U.S. Response I:  Energy Department Lifts Moratorium on Nuclear Waste Shipments

The U.S. Energy Department has a lifted a moratorium on nuclear waste shipments that was imposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, Feb. 26).

Energy officials would not provide details about when shipments occur or what routes are used, except to local officials participating in shipment security arrangements.  New security requirements were imposed last year on nuclear plants shipping waste, including increased communications and shipment escort and monitoring provisions, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Sue Gagner said (Tom Ramstack, Washington Times, July 25).

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U.S. Response II:  Lawmakers Offer New Proposal to Replace House Members Lost in Future Attack

Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday introduced a bill calling for rapid elections if a catastrophic attack on the U.S. Capitol killed more than 100 House members, according to the Washington Times (see GSN, June 4).

Under the bill, state political parties would have 21 days to choose nominees and hold a special election after the House speaker announced to loss of 100 or more representatives.  The bill was offered as an alternative to a recent think-tank proposal to modify the U.S. Constitution by allowing state governors to appoint House members after a catastrophic attack.  That proposal was made last month by a joint American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Institution commission.

“We alone, of all federal officials, have been directly elected by the people, never appointed,” said Representative David Dreier (R-Calif.), who helped draft the bill.  “I believe the Framers did this for a reason. ... We cannot let terrorists force us to change the structure they created for us,” he said (Amy Fagan, Washington Times, July 25). 

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Iraq I:  Niger Envoy Accuses White House of Leaking Wife’s CIA Status

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who traveled to Niger last year to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium there, accused the White House earlier this week of trying to intimidate him by leaking his wife’s name and the fact that she is a CIA operative (see GSN, July 24).

In a July 14 column published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Robert Novak specifically named Wilson’s wife and the fact that she was a CIA operative on weapons of mass destruction, citing “two senior administration officials” as his sources.  In a column published about a week earlier in the New York Times, Wilson had described his February 2002 visit to Niger as a CIA envoy to investigate reports that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium there, during which he determined that it was unlikely that such a transaction had occurred  — helping to discredit one of the Bush administration’s pieces of evidence of Iraq’s renewed nuclear weapons efforts (see GSN, July 7).

Wilson attacked the Bush administration Tuesday, saying the leak damaged both his wife’s career and national security.

“It would be damaging not just to her career since she’s been married to me, but since they mentioned her by her maiden name, to her entire career,” Wilson said on NBC’s Today.  “So it would be her entire network that she may have established, any operations, any programs or projects she was working on.  It’s a breach of national security,” Wilson said.

While the leak had little direct impact on intimidating him, Wilson said it could have a chilling effect.

“What I’m most worried about and most concerned about is that it is probably intended to intimidate others and keep them from stepping forward,” Wilson said.

However, White House press secretary Scott McClellan yesterday denied any intentional attempt by the White House to discredit or intimidate Wilson.

“No one would be authorized to do that within this White House,” McClellan said during a White House press briefing.  “That is simply not the way we operate, and that’s simply not the way the president operates,” he added. 

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, told Global Security Newswire yesterday that the leak lends itself to an interpretation of a White House attempt at either retribution or intimidation.

“At a minimum,” the leak reflected poor judgment, Aftergood said.  “At a maximum, it’s a criminal act,” he said.

According to Aftergood, the leak could be a violation of the Intelligence Identity Protection Act of 1982, which prohibits the disclosure of names and identities of intelligence agents working undercover.  The law carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison for the disclosure of the names and identities of intelligence agents by those who have access to classified information that identifies covert agents; and up to five years in prison for disclosure of information by those who learn the identities of covert agents through access to classified information.

The law also carries a penalty of up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine for the disclosure of information as part of a “pattern” to damage the United States.  This section, however, may not apply to a one-time act, Aftergood said.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, told GSN yesterday that it would be up to a court to decide whether or not the law was applicable to the leak, as well as which section and resultant penalties would apply.  “That’s what we have trial by jury in this country to find out,” he said.

Official investigations into media leaks, however, “never go anywhere,” Pike said.

Pike also played down the significance of the leaked information, describing it as “little tidbits that tumble out” during conversations between officials and reporters.  Media reports would be “pretty boring” if it were not for such leaks of classified information, Pike said.

McClellan indicated yesterday the White House would not be pursuing an investigation into whether there was a deliberate intimidation attempt.

“If I thought that there was any reason to believe that something like that had happened, I would … try to get to the bottom,” McClellan said.  “I have no reason to believe that there is any truth that that has happened,” he said.

