U.S. Response I:  First Responders Seek National Strategy, Basic Equipment

By Greg Seigle
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A national training standard should be established and maintained by the U.S. government for first responders who are poorly prepared and equipped to recognize or respond to a weapon of mass destruction attack, emergency officials told a congressional subcommittee yesterday.

The United States should also ensure that first responders possess equipment that is lightweight, mobile and easy to use, federal, state and local officials told the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Procurement.

With the White House fiscal 2003 budget requesting $3.5 billion for first responders — a figure Congress is expected to approve, or perhaps boost — officials want to ensure the funds are not squandered on the “wrong” equipment and that limited personnel resources are not wasted on incomplete or redundant training.

“Far too many departments across the nation lack even the most basic levels of training, equipment and manpower,” said Peter Gorman, a New York Fire Department captain who represents the International Association of Firefighters.  “The needs are tremendous and can no longer be borne solely by local jurisdictions.  The federal government must help shoulder this burden.”

“We desperately need the federal government’s assistance in setting standards, evaluating equipment and sharing that information with local law enforcement,” said Washington, D.C., police Chief Charles Ramsey. 

“In large departments such as ours, training represents a monumental undertaking,” Ramsey continued.  “Our ability to adequately train our officers and to respond effectively to terrorist attacks would be vastly enhanced by the development of training standards.”

The Federal Emergency and Management Agency now operates a national training center in New Mexico for first responders — firefighters, police, ambulance crews, doctors and other local emergency officials — but only a limited number of emergency crews are able to attend these seminars.

The center also does not set a national strategy for first responders, nor does it follow up on groups who have gone through its program, the officials testified.

“Without clear goals, we risk undermining ourselves while wasting our precious resources,” said Edward Plaugher, chief of the Arlington County Fire Department in Virginia, which oversees the Pentagon and other key federal facilities.

“We as a nation have to date lacked a comprehensive national strategy with respect to our preparedness effort,” he added.  “We believe that a strategy should be developed and adopted that includes a single point of contact for first responders.”

Feds Supportive

Federal officials echoed the sentiments of their local counterparts, testifying that first responders would benefit from national guidance for training and equipment purchases.

Police and emergency crews of all sorts need to be taught to at least recognize and report potential WMD hazards, not only react to them, officials said.

“Saturating first responders will not equate to improved capability,” said John McBroom, director of the office of emergency operations for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.  “They must be given capability to detect radiological materials and provided with timely technical information and evacuation advice.”

The NNSA maintains 28 teams of radiological specialists dispersed through the country and 10 prototype “Tricorders” devices that, when placed near a suspect item, can collect information that can be transmitted for radiation analyses by an on-call expert.  The Tricorders will soon be sent to selected FBI bomb squads across the country for further testing, McBroom said.

NNSA leaders believe the Tricorder may provide the “needed link between the first responder and national response assets,” he said.

Emergency personnel should also benefit from a host of other new high-tech devices, including wearable technologies such as small radiation detectors used by U.S. Customs inspectors and thermal sightings and Global Positioning System units currently being battle-tested by U.S. Special Operations troops in Afghanistan, said subcommittee Chairman Curt Weldon (R-Pa.).

“This is the first step in ending the shortcomings for our domestic defenders,” said Weldon, who served as volunteer firefighter chief before election to Congress.  “It is truly ridiculous that we spend millions of dollars to develop technology for our military … and we don’t share the same lifesaving technology with our domestic defenders.”

Locals Lack WMD Training, Equipment

The preparedness of various states, cities and localities for a WMD attack varies drastically, a gap that must be closed by standardized training and monitoring overseen by a single federal government agency, the officials testified.

At a bare minimum, every firefighter, police officer and emergency medical provider should be trained in the basics of a WMD attack, said Plaugher.  Firefighters in particular need to undergo such training because their current training for fires and other emergencies sometimes conflicts with how they should respond to a WMD incident, he added (see GSN, Feb. 15)

Such training should also not leave smaller municipalities out, officials said.

