U.S. Response I:  Pentagon Asks for “Intelligence Czar”

The U.S. Defense Department sent a confidential request this week asking Congress to create an “intelligence czar” to improve coordination between military and other intelligence agencies, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, May 31).

The Pentagon wants to create a defense undersecretary for intelligence, according to the Times.  Under the plan, the undersecretary-level position would have bureaucratic weight to force military intelligence units to coordinate information with other agencies, officials said.  The position would also act as a direct conduit to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Times reported.  The main candidate for the new position so far is Richard Haver, Rumsfeld’s special assistant for intelligence matters, defense sources said.

The Pentagon has also requested that Congress eliminate the office of assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict, according to the Times.  An assistant secretary for homeland security would replace the office, and a deputy assistant secretary would handle policy concerns for U.S. special forces, the Times reported.

The Pentagon made its requests in a letter sent to key members of Congress yesterday, the Times reported.  Both changes would have to be approved by Congress, a source said.  The Pentagon hopes to have the changes written into the fiscal 2003 defense authorization bill currently being debated by the Senate, the source said (Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, June 26).

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U.S. Response II:  New Department May Take Years to Create

By Michael Posner

National Journal News Service

U.S. Comptroller General David Walker yesterday presented Congress with a reality check: Getting the proposed homeland security department up to speed could take years to accomplish and require a lot more money than anticipated.

Walker, who heads the General Accounting Office, handed legislators a new 30-page report on President George W. Bush’s plan to consolidate some 22 agencies with 170,000 people into a new department with an anticipated first-year cost of $37.5 billion. The Senate Budget Committee’s staff director has already cited that figure as about $9 billion too low.

In a no-nonsense report, Walker told Senate Judiciary Technology, Terrorism and Government Information Subcommittee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and her panel that Congress has a “unique opportunity” to set up the agency to protect borders and guard against terrorism.  But he cautioned that it will take “substantial time” and effort and “additional resources” to do the job properly.

“Numerous complicated issues will need to be resolved in the short term, including a harmonization of information technology systems, human capital systems, the physical location of people and other assets, and many other factors,” Walker said.  “Implementation of the new department will be an extremely complex task and will ultimately take years.”

In response to Feinstein’s questions, Walker suggested Congress start with recommendations of a terrorism commission headed by former Senators Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) and Gary Hart (D-Colo.), then use GAO’s recommendations to evaluate the difficulties and also consider a White House office of homeland security with Senate confirmation of its director.

Rudman, whose report suggested a department with fewer consolidated agencies, called Bush’s larger plan “a sound proposal, but it can be improved by Congress and it probably will be.”

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International Response:  Bush Ready to Ratify Anti-Terrorism Conventions

By Kerry Boyd
Global Security Newswire

U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday signed into law legislation to implement two U.N. conventions designed to strengthen international efforts to combat terrorism (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2001).

The United States will now become a party to the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings and the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, Bush said.  The United States signed the conventions in 1998 and 2000 but has not yet ratified them (see GSN, Feb. 4).

“These two conventions strengthen international efforts to defeat terrorism of global reach.  They underscore — along with 10 other international terrorism conventions — the broad moral consensus that violence against innocent civilians is a criminal act and must be punished,” Bush said in a statement.

The Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, which the U.N. General Assembly adopted in 1997, requires parties to enact legislation to make terrorist bombings — or attempted bombings — punishable, to extradite or prosecute people accused of such acts and to cooperate on related criminal proceedings.

The Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism requires countries to detect and seize funds that are allocated for terrorist acts, extradite or prosecute those accused of providing or collecting funds for terrorist purposes and cooperate with other states to combat terrorist financing (see GSN, April 9).  The U.N. General Assembly adopted the convention in 1999.

For further information, see:

U.N. Conventions on Terrorism

International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings status

International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism status

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U.S. Response:  25,000 Gas Masks Headed to U.S. Capitol

Capitol Police have ordered 25,000 gas masks to store around the U.S. Capitol to protect members of Congress, congressional staff and tourists against a chemical or biological attack, the Associated Press reported today.

The police expect to announce the order today, a congressional official said.  The masks, known as quick masks, are not the same as full gas masks but are hoods that filter chemical and biological agents through a fitted mouthpiece, according to the AP.

