U.S. President George W. Bush acknowledged yesterday that no WMD stockpiles have been found in Iraq (AFP photo/Brendan Smialowski). Bush Defends Decision to Invade Iraq Despite Absence of WMD Following reports that the search for prewar Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction has ended, U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday defended his decision to go to war even though no WMD stockpiles were ever found (see GSN, Jan. 12)...Full Story

U.S. Army to Fund Vaccine Healthcare Centers By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army will continue to fund this year a $5.7 million biodefense-vaccine treatment and research centers for which no money had been budgeted, a spokesman said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 4)...Full Story

Business Helps U.S. Prevent “Sum of All Fears,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection Chief Says By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner today asked business leaders involved in seaborne trade for more input into a post-9/11 U.S. cargo security plan (see GSN, Dec. 17, 2004)...Full Story

	Thursday, January 13, 2005

Bush Defends Decision to Invade Iraq Despite Absence of WMD Following reports that the search for prewar Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction has ended, U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday defended his decision to go to war even though no WMD stockpiles were ever found (see GSN, Jan. 12). “I felt like we’d find weapons of mass destruction — like many here in the United States, many around the world,” Bush said in an interview with ABC News set to be broadcast tomorrow night. “We need to find out what went wrong in the intelligence-gathering. ... [Former Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] was dangerous and the world is safer without him in power.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, however, that Bush “needs to explain to the American people why he was so wrong, for so long, about the reasons for war” (Katherine Pfleger Shrader, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 13). Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), though, also defended the decision to invade Iraq, according to Agence France-Presse. “The fact that we didn’t discover large stocks of weapons of mass destruction doesn’t mean that Saddam Hussein didn’t have them,” Lieberman said in an interview with Fox News (Agence France-Presse/TurkishPress.com, Jan. 12). Australian opposition lawmakers today called on Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to admit the government was misled by intelligence on whether prewar Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, the Associated Press reported. “Nearly two years after the Howard government took Australia to war in Iraq we are now authoritatively told that the reason for going to war was simply not true,” said Labor Party spokesman Kevin Rudd. “Neither Mr. Howard nor Mr. Downer have had the decency to admit that Australia was misled on the reasons for going to war in the first place,” he said (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 13). Meanwhile, the U.S. presidential commission examining WMD-related intelligence failures has fired an FBI agent for wrongly passing a CIA report on to the bureau, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, Dec. 6, 2004). The commission fired the agent several weeks ago after she removed a highly classified CIA report that criticized the FBI for its WMD-related intelligence gathering, according to the Times. Soon afterward, the FBI criticized the report, triggering the investigation, according to officials. Officials close to the commission saw the incident as an attempt by the FBI to influence the commission’s work, the Times reported (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, Jan. 13). Back to top       Business Helps U.S. Prevent “Sum of All Fears,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection Chief Says By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner today asked business leaders involved in seaborne trade for more input into a post-9/11 U.S. cargo security plan (see GSN, Dec. 17, 2004). Opening a security symposium sponsored by his agency, Bonner called on gathered industry representatives to continue discussing ways to protect sea commerce against threats such as “the nuke in the box.” The prospect of a nuclear device hidden in a shipping container, he said, is “the sum of all fears” (see GSN, Jan. 12). Many business leaders in attendance at today’s symposium were also present at a related meeting last month, where they contributed to the current draft of the Homeland Security Department’s cargo plan. Bonner said the greatest sea-related threat to global security is the potential for al-Qaeda to transport weapons or operatives in shipping containers. With roughly 9 million containers entering U.S. ports each year, he said, the United States must continue to expand its efforts to head off potentially dangerous cargo before it reaches U.S. shores. “The cargo container is the potential Trojan horse of the 21st century,” Bonner said. “A weapon could be concealed inside a container, or a container could literally be made into a weapon.” In addition to the nuclear threat, Bonner expressed concern about the potential that a radiological weapon inside a container could “stop global trade in its tracks, unless we have a maritime security strategy that can detect and deter against such an attack.” He said the United States and other countries have already begun to implement such a strategy through initiatives such as a requirement for submission of advance information on U.S.-bound cargo before it is loaded at foreign ports and an automated system that evaluates security risks for U.S.-bound containers. Other elements of the strategy cited by Bonner include the Container Security Initiative, in which U.S. inspectors screen U.S.-bound shipments at foreign ports, and the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, in which companies implement security standards defined by the Customs and Border Protection in exchange for faster processing at U.S. ports. Among needed future initiatives in cargo security, Bonner mentioned the use of “smart boxes,” shipping containers that are better sealed than those now in use and which would show obvious evidence of any tampering. He also recommended that U.S.-style cargo security measures be applied to all cargo traveling anywhere in the world, so that shippers have a single set of standards worldwide. Back to top       South Korean Foreign Minister to Visit Libya South Korean Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to travel to Libya later this month in an effort to obtain Tripoli’s help in resolving the North Korea nuclear crisis, the Korea Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 6). Ban is set to visit Libya from Jan. 25-27 as part of a two-week trip to four African countries scheduled to begin Sunday, according to the Times. While the focus of the trip is expected to be on economic issues, Ban may also meet with Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qadhafi (Ryu Jin, Korea Times, Jan. 13). Back to top       British Foreign Intelligence Agency to Appoint New Official to Oversee Assessments The British intelligence service MI6 plans to appoint a new senior official to evaluate the quality of its intelligence, a British Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 13, 2004). The decision follows a report released last year that found MI6’s intelligence on prewar Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts relied on poor sources, according to the Associated Press. In response, MI6 plans to appoint a new head of reporting, known as R, to oversee intelligence assessments and to improve the training of analytical officers, the Foreign Office spokesman said. The intelligence agency also plans to alter its operating procedure so that when one officer collects intelligence, a second official will evaluate the information, the spokesman said (Michael McDonough, Associated Press, Jan. 12). Back to top

