U.S. Response I:  House Approves Funds to Combat Bioterrorism

The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday approved legislation 418-2 to spend more than $2.5 billion to fight biological terrorism (see GSN, Dec. 11).

The bill includes:

*         More than $1 billion for states and health care facilities to improve their response capabilities and train personnel;

*         $450 million for upgrades to facilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (see GSN, Dec. 12);

*         $1 billion for expansion of vaccine and medicine stockpiles;

*         $100 million to develop an emergency response plan for drinking water contamination;

*         A requirement that laboratories register in a national database if they possess one of the 36 most deadly biological agents (Associated Press/SunSpot.net, Dec. 13);

*         A provision to supply state and local health authorities with stockpiles of potassium iodide, a drug used to decrease the negative effects of radiation exposure (see GSN, Dec. 11);

*         Expansion of Energy Department programs to research rapid detection of bioterrorism agents;

*         Government authority to stop food deliveries suspected of contamination; and

*         A requirement for food processors and distributors to keep records of the source and distribution of food.

The bill does not include:

*         Liability protection for vaccine producers, although it allows the White House to negotiate liability protection with individual companies.  The Biotechnology Industry Organization has said liability protection would encourage companies to pursue vaccine research and production;

*         Assurances that the U.S. government would pay for cleanup costs if for-profit hospitals suffer contamination from a terrorist attack.  Some legislators had argued that for-profit hospitals should buy insurance like other for-profit businesses; and

*         A waiver from antitrust laws for pharmaceutical companies that wanted to work together to produce vaccines and medicine to counter potential bioterrorism agents.

The U.S. Senate has been working on a similar bill that would cost $3.2 billion, but action on the bill in the Senate has been stalled.  There are some similarities between the two bills. Both bills allow President George W. Bush to negotiate liability protection for vaccine makers. Differences remain, however, such as a Senate provision to waive antitrust laws to allow pharmaceutical companies to cooperate.  If the Senate passes its version, the House and Senate would have to reach a compromise (Jill Carroll, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 13).

The funds from both the Senate and House bills would come from the $20 billion in anti-terrorism spending that Congress has agreed to spend (Associated Press, Dec. 13).

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U.S. Response II:  House-Senate Conference Authorizes $343.3 Billion for Defense

U.S. House and Senate leaders yesterday authorized $343.3 billion for defense spending in fiscal 2002, matching President George W. Bush’s request.  The House-Senate conference on the defense authorization bill allotted $15 billion for homeland defense, including programs to defend against terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile attack.  The House and Senate are both expected to vote on the conference bill “any day now,” according to a House Armed Services Committee spokesman today.

The committee authorized $7 billion for programs in the Defense and Energy departments to combat terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.  The bill also included up to $8.3 billion for developing missile defenses and allowed the president flexibility to use $1.3 billion of those resources for anti-terrorism efforts.

“This conference report provides the largest single-year increase to defense spending since the early 1980s,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Bob Stump (R-Ariz.) yesterday (Stump statement, Dec. 12).

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U.S. Response I:  Pentagon Official Calls Homeland Defense First Priority

By David Ruppe

Global Security Newswire

A senior Pentagon official today listed homeland defense among its top U.S. military priorities as the United States transforms its forces to reflect a post-Sept. 11-era strategy.  Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Stephen Cambone made clear, however, that the military’s homeland defense role would remain one of support and said the extent of that new role is still under discussion.

“In a global environment, in a world in which it is possible for adversaries to reach across the oceans and attack directly here in the United States, we support civil defense here—and not just missile defense, which you know now is a hallmark of the president’s program (see related GSN story, today)—but also now civil defense, in support of civil authorities, biological, chemical attacks, as well as conventional attacks [and] terrorism,” said Cambone.

He took questions from reporters, congressional officials, and others at a Washington breakfast after describing the Pentagon’s effort to develop a new national military strategy.

Asked whether the new homeland defense role might require major changes in the U.S. force structure, Cambone said the Pentagon would continue to serve a supporting role and that it was continuing to evaluate that role.

“You notice how I’m careful to say ‘support the civil authorities,’” he said. “We have got to be conscious of those things that are properly the province of civil authorities and those things which the president and the Congress might assign the military to do.

