U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith (shown in 2003) yesterday restated the Bush administration’s concern that terrorists could acquire weapons of mass destruction (AFP photo/Janek Skarzynski). Iraqi WMD Still a Threat, U.S. Official Says By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Preventing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction from reaching terrorists was the primary justification for the U.S. war on Iraq and those suspected weapons, still undiscovered by U.S. forces, continue to pose a potential threat, a senior U.S. defense official said yesterday. “One of the great problems with proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is … there is always the danger they could get into the hands of terrorists or other people you don’t want to acquire them. It’s a serious problem worldwide and it’s obviously a problem in Iraq,” said Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute. ..Full Story

Some U.S. Officials Suspect Syria Has Centrifuges Some Bush administration officials suspect that Syria has obtained uranium-enrichment centrifuges, although U.S. intelligence personnel are divided on the issue, Reuters reported today (see GSN, April 28)...Full Story

Democrats Call Bioshield Weak on Future Weapons, Propose New Plan By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Seeking to plug what they called a gap in President George W. Bush’s plan to strengthen U.S. biological defenses, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday introduced legislation intended to shorten the time required to develop drugs to counter new varieties of infectious agents (see GSN, April 28)...Full Story

	Wednesday, May 5, 2004

Iraqi WMD Still a Threat, U.S. Official Says By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Preventing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction from reaching terrorists was the primary justification for the U.S. war on Iraq and those suspected weapons, still undiscovered by U.S. forces, continue to pose a potential threat, a senior U.S. defense official said yesterday. “One of the great problems with proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is … there is always the danger they could get into the hands of terrorists or other people you don’t want to acquire them. It’s a serious problem worldwide and it’s obviously a problem in Iraq,” said Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute.  More than a year after the invasion, U.S.-led investigators have failed to uncover any chemical or biological weapons or evidence of active production, according to government reports (see GSN, March 31). President George W. Bush and other senior administration officials, though, have maintained that chemical and biological stores may still exist — either hidden within Iraq or smuggled out of the country. “They could still be there. They could be hidden,” Bush said during a press conference last month (see GSN, April 14). Danger Previously Conveyed Just before the March 2003 invasion, Bush used as his primary justification for war the potential that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be obtained by terrorists. “The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other,” he said in a major televised address two days before the war. In a statement to the U.N. Security Council a month before the invasion, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the Iraqi government and international inspectors had failed to account for, among other material, an estimated 30,000 chemical and biological munitions, botulinum toxin, VX nerve agent and bulk biological agents. “These are not trivial matters one can just ignore and walk away from and say, well, maybe the inspectors will find them, maybe they won’t,” he said. Powell presented evidence to the U.N. Security Council earlier that month, arguing that Iraq was concealing chemical and biological weapons from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission. “If we consider just one category of missing weaponry — 6,500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq war — UNMOVIC says the amount of chemical agent in them would be in the order of 1,000 tons,” he said. Feith’s comment yesterday, in response to a question, was unusual, as senior administration officials since the invasion have rarely discussed in public any dangers posed by the unaccounted-for weapons. Officials instead have argued that removing the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was the principal purpose of the war — to eliminate the potential that Hussein might have shared such weapons with terrorists whether or not he had them at the time. “Even knowing what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would have called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein,” Bush said during the press conference last month, calling Hussein “a dangerous man.” Feith restated that view yesterday, saying the strategic rationale for the war did not hinge on whether or not classified U.S. intelligence indicated Iraq had chemical or biological weapons stockpiles. “Rather, it depended on assessments about the nature of the Saddam Hussein’s regime and its activities.”  “The danger was too great that Saddam might give the fruits of his WMD programs to terrorists for use against the United States,” he said. Investigation Continues Some critics charge the administration no longer believes Iraq possessed chemical or biological weapons just prior to the war. “They’ve been convinced since last November that they weren’t there, that in fact they were destroyed,” said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington. Feith yesterday, though, said administration officials were certain Iraq had possessed such weapons and said that the CIA-run Iraq Survey Group was continuing its efforts to account for them. “We are still in the process of finding out exactly what the situation is, what happened with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which we know Saddam had,” he said. In October 2003 and again in March, the group reported finding no evidence of WMD stocks since it began its work in June 2003, but said it was still searching.  The group’s former chief, David Kay, this year said that after searching, and interviewing Iraqi scientists, he believes sanctions and inspections discouraged the Iraqi government from stockpiling weapons and that weapons were probably destroyed over time (see GSN, March 16). Korb said Kay told him last November that Iraq Survey Group personnel were being diverted by the administration to other intelligence-gathering work, and that the group had good reason to doubt the existence of the weapons.  “When they interrogated the prisoners, the prisoners said the whole thing was a sham, that, ‘we never reconstituted them. The whole thing was, we were bluffing,’” Korb said. The March report by Kay’s successor, Charles Duelfer, said Iraqi scientists and managers who might have unconventional weapons information were extremely reluctant to speak freely, fearing for their personal safety. Feith said yesterday the prospect of terrorists obtaining weapons of mass destruction is still the administration’s foremost security concern. “The principal strategic danger to the United States in the war on terrorism is the possibility that terrorists could get their hands on chemical, biological or nuclear weapons,” he said. Back to top       G-8 Leaders Should Emphasize Nuclear Terrorism Prevention, Former U.S. Senator Says The leaders of the Group of Eight global economic powers should place a higher emphasis on preventing nuclear terrorism when they meet next month in the United States, former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) said Monday (see GSN, April 27). When asked if nuclear terrorism was the most important issue the G-8 leaders could discuss during the planned summit, Nunn said, “ I don’t think anything else is even close.” During the 2002 G-8 summit, the leaders of the eight countries — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — pledged $20 billion over 10 years to help fund nonproliferation projects, primarily in Russia. Nunn, now head of the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, said that he would like to see next month’s meeting in Georgia include the creation of a schedule to distribute that funding. There is no sign, though, that the G-8 leaders plan to do more than offer renewed pledges, he said (Don Melvin, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 5). “It’s too easy for the G-8 to have a photo opportunity, to have a nice set of dinners, to have press conferences, make a bunch of pledges, go home and everybody forgets about it,” Nunn said. “That must not happen,” he added (International Herald Tribune, May 5). [EDITOR’S NOTE: Sam Nunn is chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.  NTI is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group.] Back to top       Work of Al-Qaeda “Chemist” Still Interests European Authorities A 29-year-old man with al-Qaeda training prepared jars full of ricin in 2001, and the containers’ current locations and numbers remain unknown, worrying European governments already facing terrorist attacks and threats, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Jan. 13). Menad Benchellali of France was known to Arab friends as “the chemist” for the poison-making skills he learned at al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, the Post reported. He is now serving time in a French prison. Last year, containers such as those Benchellali used to store ricin he manufactured in his parents’ spare bedroom in 2001 — small glass flasks and old jars of Nivea skin cream — turned up in the United Kingdom in the possession of North Africans who were allegedly planning an attack, according to investigators. At least one other jar is known to be missing, and French investigators suspect that others exist. A string of incidents in Europe over the course of the past few months could indicate a particular interest by terrorists in ricin, according to European investigators. Equipment to make ricin or traces of the deadly toxin have been found over the last 2 1/2 years during raids on suspected al-Qaeda groups in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Russia, Georgia and Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Investigators also discovered instructions on making and using ricin. Al-Qaeda's plans to acquire biological and chemical weapons have been documented by researchers. “Biological and chemical weapons are more important than ever to al-Qaeda, but the new emphasis is on the simple and the practical,” said Roland Jacquard, a French terrorism expert and author of a forthcoming book, The Third Generation of al-Qaeda. “This is the kind of terrorism that interested Benchellali’s group. If they had been allowed to continue, they probably would have succeeded,” added Jacquard. However, al-Qaeda’s ability to produce such weapons is believed to have been damaged by the loss of its base in Afghanistan in 2001, when U.S. forces destroyed two production centers that were preparing to manufacture cyanide, botulinum and salmonella toxins, and possibly anthrax, according to the Post (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, May 5). Back to top       Libya Set to Open Oil and Gas Projects to Foreign Companies Libya plans to open eight oil and gas projects to bids from foreign firms, a senior Libyan official said yesterday, 10 days after U.S. President George W. Bush eased sanctions on the North African nation that recently renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, April 28). Several U.S. oil companies have already moved to renegotiate their leases in Libya, the New York Times reported today. New projects up for auction would allow U.S. companies to catch up to their European counterparts, who moved in during the years when Americans were prohibited from doing business with Libya. “American oil companies themselves have been pushing like mad because they have been excluded for so long, and they want to get where oil is, and they’re dying to go,” said one senior European oil executive. Regarding Libya, he added, “these guys need the money and technology, which oil companies can provide, and they have a lot of untapped areas that need developing. So why waste time?” (Neela Banerjee, New York Times, May 5). Back to top       Former Iraqi Liaison to U.N. Inspectors Remains in U.S. Custody Amer al-Saadi, the former Iraqi liaison to U.N. weapons inspectors, has been in U.S. custody in Iraq for more than a year, the London Guardian reported today (see GSN, July 24, 2003). Al-Saadi, who has long claimed that Iraq destroyed its weapons of mass destruction before the war, is being held in solitary confinement in a U.S. prison at Baghdad’s international airport, and has been denied access to media such as newspapers and radio, according to the Guardian. His wife, Helma, said that she has been unable to inform him of the failure so far by coalition forces to find WMD stockpiles in Iraq. “In the monthly one-page letters I am allowed to send him through the Red Cross I cannot mention any of this news. I can only talk about family issues,” she said. Al-Saadi has been designated by the United States as an “enemy prisoner of war” and has been repeatedly interviewed by the CIA, according to the Guardian. According to one letter he wrote from prison, his interrogation is now complete and some effort has been made to secure his release, the Guardian reported. “My handlers have appealed to higher authorities for my release but it seems it’s political and God doesn’t meddle in politics,” al-Saadi wrote (Jonathan Steele, London Guardian, May 5). Back to top       Indonesia Readies Agency to Monitor WMD Materials Indonesia plans to create an agency that will monitor the use of chemical, biological and nuclear materials and examine ways of dealing with WMD attacks, Research and Technology Minister Hatta Rajasa said today, (see GSN, April 14). “Research in the life sciences industry can be misused to develop biological weapons but the same research [is] needed to develop medicine, vaccines and technology needed to deal with the threat of bioterrorism as well as natural diseases,” Rajasa said, according to Agence France-Presse. Indonesian Economics Minister Dorodjatun Kuntjoro-Jakti said he hopes a presidential decree will be issued this year forming the new agency (Agence France-Presse, May 5). Back to top

