U.S. Response:  Los Alamos Creates Homeland Security Office, Technologies

Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has created an internal Homeland Security Organization to better coordinate the facility’s counter-terrorism research, the laboratory announced Thursday (see GSN, April 22). 

“This new organization will allow us to better focus longstanding efforts toward evolving national needs,” said Don Cobb, the laboratory’s associate director for threat reduction.

Also on Thursday, Los Alamos officials demonstrated current and developing technologies for use in the war on terrorism, the Albuquerque Journal reported.  One of the technologies on display was a self-evolving computer program called GENIE.  The program can tailor itself to examine a wide array of sources for information.

“The computer learns to how to find what you want,” said Steven Brumby, a Los Alamos scientist working on GENIE.  “It’s kind of freaky technology.  A lot of people think it sounds too much like science fiction.”

GENIE, which stands for Genetic Imagery Exploitation, was first used to track the path of a wildfire in Los Alamos in 2000, according to the Journal.  The program could be used to scan luggage for weapons and to alert security officials to potential threats, Brumby said.

Los Alamos researchers have also developed hand-held, as well as larger, radiation detectors for use in scanning vehicles to find hidden nuclear materials or nuclear or radiological weapons, said Los Alamos project leader Bill Murray. 

In partnership with the University of New Mexico, scientists at the laboratory have developed a handheld detector that could determine the presence of hantavirus or influenza, the Journal reported.  Such a distinction is important since hantavirus symptoms often resemble those of the flu, Los Alamos technical staff member Karen Grace said (Brendan Smith, Albuquerque Journal, Sept. 6).

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Iraq:  Bush to Seek Support, Action in U.N. Speech

In a speech to the United Nations this week, U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to say that unless strong action is taken to remove Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the United States will take action on its own, senior Bush administration officials said Friday (see GSN, Sept. 6).

Bush’s Thursday speech might lead to a new round of U.N inspections in Iraq, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Sept. 5).  Such a move would be a retreat away from the administration’s threats of unilateral military action.

Many within the Bush administration believe that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein must be removed from power, the Post reported.  Many officials have also begun to believe, however, that working through the United Nations is advisable.  In a statement last week, Bush indicated a recognition that he cannot appear to ignore domestic and international opinion, said senior administration officials and diplomats (see GSN, Sept. 4).

“There is definitely a new focus on the U.N.,” said an official.

In his speech this week to the United Nations, Bush is expected to detail the threat of Iraqi weapon of mass destruction and to shift responsibility for dealing with them away from the United States and toward the entire world, officials said.  Bush will also probably say the time for dealing with Iraq is becoming limited.

“By the time you see the evidence, it’s too late,” a senior official said.

Bush plans to remind the U.N. Security Council that its history of enforcement in Iraq is awful, with Hussein having violated 16 U.N. resolutions since 1990, the senior official said.  Bush will probably say that it is the credibility of the United Nations — and not the United States — at risk, a senior official said (DeYoung/Allen, Washington Post, Sept. 7).

If Bush is able to present a strong case that Hussein has been trying to develop weapons of mass destructions, then many countries will probably be willing to listen, diplomats said.

Many countries, however, have had issues with the way the United States has presented its arguments against Iraq so far, according to the New York Times.  At issue is the Bush administration’s stated policy of “regime change,” the Times reported.  Many U.N. members feel it reminds them of U.S. arrogance during the Cold War, according to the Times.

The U.S. regime change policy “collides with the role of the United Nations,” said a senior diplomat from a U.N. Security Council member that could become an important swing vote.  The diplomat nonetheless indicated a willingness to listen to Bush’s arguments.

“The United States does not have a weak case,” the diplomat said.  “But the United States first has to prove its case, that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and the intention to use them in an imminent attack.”

Many countries are worried that the Bush administration wants to draw them into a first strike-approach against Iraq based on the idea that Hussein might obtain nuclear weapons sometime in the future, according to the Times.  Such a policy would be a major change in the doctrine of pre-emptive action familiar in international diplomacy, experts said (Julia Preston, New York Times, Sept. 9).

Security Council Views

Meanwhile, Bush received lukewarm responses to telephone calls made last week to the leaders of France, China and Russia, which can veto resolutions in the U.N. Security Council, according to the Wall Street Journal.  The administration has announced that it is planning diplomatic missions to the three countries for further consultations on Iraq (Wall Street Journal, Sept. 9).

French President Jacques Chirac proposed a two-stage approach yesterday that could result in U.N. authorization of a military strike.  In an interview, Chirac proposed passing a Security Council resolution to give Iraq a three-week deadline for readmitting U.N. weapons inspectors without “restrictions or preconditions.”  If Hussein were to refuse or otherwise interfere, the council could pass a second resolution to use military force, he said.

Chirac said he is in favor of a new government in Iraq, but any attempt to remove Hussein from power without the backing of a Security Council resolution would disrupt global affairs.

“A few principles and a little order are needed to run the affairs of the world,” he said.

There are many governments throughout the world whose overthrow would be favorable to Western leaders, Chirac said, adding, “If we go down that road, where are we going?” (Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, Sept. 9).

After meeting with Bush at Camp David this weekend, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday that he believes that countries opposed to military action against Iraq would be convinced if they saw evidence of Iraq’s WMD aims (see GSN, Aug. 23).  The United Kingdom hopes to release a compilation of evidence on Hussein’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, Blair said (Associated Press/New York Times, Aug. 8).

New Evidence of Iraqi WMD Aims

In Iraq, engineers have stepped up pursuit of nuclear weapons and have begun a worldwide search for the materials needed to make such weapons, Bush administration officials said Saturday.

In the last 14 months, Iraq has attempted to purchase thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which U.S. officials believe are for use in centrifuges to enrich uranium, according to the New York Times.  Several attempts to purchase the tubes have been blocked or intercepted, U.S. officials said, declining to say how the shipments were stopped.

The technical specifications of the tubes have convinced U.S. intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, officials said, adding that the last attempt to purchase the tubes had occurred in recent months.

