U.S. Response I:  House Approves Fiscal 2004 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 425-2 yesterday to approve the fiscal 2004 homeland security appropriations bill, which provides $30 billion for homeland security programs, according to the Los Angeles Times (see GSN, June 16).

The bill would provide the Homeland Security Department with $29.4 billion for operations in the next fiscal year, an increase of almost 2 percent over last year’s funding for the U.S. agencies that were combined to create the new department, the Times reported.  The bill provides:

*         $9 billion for border protection;

*         $5.2 billion for the Transportation Security Administration;

*         $4.4 billion for state and local emergency personnel;

*         $890 million to combat biological terrorism; and

*         $776 million for U.S. infrastructure protection.

House Republicans added an additional $1 billion to the bill — more than President George W. Bush’s initial request — for additional transportation security measures and to help fund first responders, according to the Times.

Bush praised the House “for acting quickly to approve funds for our continued effort to strengthen homeland security and protect the American people” (Justin Gest, Los Angeles Times, June 24).

The funding included in the bill amounts to about $250 in U.S. spending per taxpayer, said House Select Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Christopher Cox (R-Calif.).

“Nothing we do is more important,” Cox said.  “It’s an extraordinary amount of money to respond to the post-9/11 world,” he said.

Some House Democrats, however, criticized their Republican counterparts for failing to fully fund homeland security measures while devoting so much funding to Bush’s $350 billion tax cut, according to the Washington Post.

“The problem is we cannot put the resources in the bill today because this Congress, the majority, has decided their No. 1, and virtually their only, priority is tax cuts,” Representative David Obey (D-Wis.) said (Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, June 25).

The Senate is set to consider its own version of the legislation, but no schedule for doing so has yet been announced (Gest, Los Angeles Times).

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U.S. Response II:  DHS Plans to Localize Color-Coded Warning System

The U.S. Homeland Security Department will revise its color-coded terrorist warning system this summer, the New York Daily News reported today (see GSN, June 3).

The new system will be localized, and the department will have it in place by September, according to Steve Cooper, the department’s chief information officer.  Officials are concerned that repeated nationwide warnings, without an incident, have jaded U.S. residents.

“We recognize that the risk is not uniform,” Cooper said.  “We want to regionalize or localize the alerting mechanism,” he added.

Officials also denied rumors that the country would be placed at an orange level of alert, the second-highest possible, for the July 4 holiday.

“Discussions have not taken place yet regarding the threat level over the July 4 holiday,” said spokeswoman Rachel Sunbarger (James Meek, New York Daily News, June 25).

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Iraq:  U.S. State Department Expert Says He Felt Pressure to Modify Intelligence Reports

A U.S. State Department biological and chemical weapons expert testified before two congressional committees in closed sessions last week that he had been pressured to tailor his analyses on Iraq and other issues to fit White House views, several congressional officials said yesterday (see GSN, June 23).

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last week, Christian Westermann indicated that he had felt pressure from Undersecretary of State John Bolton that originated in a dispute the two had over Bolton’s assertions last year that Cuba possessed a biological weapons program (see GSN, March 13).  Westermann said those allegations were not backed by sufficient intelligence.  Bush administration officials said Westermann has yet to make similar specific complaints about the handling of Iraq-related intelligence.

Westermann, the first member of the U.S. intelligence community to make such a claim to members of Congress, told legislators last week that while he felt pressured, he did not rewrite any of his intelligence reports, according to the New York Times.

Both Westermann and Bolton refused to comment on the issue, the Times reported.

“We don’t comment on closed hearings, but I can tell you that the secretary and deputy secretary have full confidence in John Bolton,” State spokesman Richard Boucher said (Risen/Jehl, New York Times, June 25).

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that he believed U.S. prewar intelligence on Iraqi WMD efforts was correct and that the United States would find such weapons or conclusive proof of WMD programs.

“We’re still early in the process, and the task before us is sizable and complex," Rumsfeld said, “but we do know this:  Before the war, there was no debate about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction programs.”

Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) yesterday harshly criticized the Bush administration’s handling of prewar intelligence.

