U.S. State Department Reissues Worldwide Terror Alert

The U.S. State Department Friday released a “worldwide caution” alert warning of possible new al-Qaeda attacks that could involve biological or chemical weapons (see GSN, Sept. 12).

“We expect al-Qaeda will strive for new attacks that will be more devastating than the Sept. 11 attack, possibly involving nonconventional weapons such as chemical or biological agents,” the alert says.  “We also cannot rule out the potential for al-Qaeda to attempt a second catastrophic attack within the U.S.,” it says.

The alert repeats the State Department warning issued before the second-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and also warns of increased threats to maritime interests (U.S. State Department release, Sept. 26).

The purpose of the new alert is to remind Americans of the continuing threat of terrorist attacks past the Sept. 11 anniversary, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday, describing the alert as a “technical fix.”

“The same kind of threats, the same kind of caution needs to be exercised by American travelers, as it was around the period of Sept. 11.  So I think, basically, what we did is we reissued it without centering it on the September 11th date,” Boucher said.

Boucher also said that that the inclusion of threats to maritime interests in last week’s alert was not based on new information (U.S. State Department transcript, Sept. 29).

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U.S. Justice Department Opens Investigation Into Leak of CIA Official’s Identity

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — As White House officials denied involvement with exposing the identity of a CIA agent, the U.S. Justice Department indicated last night that it will investigate the case.  The agent is married to former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who traveled to Niger last year to investigate reports that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium there (see GSN, Sept. 29).

Justice’s decision to begin an investigation into the leak was reported in a memo sent to all White House employees from the White House Counsel’s Office.  Justice is expected to send the White House today a letter instructing White House staff to preserve all materials that may be relevant to the investigation, according to the memo, signed by Alberto Gonzales, counsel to President George W. Bush. 

“In the meantime, you must preserve all materials that might in any way be related to the department’s investigation,” the memo says.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that CIA Director George Tenet had requested that Justice investigate the leak allegations.  Tenet’s request was prompted by a July 14 column in the Chicago Sun-Times, in which Robert Novak identified Wilson’s wife by name and said she was a CIA “operative on weapons of mass destruction,” citing “two senior administration officials” as his sources.  Prior to Novak’s column, Wilson had published a column in the New York Times that described his trip to Niger, during which he determined it was unlikely that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium there.  Wilson’s column helped discredit a key piece of evidence offered by the Bush administration that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Novak denied yesterday on CNN’s Crossfire program that he had been contacted by the Bush administration about Wilson’s wife.

“Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this,” CNN.com quoted Novak as saying.  “There is no great crime here,” he said.

Top Democrats in the U.S. Senate yesterday wrote to both Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft calling for Justice to appoint a special counsel to oversee an investigation into the leak allegations to avoid “serious conflicts of interest.”  Under Justice regulations, a special counsel would be able to operate independently, would only be able to be removed for cause and the attorney general would have to report such an action to Congress if it were to occur.  

The letters were signed by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.); Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee; and Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“We believe it is imperative that this matter be investigated as quickly and thoroughly as possible,” the senators said in their letters.  “If, as has been reported, senior administration officials deliberately disclosed this confidential information, they should be prosecuted and, if found guilty, dismissed from their positions of public trust,” they said.

During a press conference yesterday, Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who first called for an FBI investigation into the leak allegations in July, put forward several possible names for a special counsel, including former Senators John Danforth (R-Mo.) and Sam Nunn (D-Ga.).

“It would seem to me that if we had a special counsel … the public could have confidence that this dastardly crime would be completely and thoroughly investigated,” Schumer said.

In addition, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, announced yesterday the he planned to reintroduce the Independent Counsel Reform Act “to reassure a skeptical public that criminal investigations of those at the highest levels of power will be insulated from the political influence of the very people under suspicion.” 

White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday, however, rejected calls for the appointment of a special counsel, saying Justice was the appropriate agency to conduct an investigation into the leak allegations.