Hussein has also met with Iraqi nuclear scientists and praised their efforts as part of his campaign against Western nations, according to U.S. intelligence.  Defectors from Iraq’s nuclear weapons program have said that obtaining a nuclear weapon has again become a top priority for Hussein, according to the Times.

If Hussein is able to acquire a nuclear weapon, it could increase the chance that he would use biological or chemical weapons in response to a U.S. attack, Bush administration officials said (see GSN, Sept. 5).  Hussein did not use such weapons during the Gulf War because of fears that the United States would respond with a nuclear attack, they said.

An Iraqi defector has said that Hussein is also attempting to develop new types of chemical weapons, the Times reported.  An Iraqi opposition leader has given U.S. officials a paper taken from Iranian intelligence that says Hussein has authorized Iraqi regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to crush any Shiite Muslim resistance that might occur as a result of a U.S. attack.

During interviews in a European capital last month, a defector from Iraq’s chemical weapons program said that Hussein has never stopped producing chemical agents such as VX, even when weapons inspectors were inside the country.

The defector — who claimed to have worked for a number of years at the Muthanna State Enterprise, once Iraq’s chemical weapons plant — said Iraq had continued to develop and produce chemical weapons at several mobile and fixed sites, many located underground.

“All of Iraq is one large storage facility,” he said.

Iraq produced five tons of liquid VX between 1994 and 1998, before inspectors were forced to withdraw from Iraq, the defector said, adding that some had been made at secret facilities in the northern city of Mosul and the southern city of Basra, which U.N. inspectors said they rarely visited because they are far from Baghdad.

Another concern is the defector’s claim that Iraq has developed and is now producing a solid form of VX that clings to a soldier’s protective gear and hinders decontamination efforts, the Times reported.  An October 1990 U.S. intelligence report indicates concerns that Iraq might have been able to produce “dusty VX,” even though there is no evidence it has actually done so (Gordon/Miller, New York Times, Sept. 8).

“Historical Mistake”

Meanwhile, former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter said yesterday that the United States is close to making a “historical mistake” in threatening to overthrow Hussein.

“My country seems to be on the verge of making an historical mistake,” Ritter said in an address before the Iraqi Parliament.  The United States has “set forth on a policy of unilateral intervention that runs contrary to the letter and intent of the U.N. Charter.”

The United States so far has not backed up its claims that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, Ritter said.

“The rhetoric of fear that is disseminated by my government has not, to date, been backed by hard facts that substantiate any allegations that Iraq is today in possession of weapons of mass destruction or has links to terror groups responsible for September 11 attacks on the United States,” he said.

In comments to the London Times, Ritter denied that his statements provide Iraq with a propaganda victory.

“I basically reiterated the international community’s position that Iraq must allow unconditional return of inspectors and give them unfettered access.  How is this a propaganda coup?” he said.

“Bush and Blair are gearing up to go to war on Iraq based on unsubstantiated allegations that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.  The Bush administration itself has said repeatedly that, while they call for the return of inspectors, this will not prevent them from continuing to seek regime change in Iraq,” Ritter said.  “So my timing is designed precisely to expose the hypocrisy of the Bush position” (Michael Theodoulou, London Times, Sept. 9).

In his address to the Iraqi Parliament, Ritter called for an “honest broker mechanism,” which would allow for the immediate return of weapons inspectors to Iraq and compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions, according to Agence France-Presse.

Such a mechanism entails inspectors’ “unconditional return and yet provides assurances to Iraq that unfettered access would only be applied to disarmament issues and not be used to infringe Iraq’s sovereignty, dignity and national security,” Ritter said.

“To have credibility in Iraq and to avoid perceptions of pressure from the Security Council or its members, such an honest broker would have to come from outside the U.N. framework,” Ritter said (Agence France-Presse, Sept. 8).

“Annihilation”

U.S. officials have warned Hussein that he and Iraq face “annihilation” if he deploys a weapon of mass destruction, two U.S. senators have said.

“We have recently let Saddam Hussein know what the consequences of his use of a weapon of mass destruction — chemical, biological, or, if and when he acquires it, nuclear — against any of his neighbors, and that would be annihilation,” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham (D-Fla.) said on CNN’s Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer.

Also on the CNN program, when asked whether Hussein has been warned of the consequences of using a weapon of mass destruction, Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said, “Absolutely.  We’ve done that before.  The first [U.S.] President [George H.W.] Bush in 1990, ‘91 did that” (Joyce Howard Price, Washington Times, Sept. 9).

For further information, see:

UNMOVIC

U.N. Resolution 687 (Sanctions Regime)

U.N. Resolution 1409 (“Smart Sanctions”)

U.S. State Department Fact Sheet on Iraqi Sanctions Revisions

IAEA Iraq Action Team

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Threat Assessment:  ABC News Smuggles Uranium Into United States

ABC News successfully smuggled a shipment of depleted uranium into New York, the Associated Press reported Friday.  The story on the smuggled uranium is scheduled to run as part of ABC’s Sept. 11 anniversary coverage this week.

ABC said it borrowed 15 pounds of depleted uranium from the National Resources Defense Council to use in its test of how well U.S. authorities are preventing a possible “dirty bomb” attack.  ABC correspondent Brian Ross carried the uranium from Austria to Istanbul.  The contents were clearly marked and packed into a container with other objects and then shipped to New York.  Throughout the entire process, the uranium was never detected, according to AP.

“Seven countries, 25 days and 15 pounds of uranium, and not a single question,” Ross said.

Out of the 1,139 containers on the vessel used to ship the depleted uranium to New York, the ABC package was one of less than a dozen identified for further inspection before the ship entered port, said U.S. Customs Service spokesman Dean Boyd.  Inspectors used X-ray equipment and a radiation detector to check the ABC package, which was found to not pose a threat, he said.

The suitcase of depleted uranium, however, would give off about the same amount of radiation as a package of enriched uranium would if shipped in a lead-lined case, Ross said.  The container should have been opened and examined, he said.