“In the same way that the president asked us to get the strategy right before we open the country’s pocketbook, I think we’re doing the same thing here. Let’s sort of think our way through this before we start moving boxes around on the [organizational] charts,” he said.

Cambone noted a “growing relationship” between the Pentagon, Governor Tom Ridge’s Office of Homeland Security and various other agencies on homeland defense that are coming together “slowly but surely,” but he also acknowledged the relationship has had its “ups and downs.”

“Traditionally the military has shied away from these sorts of operations,” Chris Hellman, a senior analyst with the Center for Defense Information in Washington, told Global Security Newswire. “Their mission is national defense, and they view that as war-fighting.”

Hellman anticipates the military would provide additional logistical support to domestic forces, as it has in the U.S. war on drugs, and pitch in during times of crisis. The U.S. military already had the capabilities available to defend the Pentagon and the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11 attacks, said Hellman. They simply had not anticipated that sort of threat, he said.

“That wasn’t in their war-fighting plan.”

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U.S. Response II:  House Expected to Approve CDC Funds

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote today on a measure that would provide $750 million between 2002 and 2003 to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (see GSN, Dec. 11).  Of that amount, $600 million would go to construction, and $150 million would be spent on bioterrorism-related activities.

An Atlanta-area group called Friends of CDC has been lobbying for the funding.  The group began after more than 100 business and civic leaders toured the CDC in 1999 and discovered many areas that needed improvement.

“Million-dollar pieces of equipment were covered in plastic because the roof was leaking.  A refrigeration unit was falling through the floor.  I said this was absolutely ridiculous,” said Phil Jacobs, president of BellSouth of Georgia and co-founder of Friends of CDC.

This year a CDC investigation into an anthrax-tainted letter sent to television anchorman Tom Brokaw (see GSN, Dec. 11) was delayed for 15 hours in October when a 40-year-old power cable at a CDC building burned and cut power to a laboratory.

Jacobs and other area leaders—including Oz Nelson, former CEO and chairman of United Parcel Service, and Bernie Marcus, founder of Home Depot—formed the lobbying organization because, as a federal agency, the CDC cannot lobby Congress on its own behalf.

“I haven’t found anybody up here [on Capitol Hill] that’s not supportive of the CDC,” said Representative Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).  “We just have a lot of moving parts and capital investment for this war on terrorism, and everyone is fighting for their share of it” (Melanie Eversley, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dec. 12).

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U.S. Response I: House Prepares Major Bioterrorism Bill

By David Ruppe

Global Security Newswire

U.S. Representatives Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.) are planning to introduce a major bioterrorism bill that could be considered by the U.S. House of Representatives as soon this week.  A press conference to announce the bill was scheduled for today.

The bipartisan Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Response Act of 2001, said to be the product of weeks of intense negotiations, is intended to strengthen U.S. public infrastructure for responding to a biological weapons attack at the federal, state and local levels.

“This sweeping package includes everything from beefed-up food safety regulations (see GSN, Dec. 6) to tightened controls on deadly biological agents,” said House Commerce Committee Chairman Tauzin, announcing a bipartisan agreement on the bill last week.

The bill specifically authorizes more than $1 billion in grants to state and local governments and hundreds of millions to federal agencies (see GSN, Dec. 7).

Senate Bill Passed Last Week

The bioterrorism bill resembles a Senate appropriations measure passed last week as part of the fiscal 2002 defense appropriations bill, though many of the funding levels differ significantly.

The Senate bill, which is expected to go to a House-Senate Conference Committee in the next two weeks, similarly provides $1 billion for national health care infrastructure and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention improvements. Notably, it provides significantly less funding to upgrade CDC research capabilities and to improve the nation's pharmaceutical stockpile, while allowing millions of dollars more to improve FDA and USDA food inspections.

The Tauzin-Dingle bill ultimately could prove somewhat irrelevant, says Bill Burton, spokesman for Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) who helped design the bill as chairman of the Senate Health Appropriations Subcommittee.

