By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
A British parliamentary committee of foreign policy experts recently issued a broad and detailed critique of the Bush administration strategy for addressing global WMD proliferation, terrorism and Iraq.
The report, issued Dec. 19 by the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Commons, mainly addressed the British government’s role in U.S.-led international efforts to deal with terrorism. It expressed support for the United Kingdom’s close relationship with the United States in its efforts to combat terrorism.
“We fully support the government’s decision to align itself closely with the United States in the war against terrorism,” the report said.
The bipartisan committee took issue, however, with the Bush administration’s policies on using pre-emptive force against another country (see GSN, Dec. 5, 2002), conducting targeted killings of terrorists, using nuclear weapons in response to a WMD attack, (see GSN, Feb. 27, 2002) and asserting that Iraq has been collaborating with al-Qaeda terrorists (see GSN, Dec. 12, 2002).
It further concluded that neither the administration’s interpretation of justifiable pre-emption nor Iraqi violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions currently provide sufficient authority for a war on Iraq.
“I welcome the latest report from the Foreign Affairs Committee. It is a serious contribution to debate about counterterrorism policy,” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement following the report’s release.
“The committee and we share many of the same conclusions. In particular, we share the view that failure to address the threat from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction could pose very high risks to the security of British interests in the Middle East and Gulf region,” he said.
As usually occurs with respect to the semiannual report, Straw has promised a more detailed response.
Targeted Killings
The committee criticized a November CIA attack on a vehicle containing al-Qaeda suspects in Yemen using an unmanned aerial vehicle.
In a section titled “U.S. attacks by unmanned aerial vehicles: extrajudicial killings?” it noted U.S. officials previously had criticized Israeli targeted killings of Palestinian terror suspects.
“This attack raises further legal questions about the United States’ conduct of the war against terrorism,” the committee said.
It cited State Department spokesman Richard Boucher’s Nov. 5 comment that reasons given previously for criticizing Israeli targeted killings “do not necessarily apply in other circumstance.”
The report recommended the British government state its own policy on targeted killings.
Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction
The British legislators wrote they were under the impression the Bush administration was considering a change in nuclear posture that would make available “all our options,” including nuclear options, in response to any weapon of mass destruction attack (see GSN, Dec. 13), and was considering developing a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons (see GSN, April 5, 2002).
“In our view, this would have significant implications for arms control policy,” the committee wrote.
There were news reports last year of British plans to develop new low-yield nuclear weapons, perhaps in cooperation with the United States.
Blair government statements persuaded the committee that neither the United Kingdom nor the United States was developing tactical nuclear weapons, though the committee wrote the United States was evaluating whether to modify nuclear weapons “to make them more effective,” quoting U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
A State Department spokesman said last February the Bush administration would continue to honor a 1995 pledge not to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state, first made in 1978, which is considered an important reason why most of the world has been willing to renounce nuclear weapons.
He also, though, restated another longstanding policy that the United States would not rule out using nuclear weapons in response to a chemical or biological weapons attack by a non-nuclear state against U.S. interests or allies.
The committee members asked to be informed if the British government changes its nuclear posture or the United States plans a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons.
Critique of New Pre-Emption Policy
The committee further challenged the Bush administration’s “extended” interpretation of the international norm on pre-emptive use of military force, saying it has “significant potentially dangerous consequences in international law.”
“This assertion of the right to act pre-emptively to address potential rather than imminent security threats arguably constitutes a challenge to established international law governing the legitimate use of force by states, as set out in the Charter of the United Nations,” the committee said.
For more than a century, it has been generally accepted that a nation can attack another in self-defense if there is evidence of a mounting, imminent attack. The Bush administration, in a new National Security Strategy document released Sept. 20, contended that rule should be amended to enable countries to act pre-emptively even when there is not sufficient evidence of an imminent WMD attack, as such an attack might be effectively concealed.
“We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries,” it said. The British government has appeared to agree with that view.
The committee concluded there was not an international consensus on the definition of pre-emption and advised that the understanding of imminence be reconsidered in light of new types of threats. It recommended the British government “work to establish a clear consensus” on the circumstances in which pre-emptive action may be taken.
No Authority Yet for Attacking Iraq
The report says the Bush administration has suggested its interpretation of pre-emption may justify a possible war on Iraq, which is suspected of having weapons of mass destruction, of developing even more powerful ones, and of defying U.N. requirements to account for the destruction of all of such capabilities.