“They missed it,” Ross said.  “They could say that it was no danger, which is true because we made sure there was no danger.  But I think that misses the point.”

U.S. officials are angry over the time spent on ABC News’s operation, AP reported.

“The U.S. Customs Service is engaged in a deadly serious business,” Boyd said.  “The American public wants us to focus on real threats, not fake ones” (Associated Press/Salon.com, Sept. 6).

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Threat Assessment:  United States Still Vulnerable to Attack, Experts Say

Even though the United States has spent millions of dollars to improve public health defenses against a biological attack, experts have said vulnerabilities still exist in several areas, particularly the U.S. food supply, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, June 12).

The U.S. public health system has received $1 billion since the anthrax attacks last fall.  States have used the funds to hire workers to respond to intentional or natural disease outbreaks and generally to better prepare defenses against a biological attack, the Times reported (see GSN, June 7; Stolberg/Miller, New York Times, Sept. 9).

During the last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has distributed more than $900 million to state and local public health departments to better improve their readiness for a biological attack, the agency said in a Sept. 4 press release.

“That money is helping to build better laboratories and better systems for detecting a potential terrorist attack, as well as expanded communications systems to get information to public health workers and clinicians quickly,” CDC Director Julie Gerberding said in the release.  “These investments will not only pay off in terms of terrorism preparedness, but public health in general will also benefit” (U.S. State Department release, Sept. 6).

Public health officials have said they now pay more attention to infectious diseases, according to the New York Times.  Georges Benjamin, head of the Maryland Health Department, said his staff now prepares a monthly e-mail report of international disease outbreaks.

“We didn’t feel threatened by that before,” said Benjamin, who is also president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.  “The world has changed.  Every time we get an outbreak at all, the first question we ask is, ‘Was this intentional?’”

U.S. hospitals, however, are not as prepared to respond to a biological attack, said Jerome Hauer, director of the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Public Health Preparedness.  While hospitals have received an additional $135 million, that is not enough, he said.  President George W. Bush proposed allocating $518 million in fiscal 2003 to improve hospital preparedness, the Times reported.

One area of concern is “surge capacity” — the ability for hospitals to accommodate a sudden increase in patients, according to the Times.  Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has said he wants every state to develop plans that would enable hospitals to handle an additional 500 patients on any day in 2002, and an additional 1,500 patients on any day in 2003.

“Five hundred patients is feasible so long as people understand that not everybody is going to be in a hospital-style bed with all the accouterments,” said James Bentley, a senior vice president at the American Hospital Association.  “If we have to start using elementary schools or armories or other kinds of settings, that’s what we will have to do.”

Hospitals that typically compete with each other have begun to coordinate their efforts, the Times reported.  Paul Pepe, who heads the emergency department at Parkland Health and Hospital System in Dallas, said hospitals in the area were considering “cross-credentialing” doctors so they could treat patients at any location.

“We’re talking about buying in bulk, in economies of scale, with everybody participating,” Pepe said.  “Everybody is anteing up.”

“There is a long way to go,” Bentley said.  “It is going to probably take five years to get where we ought to be.”

Food Safety

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has not paid enough attention to the threat of biological attacks on the plants and animals in the U.S. food supply, said many experts, including Thompson (see GSN, Feb. 27).  The Food and Drug Administration has doubled the number of food inspectors this year to 1,500.  Thompson has said, however, that the United States is “woefully inadequate in this area,” labeling it his biggest concern.

Potential biological weapons attacks on the U.S. food supply have had too low a priority in the U.S. war on terrorism, many scientists and officials said.  The United States has concentrated its efforts on countering terrorist threats to people and the relatively low priority given to agriculture was based, in part, on the U.S. success in controlling diseases, a Bush administration official said.

“Most people take the programs for granted because we have been so well protected,” Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said in an interview yesterday.

Defending against possible biological attacks has been a high priority, Veneman said.  Since Sept. 11, she has formed a homeland defense council to offer advice and has began other measures to reduce the vulnerability of the U.S. food supply to attack, such as increased border inspections and research funding.

Critics, however, have said the department has not done enough, partly because of bureaucratic inertia and because of a culture of secrecy at the top of the department.

“There is a true crisis in agricultural biosecurity that stems in part from hostility to the very notion of vulnerability at the top of the Department of Agriculture,” said Thomas Frazier, president of GenCon, a nonprofit group that promotes scientific and educational projects affecting agriculture.

The issue can be illustrated by a dispute over the delayed release of a draft report from the National Research Council entitled Countering Agricultural Bioterrorism:  A Framework of Action, according to the Times.

The report, which the Times obtained a copy of, says that “gaps in biological and intelligence data on foreign-plant and foreign-animal pest and pathogens,” along with inadequate border inspections, increase the likelihood that a terrorist armed with an agricultural disease, such as foot-and-mouth virus, could enter the country and deliberately cause an outbreak.

Agriculture inspects only 1 percent of all private vehicles entering the United States, according to the report.  The United States has not created “in-depth plans for defense against the intentional introduction of biological agents directed at agriculture,” the report says.

Lawyers for Agriculture and the Office of Homeland Security asked the National Academy of Sciences, which conducted the study, not to publish the report since it could aid terrorists in attacking the U.S. food supply, NAS Executive Director E. William Colglazier said.  Prior to the report’s release, the academy had been willing to remove secret data or information that might be harmful to national security, but the administration had not identified any such information, Colglazier said.

Scientists who were involved in the study have said the report contains no secret information and the vulnerabilities in the U.S. food supply discussed in the report can be found in other information available online.  The NAS does plan to publish a version of the study, which it would edit, Colglazier said.

Agriculture spokeswoman Alicia Harris said neither her department nor the Office of Homeland Security requested that the NAS report be kept from the public (Stolberg/Miller, New York Times).

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Russia:  Bureaucrats Continue to Block U.S. Access

Russian officials have blocked recent U.S. attempts to learn more about certain aspects of the former Soviet biological weapons program, including a genetically modified strain of anthrax that Russia has previously promised to give the United States, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said Friday (see GSN, Aug. 19).