The House floor has had gas masks available for years, but the big change in the new purchase is that masks will now be available to tourists and staff in addition to lawmakers.

“They (the police) were basically just trying to include tourists,” the congressional official said.  “They’re not going to have only 535 masks.”

The purchase of masks is not a response to any specific threat, the official said.  “The reason we’re doing it is because the Capitol was targeted for a bioterrorist attack, the anthrax attack,” the official said (see GSN, March 7).

Other Capitol Security Measures

Since Sept. 11, Capitol authorities have implemented several new security measures.  Before the attacks, tourists were allowed to walk freely around much of the Capitol building, but visitors now can take only guided tours.  Cement barriers and metal posts have been set up around the Capitol, and the Capitol Police force has added 700 officers (Leslie Miller, Associated Press/New York Times, June 26).

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U.S. Response:  U.S. Unable to Identify Sources of Nuclear Terror

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — If terrorists were to explode a nuclear weapon, the United States does not have the capabilities in place to identify the source of the weapon or to respond sufficiently to such a disaster, according to a report on counterterrorism released yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences (see GSN, June 25).

The report, Making the Nation Safer:  The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism, estimates that the country is several years away from having the capability to detect a nuclear weapon’s country of origin.

“The technology for developing this capability exists but needs to be assembled, an effort that is expected to take several years,” the report says.

If true, that fact could impair short-term deterrence of nuclear weapons terrorism, allowing terrorists — and governments that might aid them — to determine that they could escape U.S. retaliation, according to the report.

The credibility of U.S. nuclear deterrence “would depend in large part on the ability of the United States to demonstrate to the rest of the world that it has the technical means to attribute such attacks to states or terror groups,” the report says.

It notes two basic challenges to identifying the source of a nuclear weapon:  determining the characteristics of the specific weapon and matching those data to information known about nuclear weapons around the world.

“The former can be determined through careful analysis of blast debris; the latter might be determined by linking this information with intelligence on thefts, smuggling, and weapons development efforts by states and terror groups developed through the data-mining techniques discussed above.”

U.S. national laboratories currently are working on developing an attribution capability through the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the report says.  It stresses that the existence of such a technical capability should be demonstrated and widely known.  The work should continue “to declared operability as quickly as possible,” it says.

In a footnote, the report’s authors acknowledged that the doctrine of assured retaliation “probably would not deter” fanatical terrorist groups, but, they added, it may discourage states from providing such groups with assistance.

The report’s conclusion and recommendations, many related to improving U.S. security against nuclear and radiological terrorism, may fly in the face of conventional wisdom.

In the movie The Sum of All Fears, based on a Tom Clancy novel and released nationwide May 31, U.S. experts were able to analyze very quickly — seemingly in hours — the debris of a nuclear blast in Baltimore to identify the source of the weapon’s fissile material.

Much of the necessary technology is already available, left over from the days when the United States was evaluating atmospheric nuclear tests, said William Happer, a physics professor at Princeton and the chairman of the committee that produced the nuclear and radiological threat section of the report.

“There is a limited amount of technology that we have left over from the days of atmospheric testing, where we tried to analyze fallout to infer the properties of the weapons,” he said.  “And that of course has essentially atrophied since we went to underground testing.”

Happer said if the United States, with a serious effort, could assemble a capability in as short as a month.

“It would be nice to have a team of people ready if necessary, to learn what you could from the debris,” he said.

The report says the United States has no evidence that a terrorist organization or non-nuclear state possesses stolen nuclear weapons, but that situation “could change rapidly over the near term” without steps to better secure former Soviet materials.

Updated Response Plan Needed

The report also recommends updating the U.S. Federal Emergency Response Plan, concluding it does not adequately address national needs in the event of a nuclear or radiological weapons attack on a U.S. city.

Published in 1996, the plan establishes authorities and procedures for responding to “peacetime” radiological emergencies such as accidents at nuclear power plants.  It devotes just three paragraphs to radiological sabotage and terrorism, the report says.  The plan designates the FBI as the lead investigative agency and requires other agencies to support the bureau.

“There’s not much there, and that I think is an accurate statement about the level of planning we’ve got right now,” said Happer.