The foreign affairs committee concluded pre-emption could not be used to justify an attack on Iraq because of a lack of an imminent threat. It further concluded the United States and allies lack clear authority to attack Iraq because of breaches of U.N. resolutions.
It said Security Council Resolution 1441 passed earlier this year “does not legitimize ‘regime change,’” though it does “provide a very strong endorsement of the United States objective of Iraqi disarmament.”
The report said the principal justification the United States was stressing for a possible attack on Iraq was its refusal to disarm according to U.N. Security Council resolutions.
The committee noted a lack of consensus among experts on whether the United States and its partners alternatively would be legally justified under international law to attack Iraq without more explicit authority granted by the U.N. Security Council.
It concluded that “Resolution 1441 would not provide unambiguous authorization for military action, were Iraq to fail to comply with its provision” and that further Security Council authority would be needed. The report recommended the British government clarify its view on the matter.
Less than a month before U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix must present the findings of weapons inspections in Iraq to the U.N. Security Council, inspectors said that they have not yet found clear evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Jan. 2).
“If we’d found a shed full of Scud missiles, don’t you think we would have reported it to the (Security) Council?” said a U.N. official.
Iraq estimated that the inspectors have visited 230 sites so far, and reports indicate that they have had success in resurrecting a dormant inspections and monitoring program, but the U.N. teams are now preparing to expand their reach with six helicopters that will allow them to arrive quickly and without warning at suspected facilities. The U.N. inspectors are also poised to open an office tomorrow in Mosul, about 240 miles north of Baghdad, the Post reported.
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who is also scheduled to give a status report to the Security Council in one week, is planning on traveling to Baghdad later in January to discuss “pending issues” in advance of his Jan. 27 Security Council presentation, according to Iraqi officials (Peter Baker, Washington Post, Jan. 3).
Arab Officials Could Ask Hussein to Step Down
Officials in the Arab world may try to pre-empt a U.S. attack themselves by persuading Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to step down, the Financial Times reported today.
Saudi Arabia is pushing for the United States to allow an Arab diplomatic initiative, if Blix’s Jan. 27 report reveals a weapons violation.
Saudi officials have not asked Hussein to step down yet, but if the United States seems poised to attack “we hope that there would be an opportunity given to the Arab countries to mitigate the situation,” said Saud al-Faysal, the Saudi foreign minister.
If Hussein were convinced he had no option other than stepping down, it would be no trouble finding a place to house him, according to an Arab official.
Hussein is “not thinking about it now, but it could be different when the Americans are serious about the alternative of war,” said another Arab official (Roula Khalaf, Financial Times, Jan. 3).
News on potential U.S. military deployments to the area has angered Iraq.
“They didn’t say, “Let us wait for a while for the result of the inspection and then let’s decide what to do,’” said Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz (Baker, Washington Post).
Mohamed Hussein, director of the al-Samoud missile facility, decried the inspectors’ professionalism and described inspections as “gangster actions.”
Inspections Continue
U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission inspections continued as the political situation grew more heated, and teams visited six sites yesterday, United Press International reported. Among the visits was an inspection in Tikrit, marking the first time a U.N. team has been to Hussein’s hometown since the latest round of inspections began (Ghassan al-Kadi, United Press International, Jan. 2).
Chemical experts visited the al-Hadar State Company, a chemical plant formerly known as the Ash Sharqat Uranium Enrichment Facility, the United Nations reported.
Missile inspectors revisited the al-Fatah State Company to interview Iraqi personnel associated with Iraq’s solid propellant missile programs, according to U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki. A team had previously visited the plant Dec. 14.
Biological inspectors went to the al-Taji Technical Military Depot for the Air Force. The depot holds aircraft equipment and is part of a larger military facility, the release said.
A variety of U.N. inspectors visited the bin Firnas State Company, an Iraqi Air Force support company that is owned by the Military Industrialization Corporation. This team of inspectors also visited the al-Fatah site to verify information.
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors went to two sites, both about 60 kilometers west of Baghdad. The Fallujah Lead Recovery Plant runs gas-fired furnaces and a storage site at Khan Dari holds materials and equipment, according to the release (U.N. release, Jan. 3).
