U.S. Response I:  Report Urges Employing Science in Terrorism War

The United States should create a program designed to help prevent terrorist attacks through science and technology, and should create a new security institute to aid in the effort, according to a National Research Council report today.

“The scientific and engineering community is aware that it can make a critical contribution to protecting the nation from catastrophic terrorism,” Lewis Branscomb, a co-chairman of the committee that prepared the report and a professor emeritus at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said. “Our report gives the government a blueprint for using current technologies and creating new capabilities to reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks and the severity of their consequences.”

In the report, a committee of National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine members recommended a number of measures that could be immediately implemented to help protect the United States from attack, according to the New York Times.  Committee recommendations included protecting nuclear materials in the United States and abroad, producing large stockpiles of vaccines (see GSN, May 16), protecting U.S. power grids and improving ventilation systems in public buildings, among others (see GSN, May 14).

The United States, however, needs a coherent national strategy to take advantage of the ways science and technology can help fight terrorism, said Richard Klausner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the other committee co-chairman (Warren Leary, New York Times, June 25).

“Research performed but not exploited, and technologies invented but not manufactured and deployed, do not help the nation protect itself,” the report says (Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post, June 25).

The committee recommended that the Homeland Security Office create a security institute composed of experts who could detect problems in critical systems throughout the United States and develop ways to solve such flaws, the Times reported.  The institute should be set up as a nonprofit organization and should be run by contractors, the committee said (Leary, New York Times).

House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) praised the report after an early briefing.

“I like what I see. It says we have to have a coordinated (research and development) strategy,” Boehlert said.  “It says we have to have somebody in charge, and I’m enamored with the idea of the institute.  A lot of what I’m reading falls under the heading of common sense” (Gugliotta, Washington Post).

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U.S. Response II:  U.S. Inspectors Will Operate at Dutch Seaport

The U.S. Customs Service will station inspectors at the Rotterdam, Netherlands, seaport to inspect cargo heading for the United States, the service announced today (see GSN, June 5).

A U.S.-Dutch agreement will “provide a significant measure of security for the Netherlands, the United States and the global trading system as a whole,” Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner said.

In 2001, shippers sent 291,000 cargo containers to the United States from the Rotterdam seaport, Customs said.  Similar agreements to station U.S. inspectors at the seaports in Antwerp, Belgium, and Le Havre, France, could be announced by the end of the week, a Customs official said (Associated Press/New York Times, June 25).

It is the agency’s goal to negotiate inspections agreements with the top 20 seaports that ship cargo to the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal.  About a third of the imports entering the United States and 68 percent of all seaborne imports originate at the top 20 international seaports, the Journal reported.

The United States has taken the right step in negotiating inspections agreements with foreign governments, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org.  The magnitude of trying to find a weapon of mass destruction smuggled in one out of millions of cargo containers, however, makes the agreements a small step, he said.

“It would be stupid not to try to expand inspections to foreign ports,” Pike said.  “But it’s a very small part of a very big problem” (Gary Fields, Wall Street Journal, June 25).

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U.S. Response III:  Ridge to Appear Before Congress

U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge is expected to testify before four congressional committees this week to answer questions on the proposed homeland security department (see GSN, June 21).

Ridge is expected to testify today on the Bush administration’s plans to move biological, chemical and radiological response activities from other departments to the proposed department during testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

He is also expected to appear before the House and Senate Judiciary committees tomorrow and before the House Intelligence Committee Thursday, according to Reuters.

Other members of the Bush administration are also scheduled to appear before congressional committees this week to discuss plans for the new department, Reuters reported.  FBI Director Robert Mueller is expected to testify before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Thursday during its hearing on the potential relationship between the new department and U.S. intelligence agencies (Reuters/New York Times, June 25).

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