“A terrorist attack could be much larger in magnitude than other events anticipated under the emergency plan,” the report says.

The proper response to a nuclear weapon attack, the report says, would require:

*         large numbers of rescuers and medical personnel trained to deal with radiological emergencies, as well as a plan for mobilizing medical resources nationwide;

*         the ability to manage large populations in contaminated urban areas for long periods of time, potentially years, as well as a capability to airlift of field hospitals rapidly;

*         the ability to predict in real time the spread of radioactive debris clouds and provide information to potentially affected populations so that appropriate actions can be taken; and

*         timely and effective cleanup capabilities, such as procedures for decontaminating people, land and buildings.

“The current plan does not appear to provide guidance needed to ensure this type of response in the case of nuclear terrorist attack,” the report said, recommending “immediate” steps to amend the plan or create a separate one.

If somebody were to set off a nuclear weapon in New York, Washington or Chicago, said Happer, “there would be hundreds of thousands of casualties” immediately.  In addition, local medical facilities would probably be damaged, requiring outside medical aid to be flown in to assist the survivors.

“What we need distributed across the country are people who would be prepared to move very quickly, to be air-lifted into the neighborhood and start to help,” he said, as well as designated resources and training.

Other Recommendations

The report also recommends:

*         an increase in research and development to improve the technological capabilities of special nuclear material detection systems for detecting highly enriched uranium;

*         a national detection network using a variety of sensors at strategic choke points to prevent smuggling of nuclear materials into the country;

*         a reexamination, through the departments of Defense and Energy, of the security of U.S. nuclear weapons within U.S. borders and elsewhere, though such weapons represent a “very small threat”;

*         an evaluation of the risks and benefits of basing U.S. nuclear weapons in NATO countries and elsewhere abroad;

*         an evaluation of ways to speed the safeguarding of Russian nuclear weapons and weapon-grade fissile materials; and

*         an increase to the priority and pace of blending down Russian highly enriched uranium to lower purity, a quick solution to take away the weapons capability.

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Israel:  Authorities Thwart Attack on Nuclear Weapons Site

Six Palestinians attempted to launch a suicide attack against an Israeli storage site where nuclear warheads and Jericho missiles are kept, Israel’s Army Radio reported today, citing the British Foreign Report (see GSN, June 17).

Israel’s Shin Bet security service arrested the Palestinians on Monday before they reached their target, Army Radio reported. 

Israeli defense officials denied today that Shin Bet received any information “of this nature,” the radio reported, according to Ha’aretz (Ha’aretz, June 26).

For further information, see:

Carnegie Endowment Nuclear Status Map

Carnegie Endowment World Missile Chart

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Smallpox I:  U.S. Residents to Be Denied Vaccine if CDC Plan Is Adopted

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Unless a smallpox outbreak occurs, U.S. residents will not be allowed to receive the vaccine, according to the recent recommendation issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sources told Global Security Newswire this week.  Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson is now reviewing the proposed policy (see GSN, June 21).

The CDC and other public health experts have said the agency’s recommendation for a U.S. smallpox vaccine strategy will provide enough protection without individuals attempting to be vaccinated on their own.  A critic of the CDC’s approach, however, said individuals had the right to make the decision whether or not to be vaccinated.

Public comments received during a recent series of forums held on U.S. vaccine policy indicated that people are supportive of reserving smallpox vaccine for emergencies only, said CDC spokesman Llelwyn Grant (see GSN, June 7).  He added that people also seem to feel comfortable with the proposed U.S. “ring vaccination” plan, in which officials would contain an outbreak by vaccinating people in close contact with those infected.

A senior defense policy analyst at the CATO Institute, a Washington think tank, however, said U.S. residents should be free to obtain smallpox vaccine from their physicians.

“As a taxpayer, you’ve already paid for this,” said Charles Pena.  “It belongs to you.  After all, you’ve paid for it.”

Health and Human Services controls the entire U.S. smallpox vaccine stockpile, blocking individuals’ access to the supply, according to Pena.  The choice whether to be vaccinated should be based on whether a person has the perception of being at risk, he said, adding that such decisions should not be dictated to the public.

