Former Top CIA Officials Recommend Different Ways to Improve U.S. Intelligence Capability

Two former CIA directors yesterday offered differing views as to how the U.S. intelligence system could be improved, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Sept. 2).

Both John Deutch, who ran the CIA for two years during the Clinton administration, and James Schlesinger, who headed the agency during the Nixon administration, testified yesterday before a bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Post reported. Deutch recommended creating a new domestic intelligence agency to handle counterterrorism duties and giving the CIA chief more authority.

Increased centralization of authority “is the best way to improve intelligence and the safety of the American people,” Deutch said.

Schlesinger, however, cautioned against a large-scale restructuring of the U.S. intelligence system, the Post reported.

“Tinkering with the organizational structure can help, but by itself will not produce major improvement,” he said (Dan Eggen, Washington Post, Oct. 15).

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French Nuclear Project Assailed over Proliferation, Security Concerns

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Antinuclear activists are expressing fears of plutonium proliferation and terrorist attacks after a top French official indicated last week that France could be about to launch a major new phase in its massive civil nuclear program.

Minister Delegate for Industry Nicole Fontaine announced last Wednesday that she is recommending to Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin that France ― which gets about three-fourths of its electricity from nuclear plants and is the world’s largest net electricity exporter ― begin construction of the European Pressurized-water Reactor (EPR), a French-German design that can be fueled with 5 percent-enriched uranium 235 or with mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX).

The announcement followed renewed debate in recent months, spurred by the European heat wave and resulting energy difficulties, about the use of nuclear power in France and other European countries.

Areva, a parent company of EPR developer Framatome, describes the reactor on its Web site as “extremely safe” owing to “advanced technological features,” and a company spokesman defended the reactor today as safe, profitable and resistant to attacks and accidents. Nevertheless, Fontaine’s announcement provoked immediate criticism of the model, development of which began in 1989.

Technically, Fontaine’s recommendation applies only to construction of an EPR prototype, but all involved appear to be equating approval of the proposal with the choice of EPR to replace the national electric company’s current stable of pressurized-water reactors. The existing reactors are expected to be retained for about 20 more years.

After French media reported that Areva had already secured Raffarin’s approval of EPR, the prime minister said last Thursday that “no decision has been made,” that Fontaine is acting “in her role of making recommendations” and that the future of the French energy sector will be submitted “in the coming weeks … to very broad public consultation.”

Fontaine responded Saturday by reiterating her support for EPR but echoing Raffarin’s assertion that the decision is not hers to make. Her office did not respond to requests for comment in time for this article.

As Raffarin sought to reassure the public, activists decried what they called a lack of open debate ahead of a decision they said will, among other things, perpetuate existing security shortfalls and encourage proliferation by necessitating large-scale MOX production. EPR can use up to 100 percent MOX.

“There is really a problem of international security and proliferation,” Greenpeace France antinuclear campaign chief Frederic Marillier said last week in a telephone interview.

World Information Service on Energy Paris Director Yves Marignac said yesterday that converting nuclear material to MOX ― a strategy the United States is pursuing under a 2000 agreement with Russia on disposal of weapon-grade plutonium stocks (see related GSN story, today) ― would be a “nearly acceptable means” of disposing of France’s 40-metric-ton stock of plutonium generated in civil reactors but that the adoption of EPR would signal a nearly opposite strategy, with Paris bolstering the “plutonium sector” to provide MOX fuel for new reactors.

Contacted by telephone in Paris, Marignac said France should consider vitrification or other spent fuel-disposal methods, rather than the reprocessing that would be required to fuel the new reactors and to treat the resulting spent fuel. Instead, he said, the country appears to be embarking on a policy of encouraging reprocessing in general, “the plutonium sector” and “the pursuit of MOX.”

The Areva spokesman, in a telephone interview from Paris, rejected Marignac’s characterization of the reactor, citing the U.S. choice of conversion to MOX as a means of uranium disposal as an example of the attractiveness of the method. The spokesman said EPR not only would be used to consume France’s stock of plutonium but could also be used to recycle its own spent fuel, an approach he called ultimately safer from an environmental and health standpoint than immobilizing and burying nuclear material, as is done in some other methods.

The EPR debate follows months of scrutiny of the security of vehicles transporting nuclear material in France, and critics are seeking to link the debate over EPR and MOX to the question of whether nuclear shipments are secure in France. They say producing more nuclear material in the country would make existing vulnerabilities more readily exploitable by terrorists.