“The authorization process right now is a helpful guide, but it’s not exactly a necessary part of the process right now. We’re just at the point where we need to appropriate the funds and make it happen.”

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U.S. Response II: Weldon Urges Domestic Responders to Get Political

By David Ruppe

Global Security Newswire

U.S. local and state responders to terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction need to assert themselves more intensely in the nation’s political process, U.S. Representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), said yesterday.

“What you have to now do is respectfully demand that government respond, that we give you the tools and resources that you may need to deal with the threats that you may face in your states, counties, cities and towns,” he told some 1,600 firefighters, emergency medical personnel and other responders from around the country.  They were gathered for a chemical emergency responder conference in Baltimore run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“We’ve got a lot of pressures in Washington, in Baltimore, Harrisburg, and Trenton, all the other state capitals. You have to make the process work for you,” he said.

Weldon urged the responders to establish personal contact with respective congressional staffers handling homeland defense issues, informing them about what is needed. He advocated greater local responder access to applicable new technologies developed for the military and increased radio frequency spectrum space to encourage better communication after an incident.

He also compared some $30 million in federal dollars last year spent on domestic responders to $317 billion in military spending this year and $4 billion spent on law enforcement, both of which he supported.

“To protect America, it’s going to cost money,” said Weldon, who is himself a former firefighter and fire chief.

The USA Patriot Act, signed into law in October, appropriated $25 million each year through 2007 for responder equipment and training (see GSN, Oct. 26) and the House version of the fiscal 2002 defense appropriations bill has an increase in funding of $1 billion for a grant program for firefighters and other first responders.

“The money should not go to federal agencies to build bigger bureaucracies, because the first responder on any incident in America … is not going to be [the Federal Emergency Management Agency], the National Guard, … EPA,” Weldon said.  “The first responder is always going to be the fireman, [the emergency medical technician], the law enforcement person on that first-in vehicle.

“If you don’t hold [lawmakers] accountable, then don’t expect them to respond,” he said.

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International Response:  U.S. and Allies Search Ships

Forces on U.S., British, Australian, German and French ships have started searching every merchant ship leaving Pakistan as well as ships in some other waters in a hunt for materials that terrorists could smuggle to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, according to the Singapore Business Times.  The countries have also searched ships in a hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders.

In addition, the U.S. Navy has been searching for 23 merchant vessels that U.S. and Norwegian intelligence agencies have identified as owned or controlled by al-Qaeda (Donald Urquhart, Singapore Business Times, Dec. 10).

Thirty to 40 seacraft, ranging from ships to small boats, are challenged every day, according to the Washington Post.   Many fewer are searched and so far none has been detained, according to the Post.

Last Thursday, for example, U.S. forces stopped and boarded a large container ship they suspected of carrying senior al-Qaeda leaders.   U.S. Marines and Navy special forces searched dozens of containers, but “didn’t find anything,” said a Navy official (Vogel/Vick, Washington Post, Dec. 11).

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U.S. Response:  Senate Passes Anti-Terrorism Package

The U.S. Senate Saturday passed a $318 billion defense bill that includes a $20 billion package for homeland defense.  The vote followed intense debate over a Democratic proposal to add $15 billion to the Bush administration’s request (see GSN, Dec. 6) for a homeland defense package in response to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

Bush had threatened to veto any spending over $20 billion, and Republican senators Friday gained 50 votes in a procedure to derail the defense bill—nine more votes than necessary (see GSN, Dec. 7).  Democrats eventually agreed to a plan within Bush’s limits that shifted $6 billion from programs the president wanted to programs to enhance homeland security and aid recovery in New York and Washington.  The package also included $8.5 billion to combat bioterrorism and enhance other homeland defense programs, which was $4.1 billion more than Bush requested.

Congress already had approved $40 billion in defense funds three days after the Sept. 11 attacks, and Bush said he would consider approving more funds early next year.

“We have ensured the funding necessary to recover from the Sept. 11 attacks and to protect and defend our homeland,” Bush said after the Senate passed the bill.

Some Democrats remained critical of the funding levels, however.  “We do not seem to be able to pull together in this town for America even in this time when the people of the United States are united,” said Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) (Alan Fram, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Dec. 9).

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