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The world’s geopolitical trash bin is already littered with treaties and agreements unilaterally discarded by the United States under this administration.
—Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), announcing a lawsuit brought by 31 members of the House of Representatives to block the United States from withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Thirty-one members of Congress filed suit in a federal district court here yesterday to prevent the expected U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (see GSN, June 11)...Full Story 
A Russian media report provided more details yesterday of a large-scale exercise in Udmurtia oblast June 7 to prepare response efforts in case of a chemical weapons release...Full Story
U.S. President George W. Bush signed a bioterrorism bill into law today to provide $4.6 billion to improve U.S. defenses against biological weapons (see GSN, May 24)...Full Story
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U.S. academic institutions have begun a lobbying effort to reduce regulations on scientific inquiry that the United States imposed to keep information out of the hands of terrorists, Newhouse News Service reported last week (see GSN, May 21).
U.S. research academies are preparing two reports to present to U.S. officials this summer, according to Newhouse. One report examines the threat of terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction and appropriate responses. The second analyzes the debate between the need for secrecy and the necessity of open inquiry in scientific research.
Several U.S. actions since the Sept. 11 attacks have raised concerns among academics, Newhouse reported. The Justice Department announced that the FBI will now be able to monitor the Internet and libraries without prior evidence of criminal activity. The Defense Department said it will restrict publication of unclassified research and travel by Pentagon-funded scientists (see GSN, May 9). In addition, the White House has created a panel to evaluate foreign students hoping to study sensitive areas of research at U.S. institutions.
“I'm very worried,” said Eugene Skolnikoff, emeritus professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The Defense Department and the White House are at war with a capital ‘W,’ and that makes all kinds of controls and restrictions possible. To clamp down on information or any kind of knowledge is counterproductive. It will not only infringe on civil liberties. It will infringe on the practice of science.”
Lobbying efforts by academics have already had some effect on U.S. policies, said George Leventhal, federal affairs director for the Association of American Universities.
“We had input when the Patriot Act and the bioterrorism bill were passed,” he said (see GSN, May 24). “The Defense Department circulated internally a memo that would have imposed restrictions on publication and travel by some scientists who get research grants, but now that is being completely reworked. So the situation is not completely terrible.”
Universities, however, do not want to appear unpatriotic, according to Newhouse.
“We want to be perceived as good soldiers,” said Richard Harpel, director of federal relations at the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. “We understand we are living in a different age and environment.”
The House Science Committee is scheduled to hold hearings later this month on concerns over research restrictions and limits, according to Newhouse.
“There is nervousness rather than specific ‘show-stopper’ complaints,” said committee Chief of Staff David Goldston (Miles Benson, Newhouse News Service, June 2002).
U.S. diplomats last week distributed a revised list of former Taliban officials to members of the U.N. Security Council, following earlier U.N. resolutions to impose sanctions on entities associated with terrorism (see GSN, May 23). The new list removes approximately half of the 152 named Taliban officials who are subject to sanctions for providing a safe haven for suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization.
The list marks the first time since the Taliban was driven from power in Afghanistan that the United States has attempted to ease U.N. sanctions against former regime members, according to the Washington Post. U.S. officials said the list has been revised because many of the officials named have either been killed or have renounced their ties to the former regime (Colum Lynch, Washington Post, June 12).
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During meetings with Indian officials today, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was expected to propose placing sensory devices in Kashmir territory to help monitor the infiltration of Islamic militants into India, a senior U.S. official said today (see GSN, June 11; Agence France-Presse/Times of India I, June 12).
Rumsfeld said, however, that ground sensors would not be feasible due to the terrain. He suggested that U.S., British, Indian and Pakistani surveillance experts meet to discuss ways to track movement across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir, a U.S. official said (Times of India II, June 12).
Rumsfeld might also formally propose expanding U.S.-Indian military cooperation to allow U.S. special forces to operate in Kashmir, the Times of India reported (see GSN, June 7). While the purpose for any U.S. forces would be to monitor militant infiltration, U.S. and Indian officials would say publicly that their purpose would be to combat al-Qaeda operatives in the area, according to the Times.
The U.S. proposal would follow Indian refusals to allow international monitors into the region and Pakistani refusals to participate in joint Indian-Pakistani patrols (Siddharth Varadarajan, Times of India III, June 12).
Rumsfeld said the United States has evidence that al-Qaeda is active in Kashmir, according to the Times of India (Times of India II).
Rumsfeld was scheduled to meet today with top Indian officials, including Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, and planned to visit Pakistan tomorrow and meet with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Tensions Down
“I must say the leadership here in India has demonstrated their concern and interest in seeing that things are resolved in an appropriate way,” Rumsfeld said after meeting with Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes. “Both sides have been saying things that are helpful and behaving in a responsible way,” he said yesterday (see GSN, June 10).