Any person should be able to learn about the potential side effects of the vaccine, be tested for risks and then be allowed to choose whether to be vaccinated, Pena said.  If people know they could die or suffer serious side effects from the vaccine, as studies have shown, then demand would probably be low, he said.

Public Demand

The CDC does not expect a high level of public demand for the vaccine prior to an outbreak, Grant said.  Mohammad Akhter, executive director of the American Public Health Association, agreed and said there has not been the same level of demand from the public for the smallpox vaccine as there was for Cipro during last year’s anthrax attacks.

“Nobody stepped forward and said we want the vaccine now,” Akhter said.

If the vaccine were made available to physicians before an outbreak, however, public fears might increase demand, Akhter said.  Currently, there are only 16 to 17 million doses of vaccine available, and they must be kept on hand in the event of an outbreak, he said, adding that he is generally against distributing medicines needlessly.

“It’s like taking any other medicine,” Akhter said.  “We didn’t tell people to stock up on Cipro.”

Pena challenged the CDC’s claims that there is low public demand for the vaccine, citing polls in which 60 percent of those surveyed said they want the vaccine available (see GSN, June 6).  The CDC public forums on the vaccine were hastily put together, poorly advertised and lightly attended, hampering the agency’s ability to gauge public opinion, he said.

First Responders and Ring Vaccination

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has decided to recommend that only smallpox response teams — those who would administer the vaccine in the event of an outbreak — be prevaccinated, Grant said (see GSN, May 7).  If an outbreak occurred, the CDC would continue to use a ring vaccination strategy, he said.

Akhter agreed with the CDC’s decision not to provide the vaccine to physicians, adding that the focus should not be on individuals.

“We need to protect our community,” Akhter said.  “We need to protect our nation.”

Ring vaccination, however, would not be able adequately halt the rapid spread of smallpox once an outbreak began, Pena said.

“If you can remember seven people you had contact with in the last few days, I’d be surprised,” he said.

The United States could take a preventive measure against smallpox by making the vaccine available to those who want it now, according to Pena.  Doing so could help facilitate any future ring vaccination plan and could also serve as a deterrent to terrorists contemplating launching a biological weapons attack using smallpox, he said.

U.S. health officials’ view is that they will wait until a smallpox outbreak has occurred before it will react, Pena said. “You just have to look at Sept. 11 to realize government can’t be perfect.”

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Anthrax:  FBI Searches Home of Former USAMRIID Scientist

FBI agents searched the apartment of a former U.S. scientist yesterday as part of the bureau’s “Amerithrax” investigation into last fall’s anthrax attacks (see GSN, June 24).

The scientist, Steven Hatfill, agreed to the search in an attempt to remove himself from a list of possible suspects, a law enforcement official said.  Hatfill has not been charged with any crime, nor has he been identified as a suspect, according to the Baltimore Sun.  Hatfill worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., for about two years during the late 1990s (Scott Shane, Baltimore Sun, June 26).

“This was a consensual search for which the only qualification was potential access to anthrax,” a law enforcement official said (Gretchen Parker, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, June 26).

The FBI found no evidence that connected Hatfill to last fall’s attacks, according to law enforcement officials.  Hatfill said he feels he is the target of a witch-hunt by authorities.

“I’ve got a letter from the FBI that says I’m not a suspect and never was,” he said.  “I just got caught up in the normal screening they were doing, because of the nature of my job” (David Johnston, New York Times, June 26).

The FBI search occurred a week after Hatfill’s name was discussed during a meeting between Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a biologist at the State University of New York who has closely followed the investigation, and members of the staffs of Senators Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), according to the Hartford Courant (see GSN, May 21).  FBI agents also attended the meeting, sources said.

Rosenberg has tried to prompt the FBI to investigate Hatfill for several reasons, the Courant reported.  Five biological weapons experts previously gave the FBI Hatfill’s name, according to Rosenberg.  Hatfill also has access to a cabin in Maryland and the knowledge needed to produce weapon-grade anthrax, according to the Courant.  Hatfill also lost his position at USAMRIID under questionable circumstances and lost a later job at a defense contractor because he had his security clearance revoked, the Courant reported.

FBI agents previously searched Hatfill’s apartment and his car late last year, the Courant reported, but no traces of anthrax were discovered (Altimari/Dolan, Hartford Courant, June 26).

