Iraq:  U.S. Intelligence Agencies Call Recovered Trailers “Strongest Evidence” of Biological Program

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Two trailers recently recovered by coalition forces in Iraq are “the strongest evidence to date” that Iraq had attempted to conceal a biological weapons program, the CIA and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said in a report yesterday (see GSN, May 21).

The trailers — one captured by Kurdish forces near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and turned over to U.S. troops in late April and a second discovered by U.S. troops at the al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development and Engineering site in Mosul early this month — have long been suspected of being mobile biological production plants.  In an address before the U.N. Security Council in February, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell cited the existence of such mobile plants as evidence that Iraq had continued to attempt to develop weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Feb. 6).

In their report, the two intelligence agencies compared the layout and inventories of the trailer recovered last month with information provided by an Iraqi chemical engineer who had managed one of Iraq’s mobile plants.  The engineer was able to recognize pictures of the trailer as being similar to the mobile plant he had managed, including specific pieces of identical equipment, the report says. 

An analysis of the trailers has determined that they are likely to be a second- or third-generation design of the mobile facilities described by the Iraqi engineer, according to the report.  The equipment discovered within the trailers, such as fermenters and systems to capture exhaust gasses, were installed in such a way as to create an “ingeniously simple, self-contained bioprocessing system,” the report says. 

The trailers were likely meant to be components in a two- or three-trailer unit, with both recovered trailers likely intended to produce biological agents in liquid slurry, the report says.  It adds that the third trailer in such a unit would likely be equipped with equipment to prepare growth media and for post-harvest processing. 

According to the report, coalition experts have been unable to determine any legitimate uses for the recovered trailers that would justify the effort and cost of a mobile production capability.  “We … agree with the experts that BW agent production is the only consistent, logical purpose for these vehicles,” the report says.

Several theories, however, have been put forth as to possible alternative uses for the trailers, according to the report.  For example, a May 13 New York Times article reported that experts have suggested the trailers might have been used to produce biopesticides or to refurbish Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles.  The report dismissed such theories, however, saying the exhaust collection systems and the size of the equipment found in the trailers are unnecessary for biopesticide production.  In addition, U.S. missile experts have been unable to determine how the trailers could refurbish anti-aircraft missiles, the report says.

The report was less critical, but sill dismissive, of claims made by senior al-Kindi officials that the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons.  While some of the equipment found in the trailers could be used to produce both biological agents and hydrogen, the trailers’ design would be “inefficient” for hydrogen production, the report says. 

The report’s assessment of the trailers helps to verify claims made by the United States concerning Iraq’s WMD efforts prior to the war, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday.

“It’s very important to recognize that programs that we had said existed do exist; that the kind of equipment that we had said existed does exist,” Boucher said.

Some independent experts, however, have criticized the CIA-DIA report’s findings.  In an issue brief released yesterday, the Institute for Science and International Security criticized the intelligence agencies for determining that the recovered trailers were used to produce biological agents by eliminating other possible uses.  The institute said the use of such a methodology was “controversial … under any circumstances.”

“Given the high stakes for the United States to prove the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, this methodology is particularly suspect,” the institute said.

The institute also criticized the report for relying so heavily on information gathered from the Iraqi chemical engineer, saying that much of the information recovered from human sources on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has been “flawed.”  In addition, the institute raised the possibility that the report might have been written with “a preferred conclusion” in mind. 

In its brief, the institute called for an independent investigation of the trailers, adding that a “logical group” to conduct such an investigation would be the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.  Such an investigation is needed to improve the credibility of the U.S. findings, the institute said.

“Because the United States has such a vested interest in proving the existence of WMD in Iraq, the report’s findings cannot be trusted without independent confirmation,” the institute said.

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Anthrax:  Hundreds In Military Disciplined For Refusing Vaccine in Past Five Years

In the five years since the U.S. military made anthrax vaccinations mandatory for all members of the armed forces, hundreds have faced disciplinary action or discharge for refusing to be inoculated, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, May 21).  Since 1998, at least 37 members of the armed forces have been court-martialed for refusing the vaccine

An Army reservist was found guilty by a military panel yesterday for disobeying an order to be vaccinated against anthrax, according to AP. Army Reserve Pvt. Kamila Iwanowska could be sentenced to up to 12 months in jail and receive a bad-conduct military discharge, reduction in rank and forfeiture of pay (Associated Press/New York Post, May 29).

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International Response:  WHO Governing Body Approves New Powers

The governing body of the World Health Organization yesterday approved a new resolution to significantly expand its powers to combat international epidemics that could be caused by biological terrorism, according to the New York Times (see GSN, May 19).