“There have been millions of dollars allocated for the training, equipping and exercising of response teams in our largest cities, however, little has reached rural and suburban America where the threats are as real and as dangerous,” said William Jenaway, chief of fire and rescue services of King of Prussia, Pa.

“These non-metropolitan areas are where our water supplies reside, our basic industry and food production lie, and where much of our electrical power and natural resources are,” Jenaway added.

Much of the federal funds slated for first responders should also be used to purchase basic equipment such as gas masks, chemical and biological protection suits and decontamination equipment, officials testified.

“Other equipment needs include explosive mitigation devices, including bomb suits and containment vessels, chemical and biological threat detection equipment to accurately sample and monitor the environment, and specialized vehicles for transporting personnel and equipment into and through contaminated areas,” said Ramsey.

While much of the $3.5 billion White House officials have earmarked for first responders will surely be spent on WMD-related equipment, much of it should also go toward training — the standards of which should be established federal specialists, officials said.  Any such training programs should also have follow-on activities so that first responders retain what they’ve learned, the officials said.

“Training is the single most critical element in responding to a WMD event,” said McBroom.  “Few states have adequately addressed the response to a WMD event on our home soil and there has been no real training done.”

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Threat Assessment:  Alerts Will Not End, Ashcroft Says

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said U.S. citizens should not expect an end, possibly throughout their lifetimes, to terrorist attack threat alerts, USA Today reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 12).

Al-Qaeda “didn’t train tens of thousands of people for a single day’s assault,” Ashcroft said.  “Take the words of Osama bin Laden himself.  He didn’t view (Sept. 11) as the end of the effort.  He viewed it as part of a sustained effort.”

To improve homeland defense, federal authorities plan to grant secret security clearances to about 1,000 local law enforcement officials, Ashcroft said.  This will allow them access to government information on any existing potential terrorist threats, he added.

Ashcroft said he describes the ongoing war against terrorism as an incremental battle with no apparent endgame.  Successes provide just “one more day,” he said (Kevin Johnson, USA Today, March 5).

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U.S. Response II:  Contingency Plans Are Cloudy, Democratic Leaders Say

U.S. lawmakers and aides on Capitol Hill have been questioning whether the Bush administration is keeping them well informed of plans to maintain a “shadow government” in the event of a devastating attack on Washington, according to reports today (see GSN, March 1).

U.S. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) received no notice of a briefing yesterday concerning contingency plans to keep the U.S. government running in the event of a nuclear attack, Gephardt aides said.

Gephardt and his staff learned about yesterday’s briefing through a phone call from a reporter, aides said.  Participants at the briefing on the “shadow government” included White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, congressional liaison Nicholas Calio, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

Gephardt aides said they were told there was no briefing after contacting Calio’s office.  They added that later they were told that the briefing’s participants were invited on the basis of the line of presidential succession.  Daschle and Lott, however, are not in that line.

“They have a responsibility to consult with the top four leaders of Congress,” said Steve Elmendorf, Gephardt’s chief of staff.

The failure to invite Gephardt to yesterday’s briefing was a “scheduling matter,” and Gephardt and his staff already had been told about the contingency plans, said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

“If Gephardt was excluded, it was inadvertent,” Fleischer said.

Aides to President George W. Bush are expected to brief Gephardt today on the shadow government plans, according to the Washington Post.  Bush aides also invited the chairmen and ranking members of the House International Relations and Senate Foreign Relations committees to meet with the president today.  Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to meet in private with some other members of Congress, the Post reported.

Previously, Daschle and Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), whose position as Senate president pro tempore places him third in the line of presidential succession, said they had not been advised of the contingency plans.

The Bush administration, however, released records that showed the Senate sergeant at arms and the Senate secretary had been briefed on the plans in late September, according to the Post.  Byrd had been invited to the briefing but did not attend, the Post reported.

