USAF COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER

CPC OUTREACH JOURNAL

Maxwell AFB, Alabama

Issue No. 401, 19 January 2005

Articles & Other Documents:

Blood Donors Will Kick Start Research for Tularemia N. Korea Willing To Talk On Nukes Vaccine N. Korea Says It's Ready To Resume Nuclear Talks US Developed A 'Love Bomb' And No, It Wasn't Barry White Bioterrorism War Game Shows Lack Of Readiness Constructive Patience With North Korea U.S. Is Punishing 8 Chinese Firms For Aiding Iran Article On Iran Lacks Truth, Pentagon Says Secret Dugway Role May Expand Bush Links Chinese Firms' Sanctions To Iranian Arms Lessons to Be Learned From 'Dirty War'

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. Established in 1998, the USAF/CPC provides education and research to present and future leaders of the Air Force, as well as to members of other branches of the armed services and Department of Defense. Our purpose is to help those agencies better prepare to counter the threat from weapons of mass destruction. Please feel free to visit our web site at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-cps.htm for in-depth information and specific points of contact. Please direct any questions or comments on CPC Outreach Journal Jo Ann Eddy, CPC Outreach Editor, at (334) 953- 7538 or DSN 493-7538. To subscribe, change e-mail address, or unsubscribe to this journal or to request inclusion on the mailing list for CPC publications, please contact Mrs. Eddy. The following articles, papers or documents do not necessarily reflect official endorsement of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or other US government agencies. Reproduction for private use or commercial gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. All rights are reserved

Vineyard Gazette Blood Donors Will Kick Start Research for Tularemia Vaccine By CHRIS BURRELL Fueled by a federal grant aimed at countering a bioterrorist attack, scientists at a Providence, R.I., pharmaceutical company are banking on the collection of blood samples from nearly two dozen Vineyarders to help them develop a new vaccine against tularemia, the rare disease with an unexplained presence on Martha's Vineyard. Since the summer of 2000, 30 people on the Island have been infected with the disease. One of those cases was fatal. The tularemia bacteria is also one of the top five bioterrorist agents listed by the National Institutes for Health (NIH). As part of a counter-terrorism initiative unveiled last summer by President George W. Bush, the NIH awarded EpiVax, Inc., a small biotechnology firm in Rhode Island, an $831,000 small business grant last fall to begin the first phase of creating a vaccine against the virulent disease. Next Thursday at 5:30 p.m. in the Baylies Room at the Whaling Church in Edgartown, representatives from the company will come to the Vineyard and hold a tularemia forum and recruit people who have had the disease to participate in the research project that is expected to last two years. What researchers really want is blood samples from as many as 20 such people. "We'll take people who were exposed to tularemia in the past. Once you've been exposed to the pathogen, you generate a memory, and the next time you see it, the body fights it better and you don't get sick," Daniel Rivera, the laboratory director at EpiVax and a molecular biologist, told the Gazette yesterday in a telephone interview. The blood sample needed is small, just eight to 10 tablespoons, said Mr. Rivera. Participants will be paid $100. Donna Enos, an infection control nurse at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital, has been hired by the company to draw the blood and screen participants. The decision to turn to the Island for help was obvious. It's just a couple hours from Providence, a geographic advantage that gave EpiVax biologists the idea to apply for the grant. More importantly, however, the Vineyard is the only place in the country to experience two outbreaks of tularemia, one in 1978 and the other beginning in 2000. There were four confirmed cases on the Island last year. Nearly all of the victims of the more recent outbreak have been people who worked outdoors, typically as landscapers. But what has made the Island even more notable in the medical history books is the fact that 21 of the 30 confirmed cases have been the pneumonic form of the disease, which is characterized by the sudden onset of flu- like symptoms. Epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) concluded more than three years ago that the pneumonic cases on the Island were likely caused by inhaling airborne particles laced with the tularemia bacteria. Landscapers were determined to be at the highest risk for contracting the disease, prompting a public health advisory that urged them to wear dust masks while mowing lawns and cutting brush. The disease is more commonly transmitted through a bite from a dog tick. No one ever suspected that the Vineyard outbreak was the result of any terrorist attack, but the thread between bioterrorism and the pneumonic cases on the Island has drawn significant attention from the federal government. A terrorist attack would likely use airborne tularemia. Three times in the last four and a half years, the CDC has dispatched epidemic intelligence teams to the Vineyard from its infectious disease facility in Fort Collins, Colo. But the NIH move to push for a tularemia vaccine represents a significant shift in the federal approach. The epidemiologists from Fort Collins were collecting data here - rabbits, rats, ticks and soil samples - in an attempt to unlock the mystery behind the outbreak, answering the big question: Why is tularemia so prevalent on the Island and nowhere else? In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and President Bush's anti-terrorism policies, the focus has turned simply to preventing transmission of the disease through a vaccine. The grant to EpiVax is about developing counter measures to bioterrorism, said Lanling Zou, a program officer and molecular biologist with the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in Bethesda, Md. "Based on its potential for use as a biological weapon, tularemia is a category A priority along with anthrax and plague," she added. Nationwide, there are just 200 confirmed cases per year of tularemia, Ms. Zou told the Gazette yesterday. An experimental vaccine is available, but only for scientists working in labs where they are exposed to the bacteria. Mr. Rivera said the blood from Islanders who have had tularemia is a key component to developing a vaccine. Scientists at EpiVax, working in concert with biologists at Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital, will extract T-cells from the blood and use them to develop the building blocks for a vaccine. "We expose them to these little synthetic peptides, and if they've seen tularemia before, they give a response, the cells will get turned on and secrete a protein immune response," said Mr. Rivera. That's phase one. If successful, phase two involves testing the vaccine on mice at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. Mice would be vaccinated and then infected with tularemia. They would also be infected first and then treated with the vaccine to see if it was therapeutic after exposure to the bacteria, Mr. Rivera explained. For now, phase one depends on the Vineyard participating. This is where EpiVax is concentrating efforts. Meanwhile, at least one scientist is still working to solve the riddle of tularemia on the Island. Sam Telford, an associate professor of infectious diseases at Tufts University, has continued to collect dog ticks from the Vineyard and study them for clues. In November, Mr. Telford published a study in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, detailing his field work on the Vineyard from 2001 to 2003. Findings show that of the 4,246 dog ticks dragged from Island fields and plucked from animals such as skunks, only seven-tenths of one per cent test positive for tularemia. But in the Squibnocket region of Chilmark, that rate jumps to four per cent. What's more, skunks and raccoons trapped and released by Mr. Telford and his teams have also tested positive. "We collected six rabbits from our site near Squibnocket," he wrote in the journal. "Three of them were dead or dying and yielded evidence of infection by F. tularensis (scientific name for tularemia)." Originally published in The Vineyard Gazette edition of Friday, January 14, 2005 http://www.mvgazette.com/news/2005/01/14/tularemia_vaccine.php

