U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge appeared yesterday and today before Congress on his department’s fiscal 2005 budget request (U.S. Homeland Security Department photo). Ridge Says New Agency to Oversee Terrorism Intelligence By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — After months of congressional pressure to state clearly which of four federal agencies has primary responsibility for coordinating terrorism-related intelligence, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge indicated this morning that the Terrorist Threat Integration Center would take the lead (see GSN, Oct. 9, 2003)...Full Story

U.S. Calls on Pakistan to Dismantle Nuclear Black Market The United States yesterday urged Pakistan to complete its efforts to dismantle its network of covert nuclear supplies that was recently disclosed by the confession of top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, according to the Washington Times (see GSN, Feb. 9)...Full Story

Iran Has Yet to Come Clean on Nuclear Program, Experts Charge The recent Pakistani investigation into the smuggling activities of its top nuclear scientists has raised doubts that Iran has provided complete details of its efforts to acquire uranium enrichment technology, according to an article by two proliferation experts released yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 6)...Full Story

	Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Ridge Says New Agency to Oversee Terrorism Intelligence By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — After months of congressional pressure to state clearly which of four federal agencies has primary responsibility for coordinating terrorism-related intelligence, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge indicated this morning that the Terrorist Threat Integration Center would take the lead (see GSN, Oct. 9, 2003). The controversial new center, a largely autonomous body created last year under the aegis of the CIA, is “the coordination point for the entire intelligence community as it relates to homeland security issues,” Ridge said at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee on the Bush administration’s fiscal 2005 budget proposal. At a related hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee yesterday, Ridge said the administration would give Congress a written answer within weeks on the matter. The determination of responsibility will address a major source of controversy in the administration’s terrorism prevention efforts in the wake of the September 2001 al-Qaeda attacks. Critics have questioned the decision last year to set up the new intelligence center, citing the Homeland Security Department’s mandate to coordinate terrorism-related intelligence. Ridge was pressed yesterday on the intelligence question by Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who last year joined Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) in questioning Ridge and the heads of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the FBI and the CIA about the matter. In a letter dated Oct. 30, 2003, Levin and Collins asked the four agency heads “which component of the U.S. intelligence community has the primary responsibility for the analysis of foreign intelligence relating to terrorism” and “which component of the U.S. intelligence community has the primary responsibility for the analysis of domestic intelligence relating to terrorism.” The letter arose out of senators’ questions about the new center, which some in Congress have advocated bringing into Ridge’s department. “It is critical that there be clear lines of responsibility in the analysis of intelligence and that these responsibilities be understood by all of the agencies involved in our counterterrorism efforts,” the two senators wrote. Ridge said yesterday that the four agencies are coordinating their reply to Levin and Collins and will provide an answer “in the next couple of weeks.” Ridge Under Fire for First-Response Cut Ridge’s budget testimony yesterday and today is part of a series of congressional appearances to discuss the Homeland Security Department budget proposal. At this morning’s hearing, top Appropriations Committee Democrat Robert Byrd (W.Va.) attacked the administration for spending too little overall on homeland security. The administration claim of raising the Homeland Security Department’s budget by 10 percent for fiscal 2005, Byrd said, is “just another puffed-up gimmick” based on a misleading presentation of the numbers. Ridge agreed that the increase can be calculated in various ways but stressed that the amount is sufficient. Senators at both hearings expressed particular concern over a proposed cut in funding for the department’s Office for Domestic Preparedness, which provides emergency-response grants to state and local governments (see GSN, Feb. 4). Claiming an increased capability to target such funds based on the risk of terrorism, the department is seeking to allocate more funds to the Urban Area Security Initiative, which provides grants to cities, while proposing cuts that are likely to hit hardest in lower-profile geographical areas. Ridge said the cut is related to “fiscal concerns that legitimately must be imposed on all of government,” but senators questioned the move. “While our urban areas are receiving unprecedented federal assistance, the concerns and vulnerabilities of our small cities, small towns and small states must not be overlooked. Perhaps more than any other area, this one gets shortchanged in the department’s budget request,” Collins said yesterday. Top Governmental Affairs