#169 10 May 2002

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. Established here at the Air War College 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 to Lt Col Michael W. Ritz, ANG Special Assistant to Director of CPC or 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

CONTENTS

Brookings Study Urges Improved Cruise Missile Defense, Stronger Coast Guard Brookings Institution Project on Homeland Security North Korea's Nuclear Threat Scientific Speed Is The Key In Fighting Bioterror Pentagon Fine-Tunes Strategy To Prepare For WMD Threats Navy Physicians At Forefront Of DNA-Based Vaccine Research What Saddam's Got U.S. Says Iraq Is Developing Banned Arms Nuclear Deal Called Closer After Powell Meets Russian NRC Warns Of Missing Radioactive Materials Plan Urged For 'Dirty' Explosive Havana Pursues Biological Warfare Washington Accuses Cuba Of Germ-Warfare Research Chemical Munitions Languish In Depots Anthrax Sent Through Mail Gained Potency By The Letter For Anthrax Survivors, A Halting, Painful Recovery U.S. May Tell Dead Gulf War Vets' Kin If Nerve Gas Involved Nuclear Team Arrives In North Korea Office Of Homeland Security Expects National Strategy Ready For Bush In July Studies Cite Smallpox Vaccine Tradeoff Biological Cars To Ensure Terror-Free World Cup Clinton Policy Declassified Nuclear Secrets New Push For Bunker-Buster Nuke Pentagon Security Checkup Pentagon Drills For Gas Attack Pentagon Tests Reflexes For Chemical Attack NORAD Chief To Head Homeland Defense U.S. Lacks Child Doses Of Nerve-Gas Antidote

(Editor’s Note: Hyperlink for referenced study follows article.) InsideDefense.com May 1, 2002 Brookings Study Urges Improved Cruise Missile Defense, Stronger Coast Guard The Defense Department should broaden air and cruise missile defense efforts, significantly increase the Coast Guard budget and focus the National Guard on homeland security rather than overseas missions, according to a new report by the Brookings Institute. The report, entitled "Protecting the American Homeland," suggests that the Defense Department and the White House Office of Homeland Security have been primarily focusing on preventing recurrences of the terrorist attacks on September 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks rather than developing a comprehensive homeland security strategy. The current focus, the Brookings authors warn, will keep the United States "fighting the last war" instead of preparing for future attacks. Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN), who delivered the opening remarks at the study presentation, supported the authors’ findings, stating, "I don't think we have been realistic by not realizing the re-prioritization that is going to have to go on in this country [to create a homeland security strategy]. . . We haven't come to terms with some of the organizational issues." To broaden and reorient the homeland security agenda, the authors, specialists in economic and foreign policy studies, suggest a four-tier system for addressing national security needs: border security, domestic prevention, protecting specific targets within the United States and consequence management after attacks. The Bush administration's fiscal year 2003 budget request is particularly lacking an adequate plan for domestic prevention and protection, according to the Brookings authors. In addressing border security issues, the authors propose significant structural changes to the military services. According to the study, the current air defense system would only be adequate for intercepting a plane identified hours from U.S. shores; if a plane was recognized once it was relatively near its target, interceptor aircraft could only be effective if they were based nearby. Accordingly, the report suggests placing additional aircraft along certain parts of the country's borders where current coverage is limited and keeping two to four aircraft on call at existing fighter bases. Such changes could cost an additional $1 billion to $3 billion a year, depending on whether the administration extends air patrols to the nation's largest cities, the report states. The Brookings report notes the difficulties associated with national cruise missile defense given the number of potential launch points and trajectories for ballistic missiles, but states "a radar system, perhaps kept airborne by aerostat balloons, together with some surface-to-air missile sites to fill in certain gaps, should be able to provide at least some coverage of the nation's borders. "Such a network might not provide leak-proof defense in all places, but it should stop small, simple attacks with high confidence," the report adds. Many dozens of interceptor bases would also be needed to protect U.S. coastal zones, the authors note. All told, a rudimentary estimate for the cost of cruise missile defense would be $10 billion to $20 billion, plus an additional $300 million to $1 billion per year for operating expenses, according to the study. The Coast Guard would be a major barrier to terrorist attacks in which explosives or weapons of mass destruction were headed for an American city on a ship, the study says. Among other initiatives, the Coast Guard should improve its protective measures against chemical and biological attack and modernize its command and control systems, according to the report. As a result of the intensive coastal patrolling that has been needed since Sept. 11, the authors envision a Coast Guard with 100 large cutters; 600 smaller ships (about twice the current number) and boats to handle old and new missions near shore; 90 special-purpose vessels; 200 to 250 aircraft; and essentially the same shore infrastructure as today. These additional expenditures would require an annual Coast Guard budget of about $7 billion, about $1 billion more than today’s level of funding, according to the report. The National Guard's role in border patrol, dealt with only tangentially in the report, was highlighted April 30 during the study's presentation. Ivo Daalder, a Brookings senior fellow and one of the report's co-authors, spoke strongly against the way the Guard is currently employed. "The National Guard ought to go back to its constitutional mission, which is homeland defense," and DOD must start divesting the Guard of its overseas responsibilities, said Daalder. "We need to have our military think about defending the United States as something that starts at home," Daalder added. Michael O'Hanlon, another of the report's authors, said he was opposed to fundamentally changing the Guard or reserve components of the military, but added that he believes "many of the combat brigades and divisions of the current National Guard are not really all that important for the overseas war fighting plan . . . if we are going to keep some of these brigades anyway, and largely for political reasons, frankly, you might as well have them be best suited for the kinds of mission they are more likely to do. And that may mean homeland security." Daalder proposed creating a federal border agency with a cabinet appointment from the many different departments and agencies that currently play a role in border security. "Today the border and defense thereof is in the hands of six different departments." The Defense Department, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the Agricultural Department, the State Department, and the Transportation Department are all technically involved in border patrol, "but none of these departments regards border security as a major addition of their department," said Daalder. "We need a person in charge . . . with a Cabinet-level position who thinks about border security." The study also calls for enhancing Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge's authority over budgetary matters as well as making him a Cabinet-level official, subject to senate confirmation, an increase in powers that the study's authors and lawmakers in attendance at the report’s presentation said was long overdue. -- Malina Brown

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Brookings Institution Project on Homeland Security http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/fp/projects/homeland/homeland.htm

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Insight Magazine May 20, 2002 North Korea's Nuclear Threat By Notra Trulock There is a new crisis looming for the Bush administration this summer, and it is not Iraq. But it does feature a harshly repressive regime trying to hide its weapons of mass destruction from international inspection. The crisis is brewing on the Korean peninsula and involves the end game of a deal made eight years ago by the Clinton administration. In 1994, in return for a freeze on its nuclear facilities, the United States promised to build Pyongyang "proliferation-resistant" nuclear reactors and supply North Korea with 500,000 tons of fuel oil annually. The North Koreans promised to open their facilities to international inspection and get out of the nuclear-weapons business altogether. The Clinton administration managed to defuse the immediate crisis and keep North Korea off the front pages for most of its two terms. Its spokesmen gradually began to tout the deal as a major Clinton foreign-policy success; Bill Clinton himself claimed that he got the North Koreans out of the nuclear business. In truth, few of our negotiators thought there still would be a North Korea by the time the bill came due. But North Korea still is standing and, with regard to nuclear weapons, it has not been standing still, according to the intelligence community. It appears that instead of freezing its program, it used the time to develop nuclear warheads. This startling news first was revealed in the public version of a National Intelligence Estimate on "Foreign Missile Developments" published in December 2001. It says, "The intelligence community judged in the mid-1990s that North Korea had produced one, possibly two, nuclear weapons." That is not what the community said in the mid- 1990s; the estimates then dealt only with plutonium production, not nuclear warheads. Presumably, this new assessment was not made lightly. It implies that North Korea has mastered the manufacture of nuclear warheads. The use of plutonium implies an implosion-type warhead because it is unsuitable for simpler gun- assembly designs. Implosion designs require more-sophisticated testing and manufacturing skills. Intelligence- community statements also indicate that the North Koreans have engineered a warhead small enough for delivery on a North Korean missile. More worrisome are new assessments that indicate those light-water reactors may not be so "proliferation-resistant" after all. Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center has unearthed a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory assessment that concludes that one reactor alone could produce enough weapons-grade plutonium for 50 nuclear warheads. Former U.S. officials involved in the original negotiations admit that they did not seek such assessments at the time of the original deal, but they categorically reject Livermore's recent analysis. They cite technical reasons that would keep North Korea from producing plutonium from the spent fuel from these reactors, but North Korea has fooled international observers (read: the U.S. intelligence community) before. This spring the Bush administration refused to certify Pyongyang's compliance with the terms of the "Agreed Framework" (as the U.S.-North Korea nuclear deal is known) claiming that North Korea was resisting new inspection arrangements with international inspectors. But the intelligence community's new findings and continued suspicions about covert North Korean activities were more likely the reasons for the noncertification. North Korea, which had suspended reactor talks after President George W. Bush included it in the "Axis of Evil," has decided to begin talking again after all. It probably is betting that the United States will be preoccupied in the Middle East and that the Bush administration will have many incentives to compromise to avoid another crisis. Despite its refusal to certify North Korea, the administration granted it another year's worth of fuel oil. You can expect pressure from Senate Democrats, such as Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden (D-Del.), and the mainstream media to stick to the deal no matter what. The North Korean threat is not going away soon, no matter how bad things get or how many predictions our intelligence community makes. Their predictions that the communist regime there would implode obviously were too optimistic. Some argue for coordinating reactor construction with the timetable for inspections. It would be better to stop the headlong rush to the end game and rethink our overall objectives. We should offer to convert the deal to non-nuclear power plants while upgrading the country's power grid, as Sokolski recommends. If this really is about economic development and power generation, North Korea should accept that offer. Notra Trulock is the associate editor of Accuracy in Media's AIM Report and a former director of intelligence at the Department of Energy.

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Los Angeles Times May 1, 2002 Scientific Speed Is The Key In Fighting Bioterror America should have a special lab and a system of molecular fingerprinting. By Scott P. Layne and Claire M. Fraser, Scott P. Layne is an associate professor of epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health. Claire M. Fraser is president of the Institute for Genome Research in Rockville, Md. It's human nature: The United States' fear of another biological attack is fading fast. But it shouldn't. In Kandahar, U.S. forces have discovered an Al Qaeda laboratory that was to produce anthrax. And one of the Sept. 11 hijackers may have been treated in Florida for cutaneous anthrax last June. The threat of biological terrorism is real. So far, our efforts have focused on improving the care of potential biological victims. And whether last year's perpetrator, still at large, is a lone "bio Kaczynski" or an organized "bio Bin Laden" is somewhat beside the point. The primary issue is that the United States must devise a broader plan to prevent, deter and respond to the long-term threats of biological terrorism. How could we do this? The complete DNA sequence of anthrax is to be unveiled next week in a public database. A practical solution to the biological security problem would take advantage of such scientific knowledge and the fact that different strains of anthrax are readily identifiable with molecular fingerprinting technology. The means exist to create a high-speed laboratory and molecular forensic database against germs like anthrax. Such a laboratory would provide for positive identification and source tracing for anthrax and many other "select germs" identified by Congress, including hantavirus and plague. Proposed laws to strengthen homeland security call for more guards, padlocks, record-keeping and personnel checks at laboratories that handle select germs. Such measures would be expensive and time-consuming. Yet forensic security can ease the burdens of physical security. Here's how it might work: Researchers would be required to periodically submit samples of their labs' select germs for high-speed fingerprinting. This practice would automatically maintain a list of institutions and investigators who handled select germs (something that does not exist at present) and an up-to-date forensic database on them. If germs from a legitimate institution were used in a biological attack, we would uncover this quickly, perhaps overnight. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, agreed to by 162 nations, bans the maintenance of offensive bioweapons programs but offers no provisions for verification and compliance. The high-speed laboratory could provide a new technical foundation for sensitive and effective inspection procedures based on molecular forensics. For example, if an insecticide plant was inspected and found to contain traces of anthrax, we would take action. That's prevention. There are about 20 rogue countries and organizations with secret offensive biological weapons programs, and the number is growing. If we had a high-speed laboratory, it would help in the covert monitoring of their capabilities and in fingerprinting their germs. And we could put such states on notice that, if their weapons were ever used against us, we would pinpoint their origins and act with guaranteed force. That's deterrence. In the event of a biological attack, the high-speed laboratory could test thousands of samples each day. It would help public health officials to save lives, reduce confusion and speed recovery operations. That's response. In addition, more information on bioterror germs would benefit medical research. It could speed the development of new drugs and vaccines. Because of this, the forensic database should be made available to scientists and not completely "walled off" behind government top security. A handful of anthrax letters has made it apparent that Americans are vulnerable to biological attacks. The first time we were relatively lucky--five deaths, a dozen or so hospitalizations, 30,000 people on prophylactic antibiotics. The next attack could kill thousands and cause havoc in our collective psyche and national economy. The U.S. has comprehensive plans to prevent, deter and respond to potential nuclear and conventional attacks. Now we need a plan for biological attacks. Every dollar spent on a high-speed system would save much more.

