s home country, Hesse said. Most countries are not willing to let U.S. officials work from their ports, he said.
“If a country agrees to allow U.S. people at their ports, fine,” Hesse said. “I don’t think you can rely on this.”
International Trust is Key Issue
Any improvements in inspection procedures would come from a “combination of technology and more inspections at foreign ports, not necessarily from U.S. inspectors,” William Schubert, maritime administrator for the U.S. Transportation Department told a Senate subcommittee yesterday.
“We need to be able to profile ships before they get here,” Schubert said. “We must have some form of pre-screening at the foreign ports.”
During yesterday’s hearing on port security by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she does not think the United States can rely on foreign inspectors.
“If we open ourselves up to that it will be much worse,” Feinstein said, adding that Osama bin Laden or members of al-Qaeda or other terrorists groups could gain access to containers bound for the United States at ports such as Karachi, Pakistan, which she called the “weak link” in global shipping security.
“I would not bet that a port in Pakistan would not be susceptible to bribery,” Feinstein said. “No way, no how, do I think we can rely on these foreign inspectors. I think the only protection we have is at our home ports.”
German officials are investigating six German companies suspected of selling military equipment to Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported.
Much of the investigation has focused on one German businessman who authorities suspect facilitated two deliveries from a Swiss company of drilling equipment that could produce artillery tubes for the Iraqi 210-millimeter al-Fao gun (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2001). The al-Fao can launch 109-kilogram shells with a range of 56 kilometers and can shoot chemical and biological weapons, according to Der Spiegel.
The drilling technology is also essential to Iraqi attempts to rebuild the country’s military, the magazine reported.
German companies have helped construct Iraqi chemical weapon plants and modernized the country’s missiles, Der Spiegel reported. A German court convicted engineer Karl-Heinz Schaab in 1999 for helping Iraq construct plants to build nuclear weapons.
Other Violators
German companies are not alone in violating the U.N. sanctions, Der Spiegel reported (see GSN, Feb. 21). German investigators have discovered links to Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
China (see GSN, Feb. 21), India, Russia and Eastern European countries are also supplying Iraq in violation of sanctions, according to an internal German government report (Kurz/Mascolo, Der Spiegel, Feb. 25, in FBIS-WEU, Feb. 26).
Canadian Intelligence Reports on Iraq
Meanwhile, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service issued a report saying Iraq, Iran and Libya appear “determined to acquire a nuclear weapons capability at the earliest possible opportunity.” Iraq is significantly closer to that goal than Iran or Libya, the report said.
Despite the report’s findings, Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham yesterday rejected demands from the Canadian opposition to increase support for a potential U.S. campaign against Iraq (see GSN, Feb. 14). “We remain firm in working within the United Nations context,” Graham said.
“There is nothing new in the CSIS report that we are not aware of and has not been forming government policy for many years,” he added (Agence France-Presse, Feb. 26).
Most Americans are worried about an attack involving weapons of mass destruction, according to a survey conducted earlier this month and commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Scientific American magazine, according to a joint NTI/Scientific American press release.
“The country at large is much more acutely aware of how vulnerable we are following 9-11,” said John Rennie, Scientific American editor in chief.
Of the 1,012 respondents to the survey, 76 percent said they were worried about a WMD attack. Those who were “very” concerned about an attack with any weapon of mass destruction totaled 27 percent, while 49 percent were somewhat worried about a biological attack, 43 percent were somewhat worried about a chemical attack, and 39 percent were somewhat worried about a nuclear attack.
In terms of vulnerable locations for an attack, 19 percent said “downtowns of large cities” are most at risk, and 14 percent said nuclear plants are vulnerable. Respondents who believe that “amusement parks and sporting events” are most vulnerable totaled 10 percent, and 15 percent said all those locations are most at risk.
Most Are Concerned About Government Response
Only 47 percent of survey respondents said the U.S. government is doing enough to respond to potential threats, and 19 percent said the government is not doing enough.