In a bid to demonstrate the vulnerability of French nuclear shipments to attack, 25 Greenpeace activists in February successfully stopped and chained themselves to a truck carrying 150 kilograms of plutonium from the La Hague nuclear plant, a northern facility operated by Areva and Cogema, to a reprocessing site in the southern town of Marcoule. Despite government assurances about varying the day and time of such shipments, Greenpeace said it found the trips were highly predictable; according to Marignac, the government said it had detected Greenpeace operatives as they staked out the route but offered no explanation as to why it did not therefore prevent the incident.

Highlighting the proliferation risk it said is posed by the “plutonium industry,” Greenpeace said at the time that “civil nuclear [activity] does not exist” and called on French President Jacques Chirac to complement his opposition to war in Iraq by “stopping proliferation at the source.”

Marignac, whose group concluded in a Greenpeace-commissioned study that about 90 vehicles carry a total of almost 12 metric tons of plutonium each year in France, said yesterday that the February operation showed transportation is the “weak link” in efforts to secure nuclear material in the country. “The overall level of security of a system is the level of security at its weakest link,” he added.

Apparently in response to such developments, France ― in the person of the Ministry of Industry’s senior defense official, Didier Lallemand ― decreed July 24 that a wide variety of information about nuclear material in the country be classified as a defense secret. Marignac said he asked Lallemand last week whether the decree means that, if it were discovered that plutonium was missing from La Hague, the case would not be made public. According to Marignac, Lallemand replied, “The situation has never presented itself.”

Security concerns have also emerged about the EPR design, which Marignac said “is in fact a little bit safer” than existing models ― “there are more mechanisms to avoid the most serious accident scenarios” and a “greater redundancy” in the security system, he said ― but does not appear to be significantly more protected than previous facilities against a violent attack.

Existing reactors are designed to survive the crash of a small tourist airplane. The Areva spokesman said EPR could resist a larger military plane and, based on studies of what he called less fortified U.S. reactors, could probably resist an airliner as well. Marignac said EPR is unlikely, given its dimensions, to survive an airliner incident.

The government’s push to build new reactors is in part an attempt to prepare for a coming gap of at least 15 years between the end of the current reactors’ lifespan and the availability of the next, or “fourth,” generation of reactors. A recent report on energy commissioned by Raffarin’s office indicated EPR’s design does not place it in the fourth generation, but the authors expressed support for adopting the design anyway because of the coming time gap.

According to both Areva and EPR critics, EPR reactors introduced around 2020, when the first of France’s existing reactors are expected to have outlived their usefulness, would remain usable until at least 2080. The Areva spokesman said a long period of use would help make EPR profitable, while Marignac said the likely EPR lifespan means weak security conditions and an increased risk of plutonium proliferation would persist for decades at many sites even after new, better reactors became available.

A former top official in France’s Atomic Energy Commission, International Conseil Energie consultant Bernard Laponche, has been stressing the inadequacies of EPR when compared with likely attributes of fourth-generation reactors.

Laponche argued last week in the newspaper La Croix that EPR ― chosen, he wrote, without democratic debate and “to respond to the urgent request of Areva” ― is “a reactor model that is certainly improved but offers no decisive technological change and remains poor in terms of productivity.” The “radically different reactors” of the coming decades, he said, will probably be more productive, smaller and “much safer.”

“They are not likely, for example, to be vulnerable to a terrorist attack, and they are likely to have resolved the crucial problem of plutonium proliferation,” Laponche wrote.

The Areva spokesman suggested discussion of the fourth generation of reactors is irrelevant to the choice with which France is faced.

“The fourth generation is great on paper,” he said, “but for now, it is not a reality in the industry.”

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South Korean Appeal for More Nuclear Talks Meets North Korean Wall

Senior South Korean envoys in Pyongyang today called for a new round of nuclear talks but the overture was met with North Korean intransigence, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Oct. 14).

“I come here with hope that North Korea will have talks on the nuclear problem in a more progressive way and thus create a favorable atmosphere for inter-Korean relations,” said South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun.

The top North Korean delegate to the high-level talks, Kim Ryong Song, said that only Washington can move the talks forward.

“It entirely depends on the U.S. attitude whether or not to resolve the nuclear issue. I will not discuss this matter further,” Kim said.

Shin Eun-sang, a spokesman for the South Korean delegation, said that “a heavy-hearted atmosphere” hung over the talks.

“Our side stressed that North Korea … should come to the second round of six-way nuclear talks as soon as possible, but they just listened and gave no particular reaction,” Shin said (Jun Kwanwoo, Agence France-Presse/Arab Times, Oct. 15).

Kim said North Korea had already played its hand in the nuclear negotiations.

“We have already revealed our principled position on the nuclear question to the whole world,” Kim said in his keynote address at the meeting (Paul Eckert, Reuters, Oct. 15).