Committee Democrat Joe Lieberman (Conn.), returning to the Senate for the first time after an unsuccessful campaign for his party’s presidential nomination, accused the administration of “shortchanging the homeland side of the war against terrorism” and of lacking an overall strategy for homeland defense. In response to such remarks, Ridge pointed yesterday to specific increases in the budget request ― for customs and border protection, the Coast Guard and overseas inspection of shipping containers, among other programs ― and repeated the claim that his department is now better able to target its first-response spending. Collins and others also cited a provision in the budget request that they said could eliminate per-state minimum payments for homeland security-related first-response efforts. Pressed by Collins, who vowed that Congress will in coming months “clarify” the question, Ridge said he still supports the minimum payments but also repeated that the department, having sought homeland security assessments from the states (see GSN, Jan. 30), is better equipped than before to dole out grants based on the risk of terrorism, rather than on payment formulas. “I believe we can better target these resources,” Ridge said, citing in particular the “maturity and growth” of the department’s Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate. He added that the department, not Congress, should decide on criteria for state and local grants and on the amount of minimum payments to the states. Back to top       U.S. Official Concedes That Bush Erred in Claiming Nuclear Plant Threat A member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said U.S. President George W. Bush was probably wrong when he said in his 2002 State of the Union address that U.S. forces in Afghanistan had found nuclear power plant designs at al-Qaeda bases, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Jan. 30, 2002). NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan said in interviews that the commission was interested in any U.S. intelligence gathered on the topic of possible terrorist attacks on U.S. nuclear power plants and would be interested in learning what types of plants were depicted in the recovered designs. He also said, though, that he could find no one who could confirm that such designs had been recovered. Last week, McGaffigan sent a letter to Greenpeace in response to a question about his position on Bush’s claim. In his letter, McGaffigan said he was “aware of no evidence” that U.S. nuclear power plant designs had been found in Afghanistan (Matthew Wald, New York Times, Feb. 10). Last night, a senior Bush administration official said no plant designs had been found in Afghanistan, according to the Wall Street Journal. “There’s no additional basis for the language in the speech that we have found,” the official said. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said last night that Bush’s State of the Union claim, while not based on actual plant designs found in Afghanistan, was based on other U.S. intelligence information, such as suggestions made by a suspected al-Qaeda operative in 2001 and 2002 of targeting nuclear power plants (Block/Hitt, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 10). Back to top

Declassified Description of Iraq’s WMD Capability Lacked Reservations Appearing in Original Assessment The Bush administration removed cautionary caveats from a secret intelligence report on Iraq’s WMD capabilities before it released the parts of the report to the public, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported today (see GSN, Feb. 9). To support its claims against Iraq before the war, the administration declassified a version of its October 2002 national intelligence estimate, a document that contained many caveats that were removed from the public version. For example, the public version says that “most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program” and that “if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon within this decade.” The classified report, however, contained a dissenting view from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research that was not included in the public version: “The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment.” As to when Iraq might acquire a nuclear weapon, the caveat says, “INR is unwilling to … project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening.” Another major difference between the secret and public assessments dealt with Iraq’s effort to develop unmanned aerial vehicles. The declassified report says that Iraq’s UAVs “especially if used for delivery of chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents, could threaten Iraq’s neighbors, U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and the United States if brought close to, or into, the U.S. homeland.” In addition, the public report warns that Iraq was able to quickly develop biological weapons for delivery by “bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives, including potentially against the U.S. homeland.” The classified intelligence assessment indicates significant disagreement among intelligence services on this issue. The Air Force “does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents,” it says, and there is no mention of Iraq’s ability to conduct a biological attack in the United States. Regarding chemical weapons, the public assessment says that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein “probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents.” The classified report, however, says that Iraq “probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and probably as much as 500 MT of CW agents,” but includes the caution that the intelligence community had “little specific information on Iraq’s CW stockpile.” That caveat was deleted from the publicly released intelligence assessment (Jonathan Landay, Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 10). Back to top

