U.S. Response I:  Pentagon Creates Online Futures Trading Market to Predict Terrorist Activities

The U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is establishing an online futures trading market that would allow people to wager on the likelihood of various types of terrorist activities, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, July 28).

The program, called the Policy Analysis Market, would allow people to deposit funds into accounts — similar to those used in stock trading — and then win or lose money by predicting various events, such as a coup in Jordan, according to the Times.  The market will focus on the economic, military and civil futures of eight Middle Eastern nations, including Iran, Iraq and Israel, as well as the results of U.S. interactions with those nations.  The program is set to begin registering an initial 1,000 participants Friday with trading to begin Oct. 1.  The number of participants could possibly grow to 10,000 by Jan. 1, the Times reported.

“Involvement in this group-prediction process should prove engaging and may prove profitable,” the market’s Web site said.

The Pentagon has said that similar futures trading projects have been able to predict events such as oil prices and elections.

“Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information,” the Pentagon said in a statement.  “Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions,” the department said (Carl Hulse, New York Times, July 29).

More than $800,000 has been spent to establish the market, according to the Washington Times.

However, congressional critics of the program have called on John Poindexter, director of the Total Information Awareness office, which will oversee the program, to shut it down, saying that gambling on future terrorist attacks is “grotesque.”

“The federal government is encouraging people to bet on and make money from atrocities and terrorist attacks,” Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said during a press conference to disclose the program.  “Betting on terrorism is morally wrong,” he said.

“It’s a harebrained scheme,” said Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.).  “I think this is an unbelievably stupid program that is so devoid of value.  It is offensive to almost everyone,” he said (Audrey Hudson, Washington Times, July 29).

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U.S. Response II:  GAO Says Port Security Needs Long-Term Plan

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — As part of its efforts to enhance security at U.S. shipping terminals, the Homeland Security Department must increase the number of well-trained port security officials, a task that could prove difficult without advanced strategic planning, the General Accounting Office said in a report yesterday (see GSN, June 17).

The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection — part of the Homeland Security Department — has not yet managed a smooth transition in port security efforts from “short-term focus to a long-term strategic approach,” according to the GAO report.  The GAO called for a comprehensive plan for developing a skilled port security workforce.

Last year, U.S. customs officials launched the Container Security Initiative, which posted agents in foreign ports to screen high-risk shipments for weapons of mass destruction before they departed for the United States.  Under the CSI program, more than 10 nations have agreed to participate in the program, according to the Customs and Border Control Web site (see GSN, July 23).

More than 1,700 companies also agreed to join the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), under which firms improve their own security in exchange for smoother access to U.S. ports.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) applauded the GAO findings and said port security relies on well-trained customs officials.

“The success of these programs, and our trust in them, depends largely on the quality, training, oversight, and retention, of the people on the ground who administer them.  Going forward, we have to have a good roadmap in place.  It’s that simple,” he said in a statement.

The GAO called for customs officials to develop “human capital plans that clearly describe how CSI and C-TPAT will recruit, train and retain staff to meet their growing demands as they expand to other countries and implement new program elements.”

The plan also called on the Homeland Security Department to develop benchmarks for the two programs to measure their progress.

“The measures should be used to determine the future direction of these Customs programs,” the report says.

In addition, the GAO said that Homeland Security officials should build strategic plans to identify the programs’ goals and reach them.

The Customs and Border Protection bureau agreed with the GAO report and said it was already addressing the problems.

“The Office of International Affairs has initiated action to develop a program to recruit, train and retain the staff necessary to effectively and efficiently carry out the mission of the CSI,” the bureau said in a statement.

Grassley said he was encouraged by the fact that customs officials agreed with the GAO assessment.

“The additional steps identified in the GAO report are crucial to the successful management and long-term success and oversight of these programs,” he said.

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Threat Assessment:  Officials Warn of New Hijacking Attacks

Al-Qaeda is believed to be preparing to conduct a new round of attacks using hijacked airliners later this summer, U.S. officials said yesterday (see GSN, July 10).

