U.S. Response:  Washington to Expand Container Security Initiative

The United States plans to station teams of inspectors at major seaports in Muslim countries and other strategically located ports, to help prevent terrorists from smuggling weapons of mass destruction into the United States, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, March 17).

The move is the second stage in the Container Security Initiative, which initially sought to station U.S. inspectors at the 20 largest international seaports, according to the Times.  In the new stage of the initiative, the Untied States will station inspectors in up to 25 additional seaports, which will be chosen on the basis of cargo volume and their location in countries or regions where terrorism poses a heightened threat, said Robert Bonner, commissioner of customs and border protection in the Homeland Security Department.

“We will be expanding to important parts of the Islamic world,” Bonner said.  “We will be looking more strategically,” he added.

Homeland Security plans to station inspectors in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Malaysia, Turkey and other Islamic nations, officials said.

In addition, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge yesterday signed an agreement with Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to station inspectors at the port of Laem Chabang as part of the first stage of the initiative, according to the Times.

The expansion of the Container Security Initiative reflects concerns that al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups might attempt to smuggle a weapon of mass destruction into the United States in one of the millions of cargo containers that enter the country each year, Bonner said.

“I’m not prophesying anything,” Bonner said.  “But I do have concern that we need to have this security system in place as fast as we possibly can,” he said (Philip Shenon, New York Times, June 12).

Bush Administration to Fully Fund U.S. Port Security Program

Meanwhile, the Bush administration yesterday said it would fully fund Operation Safe Commerce, an $85 million program that would track cargo containers entering seaports serving New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, May 20).

Ridge announced the decision in a letter to Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who had placed a hold on the nomination of Clay Johnson, a friend of U.S. President George W. Bush, to the No.2 position in the Office of Management and Budget.  Murray had placed the hold on Johnson’s nomination to protest a White House proposal to cut $28 million from the program (Matthew Daly, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, June 12).

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Iraq:  Powell Praises Blix; U.S. Taps Former Inspector to Coordinate WMD Search

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday praised chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who recently accused U.S. officials of conducting a smear campaign against him (see GSN, June 11). 

“There is no smear campaign I am aware of,” Powell said.  “I have high regard for Dr. Blix.  I worked very closely with Dr. Blix.  I noted the president had confidence in him as well,” he said (Barry Schweid, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 11).

CIA Appoints Former U.N. Inspector to Advise WMD Hunt

Meanwhile, CIA Director George Tenet yesterday announced the appointment of former U.N. chief nuclear inspector David Kay to advise on the continuing search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Kay, who has been named special adviser for strategy regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs, will be in charge of refining the overall U.S. search for banned weapons, according to a CIA press release.  The Defense Department’s Iraq Survey Group, which will soon take over the search, will provide direct support to Kay, the CIA said.

“David Kay’s experience and background make him the ideal person for this new role,” Tenet said in a statement.  “His understanding of the history of the Iraqi programs and knowledge of past Iraqi efforts to hide WMD will be of inestimable help in determining the current status of Saddam Hussein’s illicit weapons,” he added (CIA release, June 11).

Some senior officials appear to be concerned that Kay’s appointment will be seen as turf war between the CIA and the Pentagon, according to the New York Times.  The precise working relationship between Kay and U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, who heads the Iraq Survey Group, is still being determined, officials said.

The decision to appoint Kay was done to help coordinate the work in Iraq of all U.S. agencies with expertise on weapons of mass destruction, a senior Bush administration official said.  “This is about bringing all of the resources of the United States to bear on a challenging and important task,” the official said (James Risen, New York Times, June 12).

U.S. Intelligence

The chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees yesterday announced that reviews of prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq would be conducted in closed sessions.

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) yesterday indicated concerns that a public investigation into Iraq-related intelligence could be used for partisan purposes.

“I will not allow the committee to be politicized or to be used as an unwitting tool for any political strategist,” Roberts said.

Democrats, however, criticized the decision to conduct the review in private.

