#123 7 Nov 2001

USAF COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER CPC OUTREACH JOURNAL Air University Air War College Maxwell AFB, Alabama Welcome to the CPC Outreach Journal. As part of USAF Counterproliferation Center’s mission to counter weapons of mass destruction through education and research, we’re providing our government and civilian community a source for timely counterproliferation information. This information includes articles, papers and other documents addressing issues pertinent to US military response options for dealing with nuclear, biological and chemical threats and attacks. It’s our hope this information resource will help enhance your counterproliferation issue awareness.

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CONTENTS

Israeli Intelligence Officer: No Evidence Of Missing Nukes Report Finds 'Weakness' In Nuclear Controls Senate Delays Plan To Fumigate Its Hart Office Building On The Front Lines Of Anthrax War Anthrax Investigators Are Hoping Bronx Case Leads Them To Source Anthrax Danger Delays Inspection Of Millions Of Letters U.S. Looks For More Vaccine Sources Struggling To Reach A Consensus On Getting Ready For Bioterrorism Osama's Nuclear Quest Nuclear Experts' Nightmare: Terrorists Steal A Warhead Pakistani Nuclear Scientist Denies Links To The Taliban Nuke-Toting Gangs In Russia Pose A Threat To The West Pentagon And Weapons Contractors Weigh Restructuring Of Missile-Defense Program Panel Recommends Ending Satellite Plan Russia Denies Helping Iran Develop Weapons Bush Warns Bin Laden Is Seeking 'Biological And Nuclear Weapons' Inability To Trace Anthrax Poses Large Security Threat, Experts Say Arms Control: The First Line Of Defense Senators Told Of Lack Of Answers In F.B.I. Inquiry On Bioterrorism Biologists Warned To Exercise Greater Vigilance Tainted Letter Suggests Foreign Source For Anthrax Feds' Biological Defense Criticized Chemical and Biological Defense: DOD Needs to Clarify Expectations for Medical Readiness (GAO Report) Homeland Security: Challenges and Strategies in Addressing Short- and Long-Term National Needs (GAO Report) Chemical and Biological Defense: DOD Should Clarify Expectations for Medical Readiness (GAO Report)

DefenseNews.com November 5, 2001 Israeli Intelligence Officer: No Evidence Of Missing Nukes By Barbara Opall-Rome, DefenseNews.com Senior Correspondent TEL AVIV — A senior Israeli intelligence official has dismissed as baseless international reports about the possible theft or unauthorized transfer of nuclear warheads to supporters of Osama bin Laden or Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. "We’ve checked out the reports, and don’t have any evidence to support concerns over lost, stolen or misappropriated nuclear devices," Brig. Gen. Yossi Cooperwasser, chief of research for Israel’s Military Intelligence, told business executives here. Responding to a question at a Nov. 4 breakfast meeting of the Israel Managing-Directors Club, Cooperwasser added, "We don’t know of any tactical nuclear missiles or warheads in Pakistan or in the former Soviet Union that have gone missing or have gotten into the wrong hands." In a Nov. 5 issue of The New Yorker magazine, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh quoted several current and former U.S. officials who expressed concern about Pakistani nuclear devices winding up in the hands of bin Laden, the Taliban, or other state-sponsors of Islamic fundamentalist terror groups. Hersh reported that U.S. special operations forces — assisted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and "apparently … Israel’s most successful special operations unit, the storied Sayeret Matkal" — were planning a possible "exfiltration" of Pakistani nuclear warheads. An Israeli military spokesman here declined to discuss the Hersh report or other international reports referencing Israel’s elite commando unit. "We’re not in the practice of responding to these kinds of reports," the spokesman told DefenseNews.com. On related matters, Cooperwasser told the Israeli business executives that security officials here have drafted a number of contingency plans to respond to several scenarios linked to Osama bin Laden that could directly endanger Israel’s national security. The worst, "most catastrophic scenario," according to Cooperwasser, is the possibility of bin Laden winning control of an Islamic country and having his radical movement take over the trappings, infrastructure and legitimacy of a nation state. Yet another negative scenario presupposes the capture or death of bin Laden, which could precipitate a wave of revenge attacks by his followers. "If bin Laden is captured or defeated, his followers are likely to react with extreme measures, most likely through a new spate of suicide operations," Cooperwasser said. The third scenario Cooperwasser discussed with executives here involves Iraqi attacks on Israel in retaliation for a potential U.S. attack. "There’s still a capability in Iraq to endanger Israel … and we must be ready for this scenario," he said.

Washington Post November 6, 2001 Pg. 7 Report Finds 'Weakness' In Nuclear Controls Plutonium, Uranium Not Accounted For By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer Government records about plutonium and uranium loaned to U.S. academic institutions, private companies, hospitals and other government agencies cannot account for "substantial" amounts of the material, according to a report released yesterday by the Energy Department inspector general. The investigation into the matter, which began before the Sept. 11 terrorist acts, did not conclude that the radioactive materials were lost or stolen from the facilities. Instead, it said there was "a weakness in controls over potentially dangerous materials" in record-keeping by a private contractor used to track the materials. Although one official said the lapse might turn out to be only "sloppy bookkeeping," officials said the Energy Department is taking the report seriously because of concerns that terrorists may be trying to acquire radioactive materials. The Energy Department has called for an early meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licensed the research institutions, and the private contractor whose job it is to keep track of the materials. The identity of the contractor was not disclosed. Although some of the record-keeping problems were discovered before 1994, "It was not until 2001 when, in response to our report . . . [that Energy's] security operation was tasked to correct these problems," the report said. In one case, a Sept. 30, 2000, management record showed a "significant quantity of plutonium" at a facility that the NRC said "had not held plutonium since 1966," the report said. Energy Department officials said the unaccounted-for plutonium may have been washed away during decontamination and decommissioning of the facilities, according to the report. At another site, the report said, management records show significant amounts of plutonium while the NRC said the facility's license was terminated in 1993 and "no material was at this location." In neither case, the report said, could the NRC or Energy Department security operations explain the discrepancies in the records. In the case of 119 locations, the management records showed licensees returned to the Energy Department substantially more nuclear materials than originally loaned or leased. In those cases, Energy officials believed the original transfer of the material was incorrectly reported. In 35 instances where more than 2,500 grams of plutonium were reported returned, Energy Department security officials resolved all the discrepancies five months after being notified of the problem. As the result of this inquiry, the department's inspector general may have to conduct a similar audit of records of nuclear materials held by the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories, "where significantly greater numbers are involved," an Energy Department official said.

Washington Post November 6, 2001 Pg. 10 Senate Delays Plan To Fumigate Its Hart Office Building EPA to Test Chlorine Dioxide Technique By Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post Staff Writer The Senate has delayed plans to fumigate the Hart Office Building while officials conduct further tests to determine whether an experimental technique using chlorine dioxide gas will be effective in killing anthrax spores, the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday. Reviewers of the plan endorsed chlorine dioxide as a "really promising technology," but Hart houses the offices of half the members of the 100-seat Senate, and the technique needs to be "scaled up" to ensure that it works properly in such an immense building, Assistant EPA Administrator Marianne Horenko said. While it awaits the test results, the Senate yesterday began Hart's decontamination using liquid and foam cleansers in a stairwell and freight elevator, Capitol Police spokesman Lt. Dan Nichols said. The Hart Building closed Oct. 17 after a letter containing anthrax spores was found in the office of Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.). Spores were found in at least three other congressional buildings and at the Brentwood postal facility in Northeast Washington, which processed the Daschle letter. Two Brentwood postal workers have died from inhalation anthrax, but Inova Fairfax Hospital spokeswoman Lisa Wolfington said yesterday doctors are cautiously optimistic that two others hospitalized with the disease will recover. Winchester Medical Center upgraded to fair condition a State Department contract employee believed to have inhaled anthrax spores at a mail annex in Sterling. And Norma Wallace, 56, a postal worker in Hamilton, N.J., was released from the hospital after more than two weeks of treatment for inhalation anthrax. The Postal Service quarantined the mail delivery to Capitol Hill after Daschle announced the Hart contamination. Yesterday the FBI moved that mail -- received Oct. 12 to Oct. 17 -- in 280 sealed, 55-gallon barrels from a congressional building on P Street SE to a General Services Administration warehouse next to Springfield Mall. The FBI and the EPA will inspect and, if necessary, test the mail for more letters containing anthrax spores. An FBI statement said the warehouse had been sealed to prevent spores from escaping, so "the public health is not in any way threatened." No new confirmed cases of anthrax have been reported for more than a week, and the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday that weekend testing showed no spores in a downtown mailroom or in four mailrooms in agency buildings in Montgomery County. The FDA said tests from the Cohen Building, where the Department of Health and Human Services and the Voice of America have offices, were also negative. At the same time, however, the Pentagon announced that anthrax spores were discovered at a small U.S. post office branch in the Pentagon, and preventive antibiotics are being offered to more than 200 people who rent boxes there. The bacteria were found in two rental boxes, one held by a member of the Navy and the other unassigned, Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alerted the Pentagon on Saturday that two of 17 samples from the post office had tested positive. The post office is separate from the Pentagon's own mailroom and does not process Defense Department mail. It is beside several shops in a commercial concourse leading to the Metro rail station. Although authorities believe most anthrax cases in Washington, New Jersey and New York can be traced to three letters, they remain confounded by the death of Kathy T. Nguyen, 61, a hospital worker who had no apparent contact with tainted mail. Funeral services for Nguyen were held yesterday. In a telephone briefing, the CDC's Bradley Perkins said investigators believe Nguyen had direct exposure to a large dose of spores and did not catch the disease merely from coming into contact with a piece of mail contaminated by another spore-laden letter. Perkins said the CDC is "pursuing a lead" that the woman may have had a second job beyond her employment at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, which has been closed for environmental testing since her diagnosis and is scheduled to reopen tomorrow. That second job may have been at a restaurant. On Capitol Hill, Nichols said a review of the EPA's chlorine dioxide proposal had been completed, and that while test results are awaited, cleanup teams had begun decontamination work with antibacterial foam on the elevator and stairwell "hot spots." But that left untouched several other contaminated areas filled with papers, electronic equipment and other clutter that cannot be treated with liquid cleaners. That is why EPA last week suggested chlorine dioxide, a bleaching agent shown to be effective in killing anthrax spores in controlled tests by the Defense Department. "What we heard [from the peer review] was a general consensus that this was a really promising technology," said Horenko, the EPA's assistant administrator for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. But there were "really challenging design details," she added. Surmounting those requires tests to determine the proper concentration of chlorine dioxide gas to use inside the Hart Building, the length of time needed for the gas to kill anthrax spores, the optimum temperature and humidity, and the proper procedure to ensure the gas spreads throughout the building. Horenko said the EPA expected to have "a more thorough plan" ready "by the end of the week." The EPA said last week that chlorine dioxide decontamination would take about two weeks once officials start sealing the building with plastic and duct tape. Lawmakers returned to their offices at the Longworth House Office Building yesterday, and the Ford Building was to reopen today. Staff writers Avram Goldstein, Jennifer Lenhart, Spencer S. Hsu, Susan Levine, Rick Weiss and Carol Morello, and special correspondent Christine Haughney, contributed to this report.