Most Americans — 68 percent — said they were at least somewhat worried about losing some individual freedoms as security measures increase. Blacks and Hispanics in particular were concerned about civil rights losses.
“Finding the right balance between security and liberty depends on realizing that the proponents of security and the proponents of civil liberties are not antagonists but partners seeking reliable, mutually reinforcing goals,” said Charles Curtis, NTI president and chief operating officer.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group, Inc.]
The U.S. Defense Department certified the Ohio Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 8). The team is trained to respond to domestic emergencies involving nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. The Pentagon has now certified 25 of the 32 such teams authorized by Congress (Defense Department release, Feb. 26).
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By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military may be providing President George W. Bush a broader range of options for using nuclear weapons in contingencies around the world, analysts say, even as the Bush administration last week said it is sticking by a long-standing U.S. pledge to not use nuclear weapons on non-nuclear states.
The expanded range of options would result from a major shift in U.S. nuclear strategy, recently announced in the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, which de-emphasizes Russia as a threat and would enable the president to have more choices to deal with regional contingencies more flexibly.
A Congressional Research Service analysis last month questioned whether that new approach might provide an increased nuclear threat against non-nuclear states and conflict with the so-called “negative security assurances” pledge.
State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher last week said the administration would continue to honor the pledge, first made in 1978, which is considered an important reason why most of the world has been willing to renounce nuclear weapons.
Boucher also, though, restated another longstanding policy that the United States would not rule out using nuclear weapons in response to a chemical or biological weapons attack by a non-nuclear state against U.S. interests or allies.
A Shift in Approach
The Pentagon’s new nuclear weapons strategy was outlined in a Jan. 9 Pentagon briefing, which described a major shift away from the Cold War approach to nuclear planning keyed on the Soviet, then Russian, threat.
The strategy would be guided by what is called “capabilities-based” planning, intended to provide the president with a range of nuclear options for dealing with a “range of contingencies” that might occur around the world, according to Pentagon briefing materials.
U.S. strategic forces would still have plans for striking China and Russia, according to Scott Sagan, a Stanford University associate professor of political science and an authority on nuclear strategy. “But they would also have lots of smaller options. And my understanding is they are trying to make this to be far more flexible than it has been in the past.”
U.S. forces would be prepared to use nuclear weapons, he said, “in a variety of contingencies, ranging from single weapons to larger-scale uses.”
Most of the U.S. nuclear arsenal has been targeted at Russia, and to a lesser degree, China, experts say.
“To Defeat Any Aggressor”
The NPR also charted a major reduction in the number of nuclear warheads deployed worldwide over 10 years, with possibly thousands taken offline and put into storage.
The briefing did not specify the degree to which any of the remaining deployed warheads might be retargeted away from Russia, or for what sorts of other new contingencies they might be required.
Briefing materials did say, though, that U.S. strategic forces need to provide the president with “a range of options to defeat any aggressor.”
That goal, said the Congressional Research Service analysis, may be in conflict with the promise not to use nuclear weapons on non-nuclear states.
The pledge “may not be consistent with a nuclear posture that declares nuclear weapons to be part of the range of options available to ‘defeat any aggressor,’” according to the CRS analysis.
Possible Implications
The pledge is a political commitment, not a legal one, so it could be broken by the United States with no legal repercussions, experts say. In 1997 comments, Robert Bell, then special assistant to the president for defense policy and arms control, also offered a view that even a legal commitment to such a pledge could be broken if the target state had broken a treaty such as the Chemical Weapons Convention by using chemicals against U.S. troops.
The wronged state can “as a matter of international law … suspend temporarily [its] obligations vis-a-vis nuclear weapons use, for the purpose of halting this violation of another treaty,” said Bell, now a senior NATO official.
A potential harmful consequence of the new NPR approach, though, is the impression the United States does not stand by the pledge, a U.S. government nuclear weapons analyst who asked not to be identified said.
That impression may encourage declared non-nuclear states to pursue nuclear weapons for their defense, and feel free to do so, the analyst said.