Lugar said he was unsuccessful, during visit last month of a U.S. congressional delegation to Russia, in resolving a five-year dispute over the strain of genetically modified anthrax (see GSN, Aug. 19).  The U.S. Defense Department entered into contract in 1997 with the Russian State Research Center for Applied Microbiology, which developed the strain, to obtain a sample.  Russia, however, has refused to give the United States a sample, citing export laws.

Russian officials also blocked an attempt by the U.S. delegation to visit one of four military-run biological research facilities, which have remained closed to U.S. access despite more than 10 years of U.S.-Russian cooperation on nonproliferation, according to the Washington Post.

Even though there has been progress on several proliferation concerns, the refusals highlighted lingering “bureaucratic opposition” to cooperation on the war on terrorism promised by Russian and U.S. Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush during a summit last November, Lugar said.

“It shows that Putin is far ahead of much of Russia’s bureaucracy on these matters,” he said (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, Sept. 8).

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United States:  Environmental Monitors Approve Johnston Atoll Closing

The U.S. Army is set to close the chemical weapons disposal facility on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the Chicago Tribune reported yesterday.

On Friday the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved a closing plan that addresses health and environmental risks such as cleanup methods and waste treatment, according to the Tribune (see GSN, Sept. 3).  The army finished destroying all of the chemical weapons at the facility — more than 4 million pounds — in 2000 (Chicago Tribune, Sept. 8).

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U.S. Plans I:  Army Begins Work on Cruise Missile Interceptor

The U.S. Army has begun work on the Low-Cost Cruise Missile Defense Initiative designed to develop an inexpensive cruise missile interceptor, Defense Week reported today (see GSN, Aug. 19).

Under the program, the Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s Office of Technology Integration and Interoperability is conducting a system-engineering analysis to develop the preliminary design for the inexpensive interceptor.

Developers are seeking to “utilize current capabilities, current existing components or things in production” to produce a long-range missile with a manufacturing cost “in the realm of $100,000 a copy,” said program manager David Tilson.  The program seeks to develop a low-cost interceptor that could be used against other targets besides cruise missiles, Tilson said — for example, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles.

The interceptor would complement more expensive systems such as the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missile, which is used against more sophisticated targets, said William Reeves, director of the Office of Technology Integration and Interoperability.

The Patriot system can destroy cruise missiles, but the systems are so expensive they have a poor cost-per-kill advantage against low-cost threats, Reeves said.  Adversaries could use cruise missiles to overwhelm U.S. defenses and deplete limited Patriot inventories, according to Defense Week.

Currently, developers envision the cruise missile interceptor as 14 feet long, 10 inches in diameter, 700 pounds and with a range of 150 kilometers, Tilson said.  The interceptor also must be compatible with current and future launch systems, Defense Week reported.  The current acquisition strategy for the interceptor is to have it available by 2010, Reeves said.

“We’ve developed the system on from the warfighter’s standpoint,” he said.  “We’re not going to build a radar.  We’re not going to build a battle management (system).  We’ve focused on the missile we’re going to integrate with the infrastructure that’s going to be there for the warfighters” (Ann Roosevelt, Defense Week, Sept. 9).

For further information, see:

MDA Basics of Missile Defense

MDA Missile Defense System

PAC 3 Fact Sheet

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U.S. Plans II:  Negotiators Near $800 Million Kwajalein Deal

U.S. and Marshall Islands officials are preparing to sign a deal to extend U.S. use of the Kwajalein atoll for up to 50 years of missile testing, Agence France-Presse reported Thursday (see GSN, July 22).

The compact might allow the Marshall Islands to receive more than $800 million through 2023.  Marshall Islands negotiators have requested $48 million annually and have offered to allow the United States to use Kwajalein for 50 years beyond the 2016 expiration date of the current lease.  U.S. negotiators are pushing for $41 million annually and a 40-year lease extension, according to AFP.

The Marshall Islands proposal, which includes payments for rent, environmental assessments and improvements and other items, would increase the annual rent for Kwajalein to $21 million, up from the current $13.5 million.

Negotiators plan to hold a round of technical talks this month, AFP reported.  Robert Muller, executive director of Marshall Islands negotiations for the compact, said he plans to leave this week for two weeks of talks in Washington.  Officials hope to sign the compact in early October in the Marshall Islands, according to AFP (Giff Johnson, Agence France-Presse, Sept. 5).

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Sept. 11 — One Year Later I:  Weapons of Mass Destruction Are Top Threat

By Bryan Bender
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Last year’s terrorist attacks on the United States, followed quickly by the still-unsolved anthrax letter spree, forced U.S. intelligence agencies to re-evaluate the potential for catastrophic terrorism.  Officials now are coming to grips with the prospect that future attacks might involve weapons of mass destruction that could make the Sept. 11 death toll pale in comparison.

A year into the war on terrorism, after ousting the al-Qaeda terrorist network from its safe haven in Afghanistan and piecing together numerous clues about the group’s plans, the threat from chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological weapons is now the top U.S. intelligence community priority, according to intelligence officials and private experts.

National security officials have long feared the use of mass casualty weapons on the part of rogue nations as well as nonstate actors such as terrorist organizations.  New intelligence gathered during the past 12 months, however, points for the first time to both the capability and intent on the part of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to develop and deliver such weapons against civilian and military targets at home and abroad.

In the policy arena, meanwhile, the threat of weapons of mass destruction has led to a historic shift in U.S. defense strategy in the post-Sept. 11 world to a policy of pre-emptive attack.  The Bush administration has set a course for possible military action against Iraq by using Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s suspected covert and outlawed WMD program — including new revelations about his pursuit of nuclear weapons — as justification for launching a war (see related GSN story, today).

The aim would be to prevent catastrophic weapons from falling into the hands of terrorist groups, or from being used by the Iraqi regime to threaten the United States or regional allies.  The pre-emption policy, however, is expected to go beyond the threat of Iraq.