Washington Post November 6, 2001 Pg. B1 On The Front Lines Of Anthrax War Fort Detrick Lab Has History, Technology to Fight Bioterrorism By David Snyder, Washington Post Staff Writer Except for the date, the U.S. Army report on Fort Detrick reads much like today's news: "William A. Boyles, pulmonary anthrax, died 25 November 1951. . . . Joel E. Willard, visceral anthrax, died 5 July 1958." Both men were working at the Army installation, and according to the report released in 1977, both deaths were deemed accidental. The streets named after the men on the compound's sprawling grounds in Frederick, Boyles Street and Willard Place, offer enduring testimony that Fort Detrick has for decades produced and experienced the horrors of biological agents -- something few places in the country could claim before this fall. As the nation's first bioterrorism attack spreads, the focus has been on Fort Detrick as the nation's prime repository of anthrax knowledge. It was there, on the sprawling, 1,200-acre campus of squat brick buildings, that the letters containing anthrax spores sent in recent weeks to Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw were taken for testing. It was there that an anthrax vaccine was developed for U.S. troops, and there that future methods of combating biological threats are likely to be explored. A generation of retired scientists who developed technology for biological weapons remain in Frederick, perhaps the greatest concentration of such experts in the country. "I suspect there are several old-timers who were doing research at Fort Detrick [who] are being called into special conferences," said Norman Covert, retired Fort Detrick public affairs officer and author of the installation's official history. "They did a lot of testing, and they know how the anthrax can be delivered, and they understood that it could be sent through an envelope." Scientists at the compound have been working round-the-clock, said Maj. Gen. John Parker, commanding general at Fort Detrick. Parker said the special-pathogens laboratory, which normally operates eight hours a day, five days a week, has been running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. More than 2,500 samples of possible anthrax -- including post office samples -- are being analyzed at the lab, Parker said. As the Bush administration's $1.2 billion request for bioterrorism spending wends its way through the appropriations process, Fort Detrick hopes for additional funding for a new special-pathogens lab, Parker said. He declined to be more specific about plans for the installation. He said he hoped a large amount of the total bioterrorism spending would be used to help other U.S. laboratories gain expertise "so that we have a large cadre of experts in the use of biologicals and chemicals." For decades, that expertise has been mostly confined to Fort Detrick. The nation's biological weapons program began atthen-Camp Detrick amid intense secrecy in 1943. The program was tasked with researching, and eventually producing, an array of biological agents capable of killing thousands. The Germans, Japanese and Soviets were producing biological weaponry, so scientists at Fort Detrick felt they were fighting a war for the nation's survival, said microbiologist Joseph Jemski. Meanwhile, a growing number of people criticized the program. "We took a lot of abuse," said Jemski, 71, who starting in 1953 researched methods of disseminating anthrax through the air. "They said we were developing infectious agents for the destruction of mankind, and we said, 'No, we're defending our country.' " Anthrax was once churned out by the pound. Thousands of animals -- monkeys, guinea pigs, rats -- died to test the effectiveness of various bacterial and virological scourges. A huge metal sphere known as the "Eight Ball," now defunct and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, tested the proficiency of airborne bacteria. Scientists sometimes worked with loaded .45-caliber pistols at their sides for security, Covert said. Building 470, a 44,000-square-foot structure used for testing biological agents, remains vacant and sealed, Covert said. It has not been demolished for fear that agents remaining in the rubble could contaminate the area. From 1949 through the 1960s, scientists staged several tests in which anthrax substitutes -- live bacteria without the pathogenic effects of anthrax -- were scattered through New York subway tunnels, a Greyhound bus terminal in the District, and the Pentagon, to see how the material would respond. Agents with the Fort Detrick Special Operations Division scattered the material using briefcases and other methods and later measured the amounts that remained in the air. The results showed a vulnerability to biological attack, said Ed Regis, author of "The Biology of Doom: The History of America's Secret Germ Warfare Project." "Their conclusions were that if this were done on the scale that they did it, a lot of people would be infected by anthrax," Regis said. Three human deaths at Fort Detrick have been officially attributed to biological agents developed there; a fourth man died in 1944 when a pump exploded, Covert said. Willard, 53, was an electrician. Boyles, 46, was a microbiologist. They account for two of only 18 reported cases of inhalation anthrax in this country in the past century, before the recent cases. The third person to die from infection by a biological agent, Albert Nickel, was an animal caretaker who in 1964 contracted Bolivian hemorrhagic fever. Secrecy was of paramount concern at Detrick, particularly in the early years, Jemski said. "We knew that if you were in a barroom somewhere in Frederick, you had to watch yourself," Jemski said. The veil was lifted somewhat starting in 1969, when an executive order by President Richard M. Nixon halted the nation's biological weapons program. Research was then turned toward more benign ends, and despite lingering accusations that Fort Detrick continued to do research for weapons, there is no evidence to prove that, Regis said. "There is zero evidence that we continued the [biological weapons] programs," Regis said. In the past 20 years, a variety of programs have come under Fort Detrick's aegis, including the National Cancer Research Institute at Frederick and Site R, or the emergency "Underground Pentagon," about 20 miles from Frederick. Most international diplomatic and military communications are routed through Detrick. But the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, at Fort Detrick has received the most attention in recent weeks. It is the Defense Department's lead laboratory for the medical aspects of biological warfare defense. Until recently, USAMRIID's mission was often overshadowed by other types of threats such as radiological and nuclear weapons, said David Huxsoll, commander of the institute from 1983-1990. "We never had the resources to fully address the problem" of emerging biological threats, said Huxsoll, now director of the USDA's Plum Island Animal Disease Center in Greenport, N.Y. "I think the threat was not understood." During Huxsoll's tenure, USAMRIID had a total staff of about 500 people, including about 125 scientists. Staffing has stayed fairly constant since then, Parker said. Since Sept. 11, speculation has swirled around Frederick that Fort Detrick could threaten the city's safety in the event of a terrorist attack. Parker said the risk of biological agents spreading is low: Only small quantities of agents are stored at Fort Detrick, and if an explosion occurred, the heat would likely kill much of what's there. "These things are fragile and would probably be destoryed by fire," Parker said. "If the building were not completely destroyed . . . the ventilation systems would keep it from getting out." Some people in the vicinity are taking precautions. At the Good Shepherd kindergarten, about two blocks from Fort Detrick, director Rita Billups said she is drawing up an emergency evacuation plan at the behest of worried parents.

New York Times November 6, 2001 Pg. 1 Anthrax Investigators Are Hoping Bronx Case Leads Them To Source By N. R. Kleinfield Investigators are intensifying efforts to trace the last encounters and daily routines of a New York hospital worker before she died of anthrax last week, hoping to unravel the mystery of who is behind the attacks that killed her and three other people and sickened a dozen more. The focus remains on 61-year-old Kathy T. Nguyen, according to senior federal law enforcement officials, because investigators believe her habits or relationships may take them somewhere other than the routes of three anthrax- tainted letters mailed from Trenton, N.J., a trail that baffled investigators seem to feel has grown frustratingly cold. "We're missing something," a senior government official said. "There's something wrong here." Of the anthrax cases, Ms. Nguyen's stands alone in defying comprehension. She contracted a lethal dose of inhalation anthrax, but no traces of the bacteria have been found anyplace she is known to have been in her last few weeks or on any item of clothing she might have worn. Ms. Nguyen died Oct. 31, three days after checking into a Manhattan hospital. "Nothing in her house. Nothing at work. Nothing in her mail. Nothing anywhere," said a senior law enforcement official. Unpersuaded for the moment that Ms. Nguyen developed the disease from mail cross-contaminated in some fashion by contact with the known anthrax letters, law enforcement officials said it remains possible she actually crossed paths with whoever unleashed the attacks. But where and when that may have happened, or with whom, remain open questions. That theory is partly a hope built on last-ditch optimism, because the alternative — that some innocent letter addressed to her was cross- contaminated — would leave the investigation essentially where it has been almost from the start: nowhere. Investigators admit that it has been difficult pinpointing everything Ms. Nguyen did in her last days. Did she buy gum here, get coffee there? One momentary encounter might have been the only one that matters. Epidemiology is a field that learns from patterns, but Ms. Nguyen's case is stubbornly devoid of patterns — no traces of spores in her environment, no obvious correlation to the known germ-laced letters, no emergence of related cases that point in a direction. Every day, detectives and medical investigators assemble before wall charts that represent the hospital worker's final weeks. Every day, they hope to fill in more of the chart's gaps. But most of the blanks remain just that: blank, save for the long hours and frequent double shifts she worked at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital on the East Side of Manhattan, according to Dr. Marcelle Layton, the New York City assistant health commissioner. Still, each day investigators delve anew into those aspects of a structured and quiet routine, looking for some light that has yet to shine. Again and again, a discovery about her life raises hopes only to later deflate them. In one case, investigators were excited to find a receipt for an airline ticket in her apartment. Then they noticed its date — 1991. In trying to divine the details of an encounter that caused the exposure, agents of the task force have tried to interview anyone who might known anything about Ms. Nguyen. Father Carlos M. Rodriguez, the pastor at St. John Chrysostom Roman Catholic Church on 167th Street in the Bronx who presided over her funeral yesterday, said investigators visited him looking for details. All he was able to tell them, he said, was that she often attended his 10 a.m. Sunday Mass, and that she also worshiped at a Catholic church in Midtown. He wasn't sure which one. What's more, he told the authorities that she liked to shop for groceries in Chinatown, but he didn't know which shops. Dave Cruz, the superintendent at the building at 1031 Freeman Street in the South Bronx, where Ms. Nguyen lived on the third floor, said he was interviewed by agents at least twice, once shortly after he dropped her off at Lenox Hill hospital when her illness worsened and again after she was diagnosed with anthrax. He wouldn't discuss what she said to him during the trip to Lenox Hill, and said he knew little of her routines. "That's the mystery right there," he said. "Other than being at work and home, I don't know where she went." Anna Rodriguez, who lives above Ms. Nguyen's apartment, said that agents have been questioning everyone who showed up at the Ortiz Funeral Parlor in the Bronx on Saturday and Sunday, when Ms. Nguyen's body was laid out for viewing. "It's a tough one," said Jerome M. Hauer, former director of the city's emergency management office. "It's almost the way you try to find out who murdered her. Who did she make contact with? Where'd she spend her last days?" As Ms. Nguyen was buried yesterday, and as Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat announced that it would reopen today, a few fresh tidbits about her surfaced. One lead that investigators are pursuing is that Ms. Nguyen, who worked in a stockroom in the hospital's basement, may have moonlighted at a restaurant. It was not clear, however, whether officials knew of a specific establishment, or whether Ms. Nguyen worked there or simply ate there. Dr. Bradley Perkins, an anthrax expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a conference call with reporters yesterday that, "We do not have any very good leads as to where or how the exposure occurred." Dr. Bradley said that, amazingly enough, even as many more samples have been tested from the hospital, her apartment, her car, along her daily subway route to work on the No. 6 train, and from other places she was known to have visited, there has not been a single positive reading for anthrax. Investigators have been running swabs over every sweater, tabletop and doorknob that Ms. Nguyen might have touched, rubbed or passed. Authorities concede that anything is possible, including that Ms. Nguyen did in fact touch a contaminated letter. But if that is true, it would be one more surprise in a succession of anthrax surprises over recent weeks. From what is known, Ms. Nguyen's case doesn't fit the cross- contamination pattern. Four people have died after developing the disease in their lungs — the three others being a photo editor in Florida and two postal workers in Washington — and the same strain of anthrax was identified in all four cases. But in the three other deaths, anthrax was detected at their offices and presumed to have originated in a letter. Ms. Nguyen's path is not believed to have crossed news media outlets or postal facilities. She first became seriously ill on Oct. 25. Dr. Perkins said the likelihood was that she was exposed no more than four or five days before then, or around Oct. 20. This is well beyond when the known anthrax letters arrived in New York. Also, other cases of anthrax triggered by cross contamination of letters have been limited to a less-severe form: cutaneous, or skin, anthrax. Given these factors, Dr. Perkins said, it is unlikely that Ms. Nguyen was infected through cross-contamination. The greatest hope of investigators is that she somehow intersected with one or more people responsible for the attacks. Frustrated at their inability to achieve a breakthrough, officials have told the F.B.I.-N.Y.P.D. Joint Terrorist Task Force to continue their dissection of her routine, and investigators are believed to be intent on formulating as detailed a biographical portait of Ms. Nguyen as they can. Their work has been hindered by the fact that Ms. Nguyen, a Vietnamese refugee who arrived here in 1977, died without being able to be interviewed about her life and routines. She lived alone and had no nearby family. Indeed, at her funeral yesterday, it was said that she might have lost almost all of her immediate family during the war in Vietnam. Neighbors in the Bronx depicted her as friendly and unremarkable, but it was unlikely that anyone knew with precision her itinerary in the weeks preceding her death. Even a $1 million reward for information, which produced a spate of telephone calls and e-mail messages to federal law enforcement agencies over the weekend, has so far left the anthrax investigation starved for promising tips.