“There is an abundance of clear and unmistakable evidence that the administration sought to portray Iraq as a direct and deadly threat to the American people,” Byrd said.  “There is a great difference,” however, “between the hand-picked intelligence that was presented by the administration to Congress and the American people when compared against what we have actually discovered in Iraq,” Byrd said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, June 25).

British Intelligence Review

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said yesterday that a British dossier that alleged that the Iraqi military could deploy biological weapons within 45 minutes of receiving an order to do so was revised several times to “present the best case” against former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (see GSN, June 9).

The dossier, which began development last September, underwent presentational changes before its release, including the addition of a foreword by British Prime Minister Tony Blair making allegations about Iraq’s weapons capabilities, Straw said before the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

“It went back and forth several times ... it is an iterative process where various drafts are shared and documents go through all sorts of drafting,” Straw said.  “I make comments, officials make comments,” he said.

Straw said it was “nonsense,” however, to suggest that the entirety of the British case Iraq was based on the 45-minute claim.

“Neither the prime minister nor I have ever used the word ‘immediate’ or ‘imminent’ in relation to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.  What we talked about in the dossier was a ‘current and serious threat,’ which is very different,” Straw said.

“We didn’t use the phrase immediate or imminent because it means ... as it were, about to happen today or tomorrow.  We didn’t use that because frankly the evidence didn’t justify it,” he said (Paul Waugh, London Independent, June 25).

U.S. Military Officials Criticize New York Times Reporter’s Role

Some U.S. military officials have said that New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who was embedded with the Mobile Eplotiation Team Alpha unit, played an unusual role in the unit’s operation, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, May 27).

Miller acted as a go-between for the unit — which was involved with the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — and Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, a number of military officers said.  In one instance, Miller allegedly accompanied Army officers to Chalabi’s headquarters, where they took custody of Hussein’s son-in-law, and even sat in on the son-in-law’s initial debriefing, they said.

The unit, however, had not been tasked to interrogate captured Iraqi officials, leading it to become a “Judith Miller team,” as one officer described it.

Members of the unit were not trained in conducting intelligence-related interviews, military officers critical of the unit’s actions said.  Interrogations specialists said the first hours of such interrogations are often crucial, and several Army and Pentagon officials were angered that unit officers debriefed Hussein’s son-in-law Jamal Sultan Tikriti.

“This was totally out of their lane, getting involved with human intelligence,” said a military officer.  “This woman came in with a plan,” the officer said of Miller.  “She was leading them. … She ended up almost hijacking the mission,” the officer said.

In addition, Miller wrote a letter in April objecting to an Army commander’s order to withdraw the unit, the Post reported.  She said such a move would be a “waste” of time and that she would unfavorably report on it in the Times.  After Miller discussed the issue with a two-star Army general, the order was dropped, according to the Post.

Times Assistant Managing Editor Andrew Rosenthal, however, denied that Miller had any undue influence over the unit’s actions, calling such a suggestion “an idiotic proposition.”

“She didn’t bring MET Alpha anywhere. … It’s a baseless accusation," Rosenthal said.  “She doesn’t direct MET Alpha, she’s a civilian.  Judith Miller is a reporter.  She’s not a member of the U.S. armed forces.  She was covering a unit, like hundreds of other reporters for the New York Times, Washington Post and others.  She went where they went to the degree that they would allow,” he said (Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, June 25).

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United States:  Mega Non-Nuclear Bomb Prompts Usage Concerns, Official Says

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON ð– The prospect of using the U.S. military’s most massive conventional bomb has produced concerns within the Air Force about whether it might be considered a weapon of mass destruction and that its usage may prompt international condemnation, a senior military official said yesterday.

The bomb, a 21,000-pound explosive called the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), was revealed by the military in March, just before the war on Iraq and was reportedly moved into the region just prior to the war.

“I don’t know how you look at something like the MOAB.  This is a huge bomb with a lot of explosives, so at what point do we define that as a large weapon of mass destruction or not?” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Smolen, who directs the Air Force’s Nuclear and Counterproliferation Directorate.

His agency is assigned to ensure the safety, reliability and operational effectiveness of the Air Force’s nuclear weapons stockpile and identify, evaluate and analyze new technologies for countering a wide range of threats, including massive conventional weapons.