“Even while the search (for the weapons) continues, the American people need and want to know whether our government was accurate and forthcoming in its prewar assessments,” Senator John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said.

Roberts, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) and House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.), all denied that the Bush administration had pressured them to conduct a closed review of prewar intelligence documents provided by the CIA. 

Some observers have called on the committees to investigate other documents besides those provided by the CIA, and to hear testimony from former intelligence analysts, officials and experts who have criticized the White House’s handling of Iraq-related information, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Democrats have also called for the review to focus on work conducted by a team of Pentagon-assembled analysts that investigated Iraq-related intelligence.  While the Pentagon team determined that there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, its reports have never been shared with congressional oversight panels (Brownstein/Miller, Los Angeles Times, June 12).

CIA Disputed Niger Claim

A claim that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, which U.S. President George W. Bush cited in his State of the Union address last year, was disputed by a CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002, according to senior Bush administration officials and a former U.S. official (see GSN, March 28).

The CIA, however, did not share the results of its investigation into the Iraq-Niger link with the White House or other agencies, the officials said. 

In February 2002, the CIA sent a retired U.S. ambassador to Niger to the country to investigate the alleged attempted purchase, according to the officials.  While there, the CIA’s envoy spoke with the president of Niger and other officials mentioned as being involved in the attempted purchase, some of whose signatures were allegedly on related documents, according to the Washington Post. 

Upon his return, the envoy told the CIA that the uranium purchase story was false, sources said.  The envoy believed that documents purported to be related to the purchase were forged because the “dates were wrong and the names were wrong,” the former U.S. official said.

The CIA, however, did not include details of the envoy’s report nor his identity, which would have added credibility, in agency intelligence reports that were shared with other agencies, the Post reported.  Instead, the CIA said that Nigerien officials had denied that the attempted purchase had occurred, a senior Bush administration official said.

The CIA’s action, which has been previously unreported, was the result of “extremely sloppy” handling of a piece of evidence in the U.S. case against Iraq, a senior intelligence official said.

The official defended, however, the overall U.S. case against Iraq.  “It is only one fact and not the reason we went to war.  There was a lot more,” the official said.

A senior CIA analyst, however, said the case “is indicative of larger problems” in the handling of intelligence related to Iraq’s suspected WMD programs and links to terrorism. 

“Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was (consistent) was not seriously scrutinized,” the analyst said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, June 12).

INC Supplied Sources

Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, said yesterday that his group helped three Iraqi defectors provide the CIA with information on Iraqi WMD programs.

“We provided exactly three people to the U.S. who we thought could provide information about the weapons programs,” Chalabi said.

In 2001, the INC set up a meeting in Bangkok between U.S. intelligence officials and Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, an Iraqi engineer, according to the Washington Times.  Al-Haideri provided the INC with information on Iraqi weapons-storage facilities, Chalabi said. 

The second defector the INC worked with was Mohammed Harith, who met with U.S. intelligence officials in Jordan and provided information on Iraqi mobile biological facilities, the Times reported.  U.S. intelligence officials rejected the third defector, an Iraqi physicist who was involved in isotope separation efforts.

“They talked to him briefly and they didn’t want to talk to him any more and told us about that,” Chalabi said.  “That is it.  That is the extent of our intelligence provided by the INC to the United States’ government on weapons of mass destruction,” he said (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, June 12).

British Intelligence

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw will appear before the British Parliament’s House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which is conducting an inquiry as to whether British Iraq-related intelligence was exaggerated to build support for war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday (see GSN, June 10).

In “accordance with convention,” however, Blair said that neither he nor any of his staff would appear before the committee.  Blair also said there was not “a shred of truth” in the allegations that the government had exaggerated its intelligence information (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 11).

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International Response:  Officials Discussing Ways to Stop WMD Shipments

Eleven nations, including the United States, are scheduled to meet in Madrid today to discuss modifying international law to make it easier for authorities to board and seize cargo vessels suspected of transporting WMD materials (see GSN, June 2).