U.S. Calls on Pakistan to Dismantle Nuclear Black Market The United States yesterday urged Pakistan to complete its efforts to dismantle its network of covert nuclear supplies that was recently disclosed by the confession of top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, according to the Washington Times (see GSN, Feb. 9). Pakistan already has “done quite a bit now to roll up the network,” said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who spoke with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in a telephone conversation over the weekend. “I said to President Musharraf that we wanted to learn as much as we could about what Mr. Khan, and the network, was up to. It has to be pulled up by its roots and examined to make sure we have left nothing behind,” Powell said. “He assured me that was his objective as well, and he would share with us all the information they came up with,” Powell added. He denied reports that he would soon travel to Pakistan to discuss the nuclear transfer probe. “I have no plans to travel to Pakistan. I’m sure I will before the spring and summer are out,” Powell said. He also said that Musharraf had told him that a pardon given to Khan after the scientist admitted to transferring nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea was a “conditional amnesty” — a description confirmed by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, Feb. 10). “The pardon is specific to charges made so far and about the confessional statement Doctor A.Q. Khan made,” Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan said. “This is not a blanket pardon,” he added. The spokesman also said that Pakistan’s internal proliferation probe was still continuing. “The investigations have not come to a closure. The pardon granted to Doctor A.Q. Khan is conditional, because it is specific to the charges that came to the surface. They are specific to the results of current investigations established so far,” Khan said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 10). Musharraf himself said yesterday in an interview with the New York Times that he had suspected for at least three years that Khan was transferring nuclear technology to other countries. He said he had seen indications of Khan’s activities, such as “illegal contacts, maybe suspicions of contacts,” and “suspicious movement” connected to the Khan Research Laboratories, Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons facility. Musharraf also said, though, that even with his suspicions, he had been concerned about launching an investigation into Khan, seen by many in Pakistan as a hero for providing the country with nuclear weapons, because of the possible political backlash. “It was extremely sensitive,” Musharraf said. “One couldn’t outright start investigating as if he’s any common criminal,” he added. Musharraf criticized the United States for waiting until October to provide him with evidence of Khan’s activities. “If they knew it earlier, they should have told us,” Musharraf said. “Maybe a lot of things would not have happened,” he added. A senior Bush administration official confirmed that Musharraf was not provided detailed information on Khan until last fall, but added the United States gave Musharraf more general warnings about Khan beginning in 2001 (Rohde/Waldman, New York Times, Feb. 10). An official involved in Pakistan’s internal proliferation probe said yesterday that Khan has claimed that the uranium enrichment equipment he provided to Iran and North Korea were outdated, according to the Los Angeles Times. Pakistani officials said Khan has said in his signed confession that he had provided Iran and North Korea with old and discarded uranium enrichment centrifuges and other equipment (Mubashi Zaidi, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 10). International Investigation Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said yesterday that his country would cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency in its efforts to investigate the international nuclear black market. “We will share all this information with the IAEA,” Kasuri said. “The IAEA is not an investigative body. … The IAEA has a certain role, and we will do all we can to support the IAEA in that role,” he added (DAWN, Feb. 10). Western diplomats based in Vienna have said that the list of countries where middlemen in the black market were either based or used to obtain technologies is steadily growing, according to Reuters. Countries so far believed to be involved include Belgium, Germany, Japan, South Africa, the Netherlands and the United States, as well as China, Pakistan and Russia, Reuters reported. “Other countries will join that list,” said one diplomat. “They (the middlemen) were fishing in many different countries for dual-use technology, countries with high-tech industries. A lot of this technology might have been seemingly innocuous,” the diplomat said (Reuters/Planet Ark, Feb. 10). Sources close to the IAEA said last week that one middleman is suspected of obtaining centrifuge components from a Japanese company and sending them to Libya, according to the Daily Yomiuri. The name of the company and the date of the suspected transfer have not yet been released, the sources said (Masao