By James Kitfield
National Journal
LIVERMORE, Calif. — When James Bond needs a high-tech edge in his battle against the latest supervillain bent on world dominion, he invariably turns to Q and his laboratory full of customized weapons for British secret agents. In the war against terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction, Tom Ridge, secretary-designate of the new Homeland Security Department, will increasingly look westward for his own technological edge, toward the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
In fact, scientists and technicians from Livermore, and its sister nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos and Sandia, N.M., have operated largely unseen on the front lines of the counterterrorism/counterproliferation fight since long before 9/11. Since the late 1960s, the laboratories, today part of the Energy Department, have staffed secret Nuclear Emergency Search Teams that use sophisticated radioactivity-detection equipment to respond to reports of nuclear smuggling (see GSN, Sept. 23, 2002). When U.S. intelligence officials were told in October 2001 that terrorists had acquired a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb and planned to smuggle it into Manhattan, the response teams rapidly descended on New York. Fortunately, the report turned out to be false (see GSN, Mar. 4, 2002).
After the 1995 release of sarin gas in a Tokyo subway by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, the nuclear weapons laboratories deployed chemical weapons sensors in the Washington Metrorail system (see GSN, Aug. 20, 2002). More recently, mobs of spectators and revelers at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City were largely unaware of the presence of Livermore and Los Alamos technicians operating a sophisticated biological weapons detection system and field laboratory called BASIS, for Biological Aerosol Sentry and Information System (see GSN, Feb. 21, 2002). The laboratory teams also deployed to Florida in the fall of 2001 in response to hoaxes associated with that year’s anthrax attacks. According to Livermore sources, three BASIS systems are currently deployed in undisclosed U.S. cities.
At Sandia National Laboratories, too, researchers and engineers are developing technologies useful for homeland security. Sandia helped create and license the decontamination foam for chemical and biological agents that was used to help clean up the Hart and Dirksen Senate office buildings in Washington, the ABC and CBS network news offices in New York, and the American Media building after the anthrax letter mailings in 2001. Sandia has also helped develop extremely sensitive explosives detection technologies, handheld and otherwise, and a bomb disrupter that uses sound to disable bombs without exploding them so evidence against bomb makers can be retained. The disrupter is in wide use now by police and military bomb squads and was used to disable Richard Reid’s shoe bomb last December.
Meanwhile, at Livermore, a unique Forensic Science Center specializing in explosives and weapons of mass destruction has helped identify and trace the origin of weapon-grade uranium smuggled out of the former Soviet Union. It helped convict “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski. And the forensics laboratory is said to be assisting in the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Livermore is home to some of the world’s fastest supercomputers, and its staff has a wealth of expertise gained in computer simulations of how weapons of mass destruction work and how they decay (see GSN, Nov. 19, 2002). Using these resources, Livermore has also developed special “data-mining” capabilities and advanced simulations, to aid in the war against terrorism and in the effort to stop the smuggling of catastrophic weapons. In the case of the 2002 Winter Olympics, for instance, Livermore computer scientists started with a computer code they had developed for the U.S. military to simulate different combat scenarios, and adapted it so that emergency responders deployed to Salt Lake City could be ready for possible terrorist attacks and other emergencies. Livermore is also working with the California National Guard to develop a state plan for coping with threats to homeland security.
Livermore teams routinely conduct “vulnerability assessments” for private energy companies, identifying critical points in the U.S. energy infrastructure that might be susceptible to terrorist attack and recommending steps companies and authorities might adopt. Recently, Livermore technicians simulated the likely consequences of an explosion at a propane storage facility that was the intended target of two anti-government militia members who where later convicted of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. A Livermore scientist testified that the planned attack could have caused a massive, 1-kiloton explosion. A similar assessment of the vulnerability of dams to terrorist attack has led some municipalities to alter their rules governing boating on dammed lakes.
“In both those cases, we used our very sophisticated three-dimensional computer modeling to show authorities what a worst-case scenario might look like, and it really opened their eyes,” Richard Wheeler, Livermore’s manager for homeland security analysis, said.
“What we’ve found in the energy sector, for instance, is that people have done a lot of planning for natural hazards, which are single-point and somewhat predictable events such as Hurricane Andrew slamming into the East Coast,” he said. “They haven’t really considered the implications of being the potential target of a series of coordinated attacks, orchestrated by someone with malicious intent.”
