Global Security Newswire

U.S. law prohibits the Defense Department from even considering moving chemical weapons across state lines, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a letter yesterday to top Pentagon officials (see GSN, July 3).

The Pentagon last month issued a report outlining three options for destroying the U.S. chemical arsenal by 2017, as demanded by Congress.  The options are: to do nothing and maintain the existing schedule, which would violate the deadline by an estimated six years; relocate munitions from storage depots in Colorado and Kentucky, which do not yet have chemical weapons destruction facilities, to sites where disposal operations are already under way; or to attempt to increase the pace of disposal preparations and operations in Colorado and Kentucky.

Oregon is one of the states that would receive additional chemical weapons under the transport proposal, which quickly proved controversial.

"Congress clearly made it illegal for the Department of Defense to study the possibility of transporting chemical weapons across state lines in Public Law 109-13," Wyden wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.  "The law states, ‘No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the secretary of defense under this act or any other act may be obligated or expended to finance directly or indirectly any study related to the transportation of chemical weapons across state lines.'  Clearer language would be hard to find.

"I would like to know what possibly legal authority you can point to that allows you to study transporting chemical weapons," the letter adds, according to a Wyden press release.

Wyden said the Pentagon report "utterly fails" to address the significant risks of moving chemical weapons, "including possible terrorist activity and traffic hazards."  He asked Gates for assurances that transportation would not now or in the future be considered and for details of the schedule options still under consideration.

In a similar message to Defense Department Inspector General Claude Kicklighter, Wyden asked for an investigation of whether the Pentagon violated the law by studying the transportation option for the June report.

"As much as I would like to see the destruction completed, I insist that it be done safely and in accordance with the law," the senator wrote (U.S. Senator Ron Wyden release, July 7).

The Pentagon's Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program, which manages weapons disposal efforts at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky and the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, has identified increasing the pace of operations at the two sites as the best option, Defense Environment Alert reported today.

The option would involve higher staffing levels at the installations and disposal operations that continued 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  An explosive technology would be used to eliminate mustard-agent weapons at Blue Grass.

The existing disposal plan calls for using neutralization technology at the two depots.

The Pentagon is scheduled to release its anticipated budget for this option early next year in its proposed fiscal 2010 spending plan (Defense Environment Alert, July 8).