Indeed, the Bush administration’s new national security strategy, to be released this fall, is expected to identify the pre-emption of WMD programs as a pillar of U.S. defense posture in the new century.

Pre-emption depends on accurate and timely intelligence, however, and while government officials say gathering intelligence on WMD threats — and the terrorist groups and state supporters who are seeking to acquire and weaponize them — is now a top priority, the intelligence community still has a long way to go in improving its ability to effectively predict potential WMD attacks, according to government officials and private experts.

Wake-Up Call

U.S. officials and private experts look to the New York, Washington and Pennsylvania attacks, and even more so to the anthrax letter mystery, as a wake-up call to a threat that had been looming on the horizon for years but remained largely hypothetical in national security and intelligence circles.

“Before Sept. 11, the threats from weapons of mass destruction and terrorism were treated for the most part as ugly abstractions and not likely to materialize, even though they had done so in the recent past,” said John Newhouse, senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information and former assistant director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

“The world post-9/11 has not really changed,” added Tim Sample, staff director of the House Intelligence Committee.  “The audience has changed and people are now willing to listen,” he told an audience at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington in June.

As a result, weapons of mass destruction have now become a top priority for the nation’s spy agencies, according to one U.S. intelligence official.  The “priority intelligence requirements” generated by the nation’s political leadership are more commonly focused on identifying WMD-related threats than ever before, the official said.  “WMD has probably moved to the top of that list,” the official said.

According to John Pike, an intelligence expert at of Globalsecurity.org, the intelligence community has benefited from an enormous budget increase in the wake of Sept. 11, much of which has gone to counterterrorism.  Of the estimated $3 billion to $4 billion in new spending in the past year, a significant percentage is believed to have gone for WMD-related intelligence efforts, he said.  “Not much was being spent on WMD” prior to the terrorist attacks,  Pike said.

The new emphasis on the threat from chemical, biological and nuclear weapons was also generated in part by a scare last October, in which U.S. officials mistakenly believed a small nuclear device may have been smuggled into the United States by al-Qaeda, intelligence officials said.  Washington placed the elite Delta Force on alert before the intelligence was deemed inaccurate, but has maintained a “shadow government” in an undisclosed location in the event Washington suffers a WMD attack.

WMD Threat Shifts From States to Terrorist Groups

Intelligence officials point out that while countries’ WMD arsenals have been a cause for concern for decades, it is the emergence of the transnational threat — terrorist groups seeking weapons of mass destruction whose actions may not be deterred by overwhelming U.S. military retaliation — that has given them the most pause and forced them to rethink their approach to the WMD threat.

“Before you were generally talking about states like Iran, Iraq and North Korea,” named by President George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address as members of an “axis of evil” for their development of weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorist groups, said CIA spokesman Paul Nowack.  “Now you’re talking about nonstate actors like al-Qaeda that may be getting these weapons.  The concern has increased.”

That is not to say that states with WMD arsenals do not continue to be a concern, especially countries such as Pakistan, a nuclear power with a strong Muslim extremist bloc seeking to overthrow the secular government of General Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.  Concerns about Pakistan’s instability, heightened by the U.S. war in neighboring Afghanistan, renewed concerns about Muslim extremists acquiring an “Islamic bomb.”

But the threat from transnational actors may be more difficult to assess than a country, particularly for an intelligence community previously more occupied with monitoring enemy armies.

“WMD is different to Iraq than it is to al-Qaeda,” said a senior intelligence official. “They [al-Qaeda] have to use it asymmetrically.”  In other words, determining if a state such as Iraq is planning to unleash weapons of mass destruction in a missile attack, for example, is considered less challenging than gauging the activities of a terrorist organization without a traditional army that can operate inside U.S. borders. 

Asymmetric warfare is defined as employing unconventional tactics to achieve a disproportionately high impact.

Such nontraditional means of delivery, in fact, are what make assessing the threat so difficult, according to intelligence officials.  “The intelligence community doesn’t have the means to monitor every means of delivery,” the intelligence official said.

For example, the official believes that, based on newly gained intelligence, it is more probable that a terrorist will use WMD materials acquired in the United States rather than attempt to smuggle in a chemical, biological or radiological device from another country.

Mounting Evidence

Intelligence officials maintain that they were aware well before Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden and his organization planned to acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. 

Intelligence officials said reports in the late 1990s indicated that, among other efforts, bin Laden operatives were seeking to acquire a Russian nuclear device on the black market.  Al-Qaeda is not believed to have been successful in its search for a former Soviet nuclear weapon.  A scare in October 2001 arose, however, from an intelligence report suggesting al-Qaeda may have smuggled a nuclear device into the United States.

“Nothing has been gathered to change our view of al-Qaeda,” said the intelligence official.  “We were on the mark there.  We are at war with a terrorist organization with an interest in WMD and they have every intention of using it.”

Nevertheless, the toppling of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan gave U.S. intelligence agencies a new view into the workings of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, which the extremist Islamic regime had harbored since 1996.

U.S. Central Command officials have scoured an estimated 50 sites in Afghanistan suspected of being part of rudimentary al-Qaeda efforts to develop chemical and biological weapons.  Military officials have declined to discuss the details of what they have found.

Meanwhile, an al-Qaeda video library acquired by CNN in Afghanistan last month depicted al-Qaeda chemical tests on dogs in Afghanistan, possibly using a nerve agent (see GSN, Aug. 20).

Al-Qaeda WMD concerns have also moved beyond chemical, biological and nuclear threats to crude radiological weapons. 

In June, U.S. officials arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, a suspected al-Qaeda operative, while he tried to re-enter the country from Pakistan.  Intelligence officials believe he may have been part of a plot to carry out a so-called dirty bomb attack in the United States by combining conventional explosives with radioactive material that can be found in industrial or medical activities (see GSN, Sept. 3). 