A Question Regarding the Nuclear Posture Goal

Smolen spoke Tuesday about the implications of the Bush administration’s nuclear weapons strategy for the Air Force at a breakfast hosted by the National Defense University Foundation. 

The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, announced in January 2002, said the Pentagon intended to refashion its offensive strategic capabilities to emphasize both nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities, saying the development of high-yield conventional munitions could serve as a partial alternative to nuclear weapons. 

“The addition of non-nuclear strike forces — including conventional strike and information operations — means that the U.S. will be less dependent than it has been in the past on nuclear forces to provide its offensive deterrent capability,” said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in an introduction to the review.

That document said such non-nuclear capabilities would enable the United States to reduce risks as it complies with the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty requirements for reducing the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons by 2012.

Smolen said there has been a “big philosophical discussion” underway examining implications of defining and using high-explosive conventional weaponry such as the MOAB.

“Depending on how we define it, our definition will become public and will become evident, and we’ll also at that point have other nations that might say those weapons that the Americans have fit that category [of weapons of mass destruction].  And, therefore, we’re faced with trying to defend a use of a weapon of mass destruction if, in fact, we care to categorize it in a certain way,” he said. 

Smolen said difficulties persist on determining “what makes them different than a low-yield nuclear weapon.”

“I think there’s a real concern on everybody’s part that you call it a conventional weapon.  But in terms of effects its probably only in name only,” said Frank Eversole, executive director of the foundation.

Research on Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons Advocated

Smolen said research on low-yield nuclear weapons and the higher-yield Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator is needed for exploring capabilities that may be needed in the future.

The MOAB is said to produce a blast comparable to a very small nuclear weapon, but it is dwarfed by the smallest of nuclear weapons, which falls in the one- to five-kiloton range. 

The MOAB may offer other advantages over using tactical nuclear weapons in the realm of international acceptability.  The Bush administration has encountered congressional resistance to eliminating a 10-year moratorium on the development and production of low-yield nuclear weapons.  In 1995, the United States and four other nuclear weapons states reconfirmed their commitment not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.

“U.S. nuclear forces, alone are unsuited to most of the contingencies for which the United States prepares,” the Nuclear Posture Review said. 

“The United States and allied interests may not require nuclear strikes,” it said, explaining a need for a “‘new mix’ of nuclear, non-nuclear, and defensive capabilities.”

Smolen said, though, the MOAB would be insufficient for destroying some potential targets.

There are “some targets that simply cannot be held at risk with anything that we have conventional right now.  So we will always need the tactical strategic nuclear weapon,” he said.

“In the nuclear area, you’re talking about a minimum of kilotons, which is a very, very substantial amount of explosives.  You’re not very close to that on the conventional side for the most part,” he said.

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United States:  Abraham Calls for “Immediate Corrective Action” to Improve Security at National Laboratories

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham yesterday directed the National Nuclear Security Administration to take “immediate corrective action” to improve security at the U.S. national laboratories (see GSN, June 23).

“The Department of Energy views security as the critical responsibility of the national laboratories, and we treat any lapse or failure as significant,” Abraham said in a press statement.  “Therefore, I have directed NNSA Administrator [Linton] Brooks to launch a comprehensive security overhaul at the national labs and to put in place any immediate changes he deems necessary,” he added.

One of the three national laboratories — Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico — announced yesterday new management changes prompted by an independent investigation into allegations that internal security investigations were blocked or that investigators experienced retaliation.

Among the management changes, which are effective immediately, was the resignation of Dave Nokes, Sandia vice president for national security and arms control, according to a laboratory press release.  Nokes resigned at Sandia President C. Paul Robinson’s request, the release said.  He will be replaced by Al Romig, currently Sandia vice president for science, technology and partnerships, with a replacement for Romig to be announced soon.

“Changes, especially when unexpected, are particularly difficult,” Robinson said in a statement, “but they hopefully serve to assure continued public confidence and support for Sandia and all our programs.  This has been a very trying experience.  I know the changes we’re making today will make us stronger.”

GAO Criticizes NNSA Security Program Management

Meanwhile, the U.S. General Accounting Office released a report yesterday criticizing the NNSA for failing to effectively manage its safeguard and security program that oversees security at the three national laboratories, as well as the four U.S. nuclear weapons production sites (see GSN, June 16).

