U.S. Response I:  GAO Reiterates Need for National Strategy

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United States continues to need a plan for organizing growing domestic defense activities, General Accounting Office Director of Strategic Issues Patricia Dalton yesterday told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations.

The Office of Homeland Security has been preparing such a plan and is expected to propose it later this year.

Not just any approach will do, though, according to the GAO’s new report, Combating Terrorism:  Enhancing Partnerships Through a National Preparedness Strategy.

The plan should define and clarify federal, state and local roles in responding to an incident, with an eye toward bringing accountability and eliminating duplication of efforts, it said (see GSN, Feb. 15).

“Over 40 federal entities have roles in combating terrorism, and past federal efforts have resulted in a lack of accountability, a lack of cohesive effort, and duplication of programs,” the report said.

The report suggested the Homeland Security office, which has been criticized for having no direct budgetary authority over agencies activities, might not be fully ready to take on the challenge. It said the office’s role in setting priorities, interacting with agencies and developing and enforcing federal policy is “in the formative states of being fully established.”

These alleged problems have led to confusion for state and local authorities attempting to work with the federal government, it said.

The plan must also establish performance goals and measures, the report said.

“Given the recent and proposed increases in preparedness funding as well as the need for real and meaningful improvements in preparedness, establishing clear goals and performance measures is critical to ensuring both a successful and a fiscally responsible effort,” it said.

Lastly, it called for a “careful choice of the most appropriate tools” of government, to best implement the strategy and achieve the goals, including grants, regulations, and partnerships.

The recommendations come as the Bush administration is requesting a substantial increase in funding for various homeland defense activities, from $29.3 billion in fiscal 2002 to $37.7 billion in fiscal 2003, according to Bush administration accounting.

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U.S. Response II:  Reactors Could Not Endure Airliner Crash, NRC Says

U.S. officials have said none of the 103 operating U.S. nuclear power reactors could withstand a direct crash by an airliner, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported today (see GSN, March 25).

Only 4 percent of U.S. nuclear power plants factored airliner crashes into their designs, and those that did do so only considered airplanes moving at slower speeds than those involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, according to documents from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“When the plants were designed, large aircraft that are presently used were not in use,” said NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner.

The information was included in a report prepared by Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.), based on correspondence with NRC Chairman Richard Meserve.

The “NRC has admitted that even an aircraft impact at the auxiliary electrical or cooling facilities could trigger a core meltdown at a nuclear reactor,” Markey said, “and yet, the NRC refuses to upgrade security, refuses to install anti-aircraft weaponry, refuses to ensure that security at decommissioned reactors is maintained and refuses to ensure that foreign nationals employed at the reactors undergo security background checks.”

Nuclear reactors are still robust and not easily damaged, the NRC said Wednesday.

“Even though they were not designed to withstand aircraft crashes, they are extremely rugged structures,” Gagner said.

Of the 60 U.S. nuclear power facilities, 55 are within 15 miles of a public airport, according to the Journal-Constitution.  Many of those airports serve fewer than 100,000 passengers per year, according to the NRC and U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, but there are nine nuclear power plants near airports that handle more than 100,000 passengers, including plants located near New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Cedar Rapids, Iowa and San Jose and San Luis Obispo in California.

It would be difficult now to go back and refit existing reactors to better withstand an airliner crash, but new safety measures should be used in future designs, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The plants are what they are,” Lochbaum said.  “It’s too late to go back and install six more feet of concrete” (Brett Lieberman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 29).

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International Response:  World Lawmakers Join Against Terrorism

Legislators from around the world were gathered in St. Petersburg, Russia, this week for a conference on fighting terrorism.

The International Forum on Combating Terrorism urged countries to end financing of terrorist activities.  European delegates called on governments to respect human rights, and Russian delegates said the international community must harmonize efforts to combat terrorism (Associated Press/Moscow Times, March 29).

Members of parliaments from 80 countries met in St. Petersburg March 27-28 for the conference on coordinating international action against terrorism, according to the Associated Press.

“For the first time in history, nonstate actors combine the will and the capacity of inflicting mass destruction,” Council of Europe Secretary General Walter Schwimmer said at the beginning of the conference.  “There is growing evidence that they are trying to acquire know-how in nonconventional means of destruction — biological and nuclear weapons, cyber weapons” (Associated Press/Russia Journal).

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U.S. Response:  Senior Scientist Urges U.S. to Monitor “Rogue Students”

By Greg Seigle
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United States should create a system to identify and monitor foreign students who study sensitive subjects such as nuclear, biological or chemical engineering, a top Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor said yesterday.