From the perspective of a determined terrorist organization, experts say, the United States looks like a complex series of linked networks whose critical nodes and interdependencies are not well understood even by those who operate them. “Our telecommunications system, for instance, relies on water-cooled switches,” said Wheeler. “The water pumps require electricity to operate. Likewise, our natural gas pipelines are regulated by pumping stations that require electricity. So if our electric grid is interrupted, our telecommunications and natural gas systems could go down. Natural gas, in turn, is important for generating electricity. So the new Department of Homeland Security is going to have to take a systems perspective in analyzing our vulnerabilities, and that’s an arena where the weapons labs have incredible computer-modeling and analytical tools to bring to bear.”
A Transforming Threat
Although the public typically thinks of the nuclear weapons laboratories as focused on the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal, they have been developing during the past decade into centers of expertise on U.S. national security, with an emphasis on safeguarding against weapons of mass destruction.
“As terrorist violence escalated dramatically during the 1990s — from the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in Tokyo, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings, right up through 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks — people have become increasingly sensitized to the vulnerability of the U.S. homeland,” said Harry Vantine, division leader of Livermore’s Counterterrorism and Incident Response Division. “During that evolution, our emphasis on counterterrorism grew in ways that might surprise the casual observer,” he said.
With U.S. and Western interests increasingly the targets of terrorists — and with the size of the U.S. nuclear complex having shrunk dramatically with the end of the Cold War — the weapons laboratories have found a niche in the growth industry of protecting the homeland against weapons of mass destruction.
“We have a lot of attributes that adapt very naturally to the counterterror and nonproliferation missions,” said Vantine. “For instance, we have intelligence assets, access to classified information, and employees with high security clearances who can handle sensitive information. We also possess some of the world’s most advanced computers. So I think our innate capabilities in this field really appealed to Governor Ridge when he was studying the nation’s homeland defense needs,” he said.
That point was underscored in the wording of the Bush administration’s original proposal for a homeland security department, which included Lawrence Livermore as one of the entities to be folded into the agency. Although that language was later dropped during congressional debate because of the weapons laboratory’s continuing responsibilities in monitoring the nuclear weapons stockpile, it seems likely that Livermore will serve as a link between the Homeland Security Department and the nation’s scientific and research communities. On Dec. 10, Livermore announced that it was creating a new Homeland Security Organization to manage its counterterrorism and counterproliferation programs. That organization will report to the new Homeland Security Department (see GSN, Dec. 12, 2002).
Unanswered Questions
Major questions remain unanswered, however, about exactly how the new organization will work with the nascent department. That kind of uncertainty is evident throughout the U.S. government, as scores of agencies and organizations begin repositioning themselves to adapt to the largest government reorganization in half a century.
Several Livermore programs with an estimated combined annual budget of $50 million are to be transferred into the laboratory’s new Homeland Security Organization, which will become part of the Homeland Security Department, although the programs themselves will stay here in California. Among them are Livermore’s Nuclear Smuggling Program and Threat Assessment Center, its Chemical and Biological National Security program, the Energy Security and Assurance program, and a portion of Livermore’s Advanced Scientific Research program.
The question of whether Livermore will serve as the “lead lab” and focal point between the national laboratories and the new department — or whether Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia will report to the Department of Homeland Security separately — also hangs in the air. Whether this reorganization will distract the laboratories from their work is another important question. Scientists and managers here say it could have both helpful and harmful effects.
“I think creating a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security will help focus national attention, and hopefully resources, on missions that in the past were buried deep within many organizations,” said Page Stoutland, deputy division leader at Livermore’s Counterterrorism and Incident Response Division. “Because the process will necessitate merging so many different cultures, with all the attendant bureaucratic upheaval that implies, it will be important to establish clear lines of communication and to constantly tweak and update the organizational relationships involved. We’ll probably have to take a step backwards while all that plays out. Hopefully the reorganization will then allow us to take two steps forward,” Stoutland said.
Scientists, researchers, and technicians at Lawrence Livermore — which is managed by the University of California under an Energy Department contract — also wonder whether the freewheeling culture of scientific exploration that is the hallmark of the nuclear weapons laboratories will survive under the umbrella of one of the world’s largest bureaucracies.