According to the May report, congressional auditors found that the NNSA had failed to be “fully effective” in its management of the safeguards and security program in four key areas — defining clear roles and responsibilities for site offices, assessing sites’ security activities, oversight of contractors’ corrective action plans and staff allocation. 

“As a result, NNSA cannot be assured that its contractors are working to maximum advantage to protect critical facilities and material from individuals seeking to inflict damage,” the report says.

Brooks told a House Government Reform subcommittee yesterday, however, that he was confident that security at NNSA sites was effective in preventing potential terrorists from gaining access.

Since the NNSA’s creation in 2000, the agency’s management structure has been in “a state of flux,” with a full implementation of a revised management structure not expected to be completed until September 2004, the GAO report says.  This “flux” has had an effect on the agency defining site offices’ safeguards and security responsibilities, it says. 

The lack of a functional management structure, and the resultant confusion over responsibilities, has led to inconsistencies among NNSA sites as to how to conduct security assessments, according to the report.  Three of the seven sites use an Energy-required survey approach to assess security, which is a comprehensive review lasting two weeks.  The remaining sites, however, instead rely on a surveillance approach, which uses a smaller number of NNSA officials to oversee one or more aspects of a contractor’s security activities throughout the year.  These sites have been able to use the surveillance approach, the report says, because the NNSA has not issued guidelines on complying with Energy policy on conducting surveys while it conducts the management reorganization.

In addition, the GAO also found that NNSA contractors often do not conduct Energy-required analyses when preparing corrective action plans to fix security flaws, according to the report.  Out of 43 such plans reviewed between 1999 and 2002, less than half included a required root cause analysis, and less than 25 percent included required risk assessment or cost-benefit analyses, the report says.

“Potential opportunities to improve physical security at the sites are not maximized because corrective actions are developed without fully considering the problems’ root causes, risks posed or cost versus benefit of taking corrective action,” the report says.

The NNSA is also facing shortfalls in both security staff and expertise, the GAO report says.  Officials at five NNSA sites said they either have or expect to have between two and six vacancies for positions to oversee contractors’ security and safeguards activities, it says.  The report found that many such vacancies occur because staff members are reluctant to be relocated to areas seen as less desirable and because the NSSA has frozen hiring activities because of budget constraints.

In its report, the GAO made several recommendations to improve security management, such as the formalization of the responsibilities of site offices to conduct oversight and the use of the survey approach at all sites to conduct security assessments.  The GAO also recommended that the NNSA ensure that contractors develop corrective action plans based on root-cause, cost-benefit and risk-assessment analyses; and that the agency develop a plan to allocate security staff at sites to provide effective long-term oversight.

During yesterday’s National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations Subcommittee hearing, Brooks said he agreed with most of the issues the GAO raised in its report and its recommendations.

“I believe the GAO did concentrate on the right things.  I believe most things in life are a question of management, and this is clearly a question of management,” Brooks said.  “If we do not get the management of safeguards and security right, we will not ever fix the problem,” he said.

Brooks said, however, that he disagreed with the GAO’s recommendation that the survey approach to conducting security assessments should be the only method used at NNSA sites.  He defended the surveillance approach, calling it “equally effective,” and said Energy policy should be modified to legitimize the use of the surveillance method.

Brooks also said the NNSA had developed several new measures to help improve security, which the agency would soon formally announce.  The new measures include increased U.S. and contractor security experts and directives to site managers to increase surveillance and to file periodical reports to Brooks himself.  In addition, the NNSA plans to systematically re-examine a number of external reviews conducted on the agency to determine if recommendations were implemented, as well as create two panels to review physical security problems and personnel concerns, Brooks said.  The panels will be headed by outside experts, he added.  

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Iran:  Washington Works Through U.N. to Stifle Tehran

After heavily criticizing the United Nations over the crisis in Iraq, U.S. officials are attempting to use U.N. channels to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, the Washington Post reported Monday (see GSN, June 24).

Many of the other options available to Washington, including possible military action, are unattractive to U.S. officials, the Post reported.

A senior State Department official described a recent report on Iran’s nuclear development from the International Atomic Energy Agency as “factual” and “devastating.”