Some U.S. Officials Suspect Syria Has Centrifuges Some Bush administration officials suspect that Syria has obtained uranium-enrichment centrifuges, although U.S. intelligence personnel are divided on the issue, Reuters reported today (see GSN, April 28). Last week, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said that top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has confessed to providing nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, had “several other” customers interested in developing nuclear weapons. Western diplomats based in Vienna said Bolton was referring to Syria, according to Reuters. “Syria certainly had contact with Khan,” a non-U.S. Western diplomat in Vienna said. A U.S. official said, though, that intelligence was mixed on the issue. “Those who are pushing the idea that Syria has centrifuges have been held back by other members of the interagency community who question the veracity of the claim,” the official said. Syria denied allegations that it is working to develop nuclear weapons, according to Reuters. “This can only be part of a campaign of absolutely baseless accusations against Syria,” a Syrian official said. “Syria has no program to acquire ... nuclear weapons,” the official said (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters/Washington Post, May 5). Back to top

Democrats Call Bioshield Weak on Future Weapons, Propose New Plan By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Seeking to plug what they called a gap in President George W. Bush’s plan to strengthen U.S. biological defenses, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday introduced legislation intended to shorten the time required to develop drugs to counter new varieties of infectious agents (see GSN, April 28). Led by Jim Turner of Texas, the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, the lawmakers emphasized the danger that could be posed by new pathogens resulting from biotechnological advances. “The RAPID [Rapid Pathogen Identification to Delivery] Cures Act is a wake-up call for America. … The question is, will the president lead?” Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, also a Texas Democrat, said at a ceremony launching the bill and a related report by Turner. “We went many miles to seek out weapons of mass destruction. We looked far and wide, yet here we are in a nation where the wake-up call has not yet been heeded,” Jackson Lee said. According to the report, Bush’s Project Bioshield, whose legislative incarnation has passed the House but not the Senate, would not promote development of “protections for tomorrow’s biological weapons threat.” “Bioshield is targeted at addressing classical agents, not the laboratory-altered pathogens of the future. In addition, it relies on the current process of drug and vaccine development, which takes an average of 14 years before a new medicine is available. As a consequence, our protective biodefenses are essentially static and unmoving in the face of a threat that is highly variable and unpredictable. As illustrated by SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome], we lack effective countermeasures and a nimble way to develop and field them,” Turner wrote. As a result, Turner introduced the RAPID Cures Act, intended primarily to promote technological advances that would speed development of countermeasures against new threats. The bill envisions technological measures such as rapid screening of existing drug libraries during an outbreak, as well as efforts to overcome what the Democrats called pharmaceutical companies’ current preference for developing lucrative “lifestyle drugs” ― medicines that combat impotence or baldness, for example ― rather than antibiotics and vaccines. At yesterday’s gathering, Turner claimed bipartisan support for the measure in the homeland panel and the Armed Services Committee. Lee and Delegate Donna Christensen (D-V.I.), who is a medical doctor and former public health official, joined Turner at the event. According to the text of the bill, it typically costs $800 million and takes at least 10 years to discover, develop and secure approval of a new drug. Although Congress has approved shortened testing and approval processes in emergencies, the bill indicates, “it will likely still take years for even an experimental treatment or vaccine to become available.” “There is no coordinated, focused research and development program or overall national strategy to achieve significant and dramatic reductions in the time frame from the identification of a pathogen to the development and emergency approval for human use of reasonably safe and effective new biodefense medical countermeasures against a previously unknown or engineered pathogen or toxin,” the bill reads. “Even utilizing existing technologies,” it continues, “there is no organized capability in the public or private sector to rapidly screen drug candidates for potential therapeutic activity against pathogens; develop and manufacture drug, biological or medical device products; or test already approved treatments for efficacy against a previously unknown or engineered biological threat that puts our deployed armed forces or the homeland at risk.” Biosecurity expert Brad Smith called Project Bioshield an “important first step” toward improving U.S. defenses but echoed Turner’s view that the administration plan would not promote development of new countermeasures the United States is likely to need. Smith, a fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Biosecurity, stressed the need for new research tools, a different approach to science and technology and possibly changes in business development processes. The U.S. drug development pipeline, he said, is short on antibiotics, antivirals, vaccines and rapid diagnostics, while the potential of existing-drug libraries at the National Institutes of Health and elsewhere is being insufficiently tapped. “The kind of approach that is advocated in the bill introduced by Representative Turner is on the right path,” Smith said. “If you have something like SARS sweeping across the