The resolution, approved by the World Health Assembly, would give the WHO the authority to establish an instant communications network with member countries and to use nonofficial sources of information, such as media reports, when there is an international public health threat, according to the Times.  The resolution also gives the WHO the authority to issue global alerts for international health threats and authorizes the organization’s director general to send an inspection team to determine if a country has taken adequate measures to combat an international public health threat.

While the resolution lacks “legal teeth,” it does provide the WHO with “leverage” in compelling countries to address international public health threats, said WHO spokesman Iain Simpson.

The resolution is expected to be approved today by the full WHO because members routinely approve committee decisions, Simpson said.  Once approved, the resolution will be incorporated into a new version of WHO international health regulations, said David Heymann, WHO executive director for communications.  Members will have an opportunity to comment on the new regulations before they are presented for formal approval in 2005 (Lawrence Altman, New York Times, May 28).

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Smallpox:  Panel Says Smallpox Campaign Needs Review, Thwarted SARS

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Institute of Medicine committee yesterday recommended that health officials pause and evaluate the sluggish national smallpox immunization effort before expanding the pool of vaccine recipients (see GSN, Jan. 16).

Institute officials said, however, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has so far taken a thorough and deliberate approach to prepare for a smallpox bioterrorism attack.  That preparation might have helped prevent an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in the United States, according to a letter yesterday from the IOM’s Committee on Smallpox Vaccination Program Implementation.

“The committee heard from program administrators that the effective response to SARS both at the national and local level was at least in part facilitated by smallpox preparedness efforts,” the letter said.

The improved communication between health officials most likely aided the U.S. response to the worldwide emergence of SARS, according to the letter.

Pause, Review Program

Health officials should investigate all adverse effects to the vaccine and ensure the four-month-old program is integrated with the overall effort to combat bioterrorism, the letter says.

The CDC is currently focusing the immunization effort on health workers who would respond to a bioterrorism attack with the smallpox virus.  When the plan was originally announced, health officials expected to immunize 450,000 health workers — “phase one” — and then expand the program to include 10 million emergency workers, law enforcement officials and firefighters, known as “phase two.”

Widespread concerns about the safety of the vaccine have hampered the overall effort, and only 36,000 health workers have received the vaccine so far.  Some states and localities, however, are beginning phase two.

“The committee would like to reaffirm the need for a pause in the program, before the vaccine is offered more widely,” yesterday’s letter says.  The committee acknowledged the program’s low turnout, but said that a pause and evaluation is vital to “safely building smallpox preparedness.”

Specifically, the committee recommended new educational material for volunteers who lack a medical background.  The CDC has attempted to screen out some volunteers — such as those with eczema or suppressed immune systems — who are vulnerable to adverse side effects and should not receive the vaccine.

Health officials have said that more thorough safety material is needed once the program moves beyond immunizing nurses and emergency room personnel.

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Anthrax:  U.S. Company Receives FDA Approval to Begin Testing New Vaccine

A U.S. company has received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin testing a new anthrax vaccine (see GSN, Oct. 4, 2002).

VaxGen plans to conduct Phase I human clinical testing of its vaccine on 100 volunteers beginning next month, according to the company.  The trials will be carried out at four medical centers — Baylor College of Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University and St. Louis University Health Sciences Center. 

The tests will compare the safety of VaxGen’s new vaccine with that of the existing anthrax vaccine.  The tests are also intended to evaluate the efficacy of the new vaccine by comparing human immune responses with those immune responses shown to protect animals from inhalation anthrax, company officials said.

“The ability to begin Phase I clinical trials advances our ultimate goal of supplying the next-generation anthrax vaccine to the U.S. and foreign governments, as well as private markets,” company Chief Executive Officer Lance Gordon said in a statement (VaxGen release, May 27).

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United States:  Army Finds Buried Bacteria Vials in Waste Dump

Officials have discovered several vials of biological agents buried at the U.S. Army’s former biological weapons research facility at Fort Detrick, Md., the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, May 23).

Fort Detrick officials believed they were removing industrial waste from a former biological weapons research center, but workers have discovered more than 100 vials, some containing Brucella melitensis, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Bacillus anthracis, a nonvirulent form of anthrax.

“You find it, contain it, and try to figure out what it is,” said Col. John Ball, Fort Detrick’s garrison commander.  “We’re learning, but it’s expensive,” he added.

Workers are operating in a sealed tent at the excavation site and wear biohazard suits.  Piles of buried debris occasionally explode, and Army officials have equipped bulldozers with blast shields, the Post reported.  Technicians remove large waste from the soil, mash the remaining dirt and waste and then douse it with bleach to kill bacteria.