The meeting is the first, informal gathering of “a small group of like-minded countries” to discuss the “Proliferation Security Initiative” that U.S. President George W. Bush proposed late last month, a senior U.S. State Department official said yesterday.  The United States hopes the meeting will help improve intelligence sharing between countries to better block shipments of weapons and nuclear material, the official said.

The new measures are being pursued because countries that don’t belong to nonproliferation agreements, such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, do not violate any laws if they transfer weapons technology, said Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

For example, Spanish soldiers stopped a North Korean ship in December that was transporting ballistic missiles to Yemen, but the shipment was allowed to proceed after authorities determined that the sale was not illegal.

One purpose of today’s meeting is to discuss whether new international law is needed to grant the authority to block transfers of weapons that are not banned under international law, diplomats said.  Without legal authority, the seizure of a ship or airplane could be seen as an act of war, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“We want to talk about our mutual understanding of the rules of the road, what the permissible bases for interdiction are,” the State Department official said.

Under international maritime law, countries can board a suspect ship with the permission of the country under whose flag the ship is sailing, or board ships that are flying no flag, the official said.

“One thing we’re going to explore is whether those authorities need to be supplemented,” the official said (Efron/Demick, Los Angeles Times, June 12).

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Iran:  IAEA Inspectors Turned Away From Nuclear Site, Leave Iran

U.N nuclear inspectors left Iran yesterday after officials refused them access to a nuclear facility, the Wall Street Journal reported (see GSN, June 9).

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors visited the site in March and again in May, but this time they intended to collect samples to check for nuclear material, according to an IAEA report distributed last week.

The IAEA team discussed the proposed visit with Iranian officials but was rebuffed, according to the Journal.  Iran has announced it wants to build a nuclear enrichment facility for 50,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges.

Inspectors are questioning whether Iran would proceed with building such a facility if, as Tehran claims, the centrifuges have not been fully tested.  If they have been tested by enriching small amounts of uranium, Iran should have notified the IAEA that it was doing so (David Crawford, Wall Street Journal, June 12).

A spokesman from Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization denied that the inspectors were stopped from inspecting any site.

“Based on the IAEA’s letter which was sent to us, they visited all the places that were mentioned in the letter and they left the country based on the schedule which was mentioned in the letter,” Khalil Mousavi said (Reuters, June 12).

The White House wants the IAEA to pressure Iran about its nuclear program but is reportedly not pushing the U.N. nuclear agency to declare Tehran in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  The United States is hoping the agency will turn out a “devastating” report on Iran’s nuclear program that will spur other countries to censure Iran, the Los Angeles Times reported (Sonni Efron, Los Angeles Times, June 12).

The IAEA report, circulated this week to its board of governors, says Iran has been developing an experimental nuclear fuel program, processing various forms of uranium and not reporting the activity to the IAEA.

“The lack of reporting in this case is considered serious because it shows a consistent pattern and involves steps taken outside of safeguards by Iran to master the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle,” the report says, according to Nucleonics Week.

Iran also moved nuclear material around the country without notifying the agency, according to the report.

Iran processed some uranium tetrafluoride into uranium metal, displaying knowledge of skills needed for nuclear weapons production, and produced some uranium dioxide fuel pellets to test chemical production, the IAEA reported.

Significantly, however, the report never says that Iran enriched uranium outside of NPT safeguards.

Western officials said that Iran has developed uranium enrichment centrifuges that would not have been possible without conducting tests using uranium, Nucleonics Week reported.

Mousavi said that the uranium movement, and earlier revelations of illicit uranium importing, were not reported to the IAEA because of differences over reporting obligations.

Despite Iran’s purported failure to inform the IAEA of its activities, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei is strongly opposed to citing Iran for the alleged infractions, according to sources in Vienna.

Instead, ElBaradei would probably call for additional reports on Iran’s nuclear program in September and again in March 2004 (Mark Hibbs, Nucleonics Week, June 12).