“There are a lot of career professionals at the Department of Justice that address matters like this.  I have made it clear that they’re the ones, that if something like this happened, should look into it,” McClellan said during a White House press briefing.

In the House of Representatives, Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) yesterday called on House Government Reform Committee Chairman Representative Tom Davis (R-Va.) to conduct hearings on the leak allegations.

“Congressional oversight of the Wilson case is imperative,” Waxman, the senior committee Democrat, wrote in his letter.  “As the primary investigative committee in the House of Representatives, it is the committee’s responsibility to ensure that the public receives a full accounting of what happened in the Wilson matter,” he wrote.

Davis’ office did not return calls by Global Security Newswire for comment on whether the committee would approve Waxman’s request.

Schumer yesterday aggressively criticized the White House over its handling of the leak allegations, calling the release of Wilson’s wife’s identity “one of the worst things that has been done in Washington in a very, very long time.”

While saying that he believed Bush was not involved in the leak, Schumer criticized the president for so far failing to order an internal White House investigation into the matter.  McClellan indicated yesterday that the White House has not yet considered such action, reiterating the administration’s position that Justice was the appropriate agency to investigate the leak.

“This sort of ‘noblesse oblige’ attitude, ‘business-as-usual,’ ‘we don’t really think this is a big deal’ is almost as infuriating as what happened, because it means it can happen again and again and again,” Schumer told reporters yesterday.  “And, in fact, the fact that the White House seems to put such little importance in this can only lead to one conclusion, and that is that they’re worried that there may have been high-up people in the White House involved,” he said.

[EDITOR'S NOTE:  Sam Nunn is co-chairman and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group.]

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U.S., British Intelligence Agencies Offered Different Assessments Prior to War with Iraq

As the United States and United Kingdom prepared to go to war with Iraq earlier this year, the two countries’ intelligence services differed on several claims offered by each country as justifications for war, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Sept. 29).

According to documents published by British investigators, in September 2002 British intelligence services said there was inconclusive evidence that Iraq’s attempts to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes were an indication of efforts to relaunch a nuclear weapons program, according to the Post.  The CIA, however, said in an October National Intelligence Estimate that the tube purchases did reflect intent to relaunch a nuclear weapons program.

Also in September 2002, as the United Kingdom was preparing a dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, U.S. intelligence officials questioned intelligence used to claim that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium in Africa and that Iraq could conduct biological and chemical weapons attacks within 45 minutes, the Post reported.

The CIA never made a similar 45-minute claim in its own assessments of Iraq’s WMD capabilities because it had “no separate reporting,” a senior Bush administration official said, adding that the agency found the claim “interesting and plausible.”

The British documents, which have come out of three British government inquiries into prewar intelligence on Iraq, also indicate that Washington and London agreed that there was no evidence prior to the war that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would provide biological and chemical weapons to terrorists, the Post reported.  The two countries also agreed, according to documents, that Hussein would only attempt such a transfer if his regime was about to collapse (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Sept. 30).

House Intelligence Panel Democrat Challenges “New Information” Claim

Meanwhile, Representative Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, yesterday challenged recent claims made by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that the United States had new information to support claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

“We don’t see the support for that,” Harman said.

“As we moved to war, did the claims the policy-makers made, were those claims supported by the intelligence?” Harman said.  “My conclusion is no,” she said.

In a letter sent last week to CIA Director George Tenet, Harman and committee Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.) outlined their assessment of the intelligence used to prepare the October 2002 NIE on Iraq, according to the Post.  In their letter, Harman and Goss charged that most of the intelligence used was outdated, according to the Post. 

The letter to Tenet was intended to draw a response as to why the NIE made assertions that were apparently not supported by available evidence, Harman said.

“We want an explanation from him,” she said (Dana Priest, Washington Post, Sept. 30).

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Pyongyang Casts Doubt on New Nuclear Talks

North Korea warned today that it is continuing to develop its nuclear weapons and suggested it would not participate in future talks on resolving the Korean Peninsula’s nuclear crisis.  The pronouncement came as senior U.S., South Korean and Japanese officials met in Tokyo to coordinate their strategy (see GSN, Sept. 29).