The Clinton administration reaffirmed the 1978 pledge in 1995 to gain continued international support for indefinitely extending the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
“Ninety-five percent of the countries in the world insisted that we issue this thing so they feel comfortable in the NPT,” the analyst said.
Pentagon Spokesman Lt. Col. Michael Humm said the Nuclear Posture Review changes would not increase the likelihood of nuclear use by the United States since the president will continue to be the final authority on whether to use nuclear weapons.
“It is U.S. policy that the authority to use nuclear weapons rests solely with the president, and this policy has not changed as a result of the Nuclear Posture Review.”
Experts said the negative security assurances technically do not apply to countries not in good standing with the NPT. Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball said, therefore, the pledge might not preclude nuclear strikes on North Korea and possible Iraq.
Bell said in his comments, though, that “nowhere in that legal option that our lawyers have identified is there any opportunity for preemption.”
Consistent With Previous Policies
The U.S. military had plans prepared for using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states outside of the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, experts said.
Still, Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Strategy Project at the Nautilus Institute in Berkeley said the administration’s posture review “solidifies” an increased emphasis on targeting non-nuclear countries that has been underway since the early to mid-1990s.
As early as 1993, then-Commander in Chief of the U.S. Strategic Command Gen. Lee Butler told The New York Times “our focus now is not just the former Soviet Union but any potentially hostile country that has or is seeking weapons of mass destruction.”
President Bill Clinton signed a directive in November 1997 believed to include new guidelines permitting U.S. nuclear strikes after enemy attacks using chemical or biological weapons, according to a Washington Post report.
Arguing for a Nuclear Role
The U.S. Strategic Command, which is solely responsible for planning, targeting and wartime employment of U.S. strategic forces, has argued that nuclear weapons have important deterrence roles in the post-Cold War era.
“As STRATCOM embarks on this era of strategic disengagement marked by sharp decreases in the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and former Soviet Union, other more profound, more complex challenges wait on the horizon. Most significant of these challenges is countering the spread of weapons of mass destruction, biological, chemical and nuclear,” the command’s Web site says.
In a rare document release on nuclear strategy, a formerly classified study written by the command in 1996 and released in 1998, argued U.S. nuclear weapons are an effective tool for deterring biological and chemical weapons use by other states, threatening the harshest response.
Nuclear weapons are “our most potent tool of deterrence,” it said.
“Although we are not likely to use them in less than matters of greatest national importance, or in less than extreme circumstances, nuclear weapons always cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict in which the U.S. is engaged,” it said.
As a practical matter, though, the report said deterrence against weapons of mass destruction would best be accomplished by having the capability of destroying what an adversarial leadership values, such as military capabilities and its survival, “without having to inflict massive civilian casualties."
That does not necessarily rule nuclear weapons out as real tools for military planners, according to Sagan.
“There are, at least in theory, some discriminate uses of low-level nuclear weapons that could produce less collateral damage than large-scale conventional bombing.”
A danger though, he said, of making ambiguous threats is “if it does not work 100 percent of the time, a president might feel extra pressure to use nuclear weapons if biological weapons are used against us, where he might otherwise not.”
By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists today moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock up two minutes — to seven minutes to midnight — illustrating increased security concerns over nuclear weapons.
“Despite a campaign promise to rethink nuclear policy, the Bush administration has taken no significant steps to alter nuclear targeting policies or reduce the alert status of U.S. nuclear forces,” George Lopez, chairman of the Bulletin’s board of directors, said in a press release (see GSN, Feb. 20). “Meanwhile, domestic weapons laboratories continue working to refine existing warheads and design new weapons” (see GSN, Feb. 20).
Lopez said there are several other reasons for the decision to move the hands closer to midnight, including efforts by terrorist groups to obtain nuclear weapons, the U.S. preference for unilateral action and lack of U.S. cooperation on international arms control agreements (see GSN, Jan. 24).