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North Korea:  Low-Level Bilateral Meeting Held Last Week

U.S. and North Korean officials met last week at the United Nations in New York where U.S. envoy Jack Pritchard urged his counterparts to agree to hold formal multilateral talks to resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Reuters reported today (see GSN, June 11).

“At the meeting in New York, Pritchard sounded out (Pyongyang) about five-nation talks that would include Japan and South Korea,” said a source in Tokyo with close ties to North Korea.

Pritchard reportedly suggested a possible direct meeting during the multilateral talks, thus satisfying North Korea’s demand for one-on-one contact with the United States (Teruaki Ueno, Reuters, June 12).

Australia, meanwhile, is engaged in talks with the United States and Japan to hamper North Korean efforts to transfer illegal materials by sea (see related GSN story, today).

“It is a very difficult issue to deal with because international law requires that flagged vessels on the high seas can’t be interdicted except in the most exceptional of circumstances.  So to make a system of interdictions work, you have to have very broad international cooperation,” Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.  “To impose a blockade on North Korea would require a Security Council resolution, almost certainly.  Though that might happen some way down the track,” he added (Fifield/Ward, Financial Times, June 12).

South Korea, meanwhile, has not been consulted on the talks and media outlets are speculating that a conciliatory attitude to Pyongyang might have kept Seoul out of discussions.

“There has been neither U.S. request for our participation in a blockade nor discussions on this issue,” said Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan.  “I don’t think the U.S. government is moving ahead with the ‘tailored blockade’ policy or economic sanctions against North Korea in dealing with its nuclear problem,” he added (Lim Chang-won, Agence France-Presse, June 12).

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United States:  Air Force Plans Continued Modifications for B-52 Fleet

The U.S. Air Force is planning a series of modifications to the U.S. B-52 bomber fleet that is expected to keep the aircraft in use for at least an additional 40 years, Air Force Times reported this week.

The planned modifications include adding the capability to carry several types of munitions, such as the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and the 500-pound Mk-82 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM).  In addition, the service also plans to upgrade the B-52s with improved communication systems, tactical electronic jamming equipment and other equipment, according to Air Force Times.

The airframes of the B-52s also have a number of years of use left, Air Force Times reported.  The Air Force has estimated that B-52s will have to log at least 28,300 hours of flight time before the wings’ upper surfaces start to fail and the bombers become too expensive to maintain.  As of early last month, the B-52 fleet averaged 15,858 flying hours.

The B-52 fleet is a not stranger to modification.  In the past 51 years, the bombers have had their roles changed at least three times, from an initial role as a high-level bomber to a role of low-level intruder, then to one of a standoff cruise missile launcher and now currently it serves as a close-air support bomber, according to Air Force Times.

“In time you modernize (the weapon system) with improved sensors and avionics and weapons, and you can in fact change its character,” said Air Force Secretary James Roche.  “The B-52 is probably the greatest example of that.  It starts out as a penetrating bomber, a nuclear bomber, flying off the deck, rattling everybody’s fillings. … Now we wouldn’t think of flying it low and fast,” Roche said (Lance Bacon, Air Force Times, June 16).

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U.S. Response:  Monkeypox Outbreak Tests Bioterrorism Response Systems

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. efforts to prepare for a bioterrorist attack have enabled an effective response to this month’s outbreak of monkeypox in the United States, according to health officials and public health experts (see GSN, June 4).

“State health departments have been actively involved in planning and preparing for the possibility of a bioterrorist event.  We are now seeing that this level of preparation can also assist in unexpected, natural outbreaks,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.

Health officials are investigating 54 suspected cases of monkeypox in four states.  The disease is carried by rodents and is similar to smallpox but much less deadly.  U.S. officials yesterday recommended the smallpox vaccine to “persons investigating monkeypox outbreaks and involved in caring for infected individuals or animals.”

Monkeypox was not mistaken for smallpox, health officials said, but the similarity helped detect the disease quickly and bioterrorism was quickly ruled out.

Health workers are “trained more in clinical recognition of poxes” than they once were, said Lorna Will, an epidemiologist with the Wisconsin Department of Public Health.  Wisconsin has reported 20 cases of monkeypox.