If another round of nuclear talks comes together the United States might offer Pyongyang a nonaggression pact, something North Korean officials have long demanded. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the agreement would be formal, written and multilateral, according to the Associated Press. State Department staff are currently looking through historical models to find a precedent that could work in the North Korean crisis (George Gedda, Associated Press/ABC News, Oct. 15).

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Western Officials Lukewarm Over Iranian Nuclear Allegations

Western officials reacted with measured interest yesterday to allegations of secret Iranian nuclear development from an Iranian dissident group (see GSN, Oct. 14).

Officials from the National Council of Resistance of Iran said yesterday that Tehran is developing a secret centrifuge test facility in central Iran, near Isfahan. Firouz Mahvi, an NCRI spokesman, said the group expects as many as 180 centrifuges to be installed at the site (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Oct. 14).

The credibility of the group, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, has been bolstered by accurate claims in the past, but officials remained cautious of accepting the new charges as true.

“The IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] has visited some sites the NCRI reported on this year,” said a Western diplomat. “Some have turned out to be nuclear facilities and some have not. They do not have … 100 percent accuracy,” the diplomat added (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, Oct. 14).

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States has no contact with NCRI officials, but he encouraged U.N. inspectors to consider the information offered by the group.

“We think the agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, should take into account all information from all sources and look at it carefully as they proceed with their inspections,” Boucher said. “All information needs to be considered by the IAEA. But as far as we’re concerned, they’re [the NCRI] a terrorist organization and we don’t have any contact with them,” he added (State Department release, Oct. 14).

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Antinuclear Activists Criticize U.S. Plan to Ship Plutonium to France

Antinuclear activists have strongly criticized a U.S. Energy Department plan to ship weapon-grade plutonium to France for conversion into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel assemblies, Energy Daily reported today (see GSN, Oct. 10).

Energy is planning to ship up to 140 kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium to a French facility to be made into MOX fuel assemblies to be tested as nuclear reactor fuel at a U.S. nuclear plant. The plan is intended to accelerate a U.S.-Russian nonproliferation agreement to dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium by converting it to MOX fuel, according to Energy Daily.

Antinuclear activists, however, have criticized the U.S. decision to ship plutonium to France, citing both proliferation and security concerns. 

“DOE’s scheme to ship weapons plutonium reveals that the U.S. refuses to apply nonproliferation standards to itself which it is attempting to dictate to the world,” said Tom Clements of Greenpeace International. “If this shipment were being carried out by Iran or North Korea it would be interdicted on the high seas,” he said.

Clements also said the transport of the plutonium from when it arrives at the French port of Cherbourg to the Cadarache MOX fabrication facility in southern France poses increased security risks. Greenpeace has been able to locate plutonium shipments within France and recent French reports have said that a captured terrorism suspect has listed overland plutonium shipments as a possible target for attack, Clements said.

“We feel the shipments are vulnerable in France,” he said. 

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis, however, defended the plutonium shipment plan, saying it would help advance U.S. nonproliferation efforts. He also said that, while the United States would not handle security for the plutonium shipments at all points, they would have the same level of protection as similar shipments between U.S. nuclear weapons facilities (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, Oct. 15).

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German Trial Begins for Three Accused of Nuclear Smuggling to North Korea

German authorities began a trial today for three men accused of attempting to export aluminum tubes to North Korea for nuclear weapons development (see GSN, May 16).

Hans Werner Truppel, who was arrested April 9, is charged with failing to obtain a government permit before trying to export the tubes. Walter Markmann and Marc Wiese are charged as accessories to the alleged smuggling attempt. Prosecutors dismissed Truppel’s claim that the 214 tubes were destined for fuel tanks in Chinese aircraft, calling the assertion not technically credible.

“It had to be feared that the tubes would be delivered on to North Korea and used in that country’s nuclear weapons program,” the indictment said (Associated Press, Oct. 15).

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Russia Tests Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile

A Russian nuclear submarine in the White Sea fired a ballistic missile today during a training exercise, Xinhua News Agency reported (see GSN, Sept. 3).

The missile was fired from the Typhoon-class submarine Arkhangelsk, according to Capt. Igor Dygalo, an aide to the top official in the Russian Navy (see GSN, Aug. 11). The missile hit its intended target at the Kura testing ground on the Kamchatka Peninsula, Xinhua reported (Xinhua News Agency, Oct. 15).

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CIA Investigating Tip That Enriched Iraqi Uranium Was Smuggled to Iran

The CIA has agreed to investigate information provided by an Iranian exile that enriched uranium was smuggled out of Iraq and into Iran, U.S. officials said yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 11).

