U.S. Response I:  Report Urges Employing Science in Terrorism War

The United States should create a program designed to help prevent terrorist attacks through science and technology, and should create a new security institute to aid in the effort, according to a National Research Council report today.

“The scientific and engineering community is aware that it can make a critical contribution to protecting the nation from catastrophic terrorism,” Lewis Branscomb, a co-chairman of the committee that prepared the report and a professor emeritus at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said. “Our report gives the government a blueprint for using current technologies and creating new capabilities to reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks and the severity of their consequences.”

In the report, a committee of National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine members recommended a number of measures that could be immediately implemented to help protect the United States from attack, according to the New York Times.  Committee recommendations included protecting nuclear materials in the United States and abroad, producing large stockpiles of vaccines (see GSN, May 16), protecting U.S. power grids and improving ventilation systems in public buildings, among others (see GSN, May 14).

The United States, however, needs a coherent national strategy to take advantage of the ways science and technology can help fight terrorism, said Richard Klausner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the other committee co-chairman (Warren Leary, New York Times, June 25).

“Research performed but not exploited, and technologies invented but not manufactured and deployed, do not help the nation protect itself,” the report says (Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post, June 25).

The committee recommended that the Homeland Security Office create a security institute composed of experts who could detect problems in critical systems throughout the United States and develop ways to solve such flaws, the Times reported.  The institute should be set up as a nonprofit organization and should be run by contractors, the committee said (Leary, New York Times).

House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) praised the report after an early briefing.

“I like what I see. It says we have to have a coordinated (research and development) strategy,” Boehlert said.  “It says we have to have somebody in charge, and I’m enamored with the idea of the institute.  A lot of what I’m reading falls under the heading of common sense” (Gugliotta, Washington Post).

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U.S. Response II:  U.S. Inspectors Will Operate at Dutch Seaport

The U.S. Customs Service will station inspectors at the Rotterdam, Netherlands, seaport to inspect cargo heading for the United States, the service announced today (see GSN, June 5).

A U.S.-Dutch agreement will “provide a significant measure of security for the Netherlands, the United States and the global trading system as a whole,” Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner said.

In 2001, shippers sent 291,000 cargo containers to the United States from the Rotterdam seaport, Customs said.  Similar agreements to station U.S. inspectors at the seaports in Antwerp, Belgium, and Le Havre, France, could be announced by the end of the week, a Customs official said (Associated Press/New York Times, June 25).

It is the agency’s goal to negotiate inspections agreements with the top 20 seaports that ship cargo to the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal.  About a third of the imports entering the United States and 68 percent of all seaborne imports originate at the top 20 international seaports, the Journal reported.

The United States has taken the right step in negotiating inspections agreements with foreign governments, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org.  The magnitude of trying to find a weapon of mass destruction smuggled in one out of millions of cargo containers, however, makes the agreements a small step, he said.

“It would be stupid not to try to expand inspections to foreign ports,” Pike said.  “But it’s a very small part of a very big problem” (Gary Fields, Wall Street Journal, June 25).

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U.S. Response III:  Ridge to Appear Before Congress

U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge is expected to testify before four congressional committees this week to answer questions on the proposed homeland security department (see GSN, June 21).

Ridge is expected to testify today on the Bush administration’s plans to move biological, chemical and radiological response activities from other departments to the proposed department during testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

He is also expected to appear before the House and Senate Judiciary committees tomorrow and before the House Intelligence Committee Thursday, according to Reuters.

Other members of the Bush administration are also scheduled to appear before congressional committees this week to discuss plans for the new department, Reuters reported.  FBI Director Robert Mueller is expected to testify before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Thursday during its hearing on the potential relationship between the new department and U.S. intelligence agencies (Reuters/New York Times, June 25).

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North Korea:  IAEA Delays Visit

The International Atomic Energy Agency has decided to delay a planned visit to North Korea because Pyongyang wants to connect the IAEA visit to the restart of U.S.-North Korea dialogue, South Korean media sources reported today, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, June 18).

“The IAEA put off the visit after receiving North Korea’s position that discussing nuclear inspection schedules is difficult in a situation where the construction of nuclear reactors is being delayed,” a diplomatic source said, according to the South Korean Yonhap news agency.