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National Defense May 2002 Pg. 17 Pentagon Fine-Tunes Strategy To Prepare For WMD Threats By Elizabeth G. Book The Defense Department is working on a multi-tiered strategy to boost the nation’s ability to counter the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. U.S. capabilities to deter and prevent attacks must be improved sooner rather than later, before the United States experiences another 9-11, said Dale Klein, assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear, biological and chemical defense programs. "Unfortunately, I think we’ve moved into an era where [the question is] not ‘Is it going to happen,’ but ‘when?’ … We just need to be prepared to handle it and minimize it," he told National Defense. For that reason, he added, "Our intelligence-gathering capabilities need to be enhanced, we need to have the technologies and people trained to respond." Referring to the recent string of suicide bombings in Israel, Klein said it would be "easy" for attacks of that nature to occur inside the United States. "If someone has a desire to kill themselves and others, it is extremely difficult to prevent that from happening," he said. Klein’s responsibilities include the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons, the biological defense programs, the nuclear treaties, chemical demilitarization and counter-proliferation. "The portfolio is very challenging," he said. Before coming to the Pentagon last November, Klein had spent 25 years as a mechanical engineering professor and vice chancellor at the University of Texas at Austin. He served on numerous high-level Department of Energy committees, including the Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee. Klein was appointed by then-governor George W. Bush to the Texas Radiation Advisory Board. Asked about growing concerns in the United States on the possibility of a low-level nuclear attack, Klein noted that the emergence of non-state sponsored terrorism has changed the dynamics of nuclear defense. During the Cold War, there was fear of all-out nuclear annihilation. Today, "what we’re looking at, on the nuclear side, is more of a terrorist threat." Key to preventing terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear devices is to deny them access to the required materials, said Klein. "We are looking at assisting the former Soviet Union in safeguarding their materials. … We also have export controls that monitor sensitive or dual-use equipment," he said. "The former Soviet Union had a different method of accounting than the United States. And the United States had a very strong materials accountability program. The former Soviet Union had what we call the ‘three Gs,’—guns, gates and guards. That infrastructure has decayed. … It’s in the world’s best interest to help ensure that the materials … do not get into the hands of those who would like to do us harm," he said. In response to news reports about whether "orphan nukes," from the former Soviet Union could surface in the continental United States, Klein said, "We always hear rumors of missing nuclear devices. I think we just have to look carefully when we hear that information, that we follow it through to its completion, to find out if there’s substance to it. One source of concern, though perhaps not an immediate threat, is the fact that other countries are getting close to manufacturing their own nuclear weapons. "It’s no secret that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon. They’ve been at it a long time," he said. Klein’s office recently updated its annual Report of Activities and Programs for Countering Proliferation and NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) Terrorism. The document is "a roadmap for what the Defense Department should do, where should it put resources, where are the risks," he said. Much of the effort in this report is devoted to the so-called "areas for capability enhancement." This year, "the number one area for capability enhancement is biological defense," Klein said. He noted that a significant number of countries are involved in biological and chemical programs. "The Soviet Union had a massive biological program," Klein said. "And so one of the concerns that we have is people from the Soviet Union who were involved in that program selling their services. We have an interest in trying to prevent terrorist groups from getting that technology," he said. The United States has robust capabilities to detect nuclear threats, said Klein. "That’s one of the good news items about anything radioactive, our detectors work quite well. … The technology is exciting and refreshing." Because there are many levels of threats, the counter-proliferation program at the Pentagon is a "multi-tiered approach," Klein said. The strategy is based on "prevention, deterrence, then the counterforce, active defense, passive defense, and then, in the unlikely event that something occurs, consequence management." The approach applies to both domestic and global counter-proliferation. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is gathering intelligence about a possible new type of weapon, which does not fall neatly into the chemical or biological category. Sarin and mustard gases clearly are chemical weapons. Biological weapons are virus-based, such as anthrax and smallpox. In between the chemical and the biological, he said, "You have shades of gray, where you can mix the two." "A toxin is a chemical that is secreted by a microbe. So, is that a biological or a chemical or is it both? It’s not a broad line," said Air Force Col. Michael Kelly, Klein’s military assistant. The improvements planned for biological defense include intelligence gathering, technologies, training, vaccines, civil support teams, said Klein. Substantial efforts are being devoted today to train first responders, he said. "If you talked to local responders three years ago and asked them how many knew about anthrax, it’d be a very small number. Ask how many of them know today about anthrax—every one of them is going to know about it."

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European Stars and Stripes May 2, 2002 Navy Physicians At Forefront Of DNA-Based Vaccine Research By Sandra Jontz, Washington bureau SILVER SPRING, Md. — The Navy is making waves — but not only on the high seas. Doctors and scientists are pioneering their way to the top of medical research, and a group of Navy physicians might hold the key to the first DNA-based vaccine before the Food and Drug Administration for approval. If it works, that is. The Navy’s DNA-based vaccine to guard against anthrax has been successful in mice and rabbits and scientists are moving on to the primate phase, said Navy Dr. (Capt.) Al Mateczun, in charge of the Biological Defense Research Directorate at the Naval Medical Research Center in Silver Spring, Md. They hope to begin human trials by next year, he said during a recent interview in his first-floor office. "I genuinely think that’s possible," he said of the rapid time line. Success in animals doesn’t guarantee the DNA vaccine will work in humans because of varying ways in which immune systems develop, he said. "We don’t know, but we think this is going to work really well," Mateczun said. DNA is a chemical structure that forms chromosomes. A piece of a chromosome that dictates a particular trait, like hair color, is called a gene. An upshot to a vaccine developed from DNA is that it produces few, if any, side effects — and might mute critics who say the current anthrax vaccination program is unsafe, he said. "Turns out there are few side effects. In fact, I don’t know of any specific ones. … It appears to be pretty safe," Mateczun said. "But we gotta get it to work first. If we get it to work, it would not be limited to the military. If the FDA approves it as a vaccine, it could be the first FDA DNA-based vaccine," said the 24-year veteran. To create the current anthrax vaccine, the bacteria is fermented out and grown in a "soup," Mateczun said. "You take the soup and do certain things to it and you immunize people with that," he explained — as best he could in layman’s terms. "It’s got components of anthrax to give you immunity." With the DNA vaccine, the bacteria’s DNA instead of the "soup" is injected. It would be done in two or three shots instead of the current six shots. It can be mass-produced in a fraction of the time. Traditional vaccines usually take years to develop and can be difficult and costly to make, Mateczun said. They need refrigeration, and usually can’t be mixed to inoculate against more than one disease at a time. Mateczun developed the research with Navy Capt. Darrell Galloway, a Navy Reservist who worked at Ohio State University at the time of discovery and now is full-time active duty. Because of Galloway’s connection to the school, both the Navy and university hold a U.S. patent on the DNA anthrax vaccine. As if the research itself didn’t keep the scientists busy, Mateczun and his team of about 40 people invented a rapid hand-held test recently used to detect the deadly strain of anthrax that was mailed to federal buildings. They also deployed a portable lab to New York City, and tested the air for possible anthrax at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Two floors above Mateczun at the Naval Medical Research Center, Navy Dr. (Capt.) Daniel Carucci is developing a DNA-based vaccine for malaria. After about 10 years of work on the project, he is further along in the research and has moved on to the second-stage of human trials — including on himself. For now, the process of inoculating folks won’t work because it’s not feasible, he said. In his trials, participants are bitten once a month for six months by dozens of mosquitoes infected with the deadly malaria strain called plasmodium falciparum. Those mosquitoes have been "radiated," a process that affects the virus’ DNA and prevents it from leaving a human’s liver and taking a deadly course through the bloodstream, he said. "I know of few people who would want to go through that," said Carucci, 43. The repetitive exposure to the virus helps humans build up an immunity. After the six months of exposure, subjects are bitten by unradiated infected mosquitoes — and none have developed signs of malaria, he said. Last year, the Navy received a U.S. patent on all DNA vaccines against malaria.

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Time May 13, 2002 Pg. 34 What Saddam's Got Much of his chemical and biological weaponry remains unaccounted for, and he's working on nukes. By Josh Tyrangiel When Iraq accepted the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire, it agreed to "destroy, or render harmless," all its weapons of mass destruction. The last U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in December 1998, after obstruction by officials there rendered their work pointless. It is generally agreed that Saddam Hussein has not been behaving himself in their absence. The U.N. has collected reams of color satellite photos showing an unmistakable boom in reconstruction of Iraqi sites, some of which were weapons facilities in the past. "You can see hundreds of new roofs in these photos," says Hans Blix, the Swedish diplomat who heads the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which is preparing to conduct future inspections in the event Saddam consents to them. "But you don't know what's under them." U.S. intelligence officials beg to differ. Says one: "The Iraqis have been putting themselves in a position to rejuvenate their weapons-of-mass-destruction programs." Does Saddam Have The Bomb? No one has a precise answer. The International Atomic Energy Agency dismantled 40 nuclear-research facilities before the U.N. inspectors left Iraq, including three uranium-enrichment sites. Prior to the inspections, Saddam's stealthiness had been so effective that none of the 40 were known to the outside world. Clearly, Iraq was on its way to becoming a nuclear power. Without ground inspections, those who track Iraq's nuclear development have had to rely on interviews with recent defectors and surveys of suppliers Baghdad has contacted seeking parts. Both suggest that Iraq's nuclear program is back in full swing. "Iraq's known nuclear scientists are gravitating to the country's five nuclear research sites," says Charles Duelfer, who was the second-ranking official on the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq until it was disbanded in 1999. "That doesn't appear to be coincidental." Experts including Duelfer and Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, believe Saddam has the sophisticated triggers, weapon housings and everything else he needs to build a nuclear device—except for a sufficient supply of weapons-grade enriched uranium. Intelligence indicates that he is angling to obtain some on the international black market, but it's not something that your friendly neighborhood arms smuggler can lay hands on right away. So Saddam also is working to enrich his own uranium. That's a major technological challenge, but Iraq is expected to succeed within three to six years, at its current rate of progress. What About Chemical And Biological Weapons? Intelligence about Iraq's capabilities on these fronts is firmer and no less frightening. "We destroyed a lot of chemical weapons," says Duelfer of the U.N. inspection team. "They had a facility that was going night and day, like some weird James Bond movie." Inspectors discovered and disposed of 38,500 chemical munitions (such as shells, warheads, bombs), 690 tons of chemical weapons agents, 3,000 tons of precursor chemicals and 426 pieces of chemical production equipment. But Iraq never accounted for all the 100,000 chemical weapons it produced for use in the Iran-Iraq war, and there are fears that thousands of them, filled with either deadly VX or mustard gas, could be squirreled away. CIA Director George Tenet told Congress in February, "Baghdad is expanding its civilian chemical industry in ways that could be diverted quickly to chemical weapons production." Procedurally there is not much difference between making pesticides and making chemical weapons. According to former UNSCOM chief Richard Butler, Iraq takes advantage of the similarities and eludes sanctions by using Jordanian front companies to import lathes and machine tools, which, once inside Iraq, are easily adapted to the production of chemical weapons. The Iraqis consistently deny violating the sanctions or the cease-fire deal. Prior to the Gulf War, according to the Iraqi government, Baghdad produced 8,400 liters of anthrax, 19,000 liters of botulinum and 2,000 liters each of aflatoxin and clostridium. A single gram of anthrax—roughly 1/30 oz.—contains 1 trillion spores, or enough for 100 million fatal doses if properly dispersed. "In terms of where it went," says Duelfer of the Iraqi bio cache, "we could never nail it all down." Even if inspectors had found all the materials before they left the country, Iraq has almost certainly made more in the past three years. Thanks to Rihab Taha, a British-educated Iraqi biochemist, nicknamed Dr. Germ by the U.N. inspectors, Saddam still has the best biological expertise in the region. Chemical and biological agents can wipe out entire populations, but first they must be placed in an effective delivery system, such as a bomb or warhead fitted with an aerosol diffuser that will spread its plagues or poisons before the weapon explodes. Iraq is believed to be working to perfect such delivery systems. All but about a dozen of Iraq's Soviet-made Scud missiles were accounted for and dismantled after the Gulf War, but last year Iraq began testing a new line of short-range ballistic missiles, which could potentially be loaded with viruses or gases and hit targets as far away as 93 miles. An internal report from the Iraqi National Congress, the chief Iraqi opposition group, says that during a televised procession at Baghdad's military parade ground last year, new missiles were displayed, including ones that appeared to violate the U.N. ban on long-range missiles that is meant to prevent Iraq from threatening Europe. A chemical weapons unit marched with the missiles that day. As it passed Saddam's reviewing stand, he became noticeably excited, firing several shots into the air. Perhaps the rest of the world should consider those fair warning. — Reported by Massimo Calabresi and Mark Thompson / Washington, Scott MacLeod / Amman and Azadeh Moaveni / New York

