U.S. Homeland Security Department Revises Terrorism Alert System

The U.S. Homeland Security Department has created new, tougher guidelines for raising the color-coded terrorism alert level, the New York Times reported Saturday (see GSN, Aug. 19).

The alert level, which currently stands at yellow or “elevated” risk, will now only be raised if there is credible and detailed intelligence of an imminent terrorist attack within the United States, officials said.  The new guidelines represent a belief that the United States is now better prepared to respond to terrorism threats, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Friday.

“The fact is that our level of security at yellow today is better than it was a year ago, and our level of security at yellow will be better a year from now.  So the threshold to go from yellow to orange will be higher.  That does make a difference,” Ridge said.

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who has often criticized the terrorism alert system, welcomed the new guidelines, according to the Times.

“Any changes DHS makes to its Crayola-colored threat system should be an improvement over the current one,” Lautenberg said.  “The system has caused financial hardships, fear, panic and confusion among Americans,” he said (Philip Shenon, New York Times, Sept. 13).

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Cheney Defends Iraqi WMD Allegations

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday strongly defended White House charges that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime maintained programs to develop weapons of mass destruction prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (see GSN, Sept. 12).

“The whole notion that somehow there’s nothing to the notion that Saddam Hussein had WMD or had developed WMD, it just strikes me as fallacious.  It’s not valid,” Cheney said on NBC’s Meet the Press.  “Now, nobody drove into Baghdad and had somebody say, ‘Hey, there’s the building over there where all of our WMDs stored’ — but that’s not the way the system worked,” he said.

Acknowledging that he misspoke during an earlier Meet the Press appearance when he had said that Iraq had reconstituted nuclear weapons, Cheney yesterday offered a strong defense of the disputed White House claims that Iraq had maintained a nuclear weapons program.  As proof, Cheney cited Iraq’s cadre of trained scientists, evidence that Iraq possessed usable nuclear weapons designs, and a stockpile of 500 tons of uranium stored at the Tuwaitha complex, the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program.

In addition, Cheney also referred to former Iraqi scientist Mahdi Shurkur Obeidi, who has provided the United States with components and designs for a centrifuge used to enrich uranium.  “That’s physical evidence that we have got in hand today,” Cheney said.

“To suggest that there is no evidence there that he [Hussein] had aspirations to acquire a nuclear weapon, I don’t think is valid,” Cheney said.

The U.S. allegations that Iraq had maintained an active nuclear weapons program, as well as some of the Bush administration’s pieces of evidence of such a program, have been heavily disputed, however, according to reports.  Last week, the Associated Press reported that International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei had said in a confidential report that Iraq’s nuclear weapons program would not have been able to support active development of such weapons (see GSN, Sept. 9).

“In the areas of uranium acquisition, concentration and centrifuge enrichment, extensive field investigation and document analysis revealed no evidence that Iraq had resumed such activities,” AP quoted the report as saying.  “No indication of post-1991 weaponization activities was uncovered in Iraq,” it said.

Today, the Financial Times reported that many former Iraqi nuclear scientists have also continued to deny that their country possessed a nuclear weapons program prior to the war.

“It was surprising to hear these things from the Americans that we could build a nuclear bomb in six months, while meanwhile we were sitting here scrounging for a screwdriver,” the Times quoted a scientist who formerly headed a department in Bomb Design Group Four as saying.

In addition, AP reported in July that Obeidi — the same Iraqi scientist cited yesterday by Cheney — had also told the CIA that Iraq had not resurrected its nuclear weapons program since 1991 (see GSN, July 18).

Cheney also defended yesterday a heavily disputed claim made prior to the war by several senior White House officials, including President George W. Bush himself, that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Africa.  Cheney said a recent British inquiry had “revalidated” the claim.

In July, the White House acknowledged that the claim should not have been included into Bush’s State of the Union address because evidence used to support it — documents that purported to show an attempted Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger — had been determined by the IAEA to have been fraudulent (see GSN, July 30).  Last week, however, a British parliamentary committee investigating whether British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office had exaggerated prewar intelligence on Iraq said that British intelligence services were justified in continuing to support the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger (see GSN, Sept. 12).

Biological, Chemical Weapons

In his remarks yesterday, Cheney also reiterated allegations that Iraq had maintained biological and chemical weapons programs prior to the war.  Two mobile trailers recovered by U.S. forces in Iraq could have been used to “produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack,” Cheney said.

The New York Times reported last month, however, that engineering experts from the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Intelligence Agency believed that the trailers had been intended to produce hydrogen for weather balloons, as Iraqi scientists had previously claimed (see GSN, Aug. 11). 