Officials have learned of the suspected plot through interrogations of one or more captured senior al-Qaeda operatives, according to the Washington Post.  Information received from al-Qaeda operatives has been corroborated through other methods, such as electronic intercepts, officials said.

“The U.S. intelligence community has received information related to al-Qaeda’s continued interest in using commercial aviation here in the United States and abroad to further their cause,” Homeland Security Department spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

Homeland Security issued an alert with the new information to law enforcement agencies, security officials and airlines over the weekend, Johndroe said.  There are no immediate plans, however, to raise the U.S. national terrorism alert level, which currently stands at “yellow,” indicating an elevated risk, Homeland Security officials said (Susan Schmidt, Washington Post, July 29).

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Iraq:  Libya Behind Forged Nigerien Documents, Italian Sources Say

Italian sources have said that Libyan intelligence services are responsible for a set of forged documents that purported to show an Iraqi attempt to purchase uranium in Niger, Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily reported today (see GSN, July 25).

According to Italian sources, the Libyan External Security Organization passed the documents to an Italian intelligence agency through a Libyan source in an attempt to discredit U.S. decision-making, according to Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily.  The documents were later distributed to the United States and the United Kingdom, where they were used to bolster claims that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from Africa.  Once the International Atomic Energy Agency discovered the Nigerien documents were forgeries, however, those claims were disputed.

Sources have said that Libya was, in fact, purchasing uranium from Niger for Iraq during the U.N. embargo, according to Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily.  The uranium was used in joint Libyan-Iraqi nuclear weapons research conducted at two Libyan facilities  (Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, July 29).

Niger Denies Uranium Claims

Meanwhile, Nigerien Prime Minister Hama Hamadou has called on the United Kingdom to offer evidence of its continuing claims that Iraq sought to purchase uranium there.

While the United States has backed away from the Niger uranium claim since its documentation was proven false, the United Kingdom has maintained that intelligence received from other sources supports the claim, according to the London Sunday Telegraph.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Hamadou criticized the United States and the United Kingdom for the claim.  He noted that Niger had been one of the first African nations to participate in the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq.

“We were the first African country to send soldiers to fight against [former Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] after the invasion of Kuwait in 1991,” Hamadou said.  “Would we really send material to somebody whom we had fought against and who could … destroy half the world with a nuclear bomb?  It is unthinkable,” he said (David Harrison, London Sunday Telegraph I, July 27).

In addition, executives and workers at Niger’s two uranium mines — Somair and Cominak — also denied any attempt to provide uranium to Iraq.

“We were amused and a bit puzzled when we first heard about this,” said Bernard Debacque, the production director at Somair.  “We wondered what it was all about.  It is impossible for anything to go missing from here.  Everything is strictly controlled,” he said.

In the more than 40 years that uranium has been mined from the two Nigerien facilities, there has never been a “single case of uranium being lost or stolen,” said Somair Director General Serge Martinez.  He also denied that uranium from the mines could be illegally sold to Iraq, noting that they are closely monitored by both the international consortiums that own them and the IAEA.

“It is checked again and again, in Niger, in Benin and in France.  If any were to go missing, it would be known very quickly.  We are not talking about moving consignments of peanuts,” Martinez said (David Harrison, London Sunday Telegraph II, July 27).

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U.S.-Russia:  Cooperative Plutonium Disposition Activities Held Up While Liability Concerns Negotiated

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Following last week’s termination of a U.S.-Russian agreement to examine scientific and technical issues affecting the disposition of plutonium removed from Russian nuclear weapons, the U.S. State Department said yesterday that activity under a subsequent agreement on the actual disposition of the material is being put on hold (see GSN, July 25).

Last week, the 1998 Plutonium Science and Technology agreement was allowed to expire because of State Department concerns that its liability provisions would not sufficiently protect U.S. officials or contractors in case of injuries or damages occurring during activities carried out under the agreement.

Some experts indicated last week that certain projects carried out under the defunct 1998 agreement could continue under the more comprehensive 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition agreement, which in its current form contains no liability provisions.

U.S. officials are now saying, though, that activities under the latter agreement — which lays out terms and timetables according to which the United States and Russia are each to dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium — will be put on hold until a liability protocol is negotiated.