Hubert Kaempf, an 83-year-old who supervised Fort Detrick’s waste haulers decades ago, defended the facility.

“We had one of the finest safety departments in the world,” he said.  “But what was in keeping with safety and sanitary laws then would now be very much forbidden,” he added (Elizabeth Williamson, Washington Post, May 27).

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Anthrax:  U.S. Postal Service to Expand Testing of Anthrax Detection System

The U.S. Postal Service plans next week to expand testing of a new system designed to detect the presence of biological agents, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, April 10).

The biohazard detection system (BDS) has been successfully tested over the past nine months in Baltimore, said Thomas Day, vice president of engineering for the Postal Service.  Beginning June 1, the system will be tested at 14 additional postal facilities throughout the country for 30 days, after which time postal officials will decide whether the system should be deployed at all postal sites, the Post reported.

“In approximately 30 days, we’ll have the results of various test sites and hopefully, this will lead to the validation of the new BDS system, Day said.

The BDS works by testing the air surrounding mail-handling equipment for anthrax particles using a rapid on-site DNA test, Day said.  If a positive match is detected, the network computer will provide immediate notification and an emergency response plan would then be activated (Michael Zimmerman, Washington Post, May 26).

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Anthrax I:  Suspect Maryland Ponds Remain Open While FBI Considers New Searches

By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — While the FBI considers whether to drain one or more ponds in a Frederick, Md., forest to search for evidence of the 2001 anthrax attacks, the ponds remain unguarded, potentially threatening the value of any evidence found there in the future, legal experts said this week.

Authorities first searched the ponds in December 2002 as part of the FBI’s Amerithrax investigation into the anthrax attacks.  The forest is less than five miles from the U.S. biological defense laboratory at Ft. Detrick, Md., and near the former home of Steven Hatfill, whom U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has identified as a “person of interest” in the case.

The winter searches reportedly uncovered some discarded laboratory equipment, including what could be a glovebox, a tool to work on dangerous materials while preventing their release.

The Washington Post reported nearly two weeks ago that the FBI had notified local officials that it would begin draining one pond by June 1, but an FBI spokeswoman told GSN that investigators have not decided whether to proceed.

“We have acknowledged that that is under consideration, and no decision has been made,” said Debra Weierman of the FBI Washington field office.

Two visits by GSN to the ponds in the past week showed that they are unguarded and that there are no access restrictions.  Allowing a public notification of where a future search may be conducted is highly unusual, according to former federal prosecutor Judson Lobdell.  In a trial, evidence found in such a search would face great scrutiny, he said.

“The fact that the government told everyone well in advance where it was going to be looking would give a very strong argument to the defense that this evidence ought to be entirely discounted,” said Lobdell, now in private practice in San Francisco.

“Our firm handled a case here in which a similar defense was successful, a criminal case in which some evidence was found in a trash can near where the defendant resided.  But there was public access to that trash receptacle for quite a long time and the argument was made before the jury, and successfully, that it proved nothing that there was some evidence in that trash can.  It could have been put there by anybody,” he said.

Now that the search location has been revealed, Lobdell said, any evidence found in the future would be of limited value at trial unless linked directly to a suspect by physical evidence, such as fingerprints.  The advance notification of the search undermines any argument that evidence recovered from the pond must have been dumped there by Hatfill because it is close to his former home, he said.

Calling the FBI strategy “a little peculiar,” Georgetown University law professor Paul Tague said that as long as any discoveries were firmly linked to an individual suspect, the ponds’ public accessibility would not undermine the value of the evidence.  However, the delay in searching for the evidence could “lead jurors to question the probative worth of the evidence.”

“You almost infer that they don’t think there’s much to be found.  Otherwise, I would have thought they would have searched all of these ponds” by now, Tague said.

Questioning the FBI’s motives in making the advance search notification, Tague said, “Maybe they’re trying to reassure us that they’re doing more work, but at the same time a statement like this strikes one as peculiar because it doesn’t exactly allay my concerns. … Somebody could go and plant stuff or withdraw stuff in some unprotected or unsupervised place.”

The FBI’s Weierman refused to describe the investigators’ strategy for this case or in general.

“Each case is a different case,” she said, “so for me to go and say ‘Well, somebody’s going to go and disrupt or impinge upon our case,’ I’m not going to say that.  I can’t give you a blanket statement because you can’t give a blanket statement when each and every case has its own personality.”