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Washington Times January 15, 2005 Pg. 1 N. Korea Willing To Talk On Nukes By Sang-hun Choe, Associated Press SEOUL — North Korea told a visiting U.S. congressional delegation yesterday that it would return to six-nation talks on its nuclear weapons program and become a "friend" of the United States, hinting at a possible reversal of a decades-old policy of calling America its "sworn enemy." Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Curt Weldon said North Korea appeared ready to negotiate "in a matter of weeks." He spoke at a press conference in South Korea's capital, Seoul. Yesterday's overture — while requiring that Washington not vilify North Korean leader Kim Jong-il — was highly unusual. Pyongyang's anti-American propaganda has been whipped into a near-religious fervor, with banners in villages everywhere exhorting North Koreans to prepare for an inevitable war with the "U.S. imperialists." "The DPRK side expressed its stand that the DPRK would not stand against the U.S. but respect and treat it as a friend unless the latter slanders the former's system and interferes in its internal affairs," said the North's official news agency, KCNA, using the country's official name, Democratic People's Republic of Korea. North Korean officials stressed the "need to take a future-oriented approach toward improving the bilateral relations," the news agency said. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan took a wait-and-see approach to the statement out of Pyongyang. "We will see by their actions how serious they are. ... We look forward to the next round of talks; we hope they will occur soon," Mr. McClellan told reporters yesterday aboard Air Force One for President Bush's trip to Florida. Pyongyang's unexpected gesture came shortly after a bipartisan delegation of six American lawmakers concluded talks with senior communist officials in Pyongyang, the capital. Mr. Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called the trip an "overwhelming success." During their four-day trip, the six congressmen met with North Korea's No. 2 leader, Kim Yong-nam, Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun and Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan, who is also the country's chief nuclear negotiator. Mr. Weldon, who led the delegation, dismissed recent news reports that North Korea began removing leader Kim Jong-il's portraits in Pyongyang. But he said a large billboard he saw during his first trip there in May 2003 was no longer there — a mural showing a North Korean driving a bayonet into an American soldier." The North Korean leadership told the Americans that the North "would opt for finding a final solution to all the outstanding issues between the two countries, to say nothing of the resumption of the six-party talks and the nuclear issue, if what U.S. congressmen said would be formulated as a policy of the second Bush administration," KCNA said. The United States, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have struggled to arrange a new round of talks aimed at persuading the North to abandon its nuclear weapons programs. The three prior rounds since 2003 made no breakthroughs. The last round was held last June. "Our unanimous impression is that the DPRK is ready to rejoin the six-party process," Mr. Weldon said. "I am convinced, as are all my colleagues, that if in fact we move along the process ... the six-party talks can and will resume in a matter of weeks," he added. In Pyongyang, Mr. Weldon said his group tried "to reinforce the fact of what our president has said, that we do not wish to have a regime change, that we will not pre-emptively attack the North, but we do need to resolve the nuclear issue." Experts say the isolated North may already possess two or three nuclear bombs, in addition to fuel that could produce several more. North Korea has said it needs a nuclear deterrent against U.S. invasion after the Iraq war. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has said he expects North Korea to return to six-way talks after President Bush is inaugurated for his second term Thursday. In his 2002 State of the Union address, Mr. Bush lumped North Korea into an "axis of evil" together with Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The president later said he "loathes" Kim Jong-il. "They are looking to see if any other comments would come out of Washington that would be negative or that would cast a negative aspect or negative feeling about the DPRK and its leaders," Mr. Weldon said. North Korea has cited a "hostile" U.S. policy as the key stumbling block to ending the two-year nuclear standoff and has demanded that Washington provide a guarantee of nonaggression and compensation in return for dismantling its nuclear facilities. The congressional delegation urged North Korea to meet the U.S. demand for a "total and complete" removal of its nuclear programs. North Korea's friendly reception of the American lawmakers was a familiar tactic of using visiting officials to increase understanding and support within the visitors' country. But it also reflects the regime's growing troubles over prolonged economic hardship and an increasing number of people fleeing the country to avoid starvation. The Weldon-led delegation urged Washington to adopt a conciliatory approach. "It's time for us to treat the DPRK with respect, to understand that they do want to resolve this," Mr. Weldon said. The White House scuttled Mr. Weldon's plan to visit Pyongyang in October 2003. Its approval of this trip came amid signs of a change in Washington's approach to the North. Washington has reportedly decided to remove one of its harshest critics of Kim, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, from Bush's next administration. http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050115-122052-8049r.htm