U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on FBI Director Robert Mueller yesterday to begin an investigation into whether Bush administration officials violated U.S. law by leaking information about Wilson’s wife.

Schumer condemned the leak yesterday.

“This is one of the most reckless and nasty things I’ve seen in all my years of government,” Schumer said in a press statement.  “Leaking the name of a CIA agent is tantamount to putting a gun to that agent’s head.  It compromises her safety and the safety of her loved ones, not to mention those in her network and other operatives she may have dealt with.  On top of that, the officials who have done it may have also seriously jeopardized the national security of this nation,” he said.

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Iraq II:  Ignoring Iraqi Threat Would Have Been “Irresponsible,” Cheney Says

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday defended the Bush administration’s decision to go to war with Iraq, saying it would have been “irresponsible in the extreme” to ignore the threat that was posed by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (see GSN, July 24).

“The regime of Saddam Hussein is gone forever.  And at a safe remove from the danger, some are now trying to cast doubt upon the decision to liberate Iraq,” Cheney said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute.  “The ability to criticize is one of the great strengths of our democracy.  But those who do so have an obligation to answer this question.  How can any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat?” he said.

To illustrate the threat posed by Iraq, Cheney read from portions of an October 2002 CIA national intelligence estimate on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, sections of which were declassified last week.  U.S. intelligence agencies had “high confidence” that Iraq was continuing its WMD efforts, Cheney said.

“This warning could hardly be more blunt or disturbing,” Cheney said.  “To shrug off such a warning would have been irresponsible in the extreme, and so President [George W.] Bush faced that information and acted to remove the danger,” he said.

Cheney did not read, however, the sections of the NIE that cast doubt on the now-disputed claims that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Africa, according to Reuters (Adam Entous, Reuters, July 25).

Cheney’s speech yesterday was intended to help counter increased questions as to how the African uranium claim came to be included in Bush’s State of the Union address, Bush administration officials said.  One official described the speech as an attempt at “steadying the ship.”

The speech was also meant to act as a warning to congressional Democrats that the White House plans to combat criticism over its Iraq policy, aides to Bush said.  Bush plans to give a major speech next month to update progress in the war on terrorism, aides said (Mike Allen, Washington Post, July 25).

Failed WMD Hunt Could Illustrate “Massive” Intelligence Failure

Meanwhile, former CIA Director John Deutch told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday that a failure by coalition forces to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would illustrate “an intelligence failure … of massive proportions.”

“It means that … leaders of the American public based (their) support for the most serious foreign policy judgments — the decision to go to war — on an incorrect intelligence judgment,” Deutch said.

Deutch also warned the committee that the failure to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could have an impact on future U.S. efforts to combat proliferation.

“The next time military intervention is judged necessary to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction — for example in North Korea — there will be skepticism about the quality of our intelligence,” Deutch said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, July 25).

No Evidence of Al-Qaeda Link, Former CIA Official Says

There is probably no evidence of connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, as the Bush administration claimed prior to the war, because coalition forces have had ample time to discover if such links existed and have so far reported nothing, according to a former CIA official.

U.S. forces have had time to interrogate captured Iraqi intelligence officials and to examine recovered intelligence documents, and would have publicly released by now any information demonstrating a link between Hussein and terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, said former CIA official Ray McGovern.

The U.S. evidence of purported connections between Hussein and bin Laden connections was “fragmentary and strained beyond credibility,” McGovern said.  He added that the White House had already decided that such a connection existed and “what was needed was evidence.”

White House press secretary Scott McClellan defended yesterday the White House allegations, saying that up until the start of the war Iraq “sheltered and supported terrorists … who directed violence against Iran, Israel and Western governments” (Carlos Hamann, Agence France-Presse, July 25).

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U.S.-Russia:  Washington Allows Plutonium Disposition Agreement to Lapse

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — As expected, a 1998 U.S.-Russian agreement on plutonium disposition was allowed to expire this week because of U.S. concerns that the agreement had insufficient liability protections for U.S. officials and contractors, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration confirmed today.

Known as the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement, the measure provides for scientific and technical cooperation between the United States and Russia on the withdrawal of plutonium from nuclear military programs.

“I cannot understand why the administration would let key aspects of the program to get rid of so much weapons-grade plutonium lapse.  Keeping fissile material out of the hands of terrorists seems a critical step in the war on terrorism,” U.S. Representative Ellen Tauscher, who has been a vocal proponent of maintaining such programs, said today.