After the briefing yesterday, Daschle said he was not “going to get into any more finger-pointing” on the plans.

“The point is not who knew and who didn’t,” Daschle said.  “I think the point is that the facts are accurately stated and that we have an appreciation of what this effort is.”

Fleischer challenged Daschle’s and Byrd’s claims that they had not been adequately informed and said yesterday’s briefing was only “to reiterate” past information.

“When members of Congress have a chance to pause, to think and to talk to each other, they will recognize that this administration informed the Congress properly” (Milbank/Lancaster, Washington Post, March 6).

Lott said he is satisfied at the level of information he has received.

“Senators are grouchy that they aren’t getting enough information,” he said.  “I feel frankly very much informed.”

The contingency government plans have been kept secret to avoid a situation similar to the underground bunker in White Sulfur Springs, W.Va., Fleischer said.  Originally designed to protect Congress in the event of a nuclear attack during the Cold War, information on the bunker made its way to the public, and now the site is often rented out for theme parties, according to the Associated Press (Jim Abrams, Associated Press/Chicago Tribune, March. 6).

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U.S. Export Controls I:  Final Computer Regulations Expected Soon

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Commerce Department is preparing to issue final regulations in coming days on new high-performance export restrictions ordered by President George W. Bush last month, a Commerce official said yesterday.

The change will greatly relax U.S. controls over high-performance computer exports to countries identified by the United States as proliferation concerns, such as China, India, Pakistan and Russia (see GSN, Jan. 3).

Computers with a performance speed of up to 190,000 million theoretical operations per second (MTOPS) will be allowed to be exported to those countries without a U.S. license or follow-up checks.  The previous threshold was 85,000 MTOPS.

The required 60-day period starting when Congress was notified of the change ended Sunday, freeing the administration to make the move final, said Hillary Hess, director of the regulatory policy division of Commerce’s Bureau of Export Administration.

It is the sixth computer export decontrol since 1993, and while Republican and Democratic legislators have criticized the changes, Congress has never voted to block one.

The House Armed Services Committee is planning to mark up a bill today, the proposed Export Administration Act of 2001, that would eliminate the MTOPS restrictions altogether, making high-performance computers at all levels available to civilian and military buyers in such countries without required government prenotification or end-use checks.

A strong majority in the Senate approved the bill last August, and a version has been reported out of the House International Relations Committee.

Representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) said at a hearing last week reviewing the bill that the previous computer decontrols were part of a “wholesale auctioning off of our technology.”

“In 1995, there were no supercomputers in China.  We lowered the export control standard unilaterally without telling Japan in 1996.  Within two years, they had 600 high-end 8,000- to 10,000-MTOPS-range and above supercomputers.  State Department told us, ‘Don’t worry.  We’ll get end-use user certificates as to where those computers are.’  We never got those certificates” (see GSN, March 4).

The Commerce and Defense departments have worked for more than a year on developing new technology standards for controlling high-performance computer exports, but none have been announced.

“From industry’s point of view — and, again, industry’s interest is only in exporting dual-use items for legitimate civilian purposes — it’s very difficult in today’s world to draw a static control line on a dynamic technology,” said Edmund Rice, president of the Coalition for Employment Through Exports at the hearing.

Industry Screening

Under the new rules, for computers up to 190,000 MTOPS, U.S. exporters will be required to screen potential buyers to be sure they do not use the computers to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Representative Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) said that task can be a difficult one.

“This is something that I regularly found in my own practice, that various entities would spring up, and people out in Ohio or in Oregon had no idea who these entities were, and the U.S. government didn’t want to tell them because of concerns about intelligence sources and methods,” he said.

Kirk also said Commerce has its own troubles identifying Chinese front companies for organizations that may use items in WMD programs.

A version of the bill approved by the House International Relations Committee provides for a formal advisory role for the intelligence community in the export licensing process.

Representative Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) recommended giving the CIA a veto over sensitive exports that might harm national security.

Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration James Jochum opposed that idea, saying, “I don’t think it would be wise.”

He said Commerce uses a CIA database for scrutinizing potential end-users.

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U.S. Response:  Pentagon Developing New Counter-WMD Technologies

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department is considering 15 new tools against weapons of mass destruction, including a portable sensor for detecting chemical and biological agents in seaports, a communications system for homeland defense responders and a new warhead for destroying biological and chemical weapon sites.

Pentagon officials yesterday unveiled the latest list of concepts — which use already developed technologies — for possible rapid introduction into service.

The military will begin testing 12 of the technological concepts this year, and if funding permits, it will test the remaining three.  The testing program, called Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations (ACTD), is designed for partially or fully developed technologies that might satisfy military mission needs more rapidly and at a lower cost than undeveloped technologies.

This year 11 of the assessed technologies could have counterterrorism or terrorism defense applications.

Two of the chosen concepts — an expendable unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and an unmanned surface craft (called SPARTAN) — would help U.S. forces gain remote access to areas contaminated with weapons of mass destruction.

A concept called the Agent Defeat Warhead might be tested for destroying hardened or underground manufacturing and storage areas for biological and chemical weapons.  The warhead would combine earth-penetration capabilities with high-temperature, incendiary detonation that could destroy both chemical and biological agents.  For years, the military has been working on a warhead that can do it all.

“When we go against the chem- and bio-defeat targets, a lot of times, we’ll find the targets in the open or bunkered or in facilities,” said Air Force Lt. Col. John Wilcox.

“We’re looking at a variety of fills [fillings for the warhead] that we would go against different chemicals and different bio-agents with,” he said.

A separate “thermobaric” penetrating weapon would be tested for use against enemy tunnel facilities and weapons.   That would further develop the type of thermobaric weapon tested last year and used in caves suspected of harboring al-Qaeda fighters, said Sue Payton, deputy undersecretary of defense for advanced systems and concepts (see GSN, March 5).

“This ACTD is just now kicking off, and we will be examining better fills and better capabilities, and the concept of [operations] for how you really employ that once you get it to the flight line,” she said.

Local, state and federal authorities are considering a new communications system for use in the aftermath of a major attack against the United States like the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The ACTD is for the first responders,” Payton said.  “One of the things we noted in New York and even at the Pentagon is that when you bring together your city firefighters and your county and state police and then the [Defense Department], they can’t all communicate on the same frequencies with their radios.”

“And there are capabilities that are being developed for software programmable capabilities for just communication, so that everyone can go to the same net and you can actually talk to each other.  As you know, cell phones didn’t work very well after the attack on Sept. 11,” she said.

A portable tool called the Contamination Avoidance at Seaports of Debarkation could enable the U.S. Navy to assess chemical and biological contamination at seaports.

“We’ve found in the past that many of these sensors exist, but they’re large.  And you put them in place and then you run things through them, but they’ve got to stay where you install them because of their bulk,” said Navy Capt. Mike Knollmann.  “This one really gets at making it into a deployable package.”

Since the demonstrations program began in 1995, 84 technologies have been initiated, 30 of which were chosen for U.S. counterterrorism operations, according to Payton.

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Iraq:  Blix Will Join Annan and Iraqi Delegation

Hans Blix, the U.N. official responsible for inspecting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs, will meet in New York tomorrow with Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, a U.N. spokesman said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 26).

Annan expects the talks to focus on returning inspectors to Iraq, according to U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard (see GSN, Feb. 21).

“As far as the Secretary General is concerned, they’ll be talking about U.N. resolutions, and his emphasis will be implementation, implementation, implementation,” Eckhard said (U.N. News Service, March 5).

The talks are to focus on “implementation of Security Council resolutions and the return of inspectors,” Annan said Monday.  “On the 7th, we will know what they think” (Robert McMahon, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 5).