With regard to chemical weapons, Cheney said he suspected that the Hussein regime had hidden such weapons within Iraq’s civilian infrastructure.  “That’s not an unusual place to put it,” he said.

Cheney also reiterated the White House position that Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda were connected, saying that Baghdad had provided al-Qaeda operatives with training in biological and chemical weapons.

Cheney said that he was sure that Iraq had WMD capabilities prior to the war.

“There is no doubt in my mind … [that] Saddam Hussein had these capabilities,” Cheney said.  “This wasn’t an idea cooked up overnight by a handful of people either in the administration or the CIA,” he said.

Cheney Denies Pressuring U.S. Analysts

Cheney yesterday also denied reports that he had pressured CIA analysts to create analyses that supported White House positions.  In June, the Washington Post quoted a senior CIA official as saying that the trips made by Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, to the agency’s headquarters “sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here” (see GSN, June 5).

Cheney acknowledged that he had asked “a hell of a lot of questions” of CIA analysts examining Iraqi WMD efforts, adding, “That’s my job.”  He denied, however, that his questions were an attempt to pressure analysts into creating certain assessments.

“I’m not willing at all at this point to buy the proposition that somehow Saddam Hussein was innocent and he had no WMD and some guy out at the CIA, because I called him, cooked up a report saying he did,” Cheney said.  “That’s crazy.  That makes no sense.  It bears no resemblance to reality whatsoever,” he added.

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North Korea Criticizes International WMD Cargo Interdiction Exercise

North Korea yesterday criticized a naval interdiction training exercise held over the weekend off the Australian coast to practice a U.S.-led effort to block shipments of WMD-related cargo (see GSN, Sept. 12).

“Such moves of the United States are blatant military provocations to North Korea and they may push U.S. relations to an explosive phase,” the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.

Four of the 11 countries involved in the Proliferation Security Initiative — Australia, France, Japan and the United States — took part in the “Pacific Protector” exercise.  The exercise scenario involved the purusuit and capture of a U.S. ship acting as a freighter loaded with chemical weapons (Richard Spencer, London Telegraph, Sept. 15).

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Iran Backpedals, Promises Continuing IAEA Cooperation

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

VIENNA — Under fire over allegations of clandestine nuclear weapon development, Iran appeared this morning to soften its line on cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, while the United States sought to place the Iranian question in the context of concerns over North Korea’s nuclear programs.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency General Conference opened a weeklong meeting here today, Iranian Vice President for Atomic Energy Gholamreza Aghazadeh told the assembled delegates that Iran’s “cooperation with the agency within the framework of comprehensive safeguards shall continue as before” and that talks will continue on Iran’s signature of the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement.

Three days ago, Iran walked out of an IAEA Board of Governors meeting as the board assigned it an Oct. 31 deadline for increasing cooperation (see GSN, Sep. 12).

Minutes before the walkout, Iranian envoy Ali Akbar Salehi vowed Tehran would conduct a “deep review” of its cooperation with the agency — a relationship that includes regular IAEA activity in Iran and talks on the Additional Protocol, which would allow for more intrusive IAEA monitoring.

Despite Iran’s more moderate statement today, there are indications that Tehran has not finalized its policy on how to handle IAEA demands for greater transparency of its nuclear ambitions.  News agencies have reported that hard-line Iranian press commentators have called for Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. 

Salehi himself raised this possibility Wednesday in an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel, in which he discussed possible Iranian responses to the then-proposed IAEA deadline.

“We could at first limit our cooperation with the IAEA to a minimum, to that which we have committed ourselves. … We could also put a stop to cooperation.  And as a last measure, I cannot rule out we could withdraw from the NPT,” he said.

Yesterday, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tehran was still studying its options.

“The nature of our cooperation with the IAEA is under consideration.  The relevant authorities are discussing that and our decision will be made public in the future,” Hamid Reza Asefi said, as reported by Agence France-Presse.

Top U.S. Official Weighs In

The United States has led the way in voicing concerns that Iran could be seeking to develop a nuclear weapon under the cover of technical cooperation with the IAEA.  Leading the U.S. delegation to this week’s general conference, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham today expressed caution about Iran’s latest vow to cooperate, as he expressed concern that Iran is seeking “capabilities that, obviously, can be used for evil purposes … nuclear weapons.”

“This is pretty simple.  I mean, either you’re pursuing a program that is a peaceful-use program, and you’ve got nothing to hide, or you’re not,” Abraham told reporters this afternoon.  In the latter case, he said, contradictions between IAEA findings and Iranian claims about its nuclear program become “understandable.”