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Washington Post January 15, 2005 Pg. 15 N. Korea Says It's Ready To Resume Nuclear Talks In Meetings With U.S. Congressmen, Government Says U.S. Must Drop Its 'Belligerent Manner' By Anthony Faiola, Washington Post Foreign Service TOKYO, Jan. 14 -- The North Korean government this week indicated its willingness to return to stalled nuclear disarmament talks if the United States ceased acting in a "belligerent manner," according to the leader of a delegation of U.S. congressmen that just returned from a rare series of high-level meetings in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. The delegation, headed by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), told reporters in Seoul on Friday that North Korean officials had signaled their readiness to return to negotiations aimed at dismantling North Korea's professed nuclear weapons program. North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, China and Russia have held three rounds of talks since August 2003, but North Korea has refused since September to return to the table. Most analysts have said North Korea was waiting for the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, hoping that President Bush -- who has taken a hard-line policy toward the North -- would lose. It remained unclear whether North Korea's statements to the congressional delegation represented a real shift in position. North Korea has repeatedly made vague promises to return to the negotiating table if the United States dropped what the North has called its "hostile policy" toward the communist government headed by Kim Jong Il. At the State Department, spokesman Richard A. Boucher said the Bush administration was hoping for a resumption of the talks. "North Korea has not yet been in touch with the other parties to the talks to inform them of any decision or any intentions," Boucher said. "We've made very clear that we are ready to go back to six-party talks. Any discussions in the talks, we maintain, must address the full range of North Korea's nuclear programs, including its uranium enrichment program." The U.S. delegation -- which went to Pyongyang this week with the blessing of the White House -- voiced optimism that North Korea was prepared to resume discussions. "I am convinced, as are my colleagues, that if in fact we move along the process we are moving along today, the six- party talks can and will resume in a matter of weeks as opposed to months or years," Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters in Seoul, the South Korean capital. "Our focus was on the process to get the six-party talks moving again, to reassure the leaders of the DPRK that we wish them no ill will, to reinforce the fact of what our president has said, that we do not wish to have a regime change, that we will not preemptively attack the North, but we do need to resolve the nuclear issue," Weldon said at the news conference, using the initials for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name. There was no mention of a specific date to restart the talks, which have thus far been held in Beijing. In commenting on the delegation's visit this week, North Korea's official KCNA news service said the government "would opt for finding a final solution to all the outstanding issues between the two countries, to say nothing of the resumption of the six-party talks and the nuclear issue, if what U.S. congressmen said would be formulated as a policy of the second Bush administration." North Korea "would not stand against the U.S. but respect and treat it as a friend unless the latter slanders the former's system and interferes in its internal affairs," the news agency said. Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8752-2005Jan14.html