“Industrial-scale disposition activities will not go forward under the Plutonium Management and Disposition agreement of 2000 until adequate liability protections are agreed,” State Department spokeswoman Tara Rigler said yesterday.

A U.S. official said not only actual disposition — which was not scheduled to begin for several years — but also design and construction of facilities are on hold.  The official added that some activities that had begun under the 1998 agreement have stopped since it expired last week, but stressed that “intense” U.S.-Russian talks are under way in a bid to break the logjam over the 2000 agreement and allow activities to continue.

Washington is aiming to reach an agreement by late this year to preserve the existing timetable for the U.S.-Russian plutonium disposition program, officials said.

Meanwhile, some disagreement has become apparent between the State Department and the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration over the status of activities under the 2000 agreement.

“I’m not sure how it can be on hold, because it doesn’t expire, and we are continuing our programs under that agreement,” NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said today.

U.S. Looking for Umbrella Agreement-Style Liability Language

The United States is seeking, as a general standard in threat reduction texts, to obtain protections “commensurate with those in the [1992] Cooperative Threat Reduction umbrella agreement,” Rigler said.  The State Department has decided to renegotiate liability protections in agreements with protections it deems insufficient as those agreements come up for renewal, according to U.S. officials familiar with the situation.

One major objection the State Department has to the 1998 agreement’s liability provisions is that they exempt Russia from liability in cases of “premeditated” acts leading to damage or injury.  The 1992 umbrella agreement has no such exemption for Russia.

The State Department’s main focus now is on negotiating a liability protocol to the 2000 agreement, according to U.S. officials.  Agreement on such a protocol could render the 1998 text essentially obsolete, since the newer agreement provides for research and development activities in addition to actual plutonium disposition.

The 1998 agreement includes provisions under which, according to the officials, some activity governed by existing contracts can continue.  However, no new projects will be undertaken under the agreement, officials said.

In explaining the new liability focus, the U.S. State and Energy departments have repeatedly cited guidelines that Group of Eight countries agreed on last year at a summit in Canada.

A third U.S.-Russian agreement, the Nuclear Cities Initiative agreement, will also be allowed to expire later this year unless the same liability questions are resolved in the text, the U.S. Energy Department announced last week (see GSN, July 23).

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North Korea:  Washington Wants Security Council Debate on Crisis

The United States will attempt to bring the North Korean nuclear crisis to the U.N. Security Council, Yonhap News Agency reported today (see GSN, July 28).

Washington has long sought to involve other countries in any resolution to the 10-month standoff on the Korean Peninsula.

“It’s U.S. policy and has been U.S. policy for some time that we believe that the Security Council should look at the situation with regard to North Korea,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday.  “We’ve talked to a lot of other people in New York about moving that forward, and we’ll continue to discuss it with the Security Council members,” he added (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring, July 29).

A top State Department official said that bringing the crisis to the Security Council would not conflict with U.S. efforts to engage Pyongyang in talks.

“I think it will be complementary,” said U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, adding that Security Council debate on the issue was “appropriate” (Associated Press, July 29).

Bolton said there has been no clear progress toward talks with Beijing, Pyongyang and Washington.

“I don’t think there is anything on a date one way or the other that I could really indicate,” he said (Agence France Presse/Yahoo!News, July 29).

A senior U.S. official said, however, that talks could be restarted by the middle of August, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported last week (Takao Hishinuma, Yomiuri Shimbun, July 23).

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Iran:  IAEA Teams Headed to Iran Next Month

The International Atomic Energy Agency will send two groups of experts to Iran next month, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, July 28).

The first team — composed of legal experts — will spend two days in Iran to explain the fine points of the Additional Protocol, which would allow for intrusive IAEA monitoring of Iran’s nuclear activities.  The IAEA and several Western governments have been pushing for Tehran to sign the protocol.

The second team will conduct standard inspections, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 28).

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Ukraine:  Officials Discuss Extending Disarmament Projects

U.S. and Ukrainian officials have recently concluded a meeting on the possible extension of disarmament projects conducted in Ukraine, according to Interfax (see GSN, July 28).