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Los Angeles Times May 4, 2002 Pg. 1 U.S. Says Iraq Is Developing Banned Arms Weapons: Satellite photos provide evidence of long-range missiles, Washington declares. Meanwhile, Baghdad continues push to get sanctions lifted. By William Orme, Times Staff Writer UNITED NATIONS -- U.S. officials have presented U.N. Security Council members with what the Americans say is new evidence that Iraq is developing long-range missiles in defiance of international sanctions, diplomats here said Friday. The U.S. also has reached agreement with Russia on a long list of items of potential military use that Iraq will no longer be allowed to import, the diplomats said. An American-backed council resolution imposing the new trade controls on Iraq is expected to be introduced within a few days, they said. On Friday, after three days of inconclusive talks with U.N. officials here, Iraqi officials called for further negotiations on the possible return of weapons inspectors to their country. Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan used the same wording to describe their discussions--"useful and frank"--and said they hope to meet again within a month. Annan said Iraq is still seeking guarantees from the council that if it complies with the world body's inspection demands, sanctions will be lifted, the United States and Britain will end their enforcement of "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq and--most important--there will be no punitive military action against the Persian Gulf country. Annan said he noted Iraq's concerns in a meeting here Friday with the council, which has in the past reiterated its insistence on the readmission of U.N. weapons inspectors. U.S. diplomats, meanwhile, said they believe that recent intelligence briefings they gave here have helped convince council members and U.N. officials that Iraq is not bargaining in good faith. In private meetings with council members two weeks ago, U.S. officials showed satellite photographs and documents that they said provide fresh evidence of an Iraqi project to build missiles with a range far beyond the 100-mile limit stipulated in binding U.N. resolutions after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990. The unpublicized presentations were given first to the other four permanent Security Council members--Russia, China, France and Britain--and later, during a three-hour luncheon meeting at the Norwegian ambassador's residence, to the 10 rotating members. "I thought it was persuasive, but I'm not a specialist," said Ole Peter Kolby, Norway's representative to the U.N. and the host of the gathering. Kolby said in an interview that the photographs depicted what James B. Cunningham, the U.S. deputy representative, told them were long-range missile parts and missile-launching installations. "I believe that these pictures were what they said they were," Kolby said. Two other U.N. diplomats, who requested anonymity, confirmed the account of the meeting. After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the United Nations sent inspectors into Iraq looking for evidence that the Iraqis were developing nuclear, chemical and biological arms, as well as missiles capable of delivering such weapons. After inspectors complained that their access to known and suspected military facilities was being blocked, and the Iraqis charged that U.N. monitors were committing espionage for U.S. intelligence agencies, the inspectors left Iraq in December 1998. Days later, U.S. and British warplanes launched punitive bombing strikes. Iraqi army defectors and exiled opposition leaders have alleged since then that Iraq continues to try to build ballistic missiles capable of sending conventional or nuclear warheads to targets as distant as Tel Aviv. The U.S. satellite photos are said by Western diplomats to corroborate some of the defectors' accusations. U.S. officials confirmed accounts of the recent briefings but declined to give further details about the photographs and intelligence reports they presented. They also requested that their names not be used, as is common in diplomatic circles. They said they believed council members were "impressed" by the presentations, increasing skepticism about Iraq's intentions here. American and British diplomats also have asserted in U.N. committees in recent months that Iraq has routinely circumvented the world body's export controls through the undeclared shipment of crude oil by pipeline to Syria and subverted import constraints by illegally diverting heavy trucks and other goods to the military. Other diplomats, though convinced that the new U.S. evidence is credible, were less certain of its impact on council members who have urged continued dialogue with the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "It is a question of waiting, and seeing, and we just don't know yet," said a British diplomat, who asked not to be identified. But Russia, long a caustic critic of U.S. and U.N. policies toward Iraq, has agreed to a detailed catalog of hundreds of products--from radio scanners to laboratory equipment to infrared binoculars--that Iraq would no longer be able to import without specific prior U.N. approval, Western diplomats said. The agreement was reached after months of U.S. negotiations with Russia, which since the imposition of sanctions a decade ago has been Iraq's biggest supplier of advanced industrial equipment. List of Restricted Goods Part of New Sanctions In the next few days, diplomats here say, the United States and Russia will jointly propose a Security Council resolution that would make the list of restricted goods the cornerstone of a new sanctions system that would go into effect next month. Members of the Russian delegation could not be reached Friday night to confirm the agreement. In November, when it extended the present sanctions regime for another six months, the council endorsed in principle its replacement with a streamlined and toughened system of import controls. But the main stumbling block to its implementation was Russia's objections to the proposed new controls on specific products that it had been providing to Iraq. Although the new resolution is almost certain to be opposed by Syria, the Arab bloc's current representative on the council, Western diplomats say they expect support from all veto-wielding permanent members and most of the rest of the 15-member body. That doesn't mean that the Security Council has suddenly embraced the Bush administration's Iraq policy, however. The Russians, with arm's-length French and Chinese support, recently have revived demands that the Security Council give Iraq a clear timetable and explicit conditions for the eventual end of sanctions if Baghdad agrees to admit inspectors. And should Iraq refuse again to let them in, the Russians contend that military action against Baghdad would still require the consent of the Security Council. "It is our position that any nation that decides to use force, not in self-defense, should seek the approval of the United Nations," Sergei V. Lavrov, the Russian ambassador to the world body, told reporters here last month. Britain, the one constant U.S. ally in the council and in the skies over Iraq, has guardedly welcomed Iraq's recent diplomatic gestures, while Washington has remained scornfully skeptical. Polls in Britain show a growing majority oppose U.S. military action against Iraq, with opposition increasing sharply if British troops were to be engaged. "[British Prime Minister] Tony Blair may be ready for war with Iraq, but the British public is not," said a senior U.N. official, who asked not to be named. Indeed, there is scarcely a diplomat to be found outside the U.S. mission here who speaks favorably--privately or publicly--about the Bush administration's military threats against Iraq. Most U.N. members say they agree that Iraq should admit weapons inspectors. Yet it is only the threat of American military action, many diplomats here acknowledge privately, that has led Iraq to reconsider its opposition to the U.N. arms monitors. As was evident when Iraq announced last month that it was cutting off its oil exports to protest Israel's military campaign against the Palestinians, it is increasingly clear here that economic pressure alone--through U.N. trade controls or other means--is unlikely to force policy change in Baghdad, much less bring a new regime to power. This expensive political gesture has already cost Iraq as much as $1 billion. Iraq Wealthier Than Most of Its Neighbors But while Iraq's standard of living has fallen below the levels of other big Persian Gulf oil producers, the country remains wealthier than most of its neighbors. After a decade of political isolation and trade sanctions, Iraq's per- capita income was still about 10% higher than it was in 1990, thanks to petroleum earnings, and considerably above the average incomes of Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Iran. Staple foods, medicine and other civilian goods have become more readily available after Iraq and the U.N. agreed to a revised sanctions plan in 1996. Since then, all declared earnings from Iraq's oil exports--now totaling more than $52billion--have been deposited in a special U.N. account. About a quarter of these funds are set aside to settle claims against Iraq from Kuwait and to underwrite the U.N.'s enforcement expenses--including the costs of its weapons inspection unit. Most of the rest of the money is slated for imports of civilian goods, ranging from food and medicine to machinery and replacement parts for oil rigs. A U.N. office has approved $32 billion in contracts for "humanitarian supplies and equipment" since 1996, though just $19.6 billion has been delivered.

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New York Times May 4, 2002 Nuclear Deal Called Closer After Powell Meets Russian By James Dao WASHINGTON, May 3 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov of Russia said today that they had made substantial headway toward negotiating an agreement on reducing nuclear weapons that could be signed by President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin at a summit meeting in Russia in three weeks. After a day of meetings at the White House and the State Department, the two men acknowledged that differences remained, though they declined to offer details. But the tenor of their remarks left little doubt that there was growing optimism on both sides that a pact could be hammered out in time for the meeting, on May 23. "We've made progress on all areas," Secretary Powell said in a brief news conference outside the State Department. "But what I'd rather not do is single out where the remaining differences are. I'm encouraged by the progress we made." Mr. Ivanov said: "Today we had very constructive negotiations, and on many issues we achieved substantial progress. A number of questions remain to be agreed before the time of President Bush's visit to Russia. We hope to have them agreed, to ensure that by the time of the visit we have a very solid package of important documents." Mr. Ivanov's session with Secretary Powell at the State Department had been scheduled to end at 3:45 p.m., but the two men emerged nearly an hour early. Asked why, a senior administration official said so much progress had been made so quickly that there had been no reason to continue. "Compared to where we were 24 hours ago, there's light at the end of the tunnel," the official said. "It was a big meeting today." The two nations have been pushing to codify oral pledges by both presidents to slash their arsenals of deployed nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads over the coming decade. The talks have been stalled on the central issue of what would happen to the approximately 4,000 warheads that each country would remove from its deployed forces. The Bush administration has said that rather than destroying or dismantling all those weapons, it wants to keep many in what it calls a "responsive force," available to be returned to submarines, bombers or missiles in case of national emergencies. The Russians, who are struggling to pay the costs of maintaining a large nuclear arsenal, have called for dismantling or destroying those warheads. The senior American official said that a new Russian proposal presented last month to the chief American negotiator, Under Secretary of State John Bolton, had paved the way for today's progress. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told Russian officials in Moscow last Monday that the United States considered the new draft encouraging, but also offered changes. The new Russian approach tries to sidestep the thorny issue of whether reductions in warheads must be irreversible, and whether launch platforms like submarines, missiles and bombers must be destroyed, the American official said. The two sides have also disagreed over how to verify that cuts are being made and what format the agreement should take: either a treaty, as the Russians want, or possibly something less formal, but still legally binding, as some American officials advocate. The senior American official said the two sides had agreed that the Russians would handle the final agreement like a treaty, submitting it to their Parliament for ratification. But Mr. Bush has not decided whether to handle an agreement as a treaty, which would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate for ratification, or an executive-legislative agreement, which would require a majority vote in both houses. Either way, the administration does intend to present an agreement to Congress for approval, senior officials have said. Verifying reductions in nuclear weapons remains a sticking point, officials said. The Russians want a formal system in place that could include inspections of weapons sites. The Americans have argued for something less elaborate.

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Washington Post May 4, 2002 Pg. 13 NRC Warns Of Missing Radioactive Materials By Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer U.S. businesses and medical facilities have lost track of nearly 1,500 pieces equipment with radioactive parts since 1996, according to a new federal accounting of radiological material that terrorism experts warn could be used in a "dirty bomb" attack against a U.S. city. The loss of radiological material, ranging from medical diagnostic equipment to industrial X-ray machines, has been viewed with increased concern since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and has prompted several new measures to prevent theft, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a document released yesterday by a House member from Massachusetts. The vast majority of the missing items contain tiny amounts of radioactive material and pose little threat, NRC officials said. But there have been several instances in recent years of lost or stolen hospital equipment that contains potentially lethal amounts of radioactive cobalt or cesium. Such material could be packed around a conventional explosive -- a combination known as a "dirty bomb" -- to scatter radiation over large areas. "The commission is concerned about this potential terrorist threat and has advised its licensees to enhance security," the NRC said in the report, which was requested by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The NRC regulates the commercial use of radioactive material. It acknowledged receiving reports of 1,495 lost or stolen radioactive "sources" between October 1996 and September 2001; about 660 of the missing items -- 44 percent -- were recovered, but the rest remain missing, the agency said. The agency launched enforcement action against 54 companies and institutions involved in the incidents and collected fines from 16 of them. The penalties ranged from a few hundred dollars to $50,000. Markey, a frequent critic of federal nuclear security precautions, said the report highlighted a need for better safeguards measures and stricter enforcement. "Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been trying to obtain nuclear material. We know that the creation of a dirty bomb is one of al Qaeda's stated objectives," Markey said. "In the past we have been very concerned about 'loose nukes' in the former Soviet Union, but it looks like we have the same kind of problem in this country." In an interview yesterday, an NRC spokesman stood by the agency's enforcement record and stressed that most of the missing items contained "very, very small" amounts of radioactive material. Still, the agency believes the terrorism risk is significant enough to warrant new safeguards to prevent theft, spokesman Victor Dricks said. "We have taken this matter very seriously," Dricks said. Lost and missing radioactive material has been a chronic, if under-recognized, concern for both the NRC and the Department of Energy for more than a decade. A DOE inventory begun in 1995 determined that "tens of thousands" of the agency's radioactive sources could not be fully accounted for, said Robert Alvarez, a DOE senior adviser during the Clinton administration. Many of the missing items -- including radiotherapy devices that could deliver a lethal dose of radiation within hours or minutes to someone directly exposed to the radioactive core -- ended up in dumps and scrap yards, Alvarez said. Today, radioactive material turns up so frequently in scrap metal that some recycling plants have installed radiation detectors, he said. "If one of these things can end up in a scrap yard, it can end up in the hands of a terrorist," Alvarez said.