The extent of the terrorist WMD threat, however, remains largely a mystery.  A case in point are the anthrax letter attacks that quickly followed the September 11 attacks and, almost a year later, remain unsolved (see GSN, Sept. 3).  Gaining a better understanding of the psychology and socio-political culture of would-be terrorists has therefore also taken on added urgency in the last year in an effort to predict their behavior.

Psychological and Social Profiling

One way to improve WMD intelligence, officials believe, is to do a better job of profiling potential terrorists who might acquire weapons of mass destruction. While intelligence agencies attempted to predict terrorist activities prior to September 11, there is renewed interest in using novel techniques to help predict their behavior (see GSN, July 16).

“It’s certainly within the realm of terrorists to use chemicals against us,” said Stephen Younger, director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said in a recent interview.  “They have not done that yet.  We’d like to understand better why and how to keep it that way.”

Several programs initiated after Sept. 11 are designed to profile the psychological, social and political attributes of terrorists threatening to unleash WMD attacks.

One being pursued by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is called “Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment” and is seeking to develop predictive technology to better anticipate and act against terrorist threats.  Test results have already demonstrated the feasibility of developing automated and adaptive behavior prediction models, according to DARPA.

“There are currently over 400 organizations and 20 countries considered hostile to the United States and its allies,” said Larry Ellis, the DARPA program manager.   “These organizations and countries are gaining access to weapons of mass destruction at an increasing rate.  As a result of this heightened threat, the United States is shifting its focus from conventional to asymmetric operations.”

Another related effort is a classified study into the “understanding of decision-making strategies of potential users of unconventional weapons of mass destruction,” the Pentagon said.  It is utilizing a proprietary profiling method called Biocom, developed by the Evolutionary Services Institute, a Bethesda, Md., consulting firm.  The secret psychological profile study hopes to determine the types of unconventional weapons that terrorists might use.

Efforts to get inside the mind of potential terrorists demonstrate the level of difficulty intelligence officials envision in accurately assessing the WMD threat posed by al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Criticism and Challenges

While the WMD threat is believed to be growing, nailing down specifics, such as who is developing or seeking to purchase them, what kinds of materials are being pursued and how close nations or terrorist groups are to having them in an effectively deliverable form, is proving extremely difficult, officials said.

“We have not made many strides since I’ve been here in improving the intelligence take,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a town hall meeting of military personnel in early August.

Critics charge, for example, that there still doesn’t exist a single place within the U.S. intelligence community to go for WMD-related intelligence.  “One problem DTRA — a consumer of intelligence — has had is there isn’t a go-to place for intel,” said Pike.

He believes that only “1 percent of the  intelligence community” is dedicated to the WMD mission.

“I think the Bush administration is highly negligent,” said Stansfield Turner, former CIA director.  “We’re missing the boat here in focusing attention of the problem of weapons of mass destruction.”

Intelligence officials, however, maintain that the community is nearly overwhelmed in the wake of Sept. 11.  Combined with traditional terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism and growing instability in the Middle East, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is testing the limits of the U.S. intelligence community, a senior intelligence officials acknowledged in June.

“It is the convergence of these threats that has put the intelligence community to its greatest test,” said Joan Dempsey, deputy director of central intelligence for community management, told an audience at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington in June.

Added CDI’s Newhouse:  “Now we recognize the threats as being too real but difficult to assess in terms of their imminence and gravity.”

“What we are dealing with is a low probability, high consequence event,” said DTRA’s Younger.  “The consequences associated with an attack are so great that the president is exactly right to raise the priority of reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction.”

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Sept. 11 — One Year Later II:  Bush Missile Defense Program Gains Political Strength

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — In the year following the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration’s ambitious national missile defense approach experienced numerous significant developments, advancing it politically toward its goals of fielding a multisystem defense and an  “emergency” capability in Alaska by October 2004.

The terrorist attacks, and a string of high-profile missile defense testing successes, appeared to be important factors in reducing political opposition.  Two consequences were evident when the U.S. Congress approved the president’s substantially increased missile defense request for fiscal 2002 and the 2003 request, and did not block the U.S. withdrawal from Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, experts say.

Furthermore, President George W. Bush’s decision to withdraw from the missile defense-restricting ABM Treaty and major management reforms freed the Pentagon to pursue developing and deploying numerous types of systems more aggressively, and with reduced congressional oversight.

The administration’s plans nevertheless remain subject to political obstruction as testing successes, full missile defense funding, and some reforms remain the subject of congressional dispute.

Some in Congress have charged that recent testing of the most prominent and developed system, the Ground-based Midcourse Defense interceptor, was too simplistic and that the system has a fundamental weakness that might prevent it from ever working (see GSN, July 17).

An expert advisory board, meanwhile, reportedly made a recent preliminary recommendation to eliminate development of all but the ground-based and one other system, finding them the most promising, and challenging the administration’s concept of multiple systems layered together (see GSN, Sept. 3).

Pentagon officials concede none of the various systems they are developing is close to being able to destroy an enemy ICBM warhead and early testing was not done under realistic conditions.  The start of such testing for the midcourse system, Missile Defense Agency Director Gen. Ronald Kadish has suggested, probably will not start until between 2004 and 2008.

Missile defense programs risk losing out in competition with other funding priorities, such as overseas military operations against terrorists and possibly Iraq, and the procurement of other major defense systems, remain a possibility.  For instance, the Senate version of the 2003 defense authorization bill originally contained significant missile defense cuts to the nearly $8 billion White House request, but a bipartisan compromise restored the funds, although it left it to the president to decide whether they would be spent on missile defense or combating terrorism abroad (see GSN, Aug. 9).

The bill also could undo certain reforms legislators say have reduced congressional scrutiny and oversight (see GSN, Aug. 9).

The administration’s program during the past year has gained momentum, highlighted by the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the start of construction of a missile launch site at Fort Greely, Alaska (see GSN, Aug. 19), and key intercept test of a sea-launched missile (see GSN, June 14), Kadish told a congressional committee July 16, but acknowledged that momentum remains tenuous.

“These events underscore the fact that we are truly at a crossroads in the development of missile defenses.  Our pace has picked up, and it is important that we sustain our momentum to be able to take full advantage of the opportunities that are now before us,” he said.