Ukraine Rejects IAEA Additional Protocol The Ukrainian parliament yesterday refused to ratify the Additional Protocol to the country’s International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreement, according to ITAR-Tass (see GSN, Nov. 5, 2004). The Additional Protocol would have allowed the agency to conduct more intrusive monitoring of Ukrainian nuclear activities.  Ukrainian lawmakers said they refused to ratify the agreement because they believed Western countries have failed to abide by their international obligations following the shutdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, ITAR-Tass reported (ITAR-Tass, Jan. 12). Back to top

U.S. Army to Fund Vaccine Healthcare Centers By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army will continue to fund this year a $5.7 million biodefense-vaccine treatment and research centers for which no money had been budgeted, a spokesman said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 4). Full operation in fiscal 2005 of the Vaccine Healthcare Center, located at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., had appeared in question following decisions last year by the Army not to budget for it and congressional leaders not to specifically fund the program. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) over the past year had raised concerns about the future of the program, which specializes in treating and investigating uncommon, severe side effects of anthrax, smallpox and other biological defense vaccines. According to a statement from Walter Reed released to Global Security Newswire yesterday, however, “The U.S. Army Medical Command, through its North Atlantic Regional Medical Command, will underwrite the $5.7 million operation.” The Medical Command will do so, it said, “in anticipation of funding decisions for Fiscal Year 2006 and beyond.” Also, “A majority of that FY 05 amount will be credited against the Global War on Terrorism,” it said.  No indication was given about whether the program would be included in the Bush administration’s fiscal 2006 budget, which is expected to be presented to Congress later this winter. “As a matter of policy, we don’t release the dollar figures for budgets until those dollars have been appropriated — that is, until Congress has passed the budget,” according to the statement. Vaccine Healthcare Center officials have applied to include their program in the Army’s next long-term budget plan beginning in fiscal 2006. The center hopes to open, beginning in fiscal 2007, satellite treatment centers in Europe, Hawaii, on the West Coast, and in the northern Midwest — in addition to three already operating in the continental United States. However, present funding levels are not sufficient to meet the center’s current workload, center officials have said. Back to top       Genetic Diversity Protection, Global Disease Surveillance Would Cut Bioterror Risk, Institute Says By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The world’s countries must improve public health systems and resist factory-farming excesses in order to better protect against bioterrorism, a liberal research institute says in a report released here yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 23, 2004). Countries can reduce the risk of bioterrorism by taking steps that also benefit the environment, animals and the world’s poor, according to the Worldwatch Institute’s annual State of the World report. Worldwatch researchers Danielle Nierenberg and Brian Halweil write in a chapter of the report on food security that many aspects of large-scale, modern farming make the world’s food supply more vulnerable to both malicious and unintentional disease outbreaks. The researchers say the outbreak risk is increased by genetic homogeneity among livestock and crops, which reduces the chance that some members of a species would resist a spreading pathogen. In Europe, about three-fourths of livestock breeds of a century ago are now either extinct or endangered, according to data cited by Worldwatch. “In this era of ‘terror alerts,’ farms that forsake genetic diversity have in effect