New York Times November 6, 2001 Anthrax Danger Delays Inspection Of Millions Of Letters By David E. Rosenbaum WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — Three weeks after an envelope filled with anthrax spores was opened in Senator Tom Daschle's office, government officials say they have been unable to examine millions of other letters to determine whether any of them also contain anthrax. Government officials say it is still too dangerous to examine the millions of letters that have been impounded and stored since the anthrax scare hit Washington. As a result, the authorities have no way of knowing whether the contamination of post offices and mailrooms and the illnesses contracted here and in New York and New Jersey were all caused by spores that seeped out of the letter to Mr. Daschle and contaminated other mail or whether some contamination came from other letters containing the anthrax bacteria. Law enforcement officials say they have not ruled out either possibility. Azeezaly S. Jaffer, vice president and chief spokesman for the United States Postal Service, said today that millions of pieces of mail would eventually be screened letter by letter for anthrax contamination, but only after the letters were subjected to irradiation. Anthrax can be detected even after the bacteria are killed by irradiation, officials have said. Although officials have begun the irradiation process, Mr. Jaffer said he had no idea when investigators would begin looking at each letter in hopes of finding clues that could lead to an arrest in the case. The screening, he said in a conference call with reporters, will be performed by postal inspectors in coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "This is something absolutely new for us," Mr. Jaffer said, so the postal authorities are following "a slow and methodical process." If other letters with anthrax turn up, they could contain valuable forensic evidence and new information about how extensive the plot was to send microbes through the mail. So far, only three letters with anthrax have been found — the one to Mr. Daschle, in which the germs were in a form that allowed them to become airborne and thus potentially lethal; one to The New York Post, in which the anthrax was less finely milled, and one to NBC, where too little anthrax was collected for a good analysis. Meanwhile today, the Environmental Protection Agency seemed to be having second thoughts about a plan to decontaminate the Hart Building, where Mr. Daschle, the Democratic leader, has his office, by making the building airtight and fumigating it with chlorine dioxide gas, a powerful disinfectant. Tina Kreisher, a spokeswoman for the agency, said a peer review group of scientists and doctors examined the plan over the weekend and said more engineering and design studies were needed. The gas has been tested in a large trailer, and it killed bacteria without damaging papers, computers and artwork. But it has never been used in a large building. The peer review group raised questions about matters like the humidity, the temperature and proper strength, Ms. Kreisher said. "There is no long-term study on how to kill anthrax," she said. One possibility, Ms. Kreisher said, is to use the chlorine compound in a liquid form to disinfect the stairwells and elevators where traces of anthrax were found and decide later how to decontaminate Mr. Daschle's office itself. No one was willing to speculate when the building, where 50 senators have offices, could reopen. On the House side of the Capitol, the Longworth House Office Building opened today after having been closed for two weeks for decontamination. Over the weekend, small amounts of anthrax were discovered in two mailboxes in a post office in the Pentagon. The office was cleaned, and later tests for anthrax were negative, Mr. Jaffer said. In buildings that house the mailrooms of the Food and Drug Administration and the Voice of America, tests last week that showed evidence of anthrax have turned out to be false positives, and new tests found that the buildings were not infected, health officials said today. The mail the authorities intend to screen to see if they can find other letters has been taken from the central post office for the Washington area on Brentwood Road and sent to Lima, Ohio, for irradiation to kill anthrax bacteria. Mr. Jaffer said many millions of pieces of mail were involved. He said he did not know how much had already been decontaminated and sent back to Washington, and he would not say where the mail was being stored after it was returned. After it is sorted by the postal inspectors, he said, unsuspicious mail will be delivered, and suspicious letters and packages will be set aside for scrutiny. For now, all letters mailed to government offices are being sent to Ohio for treatment, Mr. Jaffer said. This means the letters are delivered weeks late. The government is buying irradiation equipment so the mail can be treated in the Washington area. Elsewhere, the effects of the anthrax attacks were still being felt today. A postal worker who contracted the first case of inhalation anthrax in New Jersey was released from the hospital and immediately held a news conference to urge Americans not to panic. "We don't have to stand back and cower in fear," said the worker, Norma Wallace, who works in the Hamilton Township mail-sorting center. When she was hospitalized in Mount Holly on Oct. 18, Ms. Wallace had a fever of 102 degrees and large amounts of fluid in her lungs. Doctors gave her a 50 percent chance of survival. Her doctors gave her a series of antibiotics intravenously and used a syringe and then chest tubes to drain her lungs. The doctors now expect her to recover fully. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed five anthrax cases in New Jersey, four of them at the Hamilton center. Two cases are inhalation anthrax, and three are skin anthrax. Ms. Wallace said she believed she contracted the disease when a high- speed automatic sorting machine jammed. When she went to fix it, there was powder on the electric eye that reads bar codes on envelopes. The New Jersey state epidemiologist, Dr. Eddy A. Bresnitz, said today that all the state's anthrax cases, including a letter carrier and an accounting firm employee, were linked to the Hamilton sorting center. Dr. Bresnitz said the mail sent to the accounting firm and the mail delivered by the letter carrier might have been contaminated by anthrax- laden letters processed at Hamilton. "A lot of people are starting to think cross- contamination is a real possibility," Dr. Bresnitz said. In New York, a postal union has been trying to close New York City's largest mail-sorting center, but the federal government filed legal papers today asserting that the site was safe and should remain open. The New York Metro Area Postal Union seeks an injunction to close the Morgan Distribution and Processing Facility until it is thoroughly cleaned. Anthrax contamination has been found on five sorting machines on the center's third floor. Judge John F. Keenan of Federal District Court in Manhattan has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday to determine whether to close the sorting center. And at City Hall in New York, environmental officials were testing for anthrax after trace amounts were found on a package that NBC News sent a month ago to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's chief of staff. City officials said the package might have picked up spores from an anthrax-laced letter that was mailed to NBC on Sept. 18 from Trenton.

New York Times November 5, 2001 U.S. Looks For More Vaccine Sources By Keith Bradsher with Michael Wines WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 — The United States has begun looking for scarce anthrax vaccine overseas as a precaution in case lingering production problems cannot be resolved at an American vaccine factory. Britain has already provided samples of its vaccines for testing, and more samples are being sought from other countries, federal health officials said. The Food and Drug Administration does not accept medicines produced overseas until they have been extensively tested in the United States, which sometimes takes years. "We have not done the tests, and that's one of the problems," Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, told reporters on Friday. A federal drug official said the agency was trying to work quickly on many bioterrorism issues, including anthrax vaccines, but without sacrificing safety. The F.D.A. required the only American factory making anthrax vaccine to shut down in December 1999 after an inspection found 30 violations involving safety, consistency, record-keeping and sterility. Mr. Thompson predicted two weeks ago that the factory, in Lansing, Mich., owned by the BioPort Corporation, would pass inspection and resume shipments by Thanksgiving. But a federal official said this weekend that the factory might not be ready until the end of November or early December. BioPort declined to provide a timetable. In addition to the United States, three countries are known to produce anthrax vaccine for humans: Britain, China and Russia. At least a dozen countries, including the United States, manufacture vaccines for livestock; medical experts say the veterinary vaccines are very similar to the Russian vaccines for people. Many doctors say veterinary vaccines could be used to treat people in the United States in an emergency — if millions of Americans were exposed to anthrax and all other supplies of antibiotics and vaccine ran out. But veterinary vaccines may carry more serious side effects than the American vaccine for people, they warn. In Britain, a government laboratory known as the Center for Applied Microbiology and Research makes a vaccine that is administered each year to about 1,000 people, most of them veterinarians, farmers, tanners and others who may encounter anthrax at work. Dr. Philip Luton, a spokesman for the British laboratory, declined to discuss the center's production capacity or stockpiles. But vaccine samples have been sent to American health officials for testing, he said. The British vaccine is similar to the American vaccine. Neither uses live anthrax spores or bacteria. Instead, toxins excreted by anthrax bacteria are filtered from a bacterial culture. Tiny quantities of these toxins are mixed with a fluid and injected so the inoculated person will develop antibodies to the toxins. British and American vaccines use slightly different strains of bacteria and are mixed with different fluids. China has also developed a vaccine that uses filtered toxins, but less is known about it. Russia uses an older vaccine technology, inoculating people with live spores of a weakened strain of anthrax. The vaccine was developed for livestock in the late 1930's and came to be used for people, said Dr. Veniamin L. Cherkassky, one of Russia's leading experts on anthrax. Russia produces large quantities of the vaccine, inoculating 60,000 livestock industry workers for the first time each year and administering an additional 100,000 booster shots annually, Dr. Cherkassky said. The Russian vaccine is very strong, requiring a single dose, compared with four doses for the British vaccine and six doses over two years for the American vaccine. Dr. Cherkassky asserted that the Russian vaccine was safe because the spores came from the weakened strain. "This vaccine does not give any reactions — it cannot give any reactions," he said. "There's nothing in it that can give reactions." Six American experts on anthrax vaccines said the Russian vaccine was probably even more effective than the American vaccine in preventing the recipient from falling ill with anthrax. But all six said the Russian vaccine had more serious side effects. Dr. Martin E. Hugh-Jones, an anthrax expert at Louisiana State University, has studied Soviet-era medical records for 60,000 people in Sverdlovsk who were inoculated in 1979 immediately after a leak from a nearby anthrax weapons factory. The records showed a dozen cases of permanent neurological damage from the vaccines, he said. The American and British vaccines carry no such risk, he said, because they do not use live spores. The Russian vaccine was probably painful, too, because many of the people inoculated skipped subsequent prescribed doses, Dr. Hugh- Jones added. Dr. Cherkassky said no one in Sverdlovsk had experienced a bad reaction to the vaccine. In the United States, no public officials have suggested mass immunizations for the general public because they think that the risk of a mass anthrax infection is low. The government is making plans to vaccinate 800 laboratory workers, and there have also been proposals to vaccinate police officers, firefighters and workers who decontaminate areas with anthrax. Mr. Thompson has sought to reassure the public about anthrax vaccine, saying on Friday that there was a stockpile of 5.4 million doses. But many of those doses were recently produced by BioPort at the factory that the federal drug agency closed. Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican who has led hearings on the vaccine's safety, said that fewer than 20,000 of the doses in the stockpile were clearly safe. The side effects of the American vaccine have been controversial, even though they are not as serious as those from the Russian vaccine. The American vaccine can cause redness and itching at the site of the injection and sometimes flulike illnesses. Hospitalization is necessary for about one out of each 200,000 people who get the vaccine, according to the Defense Department, which inoculates soldiers going to high-risk regions like the Persian Gulf and South Korea. Several hundred people have quit the military in the last four years to avoid receiving the injections. The F.D.A. has responded by saying the vaccine is safe.