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London Times January 15, 2005 US Developed A 'Love Bomb' And No, It Wasn't Barry White By James Bone, in New York IRAQI insurgents beware: the Pentagon once considered developing aphrodisiacs to use as “weapons of mass affection”. Newly declassified documents reveal that the US Defence Department received a proposal from an air force laboratory to create a chemical agent — quickly dubbed the “love bomb” — that would make enemy fighters sexually irresistible to each other. The 1994 proposal by the US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, sought funds for work on “chemicals that affect human behaviour so that discipline and morale in enemy units is adversely affected”. “One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behaviour,” the proposal said. The $7.5 million six-year plan also proposed developing chemicals to make skin oversensitive to sunlight or cause “severe and lasting halitosis” to make it easy to identify guerrillas who tried to merge into the civilian population. Other options included a “sting me/attack me” chemical that would provoke bees to besiege enemy troops, as well as agents to attract “stinging and biting bugs, rodents and larger animals”. “Chemicals can be sprayed on to enemy forces or on to infiltration routes used by enemy forces,” the proposal asserts. But it notes: “New discoveries needed.” The files were published by the Sunshine Project, which is investigating what it believes are US efforts to contravene the Chemical Weapons Convention. The group has obtained a number of documents related to the US Government’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate since filing a Freedom of Information Act request for data in 2000. Activists are exploring whether the US Army is working on opiate-type substances like those used to sedate terrorists and their hostages in the Moscow theatre siege in 2002. Edward Hammond, a spokesman for the group, says that the US military has shown interest in using “pharmaceuticals” as weapons and calls the aphrodisiac idea just another example. “Ideas like this have been floating around since the Second World War and came to the fore during Vietnam,” Mr Hammond said. There is unlikely to be an outbreak of romance among Iraq insurgents, however, because the Pentagon said yesterday that the “love bomb” project was never pursued. “This is one of hundreds of proposals that are received from private individuals, government and academia,” said Captain Dan McSweeney, a spokesman for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. Mr Hammond said that the US Air Force’s principal interest in non-lethal weapons was in lasers. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-10889-1440776,00.html