“You still have a situation where close to half the United States Senate is at least skeptical of missile defense, evidenced by votes in both the Senate Armed Services Committee last year and this year to trim funding and what would have been a very close floor vote on the issue,” said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World.

Sept. 11 Impact

The events of Sept. 11 have arguably boosted the prospects for the administration’s missile defense plans.

Most notably, two weeks after the attacks, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the most powerful congressional missile defense critic, removed language from a key bill that would have banned missile defense activities violating the ABM Treaty.

Levin also co-authored an amendment to restore $1.3 billion that had previously been cut from the administration’s budget request, allowing the president discretion on whether it would be spent on missile defense.

“I would say missile defense was a hot button issue last year until Sept. 11,” said Kevin Generous, who runs the SAFE Foundation, a missile defense advocacy group.  “Then all of a sudden … the opposition set aside the arguments that they had over the usual concerns, you know, cost, schedule, performance, the usual engineering parameters that have always been controversial about missile defense.”

“Sept. 11, if it did nothing else, it did a terrific job of letting Americans know we’re living in a different security environment,” he said.

Generous said another factor was key, the administration’s strategy of dissuading missile defense opponents from seriously opposing the effort by convincing them the administration would pursue its plans anyway.

Some Successful Testing

Another development boosting the Bush program’s outlook was a recent string of successes in testing the midcourse, ground-based program, which is designed to knock out an enemy warhead in space.

In its first three tests, the interceptor had only one success, prompting senior officials to urge the public not to draw conclusions about the viability of the system based on such tests.  In more recent tests, however, interceptors have struck their targets every time and officials now tout the results as signs the program is on course to succeed (see GSN, Feb. 28).

Questions about the rigor of the tests, however, have hounded the program, with critics charging that the decoys and countermeasures used in the tests were overly simplified and that the system had foreknowledge of its targets.

In a move critics alleged was intended to deflect such criticism in the future, Kadish announced in June further information on decoys used in intercept testing would be classified (see GSN, June 26).

Kadish said the classification change was necessary to prevent potential enemies from obtaining damaging information.  Former Pentagon testing director Philip Coyle, however, has written it could be 10 years before realistic decoy testing could begin and that classifying the information could camouflage important decision-making information to the public, Congress and Pentagon leaders.

“If independent review of testing progress is stifled, the Pentagon itself will be unable to make reasonable judgments about the program’s viability,” he wrote in a Washington Post commentary (see GSN, June 11).

“The new classification policy is not justified by either the progress in tests so far or by the realism of the tests,” U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said, citing the Coyle analysis, while addressing the reforms in general.  “So what we have here, Mr. Chairman, is an effort by the Department of Defense to eliminate congressional oversight.”

Language in the Senate version of the 2003 defense authorization bill also threatens the administration’s classification policy, requiring the administration to report in unclassified form the objectives and results of each flight test. 

The next test is scheduled for this month, after a delay last month due to a suspected problem with a rocket (see GSN, Aug. 21).

Oversight Reduced

A second major post-Sept. 11 development was the Pentagon’s restructuring of management of its many missile defense activities, announced in January by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (see GSN, Feb. 19).

A single Missile Defense Agency was created to manage nearly all activities related to national and theater ballistic missile defense.  Further changes included merging major independent programs into a single missile defense program; eliminating traditional program performance goals, measurements and reporting requirements for the development of major systems; and adopting an unorthodox “capabilities-based” approach to fielding systems, which involves sometimes deploying weapons deemed militarily useful before they are fully developed and proven through testing.

The reforms were made in the name of fielding a national missile defense system “as soon as technically possible,” which has been a national goal since former President Bill Clinton signed the National Missile Defense Act of 1999.

They also were aimed at fulfilling the administration’s goal of deploying one integrated, “layered” national missile defense system composed of numerous land, air, sea and space systems for intercepting enemy warheads at different stages in flight, as opposed to focusing upon a best system and discarding inferior ones.

“The significant advantage is that capabilities-based acquisition promotes a potential early deployment of missile defense capability that has military utility,” Kadish said at the July 16 hearing.  “Even if that capability is limited, it fills a serious gap in our current national security posture.”

Congressional critics, however, have charged that reforms have significantly reduced congressional oversight, insulating programs from congressional criticism and risks of scale-back or cancellation.

“The new emphasis defined all of the missile defense initiatives as one large research and development program.  This action reduces the oversight required by Congress,” Kucinich said at the July hearing.  “Operational requirement documents were eliminated relating to individual programs.  Timelines for development will not be established.  And the Department of Defense has declined to set an overall architecture for this new system.  I might say that under these circumstances the possibility for the taxpayers to be cheated is pretty serious.”

For proponents of the changes, reduced oversight is seen as a benefit.

“The reporting requirements that have been part of the traditional acquisitions framework where Congress gets to get into the guts of the program all the time, you know, that’s one of the reasons it’s so difficult to field a system these days,” Generous said.

The Senate version of the 2003 defense authorization bill would reverse some of the Pentagon’s reforms by requiring increased data collection and reporting on major missile defense programs.  The administration has appealed to Congress not to drop the Senate measures (see GSN, Aug. 9).

Along these lines, critics also have charged that fielding the missiles in the name of testing at Fort Greely enables the administration to deploy a system by 2004 without the full development and testing traditionally required of major defense programs (see GSN, July 19).  The critics have said the administration would have a difficulty test-firing the missiles because of safety concerns about the local population.

“The administration’s plan to put a rudimentary system in place on the eve of the 2004 election, whether or not it is proven to work, is irresponsible and politically transparent,” said Representative Tom Allen (D-Maine) at the July hearing.

Kadish insisted the capability was not intended as a deployment, but rather, “primarily” for the purpose of testing.

Tom Devanney, deputy program director for Ground-based Missile Defense, has further said such testing does not involve firing the missiles but rather “ground testing, reliability, maintainability testing, of the entire system including the interceptors,” particularly in the arctic climate (see GSN, Aug. 21).