Shimazaki, Daily Yomiuri, Feb. 9). Two of the three countries that Khan has reportedly confessed to aiding — Iran and North Korea — have begun to deny receiving nuclear technology from him, according to reported. On Sunday, Iran acknowledged that it had purchased equipment from middlemen, but denied doing so from Khan. “Pakistan’s worries are Iran’s worries, but what is being raised in the media is not true,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. “It is evident that the Islamic Republic is not aware of what is going on behind the scenes and we have just reported to the IAEA the names of the middlemen from whom we bought the parts,” he said (HiPakistan.com, Feb. 9). The IAEA has reportedly begun an investigation into whether Y.S.R. Parsad, former chairman of the Nuclear Corporation of India, was involved in transferring nuclear technology to Iran, INDOlink.com reported today (INDOlink.com, Feb. 10). North Korea has also denied receiving nuclear technology from Khan, according to BBC News. In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman described the allegations as “false propaganda” spread by the United States. The spokesman added that the allegations were part of an attempt by the United States to add credibility to U.S. assertions that North Korea has developed a uranium enrichment program   (BBC News, Feb. 10). China today said it did not believe that Khan had passed Chinese nuclear technology on to North Korea. “In recent years, China has adopted a series of measures to step up its control of the export of such technology. The measures we have adopted are now guaranteed by legal means,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said. “Therefore, any suggestion or allegation accusing China of proliferation is baseless,” she said (Agence France-Presse/Khaleej Times, Feb. 10). Back to top       Iran Has Yet to Come Clean on Nuclear Program, Experts Charge The recent Pakistani investigation into the smuggling activities of its top nuclear scientists has raised doubts that Iran has provided complete details of its efforts to acquire uranium enrichment technology, according to an article by two proliferation experts released yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 6). In an effort to ease international pressure, Iran last year disclosed that it had pursued a covert uranium enrichment capability and vowed to cooperate fully with international inspectors trying to learn about the program’s history and accomplishments. Despite Iran’s promise of cooperation, “few believe that Iran has told the whole story of its extensive foreign procurements,” said David Albright and Corey Hinderstein in an article just published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Albright is president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington and Hinderstein is a senior analyst there. The investigation into Iran’s nuclear program by the International Atomic Energy Agency has shown that much of Iran’s technology came from Pakistan, Albright and Hinderstein said, and last week, top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan formally acknowledged that he illicitly provided nuclear technology to Iran and other nations. Khan’s confession and subsequent pardon followed an official Pakistani investigation into the nuclear smuggling activities of its own scientists (see GSN, Feb. 9). The Pakistani revelations, however, have not yielded more information from Iranian officials who have continued to deny receiving information from Khan, have asserted that Iran acquired sensitive nuclear equipment through intermediaries and have said that they did not know where the technology originated (Albright/Hinderstein, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2004). “The Islamic Republic has bought certain parts from the middlemen whose names have been reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi on Sunday (see related GSN story, today). “It is evident that the Islamic Republic is not aware of what is going on behind the scenes,” Asefi said (HiPakistan.com, Feb. 9). Albright and Hinderstein said such statements were not credible. “Recent Pakistani government investigations are undercutting that assertion and magnifying concerns that Iran has made only a partial declaration to the IAEA,” they wrote. “On the surface, Iran appears so far to be protecting the actual supplier of these components,” they added. While Iran has supplied significant information about its program, the two experts said that many questions remain, particularly regarding the intent of Iran’s uranium enrichment ambitions and the presence of traces of highly enriched uranium in some equipment despite Iranian denials that it ever enriched material to such levels (Albright/Hinderstein, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists). Back to top       U.S. Expected to Demand North Korean Acknowledgement of Uranium Program The United States, Japan and South Korea agreed during a meeting held late last month in Washington to demand during the next round of multilateral talks on North Korea’s nuclear program that Pyongyang disclose its suspected uranium enrichment program, Japanese government sources said Saturday (see GSN, Feb. 4). North Korea has denied possessing a uranium enrichment program, but has acknowledged a plutonium-based nuclear weapons program. The United States, Japan and South Korea believe it is important to clarify North Korea’s nuclear efforts before Pyongyang can be forced to abandon its total nuclear program in an irreversible and verifiable manner, according to the Daily Yomiuri. The United States is considering