“We’ve made progress in defusing a very tense situation,” U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday (Robert Burns, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, June 12).
“I don’t think when you have nearly a million men shouting and glaring and occasionally shooting across a disputed border that you can say the crisis has passed, but certainly tensions are down,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Monday, after returning from a visit to South Asia.
U.S. and British intelligence shows that militant infiltration into India’s side of Kashmir has decreased, and Indian intelligence appears to agree with that assessment, Armitage said.
“The Indian government now agrees with the West that infiltrations are down, and I believe they give President Musharraf credit for having done that,” he said.
Regarding reports that the United States might offer to post U.S. monitors in the Kashmir region to monitor infiltration, Armitage said, “I don’t right now see the need for U.S. monitors.” The United States “would be delighted,” however, to consider intelligence sharing to verify situations if both sides express an interest, he said (State Department transcript, June 11).
Pakistani Reaction
When asked if Pakistan would reciprocate recent moves by India to lessen hostilities, Musharraf said yesterday that Pakistan has “done far more of its share of easing the tension” (Beth Duff-Brown, Associated Press/Washington Times, June 12).
Pakistan called on India to take more steps to resume talks on Kashmir. “The Indian decisions do not address the main causes of tension,” a Foreign Affairs Ministry statement said today.
“We trust that the Indian government will soon announce further steps leading to the resumption of a meaningful dialogue on disputes between the two countries, especially the core issue of Kashmir,” the ministry said (Reuters, June 12).
For further information, see:
Stimson Center Background on Kashmir
Pakistani Embassy to the United States
Indian Embassy to the United States
U.N. Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP)
U.S. officials have asked courts to block the sale of two plugs used to arm the “Little Boy” nuclear bomb that a U.S. airplane dropped on Hiroshima during World War II. Retired Lt. Morris Jeppson sold the plugs, which had been removed from the bomb, for $167,000 in an auction yesterday, but officials said that he has no right to sell U.S. property and that the design of plugs is classified.
San Francisco’s Butterfields auction house sold the plugs to Clay Perkins, a San Diego physicist, but U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered the auction house to hold the plugs until at least Friday when she will consider the lawsuit.
Butterfields plans to contest the lawsuit, according to the San Jose Mercury News. The plugs reveal nothing about how to construct a nuclear bomb, Perkins said (Howard Mintz, San Jose Mercury News, June 12).
One of the plugs was used to activate the bomb, according to the U.S. Justice Department (Calgary Herald, June 12).
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U.S. President George W. Bush signed a bioterrorism bill into law today to provide $4.6 billion to improve U.S. defenses against biological weapons (see GSN, May 24).
“Terrorist groups seek biological weapons. We know some rogue states already have them,” Bush said. “It is important that we confront these real threats to our country and prepare for future emergencies. Protecting our citizens against bioterrorism is an urgent duty of America.”
The bill provides $640 million to develop a U.S. smallpox vaccine stockpile (see GSN, May 16) and $1.6 billion in grants to states to improve hospital preparedness and to review the vulnerability of local water systems to attack. The legislation also enhances funding for the National Pharmacy Stockpile and makes potassium iodide more available near nuclear power plants to protect against radiation poisoning (see GSN, May 24; Curt Anderson, Associated Press/Washington Post, June 12).
Canada has decided to stockpile enough smallpox vaccine to be able to vaccinate every Canadian in the event of worst-case scenario terrorist attack with the disease, the Ottawa Citizen reported today (see GSN, Nov. 8, 2001).
“If we need to, we will be able to vaccinate every man, woman and child,” said Ron St. Jon, executive director of Health Canada’s Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response.
Canada is currently negotiating with an unnamed supplier over the price of millions of doses of the vaccine, St. Jon said. The total cost might be more than $80 million, based on the price-per-dose the United States is paying for its vaccine supply, according to the Citizen.
“The process is well along and I would say it’s (a deal) soon,” St. Jon said.
By early fall, Health Canada is expected to vaccinate epidemiologists and other federal health care workers who would be the first to respond to a smallpox attack, the Citizen reported. Pre-exposure vaccination would also be offered to researchers who work with the orthopox family of viruses, which includes smallpox (Ian McLeod, Ottawa Citizen, June 12).
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A U.S. expert on the former Soviet military has said still-buried weapons might be responsible for the recently detected traces of chemical agents at a military base in Uzbekistan currently used by U.S. forces, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported yesterday (see GSN, June 10).