The Bulletin singled out for criticism the Bush administration’s decisions to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its refusal to participate in talks for the implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2001).
The Doomsday Clock’s new position is identical to that when it was created in 1947 as a way to graphically illustrate the current worldwide threat of nuclear war, which is represented by midnight. Today’s move is the third time the clock has been moved closer to midnight since the end of the Cold War in 1991. The clock’s most recent position was nine minutes to midnight, which represented tensions resulting from Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapon tests.
South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges and U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham made progress during a meeting in Washington yesterday, but they have not yet resolved a disagreement over moving weapon-grade plutonium waste to South Carolina’s Savannah River site. They agreed to try to find a solution within 30 days, Hodges said.
“We’re making some progress, but we’re not there yet,” Hodges said. “The next month or so will tell the tale.”
“We did make progress, and we’ve agreed to a timetable to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s so we can move forward,” said Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis.
Hodges has demanded that Energy provide a document with a timetable for treating plutonium in South Carolina and then moving it out of the state. Hodges and other South Carolina politicians have expressed concern that if the department moves plutonium to South Carolina, federal officials might leave it there permanently.
“I again made it very clear to the secretary that South Carolina must have a definitive plan for when the plutonium will come to the state, how it will be treated and when it will leave,” Hodges said.
Energy plans to convert weapon-grade plutonium from various U.S. sites into mixed-oxide fuel at Savannah River (see GSN, Feb. 26). Hodges and other South Carolina officials expressed concern last summer that conversion plans would be canceled, but the Bush administration proposed more than $300 million for the MOX plan in fiscal 2003 (Brandon Haddock, Augusta Chronicle, Feb. 27).
Shipment Delays Slow Rocky Flats Shut-Down
Meanwhile, delays of shipments from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado, caused by the dispute between South Carolina and the department, could force Rocky Flats to miss its Dec. 15, 2006, deadline for closing down the plant, Rocky Flats manager Barbara Mazurowski said Monday.
On Feb. 15 energy officials drafting the paperwork to begin shipments to South Carolina sent a report to Congress that is necessary to begin the shipments, Mazurowski said.
She expressed concern, however. “Until I see a … truck roll up here, and we start loading it, and I know that truck is going to South Carolina, I am still very cautiously concerned here,” she said.
The department has not yet issued the required 30-day notice to begin shipments. Abraham and President George W. Bush, however, have both told Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) that Rocky Flats will close on schedule.
Local officials wrote to Abraham urging him to begin transporting the plutonium in March, which is necessary to close the plant on time, according to the Rocky Mountain News (Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News, Feb. 26).
U.S. and Russian companies have signed an agreement on new pricing terms for the U.S. purchase of uranium taken from Russian nuclear weapons, U.S. Enrichment Corporation said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 26). The agreement between USEC and the Russian firm Techsnabexport is now in the hands of the U.S. and Russian governments for final approval, according to USEC.
The new pricing terms would resolve a long-running dispute over the price of uranium taken from Russian nuclear weapons under the “Megatons to Megawatts” agreement (U.S. Enrichment Corp. release, Feb. 26).
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The U.S. Justice Department has issued subpoenas to U.S. microbiology laboratories to obtain Ames strain samples in an effort to determine the source of the anthrax used in last fall’s attacks, the New York Times reports today (see GSN, Feb. 26).
The laboratories that were subpoenaed include the University of New Mexico and Louisiana State University, the Times reported. LSU maintains one of the largest U.S. collections of anthrax strains, according to the Times. It is not yet known if other laboratories have received subpoenas, but experts said the total number of laboratories that will be examined would probably be more than 12.
Some experts said they were surprised it had taken the Justice Department this long to issue subpoenas — more than four months after it was discovered the Ames strain was the anthrax used in the attack.
Federal law enforcement officials said they have been conducting the investigation slowly and deliberately to ensure that no pieces of evidence are missed. One reason it took so long to issue the subpoenas was that investigators needed a scientific protocol for how samples are to be collected and shipped, according to one official.