shed their battle armor,” Nierenberg and Halweil write. The researchers also point to poor living conditions for livestock on factory farms — which are both crowded, easing the spread of disease, and massive, making it more difficult to monitor all the animals — and the frequent and rapid transport of livestock, which multiplies the number of potentially vulnerable locations and can spread diseases quickly over large areas. “There are numerous opportunities for either an unintentional outbreak of disease [or] for terrorists to introduce foot-and-mouth disease quite easily on one of these farms, or some other method of biowarfare that we might not even know about,” Nierenberg said this week in an interview. To shore up defenses, the researchers recommend increasing people’s use of local farm products, improving livestock living conditions and safeguarding genetic diversity through mechanisms such as community seed banks and the use of native livestock species. “Terrorists are pretty smart. They’ve done some pretty horrific things,” Nierenberg said. “I think that they choose the path of least resistance, and our food system is so vulnerable that it would be silly if they weren’t planning something against it.” In a chapter of the report on infectious diseases in humans, researcher Dennis Pirages argues for improvements in public health that he says would decrease the risk posed by a bioterrorist attack. Pirages recommends increasing surveillance of outbreaks around the world, doing more to anticipate future outbreaks, stepping up health aid to the world’s poor, increasing government transparency about disease outbreaks — China’s initial silence about SARS, for example, has been widely seen as facilitating the spread of the disease — and shifting military spending to public health (see GSN, Nov. 18, 2004). “The good news is that HIV/AIDS, SARS and the threat of bioterrorism have alerted policy-makers to the serious human security issues posed by infectious disease,” Pirages writes. “The first step in responding to the increasing disease threat has been to use enhanced telecommunications capabilities to create more effective surveillance networks and to apply new medical expertise and technologies to the task of rapidly identifying potentially lethal diseases, but much more remains to be done.” Back to top       Researchers Develop Fast-Acting Anthrax Vaccine Researchers inoculated mice against anthrax in just 12 hours using gene transfer technology, according to an article in next month’s issue of Molecular Therapy, the journal of the American Society of Gene Therapy (see GSN, Jan. 10). Gene transfer has been used to deliver antibodies in other research, but “to our knowledge this is the first time it’s been used as a strategy against bioterrorism,” said Ronald Crystal, chairman of the Department of Genetic Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. Fast-acting vaccines are likely to be useful in a bioterror attack, Crystal added. The existing anthrax vaccine requires six injections over an 18-month period. “This research is important, because in the event of an attack, it may not be known whether another attack is coming — or who might be affected. In that case, you want immunity to be built up in key populations as quickly as possible,” Crystal said.(EurekAlert!, Jan. 12). Back to top       Researchers Map Genome of Rabbit Fever Bacterium Researchers have charted the complete DNA sequence of the bacterium Francisella tularensis, the pathogen which causes rabbit fever, a potential biological weapon, a Swedish university announced today in a press statement (see GSN, Jan. 12). An international consortium that includes researchers at the Swedish Defense Research Agency FOI NBC Defense, Umea University and others is expected to publish its results in the journal Nature Genetics. The pathogen genome consists of nearly 1.9 billion base pairs, and the scientists have managed to locate 1,804 genes, according to the press statement. Their work could help scientists to develop vaccines and other measures against the pathogen (Umea University release, Jan. 13). Back to top