“We are taking concrete measures to keep and further strengthen our nuclear deterrent force as self-defense aimed at preventing a nuclear pre-emptive strike by the U.S. and guarantee peace and security on the Korean Peninsula,” a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

“We have lost interest in or expectations for talks when it has been proved that the U.S. has no willingness to build peaceful coexistence with us but spares no efforts to use the six-way talks to completely disarm us,” he continued.

In Tokyo, the policy coordination talks were led by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck and their Japanese counterpart, Mitoji Yabunaka (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 29).

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ElBaradei Demands Full Access to Iranian Nuclear Sites

With Iran promising to adhere only to the letter of its nuclear treaty obligations, the top international nuclear inspector cautioned yesterday that he would need more access than Tehran is now offering if he is to confirm the lack of a nuclear weapons program in Iran (see GSN, Sept. 29).

International Atomic Energy Agency officials are scheduled to begin a visit to Iran Thursday, but Iranian officials said yesterday that the inspectors would only be allowed to visit previously declared nuclear sites.

However, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said today that the agency would need access to undeclared sites as well.

“If we cannot have full cooperation, full disclosure, unfortunately I’ll have to say that I am not able to verify the Iranian statements (that their nuclear program is purely peaceful),” ElBaradei said (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, Sept. 30).

If ElBaradei does not find Iran to be fully cooperative, then the IAEA Board of Governors would certainly send the matter to the U.N. Security Council, according to U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

“If the International Atomic Energy Agency director either reports noncompliance or can’t confirm that they have not diverted nuclear material for nonpeaceful purposes, then that would constitute evidence of noncompliance and so the board, the IAEA board, would be obligated to report noncompliance to the Security Council,” Boucher said during yesterday’s State Department briefing. 

He did not say what action the United States would prefer if the council addresses the issue (U.S. State Department release, Sept. 29).

Iran yesterday restated that it is willing to provide more transparency to the IAEA by adopting the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement, but only if the United States accepts Iran’s nuclear energy activities as legitimate.

“In principle, we don’t have any problem with that because we don’t have anything to hide,” Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said in a speech yesterday at Columbia University in New York.  “We want to be transparent.  But the question is if that Additional Protocol is enough for us or not.  If it is enough, that means that after signing (the) Additional Protocol, we can go ahead and continue our efforts to use nuclear energy, nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including enriching uranium for producing fuel needed in our power plants,” he said.

“We hear voices from Washington that say [the] Additional Protocol is not enough,” he added, “so the question in Iran is, if it is not enough, why we should sign it?” (Kerry Sheridan, VOA News, Sept. 30).

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Efforts to Close Russian Plutonium Reactors Move Forward

Two U.S. companies have signed preliminary design contracts for building and refurbishing fossil-fuel power plants in Siberia that would allow Russia to shut down plutonium-producing nuclear reactors in Seversk and Zheleznogorsk, the U.S. Energy Department announced yesterday (see GSN, July 18).

The contracts, signed with the Russian construction firm Rosatomstroi, advanced a U.S.-Russian effort to shut down the nuclear reactors, which produce weapon-grade plutonium but also provide heat and power to the surrounding communities.

“Our two countries have made good progress towards nonproliferation goals, and we look forward to continuing our good work and progress through successful ventures like this,” U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement yesterday.

The two U.S. firms, Washington Group International and Raytheon Technical Services, are scheduled to begin the work in fiscal 2004.  The companies were originally selected for the work in May, when Abraham announced $466 million in U.S. funding for the project (see GSN, May 28; U.S. Energy Department release, Sept. 29).

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Russian ICBM Silo Scheduled for Destruction Today

The last SS-18 ICBM silo of a Russian missile regiment based near Kartaly in the Chelyabinsk region is scheduled to be destroyed today, according to Interfax (see GSN, July 8).  The silo will be the 12th destroyed this year (Interfax/BBC Monitoring, Sept. 30).