“Time will tell, obviously,” Abraham said of Iran’s statement this morning, nevertheless calling the statement “a more hopeful comment.”

The energy secretary said in a plenary speech earlier today that countries “must deal immediately and effectively with any state seeking to exploit the treaty to its own advantage.”

Abraham said the case of North Korea, which ejected IAEA inspectors from its facilities in December, “send[s] a worrisome message to other would-be proliferants.”

“That message,” he said, “asserts that a state can be a member of the NPT, enjoy its benefits and still put in place the assets it needs to break out of the treaty and pronounce itself a nuclear weapon state.  This is the wrong message, and we must learn from this chain of events and not allow it to happen again.”

The board’s resolution Friday, said Abraham, “makes clear that the D.P.R.K. precedent is unacceptable and that the nonproliferation regime can withstand serious challenges when member states are prepared to take firm and necessary action.”

Aghazadeh said today that Iran supports strengthening the global IAEA nuclear safeguards regime for “strategic” reasons, mentioning Israeli nuclear weapons repeatedly as a prime Iranian concern.  Keeping Iran’s nuclear energy program under IAEA safeguards, the vice president said, is in part intended to spur movement toward a Middle East nuclear weapon-free zone.

Despite indicating that Iran will not turn its back on the safeguards regime over last week’s action, Aghazadeh took up this morning where Salehi left off Friday, sharply criticizing the United States in particular and the Board of Governors in general for the process that led to the U.S.-backed resolution to set the Oct. 31 deadline.

In characterizing last week’s proceedings, Aghazadeh spoke of “false attribution [of positions] to the Secretariat,” “arm-twisting in many capitals” and “stonewalling” of Nonaligned Movement attempts to soften the board’s resolution and achieve consensus.

“This is unilateralism at its worst — that is to say, extreme unilateralism posed under a multilateralist cloak.  We believe there is more to this resolution than meets the eye at the first glance.  There is an agenda behind it that is conceived in escalating tension and chaos to divert attention from serious issues that deal with partisan politics in the United States,” he said.

Nevertheless, said Aghazadeh, “We will study the resolution carefully and will respond to it officially in a few days.”

Asked about the charge of unilateralism, Abraham said, “The actions that were taken last week were not unilateral.  They were consensus actions taken by this organization.”  Technically, the board’s resolution Friday was not passed by consensus but simply approved without a vote.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei called it “essential and urgent that all outstanding issues [with Iran] — particularly those involving high-enriched uranium — be brought to closure as soon as possible,” adding that “this is in the interests of both Iran and the international community.”

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, in a message delivered today by Undersecretary General for Disarmament Affairs Nobuyasu Abe, praised the IAEA’s “continuing efforts to strengthen international safeguards — in particular, to promote conclusion of Additional Protocols by Iran and other states and to encourage other countries to conclude safeguards activities in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

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U.S. Senators Seek to Stop Nuclear Weapons Research Funding

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) are set to offer an amendment today to the fiscal 2004 energy and water appropriations bill that would eliminate the Bush administration’s request for funding for the research and development of new nuclear weapons.

The amendment would cut the entire $21 million requested by the Bush administration for the research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons and the Robust Earth Nuclear Penetrator, Feinstein spokesman Scott Gerber told Global Security Newswire today (see GSN, Aug. 14).  The amendment would also prohibit spending for reducing the time needed to prepare the Nevada Test Site for resumed nuclear testing (see GSN, Sept. 3), and for developing a new plutonium “pit” production facility, which would produce new triggers for nuclear weapons, Gerber said (see GSN, June 3).

In July, the House of Representatives approved its version of the energy appropriations bill, which contained similar funding reductions as Feinstein and Kennedy’s amendment (see GSN, July 16).  The House version of the bill cut all $6 million requested by the Bush administration for the development of low-yield weapons and reduced the White House’s $15 million request for the Robust Earth Nuclear Penetrator to $5 million.  In addition, the House also eliminated the Bush administration’s $24 million request to shorten the time needed to prepare the Nevada Test Site for new testing and reduced the Bush administration’s request for a new pit production facility from $22.8 million to $10 million.

Feinstein is “hopeful” that the amendment, which is expected to be cosponsored by Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Ron Wyden (R-Ore.), will pass, Gerber said.  Feinstein believes that it is “important to not open the nuclear door” through the development of new nuclear weapons systems, he said.