Terrorism Defenses Tested

The monkeypox outbreak also tested the U.S. ability to respond to a bioterrorism incident, and the public health system performed admirably, officials said.

“Mother Nature has given us a little practice opportunity,” said Shelley Hearne, executive director of Trust for America’s Health, a nonpartisan public health group.

Hearne compared the monkeypox response to the confused public health reaction during the anthrax mailings of 2002 and said there has “certainly been significant improvement.  That’s the good news.”

She cautioned, however, that the government might be focusing too heavily on a few, select biological threats.  To prepare for terrorism, health officials should be prepared to face the “unexpected.”  The most effective preparation for an unknown biological or chemical threat is a strong public health infrastructure, according to Hearne.

Cuts in public health funding, brought on by nationwide budget shortfalls, risk “undercutting the foundation” of biological and chemical terrorism defenses, she warned.

Quick Detection

Health officials said the outbreak was detected and reported quickly.

“Surveillance has certainly been upgraded,” said Von Roebuck, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I suspect we may have seen monkeypox in the past and we didn’t pick it up,” Hearne said.

Enhanced communication in the public health community was the most valuable improvement cited by several officials and experts.

The focus on preparing for bioterrorism “helped a lot with communication between hospitals and health departments,” according to Will, the Wisconsin epidemiologist.

The CDC was able to effectively alert local health departments, said Roebuck, adding, “the information communication side has been very good, and that’s huge, especially in an investigation like this.”

Will, who until recently was a clinician, said that doctors now know where to go during a public health emergency.

“When we first started [improving public health infrastructure] people used to call me constantly without a clue,” she said.  Confused doctors did not know where to report unusual diseases or where to get information on new outbreaks.  “I can tell you that as a clinician, I would not have known who to call,” she said.

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China:  Researcher Sentenced to One Year for Attempted Smuggling

A biological researcher at Cornell University in New York has been sentenced to a year in jail for attempting to travel to China with more than 250 containers holding biological agents, the Associated Press reported today.

Yin Qingqiang, a Chinese citizen and a former postdoctoral research associate, was arrested at Syracuse Hancock International Airport July 28, 2002, as he was boarding a flight to Shanghai.  Yin was convicted of property theft and lying to the FBI.  He has already served two months of his sentence.

The stolen containers — vials, test tubes and Petri dishes — held bacteria and yeast cultures for livestock food production, AP reported.

Cornell’s laboratory employees sign a waiver acknowledging that their work and material belong to the school, according to lab director Xingen Lei.  Yin said that he was never told that he could not remove the biological agents, AP reported (Associated Press/New York Post, June 12).

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Iran:  Japanese Authorities Arrest Five for Selling Missile Equipment

Japanese authorities today arrested five employees of Seishin Enterprise Co., including the company’s president, for allegedly exporting equipment to Iran that could be used to produce ballistic missiles, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Feb. 6).

Seishin Enterprise is believed to have sold two industrial grinders, which can be used to produce solid missile fuel, to Iran in 1999 and 2000 without an export license, a Tokyo Metropolitan Police spokesman said.  The export of the grinders is restricted under the Missile Technology Control Regime, police said.  The five Seishin employees could face up to five years in prison if convicted of conspiring to violate Japan’s Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Control Law, a police official said (Associated Press/Kansas City Star, June 12).

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U.S. Response:  New Regulations Ignite Complaints From Model Rocketeers

U.S model-rocket hobbyists are angered over new U.S. homeland security regulations that require a background check and permit to purchase certain types of model engines, which are feared to be attractive to terrorists seeking to build bombs, the Associated Press reported today.

Under the regulations, which took effect last month, anyone purchasing or handling rocket engines that contain more than 2 1/4 ounces of ammonium perchlorate composite propellant are required to first obtain a permit.  Permit applicants must agree to have their storage areas inspected every three years, according to AP.