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Washington Post May 4, 2002 Pg. B1 Plan Urged For 'Dirty' Explosive Radioactivity Could Spur Panic, Report Cautions By Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post Staff Writer A private analysis conducted for Washington area government officials warns that a truck bomb laced with radioactive materials and detonated in downtown Washington could disable many of the region's emergency workers within days and trigger a spontaneous evacuation by fearful residents. The report, prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, concludes that police and fire agencies must develop plans to protect initial responders from radiation, stagger rescue crews to prevent overexposure and ensure that protective gear and equipment can be rushed in from regional sources. It also suggests that authorities consider ways to exercise emergency powers quickly to prevent panic and recommends disseminating information in advance to educate the media and the public about the risks. The center's study is based on the assumption that an attack with a "dirty bomb" -- a low-grade, relatively easy-to- assemble weapon that would scatter small quantities of radioactive material -- is more likely than the detonation of a stolen nuclear device, the release of smallpox or an attack on a nuclear power plant. While a dirty bomb could kill people after prolonged exposure, federal officials have said, the broader impact would be psychological. As a result, planning for such an attack includes managing its after-effects. The report was based in part on a March 21 workshop, in which the center posed a specific dirty-bomb scenario and asked local public safety officials to describe their probable responses. A copy of the 13-page report summarizing the workshop findings was provided to The Washington Post by a person who believed it warranted public discussion. Center spokesman Jay C. Farrar confirmed the workshop but declined to comment. "While we would all like to believe that the scenario described herein represents a remote possibility, the evidence points to the contrary," wrote report author Philip Anderson, senior fellow for homeland security initiatives at the center, a think tank that also conducts simulation exercises for government and industry. "The presence of radioactivity was an issue that the participants clearly were not prepared to deal with," the report concluded. "The means to develop greater public awareness and acceptance of risks should be considered." Michael C. Rogers, executive director of the council of 17 Washington area governments, cautioned that the seminar was not a full indicator of the region's readiness. Participants included about 40 representatives of area police, fire, emergency management and health agencies and utilities but not top-level decision-makers or their most expert aides, Rogers said. Washington has conducted drills simulating a dirty-bomb attack with federal and local agencies. Peter G. LaPorte, director of the D.C. Emergency Management Agency, acknowledged the challenges posed by a dirty bomb, but he said authorities have "come a long way in preparing for them." Federal officials have deployed radiation sensors around the capital, placed a commando unit on standby alert and tested scenarios based on a presumed attack by boat on the Potomac River or by truck on Interstate 95. It is believed that the al Qaeda terrorist network has acquired lower-level nuclear materials that can be scattered by conventional explosives. Locally, the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department is spending $6 million in federal aid and will install radiation monitors in all its 34 firehouses by this fall. The department is buying protective equipment and hopes to train 1,200 fire and rescue workers for radiological hazards, an official said, although hazardous-material officers say they are still not well prepared for a dirty-bomb scenario. TheD.C. Department of Health is spending $12 million for a mobile laboratory, air-monitoring devices and personal protective equipment. Fairfax County police and fire departments are receiving $12 million in federal aid, money that will be used to double the quantity and duration of protective gear for police, to 48 hours. Montgomery and Prince George's counties and other jurisdictions are receiving similar grants. The center's scenario was based on a 4,000-pound bomb detonating in a bus parked at the Mall. The report said the radiation would contaminate about 20 percent of downtown but would present a long-term risk of increased cataract or cancer rates for only a few blocks around the blast site. A low-level radioactive element could expose the first wave of police and fire crews beyond the maximum safe dosage in about one hour, and the time needed to detect and diagnose a radiological attack would require a second wave of responders to come to their relief, the report said. Recovery workers would need to replace equipment and protective suits at regular intervals, straining hazardous-material units at local agencies, it added. The scenario raised complex issues of public and media reaction. First reports of the presence of radiation could trigger speculation about a fizzled nuclear device that could spread dangerous radiation in a five-mile radius, for example. Rapid delivery of radiological information from authoritative sources and accurate computer modeling might calm fears, the report said. Legal and political authority also would be tested. Federal officials would have to decide quickly whether to evacuate downtown workers or to shelter them where they were. While the latter is preferred by experts to prevent the spread of contamination, the report said that police do not have authority to use force to prevent people from evacuating. A presidential declaration of martial law or a mayoral declaration of a state of emergency would take time, the report said. A Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman who reviewed the report said the agency is working closely with the governors of Virginia and Maryland and with D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) to respond to all threats and has a national capital region emergency response team available within two hours at all times. "There is a possibility that something like this could happen in the District," the spokesman said. "We . . . certainly support the strengthening of all plans for any kind of terrorist threat in the District." Staff writer David A. Fahrenthold contributed to this report.

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Washington Times May 7, 2002 Pg. 1 Havana Pursues Biological Warfare By Nicholas Kralev, The Washington Times The Bush administration said yesterday that it has "broad and deep" evidence that Cuba is developing offensive biological warfare capabilities and sharing them with "other rogue states." In a speech titled "Beyond the Axis of Evil," John Bolton, undersecretary of state for international security and arms control, named Cuba, Libya and Syria as "states intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction" against which the United States would take action to prevent such arms from reaching terrorists. President Bush included Iran, Iraq and North Korea in an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address to Congress in January. "The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort," Mr. Bolton said at the Heritage Foundation. "Cuba has provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states. We are concerned that such technology could support [bioweapons] programs in those states." In a later interview, a senior administration official said Washington has gathered "broad and deep" evidence of Cuba's pursuit of such weapons but is "constrained" in what it can disclose publicly. The official said the decision to go public with the charges reflects the effect the new assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Otto Reich, has had on the administration's Latin America policy. Mr. Reich was born in Cuba and came to the United States with his parents after the 1959 communist revolution. Mr. Bolton said Cuba, which has been designated by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism, "has long provided safe haven for terrorists" and "is known to be harboring terrorists from Colombia, Spain and fugitives from the United States." He said Cuban President Fidel Castro visited Iran, Syria and Libya last year and cited a speech at Tehran University in which he said, "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees." Mr. Bolton said that for four decades, Cuba "has maintained a well-developed and sophisticated biomedical industry," supported by the Soviet Union until 1990. "This industry is one of the most advanced in Latin America and leads in the production of pharmaceuticals and vaccines that are sold worldwide. Analysts and Cuban defectors have long cast suspicion on the activities conducted in these biomedical facilities," he said. "We call on Cuba to cease all [bioweapon]-applicable cooperation with rogue states and to fully comply with all of its obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention." While the administration supports the Biological Weapons Convention, as well as other international arms-control agreements such as the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Non-Proliferation Treaty, "experience has shown that treaties and agreements are an insufficient check against state sponsors of terrorism," Mr. Bolton said. Cuba and Libya have ratified and Syria has signed the Biological Weapons Convention, but Mr. Bolton said Washington will not assume that "a country's formal subscription to U.N. counterterrorism conventions or its membership in multilateral regimes necessarily constitutes an accurate reading of its intentions." Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, agreed that treaties are not enough to ensure compliance, but he said the administration "has not introduced a fundamentally new approach and is emphasizing the name-calling strategy." Mr. Bolton also accused the Clinton administration of "underplaying" the threat that Cuba poses to U.S. security and sharply criticized a 1998 government report that said Cuba "has a limited capacity to engage in some military and intelligence activities which could pose a danger to U.S. citizens under some circumstances." He said a "major reason" for the "unbalanced" report was "Cuba's aggressive intelligence operations against the United States, which included recruiting the Defense Intelligence Agency's senior Cuba analyst, Ana Belen Montes, to spy" for Havana. "Montes not only had a hand in drafting the report but also passed some of our most sensitive information about Cuba back to Havana," Mr. Bolton said. "Montes was arrested last fall and pleaded guilty to espionage on March 19."

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New York Times May 7, 2002 Washington Accuses Cuba Of Germ-Warfare Research By Judith Miller The Bush administration has accused Cuba of producing small quantities of germs that can be used in biological warfare and says Libya and Syria are also violating international treaties by making unconventional weapons. In a speech yesterday at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, John R. Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control, publicly alluded to conclusions that American intelligence agencies have reached in recent months after protracted internal debate. "The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort," Mr. Bolton said, taking aim at the Communist government of Fidel Castro. Cuba, he added, has also "provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states." While the Clinton administration expressed concern in 1998 about Cuba's potential to develop and produce biological agents, this is the first time that an American official has accused Cuba of developing germs for warfare. Luis Fernández, a spokesman for the Cuban interests section in Washington, denied Mr. Bolton's assertions. "What he said is a big lie and a big slander," Mr. Fernández said. He accused the Bush administration of trying to extend the concern over international terrorism to Cuba to justify hard-line policies at a time when American farm groups, who view Cuba as a natural market, and their allies advocate loosening the four-decade American trade embargo. He added that Mr. Bolton had produced no evidence to substantiate his allegations. Mr. Bolton's office would not elaborate on the charges. But other administration officials say the United States now believes that Cuba has been experimenting with anthrax, as well as a small number of other deadly pathogens that they declined to identify. Ken Alibek, the most senior scientist who defected from the Soviet Union's biological weapons program, told a Congressional committee last October that he believed that Cuba was capable of making genetically modified germ weapons that might be able to defeat American vaccines and antibiotics. He said the Cuban military was conducting genetic research at "several centers," one of them close to Havana. Officials say intelligence analysts have long focused on Cuba partly because its huge investment in biotechnology has produced what is regarded as Latin America's most sophisticated biomedical capabilities. According to a report on Cuba and germ weapons posted on the Web site of the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, Mr. Castro intensified concern among American officials about Cuba's germ-related activities in February 1997. He compared the United States to a dragon and Cuba to a lamb, warning that the dragon would find its meal poisoned if it tried to eat the lamb. Cuba, in fact, is one of the few developing nations to play a significant role in drug and biotechnology activities. The Web posting calls Cuba's effort "unmatched elsewhere in the developing world." Cuban biotechnological research is far advanced in genetic engineering. That has enabled Cuba to make new vaccines for its comprehensive immunization program, which is widely admired by scientists and physicians. Cuba also makes drugs like recombinant streptokinase, the "clot buster" for heart attack victims. In 1995 Cuba sold $125 million worth of these products, primarily to other developing countries, especially to former Soviet states. In a breakthrough for Cuba in late 1999, SmithKline Beecham, the British-American health care group, announced an agreement to test and market a new Cuban meningitis vaccine, first in Europe and eventually in the United States. Mr. Bolton's office declined to specify what Cuban cooperative effort with another country concerned the United States most. But José de la Fuente, the former director of research at Cuba's Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, wrote in the journal Nature Biotechnology late last year that he was "profoundly disturbed" about Cuban sales of dual-use technology to Iran. "No one believes that Iran is interested in these technologies for the purpose of protecting all the children in the Middle East from hepatitis," he wrote. Mr. Bolton said in his speech that last year, Mr. Castro visited Iran, Syria and Libya, all of which Washington has designated as sponsors of terrorism. He noted that at Tehran University, Mr. Castro had said that Iran and Cuba, together, could "bring America to its knees." Though Mr. Bolton's speech focused on Cuba, there were also expressions of concern about Libya and Syria. Mr. Bolton said that although the Libyan germ program was in an earlier stage of development than Cuba's, Libya, too, "may be capable of producing small quantities of biological agent." He also accused Syria of flouting treaties banning chemical and biological weapons. He said Syria had a "stockpile of the nerve agent sarin" and was "engaged in research and development of the more toxic and persistent nerve agent VX." Cuba, Libya and Syria have all signed the 1972 treaty banning biological weapons, though Syria has still not ratified it. The treaty is widely regarded as a worthy international agreement, though is is not considered to have adequate provisions for verifying compliance. Mr. Bolton's speech is part of an American diplomatic offensive against countries that the administration believes pose a serious threat to national security because of their pursuit of certain types of unconventional weapons. In a speech last November in Geneva discussing the administration's decision to abandon a proposed agreement for strengthening verification of the biological weapons treaty, Mr. Bolton said the administration would begin "naming names" of countries that were violating its international commitments. While Cuban diplomats denounced his speech, other critics of Cuba were quick to welcome Mr. Bolton's verbal assault. Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican from south Florida, said Mr. Bolton's remarks "begin to put into the proper perspective the debate about Cuba, a terrorist state with biological weapons 90 miles from the shores of the United States."