North Korea will probably begin talks with the IAEA after a date is set for U.S. Ambassador to North Korea Jack Pritchard to visit Pyongyang, the diplomatic source said (Agence France-Presse, June 25).

Envoy Is Ready

Meanwhile, the United States plans to send a representative to North Korea “very soon,” a senior South Korean foreign affairs official said (see GSN, June 19).

“I was told by U.S. officials during my recent visit to Washington that the Bush administration is ready to offer the restart of dialogue to Pyongyang very soon,” said Yim Sung-joon, senior secretary for national security and foreign affairs to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

It is up to the United States to decide whom to send to North Korea, whether it is Pritchard or another official, Yim said.  South Korea, however, would probably prefer to see a higher-level U.S. official become the envoy to North Korea, as it would show how serious the United States is in its attempts to restart a dialogue with Pyongyang, he said (Korea Times, June 26).

War Anniversary

Throughout North Korea today, demonstrators protested against the United States to commemorate the 52^nd anniversary of the Korean War, according to Agence France-Presse.

“The rallies evinced the resolutions of the agricultural workers and women to take a thousandfold revenge upon the U.S. imperialists and wipe them out to the last man if they unleash a war in Korea again,” the state Korean Central News Agency was quoted as saying (Agence France-Presse, June 25).

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India-Pakistan:  No Deterrence Eased Conflict, Analysts Say

By Kerry Boyd
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Several analysts have questioned the claim, repeated yesterday by Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, that nuclear weapons deterred war during the recent crisis between India and Pakistan (see GSN, June 19).

Whether nuclear weapons prevent or accentuate conflict remains unclear, the analysts said.

Great Risks

Nuclear weapons might have prevented conflict recently but only at great cost and with significant risk, Lee Feinstein, of the German Marshall Fund, told Global Security Newswire Thursday.  The two countries have come close to war three or four times since acquiring nuclear capability and “edged close” to nuclear war at least twice, he said.

The danger in the latest crisis was not deliberate use of nuclear weapons but inadvertent use, said Brig. Gen. Feroz Khan, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Affairs Division of the Pakistani Joint Services Headquarters.

Husain Haqqani, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, expressed similar concerns.  Both countries have delivery systems capable of carrying conventional and nuclear payloads, he said, so if one side fired a conventional missile, the other side might mistake it for a nuclear attack.

The two countries lack the communication systems that helped avert nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States, Haqqani said.  Without a process of arms control and dialogue, India and Pakistan rely on the United States and other parties to prevent nuclear war, he said.

Nuclear weapons might have deterred war in the short term, but they have in no way improved the relationship between India and Pakistan, Haqqani said.  Possession of nuclear weapons has increased nationalist, jingoistic attitudes that are incompatible with deterrence, he said, adding that the countries feel they can use their nuclear arsenals for diplomatic and strategic coercion.

Nuclear weapons have increased the level of violence and tension in India and Pakistan, Michael Krepon from the Stimson Center said.

Alternative:  Diplomacy

The reason that India refrained from attacking Pakistan in the last few weeks, Krepon said, was that Musharraf promised to permanently end militant infiltration into India’s side of the disputed Kashmir territory — not that India feared Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, Krepon said (see GSN, June 14).

“If Pakistan had not agreed to end infiltration, and America had not conveyed that guarantee to India, then war would not have been averted,” Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said last week, according to the Washington Post.

Nuclear weapons might have provided some deterrence, said Verghese Koithara a retired vice admiral from the Indian navy and a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.   He agreed, however, that Musharraf’s promise regarding militants and the U.S. assurances that he was sincere were the key elements in decreasing tensions.

Citing another example of a key diplomatic move, Khan said that when the United States urged its citizens to leave the region out of fear of war, the move was economically costly and led India to take de-escalatory steps (see GSN, June 6).

Lessons

Some analysts have expressed concern that the perception of nuclear weapons acting as a deterrent could create incentives among non-nuclear states to consider developing nuclear capability.

The rest of the world will take lessons from the South Asian situation, Feinstein said.  If countries decide that Pakistan withstood pressure from militarily stronger India, they might view nuclear weapons as a positive asset.  If they see that nuclear weapons internationalized the conflict, making it more difficult for either country to pursue its national interests, nuclear weapons might appear less attractive, he said.