People have been required to obtain permits for years to transport ammonium perchlorate composite propellant across stateliness, said Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesman Andrew Lluberes.  He added that 90 percent of rocket engines used by model-rocket hobbyists were smaller than those being regulated.

“This is nowhere near the onerous regulation or situation that it’s being painted out to be,” Lluberes said.

Model rocket fans, however, do not believe that the engine propellant would be of much use to potential terrorists, AP reported.

“I can walk down to the local gun store and buy a case of bullets and have immensely more power than one of these rockets,” said Randy Kastl, manager of the Hobby Shop in Dayton, Ohio, which discontinued its line of high-powered rockets because of the new regulations (James Hannah, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, June 12).

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Food Safety:  Officials Fear Terrorist Attack on U.S. Food Supply

By Katherine McIntire Peters

Government Executive

When members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network abandoned their caves and safe houses in Afghanistan after being routed by U.S. troops in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, they left behind many clues to their aspirations.  Besides the supplies and cell phones, ammunition and assorted weaponry one might expect to find with any modern paramilitary organization were thousands of documents and computer records.  Among this mother lode of information were hundreds of pages of U.S. agricultural documents that had been translated into Arabic.

Al-Qaeda’s interest in U.S. agriculture was more than academic, according to government officials. A significant part of the group’s training manual is reportedly devoted to agricultural terrorism — the destruction of crops, livestock and food processing operations (see GSN, Feb. 11).

It shouldn’t be surprising that a determined enemy like al-Qaeda would consider ways to disrupt U.S. food supplies. The history of warfare is full of examples of burned crops, poisoned wells and slaughtered herds. Agriculture is an obvious target for terrorists: infecting plants or animals with deadly disease is easier, cheaper and less risky than infecting humans directly; the economic consequences of a widespread attack would be enormous; and the panic and fear such an attack might reap could lead to wide-scale social disruption.

Over the past 18 months, state and federal agencies have beefed up security and increased inspections of food and agricultural facilities across the country. But in an industry as complex and varied as agriculture, security is an elusive concept. From sprawling farms to feed lots, from state fairs to food processing plants, there are countless points at which terrorists could access the food supply system with relative ease. Defense Department officials are so concerned about the prospect of an attack that twice over the past several months, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Strategic Policy Forum has conducted classified crisis simulation exercises for members of Congress and federal officials across government to plan potential responses to an incident.

The fact that the United States has not experienced a major agricultural or food-related disaster in recent memory is more a function of luck than design, said Peter Chalk, a policy analyst with RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “There is little real appreciation for either the threat or the potential consequences,” Chalk said.

In an article for RAND Review last summer, Chalk wrote that the farming and food industries are highly vulnerable to both deliberate and accidental disruption for several reasons:  The routine use of antibiotics and growth stimulants in animal diets has heightened the susceptibility of animals to disease; infectious animal diseases can spread rapidly across the country because of the highly concentrated nature of U.S. farming; and the huge number of food processing facilities — most of which have highly transient unscreened workforces, minimal security and inadequate procedures for recalling products — are ideal sites for the deliberate introduction of toxins into the food supply.

Critical Infrastructure

According to the Agriculture Department, one out of eight Americans works in an occupation directly supported by food production, making the food and agricultural sector the nation’s largest employer. The farm sector alone, with agricultural exports exceeding $50 billion a year, is the largest positive contributor to the U.S. trade balance.

By any reasonable measure, agriculture is not just a vital component of the national economy, but of the global economy as well. Exports of U.S. agricultural products account for 15 percent of all global agricultural exports. The United States in 1998 produced nearly half the world’s soybeans, more than 40 percent of its corn, 20 percent of its cotton, 12 percent of its wheat and 16 percent of its meat.

In a report issued by the National Defense University last March, Henry Parker, a researcher at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, wrote that there are five potential targets of agricultural bioterrorism:  field crops; farm animals; food items in the processing or distribution chain; market-ready foods at the wholesale or retail level; and agricultural facilities, including processing plants, storage facilities, wholesale and retail food outlets, elements of the transportation infrastructure, and research laboratories.