For further information, see:

CDC Frequently Asked Questions on Anthrax

FBI Amerithrax Investigation

GSN Anthrax Attack Chronology (Dec. 12, 2001)

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Smallpox II:  Scientists Try New Tactic to Infect Monkeys

U.S. scientists have begun a new attempt to infect monkeys with the human smallpox virus in an effort to create an animal model that would allow development of smallpox vaccines and treatments, the Wall Street Journal reported today.  A previous monkey infection effort killed the animals too quickly (see GSN, Jan. 29).

Scientists cannot test smallpox drugs and vaccine in humans due to its high death rate, so Peter Jahrling and his team of scientists are trying to design an animal model.

Last year, the researchers gave macaque monkeys — which do not fall victim to smallpox naturally — an aerosol and intravenous dose of a highly virulent smallpox strain.  The team successfully infected the monkeys, but they died within four days, which prompted some scientists to say the monkeys probably died of blood poisoning rather than smallpox.

On June 18, Jahrling began trying a different tactic.  In an attempt to slow infection rates to something closer to the human smallpox course of 10 to 14 days, he gave the monkeys only an IV infusion — dropping the aerosol attempt — and used a less virulent strain called Harper.

Jahrling continued to use a high dosage that would probably almost always be lethal, unlike the 30 percent death rate that occurs in human populations.  Creating a model to mirror a human mortality rate would require 60 monkeys, and the scientists can only use 12 at a time.  A death rate of 100 percent would allow the researchers to uses fewer animals, he said.

Jahrling and his team are now monitoring the progress of the disease in the test subjects, according to today’s Wall Street Journal.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has supported the experiments, but some experts have criticized Jahrling.  The work is “an abhorrent experiment by government idiots,” said Alfred Sommer, dean of the public health school at Johns Hopkins University.  Sommer has advocated destroying the two known remaining caches of smallpox in the United States and Russia.

Doctors are unlikely to ever find a drug to treat smallpox after its major symptoms appear, and countries should focus resources on finding a drug to treat potentially severe side effects of smallpox vaccine, said D.A. Henderson, former leader of the World Health Organization’s campaign to eradicate smallpox and current adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson (Marilyn Chase, Wall Street Journal, June 26).

For further information, see:

CDC Smallpox Information

Journal of the American Medical Association Background

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U.S. Response:  New Security Department Could Disrupt Public Health Programs, GAO Says

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. President George W. Bush’s proposal to create a new homeland security department could help improve the coordination and efficiency of some public health programs but could also have a disruptive effect, a General Accounting Office official said yesterday (see GSN, June 25).

The proposed homeland security department has the potential to improve the coordination of public health preparedness and response programs among federal, state and local officials, Janet Heinrich, the accounting office’s director of public health issues, said in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

The Bush administration’s proposal would transfer some emergency preparedness and response programs and some Health and Human Services Department public health assistance programs over to the new department, Heinrich said.

There has previously been a lack of coordination among federal agencies responsible for emergency preparedness and response programs that would be transferred to the new department, Heinrich said.  The Bush administration’s plan for a homeland security department would place several federal public health response programs under the control of one person — an undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response — which would provide a central contact point for state and local officials, she said.

“We believe that the proposed reorganization has the potential to repair the fragmentation we have noted in the coordination of public health preparedness programs at the federal, state and local levels,” Heinrich said.

Heinrich also told the subcommittee, however, that there would still need to be increased coordination between departments for some of the programs that would be transferred to the new homeland security department.  For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Veterans Affairs Department and Health and Human Services all have responsibilities for the Strategic National Stockpile, Heinrich said (see GSN, May 23).  Only the CDC’s responsibilities for the stockpile, however, would be transferred to the new department, she said.

Disruptive Effect

One potential problem with the Bush administration’s plan to transfer Health and Human Services programs with dual homeland security and public health functions to the new department is that it could disrupt the public health side of the programs, Heinrich said.

“We are concerned that transferring control over these programs ... to the new department has the potential to disrupt some programs that are critical to basic public health responsibilities,” she said.  “We do not believe that the president’s proposal is sufficiently clear on how both the homeland security and the public health objectives would be accomplished.”