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U.S. Official Witnesses Ukrainian Bomber Destruction

U.S. Brig. Gen. Thomas Kuenning, director of the U.S. Defense Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program, arrived in Ukraine today to oversee the destruction of a Tu-22M Backfire bomber, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, July 29).

The bomber was the last of 12 Tu-22Ms based in the city of Poltava to be destroyed, the U.S. Embassy in Kiev said.  An additional 19 Tu-22Ms based in the southern city of Mykolaiv and 225 air-to-surface missiles housed at the Ozernoye air base are scheduled to be destroyed by July 2004, AP reported.  The Pentagon is awaiting Ukrainian permission to begin assisting the destruction of an additional 20 Tu-22Ms and 25 missiles (Associated Press, Sept. 30).

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FBI Official Regrets Ashcroft’s Tagging of Hatfill as “Person of Interest”

FBI Assistant Director Michael Mason said yesterday that he regretted that former U.S. Army biologist Steven Hatfill was publicly identified by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft as a “person of interest” in the FBI’s investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks (see GSN, Sept. 18).

Mason, who took control of the bureau’s Washington field office this month, said he was disappointed that the anthrax investigation had been “beset by leaks” about the FBI’s interest in Hatfill.  Mason also said that he objected to the person-of-interest label in any investigation and that he instead prefers to identify people only when they are formal suspects.

Hatfill’s attorney Tom Connolly yesterday praised Mason’s remarks.

“His comments are at least an acknowledgement of the obvious:  that the FBI’s torrents of leaks and the attorney general’s unprecedented use of the term ‘person of interest’ was wrong,” Connolly said (Carol Leonnig, Washington Post, Sept. 30).

Mason also said yesterday that there was a good chance the person who conducted the anthrax attacks might have desired only to raise alarms about the potential for bioterrorism, not to hurt anyone, according to Reuters.

“I suppose the leading thought might be the person didn’t intend to cause harm, and did,” he said (Reuters/New York Post, Sept. 30).

In addition, Mason said yesterday that the FBI has been unsuccessful in trying to recreate the process used to create the anthrax spores used in the attacks, according to USA Today.

The FBI’s attempts at “reverse engineering” the process, however, did help “narrow” some aspects of the investigation and has led the bureau to believe that the culprit had special knowledge, Mason said.

“We would not have that if reverse engineering had completely failed to provide us with any information or valuable leads,” Mason said (Toni Locy, USA Today, Sept. 30).

Mason also suggested yesterday that the FBI might never solve the anthrax case, according to the Washington Post.

“Whether or not we bring it to a successful resolution, it has been a remarkable investigation,” Mason said, praising investigators (Leonnig, Washington Post).

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New Botox Findings Could Lead to New Treatments

University of Washington researchers announced yesterday that they have discovered how botulinum toxin enters human cells — a finding that could help scientists develop new treatments against the biological weapons agent, according Reuters (see GSN, Sept. 9).

Botulinum toxin kills by paralyzing the victim’s diaphragm, resulting in suffocation.  The University of Wisconsin researchers said they have identified the receptors used by the toxin to enter nerve cells. 

“Our study is the first to identify a receptor for one of the botulinum neurotoxins and establish its entry route,” Min Dong, a university graduate student who worked on the study, said in a statement published in the Journal of Cell Biology (Reuters, Sept. 29).

The researchers have also developed a possible botulinum toxin treatment, which has been found to be effective in mice, according to CBC News.  Pieces of the protein containing the toxin’s binding site were able to neutralize as much as 80 percent of one type of toxin, the researchers said.  They added that work is still being conducted to identify receptors for other toxin types (CBC News, Sept. 29).

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MTCR Members Amend Missile Nonproliferation Guidelines; Include “Catch-All” Provisions

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Members of the Missile Technology Control Regime agreed last week to strengthen the regime by easing the way for participating nations to control the export of equipment and technologies that could be used to develop ballistic missiles (see GSN, Oct. 28, 2002).