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Washington Post January 15, 2005 Pg. 12 Bioterrorism War Game Shows Lack Of Readiness By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer The imaginary patients started stumbling into emergency rooms in Munich and Frankfurt, then Istanbul and Los Angeles, and within hours after the start of a war game yesterday, Western intelligence agencies concluded that there had been a choreographed attack on numerous cities by terrorists wielding smallpox pathogens. By mid-afternoon, health experts realized that millions of people worldwide would soon die agonizing deaths. World leaders -- or at least people posing as them -- who were assembled at a mock Washington summit yesterday interrupted each other and waved their arms as they debated potential real-life choices. Perhaps the most important: Would wealthy nations that possess smallpox vaccine share it with their unprepared neighbors? The exercise, called Atlantic Storm, featured former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright as the U.S. president and eight current or former high-ranking officials of America's European allies -- such as Britain, France and Germany -- role-playing as the prime ministers of their respective countries. In the war-game scenario, they were gathered for a routine Washington summit to discuss problems such as the global response to the South Asian tsunami when word emerged of a rampaging virus outbreak. An al Qaeda offshoot had constructed the pathogens in an Austrian brewery and had released them at a dozen sites. Within hours of the first victims being diagnosed with smallpox, riots developed on the Polish border with Germany, whose border guards barred entry to nearly everyone. The Germans had enough vaccine to protect all their citizens, while the Poles had enough for only 5 percent of theirs. This real-life distinction between the nations with sufficient smallpox vaccines and those with far too little was a key element of the day's events. In reality, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Israel and Singapore can vaccinate 100 percent of their residents, while Canada and Japan, for example, have enough vaccine for about 20 percent of theirs, and Turkey for just 1 percent. "The United States is feeling unappreciated now" because of world condemnation of its invasion of Iraq, Albright said in her role as the president, reflecting on the political pressures on her to protect people in this country before sending spare doses overseas. "A lot of Americans are saying, 'Why cooperate with them, anyway?' " she said. "This is creating horrible pressures among and within nations," said Jan Eliasson, the Swedish ambassador in Washington, who acted as his country's prime minister. Turkey -- which in the war game had suffered an attack at the bazaar in Istanbul -- was urgently requesting vaccine for all its 70 million residents. Throughout the day, France's prime minister -- played by former French health minister Bernard Kouchner, a physician -- continually told the summit members that they were moving much too slowly in reaching consensus on policy matters. "This is the emergency period," he said at one point. "We must not lose one hour." The players seemed disoriented on a number of key policy questions that, in the event of a real attack, would require speedy worldwide decision-making and action. One was the question of whether it is safe to dilute smallpox vaccines by 5 to 1 to stretch limited supplies. U.S. government scientists said it was, but the Europeans disagreed. Perhaps the starkest lesson of the war game -- which was sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pittsburgh, among other organizations -- was that there is no playbook anywhere to guide international leaders on how to divide up the few extra doses of vaccine, or even who would make such decisions. By the end of the day, the participants agreed that the World Health Organization, a United Nations affiliate, should handle the job, but Albright said that, as a U.S. president pressured by constituencies that mistrust the United Nations, she agreed to that only reluctantly. Throughout the exercise, the leaders begged each other not to take the dangerous step of closing borders, which they knew would create panic and destroy the world economy. But within hours, Germany and the Netherlands had done so. A simulated newscast at the day's end described the state of the world two months after the attack, in terms bioterrorism experts said were realistic -- 45,000 Americans dead, millions dying worldwide, the global economy at a standstill and ethnic fighting in many nations. "It was a shock how little prepared many countries were," said former Dutch interior minister Klaas de Vries, who played the role of his country's prime minister. "The scenario we posited is very conservative," said Tara O'Toole, a Pittsburgh bioterrorism expert who helped organize the event. "The age of biological weapons is not science fiction; it's here." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10746-2005Jan14.html

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New York Times January 16, 2005 Constructive Patience With North Korea By James Brooke TOKYO — North Korea is not a country, but a cult. In dealing with a cult, it is not usually very productive, as President Bush has done, to call its Dear Leader "evil" and "a pygmy." After four years of ideology and imprecations but no progress in dealing with North Korea, with its comatose economy and its increasingly worrisome nuclear weapons program, many in Asia want the United States to change its approach and start trying to achieve practical results patiently and in small increments - even if that means being civil to the North's dictator, Kim Jong Il. At the least, they pray that Washington will resist the urge to do anything precipitous that would set off a crisis. Whether by explosion or implosion, any sudden change in North Korea could be calamitous for the region, many Asians believe. For one thing, its nuclear weapons could be used, or could slip into rogue hands. Die-hardism is probably a greater risk in North Korea than it ever was in communist Europe: over six decades of isolation, the population has been drilled relentlessly to worship the Kim family and despise America, Japan and South Korea, the scapegoats for all the country's woes. A collapse of Kim family rule would probably unleash floods of desperate refugees on the country's neighbors. The coast guards of Japan, Russia and South Korea have detailed plans to head off an expected rush of boat people, and China has stationed more troops along its border with North Korea. The contrasts across the Demilitarized Zone are stark. In December, Freedom House, which monitors civil and political rights, ranked North Korea among the most repressive countries on the planet, but South Korea among the freest. Average income per person in the South is at least 13 times that in the North. Given these huge differences, most South Koreans want to reunify the peninsula very gradually, over perhaps 50 years, starting with economic ties that they hope will infect the North with creeping capitalism. Many American conservatives would prefer to see the North collapse by next weekend, though they might settle for 2010. A broad coalition of Korean-Americans, Christian and human rights activists, and conservatives in Congress wants to hurry the process along by flooding North Korea this year with cheap portable radios that can receive broadcasts from outside the country, and with prepaid cellular phones that can connect with the Chinese network. News of these plans spurred North Korea's propaganda machine last fall into a fury of hostility. Now, with the North's missiles able to strike Tokyo and its artillery within easy range of Seoul, officials in both capitals want to lower the temperature and revive regional talks that have been stalled for seven months. A positive sign to Asians: Christopher Hill, the American ambassador in Seoul and a moderate, is expected to be the new assistant secretary of state assigned to deal with North Korea. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/weekinreview/16asia.html?oref=login