Blix Insists on Unrestricted Access

Blix, executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, emphasized Monday that the council requires unrestricted access and does not allow Iraq to choose the nationalities of inspectors.

“I am not giving any discounts on Security Council resolutions,” Blix said.  “There are no sanctuaries.  The resolutions make it quite clear that there should be access that is unconditional, immediate and unrestricted.”

UNMOVIC has enhanced its technological capabilities, Blix said.  Inspectors “have acquainted themselves with a lot of new techniques,” he said.  “Sensors, tagging, cameras, et cetera — all this moves very fast.”

Inspectors who have received training or are currently undergoing training to work in Iraq now total 230, Blix said.

Iraq Appears More Ready to Comply

Iraq’s offer to meet with Annan and agreement to meet with Blix could show that Iraq is taking the possibility of a U.S. attack seriously, diplomats and U.N. officials said, according to the New York Times.

“The fact that they are coming with a senior and quite serious delegation is a good sign that they want to have discussions with the secretary general about — as they would see it — the options open to them,” said Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations (see GSN, March 5).

“As the Security Council, and I’m sure the secretary general, see it, the options open to them are compliance,” he said.

Various members of the Security Council have met with Annan to emphasize that Iraq should not focus talks on anything other than Iraqi compliance with U.N. resolutions, according to the Times.  The council is more united than in recent years, insisting that sanctions against Iraq remain intact unless inspectors return with full access, diplomats said.  During visits in January (see GSN, Feb. 20), Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz failed to win support from Russia or China (Barbara Crossette, New York Times, March 6).

A newspaper owned by one of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s sons published an editorial Monday indicating that Iraq might allow inspectors to return if there is a time limit and a commitment to lift sanctions, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Iraq has also agreed to possibly continue talks on April 5, depending on the direction of tomorrow’s meeting.

U.N. Considers Revising Sanctions

Meanwhile, Security Council diplomats said they expect unanimous support in the council for a new sanctions regime when the sanctions are due for review at the end of May (see GSN, Feb. 14).

Every state except Russia has accepted a proposal to create a list of goods with possible military uses that would be banned from export to Iraq, allowing unrestricted importation of all other goods (McMahon, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 5).

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U.S. Export Controls II:  Commerce Control List Changes Take Effect

A federal rule implementing changes to the U.S. Commerce Control List on dual-use goods took effect yesterday (see related GSN story, today).

The changes affect computer export controls as determined by the Wassenaar List of Dual-Use Goods and Technologies (see GSN, Jan. 3).  Changes in additional categories of the Wassenaar list will be implemented in the CCL in a supplemental regulation.

The changes to the list were agreed in a December 2000 meeting of the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies, and the United States formally announced its adoption of the new rules Jan. 3 (U.S. Bureau of Export Administration release, March 6).

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International Response:  U.N. Disarmament Educators Meet This Month

The U.N. Group of Governmental Experts plans to conduct its third session March 11-15 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, the United Nations said today.

The General Assembly formed the group in 2000 to help prepare a study on disarmament and nonproliferation education.  The group’s 10 experts come from Egypt, Hungary, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Senegal and Sweden.  During their first two sessions last year, the experts gathered information from leading educators and evaluated new methods for teaching disarmament education (U.N. release, March 6).

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United States:  Nixon Did Not Want the Bomb in Vietnam, Kissinger Says

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

Former U.S. President Richard Nixon never had any intention of dropping nuclear bombs on North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, said yesterday.

“President Nixon was perfectly capable of throwing off a lot of propositions to which he was quite sure what my answer would be and so that he could say to himself and maybe say to a few parties how tough he had been,” Kissinger said during a speech in Washington at the National Press Club.  “But he had no intention — I never thought for a moment that he was going to do it.”

According to a recently released transcript of a recorded conversation between Nixon and Kissinger in 1972, Nixon had proposed the use of nuclear weapons on North Vietnam, and Kissinger had rejected the proposal (see GSN, March 4).