New York Times November 5, 2001 Struggling To Reach A Consensus On Getting Ready For Bioterrorism By Sheryl Gay Stolberg WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 — In his five years as president of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Ronald R. Peterson has spent much of his time trying to make ends meet. But now that the anthrax scare has made bioterrorism a reality, Mr. Peterson is planning to spend money, not save it. This year, Johns Hopkins will buy extra medicines, masks, ventilators and radios for its security force. It will retrofit a building with new air filters, to keep infectious germs from spreading. The price: $7 million. The question is, who will pay for it? "The federal government is going to have to give us some assistance," Mr. Peterson said. Last week, the American Hospital Association estimated that the nation would have to spend $11.3 billion to get hospitals ready to handle a serious bioweapon attack. But the leading bioterrorism legislation in Congress proposes $3 billion for all aspects of preparedness, with $400 million earmarked for hospitals. The gulf between these two estimates shows how far the nation is from a consensus on what must be done to prepare for bioterrorism. The current anthrax attacks, which have killed 4 people and sickened 14 others, have done more than years of reports and warnings to convince Americans that the nation must get ready for a large- scale germ attack. But the anthrax-tainted letters, while terrifying, have not been much of a test of the country's hospital network. The system they have tested — the public health system — has been strained to its breaking point. "We have spent, in the last three years, one dollar per year per American on bioterrorism preparedness," said Dr. Tara O'Toole, director of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies at Johns Hopkins University. "We are basically getting what we paid for." Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, are proposing legislation that would increase that amount tenfold, to $3.1 billion a year, Mr. Frist said. Dr. O'Toole says that amount is merely a "down payment on what is going to have to be a long-term investment." There is little agreement among lawmakers and policy experts about how much is needed. Mr. Kennedy, for instance, initially wanted to spend $10 billion on bioterrorism, including $5 billion to improve the public health system. The current Frist-Kennedy package, which could be taken up by the Senate this week, includes about $1 billion for public health. In the House of Representatives, Democrats have proposed $7 billion for bioterrorism, including $3.5 billion for public health improvements; House Republicans are drafting an alternative. The Bush administration has asked Congress for $1.5 billion to fight germ attacks, most of it to stockpile antibiotics and vaccines. "We can achieve much better preparedness very quickly," Mr. Kennedy said, "but it will require a major national effort and a major commitment of new resources." "The question is not whether we have the ability to protect the American people," he said, "but whether we have the will." Having the will does not just mean having the money. It means training doctors and nurses and public health professionals. It will also mean a sea change in the way hospitals do business. For more than a decade, managed care companies and the Medicare system have pressed hospitals to squeeze the extras out of their budgets. Hospitals have cut beds from emergency rooms. They have eliminated laboratory technician positions and pharmacy jobs. They no longer stockpile medicines, and instead buy drugs each day as needed. These steps have eliminated what is known as surge capacity, the ability of hospitals to handle a sharp increase in patients. To prepare for bioterrorism, hospitals must build surge capacity back in. Yet because they are reimbursed by health insurers only for patient care, hospital executives say they have no way to pay for bioterrorism preparedness. And because hospitals compete for patients, most have not engaged in regional planning for a bioterrorist attack — designating one city hospital as the burn unit, for instance, and another the infectious disease ward. "Back in civil defense days, there were regional hospital planning committees that had some type of a game plan," said Amy Smithson, a bioterrorism expert at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a research organization in Washington. "Privatization of the hospital industry has meant that if physicians, nurses and hospital administrators could not charge their time to a health insurer or Uncle Sam, then it was difficult for them to do this type of thing." The American Hospital Association estimates that, in a large-scale bioterrorist attack, each urban hospital will need to be able to care for 1,000 patients; the preparations will cost about $3 million per hospital, and more than $8 billion all told. Each rural hospital, the association has said, will need to be able to care for 200 patients, at a cost of $1.4 million per hospital, a total of more than $3 billion. Some bioterrorism experts, among them Dr. Frank E. Young, the former director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, have suggested that military field hospitals could be used to help cope with an attack. Others say that is not practical. "I think it's naïve to say we don't need to upgrade our hospital capabilities," said Joseph Waeckerle, an expert on bioterrorism who edits the Annals of Emergency Medicine. "People are going to go to emergency departments of hospitals, and they are going to go in waves." Of the current anthrax attacks, he said: "This is one small incident. What happens if we have a big one?" Senator Frist said he was reluctant to commit the government to spending a lot of money on hospital preparedness until the hospitals developed bioterrorism plans. "Only one out of five hospitals even has a bioterrorism plan," Mr. Frist said. "If you gave them a billion dollars, they don't have a plan to spend it on." There is general agreement, however, that the federal government needs to stockpile vaccines and antibiotics. The Bush administration has proposed spending $509 million to acquire 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine, one for every American, and $630 million to expand the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, a cache of medicine and equipment that could be used in the event of a national emergency. Antibiotics from the stockpile are being distributed to people exposed to anthrax. Kevin Keane, a spokesman for Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, called the administration's $1.5 billion plan "a strong investment and a good start." Mr. Keane said the health secretary is "continuing to work very closely with Senators Kennedy and Frist as well as other members of Congress on a final package." But Representative Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the House Democratic caucus's task force on homeland security, said Mr. Bush's plan did not go far enough. The Democrats' $7 billion package, for instance, includes $1.1 billion to improve intelligence capabilities to detect bioterrorism, $870 million for law enforcement and $720 million for the military. "The administration is way behind the curve," Mr. Menendez said. "They may be very aggressive in their war on Afghanistan. But in my view, and in the view of many people, they are not as aggressive on the homeland part of this issue." As the debate continues, the nation's public health laboratories are struggling to analyze tests generated by the anthrax scare. Dr. O'Toole, of Johns Hopkins, said laboratory workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were "literally sleeping in the lab," while public health departments in affected states were working around the clock to analyze suspicious powders. "We've been doing this for a few weeks now and people are tired," Dr. O'Toole said. "It is not sustainable over the long term. Public health has been so frayed and reduced in recent years that it is very hard to rise to the occasion." There is a shortage of epidemiologists who are trained to recognize and investigate outbreaks of infectious disease, said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota who advises Mr. Thompson, the health secretary, on bioterrorism. "Many health departments couldn't hire one," Dr. Osterholm said, "even if they had the money." So no matter how much money Congress appropriates, Dr. Osterholm said, the United States cannot prepare for bioterrorism overnight. "It's going to be a multiyear building project," Dr. Osterholm said. "That's what people have to understand. It's like a skyscraper. Even if you want to build it tomorrow, it's going to take time."

Time November 12, 2001 Pg. 38 Osama's Nuclear Quest How long will it take before al-Qaeda gets hold of the most dangerous of weapons? By Jeffrey Kluger Nobody is certain what Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood has been up to in Afghanistan in the past three years--but nobody in the West much likes it either. Mahmood is one of Pakistan's leading nuclear engineers, a key part of the team that developed the country's small arsenal of atom bombs. According to a lot of people, he also may be a little flaky. The fact that since 1998, so loose a nuclear cannon has been traveling in and out of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, where he has helped the Afghans construct a complex of buildings he describes as flour mills, has a lot of people worried. It was for this and other reasons that Pakistan detained Mahmood and two of his colleagues to determine if the three scientists may have been passing nuclear expertise, raw materials or--worse--functioning weaponry on to the Taliban. So far, nothing Islamabad has learned has proved that the men have indeed been trafficking in secrets, and they have been released. But nothing has put all doubts to rest either. The detention of the three scientists was just the latest in the so-far offstage effort to battle the most dreadful of the terror weapons Osama bin Laden would like to have in his arsenal: nuclear arms. Airborne anthrax and hijacked planes are little more than a murderous tease compared with the prospect of rogue nukes. Just what bin Laden has in his stockpiles, what he plans to do with it and what can be done to stop him are rapidly becoming the most pressing questions in the anti-terror wars. "The goal of terrorism is to spread panic," says Dr. Jerrold Post, a physician and professor at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, who believes that al-Qaeda would try a nuclear or radiological attack if it had the capacity. "Psychologically, there are no constraints." It's been an open secret in the intelligence community that bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization have long lusted after nukes. The consensus in Washington is that the group does not have a true nuclear-fission device, though it may well have what is known as a radiological weapon or "dirty bomb"--a conventional explosive packed with radioactive debris. Whatever bin Laden's got, he has made any number of attempts to get more. As early as the mid- 1990s, intelligence sources tell TIME, bin Laden's agents began cruising the black markets of Europe and Asia looking for pirated Russian warheads. Al-Qaeda also made it known that loose components such as enriched uranium would do too. Relatively new to the free-for-all thieving of the post-Soviet republics, bin Laden was fleeced at least twice, getting fooled by black marketeers who tried to sell him low-grade, radioactive rubbish--in one instance claiming it was "red mercury," a fictional Russian weapon. But bin Laden has been a patient shopper, and if he hasn't made a good buy yet, he has come awfully close. Earlier this year, at the trial of the four men now convicted of planning the U.S. embassy bombings, al-Qaeda turncoat Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl described his role in helping to broker a 1993 deal in which bin Laden attempted to pay $1.5 million for a cylinder of South African uranium. Al-Fadl saw the cylinder, but he wasn't present to see when--or if-- money and material changed hands. Last April a Bulgarian working as a middleman in a Dubai company providing Asian laborers to Middle East construction firms was briefly introduced to bin Laden in a safe house at an unknown location during a trip to Pakistan. The next day he was approached by a scientist who seemed to be part of bin Laden's organization, offering him a different kind of business proposition: a scheme to bring nuclear waste from Bulgaria through Moldova and Ukraine. The names al-Qaeda and bin Laden never came up during that meeting, but the wary Bulgarian backed out of the deal. "They pressured me," he told TIME. "They said, 'We're ready to give you this business.'" That kind of al-Qaeda tenacity is part of what sparked the recent arrests in Pakistan. Mahmood, the best known of the detained engineers, has been a vocal supporter of the Taliban, calling its members "upholders of a...movement of renaissance of Islam." He has compared the journey of the soul from life through death and after to an electrical current passing through a wire, and has said the energy of the spirits known as jinns could be harnessed to solve the energy crisis. Such seemingly loose-screw ideas coming from a man with so much knowledge of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal always troubled Islamabad and Washington. In 1999, when Mahmood retired from the government and began traveling in and out of Afghanistan to establish what he said was a relief organization, antennae went up. Once American military actions began, the commanders of the air campaign decided to direct a few bombs at Mahmood's flour mills. At about the same time, Pakistani officials brought Mahmood and the others in for questioning. President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman Major General Rashid Quereshi stresses that the U.S. did not request the arrests--something Washington confirms--dismissing as "absolutely baseless" rumors that the men were simply handed over to the FBI or the CIA. Secretary of State Colin Powell, however, has readily admitted that the Pakistani scientists are high on Washington's worry list. "I discussed this issue with President Musharraf," he said, "and I'm confident that he understands the importance of ensuring that elements of his nuclear program are safe." For now, they appear to be. As long as Musharraf remains in charge, the weapons are well nailed down. If he should be toppled, however, and if power should fall into the hands of extremist factions, the situation could change fast. In hopes of preventing that, the U.S. has offered to help Pakistan improve its already tight bomb security. But even if Islamabad's bombs stay buttoned up, the nuke risk remains high. That's because Russia and the former Soviet states are leaking like a sieve. The Soviet Union produced more than 140 tons of weapons-grade plutonium and a whopping 1,000 tons of highly enriched uranium during its nuclear peak. Russia's internal-security agencies admit that on hundreds of occasions they have had to seize fissionable materials or technical documents that had fallen into the wrong hands. The United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency reports 175 cases of trafficking in nuclear material since 1993. In the late 1990s, Afghan and Pakistani smugglers were sneaking so much nuclear material out of the former Soviet Union that they had to stockpile it in at least one warehouse in Peshawar, Pakistan. Robert Puffer, an American antiquities dealer familiar with Pakistan's black markets, claims to have been in the warehouse, where dozens of canisters of nuclear contraband were stored under the floor. "These Afghans didn't know anything about radioactivity," he told TIME. "They were walking around with stuff they said was 'yellow cake,' which they kept in a matchbox in their pocket." U.S. officials in the region at the time were less impressed by whatever the smugglers were selling, saying most of it was radioactive waste material scavenged from hospitals--certainly not weapons-grade stuff. If nuclear material of whatever quality is trickling out of the former Soviet Union, nuclear engineers are too. In the early 1990s--well before Mahmood and his Pakistani colleagues may have got the itch to help out al-Qaeda--Russia intercepted a planeload of its missile scientists leaving the country to go work for North Korea. In the years since, out-of-work engineers have grown no less desperate, and Russian borders have grown no less porous--meaning that the brain drain may only grow worse. But detonating a bomb won't take any technical assistance if bin Laden can get his hands on a few fully built--and widely feared--suitcase nukes. During the cold war, the Soviets built an unknown number of portable nuclear explosives, small enough to be carried in a case 8 in. by 16 in. by 24 in. After the East-West thaw, Russia claimed to have secured all the weapons, but plenty of people have doubts. In 1996, Russian General Alexander Lebed claimed that his government had lost track of 134 mini-nukes, and stories have circulated that bin Laden himself bought 20 of them from the Chechens for $30 million and two tons of opium. Given the nature of post-Soviet record keeping--which often means no record keeping at all--the truth of the claims is impossible to determine. Colonel-General Igor Valynkin, a top official of the Russian Defense Ministry, dismisses the talk as "ravings," and even if there is more to the stories than that, there is reason to believe the danger is not as great as it seems. Though suitcase bombs may be out there, they may also be duds, since the tritium triggers needed to ignite them have probably decayed. "You need to recharge the tritium every six years," says Paul Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute. Of course, even partial detonation of a weapon could cause a lot of damage--and release a lot of radioactivity. Simpler still is the so-called dirty bomb. Detonated in a crowded city, a dirty bomb would pack an explosive punch no greater than ordinary ordnance, but the radioactive debris it would scatter could sicken and kill unknown numbers of people and contaminate an unknown stretch of real estate. Because the bomb would require no special skill to build, it's perhaps the most feared of the terrorists' nuclear choices. "They don't kill as many people," says Morton Bremer Maerli, a nuclear-terror expert at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, "but as a weapon of terror, they may be just as effective." If there's reason for anxious Americans to feel hopeful, it's that pulling off a nuclear attack, even a low-grade one, is an enormously complicated business, and anything at all--from technical problems to supply problems to the simple dangers of fooling with radioactive material--could trip it up. For bin Laden, everything would have to go exactly right, or a nuclear strike wouldn't work. For the American military and the global law-enforcement forces arrayed against him, the job is to see to it that at least one of those things goes wrong. Reported by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad, Joshua Kucera and Violeta Simeonova/Sofia, Tim McGirk/Quetta, Andrew Purvis/Vienna, Douglas Waller/Washington and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow

Washington Post November 4, 2001 Pg. 6 Nuclear Experts' Nightmare: Terrorists Steal A Warhead But Specialists Disagree on Whether They Could Fashion Atomic Weapon From Uranium or Plutonium By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer Nuclear weapons experts say the greatest threat posed by terrorist groups seeking nuclear weapons comes from their stealing a warhead or obtaining highly enriched uranium or plutonium from which they could fashion a nuclear device. "We have been worrying about this kind of threat emerging for years," Roger L. Hagengruber, senior vice president for national security and arms control at Sandia National Laboratories, said Friday. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, "my worry index has gone up substantially," Hagengruber said, adding that the skills shown by the al Qaeda terrorist network putting together that operation demonstrate "the potential is there." Hagengruber said the first threat of terrorists like Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, acquiring a nuclear capability comes from their stealing a weapon. That is "the most devastating scenario," according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But Hagengruber noted that U.S. weapons have built-in locks to prevent their being exploded, a secure system that he said would take outside scientists years to break. Hagengruber added that, having worked with the Russians on security for their weapons, "I just don't think Russians are missing weapons, they care about this . . . they care about safety and security about theirs as we do about ours." Bin Laden or others obtaining highly enriched uranium is the second greatest threat, according to the IAEA and other experts. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said on Monday that "while we cannot exclude the possibility that terrorists could get hold of some nuclear material, it is highly unlikely they could use it to manufacture and successfully detonate a nuclear bomb." Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a research and advocacy center on nuclear proliferation and terrorism, disagreed. He said a team of five former U.S. weapons designers "found that terrorists indeed would be capable of making an effective, first-generation nuclear weapon if they could obtain enough reactor-grade plutonium or highly enriched uranium." But those designers said terrorists working with the material would have to be trained in physical, chemical and metallurgical properties of nuclear materials, the characteristics of their fabrication, high explosives, chemical propellants, hydrodynamics and electrical circuitry. "It is exceedingly unlikely that any single individual, even after years of assiduous preparation, could equip himself to proceed confidently in each part of the diverse range of necessary knowledge and skills," the panel wrote in a 1997 paper. It concluded that at least three specialists would be required. Hagengruber said that if an aspiring bomb builder had enough pure, highly enriched uranium, and had some fundamental understanding of nuclear weapons design, he "could create a situation with a 10 percent chance of having a sizable explosive yield." But obtaining the roughly 30 kilograms -- or 65 pounds -- of highly enriched uranium required for such a result is a difficult task, according to counterterrorism experts. Much less plutonium is needed for a nuclear explosion, but it is far more dangerous to handle and much more difficult to treat in a manner that would cause a nuclear explosion. If a terrorist group succeeded in obtaining enough fissile material, it would need a place where it could work "uninterrupted for a significant period of time," according to David Albright and his colleagues at the Institute for Science and Security. "The necessary weaponization facilities can be small," Albright wrote in September, noting that South Africa's "initial nuclear weapons effort in the 1970s used small, rudimentary facilities that were extremely difficult to detect by overseas intelligence agencies." One other consideration is what is known as a dirty bomb, a device containing radioactive materials and explosive chemicals that is detonated to contaminate a selected area. The potential impact from such a device can be measured using the experience recorded in 1987 in the Brazilian city of Goiania. There, some scrap scavengers broke into an abandoned radiological clinic and stole a capsule containing a little more than an ounce of highly radioactive cesium 137. The capsule was cut into more than 100 pieces, which were passed along to family members and friends around the city. "Fourteen people were overexposed to radiation out of 249 contaminated," according to the IAEA. "Four subsequently died and more than 110,000 had to be continuously monitored. To decontaminate the area, 125,000 drums and 1,470 boxes were filled with contaminated clothing, furniture, dirt and other materials; 85 houses had to be destroyed."

Wall Street Journal November 5, 2001 Pakistani Nuclear Scientist Denies Links To The Taliban By Steve Levine and Saeed Azhar, Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal KARACHI, Pakistan -- A retired Pakistani nuclear scientist has told military interrogators that he never met Osama bin Laden or passed on nuclear secrets to Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a person familiar with the matter said. And a senior military official said investigators have so far found "nothing objectionable" in Bashiruddin Mahmoud's behavior. Mr. Mahmoud, who headed the country's uranium-enrichment project in the 1970s, gave the answers to military investigators examining his relatively frequent contacts with the Taliban over the past few years, according to a person familiar with the interviews. Mr. Mahmoud, who retired from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in 1998, heads a humanitarian agency that works in Afghanistan. He is one of two former Pakistani nuclear scientists who have been questioned several times over the past few weeks by military investigators. The second scientist is Abdul Majid. Mr. Mahmoud has attracted particular attention in the media and elsewhere because of his role heading the country's uranium-enrichment program at its Kahuta nuclear laboratory for about a year during the 1980s. Starting in 1998, Mr. Mahmoud traveled often to Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold, for meetings with Taliban officials regarding possible agricultural projects, according to people familiar with the matter. People close to Mr. Mahmoud said he holds Islamic views similar to those of the Taliban. In a Sept. 23 interview, Mr. Mahmood said his dealings with Taliban officials centered purely on relief and economic development. On that day, for example, he said he had spoken with a Taliban minister about agriculture projects. He said his organization, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, was trying to promote private investment in Afghanistan, and that he saw his efforts threatened by the U.S. confrontation with Afghanistan. Mr. Mahmood and several friends produced a five-page report, distributed on the Internet on Sept. 21, which suggested Jews were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. The report warned that Islamic fundamentalists will ultimately come to power in the Muslim world, "and so the war started by the Jewish conspiracy may never end.'' But, under questioning this weekend, Mr. Mahmoud denied disclosing anything to the Taliban regarding his nearly three decades of secret work, according to the person familiar with the interrogations. To another question, according to the person, Mr. Mahmoud said he never met Mr. bin Laden, who the U.S. says is behind the attacks. The investigators summoned Mr. Mahmoud again Sunday morning and he was still with them through the evening, according to his son, Sherzod, interviewed by telephone from their Islamabad home. "We can't give any statements at the moment. We know we are innocent, and we want the government to decide we are innocent," Sherzod Mahmoud said. Mr. Majid was questioned Saturday, according to a senior military official who asked not to be identified. But he said investigators had found "nothing not welfare-oriented, nothing objectionable" in the two former scientists' contacts with the Taliban. "This is nothing abnormal. It's natural that, since they were involved with the Atomic Energy Commission, that we are going into just what they were involved in," the military official said, adding that the men may be summoned several times more. Separately, Pakistan moved Saturday to curb dissent over U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan, barring 27 Islamic activists from a volatile border area and placing under house arrest a cleric who called for the president's ouster.

Los Angeles Times November 5, 2001 Nuke-Toting Gangs In Russia Pose A Threat To The West By David Satter, David Satter is a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and the author of "Age of Delirium." Political cooperation is only one of the things that the West needs from Russia. We also need a measure of order within Russia itself. Without a drive against Russia's internal lawlessness, Russia could align itself with the West completely and still be a base area for Islamic terrorism. This is because Russia has huge amounts of poorly guarded weapons of mass destruction and powerful organized crime groups that have the ability to obtain and sell them. Russia has enough plutonium and uranium to make 33,000 nuclear weapons stored at 50 scientific centers guarded by soldiers who are frequently underpaid. It also has vast quantities of nuclear waste that could be used to make crude bombs capable of contaminating large areas. It has the world's largest inventory of chemical weapons--40,000 tons--and a wide variety of bacterial cultures, including drug-resistant anthrax, smallpox and plague. On Vosrozhdeniye Island, a former Soviet open-air biological weapons testing site 600 miles from Afghanistan, there are enough anthrax spores buried in metal drums a few feet below the surface to kill the world's population several times over. Russian and Chechen criminal organizations are involved in the transport and marketing of heroin from Afghanistan. And according to the Russian newspaper Izvestia, Osama bin Laden used these criminal organizations to launder money for the Taliban, with his cut being from $133 million to $1 billion a year. In the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway by the Japanese doomsday sect Aum Shinrikyo, the production design for the manufacture of sarin was given to the sect by Oleg I. Lobov, Russia's former first deputy prime minister, for $100,000, according to testimony at the trial of those accused in the attack. In recent weeks, there have been reports in the Russian press that Bin Laden has bought several suitcase nuclear bombs from Russia that have not been used only because they are protected by Soviet codes requiring a signal from Moscow before they can be detonated. Under these circumstances, it is as important for Russia to crack down on organized crime as it is for the Muslim world and the West to eliminate any network capable of facilitating terror. Russia's job would seem to be relatively easy. The activities of Russia's organized crime groups, which have extensive business holdings, have been documented not only by law enforcement but also by their commercial competitors. The Russian Internal Affairs Ministry has been in a position to crack down for years; it needed only a signal from political authorities. This didn't come from former President Boris N. Yeltsin, or so far from President Vladimir V. Putin. In 1997, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh told the House International Relations Committee that there was a serious possibility that Russian criminal gangs could get nuclear weapons and that Russian organized crime constituted a direct threat to U.S. national security. Now, with the entire world under threat from Islamic extremists, the United States needs to ask our new ally Putin to begin to eradicate this danger, even at the expense of the system of robber capitalism that has grown up in the past decade.

Wall Street Journal November 7, 2001 Pentagon And Weapons Contractors Weigh Restructuring Of Missile-Defense Program By Anne Marie Squeo and Greg Jaffe, Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal The Pentagon is weighing a restructuring of its missile-defense programs to better respond to enemy attacks here and abroad. Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, who heads the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, met secretly Saturday with top executives of five big defense companies to enlist their help, people familiar with the meeting said. Among the companies that attended were those already playing key roles in developing missile-defense systems, including Boeing Co., Raytheon Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. Any restructuring could realign the fortunes of weapons contractors currently reaping billions of dollars from this work. For example, Boeing, which has been overseeing development of a national missile-defense system for several years, could see its role diminished in that program, which focuses on the interception of missiles aimed at U.S. soil. General Dynamics Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. also attended the weekend meeting, a sign these companies could see an expansion of their limited work in this area. Gen. Kadish asked the companies to craft a plan for restructuring the missile-defense work, possibly to create a "national team" of partners working more closely together, people familiar with the meeting said. The companies are to provide their responses before the end of the year. Then Gen. Kadish and top Pentagon officials are expected to decide how sweeping a realignment to undertake. Representatives for all five companies declined to comment on the topic, as did a spokesman for the Pentagon's ballistic missile-defense agency. One possibility would be creation of an uber-integrator within the industry to oversee all missile-defense systems being developed, including the one currently managed by Boeing. The goal, said one defense official, is a cohesive military system to track the path of an incoming enemy missile and use any number of defensive measures to stop it before it hits U.S. territory. The U.S. might choose to name three lead integrators to divvy up work according to the point at which a missile is intercepted -- either right after launch in the "boost" phase, in midflight or just before descent. The change appears to flow from a massive reorganization of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization over the summer. The changes were intended to integrate various missile-defense systems that are under development. For example, the Navy had two systems in the works: one that would intercept missiles within the atmosphere and one outside. The Air Force has been developing an intercept system using a laser fired from an aircraft to detonate a missile shortly after launch. And the Army has a system that was intended to intercept an enemy missile before it strikes ground troops. These programs account for tens of billions of dollars in federal money. Under the restructured Pentagon missile- defense agency, the lines are blurring between these formerly independent projects and the larger missile-intercept system intended to protect the U.S. from missile attack. Now all weapons programs still in experimental stages are managed by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which reports directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Once a program has matured enough to be deployed, the Pentagon plans to switch oversight back to the service that had been sponsoring it.