country,” he said, “you don’t necessarily have 10 to 15 years” to develop a new drug. Asked about the potential for drastically shorter “bug-to-drug” time frames, he said, “The important thing is that, right now, we need to look at things that probably do seem amazing.” A bioterrorism strategy introduced last week by the heads of the Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Defense departments indicates the Bush administration is working to accelerate the development of countermeasures. The abridged, public version of the document does not specifically address the concerns raised by the Homeland Security Committee Democrats. “The proliferation of biological materials, technologies and expertise,” the administration said in the document, “increases the potential to evade our existing medical and nonmedical countermeasures. To address this challenge, we are taking advantage of these same technologies to ensure that we can anticipate and prepare for the emergence of this threat. We are building the flexibility and speed to characterize such agents, assess existing defenses and rapidly develop safe and effective countermeasures.” By passing Turner’s bill, Congress would declare a U.S. policy of promoting technological advances to reduce countermeasure development time and would amend laws including the Homeland Security Act to reflect the policy. Congress would authorize $10 million to implement the plan in fiscal 2005 and would require the three department heads to submit a strategy for achieving the bill’s goals within six months of passage. The Turner bill would also require Health and Human Services within six months to set up a system for rapidly establishing programs to study the safety and effectiveness of new and existing drugs that could be used against new threats. Back to top       U.S. Funds Computer Modeling of Disease Outbreaks By Chris Schneidmiller Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The United States plans to spend more than $28 million in hopes that computer bytes and scientists’ brains hold strategies for controlling an influenza epidemic or bioterror attack, the National Institutes of Health announced yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 13). The NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences intends to distribute the funds over five years to four teams of scientists to prepare computer models on the spread of infectious diseases. The plan calls for researchers in the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study [MIDAS] to devise models of communities of varying size, then simulate the effects of different outbreaks and the potential for success of response options, said Eric Jakobsson, NIGMS bioinformatics and computational biology director. The models would eventually help guide policy-makers to prepare for emergencies, and offer “on-the-fly guidance on what are the best options for emergency response,” Jakobsson said today in an interview with Global Security Newswire. “One thing that’s really important for people to understand is that these models … will never provide 100 percent accuracy of whatever is going to happen in any potential case,” he said. However, “as the models get better and better and better, they can give policy-makers a much more realistic version of scenarios than would exist without the models,” Jakobsson said. Professionals from such disciplines as mathematics, computer science, epidemiology, genetics and public health are set work on the project. Three teams are scheduled to receive $9.5 million to prepare computer models, while the fourth group has $18.8 million to develop a database organizing the other scientists’ work and to prepare “user-friendly computer modeling tools” for government officials and others to simulate outbreaks and response plans, according to an NIH release. Grant recipients include: *         A group of researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Brookings Institution, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the University of Maryland and London’s Imperial College. The team plans to create “highly visual, user-friendly computational analyses of disease outbreaks,” based on factors such as incubation period, transmission rate, weather and social networks, the press release states. Researchers also intend to evaluate the effectiveness within the models of outbreak control methods such as vaccination and quarantine on smallpox, dengue fever, West Nile virus and other infectious diseases; *         A team at Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico that plans to examine how different social networks and populations affect the spread or containment of an outbreak in a theoretical urban area of 1.5 million people; *         An Emory University group that intends to model outbreaks in hypothetical U.S. towns and cities with populations ranging from 2,000 to 48,000. Scientists at the Georgia school plan to examine the effectiveness of various control methods on smallpox, SARS, pandemic influenza and other possible biological agents or diseases, the press release states; and *         An effort led by Research Triangle Institute International to compile the collected information and develop tools for the scientific community, policy-makers and medical personnel to use the computer models. Even while the models are being developed, researchers would be able to work on specific scenarios presented by agencies such as the Homeland Security Department, Jakobsson said. Epidemiologists not affiliated with the project would likely have access to the models, which could also be used for training public health students, he said. It is not yet known if the MIDAS program will receive funding for further modeling projects, Jakobsson said. His hope is that this program will be the “catalyst” for efforts to create integrated access to all information for responding to natural or terrorist-related outbreaks. That information now is maintained in multiple areas with different formats and levels of access, Jakobsson said. “This is a start. This is a prototype project,” he said. Back to top