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Pentagon Considering Minuteman 3 ICBM Successor

The U.S. Defense Department is considering the development of a new land-based ICBM to replace the current Minuteman 3, Jane’s Defense Weekly reported this week (see GSN, Sept. 10).

Last month, the Pentagon issued a “request for information” for concepts for a planned replacement of the Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile, according to Jane’s.  The Pentagon has begun examining replacements for the Minuteman starting in 2018 because many of the current missiles are aging, according to Col. Rick Patenaude, chief of Deterrence and Strike in the requirements division of the U.S. Air Force Space Command.  The service has determined that another service-life extension of the Minuteman 3 would be difficult and not cost-effective, Patenaude said. 

The study also includes an examination as to whether a single missile or family of missiles could be used to conduct both nuclear and conventional strikes, according to Jane’s (see GSN, Feb. 24).

In addition, the Navy has released a request for information on a new submarine-launched intermediate-range ballistic missile, Jane’s reported.  The request specifically discusses the possibility that a single missile could be used to perform both nuclear and conventional strikes (Andrew Koch, Jane’s Defense Weekly, Sept. 17).

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North Korea Willing to Resume Six-Nation Talks

North Korea has agreed to participate in another round of six-nation talks in November to discuss the Korean peninsula’s nuclear crisis, Japan’s Kyodo News agency reported Friday (see GSN, Sept. 12).

Citing diplomatic sources in Moscow, the news service said North Korean officials had notified Russia and other parties to the multilateral talks that first met last month (see GSN, Sept. 2).  Officials were still working to set the exact date of the next round which would likely included North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States (Korea Times, Sept. 14).

Meanwhile, China has deployed 150,000 troops along its border with North Korea in the wake of the August talks, where North Korea reportedly professed to have nuclear weapons and threatened to demonstrate one, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday.

Large troop movements, new military barracks, and air force activity have all been seen along the 1,400-kilometer border, sources said.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry source said the buildup was intended to deter North Korean nuclear ambitions and to encourage Pyongyang to continue negotiations, the Sing Tao Daily reported (BBC Monitoring, Sept. 15).

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U.S. Awards More Than $26 Million for Biodefense Training

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department Friday awarded more than $26 million in grants to medical facilities and universities in 23 states to help improve biological defense training and education (see GSN, June 17).

The department’s Bioterrorism Training and Curriculum Development Program has awarded more than $22 million to help provide bioterrorism-related continuing education for health care workers.  The program has also provided more than $4 million to develop new emergency preparedness curricula in medical schools.

“Our health care professionals need to be prepared for the special demands that a bioterrorism attack could make on them and on our health care system,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said in a press statement.  “This new program is an important part of our broader efforts to prepare our public health system, develop effective medical countermeasures and stand ready to respond if bioterrorism should strike,” he said (U.S. Health and Human Services Department release, Sept. 12).

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Sao Tome and Principe Ratifies Chemical Weapons Convention

Sao Tome and Principe last week submitted its instruments of accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention (see GSN, June 3).  The small African island country will become the 154th party to the treaty when its accession takes effect Oct. 9 (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons release, Sept. 12).

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Japan Could Strike First to Prevent North Korean Missile Attack

Japan would feel justified attacking North Korea pre-emptively if it detected an imminent missile attack, Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in an interview reported by the London Independent today (see GSN, Sept. 10).

“The Japanese constitution permits my position.  Attacking North Korea after a missile attack on Japan is too late.  If North Korea orders its military to send a missile to attack Japan and the missile is raised to vertical in preparation for launch, then Japan will assume that an attack has begun and has the right to attack that particular missile launch site.  What else can the missile be used for but to attack us?” he said.

Ishiba has tested Japanese limits on discussing its defense options, according to the Independent, in part by publicly questioning whether Japan should change its prohibition on having offensive military capabilities (David McNeill, London Independent, Sept. 15).

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U.S. Food and Drug Administration Calls for New Radiation Treatments

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Friday called for the private development of new treatments to counter exposure to radioactive elements using two new drugs (see GSN, May 19).

The FDA has determined that pentetate calcium trisodium (Ca-DTPA) and pentetate zinc trisodium (Zn-DTPA) help eliminate plutonium, americium and curium from the human body, according to an agency press release.  The FDA is now calling for drug producers to submit marketing applications for treatments using Ca-DTPA and Zn-DTPA because there are currently no such products.

“One of FDA’s most urgent new challenges is to protect Americans from heightened threats of terrorism,” FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan said.  “We are doing all we can to help product developers provide safe and effective countermeasures for biological, chemical, and radiological attacks,” he said (U.S. Food and Drug Administration release, Sept. 12).

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