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Kansas City Star May 5, 2002 Pg. 8 Chemical Munitions Languish In Depots Delays hamper efforts to destroy the toxic stockpiles By Scott Canon, The Kansas City Star HERMISTON, Ore. - Stainless steel tanks that look as if they could haul bulk milk actually hold the makings of mustard gas, the stuff that fashioned the special hell of World War I. In more sinister packages - land mines, bombs, rockets, artillery shells and spray tanks that could be employed crop- dusting style - come the nerve agents. For years they had been stored inside the heavily guarded Umatilla Ordnance Depot, but above ground. "After 9-11, we moved it all into the igloos for safety's sake," said Umatilla spokeswoman Mary Binder, referring to half-buried, steel-reinforced concrete bunkers. All 3,717 tons. And this is not America's biggest stockpile. The end for these now-outlawed chemical weapons awaits in the belly of an oven that will crank up to 2,500 degrees and cost more than $2 billion to build and take apart. It is just now warming up. Weapon destruction at Umatilla, if an ambitious schedule is met, is on course to burn up the cache here by 2008. Long before scientists played with the powers of busted atoms, America amassed an unconventional arsenal of chemical weapons. It kept them in depots deliberately spread across the country - so that no single attack could wipe out the nation's cache. Ever more chemical weapons - ostensibly held to scare enemies from using such horrors against U.S. troops - were manufactured until 1968. By then, international pressure and public discomfort with the idea of their use made them obsolete for a superpower. Still, the stockpiles remained. In 1985, Congress ordered the Army to start destroying all the military's chemical munitions. Soon a plan was devised, priced at $1.7 billion, to finish the job by 1994. By some government estimates, the ticklish work is now likely to cost $24 billion and stretch to 2016. To avoid moving the dangerous stockpiles, and the near-certain political upheaval along shipping routes, the Army decided to destroy them at the depots where they sat. The exception was the relatively small stash of 2,000 tons held at American bases in Asia and Europe. Those weapons were hauled to an atoll in the South Pacific outfitted with its own incinerator. The burning on Johnston Island was finished in late 2000. Civic groups routinely protested - and still do - the Army's plans. The groups typically are alarmed at burning such killers and are lobbying for chemical neutralization as a safer option. Army officials insisted incinerator methods borrowed a safe and proven method from the chemical industry to get rid of its stockpile. The result has been a series of fits and starts putting the destruction behind the schedule Congress promised to meet by ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997. Yet the plans at Umatilla, for example, would complete the incineration a year after the treaty's 2007 deadline. Nationwide, the country is on course to finish the chemical weapons chore by 2016 - well beyond even a probable five-year treaty extension. At Tooele, Utah, burning of the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the country has been going on since 1996. Malfunctions that released small amounts of a nerve agent have so far been harmless, but those problems have confirmed fears of critics worried about plants soon to fire up in more populated areas. They contend that the Army isn't ready to protect civilians should an incineration plant fail more significantly. "In Alabama, you have 75,000 people in the 'pink zone' who would be in quite a bit of trouble if the systems fail," Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, said of the area within 6.5 miles of a plant. The organization is a loose network of local groups that generally prefer chemical neutralization to incineration. The neutralization approach renders the weapons harmless with chemical processes. With the skin-blistering mustard agent, for example, the liquid is diluted with water, and decomposing microbes are mixed in. The Army has given in to pressure to forgo incineration at its Aberdeen, Md., and Newport, Ind., depots - where there is a single kind of chemical agent at each site, and where the material is not encased in artillery shells, land mines, spray tanks, rockets or bombs. But at places such as Umatilla and Pine Bluff, Ark., where incineration is slated to start late next year, weapons need to be drilled and drained by robots. The contaminated shell casings, emptied rockets and other munitions still need to be destroyed, and the Army insists that is best done by burning at a minimum of 1,000 degrees. At Umatilla the weapons sit in partly buried bunkers, and some have begun to leak. Others, such as the M-55 rocket, have long been suspected to be on the verge of igniting themselves. In February the plant fired up its incinerator for testing and to heat-cure the structure. Weapons destruction could start in early 2003. Phillip Harness, plant manager, said that a similar design had performed without incident where he worked at Johnston Island. And now that design has been refined. "I'm confident this will work safely," he said.

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New York Times May 7, 2002 Pg. 1 Anthrax Sent Through Mail Gained Potency By The Letter By William J. Broad and David Johnston Deepening the mystery of the biological attacks that terrified the nation last fall, federal investigators have discovered that the anthrax sent through the mail, in general, grew more potent from one letter to the next, with the spores in the final letter to be opened — the one sent to Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont — the deadliest of all. The finding has surprised and worried investigators, who say it poses a new riddle: was the culprit an amateur making gradual improvements through experimentation, a malevolent professional intentionally ratcheting up the potency of the germ powder, or someone else entirely? It also suggests that after more than six months of painstaking effort, government experts investigating the anthrax strikes are still at sea. Part of the problem, they admit, is a lack of advisers skilled in the subtleties of germ weapons. The discovery of the progressive potential deadliness of the anthrax is the latest conclusion of scientific testing that investigators are hoping will help crack a case that has baffled the F.B.I. since the first anthrax fatality: that of Robert Stevens, a photo editor at a Florida supermarket tabloid, who died on Oct. 5. With five anthrax deaths linked to the contaminated mailings, the F.B.I. inquiry has consumed millions of hours of interviews, neighborhood sweeps and other detective work. For example, F.B.I. laboratory analysts matched the serrated ends of the strips of cellophane tape used to seal the anthrax letters. That meant that whoever sealed the letters, without leaving any fingerprints, tore off successive strips of tape from the same roll, officials said. But investigators acknowledge that they still have no idea who is behind the tainted letters. So they are increasingly turning to science to unravel the mystery. Tests being conducted at several private laboratories may reveal the precise biological signature of the anthrax used in the mailings, helping to narrow the search for the laboratory from which it came. Analyses of the anthrax sample and the chemicals used to coat it could leave telltale clues to the techniques and equipment used to manufacture the germ material. Investigators previously believed that the anthrax sent to Mr. Leahy, the Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader, were identical in strength. Each letter was mailed from Trenton on Oct. 9, 2001. Each had the same photocopied message inside. But it turns out that the Leahy anthrax is finer, its spores having a smaller range of particle sizes, officials familiar with the federal investigation said. "It could be that the final steps of the processing were done in steps," a senior government official said. "You take it so far, and take off a bunch. You go further, and take off another bunch." Despite the increasing sophistication of the anthrax, investigators say they still judge that the deadly powder could have been made in any of thousands of biological laboratories, though getting the right starter germs would have been difficult. An aide to Senator Daschle opened the letter on Oct. 15, and officials quickly warned that its anthrax was of high quality compared with earlier mailings, to news media offices in New York. The Leahy letter was impounded, along with all other Congressional mail, and was not discovered until Nov. 16. Investigators made painstaking safety and forensic preparations before opening it in early December. The analysis of the contents of the Leahy letter is proceeding slowly, the investigators say, because they are learning the science as they go along and want to make sure that none of the scarce, lightweight but extremely valuable evidence is lost, corrupted or misinterpreted. They are getting help, they say, from scores of scientists across the nation. "We'll have to take this into court," the law enforcement official said of the evidence. "We had to assure ourselves that we had a quality program." A senior Bush administration official expressed sympathy for the F.B.I. because the inquiry had grown so scientifically complex and knowledgeable advisers are so few. "They're having to review a lot of the initial takes on things," the official said. "There's an evolving picture. The bureau has gone back to scratch to invent the science." It is sometimes hard even to do reappraisals. In the Florida case, no letter or residual powder was ever recovered, leaving many questions about the anthrax there. Federal officials said the first wave of well-documented attacks with mailed anthrax — in letters from Trenton postmarked Sept. 18 to NBC News and The New York Post — was relatively crude. The powder was heavily contaminated, they said, with what biologists call vegetative cells — anthrax bacteria before processing in the laboratory turns them into hardened spores. Vegetative cells in dry anthrax powder are generally dead and therefore harmless, experts said. By contrast, the tiny spores live in a dormant state. Individual ones are light enough to float easily in the air and, if inhaled, small enough to reach deep into human lungs, eventually germinating into bacteria and causing the respiratory form of the disease, which can be fatal. They can also cause the less dangerous cutaneous form if rubbed into the skin. Last October, alarm bells rang when the Daschle powder was found to be nearly pure spores. The danger was driven home when nasal swabs came back positive for 28 people in the Senate Hart building, where the letter was opened. The F.B.I. in early November characterized the Daschle powder as "much more refined, more potent, and more easily dispersed" than the New York media anthrax. The mailer's letters hinted at the danger. The media ones warned the openers to take penicillin. But the Daschle letter said flatly, "You Die Now." As federal experts investigated the residual Daschle sample, they found the picture becoming fuzzier. On one hand, the concentration of the anthrax was extraordinarily high — roughly equal to that made in the abandoned American germ weapons program, a trillion spores per gram. But federal experts now say the particles turned out to have a large size range. While single spores predominated, the experts said, some Daschle clusters ranged up to 40 microns wide — far too big to penetrate human lungs. A micron is one-millionth of a meter, and a human hair is 75 to 100 microns wide. The big clusters suggested the powder was far less than weapons grade. Private experts disagree on just how much less. Ken Alibek, a former Soviet germ official who is now president of Advanced Biosystems, a consulting company in Manassas, Va., called the Daschle anthrax mediocre. "It was not done with a regular industrial process," Dr. Alibek said in an interview. "Maybe it's homemade." Recipes that antigovernment militia groups circulate at gun shows might suffice to make the deadly powder, he said. But William C. Patrick III, a scientist who made germ weapons for the American military and is now a private consultant on biological defense, rated the Daschle anthrax as 7 on a scale of 10. "It's relatively high grade," Mr. Patrick said, "but not weapons grade." In addition to particle size, federal experts are investigating whether the anthrax powders have electrostatic charges that affect dispersal and chemical coatings meant to increase potency and shelf life. Federal investigators saw the Leahy anthrax as an opportunity to clear up ambiguities and deepen the analysis. Since no powder had been lost in the letter's opening, they had more to work with. Still, the amount, typical of the tainted letters, was remarkably small — just 0.871 grams. A pat of butter weighs 10 grams. Last week, government officials said the most recent analyses showed that the Daschle and Leahy powders were quite different, the latter finer and more uniform. "You can characterize the Leahy as having a smaller particle range," one official said. In general, he added, the ability of federal investigators to do deeper analyses because of the relatively large amounts of powder in the Leahy letter is producing "real interesting results." A biologist aiding in the investigation said the increasing potency of anthrax in the letters might suggest that the attacker was a thief who stole several samples. "Maybe he didn't pocket one vial but two or three, if we're assuming this was an opportunist," this scientist said. Dr. Alibek raised another possible factor. The F.B.I., he said, needed to weigh the possibility that post office sorting machinery might have had an effect. "It could be an additional process of milling," he said, "like a mortar and pestle." Experts said the Daschle and Leahy letters, starting at the same place in New Jersey on the same date and ending up at the same destination in Washington, appear to have taken similar if not identical postal routes. Dr. Alibek agreed but said the same sorter could apply more pressure to one letter than another. He added that the overall grade contrasts were probably caused by "different batches of the product, one more sophisticated than the other." Investigators have also been studying the envelopes, officials say, and have found that the paper had very large pores — up to 50 microns wide. That is bigger than the largest Daschle anthrax clusters and suggests how the powder could easily escape individual letters to contaminate the general mails. "It had to be one of the most porous materials," an official said of the attack envelopes compared with standard ones. "Whether that was by chance or design, I have no idea." Bioterror Chief Leaving WASHINGTON, May 6 — Dr. D. A. Henderson, who ran the worldwide campaign to eradicate smallpox two decades ago and re-emerged after the anthrax attacks to lead the government's effort to prepare for bioterrorism, is stepping down as director of the federal Office of Public Health Preparedness. The 73-year-old Dr. Henderson, who said when he took the job that it would be temporary, will remain the principal science adviser to Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services. Dr. Henderson will be replaced at the health preparedness office by Jerome M. Hauer, who has been his deputy.