The expiration follows the announcement Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Department that another 1998 threat-reduction measure, the Nuclear Cities Initiative agreement, will be allowed to expire in September unless Russia agrees to changes in liability provisions.  Tauscher and five other Democrats wrote the Bush administration this week to protest the move (see GSN, July 23).

The source of U.S. insistence on the liability language changes is the State Department, according to NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes.

“We just want to proceed with our programs, essentially, and we don’t want to get bogged down in these legal issues, but … the State Department is insisting on some legal changes on the liability issues,” Wilkes said.

Wilkes said no new projects could be started under the plutonium agreement now that it has lapsed, but he added that “there’s a lot that’s already in the pipeline that’s been planned.” 

“This should have no short-term effect, because we fully support the program, and we have not stopped. … We are continuing work,” he added.

In any case, he added, “We anticipate this issue is going to be resolved.”

The Washington director of the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Leonard Spector, called it “unfortunate that there is this perturbation in the plutonium disposition program” but added that it “appears that, in this particular case, the impact of the agreement lapsing will not have a significant impact overall.”

The Energy Department indicated Tuesday that it expects to reinstate the NCI agreement once the liability concerns are resolved, and Wilkes said the same sequence of events is possible in the case of the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement.

Some aspects of the plutonium agreement are also covered by the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition agreement, and experts have said activities carried out under the auspices of the 1998 agreement could conceivably continue under the 2000 text.  Wilkes said today, “There’s maneuverability room, I guess, between the two agreements.”

A liability protocol to the 2000 agreement has yet to be negotiated.  The Bush administration has been seeking a single liability standard for all threat reduction programs that would be similar to the one established in the 1992 Cooperative Threat Reduction “umbrella agreement.” The provisions in that agreement assign Russia near-total liability for damages and injuries that occur in the context of activities carried out under the agreement.

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CTBT:  Diplomats Push for Nuclear Test Ban Amid Setbacks

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — With mixed success, a number of nations have recently intensified efforts to persuade a dozen key countries, including the United States, to ratify the treaty banning all nuclear weapons test explosions.

Diplomats from Austria, Finland and Japan have been pressing their counterparts around the globe to support the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by providing their full dues payments or by signing and ratifying the treaty.

Last month, the European Union also said it would make demarches to national governments urging them to sign and ratify the pact.  Three U.N. disarmament promotion centers stationed in Latin America, Africa and Asia also have received funding from Austria to advocate treaty ratification.

The efforts are being made in anticipation of a Vienna conference scheduled for early September to promote the treaty’s entry into force.  To take effect, the treaty requires 44 specific countries to ratify the accord, but only 32 have done so.  Holdout nations include China, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Vietnam and the United States, which signed the treaty in 1996.

In a breakthrough, Algeria deposited its instruments of ratification last week (see GSN, July 17).

“We are hopeful that some of the remaining 12 will do it still even before the meeting takes place,” said Tom Groenberg, Finland’s ambassador to the organization responsible for implementing the treaty.

India Will Be Absent

Despite the recent efforts to promote the treaty, signs suggest that entry into force will not occur soon.  In particular, India has indicated that it will not participate in the September conference, Groenberg said.

India has previously opposed the treaty, arguing that a nuclear testing ban that was not unaccompanied by progress toward global nuclear disarmament would unfairly help preserve a nuclear weapons advantage for some states.  India and Pakistan each conducted nuclear tests in 1998 and are the only nations to conduct such tests since the treaty was opened for signature in 1996.

U.S. officials also have indicated they will not send a representative to the conference, saying they should not participate in encouraging other countries to ratify in light of the Bush administration’s expressed opposition to U.S. ratification, Global Security Newswire reported this month (see GSN, July 9).

The administration has said the United States might someday need to resume testing to address potential problems with its nuclear warheads stockpile or possibly to test new weapons.

Perhaps of greatest concern is North Korea, which is not expected to attend, and which experts suspect might in the coming months attempt a nuclear weapons test explosion to prove it has developed a nuclear weapons capability.

“I think there is an urgency today, which is as high today as when the treaty was negotiated in the middle 1990s,” Groenberg said.

A North Korean test, he said, “would certainly be a blow and is going to weaken the understanding which has emerged [that] … there is, after all, a moratorium,” he said.

Realistically, Groenberg said, the treaty would not likely enter into force in the next three years.

Prospects for Additional Successes Seen

Still, he and Austrian Ambassador Thomas Stelzer, the current six-month chairman of the treaty’s preparatory commission, see additional areas for near-term success.

Some of the remaining holdouts have not ratified simply for technical reasons or “minor issues,” Stelzer said.