During a meeting in Kiev, U.S. Defense Department officials met with Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk and officials from the Ukrainian National Space Agency, according to the U.S. Embassy in Kiev.  During the meeting, the officials discussed a Ukrainian proposal to prolong the disarmament projects, which work to remove the remnants of the former Soviet strategic arsenal based in Ukraine.  The U.S. officials, who left Ukraine Friday, said a reply to the proposal would be given within three weeks, Interfax reported (Interfax, July 28, BBC Worldwide Monitoring, July 29).  

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Anthrax:  Antibiotic Treatment Might Need to Be Extended, Researchers Say

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found that people exposed to high levels of anthrax spores may need to take antibiotics for longer than the 60-day period now recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, July 28).

Those exposed to high levels of anthrax spores may need to take antibiotics for up to four months, according to a study published yesterday in the online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  The researchers came to their conclusion using a mathematical model they developed to determine the germination time for anthrax spores in the lungs and the time needed for antibiotics to eliminate them (Associated Press/Washington Post, July 29).

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United States I:  Representative Wants Defense Explanation on Disposal

U.S. Representative Mike Turner (R-Ohio) has appealed to the Defense Department to release records and contracts related to the Army’s plan for treating and disposing VX nerve agent, the Dayton Daily News reported Saturday (see GSN, July 16).

Turner and Representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asking for clarification on what level of “public acceptance” is required before the Army can move ahead with its chemical demilitarization plans.

The Army plans to neutralize VX agent in Indiana, then treat the runoff and release it into the sewer system in the Dayton area.  Defense officials have proposed a $9 million plan to reach out to the community and gain acceptance of the plan, according to the Daily News.

After asking Pentagon officials what level of public acceptance they are seeking, Turner received a May 15 letter from the Army saying that the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency would measure public opinion.  The Ohio EPA, however, said that it does not have the authority to measure public acceptance or gauge the safety of the program (Jim DeBrosse, Dayton Daily News, July 26). 

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United States II:  Utah Trial Begins for Man Accused of Falsifying Safety Reports

A worker at the Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah has gone on trial for allegedly falsifying air-monitoring test results, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Nov. 1, 2002).

David James Yarbrough has been charged with eight counts of making false statements to a U.S. agency, according to AP.  Yarbrough has been accused of falsely claiming last year that air-monitoring units at the depot were performing at passable levels while knowing that the data showed otherwise, AP reported.

Yarbrough’s attorney, Earl Xaiz, denied his client made any false statements.  Yarbrough made his own data sheets to gather as much information as possible on the units and accurately recorded the information he was given, Xaiz said (Associated Press, July 29).

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United States:  Army Describes Patriot Friendly Fire Difficulties

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — While the U.S. Army continues to withhold details on the causes of three friendly fire incidents involving Patriot missile batteries during the war in Iraq, an Army organization has produced a “lessons learned” briefing that points to known weaknesses in the Army’s ability to distinguish friendly aircraft from enemy aircraft and missiles.

Addressing two of the Patriot incidents, the briefing document — a PowerPoint presentation of “insights” drawn from fratricide incidents during Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom produced by the Army Center for Lessons Learned — says positive electronic means of identifying airborne objects have been demonstrated to have “low reliability.”

Jammed communications, aircraft transponders that cannot communicate with air-defense crews and some “atrophied” air-defense skills are identified as problems by the briefing, which urges using “procedural methods” of identification.

“Positive” methods of identification generally use electronic means, including radar, friend-or-foe identification transponders, computers and communications equipment, while “procedural” methods rely on tactics, techniques and procedures such as predesignating safe areas for friendly aircraft.

The briefing also urges strict adherence to procedures for identifying and targeting suspected enemy activity, as well as having “robust communications” and standardized battlefield identification systems.

The document further recommends the systems be operated manually and not put on automatic.

“Every effort must be made to avoid autonomous fire units,” it said.

The low reliability of the Patriot’s identification capability already was known, according to the briefing.