In the report, Parker said that “America is exceedingly vulnerable to agricultural bioterrorism. The reasons for the situation are numerous. To begin, there is limited appreciation for the economic and social importance of agriculture in the industrialized [world]. Abundant, affordable and safe food supplies are largely taken for granted. . . . It is hard for American citizens to imagine a world where the availability of food radically changes for the worse.”

Yet it’s not hard for terrorism analysts to imagine the impact of a major attack. RAND officials estimate that no major U.S. city has more than a seven-day supply of food. The consequences of a major attack on food sources, especially animals, would be felt almost immediately by consumers. Such an attack could easily spread fear and panic and quickly undermine public confidence in government.

According to Parker, the size and complexity of U.S. agribusiness makes it a tempting target, and the industry’s widespread vertical integration, where a single company controls much of the commodity production, processing and distribution system, makes it easier for pathogens to spread quickly over a wide area.

State and federal agencies have taken a number of steps to improve security. Twenty states have passed or are considering legislation related to agricultural terrorism, according to data compiled by the Council of State Governments, and many have hired more farm and food inspectors, developed guidelines or requirements for improving physical security at agricultural facilities, and are building more effective disease surveillance networks.

At the federal level, responsibility for ensuring food safety is for the most part spread across three departments: At the Agriculture Department, the Food Safety and Inspection Service monitors meat and poultry products and plans for responding to outbreaks of food-borne illness, while a division of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is responsible for protecting agricultural crops and plants from disease. At the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration is responsible for ensuring the safety of seafood, plant and dairy foods and beverages and other food products. The Homeland Security Department has taken over the inspection of food and agricultural products entering the United States, formerly a function of APHIS’ Agricultural Quarantine Inspection program. Close coordination among these various agencies and their state counterparts is vital to effectively securing the food supply.

Over the last 18 months, agencies have taken steps to boost their inspection and analysis capabilities. USDA has hired 20 new “import surveillance liaison” inspectors, who will reinspect imported meat and poultry products at various locations across the country. The agency is increasing the identification and diagnostic capacities at federal and state laboratories—a critical need, because responding quickly to an outbreak will be key to reducing the health and economic consequences of an attack. Also, as a result of the 2002 Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act, the Food and Drug Administration is tightening food safety regulations in several ways: requiring food processing facilities to register with the agency, mandating that companies provide advance notice of imported food shipments, and maintaining better records to make it easier to trace tainted food to its source.

All these steps are welcome, but terrorism experts say much more is needed. Chalk believes federal and state agencies remain woefully unprepared to respond to an agricultural or food-related disaster. He suggests giving a single federal agency the authority to standardize and rationalize food and agricultural safety procedures across a wide spectrum of jurisdictions: “Such an agency could help weave together the patchwork of largely uncoordinated food safety initiatives that currently exist in the United States.”

Silent Prairie

Many agricultural experts believe the greatest threat to U.S. agriculture would be the deliberate or accidental introduction of foot-and-mouth disease, the highly contagious viral disease that attacks cloven-footed animals, including cattle, swine, sheep, deer and elk. While humans cannot contract the disease from animals, its effect on animals is so swift and debilitating that milk and meat production could be severely cut nationwide. With thousands of animals being transported across state lines every day, an outbreak could spread within days, before animal health officials would even be able to provide a definitive diagnosis.

Even rumors of an outbreak can have economic consequences. At a Holstein market in Kansas one afternoon in March, a veterinarian discovered sores in the mouths of some of the cattle. He didn’t believe the problem was foot-and-mouth disease, but following procedures, he notified the state animal heath department. By 5 p.m., a state veterinarian, who had studied the devastating 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom, arrived at the market to test the animals. He also believed the problem was something other than foot-and-mouth disease. Nevertheless, the next morning, even before the appearance of news reports citing the discovery of a potential problem with the cattle, the national cattle futures market plummeted.