Isaacs played down the importance of the fielding for the administration’s program.

“They may go ahead and deploy this so-called rudimentary system in Alaska, but it’s going to be a joke system that will do nothing except pacify the conservative Republicans,” he said.

ABM Treaty Withdrawal

Perhaps the most significant and controversial breakthrough for the administration’s missile defense effort was Bush’s December announcement that the United States would withdraw from the 1972 ABM Treaty, which tightly restricted U.S. and Russian national missile defense capabilities (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2001).

While criticizing the move, Democratic opposition in Congress chose to avoid taking significant legislative action to fight the president.  Senior Russian officials also criticized the move, but were evidently quieted by a new nuclear arms treaty and the prospect of cooperative missile defense activities.

The treaty withdrawal, which took effect mid-June, has enabled the administration to pursue the research, testing and deployment of a number of technologies and capabilities banned by the treaty, such as miniature interceptors, sea-launched and space-based interceptors as well as airborne lasers for striking long-range missiles (see GSN, June 14).

It also enabled the Pentagon to begin constructing the controversial missile site and other facilities at Fort Greely and other parts of Alaska.  The administration is planning to field up to five missiles and other equipment at the Fort Greely site, which officials say is for testing, but could be operational if necessary.

The withdrawal has also enabled the administration to pursue foreign collaboration in the program (see GSN, July 1), although European governments so far have generally appeared skeptical (see GSN, July 31).

Future Uncertain

While both Generous and Isaacs, on different sides of the issue, said the administration has made political gains with missile defense, they also believe the U.S. war on terrorism has supplanted missile defense as its highest foreign policy priority.

“Ultimately, I don’t think missile defense gets very far without a very strong push from the top,” said Isaacs.

Administration officials, on the other hand, have taken the initiative to portray missile defense as a required component of U.S. post-Sept. 11 defenses (see GSN, Jan. 31).  In the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (excerpted on Globalsecurity.org) described by the Pentagon in January, missile defense was included as one of three legs of a new strategic war-fighting emphasis for U.S. forces.  Rumsfeld in an annual report to Congress last month described it as a top defense priority (see GSN, Aug. 21).

“The administration has put missile defense on kind of a different track, its an urgent national requirement track,” said Generous. 

Isaacs and Generous believe the administration would have accomplished similar political goals had Sept. 11 not occurred.

“I think eventually they would have gotten it done,” said Generous.  “It would have taken longer, but you would have seen a lot more opposition in the Congress and the arms control community.”

They also agree the possibility of substantial opposition to the administration’s plan could surface in the future, particularly as testing continues and inevitable testing failures occur.

“There’s still a small problem with national missile defense, which is it doesn’t work yet,” Isaacs said.  “Even if some of the political constraints have dissipated, the technological constraints remain as substantial as ever.” 

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Radiological Weapons I:  Al-Qaeda Considered Nuclear Targets, Operatives Say

Al-Qaeda considered attacking U.S. nuclear sites on Sept. 11 and still might conduct such attacks in the future, an Arab reporter who has interviewed two operatives involved in the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks said recently (see GSN, July 11).

Yosri Fouda, a reporter for the al-Jazeera satellite network, said he was blindfolded and taken to a secret location in Pakistan to interview Khalid Sheik Mohamed and Ramzi Binalshibh.

The initial plan for the Sept. 11 attacks was to crash the hijacked airliners into U.S. nuclear power plants, Mohamed and Binalshibh said.  Leaders decided against targeting nuclear plants because of concerns “it would go out of control,” the two said during the interview, adding that such attacks have not been ruled out.

The two al-Qaeda operatives also said the target of United Airlines flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, was the U.S. Capitol and not the White House (Nick Fielding, London Times, Sept. 8).

Mohamed told Fouda that the idea for the Sept. 11 attacks came after al-Qaeda’s military committee decided to refine a previous plan to attack 12 major U.S. buildings with aircraft “in order to cause the greatest possible number of deaths and deal a huge blow to America on its own soil,” according to a copy of Fouda’s interview with the suspected terrorists published yesterday in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

“It was decided to abandon nuclear targets for the moment,” Mohamed said.  “I mean for the moment.”

Meanwhile, suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden is probably dead, Fouda concluded based on remarks from Mohamed.

“Khalid let his tongue run away by referring to bin Laden in the past tense,” Fouda wrote.  “Something is not working well in the upper levels of al-Qaeda.  I used to think there was a 50 percent chance bin Laden was alive, now I rather believe he is dead.”

Al-Qaeda nonetheless retains a “department of martyrs” that is still active, Mohamed said.  “We have many volunteers,” he said.  Mohamed and Binalshibh seemed poised to take over the leadership of the terrorist network, Fouda said.

“Ramzi caused the greatest impression.  He has the severe charisma, the vitality and the religious knowledge,” Fouda wrote.  “This is our future bin Laden” (Giles Tremlett, London Guardian, Sept. 9).

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Radiological Weapons II:  Abandoned Materials Concern IAEA

Unlike nuclear reactors, which are closely controlled, radioactive material from commercial sources could easily fall into the hands of terrorists, an International Atomic Energy Agency official said recently (see GSN, June 25).

“It’s very difficult for nuclear reactors to fall out of regulatory control — to be orphaned — because they’re usually owned by governments and are in a few places that everyone knows about,” according to IAEA Radiation and Waste Safety Director Abel Julio Gonzalez.  “With radioactive material, the opposite is the case.”

The agency is concerned terrorists might want to spread such material with conventional explosives in a “dirty bomb,” Reuters reported today (see GSN, Sept. 3).

Materials such as nuclear fuel rods, generators with radioactive materials and dump trucks of radioactive powder have been abandoned throughout countries that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union.  For example, a large amount of cesium that had been stored in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova has disappeared, according to Reuters.

“This material can easily be orphaned and severely contaminate areas,” Gonzalez said (Reuters/Planet Ark, Sept. 9).

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