“I stated my view, never came back to it, never said, ‘Go and get a plan.  Let me at least look at a plan,’” Kissinger said yesterday.

Instead of being a concrete proposal, Nixon’s pitched idea of using nuclear weapons against Vietnam reflected his decision-making process, Kissinger said.

“It’s the way President Nixon operated … You get these pronouncements of President Nixon,” he said.  “Nobody ever says, ‘We’ll do it immediately’ … It was sort of understood that he might say these things, and that was the way he proceeded to a decision, and we never came close to using nuclear weapons, and to the best of my knowledge, he never returned to this discussion.”

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Russia:  Estimates of Buried Weapons Are Too Low, Expert Says

Russian estimates of the amount of buried chemical weapons are too low, Lev Fedorov, president of the Union for Chemical Safety, said yesterday (see GSN, March 1).

Fedorov said he believes there are 200,000 metric tons of chemical weapons, produced from 1924 to 1987, buried throughout Russia.  Russia, however, has reported only 40,000 metric tons of buried chemical weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention, he said (RosBusinessConsulting Database, March 6).

Fedorov said the obsolete chemical weapons are buried in 350 sites within Russia, three in the Moscow region alone.  There could also be 160 metric tons of old chemical weapons disposed of in bodies of water, he said.

“These obsolete chemical weapons had reached a state in which they were unsuitable for military applications, but were still capable of posing an ecological threat in various parts of the country,” Fedorov said (ITAR-Tass/BBC Monitoring, March 6).

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United States:  Missile Defense Software Might Be Flawed, GAO Says

By Kerry Boyd
Global Security Newswire

U.S. congressional investigators have said that an independent team which evaluated missile defense prototype software did not prove its claim that the software could help distinguish between missile warheads and decoys, according to a report made available yesterday (see GSN, March 4).

According to the report from the General Accounting Office, Boeing subcontractor TRW developed software that would allow the missile interceptor kill vehicles to analyze data from Boeing sensors to distinguish between enemy warheads and decoys during flight.

In 1997, the National Missile Defense Joint Program Office tested Boeing’s kill vehicle sensor.  Boeing and TRW reported that the test had been mostly successful, although the sensor had often detected false targets.  In a later report in 1997, the contractors said that the sensor had several problems, including a low probability of detection and inconsistent calibration.  The companies reported two more problems in 1998.

According to the GAO, the companies had reported the results and equipment limitations after the test, but they used qualitative terms such as “excellent,” which could have created confusion.

The U.S. Investigates Claims of Fraud

In 1996, TRW engineer Nira Schwartz reported to TRW that certain technology the company planned to add to its kill vehicle software was unable to properly distinguish between warheads and decoys.  TRW fired Schwartz, who then sued TRW and said the company falsely claimed the technology met the Defense Department’s technical requirements.

The Justice Department then hired Nichols Research Corp. to evaluate TRW’s technology and reports, but concerns arose over the corporation’s objectivity, so the department also hired Phase One Engineering Team. 

The second group reported that TRW’s software had weaknesses but was well designed.  The team said the software would perform successfully in future tests as long as no unexpected factors occurred during tests.

Simple Tests With Few Decoys

The GAO, however, said that the team did not definitively prove that TRW’s software successfully distinguishes between decoys and warheads, because the team did not process the data from the 1997 flight test or develop its own data.

In an independent evaluation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Theodore Postol said that the contractors tampered with the flight test data to hide the inadequacies of the sensor.

The Phase One Engineering Team and Nichols Research Corporation said that “TRW’s software used prior knowledge of warhead and decoy differences, to the maximum extent available, to discriminate one object from the other and cautioned such knowledge may not always be available in the real world,” the GAO report said.

Officials for the National Missile Defense program had decided to use only one decoy in early tests because an independent panel — the Welch Panel — said tests to hit and destroy missiles are difficult and should not be complicated with many decoys at first, the GAO report said.

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