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Anthrax II:  Palestinian Authority Says Arafat Targeted by Anthrax Letter

Anthrax has been found in a letter received three weeks ago by the office of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, top Palestinian security official Hani al-Hassan told the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat in remarks published today. 

“The presidential security services submitted the letter to control measures, as usual, before opening it and discovered that it contained powder. ... At first, we did not know what the nature of the powder was, and some time passed before we could analyze it in a safe place,” said al-Hassan, who noted that the analysis indicated the presence of anthrax.

Al-Hassan described the incident as an assassination attempt, calling it the 14th attempt on the president’s life.

“The stamps on the letter showed that it came from an Asian country,” said al-Hassan, adding that mail sent to the Palestinian territories always passes through Israel first and that the Palestinian Authority was “unable to investigate the original source of the letter because of the situation in which it [the authority] finds itself.”

Al-Hassan’s comments came in reply to a question about whether he takes seriously the words of “certain Israeli officials who have spoken of assassinating or isolating Arafat” in the wake of last weekend’s wave of suicide attacks against Israelis (Agence France-Presse/Voila, May 23, GSN translation).

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U.S. Response:  House Government Reform Panel Approves Bioshield Bill

By Juliana Gruenwald

CongressDaily

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Government Reform Committee approved legislation yesterday that would provide the government with additional tools to spur the development of vaccines and other measures to protect the United States from a bioterrorist attack (see GSN, May 16).

With little debate, the committee approved the “Bioshield” bill after adopting a substitute version of the measure offered by Government Reform Chairman Davis.  Only two members were present for the bill’s markup: Representative Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

In highlighting the need for the legislation, supporters point to the fall of 2001 when letters laced with anthrax were sent to some members of Congress and media outlets.

“The death toll could have been higher if there had not been effective countermeasures to treat that particular form of anthrax,” Souder said.  “Unfortunately, there has been little progress in treatments for other deadly diseases like smallpox, Ebola and the bubonic plague, which affect few, if any, Americans.”

Souder added that private companies have little interest in developing treatments for such diseases because there is little market for such products.

To address this problem, the bill would provide the Health and Human Services secretary with “flexible” tools to sponsor research and development projects aimed at combating bioterrorism and would authorize funding for the purchase of vaccines and other measures developed from such research.  It also would authorize the secretary in emergencies to allow for the use of drugs and other products aimed at combating bioterrorist attacks before the FDA has approved such products.

Among the key changes included in the substitute amendment, which was approved by voice vote, are provisions that would allow the simplified research and development procedures to be used only when the HHS secretary determines there is a “pressing” need for them.  It also would provide interested parties with a limited right to appeal contracting decisions made by the secretary.

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Smallpox:  Former U.S. Health Official Says Heart Problems Unexpected

More than 50 U.S. smallpox vaccine recipients have suffered from heart inflammation, and a former U.S. health official said the immunization program’s planners did not see the side effect coming, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported today (see GSN, May 21).

During routine smallpox vaccinations in the 1950s and 1960s, technology was not sufficiently advanced to detect the inflammation, according to Michael Lane, the former chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s smallpox eradication program.

“I think we just missed these before,” Lane said.  “We just didn’t have the technology to find them,” he added.

The civilian vaccination program has immunized 36,600 volunteers, and the U.S. Defense Department has immunized 430,000 military personnel, the Journal-Constitution reported.  The CDC has reported heart inflammation in 24 civilians and the military said that 27 personnel have experienced the problems (David Wahlberg, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 23).

State / City	Number of Immunizations
Alabama	481
Alaska	95
Arizona	39
Arkansas	976
California	1,509
Chicago	56
Colorado	224
Connecticut	634
Delaware	107
Florida	3,623
Georgia	135
Hawaii	181
Idaho	200
Illinois	228
Indiana	765
Iowa	486
Kansas	448
Kentucky	767
Los Angeles County	219
Louisiana	1,107
Maine	39
Maryland	719
Massachusetts	94
Michigan	716
Minnesota	1,475
Mississippi	404
Missouri	1,253
Montana	101
Nebraska	1,457
Nevada	10
New Hampshire	323
New Jersey	657
New Mexico	158
New York City	330
New York	659
North Carolina	1,235
North Dakota	414
Ohio	1,760
Oklahoma	335
Oregon	95
Pennsylvania	198
Puerto Rico	9
Rhode Island	29
South Carolina	859
South Dakota	735
Tennessee	2,429
Texas	4,145
Utah	282
Vermont	121
Virginia	843
Washington	512
Washington D.C.	98
West Virginia	734
Wisconsin	745
Wyoming	409
TOTAL	36,662

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