While some of the Health and Human Services programs that would be transferred to the new department have homeland security functions, they are also vital for identifying and reacting to natural outbreaks of infectious diseases, Heinrich said.  The new homeland security secretary would have control over programs that would actually be conducted by another department, she said. 

There are concerns that such an approach would lead to a breakdown in synergy in dual-function programs and could also lead to difficulties in setting priorities for such programs, Heinrich said.

“Although the HHS programs are important for homeland security, they are just as important to the day-to-day needs of public health agencies and hospitals,” she said.  “The current proposal does not clearly provide a structure that ensures that both the goals of homeland security and public health will be met.”

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United States:  Bail Decision Expected Today for Ricin Suspect

A man accused of producing the potentially lethal biological agent ricin endangered more than 1,000 co-workers at Agilent Technologies in Washington state, a U.S. federal prosecutor said Monday (see GSN, June 21).

Agilent officials fired Kenneth Olsen almost a year ago after discovering evidence he was researching ricin on his office computer.  U.S. authorities arrested Olsen last Wednesday and charged him with knowingly producing a biological agent to use as a weapon.

Tests showed that ricin was present in some test tubes and bottles belonging to Olsen.  FBI agent Joseph Cleary testified that Olsen possessed a conversion table showing how much ricin would be necessary to kill a 150-pound person.

Olsen should remain in jail without bail because he poses a risk to the community and might try to flee, Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl Hicks said.  Prosecutors have suggested Olsen was planning to kill his wife with the ricin, but Olsen is not charged with attempting to kill his wife.

Olsen’s lawyer, John Clark, said Olsen should be set free, adding that Olsen never meant to hurt anyone.  Clark said Olsen might have possessed ricin in order to commit suicide.  Clark has also said that Olsen was researching the toxin for a Boy Scout project.

U.S. Magistrate Cynthia Imbrogno delayed ruling on the bail request until today (Nicholas Geranios, Associated Press, June 25).

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Japan:  Aum Shinrikyo Member Sentenced to Death for Multiple Murders

The Tokyo District Court sentenced a former top member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult to death today for his role in 26 murders, including the 1995 nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway that killed 12 people (see GSN, May 23).

The court convicted Tomomitsu Niimi, who reportedly confessed to all charges except the subway attack.  Niimi plans to appeal the case, court official Hideyuki Ito said.

Japanese courts have sentenced nine cult members to death, but Japan has not carried out any of the sentences, according to the Associated Press.  The cult’s leader, Shoko Asahara, has been on trial since 1996.

Media reports have said the cult was developing chemical, biological and conventional weapons, and Japan’s Public Safety Agency has warned that the group — now called Aleph — is still a threat, according to the AP (Associated Press/New York Times, June 26).

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Israel:  Missiles Can Reach Any Target on Earth

Israel has the ability to launch a missile against any target in the world, an Israeli expert said following the recent launch of the Ofek 5 satellite (see GSN, May 29).

“From the moment the state of Israel has the capability to launch a satellite into orbit around the Earth at a height of hundreds of kilometers, it established (its) capability to launch, by means of a missile, a payload to any location on the face of the Earth,” said Moshe Gelman, the head of the Asher Institute at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

The launch of the 300-kilogram Ofek 5 satellite last month was intended to increase Israel’s ability to monitor activities in enemy states and to improve the country’s launch capabilities, said Avi Har-Even, director general of the Israel Space Agency.

The only difference between a ballistic missile’s path and the path of a rocket that carries a satellite into space is the target, Gelman said, noting that it requires less energy to produce a missile that returns to Earth than a satellite that remains in orbit (Amnon Barzilai, Ha’aretz, June 26).

For further information, see:

Carnegie Endowment World Missile Chart

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U.S. Plans:  Pentagon Explains New Secrecy Measures

By Bryan Bender
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. defense officials this week defended plans to classify details of future missile defense tests as secret in order to prevent potential adversaries from developing countermeasures to anti-missile systems (see GSN, May 17).

Pete Aldridge, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, and Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said the increasing complexity of the testing program for the national missile defense system requires that information about both test targets and decoys be restricted.

The first element of U.S. missile defense programs to have the new restrictions is the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, the most advanced system against ICBMs that the United States has in development.  The next GMD test is scheduled for August.