If India and Pakistan demonstrate that nuclear weapons provide prestige and power to a country, other countries might want to copy them, Haqqani said.

Countries that might consider nuclear weapons — particularly certain countries in the Middle East — will watch to see how the world, especially the United States, responds, Feinstein said.  States want to know the international cost of developing such weapons, he said.  Most countries, however, will decide whether to pursue nuclear capability based on their perceptions of their own interests, which depends on their region, he said.

India, Pakistan and Israel — countries outside the traditional nonproliferation regime that are generally known to possess nuclear weapons — are in their own category, and their actions would have little if any affect on other countries, Koithara said.

Non-nuclear states should not see events in South Asia as evidence that nuclear weapons deter or provide power; each situation is different, and comparing a different region to South Asia would be a “facile comparison,” Khan said.

Krepon agreed.  Neither Iraq, Iran nor North Korea is going to view South Asia as a model, he said, adding that they are all very different situations.

“Incentives for other countries to acquire WMD are unaffected by what happens in South Asia,” he said.  “They’re local; they’re national; they’re regional.  They relate to concerns over foreign invasion and desire to intimidate neighbors.”

For further information, see:

Pakistani Government

Indian Government

Carnegie Endowment Nuclear Status Map

Carnegie Endowment World Missile Chart

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United States I:  Pentagon Plans to Merge Space and Strategic Commands

The U.S. Defense Department plans to combine the U.S. Space Command and the U.S. Strategic Command into a single entity, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, May 9).

The proposed command, which does not yet have a name, would combine the U.S. early-warning network and the U.S. missile defense system with the ability to plan and execute attacks using either conventional or nuclear weapons, according to the Times.  The command would fit well into U.S. President George W. Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive action against those who are trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, officials said (see GSN, June 3).  Bush aides have said it is likely that the merger will be approved.

“There’s a logic in taking these two commands with important global reach, and pulling together people who can think globally,” a senior administration official said.

Adm. James Ellis, current head of Strategic Command, is expected to be chosen to head the new command, according to the Times.  The command would be able to either plan its own operations, such as deploying B-2 bombers equipped with satellite-guided munitions, or aid U.S. regional military commanders in their missions, supporters of the merger said.  The command would also be responsible for developing the military’s information warfare capabilities — both offensive and defensive, the Times reported.

Some critics of the merger have said the different cultures of the two commands would make it too difficult to combine them.  Most Pentagon, congressional and other experts, however, have said the merger is a good idea.

“Both are commands that don’t have a whole CINC’s [commander in chief’s]-worth of work to do,” said Ashton Carter, professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former assistant defense secretary in the Clinton administration. “Combining them creates a CINC-dom that has a respectable amount of mass” (Eric Schmitt, New York Times, June 25).

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United States II:  Supercomputers Weigh Power Versus Efficiency

Two supercomputers, called Q and Green Destiny, at the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory illustrate two of the main approaches to supercomputing — raw power versus efficiency, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, April 4).

Los Alamos researchers plan to use the computing powers of Q — rated at 30 teraops, which means it can perform 30 trillion calculations per second — to conduct a full-scale replication of the physics involved in a nuclear explosion (see GSN, April 9).

“Obviously with the various treaties and rules and regulations, we can't set one of these off anymore,” said Chris Kemper, deputy leader of the Los Alamos computing, communications and networking division.  “In the past we could test in Nevada and see if theory matched reality.  Now we have do to it with simulations.”

One drawback to Q, however, is the power that it needs to run, the Times reported.  The supercomputer uses three megawatts of electricity on its own and another two megawatts to power its cooling system.  Combined, that amount of electricity is enough to power about 5,000 homes, according to the Times.

The Green Destiny supercomputer is rated at 160 gigaops, which means that it can perform only billions of operations per second.  Its advantages, however, include a lower price and greater efficiency than Q, according to the Times.  At a cost of $335,000, Green Destiny is cheaper than Q, which costs $215 million plus $93 million for housing expenses.

Green Destiny also requires much less power, the Times reported.  It only uses about five kilowatts of electricity, a thousandth of that used by Q.  Even if Green Destiny were expanded to its maximum of 30 teraops, it would still only use about one megawatt, according to the Times.