“Past exercises and tests run in SWA [Southwest Asia] indicate the percentage of aircraft that [are positively identified] remains too low.  There are too many points of failure,” it says. 

Philip Coyle, the former Department of Defense director of operational test and evaluation, said joint-service testing as far back as the early 1990s identified communications problems associated with air-defense systems when attempting to identify a friend or foe.

“This clearly was not a priority in the development of this equipment and should have been,” he said.

Lessons Learned

The Patriot system currently is the Army’s only operational ground-based theater air-defense system.

Designed originally for defense against enemy aircraft, the Pentagon has invested $3 billion since the 1991 Persian Gulf War to improve the Patriot’s ability to track and destroy ballistic missiles, according to a recent congressional study.

The briefing document was prepared by the Army center following Operation Iraqi Freedom to help quickly disseminate lessons learned from various friendly fire incidents.

It does not say explicitly what the causes were for the three incidents, which led to the deaths of two airmen.  The Army and the U.S. Central Command have been conducting investigations, and so far no reports have been released.

During the conflict, two coalition aircraft were believed shot down by the Patriot — a British Tornado fighter aircraft on March 24, killing two pilots, and a U.S. Navy F/A-18C Hornet fighter on April 2, killing the pilot.

The Tornado reportedly failed to re-enter Kuwaiti airspace from Iraq in a predetermined zone cleared for friendly aircraft and reportedly carried an identification beacon that could not communicate with the air-defense system.

The third incident involved a U.S. F-16 which was targeted by a Patriot system left by its crew to operate automatically so they could take cover, and the radar mistakenly identified the aircraft as a foe.

Questions About Equipment

Many of the briefing’s recommendations identify problems not necessarily specific to the Patriot, but more generally to difficulties created by the U.S. military’s increasing emphasis on consolidating multiple pieces of surveillance data to provide a more complete picture of the airspace, said Coyle.

“Basically, the problems stem from a lack of interoperability and from fusing together data from many different sensors in a complex battle space.  It’s a tough problem requiring interoperable equipment and sophisticated computer routines that can sort through what’s happening,” he said.

In an official report in 1995, Coyle wrote that problems in then-recent tests stemmed in part from different services and weapons systems using various message formats, standards, terminology and algorithms for correlating target-tracking information.

The briefing document says the previous tests and exercises showed identification transponders on aircraft became jammed because they were overloaded by electronic requests for their signal.

“Communications continue to be a choke point, and not all elements on the battlefield have continuous access to the datalink air picture,” the briefing says.

The briefing says better capabilities are needed to allow air-defense controllers to directly communicate with aircraft.

“More emphasis must be placed on designing the theater voice and data communication architecture,” it says.

The briefing also cites a weakness with Patriot operators.

“Over the past 12 years, Patriot Tactical Control Officers have been trained to focus primarily on TBMs [theater ballistic missiles], and some skills necessary to maintain situational awareness have atrophied.  Maintaining friendly and enemy SA [situational awareness] for all air tracks is critical,” it says.

The Army is reportedly stepping up development of a new identification system called Blue Force Tracking, as a result of the war, Federal Computer Week reported recently.

The Senate Armed Services Committee in a report earlier this year expressed concern that “longstanding” combat identification and friendly force tracking needs have not been pursued “in the most expeditious manner.”

“Recent military operations have further demonstrated the high risk of fratricide on the modern battlefield and re-emphasized the need for comprehensive, interoperable combat identification and blue force tracking architectures,” it said.

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Nuclear Waste:  U.S. to Delay Releasing Nuclear Waste Shipment Routes

The U.S. Energy Department has decided to withhold until 2006 information on how nuclear waste will be transported to a repository slated to be built at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the Las Vegas Sun reported yesterday (see GSN, July 21).

Energy is set to release a strategic plan in September on how spent nuclear fuel shipments to Yucca Mountain will be organized, acting Transportation Director Joe Williams said.  Decisions on waste shipments routes and methods, however, will be delayed, he said.

Energy is set to begin construction of the Yucca Mountain repository in 2007, with the first waste shipments to arrive in 2010 (Mary Manning, Las Vegas Sun, July 28).

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