There is currently no evidence that Iraq possessed highly enriched uranium following the 1991 Gulf War, according to Knight-Ridder. The reports that such uranium was smuggled out of Iraq into Iran was provided to former U.S. National Security Council consultant Michael Ledeen by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer, officials said.

Ledeen contacted U.S. Defense Department officials and told them about Ghorbanifar’s information, the officials said. The Pentagon officials then referred Ledeen to the CIA, who refused to meet with the Iranian arms dealer, they said. The CIA has long distrusted Ghorbanifar, to the point that in the mid-1980s the agency issued “burn notices” against him, telling intelligence officials they should end their involvement with him, Knight-Ridder reported.

Instead of meeting with Ghorbanifar, the CIA decided to have intelligence officers meet in Iraq with the people said to be the source of Ghorbanifar’s information, according to Knight-Ridder. 

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said the agency decided the information was worth investigating.

“We aggressively pursue all legitimate leads on WMD (weapons of mass destruction) issues,” Harlow said. “It is true, however, we have no interest in meeting with Mr. Ghorbanifar since he was long ago proven to be a fabricator” who is known “to peddle false information for financial gain,” he added (Strobel/Landay, Knight-Ridder, Oct. 15).

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U.S. Unprepared Against Disease Outbreaks, Experts Warn

Experts have said the United States is “totally unprepared” to counter animal-spread disease epidemics involving biological warfare agents, the New York Daily News reported Sunday (see GSN, Sept. 26).

U.S. efforts against biological threats have been hampered by squabbling among the various agencies involved in the effort and by a lack of interagency communication, experts said. For example, when the U.S. Health and Human Services recently announced a plan to convert the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps into a rapid-response antibiological terrorism force, it was publicly opposed by the heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and by the Food and Drug Administration, the Daily News reported.

Efforts to counter the West Nile virus, which has so far infected more than 6,000 people this year, illustrate the level of U.S. unpreparedness to combat such epidemics, said Duane Gubler, chief of the CDC’s vector-borne infectious disease laboratory.

“West Nile was a wakeup call. We would have been just as unprepared for any other new pathogen,” Gubler said. “That is a real national security concern,” he added (Brian Kates, New York Daily News, Oct. 12).

U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) yesterday also criticized the current state of U.S. defenses against bioterrorism. 

Two years after the 2001 anthrax attacks, which killed five people, the United States still lacks effective biological countermeasures and emergency medical personnel are still not adequately funded, Lieberman, the top Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a press statement.

“The casualty potential of a biological attack is far greater than any other mode of terrorist attack we have seen to date and the administration’s progress has been negligible,” Lieberman said. “We clearly are not prepared for a serious bioterror attack. And we need to undertake bold, new steps to get ready,” he added (U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Minority Office release, Oct. 14).

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Anniston Chemical Incinerator Restarts Operations

U.S. Army officials have resumed chemical weapon destruction at a depot in Alabama after a two-week delay for repairs, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Sept. 22).

Melted metal debris from earlier operations had filtered into the conveyer-belt machinery that moves chemical shells through the incinerator, according to Donavan Mager, a spokesman for Westinghouse Anniston, the contractor that is operating the incinerator.

“The molten aluminum was getting into some areas where it wasn’t supposed to,” Mager said.

The incinerator’s furnace was reheated Monday and destroyed 48 rockets that day. The facility returned to full operations yesterday, according to AP (Associated Press/Al.com, Oct. 15).

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United States Calls for Restraint After Third Pakistani Missile Test

The United States yesterday called on Pakistan to exercise restraint after Islamabad conducted its third ballistic missile test this month (see GSN, Oct. 15).

“As we’ve said before, we urge Pakistan and other countries in the region to take steps to restrain their nuclear weapons and missile programs,” U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday, apparently also referring to Pakistan’s South Asian rival India.

Pakistan yesterday conducted a successful test of its Shaheen 1 nuclear-capable ballistic missile, according to reports. Earlier this month, Pakistan conducted a separate Shaheen 1 test and a test of the nuclear-capable, short-range Ghaznavi missile.

The United States has also called on both India and Pakistan to refrain from deploying ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons, Boucher said. He added that the United States has called on both countries to begin a dialogue to reduce tensions in the region.

“We’ve also encouraged them to begin a dialogue on confidence-building measures that could reduce the likelihood that such weapons would ever be used. That kind of dialogue could be part of broader engagement to reduce tensions,” Boucher said (U.S. State Department release, Oct. 14).

The Indian External Affairs Ministry criticized Boucher’s apparent reference to India in his remarks yesterday, according to Sify.com.

Boucher “ought to have confined himself to reacting to the Pakistani missile test rather than clutter up what he had to say by thinly disguised unwarranted references to India,” a ministry spokesman said (Sify.com, Oct. 15).

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