New York Times November 7, 2001 Panel Recommends Ending Satellite Plan By James Dao WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 — At the urging of its Republican leadership, the House Appropriations Committee is recommending canceling an expensive infrared satellite system that the Pentagon considers vital to missile defense. The satellites are intended to track ballistic missiles as they soar through the atmosphere, providing data that would help interceptor missiles tell missiles from decoys and home in on and destroy warheads. The Pentagon had proposed putting two dozen such satellites, at an estimated cost of $11 billion to $20 billion, into low orbits above the earth over the next two decades to provide continuous surveillance against missile attacks. But in a report that has yet to be voted on by the full House, the Appropriations Committee contends that the satellite program is over its budget and behind schedule. It also cites an internal Pentagon study that questions the effectiveness of the satellites in discriminating between warheads and decoys. Noting that ground-based radar might be a less expensive alternative to the satellites, the committee recommended denying the Bush administration's entire request of $385 million for the satellite program in the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Instead, the committee proposed transferring most of that money to other satellite and radar programs. "This was not ready to move forward," said Jim Specht, a spokesman for Representative Jerry Lewis, a California Republican who is chairman of the Pentagon subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. "By taking away the funding, the committee is making clear they need to do more development and testing of this system in order for it to become an integral part of national missile defense," Mr. Specht added. But Pentagon officials said that canceling or sharply cutting the satellite program would be a major setback to the Bush administration's missile defense plan. "It would degrade the future capability of the overall missile defense program," said Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. "Ground-based systems are limited by the curvature of the earth," Colonel Lehner added. "They don't have the range of a space-based system, which can cover the whole planet." Congressional officials said the fate of the satellite program before the full House and in the Senate was unclear. The Senate Armed Services Committee has voted to reduce the program by $96.6 million, while the Senate Appropriations Committee has yet to vote on the Pentagon spending bills. The satellites, known as the space- based infrared system-low, are being developed by two competing teams, one led by TRW and Raytheon, the other by Spectrum Astro and Northrop Grumman. The system had its roots in the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative, when it was known as Brilliant Eyes. Using infrared sensors, the satellites are intended to locate warheads when they reach the mid-course of their trajectory, sending back to earth data that would help ground-based radars and interceptor rockets to fix on a threatening warhead. Proponents contend that the satellites would be valuable not just for tracking long-range nuclear-tipped missiles, but also short-range weapons, known as theater missiles, that could be fired at American troops overseas. "It's an essential component if ballistic missile defenses are to work effectively," said Representative John Spratt, a South Carolina Democrat who supports the program. "Not just for national missile defense, but also theater missile defense." Pentagon officials have often cited the infrared satellites in responding to critics who contend that a missile shield would be easily fooled by decoys released alongside warheads in space. By identifying the difference in temperature between a decoy and warhead, the satellites would, in theory, be able to guide an interceptor toward the real target, the Pentagon contends. Critics of missile defense question whether any system would be effective in picking out decoys. But they concede that a missile defense is likely to be more effective with the infrared satellites than without them. "The job of the attacker is easier if there is not a S.B.I.R.S.-low system," said Lisbeth Gronlund, senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an arms control group. But over the years, the satellite program has been repeatedly criticized by Congressional investigators and Pentagon testers. In a report released in February, the General Accounting Office, Congress's investigative arm, asserted that the satellite program was being rushed and was likely to face technical failures and major cost overruns. The investigators found, for example, that the Pentagon was proposing to launch the first satellites before critical software had been completed. "The S.B.I.R.S.-low program is at high risk of not delivering the system on time or at cost or with expected performance," the report concluded.

USAToday.com November 6, 2001 Russia Denies Helping Iran Develop Weapons WASHINGTON (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected U.S. suspicions that Russia has provided dangerous weapons technology to Iran. Putin also praised President Bush, with whom he will meet next week, as someone with whom he can do business and a leader who keeps his word. In an interview in the Kremlin with Barbara Walters for ABC's 20/20 program, Putin struck a conciliatory stand on almost all fronts. He indicated, for instance, that he could be ready to strike a deal to clear the way for a U.S. anti-missile shield program. "We could reach quite quickly mutual agreements," Putin said in an interview conducted on Monday and set to air on Wednesday. He added that the Russian position on a missile shield "is quite flexible." But he also cautioned that a settlement "can only be found as a result of very intense negotiations." Both Putin and Bush have said they would like to cut nuclear arsenals, which now number about 6,000 warheads for each country. The Russians have suggested cuts as low as 1,500; U .S. officials have discussed a range of between 1,750 and 2,250. In exchange, the U.S. would like to conduct missile tests now barred by a 1972 arms control treaty. On the touchy issue of Iran, the Russian president rejected as a "legend" that Iran is receiving technology from Russia for missiles and weapons of mass destruction. "We have not ever sold anything to Iran, out of the range of technology or information that would help Iran develop missiles, or weapons of mass destruction," Putin said. Russia has some projects with Iran in atomic energy, he said. But "it has nothing to do with developing nuclear weapons. We are categorically opposed to transferring any technologies to Iran that would help it develop nuclear weapons." The issue has been underlined as serious and troubling by U.S. officials, who otherwise speak warmly of growing rapport between Washington and Moscow. On another front, Putin ruled out sending Russian troops to Afghanistan to help the United States root out Osama bin Laden and smash his al-Qa'eda terrorist network. "To us this solution would be unacceptable. To us, sending troops to Afghanistan is like for you, the U.S., returning your troops to Vietnam," Putin said. The Soviet Union fought a 10-year war in Afghanistan before withdrawing in defeat in 1989. Still, Putin said the Russian army is helping the United States in rescue operations, even on Afghan territory, and said he had shown Bush intelligence data indicating terrorists in the separatist republic of Chechnya plan to kill Americans. "The Americans should know about that," Putin said. Reaffirming Russia's support for the U.S. war against terrorism, Putin said it would be very difficult but possible to find bin Laden. "It is important," he said. "The main players in this should be brought to justice. But this will not resolve the overall terrorist problem." On the war itself, Putin said the United States was losing "not in the military but in the information." "It seems to me that in the information field, terrorist are acting more aggressively and more offensively, and they're presenting opposition in terms of emotions," he said. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Putin was the first foreign leader to call Bush to register support for the United States. In the interview, he said he wished he could have done something to prepare the United States for the assault. "I had the feeling of guilt for this tragedy," he said. "I don't know whether it would have been possible to prevent these strikes on the United States by the terrorists. But it was a pity that our special services didn't get the information on time, and warn the American people and the American political leadership about the tragedy that came to pass." Putin praised Bush at several points. "I believe it's not accidental that he became the president of the United States. He sees better and deeper and understands the problems more accurately," the Russian president said. "We argue about some problems, disagree about things, but I noticed that if he agrees with something, and if he says yes, he actually pushes the question down to resolution, to fruition, and we assess this quite positively," Putin said. "We can do business with this man, and he lives up to the agreements that he reaches," the Russian leader said.

Wall Street Journal November 7, 2001 Bush Warns Bin Laden Is Seeking 'Biological And Nuclear Weapons' By Jeanne Cummings and Robert S. Greenberger, Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal WASHINGTON -- President Bush warned that Islamic militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network "are seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons," his most direct reference yet to a possible nuclear threat from terrorists. Mr. Bush said he based his warning on Mr. bin Laden's self-declared hopes of obtaining such weapons. But officials say worries about nuclear aspirations are a growing concern within the administration. As reported last week, U.S. intelligence agencies have received information that suggests Mr. bin Laden actively is seeking a crude explosive device designed to spew radioactive material -- a so-called dirty bomb. Mr. Bush is expected to raise the issue in a meeting he will hold later this week with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, because Pakistan has questioned several nuclear scientists with ties to Afghanistan and the ruling Taliban regime there. Mr. Bush made his remarks as he launched an intense 10-day diplomatic effort to shore up the antiterror coalition amid softening public support in some countries and slow progress on the ground in Afghanistan. Tuesday, Mr. Bush spoke by satellite link to 20 Central and Eastern European leaders gathered in Poland and met privately at the White House with French President Jacques Chirac. Later this week, Mr. Bush will hold Oval Office meetings with leaders of Britain, Ireland, India and Brazil. Saturday, he will make an appearance before the United Nations General Assembly and have dinner with Mr. Musharraf. And next week, Russian President Vladimir Putin will arrive here for talks. While at the U.N., Mr. Bush doesn't plan to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected to do so. That session could help ease anxieties in the Arab world. Since taking office, Mr. Bush's administration has closely aligned itself with Israel. Arab leaders, as well as those of Britain and France, are pressing Mr. Bush to get more involved in the Middle East peace process before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as a way of gaining more Arab support for the antiterrorism effort. During Tuesday's White House meeting, Mr. Chirac said the two presidents discussed "crises that can fuel terrorism," and among them was the Middle East. Mr. Bush, while sharing the Europeans' concerns, made no specific commitment about ratcheting up U.S. involvement in the peace process. At this early juncture, the draft of Mr. Bush's U.N. address doesn't include a lengthy section on Middle East peace, which is something Mr. Blair is expected to lobby for Wednesday. Mr. Powell appeared to take another explosive issue off the table, that being an expansion of the antiterrorism campaign to Iraq. "There are no plans at the moment to undertake any other military action," Mr. Powell said on Egyptian television when asked about possible attacks on Iraq, according to a Reuters report. The series of high-level meetings at the White House demonstrates Mr. Bush's expanding role as a wartime president. The president, once tentative at foreign news conferences, leaned comfortably Tuesday on the edge of the podium he shared with Mr. Chirac. He carried no notes or talking points to guide his answers during the lunchtime event. When it came time to call on a French reporter for the last question, an impatient Mr. Bush jokingly tried to move things along. "The soup is getting cold," he said quietly to Mr. Chirac. "You're the boss," the French president replied. "I'm the boss? Well, let's go eat, then," Mr. Bush declared, and cut the news conference off early. That touch of levity was a striking contrast to the more ominous tone Mr. Bush took in his official remarks. In his morning address to European leaders in Poland, Mr. Bush sought to expand the reason for the antiterrorism campaign beyond America's need to defend itself by pointing to Mr. bin Laden's quest for weapons of mass destruction. "Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and, eventually, to civilization itself," the president said. Mr. Bush is expected to echo those themes in his U.N. address and urge all nations to join the battle by offering substantive aid. "A coalition partner must do more than just express sympathy. A coalition partner must perform," he said after the meeting with Mr. Chirac. "It is time for action." Although the president said he isn't prepared to name names of fence sitters or unhelpful nations, he said, "Over time, it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity. You are either with us or you are against us in the fight against terror."