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New York Times May 7, 2002 For Anthrax Survivors, A Halting, Painful Recovery By Sheryl Gay Stolberg WINCHESTER, Va. — When he was laid up in the intensive care unit of the Winchester Medical Center with intravenous tubes sticking out at every angle, bleeding ulcers gnawing at his gut and the lymph nodes in his chest swollen up like cherry tomatoes, David Hose believed that anthrax would surely kill him. When he left the hospital in a wheelchair 16 days later, Mr. Hose expected that certainly within a few months he would be back to normal, or at least well enough to return to his job supervising the distribution of diplomatic mail at a State Department center in Sterling. Reality, for Mr. Hose and most of the tiny corps of survivors of inhalation anthrax, has been somewhere in between. Of the 11 people who came down with the deadliest form of anthrax after germ-laced letters were sent through the mail in October, six survived. Of those, one is well enough to return to work, even though the typical recovery period for a serious infection is three to six months. The others are caught in the limbo of recovery, grateful to be alive but wondering whether the aftereffects, both physical and psychological, will ever subside. Some have nightmares. One has begun seeing a psychiatrist to cope with flashbacks that transport him, without warning, back to intensive care. Others complain that they are tired, short of breath and plagued by losses of short- term memory, symptoms that puzzle their doctors, as well as government experts. "It's like we are going through an accelerated aging process," said Norma Jean Wallace, a postal worker who became infected in Hamilton, N.J. "I guess I have grown to accept it as a way of life." If scientists learned anything last fall, it was just how little they knew about the germ and the disease it causes. Seven months later, the survivors are reinforcing that lesson. Before the attacks, just 18 cases of inhalation anthrax had been reported in the United States in the last 100 years, and nearly all of the victims died. Mr. Hose, Ms. Wallace and the others, by contrast, offer a whole new window on those who catch the deadly disease — and live. Having rewritten the book on anthrax treatment, they may well write the first book on anthrax recovery. For now, though, the pages are mostly blank. "There are more questions than there are answers," said Dr. Arthur M. Friedlander, an anthrax expert at the Army biological defense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., who has met with the six. "We know only about this disease historically, for the most part, up until the recent tragic events. So this represents an opportunity to learn." Now that the survivors are past the six-month mark by which they would have been expected to recover from serious infections, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has been collecting their blood for research, is contemplating more elaborate studies. "We are sort of at the cusp," its chief anthrax expert, Dr. Bradley Perkins, said. "As we get further out from the original infection and these individuals do not return to their normal activities, that is going to be of great concern to us. It will be a clear indication that we need to pursue all avenues to find out what's going on." Mr. Hose, a strapping 59-year-old, said he woke up feeling weary most mornings and took naps most afternoons. Once he recalled the arcana of international postal codes with ease. Now he finds himself searching, midsentence, for his thoughts. His weeks are circumscribed by return trips to the hospital every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for exercises to improve his endurance. When he started in November, he spent three minutes on each machine. Today he is up to six. The color in his cheeks, once ashen, has returned to pink. But his respiratory therapist, Laurie Giangola, said, "It's going to be a long road." There are several possible explanations for the lingering symptoms, Dr. Perkins said. One holds that toxins released by the bacteria have damaged the cells and tissues in ways that scientists do not fully understand. The side effects from long-term use of antibiotics may play a role. Or maybe the convalescence is simply longer than anyone thought. Then there is the stress of having been involved in a terrorist attack. Besides feeling anxious, several survivors have become deeply suspicious of the government. Ms. Wallace is convinced that federal authorities know who carried out the anthrax attacks — a government scientist, she conjectured in a theory rooted in unconfirmed news reports — but are "protecting that person for some reason." Mr. Hose is convinced that government scientists know more than they let on about the dangers of anthrax infection. "I'm sure they know how much it can really do to you," he said. "But they're not letting it out." Such sentiments are hardly surprising, experts said, in view of the circumstances. "The whole issue of having been attacked cannot be underestimated," says Dr. Jonathan Rosenthal, a specialist in infectious diseases at the Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group who cares for two survivors. "These patients were very much aware that someone tried to assassinate them, and there is an enormous amount of anxiety and fear about that." One of those patients is Leroy Richmond, 57, a postal worker who contracted anthrax while cleaning near a contaminated mail-sorting machine in Washington. Two co-workers died, and had he not been aggressive in demanding treatment, Mr. Richmond, too, would probably be dead. So not a day goes by that he does not count his blessings. Still, there are things that he misses. On a recent afternoon, Mr. Richmond's young son Quentin was riding his bicycle outside their house in Stafford. "I don't have the energy to do that," Mr. Richmond said. "I can't go swimming. I can't do the soccer things he wants me to do. I don't know what's happening inside my body. I don't think the doctors know." Ernesto Blanco, 74, is the sole survivor who has been well enough to return to work. An employee of American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla., publisher of supermarket newspapers, Mr. Blanco said he woke up early in the morning to jog around the block with his dogs, in an effort to keep himself fit. He went back to work at the end of February, but not to the company mailroom, where employees are wearing masks to guard against biological attacks. "Right now," Mr. Blanco said, "I am just in the stockroom doing light work." At the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, scientists have learned a good deal about anthrax just from studying the blood of Mr. Blanco and the others. They were surprised to discover, for example, that patients with inhalation anthrax, in which spores are inhaled into the lungs, produce a much stronger immune response than those infected with the cutaneous, or skin, form of the disease. "The cutaneous form of anthrax," Dr. Perkins said, "is a very substantial skin infection, and we would have expected a similar immune response." The specimens have also helped the agency verify that the blood test that it used to diagnose anthrax was reliable. Dr. Perkins said the government hoped to use the survivors' blood to help develop an improved vaccine. Understanding the lingering symptoms, however, will be a challenge, experts said. Because there are so few survivors, it will be difficult to draw conclusions and establish patterns. Nonetheless, Dr. Thomas V. Inglesby, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, said it was essential for scientists to try — not only to ease the patients' suffering, but also to improve the public health response to a biological attack. "What is it about their infection, their hospitalization, their immune responses?" Dr. Inglesby asked. "What about these things made them survivors?" That is a question that the survivors still ask themselves.

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Birmingham (AL) News May 4, 2002 U.S. May Tell Dead Gulf War Vets' Kin If Nerve Gas Involved By Dave Parks, News staff writer ATLANTA -- The Department of Defense is considering whether families of 1,800 deceased veterans who may have been contaminated by low levels of nerve gas during the Persian Gulf War should be told about the exposures, an official said Friday. Authorities have sent letters to about 100,000 living veterans warning them that they may have been exposed to fallout from chemical weapons blown up at an Iraqi ammunition depot in 1991. But they haven't informed families of deceased veterans. Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, head of the Pentagon's investigation into illnesses linked to Desert Storm, said the decision to withhold the information was made years ago. "We decided not to send letters ... to people who had died because we had nothing to tell their families," Kilpatrick said. "The letter doesn't get you any benefits from the VA." Kilpatrick spoke Friday at the annual conference of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an umbrella organization for veteran advocacy groups. Many veterans at the conference felt the families of deceased veterans should be notified of the exposures, and Kilpatrick said he was considering asking the federal Department of Veterans Affairs to do that. A recent VA study indicates that 1,800 veterans who were in the contaminated area have died since the war. The study concluded that the death rate was not unusually high. Kilpatrick spent more than an hour explaining efforts by the military to determine the extent of contamination from Khamisiyah. He told veterans that the Department of Defense's newest method of calculating who was exposed was only a "best guess," but a vast improvement over the military's initial effort. Military investigators have struggled for years to determine who was exposed to low levels of nerve gas when Army combat engineers destroyed Bunker 73 at the Khamisiyah ammunition depot in southern Iraq. The bunker held 2,160 rockets filled with sarin and cyclosarin nerve agents, Kilpatrick said. Kilpatrick insisted there was no medical evidence showing that low levels of nerve gas cause health problems. It was a contention questioned by veterans and health experts attending the conference. Hazardous plume: It took the military five years to acknowledge that a plume of contamination from the bunker may have drifted back onto troops. At first, in 1996, Defense estimated that only 25 people may have been exposed. Investigators then created more sophisticated computer models based upon weather, agent persistence, toxicity and unit location to determine 98,919 troops were exposed. Letters were sent to these veterans to warn them of the exposure and possible eligibility for benefits. Then, improved computer models added 34,819 veterans to the plume but subtracted 32,806 veterans who had been earlier placed in the hazard area. A new round of letters went out last year. Kilpatrick's description of the imprecise method of plotting exposures was met with questions and criticism. Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, said the Department of Defense has created a mess. "This has evolved now into a monster," he said. "It's a severe wild guess. Don't base our health care on a guess."

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Washington Post May 8, 2002 Pg. 15 Nuclear Team Arrives In North Korea SEOUL -- North Korea said a team from an international consortium at the heart of a crucial nuclear agreement had arrived for talks on how to push forward a deal to build atomic power reactors for Pyongyang. Under a 1994 agreement, North Korea pledged to freeze a suspected nuclear weapons program in exchange for two light-water reactors built by the West. The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), a consortium based in New York that was set up to build the reactors, cannot deliver critical equipment until U.N. inspections verify that North Korea has no stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium. This point has been a stumbling block in talks. "A KEDO delegation arrived today by air to participate in the negotiations of experts for the implementation of the agreement of light-water reactors signed between [North Korea] and KEDO," North Korea's official KCNA news agency said in a statement. It was not immediately clear what the agenda for the talks was, particularly whether inspections would be discussed. Reuters

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InsideDefense.com May 7, 2002 Office Of Homeland Security Expects National Strategy Ready For Bush In July COLLEGE PARK, MD -- Tom Ridge's Office of Homeland Security expects to have its national homeland defense strategy ready for review by President Bush in early July, Richard Falkenrath, OHS senior director for policy and plans, said here yesterday. The strategy document, which will focus on top-level issues and will not offer program-level guidance, has no set date for public release, Falkenrath added. "We're going to try to provide a useful document," he said. However, "[i]t will not be an operational document, it will not be technical, it will not be highly specific -- it cannot be." Instead, the strategy will try to generically identify "what needs to be done, and who's responsible," he said at a conference sponsored by the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, could rank among the top handful of events in world history in terms of redirecting resources, Falkenrath said, but the federal government is not solely responsible for addressing the new security requirements. Defending against future terrorist attacks "is a national problem," he said, and the strategy will propose cost- and burden-sharing efforts between federal, state and local entities. Asked when the strategy will be ready for public consumption, Falkenrath said, "I know when the president gets to see it, which is around the beginning of July. What happens to it from there is a complicated matter." The Oct. 8, 2001, executive order establishing Ridge's office lists as one of its duties the creation of a national homeland security strategy, but set no dates or specific guidelines on how to structure the document. "The Office shall work with executive departments and agencies, state and local governments, and private entities to ensure the adequacy of the national strategy for detecting, preparing for, preventing, protecting against, responding to, and recovering from terrorist threats or attacks within the United States and shall periodically review and coordinate revisions to that strategy as necessary," the executive order reads. Falkenrath said the national strategy, which will probably total less than 100 pages, takes a top-level approach to guiding the massive influx in spending on homeland defense issues. By the time the office was established and staffed, the fiscal year 2003 budget request was pretty much locked-down by the Office of Management and Budget, so OHS funding priorities were essentially "put on top of the existing budget," Falkenrath said. The office pushed for additional FY-03 funding in four main areas: for first responders, border defenses, information sharing and biological defenses. This was added to other efforts to increase transportation security funding immediately after Sept. 11, Falkenrath said, areas he described as homeland defense "no brainers." One of the top priorities for Ridge's office is to prevent funding pushes such as these from getting out of hand in future budgets, Falkenrath said. "Left unchecked", the Sept. 11 attacks could result in the single largest growth in the federal government since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, he said, and "we don't want that." Therefore, OHS will tie expenditures to outcome, and will not support any "symbolic funding." But the national strategy will look for systemic homeland vulnerabilities and identify science and technology requirements, he said, in an effort to prioritize spending. Properly prioritizing funding will remain a challenge, he said. It is impossible to "statistically pattern" a terrorist whose goal is to exploit asymmetric weaknesses, he said. If one vulnerability is secured, terrorists will seek to find others, meaning there will never be "zero risk" of an attack on the homeland. "We have smart enemies [and] they're not machines," he noted. -- Adam J. Hebert