presenting North Korea with some of its proof of Pyongyang’s uranium enrichment program during the planned talks, the Daily Yomiuri reported (Daily Yomiuri, Feb. 8). Meanwhile, Pyongyang said today that China has expressed support for its proposal to freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for economic concessions from the United States, according to the Associated Press. China indicated its support during a meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries that ended today in Beijing, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The Chinese foreign minister “recognized the rationality” of Pyongyang’s offer, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said (Jae-Suk Yoo, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Feb. 10). Back to top       Kazakhstan Signs IAEA Additional Protocol Kazakhstan Friday signed the Additional Protocol to its International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreement, which will allow the IAEA to conduct more intrusive monitoring of Kazakh nuclear activities (see GSN, Feb. 2). “Kazakhstan’s signing [of] this important international document has once again shown the Kazakh leadership’s firm adherence to nuclear nonproliferation principles and prevention of the further spread of nuclear weapons,” the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said (Interfax/BBC Monitoring, Feb. 9). Back to top       Russian Exercise Includes Strategic Bombers and Missiles Russia began a large military exercise today that was scheduled to include strategic bomber flights and tests of land- and sea-based strategic missiles, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 2). As required by U.S.-Russian arms control treaties, Russian officials have notified the United States of its plans for the exercise, said Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the first deputy chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces (Associated Press, Feb. 10). Back to top       Ukraine Denies Nuclear Weapons Were Smuggled to Al-Qaeda Ukrainian officials yesterday denied a recent Arab newspaper report that Ukrainian scientists had provided al-Qaeda with “suitcase” nuclear weapons in the late 1990s, according to the Moscow Times (see GSN, Feb. 9). “The allegations of Ukrainian scientists giving away tactical weapons is another tall story,” said Alexander Kuzmyk, a former Ukrainian defense minister and a member of the parliament’s security committee. Kuzmyk also said that Ukraine had transferred its Cold War-era nuclear weapons back to Russia in 1996, and therefore had no weapons to smuggle in 1998 as the Arab newspaper had alleged (Simon Saradzhyan, Moscow Times, Feb. 10) Back to top       India, Pakistan Reaffirm Opposition to Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Both India and Pakistan have reiterated their opposition to joining the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Hi Pakistan.com reported yesterday (see GSN, May 13, 2003). During an international security conference held in Munich that ended Sunday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri said his country “will not sign” the treaty. He did say, though, that Pakistan would fulfill its nonproliferation “obligations.” “It is in our own interest. We don’t want too many states with nuclear weapons technology,” Kasuri said (see related GSN story, today). Similarly, Indian national security adviser Brajesh Mishra said there is “no hope” India would sign the NPT (HiPakistan.com, Feb. 9). Back to top

Small Amount of Ricin in U.S. Senate Incident Hinders Investigation Investigators have not been able to learn much about the ricin found last week in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) because of the small amount of material recovered, several federal agencies said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 9). So far, investigators have been unable to determine the size of the ricin particles, the strength of the material or how long it laid on a letter-opening machine in Frist’s mailroom, law enforcement and military sources said. Investigators attempted to recover more of the ricin from the machine by using a forensic vacuum, but were unsuccessful, an official said (Hsu/Lengel, Washington Post, Feb. 10). If insufficient amounts of ricin are found to conduct testing, “that will probably impede the investigation somewhat,” Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said today in a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. As of now, Ridge said, “It’s an ongoing investigation,” adding, “We still have no idea who may have been responsible for it” (Joe Fiorill, GSN, Feb. 10). The Dirksen Senate Office Building, where Frist’s office is located, reopened yesterday (Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 10). Back to top       Anthrax-Tainted New Jersey Postal Facility Decontaminated, Officials Say A U.S. mail-processing facility in Hamilton, N.J., that became contaminated with anthrax during the 2001 anthrax mail attacks has been successfully decontaminated, officials said yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 9, 2003). The facility, which was decontaminated through the same chlorine dioxide fumigation process successfully used at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, is expected to reopen by the end of the year, according to U.S. Postal Service Vice President Thomas Day. He said the cost of decontaminating the Hamilton facility has been estimated at about $80 million (Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 10).   Back to top

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