Los Angeles Times November 7, 2001 Inability To Trace Anthrax Poses Large Security Threat, Experts Say If source of germs can't be found, no one can be punished and attacks can't be deterred, some warn. Iraq offers a case in point. By Aaron Zitner, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- Iraq had always said that its Al Hakam factory made pesticides out of harmless bacteria, a common process in the world of agriculture. But when Richard Spertzel visited in 1994, he decided something was not right. Working deep in the desert, surrounded by bunkers and barbed wire, Al Hakam workers had set their machinery to turn the bacteria into tiny, gaslike particles rather than into a heavier substance that would settle easily on crops. So Spertzel, chief of the United Nations biological inspectors who scoured Iraq after the Gulf War, ordered samples to be taken and analyzed. He suspected that Iraqi scientists were using the harmless bacteria as practice for processing a far more pernicious germ: the anthrax bacterium. Today, U.S. officials are scrambling to find the source of the anthrax that has killed four Americans, and many weapon experts say that Iraq deserves a spot on the suspect list. But Spertzel's samples stand as the only examples of what "weaponized" bacteria from Iraq might look like, several former U.N. inspectors say. U.S. investigators are using microscopes and chemical tests to chart the features of the bacteria turning up in American mailboxes. But there is nothing like an international fingerprint file of biological weapons to which they can compare those features to identify a suspect. Even the material from Iraq is meager, despite a seven-year U.N. effort to detect that nation's biological weapons. Though it was never proved, U.N. inspectors believed that the Al Hakam samples showed Iraq's methods for making weapons-grade anthrax, at least as of 1994. Their analysis of the bacterial particles showed them to be less than 10 microns in diameter--a tiny size far better suited to a biological weapon than to a pesticide, which would typically use particles five times bigger, Spertzel and others say. U.S. investigators are comparing the Al Hakam samples to the mysterious U.S. anthrax in an attempt to learn whether both were produced the same way, several weapon experts said. Now, some weapon specialists are warning that the difficulty in tracing the anthrax bacteria reveals a glaring weakness in U.S. national defenses, one that stretches far beyond the question of Iraq's involvement in the anthrax attacks. "If you can't attribute [weapons] material to someone, you give the guys who make it a free pass," said David Kay, former chief U.N. inspector of Iraqi nuclear weapon programs. "You can never convince coalition partners and maybe even your own public of who did it so that you can rally support to retaliate." And if the United States cannot credibly say to its enemies that it will retaliate, he said, then it will have little power to deter attacks in the first place. Kay and others argue that federal officials must start a new Manhattan Project to find ways to fingerprint biological warfare agents from around the world. "We need to be able to say to rogue nations: 'Use your stuff and we'll likely figure it out before the sun rises on your capital,' " said Scott Layne, a physician at UCLA's School of Public Health. The U.S. abandoned its efforts to make offensive biological weapons in 1969, but at least 13 nations are known or suspected to have active programs. They include several nations hostile to the U.S., including Iran, Libya and North Korea. U.S. officials say they do not know who is behind the anthrax attacks. President Bush on Saturday said that "we do not yet know who sent the anthrax--whether it was the same terrorists who committed the attacks on September the 11th, or whether it was other international or domestic terrorists." But Iraq has drawn a high level of suspicion, and not only because of lingering hostility to the United States from the Gulf War. Iraq is one of the few nations that has admitted stockpiling anthrax as a weapon. And Czech officials raised a range of tantalizing questions about Iraq's role when they confirmed last month that an Iraqi intelligence official met last April in Prague with Mohamed Atta, a suspected leader of the Sept. 11 hijackings. At the same time, Iraq stands as a case study in how hard it can be to penetrate a nation's weapon program--even under an intense international spotlight. After the Gulf War, Iraq agreed to a U.N. Security Council resolution that allowed inspectors to search for and destroy any chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as equipment that made the weapons and missiles used to deliver them. What followed was a seven-year cat-and-mouse game in which Iraq tried to hide evidence of its weapon programs. But it was the U.N.'s biological inspectors who faced the heaviest interference as they tried to search Iraqi factories, interview scientists and hunt for documents. For the first four years of the U.N. program, beginning in 1991, Iraq denied that it had developed offensive biological weapons. U.N. inspectors believed otherwise, but they could not prove their case. Iraqi officials "falsified documents. They got scientists to lie," said Richard Butler, former chairman of the U.N. Special Commission, which ran the inspections program. "They concealed materials. They led us down blind alleys." In 1994, the U.N. panel that oversaw the inspections program turned to Spertzel, a microbiologist and retired Army officer who had devoted his career to building U.S. defenses against biological weaponry. A man of careful speech and a precise manner, Spertzel spent five weeks at the commission offices in New York, poring over the documents. The documents, combined with interviews of Iraqi officials, allowed the inspectors to send out a set of requests to U.N. member nations for information about materials that had been exported to Iraq. When the reports came back, Spertzel and his colleagues were shocked to learn that Iraq had imported a huge amount of nutrients for growing bacteria--at least 40 tons, far more than it would need to diagnose diseases and for other routine health purposes. When Iraqi officials insisted that the material was being used at hospitals and research labs, Spertzel made his own projections, drawing on data from an urban U.S. hospital about its own usage of nutrients. The Iraqi assertions, he says, "were ridiculous." He was sure that Iraq had used the nutrients to grow biological agents and that much of it was being done at Al Hakam, a large plant in the desert that Iraqi officials said was making only animal feed and pesticides. In time, Iraq admitted it had run a vast biological weapon program, and Al Hakam was destroyed under U.N. supervision. But when the U.N. inspectors were forced out of Iraq in 1998, they still had questions about how much of the Iraqi program had remained undetected and intact. Iraq had acknowledged filling 25 missiles and 157 bombs with anthrax and botulism toxin, another bioweapon agent. But U.N. inspectors were unsure if those weapons were dismantled, as Iraq said, and if they were the true total of Iraq's arsenal. According to Spertzel, inspectors found evidence that Iraq had imported a large fermenting plant and specialized milling machinery, but they could not learn where the equipment went. Both could be used to make biological weapons. And because inspectors could not prove it had been used to make weapons, they were unable to destroy one of Iraq's large-volume spray dryers, which could be used to process bacteria into tiny, weapons-grade particles. "We sent a team out to look at it and, strangely enough, after seven years of not using it and having it sit in a warehouse, the Iraqis decided they had an urgent need for it," Spertzel said. "They tore it apart and thoroughly cleansed [it]." As a result, inspectors could not obtain DNA samples that might show whether the dryer had been used to process biowarfare agents. Despite all the inspections, Spertzel said, the U.N. team never found any bacteria or viruses that had been processed into weapons form--the kind of material that might be helpful to U.S. investigators today. The samples that Spertzel ordered taken from Al Hakam were of bacillus thuringiensis, a harmless strain related to the anthrax bacterium. Still, those samples represent "Iraq's best attempt," at least as of 1994, at making a bacterial particle that can float through the air and into victims' lungs, said Alan Zelicoff, a physician and physicist at the government's Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. The Al Hakam samples drew high interest among Western intelligence officials. The Pentagon obtained chemical studies of the Al Hakam bacteria, as well as images made by high-power microscopes, according to someone with direct knowledge of the matter. Zelicoff and others said that investigators are surely comparing the anthrax bacteria in the current attacks to the Al Hakam samples to see if they were prepared the same way. Federal officials have said that so far, the U.S. samples do not show the hallmarks of any particular foreign weapon program. For Kay, the fact that the anthrax investigation seems to be stalled shows a need for better fingerprinting of biological agents. There is a chance, he says, that bacteria or viruses might pick up telltale signs from the nutrient baths in which they grow, which could help trace the bacteria to their source. Maybe scientists can learn to fingerprint and track the various additives that are sometimes added to biological agents to help the agent disperse easily through the air. The DNA in bacteria and viruses could also yield clues to where they originated. At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, scientists are building a database of genetic landmarks unique to the hundreds of strains of anthrax bacteria. But Layne, of UCLA, argues that much more can be done. Thanks to the Human Genome Project and related studies, biology labs have new and speedy techniques for reading the genetic code of any organism. Layne said the government should obtain the DNA sequence of the 10 or 20 of the most likely warfare agents. The data might help track the source of any mysterious biological agent that appeared, he said. Spertzel, on the other hand, warns that science can carry the anthrax investigation only so far. Even in the unlikely event that investigators find a close match with material that he sampled in Iraq, "you could only say that this material is typical of what the United Nations brought back from the Al Hakam complex in 1994," Spertzel said. "But you couldn't say this excludes other countries, because they might have developed similar techniques." His recommendation: The United States must beef up its intelligence effort to develop information about foreign weapon programs. "The science can help, but it's not going to be definitive," he said. "I believe the connection is going to be made on intelligence as well as science."

Washington Times November 7, 2001 Pg. 19 Arms Control: The First Line Of Defense By Daryl Kimball and Wade Boese The Bush administration spent its first eight months in office disparaging arms control as a failed policy of a bygone era and has said almost nothing about the role arms control can play in the new "war" on terrorism. Yet arms control is vital to preventing individuals, groups, or countries from carrying out future, even deadlier terrorist attacks using chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. While the Bush administration and Congress are right to strengthen U.S. defenses and emergency responses to terrorist attacks, no civil defense plan or national missile defense system will make the United States immune to chemical, biological, and nuclear attacks. The first line of defense must be to deny, or make as difficult as possible, efforts to buy, build, transfer or steal these weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and deliver them. Arms control is that first line of defense and it has helped guard U.S. security for more than 30 years. Except North Korea, which might possibly have enough plutonium for one or two nuclear bombs, none of the so-called rogue states, let alone terrorists, possesses nuclear weapons or long-range ballistic missiles to deliver them. But they are trying to get these capabilities, and the Bush administration should expend every effort to make sure they don't succeed. President George W. Bush should increase, not decrease as currently planned, funding for programs to secure and destroy Russia's nuclear weapons and its more than a thousand metric tons of fissile material that could be used to build an estimated 40,000 additional weapons. An independent, bipartisan panel in January declared that "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today" is that Russian weapons of mass destruction and weapons-usable material could be "stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation-states." The Bush administration should also push to get international arms inspectors back into Iraq to help prevent Saddam Hussein from reconstituting his WMD programs and potentially passing these lethal weapons to others. With top Bush officials lobbying for concerted military strikes against Baghdad as part of the war on terrorism, Russia and China should be willing to work with the United States to get inspectors back in the country rather than see a new U.S. military campaign waged against Iraq. Other measures the Bush administration should consider include reaching a codified agreement with Russia to sharply cut U.S. and Russian Cold War-era nuclear arsenals, intensifying efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon its attempts to build long-range ballistic missiles, negotiating an agreement to help enforce global compliance with a treaty banning germ weapons, and pressing Russia and China to cut off all interactions with Iran that could assist its acquisition of nuclear weapons. It would also be wise to maintain, rather than cut, U.S. funding for international nuclear test ban treaty monitoring activities. Like the war on terrorism, the United States cannot stem global WMD proliferation alone. Washington needs broad international support, particularly from Russia and China, whose cooperation will be essential in shutting off the flow of WMD technology and knowledge to those wishing the United States harm. Now is the time for the Bush administration to seize upon the emerging unity underlying the international coalition against terrorism to energize and bolster efforts designed to prevent and impede the spread of weapons of mass destruction. As President Bush prepares to host Russian President Vladimir Putin for three days of talks beginning Nov. 13, he must be careful not to undercut support from key countries by pressing ahead with his missile defense plans and unilaterally withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which Russia and China argue would upset world security and stability. The Bush administration should not abandon its missile defense plans to appease Moscow and Beijing. Yet the administration should acknowledge that effective and reliable strategic missile defenses are technologically several years, if not decades, away. Therefore, Bush should avoid scrapping the ABM Treaty in his pursuit of missile defenses, which could lead Russia to halt reductions in its nuclear arsenal and compel China to significantly buildup its nuclear forces. As horrible as the September 11 attacks were, they could have been worse. It is the Bush administration's first responsibility to the American public to do everything in its power to eliminate or minimize the risk of future WMD attacks. Successfully meeting this challenge will require strengthening, not dismantling or neglecting, the international framework of arms control and nonproliferation. Daryl Kimball is executive director and Wade Boese the senior research analyst of the Arms Control Association.