“These precautions reflect the commonsense evolution of any national defense program making rapid progress in time of war,” Aldridge wrote in today’s USA Today.  “On June 14, our obligations under the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty ended, and our testing program can now proceed.  What could be a more appropriate time to tighten security?  Doing so is sensible, not sinister” (see GSN, June 14).

The Bush administration is launching a counteroffensive against charges from interest groups and former Pentagon officials that tighter security precautions are unnecessary at this time due to the relative immaturity of the program and apparent lack of realistic test conditions.  They worry the new restrictions might help the Pentagon hide test failures.

Philip Coyle, former Pentagon director of operational test and evaluation, said earlier this month that “this program is not at the point where the types of decoys used have even begun to be representative of the likely enemy countermeasures against missile defense” (see GSN, June 11).

He contended in a Washington Post commentary that to date only round balloons have been used to simulate possible enemy efforts to confuse the missile interceptor, but they do not look like enemy missiles.  Moreover, he wrote, even the targets themselves do not adequately simulate enemy warheads.

“Thus, the current test program is not giving away any secrets; nor is there any potential of that for years to come,” according to Coyle.

Kadish, speaking to reporters yesterday at the Pentagon, said the types and numbers of countermeasures to be used in upcoming tests will increase dramatically, requiring the agency to be tighter-lipped about test parameters.

“We’re at the point in our testing where we are going to aggressively pursue what we can do against countermeasures,” he said.  “There is no responsible individual that will make that type of information available to our adversaries so they can defeat our system.  In my view, this is the proper time to start classifying those details.”

Still, critics assert that the new restrictions could stifle public debate about whether the $48 billion research and development program system is sufficiently advanced and effective to invest additional billions of dollars to deploy it as early as 2004.  But Aldridge and Kadish said the restrictions will not apply to members of Congress, who ultimately will have to decide whether to proceed with the national missile defense system.

“There is not now, and can never be, any component of this program classified beyond the reach of the security clearances of its congressional overseers,” Aldridge said.

Congress Debates Funding

A more immediate controversy surrounds missile defense funding for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.  A Senate vote on the fiscal 2003 defense authorization bill has been held up this week due to debate over an amendment to restore $800 million in missile defense funds requested by the Bush administration but removed by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Debate on an amendment by Senator John Warner (R-Va.) to return the money to the administration’s $7.5 billion request for missile defense programs took place yesterday and continued today.  The House fully funded the request in its version of the defense bill.  Administration officials indicate that President George W. Bush will veto the final legislation if the funds are not restored.

For further information, see:

MDA Basics of Missile Defense

MDA Missile Defense System

MDA Midcourse Defense Segment

U.S. Missile Defense 2002 Budget

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Radiological Weapons I:  U.S. Efforts Failing to Stop Smugglers

The United States has poorly coordinated and administered its programs to provide detection devices to other countries for preventing smuggling of nuclear and radioactive materials, congressional investigators said in a report expected to be released today (see GSN, June 25).

“It’s a pretty damning report,” said Senator Pat Roberts (Kan.), ranking Republican on the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.

The report from the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, notes that no U.S. agency coordinates programs to provide assistance to 30 countries — particularly Russia, former Soviet republics and Central and Eastern European countries — to buy detection devices and provide training.  The State and Energy departments run two programs each, and the Customs Service, the FBI and the Coast Guard also have programs.

Without overall coordination, different agencies have duplicated activities and provided equipment of differing quality, the report says.

“The current multiple-agency approach … is not, in our view, the most effective way to deliver this assistance,” the report says, according to the Washington Post.  “We believe the development of a government-wide plan is needed.”

Even within departments, there is sometimes lack of coordination, according to the report.  The two Energy administrators that run the department’s two programs do not communicate with each other, even though they fund the same equipment, the report says.

U.S. agencies also fail to follow through and investigate how countries use assistance, the report says.  The Defense Department said earlier this year that often countries have never used certain U.S. equipment, have used other U.S. equipment only to impress visiting U.S. officials or have stopped using equipment once it needed new batteries or repairs.