Iran has a “lot of explaining to do,” the official added (Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, June 23).

Iranian Opposition Alleged to be Terrorists

A classified report, prepared three weeks ago by France’s intelligence agency, said that an Iranian opposition group was planning attacks in France against Iranian government targets.

French authorities last week arrested 150 members of the People’s Mujahedin, also known as Mujahedin-e Khalq, which the U.S. State Department has formally identified as a terrorist organization.  Most of the suspects were released, however, because of a lack of tangible evidence of terrorist plotting.

The group allegedly had plans to attack Iranian embassies and assassinate former members of the group who are now linked with Tehran (Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, June 23).

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North Korea:  Reactor Construction Will Likely End Soon

Construction of two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea will most likely be suspended, a South Korean official said today (see GSN, June 20).

“The issue in point is when and how to halt (the project),” the official said.  The reactors are being built as part of the defunct 1994 Agreed Framework, under which North Korea agreed to halt nuclear weapons development.

“As the United States is demanding a halt, we’re finding it more difficult to say that the project should continue,” the official added.

Seoul is pushing for a small continuation of construction, even as Washington and Pyongyang are locked in a nuclear standoff.  U.S. officials are pushing for a complete halt to the work (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring, June 25).

Former Presidential Aides Indicted

Two former South Korean presidential aides and a leading business executive have been indicted on charges that $100 million was transferred to Pyongyang before a 2000 summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

The South Korean president was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, largely as a result of the 2000 meeting.

Independent counsel Song Doo-hwan handed down the indictments against Park Jie-won, a former chief of the presidential staff, and Lim Dong-won, a former head of the South Korean intelligence service.

Chung Mong-hun, the chairman of Hyundai Asan, was also indicted.

“In pre-summit talks, the government promised to provide $100 million to North Korea, and Hyundai group was asked to transmit the money for the government,” Song said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, June 25).

Anniversary Marked With Rhetoric

North Korea marked the 53rd anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War by criticizing the U.S. presence on the Korean Peninsula.

“The U.S. seeks to fish in troubled waters by driving South Korea as cannon fodder or a shock brigade in its aggression of the D.P.R.K.,” said the state-run Korean Central News Agency (Agence Presse-France, June 25).

Pakistani Nuclear Aid A “No-Go”

During a meeting yesterday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and U.S. President George W. Bush discussed U.S. allegations that Pakistan provided nuclear aid to Pyongyang.

“He basically made it clear that he understood that any sort of contacts in any sort of military-related field, whatever they are, are a ‘no-go’ area,” said a senior Bush administration official (Agence France-Presse II, June 25).

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CTBT:  Oman Ratifies Treaty

Oman ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty June 13, according to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, bringing the total number of treaty ratifiers to 102 (see GSN, May 12).

Oman is not one of the 44 nations that must ratify the treaty before it can enter into force.  Of those 44 nations, 31 have ratified the treaty (CTBT Organization release, June 25).

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Smallpox:  Study Says Immunizations Safer Than Expected

Military immunization results have shown that it is safe to speed up the U.S. national effort to vaccinate health and emergency workers against the smallpox virus, according to a study published yesterday by the Journal of the American Medical Association (see GSN, June 24).

The Defense Department immunized almost 500,000 military personnel without any deaths and with fewer complications than were expected, the report said.

Some health care worker groups were still skeptical about President George W. Bush’s plan to immunize up to 10 million emergency workers by the end of this summer.  The plan began in February, but fewer than 38,000 civilians have received the vaccine.

The immunization effort is failing partly because there is no clear threat, according to Charles Idelson, a spokesman for the 50,000-member California Nurses Association.

The immunizations are a “massive diversion of public resources for badly needed health care toward a program that has, to this date, been demonstrated to be totally unnecessary.  Any of the adverse reactions that have occurred as a result of this immunization program have been too many,” he said.

The study was completed by John Grabenstein of the Army Medical Command’s Military Vaccine Agency and William Winkenwerder, the assistant defense secretary for health (Susannah Rosenblatt, Los Angeles Times, June 25).

“Our experience suggests that broad smallpox vaccination programs may be implemented with fewer serious adverse events than previously believed,” the report says (Reuters/New York Times, June 25).