“That took time to develop,” the official said.
The protocol is designed to make sure anthrax samples stay alive and free from contamination, according to the Times. They are also meant to make sure that the process used to collect them can withstand court scrutiny.
“There are serious health risks and a potential for danger,” said another law enforcement official (William Broad, New York Times, Feb. 27).
Culprit Might Have Tried to Divert Suspicion
The real person responsible for the anthrax attacks might have falsely accused a former scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported today.
In early October, FBI agents requested that former USAMRIID scientist Ayaad Assaad come in for questioning, according to the Journal-Constitution (see GSN, Jan. 29).
“I was just totally paralyzed, mentally and physically,” Assaad said. “The only time I ever had any dealings with the FBI was when I had to be fingerprinted for my citizenship application. So I didn’t know what to make of it.”
FBI agents told Assaad they had received an anonymous letter claiming Assaad was planning to conduct a biological weapons attack and that he had the means to successfully do so, the Journal-Constitution reported. The letter accurately described the security clearances Assaad had while employed at USAMRIID and said his two sons were possible accomplices to the plan. The letter’s author said he was a former colleague of Assaad’s.
“I’ve been in this country for 26 years,” Assaad told the FBI agents when shown the letter. “I came here for the opportunity to build for the future, not for destruction.”
The FBI agents asked Assaad if he had access to biological weapons, which Assaad said he did not, according to the Journal-Constitution. He was later told he was free to go.
The FBI questioned Assaad Oct. 3, a day before the first anthrax cases were discovered, according to the Journal-Constitution. This could mean whoever sent the anonymous letter knew the attack had begun, the Journal-Constitution reported.
“I think it could well be whoever sent the (hoax) letter,” said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a New York State University microbiologist and author of a paper for the Federation of American Scientists analyzing the anthrax investigation (see GSN, Feb. 20). “The superficial purpose was to cast suspicion on Assaad” (Lenny Savino, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Feb. 27).
The United States needs to do more to protect food imports from bioterrorism, U.S. Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Claude Allen said Monday (see GSN, Feb. 8).
“We now inspect less than 1 percent of the food that comes into this country,” Allen said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “That is a weakness.”
The Health and Human Services Department was able to increase funding enough to hire 700 new inspectors, Allen said, adding that would only allow inspections for about 3 percent of food imports.
Under the Bush administration’s fiscal 2003 budget proposal, $159 million has been allocated for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration counterterrorism program. The U.S. Agriculture Department Food Safety and Inspection Service, however, saw its funding increased by $128 million to a total of $905 million.
The fiscal 2003 budget proposal misallocates resources for food inspections, Allen said.
“The FDA inspects 80 percent of the food supply with 20 percent of the resources,” he said. “The Agriculture Department inspects 20 percent with 80 percent of the resources.”
The United States also needs to do more to inspect food imports at the source, rather than waiting for them to arrive in the country, Allen said.
“We need to develop technology that allows food safety inspectors to test the product before it enters this country,” he said (Michael Killian, Chicago Tribune/Bergen County Record, Feb. 26).
The British Public Record Office released documents yesterday describing two tests conducted by the British Defense Ministry in the 1960s to determine how biological weapons would spread through the London subway system, the London Times reported.
The documents, which were originally scheduled to be released in March 1995, had been withheld, probably over concerns that the British government might have been implicated in the Aum Shinrikyo subway attack in Japan that month, according to the Times.
In the first test, conducted in 1962, scientists threw a powder puff loaded with nonhazardous Bacillus globigii spores — which are often used to simulate anthrax — mixed with talcum powder from the window of a moving subway train, according to documents released yesterday. A second test was conducted in 1964.
The British scientists, from the Porton Down Chemical and Biological Warfare program, obtained a supply of the Bacillus globigii spores from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., according to the released documents (Helen Studd, London Times, Feb. 27).