Despite the many problems in other countries, U.S. attempts to implement detection and security measures on its borders are sometimes worse, according to the report.  Customs told congressional investigators that it has 4,200 pager-sized radiation detectors for 7,500 inspectors but plans to provide all inspectors with a detector by September 2003 (see GSN, June 13; Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post, June 26).

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Radiological Weapons II:  U.S. Lawmakers to Seek New Task Force

By Bryan Bender
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. legislation soon to be formally proposed will seek to establish a federal task force to recommend steps to secure all radiological sources from being pilfered by terrorists, congressional sources said this morning.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) were scheduled today to call for the establishment of task force with representatives of the Defense Department, intelligence agencies, the proposed homeland security department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

The task force would outline a security upgrade program to be overseen and implemented by the NRC, which up to now has had jurisdiction only over fissile materials such as uranium.  The legislation would build on similar security efforts called for in separate legislation proposed by the two lawmakers earlier this year to protect nuclear power plants from terrorist attack (see GSN, March 25).

The new measures are considered urgent in light of recent intelligence reports that the al-Qaeda terrorist network may be planning to explode a conventional device containing highly radioactive materials found in industrial and medical facilities (see GSN, June 13).

The effort would mark the first U.S. attempt to safeguard unregulated radioactive materials used for a variety of everyday purposes.  The legislation comes just a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency announced a new effort with the assistance of the United States and Russia to safeguard radioactive sources in the former Soviet Union (see GSN, June 25).

Among the security measures to be addressed, according to a Markey spokesman, are physical security at facilities that contain radioactive materials and security checks of employees who handle the materials.

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Nuclear Waste:  Lott Urges Action on Yucca Mountain

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) yesterday urged the Senate to take up a resolution to support Yucca Mountain for the site of the first U.S. long-term nuclear waste repository (see GSN, June 11).

The joint resolution would override Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn’s veto of the Yucca Mountain site.  Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, to override the veto both houses of Congress must pass an override resolution by simple majorities within 90 days of the veto.  The House of Representatives passed a resolution in May (see GSN, May 9).

During yesterday’s debate of the fiscal 2003 defense authorization bill Lott made a unanimous consent request that either Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) or Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) bring the joint resolution to the Senate floor for full consideration once work is completed on the authorization bill but before July 9 (see GSN, June 6).  Lott also asked his fellow senators to vote on the motion without debate and to consider it exclusively until a vote is taken on it.

Daschle blocked the request with an objection, saying it was unnecessary and might jeopardize consideration of more important legislation.

The Senate still must finish work on the defense authorization bill and consider an emergency supplemental appropriations bill to provide funds for the war on terrorism, Daschle said.  If the unanimous consent request had been agreed to, it could have forced the Senate to consider the override resolution before these other, more important pieces of legislation, he said.

The request was also unnecessary because, under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, any senator can bring the override resolution to the floor, Daschle said (see GSN, March 21).   Daschle has previously said he would not bring the resolution to the Senate for a full vote, said Traci Scott, communications director for Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.).

“I am personally very opposed to the Yucca Mountain legislation as is presented,” Daschle said on the Senate floor yesterday.  “I oppose it and urge my colleagues to oppose it as well.”

Ensign, an opponent of the Yucca Mountain repository plan, is against the idea of a Republican senator bringing the override resolution to the floor over the wishes of the majority leader, Scott said.  Such a move breaks with Senate tradition and could establish a precedent that would reduce the power of the majority leader — a move that could come back to the haunt the Republicans if they are able to regain control of the Senate, she said.

There have been five previous pieces of legislation that had similar language to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and allowed any senator to bring them to the floor, Ensign said.  Out of those five, three were brought by the majority leader and two were not considered because of actions by the majority leader, he said.

“If someone besides the majority leader brings this legislation [the override resolution] to the floor, we are breaking with the traditions of the Senate,” Ensign said.  “I believe we are setting a very dangerous precedent for the majority.”

Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) supported Lott’s request, however, saying urgent action is needed on the resolution before the July 27 deadline.

“I certainly urge the two leaders to proceed and recognize the obligation we have to bring this matter to a vote,” Murkowski said.  “The House has done its work and spoken with an overwhelming vote in support of proceeding with Yucca.  To allow this matter simply to die through inaction is a grave reflection on what was intended to be a balanced procedure.”

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