Military researchers did determine, however, that cardiac inflammation should be added to a list of potential side effects of the vaccine.  The inflammation, also known as myopericarditis, occurred at a rate of 78 cases for every million vaccine recipients.  That rate is triple the occurrence in the unimmunized population (Associated Press/Baltimore Sun, June 25).

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Anthrax:  U.S. Biotechnology Company Receives FDA Approval to Begin Human Testing of New Treatment

A U.S. biotechnology company announced today that it has received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin human testing of a new drug that has been found to both prevent and treat anthrax (see GSN, March 18).

Human Genome Sciences is now set to begin enrolling adult volunteers into a Phase 1 placebo-controlled clinical trial to evaluate the safety and tolerability of its new drug, ABthrax.  Adults enrolled into the study will be administered different dose levels of intramuscularly and intravenously administered ABthrax, the company said in a press release.  Under the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, the company can use the results of animal testing to demonstrate the drug efficacy for the purposes of licensing and marketing approval, the company said.

“We are pleased to be able to proceed with a clinical trial to evaluate the safety, tolerability and pharmacology of ABthrax in healthy adults,” Human Genome Sciences Senior Vice President David Stump said in a statement.  “Positive results from such a human study, along with our preclinical proof of efficacy data, would support the further development of ABthrax as a new means to prevent and treat anthrax infections,” Stump said.

ABthrax is a human monoclonal antibody that works by countering protective antigen — a toxin released by the anthrax bacterium.  Animal testing has found that a single dose of the drug can protect against anthrax infection once an appropriate level of the antibody is built up in the blood, the company said.  The drug also works against the toxins produced by anthrax bacterium, making it suitable as a treatment.

Large-scale production of ABthrax is dependent on government funding, which could be provided through the pending “Project Bioshield” legislation, the company said (see GSN, June 24; Human Genome Sciences release, June 25).

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U.S. Response:  Area Residents Oppose New Biosafety Level 4 Laboratories

U.S. plans to build at least six new Biosafety Level 4 research facilities, able to work with the most dangerous pathogens to help prevent against biological terrorism, are facing opposition from residents near the proposed laboratory sites, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, Feb. 24).

The United States has four Biosafety Level 4 facilities, located at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas, and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.  The NIH facility, however, currently only works with Biosafety Level 3 organisms, according to the Times.

Several new Biosafety Level 4 laboratories are set to be open, with one to be installed at the CDC and another at the University of Texas in Galveston.  In addition, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases plans to open large-scale facilities at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories near Hamilton, Mont., and at Fort Detrick.  Several other academic institutions and the New York state Health Department are competing to construct two additional facilities.

The plans to construct the new laboratories, however, have raised concerns and opposition among area residents worried about possible consequences of an accident.  Area residents have been able to block a Homeland Security Department plan to upgrade the Plum Island Animal Disease Center off the coast of Long Island, N.Y., and have also sued to block a laboratory proposed by the University of California at Davis, the Times reported.

“The risk is low, but the outcome is total devastation,” said Linda Perry, a Hamilton veterinarian.  “If there is an accident, people here are going to lose everything,” she said.

NIAID Deputy Director John La Montagne denied that the new laboratories pose increased risks to the public.

“Safety is a nonissue,” La Montagne said.  “These are highly safe facilities,” he added (Charles Piller, Los Angeles Times, June 25).

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United States:  Franks to Testify Before Congress on Patriot Friendly Fire Incidents

U.S. Army General Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, is expected to testify before Congress on two friendly-fire incidents during the Iraq war that involved the Patriot missile interceptor, Aerospace Daily reported today (see GSN, May 23).

Franks’ testimony may be classified, but an open session on the incidents for reporters is being scheduled in the next several weeks in Washington, said Lt. Gen. Joseph Cosumano, head of the Army Space and Missile Defense Command and the Army Space Command.  The investigations into the two Patriot incidents — the destruction of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet and a British Tornado, both by Patriots — have examined a number of possibilities, he said.

An investigation was also conducted into an incident wherein a U.S. F-16 fired at a Patriot battery, destroying the system but leaving the crew unharmed, according to Aerospace Daily.  Congress is also expected to be briefed on this incident (Rich Tuttle, Aerospace Daily, June 25).

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