“There is a very clear technical obstacle in the case of Colombia.  It is an internal issue that is about to be resolved,” he said.  “Also, in the case of Indonesia, I hear they are also very close to ratifying,” Stelzer added.

Other countries, though, may not be as close.

“It’s very difficult to believe China would ratify before the United States had ratified,” Stelzer said.

According to Groenberg, representatives from Austria, Finland and Japan have approached the Bush administration on the matter.

“The administration has made it clear that they are not going to support ratification of the treaty,” Stelzer noted.

Israel and Egypt would be likely to follow the U.S. lead on the matter, he said, adding that Iran “has been a little more cautious about ratification until specific neighbors in the region have ratified.”

The country stopped sending monitoring station data back to Vienna last year, citing the treaty’s nonratified status, and has not resumed the flow (see GSN, March 8, 2002).  

With respect to the civil war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Stelzer said, “my judgment would be it is just a matter of organization.  There are different priorities right now.”

Pakistan, meanwhile, has indicated it would ratify the treaty as soon as India does, he said.

Most critical, Stelzer said, is U.S. ratification.  “It’s my own personal view that if the United States ratified, all of the others would ratify,” he said.

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North Korea I:  Biden Wants Peace Pact, Aide Says

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wants the White House to agree to a nonaggression pact with North Korea if Pyongyang agrees to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions, a congressional aide said yesterday (see GSN, July 24).

Negotiations will not resolve the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula “if either side feels they are negotiating under the gun,” said Frank Jannuzi, an aide to Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.).

Washington wants Pyongyang to rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but North Korea has said that it needs to develop nuclear weapons to deter a U.S. attack.  U.S. President George W. Bush has said he wants to resolve the situation peacefully, but he has pointedly refused to rule out the possibility of military strikes against North Korean nuclear or military sites.

Jannuzi spoke at the Korea Peace Forum in Washington, where speakers from a variety of South Korean and Korean American organizations called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

“Our diplomacy must be resolute but creative,” Jannuzi said of the nonaggression pact, adding that, “we don’t know yet exactly what form this … might take.”

Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is also seeking a diplomatic resolution to the crisis, according to Keith Luce, one of Lugar’s top aides.

“Senator Lugar supports the president in his statements that he has no intentions to attack North Korea,” Luce said.

While the forum focused on a diplomatic settlement to end the crisis, Jannuzi said that the history of animosity on the peninsula could stand in the way of peace.

“The fundamental problem here is the complete lack of trust,” he said.

Another forum participant said she would not be surprised if war breaks out, sooner rather than later.

“The bubble is going to burst,” she said.

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North Korea II:  Pyongyang Threatens to Build Small Nuclear Weapons

North Korea has threatened to build tactical nuclear weapons in response to U.S. efforts to develop low-yield nuclear weapons, CNN.com reported (see GSN, July 24).

“The D.P.R.K. will consider the ultra-modern weapons the new conservatives of the U.S. try to use as tactical nuclear weapons, which compels the D.P.R.K. to make as powerful weapons as them,” North Korean officials said yesterday.

North Korea accused the United States of shunning direct negotiations and “trying to complicate the issue” (CNN.com, July 25).

U.S. President George W. Bush telephoned South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to discuss the crisis, the Korea Herald reported.

“The two leaders exchanged opinions about multilateral nuclear talks and expressed firm belief that (they) will be able to find a key to resolving the North’s nuclear issue peacefully through multilateral talks,” the South Korean administration said (Korea Herald, July 25).

The Pyongyang International Tribunal on U.S. Crimes in Korea, meanwhile, has charged every U.S. president from Harry Truman to Bush with war crimes (Korean Central News Agency, July 25).

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Smallpox:  Panel Questions HHS on Low Smallpox Vaccinations

By Emily Heil

CongressDaily

WASHINGTON — U.S. public health officials faced questions from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee yesterday about why fewer healthcare workers than expected have received smallpox vaccinations, after Congress passed legislation intended to boost vaccine use in preparation for a possible bioterrorism attack (see GSN, July 17).  During a hearing on bioterrorism readiness efforts, lawmakers also said they were close to reaching an agreement on legislation enacting U.S. President George W. Bush’s “Bioshield” plan to encourage commercial development of countermeasures to biological threats (see GSN, July 17).

Congress passed the “Smallpox Emergency Protection Personnel Act” in April to compensate healthcare workers harmed by side effects of the vaccine, which has been linked to heart problems and other complications (see GSN, April 14).  The administration had hoped to vaccinate between 400,000 and 500,000 emergency and healthcare workers who might respond to a smallpox outbreak.  Democrats argued when the legislation was passed that it should be more generous in order to ensure broader participation in the vaccination effort.  As of last Friday, only 38,000 civilian public health workers have been vaccinated.