Samples taken after the 1962 test found that the bacteria had traveled more than 10 miles in the subway system from the release point, according to the recently released information. The highest concentration of spores was found in the subway cars themselves.
“It would seem most likely that the spores were carried in the cars,” wrote the scientists conducting the tests.
During the second test, a battery-operated device built into a briefcase was used to take samples. In the second test, it took the spores 10 minutes to reach the Tooting Broadway subway station, as opposed to 15 minutes during the first test, the released information said.
“This simple trial shows that bacterial spores can be carried for several miles” in the subway system, said the released information. “Trains traveling through such an aerosol became heavily contaminated internally” (Audrey Woods, Associated Press, Feb. 26).
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The U.S. State Department has said a hole found in a tunnel under the U.S. Embassy in Rome was not connected to a planned terrorist attack, Bloomberg News reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 25).
“They found nothing that would lead them to believe, at this point, that the hole was connected to a terrorist plot,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
Investigators last week found a hole in an underground tunnel beneath the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Prior to the discovery, Italian police arrested four Moroccan men who possessed a cyanide-based chemical and a map of Rome’s water system on which the embassy was highlighted.
U.S. security staff yesterday inspected the tunnel and found nothing significant, Boucher said.
“We have not drawn any conclusions at this point,” he said. “I caution again, conclusions are speculative, but we’ll keep working with the Italian government on this to see if we can get to the bottom of the situation” (Basken/Tighe, Bloomberg News, Feb. 26).
Czech anti-chemical weapons troops have started to arrive in Kuwait, Radio Prague reported today (see GSN, Jan. 9).
The 350 Czech troops are in Kuwait to participate in military exercises with Kuwaiti and U.S. troops. The Czech unit will be in Kuwait for three months, Kuwaiti Defense Minister Jabir Mubarak al-Hamad al-Sabah said (Radio Prague/European Internet Network, Feb. 27).
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Russia is conducting flight tests of a new rocket system at the Plesetsk launch site near Archangel, Russian Space Troops Commander Col.-Gen. Anatoliy Perminov said Monday (see GSN, Feb. 22).
The light Rokot system, based on the SS-19 ballistic missile, is being flight-tested at Plesetsk, Perminov said. A dual-purpose space rocket based on the Angara rocket and a ground-based system for the Soyuz-2 rocket are also being constructed at the launch site, Perminov said (ITAR-Tass, Feb. 25, in FBIS-SOV, Feb. 25).
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The U.S. Missile Defense Agency will conduct an intercept test as part of the ground-based missile defense program in mid- to late March, Defense Department officials said last week.
The test will use three balloons as decoys for the first time. Previous tests used only one decoy.
“The goal is to increase the test complexity,” a defense official said. “Any time you add more objects, you stress the kill vehicle.”
The last ground-based intercept test, in December, made the third successful intercept in the ground-based program, so officials decided to add more complexity to the March test (see GSN, Dec. 4, 2001).
Agency officials had originally scheduled the test for February but delayed it until March. The date was never firmly set, said MDA spokesman Lt. Col. Rich Lehner (Kerry Gildea, Defense Daily, Feb. 26).
Although the U.S. Defense Department canceled the Navy Area missile defense program in December, the department will still spend millions of dollars to terminate the program’s contract, study other options and replace the system, Defense Week reported last week (see GSN, Jan. 18).
Although the Pentagon will save $100 million this year by killing the program, the costs of ending the program’s contract and studying options to replace it will total almost $100 million, according to a senior defense official.
Defense must meet a requirement to develop a system that can launch interceptors from ships to hit short-range missiles, which the canceled program was designed to do, so it must choose a replacement program.
Other canceled or delayed programs also carry significant costs. The Space-Based Infrared System-Low, a system of satellites to track missiles, has been delayed for two years, and that delay will add costs to the program, Defense Week reported (see GSN, Feb. 5). SBIRS-Low will continue to face a lack of competition among contractors after the two years, said a defense official (Donnelly/Roosevelt, Defense Week, Feb. 19).
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