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New York Times January 18, 2005 Pg. 1 U.S. Is Punishing 8 Chinese Firms For Aiding Iran By David E. Sanger WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - The Bush administration imposed penalties this month against some of China's largest companies for aiding Iran's efforts to improve its ballistic missiles. The move is part of an effort by the White House and American intelligence agencies to identify and slow important elements of Iran's weapons programs. The White House made no public announcement of the penalties, and the State Department placed a one-page notice on page 133 of The Federal Register early this month listing eight Chinese companies affected. The notice kept classified the nature of the technology they had exported. Since the Federal Register announcement, the penalties have been noted on some Web sites that concentrate on China and proliferation issues. President Bush has repeatedly praised China for its help in seeking a diplomatic end to the North Korean nuclear standoff. Some officials in the administration speculated in the past week that the decision not to publicize the penalties might have been part of an effort not to jeopardize Chinese cooperation at a critical moment in the administration's effort to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table. China has repeatedly vowed to curb its sales of missile technology, starting with an agreement with the first Bush administration in 1992, and expanded with the Clinton administration in 2000. But two of the largest companies cited in the State Department's list, China Great Wall Industry Corporation and China North Industry Corporation, known as Norinco, have been repeatedly penalized for more than a decade; each is closely linked to the Chinese military. A third company on the penalties list, the China Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation, or Catic, is one of the country's largest producers of military aircraft and was accused of diverting to military use sophisticated machine tools bought from McDonnell Douglas. Eighteen months ago, a senior State Department official, Paula A. DeSutter, referred to several of the companies as part of China's "serial proliferator problem," and told a Congressional commission on relations between the United States and China that although the Chinese government had often repeated its opposition to missile proliferation, "the reality has been quite different." In the 1990's, Republicans in Congress began a series of investigations into China's efforts to obtain American nuclear technology and to export missile and nuclear expertise to Pakistan, Iran and possibly other nations. At the time, they sharply criticized the Clinton administration, accusing it of playing down Chinese offenses. Bush administration officials, when asked about the penalties over the past week, said nothing was particularly notable about the latest violations and that no evidence suggested that China's leadership was aware of the sales. One senior American official said the transactions took place "within the past year or 18 months," or well after the last American penalties were announced on Chinese sales to Iran, in July 2003. American officials said the list of exports to Iran was classified, but they described them as high-performance metals and components that are banned under the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 because they could aid the country's efforts to extend the range of its missile fleet. It was unclear whether some of the technology was "dual use," meaning that it could be used for civilian or military purposes. Iran's efforts to develop longer-distance missiles that are capable of ever larger payloads are increasingly of concern among intelligence officials. American officials have charged that Iran is trying to develop nuclear warheads, which its leadership denies. "We suspect that the Iranians also have the Chinese bomb design," a former senior American official said several months ago, referring to a design that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist, acquired from China, sold to Libya and was suspected of peddling elsewhere. "What everyone is looking for is the missile that matches up with the design." American intelligence agencies are focusing much energy, officials say, on identifying major sites for Iran's nuclear and missile programs. That information is collected, in part, to plan for possible military strikes, though President Bush has repeatedly said he is focusing on diplomacy to disarm Iran. Still, Mr. Bush has also repeatedly said he would never summarily rule out any option in a crisis. In an interview broadcast Monday night by NBC News, when asked about using military action in Iran, he said, "I hope we can solve it diplomatically, but I will never take any option off the table." In an article in The New Yorker this week, titled "The Coming Wars," Seymour M. Hersh reports that "the administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer." He continued: "Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids." Administration officials said intelligence agencies had long worked to identify those sites, but they denied that more consideration was being given to striking those sites. "That's not the plan," a senior official said. "In fact, a lot of energy is going into trying to keep the Israelis from getting ideas along those lines." For now, some of the American intelligence is being provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency to spur it to conduct investigations in Iran. Last week, inspectors visited one such military site, called Parchin, where the United States says work may be under way to develop a nuclear warhead. Although the agency took soil samples to determine whether nuclear materials had been present at the site, it has no jurisdiction over missile work, or any authority to enforce the Missile Technology Control Regime, a voluntary international agreement that regulates the sale of missile components and designs. Many of Iran's missiles are based on North Korean designs, and one North Korean company, Paeksan Associated Corporation, was penalized, with the eight Chinese companies. The penalties bar the companies from doing business with the United States government, and prevent them from obtaining export licenses allowing them to buy controlled technologies from American companies. Some of the penalized Chinese companies do little or no business with the United States, but Norinco, a maker of handguns and assault weapons, does millions of dollars of business here, and other companies are constantly in search of American technology. Some American businesses have argued that the penalties are often self-defeating, contributing to the huge trade gap with China but doing little to deter Chinese companies from exporting nuclear, chemical or missile technology to nuclear aspirants like Iran. A senior administration official, asked about the penalties, said Monday in an interview that the Chinese "are moving in the right direction generally" on proliferation and have stopped some exports to North Korea, including a chemical that could be used in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel into weapons. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the subject included intelligence matters, said that "while they are helping us on North Korea, they have not been as helpful on Iran," perhaps because of China's ever expanding need for oil and other energy sources. President Bush, the official said, was trying to make the point to Chinese officials that their companies "are not going to be able to sustain the patterns of trade needed for strong economic growth and continued inward investment" in China if they are repeatedly penalized for aiding Iran. But evidence is slight that previous penalties have seriously impeded the growth of the Chinese companies. In her testimony to the China commission, Ms. DeSutter, the senior State Department official, argued that Beijing's nonproliferation commitments of 1992, 1994, 1998, 2000 and, most recently, a specific set of export control rules issued by China in 2002 "occurred only under the imminent threat, or in response to the actual imposition, of sanctions." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/politics/18nukes.html