Recent detection of traces of mustard gas and nerve agent at the Karshi Khanabad base probably indicates that former Soviet chemical weapons are buried deep beneath the base, said Mark Kramer, director of Harvard University’s Cold War Studies Project. U.S. forces stationed in two other former Soviet republics — Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan — might also be at risk of exposure, he said.
“It’s conceivable that you will find traces of chemical weapons at other bases,” Kramer said. “Soviet storage facilities for chemical weapons were never fully pinned down. Presumably there is documentation at the Russian Defense Ministry that would shed light on this. And I’m sure there are contacts going on right now with the Russian authorities to try to figure out where some of these chemicals were stored.”
The Russian military, however, has denied that there are abandoned chemical weapons in Uzbekistan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Russian Gen. Viktor Kholstov, head of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force, said it is “out of the question” that Soviet forces left chemical weapons behind (Bruce Pannier, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 11).
A Russian media report provided more details yesterday of a large-scale exercise in Udmurtia oblast June 7 to prepare response efforts in case of a chemical weapons release. Authorities simulated an explosion releasing 240 tons of blister agent from a chemical weapons storage facility based near the city of Kambarka, according to the Russian newspaper Izvestiya.
The simulation, part of preparations for a chemical munitions delivery by train, provided responders and residents with experience responding to an accident or terrorist attack (see GSN, June 6).
“The exercises that we are conducting now,” said Maj. Gen. Tamazi Gabrichidze of the Udmurtian Emergencies Ministry, “are the closest simulation of situations that may arise during transportation, storage or recycling of chemical weapons. If a similar accident took place in reality, we would have only 15 minutes by the most optimistic estimates to localize it and start an evacuation of the local people.”
Units from the Defense Ministry, Emergencies Ministry, Ministry of Railways and other related authorities practiced responding to the event and preparing almost 15,000 residents to react appropriately, Izvestiya reported.
Residents wore gas masks as firefighters tried to ward off a cloud of chemical agents with water. Kambarka residents possess two gas masks each — a total of 26,000 masks. Authorities will have to provide more than 1 million masks to residents along the Udmurtian railroad where a special train will carry chemical weapons to recycling facilities, according to Izvestiya (Izvestiya, June 8/BBC Monitoring, June 11).
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By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Thirty-one members of Congress filed suit in a federal district court here yesterday to prevent the expected U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (see GSN, June 11).
Led by Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the suit asks the court to require the president to seek the concurrence of Congress before he withdraws from the ABM Treaty or any other treaty.
The treaty, which was intended to prevent the United States and the Soviet Union — and now Russia — from deploying national missile defenses, is considered an obstacle to the Bush administration’s multitrack missile defense effort (see GSN, June 11).
Prompting Russian objections, U.S. President George W. Bush announced the withdrawal in December last year. The six-month notification period required by the treaty expires Thursday (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2001).
“The world’s geopolitical trash bin is already littered with treaties and agreements unilaterally discarded by the United States under this administration,” said Kucinich. “We will not stand idly by while the liberties enshrined in our founding documents are trampled upon. We will not stand idly by while the rule of many is cast aside by the hubris of one.”
Not Likely to Succeed
Arms control experts said the lawsuit probably will not prevent the withdrawal.
“The president has unilateral ability to withdraw without input from Congress,” said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World. The suit is “clearly a long shot in terms of trying to save the ABM Treaty.”
Nevertheless, Isaacs said, Kucinich’s lawsuit raises “important issues about how important the treaty is.”
Meanwhile, Senator Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) introduced a nonbinding resolution Monday stating that the Senate does not approve termination of the treaty and that Senate approval is required for termination (see GSN, June 7).
“For 30 years, the ABM Treaty has been the foundation upon which our strategic relationship with Russia has rested. So I am troubled that this historic treaty is about to be dissolved without so much as a hearing or even any debate in this body,” Feingold said, speaking on the Senate floor.
“I also regret that the president made this important decision without consulting with the Senate. I find this troubling on both constitutional and policy grounds,” he said.
Feingold then quoted a passage from Thomas Jefferson’s A Manual of Parliamentary Practice: for the Use of the Senate of the United States.
“Treaties are legislative acts. A treaty is the law of the land. It differs from other laws only as it must have the consent of a foreign nation, being but a contract with respect to that nation,” Jefferson wrote.
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) effectively blocked consideration of the Feingold resolution by objecting without explanation.
Hatch’s objection appears to be a reversal of position on the issue of the president’s authority to withdraw from treaties. In 1979, Hatch signed a resolution by Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) opposing President Jimmy Carter’s decision to terminate, without congressional approval, a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan.
That resolution called Carter’s move “a dangerous precedent for executive usurpation of Congress’s historically and constitutionally based powers.” Senators Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) also supported that resolution.