The State Department, Immigration and Naturalization Service and other government agencies often are unaware of how many students from potentially threatening countries are studying subjects potentially related to weapons of mass destruction at U.S. universities, an oversight that must now be changed, said Marvin Miller, senior research scientist emeritus at MIT’s Department of Nuclear Engineering.

“One of the problems we face if we try to filter out what I call ‘rogue students’ is to coordinate our policies,” Miller told a small gathering of diplomats, analysts and journalists during a speech sponsored by the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

If government agencies are unable or unwilling to track graduate students or visiting scientists from countries that could eventually pose a threat to the United States, then universities should consider establishing their own informal monitoring system, Miller said.

There are some university officials who would be reluctant to track and monitor students from suspect countries, Miller said.

“One rationale is that the academic community would be loathe to get involved in terms of academic freedom, and I think that’s largely a red herring,” Miller said during a speech on the role scientists play in developing weapons of mass destruction.

“I think there are people at places like MIT, Stanford, etc., who understand this problem and are willing to make a good faith effort to deal with it,” he continued.  “Obviously it’s a very delicate matter, but I think much more can be done to come up with a rational system.”

Iranian Nuclear Experts Trained at MIT

In 1976, when Miller was an assistant professor at MIT, 25 Iranian students arrived to study nuclear engineering, he said.  The students had been admitted to MIT as a bloc, against individual admissions policy, after a secret deal had been brokered by a nuclear engineering professor of Iranian descent, he said.  Many of the Iranian students wound up in a nuclear engineering class being taught by Miller and a more senior professor, he added.

“It seemed to me rather strange at the time that they all seemed to be interested in uranium enrichment,” Miller said.

State Department officials appeared unaware of the sudden influx of Iranian students when Miller called to alert them, and he was told “the Shah of Iran is a good friend of the United States and we’d like to do all we can to help him,” Miller said.

The students were “not welcome” back in Iran after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 by radical Islamic fundamentalists, and most stayed in the United States or moved to Europe, Miller said.

Today, however, many of those Iranian scientists hold top positions in the Iranian nuclear program, he said.

“More recently, word was passed that all is forgiven and they were ‘encouraged’ to return to Iran,” Miller said.  “Several of them are now key members of the Iranian nuclear program.”

Key Warning Signs Missed

A strong indicator that a country is actively seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction comes when its regime sends large groups of students, its “best and brightest,” overseas to study at the world’s top institutions, Miller said.

Iraq, for example, sent hundreds of students to foreign countries in the 1970s and 1980s to study subjects pertaining to weapons of mass destruction, Miller said.  Many of those former students, including those who studied nuclear, biological or chemical engineering at U.S. universities, are now in charge of the Iraqi WMD programs, he said.

U.S. officials “do not seek any advice from the academic community,” nor do they collect potentially valuable information on student research, Miller said.

“For example, we had a student in nuclear engineering [at MIT] some years ago who had finished up a master’s degree, a Pakistani student, who said he didn’t want to go back to Pakistan.  And I said why, he said he didn’t want to work on a nuclear weapons program,” Miller continued.  “If there had been a mechanism to pick up things like that I would think it would be helpful for the U.S. government to know about what’s going on.”

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U.S. Response:  Administration, Lawmakers Work to Secure Water Supplies

Bush administration officials and U.S. lawmakers are assessing risks and planning ways to distribute funds to secure the country’s water supplies, Greenwire reported today.

The U.S. Office of Homeland Security is devising a list of possible contaminants that terrorists could use to pollute U.S. drinking water supplies, said Janet Pawlukiewicz, director of the Environmental Protection Agency water protection task force (see GSN, March 18).

The security office has been in charge of U.S. efforts to “improve knowledge” of what to expect in the event of a terrorist attack on U.S. water systems, Pawlukiewicz said at a water security seminar last week in Washington.

The EPA also has created a report on the security of U.S. water systems, which has not been seen outside the U.S. government, said Diane Van DeHei, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies.

Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, a House bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act would provide $170 million for water system vulnerability assessments and an EPA review of U.S. drinking water systems.  U.S. congressional staff members have been meeting in conference committee to work out differences between bills, according to Greenwire.

Even though the Senate version of the bill did not include language on water system security, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Senator Bob Smith (R-N.H.) have said they would bring up the issue of water security during the conference committee’s negotiations.

