U.S. Response I:  Washington to Serve as Biological Defense Model

Washington is scheduled to participate in a $420 million program designed to transform four U.S. cities into models for biological weapons defense, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

“There are lots of downsides to being the national capital,” said Margaret Kellems, deputy mayor for public safety and justice, who is in charge of biological weapons defense for Washington.  “The upside is that when you’re in the spotlight, you get the best treatment.  We think the District [of Columbia] is a bull’s eye.”

Under the new program, Washington will probably receive $85 million administered by the proposed homeland security department, according to the Post.  In the Bush administration’s fiscal 2003 budget proposal, officials included the program, called the National Bioweapons Defense Analysis Center, among Defense Department activities.  The program called for $120 million to build a bioterrorism research center and $300 million to create models in four major U.S. cities for future biological weapons defense systems, the Post reported.

Washington was chosen for the program because it is an obvious target for future biological weapons attacks and because it has already received many funds to improve public health preparedness, said Anna Johnson-Winegar, deputy assistant to the defense secretary for chemical and biological defense.  The second city chosen for the program is Albuquerque because it has a well-developed radiological accident response system, the Post reported.  The other two cities have yet to be chosen.

The purpose of the Pentagon program is to build a “system of systems,” Johnson-Winegar said.

“It would include biodetection, using information from medical surveillance systems and environmental sensors and integrating the data into one comprehensive system,” she said.

Under the program Washington will receive the best available “off-the-shelf” equipment, Johnson-Winegar said.  The other three cities will use more “experimental” technologies, she added.  Even though the Pentagon will probably not control the program, its goals will not change under a new administrator, Homeland Security Office spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

Washington is also scheduled to receive funds to improve public health preparedness under a $1.1 billion Health and Human Services Department program, according to the Post (see GSN, June 7).  The city received $292 million in congressional funds to improve emergency preparedness in January.  In all, Washington could receive $400 million this year and in 2003 to improve defenses against a biological weapons, according to the Post.

Research Funding

Meanwhile, the proposed homeland security department is expected to take over $2 billion worth of biological weapons defense research projects from the National Institutes of Health, the Post reported.  The exact details of the program will probably remain vague until the Congress passes the White House’s fiscal 2003 budget and until the proposed homeland security department is created, according to the Post.

“We will provide the money and inform the scientists of the threat we want to examine,” Johndroe said.  “They do the research and disburse the money with their oversight.”

The Bush administration’s proposal to separate biological weapons defense research from the NIH might disrupt research efforts rather than improve them, several experts have said (see GSN, July 8).  Research efforts could further be damaged because the White House has not given control over Pentagon biological weapons defense research to the proposed department, according to experts.

“You really have to be careful not to disconnect some of these programs from where the expertise is,” said Peggy Hamburg, a vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit organization that studies weapons of mass destruction.  “You can’t just carve out pieces of a department, label them ‘bioterrorism’ and expect to get the same results” (Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post, July 14).

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group, Inc.]

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U.S. Response II:  Homeland Security Should Not Include CDC, Ridge Says

U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge has said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should not join the proposed homeland security department, Bio-Terrorism.Info reported today (see related GSN story, today).

The CDC is expected to work with the proposed department to prevent future terrorist attacks using biological weapons, but the two should remain separate, Ridge said during testimony before two congressional committees last month.

“There is a dual infrastructure here,” Ridge said last month before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.  “That infrastructure should remain part of HHS [Health and Human Services Department].  The notion we would work through multiple agencies to establish protocol in advance of an incident is consistent with putting several agencies together, having a strategic focus.”

Senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) tried to obtain assurances from Ridge that the CDC would be have jurisdiction over any future bioterrorism attacks, according to Bio-Terrorism.Info.  The CDC and the FBI came into conflict during last fall’s anthrax attacks because of conflicting rules, according to Cleland (see GSN, July 12).

“There may be a point at which someone concludes that a threat to public safety is occurring and therefore automatically, by a stroke of a pen, CDC becomes the lead agency,” he said.  “We don’t need competition.  We need coordination, cooperation and communication” (Bio-Terrorism.Info, July 15).

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