“I believe our national security culture will prove synergistic with a Homeland Security Department, but it will be very important to maintain a free flow of information,” said Nancy Suski, a program manager at Livermore. “The fact remains that the government is creating a new entity in the Homeland Security Department out of a lot of very diverse organizations and cultures. I really hope they move out smartly in the early days, or else a lot of people may start circling the wagons to protect their turf, and you could end up with a very large organization at the top with a whole lot of stovepipes leading to it, and little crosstalk,” she said.
Richard Wheeler manages Livermore’s Homeland Security Analysis program. “I think the new department will be a boon to recruitment of people energized by the challenge of protecting our homeland,” he said, “because after the end of the Cold War, it became harder for a time to attract the best and the brightest to come to the labs. On the other hand, the government is creating a huge bureaucracy by throwing together many different organizations and cultures, and the new department will need to maintain its flexibility to be able to adapt to emerging threats. My biggest concern is that expectations are going to ramp up very fast, once the new Homeland Security Department comes online. The ability for the new department to meet those expectations may not ramp up as fast,” Wheeler said.
Race Against Time
A tour through the secure campus of Lawrence Livermore drives home how rapidly the laboratory is evolving in the interim to counter the growing threat of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. The halls of the Threat Assessment Center are lined with framed, ominous letters threatening the United States with the use of weapons of mass destruction. The center has been analyzing the letters for credibility.
A briefing in Livermore’s Proliferation Prevention and Arms Control program reveals how scientists have scrambled to adapt radiological detectors originally designed to keep dangerous materials inside the U.S. nuclear complex to the far more challenging mission of keeping such materials from being smuggled out of the former Soviet Union, or across U.S. borders.
Scientists at Livermore recently developed a mobile radiation spectrometer-dubbed “Cryo3” for its novel cooling mechanism — that promises to limit the “false positives” from naturally occurring radiation in goods shipped into the United States such as bananas, clay, granite, and orange glaze. The importance of developing better radiation detectors was underscored in a recent presentation by the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank. The group estimated that the chances that terrorists will launch a successful attack with a radiological “dirty bomb” against a U.S target in the next five to 10 years are as high as 40 percent (see GSN, Nov. 18, 2002).
In Livermore’s program for Chemical and Biological National Security, scientists have adapted the weapons laboratory’s work in the Human Genome Project by mapping the DNA of numerous deadly biological agents, including anthrax, plague, and foot-and-mouth disease. This mapping can help detectors avoid false readings and help analysts determine the origins of such agents. A handheld biological detection system originally designed for U.S. Special Forces and called HANAA - for Handheld Advanced Nucleic Acid Analyzer - can test for 12 known biological agents simultaneously. Livermore recently adapted the system for first responders in the United States, to help them detect future biological attacks.
“In biological forensics, early detection of the actual release of a biological agent is essential, because if you wait until symptoms appear in human hosts and the disease has reached the infectious stage, the spike of how quickly it spreads at that point goes off the charts,” said J. Patrick Fitch, leader of Livermore’s chemical and biological program, which has collected and analyzed almost 1 billion liters of air for the presence of biological agents in the past year alone.
The familiarity Livermore scientists have with doomsday scenarios that were once reserved for Hollywood thrillers — and their understanding of statistical probability — gives them an air of fatalism when talking about the likely toll of death and injury in the war on terrorism. It is not a matter of whether terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction will attack the United States, they say. It is a matter of when.
“That’s why I think one of the first acts of the Department of Homeland Security,” said Livermore’s Stoutland, “should be to define a matrix of success that will not judge them as failures in the event of a single successful terrorist attack. Because I think an attack by terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction is inevitable. I don’t know how many people will be killed or what kind of attack it might be. But it’s inevitable,” Stoutland said.
Concerned about a potential U.S. attack on Iraq, Kurdish leaders are trying to prepare for a retaliatory chemical or biological warfare attack from Iraqi forces, but they say other countries are ignoring their plight, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday.
“We have repeatedly approached the United Nations,” said Hoshyar Siwaili, undersecretary at the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s Ministry of Humanitarian Aid and Cooperation. “But we got no response,” he said.
The KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan control the northern area of Iraq and are currently out of reach of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s armed forces. The two groups are working together to form rescue teams, stockpile food, fuel and medicine, and distribute protective equipment for use in a chemical weapons attack, AFP reported.
Wealthier residents of the Kurdish enclave have said they will flee the area and Siwaili warned of a possible “humanitarian disaster” in the case of a war (Shamal Aqrawi, Agence France-Presse, Jan. 2).
| 
Back to top