Goldwater’s resolution said “treaties are part of the law of the land” and that the president must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
A federal district court sided with a Goldwater lawsuit to block the withdrawal, but an appeals court overruled. The Supreme Court affirmed the decision to dismiss Goldwater’s suit without directly addressing the question of presidential authority.
Click here to see excerpts of the Supreme Court opinions.
At yesterday’s press conference, Kucinich said presidents have unilaterally withdrawn the United States from treaties in the past, but only rarely.
“In more than two centuries, only a handful of treaties have been unilaterally terminated by the president. In the vast majority of cases, one or both of the houses of Congress consented.”
For further information, see:
ABM Treaty Text
U.S. Fact Sheet on Withdrawal from ABM Treaty
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U.S. authorities have interrogated a second suspect believed to be involved in a plot to detonate a “dirty bomb” in the United States and are investigating the possibility that further conspirators are in the country, officials said yesterday (see GSN, June 11).
Pakistan has detained a second man since U.S. authorities arrested Jose Padilla last month in Chicago, a senior U.S. intelligence official said. U.S. authorities overseas are now questioning the man at an undisclosed location, the official said.
The second man is believed to have traveled with Padilla to Afghanistan where they met with now-captured al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah and other al-Qaeda leaders to discuss plans for the radiological attack, according to the Los Angeles Times. Part of the plot apparently involved stealing radioactive materials from a U.S. university or other facility, officials said.
U.S. officials believe Padilla, also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, did not plan to conduct the dirty bomb attack without assistance from others, the Times reported.
“He clearly had associates, and one of the things we want to ask him about is who those associates were and how we can track them down,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said (Los Angeles Times, June 12).
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that the United States is more interested in obtaining information from Padilla than in punishing him.
“We’re not interested in trying him at the moment. We’re not interested in punishing him at the moment,” Rumsfeld said. “We’re interested in finding out what in the world he knows.”
The U.S. military has been able to detain Padilla indefinitely, classifying him as an “enemy combatant,” according to the Associated Press. Attorney General John Ashcroft supported Padilla’s detainment yesterday, calling it “the right course of action.”
Donna Newman, Padilla’s lawyer, said her client has denied the allegations and she plans to contest the U.S. decision to place Padilla in military custody. Government lawyers, however, have said that a 1942 Supreme Court decision subjects U.S. citizens to military courts if they fight against the United States, but only if they also enter the country (Associated Press/New York Times, June 12).
For his part, Padilla has refused to cooperate with U.S. authorities, according to the Mirror.
“To the best of my knowledge he hasn’t cooperated at all so far,” Wolfowitz said (Mirror, June 12).
Tracking Down Accomplices
A thorough investigation has so far not uncovered any more U.S. accomplices to the dirty bomb plot, but the investigation is ongoing, an FBI official said. There have been many promising leads, a senior government official said. Authorities are also investigating whether possible accomplices might have entered and then left the United States.
“That’s how they operate, so there is good reason to assume that may be the case here,” the FBI official said.
“I’m not picking up any sense that (investigators) believe anyone’s out there,” the official said. “They’re satisfied that there was no one else here” (Los Angeles Times, June 11).
U.S. President George W. Bush said authorities will continue the search for anyone else connected to the dirty bomb plot.
“There’s just a full-scale manhunt on,” Bush said. “We will run down every lead, every hint” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo.com, June 12).
U.S. Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) has asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide information on tracking and security of radioactive elements used for irradiation and sterilization, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, June 11).
In 1985, a federal requirement to track radioactive materials by serial number was discarded and now that task is left to the responsibility of state health officials, Markey said. There are 48 states that each have at least one facility with radioactive material, and there are facilities with at least 1 million curies of such material in each of 17 states, he added. Nuclear experts consider 1,000 curies a substantial radiation source.
Markey has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide information on the security and monitoring of cobalt-60 and cesium-137. He also requested commission collect information on whether background checks are required for people who handle radioactive material shipments, what types of security measures are in place where such material is stored and how often storage facilities are inspected, the AP reported.
“It’s not clear that anyone tracks the material at all,” said Michael Freedhoff, a science adviser to Markey.
Terrorists are unlikely to steal and use spent nuclear fuel from a U.S. nuclear power plant for use in a “dirty bomb,” according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main lobbying group for the nuclear energy industry (see GSN, May 24).
Spent fuel assemblies are kept under tight security, and the radiation emitted would probably kill a terrorist who tried to steal one, institute President Joe Colvin said.
“Even if terrorists were able to gain access, the fuel assemblies ... (are) built in a way that would prevent terrorists from wrapping it around an explosive charge,” Colvin said (Associated Press/New York Times, June 12).
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