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Washington Post May 8, 2002 Pg. 3 Studies Cite Smallpox Vaccine Tradeoff Mass Inoculation Might Kill Hundreds, Save Thousands By Susan Okie, Washington Post Staff Writer A mass campaign to vaccinate Americans against smallpox might result in 200 to 300 deaths and make several thousand people severely ill -- yet could save thousands of lives in the event of a bioterrorist attack with the virus, according to research presented yesterday at the Pediatric Academic Societies' annual meeting in Baltimore. The new estimates came from studies led by pediatricians Alex R. Kemper and Matthew M. Davis of the University of Michigan, who said they hoped their analyses would contribute to an unfolding national debate about whether Americans should be offered a vaccine likely to kill some recipients in the cause of protecting the nation from a possible bioterrorist attack. "There's no other vaccine that we currently give that carries with it a risk of death," said Kemper. "From a societal standpoint, we have to decide whether or not we're willing to take this risk." Infectious disease experts will gather in Atlanta today and Thursday to begin drafting recommendations about who, if anyone, should get the vaccine. Public discussions scheduled for Washington and several other cities this summer will focus on whether emergency room personnel and other medical and public health workers should be vaccinated, as well as on the larger question of whether the vaccine should be made available on a voluntary basis to all Americans. Not everyone is a candidate for smallpox vaccination. People whose immune systems are weakened -- by HIV, cancer, treatment with certain drugs or various other conditions -- cannot safely take the vaccine. Neither can pregnant women, children under 1 year old, or anyone prone to eczema, a skin condition that affects 10 percent of Americans. Those who live with anyone in a high-risk group are also excluded because vaccine recipients can pass vaccinia, the virus in the vaccine, to close contacts. For all of those reasons, Kemper estimated that 25 percent of the U.S. population would be ineligible. The vaccine's most serious potential side effects are encephalitis (brain inflammation) and progressive vaccinia, in which the sore produced by the vaccine spreads without healing. Either can be fatal. People with eczema who are vaccinated may develop eczema vaccinatum, a life-threatening skin rash. Based on historical data, Kemper estimated that a campaign to vaccinate U.S. residents between the ages of 1 and 29 would cause 175 cases of encephalitis, 420 cases of progressive vaccinia and 1,200 cases of eczema vaccinatum, with a total of 190 deaths. If the campaign included people between the ages of 1 and 65, there would be an estimated 505 cases of encephalitis, 845 cases of progressive vaccinia and 3,525 cases of eczema vaccinatum, with 285 deaths. In either scenario, thousands of other people would suffer less severe but still significant side effects. A vaccination campaign would nonetheless be likely to save many lives if smallpox virus were used in a terrorist attack, according to Davis, who also presented his findings yesterday. The government's current plan for containing an outbreak is a strategy called "ring vaccination," in which people with suspected smallpox and their contacts would be traced, vaccinated and isolated from the surrounding population. Vaccinating a person even two or three days after exposure to smallpox offers considerable protection against the disease. Davis and colleagues used a mathematical model to compare the effectiveness of ring vaccination after an outbreak with the effectiveness of a preventive mass vaccination campaign targeting people between 1 and 29 years old. If 50 percent of that age group had been previously vaccinated, the number of U.S. deaths predicted from an outbreak that began with 100 infected people would be 358, including vaccine-related deaths. A similar outbreak would be predicted to cause 2,160 deaths if only ring vaccination were used. In a larger outbreak, or one that began in several places at once, the lifesaving effect of preventive vaccination would be even greater. Davis said that vaccinating children and young adults would help protect older people as well by greatly reducing transmission during an outbreak, because smallpox depends so heavily on person-to-person transmission. But for a mass vaccination campaign to succeed, Americans would have to accept "some numbers of deaths and several thousand illnesses," Davis noted. "Today's U.S. population is not accustomed to that level of side effects and deaths from a vaccine." Routine vaccination against smallpox ceased in the United States in 1972, and experts estimate that most or all of the population is vulnerable to infection with the virus, which is highly contagious and carries a 30 percent mortality rate. Although the remaining known stocks of smallpox virus are kept in two high-security laboratories in the United States and Russia, many experts fear that terrorists might gain access to samples of the virus. In Atlanta, consultants to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will begin drafting proposals for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which will issue proposed recommendations on smallpox vaccination in June. The first of about a half-dozen public forums is scheduled here on June 25.

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Korea Times May 8, 2002 Biological Cars To Ensure Terror-Free World Cup By Sohn Suk-joo, Staff Reporter With the World Cup finals only three weeks away, South Korea's military has fully readied itself to counter possible biochemical attacks during the one-month global event by putting in action indigenous ``biochemical vehicles.'' The military authorities have authorized the deployment of 30 newly- developed ``biological vehicles'' around football stadiums in 10 cities to ensure the safety of the World Cup finals to be co-hosted by South Korea and Japan May 31-June 30. ``The vehicles, modeled after the U.S. biological integrated detection system (BIDS), are designed to detect, identify and decontaminate biochemical agents, including anthrax, in the face of terrorist threats during the World Cup finals,'' Army Col. Hwang Chi-bok said yesterday. The car is able to detect biological weapons within two minutes and identify them in less than 40 minutes, he explained, saying that South Korea is only the third nation in the world to be equipped with such sophisticated military vehicles, after the U.S. and Canada. The domestically made vehicle with built-in DNA analysis equipment can identify the DNA of germs after detecting them in the air, he added. North Korea is believed to have amassed up to 5,000 tons of biochemical weapons in six storage facilities across the nation. John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control, has been accusing North Korea of developing and producing biological weapons in violation of an international treaty that bans germ warfare. The U.S., which will participate in the tournament, has committed itself to contributing an anti-terror military platoon, including seven BIDS vehicles, officials said. The unit will be deployed around major stadiums, along with Korean biological vehicles throughout, the event.

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Insight Magazine May 27, 2002 Clinton Policy Declassified Nuclear Secrets By Notra Trulock The Department of Energy (DOE) recently declassified its fifth report to Congress on "inadvertent" disclosures of classified nuclear-weapons information. For the last three years, classification experts have been scouring millions of pages of supposedly declassified government documents dumped into the public domain under the Clinton administration's misguided openness policy. They have uncovered a gold mine of nuclear-warhead secrets that, according to a DOE assessment, "would aid an adversary in obtaining a weapon of mass destruction." In 1993, citing the end of the Cold War and the "rapidly changing world situation," President Bill Clinton proposed significant changes in security-classification policies that were intended to promote greater openness and trust in government. By executive order, he mandated automatic declassification of government documents that were more than 25 years old. The White House was in such a rush to get these materials out to the public that it eliminated the requirement of careful, page-by-page review. Instead, it permitted agencies to use a "bulk-declassification" policy. Documents 25 years old or older would not be reviewed unless risk assessments warranted a more thorough review. The risk assessment was mostly a "judgment" as to whether a box of old documents might contain nuclear-weapons information. There were to be some restrictions on automatic declassification, such as information that could aid in the development of a nuclear weapon, but many agencies simply ignored these. All the defense agencies were affected by this order, including the CIA. The costs were significant, but the White House expected each agency to use existing resources to meet declassification requirements. Not surprisingly, given the potential costs and the impact on other operations, many agencies "judged" that the documents didn't contain such data and simply pushed the boxes out the door. The documents were sent to the National Archives and Records Administration for storage. By 1997, however, it was clear that the openness policy had run amok. DOE security officers discovered that bulk declassification was exposing many of the nation's nuclear secrets. They ran a test case and found that anyone with a valid driver's license could access these files at the National Archives in College Park, Md., regardless of nationality. In one test, a DOE official collected copies of detailed nuclear-warhead design plans from the open shelves at the archives. They also discovered documents from this collection on the Internet. This simply reinforced suspicions on Capitol Hill about the recklessness of Clinton's national-security policies, and Congress sought to impose more safeguards on declassification. Archivist John W. Carlin vehemently opposed this legislation as a "waste of time and resources" that would negate the letter and spirit of the administration's policy. He said nearly 500 million pages already were at the archives that would require review, with millions more anticipated. He argued that no one ever had proved that declassification had any effect on the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but Congress added a provision to the fiscal 1999 defense bill that mandated a review of each document suspected of containing nuclear secrets. Three years later, DOE has found more than 300 declassified documents that contain nuclear-weapons secrets. Among those discovered to date: warhead-design details including size, shapes and configurations; systems for boosting warhead yields; mass and dimensions of fissile materials and nuclear-assembly systems; and the mass, design or operation of high explosives for nuclear weapons. The most recent date found on any documents is 1976, but much of the warhead-design information is from early- generation U.S. nuclear-warhead programs. DOE says this information is "of significant value" to nations embarking on the production of nuclear weapons and to terrorist groups trying to assemble a simple nuclear device. There appear to be several hundred million pages yet to be reviewed. For fiscal 2002, Congress appropriated nearly $12 million for the job. The DOE has not responded to our requests for the total costs to date, how much remains to be done and whether documents still accessible at the archives are suspected of containing nuclear secrets. It would be tragic if terrorists were able to attack us using information collected from our own National Archives. The Bush administration should require that all such information be secured immediately until a thorough review can be completed. Notra Trulock is associate editor of the AIM Report and a former director of intelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy.

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Christian Science Monitor May 9, 2002 Pg. 1 New Push For Bunker-Buster Nuke This week Congress considers the next step toward a controversial nuclear bomb that the Pentagon sees as vital. By Ann Scott Tyson, Special correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON - It was March 1996. Libya had tunneled deep into a mountain south of Tripoli, allegedly to build a large chemical-weapons plant. To stop the project, the Clinton administration threatened to retaliate with "the whole range" of US weaponry – up to and including a nuclear bomb. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi apparently heeded the warning. Construction at the site halted, US intelligence showed. Yet the Libyan complex was just one of more than 10,000 underground military facilities that have mushroomed in number during the 1990s in more than 70 countries – from Iraq, Iran, and North Korea to Russia and China. Of those, more than 1,400 are known or suspected to be sheltering weapons of mass destruction (WMD), ballistic missiles, or military commands, according to US government reports. To counter what the Pentagon considers a growing threat from such "hard and deeply buried targets," the Bush administration today is accelerating steps to develop more effective, earth-penetrating nuclear bombs. The move – which is gaining momentum with a push in Congress for funding in the 2003 budget – comes charged with controversy. Challengers say the weapons are unnecessary, would still produce heavy collateral damage, and could spur nuclear proliferation if they are used to threaten non-nuclear states with preemptive strikes. Attacking what he called the administration's "reckless new nuclear weapons policy," House Armed Service Committee member Rep. Tom Allen (D) of Maine said this month it could "ignite a nuclear arms race." But Defense officials say that better bunker-busting nukes will provide vital deterrence against US foes. "The president ought to have options that enhance his ability ... to credibly threaten those targets," says a senior Pentagon official. "The obvious purpose of having a lower-yield weapon would be to ... make threatened use of that capability more credible and thereby to enhance deterrence." The administration's immediate aim is to improve on its only existing earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, the 1,200- pound B61-11 gravity bomb. Entering the US arsenal in 1997, the B61-11 has an selectable yield of from 1 to 300 kilotons, nuclear experts say. But it can reach only a limited depth underground – 10 to 20 feet in a dry lake bed in one government test – and "cannot survive penetration into many types of terrain," according to the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review submitted to Congress in January. A study is planned on the design and cost of a heavier, 5,000-pound modification of the B61-11, to see whether it could burrow deeper with its original warhead intact. Greater depth, in theory, would allow a lower-yield bomb to cause more underground destruction while also limiting nuclear fallout on the surface. Legislation moving through the House this week grants $15 million in the fiscal year 2003 budget to study such a "robust nuclear earth penetrator." The current push is separate from failed efforts in previous years to develop so-called "mini-nukes." A 1994 law prohibits the nuclear laboratories from undertaking research and development that could lead to a precision weapon of less then 5 kilotons, because it would blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war. A successful study of the modified earth penetrator would pave the way for development and production. Yet just how "usable" – and therefore credible as a deterrent – such a bomb would be remains subject to doubt for both US officials and nuclear experts. The Republican-led House Armed Services Committee, for example, points out in its report on the 2003 Defense bill that the earth penetrator "is not a new design, is not a low yield 'mini nuke', and is not 'clean' in the sense that fallout and collateral damage can be contained." Even with an extremely tiny yield, scientists estimate that such a bomb would toss up an enormous cloud of debris and radioactive fallout. "It would mean tens of thousands of people would be killed instead of hundreds of thousands" if used in a city such as Baghdad, says Rob Nelson, a physicist and researcher at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Other critics contend that conventional "bunker buster" bombs could effectively neutralize many underground targets. For example, the 5,000-pound GBU-28, used in Iraq during the Gulf War and more recently on caves in Afghanistan, has a new, steel cap that allows it to penetrate as deep or deeper than the B61-11. Such conventional bombs could be used to seal the entrances of such complexes, entombing them, says Steve Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. "If we see them digging it out, we bomb it again," he says. One major obstacle to both of these strategies – whether conventional or nuclear – is that US intelligence can't fully track the growing number of sophisticated underground facilities, many in so-called "rogue states," US military officials acknowledge. Camouflaged and buried beneath the equivalent of from 70 to 300 feet of reinforced concrete, the facilities are built using either conventional drill-and-blast tunneling or more advanced mining technology, according to a Pentagon report to Congress last year. "The challenges of hard and deeply buried targets [require] a much greater fidelity in intelligence than we currently possess," Adm. James Ellis told a Senate committee in March.