“The vaccination program is off course and behind schedule,” said senior committee Democrat Edward Kennedy (Mass.).  Kennedy pinned the blame for the delay on the failure of the Health and Human Services Department to release a table of vaccine-related injuries that are eligible for compensation, as required by the legislation.  Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said he was concerned about the delay and about the slow pace of vaccinations.  “Clearly, we haven’t gotten the vaccine out as aggressively as we should,” Gregg said.  In a letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, Kennedy and Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) pressed the agency to complete work on the table.  “We are increasingly concerned by the delay,” they wrote.  “Too many first responders aware of the possibility of side effects are refusing to participate in this very high priority vaccination program.”

Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said HHS was close to completing the table, which she said was slowed by both legal and scientific issues, including a newly discovered complication involving heart attacks.  Gerberding said relatively low vaccination rates also were due to the incorrect perception that a smallpox attack is less likely than it was in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks.  With war in Afghanistan and Iraq over, people do not think smallpox is an imminent threat, she told the committee.  “We are still operating under the assumption that the smallpox threat is real,” she said.  “We have to be prepared as a nation for the possibility of a smallpox attack.”

Kennedy said he and Gregg were working to break the impasse that has prevented the Bioshield bill from reaching the Senate floor.  The bill passed the committee, but has been stymied because of concerns about its funding source.  Appropriators, including the senior Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), do not want the program to have mandatory funding.  Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan said passage of Bioshield legislation would help speed up research and approval of vaccines.  “Enactment of Project Bioshield is a priority for the administration,” he said.

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North Korea:  United States Sanctions North Korean Entity

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United States has formally sanctioned a North Korean entity for its role in the transfer of Scud ballistic missile components to Yemen late last year, a U.S. State Department official told Global Security Newswire today (see GSN, July 3).

The sanctions against Changgwang Sinyong Corp., effective beginning today, were announced in a notice published today in the Federal Register.  Under the Arms Export Control Act and the Export Administration Act of 1979, the United States has imposed sanctions against Changgwang Sinyong for a period of three years and eight months.  The sanctions prohibit the company from importing goods into, and entering into contracts with, the United States.

In addition, private U.S. companies are barred from selling to Changgwang Sinyong items listed on the U.S. Munitions List and those normally requiring an export license under the Export Administration Act.

In mid-December 2002, the United States and Spain seized a North Korean ship traveling to Yemen loaded with more than a dozen disassembled Scud ballistic missiles (see GSN, Dec. 11, 2002).  Yemen was later allowed to receive the missile shipment, however, because the Bush administration contended that there was no legal authority to hold it, according to Robert Einhorn, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ International Security Program, who noted that today’s announced sanctions were independent of the shipment’s seizure (see GSN, Dec. 16, 2002).  He credited Yemen’s appeals to the United States and its cooperation in the war on terrorism for the Bush administration’s decision to release the shipment. 

The incident, however, helped prompt the creation of the Proliferation Security Initiative — a Bush administration proposal to interdict suspect shipments of WMD-related cargo (see GSN, July 9). 

Today’s announced sanctions against Changgwang Sinyong are the latest in a long list of sanctions imposed against the company for alleged WMD and missile proliferation activities.  Earlier this month, the company was sanctioned for allegedly transferring items to Iran that could aid Tehran’s WMD and missile programs.  In March, the United States sanctioned the company for its alleged role in the sale of North Korean ballistic missiles to Pakistan.  The company was also sanctioned last year for a sale of Scud ballistic missile components to Yemen that occurred during the Clinton administration.

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U.S. Plans:  Pentagon Might Combine Airship, Mirror System, Lasers

The U.S. Defense Department might combine two of its missile defense efforts — the Aerospace Relay Mirror System and the High Altitude Airship — to increase the range of military laser systems, Jane’s Defense Weekly reported this week (see GSN, July 23).

The Missile Defense Agency is scheduled to begin flight tests of the airship in 2006, and officials want to conduct experiments that combine both systems around that time.  The airship is primarily being developed to track missiles, but it could be teamed with the mirror relay system to allow ground-based lasers to track targets that are out of direct view, according to Jane’s.

The mirror system would be attached to the airship with cables and would sit 50 meters below the aircraft, according to Donald Washburn, who manages strategic relay mirror programs for the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico (Michael Sirak, Jane’s Defense Weekly, July 30).

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