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Washington Post January 18, 2005 Pg. 12 Article On Iran Lacks Truth, Pentagon Says By Reuters The Pentagon yesterday criticized a published article that said it is mounting reconnaissance missions inside Iran to identify potential nuclear and other targets. "The Iranian regime's apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides in the New Yorker article titled 'The Coming Wars,' " the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence T. DiRita, said in a statement. Hersh's article, published Sunday, was "so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed," DiRita said. Hersh reported that President Bush had signed a series of top-secret findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces military units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia. DiRita did not comment on that assertion. Instead, he said, Hersh's sources fed him "rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist and statements by officials that were never made." Asked whether U.S. military forces had been conducting reconnaissance missions in Iran, Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Defense Department spokesman, said: "We don't discuss missions, capabilities or activities of Special Operations forces." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16426-2005Jan17.html

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Salt Lake Tribune January 18, 2005 Secret Dugway Role May Expand New missions: Space jet launchings and a major counterterrorism unit could be in the offing for the Utah base By Christopher Smith, The Salt Lake Tribune WASHINGTON - The U.S. Air Force is considering Dugway Proving Ground as a launch site for testing new ultra- fast space jets, but federal lawmakers say that is not the motivation behind a proposal to expand the secretive Army compound in Utah's west desert. Instead, members of the state's congressional delegation say the Army wants more room at the 800,000-acre bioweapons research and testing site to add a training ground for military counterterrorism operations. According to Dugway's long-term planning documents, the range would include a mock city to rehearse chemical/biological attacks and responses. "There are a lot of people in the military who are looking into an expansion of Dugway and it would be the ideal facility for this," said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, whose district includes the compound 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. "What they are talking about could mean new jobs going to Tooele County, since we'd have to build a lot of the stuff they would need." Dugway probably is competing with military installations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia to host a counterterrorism training range, said defense policy expert John Pike. "Everybody is trying to get a piece of the counterterrorism and homeland security pie, and anybody who has a claim of expertise in the field would be a fool not to try to build out on it," said Pike, director of the nonpartisan GlobalSecurity.org. "At Dugway, you have miles and miles of buffer space, and I think it's an obvious place to do something like this." Bishop declined to give specifics on his conversations with military officials about the potential mission additions or changes being considered for Dugway. He said if the compound grows, "I don't see it as an expansion of the chemical research and development mission, it will be in programs different than that to meet a multi-service mission." Base officials have refused to publicly disclose why they requested permission in October from brass at the Army Development and Test Command in Maryland to study expanding onto federal public lands to the south and west of the current range boundary. Those areas would be beneath one of two proposed 400-mile-long, 40- to 60-mile-wide "hypersonic flight corridors" that the Air Force is now studying over Utah, Nevada and California. Air Force officials say the high-altitude jet route would not require additional range area at Dugway and say a recently released study on environmental impacts from the overflights is not related to the Army's expansion study request. "This would be for testing an air-launched hypersonic vehicle that would fly up into space and then land at Edwards [Air Force Base]," said Gary Hatch, spokesman for the California base that is host to the Air Force Flight Test Center. According to a draft of the Air Force study on the flight corridors, an unmanned experimental jet capable of flying at Mach 7.5 [seven and a half times the speed of sound] would be released at 40,000 feet altitude from a large jet flying over Utah's western desert above Dugway or the Nevada desert above Nellis Air Force Base. A booster rocket would propel the test jet up to 105,000 feet, where it would then accelerate under its own power to hypersonic flight speed before gliding down to land on a dry lake bed at Edwards. The Air Force study identified Michaels Army Airfield at Dugway as an alternative landing site for the Utah corridor during the initial launch of the vehicle, as well as a large expanse of salt flat "hardpan" known as Ibex Wells, approximately 60 miles southwest of Delta in the Tule Valley on Bureau of Land Management property. The study specifies using the western approach to the Dugway strip for any emergency landing of the experimental craft, since there would be "significant risk" to people and base facilities if the craft landed from an the eastern approach. The edge of the new hypersonic flight corridor also would be above the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, site of a proposed high-level nuclear waste storage facility. No test schedule has been announced, and Air Force and NASA officials say they want to study general environmental impacts in anticipation of future flight test programs. If and when a hypersonic vehicle is tested across the skies of the Great Basin, it's likely the program will be shrouded in secrecy. "There are a bunch of hypersonic programs floating around various agencies right now, so many that they can't all be real," said Pike, former director of space policy for the American Federation of Scientists. "At this point, it's difficult knowing which ones are real and which ones are just artwork." http://www.sltrib.com/ci_2528249