Jeffords is the lead sponsor of a bill that would create a $60 million grant program for water systems to use new security technologies.  Smith has written a bill that would provide an immediate $50 million for vulnerability assessments.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week approved the Water Quality Financial Act, which would allow states to consider anti-terrorism security measures when allocating federal infrastructure funding of wastewater systems.

So far, Congress has provided about $90 million for water security, according to Greenwire.  The EPA would begin distributing grant applications to eligible utilities in the next few weeks, said EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman.

The EPA will only be able to provide technical and financial assistance to utilities for water security; the actual “bricks and mortar” are the responsibility of utilities and municipalities themselves, Pawlukiewicz said.

Security vs. Freedom

Utilities are concerned that information, such as vulnerability assessments, could be obtained by terrorists through the Freedom of Information Act, Greenwire reported.

Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) has sponsored a bill that would keep unreleased industry information shared with the government from being accessed by the public, within the FOIA guidelines.  Representatives Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) have sponsored similar legislation in the House.

Utility managers are aware of the right-to-know debate, but they also have the attitude that they will not reveal information unless they are legally required to do so, said Ken Rubin, an Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies representative.  If the public wants certain information released, then they would have to come and ask for it, he said.

“The minute you start talking about it, you create a security breach,” Rubin said (Darren Samuelsohn, Greenwire, March 25).

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U.S. Response:  Senator Wants Better Employee Checks at Nuclear Plants

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not conduct extensive background checks on nuclear power plant employees and does not know how many foreign nationals work at nuclear plants, according to a report released today (see GSN, March 1).

The report, titled “Security Gap:  A Hard Look at the Soft Spots in Our Civilian Nuclear Reactor Security,” was prepared by Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) from an analysis of more than 100 pages of correspondence requested from the NRC.  The report indicated that although the agency does require criminal background checks of nuclear plant employees, the checks are limited to crimes conducted in the United States.

“It is unacceptable that the NRC (does not have) a policy on screening of foreign nationals,” the report said.  “Terrorists may now be employed at nuclear reactors in the U.S. just as terrorists enrolled at flight schools in the U.S.”

Security exercises conducted at nuclear plants are inadequate and the sites that conduct them fail more than half of the time, according to the report.   The NRC waited until six months after the Sep. 11 attacks to increase security at nuclear power plants, the report said, adding that the NRC has “historically failed” to change security regulations and has “yet to begin a permanent revision of security regulations.”

“Black hole after black hole is described and left unaddressed,” Markey said.  “Post 9-11, a nuclear safety agency that does not know — and seems little interested in finding out — the nationality of nuclear reactor workers or the level of resources being spent on security at these sensitive facilities, is not doing its job.”

The NRC has worked hard to ensure that the 103 U.S. operating nuclear reactors are safe, said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan.

“We think we’ve been very proactive in trying to identify any threats against nuclear power plants,” Sheehan said.  “There are a number of things that have been done and will continue to be done.  We’re not taking any threats against nuclear power plants lightly” (Cheryl Thompson, Washington Post, March 25).

The names of all nuclear plant employees are vetted by the FBI and any criminal records would likely be discovered through the process, said Ralph Beedle, chief nuclear officer for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main lobbying group for the nuclear power industry.

“The people we hire, for the most part, are folks who have come over here and gone through school,” Beedle said.  “I hired a lot of people out of Columbia University, [City College of New York], folks from India, China, that were over here for years as students,” he said, referring to when he was chief of nuclear operations at the New York Power Authority (Matthew Wald, New York Times, March 25).

The NRC also does not know how many security guards are employed at each nuclear plant, Markey said.  NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said nuclear plant security forces are fingerprinted and minimum staffing levels would be included in each plant’s security plan, which is filed with the NRC.

“The security plan would tell you the minimum number, but not necessarily the whole number,” Screnci said.

Screnci also said security tests conducted at nuclear plants are not done on a “pass-fail” basis.  Instead, they are used to find “chinks in the armor,” she said.

Even though the NRC does require background checks, “the scope is somewhat limited” and not enough to assure security at a site where a terrorist attack could be potentially devastating, said Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“I’ve worked in over 20 plants in the 17 years I was in the industry,” Lochbaum said.  “Had I wanted to sabotage the plant, it wouldn’t have been that difficult to do so.”

Although other agencies do not conduct extensive background checks of their employees, “The consequences of someone causing mayhem [at nuclear power plants] are a little more severe than someone working at a 7-11,” Lochbaum said (Susan Milligan, Boston Globe, March 25).

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