Albania Conducted Domestic Chemical Weapons Production Program, Former Army Officer Claims A former Albanian army officer has claimed that Albania once conducted a program to produce chemical weapons agents, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 10). Former Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu ordered the domestic program to develop chemicals for bombs and artillery, according to the Albanian newspaper Gazeta Shqiptare. The officer also claimed that Albania received mustard gas, lewisite and adamsite from the Soviet Union until 1960, when diplomatic ties ended, and then from China, AP reported. The Albanian Defense Ministry could not confirm the allegation, saying that the source of the country’s small stockpile of Cold War-era weapons remains unknown, according to AP. “We do not know where they came from,” Deputy Defense Minister Besnik Bare said. “There exists no documentation on them” (Llazar Semini, Associated Press, Jan. 12). Back to top       Newport Official Wants to Begin Neutralizing VX A U.S. Army official at the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana is attempting to persuade the Army leadership to allow the neutralization of VX nerve agent to proceed, despite the lack of a specific plan to dispose of wastewater from the process, the Terra Haute Tribune-Star reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 17, 2004). “Let’s destroy the agent and focus on the waste secondarily,” Col. Jesse Barber, Army Chemical Materials Agency program manager for alternative technologies and approaches, said Tuesday. “I won’t back off on that.  I still think continued storage of agent VX is the greatest threat.” Barber added that he plans to discuss the possibility with Army officials next week. Elimination of 1,269 tons of VX is expected to produce 4 million gallons of hydrolysate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is studying a plan to transport the hydrolysate from Newport to New Jersey for treatment, according to the Tribune-Star. Study results are expected no later than mid-February, Barber said. All but 10 of the 48 containers needed to temporarily store the wastewater are already at the depot, Barber said. The others would be “relatively easy to get,” he said. The containers can be shipped by truck to other sites, the Tribune-Star reported. The Army would consider disposing of the hydrolysate at Newport — through biodegradation, chemical treatment or incineration — if it cannot ship the waste to a commercial treatment plant, Barber said (Patricia Pastore, Tribune-Star, Jan. 13). Back to top       Work Resumes at Anniston Incinerator Chemical weapons destruction resumed at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Alabama within two days a small fire last week at the site, the Anniston Star reported (see GSN, Jan. 7). The Alabama Department of Environmental Management on Friday evening declared that work could resume. “We’re very thankful ADEM worked quickly to get us back to operations,” said Donavan Mager, spokesman for Westinghouse Anniston, the contractor in charge of operations at the facility. The plant last weekend destroyed 243 8-inch projectiles and 486 gallons of liquid sarin, U.S. Army officials said. The investigation continues into how two burlap bags caught fire early Jan. 6 in an area used to process explosives, according to the Star. No weapons or explosives were in the space at that time (Rob Jordan, Anniston Star, Jan. 11). Back to top

Missile Defense “Glitch” Will Not Set Back Future Testing, Air Force Official Says The “minor glitch” that derailed last month’s flight test of a U.S. missile interceptor is not expected to delay future testing of the Defense Department’s planned national missile defense system, a senior Air Force official said yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2004). An automated prelaunch check of communications between the interceptor and the main flight-control computer detected too many missed messages, and the system shut down automatically, according to design, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency.  While the target missile was fired in Alaska, the interceptor never left its silo at the Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean. Obering said the tolerance level for missed messages was set too low. “We kind of did this to ourselves,” he said. “This has been nothing more than a minor glitch,” he added. “Statistically, it’s a very rare occurrence and most likely would not happen again.” The failed Dec. 15 test is scheduled to be retried in mid-February, said Obering, adding that tests scheduled for April, July and September would also proceed (Robert Burns, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 12). Meanwhile, three rocket motors intended for use in a target missile during the next test arrived Tuesday at the Air Force base in Kodiak, Alaska, AP reported (Associated Press/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Jan. 12). Back to top       Pentagon Scraps Study of Nuclear Interceptors The U.S. Army’s Lethality Division has abandoned a December draft proposal calling for the study of using nuclear-armed missile interceptors, the Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct.22, 2002). “The draft is being revised,” said John Cummings, spokesman for the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala. “It was a mistake.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 asked the Defense Science Board to examine the idea as it explored new defense strategies, a department spokesman said then. Congress in 2003 banned research on and development of nuclear-armed missile interceptors, according to the Daily-Miner. Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency in Arlington, Va., explained the Dec. 10 proposal by saying that the Lethality Division was asked to come up with advanced technology that might be applicable in the future for missile defense. “That’s one of the things people thought of — should we consider nuclear weapons?” he said, adding that the Missile Defense Agency abandoned the idea long ago. “We committed to hit-to-kill a number of years ago,” Lehner said. “No one is certain what you would do to the electrical infrastructure of the U.S. by exploding a nuclear weapon in space.” The amount of debris and radiation from a nuclear weapon would also make it difficult to determine whether the target had been destroyed, Lehner said (Sam Bishop, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Jan. 12).     Back to top

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