Texas Man Gets 11 Years for Cyanide Possession The Texas man who pleaded guilty to possessing a dangerous chemical weapon was sentenced yesterday to more than 11 years in prison, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, May 4). Last year, federal agents raided East Texas storage units rented by William Krar and his common-law wife, Judith Bruey. Agents found a massive stockpile of weapons and about 2 pounds of sodium cyanide. There was enough of the chemical to kill everyone gathered in a space as large as a high school basketball arena, AP reported. “While we do not know the specific plans, and what the specific plans were for these particular weapons and chemicals, we do know that those plans were thwarted, that a potential tragedy was prevented and an existing threat was neutralized,” U.S. Attorney Matthew Orwig said. Bruey, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess illegal weapons, was sentenced to about five years in prison, AP reported. Before he was sentenced, Krar said he never intended to hurt anyone. “In my 63 years, I’ve never been in serious trouble. For the record, I’m [not] a terrorist or a separatist. I’ve never desired to hurt anyone or the country that I love,” he said (Associated Press/CNN.com, May 4). Back to top

U.S. Amends Missile Export Rules By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The U.S. Commerce Department has amended U.S. national export control regulations to implement decisions made during last year’s plenary meeting of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), according to a notice published yesterday in the Federal Register (see GSN, Sept. 30, 2003). Changes made by the department’s Bureau of Industry and Security went into effect yesterday. In addition to amending the language of some current control list entries, the bureau also added Inhibited Red Fumic Nitric Acid, used in missile fuel, to the list of items that must be licensed for export. The control regime seeks to restrict the spread of critical missile technologies by establishing common export controls among its 33 members. Under the agreement, exports of missile systems with a range of more than 300 kilometers and capable of carrying a payload of more than 500 kilograms are subject to a strong presumption of denial.  During the 2003 meeting, MTCR members agreed to several measures intended to strengthen the effectiveness of the regime, such as the inclusion of “catch-all” provisions to its guidelines and to members’ national export control regulations. Such provisions are intended to aid countries in restricting exports of items not specifically controlled by the regime or national regulations when destined for missile programs. Regime members also agreed last year to restrict “intangible” technology transfers, such as the electronic transmission of missile designs. The regime has come under recent criticism, though, from both within and outside the United States. During a nonproliferation conference held late last month in Moscow, former Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said the agreement lacked enough members and verification measures to make it effective in preventing missile proliferation (see GSN, April 26). In February, a report prepared by the U.S. General Accounting Office warned that regime members had not reached consensus on restricting exports related to cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, which some have warned could be used by terrorists seeking to launch a WMD attack (see GSN, Feb. 26). Back to top

Japan Looks to Revise Arms Export Ban to Enable Cooperation With U.S. on Missile Defense Japan is set to alter its prohibitions on arms sales in light of an official decision to join a U.S.-led venture to develop a missile defense system, the Asahi Shimbun reported today (see GSN, April 23). Under the present policy, Japan does not export weapons to communist countries, those countries named in a U.N. resolution banning arms sales or countries involved or likely to be involved in international conflict. According to officials in Tokyo, involvement in the U.S. missile defense effort means Japan is likely to provide covers for the tips of antiballistic missiles and other parts. Officials added that decisions must be made on altering the export prohibition to make exceptions for certain specific components, all missile-defense related technologies or a wider definition of bilateral security (Asahi Shimbun, May 5).   Back to top

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