“Bigger and faster machines simply aren't good enough anymore,” said Wu-Chung Feng, leader of the Green Destiny project at Los Alamos.  The time has come to question the doctrine of “performance at any cost,” he said.

The more power a supercomputer uses leads to an increase in heat, according to the Times.  If the operating temperature is increased by 18 degrees Fahrenheit, then reliability will be reduced by half, Feng said.  Because of this, Q is expected to only be able to operate for a few hours at a time before it will need rebooting, the Times reported.

While researchers could keep on increasing the raw power of supercomputers, it could lead to greater losses of reliability and efficient power use, Feng said.

“There are two paths now for supercomputing,” he said.  “We’re not saying this is a replacement for a machine like Q but that we need to look in this direction” (George Johnson, New York Times, June 25).

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Iran:  Russia Will Recover Spent Bushehr Fuel, Official Says

Russia will retrieve spent nuclear fuel from the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which it is helping to build in Iran, a Russian Atomic Energy Ministry official said yesterday (see GSN, June 24).

“Russia will definitely observe the principles of the International Atomic Energy Agency under which spent fuel will return to the country supplying the fuel,” Russian Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Valery Lebedev said, according to Interfax.

Officials have incorporated a provision on the return of spent fuel into the agreement between Russia and Iran on the building of the Bushehr facility, Lebedev said.  Officials will store the spent fuel in Iran for three years, however, to allow it to cool before shipping it to a Russian storage site, he said (Agence France-Presse, June 24).

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Egypt:  Israeli Experts Doubt Cairo is Developing Weapons

Israeli nuclear experts have expressed doubts over recent media reports that Egypt might be attempting to develop a nuclear weapons program, the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv reported Sunday (see GSN, June 24).

“It is such a complicated and weighty issue, not to mention the regional strategic implications, that it’s very doubtful that Egypt will go into it at this point in time,” an expert said.

The German newspaper Die Welt reported Saturday that Egypt is attempting to mine uranium in the Sinai Peninsula.  Ever since Israel occupied the area it has known that there are small deposits of uranium located in the Sinai, said Yuval Ne’eman, former chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.  The uranium located there, however, is too difficult to mine and refine to be of use, he said.

“It’s a long way between searching for and mining uranium deposits in Sinai and building a very big reactor,” said Shay Feldman of Tel Aviv University’s Strategic Studies Center.  “All in all, I don’t think there is anything much to this story” (Alex Doron, Ma’ariv, June 23 in FBIS-NES, June 23).

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U.S. Plans:  Pentagon Considers Incremental Acquisitions

The U.S. Defense Department has begun considering a proposal to acquire components of a U.S. missile defense system incrementally, Missile Defense Agency Director Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish said last week (see GSN, June 19).

“We may not be able to foresee exactly how many of these systems we would want to buy over time or could afford,” Kadish said, adding that incremental production would allow the agency to move as rapidly as possible without committing to large, full-inventory orders.

Most of the U.S. medium- and long-range missile defense programs are still in stages of development, according to Defense Week.  The Pentagon supports the idea of building such systems in a “spiral way” — fielding technologies once they become available, tested and improved and then building from there — Defense Week reported.  Such a system needs more relaxed requirements and testing programs in exchange for faster deployments.

“We want to avoid committing to a long period of procurement and acquisition (that is) expensive and may not provide the capability we need at the time of deployment,” said Stephen Cambone, incoming director of the defense secretary’s Program Analysis and Evaluation office.

The discussions over possible changes to the Pentagon’s acquisition systems are still in the early stages, Kadish said.  Any changes would have to be approved by Pentagon civilian officials, he said.

Testing Requirements Unclear

There are concerns over the possible changes to the way the Pentagon would acquire U.S. missile defense systems, according to Defense Week.  Officials are examining how legal requirements such as operational testing, which come into effect during the full-rate production phase, would change, they said (see GSN, June 18).  A Missile Defense Agency working group is examining all possibilities, said agency spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Richard Lehner.

Another concern is that if fewer systems are produced, that would lead to higher individual costs, Defense Week reported.  Lehner said it is more cost-efficient if the complete number of items to be purchased is known.

“However you can accomplish this same cost efficiency by buying a small number of systems at a pre-negotiated price,” he said (Ann Roosevelt, Defense Week, June 24).