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Washington Post January 19, 2005 Pg. 13 Bush Links Chinese Firms' Sanctions To Iranian Arms President Bush said yesterday that economic sanctions against Chinese companies doing business with Iran were designed to ward off trade in equipment that could be used in weapons programs. "To the extent that other nations are proliferating into this closed country, that represents a significant problem, as well," Bush told Fox News Channel. "That's why we're dealing with the Chinese firms, and that's why we're mindful of making sure the proliferation efforts are stopped at their source." The State Department announced in December that it had placed new sanctions on a number of Chinese companies and one North Korean firm. A public notice posted in the Federal Register on Dec. 1 identified the five companies as Liaoning Jiayi Metals and Minerals Co., Q.C. Chen, Wha Cheong Tai Co., Shanghai Triple International Ltd. and North Korea's Changgwang Sinyong Corp. Three other companies were added to the public list one month later. The two-year sanctions, imposed under the 2000 Iran Nonproliferation Act, prohibit the companies from doing business in the United States and from obtaining licenses that allow them to export or receive a patent for American technologies. China issued a public protest the next day over frequent U.S. sanctions against Chinese companies. -- Dafna Linzer http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19178-2005Jan18.html

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Washington Post Diplomatic Dispatches Lessons to Be Learned From 'Dirty War' By Nora Boustany Wednesday, January 19, 2005; Page A13 Last week in New York, the Council on Foreign Relations screened a new British film that uses documentary techniques to depict a fictional terrorist attack on London. The purpose of the gathering: to spark debate on preparations for such a scenario. In Washington, La Maison Francaise, a cultural arm of the French Embassy, was set to hold its own screening of the 90-minute film, "Dirty War," last night. Director Daniel Percival wrote the drama with playwright Lizzie Mickery following extensive research into preparations by governments and emergency services for such an event. The film aired in Britain in September. Percival, visiting Washington for the screening, said in an interview Monday that Britain's security officials took some of its conclusions into account in planning. Presented in association with the BBC, the film is to debut on HBO on Monday. Percival said that PBS will also show the film later, on grounds that airing it would be a public service. The film depicts the detonation of a "dirty bomb" -- conventional explosives that spread radioactive contaminants -- during morning rush hour in London. Commuters die, and a radioactive cloud rises over the city. But "the focus of the film is the reaction to it -- particularly by the emergency and government agencies -- and the characters caught up in the unfolding drama," Percival said. "It goes to the heart of the threat posed by the war on terror." The issues of drills, emergency planning and official competence are all real, he said. Percival and Mickery visited Washington late last year while researching and writing a series for the BBC about the role of the British Embassy here. Fashioned along the lines of the U.S.-produced television program "The West Wing," the series probes the special British-American relationship within the context of official Washington. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19161-2005Jan18.html

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