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Washington Post May 9, 2002 Pg. B1 Pentagon Security Checkup Drill Tests Response As Officials Revamp Building's Defenses By Steve Vogel, Washington Post Staff Writer The Defense Department is stepping up its efforts to defend the Pentagon against terrorist threats, creating a police agency that can handle chemical, biological and radioactive attacks and teaching everyone in the building how to react in such situations. In response to an internal review completed after the Pentagon was hit by a hijacked plane on Sept. 11, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz this week signed an order creating the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, a defense official said yesterday, speaking on background. The agency will absorb all functions now performed by the the Pentagon's police force, the Defense Protective Service, and will have expanded security responsibilities, officials said. In another step, the Pentagon will begin using CD-ROMs this month to train the more than 20,000 employees in the building how to respond to such attacks. In addition, a new public address system will soon be installed along the 17 miles of Pentagon corridors, replacing antiquated, frequently unintelligible squawk boxes. Computer networks are also being upgraded so that warnings will pop up on workers' computer screens. Yesterday, area fire and police agencies staged a major exercise at the Pentagon to train rescue workers how to respond to a chemical attack. A plume of smoke erupted from a concrete planter in the building's center courtyard yesterday morning, and soldiers in combat fatigues dropped to the ground, "victims" of a sarin nerve gas attack. As the thick, white smoke wafted through the courtyard, some of the role-playing service members in Operation Misty Court were laughing, hamming it up with extra histrionics for the long bank of cameras recording the event. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Cheryl White was not one of them. White had been at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, and for her, yesterday's exercise hit close to home. "It was weird to be in there seeing the smoke," said White, 35, a Stafford County resident participating in the exercise. "I actually flashed back to September 11." The scenes that followed, as Arlington County fire trucks converged on the Pentagon and rescue personnel wearing gas masks and chemical protective gear guided White and other designated victims past more seriously injured "casualties" lying in the grass, accentuated the feeling. "To see the 'dead and wounded,' it threw you," White said. "You felt that anxiety again." Anxiety is the driving force behind a variety of efforts to improve defenses at the Pentagon. "The existing structure is not an optimal solution for opposing subsequent acts of terrorism and other emergencies," Wolfowitz wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. "What is needed is a single [organization] that can provide a focused, streamlined and multi-disciplined force." The new agency will have an expanded charter enabling it to take on more law enforcement roles -- including anti- terrorism efforts -- than the present force, which is largely focused on building security, a defense official said. Theagency will have a larger budget than the police force and will likely be expanded from about 250 uniformed officers to about 300. Some of the steps, such as training and improved communications, were being considered prior to last fall's attack, but "after the 11th, everything was accelerated," said Pentagon police chief John Jester, who will be the new agency's acting director. Likewise, the Arlington County Fire Department had planned long before Sept. 11 to hold a chemical attack exercise, but after the terrorist attack, local and federal officials agreed that holding the event at the Pentagon would be appropriate. The exercise, funded by the Department of Justice's Domestic Preparedness Program, involved more than 300 participants and included fire departments from Fort Myer, Alexandria and Arlington and Fairfax counties, as well as the FBI, Virginia State Police and area hospitals. The scenario yesterday involved about 100 military service members gathered in the courtyard for a ceremony, a common sight at the Pentagon in warmer months. As they milled about, a simulated explosion released what was supposed to be sarin gas, the deadly agent used in the 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway system. Screaming victims lay around the courtyard, each with an orange placard around the neck to identify symptoms. Makeup added to the effect, with some victims seemingly bloodied by wounds and others with blue faces, a sign of sarin poisoning. Within minutes, members of the Pentagon police force responded in white chemical protective gear, carrying newly acquired chemical detection devices. Arlington firefighters, alerted by the Pentagon police to the purported chemical attack, donned protective gear and drove into the courtyard through a corridor on a low-riding firetruck. Inside, firefighters doused victims with water to decontaminate them. Others used knives to strip fatigues off "unconscious" victims. For White, walking around in a white gown after being stripped of her fatigues, the experience had been a little unnerving. "It was almost like reliving September 11," she said. "But you understand the reason for doing this."

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Washington Times May 9, 2002 Pg. B1 Pentagon Drills For Gas Attack By Jabeen Bhatti, The Washington Times It is morning and at the Pentagon center court 100 Pentagon officials sit in front of a small stage during an official ceremony. Suddenly people start moaning. Some grab their heads. Others scream, "Help me" or pass out. A sarin nerve gas attack, officials explained as emergency personnel rushed to the site. It isn't real — this time. Military and civilians yesterday staged a chemical attack scenario called "Operation Misty Court" to test the skills and procedures of public safety and medical personnel, so as to better prepare them should a biochemical attack occur in a public setting. "We are never too prepared," said Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood about the exercise. "We always have to train and retrain." During the drill, several dozen actors faked symptoms of exposure to sarin gas — blurry eyes, mild headaches, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting. The chemical caused several deaths during a 1996 terrorist attack in a Tokyo subway. Fire and rescue personnel from the Pentagon, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Fort Myer, Virginia State Police and the FBI rushed to the scene to help. Wearing protective suits, they investigated the chemical release, secured the site, controlled crowds and decontaminated and treated victims. Since September 11 there has been a heightened awareness of potential biochemical attacks and an attempt for emergency and health personnel to become better prepared. Even so, this drill, initiated by the U.S. Department of Justice, was planned before last September's terrorist attack, and Pentagon officials stressed that the drill doesn't signal an increased threat. Officials said the drill went well and that Pentagon protective services are more prepared to respond to modern threats than they were eight months ago, according to John Jester, chief of the Defense Protective Service. Chief Jester said equipment that detects toxic chemical or biological agents has been installed in and around the building. Also, employees have been briefed on responding to potential threats; a public address system has been set up to communicate with employees during an emergency; and a new computerized alert system is being tested, which can send messages to individual computer terminals during emergencies. About 20,000 people work in the Pentagon. Arlington County Fire Department Battalion Chief Benjamin Barksdale donned his heavy protective gear yesterday and organized efforts to pull sarin victims outside to decontamination sites. He said the drill went "very well." "We had been practicing procedures prior to this," he said. "This was our first chance to try it on a larger scale." The chief said the drill taught him and his colleagues what procedures worked well and what needed to be enhanced. For example, he said, making sure emergency personnel each have their own channel on the radio is important because communications are getting jammed. Initially, he added, they had too many resources outside and not enough inside to help the victims. Nearby Virginia Hospital Center was one of four Virginia hospitals participating in their own drills on dealing with casualties of a biochemical attack. Real nurses and doctors, some in heavy protective gear, struggled to decontaminate and treat gas victims played by Red Cross volunteers. "It was an opportunity to test a lot of changes that have occurred since September 11," said Dr. John Sverha, assistant director of the emergency department and chairman of the hospital's emergency preparedness committee. "It was a pretty effective drill. It showed us what worked and what still has to be ironed out." Since September 11, the hospital has increased its capacity to treat patients of chemical attacks by installing decontamination shower heads outside, buying 20 protective suits for its medical workers, stocking up on medical supplies necessary to treat gas attack victims and training health care personnel to use the equipment. "Dealing with patients in warm suits on a warm day in May made for an interesting two hours," he said. "It really sunk in how difficult handling a situation like this can be."

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New York Times May 9, 2002 Pentagon Tests Reflexes For Chemical Attack By The New York Times WASHINGTON, May 8 — It all started with a cellphone call to Arlington County, Va., emergency services from inside the Pentagon at about 9 this morning. A few minutes later, gray smoke rose from a cement planter and slowly filled the courtyard of the Pentagon, which employs 20,000 civilian and military personnel. The authorities from the Defense Protection Service and Arlington County were on the scene within five minutes, evaluating men and women in camouflage uniforms sprawled on the grass screaming for help. "Where are the paramedics?" one soldier bellowed. "I can't breathe." Another implored, "Who did this to us?" But this was just practice, a simulation of a chemical attack. Emergency crews from the Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax Fire Departments in Virginia, the Virginia State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and several hospitals stormed the Pentagon as if responding to a sarin gas attack. The exercise involved about 300 people, including about 125 soldiers who acted as victims. Emergency and medical personnel set up an operation center to handle mock rescue, triage and treatment and to decontaminate and secure the area. "We used the same system we have operated under for years," said James H. Schwartz, assistant chief of operations for the Arlington County Fire Department. The relationship between Arlington County emergency services and federal officials has tightened since they teamed up to respond to the terrorist attack on the Pentagon in September, Mr. Schwartz said. But emergency officials in Arlington have been developing procedures for responding to a chemical attack for about seven years, he said. The Office of Domestic Preparedness at the Justice Department organized the drill. A spokesman for the department said similar events were planned for cities throughout the country this year. John N. Jester, the chief of Defense Protective Services at the Pentagon, said that since Sept. 11 officials had enhanced the program designed to deal with chemical attacks, including installing chemical sensors in the building and creating alerts that instantly appear on workers' computer screens warning them of danger and informing them of evacuation plans. The drill, which lasted about four hours, was videotaped, and radio exchanges were recorded. Officials will assess the exercise and report within about 60 days. "This was a day of learning," Mr. Jester said.

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USA Today May 9, 2002 Pg. 2 NORAD Chief To Head Homeland Defense Air Force Gen. Ralph Eberhart is slated to head the new Northern Command, which will be responsible for homeland defense beginning Oct. 1. The pending nomination by President Bush was announced by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Eberhart has been commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, which guards U.S. and Canadian air space. The new command will coordinate the military's land, air and sea response to threats to the United States, Canada, Mexico and parts of the Caribbean.

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Washington Times May 9, 2002 Pg. 14 U.S. Lacks Child Doses Of Nerve-Gas Antidote By Ben Barber, The Washington Times The United States lacks emergency-response antidotes for children in case of a nerve-gas attack, according to the U.S. Army neurologist in charge of preparing the nation's biochemical defenses. While a U.S. firm has manufactured thousands of pediatric doses of nerve-gas antidotes for Israel, they are not legal in the United States, said Col. Jonathan Newmark. Because the military sees its primary mission as protecting its fighters so they can withstand a chemical battlefield attack, it never purchased pediatric doses, said Col. Newmark, an Army colonel and chief of chemical casualty care at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense in Edgewood, Md. Col. Newmark and others gearing up the nation's emergency-response systems for nerve-gas terrorism say they are forced to borrow the Israeli models for practice operations even though they cannot read the Hebrew instructions and dosage information on the antidote kits. They are unable to obtain English-language versions because the Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved the devices for children. The Department of Defense, which ordered adult-dosage kits for its troops, has not sought such approval. A terrorism task force created by the American Academy of Pediatrics after September 11 is asking Congress to provide funding so that emergency pediatric doses of the antidotes will be available to firefighters and ambulances in high-risk areas. The task force is asking Congress to include "child-specific language" in any new bills on preparing for a biological or chemical attack, said Dr. Joe Hagan, the head of the pediatric task force. That would require providing pediatric doses of antidotes to nerve and other chemical and biological agents. The likelihood of a chemical weapons attack is small in remote, rural towns but great in cities such as Washington and New York, making it sensible to begin stockpiling the antidotes in such potential targets, Dr. Hagan said. Col. Newmark, in an interview at Walter Reed Hospital where he is an attending neurologist, said U.S. authorities "don't have pediatric doses for auto-injections of atropine," one of two agents used to block a nerve-gas attack. "Antidotes are not readily available if sarin or other nerve gases are used," added Dr. Hagan. "Children are at risk because of their size," he said. Sarin — the gas used by a terrorist group in Tokyo's subway in 1995 — tends to cling to the ground and therefore affect children more than adults. "Sarin is heavy — you could walk with a 4-year-old child and you could feel OK while the kids are at risk," said Dr. Hagan, a pediatrician, who spoke by phone from his office in Burlington, Vt. Although the two key anti-nerve-gas medicines, atropine and a blocking agent known as an oxime, are available in emergency rooms, many people exposed to nerve agents would die before they received treatment, the doctors said. Nerve gases act so quickly that antidotes must be administered within a few minutes of the onset of symptoms. "The way the military addresses this is when an Army squad is at risk they depend on buddy treating buddy — you can't wait for a medic or evacuation — there is no time," Dr. Hagan said. "All troops at risk carry a Mark I auto-injector with atropine and a blocking agent. But it is not available in children's doses." If a mass nerve-agent attack takes place in an area such as a shopping mall where many children are likely to be affected, the delay in delivering medication could mean many would die, the doctors said. Little research has been done on human victims of nerve agents because they have been used only twice — by the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Tokyo and by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein against Iran and against rebellious Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s. Saddam's use of nerve and mustard gas against Iran and the Kurds left between 45,000 and 100,000 casualties. Iran allowed European doctors to examine victims of Iraqi mustard-gas attacks, but the victims of nerve gas died so swiftly that there was little chance to study the way the nerve agents kill, Col. Newmark said. "We still don't know what the nerve agent was in Halabja," he said, referring to the Kurdish town where about 5,000 men, women and children were killed in 1988 by gas bombs dropped from Iraqi helicopters. Researchers are reluctant to say so publicly, for fear of criticism from animal rights groups, but they are experimenting on animals to learn how the nerve agents work and to develop better ways to fight them.

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