New York Times November 7, 2001 Pg. 1 Senators Told Of Lack Of Answers In F.B.I. Inquiry On Bioterrorism By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David Johnston WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 — In a blunt exchange with members of the Senate, a senior counterterrorism official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation acknowledged today that one month into its bioterrorism investigation, his agency still could not answer such basic questions as how many laboratories in the United States handle the anthrax bacteria. The official, James T. Caruso, deputy assistant director of the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism division, told senators that the agency was "pressing hard" to answer that question and many others, including how many people had access to the strain of anthrax that has been sent through the mail, killing 4 Americans and sickening 14. He said the number could be in the thousands. "The research capabilities of thousands of researchers is something that we're still trying to run down," Mr. Caruso told Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, when she asked why the agency did not know how many laboratories handled the anthrax germ. This and other frank admissions by the man the F.B.I. sent to the Senate to testify as its expert irritated and surprised the senators. "I'm very surprised by how little people know," said Senator Feinstein, who is sponsoring legislation to tighten laboratory security. Referring to gaps in the government's system for keeping track of laboratories that work with deadly germs, she added, "It's just a symbol of a kind of laissez-faire system that is very detrimental to the security of the American people." Senator John Edwards, Democrat of North Carolina, said to Mr. Caruso: "But the bottom line is this: As of now, you don't know where the anthrax came from and you have not been able to identify all the people who may have access to it. Is that fair?" Mr. Caruso replied, "That's correct." In an interview after the hearing, Senator Edwards said, "My impression is that they are not that close to figuring out the answer to these questions." Not all laboratories that handle biological agents are required to register with the government, one reason, F.B.I. officials say they do not know how many there are. Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, said today's testimony convinced him that he should cosponsor Mrs. Feinstein's legislation. "There is no doubt we can make some improvements in the law," Mr. Kyl said. The hearing, before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, came as federal health officials announced, to their relief, that there had been no new anthrax infections in the country since Friday. Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, pronounced it "good news." But public health officials said they were still confounded by the case of Kathy T. Nguyen, the 61-year- old Bronx woman who died of inhalation anthrax, the deadliest form of the disease, even though no traces of the bacteria had turned up at her home, the hospital where she worked or any place she visited. The question of where the anthrax germs have come from is equally confounding, however, and the authorities repeated today that they had come to no conclusions about whether the germs came from a foreign or domestic laboratory. Under federal law, anthrax is classified as a "select agent" — one that could be used to make a biological weapon and, therefore, is regulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A 1996 law requires any laboratory that ships select agents to register with the federal centers when doing so. Jim Reynolds, chief of the Justice Department's terrorism and violent crimes section, told senators today that investigators were combing through those shipping records for clues. "I don't want to leave the impression," he said, "that we have no idea where anthrax is." But there are loopholes in the law, said Ronald M. Atlas, president-elect of the American Society for Microbiology. If a laboratory acquired anthrax before 1997, when the law took effect, it could continue to possess anthrax without notifying the government, so long as it did not ship the germs, Dr. Atlas said. Senator Feinstein would like to eliminate that grandfather clause, and Dr. Atlas said his society did not object, saying, "It makes sense.". But Dr. Atlas added that he worried that too much regulation would prevent university researchers from studying deadly pathogens and developing drugs and vaccines that could protect people against them. "We can't cripple the biomedical community," Dr. Atlas said in an interview. "You can impose all the biosafety rules you want and the bioterrorists aren't going to necessarily follow them." By Dr. Atlas's estimate, there are 200 to 300 university laboratories in this country, and an additional 1,200 government and academic laboratories around the world, that work with deadly pathogens. He said in the interview that he drew those figures from a survey he did for the Department of Energy. A statistical analysis suggested that 20 to 30 of the American laboratories worked with anthrax. F.B.I. officials said today that they were trying to put together a more detailed list of every American laboratory that might have access to the anthrax germ, in particular the so- called Ames strain, which was used in the bioterrorist attacks. But Mr. Caruso testified that the number of people with access to the strain was "too diverse a population at this time" for the agency to identify. "There are veterinary colleges and other types of facilities that don't have to report on that," a senior law enforcement official said after the hearing. "We have to check hundreds of people. We are building our own list and we have to check every person." Mr. Caruso was cautious in his public remarks, and at one point offered to tell senators more about the investigation privately. In an interview after the hearing, Senator Kyl, who has been a strong supporter of the F.B.I., said he came away with the impression that "this witness didn't know if he had the authority to tell us things." But Senator Edwards said the testimony was clear. "Our responsibility, as an oversight committee, is to make sure that the F.B.I. is doing everything in its power" to investigate the attacks, the senator said.

International Herald Tribune November 7, 2001 Biologists Warned To Exercise Greater Vigilance By Reuters LONDON -- A scientific adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned biologists Tuesday they should become less naive to prevent the risk of their work being abused for terrorist purposes. "Our colleagues in the physics community have long understood the application of physics in weaponry," George Poste said in an interview during a pharmaceutical conference. Mr. Poste, a member of the U.S. Defense Science Board of scientists and industrialists, which advises Mr. Rumsfeld on scientific developments, said biology should "lose its innocence." "Biologists have got to start being a little more savvy with regard to thinking about less well-intentioned individuals than themselves," he said. "I don't think that the biological community, particularly in academia, is yet sensitized enough to thinking about the implications." Mr. Poste warned that in many instances there was an "absolute naïveté" among biologists working in academia regarding the potential adverse use of some of the work being done. Mr. Poste, chief executive officer of the consulting firm Health Technology Networks and former head of research at SmithKline Beecham, said detecting clandestine activity in biology was more difficult for intelligence agencies than detecting attempts to develop nuclear weapons. Illustrating biology's potential for both good and evil, he explained how Australian scientists trying to develop a contraceptive vaccine for rodents had inadvertently created a lethal "mousepox" virus using technology that could be applied to biological warfare. The experiment, reported earlier this year by pest control researchers in Canberra, involved modifying a mousepox virus to include the gene for interleukin-4, which affects the immune system. Mr. Poste said the well-intentioned research project completely shut down the immune system, allowing the virus to "run amok." "This immediately raises the issue of the same being put into other viruses, and particularly whether that would create a devastating weapon," he said. Mr. Poste said that the publication of the research findings in the February issue of the Journal of Virology raised the next issue as to how far certain categories of biological information may eventually have to be classified.

Washington Post November 7, 2001 Pg. 8 Tainted Letter Suggests Foreign Source For Anthrax Envelope Mailed Within Pakistan to U.S. Consulate in Lahore Could Give New Focus to Investigation By Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post Staff Writer U.S. officials said yesterday that a letter mailed in Pakistan to a U.S. consulate in the city of Lahore has tested positive for anthrax bacteria, providing possible evidence that the anthrax outbreak in the United States is of international rather than domestic origin. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said preliminary testing in Pakistan indicated that the letter contained anthrax spores. Samples from the tainted letter arrived Sunday in the United States for further testing by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., he said. Results of the Fort Detrick tests have not been announced. The letter came to the consulate on Oct. 31 "in the public local mail," Boucher said. "They had an off-site mailroom facility, and it was checked, bagged, isolated there, and then sent on to us for further testing." The Lahore letter is the first piece of contaminated mail received at a U.S. consulate that has not come via diplomatic pouch from the United States. If the positive test is confirmed and the Pakistani bacteria are similar to spores mailed in the United States, the letter could provide evidence that the U.S. anthrax outbreak has international origins. Investigators have said repeatedly that they do not know whether the bacteria have been spread by domestic extremists or by international terrorists linked to the Sept. 11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Boucher cautioned Monday that many "preliminary positives" for anthrax later have turned out to be negative. And even if additional testing confirms that the Pakistani letter contained B. anthracis, the bacteria that cause anthrax, that does not mean that the spores are necessarily the same as those mailed in the United States. In the last known incident of attempted anthrax terrorism in Asia -- an attack perpetrated in Japan by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in the early 1990s -- no one grew ill. Genetic analysis showed that the Aum Shinrikyo spores belonged to the Sterne strain, a weakened type of bacteria used as a veterinary vaccine. It stimulates immunity but does not cause disease. Boucher said yesterday that a diplomatic mail pouch received at the American consulate in Yekaterinburg had tested positive for a "negligible" amount of anthrax bacteria. Similar contamination of U.S. diplomatic mail has been detected in Lima, Peru, and Vilnius, Lithuania, as well as at a State Department sorting facility in Sterling, Va. There have been 17 confirmed cases of anthrax in the United States, including four deaths, since the beginning of October, all but one of them attributed to the handling of tainted mail. On Capitol Hill yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said plans to fumigate the entire Hart Senate Office Building had been abandoned in favor of a four-step process to eliminate anthrax spores through foam cleaning, testing and some fumigation. Daschle said the Environmental Protection Agency would use chlorine dioxide gas to sterilize his Hart office and that of his neighbor, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). The Hart Building was closed Oct. 19 after a mail handler in Daschle's office opened a letter containing anthrax spores in a powder that quickly spread through the air. Daschle said the EPA also planned to use chlorine dioxide to fumigate the heating, air-conditioning and ventilation system. "Hot spots" will be scrubbed with special cleansing foam, a process that began Monday with the washing down of a contaminated freight elevator and stairwell, he said. Finally, Daschle told reporters, each of the 50 Senate offices in the Hart Building will be "spot-tested" to ensure there is no further contamination. He said senators would not be able to move back in until Nov. 21 at the earliest. "Safety must come before convenience," Daschle said later on the Senate floor. The EPA last week recommended using chlorine dioxide, a powerful bleaching agent that has been shown to be effective in killing bacteria in lab tests. But Daschle said the EPA has decided that "there are too many dangers inherent with using gas throughout the entire complex." The EPA had no comment on his remarks. In New York, a postal workers' union asked a federal judge to issue a court order to shut down and clean up the city's main mail sorting facility, charging that the Postal Service responded inadequately after anthrax microbes were detected on five sorting machines Oct. 25. "All they were concerned about was moving the mail," William M. Smith, head of New York's Metro Area Postal Union, told Judge John F. Keenen. Federal lawyers say the sprawling Morgan Distribution and Processing Facility is safe for postal workers and will stay open, a position supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The judge is not expected to rule on the case before Friday. A State Department spokesman said a Pakistani employee opened the Lahore letter as part of the consulate's local mail delivery on Oct. 31. The envelope was light blue and bore a Pakistani stamp, the spokesman said. The address was written in English, and there was no return address. The employee, wearing gloves and a mask, opened the letter and noticed a paper inside folded over a white powder. He closed the envelope immediately and reported his discovery, the spokesman said. The consulate sent the envelope to a local laboratory, where it tested positive for anthrax bacteria, the spokesman said. It was then sent to Fort Detrick. The spokesman said it was not yet known whether the paper inside the envelope was a letter. Pakistani authorities say they had confirmed three cases of anthrax contamination in Pakistan before the Lahore letter, including an Oct. 23 letter to the Karachi newsroom of the Daily Jang, an Urdu-language newspaper. Correspondent Peter Baker in Moscow, special correspondent Colum Lynch in New York and staff writer Rick Weiss contributed to this article.

(Editor’s Note: See hyperlink for GAO Report following article.) Wednesday November 7 2:51 PM ET Feds' Biological Defense Criticized By EUN-KYUNG KIM, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The Defense Department has a long way to go before it is sufficiently prepared to treat U.S. troops in a chemical or biological attack, congressional investigators told lawmakers Wednesday. Despite shortcomings raised after the Gulf War (news - web sites), the Pentagon (news - web sites) and the military services ``have not fully addressed weaknesses and gaps in planning, training, tracking systems or test of proficiency for the treatment of chemical and biological casualties,'' the General Accounting Office (news - web sites) said in a report released to lawmakers. ``Medical readiness for chemical and biological scenarios cannot be ensured,'' said the GAO, an investigative arm of Congress. The report's lead investigator said that the military has failed to implement regular tests that could help gauge medical readiness for a chemical or biological attack mainly because they have found them too distracting. ``The serious chemical and biological scenarios are show stoppers - they stop the exercises, and so they just don't do them,'' Dr. Nancy Kingsbury told lawmakers on the Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations, which requested the investigation. The report also found that few military health care providers are proficiently trained in providing care to troops injured in chemical or biological attacks. Those who are trained probably could not be easily found in an emergency because ``either the tracking systems do not exist or they are not currently functioning.'' The report found that there were no guidelines in defining requirements for chemical and biological training. ``As a result, chemical and biological warfare medical courses are generally voluntary, filled mostly by rank-and-file interest rather than by command requirements.'' The Defense Department agreed with most of the findings in the report. ``We agree with their assessment and have begun to make improvements,'' Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant defense secretary for health affairs, told lawmakers. Rep. Christopher Shays (news - bio - voting record), the Connecticut Republican who chairs the subcommittee, expressed concern that the Pentagon has failed to make much progress since biological and chemical concerns were raised after the Gulf War. With U.S. troops battling terrorism in Afghanistan (news - web sites), he said, ``those being sent to fight that war deserve to know medical support will be available whether they're facing tanks or toxins, mines or microbes.'' Rep. Dennis Kucinich (news - bio - voting record), D-Ohio, said the report revealed ``some disturbing findings.'' He asked Pentagon officials for assurances that the discussions on the report's conclusions ``take place in the upper echelons of the Department of Defense (news - web sites) before any decision is made to commit to ground troops.'' Winkenwerder assured Kucinich the matter is a top priority. ``These matters that are in this report and the concerns will be reviewed at the highest level,'' he said. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011107/pl/biological_defense_1.html

Chemical and Biological Defense: DOD Needs to Clarify Expectations for Medical Readiness. GAO-02-38, October 19. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-02-38

Homeland Security: Challenges and Strategies in Addressing Short- and Long-Term National Needs by David M. Walker, comptroller general of the United States, before the House Committee on the Budget. GAO-02-160T, November 7. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-02-160T

Chemical and Biological Defense: DOD Should Clarify Expectations for Medical Readiness by Nancy Kingsbury, managing director, applied research and metjods, before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans' Affairs, and International Relations, House Committee on Government Reform. GAO-02-219T, November 7. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-02-219T