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Radiological Weapons:  IAEA to Secure Former Soviet “Dirty Bomb” Materials

By Bryan Bender
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The International Atomic Energy Agency established a working group earlier this month with U.S. and Russian officials designed to better secure unregulated but still highly radioactive materials in the former Soviet Union, the agency announced today.  The effort was initiated to address heightened fears industrial and medical materials could be used to make a “dirty bomb,” the agency said in a release (see GSN, June 21).

The three parties have agreed to cooperate in locating, recovering, securing and recycling radioactive sources in the former Soviet Union that are currently outside the control of nuclear regulators.  Such materials are nevertheless sufficiently radioactive to cause serious illness and contamination if dispersed by a conventional explosive.

“What is needed is cradle-to-grave control of powerful radioactive sources to protect them against terrorism or theft,” said IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.

The tripartite agreement, reached June 12 between the agency, the U.S. Energy Department and Russia’s Atomic Energy Ministry, marks the first international response to the threat posed by vulnerable radioactive sources, according to the IAEA, which acknowledged that additional work is needed to safeguard similar materials outside of the former Soviet Union.

The announcement comes after the May arrest in Chicago of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen with alleged links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network who authorities maintain was planning to build and detonate a dirty bomb (see GSN, June 17). 

The United States, which has one of the most advanced security systems, has lost track of nearly 1,500 radioactive items since 1996, the agency said (see GSN, June 12).

By setting off a conventional explosive that spews radioactive debris, officials worry a terrorist group might cause relatively few direct deaths, but spread mass panic, cause widespread economic dislocation and contaminate a large area for years.

The new effort to track radioactive materials in the former Soviet Union will focus on those sources of radiation deemed most dangerous.  The IAEA has identified radioactive materials used in industrial radiography, radiotherapy, industrial irradiators and thermoelectric generators as having the largest amounts of radioactive isotopes such as cobalt-60, strontium-90, cesium-137 and iridium-192.

Agency officials said the ability to detect radioactive sources depends on the level and type of radioactivity and the possible presence of shielding materials.  “Fortunately, the most intense and dangerous sources normally are the most susceptible to detection,” according to the IAEA.

A Global Threat

The threat is global.  The agency said that dozens of countries worldwide have little or no security in place to safeguard a variety of radiological materials used for common industrial or medical purposes.

“More than 100 countries may have no minimum infrastructure in place to properly control radiation sources,” the agency said.

Worldwide, the agency estimated there are more than 20,000 operators of radioactive sources, including 10,000 radiotherapy units, 12,000 industrial sources for radiography, and 300 irradiator facilities containing radioactive sources for industrial applications.

The IAEA said it is making progress in working with nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where the control of radiological materials is believed to be most lax.  In March, for example, the agency was called in to secure a powerful cobalt source that had been abandoned in a former Afghanistan hospital (see GSN, April 8).  A week later it helped Uganda secure a radiological source that appeared to have been stolen.

Still, the agency remains particularly concerned about the more than 50 countries that are not members of the 134-nation IAEA and therefore do not benefit from its expertise and assistance.

Despite the global concerns, Russia and the former Soviet states are currently the focus of the agency’s radiological safeguard plans.  According to IAEA figures, “orphaned” radiological materials in the states of the former Soviet Union “are a widespread phenomenon.” 

For example, in February two unshielded and unsecured radioactive strontium-90 power sources were recovered in Georgia.  Since 1997, Georgia and the IAEA have recovered an estimated 280 radioactive sources (see GSN, June 10).

“This is the legacy of one of the most dramatic changes in the security environment in our lifetime:  the dissolution of the Soviet Union,” said Roger Hagengruber of Sandia National Laboratory.  “With U.S. help, Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union can secure and control the management of these sources.  The problem is money.”

Meanwhile, the situation in the former Soviet Union “may just be an indication of the serious safety and security implications that orphaned sources may have elsewhere in the world,” said Abel Gonzalez, IAEA’s director of radiation and waste safety.

“Since Sept. 11, there is a perception that threat [of a dirty bomb] has increased,” Hagengruber added.  “And the problem gets bigger when you go to countries with terrorism ties where there is also sources of radiological material.”

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