During a Sept. 19-26 meeting in Buenos Aires, MTCR members agreed to add “catch-all” provisions to the regime’s guidelines, according to a U.S. State Department press release.  Such provisions would provide regime members with a legal basis to restrict exports of items not specifically identified on the MTCR annex or national control lists when such items are destined for missile programs, the release said.  The catch-all provisions will require an export license for any trade with an organization involved in an MTCR Category 1 missile program, such as an Iranian facility involved in the production of a Shahab 3 missile, according to Richard Speier, a former U.S. Defense Department official who helped to negotiate the MTCR.

The MTCR seeks to restrict the export of critical missile technologies by establishing common export controls among the regime’s 33 members.  Under the MTCR, the export of missile systems with a range of more than 300 kilometers and capable of carrying a payload of more than 500 kilograms are subject to a strong presumption of denial. 

Regime members agreed during this year’s plenary meeting to make the inclusion of catch-all provisions into national export control regulations a regime-wide requirement, a State Department official told Global Security Newswire today.  Already, 30 of the regime’s 33 members have such provisions in place, the official said.

Speier said it is “critically important” that the catch-all provision requirement has been made regime-wide.  As the MTCR has grown in effectiveness, missile proliferators have become forced to shift their focus away from selling complete missile systems and missile production technologies, both of which are controlled by the regime, to acquiring equipment designed for other purposes but that could be used to produce missile-related items, he said.

Last year, members of the Australia Group, an informal network of 33 countries that coordinates export controls on chemical and biological weapons technology, agreed to include a catch-all provision to the group’s guidelines (see GSN, June 21, 2002).

During the Buenos Aries meeting, MTCR members also agreed to restrict “intangible” technology transfers, such as sending missile blueprints by e-mail or fax, the State Department official said.  Over the past decade, there has been increased recognition of the proliferation threat posed by intangible technology transfers, the official said, adding that many regime members have already developed national export control regulations to cover such transfers.

Controls over intangible technology transfers were included in the original MTCR, but some members of the British Commonwealth had difficulties implementing them, Speier said.  The regime members included in the Commonwealth are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Intangible technology transfer controls have also been made an MTCR-wide requirement, the State Department official said.

Last week, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security announced that U.S. export control regulations had been amended to implement decisions made at last year’s MTCR plenary meeting in Warsaw (see GSN, Sept. 23).

According to the State Department release, MTCR members this year also “actively considered” increasing the membership of the regime based on applications received from several countries.  While declining to name specific countries, Speier said that in the early 1990s, the MTCR agreed to cover all members of NATO, the European Community and the European Space Agency.  Since then, both the alliance and the EC, now known as the European Union, have expanded to include a number of East European and Baltic states.

The United States supports the “deliberate, prudent expansion” of the regime, the State Department official said.

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Missile Defense Blimp Closer to Taking Flight

U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin received a $40 million contract yesterday to design a 500-foot-long, unpiloted, radar-carrying blimp for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (see GSN, April 21).

The contractor’s Maritime Systems and Sensors division in Akron, Ohio, made the winning bid in a competition with two other firms to build an airship that would be able to fly for months at a time to detect and track missile launches, aircraft, ships at sea and other objects.

Measuring 500 feet long and 160 feet in diameter, the helium-filled blimp would be 25 times larger in volume than the Goodyear blimp (Associated Press, Sept. 30).  The solar-powered dirigible would be able to fly at 65,000 feet where low turbulence would allow it to loiter over areas of concern for months at a time.

Company officials said airships had several advantages over satellite-based radars, including a lower operating altitude, lower launch costs and the ability to modify the equipment deployed on the craft.

“Once a satellite is up, it’s up,” said Al Barber, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and general manager in Akron.

Following the $40 million design phase, the MDA is expected to decide next summer whether to order the construction of a prototype airship, now estimated to cost $50 million, according to the Akron Beacon Journal.  If ordered, the prototype could fly in 2006 and the agency would then consider whether to begin production (John Russell, Akron Beacon Journal, Sept. 30).

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