“There were six people who witnessed [the veterinarian inspecting the cattle] at the market,” says Maj. Gen. Gregory Gardner, adjutant general and director of emergency management for the state of Kansas. “That’s how powerful rumors can be.” It turned out the cattle had eaten hay containing thorns, which caused the sores.

According to Parker, more than 70 different strains of foot-and-mouth disease exist. It is the most infectious virus known, capable of spreading in wind-driven aerosol form more than 170 miles from its source. In Taiwan in March 1997, after the disease was confirmed in pigs there, it spread throughout the island within six weeks, forcing authorities to slaughter more than 8 million pigs and halt pork exports.

“The origin of the disease was reportedly traced to a single pig from Hong Kong, and China was suspected of deliberately introducing the disease into Taiwan,” Parker wrote. “The disease is still affecting Taiwan, and the ultimate costs to that nation are estimated to be at least $19 billion — $4 billion to diagnose and eradicate the disease and another $15 billion in indirect losses from trade embargoes. Was this an act of biowarfare or bioterrorism? The answer may never be known, but it is a plausible hypothesis that it indeed was.”

No cases of foot-and-mouth disease have been diagnosed in the United States since 1929, but with more than 100 million head of cattle, 70 million pigs, 10 million sheep and more than 40 million wild cloven-footed animals, the country remains at great risk for the disease, Parker says, estimating that even a limited outbreak affecting no more than 10 farms could have a $2 billion economic impact. Containing the disease to a small number of farms would be enormously difficult, he says.

Responding to an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease also would involve the coordinated efforts of thousands of local, state and federal officials, and likely require the deployment of National Guard troops—and perhaps even federal troops — to help enforce quarantines and help destroy infected animals.

The two classified agro-terrorism response exercises sponsored by the Defense Department, both called “Silent Prairie,” involved the spread of foot-and-mouth disease at a time when the military was engaged in overseas missions. Air Force Col. Jim Haas, the exercise coordinator and an analyst at the National Defense University, says the exercise was designed to enlighten officials about the complex decisions they would have to make in the event of a major disease outbreak, as well as the “second- and third-order effects” on things such as agricultural exports and trade agreements.

The 40 participants in the most recent exercise in February, including several members of Congress, Defense’s Rumsfeld, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and personnel from state and federal agencies, were not role-playing from a predetermined script, Haas says. “Everyone’s expertise is what they walked in the door with. That’s what makes these exercises especially valuable and informative.”

‘A Big Bull’s-Eye’

Foot-and-mouth is only one of many diseases that could have devastating consequences for the U.S. economy. An attack on crops would have even greater consequences, according to Parker.

Crops make up more than half the total value of American farm commodities and contribute more to exports, Parker wrote in his study. “More important,” he noted, “crops comprise the major components of prepared feeds for livestock, poultry and farm-raised fish. Finally, deliberate contamination of processed foods by terrorists could have devastating consequences, not only in terms of human health, but also because of economic impact and loss of consumer confidence in the safety of the nation’s food supplies.”

States are not waiting for the federal government to figure out solutions, but they’re also realistic about their own ability to protect the food supply. A December report by the Council of State Governments’ Midwestern Office found that risk management is critical. Only by focusing efforts on key vulnerabilities can officials hope to reduce the likelihood of an attack as well as the severity of damage. “Complete surveillance of U.S. agricultural holdings is not a realistic, cost-effective option. With more than 500,000 farms and 57,000 processors in the United States, and more than 350,000 acres of farmland in the Midwest alone, no inspection regime could fully guarantee safety and security,” the report found.

Thomas McGinn, assistant state veterinarian at the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, told an agro-terrorism panel convened by the National Governors Association in February that people need to start thinking of animal health as part of public health. North Carolina, he says, is in the process of creating a multi-hazard threat database that links the two.

Displaying a U.S. map that shows the distribution of poultry and cloven-footed livestock across the country — a blur of dots that illustrates just how dispersed the agricultural animal population is — McGinn says, “This looks like a big bull’s-eye to me.”

“We have food safety. We’ve got to get ourselves to a place where we have food security as well,” he says.

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